Aeris Resources Limited (AIS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. I think we can kick off the quarterly presentation for Aeris Resources. Just a few suggestions. So there's a chat room. If you want to put questions in the chat room, we will answer them at the end of the presentation. You can also select the raise hand option and then we will unmute you to ask questions. We will kick off the presentation. The second quarter was in line with what we have seen in the first quarter with 10,200 tonnes of copper equivalent production. The cost was again well managed at $4.93 a pound. It's down from the first quarter. Cash and receivables stable and the operational -- cash flow from operations has improved quarter-on-quarter. Cracow once again had a very good quarter, well managed on both production and costs. And we can see that Cracow will continue with their performance. Although we have seen lower production from Tritton at 3,900 tonnes of copper, there was a few challenges for the quarter, which we'll go into a bit more detail, but they've all been addressed, and we're still seeing Tritton achieving its annual guidance, and we'll go into detail as we talk through. Mt Colin, another good quarter, 1,900 tonnes of copper that was produced at an all-in sustaining cost of $284. That is nearly the end of Mt Colin. There's still some tonnes which will be processed in this quarter, but the mining has ceased by the end of November last year. Jaguar is starting to look very promising. We presented to the Board the final scenario of how we want to start it up, and we have approved by the Board the advancing the studies to feasibility study level, and we'll get into a bit more detail. Constellation drilling, very successful drilling. We'll talk a bit on some of the results. And as you would have seen on Friday, we have now renewed the ANZ facility for another 6 months, and that is just -- giving us enough time to put the new facilities in place, but also start to look at a few strategic initiatives we will launch -- we have launched already, and we'll talk about it as we move through the presentation. This is just a standard slide. You can see we're still forecasting Tritton guidance around 20,000 to 25,000 tonnes, holding Cracow guidance. Mt Colin would be on track. We -- you can see that the resources there for Barbara, Jaguar and Stockman, those are the main projects we're working on. We'll talk about Barbara, the North Queensland assets when we get to that discussion. And really, the focus is on the good cash we're generating out of Cracow to enable the copper strategy in the business as we move forward. At Tritton, the challenges for the quarter related to labor shortages, specifically over the Christmas period. We had a rising main failure at Tritton, where we actually flooded the bottom of the mine for a while. And that has now been addressed, but that put us out of mine being able to mine at the Tritton Deeps within the quarter. Also, the delay from the overseas or the international delivery of the pumps as for paste fill has been delayed. That is actually being commissioned and is in working order now. So for the quarter, all these challenges we had has been addressed, and that's the reason why we're very confident about achieving the guidance for Tritton. One of the key reasons why the Tritton will see a good second 6 months, specifically the last 3 months is the open pit ore coming in from Murrawombie. The open pit mining will start this month, and we're basically immediately in ore and by hitting the fourth quarter, the mill will run at full capacity. It's a 1.8 million tonne process plant. So you can see that we can -- we will get to that 350,000, 400,000 tonnes for Tritton when we start the Murrawombie pit. 70 hole drill program at Constellation really gave us good results. You can see some of those results at copper at 15% and 5% copper on some of those intersections. But what it has made very clear to us is actually, there are some areas in there with very good gold grades. And you can see some of those gold grades of nearly 4 gram a tonne and 1 gram a tonne. It looks like there's an area towards the left with higher grade and it drops off a little over the time. So very good results. We're busy finishing off the assaying and targeting to put a mineral resource update out by quarter 3 and really trying to then put the feasibility study together so that we can bring the feasibility study to market as soon as we can. At Cracow, once again, a very good quarter, about the same gold production as the first cost well managed, capital well managed, and then significant cash flows above budget, purely driven by price. And one of the things we're working on now is using some seismic data, which has been done a while back, redefining drill targets and starting to step out to identify new greenfield targets specific at Cracow. Now the team there has done an amazing job to turn the mine to this position and really taking the advantage of the high copper price, which then assist in delivering, as I said earlier, the copper plans. Mt Colin, that photo you see there is the final footprint. That has now been finished. The mining is done. We have removed all the pumps out of the mine. We're busy doing some rehabilitation work. All the tonnes mined is at Ernest Henry. And as of the last run, and you can see there, we've seen significant improvement in recovery, up to 85% and