Not sure why the company has not posted a Quarterly Investment...

Not sure why the company has not posted a Quarterly Investment Update as has been their historical norm. That said the Half Year accounts should be posted in 2 weeks time.

They have had a buy-back in place but have purchased virtually no shares despite them trading at arguably very low levels. Cash flow has almost all gone towards paying down the debt taken on for the 2019 acquisition, a full year special dividend and a small number of new underground rigs. I suspect MSV were looking at further acquisition opportunities and husbanding balance sheet resources if an opportunity arose. They've exercised good target buy discipline historically and considering relative valuations in drilling companies in sort after resources (gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, nickel, iron ore), MSV is cheap and well placed, their competitors are generally more expensive so I'd think (and hope) an acquisition would off the table for now.

I expect the half year to show slightly increased rig number utilisation, higher shift counts and higher operating cash flow paying down debt. I'd be surprised if they paid an interim dividend though they have the capacity to do so. With the shares trading where they are I think the best investment they could make and the best use of capital in the business would be to buy back shares while they're cheap because I suspect with the drilling demand pipeline expected over the coming year especially in gold/copper, they won't be cheap forever. The company still has around 30 surface rigs I think available. A lot of the new work might be greenfield/exploration drilling which they haven't chased but when rig markets are tight and I think they will tighten going forward (though there's some idle rigs in the thermal coal industry), rig utilisation numbers increase, shifts increase and finally margins increase to have a healthy multiplying effect on profitability. I think that's where we're going and I definitely want to stay invested when it eventuates. The resource cycle is on the up. This has the potential to do very well going forward and I like the risk/reward skew here. It's my biggest portfolio position