Good morning everyone. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you are.

Joining me today is Peter Bryant, our CFO, for our FY '26 half-year results. Exceptional set of results for this half-year, particularly when compared to last year and some of the challenges we had in PCP.

I'll skip through the highlights, sustainability, and then I'll hand over to Pete, and then I'll take you through the business's operating performances as well. Just a comment on the second page: we've now got a workforce of more than 12,000 people, we're saying circa 12,000 people, that's a 12,000 people and growing, obviously given the activity levels we're supporting across the group.

If I skip over the page to the half-year financial results, we've delivered revenue up 20% or 19.5% to $2 billion. The underlying EBITDA was $132.3 million, up 36.5% on the half, and underlying NPAT of $83.1 million, up 42.3% on the half.

Record cash holdings for the business of $342.4 million, and very strong cash conversion, which again Pete will talk to more, but a very strong focus for the business units. Underlying earnings per share of 18.1 cents.

Strong order book, it's grown a bit since the AGM, $7.5 billion including repeat business. What's really grown is the outlook and the pipeline, which is for projects to be tendered/awarded within a 12-month period.

That's now $25.2 billion, and we have a record of $9.2 billion in active tenders currently submitted and being worked on. Fully franked interim dividend declared at 8.5 cents a share is up 20% on the PCP.

Importantly, and I'll talk more about this during the presentation, is we've further upgraded our guidance to $275 to $285 million of EBITDA from $260 to $265 million, which we disclosed at the AGM. On the next page, I'll talk about sustainability.

We obviously always have a very strong focus of the safety and well-being of our people, and also critical risk management. I'm encouraged to see that the TRIFR is improved, albeit slightly from our position of 6 previously, that's down to 5.11.

Critical risk management implementation is very close to completion across all of our businesses, and obviously having the acquisition of Freedon done recently, it'll be rolled out across their business as well. Some of the decreases in female participation and indigenous are really due to the inclusion of the Freedon workforce and the increase in blue-collar workforce, which is predominantly male.

That's had a negative effect on some of those stats, but overall obviously we're looking to improve those stats. With that I'll hand over to Pete to talk through the financials, and I'll cover up again on operations shortly.

Thanks, Jules, and can I also welcome everyone to the call. It's my second results presentation as the CFO of NRW, and obviously very happy to be presenting such a great set of numbers.

Earnings, margins, cash, gearing, all reflect very positively for the half. I'm on slide 5 now, Jules has already called out all the key numbers, which leaves me with I guess the opportunity to present the most engaging commentary I can around amortization, interest, tax, and non-underlying.

If you just run down the numbers there, amortization of acquisition intangibles is up on the prior corresponding period. That increase all relates to the amortization of the Freedon customer-related intangibles that were booked.

I'll talk about the Freedon acquisition on the next slide. Non-underlying transactions at $10 million, there is a table in the directors' report, that gives you full breakdown of that number.

The largest single item is $6.7 million relates to Freedon acquisition costs and the treatment of the deferred consideration for Freedon, which is another item I'll touch on on the next slide. Interest was flat year-on or half-on-half, which when you think we used debt to fund the acquisition of Freedon is a great outcome.

Reflects the retirement of some equipment financing, and we did manage to negotiate a reduction in our interest rates with our banking syndicate. Finally on that slide, tax, very stable at just under 30% of NPAT.

Moving to slide 6, which deals with the impact of the Freedon acquisition. If there's an opening comment, I am going to say, sometimes accounting standards can add a little bit of complexity to how we're required to disclose things, and I think this is one of those times.

Just as a brief recap, when we announced Freedon, we pointed out the total consideration would be a maximum of $200 million on a debt-free, cash-free basis. The $200 million comprised a guaranteed payment of $140 million and an earn-out of up to $60 million.

Of the maximum consideration, a payment of $18 million was going to be deferred for two years. Now the good news is Freedon achieved its earn-out, we will be paying the maximum consideration of $200 million.

This slide now shows how we have to account for that. If you look at the column on the far right-hand side, I'll just move down the numbers for you.

You can see at the top the $200 million acquisition price. We are required under the accounting standards to deduct from that the $18 million deferred payment.

Because that deferred payment is tied to the retention of the minority shareholders, again under the accounting standard, that deferred payment is treated as an employee expense, not as part of the consideration. We will be providing for that payment through our P&L, and that amount will be disclosed as non-underlying, and that formed part of that non-underlying balance I referred to on the prior slide.

Continuing to move down, you'll see we add back $45 million. The $45 million was a pre-agreed maximum working capital adjustment that was to be made.

I did mention the acquisition was on a debt-free, cash-free basis. We then are required to deduct what we're calling seller deductions.

These are payments that were made on behalf of the seller by us out of the seller's consideration. As an example, some of their legal fees were paid by us out of their consideration.

The math then gives you a number of $208.1 million. That is the total consideration under AASB 3, which we will use for calculating goodwill.

You'll then see a $55, oh sorry, $53.7 million cash adjustment. That is actually the cash that was in the business when the transaction concluded.

