Evolution Mining Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Evolution Mining December 2024 quarter results 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 one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Laurie Conway, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Harmony, and good morning, everyone. I hope you had the opportunity to get some downtime during the holiday period and wishing you all the best for a safe, healthy and successful 2020. I'm joined on the call today by Barry Gundermurver, our Chief Financial Officer, Matt O'Neill, our Chief Operating Officer, Glenn Marston, our VP Discovery and Peter O'Connor, our GM Investor Relations. The outcomes for the December quarter were excellent in that we safely delivered to plan, which materially increased our cash flow by 54% to $165 million. At the halfway mark of FY25, we are ideally positioned to generate a significant step up in cash flow compared to last year. Our safety performance for the quarter was a real highlight in that we saw our TRIF reduce to 5.44 and all our operations now have single-digit TRIFs. We're on track to deliver our production guidance of 710,000 ounces of gold and 70,000 to 80,000 tons of copper at a very low all-in sustaining cost of $14.75 to $15.75 per ounce. Group production was in line with plan at just under 195,000 ounces of gold and 19,000 tonnes of copper. Our all-in sustaining cost of 1540 pounds for continuing operations was slightly higher than planned, but this is being driven by timing of sales and a lower achieved copper price. For the quarter, cow sales were 8,000 tonnes lower than production, and this will come through in the March quarter. The achieved copper price was slightly below our guidance assumption, but the spot price is now above that assumed price. The charts on page one of our report clearly demonstrate how we're tracking in the key production and cash flow. We have 52% of the midpoint of group production gold guidance, while cash flows are about 55% to 56%. Using the current spot prices, our operating mine cash flow for the year is potentially going to be above $2 billion. Two key takeaways are that this would result in a mine operating cash flow margin of nearly $2,700 per ounce, and the $200 million benefit on that chart only represents a six-month period. So annualised, this is up to $400 million more as compared to where the metal prices were when we released our guidance in August. The material increase in group cash flow to $165 million further reduced our gearing to 22.6% and our balance sheet continues to strengthen. The performance of our projects was also a standout. At Mungaree, the 4.2 processing plant expansion is now scheduled for commissioning in the June quarter, which is about nine months ahead of schedule. Total project cost is forecast to be around $235 million, which is 6% below the original budget of $250 million. For the project, all things that needed to go right have gone right. The arrival of the mill and the HV substation in early December... The continued good progress by the contractor, the mobilisation of the open pit mining and all haulage contractors have all combined to enable the project to advance much better than originally planned. To be delivering a project of this scale and cost in Western Australia early and below budget is a real credit to all who are involved. As we commission the plant in the June quarter, we expect Mungari to move back to being a considerable cash generator the group at cal in december we received new south wales regulatory approval to extend open pit mining by 10 years and the overall operation to 2042. we're grateful for the strong support we received from the local community and all the relevant regulatory bodies we expect to seek board approval in the june quarter for the project Cow's year-to-date cash generation of $366 and $268 million in operating and net mine cash flow respectively shows the real value of this asset, both now and going forward. Yes, I will repeat what I said last quarter. This asset is still a cash cow. Lastly, we also released our expiration update today with excellent results. At Ernest Henry, on the back of the recent drilling successes at Burt Orebody, we have now commenced a pre-feasibility study as an additional ore source at Ernest Henry. At North Parks, we've seen further positive results at Major Tom and we've identified a potential new ore source at the Cowell Underground. We continue to have success at our operations to add into the growth pipeline and Glenn will go through these in more detail soon. I'll now hand over to Matt to provide an update on the operations.

Thank you, Laurie, and good morning to all. As Laurie's already touched on, we've had a strong second quarter on both the production and cash flow front, and I'm really pleased with the position we're in. For me, the improvement in our safety performance is perhaps the most satisfying aspect of where we sit today. Over the last six months, we've reduced our recordable injury frequency rate by 24%, down from 7.1% to 5.4%. with a special mention here for the Red Lake, Ernest Henry and Mungaree teams who have made significant improvements in this area. As I noted at the last quarterly, whilst I'm very happy with the improvements in our tagging indicators, we continue to focus on the leading indicators, such as critical control verifications and material risk actions, in line with our ongoing commitment to material risk. For the December quarter, we produced just under 195,000 ounces of gold and around 18,500 tonnes of copper, which was again in line with plan. Cowell and North Park succeeded their plans for the quarter, with Red Lake, Mungaree, Ernest Henry and Mount Rawdon all generally in line with plan. As noted earlier, Cowell's production was strong and the operation is in a good position ahead of the planned major shutdown in March. This shutdown will reduce cow's March quarter by around 25,000 ounces. Ernest Henry's production was in line with plan, and for a second quarter in a row, the highlight has been the drilling results, which Glenn will talk to later. Mangari, pleasingly, is back in line with where it needs to be for the year, with the Ray Jacks pit in full production and having commenced early works on our new pit at Castle Hill. As noted earlier, the expansion project is tracking very well, running ahead of schedule and below budget, with commissioning targeted in the June quarter. North Parks had a strong quarter, with the highlights here being the commencement of commissioning of our loader automation in the Block Cave and the completion of the improvement works in the Crushing area. Red Lake really pleasingly was in line with plan, achieving a positive cash flow for a During the quarter here, we completed our normal schedule shutdown works in the processing plants and rebuilt our surface stocks in line with plan. Mount Rawdon continues to process stockpiles with the team on site working through this process well. I'm pleased to be able to report once again that the outlook for the operations for the remainder of the year is positive and we're on target to achieve full year guidance. I'll now hand over to Glenn to report on the exploration results for the quarter.