investor presentation, covering off a little bit about company, providing an update on the financial highlights for the period, touching on operational highlights for the period, then addressing outlook and guidance. We also provide as part of the presentation, although I won't be running through it in any detail this morning, an appendix which contains a lot of additional, hopefully informative, information.

Lycopodium remains a leading global engineering and project delivery group, working across mineral resources, industrial processes, and infrastructure industries, with an extensive book of quality clientele and 18 offices across the world. I speak to our clientele, we have an amazing bunch of clients across all those industries I mentioned, through the very large clients, mid-tiers, and junior explorers and miners, and we're very grateful for that client order book.

As a project-focused organization, it's of significant importance and to our benefit to have involvement with projects from a very early stage, hence our involvement in scoping and feasibility studies, in the evaluation phase of projects, through to the full engineering and project delivery as a full service provider in that space, and then also on to optimization and expansion phase works. Enables Lycopodium to benefit from a project's full life cycle.

That's been something we've focused on over the years, both in broadening out the services which we provide, but also broadening the time which we're involved in projects. We maintain a high workload with a strong current order book of studies and delivery phase activities on a broad range of quality projects.

Committed contracts are valued at $415 million. That's up on last period.

Also revenue opportunity pipeline is $1.3 billion, also up on last period, which really indicates, and I'll talk more about it obviously later, the outlook for the business, but indicates that we're continuing to see a busy market, enjoy a busy market, and see a busy market. By way of financial highlights, Lycopodium did $174.5 million worth of revenue for the period and $18.3 million NPAT, which provided a 10.5% NPAT margin, which is in line with our expectations for NPAT, achieved our NPAT target.

The directors declared a 22 cents per share fully franked dividend for the half year, again, returning to our traditional sort of dividend policy or dividend expectations, and strong cash at bank at the half year. The company enjoys excellent diversification across a broad range of commodities, clientele, and geographies.

Those of you that have seen this slide previously may note that we continue to achieve more balance in support of this diversification across these metrics. We're striving to continue to do this on an ongoing basis.

We would like to see a strong balance in terms of diversification across commodities, across geographies in particular. It provides a surety and strength moving forward.

From an operational perspective, we've recently been awarded a number of FEED, or front-end engineering and design, briefs, which we expect to position us optimally for the next phase of each project. These include the Winu copper project for Rio Tinto, the Essoflo Diouga Boto gold project for Endeavour Mining, which is their next development project, the Doropo gold project for Resolute, and a number of others, including most recently, Pilgangoora plant expansion, lithium project in Western Australia.

We've also started initial work on two material prospects being Tulu Kapi gold project and the Blackwater expansion Phase 1A project for Artemis Gold. In terms of the latter, we hope to be able to transition on to a larger project at Blackwater, an expansion project, and await news on that may be imminent.

Of note, however, there has been a shift to the right on these projects, particularly Tulu Kapi and Blackwater from a timing perspective, probably about a 3 to 4-month shift from what we previously expected and forecast. That has impacted our financials and forecasts.

However, we continue to invest in building capacity in anticipation of these and a swathe of other material opportunities. This is really important.

We are in a competitive labor market across the world for our people, and we've retained our people and continue to grow our people count, and also our capacity in terms of office space and just general corporate capacity. What we see is being a large number of prospects.

Our study pipeline is very strong. For those that have been on our calls previously, you would have seen this slide in particular, which tries to demonstrate our early-phase work, our work which is midstream and in middle of its delivery, and then those projects which have been completed in recent times.

You can see there's quite a number of new opportunities and new projects which have tipped into that early-phase work. I spoke around the Blackwater Expansion Phase 1A, Tulu Kapi, Winu, et cetera.

There's other projects such as Yanfolila, Goulamina, and Doropo, where we're doing the FEED work. We hope that those projects will go into full execution, and we will be able to participate in full delivery of those projects.

We've also got a really strong portfolio of projects which are in called heavy delivery, including Koné in Côte d'Ivoire, Yanqul copper in Oman, and a number of other projects which are listed there, and, of course, some projects which we've already completed. We're very, very happy with the number of studies that we've got, and that's traditionally a key metric for the business.

If we're working on a good number of and quality of studies, it tends to be a good indicator of what we will be doing next. Our focus on people continues as we seek to maintain and enhance our status as an employer of choice, and a place where people can develop excellent careers, advance themselves personally and professionally, and enjoy growing with the company.

