Northern Star Resources Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Northern Star September 2023 quarterly results briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Stuart Tonkin, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks for joining us. With me today is Chief Operating Officer Simon Jessop and Chief Financial Officer Ryan Gurner. I'm pleased to present our first quarter results for FY24 and maintain full year production and cost guidance as we are well positioned to deliver growth throughout the year with a strong half two forecast. In September quarter, we completed planned mill maintenance across each of our production centres and delivered a production result of 369,000 ounces sold at all in sustaining costs of Australian dollars, $1,939 an ounce. The September quarter enabled further progress of our organic growth plans with record throughput delivered at Thunderbox. The KCGM mill expansion pre-works and procurement is now well underway. The super bit east wall remediation is accelerating to access the high-grade golden pike zone in the second half of the year, and POGO volumes were consistent and cost-improvement initiatives have been identified and planned there. The balance sheet remains strong with net cash of $284 million and $2.2 billion of liquidity. Whilst we fully fund from operating cash flows, our production growth, our exploration activity, the active share buyback, and subsequent to the quarter, final dividend of $0.155 per share. These are all examples of a mature and sustainable business that you should own. During the quarter, we published our annual report and sustainability reports, as well as a number of disclosure statements. And I thank the team for the work to produce these reports, highlighting the extensive business activity for shareholder and associated stakeholders. And I encourage listeners to review these documents as demonstration of the great work underway at Northern Star. Now Simon will speak to the Australian operations, but first to POGO in Alaska. POGO delivered gold salt of 62,000 ounces and completed planned mill shutdowns during the quarter. Mining physicals were consistent with development above the required 1500 metres a month at 1581. Stoping contribution was two thirds of the ore fed to the mill and grade was representative of mine areas and mining dilution, which remains a focus. We also have focus on costs and that's key at Pogo with an all in sustaining cost in the quarter of US dollars, 1,438 an ounce. The pleasingly total costs were down 12% in the June quarter and planning is underway to reduce the fleet with the rehab jumbo scope diminishing and haul fleet plans to operate fewer, larger and more productive trucks they've all been ordered. During my visit to Pogo during the quarter, drive our costs across all departments. Exploration activity across the group continued with $30 million invested in the quarter to advance our geological targets and we look forward to providing an exploration update in December quarter showing the significant potential of our world-class geological systems. And now I'd like to hand over to Simon for the Australian operations.

