AIC Mines Limited

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Aaron Coleran, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Darcy. I'll provide a brief overview of the September quarter and then open for questions. The September quarter was a great quarter. Eloise produced 3,324 tonnes of copper and 1,722 ounces of gold in concentrate at an all-in sustaining cost of Aussie $4.97, US $3.23 per pound copper sold and an all-in cost of AUD$5.29 or US$3.44 per pound of copper sold. Eloise achieved guidance for the ninth consecutive quarter and generated net mine cash flow of AUD$11.8 million after Eloise's capital expenditure. $11.8 million free cash flow. Of a realized copper price of Aussie, $6.72 per pound, realized gold price of Aussie, $5,442 per ounce, and realized silver price of Aussie, $63 per ounce. All great prices, but today's prices, as you would well know, are 10%, 20%, and 30% higher respectively. would have generated an additional $7 million in free cash flow, a 60% increase. So you can see why we're excited about what the December quarter might deliver. In fact, we're massively excited about what the December quarter might deliver. At the end of the September quarter, we were 380 metres away from the J1 lens at Jericho. So you know where that puts us at the end of the December quarter. Yes, it could be a jolly good Christmas indeed. You'll also see on page four of the quarterly that we will mine a lot of LEN6 in the December quarter. So we are expecting another good quarter, guiding 3,200 to 3,400 tonnes of copper and 1,600 ounces of gold in concentrate. While I'm talking about LEN6, take a look at the LEN6 drilling results on page five of the quarterly. These results are up to 50 metres below the current resource. Sensational results. Great copper grades and great gold grades too. ED529. 5.2 metres of estimated true width, grading 3.5% copper, 0.8 grams per tonne gold. ED 547, 8.8 metres estimated true width, grading 3.2% copper and 1.8 grams per tonne gold. ED 548, 9.3 metres, 3.4% copper, 1.2 grams per tonne gold. ED 549, 3.4 metres. 4.9% copper and half a gram gold. Sensational results. Now let's get back to the quarterly result. The AISC might be a bit higher than some people were expecting, but you'll see that underground development costs were relatively high due to the higher than average capital development completed in the quarter. This is largely timing related, and these costs should normalize over the remainder of the year. Capital expenditure was broadly in line with guidance. That is, most of the line items we're at about the 25% mark of full year guidance. Being one quarter into the year, that's where they should be. Those CapEx items that are ahead of budget are Alois mine development, Alois resource definition drilling, exploration expenditure, and corporate expenditure. Let me run through these exceptions. Alois underground mine development is guided at $25 million for the year, and we spent $8.8 million in the September quarter, so 35% spent. As I just mentioned, this will normalise over the rest of the year. LOA's resource definition, drilling is guided at $2.5 million for the year and we've spent $1 million, so 40% of full-year guidance. That is effectively over budget, but what would you expect us to do when we're drilling holes like ED548? Let me repeat it. 16.2 metres, grading 3.4% copper and 1.2 grams per tonne gold in LEN6. Expiration expenditure, that's at 33% of full year guidance. This will wind back as the wet season rolls in, happens every year. And corporate expenditure is at 30% of the full year guidance. This will wind back as we continue to tighten our belts and there's no more Tim Tams in the head office. More importantly, the big ticket item. The Alloways expansion project is progressing well and although it is early in the construction period, it is on budget and on schedule. Expansion project funding, and expenditure is very clearly set out on page 15 of the quarterly, and I would direct analysts there. As we note there, the funding parameters for the project remain in line with the sources and uses outlined in the equity raise presentation we issued on the 20th of June this year. Over the next 15 months, i.e., through to the 31st of December, 2026, we have $69.2 million remaining to be spent at the Alois plant expansion, $53.3 million required to complete the Jericho link drive and commence mine development and $33.7 million remaining to be spent on non-plant infrastructure for a total funding requirement of $156.2 million. We have current liquidity of $128 million with cash and the Trafigura facility, and we expect Eloise and Jericho to generate roughly $70 million over the next 15 months. So funding sources continue to match users comfortably. And as noted earlier, if current copper prices persist, then sources are well in excess of users. If any of those numbers are difficult to calculate or you're having... trouble running those through your model, please call in this afternoon to either myself or Duncan, and we'll clarify and lead you through it. Resource definition drilling results at the JOLI shoot at Jericho are worth highlighting. We announced these on Tuesday this week. JOLI is still at resource status, but it looks eminently, imminently mineable. Reasonable grades, reasonable widths, and as at the 30th of September 2025, the Jericho access drive was only 380 metres away. This means that we could be grey control drilling this shoot from underground this quarter and mine development could commence as early as the March 2026 quarter. The Aloise processing plant has spare capacity to immediately treat any early Jericho material and early mine production will also allow for a good stockpile to be built ahead of commissioning of the expanded processing plant. This de-risks our startup and speeds up our ramp up. This is great news for shareholders. Regional expiration, I know a lot of people were looking forward to those holds. Unfortunately, no results to report this quarter as we pushed the JOLI samples through the lab ahead of the regional targets. We should get results over the next four to six weeks, so we'll likely do a mid-quarter expiration update announcement. That concludes my review, so I'll ask the operator to open the line for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Richard Adams, private investor. Please go ahead.

