Chrysos Corporation Limited (C79) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Chrysos Corporation Limited H1 FY '25 Results. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Dirk Treasure, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and good morning, shareholders. Thank you all for joining us today for our first half FY '25 results presentation. As usual, I'm joined by our CFO, Brett Coventry. Brett and I will give you an overview of the operational and financial results for the half. Slide 3, please, operator. I'd like to start with a brief summary of Chrysos' PhotonAssay technology and our market opportunity. As investors on the call would know, we operate predominantly in the gold analysis space. Gold analysis is a nondiscretionary requirement for all gold miners around the world. And prior to adoption of PhotonAssay, miners are generally using a technique called fire assay for their analysis. Our PhotonAssay technology is faster, more accurate, requires reduced labor and sample preparation and is better for the environment and for operators. Also, it doesn't cost the miner anything more than they are currently paying for their fire assay. Our service model to the industry works on a fee per sample with a take-or-pay built into the model. The committed capacity of a unit forms our minimum monthly assay payments and sample fees above those are additional assay charges. Our contracts offer secure long-term revenue, mostly with Tier 1 counterparties and also offer upside on revenue based on utilization. PhotonAssay units are operating on average at the moment between 70% and 80% gross profit. Since first deploying PhotonAssay in 2018, we've since rolled the technology out across 4 continents, processed in excess of 13 million samples, count 3 of the world's 4 biggest laboratory companies as partners and fulfill the analysis requirements of at least 7 of the world's 15 biggest gold miners in at least one of their mines. Even with our rapid growth, we represent only a small proportion of the global gold assay market, so there remains plenty of opportunity for future expansion. Next slide, please, operator. To the results for the half. Total revenue, as previously announced in our 4C was $29.1 million, up 54% year-on-year and is predominantly made up of minimum monthly assay payments, which accounted for 89% of this figure. EBITDA was $5.7 million for the half, which is a growth of 150% year-on-year and importantly, reflects an increase in EBITDA margin to 20%, reflective of Chrysos' increasing economies of scale. Our cash position of $26.9 million is supported by a $95 million debt facility with the Commonwealth Bank, which subsequent to half end, we've started to access with an initial drawdown of $18 million. As of the end of the half, we had a net available cash of $121.9 million for future growth. 5 new units were deployed during the half, supported by 6 new agreements that were signed. This brings us to a total of 34 deployed PhotonAssay units with a further 22 contracted units yet to be deployed. Next slide, please, operator. The chart on the left here illustrates our current penetration into the mining industry. Mindful that we've only had PhotonAssay operating for 6 years in an industry that is conservative and often slow to adopt new technology. We consider this to be a huge achievement and it showcases the near-term future potential. Each slice represents one of the largest 15 gold mining companies by production. The yellow slices are those companies that actively use our technology across one or multiple mines, either directly or via one of our laboratory partners. As all of these miners are multi-mine operators, they all present future opportunity for the company as well. The blue slices represent those companies where we have completed one or more paid feasibility or implementation studies. For some of the larger companies, this often spans multiple deposits and ranges through exploration geology, production geology and metallurgical analysis. These companies are each near-term conversion opportunities where we remain in active discussions regarding either technical or commercial aspects of PhotonAssay. All of these studies have successfully illustrated PhotonAssay's applicability to displace existing analytical techniques. Lastly, the gray slices represent further future potential. On the right-hand side is a chart illustrating our ongoing sample volume growth. We've had 24 consecutive quarters of record sample volumes, and this is in spite of a gold exploration market that has largely moved downward or sideways over the past couple of years. Next slide, please, operator. We continue to build our presence in key mining hubs around the world, growing adoption in these regions. Our growing regional sales team is working closely with mining companies and with our laboratory partners, both on new unit sales, but also on driving additional volume into existing units. Barrick's adoption of our technology is continuing on a global basis. And during the half, we've deployed 2 units to the Nevada Gold Mines complex, which remains the biggest mining project in the world. These deployments also provide exposure to Newmont, the world's biggest gold miner, which is a co-owner of this project with Barrick. We deployed a total of 5 units during the half, which, in addition to the NGM units include a hub laboratory deployment to STS in Orange, a deployment to STS in Tanzania for operation at Barrick's North Mara mine site and deployment of Chrysos' first Alaskan unit as an MSA Labs hub laboratory in Fairbanks. Six new lease agreements were signed during the half, bringing our total contracted number of units to 56 and supporting our ongoing PhotonAssay rollout. New units have been dominated by near-term deployment opportunities and have been well supported by the world's biggest laboratory company, SGS, which account for or are involved in 4 of these new agreements. Today, we have 2 units currently being installed and 13 units that have completed factory acceptance testing and are available for shipping and installation. Over the medium term, we remain committed to aligning our deployment cadence with our manufacturing capacity. Slide 8, please, and over to you, Brett.

