BCI Minerals Limited (BCI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you, and welcome, everybody, to the BCI Minerals AGM for 2024. My name is Brian O'Donnell, and I'm the Chairman of the company. I'd initially like to thank the organizers of today, Christie, Tammie, Rica, Steph, everyone else from the BCI team, Computershare and BDO for hosting. It's all very much appreciated. This is a shareholders meeting today. So only holders of the company's shares and their attorneys, proxies and authorized representatives are entitled to vote and speak at today's meeting. I'd like to acknowledge country, in particular, the Whadjuk Noongar people, who are the traditional owners of the region that we are gathered on today, but also the traditional owners of our Pilbara lands, the Yaburara and Mardudhunera people as well as the Robe River Kuruma people. We honor and support the ongoing cultural, spiritual and educational practices for First Nations People, and we are pleased to have ongoing indigenous engagement on site and in Perth at our operations. Of course, I'd like to welcome our Board members to the AGM. We have no new directors this year, but I would like to acknowledge and farewell Garrett Dixon, who recently resigned. Garrett made a great contribution to the company in the 4 years that he served on your Board. Thanks, Garrett, if you're watching. Also, I'd like to welcome our senior leadership team, including new members. We do have 3 new members this year. We appointed Steve Fewster as CFO; Dr. Shaun Meredith as our Head of Environment and Heritage; and Tammie Miller as our Head of External Affairs, and we're very appreciative of their support and engagement with us in coming along and joining the BCI team. I'd also like to welcome Phil Murdoch from BDO, our auditor, who is here to answer your questions on the financial statements. I'd also like to acknowledge our full team and our contractors for our achievements in FY '24. Everyone involved in BCI shares our vision and shares our laser focus on salt and sulphate of potash. We're creating something extraordinary with Mardie, Australia's largest solar salt operation. We think about that every day as we move towards realizing that vision. We all share belief in our purpose, which is to deliver the Mardie Project, and we're very much looking forward to continuing to make that happen. Our journey with Mardie started in 2017 with initial scoping studies, which confirmed the salt and SOP potential of the site. As you can see from the slide, the blue circle is surrounded by yellow circles which are existing Pilbara salt operations. So it's no surprise that it is a very good location, we believe the last good location for an operation of this type in Western Australia. And some of our peers have been operating since the 1960s. So we know we're in the right place. We're also close to the Asian markets, as we know, with iron ore and other commodities from the Pilbara. The increased global demand for salt, combined with what we believe to be relatively constrained and low supply growth, means that Mardie's financial viability became clearer and clearer to us, the more we developed the feasibility studies and following commencement of construction, even though it is going to cost more than we initially expected. It's a long-life, large-scale project with low operating costs, and those factors combined will enable us to produce high-quality salt and SOP for generations. In 2022, as I mentioned, we commenced construction with then-Premier Mark McGowan, as you see on the left. And in September this year, as you see on the right, we officially commenced operations, which is a major milestone, which David will talk more about. We were pleased to be joined this year by the Honorable Roger Cook, the Premier of Western Australia; the Honorable Madeleine King, the Federal Minister for Resources in Northern Australia; and the Honorable David Michael, who's the WA Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Ports and Road Safety. This was a great day that marked the start of Mardie's journey as an operational project. Following that day in September, we are now making salt, which is a great milestone. The strong support, as you can see from state and federal government, has been very important to us, and we very much value those ongoing relationships, which remain very important. I'll briefly summarize the highlights of FY '24. Our safety performance was strong, remained strong despite more hours being worked on the project, hence higher risk. We advanced construction materially during the year, and we signed very important new project finance funding agreements in September. We also progressed offtake negotiations, signing agreements with Wanhua and Chandra Asri during the year and making more progress on that since year-end. We also progressed approvals with more progress again since year-end in relation to that with the commencement of operations, as I mentioned. And just before the end of the financial year, we awarded the biggest single project in Mardie's history which is a $598 million 21-year agreement with CSL Australia for transhipment services for Mardie products. Towards the end of the year, we signed a contract to sell our iron ore -- sorry, our Iron Valley asset to Mineral Resources, our long-term partner in that project. And that enabled us both to realize some cash, but also to have a clearer focus on Mardie. Just for history's sake, from the first shipment of iron ore from Iron Valley to the 20th of June 2024, Iron Valley generated $641 million of revenue to BCI, and we paid $403 million in royalties. So it was a material project and a great contributor to BCI's history. I want to thank again our dedicated leadership team, led by David, and all of our hard-working employees, contractors, consultants and advisers. This commitment has driven a strong increase in our market capitalization to over the last 30 days, an average price of $0.30, and we're heading towards $1 billion of market cap, and we look forward to cracking that, hopefully, in the current financial year. I'll now hand over to David for his overview of FY '24 and also the outlook. Thanks, David.

