Stephen Young
Thank you and good morning everyone, and thank you for dialing in. It's a pleasure to host this FY26 results briefing.
Financial year '26 was a record year and our team is proud of the results, which include an outstanding second half. We delivered an underlying EBIT of $118 million, up 54% on the prior period.
Our underlying net profit after tax was $73 million, up 42% on the prior year, and we generated a return on capital employed of 38% and a return on equity of 32%. Importantly, we delivered shareholder returns.
Our earnings per share were 28.8 cents, up 27% from the prior year. We declared a final dividend of 8.5 cents, up 32% excluding last year's special dividend.
Really importantly, since IPO, we've delivered a total shareholder return of some 523%. Our operating cash flow was strong, $147 million, representing 126% growth on prior year and 125% conversion of EBIT into operating cash flow.
We completed three programmatic acquisitions: WorkPac, MaXim, and JPS. It's with pleasure that I announce that we're upgrading our FY27 guidance up a couple of million dollars to $205 to $210 million EBITA and net profit after tax and amortization $130 to $133 million.
Over to you, Mark.
Mark Vartuli
Thanks, Stephen. Next page I think.
The financial highlights slide three. I think the key message from here is that we grew organically at 18% as well as via acquisition, which is part of our compounding strategy.
Our underlying EBITA was $118.1, up 54%; NPATA $73.7, up 42%; and earnings per share 28.8 cents, up 27%. We achieved, on a net revenue basis, a gross margin of 16.2%, which represents the deliveries via our highly specialized margin businesses.
Importantly, our return on capital employed increased to 37.8%. We've provided an organic bridge at the bottom of this page in the table that takes the $118.1, strips out the $8 million for the contribution that WorkPac made, which left just over $110 million against the pro forma FY25 number of $93.2, signaling or generating an organic growth of 18.1%.
Importantly, as Stephen mentioned, it accelerated in the second half strongly, and every segment grew in the second half against the first half. If I could turn over the page.
Just continuing with that, the second half run rate we are carrying through into FY27. We started the first month very strongly, and hence the reason for providing a upgrade.
The first half EBIT of $44.3 versus the second half EBIT in FY26 of $73.8, margin grew from 13.4% to 18.5% on a net revenue basis. There are a number of things driving this, which included the mix skew of the high-margin revenue businesses coming through, more specialist labor being sold versus a high proportion of materials in the first half pass-through.
Importantly, greater self-performance and cross-selling across our subsidiaries, price escalations kicking in for the second half, and far better labor utilization as a consequence of some deferred project work in the first half coming through in the second half, ensuring that our labor was highly utilized. On top of that, we've been driving an efficiency and cost reduction program across a number of our subsidiaries by merging a couple of our smaller ones up into our larger subsidiaries in the same segments and locations, which saw a number of, I guess, headcount savings.
We've been adopting AI to streamline our back-office processes, which, again, has provided more rapid data and accurate data and also, on top of that, eliminated a number of processing headcount. I'll turn over page.
We're forecasting, just leaving that page, of our EBITA margin to sit around 14% at this stage. If we deliver higher cross-selling like we're expecting, the risk could be to the upside there.
In respect of our strong and consistent growth, our strategy been a one which has now been going for 3 years since we've been on the boards, and it's a compounding strategy. Total shareholder return was 523%, as Stephen mentioned, since we listed in April '24.
Pro forma EBIT has grown from $55 million in '24 to $93 in '25 to $128 in FY26, and on top of that, our compounding annual growth has been about 56%. Underlying earnings per share has grown from 17.9 to 28.8 cents, and around 47 cents we're giving guidance at, which is about a 38% compounding return or increase.
Shareholder value has increased alongside of our earnings and has not been diluted. Importantly, our business model generates cash, 101% over the average of the 3 years, and this is what is in funding our reinvestment.
If I turn over to the cash generation page on slide six, operating cash flow is the engine model of our business model. We focus on it, we measure it, and we ensure that our earnings is turning into cash.