Our approach to keeping our people and those on our managed sites safe is demonstrated in our exceptional safety track record. On to outlook.

Demand for our services remains very high based on our excellent track record and performance on all our most recent projects, as well as market conditions, which generally sees commodity prices at strong, if not historic high levels. Obviously, gold being very, very strong at the moment, and we're seeing enormous number of opportunities emanating out of our traditional markets, including Africa and Australia, but also across the Americas.

Silver being another commodity which we're seeing a number of projects. We've started work on the PFS for Unico Silver in Argentina, supported obviously with our investment in Saxum.

We're also seeing on the basis of our expansion across the Americas, many new opportunities and the like being presented to us, or prospects that we have identified and are pursuing. We also continue to invest in building capacity and capabilities globally.

We've, in the last 12 months, and we have planned for the next 12 months, increased the capacity in Perth, Toronto, and Cape Town, in Lima and in Manila, and that's in preparation for the work and the prospects which we continue to see. We see that this will bear fruit in subsequent financial years, certainly, but we're also expecting it to support a strong second half to this financial year.

We've revised guidance primarily due to the shift right of a number of those major prospects. I spoke about the two main ones which are expected to contribute materially to our forecasts.

We now provide guidance of group revenue between $370 and $410 million and NPAT between $37 and $41 million, in line with our target NPAT expectation of around 10%. We will obviously continue to keep the market and shareholders updated on any material changes or any material awards.

We consider that the second half will be strong to achieve that guidance that we've just provided. We remain a secure, stable, and sustainable business doing great work globally.

This is based on the deep engineering expertise and growing teams and keeping teams of exceptional, high-caliber personnel. We provide lots of what I call value in the services which we provide globally.

We have a long track record of highly disciplined risk management. We are also focused on ensuring that we have a good portfolio of contracts and style of work, which talks to both risk, but also talks to return.

Again, leveraging experience we've honed over the years. We have a very strong history of execution of projects and execution of business generally, with strong alignment with management and our shareholders, with still around 30% of the company's ownership held by board and management.

We have a very capital-light approach, we're not an organization that requires to spend a huge amount of capital to generate our returns. We continue to pursue business in that fashion.

I've touched on, and in the appendices which you can go through at your leisure, you can review the very strong field of blue-chip clients that we have. It's a very diverse list, and lots of clients have been with us a long time.

We continue to deliver repeat business as predominant. Quantum of the work that we do is in the form of repeat business for clients, new projects for existing clients and the like.

Strong commodity diversification, I spoke around that earlier, and I think we've just continued to strike a good balance there. Even in the light of a very strong gold price, we're still busy in lithium, we're still busy in uranium, copper, and a bunch of other commodities.

Lycopodium, certainly against our peers, appears to have an underlying valuation. Geographic diversification I think for us is key.

We continue to expand geographically. The Americas has been a fantastic geographic expansion for us: the acquisition of Saxum, we've opened Lima office, Vancouver office, et cetera.

We're seeing tremendous number of opportunities coming through. Again, it's fairly early days, we have got expressions of interest in and proposals in on a number of new opportunities across Latin America in particular, and North American operations continue to see a level of inquiry which is unprecedented.

I think certainly the word is out about Lycopodium across the Americas, and we expect to see continued sort of growth and opportunities for business activities across the next couple of years just coming out of the Americas, let alone our traditional Africa and APAC regions. As I said, we also provide some additional and hopefully informative content as an appendix to the presentation to further explain and illustrate the strength and quality of our business.

I'm not going to go through that this morning, or walk you all through it. If as ever after this presentation any of you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us with those questions and we can answer them on the appendices.

Thank you for attending our webinar, and I welcome any questions you may have now for us and we'll do our best to answer them. Thank you.

Hey Pete, Justine, thanks for taking my question. Just a quick one, you mentioned adding capacity and headcount kind of across the board globally.

Can you just talk to how you're finding the labor market and perhaps if by geography you're having any particular challenges, or how that sort of is going to look over the next 6 to 12 months? Thanks.

Thanks, Ollie. Look, the availability of good talent is always challenging, and that sort of is a constant.

We're seeing that in Australia, we're seeing that in Canada, we're seeing that in South Africa, in particular where the two large operational hubs are. We continue to recruit good people and bring good people in, and again, I touched on our focus on people and a focus on careers and a focus on providing people new, exciting, and diverse work is something which we sell, and we never have people come to Lycopodium to thinking they are joining anything other than an exceptional business, which is great.

