Aeris Resources Limited (AIS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Aeris Resources quarterly results presentation. As usual, we'll run through a high-level result at a group level, and then we'll have a bit more detailed discussion around the operations and projects. As everyone knows by now, Aeris has got 2 operating mines. We've got the Tritton copper mine in New South Wales, and we'll talk into the detail, which has been with the company for a long time and as we've talked a lot about is working on big growth plan to set that business up for a substantial line. And then we got Cracow gold mine in Queensland, producing around 40,000 ounces of gold and has been around for long time and as we'll talk about, is Golden Plateau is really exciting story, and we did release some results on that in the last quarter. And then the 2 projects is Jaguar copper/zinc mine in Western Australia and the Stockman project in Victoria, and we'll touch on those as we go through the presentation. At a group level, once again, was a solid quarter for Aeris with topical production ahead of plan, specifically driven by good production coming out of Tritton at 9,000 at a total of gold production, 9,300 tonnes. Tritton production was ahead of plan. Cracow production is on track to achieve guidance. The quarter grade was a bit lower because of sequencing of stopes but that will be made up in the next few quarters. At the annual guidance as we discussed before, we try to achieve that. And it's mainly driven by the Constellation deposit, it is on track. The growth capital, which we spent to set that mine up and really set it up for a 10-year mine plan is now on track, [ waste ] to be is underway and we see post production coming out of there around March. As I said earlier, Golden Plateau exciting story. We'll talk a bit more about it and the cash receivables at $178 million. It's down in the last quarter, but it is due to a significant amount of growth and sustaining capital investments we're making in the business to set it up. When we look at Tritton's specific copper production at close to 6,000 tonnes, that was lower than last quarter, but as expected, that was always planned. In fact, they were ahead of plan for the quarter and the mill run rate is running at 1.8 million tonnes. We had a record September month, which was running at an annualized rate of 2 million tonnes. So then we'll show you if you put tonnes in front of it, it can handle between 1.8 million and 2 million tonnes, and that is not driven currently by a significant amount of tonnes coming out of the more won't be put and that pit, as we discussed before, we'll finish off towards the back end of November with final tonnes. That was set on a stockpile, which will be processed in the next -- towards the end of FY '27, What was excited for the call is the Avoca Tank. As we've said before, we're drilling Avoca Tank out to convert the inferred resource to indicate it so that we can put a mine plan around it. But all the way through, there was an area which we looked at. And I might just jump the sort of you can see this area where we expected to just put the development through and keep going to get to the next levels as we drill them out, where there's a bigger ore body sitting down below, we did convert some of those areas to folks, and we've added those tonnes into the FY '27 plan. What that means though is we are spending more money on sustaining capital as we work through, but also we're getting additional tonnes from Avoca Tank. The really exciting history for Avoca Tank is, of course, what you see on that image from 4,700 down is the future of Avoca Tank really strong. And the drilling is confirming that there is a significant resource to be more in the future. Then if we look at Constellation, the construction is underway. A lot of good work by the project team. You can see a lot of work has been done on the site, the construction of the offices, the laydown areas, the catching dams and then the road, there's a 25-kilometer haul road, which already 5 kilometers has been completed and sealed. So they sit in a 5 kilometer section. So the next 1 will be done within the next month and that will then be ready for all starting in March to get the tonnes to the Tritton. You can see the stripping is well underway. We're already in oxide ore that has been that gets stockpiled. And as we said, we're expecting first ore to come out of that in March and then everything on both capital cost, capital and the project time line is online to achieve those states. That is a key feature for Tritton at the back end of this financial year where we see a significant amount of good grade tonnes coming out of this. But and will feed the mill in quarter 4 in the back end of quarter 3, which will really set written up for a very strong finish to FY '27. Moving on to Cracow once again, Cracow as it has been over the last few years, achieved [ prime ]. They did a great job on the mining side. They mined the tonnes, although the grade was slightly lower than the internal budget because we had to resequence the plan, but those higher grade tonnes will come out in the next few quarters. The real upside, we are also at Cracow working on a tailings dam uplift. That will pick up early in the new year, and then that will set it up once again all extending the mine life. The real opportunity, of course, is what we announced earlier, what we announced last week was the Golden Plateau resource update. And you can see the there's already on a resource base, now 3 million tonnes at [ 2 ] a tonne gold, of which 2.5 is open pit. Now as we said before, that is where we see a significant potential life increase for site if you think about the process plant to about 600,000 tonnes. We have been saying consistently that the new drill program, which we're working on has got a hard potential to extend that even further. Now we will -- we're working on the mine plan on this. We are doing the mine designs the current mine design, as you can see there, it looks like an open pit mine on the left-hand side or the potential to go underground. The location of Golden Plateau is literally, if you look at this map, less than 2 kilometers, it's nearly 1 kilometer from the process plants allocation-wise, it's under mining lease. The work we're doing now is to convert this current resource into [indiscernible] mine plan and add that to the current [indiscernible] life and we've been saying this certainly, we will come out with a new updated plan, a lot of 1 plan for Cracow and Tritton within the next 3 to 6 months. And that will then define both of those operations in terms of life but also in terms of the opportunity. So the next step for Golden Plateau is a drill program, which we are working on and then the conversion of, of course, of the mine planning of the resource into a mine plan. But at the same time, we're busy working on and lodging the mining application with the department to get all the necessary approvals to start Golden Plateau within the next 12 to 18 months and that then plus what we're mining out of this Western Vein Field will give us the life we're looking for at Cracow. On the project side, we've done some base metal drilling, as we discussed, in FY '26. We've done 8 -- normal is we have done 8 holes -- them really looks very interesting. The team we're doing downhole -- we've done downhole EM in Panther. It looks like there's a conductor and the guys are doing more technical work and refine the targets and then we will look at potential further drilling on those 8 targets. At the same time, we've discussed before, we have done some gold exploration targeting and the plan is still to target some of those gold normally in FY '27. On Stockman, we have finished off the draft feasibility study. We looked at further opportunities. The team are are taking that on board, and there would be another review of the feasibility study, and we will bring it out within the next 3 to 6 months. Strong project. We just think there's more opportunities now that we simplified the process, we're looking for opportunities on capital and recoveries to improve the position. At a group level, tax receivables down to $178 million. Really, it goes around the growth investment in the business. You can see Tritton and Cracow with the operating cash flows and then the capital at $64 million. The bulk of that was for growth capital and that is really just setting up constellation for that 10-, 15-year mine plan, as we discussed. The so that sort of summarized the quarter. Once again, we're very happy with the outcome, good quarter, strong results, cost of capital well managed within plan and on time. And we're really excited about the growth investments as we move Constellation and Cracow into longer-life assets, and we will come out with that in the March quarter. I'll close it off there. I'm happy to to see if there's any -- happy to open for questions. There's any question. If you want to put a question, please just put up your hand, and then we'll open it for you.

And just a couple quickly. Just on our growth spend over the year, how should we think about it, I guess, on a quarterly basis? Is it going to be peak spend sort of this quarter and next and then sort of rolls over significantly in the fourth quarter? Is that as Constellation hits commercial production?

Yes. Yes. The next 2 quarters will be the big spend from an infrastructure and the pre-strip point of view, but then once that is in production, that will come back just to sustaining capital.

Yes. Great. And then just on Golden Plateau I guess, I know it's still sort of early days, but when should we be expecting that to potentially come into the mine plan? .

We expect to come in to the plan within the next 12 to 18 months. Once we launch the application to the 4 approvals, the expectation is that we'll take about 12 months. We should have mine plans and specifically for open pit mining in place in the next 3 months, so we can launch the applications.