Operating cash flow before interest and tax was $147 million, 125% conversion to underlying EBIT, and as I said, has averaged over 100% since IPO. After interest and tax, it was $91 million.
If you take out our stay-in-business CapEx of just over $22 million, or approximately 3% of revenue, we have a high free cash flow. What drives this is our schedule of rates contracting, predictable model, regular invoicing, and recurring maintenance work for our long-term customers.
We're not carrying long-dated project claims. I'll turn over to our balance sheet.
We have the capacity to continue acquiring without going to the market for equity. Net debt was down to circa $60 million from $110.
Leverage was 0.04 times at 30 June, well below our 1 times net debt to EBITDA target. It stepped up to about 0.08 times after the acquisitions of MaXim, which completed on 1 July for MaXim and on 3 August for JPS, still sitting well below our 1 times.
Our operating working capital efficiency also improved to about 4.4 times down from 11.4 times. You can see we have a low-risk contracting model.
Bank guarantees represent only 1.3% of pro forma revenue, and we do not carry large performance security bond exposure for the majority of our work, which is done under MSAs for maintenance. The effective cash payout rate for our dividend for FY26 was within our target range of 30 to 50%, being at 46.6%.
Our DRP is taking a good proportion of that and putting it back into the balance sheet, led by the founders and executive directors reinvesting. The rest is retained and reinvested into programmatic acquisitions for high returns on capital.
We're currently in live negotiations on a number of specialist opportunities, which none are allowed for in our FY27 guidance. Might pass back to Stephen.
Stephen Young
No, to Trent I think.
Trent Northover
Just over to Trent,
Stephen Young
yeah. Trent.
Trent Northover
Thanks, Mark. Operator, slide eight if I may.
We've shared this slide previously when we announced MaXim, and that image on the left, we've just given a few quick updates on the right-hand side. What it confirms, I think the market's already confirmed it, is data centers are real and they are an absolute near-term electrical market for our business.
You'll see on the left that there's a forecast capacity to grow to 3.2 GW by 2030, with Melbourne representing 1.1 GW of that. We see that's obviously critically important to Tasman because we own MaXim in Melbourne.
In the first 2 months, we're proud to say the group's won a few extra contracts in Victoria with their existing customer, and that was already part of the DD that we forecast. Outside of Victoria, we see South Australia as the second front.
There's been a lot of discussion around Iron coming to town. They've announced that they'll have an investment in South Australia.
Likewise, Firmus is looking at two opportunities in regional SA. You'll see that AEMO has highlighted that 225 sites are in development already this year, up against 97 last year.
What does this mean? I think it's the constraint on all of this is that it's the power, not the land or the buildings.
Transmission, substations, and connections. This is our work.
This is what we're proud of. We have one of the largest remote specialist electrical workforces in the country.
Over to slide nine, please, operator. Back to our core market, so that's the sustaining spend.
This is the recurring, far far less cyclical than the growth projects. You'll see in the last week BHP and Rio have touched on the market.
They're about $22 billion in annual CapEx. $15 billion of this is in sustaining and replacement CapEx on assets that already are operating.
This is our addressable market and what we're working towards. Sustaining spend is maintenance led.
It repeats every year. It's exactly why we put so much focus on the master services agreements.
You'll see that BHP is very much focused on Copper South Australia. The three key sites: Prominent Hill, Carrapateena, and Olympic Dam.
They've also got a big focus on Car Dumper 6 over in the Pilbara. What's exciting is BHP's called Copper SA the most expandable major asset with over 80 years of life left.
For Rio, the focus is on the Pilbara mine system and the port replacement CapEx and a bit of work up in Weipa and Rhodes Ridge. What does this mean for Tasman?
We've confirmed over $80 million worth of maintenance contracts with BHP in the last 90 days, and super excited about supporting them in their growth ambitions. If we go to the next slide, please, operator, slide 10.
