Evolution Mining Limited (EVN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

September 15, 2026

ASX AU Materials Metals and Mining special 185 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Lawrie Conway

executive
#1

All right. Good to go. Thank you for coming back in on time as well. We do have, I would say, a feedback-rich environment at lunch. I got told what we should have presented, what are the messages that we've already given by when we loaded up on the ASX this morning and why some assets aren't covered in more detail, but we'll try and answer all of those as we go through the presentation. We also do have a number of our investment banks and our debt banks here who have supported us over the years. They will be the most disappointed because Kirron is not buying anything and Fran doesn't need any any more debt. So enjoy the afternoon knowing that there's no work coming out of this for you. All right. So I was told that there must be an announcement coming tomorrow, but not that I'm aware of. Normal forward-looking statements given this is -- it's also being webcast, the disclaimers there about what we're going to go through today. We'll have forward-looking statements, and everyone needs to take that into consideration when assessing. So key messages really want to kick off in terms about where Evolution is at today and how that has come about over the last 15 years as we've started in 2011. And realistically, I think what we've done with our portfolio since 2011 has created something. And as we're coming up to 15 years, which is our tag is around a legacy that we want to leave behind. And I think the work that we're doing for our business, for our shareholders is certainly going to create that. And the first one there is we've acquired well from 2015 until now. And really, what it is, though, what I want to demonstrate today is it's not what happens on the day 1 that we buy the asset. It's how we go about unlocking the value and improving the portfolio quality once we get ownership of those assets. And I'll add to that, to show that we're not emotionally attached to any of them that in that same period, we've sold well. We sold at the right time. We've made sure that those assets go into the right hands at the right times. And an example, where one of the assets that we sold was Pajingo. We sold that in 2016. It's still operating today. I think it was in our portfolio. It probably wouldn't be operating today because it wouldn't have been able to compete for the capital. And the other thing is, what Kirron and the team did really well is that we received all of our contingent consideration post that sale. About 18 months ago, we got the final payment. So we do sell well. And then something to sort of address as well is that we have delivered consistent growth from the assets that we've got in the portfolio over the last 5 years. And our growth has come in production and margin. And whilst we do talk about production growth and everybody is focused on that, our focus is primarily on maintaining our margin rather than just increasing our ounces. And hopefully, you'll see that through today as well. We've always had copper in the portfolio when we started 2011, Mt Carlton was in the portfolio, and it was copper into the business. And then our exposure increased as we got involved with Ernest Henry in 2016 and then took full ownership at the end of 2021 and picked up Northparkes in 2023. And I think having those 2 assets in the portfolio does create a difference for us in this sector, particularly when you look at the structural demand issues that are coming forward for copper. And then there's significant upside in the portfolio. And hopefully, what you'll see today from Nancy and Glen is where that sits within the 3 core assets that we're going to touch on today. And to address one of the pieces of feedback I got at lunch time, the purpose of today was really -- it's 2 years after we established the technical function with Nancy and the team moving long-term planning, tech services and projects into one area away from the operations area, who had to deliver the day-to-day. And in that 2 years, Nancy and the team have been able to really look at the assets and what is the true potential that we can extract out of those and we've been studying those to the point where we can talk about them today. It's nearly 3 years since we've acquired Northparkes, and we spent a couple of years on that, really understanding it. But the reason why Mungari and Red Lake are not getting a lot of attention here, we had actually only planned for today to address Cowal and Northparkes. But Glen and the team at Ernest Henry is the team up there, tells us and those who are on the last site visit, the only drill where there is metal, so Glen has had some great drill results, and he wanted to share those today. And hence, why Ernest Henry has been covered off on it today. So very briefly, our strategy hasn't changed from day 1. We've had a very consistent strategy about making sure that we're a business that prospers through the cycle, that we continually upgrade the portfolio so that we're creating long-term stakeholder value right across the owners of the business, the communities we operate and for our workforce. That is underpinned by our values. So one of the things that does not get any alteration on value sets that you see on the bottom of the screen. But what I want to just give you a bit of an insight into is we're looking at executing our strategy, those 4 -- 5 pillars there that you see that are key components of our strategy. And the importance they have in us being able to execute that strategy is what I'd just like to sort of touch on a little bit. So the two on your right around building the portfolio and the financial discipline, they really define for us the what, the where, the scale, the size of opportunities that we're going to look at. And then the balance sheet has to support that strategy. It's not there that we've got to adjust our strategy to support the balance sheet. So they are the sort of the starting points when we're looking at, well, what are we going to do with this business as we go forward. And then the 2 on the left, the first two around sustainability and our high-performing culture. They're the enablers to actually executing that strategy. If we've got the license to operate in the areas and where we are and we're keeping our people safe and we're providing an environment where people can perform at high culture and they can deliver and they can be rewarded for that. That enables us to execute the strategy. And then the middle one that I want to touch on a little bit more, that is the key thing that determines what we do both with the assets when we're looking at acquiring them and what we do with assets when we do acquire them because to extract the greatest value out of the assets, you've got to take the appropriate risk and you got to take appropriate risks around the geological, the operational and the financial, doesn't mean you put the whole business at risk, but it means if you are willing to take the right level of risk in those, you know what the risks are, what your mitigants are, that's when you can extract the most value. And I believe that over the last sort of 11 years as we've acquired assets, those 5 pillars have enabled us to execute the strategy well and to be able to deliver the portfolio that we've got today. And so over the last 5 years from 2022 to today, we have actually grown our production pipeline. And we've grown that organically and inorganically. And we've grown at a rate of about 6% cumulatively per annum from 680,000 to 920,000 ounces on a gold equivalent basis. We put that on a gold equivalent basis because if you have the gold and copper as separate charts, it's very hard to work out where that growth has come over the last 5 years. So we've grown it through the acquisition at Northparkes and then we've also grown it at Cowal, Mungari and Red Lake over that period of time. So we've seen over 1/3 of our production increase in 5 years. Now we had the weather event this year at Ernest Henry. So that meant the net gold equivalent production was 890,000 ounces, but we have grown our production. A good piece of work by Canaccord and everyone else does good work. But we've got to promote the ones that promote us. No, that's not true. It's really good because it's taking a long-term view around margin. So this is going from 2015 to 2026. So 10 years, but it's also now got 2026 information in there. And it's looking at how the all-in sustaining cost margin has performed over that time. And through the cycle, when you're dealing with inflation, you're dealing with COVID, you're dealing with low interest rates and what has happened with the metal prices in that period. And so when you look at 2020 and '21, that's when COVID was and as you came out of COVID, you start to see that margin squeeze. And then that 5-year 2022 to 2026 from our perspective, which matches to that production growth on the previous slide. We've seen our margin expand. Our margin has expanded at a greater rate than the industry has, and that is through our cost discipline, the way we manage our balance sheet and we manage our costs, it's through acquisitions. So the acquisition of Northparkes, as you see '23 to '24, that margin started to widen because we acquired Northparkes in December 2023 and then the metal prices. So certainly with the copper, in '25 and now into '26 has increased that margin. But what I really like about it is that in each and every one of those years, from 2015, our margin has been better than the industry average, and in the last couple of years by the changes in the portfolio, by having more copper in the portfolio, we've started to see that margin expand. And so flipping over to where copper and copper is a differentiator for us. We believe it's really important part of our portfolio. Henry, you just get back from Melbourne. NFL finished at 1:30 on Friday, right? So copper is a differentiator. And on the left-hand side, this is looking more at the industry and the structural disconnect that's going on right now. So the information here shows from S&P that over the period from now to 2040, there needs to be a 50% increase in supply of copper. So it's 14 million tonnes of copper that needs to be delivered into the market if they're going to meet the demand by 2040. And if you consider that the latest statistics are saying that the cost of bringing on 1 million tonnes of copper at the moment is about $2,000 a tonne. So to bring that production into place by 2040, you're talking about $28 billion worth of investment. It's more you've got to have those discoveries. You've got the lead time to permit and lead time to develop. And the supply side isn't helping. So this is the first year in 10 years that there's a projected decrease in production year-on-year on the supply side. And then you look at the forecast and guidance for the next couple of years, there isn't that production growth. So then on the right side, you've got where that fits in for Evolution. So it's 22% of our revenue today. And Ernest Henry and Northparkes are low-cost copper assets. You can see their cost on a C1 on a copper per pound basis. They are low cost. But importantly, we've got over 3 million tons of latent capacity already existing in our assets at Ernest Henry and Northparkes. But just as importantly, we've got ore bodies that are available today to start to fill that latent capacity. So the acquisition of Carnaby Resources and the Greater Duchess project, which is on track to close in early November, gives us one opportunity. Bert as the underground, which is starting development this quarter, is another one that in the next 3 years, those 2 can come into production. And then all the land that we've picked up in and around Ernest Henry in trucking distance to the mine, the Corella exploration has also started. So at 2.2 million tonnes of latent capacity there with all sources available to us to bring in at Ernest Henry. And Northparkes, E22, a block cave starting development on that while at the same time, given the mineral resource we've got there, studies are underway to look at increasing mill capacity by 40% to 100%. So those 2 assets provide a great opportunity to benefit from that structural demand supply position that's not playing out too well right now for copper. And so then it also will add to our competitive cost base that I talked about earlier. What this is showing here, the 2 lines is the Australian industry. So Australian producers, the range of all-in sustaining cost that's occurred over the last 5 years and the guidance there. The gold boxes are abnormal reported on a normal byproduct basis. And you can see that we are always around the bottom and our midpoint of guidance for '27 would see us below the Australian industry average. The green boxes are showing it on a co-product basis. So it's taking out the byproduct credits and putting the gold -- the copper as a gold equivalent basis. What this is also showing is you can see a flattening in terms of us on a co-product basis and you overlay the production that's coming through on copper and gold over the next 5 years, that trend is we're moving down towards the middle on a co-product basis and certainly going to improve our margins as we go forward. So spend a little bit of time now just reinforcing about how that value isn't just bought. It's what we do with the assets. And I just want to indulge you for a minute just going through what has happened with each of these assets since we've acquired them. 2014, our life average was 5 years, production average was around 100,000 ounces. That is the point before we started our first acquisition. So what have we done in terms of Cowal was the first asset. At the time, it was due to finish in 2024. It was producing 250,000 ounces and a reserve life of 15 years. Since then, we've generated for an acquisition of $707 million. We've generated nearly $5 billion of operating cash flow out of this asset. It's fully repaid everything we've invested in that since. It's now got a mine life of 18 years with upside that we'll go through today. It's generating a rate of return that we going forward should move into the 15% to 20% bracket. And it has certainly got the most upside right now from an exploration standpoint. Mungari, we've lifted the production and the mine life by 50% since we've acquired that. It's now, and we had to add a new bubble under this one where it's moved and repaid over 50% of all invested capital since we owned it, and it was $367 million last year alone in the first year of the expanded capacity. And what the focus there is really around what the underground can do to that. Red Lake, we've seen it a lot more stable and consistent over the last couple of years. We have increased the mine life. We have increased the production rate. And when you consider last year, it generated nearly $300 million of cash flow, repaid 20% of invested capital in 1 year, starting to do what it needs to do into the portfolio on playing its role. And Ernest Henry, we've increased production. We've increased the reserve life. Yes, part of that from 2016 and 2022 to today was taking 100% ownership. But similarly, $3.6 billion of operating revenue. It's generated a rate of return of 22% per annum since we've owned it. When we first got involved with Ernest Henry in 2016, it was due to finish operating today or this year, it now has 19, 20 years ahead of it and more upside. And lastly, Northparkes. When we acquired Northparkes in December of '23, the key things that the market told us, the asset won't make any money, it's going to be capital intensive, and the stream overlay is too difficult for it. We knew through the due diligence, we needed to spend a couple of years to better understand the ore bodies, the sequencing of them, the role of the stream. And what we've been able to do is increase the production. We've got over 50% of that investment now fully repaid at a rate of 30% per annum since owning it, and that is post-stream. And we've now got opportunities with the 630 million tonnes of resource of growing the production rate, increasing the rate of return and certainly getting the payback along the lines of what we've seen in the first 2.5 years. So in summary, those acquisitions and divestments, which have improved the portfolio. We've taken the average out now to a 17-year reserve life from 5 years. We've averaged an 18% return on investment out of those assets over that point of time. And as I showed earlier, we've increased our production rate while maintaining our margin. And that's really the key thing going back to the strategy of what we do with assets when we actually acquire them generates the greatest value for our shareholders. So just having a little bit of a forward look, and I'm definitely not going to steal all of the highlights that Nancy and Scott and Glen want to go through. Cowal is a significant cash generator for us in the business. It's our largest producer but it can fund its own growth and generate enough cash back into the business. The key things for us is the underground where we've got potential for a second underground at reserve grades that are 2x the open pit. Rocky loves the word of -- and so does Glen -- displacing low-grade material. That is the objective of what we want to get out of the work that we're doing in the underground. E42 will be that base load production in 18 months' time that will take us through to the mid-2030s. While what we're seeing at E41 is giving us the greatest upside in terms of open pit in both in scale and grade. And that's really what we're focusing on in terms of the exploration over the next few years. Copper, as I said, Ernest Henry earlier, but we're looking at about 6,000 tonnes of copper, 12,000 ounces of gold ramping up from FY '29 coming out of the Greater Duchess project that out of the Carnaby Resources gives us about 10,000 tonnes of copper, 5,000 ounces of gold from FY '30. The key thing about the Greater Duchess project is in our acquisition, the primary focus through our due diligence was, is the open pit viable? Is there something that can bring it into production to allow Glen and the team time to look at all the other ore bodies in and around there to extend that mine life even further given the capacity we've got in the plant. And the exploration potential can add another 10,000 tonnes of copper there. So you're looking at 26,000 tonnes of copper, importantly, at Ernest Henry, which is about 50% of what we're currently producing at the asset. But what excites us the most is that extension beyond FY '42. We are getting drill results today that are showing extensions 900 meters below where we're mining. And we're studying that 1175 to -- sorry, the down to the 775 -- and sorry, the 775 down to the 500, and we're getting drill results below those. And the result there alone at 61 meters at 1.26% copper and 0.77 grams of gold when Glen brings up the model. When you see where that sits and what the real potential that, that's showing for extensions beyond FY '42. Northparkes near-term growth is going to come from the coarse particle flotation, gives us 2% improvement in recoveries of gold and copper and it gives us the potential to lift the throughput rates by 0.5 million tonnes immediately when that project comes on and then gives upside to about 1 million tonnes coming from FY '28. E22, the key thing that comes out of that is the life of mine infrastructure and the twin declines, materials handling system, that gives us the confidence around 11 million tonne per annum underground mining capacity that then leads into that 10 million, 11 million tonne processing capacity that we're looking at. And to answer your question I got at lunch time, it's not that we're saying that we're targeting that, and we're not going for the 15 million tonnes. The first step that we always said in this study is can we get enough materially out of the mine and enough power and water to get to that 10 million, 11 million tonnes. And then do we have enough water and power to be able to sustain it at 15 million tonnes per annum because we know we've got the resource to be able to run it at 15 million tonnes per annum. So that study is progressing. As we get to December, we'll be able to make a call on what sort of that production rate we're going to. And then from January to June, it's then looking at what's the sequence and the ore sources to feed that plant. What we're also seeing in the exploration piece is in E26 South, which is off the ore bodies around E26, we're getting great results that Glen will show that's giving us another opportunity in the underground area outside the existing resources we've got there. And then the open pit really gives us flexibility around the operations between caving and those shallow open pits at E51, Major Tom and E44. And then, as I mentioned earlier, yes, Mungari, Red Lake a lot of detail here, but they're really in that cash generation phase. Mungari, we've completed the expansion. We're now running at that 4.2 million tonnes. We're generating that cash that I said, $367 million last year. We've got the first 5 years per the feasibility study said we're able to keep that at 200,000 ounces per annum. The underground is most critical. We're getting -- targeting 20% of our production coming from there, which is at 4, 4.5 grams a tonne versus the 1 to 1.2 grams we get out of the baseload feed from Castle Hill. The more we can get in terms of exploration success at the underground, we've replaced and grown the resource and reserves there each year for the last 4 years. When we can get that to a 10-year sort of mine plan out of the underground, that allows us to look at developing faster and increasing the proportion of material coming from the underground. Red Lake has to continue its stable quarter-on-quarter performance. Generating those positive cash flows while we do that study option around reprocessing of tails, which has got materially higher grades in there than what we're currently processing and we'll have that study completed by the end of FY '27. So looking at it from a portfolio perspective and one thing I've said to a couple of people at lunchtime is that each of these assets have got a role to play in our portfolio over the next 3 to 5 years. Cowal is a significant cash generator. It is our largest cash generator, and it has got a lot of growth opportunity. So it is the asset that will get a lot of the attention over the next few years as we develop those opportunities. Ernest Henry and Northparkes, likewise, they've got the greatest leverage for us to copper to grow our near-term production to extend the mine life for that supply-demand position that is not aligned. And then Mungari and Red Lake have got to be that stable cash flow, stable production. They've got to be producing 300,000 to 360,000 ounces every year at a good margin to generate the cash because what that does for us, those 2 assets over the next 3 to 5 years, yes, they will compete for capital. They will get capital invested in the business. But it derisks us from an operational standpoint so that we can continue our sustainable reliable production quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year, while we're investing in those growth projects over the next 3 to 5 years at Cowal, Ernest Henry and Northparkes, so that we do not have that production and cash disruption over that period. So in summary, those 5 points that I said at the start, still stand. I believe we've acquired assets well. We've got the right assets in our portfolio. We've upgraded the quality of those assets over the last 5 years. We've delivered growth. We've delivered growth while growing and improving our margin. We've made sure that our margin is -- we are the lowest cost producer in the sector. We've got great exposure to copper and there's a lot of leverage to that. And as I said, we've got near-term opportunities to bring that into production. And there's even further upside that you'll see through the course of the afternoon. And with that, I'll stop and allow for questions, Rocky, on time.