It makes it a little easier, but they are tough markets, there's a dearth of high quality, experienced personnel globally. We value it very much.

To that point, across the late part of the first half, we maintained capacity where if you weren't expecting to continue to see growth in demand, we might have trimmed capacity at times just to maintain utilization, which is a key metric for our business. We maintained it, particularly in Cape Town, knowing full well that it's not easy to get people.

You can't just let people go and expect they're going to rejoin you in 2 months' time, with the full knowledge that we had the amount of work and seeing the amount of work potentially ahead of us. We sort of were very careful to maintain our teams and to continue keeping on that capacity and growing that capacity.

Great. Thanks.

Just with Saxum, it's been slightly slower start than you initially expected, but can you speak to how the opportunity pipeline as it stands today compares to your expectations when you made that acquisition?

Yeah. You're right.

The their own performance, their performance in their own right has been, as you say, a bit slower than we would like. Again, for those of you who've heard us speak about the Saxum acquisition before, for us, the acquisition of Saxum wasn't so much about the what they would contribute to group in their own right, it was about the opportunities that they would bring to group and the beachhead that they would provide within Latin America, and the Americas, and particularly Latin America, and enable us to access clientele and and opportunities that we hadn't been previously.

You rewind the clock back 18 months, Lycopodium wasn't bidding anything in in Latin America, was was unaware of I'm sure lots of opportunities, and we now are sort of much more across and attuned to, and enabling and and able to to pitch for opportunities. As I said, Unico Silver is one example.

It's PFS obviously at this point in time, still relatively early days, but they're an Australian-listed company with a silver project in Argentina. Saxum in fact secured the PFS on the back of the relationship and the part of the and it's part of the group, and and supported by, in in that case supported by our Americas offices and process teams.

We're currently bidding a a, or expression of interest with a view to bidding a a large copper concentrator opportunity in in Argentina, again supported by APAC, driven by APAC hub where we've got a lot of horse power and a lot of track record in large copper concentrators, and only enabled by the fact that we have the Saxum business. In that respect, it's it's going exactly to plan.

The integration of the business has occurred, and it's occurred really well, and there's no issues there, no concerns there. The cement, the traditional cement market is slower than we would have liked to have seen, and they would have liked to have seen, of course.

Have we have we landed a big fish or a medium-sized fish at this point in time? No, but we're really in very good stead on a number of great opportunities that wouldn't have had before pre-Saxum, of course.

Great. Thank you.

That's it for me.

Thank you, Ollie.

thank you very much. Just on slide four with all the green dots, just noticed that Europe and also maybe Middle East don't have presences there.

Do you have any thinking about that in perhaps the medium term? Thank you.

Thank you, Steven. Europe is not on our radar per se.

There's not a huge amount of minerals activities in Europe. There obviously is some mineral activity, but not a huge amount.

Middle East on the other hand is on our radar. In fact, of course, we're currently working on the Yanqul project in Oman, where that project is being delivered out of our Americas hub.

The Americas hub is also seeing a number of inquiries from Dubai-based and Middle East-based groups, some projects in the Middle East, some projects funded out of the Middle East and particularly into Africa. We have an entity established in Dubai, albeit at this point in time it's on the shelf.

Acknowledging that if we do need to and do find that the level of prospectivity in that region increases to such a point that we consider it important to have an operation there, we can activate that. Certainly I think we view the Middle East from a level of prospectivity perspective something we have an eye to and could service out of APAC, out of Africa, or out of our Americas hub, anywhere client are and where relationships exist.

There's quite an amount of, I guess, money is coming out of Dubai in particular, Abu Dhabi, Saudi, and the like, I expect we'll continue to see some opportunities coming out of there.

Thank you.

It's not a, it's not indicate, it's not related to traditional project expenses per se. What it relates to, let me first of all deal with the first part of your question, and that is around timing, project delays, and the like.

Unfortunately, the reality of our world is that we don't control when projects start. We can influence obviously by completing our study work efficiently, effectively, and well, making projects more fund- more easily fundable, and and dealing with what we do, our part, and our inputs to projects, making sure they're high quality.

We like to think we do that regularly and on an ongoing basis. The, but the, the timing of when a project starts, when it gets funded, when it gets permitted, some of those, call it nuances around when a project has a full green light, is not something we can control.

I'll give you an example. We bid a project last year, early last calendar year, polymetallic project in Nunavut, Canada.