Our most recent acquisition, JPS, this opens a new end market for Tasman, but the same maintenance economics that we've run in the past. We completed with JPS on the 3rd of August.
This sits inside our mechanical segment, that you'll see. You'll see in the image there's over 10 producing LNG facilities across the country, which is about 20% of the global supply.
These plants are built, they're committed, and they're running, we see decades of operations, maintenance, and shutdowns. We see this as our sweet spot.
JPS is also considering and pursuing opportunities in the United States with some global customers that we already service in Australia. I'll hand over back to Stephen or Mark.
Stephen Young
Thank you, Trent. Maybe just to round out Trent's comments, I urge those who are on the call that haven't already done so to review both Brendan Craig's comments for his FY26 results and likewise Simon Trott.
You'll see that they share our outlook, or maybe better put, we share their outlook. They're excited about electrification and the fact that they are mining materials that they see will be in exceptional demand.
I wanted to share that our compounding strategy is delivering value, and if we could turn to slide 11, there are a couple of key messages. Our twin-pillar high-growth model is continuing to generate significant shareholder value.
As total shareholder return, as both Mark and I have mentioned and we're very proud of, is 523% since IPO in April 2024. We seek to acquire number one or number two specialist operators at 4 to 5 times enterprise value to EBIT.
We retain the leadership, and that's really important. We get asked from time to time by shareholders, how can you manage so many businesses?
The answer is we don't manage them. We direct the owner-operators who manage them and we support them to grow, but they do the day-to-day management.
We grow earnings organically. We encourage cross-selling, which makes a significant contribution to our margin.
Really importantly, we convert their earnings to cash. It's something that Mark monitors every week.
Then that cash that's generated, we reinvest it in a disciplined manner. We are very disciplined about capital allocation into the next acquisition.
That is the loop that you see on slide 11 and is absolutely critical. Our unique business model has delivered 38% earnings per share compound growth, high returns on capital employed, 38% at the 30th of June.
We continue to expand our portfolio and diversify across key industries, which reduces risk overall. It's interesting for those of you who were shareholders before we bought MaXim to consider whether post-MaXim we are more valuable, more diversified, and less risky as a result of that acquisition.
Obviously we considered so, which is why we proceeded. Each business contracts and trades individually.
Really importantly, Tasman does not trade and the only parent company is given is to our financier. We've got the benefit of diversified customers, diversified commodities, and diversified geography, reducing risk for the founders and all of our fellow shareholders.
As we expand our specialist businesses, our cross-selling and organic growth accelerates and delivers strong compounding shareholder returns. Very important, I think, to talk about alignment between us and yourselves.
We're led by founder directors who collectively own 54%. I've previously said, in very Australian terms, we own a shitload of equity and we've got a lot of skin in the game.
Really now, very importantly, we've got more than 90 employees leaning in to our results. They are included in our long-term incentive plan, which is now going to deliver most probably double the benefit they ever could have hoped when we achieve our numbers next year.
Really importantly for us, I mentioned last year that we were focused on getting Jason's option package working to his benefit. Jason gets his first tranche of options today, and we hope that he'll get, and obviously our guidance would have him getting the next two tranches prior to the 30th of June or on the 30th of June '27 results release.
Importantly, we've now proposed an option package for Trent Northover that will go to shareholder approval at the upcoming AGM. The incentive plan runs for 5 years.
It's tied to EBIT growth from $200 million in FY27—
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by. We are having technical difficulties.
I will place you back on music hold while we get the speakers back.
Stephen Young
Hello, it's Stephen Young speaking. I understand that either my line dropped out or something similar happened.
I'm back, and hopefully everyone is still with us. I was announcing that we propose a 5-year share options package for Trent Northover, our Executive Director, commencing the 1st of July '26, which will be approved by shareholders at the forthcoming AGM.
