Jupiter Mines Limited

morning, and I would like to welcome everyone to the Jupiter Minds Q3 call. Today, we have Jupiter Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Brett Rogers, and Chief Financial Officer, Melissa North, to provide a brief update on the third quarter of the 2025 financial year, and then we will open up to questions from callers. Thanks, Brad. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. You will no doubt have seen our March quarterly activities report that was released to the market this morning. You'll see in that report that this is a business performing very well and that's reflected in that quarterly activities report. As usual, I'll just give some overview comments touching on the key outcomes and themes that are summarised in that report and then I'll turn the line over to any questions that you may wish to ask. So just starting with sales and production levels, sales were up 14% on last quarter, and overall, if we're looking at the financial year track, we're on track to deliver the 3.4 million tonnes for the full financial year that we typically seek to target. So nine months in, we're on track for that, and that was supported by that strong sales quarter that we just delivered. Similarly, production was up 15% on last quarter, and that's enabled us to build quite strong stockpiles, more than three months of high-grade ore at normal sort of 3.4 million tonne per annum run rate levels are sitting in stockpile currently. So good sales, but even better production. Realised prices quarter-on-quarter were 8% higher, and I'll come back to what's going on with Anganese prices and the market more generally later on in my comments. And you'll also have noted that cost of production decreased by 15% quarter-on-quarter, so that's quite material. Cost of $2.06 US per DMTU is much lower than we've seen for the last few quarters. What's going on there is mostly about strip rate ratio. We're in a section of the PID that has a lower strip than what we've been in for the preceding quarters. And we expect to be in this section of the PID till at least the end of the June quarter. So we should see lower than average levels of unit costs in the June quarter as well. The FX ratio has helped a bit. So if we look at that, the US dollar cost of production was down about 15%. In RAND, we were down about 12.5%. So there was a bit of assistance from the FX rate, but the underlying RAND costs were down in real terms as well. All of that, higher sales, improved pricing and lower unit costs led to a very pleading profit result. You'll see that EBITDA and NPAT were both up by about 65% on the prior quarter. Mining during the quarter was impacted by wet weather. We flagged that in our last quarterly. It wasn't more than you would usually expect. It is the quarter of our financial year that is impacted by rain, and as you'll note from my comments in relation to both production and sales and stockpiles, it won't impact our target for the full year. But if you look at mining, both graded ore and waste mining, both down 8% and 17%, respectively, on the previous quarter, But if you compare to the preceding quarter, to make my point, rather the prior year comparative quarter, quarter three FY2024, the quarter just finished saw much higher mine volumes across both graded ore and waste volumes. So again, notwithstanding there were some wet weather impacts, there was still a strong quarter when you compare it to the most comparable quarter in the preceding financial year. As I mentioned in this detail where we set out mining and production volume in further detail, the high-grade ore processing was 15% higher than the previous quarter. Not surprisingly, there was no low-grade ore process, although manganese prices came up a bit. They didn't incentivise us to produce more low-grade, notwithstanding we've got some sitting on the stockpile that are low-grade, produced or sold during the quarter. Logistics, not surprisingly, were stronger as well, up 26% on the last quarter, where we saw a return of South African road haulage in order to meet the level of sales that we delivered in the quarter, and as was already covered, export sales increased materially, and that was both an intention to remain on track for our full-year targeted sales audience, but also to capitalise in quarter on some better manganese prices that we saw In terms of cash, if you look at the total attributable cash, it went down slightly for two main reasons. Both of them were dividends. The Chippy number is down because of the $300 million interim dividend that was paid by Chippy during the quarter. Jupiter's own cash is down slightly as well. Obviously, we had our normal operating costs, but we also, during the quarter, contributed some of our own cash, over two million Australian dollars, to that interim dividend that was paid to shareholders during the quarter. If you strip out the impact of that 300 million interim dividend that was paid by Jupiter, site-generated positive cash, net cash of 147 million rands, And if you take out the impact of working capital, operating cash generation was quite strong at R564 million. So if you look at the detail in our quarterly activities report, there was a working capital met accounts receivable bill and also an inventory bill for the reasons we mentioned before in the quarterly activities report. So notwithstanding, there was something of a worsening capital investment during the quarter and an increase quarter cash generation, both operating cash and net cash flow, if you back out that interest dividend was quite strong. I'll also point out here that the chippy cash on hand 100% level is 60 million Australian dollars better than at the same time last year. So again, this is a site that is performing well, strong sales and production, unit costs were pleasing, all of that resulted in good profitability and cash for the quarter. If we turn to the manganese market, you'll see that at quarter end, the 31st of March, manganese prices were 10% higher than they were at the end of December. And this is really reflective of during the quarter, fairly moderated levels of delivered manganese ore from the supply side. And that was reflecting lower manganese prices at the back end of last calendar year that was subsequently selling and then delivering into the March quarter, fairly moderated levels of supply. demand through the March quarter was steady and maybe even a bit better than expected. And so both of those factors combined to support the manganese price that was higher during the quarter on a realised basis. And also resulted in stock at Chinese ports being very much lower than average levels. You'll see that in the quarterly activities report as well. With higher manganese prices through the quarter, you have seen some elevated levels of manganese supply towards the back end of the quarter and into the current quarter that we're in currently, and that has resulted in a moderating of manganese prices to the level that you can see in the quarterly activities report, FOB, about $3.23 US per DMTU, and that's about About 5% lower than four-year average level, so not great, but not bad. Really, this is a market today that is being driven by sentiment. There's really no new factors. There's an absence of downstream momentum, but that's nothing new that's been prevailing for the last few years. There was elevated manganese supply but not drastically so, not as high as it got to last year and given where manganese prices have moderated to now that supply will again moderate so that'll be a fairly short-lived increase in manganese supply. And Chinese stocks, while they'll come up a bit from the level that we reported at the end of April, 3.7 million tonnes, that's very significantly lower than the last few years' average of, call it, 5.7, 5.8 million tonnes. There's a lot of headroom in that level there. So overall, it's a market that's sort of waiting for inspiration. Stocks are low. Demand is sideways. Nothing new there. But it is a market that's obviously also impacted by sentiment around global trade wars and those sorts of things. So inside the negative markets, there's really similar factors driving the price than we would be used to and we would expect, and really it's been all about manganese supply, and we think that will continue to both support the manganese price in the short term, given the manganese price has run off a little bit. Through this period of time, freight rates have remained quite low compared to what we've seen over the last few years. So they were marginally lower quarter on quarter, and they remain about that level today, around $21, $22 per tonne for the sort of shipping that KIPI uses. So in summary, from an operational standpoint, Every respect, sales were up, production was up, unit costs were down, profit was significantly up, and cash generation from an operating perspective and also a net cash perspective backing out the dividend were all strong and better than run rate and expectation. Manganese prices during the quarter were up on a realised basis and quarter end to quarter end compared to the December quarter, and that was really supported by what was going on with manganese supply in the back end of last calendar year. Manganese supply was low. Conversely, manganese supply increasing a bit in response to those slightly elevated manganese prices has caused the manganese price to come down a bit but Chinese stocks are still low. The level of manganese price today will mean that manganese supply should moderate again and so notwithstanding post-quarter end, the manganese price has reduced a bit to a level that's Around 5% lower than last year's average. We think, looking forward, we should expect to see support at around about these levels. We do expect Genco to come back in based on South32's comments ramping up through the coming quarters, but we think that that's largely priced into the market that we're seeing today. So hopefully that overview is helpful. I'm happy to turn the call over to any questions that might be out there.

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. The first question comes from John Schultz from Argonaut. Please go ahead.