Aurelia Metals Limited (AMI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Peter Botten. I'm Chairman of Aurelia Metals Limited. Welcome to Aurelia's 2022 Annual General Meeting. Before we commence proceedings, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Jagera and Turrbal peoples. I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which Aurelia operates and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. This is our first ever hybrid AGM. I wish to thank everyone for attending today, either in person or online. We're very pleased to be able to once again host a physical AGM but also have the flexibility for those who prefer to participate virtually. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure today's meeting runs smoothly for those attending online, if technology issues do arise, a short recess or adjournment may be required depending on the number of shareholders affected. If this occurs, I shall advise you accordingly. Just some housekeeping for those here with us in person. Could I please ask you, check that your mobile phone is on silent. And if you hear the emergency alarm, please follow the directions from Allens staff. All our Board members are present today. And on my far left hand side is Paul Harris; next door to Paul is Bob Vassie; Andrew Graham, our Interim CEO, is on my immediate left. On the right-hand side is Bruce Cox and to Bruce's right is Susie Corlett; and our CFO and Company Secretary, is on Susie's right, Ian Poole. Also with us today is Helen Gillies, who is also joining us online from Perth.

Good afternoon.

Welcome, Helen, and thanks for joining us. Also, with us, as I mentioned, today is the company's interim Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Graham; and Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary, Ian Poole; and our Chief Operating Officer, Peter Trout, who is in the body of the audience and who just put his hand up. Representing the company's auditors, Ernst & Young, is Ms. Kellie McKenzie, who is sitting at the front of the meeting. She will be available to answer any questions in relation to the audit of the company. I'll now address the quorum. Under our constitution, a quorum of share -- for a shareholder meeting is 3 members. And I do believe we have a quorum present. So I now declare the meeting open. If I move to the agenda, I propose that the Notice of Meeting dated 24th of October 2022, which was made available to shareholders, be taken as read. As announced to the market on the 18th of November, we have withdrawn resolution 4 from the formal business of the meeting. And therefore, this resolution will not be put to shareholders today. Moving to the agenda of today's meeting. I'll deliver a brief address. Our interim CEO, Andrew Graham, will then deliver a presentation on the company and our operations. This will be followed by the formal business, which is to receive and consider Aurelia's full year '22 financial statements and reports and to put 3 resolutions to shareholders. The resolutions cover the adoption of Aurelia's full year '22 remuneration report, and the reelection of Paul Harris and the election of Bruce Cox as Directors in accordance with the company's constitution. As you will appreciate, participation in the business of the meeting and asking of any questions is confined to shareholders and those persons entitled to vote on behalf of shareholders. If you are attending in person and wish to ask a question, please stand and show your yellow or blue attendance card. State your name prior to asking your questions, please. If you're attending virtually, you will be able to ask questions, either verbally or in writing. So please submit your question via the Q&A function on your Zoom screen. In order for the moderators to identify you as a shareholder online, we ask that, firstly, shareholders type in their name and shareholding SRN or HRN -- HIN at the start of their question. All company representatives, proxies, all those with powers of attorney, identify the shareholder they are representing at the start of each question. If your question is about a specific resolution, please include the number of the resolution to help us address your question at the appropriate time. If your question is a general question about the company or its operations, please put general question. We will address any general questions after the interim CEO's presentation. Written questions may be amalgamated when we answer them. If a shareholder attending online wishes to ask a question verbally, please also write, "I'd like to speak," in the Q&A function. I'll then invite the shareholder to ask their question verbally at the appropriate time during the AGM. Please be aware that there may be a delay between your submission of the question and our receiving the question. I, therefore, encourage you to enter your questions early. Before I turn to the formal business of the meeting, I'd like to make some opening remarks regarding the company's activities over the past year and outlook moving forward. After 2 years of virtual AGMs, it's a real pleasure to welcome you to our first hybrid AGM. I'd like to acknowledge our many shareholders online as well as those who have made the efforts to meet with us in person to discuss company performance and hear about our plans for Aurelia Metals. I know ensuring a strong future for our company is something on which we are all keenly focused given our unacceptable performance in 2022. Today, I want to address some of the operational issues we've faced over the last year as well as update you on the wide-ranging programs that we have put in place to improve performance and capital management. These programs are already delivering results and signal a sharp turnaround in our underlying performance. The ship is turning -- maybe not fast enough for us all, but it is turning. I also want to convey the compelling opportunity offered by our Cobar development portfolio and in particular, the outstanding Federation Project, where our discussions on project funding are now well-progressed. It is with determination we pursue three leading priorities as we close the chapter on FY '22. One, we need to recover performance at the mines to ensure high margin, low-cost production that delivers cash flows to fund future growth. We need to predictably deliver on budgets and guidance and rebuild the confidence of our shareholders and financiers in the ability of the company to deliver operational and financial objectives. Two, we need to ensure highly skilled, capable leaders are at the helm of the company to successfully achieve value-adding growth. And three, deliver a competitive funding solution to commence development of what is our highest in-situ value asset: Federation. I hope today you'll leave confident your company is in good hands with a clear pathway to strong shareholder returns over the next 12 to 18 months. If I turn to FY '22 performance, let's look back on the year that was. With the veil of COVID lifted, the company is pleased to emerge with an improved safety record, with a lost time frequency rate of 8.75. The result represented a further year-on-year reduction, but the result is not good enough. No one should come to work and be injured in any way whilst at the workplace. Our safety journey, physical and mental, is a real focus for the whole organization with our target of moving to class-leading performance as soon as we can. Our performance in safety was even more important this year given external distractions of a rapidly escalating cost environment, supply chain challenges and an extremely tight labor market, with high turnover of staff and contractors. On their own, these factors provided a complex landscape for Aurelia's operations. But when combined with lower-than-expected metal production and disappointing gold grades at the Peak and Dargues mine, the impact on our cash flows was significant. In March, Aurelia declared a substantial impairment at Dargues, in recognition of reduced forecast average gold grades, and thus overall reduction in the life of mine inventory. The Board recognizes shareholders would have been bitterly disappointed with this result and acknowledges the work needed to ensure the right expertise and diligence is applied in future business development undertakings. At the end of the year, our cash position totaled $76.7 million. Acknowledging the weak performance in the September quarter, efforts are being redoubled as part of our performance recovery to ensure improved cash generation and cost control across all of our assets. We remain extremely excited by the potential of the Federation and Great Cobar complex. These developments will progressively move the company to a base metals focus over the next few years, growing Aurelia into one of the few diversified mid-cap base metal producers. At Federation, perhaps the