Metals Acquisition Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Mac Copper Limited Q1 results call and webcast. 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. Mick McMullen, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. And thanks everyone for joining us on what is a busy reporting schedule given the shortened holiday period in Australia. I'm Mick McMullen, the CEO. I'll run through the presentation. I'm joined by our CFO, Mornay Engelbrecht, who will talk to some of the slides on the financials. This deck has been released on the ASX along with our quarterly report this morning. And as usual, we've got the disclaimers and everything at the front that you can all read at your leisure. So look, MAC copper at a glance, we get an enterprise value of around about 940 million US. We're sort of planning to get over 50,000 tonnes of copper in the not too distant future on an annual basis. Very strong balance sheet. Obviously, we've announced the refinancing of the debt that we did during the quarter. More now we'll run through that. And just so everyone's clear with you know, to make sure the market understands how many shares were an issue. 82 and a half million shares an issue about 3.18 million warrants at a strike of $12.50 US a share. The gearing under 20%, which is within our range of where we sort of target. And we've got two key growth projects underway. The ventilation work, which we'll talk about in later slides. And then the really exciting news actually is the Merrin mine that we started rolling out in the marketplace during the last quarter. And we've made some really good progress on that. And so we've got quite a few slides on that as we are quite excited about that thing. So going forward, first quarter is always our softest quarter. If you recall, the fourth quarter last year was a very strong quarter. And then obviously, you know, we then have to come through the sort of the January period where we push very hard in the back six weeks of last year. And we typically see a little bit of seasonal variation in weather as well with sort of summer storms. It really is a function of... sort of where we are in the stope sequence. And, you know, we can see the stope sequence we have ahead of us right now. We've got a lot of large tonnage, very high-grade stopes that have been coming online over the last few weeks. And therefore, you know, we're not changing our guidance based on what we can see coming out of the ground ahead of us. C1 was still pretty decent at $1.91 US a pound. Total cash cost of about $2.47 a pound and a realised price of $4.04 a pound US for the quarter. And if you read that little footnote there, we've had some questions from people about the impact of the hedges on received price. And so we are now showing that received price net of hedges. I'll let Morne really go through all the balance sheet and the financials and liquidity. But, you know, for this year, 43 to 48,000 ton of copper is where the guidance sits. Copper grade somewhere between 3.8 and 4%. And obviously, you know, we had a very strong grade profile during Q1. And growth capex of somewhere in the order of 20 to 25 million US and sustaining of 40 to 50. And overall, we have seen some good tailwinds coming into this year from both exchange rate and TCRCs. And actually, for those of you who follow the market, we've seen actually spot copper treatment charges at negative $40 a tonne, which should indicate a pretty good annual benchmark settlement for next year, possibly even lower than where we currently sit. So that's been quite a good positive thing, which I guess has obviously helped our C1 despite the lower volume during the quarter. Um, safety, we like to talk about, uh, you know, I would say I've, I've said on calls in the past that, you know, our TRIFA has been okay, but probably a little sticky, I suppose. Uh, but now we're starting to see the benefit of all the hard work that the team at site have done, uh, with the TRIFA starting to trend down quite nicely. And I think by the end of April, we've ended up at around a TRIFA of around seven actually, um, for, for, for the last 12 months. Um, so that's great. Um, One of our big sustaining capital projects that we're doing is our tailing storage facility. So the stage 10 embankment, that's on track for completion in the fourth quarter of this year. Again, just for the Australians, we're an annual financial year. So in the December quarter. And that will provide us capacity out till about 2030. And so, you know, we are actually building all of that now. So we're well on track. We've had no reportable environmental incidents during the quarter. So from an ESG point of view, actually, we've had a pretty good improvement on where we had been tracking before. Production, look, obviously we saw production trend down. As I said, it was a combination of pushing very hard during the fourth quarter. You can see there the December quarter numbers were very strong. And probably a day and a half of production lost in February due to some summer storms, which again, if you think back to last year, exactly what we had that period. Grade was good. So head grade a bit over 4% copper. and we expect to see the Q2 grade to be as strong, if not a bit stronger. And again, really the increase in C1 was driven by volume, right? You know, we've always sort of said that fixed costs are sort