Aurelia Metals Limited (AMI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Aurelia Metals Great Cobar Project Approval Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bryan Quinn, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much, Ashley. And look, thanks to everyone for dialing in this morning for -- to give us an opportunity to present a very brief upfront summary of our Great Cobar approval that we've put out to the market today. With me, I have Martin Cummings, our CFO; and I have Angus Wyllie, our Group -- Regional General Manager for Cobar Region on the call also, so we can answer any questions for this presentation. Look, what I'll just highlight upfront is for those who are still reading through the document, this project is obviously a very strong base case opportunity for us at Aurelia Metals. It delivers copper production of around 77,000 tonnes, gold at 84,000 ounces, provides a long-term -- an NPV at $51 million at our long-term prices. Obviously, we've highlighted in the announcement at spot prices when they were done in March at $164 million and provides good free cash flow, both at long-term prices and also at spot prices. The actual project is coming at $91 million and being funded from internal cash flows, which is a great result for the company and our sort of future. The actual ore itself that's been put into the presentation and into the actual models [indiscernible] with 3.57 million tonnes at 2.3% copper, 0.9 grams per tonne of gold and 5 grams per tonne of silver, which will move between 2028 and 2036 period over 8-year period. The actual ore that we will be processing out of Great Cobar fits in very nicely with our processing facility at Peak. And the numbers we've put into the models based on the Project work has shown around 95% copper recovery, 84.9% gold recovery and will give us a 24% copper grade con grade. So very good project, very good fundamentals and we are really excited as a company to take this forward into the future. As you'd be aware, we have -- obviously, our Federation Project is coming to an end, and we're ramping up into operational mode over this quarter. So the project kicking off during this quarter and into FY '26 is a great time for us to be finishing one project moving into the next to build our business to get to where we want to be in terms of our 1.1 million to 1.2 million tonnes capacity in the future. The Great Cobar Project will kick off in quarter 1 FY '26 in terms of the development. And obviously, we'll have the other projects, which is our Peak thickener upgrade, which is working in parallel to this, also occurring in the FY '26 quarter 1 as well. So both of those projects are not large projects by any form of imagination, but they are both projects we need to put in place to deliver the sort of volumes we are stretching ourselves for in the future, 1.1 million to 1.2 million tonnes. In terms of the project overview, what's actually involved in the project to deliver these strong financial outcomes, we have 2 declines from the Jubilee ore body, which will commence in quarter 1 FY '25 -- '26. Our [indiscernible] mining will be kicked off, which where we can maximize synergies with our existing operations. Over the period of the project, we'll be sinking the ventilation shaft, ranging within in 2027. Initially, we're targeting 500,000 tonnes mining rate, which will be from FY '30. And that will be sequenced in with existing new Cobar ore sources as well because obviously, we'll be still mining areas in the new Cobar facility, including Jubilee and Great Chesney over -- sorry, Chesney ore bodies over the coming years as well. Our service infrastructure upgrade will occur in new Cobar 2028. We're using the existing box cut that exist to get into the ore body via the ore -- Jubilee ore body. So we're trying to use as much of the infrastructure we can to keep the capital low, but also utilize what we have. There will be new power supply in 2028. And basically, once we get access to underground and develop these declines to a certain location, we'll be basically drilling both underground infill drilling and also exploration drilling to unlock the potential resource beyond what we've got in our models at this point in time. As you would see from the documentation, obviously, this study has delivered more resource than the actual pre-feasibility by about 58%. Mine life has gone up from 4 to 8 years. Life of mine production has gone up by 64%. And obviously, the NPV has gone up as well, considering where we were at the pre-feasibility. So overall, the fundamentals are giving strong returns for us as a business and definitely going to align with our growth strategy as a company going forward. As the document highlights that we've released, there is -- we're very confident of the upside in exploration beneath the area that we've put in the feasibility study. And like I said earlier, once we can access our declines down close to the ore body, we'll be drilling to prove up that area beneath what's actually in the feasibility study to unlock further potential mineralization that we can build into our future upside of our business effectively. The ore coming out of Great Cobar has been assessed really in terms of its throughput potential and how do we maximize metal recovery. And the plant is very much set up for Great Cobar, like I said earlier, with good copper recoveries around 95%, gold recovery just under 85%, silver recovery is around 84%, and we will get a very good copper con out at around [indiscernible] grade at around 24%. The capital that we deployed from the $91 million, largely, it's made up of mine development. We have got, I guess, a large contingency level for this project to make sure that we can deal with any uncertainties. Mine infrastructure is a large proportion, and that's really around doing things on the surface and infrastructure and pumping and fans and getting the service set up for the future as well. So realistically, the project $91.8 million is really going to set us up for this mine and hopefully, with further extensions on our resource once we've done the drilling, then we'll obviously be able to use existing infrastructure as well very much in the future. That capital spend is over a 3-year period. And therefore, in terms of the cash and how we actually mine and spend the money for this particular project will basically be very much aligned with how we generate cash in the organization also, which Martin will talk to. I'll just pass it on to Martin, and he can talk through the funding and how we're looking at those things.