Importantly, the incentive plan runs for 5 years and is tied to EBIT growth from $200 million, which is the guidance we've provided roughly in FY27, to $600 million in FY31, which requires an organic growth of 10% per annum. We'll continue to pursue our twin-pillar strategy of organic growth and growth by acquisition.
We will provide more details around that at the AGM, but I think just at a very high level, as set out on page 12 in the navy blue box, 900,000 options every year for the next 5 years, and the EBIT target goes up $100 million each year for the next 5 years. Whilst that may look like a stretch, it's worthwhile noting that our EBIT target this year has gone up by nearly that amount.
Over to Jason now to talk about the conversion of our FY27 pipeline.
Jason Pryde
Thanks, Stephen. If I could go to slide 13, please, to discuss our pipeline.
We have never had this much visibility this early on in any previous financial year. This is our highest ever pipeline.
Our June guidance shown on the left-hand side, secured plus revenue plus tender work was at $1.21 billion or 85% of the pipeline. Two months later, it is at $1.31 billion or 90% of the pipeline.
That is the de-risking of FY27 happening in real time. We have more than 125 live master services agreements, with five recently executed and a number under current negotiation.
MSAs are the reoccurring base. In regards to the contracts themselves, in the electrical segment, MaXim have been successful with two data center contracts in Victoria.
We've won more than $80 million of maintenance work at BHP. Tasmin Power continues to win MSAs and MCA work throughout the Pilbara.
Sygma Power Services has a record order book, and Future Power was awarded recently the BHP Ministers North project, just to name a few. In mechanical, Forefront have an MSA in the US, GMS rig hire contract has been executed, and TRS won a MSA with Fortescue.
In the civil segment, Flanco continue to win multiple contracts throughout the goldfields, and Northwest Mining and Civil have recently won a Rio Tinto Iron Ore rail contract with their master miner works agreement. If I could go to slide 14, please.
We're excited to provide an upgrade some 63 days after setting our original guidance because the demand shown previously has told us to. Like what Stephen already touched on, our EBITA is up to $205 to $210 from $202 to $208 million.
Our NPATA is up to $130 to $133 million, up from $128 to $132 million. That's minimum growth of 74 and 76% on FY26.
What sets behind it all is a full 12 months of MaXim, 11 months of JPS, and our continued 10 to 15% organic growth across our existing businesses. This is underpinned by our strong order book with major wins across our electrical, mechanical, and civil segments.
We've had a very strong start to trading in FY27, which was significantly up on the previous period of the same year. As Stephen said, demand for our specialist services is as high as we have ever experienced.
I'll now hand over to Stephen for questions.
Stephen Young
Thank you very much, operator. We're prepared to take questions now.
I'll leave you to handle the mechanics.
Operator
If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. That is star one if you wish to ask a question.
Your first question comes from the line of Jonathon Higgins from Unified Capital Partners. Your line is open.
Jonathon Higgins
Hi, team. Thanks for the time today.
Congratulations on the results and the early upgrade. Maybe just on the first one, on Jason's point, it sounds like you've started the year pretty strongly, got plenty of visibility.
Just the dynamics that are driving that in particular, and is that something that picked up through the half?
Stephen Young
Maybe I'll go first and my colleagues might want to add to that. We've had a very good July, both in terms of actual performance, July was well in front of budget, which is exciting.
July is a continuity of the last quarter of last year, which was exceptional. Some of the jobs that we've won, some of the MSAs that we've secured have all kicked in to touch during July, and we're quietly confident about the way both the year looks and importantly how the first half looks.
Jonathon Higgins
Right, good color. A couple more from me.
Perhaps on the acquisitions, you've got JPS and MaXim coming through. You've completed those businesses.
You've called out those data center wins. Just wondering if you can tell us about sort of how long they won for, do they expand from here?
Then also on JPS, you've also called out the US, I think for the first time. Just wondering if you can tell us what that sort of looks like.
Stephen Young
Yes, we can. Let me deal with the US bit and then I'll hand over to Trent.