Hi, Aaron. Well done, the great quarter. I've got a few questions. Firstly, Deep's West. Why are we... why are we drilling so so deep um at the moment i mean i mean i know there is an aspirational target of getting to 1.5 million tons per annum plant which is going to cost an extra 10 million dollars i mean is that part of it i mean is that you know are we just going to go deeper as well as jericho um

Richard, fair question. And I think you've emailed me some questions a week or so ago, and apologies for not having gotten back to you on those. I will. The deeps west, that was the hole we put in for downhole EM work. That's where we intersected it. Yeah, I recognize, I agree with exactly what you're saying. That's deep. It'd be nice to find ore at the top of the mine rather than the bottom of the mine. But we found ore at the bottom of the mine. It's not that far away from development and the task is to trace it upwards. You'll see when we did the downhole EM, that inline loop is paying for itself already. But the EM plate does move upwards and we'll continue to, we're planning to put some more holes up dip rather than down dip. So Richard, the intersection currently deep, yep, but where will it lead? Let's see if we can trace it up deep.

Okay.

Hang on, sorry, but the more important part or the other component of your question was about 1.5 million tonnes per annum. Now, fully developed, Jericho can do 1.5 million tonnes per annum alone So we're not reliant on Aloise currently or future Aloise exploration success for a 1.5 million ton per annum run rate. Although that said, while we're not reliant on it, I expect Aloise will be there for a long time. Maybe not at the 600,000 ton per annum run rate, but 300,000, 250,000 tons per annum of nice high-grade out of Aloise I think could be there for a long, long time as we continue to have this sort of exploration success. So I hope that fully answers your question now.

It does, but if I can carry on, sorry. Yes, absolutely. So what, I mean, at the board level, and again, I don't need to know any intricate workings, but what are the traffic lights and the roadblocks To that 1.5, I mean, I know there's, you know, yes, you're going to do some underground drilling, which will be, what, 206, 208 metres lower than you would have had to before. And you're going to do that probably March quarter to infill, for definition, at Jericho. But, I mean, you must be getting closer to the point of committing drilling. to 1.5, and you've said in the past it would cost an extra 10 million bucks. Well, according to the report today, you've got an extra 25 million in the bank over the next nine months. I mean, what is going to make you and the board commit or change from 1.1 to 1.5? And is it not better to do it earlier rather than later, or is that just you don't want to mill at 1.2 or 1.3? um you want it at 1.5 when it gets to that point um i mean i mean what's going to make you tip over and say and you know send an asx announcement at 8 24 in the morning we've now committed to 1.5 yeah look um okay wonderful question uh if anyone's not you know sort of 100 clear on this we have we effectively have committed

to 1.5, Richard. As soon as we added in those oversized items into what we are currently building, that was the commitment. We will ramp up to 1.5 million tonnes per annum. There is nothing stopping us. There is no decision required. We've got the ore in front of us to do that. Sorry, we've got the mineral resource in front of us to do that, just in case the police are online. This is a resource-based decision. So what is holding us up is development, as simple as that. There is a ramp-up period to two million tons per annum. Sorry, to one and a half million tons. Getting ahead of myself already.

