Ramelius Resources Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Remelius Resources half-year 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 via the phones, you will need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. To ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the Ask a Question box and click Submit. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mark Zeppner, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Travis. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our half-year results to December 2025. Alongside me is our CFO, Darren Millman. Today, I'll start with a brief overview of the operating performance and some recent updates at Dalgorenga before Darren goes through the underlying earnings and financials in more detail. We have uploaded to the ASX this morning, along with our website shortly, a number of documents including our half year 26 financial summary, the half year accounts, interim dividend and a presentation that we'll largely be speaking to this morning. So we start on slide three. Here we set out our gold production for the last two and a half years. Operationally, performance was in line with our expectations highlighted in the five-year growth pathway released last October. As you can see in the graph, this period is our lowest production level with 101,000 ounces produced, with Edna May being placed into carrying maintenance in FY25, and the Kew Mine's performance returning closer to geological model predictions. Production is on track to deliver FY26 guidance, which is a touch below 200,000 ounces for this year. Moving on to slide four, we announced yesterday that first of all, the Never Never deposit at Dalgaranga has been hauled to the Mount Magnet processing plant. This is a key milestone in realising our vision to become a 500,000 ounce producer by FY30. Thanks to the dedication of our team for this achievement, and it's an important milestone, just over 200 days over the closure of the combination with Spartan. And at the end of January, we had a healthy 31,000 tonne stockpile of Never Never Ore at a grade of 3.6 grams per tonne at Mount Magnet. Now, whilst this grade is below the reserve grade of 7.3, it should be noted that this ore is all development ore and from the top part of the ore body. From March, we are planning to blend this initial lower-grade ore with other Mount Magnet ore sources. Higher-grade parts of the stockpile will be introduced in the June 2026 quarter once fine-tuning has occurred at the Mount Magnet plant. On to slide five, you'll see the Never Never mining schedule. We are on track, both in terms of tonnes and grade. And from FY28 onwards, these metrics significantly increase as the main section of the ore body is accessed. Turning to slide six, key mining and production highlights. Pleasingly, tonnes mined were up 64% with the introduction of a third fleet, excavation fleet at the Kew Pits, and mining also taking place at a lower strip ratio. The mine grade was down 46% to 2.66 grams per tonne. but we are comparing this to a period which included mining from the break-a-day pit at a grade of 7.9 grams, which is quite remarkable for an open pit. At the group level, milk tons were down due to Edna May now being placed into care and maintenance. However, at Mount Magnet, throughput improved some 18%, with a new line of design that we had discussed previously being optimised, and optimised material being blent. and very high mechanical availability. As expected and planned, mill grade and production was down as we await the introduction of Dalgaranga high-grade oil. The half-year financial performance benefited from strong $8 gold price with reducing hedge book commitments, resulting in a 36% increase in the realised gold price. Without stealing too much of Darren's thunder, I would highlight that we delivered a very strong oil and sustaining cost margin, of $2,921 for every ounce sold. And I think you will agree this is a very impressive return and one that we see is only increasing with our reduced hedge book commitments going forward.

