Half Year 2022 Boart Longyear Group Ltd Earnings Call Aug 24, 2022 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of Boart Longyear Group Ltd earnings conference call or presentation Wednesday, August 24, 2022 at 12:30:00am GMT TEXT version of Transcript ================================================================================ Corporate Participants ================================================================================ * Jeffrey R. Olsen Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director * Miguel A. Desdin Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CFO * Tony Shaffer Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - Head of IR ================================================================================ Presentation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (technical difficulty) '22 Results Webcast. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. (Operator Instructions) I would like to introduce the host of today's event, Tony Shaffer, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Shaffer, you may begin. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Shaffer, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - Head of IR [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good morning to those of you in Australia, and good evening to those of you in North America. Welcome to our Half Year 2022 Results Webcast. We released our press release, financial statements and results presentation earlier today. The documents are available on our website. With me today is our CEO, Jeff Olsen; and our CFO, Miguel Desdin. Following our prepared remarks, we'll take your questions. Moving to slide 2. Please refer to our forward-looking language for today's presentation, which is also included in our press release. I'd now like to turn the call over to Jeff. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey R. Olsen, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, Tony. It's a pleasure to be with you today to review our first half results. For those who may be with us for the first time, I want to briefly introduce who we are. Boart Longyear is unique organization in the mining services sector, encompassing the world's largest specialized drilling services provider, industry-leading products business and a cutting-edge mining technology platform. We have peers within each segment, yet no group can service customers across the mining value chain as Boart Longyear can. Across our 130-plus years of history, we've developed numerous disruptive technologies, improving the efficiency of the mining industry. We have a global reputation as the industry leader for innovation. Operating on 5 continents, we have a global footprint with almost 6,000 employees worldwide and work across various commodities. Go to the next slide, please. Our first half performance was the strongest we've had since 2013. The work we've been doing for the last few years to strengthen our balance sheet and improve our cost structure laid the groundwork for this period's performance. Another important factor in our results is the macroeconomic environment driving long-term demand for metals and mining. This demand is being fueled by electrification in the green economy, which will require significantly more metals, such as copper and nickel. First half revenue grew from increased demand for our products and services. Many of our customers have expansive drilling programs to add reserves to supply the increasing demand for metals. Adjusted EBITDA expanded in the first half, yet we like many other companies are facing higher input costs and challenges in our supply chain. Our CFO, Miguel Desdin, will share how we're navigating these headwinds. Both revenue and adjusted EBITDA benefited from price and volume growth during the first half. Our technology group, geological data services, which we call GDS, is bringing the mining industry into the 21st century. GDS' disruptive platform can meaningfully speed-up exploration and development through more comprehensive and accurate ore body knowledge. GDS is focused on business development and delivering critical insights to clients with improved and faster access to ore-body knowledge, customers can make strategic development decisions in an efficient time-frame in a cost-effective manner. ESG is an integral part of our business. During the first half, we've been ramping up our sustainability initiatives and working to operationalize them. When our Board met last week, ESG was a significant topic of discussion with the group focused on implementation. Lastly, our growth was challenged for several years to manage our debt levels. With our recapitalization in 2021, we are able to start investing capital into the business to drive long-term growth. We continue investing in the organization during the first half. All told, it was a good first half, and we are optimistic that the second half of the year will be just as strong. Next slide, please. The macroeconomic environment is driving metals demand and is the basis for Boart Longyear's anticipated growth. Electrification is a key component of the energy transition and underlying metals demand. Copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel are critical to electric vehicles and power generation. We are very active in the copper space. In the first half of 2022, drilling services generated almost 30% of revenue from copper and nickel-related drilling. Exploration investment by mining houses will struggle to keep-up with surging demand for green energy. This comes on the heel of almost a decade of underinvestment, creating the current environment that is much more of a supply problem than a demand issue. The chart on the left is S&P's pipeline activity index showing dynamic expansion over the last 18-plus months. The graph on the right shows drilling activity by commodity, and you can see that copper and gold are 2 of the most active metals for drilling. Gold and copper are the top 2 commodities we focus on as they involve the most intensive drilling programs. The S&P revised forecast for 2021 exploration budget indicated growth of about 35%, and they are predicting another 5% to 10% in 2022. In June and July this year, commodity prices eased off their historic highs as world markets digested recession fears and rising interest rates. These type of macro events have the potential to change the global outlook. Our