Thank you, Brian, and good afternoon, everyone. Also I want to say good afternoon to everyone for joining us online. Yes. It's interesting reflecting on today, it's almost exactly 2 years to the day that I stood in my first AGM for BCI Minerals. I do remember that day fondly, it was -- I was filled with a lot of different emotions. There was a bit of trepidation, I have to admit a lot ahead of us. The cost was a major focus for us at that time. And there's a lot of things I didn't know. But the majority of my emotions was filled with excitement of what's ahead of us. And looking back on those 2 years, I have very fond memories of those milestones we've achieved, of those challenges we've been able to overcome, and gives me a lot of courage for what's ahead of us. So I'm looking forward to share with you today what our achievements were for the year, but also kind of look at what we expect in the next financial year. So first up, I'm going to talk through the values. And Brian mentioned that a little bit in his opening address. The values is a very important part of our fiber at BCI. We spent a lot of time designing and working through what our values should be and what do we think we should stand for. And I'm now about 18 months down that journey, I'm really happy to stand in front of you here to say that the values is very much the fiber of our business. And to see that also reflected in our conversations with our contractors and other partners more broadly has been very heartwarming. I do want to share one specific example with you today. So last Friday, and that was shared with me earlier this week, last Friday, one of our teams members in the IT team, her name is Olivia. She came up to Shaun and Brian shared Dr. Shaun Meredith joined us on the approval phase late Friday afternoon, and she wanted to understand exactly how she can contribute to the approvals. What can she do from an IT perspective to help approvals go faster. And for me, that is such a good example of a whole business working well together and understanding what is the critical part of the business. And everyone leaning in to try and make that move faster and progress more successfully. And of course, approvals has been a key achievement for us for this year. So a couple of stats on our people and safety performance for the year. The safety performance for the year has been good. Of course, we're never satisfied with safety. We always have to keep that as a first priority. But the areas that we did focus on in the year were leadership in the field. And that's based on the [ DuPont ] principle. I was fortunate enough to work on this in previous roles and embedding those leadership in the field principles that focus on safety behavior. It's really important to me, and that's something we focused a lot on for the year. We'll continue to do so in this coming year. The other component is Critical Control Verification. And for those of you familiar with the industry, of course, there's a lot of significant risks that we have to manage, and ensuring that those controls to manage those risks are effective is something that's really important. And during the year, we completed almost 700 of those verifications in our workplace. These 2 elements then lead to fatality prevention. Of course, that's ultimately the outcome we want is a safer workplace. That's governed by both behaviors and effective controls. During the year, we also have the health safety, environment and community forum. That forum was held both in Karratha and on-site with all our contracting partners. So every company conducting work on site joined us, their senior leadership joined us, and we mapped out how want to work on safety going forward as a collective group of leaders on the site. It was very well received, and we'll do that -- we'll continue to do that annually. From an employment perspective, we are at 32% female employment. That is, of course, quite high for our industry. This continues to remain a really important topic for us to focus on as we continue to diversify our organization. Also, we are at 7.4% indigenous employment on site. Again, that's one of the important topics for us. We work with great partners in [ Mardudhunera ] people and also the Robe River people and employing indigenous people on site is really important for our organization. Then lastly, on this slide, we finished the year at a 6.4 TRIFR for the year. At the end of October, we were down to 3.7, and we'll continue to drive that number down for FY '25. And just to reiterate, safety will continue to be our first priority as we need to make sure that our people go home the way they came to work. Now none of these achievements for the year would have been possible without really important and valued partners. I am very thankful. There's a lot of names on that slide, but I'll go to highlight some of them. So of course, in design and engineering, there's a lot of different organizations that's helped us. And you can see that on that slide. Also, in our contracting partners, they've done significant work. Earlier you heard McConnell on the video from McConnell Dowell, very innovative work based on and jetty construction is progressing well. Q-Birt, again, has been a very important partner for us in the earthworks construction. I've got a bit more of that later on, but they've come with really innovative and creative ways