IGO Limited

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us again. We'll dive straight in. Kath's with me again for our session today. We'll, as usual, just run through a few reflections on the quarter and then open up some Q&A. I wanted to just start by also noting the change in our quarterly reporting structure. We flagged this a couple of times over the last four or five months now, and you'll see that change has come through. We see that as being more aligned with our peers. simplifying the reporting and obviously reducing the load across the team as we look to simplify the business and streamline things so we'll pick up any other questions as we go once we get into it but look let's dive in first of all on safety performance the quarter I guess was a tale of two halves almost we actually saw a number of injuries in the first half of the quarter and despite a lot of great work by the team and focus on safety, we didn't see the trends pointing in the right direction. There was a big intervention and huge amount of effort on proactive safety interactions, increase on pre-task hazard assessment, real increase in effort, and that definitely delivered some results. As I've said on all these calls since I started, there's still a lot of work for us to do, but I'm very pleased with the the steady progress that we're making as we improve our safety culture and make that more resilient, more sustainable. The work obviously is now much more focused at NOVA as we ramp down Forestania and I'll speak more to that in a minute. I actually was back at NOVA a couple of weeks ago for our just general site visit and some field time and can see the team is very focused on on their safety and on their operating performance, and that's another key area that we saw a challenge through the quarter. The grades were certainly lower than expected in this quarter. We did expect a lower quarter, but they were lower than that, and that affected recoveries and effectively compounded our nickel performance. But I was very pleased to see the Nova team working hard on that, both in terms of getting the very best they can out of the mine, creating more optionality. And as you know, as we work towards the end of fine life, these challenges are growing. We have less flexibility, but they're doing a lot of great work to manage the scheduling and to get the best from it. Again, I'll talk more to that as we get in. Overall, the dynamics in the lithium market are pretty challenging. As you all know, the prices are very depressed at the moment. That said, Greenbush has had a great quarter. performed well, good production. Obviously the sales were down a little given that we didn't have that 200,000 tonne shipment that we had in the prior quarter, but overall a good steady quarter across that part of the business. And, you know, the team there is just continuing to focus on improving and refining and optimising that operation. If I dig into Greenbush's a little bit further, We saw that uplift in production, and all of the plants were running well, delivering a great outcome, and that affected our unit costs, obviously, averaging them down. We saw some higher feed grade and improved recoveries also coming through, affecting that result. Great performance and great to see the potential of green bushes. Puts us in a good position as we sort of start the financial year. As I mentioned, sales were lower quarter on quarter with the... the 200,000 tonne in the prior quarter that TNC placed. And we previously discussed that. We expect production to stabilise back in line with our guidance going forward. So we're not suggesting any big shift there. Our prices obviously realised 872 per tonne indicates that lower level that we're seeing across the market. Still generating good cash returns and margins for Greenbushes, given where its costs are at, but nowhere near as attractive as it was. I also spent some time actually last week at Greenbushes. The Winfield board met on site, which was great. It was a really good opportunity to spend time with the other board members and also with Rob Telford, the new CEO. I think this is week four for him. And he's doing a great job getting up to speed, getting to meet the team, connect with the business team, and understand where he wants to focus. There are a lot of things to do, and he's prioritising that really thoughtfully. So it's fabulous to see the momentum he's building up with the team. Overall, look, we continue to see Greenbush's very stable, reliable production right through this low point in the market. It's performing and delivering a great outcome, I think. as you'd all expect, and we'll continue to work on improving and optimising this outstanding asset. Moving on to Kurnana, look, and I'll keep it brief, there's not too much to share. Obviously, a lift in production through the quarter to 1,500 tonnes, which was just showing the good work the team's been doing around stabilising the operations of the plant, the refinery. But ultimately, everything's focused on the shutdown, which has been underway for the last few weeks and is wrapping up as we speak. I'm really excited to see what outcomes we get from that and how that affects the performance of the refinery. The team put an enormous amount of effort into preparing and planning for that. A lot of equipment and materials brought to bear to complete the shutdown and to do that safely. And so the next step will be seeing that ramp up through this quarter and how it starts to perform with all of the changes that have been made and the improved reliability. On nickel, I already mentioned that we had anticipated lower production this quarter, but grades achieved were lower than expected, and that also had a compounding impact as it flowed on to recoveries, and we dropped a couple of points there as well. That underperformance obviously affected our quarter-on-quarter costs as well, flowing through there. The team did meet their production rates in terms of mining rates and and processing and so on. So it really was about grade and recoveries flowing through, impacting the business. Then working through the rest of the types that we have planned this year and just seeing if there's any more that we need to understand in the ore body as we progress. I guess more importantly, what we are looking forward is optimising the performance of the mine right through to closure. And naturally, to the extent we can bring that forward, we will. And that will allow us to amortise fixed costs over a shorter period and improve the value available. We are more constrained. So the team is trying to manage with a much more difficult set of options in front of them, but doing a great job. And I think as we finish that next set of planning, we'll be able to share more as to what we see in terms of NOVA's run through to its finish. The plant's actually just gone into shut at NOVA over the weekend, and this will probably be the last time they do a mill reline. I guess as an indication of certain maintenance activities, it will start to run down now and not be repeated, and we'll see that flow through, obviously, in our costs as we manage that. But overall, everything, the assets are healthy and running well. It really is about now getting the very best out of your body. Beyond that, I wanted to talk about Forrestania for a minute. So we had a major seismic event in late July and that brought forward closure a few months. The team were well prepared for that. They