also the grades to the mill has improved in the last run we did. At the end of the quarter, we had about 140,000 tonnes remaining to be processed. And basically, the last tonnes are getting processed as we speak at Ernest Henry and then the mining and processing for Mt Collin will be finished or finished in this current quarter. What we have made a decision, though, is we talked a lot about Barbara over the years as a future project. It is a strong future project, but it is a small short life mine. And as part of the strategy to clean up the business to make it less complex, make sure we allocate capital where there's good returns and long-term returns, we have made the decision to divest the North Queensland assets. That would include the Barbara project and the tenements and Mt Colin as it is today. That process has been kicked off. And it's clearly for us, we're looking at copper assets in the business with long life -- or assets to have long lives and really focus on where we spend capital that there's significant long-term returns for projects, and that's why we are so focused on the Constellation project at Tritton, the Jaguar restart and Stockman. And that really, we believe, give us that opportunity for long-life assets. Jaguar, the restart, as I said, has been delivered to the Board, really strong attractive economics. The base plan is to start off with the restart of the Bentley mine, focus on the turbo high-grade lens, and we will do some infrastructure upgrades. We will restart the mine with a paste fill plant. We will upgrade the ventilation so we can maximize production out of the Bentley mine. And then we will start to step out to other potential opportunities, which include the old Jaguar mine, the Tritton ore, old open pit mine and Triumph, which is a new deposit. As you can see on that on the right-hand side, we've spent a lot of work trying to look at base metal targets in and around the current mines, and there's 8 targets identified. And as part of the restart plan, there would be an exploration target program to identify and to test these targets as we move forward. The Stockman project, as we said, the test work is underway. We've seen some encouraging results from the test work, which on the Albion specific test work across the ore body. The test work we're currently doing is to finalize the cost and capital all the Albion process, but also to understand what is the recoveries opportunities across the ore body because the first round of test work was only from one hole. We're now doing test work across the ore body. We have kept engineering designs now that we know the Albion is the process we would want to go down. We have -- we are making some rotation upgrades or changes in the main process facility because we think there's ways to have a smaller footprint and potentially a lower capital footprint or a capital cost for the restart of Stockmann. At a corporate level, cash and receivables at $33 million. It's down from $39 million the last year, but it's really just the timing of concentrates, but the cash and closing cash balance has been maintained at $26 million. That's stable quarter-on-quarter. And also, we have put another $3 million into cash-back bonds, which the restricted cash or the cash, which now sits in government bonds is at $15 million. As I said earlier, cash flow from operations has improved significantly quarter-on-quarter. We still have the $40 million debt facility with Washington Soul Pattinson. And as I said earlier, the ANZ facility has been renewed for another 6 months, and we are quite far advanced with various parties on the refinancing initiatives. That will allow us to get the new financing in place, but it also allows us to work on, for example, the divestment on the North Queensland assets, which will bring down that facility in any way, the requirement for bonding and will release some of the cash, which currently sits in bonding facilities. So what's the next quarter? Obviously, Tritton is a major focus for us. We have launched a review or a program where we've got external consultants to help with the improvement on productivity and efficiencies at Tritton. Now that we can get back into budget with the baseline working, the start-up of the Murrawombie pit, which will start in the next few weeks, and that will bring a lot of tonnes into Tritton. At Cracow, it's really business as usual for Cracow. The team is doing a really good job, but it is about starting to look at the exploration opportunities outside the current Western Wayne field. As I said, we'll finish off Mt Collins stockpile. We'll run the divestment process for North Queensland, and we will finish off the feasibility study for Jaguar restart so that we can really get to a position where we know what is the best and when can we restart the Jaguar mine. I guess just in summary, we are now down to -- for this last quarter, we still have 3 producing operations. We will now have 2. There's clear good projects, development projects, a lot of work done on new discoveries and constellation keeps on getting better and better and really conservation is key for the future life for Tritton and the plans are to start within the next 18 months. That is the summary of the quarter for Aeris. I'm happy to take any questions. I see we already got a question in the chat. If anyone wants to ask a question, please do the hand raise, then I am happy to unmute for that part.