Thank you Stu. For the Kalgoorlie Production Centre, including Casey Gem, Karasu Dam, Kananabela and South Kalgoorlie, we sold 183,000 ounces of gold, down 19% at an Australian, all in sustaining costs of $1,844 an ounce. This production delivered a mine operating cash flow of $174 million, while we spent $219 million on significant growth capital projects, including $80 million on the Casey Gem Mill expansion and $70 million on Casey Gem open pit mine development and new tail storage facilities. At Casey Gem, open pit material movement was in line with plan at 21.7 million tonnes in the quarter, Golden Pike South was completed during the quarter, which now enables uninterrupted access to mining the east wall remediation area. This is a real highlight as we continue to accelerate towards unlocking the 1.2 million ounces at the base of the pit. We're on track for the commencement, recommencement of mining in Golden Pike North in H2 of this financial year as a key driver of KC Gem's ounce profile over the next three years. Underground mining volumes for the Kalgoorlie region increased to 1.61 million tonnes, while grade reduced 13% to deliver 120,000 ounces. The lower grade was driven from Mount Charlotte and Karasu, having limited access to high grade areas. Casey Gem's underground Mount Charlotte operation stabilised all production at 520,000 tonnes with development lifting 52% quarter on quarter to 3.2 kilometres. The Karasu Dam Porphyry Underground Mine successfully commenced stoping and will ramp up over the course of FY24 as a new high-grade feed source for Karasu. This mine is run by our in-house Northern Star Mining Services Division. which averaged 470 metres a month with a single jumbo for the quarter. The Kalgoorlie operations of Kanaunabell and South Kalgoorlie mines were stable quarter on quarter on underground mine volumes and growth. Processing volumes in the Kalgoorlie Production Centre had their major annual planned shutdowns for maintenance. Casey Gem had its full re-line of the Pimleston SAG, along with the usual bi-annual major maintenance activities. Lower head grades were driven from the Casey Gem and Karasu Dam operations, along with reduced mill volumes, which is planned for this time of the year. The Casey Gem mill expansion spent $80 million during the quarter and successfully commenced the on-ground enabling works. The engineering and design works are progressing very well, with Primero assembling a high-quality team for this marquee project. which is integrating well with our Northern Star project team. The focus is on the preparation for the main construction team to commence on-ground site works at Casey Gym in quarter three of FY24. At our Yandall production centre, including Jundee, Thunderbox and Bronzewing, we sold 124,000 ounces of gold at an Australian all-in sustaining cost of $1,929 an ounce. This production delivered a mine operating cash flow of 96 million while we spent 40 million on growth capital projects. Primarily 18 million was spent on the Aurelia open pit. At our Jundi operation, development advance was 7.5 kilometres with 687,000 tonnes mined and 80,000 ounces for the quarter. Processing had its major plan shut down along with an unplanned crushing circuit downtime event. which limited throughput at the end of the quarter. This also delayed processing of high grade ounces into the December quarter. The Jundee Renewable Project is on track for the 16 megawatt solar farm and 12 megawatt battery energy storage system to be online in FY24, the second half. The 24 megawatt wind farm works are continuing and on track for FY25. Thunderbox underground operation achieved a new site record with 603,000 tonnes of ore mined and the highest quarterly physicals to date. For the quarter, the underground and open pit operations successfully mined 1.95 million tonnes of ore, which is above the nameplate of the newly expanded process plant. The Thunderbox Process Plant achieved a new record of 1.37 million tonnes milled for the quarter, with a major plant shutdown and 58,000 ounces of gold sold. The throughput tonne per hour lifted to an average of 775 tonne per hour for the entire quarter, which is 25 tonne per hour above the nameplate. The focus for the processing team continues to be around availability and utilisation, along with stabilisation in the plan. We are very pleased with the quarterly step change in throughput of this processing facility and the lift in gold sold. I'll now pass over to Ryan, our Chief Financial Officer, to discuss the financials.

Yeah, thanks, Simon, and good morning, all. As demonstrated in today's quarterly results, the company remains in a robust financial position. Our balance sheet remains strong, as set out in Table 3 on page 8, with cash and bullion of $1.2 billion at 30 September, and we remain in a net cash position of $285 million. Pleasingly, our assets collectively generated positive free cash flow, with the group's capital expenditure fully funded. Figure 9 on page 9 sets out the company's cash movements for the quarter, with key elements being the company recording $397 million of operational cash flow. And looking ahead to the remaining quarters of the financial year, this is forecast to rise with access to high-grade, low-strip material at Golden Pike North, Casey Gem, planned high-head grade and recoveries at Jundee, continued throughput increases and recovery at Thunderbox with increasing grade planned and contributions from high-grade all-source of the Porphyry Underground at CDO. After deducting capex of $299 million relating to plant and equipment and mine development, $31 million in exploration and $39 million in equipment finance and lease costs, quarterly free cash flow generation was $28 million. Quarterly investment in sustaining capital, growth capital and exploration are tracking to plan. Growth capital includes development of Porphyry Underground at CDO and open pit development at Aurelia and KCGM. Growth capital includes $80 million for the KCGEM plan expansion and includes work performed and commitments in respect of the major equipment package enabling works and prepayment to the EPC contractor relating to the process plant works. As announced with the FY23 financials, the company has extended its $300 million share buyback program for a further 12 months to the 13th of September 2024. During the quarter, 3.7 million Northern Star shares, totaling 41 million, were bought back and cancelled. And the company purchased the Milrose Gold Project, which is an advanced exploration asset located 40 kilometres east of our Jundi operations. While operational free cash flow is expected to increase in Q2, please note, subsequent to the quarter end, the company paid its FY23 financial dividend, which Stu mentioned, semi-annual coupon payment on the bonds and the fy 24 annual group insurance premiums on other financial matters depreciation amortization are in line with expectations at the midpoint of the guidance range approximately 700 dollars per ounce sold and for the quarter non-cash inventory charges for the group are 29 million The majority of these non-cash charges relate to the milling of acquired stockpiles of KC Gem and are a component of IBIDA. Lastly, in respect of hedging, Table 4, page 9, sets out the company's committed hedge position at 30 September, with the overall hedge book being 1.68 million ounces at an average price of 2,929 per ounce Australian. During the quarter, the company placed 330,000 ounces at an average price above 3,300. These were predominantly placed across FY26 and FY27 financial years. I'll now hand back to Travis for the Q&A session. Thanks.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then 2. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question today comes from Mitch Ryan from Jefferies.