Thanks, Bryan. I guess, firstly, and many of you have noticed, it's been a really pleasing March quarter. We actually finished with around $10 million more cash than the December quarter. So that just came in at around just under $107 million. I will provide more details in the quarterly later in the month, but it really is important to highlight the excellent quarter that Peak had with $44.6 million of mine cash flow. We did flag during the December quarterly call that we were expecting higher gold production to come through this half. So you can really see that now in the cash generating out of Peak and really is setting us up well with the way we're trying to maximize cash generation out of our operations. In terms of the capital for Great Cobar, the sequence over the next 3 years really is complementary to the capital requirements for Federation and also for the Peak expansion project. So in this quarter, our main commitments really are to secure our fleet and to get our operators on board and trained. So there really is a small investment, $6 million in this quarter, and the majority of that is for fleet, which I will look to finance. So cash outlay, not large. But then as we go into FY '26 and beyond, our ability to generate strong cash flow will allow us to fund it internally, only $21 million required next year, which does provide capacity to also fund the big expansion project with the majority of that cash to be incurred in FY '26. At the moment, we are enjoying these nice gold prices and -- but we have stress tested this project at a lower price environment and continues to show that we're able to fund this project internally. I would like to point out, though, with the recent market volatility, we haven't seen a lot of volatility in our production mix and in our revenue really off the back of having that mix of both precious and base metals. So we are comfortable. We haven't seen any shocks on revenue. And as I say, we take this project forward with good confidence that we'll be funding this from our available cash. So that's all. I just wanted to mention on the balance sheet. I might hand back to Bryan.

Thanks, Martin. Look, to really summarize, obviously, there's lots of information in the pack we've sent out, and we'll touch on more next week at the quarterly when the quarterly is released. But just to summarize the project, it's a long-life copper mine, obviously, with gold, with significant exploration potential for us. We've actually put reasonably conservative assumptions in for how we will operate this both at a cost and a performance level. So there's definitely upside for us in terms of delivering better than that. It's got very attractive financial metrics with the copper's upside potential in the future. And our cash capital, as mentioned -- I guess we focus on derisking them as much as possible by using existing infrastructure, looking at the timing of the spend and also making sure we have adequate contingency to deal with any of the uncertainties that we haven't covered. We will leverage infrastructure at Peak operations and the existing new Cobar entry point and the existing office facilities and fans that exist currently in the new Cobar operations. And like I said, we do have extensive -- extension opportunity well below the current footprint once we actually get across here and put the drilling in place to unpack further, the potential of this ore body beneath what's in the resource and the feasibility outcomes right now. So I might just park it there because obviously, I'll just take -- we'll take any questions. And then like I said, we can follow it up next week with further Q&A once people have had a chance to understand more about the project. So back to you, Ashley.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Adam Baker with Macquarie.