Thanks, Dirk. It's great to see continued momentum during the half with both deployments and near-term contracts. Revenue growth has continued this half to $29.1 million, being 54% growth year-on-year. This growth is driven by continued adoption of our technology across the globe, particularly in our international markets with 59% growth across EMEA and 270% growth across Americas. Considering the regions, we see Australia, as we've talked about previously, remaining relatively flat as we are yet to see industry sample volumes aligned with record gold prices, with EMEA and Americas demonstrating sound growth with continued adoption of PhotonAssay technology, and these 2 regions present the more significant growth opportunities in the near term. Next slide, please. This is one of my favorite graphs in the deck. It demonstrates the forecastable underlying revenue generated by the minimum monthly assay payments, the yellow section of the graph. These minimum revenues continue to grow with our deployed unit base and was a 56% year-on-year growth to $25.8 million. The grade for additional assay charges, which is utilization in excess of the minimum monthly assay charges, was up 41% year-on-year to $3.3 million. For our existing deployments, particularly laboratory partners, there is opportunity for upside should the industry start to accelerate. During this half, the additional assay charges represented 11% of our revenue. Next slide, please. It's the third dot point here, which is a highlight for me, being growth in EBITDA to $5.7 million with revenue growth of 54%, outpacing our expenses growth of 27%. We've spoken about having a platform to grow globally from. And as this continues to mature, it provides the opportunity to continue this trend. Our PhotonAssay cost sees us remaining in the target range for gross profit of 70% to 80%. This remains a focus for us to grow our in-house maintenance capability. As we look forward, we can also see it's appropriate to recognize the full year -- the full deferred tax asset. Next slide, please. With our growth, our cash flows continue to improve reflective of that. This is the first half we've been able to add a PhotonAssay unit to the fleet totally from operating cash flow. Of course, this is supported by cash holdings and debt facility at 31 December of $121.9 million. We can see our R&D activities and sustaining CapEx related largely to our second building at Tomsleyf facility, which aren't expected to continue at this rate. At our quarterly announcement a few weeks back, we spoke about CapEx normalizing back to previous quarter's rate. We expect to return to that quarterly cadence, balancing supply, long-term supply commitments and future growth capability. Next slide, please. Chrysos' balance sheet remains strong. And after the half, we have started to use our CBA facility with $18 million drawn, making sure we maintain a reasonable cash level within the business. At the end of the period, our capital commitments have reduced to $79 million, down from $95 million at the same time last year. Our balance sheet remains well positioned to continue our growth. Back to you. Thanks, Dirk.

Thank you, Brett. Slide 14, please, operator. Our view as a company is to become the world's leading provider of innovative assay services and technologies, and that really starts with our PhotonAssay technology. The goal with PhotonAssay is to convert all major gold mining projects around the world to PhotonAssay, displacing their incumbent analytical techniques. We're building strategic partnerships with our customers, which are both miners and laboratory companies. This half, in particular, has seen us broaden our relationship with SGS in both the direct to site as well as the hub laboratory space. These partnerships are key to our success, and we work closely with our partners on new opportunities. Our business model, which operates as a fee per sample, reduces barriers to entry, minimizing the investment required by our customers, making for a very simple adoption proposition. Our commitment to availability and performance of the equipment supported by our global maintenance team, derisks operation and adoption of the technology that becomes critical infrastructure for the mine site. For Chrysos, the business model offers a long-term annuity style revenue post deployment, where our economics are supported by our minimum monthly assay payments. We also retain exposure to industry upswings where our additional assay charges can drive unit profitability higher. On the right-hand side, we illustrate market penetration into our total addressable market. Our TAM is made up of hub laboratories accounting for around 200 deployment opportunities and miners, which account for around 410 opportunities. Once the mine is large enough, it requires on-site analysis to operate. Otherwise, it's effectively running its process plant and mining operations without real-time information. As a gold mine processes more tonnes, it generally correlates to a higher volume of samples. We've estimated our TAM as those mines around the world, which are mining at least 40,000 ounces of gold a year, equating to around USD 120 million in revenue. Next slide, please, operator. While the gold market remains our primary focus, there is considerable opportunity beyond just gold analysis. We currently operate PhotonAssay globally for gold, silver and copper and have scope to broaden that into other elements as well as other applications. Our ability to offer this broader service has been important in securing contracts with customers that have products that extend beyond gold. We're seeing an increased interest in our broader suite of analysis and have been working with our laboratory partners around the world to enable these additional services on their units. Next slide, please. While we remain within our guidance provided at the start of FY '25, we are currently tracking towards the lower end of our revenue guidance related to the timing of deployment of some of our earlier contracts. We remain focused on accelerating our deployment cadence by broadening our customer base and deepening our pipeline. We're pleased that most of the units that were contracted during the first half were or will be deployed during FY '25. With respect to EBITDA, we remain within the guidance range and are tracking below the midpoint. Our ability to decouple EBITDA from the lower revenue guidance is reflective of the cost controls implemented by the business that align the bulk of our unit costs, both capital and expenses with timing of unit deployments. Next slide, please. Summarizing the first half, we've had continued top line growth with revenue up 54% and EBITDA up 150% year-on-year. We've continued to improve EBITDA margin conversion with margin increasing to 20% from 12% year-on-year. Our focus on broadening our customer base and deepening our pipeline has started strongly during the half with 6 new contracts secured, all of which are for near-term deployment. We've continued to evolve our relationship with Barrick with deployment at the Nevada Gold Mines operation, which importantly gives us exposure to Newmont as the joint venture party to that operation. Finally, we're well supported for future growth with $26.9 million cash on hand, supported by our $95 million Commonwealth Bank facility, which we have now started to draw down upon. Thank you, and we'll move to questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Josh Kannourakis with Barrenjoey.