Please go ahead. Morning, Stu and team. Thank you very much. First question was just the sort of $45 million of M&A expenses in your cash flow waterfall. The majority of that relates to the Melrose project. Is that the correct understanding? Yeah, Mitch Ryan here. Yeah, that's right, Mitch, yeah. Okay, okay. I thought there might be some very busy bankers and there might be something happening. Okay, and just the second one. Did the unplanned impact of the clash in 2nd of Jundi, did that fall over into the current quarter as well, or was it all resolved by the end of the September quarter?

Yeah, thanks, Mitch, Simon. Yeah, all resolved during the quarter. The frustrating thing there was just it happened in month three of the quarter, so early in September quarter, just as we sort of got the high grade from Jundi from the sequence came through. So that's just been pushed into Q2, of which we're milling. So, yeah, all resolved during quarter one. Awesome.

Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. The next question comes from Daniel Morgan from Baron Joey. Please go ahead.

Hi, Stuart and team. So first question is just on the super pit. Can you confirm if I've read this correctly? Basically, you're going to do a big waste removal campaign in half one, which is going to give you access to high grade ore at Golden Pike in half two. Can I just clarify if that's the case? And is access at Golden Pike more weighted to Q4 and is Q2 grade likely to be similar to Q1 that we've just witnessed. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Daniel. Simon. Yeah, so during the quarter, we finished Golden Pike South. So that's successfully finished that part of the pit we've been mining over the last few years. And while we were doing that, we were continuing to mine the East Wall remediation area, which is probably about 80 complete now um so during q2 we'll continue to mine through the east wall area and progressively get ourselves um set up for golden pie of north access in h2 so in terms of in terms of grades uh it's it's probably similar to quarter one but we don't have the mill uh shutdown uh event so a bigger quarter for us in terms of throughput and run time.

Yeah, but you identified it right that the way it's moving in half, you know, it's transitional quarter and it sort of moves that once that second half and that golden pike, you know, Simon spoke that there's 1.2 million ounces there, so it sits at about 1.8 grams. The strip ratio is below two. That momentum in the second half of that golden pike north really lifts the profile and then that continues for years. It's not just a sort of honeypot, that's All of the efforts to get the east wall remediated is to access that high-grade pit floor from that slip from back in 2018. We're right on the cusp of liberating that value.

So on that east wall remediation, is it safe to say that you should be mostly done by the end of this fiscal year on cleaning that up? I know it's been a huge campaign at the site.

Yeah, so the work done to access the floor will be there continuing to clear off the benches above and do that remediation work for the long term. But there's two parts of it. One is to just access safely on the pit floor, and that happens half two. There'll be some continuing costs associated with waste removal because we've got to get the containment bund and a few of those benches cleared, and that will continue throughout the year.

Thank you. Financial year, Daniel, will be finished on the east wall remediation.

That's a huge catalyst, many years in the making. Just switching over to POGO, the physicals looked really good, but the grade was a tad weak. Can we expect that this might improve in the future quarters? Thank you.

Yeah, it is a bit swings and roundabouts, you know, very similar to a Jundi. You end up with sort of quite a variance in grade and we expect it always returns to reserve grade through the plant. We still have some modest stope dilution there that we're working on, but a lot of that was the backlog of cleaning out a lot of waste stockpiled underground and the development of ore. So although stoping was two-thirds of the feed, there was just varied grade that was held and stockpiled underground through that planned shutdown. So, yeah, there's a bit of that catching up of that material, but, yeah, we don't see that as – we see that as a very temporary position on that grade.

