Mineral Resources Limited

Today's call will begin shortly. Participants can ask both text and live audio questions during the call. To ask a text question, select the messaging icon, type your question in the box towards the top of the screen and press the send button. To ask a live audio question, press the request to speak button at the top of the broadcast window. The broadcast will be replaced by the audio question screen. Use the dial-in number and access pin provided to ask your question via the phone. Alternatively, for those on a home or personal network, you can ask your question via the web by pressing join queue. If prompted, select allow in the pop-up to grant access to your microphone. If you have any issues using the platform, dial in details can also be found on the homepage under asking audio questions. Text questions can be submitted at any time and the audio queue is now open. Thank you. Thank you for standing by and welcome to Mineral Resources Analyst Call, covering today's release of its September 2025 Exploration and Mining Activity Report. Your speakers today are Mark Wilson, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Chong, General Manager, Investor Relations. A bit of admin before we kick off, this is a sell-side call with analysts able to ask both text and live audio questions. To ask a text question, select the messaging icon. Type your question in the box towards the top of the screen and press the send button. To ask a live audio question, press the request to speak button at the top of the broadcast window. The broadcast will be replaced by the audio questions screen. Use the dial in number and access pin provided to ask your question over the phone. Alternatively, for those on a home or personal network, you can ask your question via the web by pressing Join Queue. If prompted, select Allow in the pop-up to grant access to your microphone. If you have any issues using the platform, dial-in details can also be found on the homepage under Asking Audio Questions. Text questions can be submitted at any time, and the audio queue is now open. This call is being recorded with a written transcript being uploaded to the Minres website later today. I will now hand over to the Minres team.