We we had a red-hot crack. We were shortlisted and have, of course, the belief, perhaps even the favorite party.

That project at the time was, apparently going to be starting in second quarter calendar year '25. That project has still got permitting and some effectively native title issues they're still dealing with.

These things we can't control. We do our best to to forecast and to to do a a likelihood and probability of a project going, and then a likelihood and probability of us securing that project, and then what that might mean for our our business size, our capacity, our capabilities, and all that, all that business planning that we do.

Unfortunately, we don't control the timing of projects. Two that we've sort of singled out in our presentation today, we singled out because they are material contracts potentially, or they if we's, they get full green light and we fully secure them, they are both material contracts and have material demands on the business.

We prepared in in advance for what was meant to be a kickoff in, call it fourth quarter 2025, and you have to do that because you can't be caught flat-footed on these things. They all got, they all have aggressive and and challenging schedules.

When things don't kick off necessarily exactly as per our forecast, we have to, enact contingency plans and the like. To the second part of your question, increased project expenses that you're seeing in in the in the financials really relate to FG Gold, Baomahun, which is a relatively soft, it's former EPC.

I won't give you too much detail, but it's a it's a project where you're seeing some direct costs being coming through our books. That's where you're seeing project equipment, project costs.

On the equipment side, it's we've started a business about 18 months call months ago called Podco, where we sell some form of OEM products leveraging our our technical capabilities and our technologies that we've developed over the years, and that's what you're seeing there. To the last part, are we seeing, have those project delays caused us to incur costs?

In one respect, yes. What happens with project delays is where you start seeing a softening in utilization of of of our personnel because they, you bring on 40 people and they're not fully occupied to the level you'd like to see them occupied.

That can have an an adverse impact because you're carrying some of their costs that's not being that's not flowing straight through projects. Again, it's just a a reality.

We we tend to model our commercials around a certain utilization level. If you're doing better than that utilization, then you make more profit.

If you're doing less than that utilization, you you start eroding into your target profits.

We expect to see utilization increase. Our utilization was reasonably high through the first quarter of this financial year, but softened across second quarter, as I said, certainly for some of our operational centers.

APAC and Americas are running both fairly high utilization levels, but Africa, Cape Town is lower, as was our Process Industries business, in this time Saxum. Again, though, as a group, we were still running above target utilization levels, but softer than we'd seen in the first quarter.

We expect those utilization levels to increase. Our forecasts are that they will increase through Q3, Q4 of this financial year, but certainly beyond that, and we expect, based on our forecasts, that we'll see utilization increase into FY '27 as well, and not only increase, but we expect probably bigger numbers, bigger headcount in due course, obviously evidenced by we're taking on more office space and the like, so that's kind of the plan.

It's a bit of a tough question, but in terms of total quantum, it's probably there or thereabouts, maybe a little higher. It's obviously also a mix of studies, and what those projects look like that we are studying, what the size of them are, what stage of study it is, et cetera.

It's always a tough question to answer, but we've got more studies on today than we had on this time last year, probably I'd say we do, because we're doing more studies in the Americas, similar amount of studies here in APAC, and probably a similar number of studies out of Africa as well, I'd say it's probably up.

Often yes, sometimes no. I'd say most of the project work which we get involved with, we've been involved in study work, and we know that you have an advantage if you've delivered a feasibility study, whether it be the PFS, DFS.

Often if you're doing a scoping, you'll generally roll on to PFS and DFS, and so on and so forth. What I will say is taking a project from scoping study, say it's especially a copper project, copper concentrator for example, the scoping study level through to execution might take you 10 years.

These things take a long time. Gold projects come on less, particularly in this market.

We've got a number of clients who haven't done a scoping study and want to be in execution, want to be pouring gold by Christmas next year, which is unrealistic, of course, but there's no shortage of, call it enthusiasm, that side of the fence at the moment.

Thank you very much. Look, nothing else to add other than we're very happy with the way the business is tracking at the moment.

We're really working to plan. Obviously, dealing with the vagaries of project timing and some of that impact that it has to the business over time.

In terms of the strength of the business, the fundamentals of the business, the balance sheet, of course, it remains strong. We're always looking for new opportunities, looking for how we can leverage our capabilities and do more and continue to do it as well as we're doing it, if not better.

That's it for the presentation. Again, as I said earlier, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to myself or Justine, and we'll try to help you out with answers.

Thank you very much for your attendance. Great,