of circa 70% of our volume, but we did have a bit of a win on the TCRCs. And in the word version of the quarterly that we put out, you know, if you look at our production and cost in the month of March, obviously as we sort of, you know, did a lot of catch-up work in January after the very strong December quarter, If you look at the month of March, you know, we produced just under 4,000 tonne of copper and our C1 was around about $1.45 US a pound. So that sort of gives you an indication of where we think the business should be and can be. And again, it's really making sure that we have, you know, as a minimum, two or three months really strong in a quarter. And actually this Merrin mine has the ability to sort of smooth out some of those ups and downs in the production cycle. So overall, you know, it was an okay quarter. We do expect always the March quarter to be our softest quarter. And that pattern has been maintained. Lots going on on this slide here. I guess we've sort of, again, we've had some questions from people around, you know, total CapEx and sort of, you know, what's in growth and exploration and sustaining. And Morne has done a great job on the graph on the left there, sort of trying to outline, you know, what we've spent the money on. You will note that sustaining CapEx has dropped down a fair bit, actually. We had a very strong spend on the Stage 10 capital expenditure during the December quarter and sort of ahead of the game there. Also, some of the timing of rebuilds has basically resulted in us needing to spend less capital. You can see there the growth capex was sort of pretty constant around about that $4 million and what's in growth capex. So, you know, we don't put tailings dams into growth. That's in sustaining. but we do put our Merrimine expenditure and the Capital Vent project sits in there. And then we've spent about just over a million dollars on exploration. Development meters. So again, we're starting to give a little bit more detail for people here as to where the development meters are going or coming from. And you can see here that... That blue bar on the graph on the right is the Capital Vent Project, which we've spoken about as being very important for the future of the mine. You can see we're starting to ramp up the development metres there again, for those of you who followed us for a while. As we turn off from the existing workings and head out to these things, the development rates are quite slow because we're interacting with the existing mine, and that's Merrin Mine and the Capital Vent Project. have both been the same. But as we get a bit further out, then we can start not interacting with the mine and we can really start ramping up those metres. And so that's really what you're seeing in that graph on the right. In addition to that, we did an extra 227 metres of capital development up in the Merrin mine. So if you think about total development for the business, we are actually starting to ramp up capital development quite a bit here. And you will see why in the Merrin mine, you know, that's actually, we've been able to do a lot of development meters with not a lot of equipment and for a pretty cheap cost. So look, our goals are still the same. You know, it's really been consistent, safe, low cost copper production. You know, we do want to advance that ventilation project. We want to get the Merrin mine online and obviously the balance sheet. So this sort of bridge gives you a bit of an idea of where we see the production coming from. So for next year, 2026, midpoint of guidance around about 50,000 tonnes of copper, we see the Merrimine being additive to that. And we're getting quite excited about the Merrimine, as you're going to see in the next few slides here. So targeting production from the fourth quarter, being the December quarter this year, this is everything from surface down to about 900 metres below surface. It's the Merrin mine. It's got a whole bunch of different deposits in there, but for just making life easy, we just call it that. Not all of that is in JORC or SK 1300 resources, but we have sufficient confidence in those mineralised estimates to make investment decisions. And really that revolves around the age of some of the assay data and assay certificates with the resource and reserve QPs and the mine planning teams have done a Herculean effort here to digitise a lot of old data and to go and do check drilling and confirmation work, which has taken quite some time. This is data that's gone back over 40 years, 50 years. But actually we found a significant amount of mineralisation that was sitting in there most of it sitting very close to existing development. I try and break it down into the simplest form by saying there's really four separate components to this mine. There's the quite high grade, you know, narrow three, four meters wide at 10 to 20% copper in that QTS south upper, which is that little blob sitting right up on the top left of that page there, that image. That's what we're driving out to now. Then there's a reasonably high grade sort of you know eight to ten percent zinc with a little bit of lead and a high grade zinc zone which our plan is to mine that uh and truck that up to polymetals uh to the endeavor mill for treatment uh we then have what we call a medium grade copper ore body which actually in terms of tonnage is the largest part uh quite