Thanks for the update, it's very positive, no doubt. Just wanted to look to the gross CapEx for FY '26. Now that you've outlined these numbers, we've got some numbers for Great Cobar, which is great, around $21 million. And I just want to get some clarity on what else there is for next year? Obviously, you got the Peak plan expansion, which was $20 million to $25 million, but is there anything remaining for Federation? And is there anything else to think about?

Martin here. So yes, you're right. So [ $41 million ] for Great Cobar, we had the Peak plant expansion at around $20 million to $25 million, and we also had the thickener project that we came out with earlier of around $9 million. In terms of Federation, there will still be capital to push the decline down further. So commercial production, we're still on track for around 30 June this year. And that's where, as I said, the operating cash flow or the EBITDA from Federation is sort of mildly positive, but we will push that capital down. In terms of how much that is, we're still working through our planning process at the moment and intend to give you a full line of sight on that when we put the guidance out in June. What I'd say this year is, we're still tracking to Federation capital was $70 million to $80 million this year. We're still tracking well to within that range. So everything on track in that respect.

Okay. And in terms of the mining inventory for Great Cobar, I thought that maybe it could have been a little bit bigger. I think there's only about 40% of the indicated resources being converted across to your mining inventory assumptions. Just wondering, is there a reason why it's not larger? Or is there -- is the resource a bit scattered and you can't get all of it into the mining study? Or just some thoughts around that would be great.

Angus, would you want to respond to that one?

Yes. Look, certainly, there's a lot of opportunity for upside there. Really, the balance between indicated and inferred material is where we want to get right at this point. But yes, certainly, we expect a lot of upside once we're out there and able to drill more. And as we continue to work on bringing our costs down, that will certainly convert more resource to reserve in that space as well.

Okay. And just finally for me, just the twin decline capacity at Great Cobar. I know you've got a Peak throughput of Peak mining rate of 500,000 tonnes per annum, but is there any potential to be able to push them further? Or what's your bottleneck in the future mining scenarios? Is it ventilation? Is it haulage capacity? And if you've given yourself any kind of wiggle room to push mining a bit harder into the future?

Just to start with, I guess there's 2 things. Obviously, we will have Federation ore coming up the road, and we'll have the Great Cobar ore at that level, and that should fill the Peak mill, which is the first thing. Having those 2 ores together will fill the Peak mill at an expanded level. But if we want to expand and go beyond that, basically, one of the key steps will be to -- ventilation shaft to obviously give more ventilation into the mine. But like I said, it's -- initially, we've sort of pushed the bottleneck to the plant where it should be, and that's what we're focused on the 500,000 tonnes and what we need to put that in place plus the Federation ore ramping up as well to the numbers we have. But if you think about from an expandability point of view, we intend to obviously get down into the declines and actually drill down into the area and understand the area beneath what's in the current feasibility and unlock the potential. And then we can rerun models to see how much more is potentially there for us to go after. And in the same time, look at if there is this opportunity to put some more capital in the future to grow it further, we'll assess it on -- and economics at the time.

Your next question comes from Paul Kaner with Ord Minnett.

Firstly, exploration and sort of touching further on Adam's question. I mean this is the base case sort of extension potential seems quite significant. I guess how should we think about when you can feasibly get down there and start preparing this from a drill rig perspective?

Look, I'll answer that initially and pass over to Angus. The intention is we want to be able to get down to the declines to obviously, to where the top of the stopes are, put some drilling platforms in and obviously do both infill drilling to show up our stope designs and obviously then set up for drilling beneath the current area. If we look at the sort of cost of that versus the cost of drilling from the surface, it sort of speaks for itself why we do it this way. We have obviously a very good project as it is, and we can get going with it. But like I said, we can set up these rigs once we get down there towards the top of that decline to actually start then peppering underneath it. And that can then build on what we do next as far as that resource potential for the business. So that's kind of the main point. Do you want to add anything to that, Angus?

Yes. So the exploration team has already done quite a lot of work on the drill platforms and the position and the target areas they want to look at when they get out there. So obviously, the extension across to the B and C zone as well as the depth extension. So they are already factored into the longer-term plan as series of drill platforms for those areas.

