Alkane Resources Limited

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Arcane Resources Q3 full year 2026 operating and financial results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Alternatively, you may also submit your questions on the webcast at any time by typing them in the question box and click submit. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Natalie Chapman, Corporate Communications Manager. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. Some housekeeping items to note. The accompanying presentation for today's call is available for download from the company's website at alcres.com. Today's press release, the financial statements and the MD&A are all posted on our website and CEDA+. For those on the webcast, please move through the presentation slides yourself as directed by our presenters. Moving on to slide two. I'll remind everyone that this conference call contains forward-looking information that is based on the company's current expectations, estimates, and beliefs, and may also use terms that are non-IFRS performance measures. Please review Alkane's quarter three fiscal year 2026 disclosure materials for the risks associated with this forward-looking information and the use of non-IFRS performance measures. Please note that all dollar amounts mentioned on today's call are in Australian dollars unless otherwise stated. Also, as management reviews the results, please remember that Alkane has a June 30th fiscal year end. So the quarter ending March 31st, 2026 is the third quarter of our 2026 fiscal year. And as we close the merger with Mandalay Resources on August the 5th, 2025, our group financial and operating results for quarter three, 2026, shown today, only include eight months from the Costa Field and Bjorkdale mines, a former Mandalay operations, and a complete nine months of results from Tomingley. Please move on to slide three. Today's speakers from Alkane Resources are Nick Earnor, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer and James Carter, Chief Financial Officer. I will now hand the call over to Nick Earnor. Please go ahead Nick.

Thanks everyone for joining us today. Let's jump right into slide four which tells a pretty clear story. We've just delivered another record breaking quarter across the board and this is both operationally and financially. All three of our mines are operating really well. On a consolidated basis, we produced a record 45,800 gold equivalent ounces in the quarter, which is about 5% higher than in quarter two. For the first nine months of our fiscal year, we produced 120,000 gold equivalent ounces. This is well on our way to meeting our full year guidance of 155,000 to 168,000 gold equivalent ounces, remembering as Nat said that this doesn't include July's production from Costa Field and Bjorkdal. Given the strong prices for Golden Antony in our robust production results, our mines generated 189 million Australian dollars in operating cash on the quarter. This is a bit over 40% higher than in quarter two. At quarter end, we had 374 million Australian dollars in cash, bullion and liquid investments on hand. We continue to build our financial position clearly to aggressively grow the company through both exploration and capital in each of our mines and advance the Bode-Kaiser copper-gold porphyry project. And as I've discussed previously, we're simultaneously seeking M&A to opportunistically grow the company. Another accomplishment I'd like to point out, which we're pretty proud of, which occurred subsequent to quarter end, alkane was included in the S&P ASX 200 index on April 22nd. We expect this to in time result in a further increase in stock liquidity and potentially reduce volatility as a greater number of investment funds can now own Alkane in their respective portfolios. Now let me move on to slide five. On a consolidated basis in Q3, Alkane mined more than 620,000 ounces of ore and an average gold grade of 2.33 grams per tonne and an average anthony grade of 1.12%. Recoveries of 91.4% gold and 85.9% antimony remain fairly consistent quarter over quarter. As a result, our mines produce nearly 46,000 gold equivalent ounces consisting of nearly 45,000 ounces of gold and 377 tonnes of antimony, which again is the record for the company. I'll get into specifics on each mine shortly. Needless to say, all of our mines are operating well and we remain on track to meet fiscal 2026 guidance. Moving on to slide six at Tomingley. In quarter three, we produced 315,000 tonnes of ore, which is just a touch less, 1% less than quarter two, and an average recovery rate of 90.1%, with an average grade of 2.4 grams per tonne of gold. This results in production of 21,652 ounces of gold, which is a touch lower than in Q2. Processing continues to perform well, and milling's exceeding plan Now, this is primarily as a result of an insertion of a mobile crusher to pre-crush material prior to entering the processing circuit. This pre-crushing material, which we've tried different sizes prior to entering the circuit, continues. And it's seen an increase in milling rates to about 1.3 million tonnes per annum. Further optimisation to balance our throughput and the cost that occurs in this mobile crusher continues. The primary source of ore continues to be from the Roswell deposit. Underground ore was slightly below what it would have liked, primarily due to stoke performance issues on several stoves that required rework. But this was offset slightly by high development ore tonnages. Capital