substantial around about two and a half percent copper And then last is the mixed, which is a mixed copper-zinc material, which actually is starting to become reasonably sizeable as well. The beauty of this thing is that it is completely separate to the rest of the mine. We access it through the decline. It's 150 to 200 metres below surface. It's fantastic ground. The team that's up there is running as a separate operation and is doing development at a much faster rate than we currently can do at the bottom of the mine. We really have no great constraints apart from equipment and people. We've been spending a lot of time at site with the corporate team over the last six weeks, actually adding resources to this. We've doubled the number of jumbos that are going in there and increasing the number of trucks, increasing the people, because quite frankly, this is a lever we can pull very cheaply. Our cost per metre to develop is roughly one third of what it is at the bottom of the mine. And as we've said often, the more you look, the more you find at CSA, and I'll run through some of the things that we've found. So again, we're sort of on track for some production for copper out of this during the fourth quarter, and we're actually quite excited about this. View on the left is a surface plan. All that light gray looking stuff is the surface projection of the existing underground workings. Cutia South Upper is heading off to the left side of the page. Pink Panther is another deposit we've been drilling out from surface. And sort of that is the surface expression of the Maronite. As we have developed the drive out towards Cutia South Upper, Um, we have discovered quite a bit of massive sulfide, both copper and you can see in that, in that actually that's the tag board cutting for independent firing there, but you know, that's about two and a half meters of high grade, massive sulfide for copper, which was not in any of the models at all. Uh, we've also developed through some quite high grade zinc and lead mineralization as well on the way out there. So, um, We think there's a lot of opportunities to expand this. And as I've said, there's no real constraints, you know, in terms of going faster or doing more apart from people and equipment. So we now have independent ventilation that's been established there. So, again, as you start developing out from the existing drives, it's slow. You're interacting with the rest of the mine. The team have managed to tap into an existing vent shaft out there that's not connected to the bottom of the mine. And during the month of April, we've established independent ventilation and therefore independent firing. And now we can really ramp up development rates. Having said that, one jumbo up here has been getting about the same amount of metres, more or less, as three jumbos at the bottom of the mine. And consequently, very cheap on a unit rate basis. So we're pretty excited about this area. You can see here, this is the drive going out to Cutia South Upper. And again, the more you look, the more you find. We drilled actually that vertical hole on the right is a JTEC hole for where the vent rise was going. And it hit the typical three to four metres at, you know, 10 to 20% copper mineralisation. So all of a sudden we decided to go and drill some more holes up there. And guess what? We've extended that ore body vertically about 70 metres now. So we knew enough to go to make the investment decision to go out there, but we knew everything was still open. As we go out there, we're finding more and more stuff. So we're pretty happy with the way that's all going. It really will be a separate mine to the rest of the mine. So again, the existing mine is being accessed. The ore comes out through the haulage shafts. This is coming out through the decline. It's around about a six minute drive from the ore body to the ROM pad and very low unit rates relative to what we currently have. to what it currently costs us to mine, and quite good grade as well, actually. And so, you know, we've been asked, you know, well, how big could this thing be? Not all of it's in reserve. Very little of it's in reserve, in fact. Not all of it is actually in JORC or SK1300 resource. I think it's pretty topical right now, but, you know, this would be a woodlawn-sized mine, but mostly copper with a bit of zinc as opposed to the other way. Yeah. That's probably the most analogous thing I can give to people right now, just for the mayor in mind, is that this would be a roundabout, a woodlawn-sized operation. So you can tell why we're quite excited about it and why we're throwing more resources at it as quickly as we can. Ventilation project. So again, chugging along, you could see from that graph earlier that the Development metres is really starting to ramp up in that thing, still on track for Q3, the September quarter next year for completion. This is really important for unlocking the bottom of the mine, allows us really for the bottom of the mine to get additional vent. And so, you know, in the immediate term, we're developing this Merrin mine, which will have a reasonably long life. but also we haven't taken our eye off the ball for this thing because this is actually really important for unlocking the bottom of the mine. With that, I'm going to hand over to Mornay and he can talk to people about the financial side of things.