That was a bit Freudian.

Freudian slip there. Whoops, scratched that. So it's all about underground development. We've got one jumbo at Jericho at the moment, obviously. It's in the link drive, the access drive. Once we've got room and ventilation, we could have two. Once we've got room and ventilation and money, we could have three, we could have four. And that's what does it. And so this is, we are capital constrained. That's the constraint. It's not about commitment. And so Richard, your comments on how much more money we would make at these prices, it really helps us to bring that forward. We don't need to bring the commitment forward. We need to bring the expenditure forward, the underground development to open up the full line of strike at Jericho. So it's not Jericho access drive intersects J1, bang, we're mining at 1.5 million tons per annum rate. Sorry, not to labour the point. But there is a number of years, and I think we have referenced that in the past, about how quickly we can get to the 1.5 million tonne per annum rate. Out of cash flow and lower copper prices, that takes us quite a few years. Out of higher copper prices, we can get there before FY30. On low prices and doing it out of cash flow, it's around FY30 or a little bit later. So it's all dependent on capital.

OK. And if I can have one last question before you move on. Kevin Downs. Kelvin Downs, Kevin Downs. We're obviously waiting on Arlington, Yukon, Defiance, Baghdad. Those seven holes seem a bit late. But as you say, you prioritise Jolly. But can you give us some more colour on Kevin Downs?

I probably need to be cautious there. I... I don't think I can. I think you'll have to wait for us just to tell you what those results were. Any hints or updates? We've drilled the hole. We know what it looks like. We're waiting for the assays to come back. We need to put a full release around all those areas, go through the MT, the results, what those results mean, how we're interpreting, what the follow-up. So there's a bit of work to be done there to make that nice and clear for you and to sort of hint and those sort of things is just not right on this call.

Okay. And absolute last question, absolute promise. The specs passing at the moment are LOEs, which you're likely to fill in in March quarter. What percentage is that? Is that sort of 5%, 10% extra or can go in at the moment?

Yeah, it's around that. It's around 5%. So what we've got, is on a good day a mill that can do 725,000 tonnes per annum of Eloise ore. It's a complicated equation here, but let me run you through it anyway. We're currently putting in the order of 625 to 650,000 tonnes per annum of Eloise ore. So somewhere between, on an annual basis, not on a daily basis, but on an annual basis, 75 to 100,000 tons of spare capacity there. Jericho's a bit harder than Alois. It's got a little bit more silica in it, so it's slower through the mill. So we've got anywhere between, in terms of spare capacity, 50 to 75,000 tons per annum of Jericho could be squeezed through. But then beyond that, you can start to look at displacing because obviously in any sort of buildup of Eloise or we've got the beautiful high grade from the deeps and some of those lovely remnant stoves from the upper levels that are running close to 3%, if not 4% copper, nothing trumps them. But then elsewhere, when we're getting towards the end of a stove, end of a level, all those sort of things, we're taking 1.8, 1.6, maybe 1.5% all through. we can hold that up and start squeezing some Jericho through. It's closer, potentially running 1.8, better gold recoveries, all those sorts of things. So like I said, a complicated equation, let's call it somewhere between 50 to 100,000 tonnes per annum of capacity and more capacity if we need it, if the grades are better, we'll just displace Eloise or We'll build up our stockpile, which will be great. We'll have a stockpile ready to go just to thump through when we complete the expansion and see if she really can run at 1.1 million tonnes per annum and get it chugging along, I reckon, at 1.2. See how we go if we've got that stockpile built up. I hope that answers your question, Richard.

