Australian surface contract mining major NRW has put itself in a position to expand further by acquisition, reporting strong FY22 financial results and cutting net debt significantly by the end of the year. The company, spurned by MACA for now, posted a A$97.4 million net profit on $2.4 billion revenue for the latest year.
NPAT was up 79.4% on the prior year; revenue was 4.6% higher.
NRW is forecasting FY23 EBITA of $162-172m ($157m in FY22) and revenue of $2.6-2.7 billion.
The company declared a 7c-a-share final divided to take the full-year payout to 12.5%, or $56.1m (56% of NPAT), up 39% on FY21. It cut net debt from $171.3m to $66.6m during FY22 and finished the year with $219.3m cash.
It is forecasting $206.3m of capex in FY23. Its order book stood at $5.2b at the end of FY22.
“These are the best results NRW has reported despite the challenging conditions the business has encountered over the last 12 months,” CEO Jules Pemberton said.
“The overall group pipeline remains strong at $19.8b of which circa $3.5b are submitted tenders.
“We have assumed that projects will still be subject to current resource and supply chain pressures although we expect these to ease through the year.”
Pemberton said this week NRW’s $375m cash-and-share offer for MACA – under a $350m all-cash bid from Thiess – “was capable of being a superior proposal to the current conditional Thiess takeover offer … and warranted further investigation by MACA”.
“We are disappointed that the board of MACA has indicated that it is not willing to entertain our compelling proposal.”
It is unclear whether NRW will pursue the target. MACA announces its FY22 results next week.
ASX-listed NRW’s share price is up about 24% year-to-date, capitalising the company at $1.02b.
MACA is currently valued by the market at about $360m.