Right, thanks, Mick. Good evening, morning, everybody. Going to slide 15 now. We announced during March 2025 the very exciting news that we Completed the refinance, as Mick said, of our debt structure with the recut of the senior debt facilities, including the earlier repayment of the mezzanine facility. Overall, we have significantly delivered and simplified our balance sheet over the last year, reducing our net gearing by more than 50% to just under 20%, as Mick said, at the end of March 2025. Just to recap what has changed with the refinance. As you remember, we had the old facilities which were made up of the $159 million US term loan facility. There was a $25 million revolving credit facility, a $145 million mezzanine debt facility, and then a $45 million Aussie environmental bond that was provided by Glencore. The new facilities are made up of a $159 million term loan facility, 125 million revolving credit facility and a 45 million Aussie dollar environmental bond now provided by three new Australian banks. Some of the key highlights of the refinance, it's really around, you know, we've now fully repaid the mezzanine debt facility, so that's the $160 million that we've repaid on that facility, which included the the 4% premium and the interest to June. We did extend the maturity of the old facilities as well, so both the term and the revolving facilities to March 2028. We increased the revolving credit facility by 100 million US to 125 million US, providing even greater flexibility and available liquidity. The refinance provides for repayment holiday to 30 September 25. And then also we've got a new repayment profile which reduces our repayments by $123 million by December 26 when comparing the old versus the new repayment profile. Importantly, we also reduce the average weighted cost of debt by more than 30%. So that's sort of sitting at the end of March is sort of around that 6.84%. um on on the on the on the senior debt we've we've got a outstanding at the moment that that sort of saving equates to about 100 equates to about 14 million us a million per annum cash interest saving and then finally on the uh continuous copper payments to glencore we have maintained the contractual position that the continuous payments will not be payable before june 26 even if triggered other than from free cash flow after satisfaction of all of our operating costs, royalty, debt repayments and stream servicing costs. So overall, we are extremely pleased with the refinance position of the balance sheet and obviously very thankful for the great support that's been provided by our lenders in that regard. Moving to slide 16. and the all-important cash flow waterfall. Just to go through a few key elements there. So firstly, again, we had a very healthy free cash flow from operations thereafter, sustaining capex of around $30 million for the quarter. Secondly, we paid that, as I said, $160 million to extinguish the mezzanine debt facility, which included that 4% premium and then also the interest paid of around 9 million from 1 January to 16 June 2025. That's included in that 160. You will note the interest there that we have from the senior facility of $3 million. And as I said before, you know, with the repayment of that MES debt, we're now saving around 14 million US per annum on interest on that. We also sold some concentrate at the port of just over 1,500 tons at the end of March, so that was just to align the production and sales from a cash point of view, albeit we couldn't recognize it as revenue because it wasn't loaded on ship by the end of March, but that sort of happened in early April. So in summary, our senior facility now is sitting at sort of $159 million. We threw down on about $66 million on the evolving facility. And then we had $75 million US of cash in the bank at the end of March as well. So that gives us that sort of net debt figure of $150 million US. All in all, we also had that very healthy liquidity of $153 million, so almost 245 million Aussie liquidity available to us at the end of March. And that sort of consisted of that undrawn revolving facility of 60 million. We also had outstanding QP receipts of 8 million, unsold concentrate of about 8.2 million, and that investment in polymetals, which has done really well for us at around 3 million US as well that sort of contributed to that sort of liquidity. So overall very strong and healthy banner sheet position and with the completion of the refinance and obviously the repayment of the mezzanine debt facility there, which will require some significant cash interest savings for us going forward. Going to slide 17, you know, slightly shown before, just showing our targets around production, cash costs and gearing. Meg has already covered off on how we are targeting significant growth through the execution of those two key projects in terms of the Merrimine and the Ventilation Capital project. So, you know, so which will deliver at the end of this year and then Q3 next year, respectively. And that will drive that targeted annual copper production above 50,000 tons. On the cost side of things, again, we've been chipping away at the cash cost there, and, you know, C1 has reduced, you know, significantly, you know, around 30% to $1.91 from the March quarter compared to June 23. And then, as Mick has mentioned as well, you know, the C1 in March with the production of that roughly 4,000 tons in March dropped to about $1.49 US per pound. So that's very pleasing to see and, you know, already demonstrates that we're sort of getting to that target of 150 that we have for 2025. And then with the refinance, as we've sort of walked through, you know, that's reduced significantly from where we started out. And, you know, that's sort of within our target range of just below 20%. It's all very pleasing and pleasing to see that all those metrics are going the right way and pleasing to see the progress there. And I will back to you, Mick.