A couple of quick questions. So just firstly, with regard to some of the units that you obviously have sitting there, can you just remind us with regard to the units you have sitting there in terms of how many are contracted out? And just in terms of the -- in light of some of the tariff discussions that are out there today, just how you're sort of preparing to navigate that?

Yes. Look, absolutely. So I will just flag that the units that we consider to be post factory acceptance testing ready for shipping and installation don't mean that they're sitting in a warehouse somewhere. That's anything that is post testing, like finished production ready to go, but it can refer to anything that is sitting on the water, sitting in customs, waiting to start deployment at a site as well. So just broadening that a little bit from thinking that they're sitting there in a warehouse. With respect to tariffs, we are getting ahead of potential tariffs in the U.S. That's obviously a topic of discussion. We have shipped a couple of units to the U.S. to support those deployments that we've talked about going on in that region. So we consider ourselves to be ahead of that. I will just flag though that the U.S. does represent a relatively small market to us compared to the rest of the world. So for example, where we've talked about employing a sales manager into South America, the South American opportunity dwarfs U.S. in of itself. So tariffs are a small item for us.

Yes. Got it. And then just in terms of -- obviously, everyone is looking at the gold price and where it's sitting, obviously, at significant highs. How much latent capacity is within the fleet? And how should we think about it in terms of in a market uptick, how that could improve with regard to your portion that is currently labs that will obviously get a much higher pickup in volumes in that uptick in environment versus the sort of mine site operators that may be sort of more modest upticks.

Yes, absolutely. And so we're very dominated deployment-wise at the moment by those hub laboratories, all of which are exposed to the macro market. We've disclosed some of the financials previously that a unit operating at 100% compared to its committed capacity could easily be earning twice the revenue that it would be at just its committed capacity. So there is a pretty substantial upswing available there. And look, to calculate actual latent capacity is quite simple. Take sample volume run in the quarter divided by number of units, mindful that our capacity per unit, nameplate capacity is 40,000 samples a month.

Okay. No, that's great. And then final one, just in terms of the debt piece, how should we think about, I guess, the staging of that? Obviously, your deployment this year a bit lower than previously expected. But in terms of the cash flow generation versus that, how should we think -- obviously, draw down a little bit after balance date. How should we think about the staging of that debt over the 12 to 18 months?

I think -- thanks, Josh, first of all. And we've been pretty transparent through the process at the 4C, we intimated that was going to happen. And we'll -- as you should think about it, we're paid for one unit ourselves this quarter effectively. That's going to continue as we grow. Obviously, that deployment cadence will have a little bit of impact on it. Could we expect another draw before the end of the calendar year? There's a chance, and we'll be transparent with the market around the timing of that.

Your next question comes from Joseph House with Bell Potter Securities.

I've got 2. Firstly, I think, Dirk, you touched on this in the presentation, but just to clarify, the revenue guidance update, just can you provide some comments on whether the variance to your prior internal expectations was more driven by the first half deployment timings or if there's an updated view on the second half deployment timings in your expectations now?

Yes, great question. We continue to evaluate all of our deployment timing as we go, and it's simply a reflection of those deployment timings. So really, what we've done is sat down and worked out what the first half looks like, what the second half looks like and provided the most up-to-date guidance that we can against that.