We've got a question here from Peter Cooper. Peter is asking about we generated $33 million in operating cash. We spent $25 million on capital. what was the CapEx spend in prior years, we had spent big CapEx on bench raising tailings facility, et cetera, et cetera. Peter, the $25 million, a lot of that is going into capital development, specifically at the operations at Avoca Tank to advance and bring forward some Avoca Tank tonnes. A lot of money was spent on the paste fill plant to get that up and running. And also the -- we spent quite a substantial amount of money on exploration, specifically at Constellation. So it is part of the growth plan. It's part of investing. We will -- we've also spent quite a bit of money in the mobilization for the open pit and for the next 3 to 6 months will see us spending quite a bit of money on the open pit restart plans. I've got Dan. Dan, I'll unmute you, just give me a second.

Just a few questions from me. I just wanted to touch on, I guess, Cracow, ask to look at the last reserve statement that was printed. Obviously, you kind of outlined a bit of a shortened mine life. Now as we all know, reserves are a lot lower than resources at that asset. And the production over that period obviously, it hasn't all come from that reserve base has come from other places as well. I just wanted to maybe just get an indication of -- is there anything you can kind of point to, to give us a bit more confidence in what mine life is at that asset, particularly at current gold prices. I imagine you're bringing in some more marginal or historically marginal stopes that are quite economic at these prices. So I just wanted to see if you could give the directional mine life at...

Sure. Look, good question. I mean we have spent quite a bit of time in the last 3 to 6 months with the high gold price to go and do a full review of the resource and specifically in that Western mine field. And we have already added about 80,000 ounces of additional gold into the mine plan over the next 18 months to 2 years. So just from the work we've done around the cutoff grades and the potential to go back into some of those significant potential, and there's still work to be done. So it's not done yet. So good result on that within the Western vein field. For example, we're doing some drilling kind of in and below the current workings, and it keeps on extending. So we -- 4 years ago, we bought the mine with 2 years in life and 4 years later, we're sort of saying, well, we think there's at least 4 years life with the opportunities we see at Cracow and the continuation of those Western vein field ore bodies. But a good work has been done to really look at the higher gold price and see what else can we actually bring into the production profile.

Okay. Awesome. And maybe just turning over to Tritton, obviously reiterated guidance of that asset, which requires quite a large second half in FY '25. Maybe you can just help us unpack what assumptions we should be baking in there? Obviously, you've got the open pit material coming in kind of end of Q3 in Q4. Is that assuming a step-up in milling rates as well, like if I assume underground rates are maintained kind of relatively holding through that period, the open pit volumes just go on top of that milling rate, is that a fair assumption?

That is a fair assumption. We will -- in the fourth quarter, the mill -- we really run at full capacity, and that is just because of the tonnes we're seeing coming into production from the pit. So the pit will be where we'll get the most. And also, we should see now more production come out of Budgerygar in the -- with the paste fill now in place and being done. So there will be a movement for better grade and tonnes coming from Budgerygar. We're seeing some really good results at Avoca Tank. We're getting really good grades and tonnes out of Avoca Tank currently. And the team are working there as well on a new development program to speed up development as we move forward. But really, on your assumptions, the key one will be the open pit tonnes coming into the mill in the fourth quarter.

Yes. And just to clarify the full run rate for the plant 1.7 million, 1.8 million tonnes per annum.

Any sort of the capacity of the plant.

Yes. Have you done any -- because it hasn't run at that rate sustainably for a couple of years. Has there been any, I guess, preparation work going into that to make sure that it's capable of producing at that rate after a couple of years?

