29Metals Limited

Now I'd like to hand the conference over to Mr James Palmer, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning all. James Palmer here and thanks for joining this 29 Medals update for the March quarter 2025. Today we'll be speaking to the presentation released this morning alongside our March quarter report and joining me are Ed Cooney, our Chief Operating Officer, Peter Herbert, our Chief Financial Officer and Christian Speller, our Group Executive, Corporate Development. It's great news speaking with you all again. What was another quarter of significant milestones for the business. The team are delivering on commitments and on track to deliver full year guidance. On slide three, briefly before getting into the quarter results, the 29 medal investment thesis remains strong. It's all about copper, which remains a critical medal as the world transitions further towards electrification. At 29 Metals we have two assets, lots of copper, over 2 million tonnes of contained copper and resources across Golden Grove and Capricorn Copper. Both assets have long life potential and significant geological upside that we have plans to capitalise on. Slide 4 lays out our key priorities. Health and safety first always and a great result on this front with zero recordable and zero lost time injuries during the quarter. across the group, discipline in productivity and cost improvements which remain a focus and at Golden Grove it's all about the drum beater delivery. Delivery of 2025 guidance and delivery of Gossam Valley First Ore in H226, both of which remain on track. At Capricorn Cooperate it's all about the imperatives for a successful and sustainable restart with water reduction the immediate focus. Fantastic progress made on this front during the quarter and post quarter end with a successful wet season delivered by the team. Significant progress made on reducing water levels on site to the tune of one gigalitre since I joined the company 12 months ago. Slide five to talk through the quarter in more detail. On safety, our TRIF and L2 found over the quarter on the back of zero recordable and zero lost time injuries during the quarter, a fantastic outcome and a result of remaining focused on safety first always. Operationally, a solid quarter delivered by the team at Golden Grove where operational challenges were well managed to produce 4.1 kilotons of copper and 17 kilotons of zinc, remaining on track for full year guidance. TSF4 is now complete with the first deposition of thickened tails during the quarter, a significant milestone that sets the asset up for the long term and a big investment now behind us. And activity is ramping up on the Gossand Valley project towards first door H226. We're working towards key approvals during the June quarter, recruitment's ramped up and key tender packages have been progressed during the quarter. Capital and Copper, I'm pleased to say we've had a very successful wet season. All the opportunities were realised for treated water releases. For the quarter we released 0.3 gigalitres of net water inventory reductions, the largest quarterly inventory reduction since the decision to suspend operations. Over the wet season, the team achieved approximately half a gigalitre of treated water releases, more than offsetting additions from rainfall, resulting in a big negative water balance for the duration of the wet season. Post quarter end, water levels were reduced further to now be below the maximum operating level for the first time since the extreme weather event two years ago. a key milestone towards resetting the compliance footing of the asset and positions us well with the regulator as we continue our focus on water level reductions and progress our application for long-term tailings. I'll now pass to Ed to talk through Golden Grove in some additional detail and I'll then provide an update on Capricorn Copper prior to Peter providing a corporate and finance update for the quarter. Over to you, Ed.