Sure. Thanks for that. So, you know, look, I think in summary, you know, we're executing on the plan, the base plan, maintaining guidance. We, you know, we expect to have a pretty strong second quarter based on the... on the production profile we have ahead of us. Our investment in polymetals has done really well. They look to be progressing well towards ramp up. I guess we actually have some hydrate zinc material in the Meron mine that we could mine quite quickly. We're just waiting to see how they go ramping up. But again, we would like to think that by the fourth quarter of this year, We are shipping them some zinc mineralisation for treatment. We have signed that tolling agreement with Polymetals. But that's, you know, subsequent to the end of the quarter, I think on the 1st or 2nd of April, we invested another two and a half million Australian dollars into Polymetals at 35 cents and, you know, now trading it to 90-ish. So that's been a good return for shareholders. Overall, as I said, we're liking Merrin Mine more and more the more we look at it, the ease with which we can get stuff done. Now, mining's never easy, but on a relative basis, it is quite easy up there. Very shallow, fantastic ground, really quick to develop stuff, and we are finding more and more material up there that can go through either our plant or the Polymetals plant. You know, it is a woodlawn size mine, but predominantly copper. And, you know, we'll try and as we sort of, we're moving drill rigs out of the bottom of the mine, that'll give us more ventilation down there for production. We've got a 12-year reserve life at the bottom of the mine anyway, but we want to pull those rigs up and put them up in the top part of the mine, in that merrin mine, so that we can start drilling that material out and getting it into reserve so that we can actually start talking about it in a bit more of a, you know, sort of SK 1300 type manner. So overall, you know, look, I think our employees have done a pretty good job. We obviously had a really strong December quarter. And then, you know, we had a bit of catch up work that we had to do during January into February. But it is pleasing to sort of see, you know, turnover stabilised. We've seen, I think March was probably, if not the lowest, certainly one of the lowest turnover months we've had since we've owned the mine. and again, the safety's improved sort of quite markedly. So with that, I'm going to hand it over for questions, and I'm happy to take questions from anyone who'd like to ask some.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2, and if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your questions. Your first question comes from Daniel Morgan from Baron Joey. Please go ahead.

