Chrysos Corporation Limited (C79) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day. My name is Dennis, and I will be your conference operator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Chrysos Corporation H1 Fiscal Year '24 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Dirk Treasure, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much, Dennis, and good morning, shareholders. Thank you all for joining us today for our first half FY '24 results presentation. As usual, I'm joined by our CFO, Brett Coventry. And Brett and I will give an overview of the operational and financial results for the half. Slide 3, please, operator. For anyone on the call that's new to the story, I'd like to start off with a summary of what we do as a company. First, very briefly, we build what is called PhotonAssay units. We deploy them to our customers, which are miners and laboratories and then we charge a fee for use over a long equipment lifetime. PhotonAssay is a gold analysis technology, which uses high-powered x-rays to measure gold in a sample and analysis is a nondiscretionary spend for miners. We're displacing a technique called fire assay, and we're seeing rapid adoption of our technology all over the world because it offers substantial advantages. First developed by CSIRO, PhotonAssay is significantly faster reducing analysis time from hours to minutes. It's more accurate, particularly where miners have complex mineralogy. It allows reduced sample preparation, which reduces the overall analysis cost as well as the overall analysis time. It's completely automated, technician only needs to place the sample onto an input conveyor and then remove samples from an outlook conveyor post analysis. It has reduced labor requirements. A number of our partners that run both PhotonAssay and fire assay in the same facility, have let us know that it takes about 1/3 of the labor for a comparative size PhotonAssay in comparison to those old fire assay operations. Substantially improves health and safety. We're very proud of removing lead from the environment and lead exposure is particularly nasty for operators and means that our fire assay operators often have their blood tested every 6 months for lead contamination. The WHO has come out and said there is no safe level of lead contamination. So being able to remove that entirely from the laboratory with PhotonAssay, it's something we're very proud of. PhotonAssay samples are also 10x to 20x the sample mass of a fire assay sample, which leads to a more representative subsample for analysis. Stemming from our acquisition of PhotonAssay from CSIRO, our technology is well protected by a mosaic patents on a global basis, which would make it very difficult for anyone to compete with a similar technology. We also keep a very close watch for any alternative gold analysis techniques in the market. PhotonAssay has become quickly accepted by the industry. It's been used in JORC and NI43-101 compliant releases. We've now processed in excess of 8 million samples. And our first unit has been operating now since the middle of 2018. Slide 4, please, operator. In an ongoing story of sustained high growth, I'm pleased to present the highlights for the first half. Firstly, our total revenue was $19 million, a substantial increase of 64% year-on-year or 72% once we adjust for consumable provision. Our EBITDA has increased by 262% year-on-year to a total of $2.3 million for the half. And importantly, our EBITDA conversion has improved illustrating improved operational leverage and bolstered by our strategy of clustering units, leading to reduced unitized costs. During the half, we had two major achievements with regards to funding. Firstly, our $75 million capital raise, which was very well supported and more recently, having secured an additional $65 million in debt from the Commonwealth Bank. And the Commonwealth Bank has been a very long-term supporter of Chrysos. This leaves us with $180 million in funding to continue our growth aspirations of making PhotonAssay the ubiquitous name in gold analysis around the world. We now have a total of 27 units deployed, having started the financial year with 20. During the half, we deployed 4 of these units and have subsequently deployed a further 3 post period. In addition to the new -- the 7 new units, we've also successfully decommissioned and then reinstalled an MSALABS unit during the half, highlighting our growing installation capability, as well as showcasing our ability to pick up and move a PhotonAssay unit when required. Slide 5, please operator. The next few slides will be familiar to our shareholders, starting on this page with samples processed over time. We continue to achieve record quarters from a volume perspective and utilization is tracking according to our expectations. Our customers span laboratories and miners, and we count some of the world's biggest gold miners as our direct and indirect customers. We're also well supported by our laboratory partners, which are some of the world's biggest laboratory companies in the industry. It's through these strong partnerships that we're able to deliver PhotonAssay to our customers around the world. Slide 6, please. We continue to roll out PhotonAssay units in key gold mining regions around the world, and our operations as of this release now spans 4 continents, which is a major milestone for the company. We continue to have interest in the technology from all over the world and have run studies in most regions where gold originates. Our strategy is to continue to grow our footprint of units and to continue to convert more and more mining projects to PhotonAssay. We've built the company's capability to deploy 18 PhotonAssay units a year and are working closely with our customers to continue our global expansion. Slide 7, please, operator. It was in the fourth quarter of last year that we were able to announce our partnership with MSALABS and Barrick. Barrick being one of the world's largest gold miners and a company that is continually proving themselves to be an innovative and agile company. We're enjoying working with the Barrick team both for the ongoing rollout but also for expansion of application of PhotonAssay within their operations. Mindful that Barrick was the first adopter of both our silver and copper PhotonAssay services. We look forward to the upcoming rollout of more units into Barrick and to fulfilling our plan of having PhotonAssay units operating in Barrick sites across 4 continents. Slide 8, please, operator, and over to you, Brett.

