Metro Mining Limited

Thanks very much for joining this. I really appreciate the time and effort you take to follow the company. So please be assured that we don't underestimate that. So thank you very much for spending the time. As Peter said, Earlier this week, we released our quarterly report for the October, November, December months for 2024. I'll share the screen so that those of you who don't have it to hand can see it. So we can then sort of go through the document as we move forward. So all in all, you know, a strong quarter, very solid set of outcomes. we achieved so look the main aspect of it as we've been talking about all year has been the ramp up of our expansion and we continued to push through and deliver record shipments through this last quarter of the year again over and above the record shipments that we've had in all of the previous quarters. So the record Q4 this year was just under 2.1 million wet metric tons. So that's about 22% up year on year. And look, that's taken us to a total for the year of 5.7 million wet metric tons. So again, 24% up year on year from last year's uh, total. And, and I think, you know, from a, from a volume perspective, you know, we've, uh, we were a bit late getting, getting off the mark with the condition with the commissioning in Q2 this year. So really the ramp up only started at the end of that quarter. And so in the last six months, we've managed to, to pull the production levels up and there's a chart. Um, we've been showing this chart sort of quite regularly through the, uh, through the year, which sort of shows the ramp up through the year. And again, you can see through October and November, we actually achieved at times, not just on single days, but with this three-day rolling average, you can see there in October and in November, we had weeks where we had significantly above the 27, 28,000 tonne per day target that we had set. previously in the year. So we've demonstrated that the system can push through to the 30,000 ton level. And I think what's interesting is as we start to optimize the process, what we see is the bottleneck sort of move uh, through, through that, through the year as we, as we push through those, those expansion elements and we improve. And so we, you know, we, we saw particularly in this last quarter improvements in the, uh, tug and barging, uh, aspects of the business and also in the transshipment side of things. And so the bottleneck was really then, you know, has pushed back to, um, the barge loading facility, which is obviously fed by, by our screens, uh, and, and, but is, uh, You know, it's the place where we load the barges. And so we had expanded that in 2023. We put a fair bit of effort into speeding that up, widening belts, putting motors in, et cetera. And so that impacted. We hadn't done really much work in 2024 on the barge loader. And that will be then now, you know, an ongoing focus of incremental expansion and debottlenecking. you know, from here on. I guess of note, you know, we also still had a couple of days of downtime during October. We sort of had some weather events and maintenance events that occurred October and November. And then in about the middle, we had a belt failure in the beginning of December on Ecamba, ramped back up to to our plan. But then about around the middle of December, we saw the first sort of serious weather, the weather impacts into the operation. That mainly consisted of a bit of rain, but the main issues were wave heights and wind. And we saw about sort of, I guess, 10 to 12 days of production being affected during that period. But pleasingly, we were able to see The ACUMBA, so our offshore floating terminal, operate for significantly more time during that period than the floating crane, the single floating crane was able to do safely. So we're seeing some of that investment in larger, more resilient pieces of kit come to fruition in that period. And so that bodes well. And indeed, we continue to operate into January past the end of this chart. Because the weather remained reasonable, we shut down on the 6th of January to then go into our maintenance shut. And that was preordained pretty much because of a bunch of commitments that we had with respect to some of our transshipment assets like the tugs and the barges and also in terms of our barge loading facility being taken down for maintenance. And so we've completely disassembled our barge loading facility. So the stacker and the stinger, so the extendable conveyor at the end of the stacker have been completely disassembled and removed from the pontoon. The pontoon is going through a bunch of inspections and maintenance. And we have mobilized the stacker to weeper where we are going through a sort of a a full um breakdown and rebuild of that um and replacing the the whole of the extendable stinger unit is going to be replaced with a uh with a new a new unit so and again all the motors belts uh rollers etc all getting uh getting a full uh full birthday so that that's already uh already done and down in operation in weeper uh with our contracting partners there And we should have that back in the beginning of March. The other notable, look, in terms of outcomes then, in terms of financials, we saw pricing improve from Q3 by about 16%. I haven't gone back to Q, you know, to 2021. three on that, but obviously a strongly increasing price from 2023 as well. And that resulted in site EBITDA margins of just over $17 per ton. So we were guiding, I think, through the year that the back end of this year, we were looking to try and achieve around