Hi, Mick, Mornay and Tim. Probably first question just for Mornay. Can I just confirm that from a cash flow perspective, your production and sales are aligned? So I note that you sold officially 1.2 thousand tonnes less copper than produced in the quarter, but you also got the $22 million payment from Glencore. Is my interpretation correct that basically from a cash perspective, your production equals sales?

Yeah, I mean, that's typically how we try to run it on a quarterly basis. You know, it's difficult to make all the shipments sort of work out exactly in terms of the quarterly reporting. So, you know, in terms of the sales versus production. So if you look at, you know, what we pre-sold, you know, just over one and a half thousand times, you add that to the sales volume that you sort of get to the production volume so that's what i sort of try to do on a quarterly basis is to try and match the cash with the production um you know just to have that sort of consistency in terms of every quarter sort of matching up so um so that's that's the aim um we can't recognize it as a sale so i can't add it to the sales figure or the sales revenue and and i can't add it to the free cash flow from operations but um you know until it's loaded on onto the ship but i can add the cash to to it so i do that we do that to just to smooth out and and make sure that we report to the market i suppose cash that reflects the production uh um because obviously we've sunk the um the cost into that production already so um that's that's the aim really oh that's uh that's clear uh and um

And Mick, maybe going to Merrin, I think you indicate expectations of first ore at the end of 2025, Q4-ish. Will you get any development ore as you go? Is there any potential to pull a stope or is it barren? I guess you've found stuff as you've been developing across.

Yes, well, actually... That massive sulphide sitting in that cutty right there, the short answer is we'll be able to pull development ore out. We actually already have, I don't know, a dozen truckloads or half a dozen truckloads of fairly high-grade zinc lead mineralisation sitting on the surface that we mine through as part of the development. so yeah look we're obviously going to be opportunistic and take it as quick as we can right now polymetals isn't running so that stuff's sitting on service but if we see copper mineralisation that you know is worthwhile taking we'll obviously get that and we'll put it through the plant and so I appreciate that the Marin is still an evolving thing and certainty and you know hard numbers etc are difficult to talk to at the moment but

You know, what tonnage would you see as a success based on where you're sitting now for 2026, for example? I'm talking ore tonnage and where would it come from? I mean, you identified a few different areas of mineralisation which have, I guess, different outcomes with grade and economics.

Yeah, actually, maybe that plan that's on that slide there would be good. So Cutia South Upper, you know, I think if we do somewhere, look, I'm hoping we can mine it a bit narrower than what the current plan is, but somewhere like 150,000 tonnes at 5, 6% copper out of that. Maybe a little bit out of Pink Panther as well. It's lower grade. And then something like 150,000 tonnes at, I don't know, call it 9% zinc to truck up the road to polymetals. and I would think the sort of what we call the medium grade copper, that stuff that's about 2.5%, that's actually a bit more bulk tonnage. Just not quite sure how much of that we'll get out next year, but I don't know, about 100, maybe 150,000 tonnes of that at 2.5%, something like that.

And just for clarity, these numbers you're providing, are these Run rate numbers, or is that what you would cumulatively success would be for 2026 in the delivery?

Run rate is higher than that, but, you know, we won't be, because we're getting into it at the end, towards the end of this year, we won't be at full run rate, you know, on average for next year. But yeah, you know, that sort of number, I think we should be able to get out.

Okay. Thank you very much. I'll let others ask questions.

