NRW said it had strong order book growth prospects. Image: NRW Holdings.
BY CAMERON DRUMMOND
MINING services contractor NRW Holdings has decided against an interim dividend, despite the business continuing to “meet or exceed our expectations”, securing contracts and contract extensions across all its businesses.
The company almost doubled its yearly revenue to $345.3 million and increased profit from $11.9m to $15.3m.
Last year, the company acquired east coast mining services business Golding for $85m, funded by a capital raising and debt facility.
Because of this, the company decided to retain its cash balances and not pay an interim dividend to ensure its debt was fully serviced.
It has not paid out to shareholders since a fully franked interim dividend of 4c per share in October 2014, when it posted an H1 FY14 profit of $22.4m and had a net debt of $39.8m.
NRW’s activity in the six months to December 31 2017 included mining services at Middlemount, and contract mining at the Kogan Creek, Curragh, Isaac Plains and Pilgangoora projects.
The company said it had an order book of $1.6 billion, with $360m of work scheduled for delivery in the second half of the year.
NRW chief executive Jules Pemberton said the acquisition of Golding had been an outstanding success and largely contributed to the significant increase in revenue and earnings compared to the six months to December.
“NRW’s strong order book growth not only indicates the incremental work related to Golding but also a number of key contract awards in the six months to December 2017,” Mr Pemberton said.
“Following the announcement of a $111m early contractor involvement for OZ Minerals, we have now commenced the first stage of the work on site with the construction of the aerodrome at the Carrapateena project.”
Mr Pemberton said the quality of prospects continued to improve and “more closely aligns with our historic delivery capability and our enhanced capability as a result of the Golding acquisition”.
“The pipeline of opportunities is currently valued at $6 billion, of which approximately $1.5 billion are active tenders,” he said.
“These tenders are spread across the civil business in iron ore and public infrastructure and in mining in coal, lithium, nickel, gold and bauxite.”