Thanks, George. Moving on to slide seven. So as mentioned, another solid quarter of safe production delivered by the team at Golden Grove with just over 4,000 tonnes of copper and 17,000 tonnes of zinc produced. Tons mined from Zant that extended accounted for about a third of total all mine during the quarter, which was down from about half the prior quarter. And that's really owing to two factors. So ventilation was constrained due to mechanical issues with an underground primary fan. That fan has been replaced and a fully rebuilt spare is expected on site in early May. And secondly, the localised impact of seismic activity which was associated with a narrow dollarite intrusive intersecting the Xantho extended decline in one of the production levels resulted in access restrictions late in the quarter. Production has fully recommenced post quarter end from Zantdo Extended with decline advance expected to recommence early May once the site team have completed the rehab of the decline. An update to the four year mine schedule which incorporates these interruptions is expected to replace up to 100,000 tonnes of Zantdo Extended Oil with largely copper oil from other Gossam Hill and Scuttles oil sources. with no impact to 2025 production guidance. On the surface, a planned four-day grid outage for routine maintenance by the power provider contributed to approximately 10% lower ore tonnes milled versus the prior quarter. We did mobilise a temporary diesel power station ahead of the outage to sustain underground operations, which resulted in a build of ROM stocks at quarter end that will be used to recover the lower mill volumes over the remainder of the year. Moving on to slide 8, pleasing unit cost performance for the quarter with C1 costs and AISC of about $0.76 and $2.07 per pound of copper sold respectively. As previously mentioned, ROM stocks were built during the planned four-day outage by the This build in ROM stocks combined with finished zinc concentrate stockpile build resulted in a $23 million credit to C1 costs versus a $10 million charge in the prior quarter, which contributed to the lower quarter-on-quarter unit costs. And capital expenditure reduced substantially in the March quarter, reflecting the completion of TSF4 and the ramp-down of associated project activity. And on the slide 9 where we can see the result of that capital expenditure in TSF4 and the initial deposition of tailings which occurred on schedule during the quarter. The photos on the slide hopefully provide some context to the scale of the facility and for reference the thickener you can see in the background of the picture on the right-hand side of slide 9 is 30 metres in diameter and equivalent in height to a multi-storey building. Owing to its scale and thickened tailings deposition methodology, TSF4 is expected to enable lower tailings deposition cost for the life of mine. In addition, the upfront investment now in long-term tailings capacity is expected to de-risk future tailings permitting requirements relative to the incremental approach of building stage lifts on smaller facilities adopted at Golden Grove in prior years. Productivity improvements and cost reductions remain an ongoing focus at Golden Grove and slide 10 outlines two other productivity initiatives in addition to TSF4 which were progressed during the March quarter. Specifically, a trial commenced post-quarter end to test the potential for battery electric loges to deliver health benefits by lowering diesel particulate emissions and heat generation underground. And with Golden Grove's underground ventilation constraints, the opportunity to then in future increase truck haulage production rates. And also a secondary portal to Gossam Hill was established during the quarter, which is expected to provide additional ventilation and production flexibility from next month As shown on slide 11, the team achieved a 10% reduction in unit cost and 16% increase in production from 2023 to 2024, and in part really due to the ongoing cumulative impact of initiatives like the ones outlined on the prior slides, which do drive productivity and unlock production growth. This production growth is planned to continue into 2025 with the midpoint of guidance representing a 7% increase in copper production, 15% increase in zinc production or on a copper equivalent basis, an 11% increase in production for 2025. On to slide 12, which outlines the progress made on the Gosselin Valley project during the quarter, which remains on track for first ore during the second half of 2026. Specifically, several responses to regulator requests for information were completed during the quarter and post-quarter end to facilitate progression of the mining proposal approval in the June quarter. Other project works during the quarter included commencement of grey control drilling to inform the initial six months of the mine plan, recruitment of the remaining Gosling Valley project team and progression of tender packages for the mining contract and surface infrastructure. We did award key contracts for the surface civil construction and box cut post quarter end. As Golden Grove's second highest grade ore source in reserves, it's an exciting project for 29 Metals and an important next phase of investment to enhance the long-term value of the asset. Gossan Valley will provide production flexibility as an additional independent mining front and being relatively shallow and analogous with other ore bodies at Gossan Hill, It is expected to be relatively straightforward to mine, and importantly, it will act as a replacement higher-grade oil source for declining oil production from scuttles. And as shown on slide 13, the Gossam Valley resource remains open at depth. The inventory we have today is sufficient to underpin the investment decision to commence development, but we are looking forward to testing extensions to the resource, predominantly from future underground drill platforms as we progress development. and hopefully build on the long and ongoing track record of mine life extensions demonstrated at other Golden Grove mining fronts. More broadly on exploration, we are ramping up spend in 2025 after a two-year period of reduced activity to conserve group liquidity. We're spending approximately three times more on exploration this year than we did in 2024, with slide 14 showing where those funds will be allocated. We look forward to keeping you updated as the 25 drilling programs progress. I'll now hand back to James to talk a bit more about Capricorn Copper.