expenditure during the quarter was allocated primarily for our new highway realignment project. Construction of this is expected to complete in Q2 fiscal 2027, so the end of this calendar year 2026. By accessing the high-grade San Antonio deposits via two new open cuts, this high-return project will accelerate Tomingley's growth and further optimise our cost profile. All in sustaining costs at Tomingley in quarter three were $2,444 per ounce, about 10% higher than we had in Q2. The high costs were a result of higher processing costs, which includes the cost of the rental crusher, which, as I said before, this is a high-return initiative that's continuing to queue for and expected to continue going forward. Overall, Tommingley generated $54 million Australian dollars in the third quarter. Moving on to slide seven. At Costa Field, our gold ants were in the mines. We processed 36,000 tonnes of ore. In Q3, gold grades were 10.2 grams per tonne, in line with Q2, and antimony grades at 1.2%, which is about a third higher than in Q2. Gold and antimony recovery rates were 93.6% and 85.9% respectively, matching the previous quarter. The mine produced 10,584 ounces of gold, which is similar to Q2, and 377 tonnes of antimony. which is 41% more in Q2. Now, I want to stress that Antony grades can be variable throughout the mine and more higher than typically we're seeing in the ore body areas that we're in in Q3. Overall, we remain in our mining plan on our own guidance for Costa Field. Costa Field delivered steady state operational performance during the quarter, with all mining and milling rates exceeded our planned rates. We've had strong mining performance in terms of tonnes mined for the quarter, And our extraction from different areas complied reasonably well with forecast mining advance in each area per month. We do, of course, continue to work on our continuous improvement programs. For us at Costville, this is a bit of drill and bust optimization, capital development optimization. We continue to work on operator training. And our transition to emulsion explosives to improve recovery and reduce dilution continues. Processing we focus on blending control to maximise throughput, recoveries and produce metal. We also here had successful trials during the quarter with respect to pre-crushing ore feed as well and screening lower grade ore stockpiles to further improve throughput, crush at downtime and blend control. Work continues here to prioritise that operational efficiency. All in sustaining costs at Costa Field in Q3 were $2,521 Australian dollars per ounce. This is 17% higher than Q2. This is primarily a result of a one-off $4 million Australian dollar inventory adjustment of the run of mine stockpile following the introduction of a new inventory model to match that used at Tommingley. As a result of all of this, Costa Field generated a record $80 million Australian dollars in cash flow. This is a significant increase. Moving on to slide 8, in Q3 at Bjorkdal, we processed more than 320,000 tonnes of ore, an average grade of 1.5 grams per tonne and an average recovery rate of 90.4%. Building on this consistent operation, Bjorkdal produced 12,433 ounces of gold, which is up nearly 25% compared to the previous quarter. In general, we allocated resources to capital development activities in preference to operating development. Mine grade was in line with plan grades, and we had a slightly higher contribution from below the marble mining area, which traditionally has been a slightly higher grade area for us rather than above the marble unit. Mill throughput decreased slightly while recoveries improved compared to the previous quarter, albeit not really much more than we would expect in line with the increased head grade. Also during this quarter, of interest, we did a trial of processing a parcel of off-site ore from a small mine to the west of Bjorkdal, and this was pretty successful. The goal with this program is to evaluate the option and possibility of sourcing off-site ore to increase production and lower costs of Bjorkdal. Through this trial, we've got an understanding, hey, this ore, it works, it's successfully into the plant, it's fed into the plant, it's got great recoveries, So further studies of this, negotiations, what permitting things needed are underway to understand how we can continue this program. During the quarter, there was continued underground capital development success. We achieved more than 1,100 metres. This is in line with the previous quarter. We got 1,200 metres and we're above plans both for the quarter and year to date. Also, capital works on a series of lists the tailings down facility have commenced We started this once the area there thawed post-winter. And additionally, the development of the Newlands open pit, a small open pit right next to the long-term Bjorkdal pit that closed many years ago, and an upgrade of the equipment fleet is also continued in quarter three. So the higher production allowed all interstanding costs in Q3 to be Australian dollar, $3,699 per ounce, about 10% lower than in Q2. With this improved production, Operating cash flow from Yorkdale was 55 million Australian dollars, or over 50% more than the second quarter. One of our key things is to drive organic growth by increased mineral resources, and I'm going to talk you through the exploration program across our portfolio. So let me start by moving on to slide nine, Tomingley. At Tomingley, one of the interesting things that we did in the quarter was testing a size