Yes, that's great. And then so the timing on that first drill platform?

Sorry, I don't have that number right in front of me, but it is in the plan, basically at the end of the project capital. So around when we're into ore drives in that first ore, which I think is FY '28, we should be developing that drill platform as well.

Yes, [indiscernible]. And then just sort of secondly, and you briefly touched on this, Brian, just at a high level, I guess, how should we think about the ore contributions over the next 5 years at a sort of a group level? Obviously, $600 million coming from Fed, 500 coming from Great Cobar in FY '30. I guess what else can you do from Peak North and Peak South to sort of make up the delta and some more, if possible?

Yes. So basically, we will be focused on ramping up to 1.1 million, 1.2 million tonnes, subject to further approvals, obviously, of expansions, especially around the ball mill. But the way to think about it is we'll be at 50% copper-gold ores and 50% zinc-lead ores coming out of both the mines. That's probably the best way to think about it at the moment. Now having said that, we are obviously going through our long process, and we'll look at that combination of ores based on how to maximize value on an annualized basis as well as we go from long to the budget process. So -- but that's a general way to think about it at that sort of 50%, 50% against those sort of higher throughput numbers out of the Peak processing plant. And obviously, we'll talk more at a quarterly and an Investor Day about where we see our plans going beyond this current project and beyond our 1.1 million, 1.2 million tonnes in the future and how we use Hera plant potentially in the future as well. But this is what we're going to focus on just for now in terms of what Great Cobar is all about.

Yes. Great. And then last question for Martin maybe. With this sort of new CapEx profile, it's a bit more staged than, I guess, I was expecting, so less CapEx in FY '26. And if we look at spot prices, I guess you should be generating pretty decent free cash flow in FY '26 now. How should we sort of be thinking about capital allocation? And I guess, is it too early to talk returns? Yes.

Priority right now is delivering these projects. Returns are obviously something we'll consider, but the likelihood is it's beyond getting into Great Cobar meaningfully over this. As Adam sort of touched on before, we've got the $20-odd million for this project. We've got another circa $30 million across the Peak plant, and we've got the tail of Federation. So that's really the focus in FY '26; FY '27, predominantly Great Cobar. And then once we get through that and Great Cobar is up and running, then we're into good cash, really good cash then. So at these spot prices, yes, things are looking pretty good. I guess I'm going to enjoy these prices, but I'm not going to bank on them to deliver the project. So -- but very happy with the funding outlook over that period.

Just to add to that, Paul, I think the -- we need to -- with the size of our company, we need to make sure we can sequence these projects and sequence the timing. So we're not sort of having our teams stripping over each other as well. So capital spend is one thing, but it's also doing the execution of the work. We want to make sure we can sequence these things properly with Federation finishing, Cobar kicking off, the thickener upgrade happening and just making sure that the spend is an outcome of that, but making sure the workloads we do keeps the business moving and keeps our operations pumping out safe tonnes and good payabilities. And that's kind of we're balancing those overall things as well.

Yes. No, understood. So I guess any sort of excess cash as a result of higher pricing, that's just going to go to sort of showing up the balance sheet more so or sort of organic opportunities within your portfolio?

That will be the plan, yes, for the time being.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Ashley Tan with -- a private investor.

It's Ashley here from Perth, just a small retail Western Australian shareholder with about 400,000 shares. Just congratulations on the feasibility study. It looks really [indiscernible] like the -- that you're using a realistic post-tax real discount rate of 8% and you've got the long-term and spot prices there and like the fact it's a brownfields development with stage CapEx, and it's just a staged work program, and we're getting exposure to pricing upside. So just on that, I have 3 questions. The first question is, can we take it when you're saying that this project has exposure to the pricing upside that the copper and the gold and the silver product streams will all be unhedged, especially as there's no need for bank funding and especially as you can see recently with the catastrophe in the Bellevue share price when they went through forward pricing to hedge the gold price?