to, what we call, find a way, find a way to do things more cost effectively and more safely. Also, of course, in the finance, our finance partners, and thank you, Westpac, Andrew and team, for joining. Of course, this project is not possible with solid and reliable finance partners that sees our vision, shares our vision for the project. So I really want to thank the vision that you, as Westpac, and of course, more broadly, our other funders have been able to bring to the table. Also, environmental approvals, and Brian mentioned that briefly. Our approvals has been a key part. And we're very thankful for the federal government as well as the state government at all levels that really support our project and help us to continue to make this a reality. Lastly, of course, is our community. I did mention that we've spent a lot of time and invest a lot of effort in relationship with our traditional owners. That's an important relationship for us. Additionally to that, also the Karratha community. So we have some sponsorships in Karratha community. Of course, small in its nature given we are pre-revenue organization, but continue to value that relationship with our partners in Karratha. Now on to the approvals. This has been our major focus for the most part of the year. Earlier in the year, we received our mining leases that were approved for the -- what we call the OMP, Optimized Mardie area for the project. We have also signed an agreement with the Pilbara Ports Authority. That's the infrastructure development agreement, again, a very key agreement for us to continue and finalize and use the asset of Jetty. We have also received our optimized Mardie project approval from the Western Australia government in October last year, and that was followed up with an approval from the federal government in September this year. During that period, we also have successfully got approval for numerous management plans through the federal and state governments, and we continue to work very closely with them for these approvals that's still ahead of us. Now some of these time lines -- some of these milestones I've mentioned is highlighted on that time line. I'll call out a couple of those. So first of all, at the end of June, we're at 44% complete, and Brian mentioned that. Now at the end of last month, we are now at 52% complete. So again, progressing really well throughout the project. We've delivered essential road infrastructure. We've completed Ponds 3 to 5 in September. We then placed block on gas corridor in Pond 1, 2 and 3. That's important for our partners in Chevron and Santos, with a gas pipeline running through our project footprint; completed transfer station 2/3, and then also commissioned that in the last couple of months, successfully commissioned that transfer station. We've completed Ponds 6 to 8. More than 25% of the crystallizers are done, and the jetty is currently at 2.4 kilometers. One of the items that I did mention at the beginning is our values. You can see in October, we have reset our new values that I shared with you earlier. That was a very important milestone for us as a company, and it's underpinning our performance going forward. And lastly, we are in the pre-FEED work for our SOP plant, or SOP part of the project. And that work will continue. And as soon as we are ready with that, we'll be able to share more details with you. Now on to the schedule. Our construction schedule remains on track and within budget. Our FSOS date of or first salt on ship date is still targeting quarter 2 in FY '27. Of course, this is weather-dependent. Our operation is dependent on weather for evaporation in [ South Wales ], but we're still confident about that date. Also, in FY '24, we've awarded $683 million in contracts, and our overall forecast still remains in line with the base case update that I gave to the market in June 2023. I'll share a couple of photos with you. In my opening address, I referred to the last 2 years. I would say one of the key milestones for me was the moment I was able to stand there next the [indiscernible] and see that dream of us starting operations coming into reality. It was great to be part of something so significant and to be able to build a salt project that hasn't been done for so many years to stand there and witness that operation commencing has been significant. Also, since that commissioning, and you can see if you look carefully to the top of that photo, that photo was taken when Pond 1 was still empty. That pond is now full. Pond 2 is full, and waters almost finishing, the work is arriving at the next transfer station going from 3 to 4. Pond 3 is almost completely covered as well. I mentioned Q-Birt in my earlier remarks. They've been a key partner for us in the earthworks construction. Quinton Birt is the owner. I spent a lot of time talking to him about better and more creative ways to manage the project, particularly on how to do things more efficiently. And it's been great to partner with him over that period. This is a photo taken of the OMP, or the Optimized Mardie Project, only a couple of weeks after we got the approval. In fact, the same day -- only a couple of hours after we got the approval, we're ready to go, and we started our works in that area. As I mentioned, the crystallizers are more than 25% complete, and we continue to be excited about the work that Q-Birt is doing in contribution