Thank you. And last question is a financial one. During the quarter, you recommenced your buyback. Can you just clarify what is the, you know, what are the triggers for bringing back the buyback on or not? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Dan. Obviously, you know, the company, we were sort of just under 50% last financial year. So obviously the board made the decision to extend that. Just to remind everyone, we've got blackout. We follow our own blackout period, so we can't look to buy back shares all the time. And we're just looking to be opportunistic over the 12 months. We bought back another $41 million this quarter, so we're advancing on that. We've got lots of time left in the financial year to complete.

And it sort of has to stay live, Daniel, as you appreciate that our internal model and valuation modifies when gold price changes. So, you know, Aussie gold's at $3,075 an ounce. So it's always continually, you know, reviewing where our best returns are for our capital employed. We've obviously got a lot of organic growth projects underway, but the commitment is that that buyback's available to us for that extension of 12 months.

Okay, thank you very much, Stuart and Tim. Thank you. The next question comes from Matthew Freidman from MST Financial. Please go ahead.

Sure. Thanks. Morning. A couple of questions from me, if I can. Firstly, maybe drilling down into the mining costs at KCGM. Look like a pretty strong quarter, if my rough numbers are right. In the open pit, you're moving dirt at about $1.20 a tonne. So I guess, you know, now that you've tidied up some of those areas in Golden Pike South and you're getting stuck into more productive areas, is it fair to assume that that's the kind of material movement cost that you're sort of aiming for going forward or you're budgeting at the operation?

Yeah, Matt, look, I'd love it to be $1.20 a tonne. It's pretty consistent around that $4 cost. $4.50 a tonne, just depending on where we're mining. So we'll get some shorter haulage over the next sort of period as we're mining higher up in the pit. And then as we access Golden Pike North, we'll obviously spend some more money in terms of hauling from the base of the pit. However, you know, strip ratio of less than two to one and the grade, you know, 1.8 to 2 grams, we're always going to go to the base of the pit when it's available. So that's broadly where we sit. We did achieve 66,000 trucking hours again, so fairly consistent now in terms of peak material movement.

Yeah, got it. Thanks, Simon. I was talking on a TMM basis, whereas I'm not sure that you might have been talking on a per tonne of ore mine basis. But anyway, I can dig through those numbers a bit after the call to work out where we're at. I just see the open pit mining cost on a dollar per ounce basis and turn that into... Turn that into dollar millions, and it's obviously quite a low number relative to where you've been tracking for the last few quarters. But no, I appreciate that additional detail. Thanks. We can go to the number.

Right. We'll also verify the allocation of that growth capital, which is a lot of that waste movement. And there's potentially some re-handle on stockpile that's quite cheap in that as well.

Yeah. So, Matt, so obviously with Golden Pike South finishing, which would be in your operating costs, whereas – you know, Simon's talking more just generally as a material movement, a lot of it is waste. So that's either relative to the cutback, which would be in growth. So, yeah, we'll go through the splits after the call, if you like.

Yeah, that'd be helpful. Thanks, Ryan. Maybe secondly, perhaps a somewhat similar question on Pogo and obviously Stu, you gave some colour about how you're upsizing the equipment there and obviously with the improvements in, I guess, mine development that you actually don't need necessarily all of the equipment that's down in the hole. Do you have in mind a mining cost either in Aussie dollars a tonne or US dollars a tonne that you're sort of targeting for that operation going forward? I think at the moment in Aussie dollars you're sort of running at about you know, call it $200 a tonne mining cost. Is that, you know, again, what sort of quantum of improvement can we expect from those changes?