Thanks, Dirk. Think you can move straight to Slide 9. Yes, that's exactly. Thanks, Dirk. It's great to be talking about another half of growth with PhotonAssay revenue increasing 72% compared to the first half of FY '23. At the same time, with our further 3 deployments of PhotonAssay units, our minimum monthly assay payments are now annualized to $50 million per year. Next slide, please. Probably the most important piece here of our P&L is looking at the decrease in PhotonAssay costs. While we're seeing improvements here, as we take more control of our operations and maintenance, we have seen increase in direct employment costs, albeit at a reduced rate per unit. We continue to explore how we best represent this to provide a better visibility going forward. However, most importantly, we see this continuing to contribute to improved operational leverage. Slide 11, please. I'm not going to spend too much time on the next couple of pages. Obviously, except for noting our ongoing positive cash flow, and our spending continues to be in line with our expectations, including around our growth and being able to deploy units moving forward. Moving to next slide, please. And with looking at our balance sheet, we remain well funded on the back of our successful capital raise late last year and then the recent approval by the Commonwealth Bank for additional of $65 million. Back to you. Thank you, Dirk.

Thank you, Brett. And on to Slide 14, please. I particularly like the slide as it gives us a summary snapshot of some of the opportunities that are ahead of us with PhotonAssay. On the left, we can see that there is substantial upside within the total addressable market with our deployed units accounting for only 4.5% and our contracted units being only 8% of the total addressable market. Mindful that this is gold miners only. And on the right-hand side of the page, we highlight those other elements for which PhotonAssay is applicable, which offer further expansion opportunities. As well as broader elemental analysis, we continue to develop the breadth of the PhotonAssay offering with our focus on moisture analysis and solution analysis. We're also working closely with our mining partners to expand the use case of the technology as an enabling technology to optimize process plants and mining operations in general. Next slide, please. Closing off the half, we're proud of the growth that the company continues to achieve. A 72% increase in PhotonAssay revenue is a great outcome for the half, and we look forward to continuing to grow this number going forward. We maintain a strong pipeline of committed opportunities with a further 21 contracted units to deploy and an extensive pipeline of opportunities beyond this, bolstered by our recent partnership with MSA and Barrick. We're currently at 27 deployed units around the world. As I mentioned before, that's up from 20 at the start of the half and are mindful that we've redeployed a unit during that period as well. This illustrates our ongoing growth and deployment capability around the world. We have further strong growth ahead of us with further revenue growth and EBITDA growth flagged in our guidance and we are well funded now to continue our rollout of PhotonAssay units with around $180 million available for growth. I'd like to close out with a quick thank you to the ever-growing Chrysos team for their dedication and hard work without which we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have during the half. Thank you, and we'll move to questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question from the line of Taylor Guyot with Barrenjoey.

Are you able to hear me okay?

We can hear you and clear, Taylor.

Perfect. Just in terms of the 2 new deployed units since the last presentation, which were an incremental $2 million MMAP. This implies 1 mill per machine. Can you just talk about what drove this and what we can expect for future contract deployments, please?

Yes, absolutely. So the MMAP is rebalanced basically each time that we do an update. And that's the various underlying variables that you'd imagine things like changes in currency and this type of thing as well. So it's not quite as simple as just adding the -- or subtracting the previous MMAP and dividing it by the new number of units because there are some movements that go on in the background. On the other side, it is very appropriate to take that entire number, which is the $50 million that Brett mentioned before and divide that by the total number of units deployed to get the average MMAP across the units. And basically, what you can see over time is that our average MMAP per unit continues to increase.

Yes. Just on that a little bit further is one of the questions I received last time, which flows to your question is, we don't deploy in a linear rate. Obviously, we've looked at some ROIC charts, et cetera, over time, you see the increase just because we signed later contracts with a higher value, some of those earlier contracts, the timing of our deployments, we've always spoken about being able to deploy working through those at the right time for the -- for our customers and us. So some of the lower value earlier contracts might be coming on stream as well as we see a higher value on later on coming. So there's always a bit of a blended mix there as well.