to the overall project. Now on to some financials. The important focus for us as a company is continue to derisk the project with us being 52% complete through the project and the cost -- a lot of those costs are behind us. Our focus, of course, for the year ahead is going to ensure we continue to derisk the project both from a cost perspective as well as a schedule perspective. The derisking, our view is also that, that's been reflected in the share price depreciation. During the last 12 months, of course, we completed the funding strategy. That was a key risk that is now under control. And we've also received very important environmental approvals that I shared with you earlier. We've commenced operations, and we've been able to maintain the construction schedule to cost and time. At full production, BCI's EBITDA will be in real terms, $385 million, and that will yield then strong returns to our shareholders in a dividend pay format over a long period of time. At the current share price, of course, in our view, BCI will yield higher returns and annuity style over time over its life. One of the key highlights, of course, during the year was our capital raise and our fund -- debt funding. Our salt first phase of the project remains fully funded. I do want to thank our shareholders who supported us at $0.25 per share during that raise. And of course, that then enabled us to get our debt funding arranged and continue with that process. At the end of October, that's now with 25% complete, the CapEx we've spent is $665 million, and our forecast remained on track at completion of the project to come in at or below our base case estimate. And our 30-day VWAP market gap was just over $880 million. And of course, as Brian mentioned earlier, it's important milestone for us to get to $1 billion, and I'm sure that's going to become a reality. One of the key achievements that we also have accomplished is the binding offtake agreements. We are pleased to report that we've signed 3 binding offtake agreements, and these binding offtake agreements will deliver firm sales for 62% of our volume for the first 3 years of operation. And that will also secure our entry into some key Asian markets. You can see on the photo here, Steve and I were there in Jakarta when we signed the Chandra Asri agreement. Again, that was a great milestone for us and something that we celebrated as an organization. These -- of course, these offtake agreements are still subject to lender approval, and we're looking forward to concluding that with our lender partners. Now a bit about the salt markets. This for me is a very exciting graph. So the one on the left-hand side, of course, indicates demand of salt going forward. Steve and I, our CFO, we spend a fair bit of time with customers and our partners in the other markets, Indonesia and China and elsewhere. And we are very excited about what we've seen in the field, and for me, that correlates with what you can see in that graph. So of course, the green line indicating the expected demand for salt. The blue line indicated the additional supply coming on. And ultimately, what excites me is the gap between those two. Such a shortfall in supply must lead into an increase in price. And what you can see on the right-hand side is our modeling from Wood Mackenzie of the price. What they have assumed in 2030 is that there's new demand coming on that's currently not predicted but to close the supply price -- the price gap. Of course, that remains to be seen. We know that entering into the market, there is a lot of high barriers for new salt operations to come on. You need large areas of land. You need the right climate conditions, and you need environmental approvals, and all those things are high barriers to entry for competitors. The exciting part also is that supply gap corresponds with when we're coming into production. I've witnessed many plants in Southeast Asia currently under construction, at least 2 that we visited in person and another one that's been discussed and planned. And these are significant plants that demand a lot of salt into the future. And that's just the one that we are aware of. Of course, that demand we expect to continue to grow. And this, of course, all means really exciting times for BCI ahead that corresponds with our expectations of where we think the salt will be. We also have been seeing recent times a lot of approaches, unsolicited approaches for people wanting to buy salt and trying to get entry into our production planning. In conclusion, FY '24 has been a pivotal year for our company. On safety, we're focused on leadership in the field, critical control verifications, and those 3 pillars are leading to fatality prevention and continued improvement in safety performance. Our construction is now 52% complete. We commenced operations on the 10th of September and are currently in commissioning. Commissioning is going to plan. The Transfer Station 2/3 as well as [ Ponds 3 and 5 ] has been commissioned with excellent conclusion to that and is performing to expectations. We remain on budget for our base case and continue to target quarter 2 FY '27 for salt exports. Now for the outlook of FY '25. We continue -- we will continue to do what we said we're going to do. As you would have seen on our values earlier, that's one of our central values that we focus on. It creates confidence. It creates