that $15 per ton for the second half, and we were a bit under that. for last quarter, but a bit over that for this quarter. And I might ask Nathan in a minute to just talk you through some of the financials. But before I do that, I will just cover the market side of things. So that pricing is a result of continued growth in demand from the Asia Pacific in particular. So we're seeing incremental gains out of the Middle East, out of India. But the main market, as you all know, is in China. And so we've seen continued growth, as you can see in that top line. So that's the total demand for bauxite consumption. And that's been growing steadily over the last few years. And you can see the difference between imports are still increasing share. So you can see now that imports are taking over 80% of the sharing consumption of bauxite in China. And that's still being driven by increased demand from aluminium, increased onshore production in the value chain there, and increasingly improved the consumption occurring at the coast is driving that imported demand for bauxite. which we're benefiting from. So we did just about get the calendar year results for this year. So a total of 159 million tons of imported bauxite into China. That's another successive record. Last year was a 13% increase on you know, 2020 through 22. And this year has been another 12% increase in 24 over, over 2023. So, you know, double digit, double digit growth in the main market. And we're seeing that, that broadly continue certainly over the next sort of 12 to 12 to 24 months, nothing to say that's, that's going to stop the, the market for Lumina. So our customers, our book site goes into a, alumina refineries, and you can see at the back end of last year, that price started to rise, you know, through the end of 2023. And then all the way through 2024, we saw sort of, you know, steadily increasing pricing. And then in that sort of last quarter of the year, we started to see even more tightness. Some of that was demand driven, but also there was some supply issues in that, both from Australian companies aluminum refineries from Brazilian aluminum refinery and also domestic tightness in China due to bauxite constraints in China. So you saw quite rapidly the price for bauxite, sorry, for aluminum rise. So when our customer's price rises, then the demand for bauxite, that marginal ton of bauxite becomes even more valuable to produce a very profitable ton of alumina. So you saw record prices for alumina in that sort of last quarter of last year. That then, you know, as I said, that does drive the marginal ton of bauxite in terms of its demands of the spot. This is the spot price, so the single cargo pricing from the CM group for bauxite through since the beginning of 2023. And you can see, you know, steady rises through 2023 and through the bulk of 2024. And then again, in that last quarter, so in that sort of October, November period for and into December, sharp rises for both the Guinea prices, which makes up a large amount of that spot, but also there were some price rises for the Australian cargoes as well, going up towards that sort of $100 per tonne. So this chart extends pretty much up until the current, sort of I think this last week's price. And so we're seeing Guinea price at about, you know, 110 to 120 and the Aussie price at about 90 to 95 US dollars per tonne delivered. So that is the spot. That's the spot price. Now, the Q4 price that's in our quarterly wasn't negotiated when these prices were around. So they were negotiated just before these prices came into effect. And so that was the result that you saw broadly flowing through into our Q4 pricing. I think that shows, obviously, the contract prices are lower when we're dealing with larger customers over quarterly periods, but it does suggest where the trend is going. It has come off a bit, as you can see, a little bit. Those prices rose very sharply and have just come off a little bit in the last month or so. We'll be entering into the market to negotiate the Q2 2025 price in about a month's time. So we'll be looking at these indicator pricing, aluminum price, aluminum demand, bauxite price, caustic soda price, logistics cost, et cetera. These all factor into the negotiation for open volume. And this year we've got about, we're targeting 6.5 to 7, million tons of sales this year in production. So about five and a half to six, depending on the volume, five and a half to six of that is open, depending on what our total volume looks like. So that's where we're at at the moment. We did also, during the quarter, announce a number of new contract partners as part of or extended or new contracts and new partners. So Lube Chemical signed an additional contract. Chalco, the largest aluminium and alumina producer in the world, has also become a substantial customer. And EGA, the Emirates Global Aluminium, who has a large refinery in Abu Dhabi, has also signed contracts. a contract for us for a number of cargo. So that's a really, I think, good indication of customers' risk assessment of Metro and our ability to supply and the quality of our product and also our financial strength, which has sort of obviously grown significantly over the last couple of years. So very, very pleased to have those very strong customers. And that's also in addition to our baseload customers, Jinfa, have been an amazing support to us over the last few years as we've been going through this turnaround and the expansion. So I might hand over to Nathan just to sort of talk us through the financial side of the business.

Yeah, sure thing. Thanks, Simon. So obviously, as you've just seen from some of the market information that Simon's just provided, We're very pleased to have seen that flow through to the site EBITDA margin, which, as mentioned, is a record for metro mining, so that's been very pleasing. I mean, aside from the margin, which we're obviously great beneficiaries of, with the price increase, really the focus for us has continued to be on the site costs to ensure that, from a flow sheet perspective, we're realising all of the gains as part of the economies of scale. That was the original thesis. So, pleasingly, although... Although what we saw was an incremental increase over Q3 2024, within the individual months during this period, we're very pleased to see site costs of getting as close down to $20 a tonne. If not for some reduced loading in December after being cruel by the weather, I'm confident that we would have seen an improvement on Q3 2024. So that's going to continue to be the focus and will be very much a big focus for 2025 is as we better understand our flow sheet and get greater consistency and ultimately reduce the variability in the operation, which is, as you can imagine, you know, far more expensive than versus a sort of more consistent throughput. We're very confident that we're gonna see even greater economies of scale come through in 2025 as we get a little bit more disciplined, a little bit more consistent and get a greater understanding of the flow sheet overall. Just while I've got the floor, I might just touch on some of the other corporate elements. So we were pleased to finish the year in a strong position in terms of cash flow. Obviously, one of the things that we've spoken about before was around the senior debt refinance. So, very pleased to have gotten that done before the end of the year and very pleased with the restructuring in our continuing relationship with the BARI. The other key highlight for us that we're very pleased with is the final junior debt repayment for the year. So, that's a bit of a seminal moment for Metro Mining and one that we're very pleased to have accomplished. during this period and and very very pleased to um beyond that with the repayment um have ingot artists and lamb hill there's they still continue to be very strong supporters of the business and we're very pleased to have them remaining on as um significant shareholders great thanks thanks nathan um i guess what we've both touched on a little bit is uh look we we can review

