This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
4/14/2025
Thanks, Darcy, and welcome everyone to the Great Learned March 2025 quarterly result. This is our first full quarterly result for Telta Havron, so we're really pleased to share it with you today. Joining myself is Rowan Krasnoff, Head of Business Development. So with that, I'll try to go through the deck reasonably briefly to leave the balance of time for questions. But when we look at the March quarter result, we felt it was a really positive quarter for us. We produced just over 90,000 ounces, 90.2 thousand ounces of gold, plus 3.5 thousand tonnes of copper. and we delivered that at a $2,126 all-in sustaining cost. Our realized price for the quarter was really strong because we're not heads. We fully participate in the gold price. And, of course, now we're in a market with a $5,000 gold price, which is really positive. What did that lead to? That helped us to deliver free cash flow of $253 million. That $253 million, you can see that in our bank account. We went from $145 million at the end of December to $398 million at 31 March. We're debt-free. This has given us a fantastic foundation for growth. We also, during the quarter, added a little bit more protection. The way we've done this is we've bought some gold put options. Put options are the... path of least regret. It's a right but not an obligation to deliver. So we've got options sitting there at $4,200 across coming the year 2026. Of course we celebrate when they expire unused and we're participating in the higher spot price but we think it's a really sensible protection because it's effectively locking in a margin circa $2,000 August which we think is incredibly cheap insurance for us to achieve that. We also came out with quarterly guidance for the full year. This is effectively the period just less than seven months, 196,000 to 210,000 ounces and largely consistent oil and sustaining costs between that $2,100 and $2,250 Aussie. So, look, we feel it's a really good start and it's the first time we've daylighted what Telfer looks like as a standalone asset. When we think about some of the outperformance we were able to do during the quarter, we feel this slide five kind of gives a very good and brief summary of some of the key elements we were able to do. Firstly, we participated at this really strong gold price of $4,585. Obviously, that's a great tailwind, not just for us, but for the sector. But what we were able to do is maintain production at historically significant levels, but also walk down the all-in sustaining cost and create that positive jaws where we had the gold price received going up and notching down the all-in sustaining costs. One of the really important elements we did on that second chart was a key element from us during the due diligence was what we thought we could do in just adding back a bit more discipline and hygiene to the site, particularly around processing and in turn recoveries. If you look at recoveries over the last three years, they're sitting around 81% gold. We walked that up 5.7 full percentage points. to 86.7 in the quarter. And a slightly better story with copper from about 71, 72% up to 80%, which was a 8.3 improvement in percentage recovery points. That is a remarkable improvement. And if you have a look at that improved recoveries, that delivers about $100 million a year at a $5,000 Aussie dollar gold price. So really significant. We'll talk to the recoveries a little bit more through the next slide, but it just shows what you can do with a focus on this asset. Just turning to Telfer, during the quarter we also came out with an updated resource on the asset, 3.2 million ounces plus 117,000 tonnes of copper. That's across 155 million tonnes. The centre of gravity for these uplifts was in that west dome open pit, which is where our focus of mining is, and the majority of that mining. We think we're in that open pit for a long time to come, and we're really pleased with the growth there along structure. The other area where we focused was in that main dome underground pit, Historically, Newcrest was really targeting that sub-level cave, the lower-grade bulk stokes. A couple of years ago, the mine pivoted to stoking, to long-haul open stoking, and effectively we've really targeted the higher-grade areas. You see that mostly in that lower reaches of the mine around the A reef area. That's right next to the underground crusher. and that super-efficient and high-production shaft, so a low-cost shaft. So we like those ounces there. We've got some other ounces we've delineated further up around the M-reef structures. But again, it's just a focus. We've doubled the number of drill rigs at on-site, and I think you might see us continue to invest in that because the endowment on Telfer is remarkable. We also provided the updated guidance. This just brought out the following two years. We have that range of 300,000 to 340,000 ounces for next year, 260,000 to 300,000 ounces for FY27. Really the purpose of this was to demonstrate the continuity and the ongoing production at Telfer. for Havron coming in in FY28. Previously, people asked about the gap. In less than five months, we've delivered that an over 18-month mine life extension to demonstrate that there's continuity at Telfer. And, of course, the grade when we bring Havron online is five times higher in FY28. Really low-cost assets. We then augment the TELFA profile with Havron and your expectation should be TELFA continues. We've still got another year delineated of reserves in the West Dome open pit plus 19 million tonnes of stockpiles at surface. So the expectation is both continue to be on this date and what we're going to do is continue to refine the mine plan