There are a number of Australian operating customers who have asked both Forefront and JPS to go to the United States. We did that a couple of times last year with Forefront very successfully.
Believe it or not, those customers think it's better value for us to put a team on a plane. They pay for them whilst they're on the plane and the airfares, go over, do the work, and turn around and come home.
That's very easy to say yes to that work. We're cautious about growing too quickly in the US, but in the event our clients want us, we'll meet our clients' expectations.
I'll get Trent to add to those comments and, importantly, deal with the MaXim part.
Trent Northover
Just to finish on JPS, yes, Stephen been vocal and supportive of where the direction is. As he said, the customers have asked for us to go over.
I'm supporting JPS in the next fortnight with a 7 days of visits to see about 15 customers. The interest is there, but I'll always have to come back for board approval about our expansion.
It's exciting that JPS have been asked to go there similar to when they went to Angola 4 weeks ago. With regards to MaXim query, Jono, the two contracts were enabling works with the existing customer, we did see those through DD phase.
It's always nice to see not long after settlement that those are confirmed. They are with the existing customer and enabling works.
Jonathon Higgins
Excellent. I might go one more if I can.
You sort of talked towards the shortage and availability of power and sort of personnel in regards to that. When you guys are one of the few sort of now multiregional operators in the electrical space, do you have a view on when you'll start to see the remote and sort of more fly-in, fly-out electrical contracting work in DCs coming through for your business?
Stephen Young
Let me just touch on that and then, again, I'll hand back to Trent. If you look at Australia's current data centers, they are all located in CBD locations.
If you have a look at what's going on in the United States, that was where they were maybe 5 years ago, and there's been a lot now that have gone to Middle America and, in particular, Texas. We think the trend will be the same in Australia, that data centers will have to go to where land is cheaper, power is available, and water is available.
Australia is unlike the US, a population of 28 million that live essentially around the Australian coastline in the capital cities. As our businesses focus on remote and we've got Australia's largest remote workforce, blue-collar workforce, and we think we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that trend as and when it happens.
As Trent has already mentioned, there are well beyond the drawing board projects that are coming up in South Australia. We're aware that a couple of the hyperscalers been having a look at the Pilbara, which again is our backyard.
We see that we are very well positioned for a trend that is emerging. I know Australia's data center operators organization, whatever they call themselves, announced yesterday that there's $46 billion of data centers committed over the next 3 years.
These are just extraordinary numbers, and we'll do the very best we can to keep up with them, but that's most probably a number of multiples of the amount of electrical labor that's available to build them.
Trent Northover
I can support that, Stephen, if you like. I think we've got over 2,000 sparkies in the group, Jono.
I think you know that. That will be a mix of FIFO/DIDO.
That is what we're set up to do traditionally. What's important is we've got collaboration within the group.
The MaXim business are a fantastic bunch of people and have been very open to sharing some of their insights and their skills, and we're trying to get that collaboration happening within the group to make sure we're ready for the next phase.
Jonathon Higgins
Thanks, guys.
Stephen Young
Operator, we're ready for the next question, if there is one.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Amanda Kelly from Barrenjoey Capital Partners. Your line is open.
Amanda Kelly
Hey, morning, guys. I'm just wondering if you can talk through the acceleration of the electrical margin into the second half, just what type of work drove that stronger profile.
Mark Vartuli
Amanda, it's Mark here. I'll let Jason answer after this.
In the first half results, I think we mentioned that we had a fair bit of material supply at low margin, which, with the deferral of a bit of the project-based work into the second half, meant we had a bit of unutilized labor as well in that first half. When you flip that on its head with everyone being super productive and more specialist labor being sold, and one of our businesses, SPS, had a stunning second half, and that is quite a high-margin business given the specialist nature of high-voltage commissioning work that they do.
It's very unique, and they work for a number of the players in both the electrical space and also direct for end clients. You have anything further, Jason?
