Aurelia Metals Limited

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr Brian Quinn, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and good morning and thanks for all joining today for the Early Metals Q3 update. I have Martin Cummings, our Chief Financial Officer, Angus Wiley, the Regional General Manager of the Kovar Region and Andrew Gray, our Chief Technical and Business Development Officer on the call with me today and we will obviously take questions at the end of the call for any one of us. Just to start off with, I'll talk about each page as I refer to the information. I will then pass on to Andrew, who will then pass on to Martin to talk through the cash flows and balance sheet. To start off with, look a strong production and cost performance for the quarter with both Peak and Federation Mine both working to deliver good results. We had a strong obviously gold delivery for this quarter which is in sequence with our mine plans for the full year and the business delivered a sort of good oil and sustain cost of $15.93 per ounce. and that's obviously been supported by very strong realised prices as well to give us a good margin for the quarter. I'll talk to some of the physicals in general when I get to each of the slides. Federation Mining ramping up nicely, obviously still within our approved budget and we are likely to move into commercial production in Q4 FY25 but definitely ramping up and we'll talk about some of the details of that at the relevant slide also. Our balance sheet and cash balance of $107 million for the quarter after really investing $19 million into Federation and also spending our monies on exploration as well is going very strong. A huge effort and performance from delivering $44.5 million from peak this quarter also with good volumes, good answers but also supported by good gold pricing which is a great outcome for the business. And lastly, although quarter four FY25, big milestone was the delivery of the Great Tobar project which we announced recently. We'll talk a bit more about it during the presentation but really leveraging the gold prices to transition our business to copper into the future. Just to remind some of the key points here, this MVV of 51 million at our planning assumptions 164 million MPV based on spot price of 22nd of March and really we'll be developing the project from early quarter one FY26 and getting into a sequence of development and various project works over the next couple of years. I'll talk to the Gantt chart and Tommy in the presentation as well. If I could just move on to slide four, group production costs for the quarter. As we sort of highlight, gold has been strong for us this quarter. Copper also, both of those two commodities sitting just under guidance at the moment at the end of quarter three. Zinc and lead are a bit as they are right now, they are still on track for guidance. We have actually stockpiles of Federation ore sitting both at Federation and at Peak which will be processed soon and into this quarter, quarter four and that will allow us to still deliver our guidance on those various commodities. We've actually had some stockpiles there based on trucking that is being ramped up at the moment to get the ore to the Peak Processing Facility. But overall, if you look at our commodities, well and truly on track for the full year. Operating costs, no issues there at the moment. We foresee that we'll deliver within guidance for the operating costs. Our sustaining capital run rate was higher at the end of quarter two because we purchased two trucks. Quarter three has been a period of back to sort of normality again and we believe for the full year we'll be still within the guidance as we've stated in the FY25 guidance. Growth capital, once again, $56.4 million at the end of quarter three, still definitely tracking well and truly to be within the guidance of $70 to $80 million. The key point there really is Federation project has pretty much declined development, infill drilling and some workshop modifications still underway, but really simply the capital spend is slowing towards commercial production and ramping up the operation. So once again, definitely on track for our growth capital and staying under budget. For the first couple of quarters we had a bit of a slow start renegotiating contracts and establishing the sites to be ready. Quarter three has delivered more in terms of ramping up and quarter four is a lot of activity that Andrew will talk about that we're doing in quarter four to deliver our exploration results for this year as well. So in summary, no concerns, definitely all the measures are in the right direction for our business to deliver the value we've talked about throughout each quarter so far. On slide five, obviously very much on a sustainability basis, our injury frequency rate is continuing to trend down. We've had some injuries around hand injuries in this quarter which are not pleasing to see. Obviously there's a big campaign at the moment to reduce those injuries by really having our people focus on pinch points and line of fire, where they're putting their hands when they're doing their work, wearing gloves. We have a massive campaign to really sort of change that trend into having people return home every day like they should without injuries and obviously that's a very key focus of the leisure team on site. In terms of our other metrics, we continue to work very well with communities in the Cobar region. Definitely a lot of interest into our Cobar Hub which we have located in the centre of where our staff meet with people regularly and talk about great Kovar project recruitment, general sort of information in the community that is relevant to the community. Once again, Highline Kovar is a great place to work and it's a great community to be working with. And environmentally, no major concerns. Our frequency rate remains on track and will continue to be on track as we continue to upgrade various facilities over the coming 12 to 18 months as well. I'll just move on to slide five and talk about, sorry, slide six. and talk about the peak, executing a plan and guides at the moment. Our development rate continues to range up. We are aspiring to get over 1,000 metres per quarter. We're resourcing up with people and equipment to deliver that. Obviously, we were sort of on track. We've had a few operator availability issues and some maintenance issues in the last quarter that we're getting on top of. We have a very focused development improvement project that was kicked off in March and as the report highlights, March was a record month for us in terms of development metres and we anticipate trying to leverage that and continue on to really get above this thousand metres per quarter as a focus for the team. Our unit costs, mining unit costs were a bit higher this quarter on the back of lower volume, operator availability and we also had our new contract kick in this quarter which has increased our energy costs under the new contract. To deal with that, one of the things actually that has been a focus of our technical team has to be to lower the dilution coming out of the mine, therefore bringing quality Tums to the surface and removing dilution. We have seen some uplift in our recovery as a result of that coming through the plant which is fantastic and we're in an active recruitment process to try and get more operators being