Matthew Frydman

analyst
#2

Matt Frydman from MST Financial. Lawrie, I thought the slide that you put up presenting your all-in sustaining costs on a co-product basis was quite interesting because it sort of frames evolution as more like a 1 million-ounce producer with the middle of the range cost structure or middle of the range all-in sustaining cost. So I guess my question is, do you feel a need to improve the cost structure of the portfolio to be more resilient in a lower gold price or a lower copper price? Or is it more a question of managing that relatively conservative balance sheet leverage and then trading that off against maybe a little bit more operating leverage?

Lawrie Conway

executive
#3

Yes, Matt knows that we can always do better on the cost piece. I think as we go forward, that's -- the industry lines are going to increase. They're going to get higher. The top end is going to get higher, and I think we'll still be trending down towards the bottom end. What we wanted to show is that when you look on a co-product basis, at $2,700 and you put about -- on that basis, you put about $1,300 an ounce for major capital and exploration in there. At $4,000 for an achieved price of $6,000 a year, you're still going to be a significant cash generator. So yes, we'll continue on the cost discipline. But if we're -- and when Fran presents later, if we've got opportunities to continue to invest in the business, they're getting returns that are far greater than 18%, we'll do that as well. The thing that we've got to be able to do, Matt, is we got to be able to do all of them at the same time. It doesn't mean you biased one to the other. You will in the short term. If you've got an operational issue and you've got to get the production, you'll probably erode your margin for a short bit. But the objective is, over the long term, you don't erode that margin.

Peter O’Connor

executive
#4

Jon Sharp.

Jonathon Sharp

analyst
#5

Just on Cowal, Lawrie, it seems like it's got a fair bit of upside. Is it -- can you just take us through, is that mainly grade from underground? What are your thoughts on expansion of the mill? Does it need volume and grade? Maybe just take us through that?

Lawrie Conway

executive
#6

Yes. I think you'll see a little bit of it coming from Nancy and Glen, but the reality for us is that the underground and the potential second underground is going to allow us to then at the 8.8 million tonnes put more material from an underground through the plant. And then depending on the size of E41, I think that ultimately will determine whether the 8.8 million tonnes is enough from a processing capacity because when you consider everything at Cowal versus Northparkes, one thing that Cowal doesn't have is real estate. We've got 47 million tonnes of ore sitting on stockpile. We've got waste. We got the integrated waste landform. You got the paste plant. So there's not a lot of space that if you are going to continue mining the open pit and you do get the underground, which were the second underground going, you have to look at ways of not leaving that on the stockpile. Therefore, you have to ultimately look at the expansion. I would say right now, and unless Nancy is going to present something different, the next 2 to 4 years is more about optimizing the ore sources rather than looking at expanding the plant.