You'll recall I just said the working capital adjustment was $45 million. We actually had a gain because on conclusion there was $53.7 million of cash in the business.

That then gives you the final cash outlay of $154 million. I'll call out the bottom bullet point on that slide: so on a like-for-like basis, if you think of the announced $200 million purchase price, we effectively paid $191.3 million for the business due to the additional cash that came across to us.

You'll see the commentary there on what the earnings multiple would be at that level. As I said, sometimes accounting standards do add some complexity to how we report.

Moving on to the balance sheet, which is slide 7. Perhaps stating the obvious, but off the back of the Freedon acquisition, pretty much every balance in the balance sheet moved.

I'm going to call out the two or three that I think are most important. Net debt, you'll see increased to $200.4 million, and importantly, leverage was sitting at 23.1% before AASB 16.

That balance is actually lower than I think I gave guidance to in previous conversations with most folk on the phone. The gearing was better than expected due to the really strong cash balance that we had at the half.

I'm just going to call out we do still have to pay out the $60 million payment in relation to Freedon, I do expect gearing will tickle up a little bit during the second half of this year, but should close the full year at or a bit below 30%. Working capital, you'll see there we had an increase of $207.6 million in our negative work, oh sorry, to $207.6 million, that is negative working capital.

Just to remind everyone, negative working capital is actually a positive, and I think with the time to do the Freedon acquisition, we did call out that Freedon runs their business with negative working capital, very focused on getting paid in advance for the work they do. My last call-out on the balance sheet is in relation to intangibles and goodwill.

You'll see that balance had increased. That increase all relates to the Freedon acquisition.

We will be booking customer-related intangibles of $95.3 million and goodwill of $141.7 million. Moving down to the cash flow, and Jules did reference the very very good cash flow conversions, 114.1%.

That cash flow conversion was underpinned by two things: by a significant effort of the team to get debtor balances paid. There are a couple of older balances that we recovered during the period, which was great.

We also through one of our major clients received some early payment of invoices that were due at the end of the month, a little bit of a one-off kicker for us. We have called out in the guidance that we expect cash flow conversion to be consistent with long-term averages, I don't see it at 114 percent for the full year.

We had a $69.2 million tax payment. I'm calling that out just because it is up on the prior period.

Again, we have called this out on previous calls. The business had the benefit of some carryforward tax losses and some accelerated capital deductions during the COVID period.

Those are now unwinding, and we're reversing back to what I'd call a more normal cash tax basis. Final one on this page from me is capital expenditure at $56.2 million for the half.

Jules mentioned our focus on capital and cash discipline, that remains. We guided when we released the full-year results to about $140 million of capital for the full year.

We haven't changed that number, but I do expect we'll come in a bit below it given that the focus we have on it. Last slide for me is on debt and available liquidity.

I won't spend long on this slide. The data in the table on the left-hand side, I've really referred to already as we've been working through the call.

The data on the right-hand table just reflects the headroom we have under our various liquidity facilities. That said, we are going to carry out a bit of a review of liquidity off the back of Freedon just to see what that structure should look like.

My final comment really for those who have had an opportunity to read the accounts is you will see in the subsequent events note that we did increase our debt capacity by about $40 million to the establishment of a overdraft facility to help us manage the ebbs and flows of cash in and out of the business. I'll hand you back to Jules now for the exciting stuff.

Thanks, Pete. On the next slide, slide 10, a slide you've seen many times before, which is our divisional splits between civil, mining, MET, and EM&I.

My only comment on this really is that we're not really a true mining services business anymore, we are a services company, obviously with activities across mining services, but also public infrastructure, building, data, defense, etc. We are a very, very diversified business these days.

On the second slide, we just have a quick overview of the various segments. Obviously all of them up on the right-hand side very positively in an earning sense.

Mining was down slightly due to completion of some projects, which I'll talk about on the slide. On to Civil.

Revenue increases 6.3%, strong urban growth, and also the WA side of the business. A lot of work for Rio Tinto in terms of their sustaining capital business.

Three projects there: Brockman Syncline, Rio Tinto's coastal water supply, and also West Angelas, we've worked at for quite a period of time, but we've also awarded Deposit H, which is a new project for us there. The revenue in the core Civil business in Queensland was flat compared to the PCP.

Was also impacted by an underperforming contract. Productivity and rain was causing some issues on that job.

We have fully priced that into this half, the expected outcome, and it's due to complete very soon. Had that not occurred, we would see margins at least where they were at the second half of the FY '25 financial year or better.

As we've said previously, we see those margins continuing to trend up post all of the COVID and hyper-escalation sort of period to being stronger, we'd expect that looking forward. Looking forward, huge amount of opportunity continuing obviously in the heartland that we've worked in for a long time in the Pilbara, sustaining, replacement, minor works, major works, a very large pipeline of opportunities across all of the majors at the moment.

