Aurelia Metals Ltd

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Brian Quinn, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you for calling in today for Aurelia Mettle's third quarter results for financial year 2024. Joining today are my executive leadership team members, Martin Cummings and Andrew Gray, who will provide some updates and then join me for Q&A. We will be using the presentations circulated today as a reference if you would like to follow these presentations. Let me start by highlighting that our solid third quarter production performance has been underpinned by peak north and south mine delivery, 10% higher oil mining volumes and 13% higher processing volumes, and the dark gold mine delivering slightly above target for oil around target for processing. All efforts towards delivering our FY20 point budget and delivering quarter-on-quarter improvements that we've discussed in our previous quarterly presentations. Our project and exploration teams are continuing to build our future pipeline for our growing base metal portfolio with some exciting releases and milestones presented during this quarter also. The Federation project has delivered many achievements and there are more planned over the next two quarters including first stowfall in Q1 FY25 which I'll talk to you later. Our focus efforts remain on disciplined capital management to keep our balance sheet robust with the cash balance remaining steady since last quarter reporting $106.9 million and $144 million liquidity available. This is very important for Aurelia and a platform to build our credibility for our ongoing journey and commitment to sustainably grow our business in line with our vision, values and strategies. With a strong outlook in gold and base metals demand and with our established infrastructure and resource base and our recently revised regional operating model being implemented in the quarter to achieve our goals, so we can continue on the journey to building our base metal business into FY25 and beyond to create shareholder value. Despite this great potential, we released some exciting building results at Federation this quarter and also at NIMIGI to confirm the high quality resource potential at both of these locations. They are significant results for Aurelia as we continue to review and work on our portfolio and pipeline of opportunities beyond what we already have in our resource model of 26 million tonnes in the Cobar region. The results also confirm our direction and transition to base metal business, which is a positive upside. And Andrew will talk to more of this in his section. I'm just going to move to slide four on the production and costs. In summary, during the third quarter, Aurelia produced 14.5 thousand ounces of gold, 4.3 thousand tonnes of zinc, 5.8 thousand tonnes of lead, Notably zinc and lead were up 30% and 46% relatively this quarter in line with our narrative in the December quarter report. Our group production was largely impacted by PEAK's processing plant online streaming analyser which reduced our recovery of base metals and force management to move to low-grade feed to prevent loss of high-grade base metals that we had planned in quarter three and I'll discuss this in more detail. These results generate a positive group operating cash flow of $4.2 million. This $4.2 million does not include cash flow which was impacted by timing of shipment and sales from Peak, where we are sitting with stocks on hand at $14 million at the end of the quarter, three, that will largely transfer into quarter four. We're anticipating a stronger quarter four cash flow based on production and sales in our plan. Mark will unpack some of these details in his section. The impact of these operational issues impacts the inability cost per ounce being higher than planned which is expected to reverse in the June quarter. We also had some higher costs from peak which I'll talk to you in the peak section. Overall we're committed to deliver on the upside of gold guidance, remain on guidance for lead and copper and have revised our zinc guidance down at our orange sustained cost upwards. We also slightly reduced the growth capital guidance to combat some of the delays to non-critical project work with Federation. in addition to our expanding capital guidance, which we're partly managing through our capital management framework. I might just move on to slide five, safety and environment. We continue to put safety above all else and have some improvements this quarter. However, our people are having instant injuries and we can't rest until all these people on site return home every shift injury-free. We've continued a disciplined process of reviewing fatal risks and business material risks across the site and business every month. And we continue to have our leaders focus on safety interactions in the field to observe safety in action and risk control effectiveness that must be in place at all times to prevent fatalities. As indicated last quarter, our report of injuries continue to be a report of mainly hand injuries, splits and trips. Subsequently, we've introduced some expertise in the organisation to assist, raise awareness on how to prevent these injuries and use our tools better. We can shift to operational efforts I think we continue to expect the base metal production and grade this year to be weighted to the last quarter after some operational resequencing had to occur when the online streaming analyzer failed. The online streaming analyzer, which we call OSA, receives plant slurry samples from the different streams within the circuit and tells us how much lead and zinc is in the feed. concentrate and tally streams that can manage the chemicals and concentrate grades and recoveries. Preparature failure, which was caused by potentially power and moisture issues from the regional supply, and required the mine and processing plant to change gears and stop producing high-grade lead and zinc due to loss of recoveries that were being caused with the OSP being out of action. This was down for nearly a month with this particular issue. In the meantime, we ran low-grade lead and zinc and then lower-grade copper production This was rectified in February and production of high-grade base metals prioritised for March. Unfortunately throughout the quarter and more particularly in March peaked at over $3 million of maintenance and repair costs associated with changing our tower ropes, some major repairs to jumbo loaders as a result of some tough conditions in the South Mine. These tough ground conditions also changed the sequence of two high-grade stoves which will be extracted in the June quarter. Increasingly developed metres were also higher at peak by 5% for the quarter. which continues to set up the mind for optionality of production. Having these development needs ahead of plan continues to provide options for stoves if conditions are providing challenges. I'll move on to slide seven on data. Data has continued to produce in line with their plan with production drilling and stoking keeping up with the monthly production targets. The plan has been resequenced to bring additional ounces into FY24 from FY25 to allow a smaller At present, soap is sequential and providing good reconciliation grades. The closure plan is well underway at the start, so we are ready to execute the preferred plan post Q1 FY25, once production is completed. And the sale process is well underway with several inter-parties in the processing plan, which will be finalised in the coming quarters. We're now at the end of underground production. The teams at the start are also looking at extracting valuable items from the mine that have been reused that peak or federation to offset future capital requirements. At Federation on slide 8, we continue to be firmly committed to deliver Federation First 04 in Q1 FY25, with the team modifying the mine plan to accommodate the lost time in January where we experienced rainfall events that we did report. At present, the project is slightly behind on de-climbing development, which we have plans in place to recover in the coming quarters. With all the focus on infill drilling work during this quarter, the geological team is getting ready to release the block more in late April for the production protocol of the Federation mine. Other key milestones include two shafts being completed and a third nearly completed, all incident free, which is a fantastic result for the team. And it also decreases the first stove oil risk as it relates to having ventilation and the unknown geotech issues that we get with the shaft raising. The construction of the ceiling has been completed. are now fully functional and accessible under all weather conditions with our heavy equipment. As highlighted, we've downgraded the capital for FY24 based on several non-critical projects, slipping in and cleaning earth, pollution and surface for future ROM areas, delivery of main ventilation fans and other items that we've decided to re-scope or remove from the project, none of which will stop the first step or the associated ramp-ups. Operations range is progressing as we employ the operations management team to assist building on the operations into the future in line with the regional operating model. The team has taken the best information from PEAC and rebuilding to the Federation site. Lots still to be done over the coming quarters but the team is committed to the plan to achieve our goals. Now I'll pass on to Andrew to talk more around the exciting new exploration results we've released recently. Over to you Andrew.