Jason Pryde
No, you've pretty much covered it all, Mark. Just to support what you said, yeah, the first half had a lot of the material component purchases and some of our project work, and in the second half, we're able to execute that, get all the installations done and all the commissioning completed, etc.
Mark covered it all.
Stephen Young
Amanda, you might notice that we've got guidance of 14% EBITA margin for the next year.
Amanda Kelly
Yeah. Cool, thank you.
Maybe just a second one, just wondering out of this JPS work in the US, are you expecting the FY27 work to become more recurring maintenance then, and does that mean that you might consider having a base in the US?
Stephen Young
I think we'll proceed with a great deal of caution. It's very important that we meet our clients' expectations.
The US is a very big market. There's not a lot of evidence of Australian companies going to the US and doing well.
As a consequence, we'll focus on maintenance and we'll grow cautiously. Obviously when you end up with more work and you're no longer doing fly-in, fly-out, JPS are a very capable specialist organization, and they've got technology and skills that clearly their global customers, which I think is really important If you have a look at their customer list, most of their customers are actually global in their operations, and they're seeing skills that have been deployed by JPS in Australia that they would have to like to have offshore.
One thing is to go to Angola. It's not hard to imagine that Australian skills are better than you might have in Angola.
It's exciting to think that our skills might be better than what's available in Houston, but if that is the case, we'll grow cautiously.
Trent Northover
Just to support Stephen's comments, Amanda, I think I will bring up a Stephen comment is I don't go anywhere without a PO. That was his first comment internally when we raised it to do this visit in the next couple of weeks.
We've received his endorsement for one flight without a PO. It's client-side focus, which is probably the key point here, there's no delivery risk.
We're not spinning spanners over there in the US market. We're not trying to get that labor.
It is the LNG market labor, likely from Australia, that we can grow into the US to support our customers. We're just supporting the maturity of the LNG market as it expands in the US.
Amanda Kelly
Thank you.
Operator
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from the line of Lachlan Woods from CGS.
Your line is open.
Lachlan Woods
Hey, thanks for taking the question. I guess the first one is, can you kind of talk through just the success you're having with MaXim in terms of bringing in the other subsidiaries and kind of cross-selling them into the key customer?
Stephen Young
Can I again just touch on that before handing to Trent. We are managing the cross-sell with a great deal of caution.
We are providing labor to MaXim, that's easy. Going the other way and sharing skill and knowledge is something that we'll hasten with caution.
There are very significant opportunities arising outside Melbourne, and we just need to be very careful. To be seen by our customers to be looking after—this is our existing customers—to be looking after them first.
Then we need to expand as a group and look after new customers operating in new locations. As we've shared with you, we are concerned about the available labor.
We think that Tasman, as a result of the WorkPac acquisition, best placed to meet the increasing demand for skilled labor. You'll gather from my comments now on a couple of points, we are growing consistently, but we're also growing with caution, trying to meet our customers' expectations in a way that we exceed them rather than let them down.
Lachlan Woods
That's super helpful. Locky,
Trent Northover
you want any more info, or you're happy with that?
Lachlan Woods
If you've got any more, would always love it.
Trent Northover
No, it's more supporting Stephen's comment. The cross-sell is real, but what our biggest focus is to make sure we support their labor demands.
They've got existing customers. We want to deliver on what we've got.
Jason's always said don't give up what you've got. Don't walk past new customers and miss the existing one.
We want to make sure we do that first. They've got a lot of experience in data centers, and that's where we're collaborating.
To long-term strategy for us, if that eventuates, happy days, but we're not going to let it impact our existing operations with our existing customers.
Lachlan Woods
That measured approach makes complete sense. I guess the second question for me, qualitatively, can you also just give us a bit of color on the demand you're seeing across the key subsidiaries, like so Tasman Power, Flanco, ICE, etc.?
Just can you kind of just talk us through what demand is driving in each one?
Stephen Young
Jason, why don't you start in the west with what's driving demand in the west, and then we'll hand over to Trent to do the same thing in the east.
