Ann: Half Year Results Presentation, page-2

The main element was probably that the company delivered on its forecast to increase its margin (which has been regularly deteriorating before).
So, they got an H1 24 EBITDA margin of 2.9 % vs 2.2 % in FY 23.
However, part of this improvement may be a one off as the company indicates that the gross profit increase (+ 22 % despite - 5 % for revenues*) was, in particular, due to the fact that they had "higher than usual % of projects being closed out in the period (higher GM at the tail end of a project on average)".

This EBITDA of 12.2 m $ (+ 31 % yoy) also allowed the company to publish another strong cash flow from operation of 17.6 m $.
Overall, they reached a free cash flow (after lease) of 15.7 m and led to another increase of their net cash position to 95.2 m $, including financial assets.

This level of free cash flow (for just one half) is really high when we compare it to the enterprise value of 60 m $.
So, no surprise that the company increased its dividend by 60 % (in line with the growth of NPAT) to 8 c, which corresponds to a dividend yield of 4.3 % just for one half.
Such an increase of the dividend (with a 89 % payout ratio) seems to indicate that these results do not mainly rely on one off elements.

It will be interesting to listen to their conf call later on today, to have more details regarding the potential one offs in the margin improvement.

* revenue decrease does not seem a major issue given the increase of their orders.