Regis Resources Limited

Thank you for signing by and welcome to the Regis Resources half-year 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. Jim Beyer, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ryan, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us for the Regis Resources December 2024 Half-Year Financial Results. I'm joined this morning with our CFO, Anthony Rakiki, and our Head of Investor Relations, Jeff Sansom. On this call, we'll be referring to various slides that are in the pack that was released earlier this morning. And if you don't have it, the document can be downloaded from our website or from the ASX. But firstly, looking at safety, Regis has continued to deliver safe and profitable ounces. And in the first half of the year, our lost time injury frequency rate, a key safety outcome measure, was 0.4 and remained well below the industry averages reported by the MERS of the Department of Mines here in WA. Now, if we look at slide three, this is a great slide that highlights the significant financial turnaround that we've made since this time last year. What a difference 12 mates can make with a great team. Running down the list of financial results, we're very pleased with the significant step up in earnings, profitability and cash generation. Across our assets, we've seen solid and consistent operational performance, which we expect to continue into the second half of the year. Gold production and all-in sustaining costs for the first half of FY25 were in line with expectations at nearly 196,000 ounces of gold for an all-in sustaining cost of just over $2,400 Aussie an ounce, and that included nearly $90 an ounce of non-cash stockpile inventory drawdowns. We sold our gold into another period of record spot gold prices, and at the end of December, we finished with $529 million of cash and bullion. That's after a build of $234 million in just six months. At the end of the half, or sorry, after the end of that half, we repaid our $300 million corporate debt facility, and we also established a $300 million revolving credit facility. This was struck on very competitive terms with a number of leading banks with significant experience in the resource space being part of that group. Our balance sheet is in a very strong position, and given the cash-generating capacity of our assets, it will continue to strengthen each day, which positions us well to capitalise on growth opportunities. Now, with that, I'll hand over to Anthony, who will take us through some more details on the half-year results. Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everyone.

I'll start by having you all turn to slide number four in that presentation, and as we discussed in the recent quarterly report, our physical and unit cost performance saw a solid half year, well on track to meet our full year guidance expectations. We sold 198,000 ounces of gold in an increasing spot market, and our clean results enabled this strong performance to translate into high earnings, cash flows and profitability. In the first half of FY25, we delivered $348 million of statutory cash flows from operations. Impressively, we also delivered a $180 million turnaround in profitability from an after-tax loss of $92 million in the December 23 period to an after-tax profit of $88 million this half. Slide five shows the... So if you move to slide five now, that shows the cash and bullion movement during the period. You may be familiar with this chart from our recent December quarterly report, and it includes our bullion on hand, which is valued at market rather than at cost like it is in our statutory balance sheet. If you have any questions on the difference in the presentation of these cash flows versus our statutory cash flow statement in the half-year report, Please feel free to ask. I think it's pretty straightforward. Our operations generated $364 million. We spent $78 million on capital, inclusive of our growth projects, $26 million on exploration, and a further $5 million at McPhilemys during the half year. Additionally, $20 million of expenditure is related to corporate costs, interest, and facility fees. With the repayment of $300 million of debt in January 25, just recently, we'll no longer be incurring the high interest costs that we've been paying in recent years. Moving on to slide six now. You can see a simple yet effective representation of the ability of our assets to generate significant cash. As you can see, over the past six months, the business has generated $234 million of cash and bullion, And over the last 12 months, it has generated $374 million. Importantly, this is not by doing anything extraordinary. It's by being unhedged and by delivering what we said we would do and doing so in a healthy spot gold price environment. Now, moving on to our income statement on slide seven. The layout of this slide shows our income statement in a simplistic way. Transparent flow through from our sales revenue down to our statutory net profit. With our hedge book gone and no significant one-off items, the profitability of our business is really very clear. During the half, gold sales were up 23% on record spot gold prices, which was partly offset by slightly lower gold sold ounces. The costs of sales were up 8%. And the increase is due to general cost inflation and the impact of deeper pits, longer haulage and increased production from underground ore. Furthermore, the cost of sales in the first half of FY24, the corresponding period, include a significant credit to costs for the increase in bullion on hand. And that's the timing difference only relating to that period. And it's a timing difference relating to gold sales. I'll also add that, as we mentioned in the quarterly report, depreciation and amortisation was up, and this is a lot to do with the amortisation of pre-production costs at our Russell's Find and Ben Hur Open Pits. All up, looking at the results here, we produced a great net profit figure, and we're working to ensure our ongoing performance is not impacted by one-off items, and we expect that the second half of the year to be as simple to follow as what we've seen here in the first half. Finally onto our balance sheet on slide 8. At the end of the half year we had a net cash and bullion position of $229 million which included our $300 million loan. In January we paid that loan off well ahead of its maturity date in order to reduce interest costs. In the weeks following that we announced the establishment of a $300 million revolving credit facility which will provide us with flexibility and liquidity to pursue our growth objectives. Overall, our balance sheet is in a fantastic position, and should spot gold prices remain similar to today, we expect our balance sheet to continue to strengthen at this rate over the coming months. Thank you all, and back to you, Jim.