Perplexing hey. Not expecting this quarter to be as good as the...

Perplexing hey. Not expecting this quarter to be as good as the raw numbers for the June one. That said it's still going to be very solid. Net debt is going to be a lot higher after paying out the divi but I'm ok for MSV to carry some debt, esp considering they did so well to lock in much of it at an average current cost of around 550bps & considering the cashflow they're generating. You'd think they won't have too much trouble with targeting net debt at 15mil at EOFY 24 even with a second diviidend of similar magnitude to the one just received.

If they've exhausted the proceeds from asset sales to buy back shares they should either sell off more kit (around 25% of the drilling fleet is still idle) or if they can't for whatever reason, then buy back more equity using cashflow. A lot more. I'd buy more myself but already have a massive overweight position in my portfolio. There's still scope for increasing the biz by acquisition too though I hope they don't when their own equity is so cheap....and they can buy it back at such discounted prices. However the drilling business buried in AJL for instance is low hanging fruit. The Mitchell's of course sold that business many years ago. They've already made approaches to buy it back (at a fraction of what they sold it for) but were unsuccessful. AJL are in all sorts of trouble though so who knows what's possible? If it continues to trade at such low prices, MSV would be an easy and tempting target itself for someone like Perenti that just absorbed DDH1. In the end whatever Nathan Mitchell wants he'll get as to where the biz is going with his family's controlling stake & sitting as Exec Chair