Look, we have put the Jameson cells in. We've had a crusher replacement a while back. There's nothing there in the plant. What we're currently doing actually with the process plant is we run it for 3 weeks on 1 week off. So a lot of maintenance are getting done in the week where it's often and it really runs at a higher rate for the other 3 weeks. So it is getting tested quite often to run at full capacity.

Okay. And final one for me, just about Barbara. I was just wondering if you could maybe talk about some of the options for the divestment process there and what that could look like?

The divestment, we're running a process basically where we will target the North Queensland and has been approached by a few of the North Queensland explorers producers up there. We have got a good close relationship with Glencore, who is obviously interested not to buy the assets, but to be part of the solution for people up there. Really, we will package it all up and sell it as a package. There is interest from various parties for certain areas. So we might look at it once we run the process if we split it up. But clearly, for us, the people who work for us has all been either absorbed back into Aeris or has been made redundant. The contractors are all off site, all the equipment is on site. Some of the equipment we can use at the other operations has been underway to be moved to both Cracow and Tritton. But clearly, we see the value for us by focusing on the longer life assets in the business and focusing on the restart of Jag and Stockman as a priority.

Just a quick couple of questions from my side. A following on from Dan's question there on guidance at Tritton, just running a bit under there on capital spend year-to-date. And I guess that mainly surrounds Murrawombie and the pre-strip there, right? So are you still on track to, I guess, get to that midpoint of growth CapEx? Or has that been a bit of that slipped into FY '26 at all?

At this stage, Paul, we are on track. The plan for the Murrawombie originally was to start -- to kick it off in December. But with the plans which the guys has come up with accelerating in the different stages of the pit, there was not -- we didn't -- there was no requirement to start early and the work which the guys are doing shows that clearly, there's going to be a faster strip done and mining done than we originally thought. So at this stage, it might move between quarter-on-quarter, but still forecasting to spend most or all of the capital in -- as per the plan for FY '25.

Yes, easy and maybe coming in a little bit lower than the midpoint if it slips into next year. That's fine. And then second question, just on Bentley and that restart and feasibility study. I guess, where will efforts be focused in the very near term in terms of that mining sequence? And I guess next question following on from that is, do you think you could sort of get those mining rates up there at the Bentley mine similar to previous rates that you're running at? Or maybe it's going to be a bit lower given the issues that you've experienced or the geotechnical issues you've experienced in that asset?

So look, the guys are still working on some of those. But at a high level, we are targeting plus 450,000 tonnes for us from the start. And to achieve that, 2 things need to happen. The one is you've got to put base fill in to help the geotech challenges we had before we closed it down. And the other one is a ventilation upgrade. With the current restrictions on ventilation, you can probably only do 350,000, 400,000. If we've spent a bit of money on a ventilation shaft, it will unrestrict your tonnes and the capacity we are trying to get to is to get to 550,000 tonnes. So in the next month or 2, that work will be finished off by the mining engineers and the projects team, but we're really very focused on when you start it up, you've got to try to target that 450,000, 550,000 tonnes, and that will make it a very feasible restart. I got another question here from Toby. Will the Washington Soul Pattinson debt facility be refinanced before August maturity? Or is it a possibility they need to be extended? So Toby, it's early days. We do have an option with Soul Pattinson to extend by 12 months. That is a viable option for us. But as part of this refinancing working on the ANZ, obviously, there might be opportunities to look at different ways to deal with Soul Pattinson. But right now, we do have the option to extend by 12 months. Adam is asking a question about the ANZ facility, which we announced on Friday that the required a $10 million cash backing over 2 installments. Adam, the first one was paid on Friday, and the next $5 million will be paid towards at the end of February. So both of those currently being managed through the business cash flows. I don't see any more questions. No more hands. I'll give it a minute. And then if anyone want to ask a question, please feel free, just select the hand or put your question into the chat room. All right. Thank you, everyone. Really appreciate your time for taking time out to listening to our quarterly. We are available for questions afterwards as well. So please feel free to reach out. Thank you very much.