Yeah, I won't sort of say cost per tonne targets at the moment. I guess I'm still trying to get to the $1,000 all in sustaining US an ounce target. Not talking tons, and I know we've got years to get to there given we're a guided and 1100 is probably the first checkpoint. That's a real target. So during my visit, it was going through and the only way we can achieve that with the current format is is striking out, you know, line items of costs. And so things like the sixth jumbo, we see that it will complete its work and then the rest of the jumbos will take up that type of sporadic rehab work as part of its normal activity. So we can still maintain above 1500 metres a month and all the rehab with five jumbos. So it takes one good cost line out. The trucking is a really interesting one because we've sort of run 10 trucks and we believe we can get down to six trucks with the larger fleet. We've got one that we've been trialling and I viewed that when I was there and I've placed orders to order six of those to replace the current fleet. And that's across the labour, not the congestion underground, the productivity, the tonnage and the speed on grade and all those things that come through of taking 10 to six trucks to move the same material, a step change. And what we've done and how we can do that is gone through the mine and taken and stripped out and moved services to enable that much larger truck to fit. And that's been years in the making because you're retrofitting a historically old mine. And we've basically got that fixed. to all the areas to prove that that's capable of doing that. And then a lot of the costs in pogo are above ground. A lot of the G&A and, you know, reagents and energy costs and those things. So it's every department. You know, in Australia, typically the mining cost from an underground perspective is your biggest gains. In Pogo, there's a balance between underground and open surface activity where that cost is significant and the dry stack tiles and the float plant and all those things. So across every department, there's a lot of work to identify doing more with less and getting the most out of the infrastructure that's there.

Sure, got it. Thanks, Stu. Yep. And then maybe finally, a bit of a higher level one on M&A. As of this week, you guys are now officially the biggest ASX listed gold miner. Clearly, we can see from the end of the quarterly that you've got a strong balance sheet. $1.2 billion in cash and bullion is a pretty enviable position. There's certainly a lot of peers out there that aren't nearly as well capitalized as you guys. So How do you think about the high-level strategy for M&A in that setting? Has that changed? And how do you think about, I guess, the scale of inorganic growth opportunities, what you'd like to target and what's meaningful for the business going forward?

Yeah, look, I went to the North American Gold Conference, Denver Gold, in the quarter, and there's a lot of chatter around what would happen post that tie-up with Newcrest and any assets would go. But we're pretty clear on saying the ones we like in all of their portfolio are the ones that Newmont also likes, so it's unlikely they'll be coming available. And then down the lower end of registers, I still expect to see plenty of activity in that regard. But where we're sitting in our space, I think the best value and the efforts for us are our organic projects that we're, you know, this is hump year. We're in a five-year strategy. We've progressed our projects very well across all of those assets. You know, we spoke about where we're positioned at KCGM, which is the next kind of real key lift up in a house profile project. that is the team's focus and efforts presently, and there's still enormous value to get out of the current portfolio without worrying about external stuff. So, yeah, you always look, but we'll keep busy on what we already have. Okay, got it. Thanks, Stuart.

Thank you. The next question comes from Meredith Schwartz from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Stu and team. A question for POGO for me, please. There's been a lot on that this morning, but can you talk through the grade optimisation work that you're doing and the production initiatives that are ongoing and what that entails for lifting the grades? And then secondly, with reserve grades at around the 8.6 grams per tonne, do you think that a grade level that you can achieve in time? How do you look at the grade profiling for POGO looking forward? Thank you.

Thanks, Meredith. So if you go back a number of quarters, we were... Well, we're incurring two things. One, sort of the lower stoke tonnes overall. So it was development led and the development ore is a lower grade, which is opening up those new mining areas. So the ratio of development order to stoping ore. But also we were incurring some stoke dilution. which we've modified our mining design. So there's two key elements we've done to change that, bring in the drill and blast designs and shorten the length of the stopes to create less geotechnical issues. We've also put most of the ore drives, the placement of those on a survey control so that the dilution, the vein is in the correct positioning in the face for the stopes benefit, not for the development face, which means you might get worse development grade, but you get better stope grade. So that's been the structural change, and it takes six to 12 months to work that through the whole mine design. So they're things initiated by the site, and they're underway, and they're working. And so we absolutely accept and believe we'll migrate back to reserve grade, remembering the institute resource grade is above 10 grams per tonne. Mine dilution factors take it down to reserve grade, so to 8.5. So, yeah, maintaining above 8 grams is an average mill feed. will get us that ounce profile. We've also run the mill above 1.3 million tonne name plate. So the June quarter had run at 1.45 and that's a leveller for any sort of reduction in grade. So yeah, lots of busy things happening at Pogo. Apologies, we can't just take quarterly stats and drag, right? It's still moving, but we know which parts we're working on.

