Northern Star Resources Limited

Good morning and thanks for joining our FY23 Path 1 results presentation. With me on the call today is Chief Operating Officer Simon Jessup. Managing Director Stu Tomkin is at our PODA operations on a routine visit ahead of attending a North American Global Mining Conference. I will now step you through the results presentation which was lodged on the ASX this morning. I'll let you all review the usual disclaimers on slide two at your own leisure. I'd like to begin on slide three. You will see our results and throughout this presentation, we've continued to generate superior returns for our shareholders. Our focus remains on operational excellence and a disciplined and mature approach to investing shareholder funds. Northern Star continues to build from strength to strength. This is achieved from our simplified portfolio of three large scale production centres in tier one jurisdictions producing one commodity, gold. I'm particularly proud of the people and their commitment to safety and sustainably execute our value creation strategy. Turning to slide four. Despite the challenges the resource sector currently faces with cost pressures and labour constraints, The strength and resilience of our assets was illustrated with the company delivering a strong underlying EBITDA of $633 million during half one of FY23. Maintaining capital prudency and the realisation of tax synergies from the merger during the first half have resulted in a generation of significant cash earnings which totaled $467 million. Pleasingly, this was higher than the first half of FY22. A reminder that cash earnings represents the amount of underlying earnings which is available for return to shareholders, profitable growth related investments and balance sheet management. A reconciliation is provided at the back of the presentation. These strong first half cash earnings has enabled the board to declare a record fully franked interim dividend of 11 cents per share. This represents a 10% increase from the FY22 interim dividend and towards the top end of our dividend payout policy. The company is expecting approximately $32 million in income tax refunds in the second half of FY23. Following these receipts and the payment of the FY23 interim dividend, the company's available franking credit balance will be approximately $3 million. The company does not expect to generate franking credits for at least 18 months due to the synergies arising on merger temporarily reducing the company's taxable income of its Australian operations. This means we anticipate the company's next few dividends to be unfranked, subject to future profitability. In respect of the company's $300 million share buyback, good progress has been made on the program during the first half and it remained open subject to blackout periods until September. And we remain well positioned to deliver our near-term low capital intensity organic growth profile with our strong balance sheet, which includes $145 million net cash position at December. Now to our operations on slide five, which have all continued to deliver in what is a challenging environment. Across our three production centres, we remain on track to meet FY23 guidance. During the first half, and as outlined on this slide, we've made great progress across each of the production centres on our low-risk five-year profitable growth strategy to become a 2 million ounce gold producer by FY26. Turning over the page to slide six. As illustrated, all three of our production centres continue to generate positive cash earnings. Key growth projects at Pogo and Thunderbox are delivering significant cost improvements. We will maintain our sharp focus in the second half on costs which, alongside the expected lift in production, should further build cash to maintain the company's strong financial position. Moving on to slide seven. I talked earlier about our focus and disciplined approach to managing shareholder funds. This slide highlights the key elements of our capital management framework and the importance of our balance sheet and risk management to maximise shareholder returns over the long term. We remain in a strong financial position with $1.1 billion in liquidity at 31 December and continue our sensible and consistent approach to mitigate risk in light of external conditions to support the delivery of our strategy. Now to slide eight. And before I hand over to Simon to talk to our operations in the next few slides, I'd like to say that as the team we are really pleased with the progress made during the first half of FY23. And we are very proud to be the best performing senior global gold stock on a total shareholder return basis over the past 12 months. Over the Northern Star journey, and including our declared instant dividend of 11 cents per share, we've now returned over $1.1 billion to our shareholders.

Thank you, Ryan. And on slide nine, at the halfway point of FY23, we have sold 773,000 ounces of gold, or 48% of the midpoint of God. And in Australia, in all our sustaining costs, of $1,766 an ounce, which is 106% of the midpoint of guidance. We remain on track for the stated yearly guidance of gold sales ranging between 1.56 and 1.68 million ounces at an Australian all-in sustaining cost of $1,630 to $1,690 an ounce. Also previously stated, our guidance is second-half weighted due to the commissioning of the Thunderbox Process Plan, KCGEN's open pit or sequence timing, and POGO moving into higher-grade stoves. On slide 10, you can see our profitable five-year organic growth strategy planned out to FY26. I would like to emphasise that this growth path has low risk delivery and is executable from within our existing assets. So far this year, we have made significant progress. At KCGEM over half one, we saw a pleasing annualised movement rate of 84 million tonnes per annum, which is within our stated 80 to 100 million tonne per annum strategic goal. The new fleet is operating very well plus we continue to look for further optimisation. The Thunderbox mill is well positioned to operate at 6 million tonnes per year nameplate capacity during the second half and remains a key driver of increased ounces from the Andal region. The newly installed process plant expansion will take Thunderbox from 3 million tonnes per annum to a 6 million tonne per annum nameplate capacity. While at POGO, we have maintained the expanded 1.3 million tonne per year run rate through the mill. We continue to focus on optimisation initiatives at the mine, particularly high-grade stoke wall contribution. We are well on plan to deliver our profitable growth plan to 2 million ounces per year by financial year 26. Now moving on to slide 11. We maintain being in an enviable position with a significant mineral resource base of 56.4 million ounces and reserves of 20.6 million ounces. We have very effective and efficient exploration programs, which is shown on adding ounces to the resource base at $24 an ounce last year. We have committed 125 million to exploration over FY23, at our high quality geological systems to replace and profitably grow our mine lives. Turning to slide 12, the chart shows our visibility to improve renewable projects across each of our assets and to reduce our carbon footprint. We have commenced planning and implementation of these projects to enable a 35% reduction in scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 2030. and a net zero target by 2050. On slide 13, at present we are still in the process of evaluating whether to expand the milling capacity at Casey Gem due to the large stock bowls stranded on the surface from past mining. While the project has many merits, the current 13 million tonne per annum milling capacity does remain an option. A reminder that the potential expansion is not included in our five-year strategy to reach 2 million ounces by FY26. Earlier we spoke about capital management discipline. Given our extensive knowledge and our understanding of the KCGM ore body, we see low technical and geological risk to committing to such a project. We continue to monitor external pressures while working to de-risk the execution elements of any expansion and will come to a decision point during 2023 calendar year. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Ryan.

Thanks, Simon. And to summarise just on slide 14 here, that we continue to execute on our clearly defined strategy of generating superior returns. Completion of growth projects at Thunderbox and Pogo are expected to generate increased cash flow and strong investor returns. And at Casey Gem, we are making great progress and are quickly unlocking the significant opportunities that exist at this tier one asset. Thanks very much for listening. I'll now hand back to Travis for questions.