29Metals Limited

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the 29 Metals Limited June quarter conference call. All participants are in a lesson only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. James Palmer, CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning all, it's James Palmer here and thanks for joining the 29 Metals quarterly activities update for the June quarter for 2024, my first as CEO. So today we'll be speaking to the presentation released this morning alongside our June quarter report and joining me here are Ed Cooney, our Chief Operating Officer, Peter Herbert, our Chief Financial Officer and Christian Stella, our Group Executive, Corporate Development. It's great to be speaking with you all today. I've met a number of you since joining partway through this reporting quarter and I look forward to meeting many of you over the coming days, weeks and months. I had to spend the first few weeks and months just listening, learning and recently shaping and executing our strategy and plans and look forward to speaking more about that over the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, let's get into the quarter that was. So briefly turning to slide three before getting into the quarter results, this highlights many of the attributes of the 29 Metals portfolio that certainly attracted me to the company. So specifically large Australian-based copper endowments with lots of upside potential. In my first near 90 days in the role, I've invested time visiting our sites, meeting our people and many of our key stakeholders and doing a lot of listening. It's clear to me the enormous potential embedded in the 29 Metals portfolio and importantly, we have a team committed to realising that potential for the benefit of all stakeholders. Slide four lays out our key priorities, so health and safety first always and then across the group discipline in productivity and in cost and in the way that we improve. At Golden Grove it's all about the drumbeat of delivery to maximise free cash flow and moving Gossam Valley forward in the near term. For Capricorn Copper, it's all about the imperatives for a sustainable restart with an immediate focus on meaningful water reduction. Slide five is the summary of the June quarter, a quarter that certainly provides a snapshot of the opportunity available for the company. Safety, single digits for TRIF and our significant potential incidents reducing. Copper up, zinc up, OPEX down, CAPEX up, and mining at Golden Grove's highest-grade ore bodies, Anto Extended, is ramping up, enabled by the significant investment in mine de-bottomlinking and surface infrastructure upgrades since the IPO. The value in the ground at Capricorn Copper was highlighted by the exceptional high-grade copper drill results received post-quarter end, With reduction on the water levels, the immediate focus and first step towards unlocking that value as we progress the site towards a sustainable restart of operations. So I'll shortly pass to Ed to talk through Golden Grove in some additional detail. I'll then provide an update on Capricorn Copper prior to handing to Peter to provide the corporate and finance update for the quarter. So over to you, Ed.

Thanks, James, and morning, everyone. So moving on to slide seven of the pack. So copper production for the quarter was 6.4 thousand tonnes. That's the higher copper production quarter under 29 metals ownership and up 11% relative to the prior quarter. Really largely driven by higher tonnes milled. Zinc production was also up at 15 odd thousand tonnes. That's about 200% up on the prior quarter. and really driven by a higher proportion of zinc ore milled and higher zinc grades and recoveries. Further improvement at Xanthox standard in terms of development rates continued during the quarter, which combined with good pace fill cycles earlier in the March quarter enabled the higher zinc and precious metals production. The site team continue to pursue continuous improvement opportunities in partnership with Burncut, with multiple enabling technologies being adopted to improve mining efficiencies at depth. And some examples of this include commencement of remote loading of development ore, remote monitoring of air quality and ventilation fans to really reduce re-entry times and maximize pace time. So the month of June saw another record for development advance at Xantho extended and for the remainder of the year we'd anticipate maintaining sort of first half development advance. Our second half ore production from Xantho extended is expected to be higher than the first half in order to achieve our full year guidance for zinc production which will obviously be second half weighted. Moving on to slide eight, the higher production also contributed to a pleasing result on unit costs for the quarter with C1 costs and AISC of about 14 US per pound and 283 per pound respectively. Mining and processing unit costs were in line with the prior quarter with byproduct credits and stockpile movements really the key drivers of the lower unit costs quarter on quarter. and on a full year basis the site costs continue to track to 2024 guidance ranges. TSF4 project is important to us. It remains on track for completion early in the 2025 March quarter with approvals from DMERS now received. The civil contract has been awarded, mobilisation and clearing activities undertaken during the quarter. Fabrication of the thickener has been completed and deliveries of components landing on site and the team are now focused on concrete pours within the thickener pad and finalising remaining tender packages. Fully growth capital guidance range has been increased to $35 to $40 million. Previously it was $20 to $25 million. And the prior TSF4 capital estimate for 24 was subject to final design and based on preliminary designs undertaken in late 21 and 2022. And approximately half of the TSF4 increase relates to additional scope, including certain electrical infrastructure and symbols that were not included in the prelim design. And the other proportion of the increase costs relates to labour, contractor indirects, material supply, foreign exchange, et cetera. In addition to the TSF-4 increased costs, we do anticipate some higher capitalisation of Xantho extended development over the year and also some additional activities to support Gossan Valley. And works during the quarter to progress Gosselin Valley towards a final investment decision included submission of the application material for regulatory approvals. We undertook a mine plan design review, commenced some geotech drilling of the planned box cut and raised bore locations really to de-risk in future and we also issued tenders for key work packages And really upon development, you know, Gosselin Valley is expected to enhance overall oil production and scheduling flexibility by providing an additional independent and relatively shallow production front at Golden Grove. But I'll now hand back to you, James, to talk through Capricorn Copper.