available to obviously get our Tums as well. So one additional point I will make, we're kicking off in quarter four a cost per tonne focused project with bringing in external support to make that happen and so that will obviously still work towards reaching my aspiration of around $100 a tonne over the near future or medium term. Second batch of ore came from Federation and once again we're getting some really good recoveries and performance out of the ore at Federation. One of the points that have been asked in the past is around are we going to continue batching or blending. At this point in time we are going to continue batching the Federation ore to maximise the recoveries and recalibrate consistently the yaw with the geological model to make sure we can keep that moving as long as we can. If the plant, processing plant obviously at peak becomes a constraint then also you may consider blending if we need to but right now the focus will be on keeping it as batch campaigns. And like I said earlier, the March quarter gave us a more sustained cost of of peak of 1.353 per ounce which is in the right direction and a very good margin as well from a point of view of the business. One notable point which is worth holding at peak is the gold grades did go up. That wasn't high grading. We were basically mining in line with the sequence for the mine and we anticipated those that's when the results come through. So definitely no sugar hit there. It's basically part of the overall sequence for the 12 months. On Federation which is slide 7, Development has also this quarter continued to deliver another record for the quarter which is great for the Federation as we continue to ramp up. All of the major service works completed like I said earlier. It's just really now finishing up the service mobile workshop extension that was planned and executed over the last couple of months. That's expected to be finished this financial year in line with our sort of moving commercial production at the end of the quarter. Our infill drilling programs have continued to be a key focus. A second rig has been to Federation in April and will be obviously spinning as well which will obviously focus on infield drilling beneath the current stove areas into FY27 and FY28 while our current rig continues to do the infield drilling in front of ourselves. The overall project remains within the period budget as we've said before which is a great outcome considering most projects I refer to don't deliver that sort of result. We did get the increase in our haulage of all in approved as we committed to focusing on for the 200,000 to the 600,000 tonnes. That's all been done in order three. And as a result, some of the trucking delays we've experienced in February by getting trucks back on the road to move the oil from Federation to Peak will be sorted out because we'll have additional trucks running additional hours now in this quarter to make up the ground that we lost over a week or so in February. So overall, like I said, granting up development, mining activities going well, the infill drilling program is increasing in intensity as we've committed to in the previous quarter and really now it's about hauling the ore and getting into the peak processing facility and maximising the returns out of the ore in line with our plans for quarter four and the full year. I might just turn to the slide. and just talk about the delivery of our growth projects. In the previous presentation last week, we talked about, obviously, the Great Cobalt Project being approved. We talked about how it fits into the sequence of all the projects so people can understand, you know, where we are and what we're trying to deliver at Aurelia Metals and how it sort of works towards tiring our wild 1.1 to 1.2 million tonnes of processing capacity over the coming years. So to be clear, as you can see in this scan chart, Federation project will meet its commercial production and then it will basically be moving out of project and falling into operations in FY26 quarter one. In the background, we're working on our water management upgrade that we had approved recently. That works well and fully underway and is sort of from an engineering and working with the manufacturers. That's kicking along nicely and the project team is working on that. The peak plant optimisation, that is still in study work and we'll see the study work for that come out in the coming quarter or so and then we'll be able to understand and communicate what that looks like to the market as well. And lastly the Great Kovar Project, obviously very exciting news for us which I'll talk about in more detail in a second but this is sort of showing the sequence of cash flow and the sequence of timing where we really will look at onboarding in quarter four FY25 and buying the equipment in quarter four FY25 with zonified equipment and it will be available ready so we can actually kick off our development in in order one, FY26, and start development activities and start pursuing our great co-buyer project into real life. So that's obviously the sequencing and that's how we've tried to show people what's going on with really Federation ramping off and the other projects sort of moving into execution in a controlled way and how we're going to manage the cash flow against our operating performance. As I said earlier, what that's going to give us is a 1.1 to 1.2 million tonnes capacity and that will phase us into 50% copper gold and 50% zinc lead or in the future once we have all these things in place which will be very much a great business. If I move on to just slide 9, just to reiterate what we discussed last week on the Great Cobar project. Once again, I talked about the financials up front and talked about the capital investment of just over $91.8 million over a three-year period and what it will include is developing the two declines from Jubilee or Bodiedown to the Great Cobar. We are going to own and mine that to maximise synergies with existing operations. We'll still be mining in New Cobar and Chesney, which is located in the north, in the New Cobar mine site facility. We'll be looking at the green line on the picture that shows the shaft, that will be a ring in 2027. We'll be looking at a new power supply and servicing structure work in 2028 and we'll basically be looking at first ore in 2028 with an initial mining rate of 500,000 tonnes ramping up over a period of time. That will be sequenced with existing ore that we're getting out of the North mine in Chesney the volumes coming out of this particular facility. As we've highlighted also in that update provided recently, this particular project gives us significant option value beyond the base case. We sort of provide information in that presentation on some drill holes that we do have beneath the resource that we've put into this current Great Cobar project and once we get ourselves down towards the ore body, set up our drill platforms, we'll be setting up drill rigs to really understand and unpack the potential of what Great Cobar is likely to be beyond what's in the current model now which is all upside for the base case effectively. If you want more information obviously there was a release provided on the 16th of April which is called the Great Cobar Project Approval which happy for you to refer to that for more information on that detail. I'll pass over to Andrew to talk about exploration.