It certainly does. Thank you again. You've been very generous. Thank you.

No, look, thank you, Richard. Those are excellent questions. It's helpful that you ask these questions because, you know, as you know, we're very close to this and sometimes when we summarise it or put it into the public domain, it's very summarised or high level and maybe it's not as clear as it should be. So thanks for asking those questions because they're all important, important points.

All good. Thank you. Thank you again.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Your next question comes from David Coates from Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, Aaron. Thanks for the call. Thank you for your time this morning and nice work on Starter FY26. A couple of questions. The main question for me is just I'm interested in your comments around the Jolly Christmas and getting access to the J6 lens. run us through, I guess, the mine development requirements in order to actually fire that up. Yeah.

So if you zoom in on diagram, it's probably number one or two, yeah, on figure one, you've got to really sort of zoom in. You'll see where the link drive is, where it turns out, where it crosses J1. It then heads north, then we can head north to JOLI, south to Matilda. Ideally we'll do both those things. So we're at about, we're about to get sort of stockpiles in place. Once those stockpiles are used, there'll be drilling platforms for JOLI. So the upper few levels we can grade control drill. you know, we hit the J1 lens, you know, as it says in the quarterly, then turn out to the north, head up to Jolly and start developing, head south as well. Now, that means we need a little bit more equipment there, so that does, you know, we either need to miraculously invent that equipment or bring some across from Eloise, bringing stuff across from Eloise is possible. and to get us stuck into jolly early if that's the decision we make at that point in time. Does that help? I'm probably a bit vague.

Yeah, no, no, no. Presumably there's some extra ventilation required in there or is that sufficiently in place yet?

Yeah, that ventilation shaft that's shown on that same diagram, figure one, internally called JS3. You'll see it just immediately right at the title Matilda North. Yep. All focuses on that. You've correctly identified a critical piece of work coming up that event shaft.

Cool. And sorry, I probably shouldn't over the grades in those jolly lenses.

No, you probably shouldn't know because I don't either. The infill drill results that we've released, the reason we don't know is that resource data. We're running to keep up ourselves. Matt Fallon, if he's on this call listening in, hang up. You're supposed to be doing this, Matt. You're not supposed to be listening to me talk about it. So, yeah, Matt's running that sort of reserve work now. We'll put some stove shapes around it shortly. And again, you know, that's why we've been a little bit... It's been a bit difficult to talk about because from a true JORC perspective, we can't talk about JOLI because, you know, it's not even in... It's all inferred other than you saw all that drilling we did and released on Tuesday. You know, that brings the status up. And then the grade control drilling we'll do from the JAD will get us through to stokeshapes around it. So the likelihood is we could be taking mineralised material out of there before we've even put it into the reserve. So sorry, to answer your question though, run with average Jericho grade.

Sure thing. Okay. Thanks, Aaron. I'm no better person than Matt to be running those reserves. Excellent. Thanks very much.

Exactly. Exactly. I can almost guarantee he hasn't dialed in. He will be working. We'll have seen at his desk at six o'clock this morning. Thanks, Dan. Cheers, Aaron.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Keener from Ordmanet. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, Aaron. Thanks. Thanks for taking my questions. on the mill performance for the quarter throughput sort of increased 20,000 tons. Anything to call out there to drive that sort of increase relative to historical performance? Is it just a function of having a few extra stocks left over from the last quarter, considering you're not- Correct, correct.

Yeah, Paul, a simple answer really. If we've got ore on the ROM pad, we'll thump it through, and thump it through hard, and even to the point of relaxing the grind size a bit to get it through, because as you know, this chalcopyrite or this Eloise ore, it almost jumps onto the con pad. It doesn't even need bubbles to get it there. But also the mill performance, we had three months where So the shutdown, we started on, I think it was 1st, 2nd and 3rd or 2nd and 3rd of October. So no shutdown in the quarter and a very good run. So yeah, just a good quarter.