Thanks, Brian. And it certainly was a very strong quarter for exploration. I want to take the chance to recognise the entire exploration team who are really doing an amazing job. For those following along, we're on slide nine, which talks about the Federation exploration update to be released to the market on the 5th of April. If you haven't had a chance to read this, I would strongly recommend that you do. The release included two standout results. Firstly, we drilled below the main thrust, at Federation and hit some very high grade mineralization over very good meters. Now I'm talking kind of 27.9% combined lead zinc over 14 meters. So the question I suppose is why is this result important and why are we so excited about it? Previous drilling below that main thrust yielded kind of disseminated sporadic sulfides. This high grade result was our first high grade result below that thrust. It's offset about 35 meters to the south. and it really gives a strong suggestion that the high-grade eastern lands federation continues to depth. Now, perhaps more excitingly in that release, the exploration team tested a concept to the west of federation, really testing whether it's offset actually to the north in this area. And what we had seen to the west is strong alterations, but we weren't getting the mineralization. So it really pointed to something being there. The team did some excellent work. to chase this concept of an offset and frill hole 215 intercepted massive sulphides about 140 metres north of the strike of the main deposit. Now if you do go to our release from April you can see a photo of this outstanding core. The results of that northern offset are visual at present and we'll provide assay data once it's available. But it's a great result that demonstrates the potential for the high-grade federation mineralisation to continue out to the west. Now, just turning the page, the other very strong exploration result this quarter was from NIMIGY, which was the subject of a release on the 22nd of February. We touched on this, I believe, at our half-year result call. The exciting piece here really for us, as well as the very high-grade zinc mineralisation in the western lead zinc zone, were multiple thick high-grade copper lenses. And now I'm talking 29 metres of 2.3% copper in one of our holes. So a really good result, and certainly we'll be back at NIMIGY in financial year 25 doing further drilling. Now, not to be outdone, we were also very busy at peak, and we've touched a little bit on that in our quarterly report. We haven't gotten the assay results from that drilling to share with you today, but we will bring you those results from those programs throughout this current quarter. Suffice to say, look, we've been very pleased with the results we've been seeing for our efforts at peak. We'll pass on to Martin now, who's going to cover off on balance sheet.