In addition to that, we're seeing quite a bit in the infrastructure space. Not as much obviously in Queensland yet, but certainly in WA, freeway widening, Tonkin Grade Seps, a whole number of projects that are still coming to market, and this really excludes all of the tailwinds coming in defense, both in WA and South Australia, where I think there's a combined $30 million tag for Henderson and another 35, billion, sorry, another $35 billion in South Australia.

I think activity is going to remain very strong. When you think about the South Australian market, we've worked there previously at OZ Minerals, Olympic Dam.

A lot of that workforce and equipment, the capability doesn't exist in South Australia and would come from WA or from our East Coast business. Very good opportunities, and as you can see from our order book, active tenders, and pipeline is probably as strong as we've ever seen it, with significant tenders pending award.

On to Mining, great result, back to that sort of 9% margin. We've always sort of talked about a 9% to 11% EBIT margin for this business.

We're back at 9% after having a pretty difficult time last year due to the excessive rainfall that we had across those operations. That's a real positive.

Revenue a bit lower on PCP purely because of the cessation of the Mt Cattlin job, Mt Webber, and also Isaac Downs were in that period, run rate was high, but we do expect a much stronger second half with acceleration of Castle Hill, and also the awaiting of the South Walker Creek project coming in under the new contract model, which sort of started in January this year. Increase in volumes, and better performance expected in the second half.

The only other thing I'd call out is probably the award of the Mandoo contract. Excellent contract for us to win.

It's 100% client's equipment, when you think about the mobilization transition phase is happening this half, but it doesn't really impact us financially until FY '27. Again, we're growing the business, growing the mining division with zero capital.

When you kind of compare us to some of the comps, we are a very capital-light mining business compared to what you think a mining business looks like or a mining contracting business looks like. Again in terms of order book, as I said, outlook very positive, order book strong at $4.5 billion.

There's a couple of projects, obviously that you can see from the chart there that will be coming up due for extensions. Those conversations are happening now between those two large projects that we have in both Curragh and Karara.

Then other than that, there's a pretty big pipeline of opportunities of which we do have capital available to support, there wouldn't be a huge amount of additional capital required in the short term. On to MET, exceptional performance from those guys on a PCP basis.

Revenue very strong, 30% increase on the PCP, and also the margin trended up very strongly as well. The combination of good performances from DIAB and RCR, and obviously a very strong performance in the revenue from Primero at Fimiston.

That project is completing sort of towards the end of this half. Again, if you think about pipeline outlook for this business, very strong performances during the half and during the sort of calendar year.

A lot of active tenders in play at the moment again pending to award, plus a pipeline that's building currently $3.8 billion, but activity levels are very high, we've got no concerns in terms of replacing the Fimiston revenues as we look forward to '27, which may be a concern from some of the investors' comments in the past. We're very comfortable where this business is at the moment in terms of the MET group run rate, and bear in mind, DIAB has maintenance and shut down services that it does, has RCR in terms of its product supply plus maintenance services, there's a very large annuity business, good margin annuity business that is embedded in our MET group division, it's not all about projects.

Having said that, obviously Fimiston has been a standout for us in terms of capability, and size and scale, and very strong progress on Coastal Waters and Hope Downs 1 NPI as well for Rio Tinto. The only other thing probably to call out on that slide is that we're commencing discussions with sort of global investment banks around next steps on generating value, commercializing our lithium processing technology, which we've been working on for a number of years now.

We've just completed a third pilot plant, had various global majors through, understanding our process and its value to the lithium processing industry in general. That's something that we've kicked off.

We haven't talked about it a huge amount in the past, but it's certainly something that can potentially give us a great outcome in the future. On to EM&I, very happy with obviously the acquisition of the business, the people, some fantastic people in their management team and all of the culture of the people, fits in hand in glove with the NRW businesses.

The integration of the 2,500 employees, the systems, and management reports, and all of the things that we look at, the financials, has gone very smoothly, and really got some great outlook for that business as we look forward. What it delivered during the period: $208 million of revenue at an EBITDA of 4.6%.

That was generally expected and communicated to the market through our due diligence phase. We've won a bunch of data center contracts, but importantly, if you look at that sort of second-last bullet point, Freedon has successfully completed delivery of Westmead Children's Hospital, Auckland Convention Centre, Sydney Metro.

This is a business that is not just about data centers, if the technology stocks go fluctuating wildly, it's not all about data centers. Yes, we're doing a lot of data centers at the moment, but this business has been around for a long time, and its strengths are across infrastructure, hospitals, public venues, sporting stadiums, defense, and all of those areas going to have some huge tailwinds as we look forward at the moment.

We expect a very strong growth outlook coupled with a focus on achieving our internal target of a 6% EBIT margin, which, if you compare to our comps, should be absolutely manageable, and we'd look to improve that going forward. Order book, again, strong, active tenders and pipeline continues to build, really some very good opportunities that you'll get to hear about in the near future.

That leads me to our outlook and guidance. Continued strong growth will be delivered in FY '27 and beyond, which is underpinned by our pipeline currently sitting at $25.2 billion and those active tenders of $9.2 billion.