Thanks, Josh, and good morning, everyone. My name is Mark Wilson. I'm the CFO of Mineral Resources, and welcome to our quarterly call for September. In the office with me this morning, I have Chris Chong, Investor Relations, and today we're joined on the line by our chair, Mel Bundy. As usual, I'll first run through some highlights from the quarterly, which was released this morning, and then I'll be happy to take questions at the end. Beginning with the key highlights, I'm pleased to advise we've delivered another strong quarter across the business, and as a result, confirm that we're on track for our volume and cost guidance for FY26. Onslow Iron was a key highlight in the quarter. We shipped 8.6 million tonnes on a 100% basis in the quarter, which was a commendable performance from the team, noting that road upgrades were being conducted through almost all of the quarter. The project also operated at its full 35 million tonne per annum nameplate capacity between August and October, which, as announced this week, triggered a $200 million increase Morgan Stanley infrastructure partners payment, which we expect to receive in coming days. Securing that contingent payment is a strong financial outcome that rewards the operational excellence we're seeing at Oslo Iron. And I want to take a moment to thank the entire team for a huge effort to get us to that point. This range from the construction team to our approvals and heritage teams through the commodities and mining services teams. On the board renewal front, Mel commenced as chair on the first day of the quarter. We also announced the appointment of two new independent non-executive directors in the quarter, being Laurie Tremaine and Ross Carroll. And after quarter end, we were pleased to advise the further appointments of Colin Moorhead and Susan Ferrier as independent non-executive directors. Turning to safety, the 12-month rolling TRIFA was 3.35, which was a 13% improvement quarter on quarter. That's a solid outcome and reflects less recordable injuries following the wind down of construction activity at Onslow Iron. In terms of corporate, our liquidity remains strong and steady at $1.1 billion at 30 September, with net debt at $5.4 billion. And importantly, net debt to EBITDA continuing to fall. I believe we're now past peak net debt and we continue to see a clear pathway to deleveraging through the operations. As we've said previously, as Onslow Iron ramps up, our EBITDA is expected to increase and our net debt to EBITDA will continue to decrease organically. The Onslow Iron Carry Loan, which to remind everyone is the receivable from our JV partners for funding them into the project, is now being repaid with interest, with balance at the end of the quarter of $714 million. That's a decrease of over $50 million over the quarter, despite some additional spend adding to the balance. Subject to commodity prices, we expect that balance to reduce more quickly in coming quarters. As foreshadowed, during the quarter, we successfully refinanced our US $700 million May 27 notes, extending the maturity out to April 31 at our lowest coupon rate of 7%. This represents the smallest spread over treasuries we've achieved, and I believe it reflects the bond market's understanding of our diversified business model and the improved quality of cash flows being generated in the business. In terms of mining services, quarterly production volumes were 81 million tonnes, steady over the prior quarter and notably representing growth of 19% year on year. Volumes were driven by the ramp up of Onslow Iron to Nameplate and were partially offset by reduced volumes at Mount Marion and a couple of declined sites. At Onslow Iron, we have incurred additional cost as a result of the use of contractor trucks, but we've also benefited from higher rates, which were designed to protect us through the first 15 months or so of operations. Those rates are now back to long-term rates. In terms of the broader market for mining services, third-party demand remains strong and we see good growth opportunities. with Onslow Iron being a great showcase of our capability. For mining services, we remain confident of hitting our guidance range of 305 to 325 million tonnes for the year, implying 13% annualised growth. In terms of iron ore, total attributable shipments were 7.6 million tonnes over the quarter, sorry, up 30% over the quarter. The average quarterly realised price across both hubs was US$90. That represented an 88% realisation. We continue to see strong demand for our Onslow Iron product. I do, however, want to point out that realisations at our Pilbara hub are likely to reduce over the next two quarters. As the contribution of ore from Wanmunna decreases, the head of Lamb Creek's ramp up in Q4. As I flagged last quarter, with iron ore prices solid and the curve relatively flat, we've prudently edged out about a third of production to the end of calendar year 25, given the first half weighting of capex. We're currently assessing our strategy for the next calendar year. In terms of iron ore at Onslow, as I said, the team's delivering excellent performance there. We've loaded 44 ocean-going vessels this quarter, and as of today, we've loaded a total of 136 vessels and continue to be very pleased with the way the transhippers are performing. We have had an issue with the bow thruster of one of the trans shippers since the 7th of October, which means that for the last three weeks we've been operating with four. That bow thruster is being repaired and expected to be back online early next week. Sixth trans shipper was launched from China in the quarter. and we expect it to be commissioned by around June next year, as we flagged previously. Over the quarter, we had 202, on average, 202 road trains operating, 118 of the min-res jumbo trucks and 85 contractors with over 31,800 trips to port completed. With the private haul road upgrade completed, we're now operating unconstrained at normal speeds. and all the contractor road trains are now slowly using our road. We do have the full fleet of jumbo road trains on site, and we're progressively reducing the number of contractor trucks being utilised in line with contract arrangements. We'll be able to continue to operate at the 35 million tonne per annum nameplate rate, but do expect some seasonality impacts through the typical cyclone season from November through to April. On the costs at Onslow, I've said previously that I feel like we have pretty good grip on those. The FOB costs came in at $54 a tonne at the bottom end of guidance and just confirming there were no capitalised operating costs as we had declared commercial production from 30 June. In terms of the Pilbara hub, we shipped a total of 2.7 million tonnes, which was another strong quarter. FOB costs came in at $83 a tonne, reflecting a higher contribution from Iron Valley. We do expect those FOB costs to fall back within guidance over the year as we transition from Wanmunna to the lower cost Lamb Creek operation in the second half. Turning to lithium, the lithium pillar continued the strong operational performance we've reported over recent quarters. Production across Mount Marion and Wojana was 137,000 drammetric tonnes on an SC6 equivalent basis, with sales of 142,000 tonnes SC6. That's up 23% quarter on quarter. Average realised quarterly prices across both sites was US$849. dry metric tonne on an SE6 equivalent basis. That's up 32%. Wojena delivered sales of 88,000 kilotons of SE6. That was helped by a ship that was scheduled for June slipping into early July. Production was up 6%, driven by improved recoveries of 67%. That followed the plant improvements that I mentioned last quarter, including the successful commissioning of high-intensity conditioning dewatering cyclones on the second and third processing trains, which is now complete. We achieved a FOB cost for Wojana SE6 equipment basis of $733 a tonne. I just want to point out that we expect that cost number to rise in the second half. Essentially, we're moving from higher or upper levels of stage three down. And as we do that, we're feeding ore that we'll see a little bit more dilution and lower recoveries through the plant. But we will then get to deeper and higher quality ore. In terms of Marion, Q1 sales were $55,000 on an SE6 equivalent basis in line with the prior quarter. The cost coming in at $796 a tonne. Those costs are lower than guidance. And again, I just want to point out that we expect them to rise in the second half. We're transitioning from the central pit to the north pit. So the grade changes and the mining costs increase significantly. Finally, to finish with energy, we did receive an independent resource certification for the Lockyer Six well in October, post-quarter end, and we've now received $41 million for that as a final payment under that arrangement with Hancock. Having completed those comments, I'm happy to hand back to Josh to queue questions. Thanks.

Thank you. If you have not yet submitted your text question or joined the live audio queue, please do so now. I will introduce each caller by name and ask you to go ahead. You will then hear a beep indicating your microphone is live. Our first question today comes from Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley. Rahul, please go ahead after the beep.