trust, and it's important for us to continue to live our values. We expect first draw of our debt to happen in quarter 3 FY '24. We're looking at Andrew to make sure that we're on same page. Thanks, Andrew. Also, the approval of the resubmitted Groundwater Monitoring and Management Plan into early next year, again, another important approval that we want to make sure we get done with federal and state governments. And again, that's tracking really well. We also will be preparing to commission our jetty towards the back end of the financial year, that construction again tracking well. At the end of FY '24, we expect substantial progress to be made with crystallizers. This is a large part of the project of the crystallizers an important part, and that's tracking really well for us as well. And then lastly, we expect that the design of the southwest spot be completed by that time and as reading a sizable construction. I then would like to conclude with a heartfelt thanks to all our employees who has been supporting us through this year; our contractors who has done an amazing job in executing those critical works on site, our partners, lending partners, shareholders and our community partners that's been so fundamental to BCI's success in the last year. I also appreciate the ongoing commitment and confidence in our project as we continue to construct and operate into the next year.

Let's give David a little round of applause. Now we move to the formal part of the meeting with the formal proceedings. So please bear with me. The resolution is the subject of the notice and Annual General Meeting will now be put with an opportunity for shareholders to ask questions on each resolution. There will be a further opportunity to speak with me and the other members of the Board and management team in a more informal environment over tea and coffee at the end of the meeting. As I said earlier, this is a shareholders' meeting, and only holders of the company's shares, their attorneys, proxies and authorized representatives are entitled to vote and speak at this meeting. So I don't think there'll be much of that. I ask that each person who wishes to ask a question on the resolution being put to the meeting today to identify themselves and hold up the green shareholder admission card. Pursuant to Clause 7 of the company's constitution, we will conduct a poll on each resolution, as is required under the ASX listing rules. That poll will be taken at the end of the meeting. I will explain the poll procedure at that time. Once all voting has occurred, the poll will be declared closed, the poll will then be counted, and the results of the poll will be announced to the ASX following the end of the meeting. The persons entitled to vote on the poll are all shareholders, representatives and attorneys of shareholders and proxy holders present today in person who hold green admission cards. The register of shareholders is available for inspection at the Computershare desk. Please ensure that if you haven't already, you registered your attendance with the share registry for today's meeting. I advise that the notice of Annual General Meeting for a letter directing shareholders to the website location of the notice was sent to all registered members. And unless there are any questions, I will take that notice as read. Thank you. Before I move to the first item on the agenda, I advise the meeting that 253 ballot proxy forms have been received, representing a total of approximately 2,120 million shares or 73.5% of the company's issued share capital. The proxy results will be shown on the screen when each resolution is put to the meeting. I advise that the Chair intends to vote in favor of all resolutions with proxies received where they give the Chair the discretion to vote as the Chair sees fit. So with that said, I will now commence with the business of the meeting as set out in the notice to this Annual General Meeting. The first item is to receive and consider the financial report of the company for the year ended 30 June 2024, together with the director's report and the auditor's report as set out in the annual report. The annual report is available on BCI's website, and extra copies are available at this meeting, if you would like one. While there is no requirement for a formal resolution on the financial reports, I welcome any questions or discussion on them. In addition, in accordance with the Corporations Act, members are entitled to ask questions of the company's auditor, BDO, that's here today. Would anyone like to discuss any aspects of the financial accounts or if anyone have any questions for the auditors? There being no questions, I would ask the company secretary to note that the annual financial report of the company, the director's report and the audit report have been received, and we will now move to the first of the resolutions. Resolution 1 is to consider, and if thought fit, to pass as a nonbinding resolution that the remuneration report for the year ended 30 June 2024, as set out in the annual report be adopted. As Chair, I move the motion. The proxy results on the resolution are also shown on the screen. Are there any questions? There being no questions, I put the motion to a call to be taken at the end of the meeting. Since the next resolution concerns my reelection to the Board, I will hand the call to Richard Court AC. Thank you, Richard.