$7.5 billion of work in hand obviously as you've heard previously. Just to reiterate our '26 guidance, our full-year guidance at this stage is full-year revenue increased by $4.1 to $4.2 billion from previously $4.1 billion, and our underlying EBITDA is increased to between $275 million to $285 million from $260 to $265 million.

Cash conversion consistent with long-term averages. Maybe we don't do 114% all the time, but the high '80s, high '90s is kind of where we're targeting.

With that, I will open it up to questions. Thanks very much.

Thank you, Jules and Pete, for taking my question. Can I just ask about how things have sort of trended in the first 1.5 months of second half, and appreciate your comments around optimistic outlook, but just in terms of how things have tracked across each segment, and particularly with mining, whether you've seen any sort of impact from rain in the first month or so of second half, please?

Thank you.

Thanks, Will. Look, there has been a little bit of rain in January, but nothing out of the ordinary.

You would know that last year was an exceptional rain event and constant sort of rain that we experienced throughout the year, more than 8 or 9 months of the year. It's normal for us to have rain in January, that normal period where you'd expect it between December and sort of February, but it hasn't been anything excessive that we're concerned about.

It's dry as a bone out there at the moment, so.

Then just across the other segments, have all stepped up the momentum?

No, look, again, Urban always gets a little whack with the rain when it's in Southeast Queensland, but that business continues to perform generally rain or shine, because they recover the ops very quickly and generally don't have a lot of disruptions. Nothing here.

WA, very little impact. The cyclone came across the coast, went across Karara, I think we lost half a day or something, certainly nothing that I'm concerned about, and touch wood, last year was the anomaly, and we're in a more normal pattern at this stage.

It doesn't mean that it can't happen between now and sort of Easter time.

Will, the January consolidated result was where we wanted it to be. We're halfway through February, I don't have numbers, but I'm not hearing anything, as Jules said, everything's tracking as we expected.

Thank you. Then can I just clarify your comments, Jules, around mining?

Typically, as I understand, it is first-half skewed, but are you suggesting that this year because of the timing of project completions and so forth you're expecting second-half revenue for mining to be higher half-on-half?

It shouldn't ever be a first-half skew. It kind of depends on what you're commencing and when you're commencing it.

We had South Walker Creek step up because we're running the client's gear plus our own gear, so that was always going to step up under the new contract in terms of size of contract, and then also the commercial model flips back to a production-based model rather than the hourly hire-based model, which it was before. When it rained like buggery, we actually did the best on that job at South Walker Creek compared to the other projects because of the non-productivity aspect of it.

Now it's converted to our normal production-style contract. It's performing very well because we're not having the rain impact.

That's new versus the first half. Obviously the first half, as I just said before, with Mt Cattlin dropped out versus PCP, first half '26 versus first half '25, Mt Webber's completed, it's just run at the end of its course, and then also we had a little bit of Isaac Plains in there previously from Queensland.

Second half now, as we say, FY '26 into '27, has growth from Mt Cattlin increasing its second big fleet, but also South Walker Creek, and obviously nothing else coming out. You've got stuff coming in, things not coming out, and then when you hit '27, you've got to add on Mandoo as well, which is zero capital plus, whatever it is, $150 million a year of revenue, whatever the number is.

Does that make sense?

Thank you. Yes, no, thank you, that's very clear.

Then just one last one from me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is first time that you've ever sort of guided color around I guess the next fiscal year.

Sort of in comparison to prior years, could you give us some sense around revenue coverage for the next fiscal year at this point? Looking at sort of your pipeline, work in hand, and active tender balance, it looks to be quite full, but just wondering whether something's effectively changed in comparison to prior years.

Clearly, your visibility does look good, but yeah, just curious to know what your revenue coverage sort of looks like versus your internal expectations for FY '27.

Look, Will, you got to think about the volatility that's been in the sector over the last few years, COVID and post-COVID and those kind of which weren't really normal. Up until 2018, even in the last kind of real downturn from '27 to 2019, we probably would have been giving forward-looking statements like that, but the business today is so different.

There's so much walk-in-the-door, annuity, other things that we don't even announce because of the individual values. If we get a variation on the contract with a large client who might not want to say anything, it could be $30 to $80, $100 mil that comes in the door.

Order book's one measure. I think the submitted tenders is very important.

We haven't got preferred tenders split out of that, it's not in the order book, but we don't have that sort of split out of the submitted tenders or active tenders. There's a whole bunch of numbers in there that some of which you see when we deliver the financial periods, but a lot of it you don't necessarily.

The confidence that we have going forward is really based on that growing pipeline, which is $25.2 billion of projects, which is here right now and coming up within a 12-month period that we'll be bidding or commencing it. The activity levels are very strong, and obviously you got to remember that we've got different businesses now, including Freedon and EM&I.

You've got parts, maintenance businesses that are kind of churning along, and then the project profile that we see across the iron ore majors plus infrastructure is also building. It's a very different business to worrying about, oh, it's binary about one big project turning up.