Q4, and I guess it's right to do so, but it's gone. It's in the past. And look, what I'm very pleased about, you know, in Q4 particularly was these elements that we've used, we've put in place now that really set Metro up. It's about, yes, you know, we've got to deliver on sort of short-term outcomes. And, you know, there's always room for improvement there. But really, this last six months has been really about setting ourselves up again for next year. So, you know, from a top line perspective, you know, the market will be what the market will be. But, you know, we've got in place now a very, very strong customer portfolio. So, you know, we will need to... negotiate prices around what the, the, the sort of contract market looks like, but that, that is a first class, um, offtake portfolio for us, uh, diversified different, different types of companies, different sizes of companies, different companies that operate in different parts of the value chain. So, so really, really, really a good diverse and strong customer portfolio. The, look, the, the production chain, um, all the elements are in place. I'm very pleased to announce that our own tug, Mandung, finally arrived. I mean, that's been a little bit of a difficult project, the refurbishment of that tug, which we purchased, you know, beginning of last year. It hasn't quite gone according to plan, and also means that we didn't see the cost benefits of having that in our operation and had to hire you know, hire an additional tug for the fleet, which has gone towards some of this cost, this cost inflation. But, you know, we've seen that now. We've got our marine fleet in a very, very good position to take on, you know, the next year, the expansion of the upstream part. So all of our prime movers and trucks and trailers are all in place. They're the two 992, the big wheel loaders, They're demonstrated operating the screening plants, you know, really, really seeing, you know, really, really showing what they were, what they were there. So, so look, I think we've, you know, all of that now has been demonstrated up to that 30,000 ton per day operating rate, which is exactly where we want it to be by, by the end of the year. Balance sheet again, you know, credit to Nathan and his team, you know, running a good process, a competitive process there. And, you know, we've seen, you know, cost of funds come down significantly, which is great. And put ourselves in a good position, again, from a cash perspective for this wet season to be able to go and do the things that we need to do. So still, you know, we're focusing on that reliability, on that reducing the variability and being ready to, to to try and hit that sort of seven million ton rate for the whole for the whole of next year so you know extremely pleased that you know all of that has been set up and over and above that you know freight contracts for our delivered freight so we're now moving into a new phase of our contract book for for those uh freight contracts and that you know that will also deliver cost savings to us from a delivered price perspective. So that'll also flow through to that. The differential between SIF and FOB next year will be several dollars better than what we've seen through 2023 and 2024. So these are all the things that really put a lot of effort into. You don't see the immediate benefits. And as we go down, as we start to see those economies of scale, as Nathan said, you know, we will be heading down towards that sort of $20 per tonne sort of FOB site cost. And, you know, that really does place us at the bottom of the cost curve and in a great position to withstand pretty much anything that this market can throw at us. So, yes, you know, very solid, good result for quarter four, but a lot of activity has gone into repositioning us for 2025 and beyond. So Peter, I'm happy to, as always, take some questions. We can stay on a little bit longer after the nominated time to cover as many as we can.

Thanks, Simon. Delivery of another good report. Just one of the questions that I've got here today, and which does keep coming up through us here, is the question of the spot price. Can you perhaps just discuss the tightness of the market and the representation of the spot price versus what your contracted prices are?

Yeah, I think, like most markets, there are often two or three different types of pricing that occur in the market. A spot price literally is what it says. It's an instantaneous price. In this case, it's usually for the single cargo. That cargo could be 50,000 tons, could be 75, could be 110, could be 180,000 ton, you know, the sort of cargos that we ship. So it's just merely a representation of that marginal, you know, supply and demand aspect at that particular time and what one particular buyer and one particular seller are willing to agree. And there is no, I guess, true representation of that in an over-the-counter, you know, index or anything else. So this represents CM Group's best best view of what that you know based on their intelligence based on what they can see in the shipping stats in the export stats or import stats depending on the country what they can see and how they they calculate that so it's a it's a representation of what that marginal ton now um obviously you could you can from a sales strategy um we're a long-term player. Markets can go up and go down and they can go up and down relatively quickly. So we try and build in longer-term contracting. So they tend to be frame contracts that we have with our customers. They can be one, two, three, or even up to say five-year contract lengths. And so within that, they can be different forms of pricing. Consciously, I brought most of that contract pricing down to quarterly pricing over the last couple of years. That's been partly around the fact that I've suspected that prices were going to rise. I didn't quite expect them to go as fast and as high. I sort of expected them to go as high as this, but I thought it might take maybe 18 months or so to get there. It sort of happened over the last sort of six months relatively quickly. quickly. I'm not surprised by the level given the demand in the market, I think the supply constraints that we're seeing and the structural cost of bringing more bauxite on and bringing projects on stream and indeed the logistics costs of shipping, particularly Guinea product halfway around the world. So I'm not particularly surprised by the general level of the pricing. But when we negotiate know contract pricing and they've as i said the quarterly price there'll be a lot of different factors um you know a longer term someone who's got a two or three year contract um you know they are a longer term they won't be looking to experience the volatile highs and by the same token we wouldn't be expected to take the volatile lows. And so there's a more, I guess, sustained level of pricing that goes into that. And it's based around a bunch of different factors. Like I said earlier, the aluminum price. So my customer's price, what are they selling their product for? Their product might be aluminum, it might be aluminum, it might be downstream wheels, et cetera. That would be part of the thinking process. The caustic soda price, the coal price, the energy price is generally coming into the manufacturer of the product. What they can buy from competition, from a product mix point of view. And so all of these, the spot price plays a role, but it's not the only factor that we will use in a negotiation. So a whole bunch of factors. And what we tend to see with contract pricing is a smoother, less volatile set of outcomes. In general, what this does indicate is the trend in which the market is going. And as I said, at the moment, bauxite is very tight. It's in strong demand. Demand is still increasing. Supply is increasing more slowly. And but there are other factors that are driving that on a daily, weekly basis. And so, you know, we will start to see we will see this if this price was to stay the same for the next, say, three to six months, then the majority of the spot price would then factor into the contract price. But it just takes some time for that to occur. But of course, during that time, prices may go higher or they may go lower. So I think that's sort of a long-winded explanation to say that contract and spot are not the same. There are more factors involved. in a quarterly price negotiation. It is still a relatively short-term pricing period, but there are other factors that will go in that will moderate the volatility of that outcome.