Daniel Morgan

analyst
#7

Daniel Morgan at Barrenjoey. It looks like a key theme from today is a pivot towards greater growth across the assets. Just wondering if you could talk about what's driving that? Is it, a, natural evolution, pardon the pun, of all of the different assets where you feel like you've got a handle on the exploration or geology and a natural sequence to pivot towards more growth? Or is it the cash flow that's coming in from commodity prices, which are very buoyant and are causing you to look at your portfolio again and go, well, can we get these assets to grow or get better returns? What's driving the growth agenda?

Lawrie Conway

executive
#8

Yes. It's not so much driving a growth agenda. I mean, as I said, we've grown over the last 5 years. We've increased our production organically, inorganically. What the last couple of years has enabled us to do through Glen's programs and Nancy's technical team looking at these assets, okay, how do we unlock value rather than just the growth. And we've now got to a point through all of that work to where we can sort of articulate what these assets look like over the next 3 to 5 years. Internally, we've known there was always going to be that growth. But we've got enough information now to be able to sort of explain that to the market. And then ultimately, when you've got that 18% return and you've got a 17% reserve life, you've got to run harder to keep those production rates up, but you've got enough mineral resource and ore reserves to be able to look at that expansion of production. And the last piece I would say is that in September '23, 30% gearing, everyone down the back saying we needed to raise equity. Therefore, where we were investing our money was very restricted. We're committed to the Mungari expansion. We were committing to studies at the Cowal OPC, getting Red Lake right that was losing money on us. Those things having fixed those and then the metal prices improving does allow us to look at how you accelerate some of that. So it is a combination, but it's not like where we need to go out there and show growth. So we've done enough work now to sort of show what the potential of these assets are.

David Radclyffe

analyst
#9

Dave Radclyffe from Global Mining Research. Lawrie, my question is about the Cowal underground. We're sort of talking about it, but we're not giving a lot of details. So maybe could you give us a bit of an idea of kind of the way forward and time lines when we get a new resource reserve investment decision? Because isn't the key at Cowal lifting the blended grade, and that's what expanding the underground would actually give you and that would obviously have the multiplier effect on the ounces.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#10

So the first part I'm going to leave to Glen and Nancy this afternoon because they'll bring up the models and show you what we're looking at and then we can talk about the timing. The first part is that we've got to get the second -- the Regal Portal decline at the underground, that allows us to increase productivity and increase the tonnage we're getting out of there. We have put in a modification application to the regulator to lift our underground tonnage to 4 million tonnes per annum. And so that's what we're already working on. It is going to be predicated on the drill results and the program that Glen is running through this year. And then from timing, if you consider for the existing underground, 2018 discovery, 2021 into production, that's -- it's going to be around that. We had to put a lot more infrastructure in place for the first underground mine that we wouldn't have to do. So at the end of this year is when we sort of get a good indication of the potential of a second underground and then you'd be looking at around a 3-year period from there. All right. That's excellent. We're going to stay on time and move over to Nancy. Thank you.

Nancy Guay

executive
#11

I have the good slide. Yes. All right. So I hope I can answer a little bit more of your question and talk a little bit about the strategy and what are we looking for and what are we doing. Before I start to talk about the strategy, I would like to briefly introduce myself. I'm very excited to discuss about the future opportunity that we have in the Evolution's portfolio. And as mentioned with Lawrie, we're going to focus on Cowal, Northparkes and Ernest Henry this afternoon. On my side, I joined Evolution a little bit more than 2 years ago after more than 2 decades with Agnico Eagle in Canada. I have over 34 years of experience in the mining industry. I have worked across operations, project development, technology, innovation and technical leadership. I have helped to build new mines, improve existing operations and support assets through each stage of their life cycle. One lesson from that experience is that truly exceptional assets are rare. When I joined Evolution, I was immediately impressed by the quality of the portfolio, the depth of the resource base that we're going to discuss a lot today, the established infrastructure and most importantly, the capability of our people. One of my first priority was to establish a technical function and bring together a strong team focused on understanding, protect and growing the value of these assets. Over the past 2 years, our team has tested assumption, as you will see today, we have evaluated a lot of alternatives. We're still doing that, and we built a clear pathway for the future growth. Today, I will focus on our disciplined reinvestment and technical work can unlock the long-term value and the production, the cash flow and the shareholder value. I hope you will see the same confidence and enthusiast that our team brings to this opportunity every day. Before I get into the detail, our strategy and growth opportunities, I want to highlight the common theme across the 3 operations: Cowal, Northparkes and Ernest Henry, we were going to talk about optionality. And this is what we have in front of us. That's why we have a very good amazing portfolio. The projects we are advancing today are built on the known resources, disciplined technical work and a clear value creation pathway. However, the real strength on this portfolio lies in the ability to continue growing through exploration and discovery, and that's what Glen will show you and explain today. We have the opportunity to further expand our resource base, extend the mine life, enhance development sequencing and unlock additional value. So I will talk about the strategy on how we see the next phase of the growth out of the asset. And then -- I will then hand over to Glen, so he will go with you through all the opportunity that we have in this portfolio. Disclaimer, I have to show it, everybody see it, understand it. All right. Evolution's portfolio is built for longevity. We are found by cash generation today and strengthened by multiple pathways to create further value. Our portfolio demonstrates 3 key strengths: long-life assets with production, cash flow and reserve replacement potential, which is very important, strong cash generation. Fran will talk about that, that fund reinvestment for the future growth, and we have the value and optionality for the opportunity. The key message is that in the -- it's not a portfolio designed for the cycle, a single cycle commodity price. It is a portfolio with the asset quality, the cash generation and the technical option to create long-term value. And that's really the message that I want to bring through to the last one. The big discussion when a lot of people arrived this morning, Cowal is a proven producer with global Tier 1 potential. So we'll begin to talk with Cowal where a strong operating base and responsible reinvestment are creating the platform for the next value of growth. All right. Cowal is a mining system with multiple open pit underground and exploration growth areas. So that's what we have to remark. Cowal has 10 million ounces in mineral resources and 5.1 million in ore reserve across stockpile open pit and underground. The value proposition is no longer reliant on a single ore body. We have the underground. We have the broader open pit system, and we have the OPC North and South area that will give us multiple fronts for resource conversion and future development. Importantly, we have already invested in underground access, as Lawrie mentioned, and the processing capability. Further discovery and resource conversion can, therefore, leverage an established operating platform. So what are we doing? We are studying near-term decision that can unlock while preserving optionality and supporting the ambition to create a Tier 1 operation. So that's what we are looking at. Today, Cowal operates from a strong base. The opportunity is to move this asset up to the value curve through the permitting, the mill capacity, the underground production, the mineral resource conversion, mineral resource growth and a disciplined response for the gold price environment. Our approach is deliberate, discovery drilling and related study are required to define the operational potential. The objective is not simple to produce more ounces, it is to build a larger long life and higher value operation that can deliver sustainable cash flow. To achieve that, we have to do a lot of parallel study and approval that will be integrated to support the incremental value-based investment decision. So through FY '27, we are evaluating options for the GR pit, expansion of E41, underground expansion scenario, staged mill expansion pathways and the oxide pre-treatment. This work, along with the MOD 2, like Lawrie mentioned, approval process, the mineral resources conversion and continued evaluation of the Oban corridor that Glen will discuss and the E41 and the underground opportunity. All of that has to be looked at the same time. The combined outcomes will form an integrated business case that allows us to make incremental investment decision while we're going to retain the flexibility for further study and approval for FY '28 and onward. So that's the work that we are doing right now to try to unlock the value that we can have in Cowal so we can have a better path forward. What does that mean in the mid- to long-term for Cowal? So Cowal is a reinvestment story today and a major cash flow story tomorrow. So we're going to want to try to still generate the cash flow. We have to reinvest right now to unlock the growth. So our objective on the short term is to deliver the OPC, drilling -- progress the drilling in the study, what we are doing. We have to secure the approval. So we are in movement in that one, so we can refine the next value. Then we can scale up the operation. So we can deliver [indiscernible] open pit and the underground growth and position to operation at a larger scale. And then we want to realize the Tier 1 vision, so commission the growth option and capture the benefits of scale. And then we're going to keep running because the runway is still open. There's a lot of discovery in that area. So we want to unlock the broader mineral district and leverage the mine life and the scale of these assets. The takeaway is quite straightforward. It's the disciplined reinvestment can create substantial long-term shareholder value and I think for me, what is so interesting and fun is Cowal is not a mine approaching maturity. It's a mining district that is entering to the next generation of growth and that's what we are working on right now. Northparkes. We are transforming and I say transforming because that's the case. We are transforming a stable operation into a major copper growth platform. There's so much copper there. So Northparkes, it's much more than the single growth project. It is a copper gold district with significant resource depth, established infrastructure and multiple development options. I will apply the long-term opportunity and the pathway we are assessing. And Scott will come right after me to update you on the current project execution and the work on the way to unlock that value. The resource base provides scale and optionality while our technical work determines the highest value pathway. So it's a little bit like Cowal, it's the same structure, the same approach. Northparkes has a total mineral resources of 3.1 million ounces of gold and 2.5 million tonnes of copper compared with the ore reserve of 0.69, I didn't say 0.7, million ounces of gold and 400,000 tonnes of copper. The gap between the mineral resources and the ore reserves is I like the opportunity. This is our big opportunity but also there's still work that is required. So our focus is not to go with the production target. It's really to determine the optimal development pathway that maximize value, manage risk and support long-term cash flow generation. The district provides a broad set of underground, open pit and stockpile option. So this is what we have in this picture there. So that gives us the flexibility in the sequencing, the capital allocation and the future development. And that's what we have to understand to unlock the full value of this district. That's a big slide. So the strategy is really to go as an integrated open pit and case strategy, and that will help us to derisk and maximize the asset value. So there's all those concepts that have to go together. The existing production platforms include right now, we are with E26 Lift 1, E48 SLC and E22 that we are developing right now. Behind those source, we have in the pipeline, the study stage for the underground opportunity, where we are looking at MGH, we're looking at GRP, we are looking at E26 Lift 3 and E48 Lift 2. We have some surface opportunity as well, which is going to help us to unlock the value. So we have E28 Northeast. We have Major Tom, E51 and E44. Integrate those open pit with the cave production, provide the flexibility to the sequence to progressively increase the scale. The presentation shows -- so those tables show approximately, I will round it to 600 million tonnes of mineral resources and that's the scalable foundation for the future growth. The key point is not only one project in isolation, cannot look just as one parameter. It is the depth of the pipeline and our ability to accelerate the preferred sequences while we're managing the risk. And that's really what we are studying right now and look at the option. So the study -- the expansion study is assessing processing scale, what we mentioned, the 11 million or more and the next generation of underground and surface ore possibility. The expansion study includes -- so we have some prefeasibility on the MGH block cave and the E44 open pit. And we have Major Tom and E51 as well. We have some concept studies that are up and going with E48 Lift 2, E26 Lift 3 and GRP. The studies are due for completion at FY '27, and we have a budget right now of $14 million to do that. So this work is assessing the potential of an expansion to the mill or a new mining mill and a new plant and is designed to build confidence before the expansion and investment decision is made. All right. We will develop and assess. We will construct and expand then we can transition to a long life with cost-efficient operation. That's what we want to do at Northparkes. To develop and assess, we are supporting right now the current operation. We need to maintain the production. We are developing E22. We are advancing the studies and we have to improve a little bit our processing capability, what we are doing as well. Construct and expand, we have to make the preferred expansion decision with the outcome of the study. We need to unlock value via open pit. We have to deliver metallurgical improvement with the Coarse Particle Flotation projects and the regrind projects as well that we're studying. We have to ramp up E22, and we have to establish MGH as the next block cave in the sequence. That will give us a long-life cost-efficient operation that will optimize and operate block cave sequence. But those block caves will be supplemented with surface sources to deliver production with predictable cash flow. Northparkes, it's not simply an expansion story. It's a strong copper producer. It is a long-term value creation story supported by substantial resource base, established infrastructure and a disciplined sequence of investment, and that's where we have to keep our focus. Ernest Henry, strong cash flow and enduring value. I will now turn to Ernest Henry, one of the Evolution important cash-generating assets and an operation with meaningful potential beyond its current horizon. And there's so much potential. Ernest Henry combine consistent underground production, strong infrastructure and clear option for future expansion. Ernest Henry has operated for more than 25 years with stable underground production since 2012. Evolution completed the full acquisition in January 2022, and the asset has delivered exceptional resource growth since acquisition. That's what Lawrie just showed us with this bubble. The operation is now transitioning from a stable sub-level cave base through a planned investment phase. We are now tracking below the current crusher. We have additional ore sources, and we have some capital investment for longer life operation, which are central to this transition. The future state of Bert is the red, and Scott will spend time to explain you that in more detail. As an independent ore sources, we have the further extension study below the 750 and the use of the latent mill capacity at Greater Duchess is one example of the optionality available to supplement the operation. Much of the infrastructure is already in place that give us flexibility to test additional resources and extend mine life while continuing the generated cash. So strategic reinvestment in Ernest Henry creates capacity, new ore source flexibility, and this is a pathway to a sustainable steady state. In the strategic reinvestment phase, we continue sublevel caving baseload. We established Bert as an independent mill feed. We are progressing drilling and expansion studies, and we delivered infrastructure for the mine extension area. So that's our short-term focus. The capacity realization comes from the tracking system and the better use of approximately 2.2 million tonnes per annum of latent capacity. The presentation in [ Fi Bert ] as the additional 7,000 tonnes of copper and 14,000 tonnes of gold and Greater Duchess at approximately 10,000 tonnes of copper and 5,000 ounces of gold per annum. FY '30, around FY '30. Regional exploration provides future potential. The steady-state ambition is a new mining horizon, full leverage of the infrastructure and consistent cash generation through efficient mining practice. Our strategy is simple, continue generating strong cash flow today while systematically building the foundation for the long-term value creation. I will now -- the strategy pathway that we are talking are supported by active projects already in the pipeline. So I will ask Scott to go through the project and explain all the projects that has been made. And you don't need...