Thanks, Andrew. And I'll turn to slide 11. And as you can see, our balance sheet remains very strong. We're just under $107 million of cash on hand at the end of March. Our loan note is undrawn, and that results in It was, as Brian said, another strong quarter from DAGS, and they generated $10.5 million of operating cash flow, and we expect that strong cash flow to continue in the June quarter. As for peak, cash flow was negative this quarter, but mainly driven by the timing of concentrate production. After we resolved the issues that Brian talked about in the plan, month. We're working with our logistics partners and have secured additional capacity to move that product this quarter. The silver lining from this is that production is likely to be sold at higher prices than what we achieved. Peak also did incur some additional maintenance costs which were not planned this financial year. In addition to the OSA repairs, we had the unplanned repairs to a loader and a jumbo and we had to replace the tail regular testing regime. We do remain focused on lowering our unit costs through productivity and cost out programs, and $100 a ton mining costs remains our goal. The material that we plan to mine in the June quarter, coupled with the sale of concentrate that builds up this quarter, is expected to result in a materially stronger result in terms of cash flow. For Federation, we spent $20.4 million this quarter, and that was lower than we had planned. but pleasingly did include spend on completing the sealing of the Berthong Road and development of the surface ventilation shafts. The spend this quarter takes year-to-date to just under $50 million, and we're forecasting around $15 to $20 million to be spent in the final quarter. With this, we've therefore reduced our guidance slightly at Federation for Capital to $65 to $70 million, reflecting that some of those non-critical items have been deferred. The project does continue to track within the approved capital budget of $143 million. Andrew's just touched on exploration and spend was consistent with the previous quarter and it does continue to deliver some fantastic results. We've spent $8.5 million on exploration year to date and tracking well within the guidance issued of $10 to $15 million. And you'll finally notice on the chart that we did receive the tax refund in January which I've talked about previously. So whilst not specifically called out on this slide, I just want to make a few further comments on our all-in sustaining costs this quarter. The DAGs, their all-in sustaining costs was in line with our expectations, and I just want to commend Angus and the team there on how they're managing the operation in its twilight period. At peak, their all-in sustaining costs this quarter really suffered from these lower sales. The cost of sales adjustment that we put through in all-in sustaining costs So with the strong production that Brian's flagged for the June quarter and the additional sales from production this quarter, we expect peaks all in sustaining costs and therefore the group all in sustaining costs to reduce materially. I've mentioned previously that we'll look to changing our cost metric for reporting purposes to better reflect the business that we're moving towards, which is focused on base metals. Thanks for your time. I'll hand the call back to Brian now.

