Jupiter Mines Limited

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone for the Jupiter Mines Q2 call. Today with Jupiter Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Brad Rogers and Chief Financial Officer Melissa North to provide a brief update on the second quarter of the 2026 financial year and then we will open up questions from callers. Thanks Brad. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning. Thanks for joining the call this morning. So we released our December quarterly to the market this morning and I'll just provide as usual a few overview remarks trying to tease out what I think are the key points that are contained within that quarterly activities report and then at the end of the remarks I'll turn the line over to any questions. So those who have had the opportunity to review our quarterly will see that the second quarter of the 2026 financial year reflected another strong operating result. Sales and production both up quarter on quarter and in line with our full year targets. Unit costs in US dollars slightly better as well quarter on quarter and that was a great result particularly because the rand against the longer term trend actually continued to strengthen in this December quarter which was obviously a headwind for USD reported costs. Cash also was steady quarter on quarter at quite healthy levels, notwithstanding we had the usual semi-annual payment of taxes and royalties in the December quarter, so that was a good result as well. From a safety perspective, we unfortunately had two minor lost time injuries in the quarter. Both of those injuries were in the nature of slips and trips. One worker tripping over an exposed rock and sprained his ankle and the cleaner sustaining some lower leg injuries whilst flipping as well, whilst conducting her duty. Both of them, as I said, lower leg soft tissue injuries and our team at site, as you'd imagine, is responding with appropriate medications and communications around those injuries which unfortunately remain a risk in any mining environment and so a lot of that is about remaining diligent about those risks and having proper lighting and those sorts of things. From an operations perspective our sales for the quarter were 867,619 tonnes sold and that figure was four percent up on the previous quarter and 27% up on the prior corresponding period in the previous financial year. Production also was quite strong 840,688 tonnes and that was slightly up quarter on quarter and 13% up on the prior corresponding But there was a lean towards high-grade oil production. So less low-grade oil production in the quarter, more high-grade oil production. Obviously, that sets us up for a good mess of sales in the forward-looking quarters. The high-grade oil production was actually 10% up quarter on quarter, whilst the overall production was about 1% up quarter on quarter. Operating costs, as I mentioned a moment ago, were good. We're sort of in range and the costs were $2.24 USD FOB per DMTU for the quarter. That's about where we were sort of guiding that we expected to be. However, we have had a strengthening RAND, which is a major factor in reported US dollar costs. And so actually being slightly down as we were quarter on quarter with our costs is a particularly good result in view of the strengthening RAND. Land logistics were basically flat quarter on quarter. Mining was slightly down, 5% down quarter on quarter, and part of that was seasonal rain that we expect to see in the December quarter, and we usually see it around this time of year. Manganese prices and market prices more broadly were quite supportive during the December quarter. As we sit here today, FOB's spot for the grade of ore that SIPI sells is $3.68. per DM to you and at the end of the December quarter it was $3.46 so we improved spot 30 September $3.36 to 31 December $3.46 and today $3.68 so we've seen the strengthening of Manganese market prices through that period of time and that's continued post quarter end and I'll come back to why that has been the case for the moment. You'll see in the quarterly activities report that average realised prices were 6% up for the December quarter compared to the September quarter. Trade rates also slightly lower, $25 per tonne USD on 31 December 2340. Today we've been range trading for the last sort of three or four months in a reasonably tight range of about $23.5 to $26 a tonne and that's where we'd expect to be or hope to be in this sort of market, so also quite favourable. Manganese ore stockpiles in China which we've talked about are a good leading indicator for where prices might be going hence why we included tracking of that particular metric in our coordinate activities report. Remained at around 4.4 million tonnes of manganese ore at Chinese ports in stockpile today. We have been around that level for much of the last six or nine months or so and so you'll see in our quarterly activities report averaging around that number and it's still that number today at the end of January. You'll also recall in some of our previous communications that we have called out that the port five-year average proceeding the last nine months or so has been about 5.8 million tons of manganese ore at Scottpile at port in China and so that 4.4 million tons remains quite a bit lower than the recent average that we have tended to see and that's also supportive given manganese prices have been a bit higher and given over the last few months exports of manganese ore have been reasonably elevated from some