Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Orbit Garant Drilling's Fiscal 2023 First Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following management's remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Please be aware that certain information discussed today may be forward-looking, that actual results could differ materially. Certain non-IFRS financial measures will also be discussed. Please refer to the company's SEDAR filings for the additional information on both risk factors and non-IFRS measures. This call is being recorded on Thursday, November 10, 2022. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Éric Alexandre, President and CEO of Orbit Garant. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. With me on the call is Daniel Maheu, CFO. Following my opening remarks, Daniel will review our financial results, and I will conclude with comments on our outlook. We will then welcome questions. Our profitability continued to improve in the first quarter, due primarily to increased revenue per meter drilled, reflecting improved driller productivity, more favorable contract pricing, and increased specialized drilling activity in Canada. Our average revenue per meter drilled was approximately CAD 130 in the quarter, an increase of 19.5% compared to CAD 108 in Q1 last year. Our margins in the quarter also benefit from decreased project ramp-up costs in Canada and reduced mobilization costs for projects in Chile and Guinea compared to Q1 last year.
Revenue for the quarter was CAD 53.2 million, up 5.3% compared to Q1 last year, and we generated adjusted gross margin of 16.3% compared to 12.3% in Q1 a year ago. Our drill utilization rate in the quarter was approximately 63%, similar to 64% in Q1 last year. Our utilization rate has now exceeded 60% in five of the last six quarters, demonstrating the sustained strong customer demand we are experiencing. I will now turn the call over to Daniel Maheu to review our first quarter results in more detail. Daniel Maheu.
Thank you, Éric, and good morning, everyone. As Éric noted, our fiscal 2023 first quarter revenue totaled CAD 53.2 million, an increase of 5.3% from Q1 last year. Canada revenue totaled CAD 42.8 million, up 12.9% from Q1 last year, reflecting improved driller productivity, a more favorable pricing environment, and increased specialized drilling activity. International revenue was CAD 10.4 million compared to CAD 12.7 million in Q1 last year. The decline was due to the lower drilling activity in Burkina Faso and Chile, partially offset by increased drilling activity in Guinea and Guyana. Gross profit for the quarter increased to CAD 6.2 million from CAD 3.8 million in Q1 last year. Adjusted gross margin, excluding depreciation expenses, was 16.3%, up from 12.3% a year ago.
As Éric noted, higher margin in Q1 this year were attributable to higher average revenue per meter drilled, reflecting improved driller productivity, a more favorable pricing environment, and increased specialized drilling activity in Canada. Prior year margins were impacted by project ramp-up costs due to the rapid growth in Canada and mobilization costs for new long-term projects in Chile and Guinea. G&A expenses were $3.9 million in the quarter, or 7.3% of revenue, compared to $3.8 million or 7.4% of revenue in Q1 last year. EBITDA for the quarter increased to $5.8 million from $2.7 million in Q1 last year. Net earnings were $1.1 million, or $0.03 per share, compared to a net loss of $1.3 million, or $0.04 per share in Q1 a year ago.
The positive variances in EBITDA and net earnings were attributable to factors already discussed. Now turning to our balance sheet. During the quarter, we generated a cash flow of CAD 0.1 million from financing activities. In Q1 last year, we repaid a net amount of CAD 1.2 million of long-term debt and lease liabilities. On September 9, we entered into an additional loan agreement with the Business Development Bank of Canada, which provide for a term loan of CAD 8.47 million. The loan bears interest at a fixed rate of 6.7% per year, has a 20-year term, and is repayable in 240 consecutive monthly payments from November 2022 until October 2042.
The fixed interest rate may be reduced by 0.2% from October 2023 if we meet certain financial covenants. As a result of this loan agreement, and in order to extract our head office building from the borrowing base under the credit agreement, we concurrently entered in a third amending agreement to our credit agreement with National Bank. Under this amended agreement, the amount available for borrowing under the revolving facility was reduced from CAD 35 million to CAD 30 million, and modifications were made to certain financial covenants applicable to Q1 2023 and further quarters. We repay a net amount of CAD 7 million on our credit facility in Q1 2023 following this loan agreement, compared to a withdrawal of CAD 1.4 million in Q1 last year.
