Sandfire Resources Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Sandfire Resources September 2022 quarterly results call. All participants are in listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ben Crowley, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our quarterly presentation for the September 22 quarter. With us today in the room we have Jason Grace, our Acting CEO, Matt Fitzgerald, our Chief Financial Officer, Richard Holmes, Executive for Growth, and David Wilson, Head of Technical Services. Jason will take us through some of the operational highlights today. Matt will, as usual, cover off on the finance. So with that, I will hand over to Jason.

Thanks, Ben, and welcome to today's webcast. Over the last year, SANFIRE's execution of our strategy has delivered an excellent portfolio of high-quality operating mines, development and exploration projects. And we've transitioned from being a truly single operation WA miner to being a genuine international copper producer. Our values of honesty, respect, collaboration, accountability and performance are key to Samphire's culture and they guide our activities across every part of the business. When we consider that Samphire is one of the largest copper-focused miners listed on the ASX, That there is an inevitable increase in demand for copper in the future, driven by the global energy transition. That we have a dominant presence in four mineral provinces that have excellent organic and inorganic growth opportunities. That Samphire has proven capability as an explorer, developer and operator of copper mines. And on the back of the MATS acquisition, and the recently approved expansion of Mateo to a 5.2 million tonne per annum capacity, Samphire now has a firm production growth pathway over the next three years to over 110,000 tonnes of copper and over 80,000 tonnes of zinc production per annum. In my mind, Samphire represents an excellent investment opportunity and for our people it will be an exciting company to be part of over the next few years. If we now move to the September quarter highlights at a company level, consolidated copper production totaled just over 28,000 tonnes with zinc at 19,500 tonnes for the period. The Mateo copper mine development continues to be on track and construction is now well advanced. The Mateo 5.2 million tonne per annum expansion feasibility study was also completed during the quarter and the SAFIRE board green-lighted the approval for the development of the project. As mentioned in the last slide, this key step has now positioned Samphire to become a 10 million tonne per annum operator with firm production growth pathway for both copper and zinc over the next three years. Looking now at key company results for the quarter, sales revenue totaled $214.7 million with operations EBITDA at $87 million, a group EBITDA of $64.8 million and an EBITDA margin of 40%. As touched on in the last slide, consolidated copper production totaled just over 28,000 tonnes with zinc at 19,500 tonnes for the period. C1 costs for the group were $1.73 per pound of payable copper and cash holdings for the company were just over $190 million after making $215.5 million in scheduled payments for the MATSA and corporate debt facilities. And examining in more detail at group metal production for Q1, performance was in line or exceeded the company's expectations, noting that copper was a balance of marginally lower than expected production from Matza, offset by higher production from De Grasse, mostly as a result of higher grades from Monty during the period. Zinc production exceeded plan as a result of continued reduction in stoke dilution and minor changes to the mine plan at Matza, and gold, silver and lead production was generally in line with plan. Given this good start to the year and SANFAR now extending all processing operations at Degrossa to include transitional and low-grade ore stockpiles, which I'll cover in more detail in the Degrossa section, we have now lifted copper production guidance from 81,000 to 89,000 tonnes to 83,000 to 91,000 tonnes and increased gold production from 10,000 to 12,000 ounces to now 12,000 to 14,000 ounces. Previously stated zinc, lead and silver guidance is maintained for the full year.