Fair enough.

Hi Jules and Peter, thanks for taking my questions. First one just on MET performance.

Could you break down how much of that improvement is leveraged to higher production versus what's coming from customers? Just given where commodity prices are, how should we expect any incremental benefits as customers continue to ramp up into the second half, please?

Are you talking about MET specifically?

Yes, MET specifically.

Look, the RCR business is a products business mostly these days. It doesn't do major projects anymore.

It used to do a bit of that, but it's mostly now products, and then the service and maintenance of those products. That's become more of an annuity business, and that's obviously helping improve the overall margin.

DIAB is more specialist small projects plus shutdown and maintenance as well, it's doing shutdown and maintenance for FMG, and for others as well. Again, that becomes sort of not really an annuity business, but more so an annuity business, and then their projects are generally kind of smaller, sub-$50 million total size projects.

Then you've got Primero, which has, obviously a chunk of Fimiston in at the moment, at a lower margin than most of the projects are bit at. I don't know if that really explains the question properly.

Pete, you want to add anything?

No, I think the only bit of color I'd add, and I think when we talk about MET, people automatically go to Primero. The MET business, when you roll in as Jules has said, RCR, DIAB, and OFI, Primero is kind of call it ballpark 50% of the EBIT that division generates.

It's not as heavy as I think most people think it is, and Jules has gone through those three businesses. That's the only additional point I'd add.

Thanks, guys, that's great detail. Just on margins, mining performance looked pretty strong in the half.

Can you just talk to what you're seeing in that segment now, how we should think about capacity from here, what you guys are seeing in terms of competitive intensity, and just whether there are any key projects or contracts we should keep in mind for the second half that we should be aware of, please?

Look, the two key things I called out on the slide are obviously the extensions that are sort of there at the moment, which is Curragh and Karara, which we've been obviously incumbents for quite a long period of time. Curragh also has Curragh North, which is Thiess and others, we're at Curragh Main, there's ongoing conversations at the moment to obviously extend that project.

Those two are big sort of catalysts as if you look at the business-as-usual number, our revenue, annuity number, that's important for us for looking forward. The bid activity is reasonable and building, obviously through all the gold guys and others and even lithium people that are starting up again and need gear.

Winning Mandoo was a great opportunity for us. It doesn't use any capital, we've been very disciplined, and unless we're getting the right returns, we're not interested.

We'd rather spend the money on a Freedon, as you can see, and diversify the business or grow that business, and there is no capital intensity. We've been very, very disciplined around that.

What we'll see is probably drill and blast is in the mix on a few contracts. They haven't had the best year this year, it's been a bit quieter for them, but I think into '27, that'll pick up as well.

Drill and blast, which is quite a profitable part of that mining segment will help as we look to sort of '27, '28. With the focus on capital from even the majors as well, there will be opportunities that come to contractors, assuming they have equipment.

For us then, if we have the equipment, great. If we need to go and buy the equipment, it's very, very heavily scrutinized before we let anyone spend any money.

Thanks, guys.

All right. Hey Jules and Pete.

I'm getting this asked a lot, I think I know the answer, but I'm just going to ask it anyway. In the MET results, obviously very strong, was there any profit release from Fimiston or anything else that could be seen as, I don't know, one-offy and not normal course of business or anything else like that?

No.

No. Mate,

no. All right,

okay. Yep, very clear.

Then when we think about just the MET earnings number, you sort of in this 40 mid-40s the last two halves. Do you want to maybe just speak on how you're thinking about the sustainability of this level of earnings for the rest of '26 and then also into '27 as well, please?

Look, I think as Pete said, you've got—well, as I said as well—the DIAB, the RCR business is sort of NOFI, a kind of part of that solution. More projects that we bid with Primero at our usual margins would potentially improve it.

There is a very large revenue chunk related to Fimiston, but at a lower average margin across the business. I think it just depends on the mix of that, but project-wise there's a lot happening.

What Primero is involved in at the moment, that momentum and that project pipeline is building, there's some really good things that we're involved in. I've no concern in that business growing looking forward.

Yeah. Good one.

Then just a final one for me, just coming to Freedon. Can you just remind us of the margin expansion opportunity for Freedon there getting to 6%?

Why is it more depressed today, and what drives it to 6% over the short term, anything you can point to there? Also, what's the definition of short term as well?

Short term? For us as the bosses, to the Freedon guys listening on the call, short term is soon.

Did that help? Very soon.

Look, I think some of the comps do produce different margins. These guys are very conscious of delivery, conservative in terms of their view around their projects, which is a good thing.

You don't want them aggressive and things like that. They are a conservative delivery model.

There are no kind of commercial issues outstanding, they deliver exceptionally well, and they're conservative in the way they do it. I think that, very early days obviously for us acquiring this business, and it's really about getting our sort of systems, processes, management reporting, all that sort of stuff that we need to get our hands around.

They're very clear in their understanding of the focus on improving those margins, and I've no doubt they'll do so within a short period of time, which could be in a half, it could be next, first half '27. I think we'll start to see things improve pretty quickly.