countries that ore has been consumed by downstream alloy demand which has been relatively robust for this last period of time. There's a few things going on there. The stronger Chinese yuan against the US dollar, obviously, is supportive for USD reported nascent ease prices, so that's part of what's going on. There's also some newer... renewable energy powered alloy plants in China that have greater levels of efficiency and that's also been supportive and we think why there's been quite robust downstream alloy demand recently and then very recently there's the usual pre-Chinese year stocking perhaps going on. So even though prices have been up and from Chippy's cost position we think reasonably supportive. We're quite happy of the trend and where they sit today. And at times overall market supply has been reasonably elevated as well. That all has been consumed in the market and that's quite evident when you have a look at the levels of manganese or its stockpile in China. So I think you'd say a balanced market at the moment. My understanding prices have picked up quite nicely, albeit fairly gradually over the last month or so. The trend is pleasing. Onto financials, Chippy's EBITDA was down 19% quarter-on-quarter and that was mostly due to FX losses with the strengthening rand, as you can imagine. Whilst it's down quarter-on-quarter, the actual dollar figure isn't that material. If you have a look at the EBITDA dollars, it's sort of within the range of where Chippy trades in this sort of pricing environment cash at chippy as I mentioned earlier on basically steady quarter on quarter and at healthy levels around 137 million Australian dollars at the end of December and that's down 2% from the from the end of the September quarter but we did have to pay taxes and royalties in the period. It's a semi-annual payment so there was good operating cash generation and that resulted in a good ending cash that typically notwithstanding the payment of taxes and royalties in the period and cash at the Jupiter level also basically steady quarter on quarter. You will have also seen this morning perhaps that we updated the market referencing a market announcement by Exaro yesterday in South Africa that Exaro is now unconditional in respect of the acquisition of certain Mangleese interests from InstaBitly Holdings and from OM Holdings. What that means, according to the XARO announcement, as reflected in our announcement this morning, is that XARO expects to complete the acquisition of those interests on or before the 23rd of February, so a little under a month away. On that date of completion, what that means from a Jupiter perspective is that XARO will join Jupiter as our co-investor at ChipX. under the same shareholders agreement that's always been in place there. Exaro is buying into the same shareholders agreement and taking out the existing shareholders and subsequently an OM holding. So that's what it means. At an asset level Jupiter continues with Exaro from that date to exercise joint control over the asset and the way that the asset has been governed very successfully over the period of this operation will continue to be the case. At Jupyter what it means as summarized in our announcement is that Exaro will join Jupyter as our largest shareholder. They will be acquiring 19.99% of Jupyter's shares from Incidentally Holdings and that trade will complete on that same date, 27th of February or earlier. That's also unconditional. The price that Xero has agreed with incidentally to pay for those Jupiter shares is in rands, 3.69 rands per share. and obviously it's exposed to the foreign exchange rate but as an indication the Australian dollar price today is a little over 33 cents a share and that compares to our trading share price today on our last list of about 28.5 cents per share. So in summary, just bringing it back before I open the line for questions, strong operating results from Chippy, sales up, production up, unit costs slightly down and cash at steady healthy levels. Our interim dividend 31 December will be decided in the next month. You'll be familiar that it goes through a two-step process of Chippy first, recommending a dividend to shareholders and once you have that Jupiter will communicate that to the market so that's also to come in the next month. We have seen and we continue to see a relatively supportive market in terms of Manganese prices levels of manganese ore at stockpile in China and also strike rates. So support is here for the December quarter relative to the preceding quarter end and continuing that trend post quarter end. And then finally Xaro communicating that important news yesterday and relevant for Jupiter in the ways that I've mentioned a moment ago that in a little under a month say we'll be joining Jupiter as a co-investor at Chippy and also joining Jupiter as our largest shareholder and as we continue to say Jupiter is very welcoming of that development we see that as being really supportive in terms of value of growth at TIPI, but also we share a view with Exaro around growth rate consolidation in the Kalahari, and so we're looking forward to welcoming Exaro as a co-investor and working to give them that shared view strategically. Hopefully that overview's been useful. I'll turn the call over and see whether there are any questions on the line.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, 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 hand to ask your question. Your first question comes from John Schultz with Argonauts. Please go ahead.