highlight of the year was the substantial progress made towards development of this exceptional asset. At year-end surface works were 90% complete with the boxcut in place and the portal awaiting first blast for development of the exploration decline. Since then, even more work has been completed, and we are now 90 meters underground. During the year, a large body of work was undertaken to progress and finalize the Federation feasibility study, which was released on the 10th of October 2022. The study reveals the significant value opportunity that Federation represents to Aurelia shareholders. At 16.7% zinc equivalent ore reserve grade and the net present value ranging from $186 million to $415 million, it's truly a fantastic asset. I can confirm while the project remains paused to ensure fit-for-purpose funding solutions, the whole team stands ready and waiting to remobilize and continue developing this world-class mine. Further optimization of the capital costs and mining plans continue. Following the targeted development of Federation, we plan to direct our growth efforts to the Great Cobar deposit, which is expected to underpin Peak's future as a material copper producer. In January, the company released the pre-feasibility study demonstrating a robust technical and economic case for a low-risk brownfield development of the copper-rich Great Cobar deposit. Later in March, full development consent was received from the New South Wales government to develop Great Cobar, and we're excited by the opportunity to bring one of Australia's highest grade copper projects into production and a feasibility study will be prepared to ensure the project will be executed in a way that realizes the full value of this outstanding asset. Both Federation and Great Cobar will benefit strongly from our substantial and established mine and milling infrastructure, providing our shareholders with low-cost capital efficient growth. The discovery of Federation and Great Cobar are evidence Aurelia has one of the most successful exploration programs in the industry, combined with perhaps the most coveted ground position in the region. In FY '22, the team continued to deliver with some of the best drill results delivered to date at Federation, Great Cobar and the Kairos deposit at Peak. These results contributed to the 5% year-on-year growth in Mineral Resources to 29 million tonnes and a 45% increase in Great Cobar resource tonnage to 7.7 million tonnes. Our first major strategic priority for the organization is performance recovery. With our sites firmly focused on turning this organic growth into shareholder returns, it's imperative we recover our operating performance to increase cash flows as we go forward. This is, as I say, our first strategic priority. To do this, we have implemented a range of the internal programs to improve operational performance as well as an external review of cost efficiencies and management. Our objective is to deliver predictable superior operating performance, which delivers on budget and guidance, product volumes and revenues. This will drive increased value and improve our ability to fund growth, including the finance and completion of the development of Federation, followed by Great Cobar. We must rebuild the confidence with our shareholders and financiers by showing we can deliver what we say. With this in mind, we have brought in further expertise, including a team from KPMG to aid management in reviewing operating efficiencies, optimizing our mining and processing infrastructure as well as then improving cash flow management, cost control and budgeting. We also continue to optimize the development plans for Federation. Today, approximately halfway through the second quarter of FY '23, performance is on track with guidance. It is expected to continue to improve, particularly in relation to costs as we start to see the benefit of our intervention programs at the sites. Today, Andrew will take us through these plans in more detail. We look forward to reporting our December quarter physicals and cost outcomes in January and progressively demonstrating the projected success of our performance improvement plans. Our second strategic priority is leadership renewal. Following the departure of Dan Clifford, a global executive search for a new CEO is underway as the company prepares to take the world-class Federation project from development into production. A key priority for the appointee will be to unlock further value at Federation by optimizing the mine design and development as well as a broader view of the company's extent -- review of the company's extensive assets and infrastructure in the Cobar Basin to deliver improved shareholder return. While recruitment for a permanent CEO is underway, Andrew Graham, Aurelia's current General Manager - Growth, will step into and has stepped into the role as interim CEO. Andrew is a highly regarded mining professional with a broad range of operating and development experience with companies, including BHP, OZ Minerals, Zinifex and MMG. Andrew will be a strong pair of hands as we work through the transition to a new CEO. The recent appointment of Martin Cummings as Chief Financial Officer is also part of the Board's plan to ensure we have the right skill sets at the helm of the company. Martin is well-qualified to help manage our capital and future funding arrangements as part of our third strategic priority, moving forward. That third priority is the delivery of appropriate cost-effective funding for Federation. Running in parallel with our performance recovery program is the work streams to arrange and deliver the best funding solution for what are the exceptional rates of return offered by developing Federation. Discussions with multiple potential counterparties have taken place, and we are well-placed in finalizing a funding structure we believe is balanced, efficient and cost effective. This structure also minimizes our exposure to the challenges of inflation and supply chain delivery whilst optimizing the value of our existing infrastructure in the Cobar area. We are targeting finalization of the funding structure in the first quarter of CY 2023 and subsequently remobilizing to the Federation site as quickly as possible thereafter. With returns from our organic growth portfolio now in sight, the Board has chosen not to pay a dividend this year and continue towards achieving first cash flows from Federation, followed by Great Cobar. In closing, I'd like to thank our local communities, our suppliers and other stakeholders for their commitment and support. Our relationships with all who have a vested interest in our business continues to flourish as we mature our sustainable foundation. While much was achieved this year in this space of diversity and inclusion, climate change, First Nations engagement and consultation with community groups, I hope to see even greater advances as we move forward through FY '23. My sincere appreciation is expanded to the dedicated people of Aurelia Metals. You have consistently stepped up through the trying circumstances of the pandemic over the last 2 years, and you continue to support the company's operational delivery and growth ambitions. Thank you to my fellow directors, inclusive of Lawrie Conway, who recently departed Aurelia after 5 years in service and stewardship of the Audit Committee. Newly appointed Non-Executive Director, Bruce Cox, has stepped into this role and I also thank him for coming up to speed so quickly. I'd like to thank Dan Clifford for his tireless dedication in leading Aurelia over the last 3 or so years. There are few CEOs I've met over the years who have worked harder than Dan in addressing the many challenges the company has faced over this time. He's a good human being and I wish him well in the future. I'd also like to thank our soon to be retiring Company Secretary and Chief Financial Officer, Ian Poole, all of his hard work in managing our accounts, financing arrangements and company secretarial services over the last few years. Again, I wish in him well in the future, and I'm sure his golf handicap will benefit from more time on the course. Finally, I'd like to leave you with the knowledge that every single member of the Aurelia team is intensely focused on three things: the safety of our employees and contractors will always be our first priority; a return to operational excellence across our business; and optimizing our value-creating Federation and Great Cobar developments, with delivery of an appropriate cost-effective supported financing. We believe together, delivering these outcomes will result in significant and appropriate recalibration in the market value of your business. We look forward to delivering strong results in 2023. Now with that in mind, I'll open to Andrew to walk us through a presentation on the business. So Andrew, over to you.