managed that safely and have now completed that transition into care and maintenance. That happened two weeks ago. They've safely ramped down the assets. And as you know, we're working through discussions with Medallion to see if they have some interest in continuing another story or chapter for Forestania. But I did want to take a minute to recognise this was a mine that opened in 1992, originally under the operatorship of Otokompu. They started producing from Flying Fox in 1998 and eventually transferred ownership to Western Areas, who ran that for quite a long time. also building the spotted coal mine and producing a lot of nickel for many years from it. So there's been a lot of people through the industry involved with Forestania over the years as a nickel business. And certainly as far as we can see, that's the end of it. Those two old bodies are well and truly depleted. And we're going through that process of care and maintenance now. But something definitely to celebrate and recognise, a long history there and a great story of success over many years. On our financial results, Look, as we noted, I said at the start of the call, a week, a quarter, generally, the contribution from TLEA from a combination of lower sales and prices, as well as our nickel business, we're all drivers of this. Given the prevailing market conditions, we didn't declare any dividend from TLEA, which I'm sure you'll understand is prudent and makes a lot of sense in this current environment. We saw the underlying group free cash flow reflect the absence of that dividend and obviously some lower returns from Nova. The shipments from Nickel are now going out through the port instead of Kambalda and that's just delaying some of the payment timings and affecting our cash flows as well. But that'll true up in due course. That's a flow on from obviously the Nickel West change that we saw unfold three, four months ago. We finished the quarter with $259 million of cash and no debt. And we've also been obviously progressing the review of corporate and exploration. And those changes are largely implemented now and will start to flow through in cost reduction quarter on quarter through the rest of this year. Before I throw open for questions, I just want to just spend a moment on the strategy as well. Another key milestone through the quarter, just after our annual results, we were in Sydney for the release of our refreshed and renewed strategy. I'm sure many of you sat through that and it was a great piece of work. I again wanted to compliment the team who worked very hard to pull that together. Just to touch on some of the headlines there, you know, look, we're still very much a purpose-driven organisation focused on our role around the energy transition and the contribution of minerals and metals, particularly in the battery materials segment. A focus on three major commodities, lithium in and through our partnership with TNT Lithium and the TLEA JV, copper and nickel. Not to say that other commodities are completely off the list, but that's really where our focus is. We continue to look to build out a portfolio around our exploration capability development and operations. And in lithium, obviously with green bushes, our interest there is a bedrock, generating great cash and returns through the cycle gives us a fantastic foundation to work together with Tianqi to build on that strength. In copper, we recognise, of course, the challenges and the strong market interest there, so very difficult to do things. Equally, we think we bring quite a lot to that space given our exploration capabilities and operating capabilities across different mining techniques. So we'll continue to look at that market and try and understand where we see opportunity. And of course, nickel, which has been a big part of IGO's history now for some time, is something that we deeply understand and have a lot of experience in. Equally, we recognise that to find value you need a very high-quality resource, and that's certainly challenging. They're very difficult to come by. So we'll continue to keep our focus out there. Beyond that, the themes that we are building out around our capabilities, exploration and development, continuing to focus on that, we believe strongly in our exploration capability and the need to bring more critical minerals to the market. we are certainly transforming the way our exploration organisation is working and refocusing both from a ground position and tenement holding point of view, but also in terms of how we deploy that capability that we have. But it's something that we strongly believe in, albeit with a reduced budget or allocation in that space. Partnerships, and I've mentioned TNC a couple of times, that's a foundation piece for us, but equally we have a number of other partnerships that we lean on through our business JVs in our exploration space and beyond that we believe are critical for success. Building out our commercial capability is something that Brett's started to work through, and we believe that's important, particularly as we understand the very volatile market of lithium and how we can better draw value from that. And lastly, the playbook, which is a means of both enshrining and documenting and capturing the way that we do mining, the great capabilities and strengths of IGO and distilling that into a single set of information and documents that we can draw on as we continue to look and grow the business. Beyond that, our value proposition and I guess who we are as a mining company, I think is captured on this great slide. Starting with our culture, the strength of our culture is absolutely key. And obviously the business has been through a lot of change in the last 10 months, and that's very challenging and painful for our people. Seeing that kind of change, a number of people have left the business as we've made the restructure in our corporate and exploration teams. But the core of who we are remains. That's based around our values and our purpose and continuing to focus on being successful. very people-centric, being an ethical and responsible mining company that's focused on partnering well with the stakeholders that we have around our operations. We continue to seek to be diversified, as I've mentioned, and we think that's valuable, particularly given our interest in the lithium markets and industry. Green bushes as a core part of that asset portfolio and a source of cash flow for our business. Our exploration capability, I've already mentioned, continuing to build on our operating excellence and that track record. Our strategic partnerships, obviously with Tianqi in the first instance, but then also with Abamal through the joint venture at Winfield for Greenbushes. And finally, a renewed leadership team that's just getting up to speed and building some momentum together. So we've got all the ingredients to succeed and we continue to to work hard to optimise the base of assets that we're looking at currently and then look forward to the right options for growth beyond that. So I'll wind up there and throw it open for some questions and then take it from there. Thank you.

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Hi, Ivan and team. Great production result at Greenbushes. You are ahead on a run rate basis versus your guidance or doing very well. Does that mean that there may be upside risk or implicitly does that mean future quarters you're expecting production to slow down from these levels? Thank you.