There are a few questions coming in here which are recorded. We'll get to all of them perhaps offline. But sticking to the quarterly theme, the freight charges seemed a little high. Would that be reflective of the external tug charges you had to bring in?

It's more reflective probably. So the majority of our freight contracts were fixed. We did because of the, we normally have to indicate our freight about a month in advance. So you can see that if you get a weather event that's unforeseeable, you know, more than say a week in advance, very difficult to modify your structures. So there are, you know, there are demurrage, you know, so when we have to make a vessel wait, we have to pay the cost of that vessel while it waits. And so that factors into that difference between SIF and FOB. There are also other costs in here. So, for example, depending on as we move forward, some of our legacy contracts have relatively high penalties in them for missing grade. As we've expanded through this year, we've seen a few cargoes where, as we've ramped up, grade has been a bit of a casualty of us ramping up. And so we've seen some additional penalties in our contracts for that $1 to $2 a ton maybe in some of those. So you can see, you know, that contains, the majority of it is freight, but most of our contracts have been relatively fixed for freight. So the volatility there has been mainly due to sort of other factors like demurrage costs and maybe penalties. Now, looking forward, as I said, our freight costs are going to drop by about, you know, three US dollars per tonne. As we move forward to that, I'll factor into that differential there. And we've also taken the chance to renegotiate, as I said, with those contracts. And so the penalty rates and the target specifications will have all changed there. So I'm also expecting to see fewer penalties coming through in our contracts. That'll also be a function of us having a more stable, as you ramp up things, can be a little bit volatile and we'll have a more stable production process for 2025 and beyond.

And we've got a question here regarding foreign exchange hedging. It looks like you've got about a month of it hedged. What is the strategy for hedging and what will your foreign exchange hedging program look over calendar 25?

I might start that. question and the answer, and then we get Nathan. I mean, I'll talk a bit more about history and strategy. So look, there was a period, obviously, when we took over the company that margins were extremely, well, they were negative, frankly. And we were trying to as we talked about a lot to investors, tried to become a much more predictable company with a more predictable set of outcomes. And there was a period there, I can't quite remember exactly what it was, but we started to see exchange rates rising towards 80 cents. And that would have been catastrophic for, you know, medium term outcomes for margins as we were trying to recover the business. So We do need, in this period of the last couple of years where we've been trying to turn the company around and then expand with the uncertainty that goes with expansion, try to create a more predictable set of outcomes, even if they may, in the aftermath and on reflection, have actually reduced outcomes. on average, what our margin might have been. At least it's been a more predictable outcome that we've been able to look at. And so hedging for us has been about creating a predictable outcome and not being able to suffer the volatilities of what had caused Metro to get into trouble back in that early 2020 and 2021 period. And so that's been the objective of what we've been trying to do. So I might get Nathan then to answer a more you know, in terms of what's in place and what we're doing now from here on.