Thanks, Peter, and I'm certainly humbled to have had a chance to serve the company in this capacity at what is actually a really important time. Now I'm conscious that quite a number of you might know me. And I thought it's probably worth introducing myself -- some of you might have heard me talk to the ABC Radio about Federation and Great Cobar and the exciting things we were doing in the Cobar region. Some of you may have heard me on quarterly calls through this year. But I don't intend on going through my resume. If you want to find out my background, you can Google me and see me on LinkedIn. But what I do want to tell you is why I do what I do. I'm passionate about mining, I've been in mining for more than 26 years. I love the industry; I love what we do. I love the fact that we're primary producers and we're producing the commodities that the world needs going forward. I'm also passionate about growth and development and corporate strategy. And my career started out as a mining engineer; I still am a mining engineer. It's evolved into that space around strategy and development. We spend a lot of time the mergers and acquisitions, a lot of time in project development studies, capital project studies, including when I was at MMG. About 7 years ago, Dugald River was at a similar place to Federation, where work had started, work had stopped. And at the time I was leading projects, we drove it back in a new configuration to get Board approval. And have some of the work I've been doing in the last weeks and months on Federation reminds me a lot of that position. And I'm absolutely confident, therefore, that we can take that forward. I'm also passionate about making things better. And one of the roles I had in the past at BHP was heading business improvement from our aluminum division. But it's part of something even outside of work that I just love. I'm taking something and changing it and making it better, looking for opportunity to make things better. And we've certainly got that opportunity year-to-date. And I'm going to relish that. I joined really earlier in the year, and I sometimes think about why I joined in a sort of a positive sense. What is it that attracted me? And I was attracted by the foundation of Federation, Great Cobar, the underlying assets and the good people I've met along the long way. None of that has changed. All of that is still with us today. If anything, it's probably better: we put out the Federation feasibility study. We're well-advanced on Federation permitting. We've had drill success around Great Cobar and we've materially extended that resource. So I look at what attracted me, it's there and it's better. And our job in the next little while will be to unlock that. But before I get into that, we'll go through the year that was, and I'll make some comments, adding to Peter's comments already, just around how we're seeing the underlying business. But I do want to spend a fair bit of time today talking about the way forward. So firstly, the safety. The pleasing piece of this chart is that we've maintained the improvement. So to Dan and Peter Trout's credit through 2020 into '21, there was a very material improvement in safety performance, and we've maintained that. So we haven't gone backwards. Now obviously, we have also plateaued. And to Peter's comment earlier, we won't rest until we are sure, confident that our people go home safely every day. So there's still work to do, and we are certainly going to be focused on that. When I look at safety stats, we often see them on the first slide of the presentation, you see the set of numbers. But I see a set of people because every one of those numbers is someone who ended up injured while involved in our work. So we're very focused on improving our performance, not just maintaining the status quo. The other chart we're showing in here is our environmental incident frequency rate. It's not a chart that a lot of companies show. But we're very proud of our environmental record and our performance. We're very focused on making that better. Just to correlate, those numbers are very, very good. And we don't have -- we're very proud, as I say, of our performance. We don't have a lot of incidents. We have had a couple through this early part of the financial year and we know what they are. None of them resulted in any environmental harm, and we've put in place steps to ensure that we don't have those issues again. So [indiscernible] if you want a better term. We are confident with continued performance, we'll get back into our target. Our target is to be below 3 for this year, and we're absolutely confident that we can achieve that. Operationally -- I'm not going to dwell on this slide. I'm not going to dwell on information you've seen before. You've seen the performance in full year results presentation. You've seen our guidance; you've seen our production. Now despite the weak start to this year, the first quarter, we are maintaining guidance and we do have confidence that we can actually achieve our guidance this year. Clearly, though, and as shown in the graph on the top left, 2 quarters of performance in a row have not been enough and our focus will be on what we can do to turn that around. That's the focus of the entire business. It's certainly the focus for me going forward. We'll spend a lot of time on that today as we move forward. Just on full year results. On face value, it's not a bad set of results insofar as we generated good operating cash. We did reinvest effectively all of that cash into the business. As you can see from our cash balance staying rather static, it was a fairly hefty capital investment period. But clearly, our role as a business now, goal as a business is to be generating free cash flow for our shareholders. In some ways, too, reasonable overall full year performance has masked the issues that we saw in Q4, and those have continued into Q1. So I'm going to get straight into what we are actually going to do about that. Now firstly, I just wanted everyone to be clear, to remind on my role, it's an interim CEO role. I don't see it as a caretaker role. It can't be a caretaker role. We've got a lot of work to do within this next 6-month period. And that work is actually critical to the future of the business. So my sleeves are rolled up as of Friday. I have been all the way [ through anyway, ] and we're looking forward. And so three key priorities in this period. So the first one is safety, and I touched on our safety performance. But one thing and I have driven this home with our operations teams, and I will do once they get down to site in this new capacity. In times of uncertainty, in times of change, usually people say, "We'll also see an increased level of incidents," and we can't afford that. So it's a message that we've driven off -- I've driven from day one, and I'll continue to drive as we get out to sites, and we're pushing that down through our line. Clearly, we can't afford hiccups along the way and a safety or environmental hiccup is certainly something that can bring us [indiscernible]. Operationally, we mentioned -- I'll cover this in quite a bit of detail. We cannot and we will not continue the way we have for the last 2 quarters. It's just not good enough. And we do have a plan to make that change, and a lot of that work is already in place and starting. Also, as Peter mentioned, Federation funding is my third priority, not in order, but all three equally important priorities. It is the key catalyst of the shares going forward. We need to find a way forward. There is an interest of shareholders. We've got a range of options that we're considering and working through at the moment. Our intent, as Peter mentioned, is to have a solution in place in quarter 1 of this calendar year. So moving on to performance and improvement on what we're doing on [ separating ] the assets. I'm not going to dwell on the things that are on the left-hand side of your screen. You've seen a lot of this stuff before, you've heard a lot of this stuff through the quarterly calls. Now we're certainly pleased to see an improved mining performance out of Peak and greater production. And without that, we're certainly in trouble. So we're pleased to see that turn around and that improved performance. But just to let you know what we're doing differently. So first of all, across the entire business, we are in the midst of a very active margin enhancement project. We've called it working smarter. It's across each of the sites, it's at corporate. It's not just a cost out program and a cost reduction program: very clear this is a margin enhancement program. And certainly, cost will make a piece of that. Definitely, you can improve margin by pulling out costs but also you get greater leverage by working on the revenue side of your business as well. And the key enabler for Peak going forward, and I'll get into what we're thinking about there, will be that margin enhancement project. I talked about coming into this business and the things that interested me. One of the things that really interested me was the scale and the quality of the resource base at Peak. Peak's quite a complicated asset, but it has a very substantial and good grade copper inventory. It has exceptionally good grade [ gold, lead, and zinc ores ]. Part of the margin enhancement project, the cost improvement project will be to get more of that material into a mine plan, and we are embarking on a program at Peak, reviewing our mine plan, thinking about what life of mine should look like and really bringing a fair chunk of that inventory into our production inventory. The other thing and I'll get to it in a little bit more detail. As we outlined in the Fed feasibility study, we are intending on taking Federation over to Peak. So there is some work that we can do, thinking about the optimization of that, timing, sequencing, equipment, flowsheet, and all of that is active at the moment. And we're thinking about how we improve both Federation but also synergies through Peak. Moving to Hera. One point I want to make straight up on Hera is it's not just a tonnes game. And Hera is off-grid. The nature of -- [ as it can, ] it's an isolated site. So it does have a reasonably high cost base. But it's not just about [ trying to ] dilute cost. So my mantra is the right tonnes delivered effectively. And there's a whole piece of work going on in respect to the Hera life of mine plan right now. It's been going on