Yeah. Okay.

All right. It's that combination of delivery and better scale, right?

Just the number of projects that are coming as well. You think about what's out there, it's not just data centers, they do a lot of data centers, but it's their traditional business that they've been working in well, whether it's hospitals, major projects, convention centers or stadiums or airports or whatever else.

There is a huge volume of work coming up, and they are a very, very capable organization. One of the interesting stats on it, and they're probably the lowest turnover rate out of any of our businesses.

Think culturally, it's actually improved since the acquisition down to 11% annualized turnover, which is the lowest you'd ever see anywhere for this kind of business. It's really an exceptional outcome for us, and obviously, we're very pleased to welcome all of those employees to our group.

They'll get to leverage a bit off group procurement contracts, and dare I say, they're not for sale, they're now focused on growing their business, not answering due diligence questions.

Yeah. Good one.

All right. Nice result, guys.

I'll give someone else a turn. Thanks.

Thanks, Evan.

Oh, good day, guys. Great result, actually.

Just two questions from me, and it's sort of already been asked, but just around MET and Fimiston, would it be right to think along the lines of say into FY '27 that there'll be a couple of hundred million of revenues that need to be replaced, but presumably, as you say the pipeline's pretty good, but the margin impact probably is going to be positive, just the question of whether you can fully replace those lost revenues?

Yes, and yes, and yes, John. I think the replace revenues is not that much of a focus because there is quite a lot of work around.

The important thing for us is obviously just improving, making sure that we maximize the overall margin. Whatever opportunities we get to do that, and there are a number of live bids that would certainly deal with that.

Our pipeline's pretty good, and building probably, it would be the comment.

The margin performance obviously for the first half was really good, it would seem reasonable to assume margins would be higher in '27, almost certainly.

Again depends on the mix of the DIAB, RCR and those sort of volumes. Everything we've been doing with those businesses, they had some challenges with RCR with overheads reduction, when we're trying to grow the parts and maintenance business.

I think we've got a good handle on that now, and that's really the focus. That's a higher margin business.

Generally, the NPI projects, the other projects, the FEED studies, the engineering work that Primero does is also at a higher level. It's just making sure that we balance the right projects in that sort of mix.

What we're seeing at the moment in an activity sense is very positive, so.

Yeah. Okay.

Thanks. Thanks for that, Jules.

Just on mining, again, pretty solid margin performance, and your target, I think around that, the mining can be sort of in the 10s, early low 10, no sorry, low double-digit, potentially. As you've sort of progressed and you're becoming less capital-intensive within that segment, is it reasonable to assume that margins, if you can maintain margins as you're increasing the proportion of non-capital-intensive contracts, that would be a very, very good outcome?

Look, ultimately, if we get the opportunity to do that, because obviously not every project you can, and then it comes back to: are we willing to invest that level of capex in a project? Which lately we haven't won a lot of big mining projects with our own equipment.

We've been focusing on other things. Baralaba is a good example of that, Mandoo is a good example of that, 100% client's equipment, and if we can keep the mining margin at a blended 9%, happy days.

It's not a bad outcome. You see what we're spending in capex.

I don't think I've seen that number that low for 10 years, I don't know. It's been a long time since we've looked at a number that low.

We do have a focus on it, but we've just shut the gates. You can't walk in the door and say, "I want to go and buy this and buy that."

No, to grow a mining business that is still competitive and isn't spitting out the right margins. Unless something changes there and you're making stupid margins, why would we go and buy the equipment and deploy that capital to that business?

Yeah. Yep, thanks for that, Jules.

All right, thanks, John.

Hi, Jules and Pete, thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a really strong result. Just on the MET segment, when you roll off the target cost estimate contract at Fimiston, I know it depends on mix a bit, but say mix of Primero, RCR, DIAB, OFI are all pretty much the same.

What's sort of a sustainable margin for MET? Can you give us sort of a rough indication?

Look, where it is at the moment to when it was smaller it was doing 8% to 10%, and now we've sort of said it should be better than, I don't know what we reported last half, slightly higher, but that was sort of a one-off bit of extra from DIAB. In the kind of realms of where we are now is not unreasonable.

A couple of things obviously come out of that. It's just that mix of projects and we've got some very good project teams.

We obviously want to keep them busy. We've really built probably the largest project of its kind in Australia very successfully, and we're bringing the Rios, the BHP, everyone else up there to have a look at our capability, which is a real pat on the back for our capability as a group, which is probably not well enough understood.

As a result of that, we're starting to see a lot more interest, and not only in construction, but also in FEED studies. Obviously, the commodities in general are in a very positive environment.

Thanks, Jules. Then just a general one, at the group level, the EBITDA guidance range has actually widened.

Usually you'd be narrowing it at this time of year, I guess. Could you just explain what's driven the $10 million delta?

Look, we're not out of the complete wet season yet, if you want to think about it like that, but the

It's gone up quite a bit.

It did go up a bit.

