Perenti chief executive Mark Norwell’s remuneration decreases $862k following Smith-Gander safety overhaul

A spate of fatalities and a related remuneration report strike has led Perenti’s board to trim the salaries of the company’s top brass. The mining services contractor revealed the pay packet of chief executive Mark Norwell was $3.12 million for the 2024 financial year, compared to $3.98m for the 12 months prior. His pay cut follows the death of a Perenti employee in February at the Mano gold mine Burkina Faso. It marked the fifth company worker to be killed on site in less than two years. The February death raised more questions about the effectiveness of Perenti’s safety taskforce and the size of financial penalties slapped on its leadership. Just months prior Perenti shareholders voted down the 2023 remuneration report over the apparent lack of management action to tackle safety issues. “The Board has taken action to reflect accountability for the (February) incident in our remuneration outcomes in FY2024 and commits to remuneration structure change in FY2025,” Perenti said on Tuesday. “The Board took decisive action to replace the less effective ‘safety gateway’ on the short-term incentive (STI) scorecard with Board safety discretion to reduce overall incentive outcomes post scorecard assessment taking safety performance into account.” Mr Norwell’s STIs for the 2024 financial year were slashed by 27.5 per cent, the former of president of contract mining — Paul Muller — copped a 25 per cent STI hit, and outgoing chief financial officer Peter Bryant had an STI reduction of 20 per cent. The remuneration restructure was flagged by freshly-minted Perenti chair Diane Smith-Gander in an April interview with The West Australian. “It would be a very foolish board that doesn’t listen to that feedback,” Ms Smith-Gander said at the time in reference to the 2023 annual general meeting pay strike. “I can’t tell you where we are headed . . . (but) there will be changes.” The management pay pruning comes as Perenti posted a stable set of financial results for the 12 months ended June 30. Net profit attributable to Perenti shareholders was down from $95.7m to $95.4m, but net debt shrunk from $499m to $469.5m. Perenti is currently bedding down the October acquisition of DDH1 Drilling and expects underlying earnings for the 2025 financial year to be between $325m and $345m, versus $314.2m for the financial year just passed. Shares in Perenti finished down 2 per cent. Meanwhile, contracting rival Macmahon received a warmer market reception to its results. Easing labor pressures and gold producers flush with cash sees Macmahon forecast between $160 million and $175 million of adjusted underlying earnings for FY2025. This is compared to $140.3m on the same metric for FY2024, which itself was a 20 per cent rise on the FY2023 result. “The acquisition of key (Emeco) Pit N Portal contracts and personnel significantly enhanced our capacity to organically grow in the underground space, and the recent addition of Decmil into our business will accelerate our expansion into the civil infrastructure sector in FY25 and beyond,” Macmahon chief executive Michael Finnegan said. Shares in Macmahon surged 8.6 per cent to 32¢ a piece at the close of trade.