Thanks, Ashley. I'll just start by saying that the production covered under this project is currently unhedged. We only have hedges out to June 2026 at the moment. We're not going to see first production out of Great Cobar until FY '28. We have a very modest -- as you've seen in the quarterly, a modest copper hedge, some base metal hedging and some gold hedging. Obviously, our gold hedging is out of the money at the moment, but the majority of our production is -- remains unhedged. What happens in FY '28? Look, right now, I'm not seeing a hedging requirement. So yes, for now, that when that production comes online, there's no hedges allocated to it.

Excellent. So the second question is on the -- your session on risks and opportunities where you put together a risk register. Are you putting together also a risk heat map to show, I guess, likelihood on one [indiscernible] impact on the other and the mitigation programs for each of the risks at least don't necessarily have to present them publicly or at least to the Board. And the sub question is I noticed that in minerals processing, you highlighted pyrrhotite as the only significant metallurgical performance risk, but I couldn't see it in the Section 18 on Page 19 and the mitigation for it. Is that a significant risk? How significant is this significant risk and what mitigation plan for pyrrhotite?

Yes. Let me just start with the risk. How we do our risk management in general, and then I might just pass on to Angus around the pyrrhotite, and I can talk about that as well. So just in terms of how we do our risk management, we have a very sort of regimented process where we look at what the risk event is as a company at a company level, at an ELT level, then we obviously have risks across site and also in various functions. And then what we do is based on the risk event and based on the sort of risk level, how serious it is and consequences and et cetera, we would then have risk owners and risk owners would be the risk owners of that particular risk event. And we have contract -- we have sorry, control owners, which will be day-to-day making sure the controls are in place to mitigate or to prevent that risk from eventuating to the seriousness of what it could be. So we have a regimen of process we use and we have a risk appetite process we report against to the Board. And that risk appetite process highlights, if something gets to a certain level, then obviously, we report to the Board in a sort of a routine way through our regular Board meetings. So we actually have reinvigorated that over the last 12 to 18 months to be very focused on making sure that each month, we are going through a detailed risk myself with both the ELT and the site personnel to understand what that -- what the risk event is and how -- who's the risk owner, who's the controllers, are we reducing effectively that residual risk down to a level that's acceptable that we can manage. And that's how we deal with things that come up around the corner, if you want to call it, things that come up around the corner that we haven't seen or things that we know about and that we need to address. And that's done on the registers updated by a key personnel in the team who has single point accountability for that and actually works on the Martin's team under the CFO. So we have that as part of the process. And so therefore, yes, we do report those things as they come up. And so when we said risk and opportunities in the particular report, there's obviously more risks, there's more opportunities. There's the key ones which are driving both for us to focus on and looking at where we can mitigate against them or prevent them or they can drive the opportunity to get more value out of the actual project. And those things will be ongoing with single point accountability risk owners for each one of those. Do you want to talk about the pyrrhotite quickly, Angus, and I can add some value to that if you like as well.

Yes. I was just going to say, as outlined in Section 7, like we do have existing processes that manage that risk. So we currently do have target in some of our existing copper ores, and that is managed through the grinding and regrind to make sure that that's liberated and just line suppression. So getting the pH right through our circuit, we found we're able to contain and manage that in the existing circuit.

Just on the third question I had then is on the project cost side, I know it's class 3 cost estimate. Is 13.5% contingency enough? Or what justification is there for the 13.5% contingency and all the other costs are all pretty much known reasonably cookie cutter costs?

So what we've done there, Ashley, is we've actually got -- and this is obviously a summarized summary of many summaries. Our contingency is different for each different work package. So we have different contingencies spread across different areas based on the level of engineering or the level of scoping and the level of knowns and unknowns, obviously. So that level of numbers we're talking about there is sort of like an overall summary of those various areas. So [indiscernible] and there's a risk or there's contingency around buying equipment when we've already identified where the equipment is, obviously, the contingency is going to be much lower than something which still needs to be engineered in terms of level of work that still needs to be done between now and the finish. So I couldn't give you a definitive number for each one of them. I don't have that in front of me, but the contingency is definitely a summary of contingencies that are built up work package by work package, if that makes sense.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Daniel Roden with Jefferies.