Jason Pryde
Overall, our clients continue to put through record tonnes, or if they're not record tonnes, they're close to it. Their assets, like we've sort of said previously, that they continue to age.
What that means for us is they require more maintenance or brownfield project upgrades to ensure that they can keep to maintain those record production levels that they're chasing. In the electrical segment, Tasman Power, Sygma, Future Power, the Future Engineering Communications guys, they're all experiencing record order books than what they've had previously.
Civils no different. Flanco continue to do exceptional work throughout the goldfields.
Their record book is by far the biggest I've ever seen. Northwest has had its strong start as well.
They've won a significant MMWA, which is very similar to an MSA, that they haven't had previously, and we think that that really positions them well to secure long-term growth for them. The mechanical as well.
Rope access had a tough couple of years, but their July's was a record month for them. That's the best month we've ever had, the most amount of hours.
Their pipeline's as strong as we've ever seen it. GMS has got some drill rigs on hire, which is no secret, that's been tough.
We've been able to pivot that business, so that's going very well. Overall, across all of the segments in WA, it is the strongest that I've ever seen it.
West Coast Lining's doing a great job, and yeah, Sygma just continues to perform year-on-year. Their specialist service is really being valued by all of their customers, and their name continues to grow.
I'll hand it over to Trent.
Trent Northover
Thanks, Jason. Similar to Jason, Olympic Dam I think we've highlighted.
We've put a lot of focus there. I think we've had some very detailed discussions with senior leadership there regarding not wanting to take over the world, that can be left for other Tier 1 contractors.
There's a lot of what Stephen might call bits and chips, and that's what we're really good at. That value at Olympic Dam, Prom Hill, and Carra is significant and low risk, we want to clean that up.
NT is expanding thanks to JPS. They've got a good network there.
Gladstone, Mark touched on it, we merged ICE and Cawfield's. Cawfield's was a good local company, but we've boxed them into ICE.
That's generating a lot of interest from Rio Tinto in the mainland in Gladstone, but also the customers on Curtis Island. Why?
Because we've got a bigger balance sheet and a bigger group to service for them. That's going well.
I think we touched on in the last results or half year that Santos had been quiet, and that's sort of probably consistent with what we've seen, but their major projects globally are done. There's a bunch of free cash coming, and they're doing a bunch of maintenance and shutdowns next year.
That's Tasman and all of our subsidiaries' sweet spot. That's what we'll be focused on, I'm actually a bit excited about Santos's growth next year for us.
Stephen Young
Can I just repeat a comment I made earlier? I was excited, best way of describing my response to Simon Trott's briefing from Rio.
I then got even more excited when we had Brendan Craig's briefing from BHP. Both of them have done better than their iron ore business in copper last year, and obviously both committed to further growth in the copper sector.
Copper province in South Australia is the next big step for BHP. We won't be that involved in the construction.
Having said that, we're doing non-process infrastructure work currently up at Olympic Dam, but we'll get the bits around the edge of the large construction work, and then we'll hopefully be involved in the maintenance once that is completed. As I look at what's going on, you've got most probably in this order: data centers, copper, iron ore.
Even BHP mentioned coal in the last announcement. I don't reckon BHP's mentioned coal for 5 years, and all of a sudden, their Chief Executive is saying we might even invest some more in metallurgical coal, which is a brave comment for any CEO to make.
I'm really very confident about all of the segments that we currently operate in.
Lachlan Woods
Perfect, that's super insightful. Thanks, all.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand back for closing comments.
Stephen Young
Thank you very much, operator. To all of you who have dialed in, thank you.
We appreciate your support. Mark, Jason, Trent, and I will be available to answer any questions.
I know we've got a couple more briefings via the brokers during the course of the day, and hopefully we'll get to see a few of you on our roadshow next week. Thank you for your time and thank you for attending.
Operator
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating.
You may now all disconnect.
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