Scott Paddington

executive
#12

Good afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me at the back? Thumbs up, excellent. Thanks, Nancy. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Scott Paddington. I joined Nancy's team in November this year to lead the group projects team. And our mandate is to develop the major studies that Nancy just talked about and to deliver on our major projects for the business. So it's very exciting times, as Nancy has pointed out. I have over 2 decades of experience in the mining industry in technical operations, projects and studies roles. I spent 13 years with Newcrest, where I focused on some capital projects at Lihir, a mill expansion and capital projects at Red Chris in Canada. And then I went to Telfer and ran the operation, the mill and they mined for a little while as well. So I'm very excited to join Evolution and what a great time to be here, as Nancy just pointed out, to build new mines and expand on our opportunities. Next -- so I'll just go into a bit more detail about the projects that Lawrie and Nancy have just talked about. As you know, the second half of FY '26 was a very busy time. We had the open pit continuation project in execution at Cowal. In November, we approved the Coarse Particle Flotation project at Northparkes. And then we approved in February both E22 and the Bert mines at Northparkes and Ernest Henry. So we started straightaway building our project team and went out to find some great leaders, and we've got many decades of experience now within our team executing mining, processing and infrastructure projects, including some key players from block cave construction in Mongolia and in Australia. So we're partnering with some really highly experienced contractors as well to complete our mining, engineering and construction phases of these projects. All green ticks. So we're on track with each project. And over the next few slides, I'll take you through where we've been and where we're heading. So Cowal, we've talked about Cowal many times, and Lawrie's has talked about Cowal for a number of years. So I'm sure you're all over it. But those of you who were on the 2024 site visit and who are going back today, you'll see a significantly different mine site than you saw then. In May 2025, we commenced construction of the North Bund. So we get this right. So the North Bund is here. And you can see at the top, this is preconstruction, and that was in August this year. So we've made -- we've released a significant package of land. That allowed us into E46 and really turning growth into reality. We got into pre-stripping 5 months earlier than planned, which gave us first ore the mill in Q3 of FY '26. So we're moving quickly. This is a major civil project. So we're building 7 kilometers of Bund and reframing the shore line for Lake Cowal, giving us a lot of area to work in. The North bund, you'll see we are finishing construction in the coming months. So you'll see that when we're on site. And the second phase of the project, which is the South bund, that kicked off in August. So we're away. As you can see, the North bund enables access to GR pit, which E46, which Nancy and I both just discussed. And the South bund enables additional resource definition and E41. Combined, the two bunds allow us to expand the high stage of E42, which just commenced recently. So as Nancy said, as Lawrie said, and I'll say, and no doubt you'll hear many, many times over the next few days, lots of opportunity at Cowal. So if I stay in New South Wales when we head off to NorthParkes. Nancy talked about the mineral endowment we have and the opportunities ahead of us. There are many and my team and many others are working on all the studies, but we also got a great team, as I said, working out on E22 and CPF. E22 is really important for us. It's got two key components. It's obviously got the next block cave, E22, gives us nine years of mine life. So we're back into new block caves. The second is the twin declines, which houses the material handling system, which both Lawrie and Nancy talked about. So that gives us additional material handling capacity beyond our current hoisting constraint at 6.5 million tonnes. So we'll start -- we'll get the conveyor started in FY '29. That's installation started, not running, okay? So after the Board approval in February, we went pretty hard at Northparkes and got started, focusing on the access drives between E48, which is here in E22. So we've done a lot of work there and a real credit to the Northparkes mining team because they took this on and they produced the first 300 meters of the project, which is fantastic. And then we've gone off and we started with the box cut. So up in the top pictures there, May, we had a nice paddock. We just scraped the top off. And now in August, we're nearly completing the box cut and ready to cut the portal in the next month or 2. So very exciting times. And of course, in the background, we're doing the detailed engineering of the conveyor system, the ventilation system, buying a long lead items, sticking to plan. And we've got Redpath coming on board as our principal mining contractor, and they've just started to mobilize in the last sic or eight weeks. Our next big project is the Coarse Particle Flotation. So this one, we're expanding the mill. This circuit sits behind the existing float, existing float cells and includes additional cyclones, hydrofloat cells, a Jameson cell and a new reagent mixing plant. Lawrie mentioned that this is going to provide us with the ability to get to 8 million tonnes of throughput as well as adding 2% of recovery for both copper and gold. We began activity here with GR Engineering as our primary contractor to date, and we hit the ground running in July and worked through our July shutdown to install some key electrical -- sorry, electrical tie-ins. But this work is really important for us so we can continue to build the plant and start to tie things in without impacting the operation outside of shutdowns. So we're currently deconstructing some of the old cells. As you can see, this is giving away Bert, sorry. There we go. Here, we're deconstructing old redundant parts of the plant, and that was a big day, a big lift. And that gives us access for the new infrastructure to be built on the existing footprint. We're also kicking off the construction of the foundation. So those of you coming to site, you'll see a lot of concrete going in. That's the foundation of the new plant. So you can see Northparkes, we're doing great things, moving things forward, going after the growth that we've been talking about for years. And I'm really looking forward to showing you around when we get there. And that's the tour areas. Now Bert, very exciting at Ernest Henry. Nancy outlined that Bert, of course, will be additional ore source for us to eat up some of that latent capacity. This is a small ore body off to the side of the Ernest Henry ore body, as you know. Bert will be a conventional sublevel open stoping operation with a new decline accessed by the highwall, north side of the highwall. It will give us another ventilation system, electrical systems and the cemented hydraulic fill plant. Obviously, a different mining method. We need to backfill to get everything out of the ground. Since February, we've been pushing for the first portal cut, which I'm pleased to say will happen soon. In this photo, we go we're stabilizing what will be the portal. So this is now all moved away, and we're getting ready to go drill the portal. Here, we spent a lot of time stabilizing the highwall, both at the portal face, so the shotcrete and rock bolts and all manner of steel in the wall. And then we went above that and we drag mesh down the wall to make sure we manage the risk of rock falls. So it's quite a safe place to work. In addition, we're working on the detailed engineering of the hydraulic fill plant, doing some long lead item procurement and working on getting our infrastructure ready to go. Redpath is also our primary contractor at this site. So they're in the process of mobilizing to Bert at the moment as well. And I said -- as I said, first cut coming shortly. That's it for my slide. So as you can see, we've got a lot of things happening, a lot of great, very exciting projects, and we're going to deliver value to the business over the next few years. It's fantastic timing. And of course, looking forward to taking you on the tour of some of these projects. That's it. Rocky, over to you.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#13

Scott and Nancy are too efficient. They ahead of schedule and ahead of budget, Scott. So we are going to open it up for -- that's well done, especially the animation on Bert.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#14

We're going to actually open it up for some Q&A for the next 10 minutes, and then we'll take the break given we are on a webcast. And if there's anything about Glen, we're going to defer it until after the break. We're going to start with Glen, but he's got to set up his -- all of these models. Adam, right there, Will.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#15

Just starting on the Northparkes expansion. I mean you mentioned that 10 million to 11 million tonnes. I guess that's the first feasible stepping stone to maybe getting to the broader 15 million tonnes in an upside scenario. Just wondering if you could further elaborate on some of these infrastructure requirements that Lawrie talked to earlier on in the piece about water and power as two large considerations to getting to that upscale size. I mean it strikes me that power should be easy enough to resolve, but particularly on water and I guess, other considerations we should be thinking about for expansions, particularly on the, I guess, the prioritization between copper-rich resource and gold resource? And could we see additional agreements with Triple Flag on some of that gold-rich material?