Our long-term debt under the credit facility, including $1 million draw from our $5 million revolving facility, and the current portion was CAD 24.6 million as at September 30th, 2022, compared to CAD 31.5 million as at June 30th, 2022, which was our fiscal 2022 year end. At quarter end, our working capital position was CAD 53.7 million compared to CAD 53.4 million as at June 30th, 2022. I will now turn the call back to Éric for closing comments. Éric?
Thanks, Daniel. We are pleased with our performance for the quarter, and we expect to generate further margin expansion over the course of fiscal 2023, supported by continued strong customer demand, a more favorable contract pricing environment, which we expect will continue to help offset inflationary pressures on our business, the investment we made last year to ramp up our operation and a continued improvement in driller productivity. We are pleased with the gains in driller productivity that we have achieved over the last two quarters in Canada. We expect further improvement ahead as our newer drillers gain more field experience and continue to benefit from the support of our training program. While gold and copper prices have declined from their highs early this year, they remain at historically elevated levels that provide the mining industry with a strong incentive to maintain exploration and development spending.
According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, global non-ferrous exploration budget increased an estimated 16% in the 2022 calendar year to $13 billion, the most in a single year since 2013. S&P anticipate a decline of 10%-20% in 2023 budgets from 2022 levels. Even a 20% decline would result in higher budgets than the industry had in any year between 2015 and 2020. The feedback we are getting from our customer operating in Canada indicates that they plan to maintain their exploration and development spending throughout 2023. Internationally, in Chile and Guinea, we have made the necessary investment to mobilize our equipment and personnel there to support our long-term drilling contracts, so we expect improved contributions from these international operations going forward.
In Guyana, we expect to maintain similar level of drilling activity that we perform in Q1 throughout 2023. In Burkina Faso, our drilling projects are in areas that have historically experienced fewer security challenges. However, we have recently been experiencing increased delay and interruptions in our drilling operation there. We continue to monitor this situation. Looking ahead, supported by strong customer demand, improved driller productivity, and a more favorable pricing environment, we will continue to focus on expanding margins over the course of fiscal 2023 to drive value to shareholders. That concludes our formal remarks this morning. We will now welcome any questions. Michelle, please begin the question period.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touch tone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be polled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Gordon Lawson of Paradigm Capital. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Can you please elaborate on the evolving labor market in terms of hiring and training and how you expect that to assist with contract expansion this fiscal year?
Well, this is one of the challenges that all the industry has now, especially in Canada, where it's more challenging to find people to perform some work. You know, with our training school we have put in place many years ago, we are well positioned to improve our position out there. Actually, we keep on going and training people. We don't have any big difficulty to attract people to get trained. It goes the way we would like to, except that it's hard now to have more experienced drillers in place as it was in the past, because some of them are getting retired now.
Moving forward, we will continue to train people and as we go, and we don't see any big challenge to attract people because we are able to find some to be trained. There is something else that help us, Gordon, is that we have this computerized rig in place that help us to accelerate the training for our new employees. I think we are well-positioned for that, but it's still a challenge for all the industries, for sure.
Would you say it's still an impediment to expanding or landing new contracts as it has been before?
Yeah. It will be, you know, slowing down the industry capacity to take more, for sure.
Okay. Is there any more color you can provide with respect to canceling Russian contracts and mobilization of units to more profitable jurisdictions?
I don't get what you said, Gordon. Could you repeat, please?
Yeah. Well, in the past, you've talked about canceling contracts with Russian companies and mobilization of units. You're talking now about more profitable areas such as Guinea and so on. Can you just elaborate on how the mobilization of these units is going?
Well, while Burkina Faso is a challenging country right now, and we have some capacity that has been freed up in the last two quarter, you know, our plan would be to revise, you know, our strategic position out there. Guinea is one of the strategy we have put in place. We might move some rig out of Burkina and because they are not working right now and we're not taking more contract as the security is a challenge out there. Probably those capacity would be transferred in another sector where we have activity and where we have some demand. As an example, Guinea is one. Chile could be one. That's gonna be, you know, our strategy out there in terms to address the challenge we have to face in Burkina Faso.
No decision has been taken yet. We clearly see that Burkina Faso would be difficult to grow moving forward based on the political situation and the security in the country.
Okay. That's it for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Gordon. Have a nice day.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question, please press star one at this time. There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn the conference back to you.
Okay. Thank you everyone for participating. We will now end up the call. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.