for quite a while, thinking about as -- a finite inventory left at Hera. How do we best exploit that, sequence and grade and cutoffs, to maximize cash for the business in the remaining life of Hera. There's a very active piece of work going on in that space currently, supported by some of the improvements we've seen in production out of Hera -- development [ rates ] out of Hera, which is critical to unlocking that future for the business. The other piece of work we're doing -- and with the shift of ore from Federation in the early days heading probably to Peak, and I'll talk about that in a moment, we're also doing some work around cost-effective perseveration plans for the Hera plant so we can bring it back on to treat future ores. With respect to Dargues, I think it's important people separate the acquisition from the underlying asset. We can't go backwards and can't change the acquisition. We all agree with shareholders that it's a deal that probably should never have happened. And if we had our time again, we wouldn't do it, but we can't change that. But the beauty of Dargues, for us though, is it's a reliable performer. We benchmarked all of our businesses. Dargues sits closest to a benchmark of any of our assets. It's day in, day out. It delivers what they say they're going to do, it has been making us cash along the way, which is certainly very good when we're looking at how we fund our growth projects. So Dargues is an important piece for us in the business around that [indiscernible]. We currently have two underground drill rigs working at Dargues. We're looking around expansional drilling as well as infill drilling to better understand what we have at depth, and we'll continue to do work into next year to see whether we can bring some of those lower levels and lower [ tonnes of ] inventory deeper into the mine, into the mine plan. We'll turn now to Federation. Many of you who followed the journey with -- earlier, [ will recall all this ] plenty of times since the announcement and saw what came along with it. It was discovered in April 2019. We've gone a long way in what is actually a very short period of time. Declared first resource, June 2020. We materially improved that, almost double that, in June 2021. Through 2022, got a massive infill program and the shot there, it's hard to make out, but there's actually 5 drill rigs working in that shot. And part of that was proving up that inventory that we drilled [ out to the state in ] support of a feasibility study. And that in itself was very successful. I think we went from 29% of our resource sitting in the indicated category -- I can't read my numbers -- up to 62%. It was a material increase and it's exactly what we were trying to achieve to underlie and support the feasibility study [ as it ] happened. First blast went off, we started the boxcut. We did all the surface works. And these shots here, as mentioned in the caption, September, things have moved on since then. The site is certainly looking like a mine site. The boxcut became a decline 90 meters underground when things got pulled up. This means some additional drilling beyond the resource into getting that in a declared resource. And we did put out what is a very compelling feasibility study. That doesn't mean that there's no work involved. The decline is not coming forward currently, and we're still very, very active. And I'll talk in some detail on what we're doing around optimization of the project. We've obviously mentioned funding. And the other piece, which is very active at the moment, is development consent, which has gone extremely well, and we are continuing to progress that with pace. So Federation. In reality is -- and in some ways, when we announced the feasibility study, it all got caught up with funding and the market reaction and everything else that was going on, the results and quarterly cash balance. I think it may have got a little bit lost. Federation itself is a very compelling polymetallic mining business. The feasibility study, as mentioned earlier, NPVs in the order of $400 million; 71% IRR. The running spot at that time, still 37% IRR. And these are compelling investment metrics. And it has borne out because of the quality of the resource. As Peter mentioned earlier, 16.7%, zinc equivalent. There's very few others in the country with development projects that look like that. One of the things I look after is exploration. And we're certainly, as a team, very excited about the potential around Federation. We have curtailed some of the work we had planned for this year to preserve cash. But it doesn't take away the potential Federation at depth, along strike, in hanging wall, and in the footwall, there's still plenty of potential to be had once we get back on to extensional and step-out drilling as opposed to the infill drilling we've been doing through FY '23. Importantly, the feasibility study presented a plan that leveraged the plants that we already have within the business. And in our world at the moment, we're seeing capital inflation going rampant in a lot of projects. To not have to build a processing plant, to have a [indiscernible] in place at Hera, to have most of our service works done started [indiscernible] to decline in place. We're in a very, very strong position to be insulated somewhat from the inflationary environment. Now looking at [ those for us ] by using the existing plants to ensure there's a lead time to revenue. So from first -- from restart of the decline, we'll see first ore within 12 months. And that first ore can go straight to our plant and it gets turned into cash. There's again, very few projects out there in Australia [indiscernible] that can say that. I mentioned permitting. And I mentioned that we're well-progressed on that and it certainly has gone very well, and it's a credit to the team internally that have been working on that. And we are certainly thankful of the support we've had from both communities, our neighbors, the government, regulators and other people. We're on target to achieve a full permitting by middle of next year. And at this stage, we see nothing that may get in the way of that but still plenty of work to be done on that. On this slide, probably the bit that's most, in my mind, interesting and new and different and something we really want to talk to you about today because you've seen the other things before, you've seen the other story before, is the work we're doing to further optimize the project. And when we did the feasibility study, and when you do feasibility studies, you don't just stop and put it on the shelf, and that's the project you deal with forever. So the intent was to put out a feasibility study, and we're very fortunate to have very, very compelling sets of metrics. But then the intent is to go on and improve that further. So there's some very active streams on at the moment. The first one we're looking at is around capital optimization. And still -- there's plenty of potential we're seeing to bring capital out of that estimate. As I said, we are very actively looking at that, whether it's reducing capital items, whether it's removing capital altogether, whether it's simply deferring the spend, so we could wait when we've actually got cash generation from the business. We're certainly using that as a lever to help reduce the amount we're seeking to fund. The mine plan, always able to be further optimized, the team's back working at that. One of the things we're looking to try and do is bring forward ore, bring forward cash flow, bring forward revenue and help, therefore, to fund the project, effectively self-funding the project. There's also some further optimization we can do on panel spacings and those sorts of things that we're looking at. Finally, and I touched on a little bit around also optimization. And you will recall on the feasibility study, the plan to strip some of the super high-grade material up towards Peak with the remainder staying at Hera. That's still the plan at this stage. But one thing that we are looking to change is taking early ore from Federation up to Peak. And the Peak plant is able to produce two separate products: the zinc concentrate and the lead concentrate. We get much, much better payability for that. So there's some very active work going on [ to say ] and we've put out a feasibility study. It's absolutely compelling and we believe we can actually make it [ happen ] And before I sign off, my last slide is on Cobar, Great Cobar. And unfortunately, Great Cobar often is the sort of last slide, the afterthought. My sense in talking to people is sometimes they forget we even have it. When you look at Great Cobar, it's one of the highest grade undeveloped copper resources in Australia. And we've borrowed the main chart from another business. They chose to put something like this out the other day without Great Cobar on it. We've added Great Cobar and you can see it's sitting right at the top there on grade. I'm also just showing the bigger blue dot to the right of that, Peak Copper. And that's the stuff that includes Great Cobar, but Peak also has its own copper resources already. And you can see there's a very, very meaningful copper inventory there. Within the Peak complex, again, brownfield development, used to be [ existing plant ] [indiscernible]. And that work's been done. And our intent is to, as Peter mentioned, develop Federation, it's our highest value ore. Makes sense to take that first. But then move -- as a business is moving forward and as plant capacity's available to bring on Great Cobar and the broader Peak Copper business. So to sum up, some talking points really for me to leave with you. Firstly, operational delivery. Significant and fundamental improvement is ongoing and is absolutely there. On the Federation project, I leave it with you that it's an absolutely compelling shovel-ready project and that further optimization is happening. With respect to Federation funding, we assure it's a very active work stream. We are targeting first quarter of calendar year 2023. And finally, don't forget Great Cobar: it has one of the highest grade undeveloped copper resources in Australia, and we have it sitting there in a brownfield setting . As I mentioned, certainly excited about taking on this challenge and I would certainly thank the Board for their confidence in me, and I look to keep all of you informed as we move forward with those things I've outlined. Thank you, Peter.

Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for that presentation. I'll now open to general questions.

There will be an opportunity later on in the meeting to ask questions against specific resolutions being put to the meeting. But this is a time when you can ask some general questions about the business or the company, and any questions that come from my -- either my presentation or Andrew's. If you would like to [ stand -- without rushing through the floor ] in this room, please stand up and show your yellow or blue attendance cards. State your name, or if appropriate, the shareholder you represent. Once we've covered the questions from the room, we'll then cover questions from the other line participants. So are there any questions on the general business of the company?

My name is [ Glen Risen ], shareholder for some years. And an active participant in the quarterly conferences and so forth. And quite well aware of stuff going on. I refer to the announcement from Friday, the leadership changes, and in particular, the renewal plan. The Board has appointed KPMG to perform a comprehensive review of Aurelia's operations to improve operational performance as well as enhance plan efficiencies, operating costs and capital management. So my observation and part of the discussion, it seems to me that it has been the ore grades that we've been particularly having issues with and some mining issues. There also -- which are much more to do with mine engineering than counting the dollars. And we've also, in this year, taken steps to shift from a contractor basis to an owner-operator basis. So it seems a little strange to me that we would choose KPMG, which is probably more noted for financial matters rather than what seems to be mine and geology matters to do this review. And so I'd really like some -- a bit more feedback on that. And the other thing is -- part b to that question, there is no time line mentioned in any of the announcements about the review and [ reporting ] and so forth. So if we could have some information on that.

Thanks very much for your question. I'll have a shot at answering that. And so firstly, KPMG has got a number of dimensions. And they certainly, by reputation, have an excellent skill set in allowing us to understand the numbers, allowing us to better understand and better predict the cash flows and the associated accounting elements. But they also have a significant mine -- which has been used in other companies as well, including [indiscernible] and [indiscernible] and others, but having really highly experienced and skilled mining engineers who, right now, actually, are visiting the field this week to provide us with new ideas, new eyes -- set of eyes about how we can optimize our mine plan. So it's not one dimension around -- I originally thought KPMG was very much focused on the numbers. They are, because we do need as a Board to fully understand and predict where the cash flow is going, what our cost controls are and an optimization of our capital management across the business. But they also have a dimension with their consultants to really understand the mining operations and provide through these very experienced consultants through KPMG, a different set of eyes about where the business can go and where the mine plans may have some optimization and they are out in the field right now actually providing us with that advice. They have been really instrumental already in providing advice to Andrew and the team. And Andrew can speak to that in a moment, which is -- but it is, we believe as a Board, really necessary to get some other eyes into our business, both on the finance accounting, bank accounting, cash flow management side as well as getting different views around how our mines are [ traveling, ] and they have provided that expertise over the last month or so and it has already added some value. So Andrew, I don't know if you want to add anything to that from an operational side?

Yes, really briefly. I think I push and challenge, and feeling KPMG technical people are pushing and challenging me is fantastic. That's what they're there for. So we think we've gone far enough to have another question, a different angle, yes sometimes we can assure them yes, we've thought about that and this is the reason this works or otherwise, but it's just great having that challenge alongside us.

And the timeline?

Yes. I just was going to come to that. From a time perspective, we're actually really close as a Board to be able to review a revised set of business plans and mine plans, which hopefully will go to -- come to use next week. They will be the basis for a further engagement with our financiers and our various stakeholders that will, we believe, can underpin the -- an appropriate financing of Federation. And I would expect to be able to provide shareholders with an update, hopefully, before Christmas around the direction of that mine plan. And clearly, we will have further reporting at the end of the quarter around our results, our cost base and production into January next year. But I would anticipate that we can provide further updates on that plan to our staff and to our shareholders [ before ] Christmas. Are there any more questions from the floor?

My name is [ Mike Menzis, ] I'm a shareholder. Some of you would know that I had a reasonably long association with the company. And while the Board is here to run this meeting, in my view, the issues the company has faced in a period of record commodity prices, have essentially been operational. And I've got a range of questions -- I would like to talk to your Chief Operating Officer concerning the operations. If it's a -- if this is the appropriate forum to do that, if he is available to come up and answer all those questions, I'll be grateful for that opportunity.

Well, no, thanks. Thanks very much for your interest. And I know you've had a long history with the company, and there l have a very strong knowledge base around that. You're absolutely right that many of the challenges we have as an organization are around operations. I have no problems at all you asking a couple of questions of Peter and I'm sure Peter is available to come up and give you that. I would stress though, that in the interest of time, and there's a lot of other potential questions in business to deal with, that maybe we could limit the number of questions to a couple of [ the key ] ones, and I'm sure Peter can talk to you outside this meeting. But certainly, I'm sure you've got a couple that you'd like to air in front of shareholders, I have no problems with that, but I think if we could limit the number questions and time, that would be appropriate.

That might be a bit difficult, but anyway...

Well, we'll all attempt, do I say it, control the dialogue a little bit.

[indiscernible]

I'm sure they're not, but again, I think in the interest of time for all shareholders, there's a good opportunity that you ask a couple. But again, I think bearing in mind Peter is available and can speak to you outside of this meeting as well. But certainly, please, this is a platform to ask a few questions. So please go ahead and do it.

Okay. Peter, the first question I've got is that if you have a look -- [indiscernible] your views on the relationship between grade and recovery at [ Cobar and ] Hera. I noticed in the last quarter, you had a head grade of 1.12 grams per tonne, and you've got a recovery of 85%. And in the previous quarter of 1.56 grams per tonne; head grade you only managed 81.4%. What's the explanation for that?

One of the things you know, there is a relationship [indiscernible] between head grade and recovery, but there's also factors around mineralogy and the operating performance. So part of the feed into the plant comes from different parts of the ore body and [indiscernible] responds differently through the plant in terms of recovery. And also in there is some adjustments based on assay returns, returns from the refinery.

So that's not necessarily the period recoveries -- it's an accounting issue you say?

No, no. That's a minor issue. But we do take in adjustments, both positive and negative, but in general response to your point, over the course of the last 2 quarters, we have been mining in different parts of the orebody.

Second question is in relation to cash generation from Peak, which has been acknowledged as one of the major issues that the company has got. From memory, the Chronos orebody was discovered in 2019, and we started development also in 2019. And you started initial stoping in January of last year or in the March quarter of last year. Why is it this far down the track that the Peak decline hasn't been pushed through [ to the area up the sea ] the development from Perseverance?

The answer to that is we have a negative [indiscernible]. We've had a second means of regress through [ our lines ] internally and put [indiscernible] additional development costs online, and we chose not to spend that money at this point in time.

But in terms of where we're going in terms of maximizing grades and values out of the project, the highest value ore in the quarry [indiscernible]. You are limited by only one means of access with -- if you want a trucking so you've got to get all your trucking here, all your [indiscernible] in a mine that is already congested. And if you're going to get [ relevant ], you've got to get volumes off of [ Chronos. ] You've got to join those two pieces of development. I would have thought it was pretty self-evident.

If trucking was a constraint, that would be the case. Because it's not trucking that's a constraint. You'll see from the diagram, the long section [ to put out, ] the decline is extended up and downwards [indiscernible]. It's the ability to turn those stopes over that is the constraint on production there, not the trucking.

Okay. The next thing I'd like to ask you is in relation to this recovery plan. I've seen what has been printed and when I listened to the last conference call -- am I correct to say that you were looking at targeting between 550,000 to 600,000 tonnes of ore out of the Peak as part of your recovery plan and resizing?

That was made before. That position of mine was part of the [ life of mine ] planning and permitting process implemented in the first quarter of this year. That was operated independently of the improvement plans.

Okay. So the resizing from 550,000 to 600,000 tonnes, when you actually have a look at what we've actually achieved in a whole of that time since the mill has been upgraded, the mill has a capacity of 800,000 tonnes a year. And apart from 1 month, which was August 2020, you've never operated [ at it ] [indiscernible]. I've had a look at your mining [ rates ] and for the last 2 years, they've been 607,000 tonnes and 597,000 tonnes. And it doesn't seem to me that -- so there's a lot of resizing involved in that. When you're talking about resizing to 550,000 to 600,000, that's all you've been doing, the only improvement I can see is by going on a 7-day or 5-day roster, which to me seems as a simple measurement issue that should have been addressed earlier.

