After successfully shaking the tin for $6.2m, K2fly now has the largest privately owned mining software provider in the world on its register. Australian based Maptek has emerged from K2fly’s latest capital raise with a 13.2 per cent holding in the ASX-listed mining software player. The deal also includes Maptek Chairman Peter Johnson taking a seat on the K2fly board as a non-executive director.
According to K2fly, Maptek is the largest private mining software group in the world with hundreds of clients and annual revenues of more than $120 million. It has been around for over 40 years.
Maptek is behind the well-known and widely used Vulcan software that delivers advanced 3D modelling, mine design and production planning scenarios. All of which will no doubt complement K2fky’s own mining software.
Maptek will enter a 12-month standstill agreement, limiting its ability to acquire above a 19.9 per cent stake.
K2fly operates in the global resources space under a ‘Software as a Service’, or ‘SaaS’ business model – meaning it delivers its software on a subscription basis.
Software as a service businesses have come into vogue in the last couple of years as punters look to get a piece of what is essentially an annuity style revenue stream.
Notably, K2fly holds a page-long roster of rolled gold clients including ‘A-listers’ such as Fortescue Metals Group, South32, Rio Tinto, Roy Hill Holdings, Mineral Resources, Newmont Corporation, Newcrest Mining, AngloGold Ashanti, Goldfields, Westgold Resources and Glencore.
The mining tech company provides an encompassing range of software from traditional mining items such as resource inventory calculation to tools that facilitate meeting the increasingly important environmental, social and governance, or “ESG” criteria.
With companies within the resources space being held to a higher standard these days and the term “ESG” seemingly gaining an organic life of its own, K2fky appears to be in the right place at the right time with the right product. It will be curious to see what synergies if any may arise from its new found friendship in Maptek – itself no sloutch in the mining software game.
Notably the recent placement was done at a premium to the 15 day volume weighted average share price and was taken up by company executives and existing institutional investors in addition to the usual suspects on the sophisticated investor lists around town.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