Yeah, but again, you can see why we're pretty excited about this because it has the potential to add, you know, meaningful production to us. And, you know, we've got estimates of what our mining costs will be, but, you know, we can look at what our cost per metre of development is, and it is one third of what we're currently paying at the bottom of the mine, right? So, you know... two and a half, you know, our medium grade stuff at only two and a half percent copper, whilst not quite as exciting as four percent at the bottom of the mine, the cost per tonne for that is very low and it's only going to cover your variable costs, right? Like it doesn't cost us any more overhead or through the plant or overhead through, you know, G&A. It's the same stuff, same costs. So, yeah, we think we can make quite a lot of money. So the other advantage of this Merrin mine is obviously You know, we've spoken about it at length. The CSA mine has these, you know, very high-grade stoping areas that when you're in them, it's fantastic. When you're not in them, you know, it's less fantastic. We can produce anywhere from 2,000 tonne of copper in a month to 5,500 tonnes of copper in a month. And whilst we can see the stoping profile and we're comfortable for an annual basis, clearly the market likes to see less volatility on a quarter by quarter basis, right? So one, we think we can make a lot of money out of this Merrin mine, so that's a great idea, you know, fantastic return for the capital deployed. But secondly, we think it has the ability to allow us to smooth that production profile out and de-risk the operation because it's coming out of a different part of the mine, different means of getting out as well. So to me, that's actually a big advantage of this thing is it allows me to engineer out that inherent volatility that the CSA mine, like the current CSA mine has, right? Two advantages, I always like to make money out of things, but the second one is smoothing that volatility up is really important.

Sorry, Mick, to come back. Just on the fixed cost leverage in the business, is it fair to say that the mine is about break-even at maybe 35,000 tonnes per annum of copper production and then after that, that's your margin? Is that a fair way of looking at it?

to be a lower number than that um more than i'd be able to work it out for you but i i have done the exercise a while back i would think it's high 20s 30 you know probably the number thank you so much thanks thank you your next question comes from ben wood from wilson's advisory please go ahead

Nick Mornay, I'm positive to see you guys that the strong volume coming through in March lead to those meaningful cost reductions that we were sort of baking into our forecast. My question sort of previous copper production guidance for calendar year 26 is sitting between 48 and 53 kilotons. But I noticed in this release that you reference further down that there's a pathway to greater than 50 kilotons of copper equivalent production. And just sort of wondering, should we interpret this as perhaps a more conservative outlook in 26 for copper, but perhaps signaling a greater emphasis of zinc? Or how should we sort of interpret that wording?

Well, no real change, to be honest with you. I think, yeah, obviously, when we put that guidance out originally, we weren't planning on mining any zinc. Now we are planning on mining some zinc. We've obviously got the agreement in place with Polymetals, so we've got an outlet for it. I think with what we see in this Merrin mine, we're feeling pretty comfortable. There's upside risk in that forecast. But, you know, it's a bit of an evolving thing, this Merrimon, right? Like, I think I'd rather get to the end of this year and then I can upgrade next year, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, no worries. I'll have developed a mind by that stage, right? Then I'll have a much better idea.

Excellent. So just a second one as well, if I can. Previous sort of estimates for the Vent project sitting at about $40 million. there's sort of been 8 million spent on growth capex in the last two quarters, sort of implying about 34, 35 million less to the vent project. Is that still on track?

Yes, although I think it's 42 Aussie versus 8 US. Yeah. So, yeah, that's right. But those numbers still sort of hold? Yeah, yeah. Look, again, I think... We may not have it in the deck. I think it's in the Word version of the quarterly. As we're doing more metres, Morto, you may have the exact number, but I think we saw a reduction in the cost per metre of development come down a bit as we did more metres. Yeah, that's about right.

No, that's down to about $11,000 a metre from 12.5. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that's about right. Yeah, so look, the bigger components, obviously, is when you start, you know, we've got to do a bit more development, but there's some somewhat sizable vent fans that have got to be bought. So they're, from memory, don't hold me to it, but off the top of my head, there'd be $4 or $5 million between those two there as like a one-off lump. And then there's the raised boring work, which is the other sort of big component, right? All right, thanks, Tim. I'll hand it on.

Thank you. Your next question comes from David Radcliffe from Global Mining Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Mick and Mornay. My question is just coming back to that profile again and maybe just thinking about the shaft production for the year, because it looks like you've got an average sort of north of 3,000 tonnes per day ore hoisted. The mine hasn't done that for a while so maybe could you talk to just that the outlook for this year and give us some more colour on how that profile looks and maybe there's some more great upside there that gives you confidence in hitting your targets. Thanks.