I know. You had $260 to $265 million.

I was just wondering if there was maybe a bit of contingency built in there for, I don't know, the outcomes of Fimiston, margin recognition there, in terms of whether maybe you'd take a little bit of a hit or something like that. Yeah.

No, look, I don't think so, but you can work out what you think. The reason is it's usually been that kind of $10 mil range.

It was only, yeah, obviously we went to a slightly tighter range, but things have continued to be dry. Operations are performing well, so.

Great, that's it for me. Thanks very much, guys.

Thanks, Nick. Nick.

Thanks. G'day, guys.

Just that pipeline of projects in the next 12 months and your active tenders, Well, they're massive numbers. It's probably a difficult question to answer and I won't hold you to it, but that $25 billion pipeline, roughly ballpark, how much of that would you expect to actually convert into eventual active tenders?

Good question. Look, depending on who the customer is in that mix is to, some of it can be extensions, as an example, we're already there and they're big numbers, as you can kind of work out from our mining slide.

There is other mining bids live. There's a lot of construction, and as I said just before, we haven't split out the stuff that we're preferred on.

There's another number of that preferred. Look, I'm not going to give you a number.

It could be sizable.

No, I thought I was pushing my luck. I guess the other part of that, during this sort of reverse trickle-down pyramid of work, given how much work is out there and how the competitive landscape has consolidated, do you think your win rate of tenders is heading higher?

Look, again, probably. I think if you need a particular capability and you need certainty of delivery, we've been around a long time in our core businesses, and we have a very good reputation for delivery across those segments.

Urban's kind of a no-brainer. Civil Pilbara, WA, kind of no-brainer.

There's some decent stuff there in terms of framework agreements and other things that are happening. Infrastructure, the other interesting thing probably to comment, which I haven't commented on, is made in WA or even made in Australia, if you think about our comps in a civil sense, there are very little left.

I think we're the only sizable one left in WA. Georgiou was taken out by the Austrians, Strabag.

That's a very important piece to decision-making in the public infrastructure space as well, as a local content. Otherwise, they're Spanish, they're French, one Queensland mob that's private, that's been doing a bit of work over here.

That becomes then a smaller tender field or potentially as long as you've got the capacity. The key thing for us is making sure we're hiring key people ahead of those opportunities so we can deliver well.

That's what we're sort of focusing on. Rio have got direct flights from Brisbane as an example, they need to bring people through Perth.

If Brisbane's a bit quiet or Golding's a bit quiet, we can funnel people to the west and vice versa. Then potentially we've got South Australia to deal with, where there's some opportunities that we're working on that are also obviously around Olympic Dam, but then AUKUS related as well.

We're still in Whyalla. Lots of things are going on and ultimately not a huge amount of choice.

Just for a bit of context, too, and without giving you the names, but the top five jobs in that pipeline, there's $6 billion in the top five jobs. There's some big jobs out there.

Okay. Then just the last question from me.

You gave us that little breadcrumb in the MET slide. What does generate value mean, I guess, when you're talking about the lithium processing tech?

Look, we think we have developed a process and we're patenting it, and we have the IP, which is now called LieNA, for a much lower capital cost refining process which doesn't use the same heat or acids, or caustic chemicals to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate. When you think about that versus a Metso, which is a nearly €20 billion company, we may have something that has some value there.

However, we need to go through the motions and understand how to best do that, whether it's sell it, operate our own operation, JV, license, all of those things, which ultimately we'd want to build. This has a global significance in terms of we think.

Hence, it's a breadcrumb in terms of what future value, well, we don't really understand the future value. We know there's a lot going on, and if we can build something at half the price of a current lithium processing plant which they don't really work here, we might be on to something.

If Albemarle say that doing it in Australia is twice the cost of China, well, maybe we can do it at the same cost as China, but it's a different flowsheet and different process. Anyway, that's why it's a breadcrumb.

Need to work on it.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

No worries. Thanks, Cam.

morning, guys. Interested in your latest thoughts in capacity or geographies you want to build on?

Sounds like Freedon's gone pretty well, interested if you kind of want to focus in that more localized space. Thanks.

In terms of our geographical split, or

No, in capacity, yeah, in that sense, on that side.

Look, we're growing our workforce numbers. I think when we talked about the acquisition not long after, we were 11,500.

I think we're now 12,200 or 12,300 or something, not long after. The focus as I said, and for Freedon, we've talked about this with investors as well, that should be a material growth uplift into '27.

Material growth uplift. That's really to support the projects that we see coming across a lot in the eastern states, but they're also very busy in WA.

It's been sort of Victoria, WA, Queensland in this sort of financial year, but as we look forward, there's probably more in South Australia, Victoria is still very busy, but they're also coming back into New South Wales as well, and Queensland. We're just positioning to make sure that they follow their clients, obviously a lot of data centers still to build, huge amount of capacity.

Interesting, the whole Musk thing, and where he hasn't built a huge project before, but he's tied up with Fermas. We have that capability.