I'll just move on to the key focus areas for the final slide. Look, as I highlighted in previous quarters, we're very committed and focused on delivering the right mining sequence, the right value, lower cost of peak. And as Martin highlighted, we had a tough first couple of months, but the third month of the quarter, the peak management team really dug in and got the correct results. and the back end of the port is strong, despite the challenges. So obviously going forward, there's still much work to be done in terms of reducing our costs and inefficiencies and utilization of our equipment and getting better productivity. But the team have that all in front of them, which they're fully aware of. In terms of maximizing cash generation from DAVs, obviously, as Martin highlighted, it's been a strong port for DAVs. current quarter. The team's got a very clear plan in front of themselves and like I said it's been a good quarter result and they continue to sort of live exactly to the plan which is fantastic. First SOFOR federation in quarter one FY25 and the ramp up. So all efforts on really getting the decline development done, getting ready for the all forward development to commence for the first SOFOR is a high priority and with our company partners and so the leadership realisation. In terms of progressing optimisation of the Coburg region, Andrew Graham and his team are really looking at how we're progressing the optimisation work in terms of taking the current base case and seeing if there's more value and potential value outside and doing a few things differently. We'll continue to work on that and present it to the board in the coming months and then we'll obviously release it throughout quarterly at the right time. Exploration to deliver. Obviously, Andrew talked about that, some really exciting results that have been released and that will be coming. Like I said, it's one of those things that's going to help us really define where we go and what we do next beyond Great Cobar, which is obviously fundamental to our organisation in terms of our growth in the baseball's position. Last but not least, without the right people, it's obviously very hard to build a business and our focus at the moment is really attracting the right talent into our regional into the Cobar region under a regional management team or regional operating model. That's obviously still key to us and we've been able to attract and retain some very good talent that have started and are coming soon to the team to really look at how we can build our organisation going forward. So really, obviously, our focus in summary is to safely deliver our operating performance and our growth agenda, which is really about filling our meals with quality order, as I've said from time to time, and that's still on the agenda and still very much our medium-term objective. Nothing's changing and obviously this quarter results are sort of testament to we've got the capacity, we've got the horsepower, we've had a few headwinds but we've pushed through them and now we're seeing ourselves up to FY25 as well as delivering FY24. So last but not least I'd like to thank the team, Aurelia team, everyone's really worked hard this last quarter to make the results come out the way they have and it's an ongoing team that's going to continue to deliver us going forward. So, Rachel, hand it back to yourself and to pose any questions people may have.

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. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Daniel Roden with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Good day, Brian Martin and Andrew. I was just wondering, it's probably just given DAGs is coming towards the end of the 12th year, you know, we're in a pretty, you know, standing gold price environment. I just wanted to, I guess, ask and unpack if and what the ability for some legacy scopes there to be, I guess, reclassified into a reserve component. And is there any opportunistic or that you might be able to sneak out from the asset?

Yeah, thanks Dan. At this stage we've reviewed that. Management's reviewed any opportunistic ore or stoves that may sort of fit into the current sort of economic situation. There is actually one stove that actually bought into this financial year and re-sequenced into this financial year. They continue to look for those opportunities but that's the only one we've identified so far. But obviously that is part of their agenda. If they could get extra stove ore and And it's economic that they will go for that, but currently we don't have any other options on the table on the recovery of the mine.

Yep, noted. And I guess just with federation, obviously Q1, FY25, first of all, I just wanted to unpack the ramp-up profile a bit more of the asset in the underground there and I guess what it understands what that transition looks like to the assets that come in. you know, free cash flow positive standalone, so it's not drawing down additional funding. You know, it looks very healthy at the moment, but just unpacking that a bit more just to, you know, as it's becoming closer.