around FY26 and 27. We think there's some improvement opportunities there. We've really tried to drive this. We got the resource out in 15 weeks. Four weeks later we've brought out this reserve update and life of mine update or outlook. So we think it's really helpful to demonstrate that to the market. Just going forward and just briefly looking at this West Dome open pit slide. Now, as I said, this is the centre of gravity for our mining. And really the story here is not just the volume that we've increased, but really the whole pit shell has expanded with drilling to the south in that we've also got the stage two extension at the bottom of the pit and then the stage seven cut back towards the top of West Dome. We love the flexibility this affords us. It's not just The increase in volume, it's the increase in mining flexibility around the West Dome open pit. And I think a really good example of that is the Zelia cyclone that came through. You saw a lot of companies in that region have to update guidance around that. You didn't hear an update from us. You've seen the quarter. It was a really, we think, solid quarter. We comfortably beat the streaks. And we're able to do that because when we did, we were inundated with water. We had water come into the pit. I was up there last week. It's fully pumped out again. But we're able just to pivot the mining faces. And that flexibility is really important. I might just add as well, since I spoke about recoveries before, what we are doing right now is that stage seven cutback. That's a really good cutback for us. We're at surface. We don't really have a vertical haul up the pit, so shorter overburden, haulage, cheaper haulage, but it's in an oxide material. So you will see the recoveries on that notch down in the next quarter when we put that through the mill, just to make sure people are aware of that. But overall, I think you'll still see it in the context of improved recoveries overall, but there will be a little bit of oxide material blended through. And then turning to the underground, just like in the open pit, this is the main dome underground. What we've tried to focus on is improving the number of mining faces we have available to us. The A reefs have expanded, M reefs, we have the really high-grade ray down the bottom there. Also, we're starting to bring online that ESC. That's the eastern stock work. I think that gets a lot bigger for us as well, but Improving mining faces just gives us that additional underground flexibility and having a look at the development rates we're getting. In the last month we achieved 470 metre of jumbo. That's outstanding and again is all about the sea change if you have a look at to what the jumbo development metres were prior to our ownership. That focus, and a number of us have some really good underground mining pedigree out of Northern Star, I think is, again, one of the hallmarks that we can bring to Telfer. Finally, just to briefly close out Telfer, just the areas that are still left to be added on this slide 11. Again, very much a long structure in that West Dome open pit. We really like that. The main dome, we're not operating in the main dome, is contingent, but we have that existing cut back there. Also, behind that in the north face, we really like what we see there. That's probably a bit of a slow burn for us. We'd like to drill it out some more, but no one's really entered this main dome for a long time. I think the last pitch show was at 1450, 1500. So we think when we rerun that, there's some really good long-life opportunity for us there. In the underground, again, the bulk donations at Eastern Stockwork, a bit lower right next to the Crusher and Shaft. The vertical stockwork, big donations. And then across into the West Dome, we had an announcement on this a couple of weeks ago. Fantastic grades, the highest grade seen at Delta since 2005. Good gold, even better copper. We've got one drive across to that where we shared the 19 intercepts. We've started the second drive out there. That demonstrates a little bit of our confidence in that and the conviction we have. That will give us another drill platform, but it will also allow us to commence mining in due course if it all hangs together. But with those 24-plus metre mining with high-grade 750 metres of strike length We like what we see. Just to reiterate in the next program, we also want to understand the geotech and the hydrology a bit more. The hydrology is a bit of a focus for us because there is a bit of water around there. Not excessive, but it is a focus for us before we have full conviction on that. But we certainly think it's a great upside in the portfolio. I'll just move across to Havron. Look, Havron... There's a huge focus for us, of course, on Telfer because it's immediate ounces, but also when we look into this, the big prize here is Havron. 20-year, five times higher grade than Telfer Open Pit, sitting around 8,000 ounces per vertical metre. It's a beautiful ore body. And the big kicker for us in the last announcement was we're taking that Havron from... the PFS of 2.8 million tonnes. We're now looking at upsizing this for maybe up to 4.5 million tonnes for Havron. Of course, we already will be building the bitumen haul road connecting it to Telfer. Telfer is a really large processing capacity, so the incremental investment, which is likely self-funded because the initial decline is already far down, and that will be the start of mining there, gives us a lot of flexibility about how we bring on a larger Havron. And I expect the IRR on those incremental terms, given all the fixed infrastructure is in place, I think will be compelling. So with that, I'll pass across to Rowan just to give an update on the ASX listing.