Lawrie Conway

executive
#16

Yes, I'll answer the second bit, Adam, while Laura, do you want to bring the microphone up to Nancy to answer this. I mean in terms of the one with Triple Flag, I think the work that Kieran and the team did on E44 and the expansion has laid a foundation for us. What they've been very open about, if there are opportunities for us that we want to look at that are gold dominant, they're willing to engage on those. I think if there's anything that is copper dominant, it's going to be hard to get them to engage because that was already in their plan when they took out the stream. What -- I'll just bring up the NorthParkes lay out. What we have had discussions with them about E31, E31 North, we finished mining those nearly two years ago now, and the team is wanting to go back and have a look as to whether or not there's either another cutback in there or we actually combine those as one open pit. And Kieran's had an initial discussion and say, well, if it does, they were gold dominant deposits. And it's not something that we would go and do without their involvement. And they've said, yes, do the drilling, and we'll be able to engage. What they need to be able to do is evaluate what the economics of those are. And so that's -- as we get any of these that we can show economic value out of those, they're willing to engage on it. But Nancy do you want to talk around the power the water the 15 million?

Nancy Guay

executive
#17

Yes. So we are doing, like I said, a lot of studies. On my point of view, the more risky part is the underground, so the mining aspect. So we have to make sure that we can bring if we go over the 11, 15, 16, 11 or 10, even 10 we need to feed the mill. So the mill expansion, that's something I think we can do. There's always solution. There's cost associated with it, but the mining is really the big part. So that's why we are spending a lot of time to look, and I was talking about the importance to have open pit and underground to derisk the operation and then find a good sequence in terms of caving. So we are spending a lot of time right now to do that. On the mill side, we are in -- I will use the PFS level for the 11 million tonnes. So we're going to see the outcome, what's the cost, the structure, the financial model to bring it up to line. I will say that at this stage, we don't see any big issue. We have solutions. It might be costly, but we have solution for the power and the water. Going to bigger than that, that's where it starts to be a little bit more complex. So we still have a lot of work to do, but we have option in front of us.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#18

Just on the sequencing of the ore bodies for Northparkes, a very colorful chart. We don't have the years on the X-axis. Just wondering if you could put some frame around that, please?

Lawrie Conway

executive
#19

You want a production target. I'll hand that back to Nancy in a second. The thing for us is, firstly, we've got to work out what size do we go to. If we go to 10 to 11 or if we go to 15, then you're compressing those. And one of the things, and Matt has said this for a number of months now, we've got enough resource there. We've got enough caving options. Engineers would love to work there because for the next 20 to 30 years, you could just be continually bringing caves on and make no money. What we've got to work out is when do the sequences happen with the caving operations, the underground and the open pit. So the reason we haven't got the years is basically what we'll do is, as Nancy has said, we've got to finish that study, work out what size and scale we're going to be, when we then would build that and when they would come in. This one here at least shows where those ore bodies would allow over the next sort of 10 years coming into production. Do you want to add to that?

Nancy Guay

executive
#20

Yes. So what I should say is some of those ore body, that's why we need to study a lot. Some are close to the other ones. Some are restrained in terms of the geotech impact. So we cannot -- we have a sequence that we need to respect. So we are looking at that. And some of them doesn't need as much infrastructure as others. So that's why the trade-off around capital. But this is kind of the first one of the outlook or possibility that we can have in terms of sequencing.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#21

Cool. Maybe just one follow-up. Do you tend to model on reserves only a portion of M&I resources in your mining inventory?

Nancy Guay

executive
#22

Both. We have the reserves, and we have a little bit of resource that can come in as well. But we are working to do a little bit more drilling to try to cover as much as we can.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#23

Maybe just a totally different topic, Lawrie, if I may. I guess...

Lawrie Conway

executive
#24

Just before we go off that, just to help you a bit, if you do look at the blue one is E22, when it's coming into production and how many years it's going to run for. So that might give you a bit of an indication on the years without actually labeling it, just to help.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#25

Hence my reserves versus resources question. A lot of the mid-tier are now putting out aspirations, targets, ranges that you're a well-established 700,000 ounce producer or as Matt put it 100 like 1 million ounce producer if you include the copper units as well. You're undertaking a lot of studies and clearly, a theme today is about the optionality in the portfolio. So just how you sort of approach that tension between the emerging mid-tier that are saying they're going to do everything, whereas you're actually undertaking the fundamental studies to put it to market with a lot of meat on the bones.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#26

I got it. Nancy, you talk about our planning piece. The thing I look at for some of these other presentations, I love Slide 2 that says this is not a production target, and there's a high likelihood that this will never come into production. We didn't think that was the best way to sort of put it in the market. I think if we can outline what our ore bodies are and what we're thinking about and when they could sort of come through the pipeline. But do you want to, Nancy, just touch on the studies and the resource and reserves and how we go about those?

Nancy Guay

executive
#27

Yes, I can. So we are following what Glen is doing in terms of resource and reserve. And if we saw some potential, we're going to accelerate some study to bring it in reserve ASAP. So -- and a lot of that is from drilling. So that's why we had quite a big budget in drilling as well to make sure that we are in the good ratio to convert those resource to reserves.

Daniel Morgan

analyst
#28

Lawrie on [indiscernible]. Can I just ask about Cowal? Sorry, Daniel Morgan from Barrenjoey. Can I just ask about Cowal? If I look at the M2 and I look at some of the materials you've outlined today, the southern protection bund at Cowal, it seems like it might be moving slightly or getting bigger to prepare for what is it, E30? Is it E31...

Lawrie Conway

executive
#29

E41.

Daniel Morgan

analyst
#30

E41 to the south? Can you just talk about is E41 actually getting bigger? Are you preparing for that by moving the southern aspect of the Lake protection bund a little bit further out?

Lawrie Conway

executive
#31

Yes, Scott?

Scott Paddington

executive
#32

Sure. It's really an opportunity, and Glen will take us through where he's going to be drilling and the work we're doing there. So if we have the approval to do that, we can give ourselves more space for E41 just in case. So there's more work to be done there. We've got the land. We just need -- there's a few things -- a few hurdles to crop to get through, but it frees us up some space.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#33

Yes. I mean, then when you consider what we're getting out of E41 and when Glen goes through the model this afternoon, what we've done with Mod 2 is to say, well, okay, if it does, is there some optionality around expanding into that southern area. The bund at the moment allows us to capture all of the E41 plan and a larger pit shell. This is more doing an inquiry about, okay, what would be conditions if we wanted to do further in the E41 if it gets larger. So it does allow for E41 to be bigger than what it was at the time of OPC. The Mod 2 is saying, well, what happens if it gets larger?

Matthew Frydman

analyst
#34

Matt Frydman from MST Financial again. Lawrie, can I ask hopefully a quick one on the Northparkes Coarse Particle Flotation expansion. I think in the past, you've said that adds about 0.5 million tonnes to processing capacity. So it takes you from that 7.5 million to about 8 million, which I think is on most of the slides. But then you also mentioned that beyond FY '28, it adds 1 million tonnes to capacity. So can you just talk us through that? And does that mean that Northparkes goes from 7.5 million to 8.5 million?

Lawrie Conway

executive
#35

Scott is very happy to talk about that one. No. The initial project gets us that immediate bit and then the works that we're looking at is how do we optimize it further. Scott?

Scott Paddington

executive
#36

Yes, there's some debottlenecking work that's being done on site that's going to help us get more capacity. That's really all I can say.

Matthew Frydman

analyst
#37

CapEx...

Scott Paddington

executive
#38

No.

Hugo Nicolaci

analyst
#39

Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs. Two, if I can. Firstly, just looking at your aim for the future production on Slide 3. And just one quickly around Red Lake. Depending on how we sort of anchor that aim for the future, depending on whether Mungari is 200,000 ounces or Cowal's a Tier 1 500,000 ounce a year asset, seems to imply that Red Lake gets back to close to 200,000 ounces from the sort of 130,000 for '27. Can you just talk to what some of the moving pieces are and if that's right.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#40

The not-to-scale footprint. No, a couple of things that I'll highlight, firstly, is that what this is also showing is that as we go over the next 5 to 10 years, we don't have a concentration risk at one asset. So it's not as though we get Cowal and in 5 years' time, it's making up 60%, 70% of our production. So Cowal will grow. And as Cowal grows, yes, the others do. So when we look at it for Red Lake, the outcomes of the tails reprocessing study and the like, our expectations are that, that will be successful. And at some point, we then go above that sort of 35,000 to 40,000 ounces a quarter, get that more to the 40,000 to then ultimately 45,000 to 50,000. So in the next sort of 5 to 10 years, that's what we see happening there at Red Lake. And at Mungari, it aligns very much to what I said earlier, we need to find a way through the drilling programs in the underground to be able to put a higher proportion of the underground, which is 4 to 4.5 grams versus the 1 to 1.2 through. So ideally, what we'd like to see is that they do both grow at the right time over the next 5 to 7 years.