Thanks, Brian. Just firstly, on Great Cobar, certainly a key milestone for the development of technical team in getting that approved to execution. I'd just like to acknowledge Justin Woodward, our group manager of tech services, who led that study, as well as a very large team internally, largely internally resourced with external assistance. The key milestone getting to that stage. Anyway, flipping now to exploration on slide 10, We also last week, as well as the Great Cobar, approved a release and exciting drill results last Thursday from our ongoing exploration drilling at Federation West. Now, you might recall the discovery announcement in June last year, Hole 215, which is offset to the northwest of Federation. We hit about 4.6 metres at that stage, good grade zinc lead copper gold, and it's about 140 metres from existing workings. So what we've been doing this quarter is following that up with drilling. And last week we released some of that drilling. It's an ongoing program, so we don't have it all just yet. But certainly two holes to flag, 12.5 metres, 20% zinc, 9% lead, 1% copper with gold. 17.5 metres, it's 11% zinc, 6% lead, 0.4% copper with gold. it feels a lot like the drilling that I was releasing to you in time on Federation or body itself. So really exciting to have that, you know, give him the couple hundred metres of the planned workings there at Federation. Also, just as we went to put out that release, we also intercepted a further massive and semi-massive sulphides in hole 222. Score photos of that in the release of last week, so certainly have a look at that, and we'll bring you those results once we have them released. Now based on the success we've been having at Federation West, we've decided to keep that surface drill rig at Federation West for the remainder of the financial year. It'll certainly give us a better understanding of what we've got in that area, but hopefully it'll also give us some more great results that we can bring to you as we get those assays in. As I mentioned, 140 metres from planned workings. If it does start to build out, it's certainly readily mineable from our workings there at Federation. Now, staying within the Nimidji District, we are partway through the Nimidji drill program that we've spoken about previously. This has been paused because the rig is staying at Federation West, so we are in the process of mobilising a second surface drill rig to the Nimidji District, which will be there hopefully next month. to allow us to then continue that imaging drill program. We also, through the quarter, got results back from the downhole electromagnetic survey that we completed at imaging, and that'll help guide that further drilling. Now, at peak, we've definitely been very busy, both underground and on the surface. So at Gladstone, which is the new Cobar mine, we targeted drilling a gap in the resource from underground. Gladstone sits at kind of between Chesney and New Cobar, but further west, and this quarter we'll continue to drill that, this time the surface part of the program, to better understand what we've got there at Gladstone. We wrapped up our program at Young Australian. There's a long section in the release just to orientate yourself to where that is, but it's a third of the ore bodies in what we call the Proteus Corridor south of Chesney, so it's alongside Mount Pleasant and Burra Bungee. We also were active at Queen Bee, continuing surface drilling. You may recall we put our results on Queen Bee drilling previously, targeting depth extensions of those. Queen Bee sits about 10 kilometres south of the peak processing plant, and through the next quarter, we intend to then bring the rig back down to Queen Bee to target some of the satellite prospects. Excitingly for the team, the quarter also saw that rig move to Tharsis, and Tharsis sits north of the Cobart town It's the first time that's been drilled since the 90s, so fingers crossed we get some good results out of that. Now, we should be in a position to provide you some results through the fourth quarter of our activities at peak, and once we get those assays in. I'll pass on. I think it's on to Martin at this stage.