With that, I'll hand over to Darren. Thank you, Mark. For those following on the presentation, I'll be initially speaking to slide seven and our underlying earnings. It's important to talk about our underlying earnings as there were significant one-off and non-cash adjustments between the statutory and underlying earnings in the half, primarily relating to the Spartan acquisition. We have previously highlighted these two significant adjustments that were recorded in the period. These included a $133.2 million of non-recurring acquisition costs, which with estimated stamp duty payable of $131 million of this, The other adjustment of note is the 46.6 million non-cash fair value adjustment to Spartan's pre-existing royalty obligation. This reflects two things. Firstly, high consensus gold price forecast since acquisition, and secondly, a high level of confidence of the ore body with the release of the maiden ore reserve for Never Never deposit. While this is a cost to earnings, it is reflective of higher expected future revenue. This will be a recurring adjustment every reporting period, whether it is at a level or not seen today, but will be largely attributable to gold price and changes in all reserves across the Delgaranga mineral properties. Moving on to slide eight. Earnings were generated from revenue of $485.6 million, which is down 4% from the prior period, with lower gold production being the offset almost in full. By the improved Aussie gold price and reducing hedge book commitments at a higher realised gold price, the resulting underlying EBITDA of $347 million at a margin of 42% is a H1 record for the company and up 13% on the prior period. Again, the driver behind this is the improved realised gold price. The reported underlying net profit after tax of $160 million million despite lower production. On slide 9, we provided more detail on the Mount Magninians and operations. Mount Magninians generated a gross profit of 244 million, which is comparable to the prior period, albeit at a slightly lower margin. The lower margin was driven by higher cost per tonne and a lower mill grade. The operating cost per tonne, whilst in line with expectations, was higher than the prior period due to increased tonnes from Q, which, whilst of a higher grade, was higher strip ratio, incurs a higher haulage charge to Mount Maidment and attracts a higher amortisation charge relating to the purchase price initially. Also contributing to the higher operating cost in the reporting period was an increase in underlying tonnes in the ore blend. The resulting gross margin increased to Aussie $2,413 per ounce sold. The mountain magnet hub will only be benefited with future introduction of the Dogaranga ore feed. Moving on to what really matters, cash, which has been detailed on slide 10. Operating cash flow of $311.6 million was largely in line with the prior period. However, the free cash flow, which is cash flow from operations, less the cash used in investing, was an outflow of $40 million. This was not unexpected given the acquisition of Spartan and our increased exploration budget and the final FY25 income tax payment. The closing cash and gold balance was $694.3 million. Secondly, we invested $211 million back into the business. This includes $73.4 million for the acquisition of Spartan, net of $199 million cash acquired, investing in the development of the Nevernever and Dogoranga infrastructure and our exploration focus. LASU paid 148 million in income taxes in the period, with 130 million of this relating to the final FY25 payments. The last of these large one-off income tax payments now were more regular payers in advance of income tax. Looking forward for the remainder of FY26, do keep in mind the stamp duty which is payable on the acquisition of Spartan of approximately 131 million. The timing of this payment is out of our hands, but it could be reasonably expected at the back end of FY26. Moving forward onto slide 12. I would just want to touch on the acquisition relating to Spartan. As you will see on this slide, the total acquisition of fair value was 2.8 billion, which includes our initial and 19.9 investment. What is worth highlighting is the cost of the asset to Ramirez is 2.3 billion, which takes into account the cash we acquired and the cost of initial investment as opposed to the fair value. As noted, there are tax synergies available to the group from the acquisition, especially the use of Spartan tax losses, which we've now concluded our analysis of the tax losses and obtained external tax advice. The analysis shows that tax losses with a net cash benefit of 105 million can be transferred to the group, the use of which compares favourably to the 90 million we initially flagged in our growth pathway presentation back in October. This is a real and immediate benefit to the group with a net amount of just under 20 million losses being used in the December half year. And moving on to balance sheet on slide 13. Vermeer has remained in a very strong financial position with just under $600 million in working capital and net assets of $4 billion. Subsequent to the end of this period, we have further enhanced our balance sheet flexibility and funding optionality by replacing our existing $165 million credit facility with a $500 million credit facility. We'd like to put this new facility in place in recognition of the company's significant change in capital structure post the acquisition of Spartan and pleasingly we've been able to improve the overall commercial terms and increase the tenure. Before handing back to Mark for closing remarks, I just want to highlight our recent activity with our hedge book on slide 14. We have closed out our FY27 hedge book at a cost of 28.4 million and we have committed to, in fact, that we restarted pre-delivering the June quarter forward contracts in the March quarter. The outcome being from the end of March, we'll have no forward contract hedges in place and we'll have more exposure to the Australian gold price. The chart on the left of the slide shows the historical cost of the hedge book. That is what is being eliminated by the actions we were taking on our forward contract positions. We do still have a level of cover in FY27 and FY28, with collies in place for FY27 of 22,500 ounces of a floor of 4,200 Aussie and a ceiling of 5,906, and put options in place for FY27, guaranteeing a minimum price for 40,000 ounces at 5,750 per ounce. With that, I now hand back to Mark.

Thanks, Darren. Slide 15 shows our capital allocation and priorities and one that you perhaps are familiar with. The phase that we are in now is in the middle section, reinvestment in the business. And as we have highlighted previously, we have committed to a $0.02 per share minimum dividend for FY26. And as such, it is pleasing that a $0.03 per share fully franked interim dividend has been declared this morning, exceeding the minimum annual amount. This interim dividend is discussed on slide 16. So if we turn to slide 16, this is the second consecutive interim dividend paid by Remedios and this equates to a total amount of $57.7 million or $574 per ounce produced. It takes the total shareholder returns over the past five years to almost $320 million at an average of 18.8% per annum. In summary, this was a solid half-year result delivered during a transition phase for the business. We entered the second half with a strong balance sheet, significant liquidity, an improving production outlook and leverage to a strong gold price environment. That concludes the presentation. I'll now hand back to Travis to open the phone line for questions first.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phones, please press star 1 and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then 2. For those on the webcast to ask a question, please type it into the ask a question box and click submit. The first phone question today comes from Richard Knights from Baron Joey. Please go ahead.

Hi Mark. Hi Darren. Thanks for the call and welcome back from Ulz, Mark. Just one on the dividend. I mean it's certainly a bait versus consensus in my numbers. Just wondering how you're thinking about dividend policy over the next couple of years with the relatively high sort of capex burden you've got in terms of development?

I'll take that one. Thanks, Richard. Yeah, look, we had a look at our dividend. Obviously, the gold price has run very strongly while I've been on holidays. I was tempted to extend, in fact. But looking at the dividend, we look at the dividend and the buyback sort of together. The fact of the matter is, and whether we're a little more conservative than others, we actually haven't been able to access the buyback much since we announced it in December. So a very small number of shares have been bought back. We'll be freed up going forward more so, but the whole period through January and February pre these results has really limited our ability to buy back. So we thought a slightly stronger dividend was warranted in this case. In terms of moving forward, yeah, we'll look to reassess our dividend policy as we ramp up production and as cash flows increase.

Yeah, okay, thanks. Maybe just one more just on the ramp up at Delgarenga. Can you give us an indication when you're going to be mining scope ore as opposed to development ore?

In the June quarter, very early in the June quarter, if not before. We're obviously getting back this week, coming up to speed with what's going on. The mine is progressing very well. We're drilling Paste fill holes, as you see, we've got a decent stockpile of development also. It means we've put in a number of ore drives. The paste plant foundations are in place. And so we'll be ready to be stoping March, April, this stage, which is on schedule, if not slightly ahead.

Yeah, okay, brilliant. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Once again, to ask a question via the phones, please press star 1. We'll pause for a moment to allow parties to enter the queue. At this time, we're showing no further questions via the phone. I'll hand the conference back to Mark.

I'm just checking the webcast. It doesn't look like there's any questions there either. This has got to be some sort of record one question. It must be the time of day or the comprehensive nature of the presentation. If there's no further questions, we'll wrap up. Have a good day, everyone. Thanks for tuning in.