IT HAS been a good year for drilling services, products and technologies company Boart Longyear, even though it posted a $57 million loss for the full year ended December 31.
That loss was actually a 42% improvement on the 2020 full year's $99 million loss. It should be noted the company, which listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2007, has not posted a profit since 2012.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation improved 110% to $84 million on the back of a 40% year on year increase in revenue to $921 million.
Net debt was down 81% to $164 million thanks to the $1.1 million debt for equity swap recapitalisation Boart Longyear did in October.
The company recently managed to redomicile in Canada and is planning to pursue a dual listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Boart Longyear CEO Jeff Olsen said 2021 was a good year and he believed the tailwinds from that year would flow into 2022.
"We have a strong belief that 2022 will be another good year," he said.
"We believe there will be volume expansions on both the revenue side and the EBITDA.
"But we also believe some competitive pricing going forward.
"That will show up in both revenues and EBITDA."
The company is split into three main business areas: Drilling Services, Global Products and Geological Data Services.
Olsen said Drilling Services revenue increased about 35% year on year to $635 million driven by improved volumes.
"You would have to go back to about 2013 to see those sort of volumes in our Drilling Services business," he said.
"It has strong prospects in the future. Its demand is predominantly driven by the customers."
The Global Products business' revenue increased 53% and its EBITDA grew 148% to $62 million.
Olsen said there had been incremental growth in the Global Products business over the Drilling Services business through 2021.
"We expected that because products move quicker than Drilling Services," he said.
"We expect that to be more balanced in 2022."
While Drilling Services makes up 70% of Boart Longyear's business, Olsen believes the future of the business is in the exploration and data space.
That is held in GDS and Olsen points to its Truscan system as something he believes will disrupt the exploration space.
"Truscan can reduce the time to log core by 60%," he said.
"It also reduces the time from drill core to assay from one month to one day.
"Onsite sampling can reduce carbon emissions on core freight by 95%."
There is also a gyro product that is coming to the market.
Olsen said he believed there would be greater adoption of the technologies in Boart Longyear's GDS division.
"We're also accelerating the use of GDS technologies in our business to understand what markets we can address best.
"We think there are a lot of areas to grow our business going forward.
"We're going to accelerate the growth of GDS and do it aggressively.
"We believe there are margin expansions opportunities on both the volume side and price side.
"There are plenty of opportunities to grow this business and fund it ourselves.
"We will look for opportunistic areas to grow the business and that could be geographical."
Olsen said initially first world markets such as the US, Canada and Australia would be targeted.
"I wouldn't discount growth in Latin America," he said.
"The copper story is very strong there.
"But it lags behind the US, Canada and Australia."
Olsen said the company was going to explore a dual listing on the TSX.
"That provides potentially a broader access to capital in the future," he said - echoing the reasons given for redomiciling the business in Canada.
"It also recognises the fact that most of our existing shareholders are North America-based and our headquarters are in Salt Lake City [Utah, US]."