That's certainly one of the changes that happened. There's no point resourcing for 800,000 tonnes per annum if you can't [ live ] the life of mine. The second part though is when we look through the life of mine plans, to get more ore out of the mine, we'd be chasing [indiscernible] at lower margins. And we spend a fair chunk of cash at the moment [ towards development in, ] to bring that ore into production in the future.

You were talking about a resizing the operation. What's the difference in size that you're talking about, if you're going to continue doing like you've already been doing?

I think the [ mining increase, ] we [ brought ] back the [ mining increase ] underground from about 170 people down to little over 100 people to sustain that production rate going forward.

I can't understand that -- you have been having troubles with your production because of COVID and the absence of people. Now you're reducing your workforce and you're going to produce the same result. Right? That seems to me as it is going in circles.

Well, the other part of that, [ Mike, ] is we've also put in some new equipment, which is much more productive than the existing -- previous equipments [ in place. ]

And then final question. It relates to the options that we looked at in relation to the feasibility study. Can you tell me when you applied for the trucking permit from -- I assume it's just from Federation, but the trucking permit to take ore from Federation to Peak. When was it applied to?

So we have an existing approval for Hera: 800,000 tonnes per annum from Hera, up to Peak. All of the [ EIS application ] made in February this year. We have applied for the additional tonnage to come from Federation to the Peak.

Which is the additional tonnage? Another 100,000 tonnes?

Taking up to 200,000 tonnes per annum.

Was it suggested or we were advised in the past by the Board or internally by the management to tie [ cables to the ] truck from Federation, that part of Federation output and part of the Fed ore [indiscernible] output to [ pay the ] processing?

That was discussed; it wasn't the go-forward option that came out of the stoping study and taken into the feasibility side.

Well, as part of that, I've heard the previous managing director talked about the company but on the optionality of having a number of available plants and processing options. What value are those options to you if you don't have permitting in place to use them?

First thing, you will skip the permitting and then there's a well-proven process to modify the permits based on the studies and the plans going forward.

Would you agree that had you applied when it was suggested to you some years ago to obtain those numerous [indiscernible] that the company would have been far better off in terms of its current options?

The benefit of hindsight, [ Mike, ] we've [indiscernible] apply for permitting for everything, every possible combination out of that site, but that's not how the system works.

Well, let me say, it should have been. [ Thanks for such efforts. ]

Thank you, Mike. And obviously, if you have further questions or queries for Peter or Andrew, I'm sure your [ calls are lining up ] to come forward and discuss that with him and thank you for your contribution. Are there any more questions from the floor? Are there questions of a general nature from the online participants?

There are three questions here. Mr. [ Ben Hunt ] [indiscernible] would like to ask a question. [indiscernible]

Can you hear me?

Yes. We can. Thanks, [ Mr. Hunt. ] Can you hear me?

So I'm pleased to see that the net present value of $415 million is there. If you take the number of shareholders now, that's worth approximately $0.35 per share. And you're probably aware that the shares are trading about $0.10 a share. I wonder if the Board could give me any explanation of the difference between those two numbers?

Yes. I have to provide clarity. And then obviously, the market is the market and share trades where the market believes they should trade. I think it's fair to say that the confidence of our shareholders and financiers, et cetera, has been dented by the reality that we've been unable to deliver predictable outcomes on our mining and our financial results over the last 12 months and that confidence needs to be rebuilt by us actually delivering on what we're guiding, delivering on our budgets. And clearly, that will help us move forward with an appropriate financing for Federation and shareholders who I believe will see our plans, but more importantly, us delivering on our plans, we'll see a much better correlation between the core value of our business, which is far higher than our present share price and be able to make an appropriate market assessment to move that share price up towards our NPV. But it does require rebuilding of confidence. It requires comprehensive, believable and deliverable [ banning ] to move that share price and get comfort in, as I said, both our shareholders and financing groups and stakeholders to actually move that value towards the NPV of what we believe to be our core business. And that is the absolute focus of the Board to ensure that management and Board are able to do that. It goes beyond me saying that. It actually needs actual delivery and I always say, talk is cheap. But actually, what does speak is actually delivery of results. And I believe we can improve that confidence and have a share price that reflects the core value of our business.

Yes. But the market is generally not wrong. So you're saying that the net present value of current management and Board is roughly $800 million or something -- negative?

I don't quite understand where you got the $800 million from. Look, the market is never wrong. Of course, it's never right either. What -- we trade at whatever our shareholders buy and sell at . And but there is a real, I think, challenge to us as an organization -- it is confidence in what we're doing and where we're going. And so in my discussions with shareholders, as indicated, they're keen to understand how we can turn this business into a much, much better place. And I'm sure when the confidence returns and we can deliver a smart, sensible cost-effective financing plan for Federation, I'm sure that value will be very different in terms of share trading.

There's been a more of statement from [ Mr. Harry. ] It says, I'm curious to know of the plans that we have, the 3 mines back to [indiscernible], and may I remind [indiscernible], which will be there in 6 months time. It could be [indiscernible] long ago but all the work stopped at Federation now, and I wondered but with Hera, your cash flows from Hera will end before the start of production in Federation. Will the returns from the Cobar deposits and the Dargues produce enough [ put forward with ] Federation, without a mining lease approval at Federation, I could assume getting outside funding for Federation would be typical. I believe the operating hours of the mill at Peak have been reduced. It does mean some uncertainty on the future. I'm aware of the huge potential of Federation. But a full bore approach, most definitely outside other issues, will make life difficult and the industry hasn't [ come off for a company. ] What are other options on the table to [ try as a ] company from going backwards.

Well, thank you, those are all serious questions [ in that space ]. And I don't know but I'll attempt to answer some or all of them. Look, firstly, as far as the [indiscernible] for the organization is absolutely delivery of a financing solution for Federation. And there are a whole range of equity and debt options that the company might have at both the company and asset level. And we're very, very much focused on delivering that in a relatively short term. That is all based on a recap of our mining plan and Andrew spoke to that. And we'll be reviewing that as a Board in the coming few weeks and certainly, I would anticipate that we'll be communicating some of the outworkings of that to the market, shareholders and financiers. It is based on having a credible plan, which allows us some great level of certainty around delivery and without that certainty and constantly going back to our financiers to adjust delivery of production and cost base is obviously being detrimental to our business. So on that basis, we're very close to finalizing a revised plan, which we will be discussing with our financiers and to our shareholders. And we believe that we have a fair number of opportunities in financing that are credible and cost effective. I should say that we're also seeing that our main development license is likely to be granted sometime in the first half of next year. And that will open up a series of other financing options for Federation at that time. And certainly, as a priority, we are working very closely with the New South Wales government and other stakeholders to facilitate the grant of that license as soon as we can reasonably do so. As I say, that does change the financing [ optic ] pretty heavily. And we certainly see that as possibly delivered to us sometime in the first half of next year. Andrew, do you want to add any comments around production at Hera and where that goes?

No. Look, only to flag that it is a work in progress, as I mentioned. Once we do have a definitive position, we'll come back to the market on that and let you all know, and we also would need to come back to our own people around giving them some certainty of the way forward for the business as well. So very much an active process.

Well, it's not a question but [indiscernible] things.

Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. We'll now have -- move on to the formal business of the meeting. And we'll now move to consideration of the formal items of business for today. The Notice of Meeting sets out the resolutions proposed in the meeting. No notice of other business has been received in accordance with the Corporations Act. And so only the items of business to come before the meeting today will be those [ attested to in the ] Notice of Meeting other than resolution 4, which has been withdrawn. Firstly, I'd like to explain today's voting procedures. As stated in the Notice of Meeting, all resolutions will be put to a poll. I appoint Adrienne Atkinson of the Automic Group, the company's share registry, who have examined and prepared summaries of the proxy forms received to act as returning officer and to conduct the [ vote ]. If you are attending in person, please fill out your voting card and our Automic representative will collect your completed voting card at the appropriate time. If you're voting online, you'll see instructions on the Automic website once you have logged in on how to register and vote online. Please be aware that you should not click "next" until you have selected your vote for all resolutions. Resolution 1, relating to the remuneration report, is advisory only. Resolutions 2 and 3 are ordinary resolutions, meaning that to be carried, they require 50% of the votes cast by members who are entitled to vote on the resolution. Resolution 1 is subject to voting exclusions, and further details are set out in the notice of meeting. Each resolution is discussed, we will be showing the wording of each resolution and the proxies received prior to the meeting for each resolution. The proxies received prior to the meeting represent 491,410,067 shares or 40% of the issued capital of the company. To the extent permitted by the Corporations Act and the ASX Listing Rules and subject to the voting exclusions detailed in the notice of meeting, all valid undirected proxies or open votes that have been -- that have nominated the Chairman of the meeting as their proxy will be cast in favor of each resolution in the Notice of Meeting. Directors and executives identified as key management personnel will not be voting undirected proxy votes given to them for resolution 1. And therefore, the online voting portal is now open and will remain open until I declare the poll closed. Your votes must be submitted prior to the poll being closed for them to count. So I will now move to the first item of the business, which is financial statements and reports. The first item is to receive and consider Aurelia's FY '22 financial statements, the Director's report and the independent auditor's report. As no resolution is required, there will be no voting on this item of business. Kellie McKenzie from Ernst & Young is available to answer any questions you may have in regards to the audit. Are there any questions from shareholders in the room regarding the financial statements or the audit or any other questions related to this piece of business? There are no questions in the room. Ian, are there any questions on the line?

No.

There are no questions online. So there being no further questions or no questions, we'll move to resolution 1. Resolution 1 relates to a nonbinding resolution required by the Corporations Act in relation to the FY '22 remuneration report. The wording of the proposed resolution is shown on the screen. The presentation of the remuneration report is a requirement for all listed companies. The company's remuneration report is included in the company's 2022 annual report. The Remuneration report sets out the remuneration of Aurelia's Directors and key management personnel and Aurelia's remuneration policies in respect of the key management personnel. In accordance with the Corporations Act, this vote is advisory only and does not bind the directors or the company. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are now shown on the screen. I now ask you, are there any questions or comments from shareholders in the room on the remuneration report?

Mr. Chairman, [indiscernible]. I noticed that during the meeting, you kept -- preserving capital, preserving capital, preserving capital. That seems to be the main issue. You say in the annual report, there's no dividend, we're preserving capital. But I did notice that all the directors got an increase in director fees this year. So that's not preserving capital. Can we presume from this preserving capital that next year that the directors will not get an increase in directors' fees? We're preserving capital, you keep telling us we need to preserve capital, preserve capital but the directors got an increase in directors' fees this year. Can't afford to pay -- pay out a [ 0.1% ] dividend -- preserving capital. But the directors who are [ -- they're normally borderline. ] They're not getting $50,000, $60,000 a year [indiscernible] [ desperate ] to have a pay increase. [ Because they're well paid. ] [indiscernible] could well do without a pay increase for a year or 2 to have this money going back into the company for the development and for the [ research ] and [indiscernible] spend.

Thank you, sir for your comments and questions and I can absolutely assure you that the Directors will be -- not been receiving any increase in their Directors fees this year. And let me pass over to Paul Harris, who's chair of the remuneration committee of our board who clearly wants to say something.

Thanks, Peter. And absolutely valid question, 100%. We all agree with you. Just to note, though, that those increases from -- were for the prior year, not from the year of reporting.

Thank you. Are there any more questions on the remuneration report from the floor? We could then move to online, Ian.

No questions online.

No questions online. Okay. Well, I put to the meeting resolution 1. Please record your vote in relation to resolution 1 by choosing for, against or abstain on your screen or voting card. [Voting]

Shareholders voting online are reminded not to click "next" until you have selected your vote for all resolutions. I'll give you a little while to vote accordingly. Okay. We will now move to resolution 2, which is the reelection of Paul Harris. The next item is, as I say, resolution 2, which is the reelection of Paul Harris as a Non-Executive Director. The wording of the proposed resolution is shown on the screen and Paul's credentials are outlined in the notice of meeting. Paul is the Chair of the Board's Remuneration and Nomination Committee and a member of the audit committee, I now ask Paul to address shareholders regarding his reelection.

Thanks, Peter. First, I'd like to say it's an honor to be standing for the reelection of this company. For those who don't know me, my name is Paul Harris, my early career was in markets and banking, and I spent a lot of time in the metals and mining, M&A and capital markets at Merrill Lynch and Citibank. The latter half of the last 10 years I've spent on the other side, advising boards on strategy M&A, ECM -- in particular, capital markets in a range of commodities in copper, cobalt, and gold and also in potash. As Peter outlined, I am Chair of Rem and Nom. It's a busy community. It's one that's [ learning. ] It's certainly been busy this year. I also sit on the audit committee under Bruce. And I have full faith in our new Chairman, who has hit the ground running and has been working incredibly hard to turn this around. It's been a very difficult year. I'd just like to finish also by paying my respect to the late Cobb Johnson, who passed away a couple of weeks ago, who was our previous chair prior to being -- prior to Peter, with Susie as the interim, who was the chair when I first joined the Board back at the end of 2018. So thanks for that, Peter. I do have a question in relation to resolution 4, which has been put, I can answer that now or at the end of the meeting. It's up to you.

I think we'll do resolution 4, question -- in Q&A later.

All right. Thanks.

Thank you, Paul. Paul's reelection is unanimously supported by the rest of the Board. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. Are there any questions from shareholders in the room regarding resolution 2, the reelection of Paul Harris? Please.

[ Glen Risen ] again. Sorry to put you on the spot Paul, but you're up for reelection. So I get to ask a question.

Absolutely, why not.

Okay. Funding, funding for our projects, funding for our future is a really big deal, and you seem to be the main director on the spot for doing that. So my question relates to, are you playing an active role in working through the funding of propositions and seeking and sourcing funding of our future projects?

A good question, absolutely. I think all the Board members have leaned in over this period. We all have a different skill set. In particular, [indiscernible] have got a wonderful background, in particular on the debt side. Mine's probably more on the equity side and strategy and M&A. So to answer unequivocally, yes, and we'll continue to. And the amount of time this year that I've spent on this Board in relation to these matters outweighs any of the other roles that I have at the moment. And I have to say, I enjoy it. They're a great Board to work with, but we've all got different skill sets and they are all utilized at the appropriate time. So yes.

And I'll just add something to that. So the Board is leaning in right across the Board. And as Paul had said, there are a number of skill sets that we each bring to this. We recognize and own the issues that the company has, and we absolutely are applying our skill sets across the Board to address those challenges. And I think we are -- well, I know we are making progress. But this is not -- it's not a straightforward piece of business at the moment. And -- but this Board, I believe is working very cohesively to address the challenges we have, and we need to. It's our reputations, it's our belief in the company as well. And no one wants to be associated with a company that is not performing well. None of us believe that is appropriate. So we are leaning in big time. Are there any other questions from the floor? Are there any questions online, Ian?

