Energold Drilling (EGD:TSV) should be on the first companies to signal a bounce back in the mining space. When activity picks up Energold will be on the first companies to know.

The firm operates over 230 drill rigs all over the world in the mining,energy, and manufacturing space. The diversification has allowed them to weather the downturn.

CEO.ca was fortunate to catch up with Jerry Huang, Corporate Development, for a quick chat on Energold and his insights on the drilling business.

Jerry Huang, Corporate Development, Energold Drilling, AME BC Roundup 2015 transcript:

The last three and a half years we were fairly fortunate because we are so diversified.

Energold works in 24 countries across mining, energy, and manufacturing. We build and sell water rigs and geo-technical rigs. We were buffered in a sense even though mining revenue has clearly been down nearly 80% in the last three years.

Going forward we are in a strong position compared to our peers in the sector. We are still really balanced and have a minimal debt load with a healthy cash balance.

 We are still able to work very versatility across different sectors whether it is gold,silver,platinum, oil sands we can do it all.

We do work for a lot of the mid tiers and majors.When a downturn happen we see the preference of drilling  going towards cash flow or near cash flow projects or in production projects from less towards greenfield and more towards brownfield. 

That is what we have been observing for the last little while but to further that point. The great thing about that is in a few years this will catch up with the industry. There is less and less being discovered.

All the projects being worked on right now are depleting the resource.

What we saw back in 2009-2010 is when this  bounces back  it bounces back very quick.

We have already seen the acquisitions in the space. Probe got taken over by Goldcorp. These are usually the signs of a bit of a bottom. We are not saying 2015 is a bottom but we are definitely seeing signals that a bottom is close.