Aaron MacNeil: I appreciate the color. I’ll turn it over.
Joe Lambert: Yes, no worries.
Operator: Your next question comes from Maxim Sytchev of National Bank Financial. Your line is already open.
Maxim Sytchev: Hi. Good morning, gentlemen.
Joe Lambert: Good morning, Max.
Maxim Sytchev: Joe, I was wondering if you don’t mind maybe commenting in a bit more sort of granular detail around some of the Australian business, because I think some of the local peers are sort of calling out flattish 2024. And maybe if you don’t mind [indiscernible] kind of how met coal is different from thermal and maybe some of the puts and takes that you’re seeing kind of like on the ground as you get more comfortable with the asset? Thanks.
Joe Lambert: Yes, Max, I’d say, we continue to see what I’d say across all commodities is a stronger for longer. And this goes from our oil sands business through met coal, thermal coal, or any of the commodities we think there’s an extremely strong marketplace out there that continues. We see it in our bid pipeline, and you would see here in our Canadian business. And although we don’t have it on those graphs, we see the same thing in Australia. We’ve had a lot of inquiries. We actually have — there’s like six different infrastructure projects that we’re going to be digging in down there that we’re now aware of which MacKellar hasn’t pursued in the past. So I don’t think there’s been a negative surprise in any of the work we’ve done so far, or our expectations going forward.
And between our forecast to 2024, which is bit of an uplift from — if you’ve just taken the pro forma from our July 27 deck to now, we’ve increased and I think we’ve been first principle based in that. That’s not an overly optimistic viewpoint. We fully expect to meet or exceed those targets. And I think I’ve used the term that we see opportunities to grow at 5% to 15% annual pace in our business and I think that holds true whether we’re talking Canadian resources or Australian or even the infrastructure side, which comes a bit lumpier. But no, if anything, I’d say Max, we’re just reconfirming our confidence in this market going forward.
Maxim Sytchev: For sure. Thank you for that. And I guess on the interest side of things, Joe, so are you at the point right now evaluating sort of these opportunities? And would you have hypothetically the ability to participate in those, if some of them sort of come to fruition in Australia I’m talking about?
Joe Lambert: Yes. We’re really early stage as in expressing interest to receive tender packages, and then talking to potential partners like our partners that we’re using in Fargo. But there’s a significant amount of work that we’re already aware of that has to give — we’re just looking at ones that have meaningful earthworks to them. And I think we’ve already identified five different jobs. There were solar farms, wind farms, there’s a desalination plant, harbor bypass and an inland rail that we’re looking at down there that we just be expressing interest on, and then looking at partner. These things don’t move real fast. They tend to be years in the process. But we do see great opportunity down there to expand our MacKellar business into that. And our COO, Barry, is down there right now talking to them.
Maxim Sytchev: Okay, it’s good to hear it. Thank you. And then do you mind maybe just kind of, because you mentioned Fargo, maybe kind of discussing sort of the political path of this project. And where it stands in terms of the execution dynamic and partners and so forth, just maybe an incremental color on that? Thanks.
Joe Lambert: Yes. I think we had a really good summer and looking to finish it up with a strong winter there. Last winter, we weren’t real busy. But this winter is going to be much busier. And then next summer, not only is the earthworks high, but we start into the roads and bridges side of things. So we really get into the teeth of this project over the next four years. I think we had a six-year construction schedule altogether or something like that. And there’s really the meet of it that we’re just getting into. And from the earthworks side, we were pretty much meeting and beating our plans, at least we did this year and we will hopefully continue to do that. So our expectations remain high for that project.
Maxim Sytchev: And I guess — and we’re sort of fully over the hump in terms of getting supply chain and some of the materials and I presume labor as well, to a certain degree, right, in terms of that project specifically?
Joe Lambert: Yes. We’ve been doing mostly the earthworks. Certainly, our equipment and our labor supply and our maintenance supply has gone well. We had some anxiety at the start, but it’s really — we delivered into the plan well, and we’ve exceeded some of our production forecasts. So I think as we get into the bridge and the roadwork, and I think we’re roughly — we’ll end the year around 25% complete on the earthworks. But not that far into the bridge and road works. So next year we will be — kind of the end of next year, when everything’s kind of at that 25% or further mark, I think it’ll be a good milestone first to really predict how the overall project is going to go.
Maxim Sytchev: Okay, excellent. That’s it for me. Thank you very much.
Joe Lambert: Thank you, Max.
Operator: Your next question comes from Jacob Bout of CIBC. Your line is already open.
Rahul Malhotra: Hi. Good morning, Joe and Jason. This is Rahul on for Jacob.
Joe Lambert: Hi, Rahul.
Jason Veenstra: Good morning.
Rahul Malhotra: Good morning. I had a couple of questions on guidance as well. I believe this slide deck mentions that 2024 revenue guidance assumes MacKellar’s current run rate operations, so not much growth being baked in there if I’m reading that right. Would you say there is a degree of conservatism being built in here given integration has just started and the broader macro environment?
Joe Lambert: I think that’s reasonable. But we’re going with what we have in hand. This is still first principles budgeting, but we’re not assuming any big growth opportunities or expansions.
Rahul Malhotra: Right. Okay.
