Evolution Mining Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Evolution Mining Financial Year 2022 Results Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-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 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Martin Cummings, General Manager, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you Nirav. Good morning and welcome to the Evolution Mining FY22 financial results conference call. Joining me on the call this morning are Executive Chair Jake Klein and Finance Director and CFO Laurie Conway. We'll be talking to the presentation released to the ASX platform this morning. As you can see, the results we've released today are in line with what we've released recently in our business update late June and our June quarterly report released in late July. We now look forward to hosting investors and analysts at Red Lake next month, where attendees will see firsthand the extensive infrastructure in place, the improvements we've made to date, and the opportunity we have at the operation. We're pleased with the strong interest shown, but if anyone is interested to join the group, please let me know. With that, I'll hand over to Jake.

Thanks, Martin. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us again. It does feel a little like deja vu as this is the third time in six weeks we are speaking to you. I'll make a few opening comments before handing over to Laurie Conway, our CFO and Finance Director, who will take you through the FY22 full year financial results in detail. Since we formed Evolution in 2011, which is now almost 11 years ago, our strategy has remained the same. build a great team, focus exclusively on the Tier 1 jurisdictions of Australia and Canada, have a small concentrated portfolio of high-quality operations in well-endowed geologically prospective gold districts, and continually seek opportunities to improve the quality of our portfolio of assets. In that context, these last 12 months have both been extremely challenging but truly transformational for evolution as we have achieved a genuine step change in the quality of our portfolio. With significant external and internal challenges, we do acknowledge that we have fallen short on operational delivery over these past 12 months. Encouragingly, whilst early days, we have started the year well with our portfolio performing to plan and we are determined to sustain this throughout this year. Now I'm going to turn to slide three. Our approach to sustainability is that it is integrated into everything we do. This is seen through a human-centric lens which incorporates health and safety, both physical and psychological, the environment and the community, including our First Nations partners. We acknowledge that we as a company, like the rest of the industry, have work to do in ensuring the psychological safety for all of our people. In essence, for us this means a workplace where people believe they can speak up and that is inclusive and diverse. Where at a minimum it is free of any form of bullying, prejudice or sexual harassment. We are absolutely committed to doing this. We have demonstrated resilience and strong risk management through the COVID pandemic. Protocols were developed to minimize the risks to our people and the communities that also allowed safe production during this challenging time. Notwithstanding this, we, like every other business, understandably experienced high levels of absenteeism that adversely impacted our performance during the year. Our commitment and focus to a net zero target by 2050 resulted in a 7% improvement in our carbon emission intensity per tonne mined. This is encouraging progress on this important journey. With a shifting ESG landscape and a demand for renewables, we are also looking at our mine life cycle differently. In this regard, we are fortunate to have a truly unique opportunity at Mount Rawdon to create a multi-generational infrastructure asset. Our plan, which is advancing rapidly, is to convert the open pit into a one to two gigawatt pumped hydro battery at the conclusion of mining. We are working with Ironstone Capital Australia, who originated the concept some three years ago and will be co-owners of the project, with each party having a 50% share. We have now reached the stage where we are engaging potential off-take parties. Encouragingly, there's been very strong interest with a number of parties in the data room. We are growing increasingly confident of the potential to demonstrate this as both a model mine closure as well as creating significant value for evolution shareholders. The value of this type of renewable storage has been demonstrated recently with the takeover bid for GenX Power, which valued the company at an enterprise value of around $500 million. Turning to slide four, it has been a very busy year. And we've ended the year with our portfolio transformed and very well positioned for the future. We acquired the balance of Ernest Henry from Glencore. We consolidated the Mangari District through the acquisition of the Kandana and East Kandana joint venture from Northern Star. And we sold Mount Carleton to Navarre Minerals. We have a portfolio that is in the lowest cost quartile and was able to generate an EBITDA margin of 44% for every ounce we produced. We like our increased exposure to copper, which helped us generate almost $900 million in operating cash flow. We are well positioned for growth, with good progress being made on the Red Lake transformation, with all physical metrics having improved to the level we need them at for delivery for our FY23 guidance. And the Cow Underground project remains on schedule and budget. These two projects alone will increase our production by 25% over the next two years, and importantly, this growth is coming from operations that have 15 to 20-year mine lives ahead of them. We also have a number of organic growth studies underway. None of these projects have been committed to, and we will be disciplined in our capital allocation, but they also do give us good options for future growth. As you will hear from Laurie, our balance sheet is strong, and we were particularly pleased that our investment-grade rating was recently reaffirmed by the rating agency in their annual review. Turning to slide five, titled Delivering Value. I think we can all easily agree that the value of a gold company is largely determined by its mineral inventory, its resources and reserves, both the quality and the quantities. Discovering more high margin ounces that are ultimately able to be safely mined, processed and converted into cash in the bank is the true test of value creation. It has been a core pillar of our strategy. The most important call on any acquisition or exploration program is the geological call on the discovery potential. We were very pleased that three weeks ago we released an updated mineral resource estimate for Ernest Henry that captured 119 new drill holes and resulted in a 28% increase in the contained copper to 1.13 million tonnes and a 24% increase in contained gold to just over 2 million ounces. If you think about Ernest Henry in terms of gold equivalents, it equates to a total resource of about 7.5 million ounces, making it a very large mineral system. Whilst these additions have not been included in the charts on this slide, it continues our track record of being able to add ounces of resources to our inventory at a sector-leading very low cost of $35 to $40 an ounce, with the reserve additions delivered at $50 to $55 an ounce. In summary, these last 12 months have been challenging, but they've also demonstrated that our people are up for the challenge. They have shown incredible commitment, strength and dedication to navigate these difficult circumstances and I really believe this is what makes Evolution a unique and special company and provides us a great platform for the future. Thank you and I will hand over to Laurie. Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone.