Genesis Minerals Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Genesis Minerals Limited Quarterly Activities Report December 2025 conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. 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 Troy Irvin, Corporate Development Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks for dialing in to Genesis Teleconference. In Perth, presenting today, we have Raleigh Finlayson, Executive Chair, Matt Nixon, CEO, and Morgan Ball, CFO. Fair to say, these are unprecedented times in gold. At the current gold price, gold companies from every corner are generating soaring cash flows and have soaring share prices. So how to stand out? The team will cover all the key numbers shortly, but the pollster with his two attributes, Genesis, will continue to strive for in 2026. Firstly, reliability. That is consistently hitting production guidance. And secondly, growth. That is selling more gold into a buoyant gold price. From the investor engagement perspective, today's ASX announcements mark the start of a busy period. In the coming weeks, we will release an updated corporate presentation plus half-year financials with one or even two drilling updates also brewing. I will now hand over to our Executive Chair. When it comes to the Q&A session, can all questions please be directed to Raleigh in the first instance? Thanks again.

Thanks, Swerve. I'd like to start with providing some additional colour on the important announcement we made today, namely the promotion of Matt Nixon into the role of CEO and me stepping into executive chair role. Now is a perfect time for this realignment of roles and responsibilities for the following reasons. We've recently completed the Underground Mining Tender and Contract Award to Burncut, a six-month process that Duncan Coutts has diligently led. With that body of work behind us, Duncan now has capacity to take on operational oversight in his role of Executive Director Operations. Duncan is a mining engineer with over 30 years' experience, providing invaluable leadership and mentoring to the high-calibre leadership team we have assembled at Genesis. many of whom I'm confident will become future industry leaders. Duncan was previously COO at Remelius Resources for nine years, managing Remelius' operating mines during a period of significant growth. With Duncan taking on operational oversight at Genesis, not only will our results call value remain in very good hands, but importantly this provides Matt capacity to take on a broader role within the organisation. by expanding to the running of the company on a day-to-day basis and delivering our strategic plan, which is due to be published to the market in the current half. Personally, with the rail tripartite agreement, Tower Hill approvals and native tile agreements now all in place, this affords me the opportunity to look to the future and proactively focus on strategy and kickstart important strategic initiatives like a strategic review on our Bardock project, and unlocking the potential of the recently acquired focus assets within the Labor and Operations. But at the same time, retaining ultimate executive oversight. Importantly, our previous chair, Tony Kiernan, will assume the role of lead independent director, which will ensure the high standards of corporate governance are maintained. This is very much a case of business as usual. Same people, same strategy, with a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities. The priorities and key objectives remain the same, and very importantly, the culture is completely maintained, noting Matt's key role in development of our five-year strategic plan and core values in March 2024. Matt's promotion aligns strongly with our strategic plan, which includes people first as one of our core values. In that plan, we promise to empower key talents with development pathways and provide a one-stop shop for our people. This is recognition and reward for Matt's performance, meeting or exceeding guidance since Matt started with us in August 2023. Our team is totally fit for purpose, with the right people in the right roles. This will ensure we fully capitalise on the outstanding growth pipeline we've established, while maintaining our track record of meeting or exceeding our commitments to the market. Personally, I remain heavily invested and committed to Genesis and its ongoing success. This transition will facilitate further outperformance and aligns us with our commitments to develop our people from within. This in turn ideally attracts similar like-minded people that are seeking career development and progression to join Genesis. Troy and I will be conducting a global roadshow starting in Sydney and Melbourne next week and then on to the BMO conference in late February, where we'll be happy to discuss Genesis' exciting future. With regards to the quarter report, It was another one where we met or exceeded all operational targets whilst making strong progress on our growth agenda. Importantly, our record production was accompanied by tight cost control, which was a significant achievement given the cost pressures faced across the industry. This led to an underlying cash build of more than $200 million, ending in the court of a cash and equivalence of more than $400 million and nil bank debt. With $100 million of debt drawn to fund the focus acquisition, now fully repaid, only seven months post-acquisition. Pleasing living results phase has us at the upper end of production guidance, the lower end of all and sustaining cost guidance at the halfway mark. With our FY26 full-year guidance maintained at 260,000 to 290,000 ounces at between $2,500 and $2,700 all and sustaining cost range. We'll continue to lay the foundation to deliver our SPI 400's accelerated growth strategy, including a milestone December quarter at Tower Hill. Matt will provide an update on this outstanding progress on this flagship asset in a second. We look forward to unveiling details of our longer term plan later in the current half, including the mill expansion strategy and a refresh of our strategic pillars following significant growth since our inaugural plan was published in March 2024. I'll now pass you on to Matt to run you through the operations.

Thanks, Raoul, and good morning all. I'm pleased to highlight another consecutive quarter of record gold production for Genesis, with just over 74,000 ounces produced at an all-in sustaining cost of $2,635 an ounce, generating $231 million of mine operating cash flow a net mine cash flow of $167 million after investing $64 million into our growth assets, including Tower Hill, Ulysses Underground and Jupiter Open Pit. Importantly, this was underpinned by strong safety performance, with zero LTIs sustained during the quarter and an improved serious injury frequency rate to 4.2. This consistent delivery has the company well placed to meet our FY26 guidance, as Raoul reiterated, with just over 147,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $2,578 an ounce produced during the first half. In parallel with the strong production performance across the Leonora and Laberton operations, multiple significant development milestones for the Tower Hill project were achieved during the December quarter, which paved the way for operational readiness activities to be advancing ahead of schedule and site establishment works to be able to commence in the current March quarter. These milestones included receipt of Stage 1 Mine Development and Closure Plan approval and Native Vegetation Clearing Permit, agreement reach with the PTA, ARC Infrastructure and Horizon to enable shortening of the Leonora Rail Line, and execution of a mining agreement with the Dalo people. Also noting, we're very pleased to execute a second mining agreement late in the quarter with the Nalpabini people, ensuring that development pathways for all Genesis tenure in the Leonora and Laberton operational centres is now formalised through these mining agreements. To facilitate acceleration of this world-class asset, capital investment into Tower Hill has been brought forward into FY26, resulting in a revised full-year Genesis growth capital outlook, of $220 to $240 million, previously $150 to $170 million. I look forward to articulating further details in our updated long-term plan later in the June half. The Leonora Underground Mines delivered 289,000 tonnes of ore at a grade of 4.6 grams per tonne for 42,783 ounces, a 24% improvement in tonnes and 34% improvement in ounces quarter on quarter. Wallia mines just over 32,000 ounces at a grade of 5.6 grams per tonne from 178,000 tonnes as stoping continues through the Heart of Gold. Ulysses development and ramp-up continued positively with a record 1.6 kilometres of lateral advance and 10.5,000 ounces mined at 2.9 grams per tonne from 111,000 ore tonnes, which was a 46% improvement on the September quarter. As announced earlier this month, we completed a competitive tender process for provision of underground mining services at our Leonora operations that attracted several Tier 1 contractors and culminated in issuance of a letter of intent to Burncut Australia, who will plan to mobilise in early May following completion of the current contract term by McMahon, to whom I would like to express our appreciation for the dedication and contribution of their people to Gwarlia, Ulysses and the Genesis business. The Leonora open pit mines delivered 330,000 tonnes of ore at a grade of 1 gram per tonne for 11,000 ounces, as focus continued on cutback activities for recently identified shallow lateral extensions at Admiral and pre-stripping works for Stage 2 at Hub, with ore volumes to increase significantly during H2, particularly in the June quarter. Impressive total material movement was achieved at both open pits for a total of just over 6 million tonnes hauled during the quarter. Over at Laverton Operations, the Jupiter Open Pit continued to ramp up well following commencement earlier in FY26, with mining productivities across our new Genesis Mining Services fleet improving as more floor space was opened up in the central saddle section of the pit, and just shy of 3,000 ounces were mined at a grade of 0.7 grams per tonne from 133,000 tonnes of ore and total material movement of 3.5 million tonnes. At both the Leonora and Laverton Mills, throughput performance was excellent, with 365,000 tonnes processed at Leonora at 4 grams per tonne and 92.8% recovery for just over 43,000 ounces recovered, and 759,000 tonnes processed at Laverton at 1.5 grams per tonne and 83.8% recovery for just over 31,000 ounces. 38% of that Laverton mill feed during the quarter was third-party ore at a recovery of 79.2%, noting Genesis Ore recovery remained consistent at 91.2%. As we close out the FY26 all-purchase agreements with one final campaign to complete during the March quarter, pleasingly and aligned with our consistent future-proofing strategy, as well as supporting current mill expansion studies of both Leonora and Laverton, we close the quarter with group stockpiles of 1.4 million tonnes at 1.2 grams per tonne for 53,000 ounces. To round out the excellent quarter, $11.9 million invested into exploration activities continue to yield encouraging opportunities across the portfolio, including testing the upper 1,000 metres of Gwalior that hosts the historic workings and commencing the Maiden Genesis Drilling Program at Beasley Creek, testing for all-body extensions as well as infill for inferred resource conversion. We look forward to providing a geological results update in the coming months. I'll now hand over to Morgan to talk through financial performance.

Thanks, Matt, and morning all. Further to this morning's release, I'm pleased to comment on some of the key financial outcomes for the quarter. As you heard from Matt, we maintained our run of increasing gold production quarter on quarter, and in the December quarter, we sold 71,000 ounces to an average gold price of Australian $6,057 an ounce, up 20% queue on queue, generating $430 million in sales. Cash, volume and investments increased by $41 million to $404 million. This is after the company fully repaid the $100 million in corporate debt that we drew down just seven months ago as part of the focus labour and acquisition funding. It's really pleasing to have had the liquidity and balance sheet flexibility to optimise our capital management approach this way. Matt and Raoul have referenced our cost performance, tracking to the lower half of guidance year-to-date. Despite ongoing cost pressures, it has been very encouraging to see the way that the whole Genesis workforce has embraced and contributed to our internal cost reduction initiatives under the Project TALO banner, TALO being an acronym for Think and Act Like Owners. Support for the TALO project has been across the entire business from the shop floor upwards, and this is particularly pleasing given the strong macro backdrop and rhetoric, potentially resulting in people not chasing those 1%. Despite this backdrop, our view is that now is the exact time that we should be focusing on these initiatives, and we are practising what we preach. We set an ambitious internal cost-out target under Project TALO, and we are on track to achieve this. A few additional corporate matters. We have finalised the stamp duty position in relation to the focused labour and acquisition, and we will make this $13 million payment in the June quarter. Given the company's growth, performance and profit generation, we will utilise our remaining tax losses during FY26 and therefore it is likely that we will start paying income tax instalments in the coming months. You will note that we have estimated our unaudited NPAT for the half year at $235 to $245 million. Not surprisingly, given our growth, and with some help from the gold price, this compares favourably to the corresponding period last year, up 300%. and if that is above our full-year FY25N PEP of $221 million. We anticipate releasing our half-year accounts on 19 February. I'll now pass you back to Travis for Q&A.

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 then 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question today comes from David Radcliffe from Global Mining Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Rayleigh and team. A couple of questions from me. First off, I appreciate the long-term plan is still in the works, but maybe could you talk to what, if any, the potential impact is on the Tower Hill timetable from bringing forward the capital that you announced today, especially if we think about the Stage 1 pit and the opportunities here?

Yeah, thanks, David. Yeah, look, as you articulated, five-year plan in this current half. Obviously, all the final details coming together, you would have read in the quarterly. Activities underway there. Obviously, the original plan was first all. In FY28, there is scope to bring that forward, but that will be fully articulated in the plan, which is just around the corner. So not long to wait now.

All right. So thank you. And again, maybe pushing that a little bit too, in terms of the potential expansion studies that are going through now, have you started to think about the long need items there and maybe committing to some of them, given that the market could tighten again? Just coming from the thought here that, you know, hopefully that doesn't become a bottleneck to actually delivering the expansion plans when you announce them.

Yeah, 100%. Obviously, in the final throws of the expansion works at Lenora as well. So that's a couple of items on the radar. Very good tabs about what those long lead time items are. So again, that'll be updated in the full plan. But there's a couple of things that we will move on reasonably quickly. So again, watch out for that in due course.

Look, if I could squeeze just one last one in. In terms of the Ulysses Underground, it's still ramping up, but I notice that the grade is still running reasonably below reserve grade, so any colour you could provide here maybe on the current thoughts about the volume and grade profile for the Ulysses Underground?

Yeah, David, Matt here. Just to, I guess, summarise where your list is at as we ramp up, as you highlighted, when I look at the split between development ore and stoping ore, particularly underpinned by the 1.6 kilometres through the quarter, development ore is still a heavy percentage of that feed. As more levels open up and stoping starts to become the dominant production feed, that's where we see the grade increase towards that reserve grade.

Okay, cool. And then so the ramp up is what, still effectively a 12-month process from here or less?

Improving quarter on quarter. David, obviously we want to be pretty aggressive with this piece, you know, 111,000 ore tonnes for the quarter. You know, Ulysses in the longer term, Leonora Strategy, looks to provide 500,000 to 600,000 tonnes per annum. So you can see we're well on track for that 150,000 tonne run rate.

Perfect. Thank you very much, guys. I'll pass it on.

Thank you. The next question comes from Levi Spry from UBS. Please go ahead.

Yeah, morning. Thanks, team. Thanks for your time. I know it's cheeky, but, you know, the midweek strategy, as you get closer, maybe you can just help us talk about how maybe some of the inputs have been refined on the Tower Hill timing, on gold price, on... on Laverton, on the focus ground, just as we get closer to the unveiling of it. Is there anything you want to point out in terms of refining the goalposts?

Yeah, thanks, Levi, and noted Cheeky. Yes, look, at the end of the day, we've got that plan to surround a horizon. If I think about a tight Tower Hill, as far as the plan that we're going in with as far as the cutback, Yeah, million ounces at 2 grams. There's no change there. We're not chasing a gold price, changing cut-off grades, any of those sorts of things. It's, you know, purely the potential timing. Obviously, with lining up the rail agreements and obviously getting the approvals to Stage 1 in the last quarter has enabled us to eventually fast-track some of that. So that's obviously the one change. As far as across the portfolio, drilling's commenced at Lizzie Creek, so obviously very early days on the... focused ground, which we acquired in June, but really only upside to the plan on that front. So you'll see parts of that feed into the plan when we unveil at this half, but there's a lot more scope ahead. And as round the mill goes, I think as we've articulated in the corporate presentation, if you have a good look at the reserve ounces and ore tonnes by area, so over at Laverton, And, Lena, it gives you a bit of a guide to, you know, what type of sizing of milling we're chasing, which, you know, heavily ends up with that sort of 400,000 ounce run rate, which is not a massive surprise considering our Aspire 400 target that we've had out in the market for a while. So all very close. Appreciate people very keen to know what that looks like. But, you know, we're in the final throes of getting that pulled together and obviously articulating it for the market.

Yep, nice one. Thank you. Look forward to it. Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. The next question comes from Daniel Morgan from Baron Joey. Please go ahead.

Hi, Raleigh and Tim. Just looking at Gwalior and the contractor change to Burncut, I'm just wondering if you can articulate, you know, what are the key benefits from making this change that you are seeking or expecting to get? and just what are the expectations of managing disruption from this change? Thank you.

Yeah, look, I'll kick start and I'll throw it at Matt to add some more colour to that. But, you know, this has been a process. I'll just go back a step. Obviously, when we made the focus announcement, we also announced Duncan Coote's appointment. to the Board as Executive Director at that time. Obviously, this was with the planned announcement we did today on the succession of Mattress CEO in mind. Over that period of time since then to now, Undunka's been solely focused on the tender process. It's a competitive process with a range of Tier 1 That's run its course all the way through to an announcement which we made a couple of weeks ago. Burncut is certainly familiar to myself, familiar to Matt, familiar to Duncan in previous years. Mines and previous companies, certainly a tier one contractor moving forward. So we won't dive into much more detail about the final outputs of that tender. But as I said, we're talking about a sort of early May transition. So I'll throw to Matt to give a bit more colour on the tender and the outcome of the burn cut.

Yeah, thanks, Raoul. Thanks, Dan. Ultimately, yeah, just to emphasise, really strong proposals from all Tier 1 contractors received and ultimately the proposal from Burncut received through that competitive tender process highlighted Burncut as the optimal selection for Gwalior and Ulysses all bodies ultimately to take us forward following completion of the existing contract term. We maintain our production and cost guidance for FY26 as we've highlighted, as we work through that transition in the June quarter. From an opportunity point of view, you know, I look at productivity, both at Ulysses as a new, shallow, unconstrained mine, and also at Gwalior with Genesis' right-side schedule approach versus previous strategy, particularly late in the piece for Bernkart, who have operated at Gwalior in the 10 years prior. So for high fixed cost type operations, productivity is a game changer both on output and cost profile.

Thank you. And then maybe just a question to the team just on the broader, you know, months ahead on the, you know, fresh ore outlook and grade across the various operations, you know, maybe trying to put together all the levers, you know, you know, from the various sites and big changes coming ahead, tons and groves.

Yeah. So, obviously, awesome disclosure just around the corner, as I've mentioned. Just a couple of, I suppose, things that you can look out for. Obviously, Tower Hill timing I've talked about on previous questions, so look out for the timing around that one. Some other ones that have been pleasing, just on the Admiral area, that should have been completed by now with having ongoing... Drill success. Drill being an operative word, not gold price, so we're not changing our assumptions on gold price. It's purely the drilling success we're having there, which is extending the life there. Bruno Lewis sits in the wings. There will most likely be some drilling that will come out in due course on that. Had a very successful campaign of drilling over there over the last 12 months, so that's continued to get bigger. So we're excited about Bruno coming into the production profile. And the obvious other one is Jupiter just ramping up. early days at the moment, but the team are doing an outstanding job there on production rates and the grade continues to climb, ship ratio continues to fall on that asset as we go forward. So there are a couple of sort of important levers, obviously Ulysses ramping up as Matt alluded to before, and even at Gwalior, obviously contract change out short term, but Bit of a sneak peek on some of the, you know, talking about some of the uppers drilling that we're doing at Gwalau, you know, potential step change there with some more ounces higher up in the mining sequence. So they're all little snippets. Might give much more detail there because we are so close to unveiling that 10-year plan shortly.

OK, thank you very much, Relian.

Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, please press style 1 on your phone. The next question comes from Hugo Nicolaisi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Morning, team, and obviously congrats, Matt, on the Royal Transitions. Apologies if I've missed this earlier in the discussion. Just first one, looking at the recovery piece at Laverton. Are you able to just elaborate a little bit more on some of the third-party ore impacts around the recovery and then just give us an update in terms of the expected timing and volume of third-party ore purchases into the second half?

Yeah, absolutely, Hugo. Matt here. Ultimately, the recovery piece, different ore types from the two OPA partners coming through in the December quarter campaigns, whether that's some refractory element or some of the gold locked up in, I guess, their rock types, summary would be no impact either during the December quarter or moving forward on Genesis All Recovery, highlighted by that 91%. And to your point on the second question, So just remind me, Hugo, second question? Next, next. Oh, apologies, thank you. Yeah, sorry, Hugo, thank you. Just to close out in the March quarter, forecasting one final campaign from Brightstar, looking at 130,000 to 140,000 tonnes to complete at the end of March quarter, which closes out both OPA, third-party oil commitments.

Great, that's helpful. And then... So maybe picking up on the refractory ore piece, if I look at the resource base, you've got about 4 million ounces or close to 20% of the resource is that refractory ore type. So I want to get an update whether we should think about that starting to factor into that sort of next 5, 10 year outlook or maybe are there opportunities to monetize deposits like Aphrodite and some of those others if that's not in the sort of medium to longer term thinking?

Yeah, thanks, Hugo. Perfect segue. Thank you. And really, I'm going to sort of use that question to partly answer the timing around the succession today. Obviously, Matt being promoted as CEO gives me absolute scope to start thinking, forward-looking, thinking about the strategy and a couple of strategic initiatives that I talked about in the opening around, you know, obviously reviewing the The focus acquisition ground and how that dovetails into Laverton, it's obviously a fresh portfolio, only acquired in June. The other part of that is a strategic review of the Bardock project and all options on the table. The first thing, obviously, is refreshing the DFS numbers, which we haven't looked at for a couple of years. It hasn't been, obviously, a core focus for us to date, but a refresh of that plan and obviously look at all the options, some of which you tabled. will be something that I'll be starting to focus on, obviously, with Matt stepping up and Duncan taking on an operational oversight role. So, yes, more to come. There'll be more colour provided on that in the strategic plan when we release it.

Thanks. That's helpful. And then one more, if I can, just in terms of just clarifying the timing of that outlook, it sounds like... You're in the final throes there. Is that something we should expect sort of by the April quarterly or possibly, you know, a little bit earlier than if you're in that final process?

I love your work. Our current half, I think, is what we've said, so... I'm not going to be around there. It was somewhere in that period. We've obviously got resource reserves to update, finalising of the milling strategy, which is obviously a key component of that, and obviously dovetailing in some of the work we're doing on the focus ground, and plus the timing of Tower Hill, other key components, but the current half is what we'll stick to for now.

Yes, and I can't blame him for trying. Thanks, guys. I'll pass it on.

Thank you. At this time, we're showing no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to Raleigh Finlayson for closing remarks.

Thanks for joining us on the December quarterly call. A quarter highlighted with safe record production and free cash flow generation. Appreciate a very busy morning, so we'll leave it there, and thank you very much.