view is we'll likely see robust demand for our products and services for several years. Let's move on to the next slide. Now turning to our first half performance. We had a strong first half. However, we had a rough start to the year with safety. About half of our safety incidents came from new employees, and we've seen an increase in hand injuries. To address the situation, we renewed our focus on critical risk management and doubled down on EHS fundamentals such as the 8 Golden Rules of Safety. We are acutely focused on improving safety in the second half of the year. Revenue increased 18% for the period to $528 million, driven by price and volume expansion in drilling services and products. Drilling Services saw vigorous customer demand, particularly in the US, Canada and Latin America. The current economic climate has led to limited pullback from a handful of juniors with any rig availability quickly assumed by other customers. Products saw a solid price and volume growth during the half, driven by performance tooling and capital equipment. Overall, there's been a progressive decrease in operational impacts from COVID throughout the first half and although there has been some regional issues that continue to linger. Adjusted EBITDA increased 14% in the first half, driven primarily by volume and price growth as well as the impact of operational efficiencies Drilling Services implemented last year. Adjusted EBITDA was negatively impacted by products' higher manufacturing, freight and freight and distribution costs and, of course, higher raw material price inflation. We continue to invest capital to position the businesses for long-term growth. During the first half, we invested $28 million into the organization. We focused on new rigs, refurbishing rigs and GDS R&D. Lastly, net debt dropped 81%, reflecting the impact of last year's recapitalization, which right-sized our balance sheet and put us back on a growth trajectory. Let's move on to the next slide. I want to focus a bit more on the first half performance of drilling services and products. One of the benefits of our group structure is Drilling Services access to both our product portfolio and GDS technology. Our financial reporting consolidates the group's intersegment sales. We have started providing financial data before elimination so that investors can better understand the true scale of each business. Drilling Services saw healthy revenue and EBITDA increases during the first half. Client demand is strong, and we are already working with numerous customers on 2023 drilling programs. Our strongest performing regions are the US, Canada and Latin America and surface coring, RC rotary and underground coring accounted for 90% of drilling services revenue. Almost 90% of the division's first half revenue came from major mining companies. Volume and price increases had a very positive impact on Drilling Services EBITDA for the period as did productivity initiatives. Products had solid revenue growth for the first half and EBITDA suffered from increased manufacturing costs, including raw material, freight and distribution costs. Revenue benefited from a new pricing program implemented early in the first half. During 2021, we ramped up our manufacturing facilities quite quickly. This year, the plants are running at a more normal rate. We are extremely focused on managing products costs and improving EBITDA. Next slide, please. Late last year, GDS introduced TruGyro and progressed its rollout during the first half. It is the market's most efficient, safest, lightest and most compact north-seeking gyro. Importantly, it finds north faster than any other competing product. TruGyro has gained traction and its popularity is indicative of the high-quality digital instruments GDS produces. The other significant part of the GDS business is TruScan, which can reduce the time to [live] core by over 60% and has a digital record to drive logging consistency. TruScan also reduces the time from drill core to asset results from about one month to less than a day. And on the environmental front, TruScan sampling can significantly reduce carbon emissions by up to 95% on core freight. TruScan is starting at a variety of new customer mine sites in the third quarter with some clients requesting multiple units. Our customers are making major strides in their exploration drilling programs with GDS portfolio products. On to the next slide, please. As I mentioned earlier in the presentation, we're starting to drive ESG throughout the organization. In April, we published our inaugural ESG report, a significant milestone for the company. While it was our first report, ESG principles have been an essential part of our DNA for much of our 130-plus year history. We started a baseline project during the first half to measure Scope 1 and 2 emissions at our 6 manufacturing sites. This complex undertaking is a critical component of our ESG commitment. We're also studying how to best measure emissions within drilling services. We have finalized our 3-year ESG strategy, which will drive all our initiatives across the business. Lastly, in April, our African colleagues marked World Malaria Day by distributing more than 1,000 mosquito nets to local communities in the DRC, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gabon and Tanzania. Malaria is a serious concern as 95% of our cases occur in Africa, where we operate, posing significant health risk to our employees. So that wraps up my section, and I'm going to turn the call over to our CFO, Miguel Desdin, to discuss our financial performance for the half. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Miguel A. Desdin, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CFO [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, Jeff. Like many companies in this sector, we're navigating inflationary cost pressures and supply chain issues that impact operations. I thought it would be helpful to discuss how we're managing both before I review the financial metrics. Next slide, please. We've been hard at work trying to overcome inflationary pressures. We break inflation into 2 main categories: input costs and labor costs. Since labor is a significant part of our cost structure, it's a focal point for us. For Drilling Services, high-quality labor is fundamental to delivering value to our customers. Looking first at input cost inflation, the price of steel is the biggest driver of higher costs for our products business. One strategy we've implemented is to move 2 rod manufacturing cells from Canada to our plant in Eiterfeld, Germany. This has allowed us to leverage lower-cost European steel. Rising energy prices have increased our costs as have higher freight rates. Shipping delays have impacted receipts of materials and components and have affected our ability to get final products delivered to customers. We're working on lowering production costs by sourcing materials from lower-cost providers. For example, we're looking at new sources of steel. We're also working with our engineering group to explore reengineering some of our systems in an effort to reduce costs by considering other lower-cost materials. On the labor side, we have a multi-faceted approach to attracting and retaining new employees. It's a highly competitive global market. Given demand within the sector, everyone is looking for experienced drillers and high-quality employees that have development potential. We offer and pay competitive wages to attract the best candidates and distinguish ourselves by providing an industry-leading training program. We've also fine-tuned our recruitment and onboarding to enhance employee retention. Another strategy we have implemented is increasing women in our workforce. Last year, we initiated our 15x25 goal of having women represent 15% of our employee base by the end of 2025. Last year, we undertook an employee engagement survey and are implementing actions to improve the employee experience and strengthen retention. On the supply chain front, earlier in the year, we increased our lending facility to allow for more investment in inventory. This enables us to work around lead time delays and meet customer commitments. We've developed the vendor management strategy to lower input costs by shifting to alternate suppliers. Our ability to leverage lower European produced steel for rod manufacturing is a good example. Lastly, we're leveraging our manufacturing footprint to take advantage of elevated consumption. We've moved some percussive rod production to our plant in Wuxi, China to benefit from their manufacturing capacity. And since our plant in Poland is at capacity, we're outsourcing certain component parts, thus enabling us to fill orders that would otherwise take considerably longer to complete. Next slide, please. The revenue bridge shows the year-over-year revenue increase, which, as you can see, has been driven by broad-based improvement in volumes and prices. Revenue in the first half increased 18% to $528 million. There was a negative foreign exchange impact of $17 million, mainly from movements in the Canadian and Australian dollars. Price and volume growth in drilling services was the primary driver of the revenue growth and products contributed growth, but ultimately, the result was muted by higher input costs. Next slide, please. We've been focused on improving adjusted EBITDA and are proud that we had the strongest performance in the first half since 2013. During the half, we benefited $38 million from price growth and $15 million from volume expansion. The $10 million cost of goods sold impact is related to the increased manufacturing costs. This was offset by the benefit from productivity initiatives that Drilling Services implemented last year. The $28 million inflation impact is spread across drilling services, products and GDS. And the SG&A impact reflects the cost of higher professional fees and additional headcount to support the growth. Next slide, please. Finally, a look at liquidity. For the half year, we generated $54 million of cash from operating activities. We used $20 million for working capital, paid $13 million for interest and taxes and had $26 million of capital expenditures, net of $2 million of asset sales. At the end of the first half, we had a cash balance of 38 and $6 million available on our ABL. That resulted in available liquidity of $44 million. In summary, given the inflationary pressures we're dealing with, we had a good first half, and we're focused on delivering similar performance in the second half of the year. That concludes my remarks. I'll turn the call back over to Jeff. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey R. Olsen, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, Miguel. To summarize the first half, industry demand remains strong. We're keeping a close eye on macroeconomic trends, but think the mining sector is well positioned given the strong long-term demand for green energy and electrification. Our revenue growth was robust, and we're working to proactively manage inflationary pressures and supply chain issues. Next slide, please. We have been working on our cost structure for several years and since our peak SG&A, we've reduced around $200 million of costs to the business. I firmly believe that we don't need $2 billion in revenue like the peak to deliver these strong margins very much like the peak and strong EBITDA, of course. For fiscal year 2021, our adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.2%. For this year, our margin was 13.1%. We still have more work to do, but I'm proud of our cost discipline and what we have delivered with margin improvement. Next slide, please. In wrapping up, I want to leave you with what makes Boart Longyear stand-out from an investment perspective. Our unique combination of best-in-class businesses is a competitive advantage, allowing us to provide customers with distinct products and services offered under one roof. We offer a revenue mix that encompasses both commodity and geographic diversity. GDS is revolutionizing the industry upending the legacy logging and assaying processes. Our right-sized balance sheet has positioned us to take advantage of robust growth opportunities and continue to push for improved profitability. Now that concludes our prepared remarks. We'll now open-up the call for some questions. ================================================================================ Questions and Answers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Shaffer, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - Head of IR [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A reminder to please use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen to ask your questions and one of our panelists will do their best to answer it. Starting with our first question, comes from Matthew Chen. Matthew says, well done on the result, Jeff and the team. Thanks for the opportunity. What's the potential for further upside in rig utilization? And is this where the delta in the near term can come from? How should we think about the growth in the number of operating and total rigs similar to as observed? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey R. Olsen, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you very much. You've probably heard me say this before, Matt, and thanks for the question. But the simple utilization number doesn't tell the whole story. We certainly are at a pretty high utilization rate today. And in some cases, we would say that in some drilling disciplines in some regions, we are at capacity. We are fully utilized, given the ability to use equipment. However, there are always room for increased utilization in the form of extra shifts, reducing time between jobs, length of jobs. And we think that, of course, that will have some benefits in the future. So when I look at that question, I would sort of dig a layer deeper into utilization and see that there's always opportunity to improve how hard we sweat our assets even if there isn't more assets out there or they're not put into the field. I think that answers your question. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Shaffer, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - Head of IR [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fantastic. And Matt has a follow-up question, just regarding products. He says, regarding products, is this a new base for product costs going forward and what should we think about this? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey R. Olsen, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I wouldn't see this as a new base for our costs going forward in products. Certainly, a lot of those cost increases, they're not new to us or our industry or they're really global trends such as steel costs, raw material costs, freight costs, distribution costs. And I don't think they're the new norm. I think we're going to see some mitigation in those. Certainly, there are things that we can do to help mitigate that in the future. And what Miguel talked about was moving a couple of our rod sales to Eiterfeld to make sure that we take advantage of cheaper raw materials in Europe than we could get in North America. And of course, that gives us the flexibility in the future to try to match our production to where those raw material costs might be the cheapest. If you're making a rod, remember that 70% of the cost of rods is going to be steel. So that's a big factor. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Miguel A. Desdin, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CFO [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Of course, just to add on to that, if I may. Matthew, you know as well as we do, that it's important that we keep up with inflationary pressures. And so whatever we can do over the second half to do that, we're going to try and do, so that the business isn't handicapped by continued inflationary upturns. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Shaffer, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - Head of IR [6] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Excellent. Our next question is regarding shares and comes from Christopher King. Christopher ask, given the miniscule free float, are you able to give some insight into plans to address share liquidity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey R. Olsen, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director [7] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Christopher. We publicly announced that when we did our recapitalization late last year that we would explore the potential for accessing capital markets in North America. That's certainly one potential way to create liquidity in our share price. But it's no secret that the IPO markets and those markets aren't in the best of condition today and so that probably puts that out a little bit. But there are probably other things we can explore and rest assured, we're looking at all options out there. Part of what we need to do is -- part of one of our constraints is we're held a little bit captive to the capital markets, but we will certainly be exploring all options that we can. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Shaffer, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - Head of IR [8] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fantastic. Another question from Matthew. Matthew says thanks guys, just a follow-up on your CapEx profile over the near-term. Still expecting to be a similar quantum? Thanks in advance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Miguel A. Desdin, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CFO [9] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. Matthew, we don't think anything has changed dramatically on the capital side for this year. I think we're going to be in the same realm as we started the year with the original budget. So nothing's changed from that perspective. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey R. Olsen, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director [10] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. I think the risk to our capital budget is more on the supply chain side than it is on our willingness to spend our capital budget. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Shaffer, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - Head of IR [11] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fantastic. At this stage, gentlemen, we have no further questions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey R. Olsen, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director [12] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Matt, for your questions. If there are no any other questions, Tony, should we close it off? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Shaffer, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - Head of IR [13] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey R. Olsen, Boart Longyear Group Ltd. - CEO, President & Executive Director [14] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining today. Thank you for your interest in Boart Longyear. We appreciate it very much.

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