MDI Q1 2027 — earnings-desk

Actuals vs. estimates

No consensus comparison available for this event.

No consensus estimate was available, so the print stands on its own comparisons: record revenue of C$277.3m, up 22.4% year over year, and EPS of C$0.18 against C$0.12.
The call added the sequential margin path the release did not spell out: adjusted gross margin of 24% is down from 25.2% a year ago but up from 22% in the prior quarter, which management attributes to pricing increases taking hold.
Management gave no numeric guidance and framed the next quarter qualitatively -- rigs deployed gradually at incrementally higher prices, with margins improving more slowly than revenue.
The one thing that matters: pricing is now visibly beating cost sequentially, but the binding constraint management named is the supply of experienced drillers, not demand -- so the revenue record depends on hiring, and hiring is what is costing the margin.

No financial guidance change disclosed.

Larocque tied the growth to rig deployment across every region, with Canada-U.S. up over 31%, South and Central America up 18% on Peru, Mexico and Brazil, and Australasia and Africa up nearly 14% on Australian senior expansions.
Ross said the 24% adjusted gross margin improved from 22% last quarter on pricing, partially offset by ramp-up costs on new contracts plus higher labour and consumable costs and investment in workforce training.
On the outlook, Larocque said: "We're still absorbing labor training and ramp-up costs, but price increases are taking hold and progressively offsetting those pressures. As a result, we expect margins to continue improving, albeit at a slower pace than revenue growth."
Management named the availability of experienced drillers as the primary industry constraint and said adding training drillers has a temporary productivity cost.
The only analyst question was on the C$573,000 gain on disposal of property; Ross said the retired rigs are cut up rather than resold, so the gain is not a read on a secondary rig market.

Part of the growth is currency, not activity. Of the roughly C$50.7m of year-over-year revenue growth, about C$8m came from favourable foreign exchange translation, and the company says the impact on net earnings was minimal because costs sit in the same currencies.
Earnings grew far faster than operating profit did. Net earnings rose about 44% to C$14.5m against 15.9% EBITDA growth to C$37.2m, helped by a lower effective tax rate the company attributes to utilization of previously unrecognized losses -- tax of C$4.6m against C$3.9m on much higher pretax earnings.
The compensation line moves with the share price, not the quarter. Other expenses rose to C$6m from C$3.3m on incentive compensation and stock-based compensation tied to share price performance, and G&A rose C$2.4m to C$23.8m on wage adjustments.

Utilization disclosure changed this quarter: specialized and conventional rigs are now combined into a single surface category, giving 455 surface rigs at 57% and 228 underground at 59% for 683 drills at 58% -- the prior split is no longer reported.
Net cash fell to C$15.7m from C$20.6m at the end of the prior quarter as higher rig utilization pulled working capital, so the record quarter consumed cash.
The fleet shrank on a net basis -- five rigs added against 10 retired on C$13.5m of capital expenditure -- so the revenue record came from utilization and price rather than capacity.
Junior customers grew to 15% of revenue from 8% a year ago, and that growth is explicitly tied to gold price strength and financing activity rather than to contracted senior programs.