Hugo Nicolaci

analyst
#41

Got it. And then just second one, sort of connecting the 2 themes to your earlier comments as well. You highlighted earlier the rising capital intensity in the mining sector. And if we look at Australia as an example, the capital intensity of building a gold project has doubled in the last three years. Evolution, you've obviously had the expanding cash generation in the portfolio ahead of peers. But given the nature of the business and the growing skew to large underground, it's fair to say your capital intensity is probably also higher than what your peer average is. So if we look at the broader strategy, what do you think the right level of growth capital intensity either the asset or the portfolio is? And is it just a matter of if the project is above an investment hurdle, you'll do it if you can afford to? Or do you need to sequence some of these projects as well?

Lawrie Conway

executive
#42

Yes. So this hasn't got my presentation, but in the appendix has got the guidance. If I use that as a base for this year, -- we need to spend -- so our depreciation per ounce equates to about $800 million to $1 billion a year. That's sort of what we've got to be reinvesting back in the business to keep our mine life at 17 years. I've said that if we get back, we're only investing $700 million of total capital in the year. Therefore, we've lost any optionality in the portfolio. So I'm happy that we're spending at the rate we're spending at. In terms of then that growth piece, yes, it is capital intensive. If we go caves at both Ernest Henry and Northparkes, a lot of the capital is upfront, but then you do get the lower operating cost and you get the economies of scale there. I would say from our perspective, you're going to be seeing $300 million to $330 million of sustaining capital over the next -- and we said that with our guidance. That's sort of the rate you're going to see in the next three to five years. Then the mine development and the growth capital is going to depend on when each of these projects sequence. So your mine development has to be ahead of your construction so that when you then finish the construction, the mine is ready to deliver. So hence, we've got that high mine development this year. If the studies are successful and we go to that 11 million or 15 million tonnes, it's going to need to be ready. So therefore, that mine development probably continues for longer than the next few years. And then it just depends on when you sequence to do that construction. That is a way of saying that if we're spending in the $1 billion to $1.3 billion each year over the next 10 years, and we've still got 17 years of reserve life in 10 years' time, I'll be very happy. So should our shareholders based on the rates of return those projects are generating.

David Radclyffe

analyst
#43

David Radclyffe again from Global Mining Research. Just a follow-up question, if I can, on the Coarse Particle Flotation. Newcrest was really excited about the technology. Newmont seems less so. It's not that widely used, so we can't see a lot of examples. And obviously, at Cadia, we can't see the numbers or the uplift for well-known reasons with their issues. So could you talk maybe about how you've sort of -- how you think about those risks, how you've derisked it? Because it tends to be with these recovery improvement programs in the back rear mirror, if you like, it's very hard to actually see that uplift in recoveries with a lot of these projects.

Nancy Guay

executive
#44

There was a lot of work that was done before we approved this project. So there was a lot of test work, and we had a pilot plant as well that was running on site. So we can prove the technology and be very controllable with the technology. We are still running in parallel right now in the lab almost like every day, like some feed sample and just make sure we understand what will be the impact when the project will be up and running. So we have those up and running. So we are quite confident. We have started a big group of a consortium, I will say, or a group with the University of Queensland. And Newmont and a lot of other peers are with us in that one, so we can share and learn about the technology and make sure we are going in a good direction. In this slide, we have the Coarse Particle Flotation, but we have other improvements as well that are identified metallurgical improvement that are part of our pathway, and that will help us to make sure we have minimum this recovery.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#45

Yes, David, as all metallurgists promised the recoveries and you'd be at 120%, but we don't get there. But what Nancy and the team did and the site team, so you will see on site at the lab, how we've got our own sort of works that we've done there to sort of test it. We did do a lot of work with the team at Cadia in understanding their project and what worked and what didn't and the like in choosing what we've done here. And so that's giving us the confidence on that side. The proof will be in early FY '28 when we start running it, turning it on -- end of FY '28, sorry. All right. We are going to break now for a short while so that Glen can get set up. We'll have some afternoon tea and other coffee for anyone who wants, and we'll come back what time Rocky is it can pass through. [Break]

