IMDEX achieves record first-quarter revenue in strong start to FY23

Leading global mining-tech company IMDEX has revealed record first-quarter revenue amid a strong start to the financial year.

Speaking at the company’s Annual General Meeting today, Chief Executive Officer Paul House said revenue growth was up in all key regions with an increasing demand for real-time orebody knowledge and robust industry fundamentals.

IMDEX technologies enable resource companies and drilling contractors, to find, define, and mine orebodies – with precision, confidence and at speed. Record unaudited first-quarter revenue of $105.9 million was up 22 per cent on the same period last year. Sensors on hire were up 13 per cent on 1Q22 and 9 per cent on 4Q22. Mr House said supply chain pressures also continued to ease during the first quarter. Revenue growth was up 17 per cent from 1Q22 in the Americas, 29 per cent in Africa and Europe, and 27 per cent in Australia and Asia.

He said exploration budgets remained strong in Australia, with clients reporting longer order books of nine to 10 months rather than three to four months. Major and mid-cap mining clients were reporting ongoing or expanded exploration budgets, and deeper ore bodies were resulting in larger and more complex drilling programs.

Production levels

The drive to expand existing projects or find additional ore bodies to sustain current production levels, continuing strong demand for metals across a broad range of sectors, and an increased demand for critical metals all contributed to a strong outlook. Funding for special commodities, which includes lithium and rare earth elements, was up 232% on August, according to S&P market Intelligence.

“It is worth noting that during this current cycle, unlike any cycle previously, the industry has not made any major discoveries. We believe that this supports both the continued need for exploration drilling and the importance of precision mining technologies that may improve the economics of smaller deposits or increase the mine life of existing operations,” Mr House said.

Mr House said that early in the first quarter of FY23 IMDEX signed its first significant commercial contract with a tier-one resource company in South Africa for its BORE HOLE STABILISER TM (BHS), part of its suite of drilling optimisation products.

BHS TM is a multifunctional product formulated specifically for air drilling applications, particularly Drill & Blast applications. Trials are underway with underground commercial prototypes in Africa, Asia, and Australia, and further opportunities exist for surface applications. Mr House provided an update on development of BLAST DOG™, a multi-sensor probe designed to measure a wide range of geophysical properties of an orebody and map its material rock properties.

The data collected by BLAST DOG™ has the potential to be utilised by mining companies to develop programs which could improve mine planning, blast design, fragmentation, and material movement tracking post blast. IMDEX achieved the first commercial contract with BLAST DOG TM in August 2022, at Iron Bridge in the Pilbara. The agreement provides for the staged utilisation of up to three BLAST DOG TM sensors, together with associated products, software, and support, over the initial term. This will result in an estimated contract value of $13m.

“Our MINEPORTAL TM 3D visualisation software, acquired from DataCloud in September 2021, has been instrumental in demonstrating the value of BLAST DOG TM to customers,” Mr House said. He said the initial focus for development of BLAST DOG TM was copper and bulk metals within Australia and the Americas.

A rigorous assessment defined by global mines with the capacity for more than three drill rigs identified a serviceable addressable market beyond five years of approximately 400 sites. With IMDEX focussing on the top 25 per cent of those that were more likely to support the introduction of technologies that are disruptive to existing mining workflows, the assessment had determined that the obtainable market over the same period was about 100 mine sites to support this first phase of growth for the BLAST DOG TM. Six commercial prototype trials are planned for FY23 under the first phase of BLAST DOG TM development.

“The next generation BLAST DOG TM will incorporate additional sensors, software, and data answer products, and we will expand its application to other commodities and geographies and eventually to underground applications,” Mr House said. The IMDEX first-quarter snapshot follows the full-year results delivered in August in which it reported record revenue of $341.8 million, a 29.3 per cent increase on FY21, record EBITDA of $104.9 million, a 38.9 per cent increase, and Net Profit After Tax of $44.7 million, a 41 per cent increase on FY21.