Yeah, Dan, I'm Martin here. I'll preface this response by saying we are working through our life of mine planning process at the moment, but so that might just Essentially, first O4 in the September quarter, we are looking at the commercial production rate somewhere six to nine months after first O4 is the timing. That really hasn't changed too much. You'll recall from our previous calls and conversations, and again, I'll retest this when we do the life of mine plan, but around 20,000 tonnes a month of mine production The ramp-up period from then is around 12 months after that, 12 to 18 months where you get to that 50,000 tonne a month. And really the key deliverable there is getting the decline progressed deep enough so that you've got those multiple levels that you're soaking on. Andrew, I might just throw to you just for any other comments.

No, look, nothing more than what you've talked about there, Martin. I think the ramp-up profile we've previously shared largely still holds. We'll obviously update that once we have life of mine. But we are looking at being ramped up to full production in about 18 months from when we do start stoking.

Yeah. Yeah, perfect. And that life of mine guidance, is that coming with FY24 results as well?

Yeah, that's the intention at the moment. Whether it's false or whether it's at the June quarterly, it'll be somewhere in there.

Awesome, awesome. And I'll just stick one more in, a bit of a long-awaited one, but the Glencore arbitration process, you've mentioned that's going to be confidential now. I'm assuming that indicates that there's not likely to be a financial outcome in that that is disclosable. So what options are being explored there, I guess, and can you... share any additional information on that?

Well, what we're progressing at the moment is the arbitration process. So, you know, that is our preferred option to get resolution on the application of those historic contracts associated with error.

So that is the focus right now. All right. No worries, guys. Thanks for your time. I'll pass it on. Cheers.

Your next question comes from David Coates with Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning, Brian, Martin and Andrew. Thanks for the presentation this morning. Just a couple of questions there. Can you just run us through, obviously you've provided the guidance that you usually provide some of the projects have been deferred. What's the outlook of the CapEx profile for the next three quarters with those changes updated?

So Dave, we're going through that re-forecast process at the moment as part of the life of mine. So we've got 15 to 20 for this quarter. I've been previously talking about it's around about a $30 million CapEx And then, you know, from there, that would be a cumulative spend of around $100 million. And then you progressively spend the balance over the next 12 months or sort of 18 months, really, because there's a bit of a tail in that capital. But I prefer to just confirm 15 to 20 for this quarter. And then when I come out with guidance, I can give you full detail on what that updated capital profile looks like for 25.

Sorry, sir, I'm sorry. And just a quick one. The oil and sustaining costs, and you mentioned you've been continuing to change your methodology, but if you did include, if you backed out the costs related to those sales, what would your oil and sustaining costs have been this quarter, roughly?

Look, yeah, I've got an estimate. Yeah, group oiling costs would be around $200. Okay.

Okay. And just finally, the exploration below the thrust zone, we talked about that in the presentation. It sounds like it's about 140 meters away, if I read that correctly. Assuming, you know, hypothetically, If that were to evolve into an exploitable deposit, what kind of infrastructure would need to go into it? Would it just be an extension from current workings? Would it need extra ventilation? How could that possibly, in what way might that work?

I might run with this one, David. It's Andrew here. Just a couple of things. So two things. There's two elements there. There's the exploration below the thrust and then there's the northern offset down to the west. Two very different things. The exploration below the thrust is offset about 30-odd metres to the south. It'll just be a continuation of the mine as we know it. The stuff to the west, it's early days to know what that evolved into. I think the real success there was the fact that the ore body continued to the west. We really thought it would. We were getting some really good alterations to the to the western extent of the deposit there, but we just weren't getting yours. That's great that our teams got on to this offset extension. It's only 140 metres, underground mining is not far, that we would use existing infrastructure accesses and all the rest of it to access that. And the real plus, if it evolves into something, is the potential for additional tons per vertical metre, which would be great. But early, early days, you put a hole through it, it's certainly an exciting result, but we need to do a lot more work there.

Yes, I understand that, but it sounds like one that's got a pretty popular exploitation, sending the right exploration success.

Oh, absolutely. I agree totally.

Thanks very much.

Thanks, Simon. Your next question comes from Adam Baker with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Good morning Brian and team. Apologies I might have missed the start. Just on the zinc guidance reduction at peak, could you just quickly delve into the on-stream analyzer and exactly what occurred there and if it's expected to be reoccurring or not?