Thanks, Sean. On Friday, we announced that we'd formally commenced our ASX listing process. We described our intention to list on ASX since the acquisition. On Friday we launched documents with courts in the UK and that's just to affect a UK scheme of arrangement that will insert an Australian public company as our parent company for when we come to ASX. So when we get to ASX we'll be an Australian public company with a primary ASX listing and a secondary AIM listing. So we're delighted to be able to give people a clearer timetable to the ASX listing, which we expect will complete in late June. We think we present as a really compelling case when we come to ASX. If you benchmark us on production, cash flow, I think March quarter we've printed the highest cash flow of anyone who's reported yet. But we also have this great confluence of near-term significant production at good margin. and a quality multi-decade Havron coming around the corner soon. So we're excited to get to ASX. We haven't made any decision on a capital raising. We have preserved an ability to do a modest raising. We finished the March quarter with about $400 million cash in the bank, but we'll consider that as we go through the process. So next steps, we'll have a UK scheme meeting in early May, and then expect to be lodging a prospectus with ASIC later in May, and then listing on ASX and AIM from late June. There is a slide here just setting out the post-listing structure and key events, but it's really, as I described, having an Australian public company and primary ASX, secondary AIM listing.
Thanks, Rowan. We'll just close out our last slide just on our timetable pathway. Look, I think the emphasis here is really we set out a reasonably ambitious pathway for ourselves to complete the acquisition. The integration has gone well to date, but integrations are hard and there's no relax about that. That's an ongoing focus for us. but we undertook to get an ASX listing by June. Rowan's, on the first half of the year, Rowan's leading that, and we should achieve it. We said we'd come out with an updated Telfer resource, which we've done, an updated reserve, which we've done. We've demonstrated that mine life extension well beyond two years. In four, almost five months, we've added 18 months of mine life. Yeah, that's really important. And then in terms of the Havron feasibility study, that's something we maintain that will come out with that updated feasibility study in the second half of the year. But it's lovely to share with you the potential upsizing in that feasibility study. And then we'll be able to kind of show what a combined Telfer-Havron looks like over time. So with that I'll open it up to questions Darcy but hopefully that gives you a really good understanding of how our March quarters kind of transpired.
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 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Daniel Morgan from Baron Joey. Please go ahead.
Hi. First question just on recovery. Can you just expand on the recovery improvements? What has been done? What are the thoughts about sustainability about these improvements? I note you do have lower numbers in your outlook commentary. Thank you.
Yeah, hi Daniel. Great question. So look, let me answer it in two parts. So firstly, what has been done? In the 120 days since we've owned it, these were not structural changes to the mill. This was about operating disciplines and hygiene. We've come in, we've done grade recovery curves, which probably hadn't been done for longer than we expected. We've done our reconciliations back to sale assays, which we think is a more reliable and fuller understanding of recovery. And importantly, we've really focused on not just tracking and monitoring what goes out to tails, but being responsive to it. And so this is all about really just bring a higher level of operational discipline to TELFA. The teams responded to that really well. We think it's been a focus for us. We identified this opportunity in due diligence and it was really gratifying to see that start to play out in this first quarter. In terms of going forward, I did try to make a point just when I spoke to that Telfer slide or the West Dome open pit slide, slide nine in the presentation deck, that we've gone right up to the top of West Dome open pit, slide seven, so we're effectively extending the pit there. Now, when we do that, effectively it goes through an oxide period up the top. That is typically associated with notching down the recoveries a little bit as we go through there. Now, we still think we can do historically high recoveries, but as we introduce that oxide into the mill, I'd expect it to come a little bit off the current levels dip down a bit, and then as we get through that oxide donation, start to return to where we are now. We actually, you know, we're still looking at ways to improve, but right now I think just understand that as that oxide material, it will just notch down a little bit in the next quarter, and that's reflected in that guidance, which is a pretty similar run rate, but we notch it around a little bit.
Thank you. Just on your two-year outlook, what are some of the potential areas of upside that weren't included in this? I imagine there's a high level of constraints on what you can put into the outlook.
Yeah, look, there is. Look, I think there's a number of opportunities there. Firstly, within that underground, I think it's about creating more faces. We're not constrained in terms of the volume we can bring up with that shaft. That's operated at plus six million tonnes per annum. We're doing one to one and a half million tonnes out of that underground. So I think if there's an opportunity to increase that over time, it notches up great. The West Dome underground, now this is more in a two-year guidance period. I think if that comes on, highest grade you've seen at Telfer in 20 years. We really like it. We're committed to that second decline. I don't want to overpromise on this because there's still work to be done before we have conviction, but we certainly have enough conviction to invest time, energy and effort to understand it. But that's also a really good delta view. And then within the West Dome open pit, Again, notching up mining rates, perhaps changing the sequence to bring in some higher grey are all things that we are looking at. Right now, I think we've given an outlook that we're really comfortable with. But that was done in four, less than five months. I think there's some opportunity to optimise it around what I just described.
Thanks, Sean. Just pivoting to Havaron. You've outlined a plan to investigate 4 to 4.5 million tonnes per annum. What's the logic of this number? Is what's being considered an underground conveyor system? And how would you future-proof any decisions to possibly go bigger than these numbers?
Yeah, let me answer that in three parts then. So... Initially, one of the things we did, in fact, Greatland did back in 2022, was an unconstrained mindset. Now, that, for me, is the starting place to understand any ore body. That ended up becoming, I guess, a proprietary view of Greatland on the asset, and we spent a lot of effort on that internally. We had it then reviewed by two external groups to really... consolidate our understanding. Now, that wasn't done to a feasibility study standard, and that's what we're doing now, and we've progressed in that. But when you look at this, it's 100,000 to 125,000 tonne stoats. That's big. The average tonne stoat size in Australia is around 10,000 tonnes. So this is an order of magnitude bigger than that. That drives low mining costs, but it means this actually wants to be mined faster. than the 2.8 million tonne, with the bottleneck being a single wheeled or truck decline. So that's kind of, I think, the genesis of us, was us saying, well, let's solve for the proper mining rate, and now let's think about back-solving the infrastructure or the in-ground infrastructure to deliver that. That takes us to the second element of your question, which is the infrastructure. Daniel, look, our feasibility study will look at, I guess, a second wheel decline, a conveyor, a shaft, but we think a bulk handling system is the solution. My own view, and I don't want to pre-empt what the technical team will come out, but it's very... I think it's unlikely it will be a shaft. Australia... doesn't have a huge amount of experience on shafts. The ones that have been put in late by some really good companies have shown a bit of cost and time delta. Also, if you're going to do a shaft here, look, it's a beautiful sub-vertical ore body. Perhaps it could have had a shaft, but if you're going to do one, you should have started four years ago. I think conveyors are much more ubiquitous in Australia. It's really just a matter of putting in a second decline that will probably zigzag down the ore body, at least in my mind, so you can get multiple draw points. It means you can use the conveyor earlier in the mine plan, but also optimise it later as well. So, yeah, I think that's going to be likely where we focus. And, of course, with that, you have the optionality to keep it as a wheel decline as well. But I think those two are centred around a... a second decline is where you should be thinking. The other thing I like about a conveyor is it's really good ESG as well, but even better economic. So those will all come into the equation, but economics will drive the outcome. In terms of the final bulletproofing, look, obviously all mines have challenge. This is a really significant development for us. We think we've brought in the A team to do it. It's brownfields. It's half-built. But there's no relax. There's a lot of work to do around that. And I think by the time we bring out that feasibility study, you'd have a level of confidence that we have run this to ground in a very comprehensive manner.