Thank you to the Chairman. The second resolution is the reelection of Brian O'Donnell as a director. To consider, and if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution that Brian O'Donnell, who ceases to hold office in accordance with the constitution, and being eligible, offers himself for reelection to be reelected a director of the company. As Chair, I move the motion. The proxy results on the resolution are shown on the screen. Are there any questions? There being no questions, I put the motion to a poll to be taken at the end of the meeting. And I now hand the chair back to Brian.

Thank you, Richard. Let's move along to the next resolution. Resolution 3 is to consider, and if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That Ms. Miriam Stanborough AM, who ceases to hold office in accordance with the constitution, and being eligible, offers herself for reelection to be reelected as a director of the company. As Chair, I move the motion. The proxy results on the resolution are also shown on the screen. Are there any questions? There being no questions, I put the motion to a poll to be taken at the end of the meeting. Resolution 4 is to consider, and if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purposes of Section 327B 1B of the Corporations Act and for all other purposes, BDO Audit Pty Ltd having been nominated by a shareholder and having given its consent in writing to act in the capacity as auditor of the company, be appointed as auditor of the company with immediate effect. As Chair, I move the motion. The proxy results on the resolution are shown on the screen. Do we have any questions? There being no questions, I put the motion to a poll, which will be taken at the end of the meeting. Resolution 5 is to consider, and if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.14 and all other purposes, the issue of up to 3,825,343 performance rights to Mr. David Boshoff or his nominee under the performance rights plan be approved on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum, including annexes A and B to the explanatory memorandum. As Chair, I move the motion. The proxy results on the resolution are shown on the screen. Are there any questions? Thank you. There being no questions, I put the motion to a poll to be taken at the end of the meeting. We move to Resolution 6, which is to consider, and if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.14 and all other purposes, the issue of up to 1,944,525 share rights to Mr. David Boshoff or his nominees under the share rights plan be approved on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum including annexes A and C to the explanatory memorandum. As Chair, I move the motion. Proxy results on the resolution are also shown on the screen. Are there any questions? Thank you. There being no questions, I put the motion to a poll. We will now conduct the poll in accordance with Clause 6.7 of the company's constitution on all resolutions. The company's share registry, Computershare, will run the poll and act as a returning officer. The persons entitled to vote on the poll are all shareholders, representatives and attorneys for shareholders and proxy holders who hold the green admission cards. On the back of your green admission card is your voting paper and instructions. If you are a proxy holder, attached to your admission card is a summary of proxy votes which details the voting instructions. By completing the voting paper, you are deemed to have voted in accordance with those instructions. In respect of any open votes a proxy holder may be entitled to cast, you need to mark the box beside the motion to indicate how you wish to cast your open votes. Shareholders also need to mark the box beside the motion to indicate how you wish to cast your votes. Please ensure you print your name where indicated and sign the voting paper. When you finish filling in your voting paper, please lodge it on the ballot box to ensure your votes are counted. If you require any assistance, please raise your hand. Lisa is now collecting, Lisa from Computershare. Thank you. We have green papers? [Voting]

Thank you. I declare the poll closed. The results of the poll will be announced to ASX following the end of the meeting. Before closing this meeting, are there any further questions shareholders would you like to ask. And there were a couple of questions before the meeting, which is good. There being no further business lawfully brought forward to the meeting, I'd like to thank all shareholders and visitors for their attendance, and formally declare the Annual General Meeting closed. Please join me, the other directors and management for tea or coffee or a glass of water. Thank you.