reflector feature quite deep beneath the Roswell deposit, which is bullet point number four on your map there, and near mine prospects such as El Paso, which is bullet point number five. Now at Roswell, this deep drilling intersected gold arsenic-enriched hydrothermal breaches and veining right where we expected it in the seismic reflector. This is 400 metres below the current resources. So we've got a fair bit of further drilling planned to test where this structure intersects both the andesite and monzodiorite units. Both of these are favourable hosts at Roswell, and both of them extend down at depth. So a pretty interesting area for us to see whether this is an area that has fluids that feeds gold up higher into Roswell. At Roswell, I mean, sorry, at El Paso, we had eight drill holes completed, and this resulted in us reinterpreting the geological model, allowing us to better understand the geological structure of El Paso, which we don't really fully understand. A drilling program to test the new model is planned. Meanwhile, underground drilling at Roswell itself in the quarter focused on improving confidence in the inferred resource. We got some great results like 5.9 metres at 31 grams per tonne of gold, which includes 2.1 metres at 78.4 grams per tonne of gold. Got a different one at 17.4 metres, growing 4.3 grams per tonne. which includes 2.5 at 21.1. These are all very typical of what we see at Roswell. Additional underground drilling has commenced to kick and accelerate this infill drilling program. So moving on to slide 10 at Costafield, we invested just under 7 million Australian dollars, 6.6 million Australian dollars in Q3 to work to expand the resources. As you can see in points one and two on the map on the slide, through blue drilling, continued. We will advance this in Q2, and we include step-out testing of surface geochemical anomalies. Targets around the existing workings, which these targets will be incorporated, our results will be incorporated in the plan in the coming year, so the FY27, including Kendall, Bullet Point 3, Brunswick South, Bullet Point 4 on the slide. At Kendall, 25 individual veins have now been identified and modelled These are immediately above the currently mined Ewell and Sheppard ore bodies, and they surround the historically mined from many decades ago Costefield deposit. So we looked at extension drilling in that area, and this gave us pretty strong results, including amazing results, like 1.94 metres grading 132 grams per tonne of gold, so over four ounces of gold per tonne, and 19.8% antimony, very high-grade antimony. and 2.3 metres grading 267.5 grams per tonne, so over eight ounces per tonne of gold and 5.6% antimony. These are clearly ultra-high grade and they're similar to mineralisation at the nearby Fosterville mine. And these present one of our most exciting prospects. I would not want you to think that I'm saying that we have a massive tonnage here, but they're certainly very, very high grade. At Brunswick, we conducted infill and extension drilling programs with additional droids mobilised to chlorate that program. And up at bullet point six, you can see on the screen, we're also testing for potential of the Sunday Creek, the Southern Cross style mineralisation just below Costaville's historic mines. So let's move on to slide seven. At Bjorkdale, drilling expenditures were just under three million Australian dollars during the quarter, as three exploration targets were progressed. Drilling at North Zone, that's bullet point one, this move from growing to infill, while the eastern extension program targeted the continued depth and the eastward extension of the main and central zones. This is bullet point two. And further to the northeast, most interestingly, at Storeheaven, this growth drilling also continued, as did to the east at Norbury during the quarter. At Bjorkdal, we continue to explore for narrow high-grade veins, which we've shown that we can mine these efficiently. Let's move to slide 12. The Northern Molong Porphyry Project, the entirety of which is shown on the map on this slide, is a highly prospective gold corridor. This project also encompasses our Boda-Kaisa Copper Gold Project, which is in the bottom right of the picture that you're looking at. Exploration on this project for the quarter included our continued inversion and interpretation of the Mobile Magnet Tellurids, or MMT, survey data that was flown in November. Reconnaissance drilling for a total of 4,000 metres that commence through December was completed, and we're interpreting this, and we expect to report them in the coming months. Now, other low-cost activities to advance the development of Bodo Kaiser Gold Copper Project in the quarter included the continuation of our environmental baseline studies. We did stakeholder consultations, property negotiations, site selection, infrastructure. These are low-cost but high-impact activities. So we think This keeps us well on the path towards a project approval application in late 2027, calendar 27, or early 2028. We have here the goal of receiving approval to then go on and make an investment decision in late 2029. So as you can see, there's a tremendous amount of exploration work going on with each of our projects, all with the goal of expanding resources and driving for new recoveries to increase the mine life therefore increase production levels and contain potentially lower costs. And with that, I'll now hand the call over to you, Jim, to provide a review of our financial performance.