Congratulations on the results. Just a few quick ones from me. Just wondered if you're seeing any, I guess, half presence in the Great Cobar reserve resource and what the potential impacts of that would be through the Peak mill?

Angus, do you want to take that question to start with, and I'll follow up.

Yes. No, I don't believe there's any [indiscernible] identified in the current resource piece.

Yes. Awesome. And so I guess just on blending between Federation and Great Cobar ores, I know you kind of touched on it, but have you done any, I guess, tradeoff studies between just raw blending or batch treating? And is there a benefit to batch treating Federation ore and then Cobar ore separately given the mineralogical differences?

Yes. So basically, obviously, with the Federation ore coming up the road now, we have been doing batch treating of the Federation ore. Obviously, running the lead-zinc circuit is obviously a key priority from the Federation ore and running the copper-gold for Great Cobar in the future. So if you think about the combination of those 2 ores, we will continue to do work on that and understand how do we get more throughput through the plant in terms of using the full batch opportunity and also the blending opportunity. But right now, as is documented in the study, we've run it pretty much as these are the 2 sources of ore and the throughput is based on what those 2 sources provide in terms of the sequencing. Is there any additional add to that, Angus?

No. Look, we'll continue to look at opportunities for blending and depending on the ore types and the timing. So yes, if we can batch, we'll batch. Otherwise, we will look at blending opportunities as we go forward. And as outlined in the document, there is still potential to exploit some lead-zinc once we get out and understand it a bit better at Great Cobar, and that will provide another opportunity for blending with Federation material.

Yes. Awesome. And might be touch out of [indiscernible] but you mentioned a pretty strong position stating that you can fund this through pure free cash flow, which obviously is a really strong outcome. But I think a big contingent on that is Federation ramping up and getting to nameplate and like that. I just -- I wondered if you'd be able to provide some color, I guess, on how that ramp-up is going? And you've identified some geological orientation interpretation differences that might have caused some, I guess, impacts in the way that the stopes are being planned and the development in the ore body, I guess do you have any further understanding of the outcomes of that? And it sounds like you have a fair degree of confidence over the next few years on what the mine is going to be able to produce. But just if you can provide any color on that would be awesome.

Look, I think for that question, if it's okay, Dan, we might hold that over to next -- to our quarterly release because obviously, a lot of what you're asking is actually to be featured in our quarterly release of the Federation ramp-up. So we haven't released that information yet to the market. And then what I'll do beyond that is when we took it to the June Investor Day, we'll talk about our ramp-up profile and how we're looking at this going forward in the future as well. So if it's okay, we might hold that question over to next week because then we can release that with all the other sequencing information around the ramp-up. Is that okay?

[indiscernible] Fine.

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

Yes. Look, thanks very much. I do want to extend a very big thanks to the team for pulling this study together and getting it to an approval process. Obviously, we've been busy building the Federation mine and ramping that up and now moving into the next phase of our growth cycle with Great Cobar and obviously pushing down the path of copper with gold at Great Cobar. So busy time for the organization and a really big call out to the teams that have been involved. We're doing the work to get us to this position in time. It is a great outcome for the organization. As I said earlier, this project has given us a sort of the next phase of our growth journey. It actually does provide a long-life copper mine with exploration potential I talked about. It has got very attractive financial metrics as a base case with good upside for us, both on the price side, hopefully in the future and also with the resource. The capital estimate, we've got a sufficient contingency in there to derisk the sort of money we need to spend. We are going to leverage a lot of the infrastructure we've got and utilize that where we can to save on capital and so forth. And like I said, as soon as we have got the opportunity to drill and unlock the potential beneath and beside the Great Cobar resource that we've put into this report, we will do so and provide, hopefully, upside to where this organization is going in copper and Great Cobar. So thanks, everyone, for dialing in, and we look forward to communicating further about this project as we go on. And thanks, Ashley for [indiscernible].

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.