Yeah, too easy. And then just on the link drive, yeah, congrats on getting that. that vent shaft through. Can you maybe just talk about how this sort of improves your productivity of both the link drive and maybe even Eloise as well?

Yeah, so that vent shaft was a great success. Almost literally black and white compared to the first one. With that piling that we did in backfield with cement, apparently obviously definitely the right way to go about it the raised boring almost went without without hiccup came straight through it was nice no issues with it at all sprayed it a little bit of water that's dried up so all good there installed ventilation and quickly and moved quickly to independent firing so We do not have to, what that means is blasting or firing is no longer on the same schedule as Eloise. At Eloise we fire twice a day, once a shift. At Jericho we can now fire when ready, fire whenever there's a loaded face, shut the area down, evacuate everyone and blast while Eloise can continue on. What that does is speeds up gerico development. You asked what's the impact on Eloise, which is interesting. There's a positive impact on Eloise because it benefits their ventilation. And as you know, good ventilation at the bottom of that mine is very important. So there is, you know, it's not a quantifiable benefit, but there is a benefit to Eloise as well. Broadly speaking, Paul, we're getting around 180 metres a month development with blasting twice a day. Blasting 2.2, 2.4 times a day, we should get over 200 metres, maybe in the order of 220 metres a month of development.

Yeah, that's great. I appreciate that. And then just a final question on your debt with Traffi. I sort of see that you've hedged the currency there. Any thoughts on sort of further currency hedging for your sales as you sort of progress through this expansion phase or even the commodity?

Yeah, and on granularity, Paul, you know us, we're always... Ready for granularity. On hedging, yeah, great question. I think this gold price is too good to believe, but my board doesn't. They're mad gold bulls. We're not hedging copper. Of course, we won't hedge copper. It's dirt cheap as it currently stands. I think it's dirt cheap all the way through to $6 a pound US. The gold... maybe maybe but that's only a maybe don't read too much into that currency yeah with that concern that the currency could get to 70 cents you know that makes that makes a difference locking it in a sort of the six six or the six six is just We know what we're getting out of the US $40 million, so that was useful to lock that in. We now know it's also a, I think the reason we reported that's also a signal. There's one or two people who think we don't, we're not gonna draw that debt, that we've just held it there. We'll be drawing that debt, of course we will. It's very cheap debt, and Traff's a great partner. We now know what it's worth in Aussie dollars. So to be honest, Paul, I suspect that's the extent of our hedging, but we're certainly alert to the benefit of the gold price, and to be honest, the benefit of the Aussie dollar at these sort of 65 numbers there. It's great. It's a bizarre market. You and callers will all have your own views and probably more educated than mine, but it just seems Too good to be true. It feels like an everything boom at the moment. You know, you've got oil down, gold up, copper up, Aussie down, iron ore up. They can't all be right. Something's going to change. So we locked in the Aussie.

Yeah, no, understood. Thanks, Aaron. That's it from me. Cheers, Alan.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Paul Hissy from Marlis. Please go ahead.

Hi, good day, Aaron. A couple of quick questions for me. Just apologies, I might have missed your description earlier on. I think you were talking about being 35% full of the full year run rate and I didn't catch, was that sustaining capital? And if it wasn't, can you just comment a bit on the pace of the sustaining capital spend over the year?

Yep. Yep, so what we do with our guidance, you know the line items that we break out for guidance. The one is underground mine development. FY26 guidance was $25 million. September quarter actual was $8.8 million. So that is effectively at $35 million. of the full year guidance and we're only 25% of the way through the year. And that's where I just went through each of the ones that are exceptions. The exceptions were Allowee's underground mine development, Allowee's resource definition drilling, exploration expenditure and corporate expenditure. So the one you asked about, the 35% one, is that Allowee's underground mine development. We did more capital, we did more development in the quarter, higher than normal rate, and we expect that to pull back, that to normalise over the rest of the year. So don't be concerned that CapEx or underground mine development CapEx is over budget. So what I'm telling you is it's a timing issue. Is that clear?