Yeah, thanks for that. Because I know that it is quite a variable grade deposit. And in mining dilution, so that 8.6 or the mid-8 grand per tonne is achievable as a mill rate. So that's great. Looking at KCGM, I've noticed over the last, few quarters the recovery rates have been trending lower is that simply a function of of lower grade um do you see those recovery rates lifting back up to the 83 84 percent moving forward as you see a lifting grade can you talk through the the recoveries please

Yeah, thanks, Meredith. This is Simon. Yes, the grade in the last quarter was, you know, a couple of percent lower. That was really driven by we had some filter belt maintenance issues at the back of the plant. So what that meant was instead of sending, treating majority of the concentrate up at Gidgee, we actually used the Fimston ultra-fine grind material um facility at phimston and what that means is you get a reduced residence time through the plant so that was um that that was a one-off in terms of we had to had to do that just to try and get through the concentrate stocks um that's all rectified now and we're back to a long much longer residence time up at gidgie so that that was a the key driver a little bit of float maintenance um issues in the quarter, but we'll absolutely go back to our 83, 84%.

Perfect. Thanks, Simon. Thanks for the answers.

Thank you. The next question comes from Al Harvey from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good day, Stu and team. Just back to M&A briefly. So I guess Milrose was a bit of a bolt-on acquisition. Do note, though, you've still got the Asisco bond on the balance sheet. And I guess that was initially thought of as something as a stepping stone to something a bit more substantive prior to the DD you did. Just want to get a sense of how that bond's fitting in the strategy in the medium to long term. Plans are there and, yeah, just, you know, that kind of trade-off between smaller bolt-ons and, yeah, something more substantive.

Yeah, thanks, Al. So, yeah, the dementia was a convertible note for the purpose of almost a deposit. to enable exclusivity and three months of DD with the opportunity converted into direct interest in the JV on that quality deposit. So we obviously didn't get there in any agreement. And since then, it's been dealt. But the dementia remains with coupon being paid. I think it's got another two and a bit years. um, to, to run through, um, depending on what Cisco cheers to do. So yeah, no, no issue from, from us. Um, you know, sense in where that's at, since giving us a coupon, where net cash anyway. So we're servicing all of the growth and the dividends and the buybacks from cash flows. So it's not that it's burning a hole in our pocket. We don't like seeing lazy cash sitting around, though. But I think I recall sort of 154 million Canadian or something like that. So It's meaningful, but it was more how it got there in the first place. We didn't utilise it in the form we'd set it out to be, so it'll eventually return to us.

John, thanks, Stu. And just quickly on Milrose, I guess 350,000-ounce resource, 1.8 grams per tonne, a bit lower than Jundi Reserve grade and a 30k haul. Is there anything there that we should be thinking about in terms of upside beyond, I guess, or is it just purely for the ounces and life extension? And maybe if you could touch on when you think it could potentially feed into the mine plan.

Yeah, so our exploration budget every, I mean, across the group is $150 million. But, you know, when you see things like that, the team did at Melrose, One, we didn't know that they'd advanced that resource well, and we're exploring and developing that to be something. And then natural fitters that can come through our plant. So we saw a pretty neat transaction that met their shareholder needs and ours. It's oxide, right? So it'll come through fairly well, quickly, free, cheaply through the plant on top of current milling rates. So it doesn't necessarily displace hard rock feed. It can come through that plant. But you've still got a fair bit of runway to sequence that into the mine plan and, again, drill it, drill it and see if we can grow it to get a bit of that supplementary satellite feed. But, yeah, I wouldn't count it in 24, maybe 25. There may be some capital associated with haul roads and those sorts of things in 25 years.