Glenton Masterman

executive
#46

Well, good afternoon, everyone. A couple of things to begin with. I'm going to run through a couple of slides just to really talk about how we think about Discovery at Evolution and how it supports Evolution's growth goals. I think when I came in this morning really early just to set up and make sure the models were going to run okay, I realized that my aging eyes were really struggling. So I had to duck out to the pharmacy for the $5 set of pharmacy glasses to read this first time ever. But anyway, first time I'm running actual models in an Investor Day presentation as opposed to movies of them. So we'll see how that goes as well. So bear with me. Look, yes, I'm pretty keen to get through these just to get into the models because that's the way we like to see these opportunities that we're drilling, and it's really the way in which I can share why we're excited about them. Disclaimer, get through that. So my theme today is pretty simple. It's creating value through discovery success. And over the years that I've been at Evolution, which is over 10 now and dating back before then as well, we put together a portfolio in what I consider some of the best geological addresses you can find. And that builds on the point that Lawrie made earlier, and that is acquisitions create the opportunity, but the value add comes from what you do with the asset once you own it. And for Evolution, it starts with discovery. What excites me is that we're drilling around our operations at Cowal, Northparkes and Ernest Henry, where our discoveries have the potential to make a direct contribution to future production. And in the near term, we're supporting the growth opportunities that Nancy and Scott talked about earlier. So for example, at Cowal, we're looking for ways to improve both the scale and grade. Now that could be by growing the open pit resources or through what we think may become a new underground mining front at the operation. At Northparkes, we're focused on finding accessible ore sources that could support the expansion and provide greater operating flexibility. At Ernest Henry, we're combining deep drilling success, the proposed Carnaby acquisition, and the regional exploration program that give us really a genuine opportunity to grow production and extend the mine life. And then Mungari and Red Lake are equally important, improving life of mine grade at Mungari, as Lawrie spoke to earlier, and as well at Red Lake targeting high-value future ore sources. But we're not only thinking about the next few years. We're also asking what could Evolution look like in 5 to 7 years from now. And that's where our greenfields portfolio comes in. So our investment in Arizona Gold & Silver, the recent one gives us exposure to the Philadelphia high-grade zone project in Arizona. And in British Columbia, we have Two Times Fred and an option over the Clisbako project. So these are 2 drill-ready opportunities with the potential to discover high-grade resources. They are earlier stage opportunities, but they're in the right rocks and in the right locations, and we believe they can be big enough to move the dial for Evolution. Underlying all of this is a significant increase in drilling and exploration investment this year. That's a deliberate choice, as we see genuine high-value opportunities across the portfolio, and we're investing to unlock it. This slide shows where we're putting the rigs and what we're doing with the money. So we have 11 rigs currently turning across 3 of our key operations, 4 at Cowal, 4 at Northparkes, and we have 3 at Ernest Henry. That level of drilling activity reflects both the quality of the opportunities that we have in front of us and confidence that we have in delivery. So at Cowal, we're running 1 RC rig and 1 diamond rig at E41, alongside 2 underground diamond rigs. Together, they're testing near-surface growth, extensions to E41, the potential connection from E41 back to E42, and the emerging underground opportunity along the Oban corridor. At Northparkes, we have 2 diamond rigs drilling at E44 that Nancy spoke about earlier. One rig testing depth and strike extensions around the E31 open pits and the E51 as well and 1 underground rig delineating mineralization at E26 South. And at Ernest Henry, we have 2 directional diamond rigs drilling very deep holes to test the down-plunge extension of the ore body below the current mineral resource. And we have a third rig at Ernest Henry, which is drilling the regional targets. So this is a great point for me to actually pause on the presentation and actually jump into some of the models. So let's do that next. All right. So we are going to start at Cowal. But before we dive into the drilling, it's worth just stepping back and remembering what we're trying to achieve. So we're targeting 2 opportunities. The first is growing the open pit inventory by extending mineralization around E41 and potentially linking it back to the main open pit at E42. The second is what we think could become a new underground mining front. It's higher risk, but it's also where some of the bigger upside is. And the reason it matters is because every additional quality tonne we can bring into the mine plan has the potential to improve the feed grade and create additional operational flexibility. So in the open pits, that can mean displacing lower-grade stockpile material and kicking it down the road as far into the future as we possibly can. And in the underground, we're talking about ore that is roughly twice the grade of the open pit feed. So here on this leapfrog image, and sorry, I've got to put the glasses on now, we have -- we're going to start with Cowal. It's not far from Northparkes, over here in the center of the image. And what you can see is we have large land positions around each of the mines. And the other thing to point out here is that these green shapes represent the rocks that are really important in New South Wales. They're the most important for hosting the best gold and copper-gold deposits. And Evolution controls 2 of these belts, 1 here, 1 here of the 3 main ones that exist in New South Wales, Cadia being out here to the east. So let's go and look at the site itself. And this is really just to bring some orientation to what it is we're actually looking at. So here's the E42 pit that I'm circling there. As Lawrie mentioned, we commenced production here at E46. Here is the sort of OPC North area with the Northern Lake Protection Bund, as Scott mentioned, that's due for completion shortly. And what I'm going to do next is just switch on where the planned pits are going, and we'll flip down the -- we'll just make that topo a bit more transparent. So these are the design pits for E46. So this is what they'll look like at the moment when they finish up, so E46, Regal and Galway here. This is the Stage I, cutback at E42, and the 2 E41 pits are located down at the bottom. So what we're going to do now is then just look at what we have underneath. So I'm going to flip that topo off, get you off. We're going to go in here and looking from east to west now, and we'll just turn up some of the mineral resource. That's the regularized one. So here, we have the resource that sits outside of the pit and also define some of the underground. So the dark brown is the indicated. The beige is our inferred resource. So we'll get that down again and then look just coming on the underground, which is quite separate as we spin that around and look at how it's quite separate from the pit at E42. And then obviously, the top of the underground, as we can see, is the Regal and Galway pits in through there. So the blue shapes that we have here are the reserve stopes. And if we come in a bit more, we can look at some of these gray shapes in here. These are the mined-out stopes that have already been extracted at the mine. And so the other thing that we can do now is turn on some of the planned development in the underground. So this should show you our current life of mine development for the underground at Cowal. So now we know where we are. Let's have a look at some of the drilling results. So here is the slide that was in the ASX announcement this morning for the exploration results. So on this slide, we are looking at E41. So here is one of the E41 pits. It's a slice through there. Here is E42. The Oban drilling results are sitting over here on the right-hand side. I'm going to firstly really talk about what we're trying to do at E41. And I think importantly, what we're starting to see in some of these new results are some really impressive grades. And we're also drilling in an orientation that we now believe has the ability to get -- to actually expand the resource, not only at depth, but to bring it back towards the E42 open pit and take it through the sort of ridge area through here. Now one of the reasons we believe that is if we look at the historic drilling directions, I'll turn that off, I will turn you off and you off, and so if we just rotate the whole mine around. What we can see is that the historic drilling direction was predominantly east-west. So you can see these drill fences here. These are east-west lines. You can see the same orientation through the pit. And we started that same drilling orientation when we were drilling the underground at Cowal off to the east side of E42. Now one of the lessons we learned at -- in the underground is that many of the veins, the predominant vein set, are roughly parallel to these east-west fences. They're in the same direction. So we are either getting them randomly or we were stepping over them and missing them when ideally we want drilling to cut across them so that we can link them up from hole to hole, and that's how we estimate our resources. So we've applied our learnings from the underground where we're able to do that, and we're starting to get the results at E41. And as we can see in the saddle here, as we sort of go across, that dominant drill direction is still east-west. And so we don't believe the program has really effectively tested that opportunity. So the idea is to understand whether that gap is real or to prove it's wrong and understand if we're dealing with a much larger mineral system. So what we'll do is we'll have a bit of a look at the RC program, so we can see this is what we're doing this year. I'll just flip off all of the historic stuff so that it doesn't confuse us. So that's the RC drilling program that's going to close up, a lot of that inside of that Southern Lake Protection Bund. And we've got a bunch of diamond drilling going in here through the course of FY '27 as well. And so a lot of that diamond drilling is actually looking at the links between the 2 separate pits at E41 and exploring that area between 41 and 42. So that is how we're viewing E41 as the opportunity to grow that mineral resource. So next we -- not that one, we are going to go to Oban, and we'll go to that one. Okay. So here is the other schematic in the ASX announcement this morning. So this is a depth slice of the underground. So it's about the 700-meter RL, or if you like, we will turn on the planned pit. So this is the planned pit for E42 Stage I. So it's basically the bottom of the pit. That's the level at which we've cut this horizontal section. And we can see those drill results, some of the historic ones and the one we announced this morning, which was quite attractive. And what I'm going to do now is really talk about what we're seeing and why we really like this opportunity. So I'll turn off this plan, get that off. What I'm going to also do is just sharpen up this pink shape here. And I'm going to get rid of some of those built and some of the planned developments and the drilling. So all we're showing here at the moment is just a few things. So obviously, here is the bottom of Stage I in E42. We have this sort of gray-black surface through here. That's the Glenfiddich fault. And all of these red dots are everything that's above 1 gram in an assay result in our drilling. And if you can -- so that I can pan in a bit, you can see some purples in there, that's everything above 5 grams. What is immediately apparent is that the gold likes contact, and it particularly likes this contact where it's hosted in volcanics, so that's everything out here in contact against this pink solid, which is what I call a diorite. It doesn't matter what a diorite is. It's -- that's the name of the rock. It just happens to like that contact. It doesn't happen to really be inside the diorite, and we can rotate that around and show everything like that. The fault basically cuts mineralization, so it terminates against the fault. But what we found is as we've been drilling at Oban, and the reason why we did that drilling was it was linked to grade control. And we were doing grade control in the southern area of the underground, and we decided to push a handful of holes through that Glenfiddich fault, where we knew the underground would terminate, but just to see what was on the other side. We've always known we've had this diorite because we've mined it deep into the E42 pit. So we knew it was there. We didn't always know where that eastern contact was. So we put a couple of drill holes all the way through till we got that contact. And these are these yellow disks here, which are -- which is the mineralized intervals that we've seen at Oban. And so we have an identical contact that's been repeated over here. So this is that contact of that diorite. And what I'm going to put on now is just show the level of drilling. So here is all the drilling in the underground. And what we can see is we've got a lot of drilling just in here, which is really what we've done for Oban. But when you look along the length here and on the length there, there's not a lot to go by. And we know we have another diorite body up in here with not much drilling information on the contact. So if we play a little bit of what is here. So this is a ruler. And I can work out how long that is. It's about 1.5 kilometers. That's pretty good. That's the scale of the existing underground. So if I take the southern end of this contact and take it up to the northern end of that contact, I get 1.5 kilometers again. So we're repeating the scale. And then we have a little bit more up here. And if I can get that to work, we've got about 500 meters. So there's a couple of kilometers of scale on a contact in the diorite against volcanics, which we believe is -- let me get rid of that first, which we believe is as equally prospective as the existing underground. So what are we going to do about that? We are going to put in a bucket load of drilling this year. So here's the drill program. A lot of it is going to be from the underground, and that's just Phase 1. And you can see when you look at what we've done, and this is just, again, a depth slice in that underground. When you look at what we've done, it's a lot. So there's a lot more work to do here. This is the phase of drilling we believe we need to do first to understand do we have an ore body that's going to start to develop along the eastern edge of this contact in the diorite. So that really is the story at Oban. So next cab off the rank. We're going to take a bit of a look at Northparkes. So I'll let that come up and correct itself. Here we go. Bring you over. So there we were just looking at Cowal right there. So we're now up here at Northparkes. And I think one of the things at Northparkes that's actually quite interesting is that it's a really clear example of how the drilling bit plays a role at the front end of the growth options that Nancy was talking about earlier. So if we expand the plant, we'll need additional ore sources, as Nancy mentioned. These need to be easily accessible and in locations that can be accelerated to production to support that growth when it's needed. And so what's really encouraging at Northparkes is we're seeing these opportunities really close to existing ore bodies and in established mining areas. So where we can leverage existing infrastructure. So let's dive into what we're seeing there. So this is the 3D image, when it arrives, for Northparkes, and it's essentially what Scott was showing earlier in the 2D, but let's just have a bit of a look at what we're actually dealing with here. So you can see the topography underneath, E26 here, E48 there, and this is E22 over here. The E22 plan development. So here's the box cut. That should be in the right location. I think Scott, right there, and the dual declines that he described, and we also show the link -- the linkage drive back to E48. What we're also showing in the blue are our reserves. So that's great. We've got E22 in reserves. Here is E26 Lift 1 North. And if I rotate around the side, we can start to see some of the ore bodies that Nancy was describing in that sequence for -- in the current sequence that we're looking for the underground. So let's start with what we have. So here's Lift 1 North in the blue there. This was Lift 1 in the gray, so that's mined out. This was Lift 2 in the gray. That's the Lift 2 extraction level. This is MJH there. That's the MJH ore body. It sits under Lift 1 North. This is Lift 3 that Nancy also described. GRP is this big one over here, so that's GRP in there. What I might do, because it's confusing matters, is to switch the topography off for now. In the background, we just move over here. This is E48. Let's just go in and have a quick look at the sublevel cave. So you can see the sublevels there. That's the portion of E48 in the SLC, and this is Lift 2. So this is the sequence that Nancy was describing earlier. And then, if we look at the open pit story that we have, this is E28 Northeast. So it's the next pit that is in the sequence for development. These are the mined-out areas, E31 South and E31 North, and the newly declared resources at E51 and Major Tom. So it gives you a bit of an impression of what we're dealing with at Northparkes. So let's go to some drilling results, and we'll start really with E26 or E26 South. So what has our attention here. So let's just zoom in through here. So what we think we have is a new porphyry system emerging here adjacent to an existing one. So that is the really attractive opportunity. So what -- if we look at -- here are the results that you can see in the callout boxes, they are shown as the yellow discs again. So the yellow discs are everything above 0.3% copper. And what you can see just by those grades there, and those grades there, it's a copper-dominant system. So there's a couple of things for me, which really stand out. The first is the consistency of those mineralized intervals. So you're getting a couple of hundred meters in each of these deeper drill holes. These have been drilled from the Lift 2 extraction level at E26, and what we also like about these intervals is that we have some internal runs at much higher grade. So that's what we're really starting to like. So let's turn off this 2D image for now and have a bit more of a look at where we think this is going to go. So here we go, here's that drilling again. So what we've been doing is sort of drilling out to the south of E26. We've been following it up plunge using some of the existing development to drill off out here. And the next phase of work is going to look like this. And in fact, I've been reliably informed, we're pretty much almost concluded this drilling program underground at E26. So we will have results in the hopper pretty soon, and that's going to sort of guide and drive what we do next. Now this is also where some of the geology becomes important. So you need to bear with me. We've always got to talk about a little bit of geology in one of these. So I'm going to turn off that surface topo, and I'm going to put on a solid stock below Altona, it's called. And let's sharpen that up a bit. And that's what we want to see. There we go. All right. So this is an intrusive body. And why it's important is that we see these shoulders that sort of run off into sort of cliffs or really steeply dipping zones. So here's the shoulder here, runs off into this really steep dipping zone. Guess what, the porphyries at Northparkes love these positions around this intrusion. They love these steep shoulders that roll off the intrusion. We have E26 here. We rotate, we can see that ridge or shoulder position there at E48. If I bring it around, you'll be able to see that again. So it is -- here we go, it's right there. So there's that shoulder position again. It's a fundamental control on the localization and emplacement of these porphyry systems. E22, it's a little more subtle, but there's a ridge coming in through here, and we can sort of lift it up. You can run your eye through there, and you can imagine it being there. It's a really important control. And in terms of where do you go next? Well, you're looking for these positions around this big intrusive stock. Now, the other piece about the geology here that's actually quite interesting is when we transition out of the stock into the overlying and surrounding volcanics. So here's the contact of the stock there. When we transition into the overlying volcanics, we typically see the best grades at Northparkes in all of the porphyry systems. So E48 is the same. Where it is out of stock -- sorry, I'm just bringing in here to convince you. We have some of the higher grades that we're mining in the SLC at E48. It is hosted above that contact in the volcanics. And all of the E22, you can see is above. So they are where we're getting the best grades. So what I like about this new E26 South target, and bear with me, is the current drilling is in here, and we're chasing it up plunge to see where it continues because we don't know where it projects to surface. But if I put the surface back on, that is -- that's not going to show up quite like that, here we go. So that's the surface there. Here's the contact there. There's a lot of space to move in here, where we can drill for higher grade. And that's going to be the objective of the surface program, assuming these results come back in -- confirming the orientation and the grade continuity in this new system. So that is E26. And what we also like about it is its proximity to the existing infrastructure. It's right there. So this is the challenge I'm going to put in front of Nancy, as she considers her mining sequence is these types of opportunities, where do they belong in the sequence as we start to drill them off. So that is the story around E26 South, and we are going to now go to some of the open pit drilling. And as Nancy mentioned, this is also a really important stuff for us to understand in terms of what is the sequence and can we find more of these open pits. So here we have -- here's this funny-looking stock again. It's a -- this is a bit of a different relationship to what we saw below. There's a couple of things to point out. Major Tom here, E51 here, the E31s up in here, and here, all around the edge of the stock. So it's not just coincidence. This is a common position where these ore bodies tend to localize. And what we've done in the last 12 months is a first phase of work that's understanding what are we getting as we drill around the stock, are there other opportunities? Pleasingly, there are. And these -- we're seeing these in the results. So these yellow discs, again, above 0.3. So we're seeing an ore body in through here. We're seeing an ore body in through here. Our best results occur in between E31 North and South. And so this is really the opportunity. The gray surface underneath is quite interesting because it's the Altona fault. So it's a big fault discontinuity. So everything here that's developed here came from somewhere down here. It slid all the way up here. So they are not -- these porphyry systems are not spatially related to these. They are in time, but in space, they're not. So this fault has also been -- so it's actually pulled mineralization from depth and pulled it up. So it's actually been helping us. Geology tends not to, but in this case, it has. So it's brought deep stuff up to surface. And what it also did, it was a little bit annoying because it came up over the top of part of E26, but completely hides GRP and completely hides E48. So that took a lot of deeper drilling to understand where they were located and took us a little bit longer. So this is the other consideration at Northparkes, we have to see through this fault as we're doing more drill targeting. But that is essentially what we're going to be doing. And I do have a drill program just to show you all that we are going to be doing more work here. So we've actually just completed a fair bit of drilling around E31 South and North. And as you can see, we're following up on a number of these anomalies. And my comment to the team when we were talking about this about a week ago, so I think we're under-testing this. So I expect to see a fair bit more drilling, particularly given some of the results that we've been getting at Northparkes. So that's really what we're trying to do. So testing for additional open pit targets, and we're taking a geological model and really using it to deliver future success. So that is that story. So I'll wrap Northparkes up there, and then, we'll transition over to Ernest Henry. So we're going to finish the slide show here. And in many ways, this is probably the easiest discovery story in the portfolio to explain because we've been successful here for a long period of time. And I'll show you sort of how that's evolved over time. But each time we drill deeper at Ernest Henry, we keep demonstrating the remarkable continuity of this ore body. And what we're trying to understand now is just how far that continuity extends. All right. So here we are near Cloncurry, which is located here, Mount Isa to the west over here. The mine leases at Ernest Henry have this sort of little white inset there with the yellow circle. This is the land position that we've assembled around the mine. Here are the tenements that will come across with the Carnaby acquisition. And so really, what we're dealing with here is an opportunity really on 3 fronts. I think we have multiple avenues for growth, which is the ore body extension at depth. We've got the land position and the Royal Duchess at Carnaby, and then, we've also got that exploration ground around the mine. All right. So let's go into and have a bit of a deeper look at Ernest Henry. So here's the pit here. That was -- that has been mined out. This is the resource as it would have been in the day. It's obviously been extracted. The shaft is here, and the processing facility is over there with the coarse ore stockpile right there. So that's essentially the basic infrastructure on surface. So let's just rotate this up and have a look at the ore body underneath. So we'll do that. I'll switch the topo off, get you out of the way. All right. So one of the stories really at Ernest Henry is a remarkable resource growth that we've been able to deliver since we took the keys to the 100% ownership in 2022 -- early 2022. So this was at the end of '21, the resource model. And now, if I switch on all of the drilling traces, now this is everything that's been done at Ernest Henry, and that now informs the latest resource update. But if I switch that on, you can see the growth, all right? So in fact, back in the day, I'll turn that drilling off because it gets in the way, this is all it was. In fact, it wasn't even in resource. It was just a couple of drill hits off to the side of the open pit. And we said -- we asked the question, what's that? We should get some more drilling into it, and we're able to extend it at depth, and there's a really lovely development story happening there. This was the only junior area. So we've done -- we've expanded the resource into these areas, and we know that the ore body is open at depth. So if we now take a look at the reserves, we'll just quieten down the resource, we'll get that one off. So that's the resource underneath. The blue shapes are the reserve. So that's taking sort of -- that's the bottom of the current reserve, which Nancy was illustrating earlier. We do have some reserves sort of up in the mine in those eastern areas. And we can just -- well, Scott has already done it, but we'll just do it again for some giggles here. So here's the -- this will be the Bert development and here are the stopes that will be mined at Bert. So that's essentially what we have at Ernest Henry. So the next slide really takes us to the result that was announced this morning. So here's the schematic that was in the slide deck. Here's the result that Lawrie has already mentioned in his presentation, but we really love the copper interval here and the gold. And the fact that really, we're sort of over 500 meters off the nearest drill hole up plunge. So it's really illustrating some remarkable continuity. And I think if we just -- if I turn that image off, if we just come back in on it and rotate it around, you can see that's -- let me just do that. You can see the ore body is a little bit twisted, comes down here and then sort of rotates back the other way. But its down-plunge projection is right on target. So it's really, really predictable. We can see if we rotate -- look from -- that's going to be from west to east, we look there, yes, it's right where it should be. So the question is not so much is it there. The question is how far does it really go at this type of thickness and grade and continuity. And that's the really exciting piece around what we're doing next. And if I just switch that on, these are the pierce points for the deep directional drilling program that we have currently running at the mine at the moment. Now you can see this is a -- this hole went something like 2.5 kilometers deep. It's a really deep hole. Now one of the reasons why we're drilling with a surface rig is we wanted to decouple the drill program from the underground mining because that was -- we couldn't get it into the schedule when we needed to, to drill from underground. And we really just don't have the development down to a depth at the moment where we can launch from underground and drill shorter holes. So we're doing -- we've got a directional drilling program from surface. This rig will stay in this position for a very long time as it drills part of this pattern. We actually have another rig side by side. So they sit, they're collaring on the west side of the waste rock dump here. We've got another rig. It's just drilled its first hole. And these rigs will sit here until we basically pick off this drilling pattern at depth to understand really the geometry, which is the important thing that we need to understand. We're confident we're going to get the grade. So I really look forward to sharing those results as they come to bear through FY '27, but a really exciting opportunity to really keep pulling this ore body down at depth. And really, that's where I was going to leave it. But so as I look across the portfolio, Cowal, Northparkes and Ernest Henry. I see 3 pretty different discovery stories. So at Cowal, we're growing and connecting mineralized systems while testing the potential for another underground. At Northparkes, we're looking at identifying the next generation of ore sources that could support the expansion. And at Ernest Henry, we're continuing to extend one of Australia's really incredible copper-gold mineral deposits. So there are different opportunities. The common objective is to convert that exploration success into resource and over to reserves and provide those options for future growth. So I will leave it there, and I can open it up to questions and get rid of these pharmacy glasses, which would be great.