Thank you. and the streaming analyzer generally has a life of about seven or so years and this thing, this actually one prematurely failed just over three years in. So it hasn't failed to our knowledge beforehand in the same way. So what actually eventually, as I said, this machine actually, it takes the material from the slurry samples and the different streams coming into the circuit tells the operator exactly how much lead is actually coming into the feed and also the concentrated tailing stream and then they can adjust the chemicals and also work with the concentrate grades and recoveries. So if that goes down you really require the metallurgist to visually look what's going on and then take samples every four hours to check in hindsight what went through and what actually happened. So during that period we obviously As soon as the on-stream analyzer went down they moved to lower grade lead and zinc so we didn't obviously throw the good stuff up into the tails and that was obviously something we had to do very quickly and then obviously they went on to a lower grade copper as well which has lower variation in the feed or lower variability in the feed so they can actually visually keep things in control as much as possible. And then once they ran out of the lower grade copper and lower grade lead zinc they had to move on to the higher grade which we actually did lose some of the higher grade into the tail unfortunately. So the RSA has been obviously put back in order and you would expect it's not going to have the same situation again. However, we are working through looking at changing that out to sort of a radiation based circuit. which is available in Australia. And that's something we're looking at right now to sort of change that system out as soon as we can. And once all the sort of assessment work's been done on it, to have it localised anyway. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, that's really good, Tyler. Thanks. And just on the underground unit mining costs at peak, obviously up until today, you've been going pretty well getting that unit mining cost down. And, you know, I suspect it's just a blip on the radar in the short term. But do you have an aspirational target of when you think you can get to that $100 a tonne mining cost level?

Yeah, well, some of the costs were one-offs. The tail ropes were actually planned next financial year, so that was planned and had come forward. And then we had two loaders that had actually a fair bit of money spent on them in terms of one... was over half a million and another one was a couple of thousand. They were actually damaged in the stoves in Kairos which is obviously where some of the tougher stuff. We also had jumbo damage as well with its boom in that same area. So effectively they're one of the costs. We haven't seen them before obviously and conditionally based on what we saw in the underground working area. The overall challenge is to keep that focus there in terms of we've got a sort of working smarter process which is looking at how do we load every truck to get full productivity on the trucks. We're looking at increasing utilization by cage riding to improve people on the job much an hour a day longer than what we're currently getting now. So there's a bunch of initiatives which sort of drive us down to that sort of $100 tonne sort of focus we have and obviously that through for FY25 but there's plenty of initiatives and plenty of different activities we're working on to bring that cost down.

It's just a matter of these one-off costs hit us this month and this quarter. Thank you Brian.

Once again if you wish to ask a question please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Ashley Chan, a shareholder. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks everyone for a great result, great exploration results. I just got three questions as a shareholder. First one is I guess the positive one. Are you able to give any colour on the target or size for Are you looking at something that's incremental target, whatever you can say and take into account ASX rules? Was it something that's significant, or are they company-making targets? The second question would be on hedging, and in the future, do you see that before you make any hedging policy that you consult with the major shareholder and active institutions and also get an independent consultant to review any potential hedging policy that's independent of lenders. And the third one is bearing in mind your competitor, comparable peer company, what level of flood or weather event protection do you have? Are we protected against a one-in-100-year flood or a one-in-500-year flood or against a one-in-1,000-year weather event? Thanks.

No problem Brian and Ashley, thanks very much for your questions.