Yeah, that's right. So again, look, we've been very clear that when we bought the mine, dilution control and mining practices weren't best in class, I think is probably the best way to put it. So the guidance for this year that we had for grade was, I think it's on the front slide there, but it was three eight to four uh and obviously you know we're running at 4.1 um yeah three eight to four so we are sort of seeing a little bit better grade so i've always rather haul less dirt for the same metal um so what's likely to happen is you know round about that you know sort of 4%, maybe 4.1% for the year, and haul a little bit less dirt. That's probably where it looks like it's coming out.

Okay, that makes sense then. Thanks for that. I'll pause that on.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1. Your next question comes from Tim Hoss from Canaccord. Please go ahead.

I was just wondering around the offtake terms that you've got for any zinc production that might have been produced through the tolling arrangement. Does that go through Glencore's current arrangement?

Not at this stage. So it is a tolling agreement as opposed to an all sale. So we will get con back to deal. We have not at this stage signed offtake. And I've spoken about the copper market in terms of it's incredibly tight for copper con. Actually, it's really tight for zinc con as well. I must admit I haven't had a look for a few weeks, but, you know, zinc con on spot will be, if not below zero, pretty close to zero. And so our immediate focus has been to charge on out to get the high-grade copper out there. Quite frankly, there's high-grade zinc we could take in a very short space of time, even quicker than the copper. But we have to wait for polymetals to be up and running, right, and let them get up and running and, you know, not try and force them. get them up and running. But that, we have a draft of the offtake. We'll be signing something in the not too distant future, I think.

Okay, fantastic. Just to clarify that the copper is also separate to the CSA offtakes.

Sorry, which copper?

So the copper, any copper you might produce through polymetallic or going to poly...

Yeah, that's right. Well, if we're sending copper ore up to polymetals, we won't recover the copper because their circuit's a zinc lead circuit. So that's why we've chosen to send the zinc lead ore up there. Anything that's got copper in it, that's going to run through our plant. Right, Roger. I think that was it for me.

Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Eric Windmill from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks very much, Mick and team, for taking my question. Sorry if I missed it earlier. The line was cutting out a bit. But just on tariffs, I mean, are you seeing any issues in the supply chain or anticipating any major impacts, you know, in terms of cost or availability of consumables, things like that?

It doesn't seem to be an issue for us right now. Obviously, look, it's a very unstable world. I think Mornay and our general counsel did an amazing job getting our refinancing done. Notwithstanding the ups and downs in the market and everything, I sleep much easier knowing that we have all that liquidity and no near-term principal repayments. to to you know weather any storms i think that's more what we're going to see we haven't seen any uh like consumable or critical spare uh issues at this stage can't rule them out um it's probably more of a just a what i would call a general market uncertainty right that's been more of an issue for us but um as i say i do sleep much easier having having that refinance done

Okay, fantastic. No, I appreciate that. Thanks very much. I'll hop back in the queue. Cheers.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. McMillan for closing remarks.

Look, I appreciate everyone. I know it's a really busy reporting period in Australia. You know, look, I think clearly if you asked me at the end of last quarter, which was our strongest quarter, what would I want? More copper is always the answer. Clearly in Q1, more copper is the answer. I'll say the same thing at the end of Q2, just given the leverage we have to our fixed costs. But, you know, I think things that we've got a really good runway ahead of us now for 2025 and into 26. The major projects are all being executed. And, you know, look, the more we get into this Merrin mine, the more we really think that thing has got the ability to really move the needle for shareholders and, you know, cap it on that. You know, if you can see our growth capex for this year, in total, that Merrin mine's circa 25 million Aussie dollars for that kind of production. It's a no-brainer for us to do it, right? And... So we're very excited about it, but obviously not taking an eye off the ball with our capital vent project. You can see those development meters and that really starting to pick up. So thanks, everyone. And, you know, we'll talk to you after Q2.

And that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.