Yeah, sure. Makes sense. Thanks, Stu.

Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. The next question comes from Hugo Nicolese from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Morning, Stuart. Thanks for the update this morning. Maybe just another one on Pogo. Obviously a pretty good result in the quarter given the shutdown, but you highlighted some early success in cost reductions. I was just wondering if you could talk through what those were to date. And what other opportunities you might have there to get the costs down at Pogo? And then I'll come back with the second thing.

Yeah, so, I mean, there's many. I guess the main structural ones are still to come in regard to sort of removal of fleet. But what we've seen in productivities across all of our fleet, and this is delivered by the US team, so we've reduced our – if I kind of think about over the period, we started with about 80-plus fleet. expatriates across the team. We're down to about 40 and therefore the US team are delivering these physicals out of the operation. So we've been able to remove some of those training levels of skills and duplication of costs in that regard as the US team are meeting and exceeding those productivity rates. So that's one element. The other element is fewer machines and to to do the same work or do more work, and that's across everything. So even our diamond driller, they're increasing metres per shift. The jumbo is increasing their metres per month and maintaining at those levels without training. All of the haulage fleet loaders and trucks have been performing at max hours and productivity, and then we can make structural changes in larger trucks, fewer trucks. So that's a lot of the underground activity. reducing dilution, so we're not moving waste, you know, we're moving more ore. And they've also created more real estate outside of the portal when some of the waste has come out to create hard stand outside in front of the workshop in the valley, which means a lot of the inventory has been moved up closer to the portals, so there's less time trampling equipment around the region. So there's just so many things that are now done that set us up work underway in the last few years, and some of this has to be done seasonally. We just see that benefit starting to flow through. Then there's all the processing stabilisation, and there's still a lot of work to do there. We see massive opportunities. It's just around timing, capital associated with a disruption to production activity, The whole plant doesn't even have a primary crusher. It all goes through a grizzly. We created our underground ore bins that help the flow of material and give a search capacity to keep sustainable feeds. All of these things are just adding to the benefit of it. So I could talk for hours on it, but it's been what... What's required, we're setting this up for multi-decades, and that's been the view to get the all-in sustaining cost ultimately down to that $1,000 US all-in sustaining cost, and we're sitting up above $1,400 an ounce at the moment. So some of it's ounce denominator, some of it's true cost ripped out of the cost structure.

Brilliant. Thanks for that. Sounds like pretty successful so far and still a lot of optionality there. Second one, just really more clarification on John D., Apologies if you already mentioned it, but how long was the crushing circuit out and when did that one come back on?

Yeah, thanks, Hugo, Simon. It was out for 12 days in total on the crushing circuit. That was sort of early September. So really in the last week of September, we got back. We've got the crushing going again. We obviously were drawn down our crush stocks, but we're in great shape at the moment. 60,000 tonnes crush stocks. And, you know, all that's rectified on the crushing circuit.

Great. Thanks for that, Simon. I'll pass on.

Thank you. The next question comes from Alex Papaya now from Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, student team. Just one from me. At KCGM, can you remind me what is needed to lift Mount Charlotte to the 2.5 million tonne run rate? And is the target still to get to that 2.5 run rate this FY?

Yeah, thanks, Alex. It's really incrementally just opening up more stoking area. We've gone from sort of 2.1 kilometres development the previous quarter to 3.2 kilometres in the existing quarter we've just had. So the more development we get in, the more stoking areas we're bringing online. And that really gives our underground team more opportunities to develop. to keep increasing the tons so it'll steadily steadily increase um um as we as we really open up more mining areas and it's the you know the leading leading pieces the development um activities required so you'll just steadily keep seeing um that casey gem underground uh you know ramp up to 2.5 million tons we're absolutely very confident we'll get the 2.5 million tonnes this year's step change over the course of the year.

Great. Thanks. That's it for me.

Thank you. At this time, we're showing no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to Stuart for closing remarks.

Okay, and thanks for joining us all on the call today, and I look forward to updating you as we continue to advance a profitable organic growth strategy. Have a great day.