Thanks, Sean. And Rowan, I'll pop back in the queue.
Okay. Thanks, Daniel.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Hayden Bairstow from Argonaut. Please go ahead.
A couple from me. Just on the reserves around Telfer, what do you have to do to put some of this underground into the reserve at Telfer? And then also a similar question for Averon really. I mean there's a huge resource base there. There's that big inferred resource. Are you going to have to wait until you get underground to drill that out properly or is it just more sparsely mineralised and you don't think it'll bulk into an underground development? How are you thinking about those two things?
Yeah, I think, you know, and this goes back to what we've done with the rigs. We've doubled the number of rigs. As long as we can double shift and have productive rigs and we have drilling platforms defined... I think just given the endowment here, there's a possibility that we will further invest in the drill bit, particularly at this gold price. So part of it's just timing, particularly around Telfer, just to have time to drill these, time for the mine team to then bring that through. So I think there's a bit of a conveyor belt And one of the things we have to do is decide whether to do another interim update to the resource and reserve or just get into an annual cadence. But we certainly think that conveyor belt's moving pretty quickly right now. Just turning to Havron, that's a slightly different story. That's really well drilled out, close to 400,000 metres of drilling in that, drilled out like a pincushion. So when we come out with the feasibility study, we'll be able to update the reserve at that time. And again, we feel pretty positive about that directionally.
Yeah, okay. And then, I mean, on exploration, you're not doing anything regionally at the moment, are you? It's just all on the new mine stuff at Telfer?
No, we do have a regional program. That will continue. Maybe one of the really interesting things about which is falling under our regional program, because the ResDev team is very much focused in the schematics we showed on spring, kind of in that West Dome open pit, just a long structure from that and in the underground. But on the mining leases themselves, there's things like the southeast hub, which is Thompson's Big Tree. Now, these are defined deposits. with good ore in them at surface. We actually, one of our regional team is going to take the reins on that. So we're going to drill that out and understand whether these connect up, what's their long strike. We already think they're attractive, but if they get a bit bigger, that creates a whole new kind of mining area for us already on mining lists. So the regional exploration team is actually going to be getting unleashed a bit on the mining leases themselves just because it's a big mining lease structure there at Telfer and we want to keep the ResDes team focused on deliverable of actionable outreach for the mines team.
Yeah, okay, perfect. I'll leave it there. Thanks, mate.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Your next question comes from Alex Bedwaney from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking my questions, guys. Just a couple from me. The first is I'm just a little bit interested in the West Dome underground, given the high-grade hits that you pulled out there. What's the sort of timeline on having a line of sight to when that might come into the mine plan? And then the second question is just around costs and efficiencies. What have you identified beyond the recoveries so far and has that changed your thinking around potentially operating one train rather than two going forward?