Great. And then just in terms of EBITDA margin increase year-on-year. So this was driven by execution of -- or you called out, it was driven by execution of strategy to scale efficiently in key mining hubs. Could you just talk a bit about how we can think about scale economics going forward as you continue to roll out units and improve operating leverage, please?

Yes. Thanks, Taylor. That's certainly one of my focuses in terms of how we can get the market some better information on that and make sure we can report it consistently. Obviously, we've been growing a finance team. But as we deploy units in co-located regions, obviously, whether that's the region or a country or even in the same site. Obviously, there's various levels of different savings across those kind of deployments, especially I think when we go into a new country, we've got all the costs of setting up a new country. So if we're already there, we're kind of avoiding those kind of setup costs and also if we're in the same country, we're already immediately reducing the number of spares we might need to be holding the number of team members we need to be holding support functions will potentially already be in place. So it's all of those sorts of savings that we continue to make as we are able to deploy in that hubbing and grouping strategy.

All right. Perfect. And then just last one for me. Just in terms of the customer site readiness and contractor availability challenges that were called out in January. Could you just talk through how you've seen that since then and have those challenges abated?

Yes. Look, very little update over the last 3 weeks since the last 4 seats. So still largely in the same place. We did flag at that point the availability of contractors over the Christmas period. Obviously, since then, we're back out of the Christmas period, so really no issue from that side, things returning to normal. And we've started to engage a lot earlier along the process with those customers continuing to expand the deployment capability and the deployment team so that we're having those early engagements. So certainly a focus of ours to make sure that the timing of availability for installation of a unit from our side lines up with the customer being ready going forward.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from a line of Joseph House from Bell Potter Securities.

Dirk and Brett. I've got three. Firstly, are you able to provide a bit of a commentary on your near-term deployment pipeline. It's good to see you've got 3 deployments post-period year-end. And it looks like you're probably going to have to hit 6 -- potential 6 deployments in the March quarter, maybe 8 in the final quarter to hit your guidance numbers. Just a bit of context around how we should think about deployments over the next kind of 3 to 6 months?

Yes, fair question, and thanks, Joseph. With regard to sort of the number of overlapping deployments, a number of 8 overlapping deployments is really not an issue for us now that we've got the team built out the way that we have. Certainly, we're cognizant that the -- we're continuing to grow the number of deployments over time. So you're absolutely right that you become more back-ended in those deployments. And I think your calculations are pretty much match up with our own.

Great. That's clear. And then just secondly, on your D&A charge rates, I see that they're higher this half versus prior halves. Can you just run me through your thinking on the changes in variables that you used to determine your D&A charge. Is this higher charge likely to remain going forward?

Just so I can -- so that -- obviously, the step-up in D&A is reflective of the units we've got deployed across the globe. So that is something that you would expect as obviously that ongoing depreciation on an accounting basis, they're effectively treated as we set out in the accounts with the component accounting. But roughly, if you're doing a quick calculation, that would be equivalent, close to a 10-year straight line division of deploying an asset. So that number -- the more units we deploy, that number is going to continue to grow.

Yes. Great. I understand that. Just looking at it as a percentage of your revenue base, it's ticked up to about 27% in the half. Prior halves, it was around 22% to 24%.

Yes. That's -- it has to be reflective of the rate of deployment of units in the assets. No particular other assets in there materially all PhotonAssay units in that chart is there's not a significant amount of other costs or other assets being depreciated. So it's just reflective of the rate of deployment of units.

We'd be unlikely to look at linking that to revenue. Really, it's aspect of the total value of the units deployed.

Okay. Great. And just lastly, there was a negative working capital change or movement in the half. Are you able to just talk to what's driven that?

I think it's largely around timing of debtors collections and those key driving factors there, a little bit of inventory. Obviously, that's not a material piece for us. It's a material holding, but obviously, it doesn't have as material impact, but it's around the movements in those debtors and creditors. And we're not experiencing any significant delays or issues either side with suppliers or customers.

[Operator Instructions] And at this time, there appear to be no further questions. I will now turn the call back to Mr. Treasure for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much, Dennis, and thank you to everyone for attending today. We look forward to providing further updates to the market and look forward to seeing you at our next webinar, which will be the FY '24 third quarter webinar in April. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.