Neither of the drilling programs, NIMIGY or the Federation, that we can sit here and say, you know, it'll be X, it'll be Y, it'll be company-making or it won't be. From my point of view, the Federation discovery was company-making. From the point of view, we've got all that infrastructure there in Cobar and we can exploit it with super high-grade, in that case, lead zinc material. You know, certainly getting particularly that Western extension offset piece at Federation is very exciting. From the point of view, it has the potential to extend Federation to the Western But until we put more holes in, we really won't know. On Nimigi, there's already a reasonable resource in our reserve and resource statement on Nimigi. Had some pretty good copper grades. This drilling will hopefully extend that, and we'll do that through the MROR process in a few months' time. But it does actually flag the possibility of there being much, much more of Nimigi, of really good grade material and of copper material. I think in the past, they really chased the lead zinc material when they thought about Nimigi. So for us it's about putting more holes in, really understanding what's there and then seeing if that flows through to a mine plan. So the goal obviously is to see a mine at Nimigi.

Thanks Andrew.

Actually I'll jump on to Martin here just around hedging. So I'll just give you a bit of background as to, you're obviously looking at a hedge book that's out of the money at the moment. we put in place and how we think about it. So if you cast your mind back, we put the financing in place May last year and we were embarking on quite a capital intensive process starting in August where we were going to commit significant balance sheet capacity to deliver federation. At the time we had DAGS coming to an end and DAGS is an important funding source for funding federation and we wanted to lock in the returns from DAGS. I'd updated you before. I'm still comfortable with the hedging that we did. It was the right move to do at the time. I'm very happy with the fact that it's out of the money because we did retain exposure to upside price movements, and we're benefiting from them now, as I mentioned in my section. In terms of consultation, yes, we did consult with major shareholders before with the hedging program, and the overwhelming feedback was that if we could lock in the returns from DAGs and get that good cash and really provide a bit more protection and balance sheet protection in terms of delivery operation, then that was the right move. Some of those people are on this call, funnily enough. And certainly around advice, yes, we do get advice. We have a group that we use on a retainer basis who are advising us on the market and advising us on the hedging market, what is happening in the forward market. So we do get that advice. But ultimately, it comes down to the management team and the board around managing the balance sheet. And we make the final call on whether we want to hedge or not. But we do take input from externals. So I hope that answers your question.

Yes, it does. Thanks. Thanks for that.

And look, just your question around protection from rainfall events relative to our peers. Obviously, we've had some major rainfall events in the Cobar region and Nimidji region, and obviously our people can perform and deliver and can handle those events. If I can just reiterate in terms of Federation, Federation is a project, and we are in the process of building the infrastructure and establishing all the infrastructure in that region as we build that project. And in January, we were obviously caught short of having all those things in place. By nature of the project they weren't due to be in place. We are also looking at some additional mine water dams which were planned to come on board in the future, bringing them forward to also provide additional insurance and working through those optionalities right now as well so we can really sort of secure ourselves to not be affected by these one-off major storm events that we actually have seen of recent. So, I mean, that's kind of the storyline we're going at the moment. And if you look at Dargs, Dargs have a large capacity of water. They do experience a significant amount of rainfall. They will finish the mine, obviously, in quarter one FY25 with, obviously, excess water that we need to actually remove as we close the site. But there's no risk of that rainfall affecting that dam or the operations either. So in summary, we are very conscious of the risk on our register and we're working our way through it and effectively we'll fund the various activities we need to to make sure those risks are reduced for us in terms of operations.

Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time and I'll hand back to Mr Quinn for closing remarks.

Yeah, thanks, Rachel. Look, our vision is to be a developer and operator of choice of critical-based metals, and we believe we're well on track to do that. We obviously have a lot of foundations we're putting in place to get there. We are transitioning ourselves to the Cobar region over the next 12 months. We're actually an exciting business. We have one sort of project under study, one project being built. We have an operation... that we're optimising and we have an operation that we'll be shutting in the coming period of time. So there's a lot of work going on and the team is really well set up to deliver the plans we have, especially for FY24 that we've already communicated against the guidance and we're preparing ourselves for the long work to get that finalised for FY25 and beyond. So we thank you for dialling in. We thank you for your questions. and we look forward to providing results in the next quarter. And once again, I'd like to thank Aurelia's team for bringing to this exciting portfolio we have right now. So thank you very much, and we will speak to you at the next quarter.

That's concluded our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.