Thanks, Alex. There's a bit to unpack there. Look, love questions on West Dome Underground. You know, it's a prize. So, look, right now we're putting that second decline out. We'll largely... Sorry, second drive out. We'll largely get that in place and that will connect it up to the underground crusher and shaft structure. So we think that's advantageous infrastructure to have in place. In terms of timing, look, I'd normally talk about a two-year timeframe to bring that into production, maybe 18 months, and maybe we've accelerated those timeframes a little bit by committing to that second decline at this stage. Before I really am definitive on it, though, this next drill program, we'll put a couple of rigs back on it. We want to understand the geotech. That looks good. pretty good when I look at it and pretty consistent. It's the same geological units under West Dome that you get under the main pit. And just to kind of describe that, we've been mining underground the main dome for 20 years. And we've got the whole West Dome underground now ahead of us. And first at that into this West Dome, 750 metres of strike length, open, 24 metre mining width and high grade. So it's a good start. But what I'd like to understand is the hydrology a little bit more. We manage a meaningful amount of water in the Telfer main dome underground. You can manage water with this grade and mining sites. But what I'd just like to do is get that hydrology work done and then I think I'd be better placed to kind of whether we can bring that in, whether it will be a bit sooner or a bit later, kind of in that two-year horizon that I kind of started by outlining. In terms of costs and efficiencies, look, obviously a really good start and the highlights of this presentation was around the recoveries. Also, look, our integration was divided into day one, day 45, day 90, and also day 180, which is 30 May for us. So, you know, the integration continues. We've done a lot of the physical integration, but there's more work to be done and more improvement. But on day 45, we did a series of redundancies. So, you know, that took some of that cost structure out. That's still flowing through. But it's really around the three areas of productivity that we've focused on today and we think there's some improvements on. That mill recovery and throughput rates. Two in the underground, just continuing to improve the development rates. That's the other big highlight of this quarter, what we've done with development rates. but can we actually translate that into additional mining fronts and notch up, not dramatically, but notch up what you can do from that underground, because it's a beautiful kicker, and then into that West Dome, what we can do with costs and efficiency with McMahon, who are a really good partner there with us in the open pit, and we are actually looking at redoing the McMahon contract as we speak. And we think there's a little bit of dividends from that. Again, these are incremental improvements, but we think we keep making incremental improvements. Continuous improvement is what we're trying to achieve. And then just to the final element of one train versus two trains, when we look at that, we did our original narrative was, hey, look, we're focused on cash flow, not tonnage or ounces. I like to think you see that focus and discipline and cash flow in our first quarter. But we're comfortable if we do take it down to one train at some stage. But with what we're seeing at that Telfer main dome, what we've already demonstrated in terms of the next two years, plus at the end of the two years, we still have a lot left in the main dome to mine, plus 19 million tonnes, which is basically a year of processing two trains at surface. and we hopefully bring on the Havron feasibility study, obviously Havron mine, subject to the final timing in the feasibility study where we nail our colours to the mast, we just feel directionally it feels bigger for longer. But again, we're just going to maintain our discipline around that. Right now we're just talking about in a two-year horizon, but there is a step change in grades and cost and ounces when you go into 28.
Okay, all clear. Thanks, Sean.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Lyons from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I actually tried to star one myself out of it, so apologies, Sean. I was also going to ask about the costs, maybe just throwing a few numbers around it. After the March quarter, processing costs of just a touch over $14 a tonne were very impressive compared to the last historical stats that we have access to from Newcrest back in the day. And total mining costs of just a touch above $19 a tonne Obviously, it'd be helpful if we had the breakdown between the open pit and the underground mining costs. Maybe something we can look at going forward. But obviously, the vast majority of those costs contain within the open pit as well. So, yeah, I was also very impressed by that cost performance during the quarter, notwithstanding the ounces and free cash flow generation as well. So, yeah, my question was along similar lines, but I think you've largely addressed it. So I'll pass it on. Thank you.
Well, look, thanks, Ben, for the observation. And I think... I might just add to that, when we came in through due diligence, we really thought the cost optimisation could be centred on the processing plant, so that is where we really spent a lot of time. Now, obviously, the higher grades, and again, I think that will notch down a little bit as we bring in West Dome... so we want to be transparent about that. That obviously helps. But equally, look, we do think we can do a little bit of work with those contractors that Newcrest was using, Burntuck in the underground, McMahon in the open pit, but their productivity were a little bit better and it's probably more notching those around, but we want to continue to tackle site costs.
