Northern Star Resources Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Northern Star FY25 half-year financial results. 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 Mr. Stuart Tonkin, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks for joining us to discuss our first half FY25 financial results today. We'll be referring to the presentation that's published on the ASX this morning, so I'll refer to the slide numbers there. And with me on the call today is our Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Gerner. We are excited to report record underlying earnings for a second consecutive period, which underscores the value of the profitable growth strategy that we embarked on in FY22. We are more than halfway through the strategy and are well positioned to deliver the end goal of 2 million ounces in FY26, which drives our superior returns. What is very clear is that this interim result again demonstrates the strength and value creation that we are embedding in our business. Both EBITDA and return on capital employed metrics continue to improve, while the balance sheet remains strong and in a net cash position. This multi-year trend reflects our longer-term strategic lens we apply to all parts of our business. We believe this is a key differentiator for all our stakeholders at Northern Star, which we are very proud of. Northern Star offers significant gold price leverage to investors, and we continue to gain strength from the simplicity of our gold-only portfolio, with globally significant scale in the low-risk jurisdictions of Western Australia and Alaska. I thank our team for the effort and the commitment that delivered this excellent result. We remain well positioned to achieve our FY25 production and cost guidance while retaining a firm focus on progressing our key growth plans, including the KCGM mill expansion project, which remains on time and within budget. With that context, I'd now like to hand over to Ryan Gerner, our Chief Financial Officer, who will discuss the results in more detail. Thanks.

Thanks, Stu, and good morning, all. I'll now step you through the first half financials. I'd like to begin on slide four. Our key financial metrics for the group improved significantly on the previous corresponding period. The strength and quality of our assets is illustrated by the company delivering a record underlying EBITDA of $1.4 billion for the first half of FY25, up 58% from the previous period. Maintaining capital prudency and the realisation of tax synergies from the merger have resulted in $1.15 billion of cash earnings, up 63% from the previous period. This record first half cash earnings has enabled the board to declare an unfranked interim dividend of $0.25 per share. The company expects to generate franking credits from Q3, as mentioned in the second quarterly call. and therefore subject to board approval, the final FY25 dividend is expected to be partially to fully franked. In respect of the company's share buyback, we've bought back $257 million in shares to date, and the program is open subject to blackout periods until September 25. Over to slide 5. Our balance sheet supports our strategy and gives us flexibility through the cycle to fund opportunities that may arise to enhance our asset portfolio to deliver long-term superior returns to our shareholders. We remain well positioned to deliver our profitable organic growth strategy with our strong balance sheet, which includes $265 million net cash position at 31 December. We have significant liquidity of $2.7 billion and maintain three investment-grade credit ratings. Over to our production overview slide on slide six. During the first half, the company sold 804,000 ounces of gold at an all-in-sustaining cost of $2,105 per ounce, and we remain on track to meet our FY25 guidance. A key milestone was reached during the first half. After many years of work by our team at Casey Gem, they successfully completed the east wall remediation. This now enables full access to the high-grade Golden Pike North mining area, which is key to lifting production in the second half. At Thunderbox, we're delivering nameplate throughput consistently, which is really pleasing to see. And at Pogo, with the major processing works completed in the half, this asset continues to deliver at the mine and mill, which is translating into great cash flow. Over to page 7. This slide highlights the significant cash generation by the business during the first half with 124 million of group underlying free cash flow. The waterfall chart on the left illustrates the positive contribution from each production centre to the group's cash earnings for the period. Cash earnings for each production centre is represented by the segment EBITDA generated minus the sustained capital spent at that centre. Pleasingly, all production centres contributed strongly with Kalgoorlie, our largest centre, comprising 60% of the group's cash earnings for the period. We will continue our focus on cost and productivity in the second half, which, alongside the planned lift in group production and with the current buoyant gold price, should translate into higher free cash generation. Now, slide eight. We are pleased to have doubled our return on capital employed to 6.1% half on half. This reflects progress in our profitable growth strategy and focus on allocating shareholder funds to generate returns. This also highlights the strength of our first half underlying earnings before interest and tax, which is up 130% from the prior year to $778 million. Over to slide nine. which highlights EBITDA margins achieved by the group and each production centre over the period. All three production centres performed strongly and achieved healthy EBITDA margins. A strong gold price and a focus on costs has delivered an EBITDA per ounce increase from $1,200 per ounce a year ago to over $1,700 per ounce this half. As illustrated by the graph on the left, Kalgoorlie Production Centre continues as the key contributor Iboda and is expected to grow with access to Golden Pike North at Casey Gem. In relation to our profitable growth strategy on slide 10, we are now three and a half years into our five-year strategy and we have delivered major milestones which are key to us achieving our objectives. With the progress made on our strategy and the capital investment undertaken in our operations, the business has generated over $2.1 billion in cumulative operational free cash flow. As you will hear from Stu shortly, we're also well progressed at our KCGN mill expansion project. Over to slide 11. Today, the board has declared a record interim dividend of $0.25 per share, equating to a 25% payout of cash earnings. This dividend is complemented by our $300 million share buyback program, which remains active, demonstrating our purpose to deliver superior shareholder returns. Before I hand over to Stu to finish the presentation, I'd like to step you through page 12, where we've set out our key elements of how we deliver shareholder value, which is through owning world-class assets in Tier 1 locations and applying our DNA of operational excellence. Operating in a safe and responsible way with a demonstrated track record, our portfolio of long-life assets in well-endowed geological systems provides us with flexibility and optionality to extract value and employ capital prudently to where the best returns can be generated. And as an overarching foundation, we maintain a strong balance sheet which enables the execution of our strategy through the cycle. Thanks very much, Stu. Back to you.