There are 2 questions online. Paul has one question in the room.

In relation to resolution 4.

We're coming back to resolution 4.

And also [ Mr. Ben Hunt ] [indiscernible], would also like to ask a general question -- I'm sorry, [ Radak ] would like to ask a question [indiscernible].

[ Mr. Hunt, ] please go ahead.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can, [ Mr. Hunt. ]

Yes. Thank you, Chair. My -- I want to speak against the motion, the reelection of Paul Harris, not because I wish Paul any ill. But it's in relation to the Dargues purchase, which Andrew, I thought perhaps rather indiscreetly said, "We wish we had never done it." But you did do it. And it was -- Dan, has paid the price that has arisen out of that. But it's not just Dan who made this -- the Board who makes decisions. And there are 2 current Board members, Paul and Susie, who were on the Board at the time the decision was made. And I want to say that people -- decisions can go wrong. If you had purchased Dargues and the gold price had dropped dramatically, I wouldn't object to that because that was outside your control. But it appears to me there's a general lack of good corporate governance in making this decision. It was a decision made without reference to the shareholders, but I understand that, that's not possible. But it was a -- if not a related party transaction, it was an incestuous transaction with Pybar and I think for that reason, I would ask shareholders who haven't yet cast a vote, to vote against the reelection of Paul Harris in that he was party to a very bad decision, which was not a decision about finance, but it was a decision -- essentially, the wrongness of it was the lack of corporate governance. Thank you.

Thanks, [ Mr. Hunt. ] Unfortunately, I don't -- it's unfortunate that you're going to vote against me, but that's fair enough. In relation to Dargues acquisition, I would certainly push back and say there was absolutely no related parties issue in relation to Pybar. They were a [ search ] provided to us, but the ownership of the asset sat in a separate vehicle and the corporate governance surrounding that process was incredibly high, with proper advice from our legal counsel. So there's no issues whatsoever about that. It's unfortunate that the asset hasn't performed to what we expected. That's mining. And yes, we have to own that decision.

And I should say, I think Paul got in before I could so -- I mean, he was controlling the microphone, so he's put his case. Look, the Board owns the acquisition -- the whole Board owns the acquisition of Dargues and it clearly has been a very disappointing outcome to shareholders and we own that, unfortunately. There are times when acquisitions work. There are times when they don't and the geology of Dargues has absolutely been working against us, unfortunately. And despite the fact that the mining operation itself has actually gone okay, the geology hasn't unfortunately. But it is an ownership that we all have. A disappointing outcome to that acquisition, for sure. Okay. Are there any more questions? Okay. Thanks. I will then put to the meeting resolution 2. Please record your vote in relation to resolution 2 by choosing for, against or abstain on your screen or voting card. [Voting]

Thanks very much for that. I'll now move to resolution 3, which is the election of Bruce Cox. The next item of business is that reelection or the election of, pardon me, Bruce Cox as a Non-Executive Director. The wording of the proposed resolution is shown on the screen and Bruce's credentials are outlined in the notice of meeting. Bruce is the Chair of the Board's Audit Committee. I now ask Bruce to address shareholders regarding his election. So over to you, Bruce.

Thank you, Peter. I'm very pleased to have this opportunity. By way of background, I've worked in the mining, heavy industry, mineral processing sector for the last 40 years in my career. That would cross the steel, iron ore, platinum, copper, diamonds, uranium, bauxite, alumina and aluminum sector. So you can tell that I've been working across the industry for quite a while. The first half of my career, I was in the finance and CFO based roles, having gotten a Bachelor of Commerce and majoring in accounting. That was really in my earlier life. The last half of my career I've been in -- predominantly been in operational roles, including CEO and Chief Operating Officer positions. I've lived and worked in Zimbabwe, Chile, the United States, Canada, U.K. and of course, Australia and I worked for BHP for 23 years and Rio Tinto for 17 years. So it's all the different commodities that are covered in that time. My last significant executive roles, I headed up the diamonds division for Rio Tinto. And that would include a number of its assets, the Argyle Diamond mine that is rather iconic in Western Australia. That was a part of my portfolio. And more recently, I was the Managing Director of Rio Tinto's Aluminum business in the Southern Hemisphere. That included 4 aluminum smelters, 2 alumina refineries, 2 bauxite mines [ and glass and panel section. ] My previous Director roles included Energy Resources Australia, ERA, which is a uranium mining company; Queensland Alumina; Australian Aluminium Council and Tomago Smelter. In addition to Aurelia, I'm on the minerals and minerals processing Sovereign Wealth Fund, all with Saudi Arabia. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Bruce. I should say you've hit the ground running at a tremendous pace and already through your [ CEI, ] have provided [ gap ] sage counsel to the Board on some of the challenges in finance and accounting that we're presently facing. Bruce's election is unanimously supported by the rest of the Board. The proxies received in relation to this Resolution are shown on the screen. Are there any comments or questions from shareholders in the room on resolution 3? No? And Ian, are there any comments or questions from you online?

No.

Thanks. Well, I then put to the meeting resolution 3. So please record your vote in relation to resolution 3 by choosing for, against, or abstain on your screen or voting card. [Voting]

Thank you very much for that. As I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, resolution 4 has been withdrawn following the departure, obviously, of Dan Clifford. There is any -- a question or questions -- I'm not sure question -- or just one question on resolution 4 and I would like to allow that shareholder to put that question now.

The question comes from the [indiscernible] head of store of [indiscernible].

Yes. The question is in relation to the resolution 4, which the question is, what's the background of establishing the resolution and then the following withdrawal? So the resolution 4 was in relation to performance rights to be issued to Dan Clifford, previous MD. Those rights given he was a Director and any shares or rights issued to directors need shareholder approval under Listing Rule 10.14. So we were seeking shareholder approval for those rights to be issued. Those rights were in relation to rights under the long-term incentive plan under here -- and under Dan's previous remuneration structure, he was eligible for long-term incentive plan rights going forward. So those, given he's not currently employed, the Board felt that it was the right decision to pull that resolution as those long-term incentive plan rights will not be issued to Mr. Clifford.

Thank you, Paul, for that comprehensive answer. Are there any more questions, Ian?

No more questions.

No more questions. Thank you. Well, as that is the last item of business, the online voting platform will now be closed. And all shareholders voting online, please ensure that you have submitted your votes and all shareholders attending in person, please complete your voting card and a representative from Automic will collect them now. I'll allow another minute before I close the poll while we go around and collect those voting cards. [Voting]

Are there any more cards to collect in the room? I think we're done, and I can therefore declare the poll closed. That concludes the formal part of today's meeting. The results of the poll will be declared and released to the ASX after the conclusion of the meeting. In closing, I'd really like to thank you for your attendance and participation at this meeting. And your continued support to the company throughout the year. I acknowledge it was an exceptionally challenging year and I reiterate the Board and management's commitment to improving company performance. I now declare the 2022 Annual General Meeting closed. The Directors, the management, certainly welcome those who are in the building here, attending in person this AGM, to join us for a cup and coffee after the meeting. Thank you very much for your understanding and your attendance today. And thank you for your continued support. Thank you.