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Simon. So as you can imagine, we're pretty conservative with our hedging strategy, both in terms of coverage and also the instruments used. So nothing beyond ultimately some vanilla forwards and participating options. In terms of quantum that we have currently, as at the quarter end, it was about $50 million US notional. That $50 million represents probably about a quarter of what our total sort of net USD exposure would be. over the period. So what that means for us is 75% exposure remaining to obviously benefit from the improved rate. We'll start to, as we get closer to the season, start to lock away some baseload hedging for both Q3 and Q4 at the respective forward rates at the time. But otherwise, pleased with the balance between the risk management from a Q2 perspective, but also being in a position to ultimately start to average that down and benefit from the current rates.

Thanks, Nathan. Probably keeping this question for you as well, we're looking at protecting margins and profits. One question is, we're curious of what the total tax losses are accumulated in the business and when you expect to pay tax

Yeah, sure. Gross carry forward tax losses at the moment is about $260 million. That will obviously be trued up as part of our year-end reporting. I would be expecting at this point, and it's very price dependent, so in the current pricing market, the tax modelling is a little bit earlier than what we might have thought it would be about a year ago, but at this stage of modelling, I'd expect to be paying tax more probably late 2026, early 2027.

Thank you. And probably finish up with this question here. The study for the beneficiation plan, what is the current status on that?

So we did a concept study a couple of years ago on what you might call a sort of traditional WIPA style beneficiation plan. And I guess there are several factors there, obviously CAPEX, OPEX approvals, particularly water and tailings. So these are things that not trivial project elements. And at this point, at that point, we decided that we would pause that work and we would be looking more towards trying to reshape our customer contracts to be more reflective of the longer term grade of our reserves. So we have managed to do that. So our now forward looking contracts are much more reflective of the long term grade in our reserves. So the urgent need for beneficiation um, is not there. And that, that, you know, that allows us to keep things simple. It allows to allows us to keep our costs down, et cetera. Now, I guess looking forward as we do with one thing we're going to do, uh, this year is, is we did a bit of, we did a bit of exploration work in Q4, which you'll note from the, from the report. Um, that was mainly, um, in the, I guess, the close by areas in the orbit of where we're already mining south of the Skarden River. I mean, as we look out beyond that, we look a bit further afield, even to some of our exploration areas, there may well be a balk site there that is of, you know, maybe less of a quality than what we've got. And so the beneficiation, I guess, may come back on the table in that way. But I guess we're just mindful of prioritizing limited resources that we've got on projects, if you like. And right now, I think it's about trying to maximize our throughput and minimize our costs. So we're looking at, you know, projects, they're really going to be focused on hybrid fast, you know, high return, uh, projects like that rather than longer term. Now it's still on the radar screen. Uh, we've got, we've, we've, we've got the ability to re-energize that, but it's not an urgent, it's not an urgent thing for us at the moment.

Thanks Simon. And we'll stick with the operational theme and finish on this question. Um, what sort of money are you expecting to spend during the maintenance shutdown?

Do you want to cover that?

Yeah, sure thing. Typically, we would average somewhere between the $15 million to $20 million cash burn range. This wet season will be closer to $20 million. We're taking the opportunity to do a fair bit of maintenance work and essentially bring forward on what are ultimately the critical assets of the operation. So essentially campaigning some maintenance on the Akumba and the barge loading facility, which is going to stand us in good stead for 2025.

Thank you, gentlemen. That concludes most of the questions here. I've copied them and we'll get back to everybody and anyone that we didn't get to in this session. But thanks for the report today, Simon and Nathan, and thank you to everybody who's attended today. We look forward to hearing from you very soon.