Noted. Thank you. Thanks for the colour.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Your next question comes from Daniel Morgan from Baron Joey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sean. Thought I'd come back around. Next question is just on tailings investments. I think you've highlighted you're making some this quarter in anticipation of Haberon. Can you just outline where tailings is across the site and what investments are being made? Thanks.
Yeah, it's probably worth me answering this in two parts. Firstly, when Newmont came in, they wanted to improve that tailings infrastructure. I think it's just instructive that we think they did a very good job on that. It's operating to expectations. And we had that cyclone Zalicia come through, you know, just inundated with rainfall, absolutely inundated. And that's a really good test of TSS infrastructure. And it continued to perform to expectation. And obviously you see from our numbers that we were able to continue to operate through that. So I think, you know, to stress test that infrastructure, You know, it's never good to do a real stress test of stuff, but since it was thrust upon us by Mother Nature, we're really pleased to see that outcome. The investment we're doing was stage two uplift is now complete, so we can do deposition into the stage two uplift on TSS8. uh already but the float that new crest had in the timetable was much tighter than we would want to complete a stage lift so what we're going to do is go straight into stage three and that's what you're seeing the principal driver of capex in this june quarter we're accelerating that um stage three development because we want to have runway ahead of ourselves we just think that gives us more flexibility more contingency in the site planning. So that's what you're seeing us just get ahead of the curve by an early investment in the Stage 3 lift. So we don't have narrow float periods to get lift done, but we're ahead of the game.
Thank you. And then back to Haberon, what is the critical path? What decisions need to be made to turn this into an ore body? Obviously, there's a lot of decline work that's already been done, but what needs to bring it into production?
Thanks, Daniel. Look, really, it's the feasibility study. That's the gateway for us. That's our focus right now. We have a team in place that's been doing that We basically put that in place before we even completed the acquisition. So we are well advanced in that and really, hence, we were able to share that update with the market yesterday. We get the feasibility study. We make a FID, I think, in very short order from that. And then you'll see us restart the declines. But also some of the guidance we gave was around the decline is actually quite ahead of where it needs to be because it's 80%, 81% of the way to the top of the ore body. It's sitting about 340 metres of vertical development with an ore body that starts at 415 metres. We do want to get in VR2, VR3, the ventilation shaft. We've actually pre-booked the blind boards for that. We've already pre-purchased the cutter heads. That's the development that is a focus for us. So if you think about critical path, that's a focus for us, just making sure we mobilise and get those two blind boards in place to get the ventilation shut. Because although we can keep doing decline and we can put the drives in place, before we start stoking, we want to have that additional ventilation in place. That's what I'm keeping an eye on.
Okay, thank you very much, Sean and Tim.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Dave for closing remarks.
Okay, we'll just look firstly, thank you for everyone joining. I think what was really pleasing for us is, you know, to take over Telfer, we felt delivered a good free cash flow outcome It's the highest of our peer group that we've seen to date. I think Northern Star are still to come out. But them aside, it's a really strong free cash flow performance, which is our focus. We also think that has implications for Havron funding. We obviously have the support of ANZ, ING, HSBC. But depending upon your view on gold price, we've got another 11 quarters of Telfer production before the bottom of the J curve on Havron. So we like the dynamic that creates on our balance sheet, which currently sits there with $498 million and zero debt. We think we are a pretty unique proposition in the market with immediate production, immediate cash flow, but the confluence with what we like to think is the strongest growth story in the sector, with a brownfield, have-run delivery, 20-year mine life, high-grade, well-understood free milling on existing infrastructure, which will augment our Telfer asset. And effectively, we will run a single Telfer have-run asset a single meal fed by the Havron Underground, the Telfer Underground and the Telfer Ocean Pier. So with that, thank you again for your time. Really appreciate the support.