Yeah, no, that answers the 35% comment you made. And just with regard to the FY26 sustaining guidance in totality, I think the number's 41 when you add up the, I guess there's three line items to it. It looks like you spent about $12.9 in the first quarter. So not just your underground development, it seems like maybe all sustaining CapEx sort of And by that, I'm taking the cents per pound in your quarterly grossed back up.

Oh, yeah.

A little bit ahead, not just on development, but other sustaining items as well.

Oh, yeah. There's only three line items there, plant and equipment. That's at 24%. So that's sort of bang on. The underground mine development we've talked about. Then the other one is res def drilling. FY26 guidance of $2.5 million. We spent $1 million during the quarter. That was the other one, yeah. Yeah, correct. And look, because that's small, $2.5 million, we probably guide on somewhere between, I would say that's average success. Now, we did spend a little bit more in the September quarter than we probably will in the December quarter. But we're also happy, I would say, we're a touch over budget there on that ResDef drilling. We're in the hundreds of thousands of dollars pool. It's not really meaningful. And as I referenced, those results we're getting were great. So we bang on. Plus some of the drilling, in the upper levels of remnant drilling we do, some of that's difficult, not always successful, it's not always there, and so on. So a tough one to really get too accurate on it. But like I said, full year guides are two and a half. If that comes in at three and a half, don't shoot the messenger.

That's not a bad thing. No, no, no. That's fine. So low 40s is still the right number. Low 40s is still the right number. Yep. Great. Just to back over this, I don't want to put words into your mouth regarding having already committed to your one and a half million tonne expansion. But I mean, to take that at face value that, you know, it's an extra 10 million bucks to get you the extra three or four hundred thousand tonnes of annual capacity. In practical terms, what does the timing of such a $10 million bill look like? I'm assuming that's an incremental number that sort of gets lost over the journey rather than you get to the end and then you spend 10 more?

Correct. Yep. Yeah, in one word answer, Paul, and to be honest, to give you more detail on that, it's non-material. Yeah, you You'll see that go through over three years. I could talk about lead times for the equipment we need. I could say that $10 million is the equipment. There could be a knock-on to some rooms in the camp and things like that. It could be some $10, $12 million, $13 million. But over the next three, five years, you'll barely notice it.

Sure. And then last question, just around, and you might have touched on it with your response to Paul earlier. So are we at sort of normalised working capital slash con inventory stockpile levels at the moment? I know there has been a little bit of build and draw over the last few quarters. Would you consider us to be at a somewhat normalised level now? Yeah.

Paul, it's a complicated question. I don't think there is a normalised. Remember, it's all about the wet season, really. And so September quarter is our best quarter in terms of drying weather, in terms of weather. Well, September quarter is bloody beautiful up there. We're heading into December. We've had some rain recently. from November onwards things can get a little bit more difficult and you can see us potentially with more concentrate on the pad at the end of a quarter or ROM stocks on the ROM pad at the end of the quarter and yeah that messes up some of our reporting I get that but it's It's difficult to avoid. It's weather dependent. It's not... There is no... You know, the perfect world is really like we've just done here with close to zero, you know, close to nothing left on the pad, either on pad or con pad.

Yeah, that's the answer I was looking for. OK, that was all from me. Thank you. That's a great relief. Paul, cheers.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr Culleran for closing remarks.

Thanks, Darcy. As we just heard, honestly, the September quarter was a great quarter. Eloise again achieved guidance and produced good cash. FY26 is a transformational year for AIC Mines. The expansion of 20,000 tonnes per annum copper is underway. The Jericho Access Drive is progressing well. We're de-risking the mine ramp up with infield drilling success. Our exploration drilling is showing that Sizing the major plant upgrade items for 1.5 million tonnes per annum was absolutely the right decision and question time drew that out nicely. Thank you to the questioners. Eloise is performing well and commodity prices are providing a tailwind. What more could you ask for? Thank you for dialling in. That concludes the call.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.