Okay. Great. And just looking at the EBITDA guidance update, additional assay charges as a percentage of revenue was lower in the first half versus the PCP just modestly. Has that at all influenced the EBITDA guidance update? And also, how are you accounting for the additional assay charges for the second half in your guidance?

Yes. Look, another great question. And similar to when we provided guidance originally, we're not guiding to any major change in the market itself. I think everyone is kind of looking at when a high gold price will lead to increased exploration spend and Ergo higher volumes coming through the laboratories, but we're somewhat at the whim of the market on that. So we're really looking at the things that are in our control, and that is around deployment timing.

Your next question comes from Jules Cooper with Shaw and Partners Limited.

Dirk can you hear me? Awesome. All right. First question was, can you shed any light on the second unit that you're currently deploying now? I think 4 weeks ago, that was one. So now you're deploying 2. Just wondering if that is one of those units that you had contracted this period now getting into the deployment phase? Or is it maybe a customer that maybe you've contracted units before that's sort of moving ahead with utilizing one of those?

Jules, I'll grab that one. Yes, and they're both new contracts in terms of the deployments that are going on at the moment. Obviously, we spoke at the quarter about Namibia. We also have team members currently in New Zealand. So they're both current year contracts.

Awesome. Excellent. And Dirk, just sort of picking up on the revised guidance, particularly the revenue there sort of now to come in at the lower end. You've sort of -- you mentioned in your earlier remarks that the units that you'd contracted this period, you expect still to deploy. So I guess there's a timing element there. So one question was, are there any common themes across why some of those units might be slipping in terms of when you thought they'd deployed? And secondly, if that's not the driver, is there -- was there something you expected to contract and maybe you just haven't got that across the line in time? Just sort of trying to piece together how we could think about why that revenue is just shifting a little bit.

Yes. Look, good question. And I think the way that we look at this is that we really have talked about the way for us to accelerate deployment cadence is to broaden the customer base and to deepen that pipeline in general. So I'm really comforted by the 6 units that we've signed up during the first half, all being for that near-term deployment. So you can see a clear drive there of Chrysos to be looking at those near-term deployment opportunities when we're contracting, both with miners and laboratory companies alike. I did flag earlier in my discussion that some of the earlier contracts that we have signed a little bit delayed from where we would like them to be. But really, it comes back to how we're ameliorating that, and we're being successful on that front.

Your next question comes from Lindsay Robert Bettiol with Ords.

I've got a couple of questions. Something that may be missing from this release, no update on new leases that have been signed in the past 8 weeks. So I just take that to mean there have been no new leases signed kind of calendar year-to-date?

No, look. So obviously, we had the 4C come out 4 weeks ago, I think, along those lines. So no update to that line.

Brilliant. Then on the CapEx piece, I think like we rolled the clock back kind of 6 months or so, the narrative was very much we have a few units the past factory acceptance, they're sitting in inventory. I had expected that would mean CapEx would step down. It obviously hasn't in the half. That's okay. We've now got another $18 million being drawn to the CBA debt facility. Could we just unpack that a little bit as to where the spending is going, given that the inventory kind of isn't really changing from that 13 to 14 unit number?

It's -- in terms of the deployment, the cost of units, I think as I touched on, there is an ongoing balance of our supply commitments around those unit deployments and making sure that we are still focused on our future growth. So there's some long lead time items and things like that in there. So we do continue to have some commitments around there. I have said we expect to come back to that previous quarterly cadence of the cash capital expenditure. So we do expect to come back to that $10 million to $12 million a quarter. That's our expectations. Outside of that, I think the other piece of the puzzle in terms of the drawdown is one, we obviously needed to make sure the facility is in line in place and working and the drawdowns work. It's the first time we've drawn it. And we do need to keep a minimum flow of cash in the business across the globe because we do operate across many jurisdictions. So that's really about just making sure that we've got an appropriate level of cash in the business.

Yes, brilliant. So the balance date number of circa $27 million in cash, that hasn't really changed much as I have to read that.

No, it's still in that ballpark as well, yes.

Yes. Okay. And then just final question. I mean, these 2 guidance items tracking below the lower end and then tracking below the midpoint, which I would argue are kind of the same thing. But just help me with the terminology, should I read that revenue is like in the lower quartile and EBITDA is kind of just below the midpoint? Is that how you're trying to frame that for us?

Yes. Look, I mean, we've been quite intentional in the wording there, and they are intentionally different. So revenue tracking towards the lower end of guidance and EBITDA tracking below the midpoint.

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

Thank you very much, and thank you to everyone for attending today. 2025 is shaping up to be a big year. So I look forward to providing you with further updates throughout.

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