We're doing, I don't know, $300 million worth of data centers. We're right in there in terms of electrical and a cooling perspective through the HVAC business.

We're focusing on how we can deliver the best outcomes for our business through the opportunities that are out there.

Thanks.

No worries.

Hi, Jules. Hi, Pete.

Thanks for taking the questions, and yeah, congrats on a great result. Just a couple of quick ones.

On the civil business, you just made that comment, and apologies, you've been through this, I've been jumping between a few today. You've made the comments about opportunities with defense in Western Australia and South Australia.

Do you mind just talking to that in a little bit more detail, are you at the point where you're looking at tenders, over what timeframe would that potential work start to build? Thank you.

Good question on the timeframe. Not really sure.

The defense business in WA is very closely aligned with the WA government as well, it's not just purely run by defense, it's being run sort of collectively. We've just extended our lease at the Primero Henderson yard and everything else to be ready to support all those activities.

I think it may go to, because of the sensitivities around it, a couple of major contractors, and then we'll look to align our group's capability with one of those two major delivery partners. These are massive construction guys that are well versed and trusted by defense.

That's kind of how that's probably going to work in WA. Then you've got South Australia going at the same time, and we're just looking at those opportunities at the moment in terms of teaming up with some of the majors to look at that.

We don't have a big capability in South Australia at the moment, but we have done quite a bit of work at Olympic Dam and airstrips and infrastructure. We did the road for OZ Minerals when they were building their original copper project out there and things as well, we do have the experience there other than what we're doing at Whyalla.

That's a consideration subject to kind of how busy we get in WA, I suppose.

Mitch, even a bit in that field on defense, we've even had some thoughts around RCR, because RCR has got a big machine shop here, in the future, we might be making driveshafts for submarines, who knows? That's kind of very left field, but there's a lot happening.

Yeah. They're only one of two businesses in WA, the other one being Hofmann Engineering, that can do that type of machining, which actually was news to me until about a year ago, I don't know, nine months ago when they started talking about it.

Future opportunity's very good.

Yep. Thanks, guys.

Just a second sort of one, just on Freedon, $1.7 billion of active tenders. Just wondering over what timeframe would that work typically be delivered?

Is it a 12 to 24-month period, and I guess just what's the historical win rate that they've typically achieved or arrange there? Thanks, guys, that's all for me.

No worries, thanks. Look, I think they've got a very high strike rate in terms of their win rate, because a lot of it is with long-term customers, and a lot of their business, I think 70% when we announced it of their business was with long-term customers they've had for 20 years or more.

Their win rate is very high. They get involved very early.

Sometimes the timing of those awards can take time, depending on when the builder or whoever the head contractor is that starts. Win rate's very high.

Again, a lot of that we don't necessarily announce because of the value, depending on the materiality to the group. We kind of thought about announcing some of those little stuff, but again, it takes time to get the announcements through their counterparts, their clients, and obviously the end client.

If it's defense, particularly, that's challenging because they don't necessarily want to talk about it, so that's

It'd be interesting announcements: "We won something. That's all."

Yeah. Yeah, "We won something.

We just can't tell you." I think that's, it's a fantastic business, as I said, really really good addition to the group.

Thank you. Hello, Jules and Peter, that's an excellent result, a very happy shareholder.

Could you just clarify where we are with the Whyalla situation, please, with the goal being recovering of the $110 million? I realize there's a Note 3 in the accounts, it's quite complicated.

Could you just summarize exactly where we're at in sort of plain English, please?

Hi, Peter. That's going to be difficult because it is a complicated scenario.

Look, we've tried and been scuppered at every opportunity to try and get money out of this process. We tried to take ownership of the port, which we thought we had until the government changed the legislation to take it away from us.

That was obviously a challenge. We successfully wound up LPMA, which was Gupta's private company which owns the shares in Tahmoor.

Again, he put that into administration, and he's since put Tahmoor into administration. We're not giving up.

We're not spending five hours of the day thinking about it, but we are still continuing to work on it. Ultimately where the situation is now, Tahmoor will end up being sold by the administrator of LPMA which owns the shares in Tahmoor, and that's a pretty valuable asset.

2 million tonnes a year coking, reasonable quality coking coal close to the coast. If that sells, we get a very significant chunk of anything over a certain value, but we've just got to wait and see on it.

Look, we don't give up. We got all our money back on Gascoyne, which turned into Spartan, should have held it a bit longer, but that's just what it is.

We've had to deal with the pain, and we're a very different position to where we were 12 months ago, when the government stepped in. We're still on the mine, we're still working on the mine.

Yep. The reassurance was that we're not getting distracted and it's not taking a huge amount of time trying to recover this money.

No, but as a shareholder, I absolutely value your thoughts on it and all our shareholders. It's our money, we should have been paid for it, we're not a bank.

We will do whatever we can to recover it, until that moment comes, and hopefully we do get something back.

Thanks.

No worries, cheers.

Thanks again everyone for listening. A lot of good questions as well today, and look forward to seeing a lot of you when we're on the road next week.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.