Glenton Masterman

executive
#47

So if you have questions on any of these models, I can pull them back up quite easily.

Jon Scholtz

analyst
#48

Jon Scholtz from Argonaut. Just a question on -- like especially the greenfields, if you're looking at gold versus copper, where do you align with what you chase more in that sense?

Glenton Masterman

executive
#49

It's a good question. So the way we do that, we -- when we look at the greenfields portfolio and screen for those opportunities, there's a higher abundance of gold targets that are available for us to explore. When you go and look in the copper space, those -- it's a much smaller pool of exploration opportunities that we're screening for. And if I had to pick a ratio, it's not unlike what our sort of gold to copper production ratio is. It's that sort of 25% of the targets we would look at from a greenfields perspective in copper. The other challenge in the greenfield space around copper is that there's a lot of competition for a really small pool of projects. So we feel we have more opportunities in the gold space. It doesn't mean that we're putting a line through copper. We're still looking really hard at it. But it generally means that we turn up more sort of gold exploration opportunities to bring into the portfolio.

Jon Scholtz

analyst
#50

And just at Cowal, that Southern bund that goes in, does that end off the exploration there, you won't go any further out to try and look something? Does it...

Glenton Masterman

executive
#51

Yes. So right now, so I can prove I got the bund there. I don't have the bund there. So we'll just take a quick look at this underground because it's an important question. So the bund position, I'll come back to that. But this sort of shows what we're trying to do in the underground. So we are exploring out to the east, but there's a real sort of methodology and strategy to that. So what we see, and if you can get your eye in, we have a series of splay structures. So most of the ore body lines up along the diorite contact here. We have a couple of these splays. This is the main fault where we have a lot of high grade sort of coming off to the east. This is another one here. You start to see another one here. We do have drilling targeting the eastern extensions of those splays because they are high grade. We do want to know how far east they go. Now back to your question on the lake bund. So if we go to -- let's go to this one. Actually, no -- we'll go to the E41, so I'll turn off that slice. There's the bund there, and I will get rid of that long section. All right. So -- and let's turn on some of the drilling. I'm going to do that in that. So if we spin that around -- sorry, I'll just declutter that a bit for you, get rid of field traces and the assays. What we can see here is most of our drilling at -- in the E41 area occurs inside this Southern Lake Protection Bund or the OPC South, if you like. So this is -- so these blue dots are all the RC drilling that we're going to be doing around up to the sort of edge of that lake protection bund, and we have some deeper diamond holes going in under those pits. These diamond holes are well and truly on land. So the edge of the lake is over here. And we are drilling over here because we know, and you can see just by the shape of the pit, it's quite linear through here. There's a high-grade structure known as the Clara fault. It comes through all the way through here. So we are drilling that outside of the bund, but on land. So that would be way out into the future. We're just trying to understand does that high grade continue beyond where we have it currently delineated.

Matthew Frydman

analyst
#52

Glen, Matt Frydman from MST again. I apologize because I'm going to ask you about one of the assets that you didn't just talk about. But Red Lake FY '27 exploration budget, $25 million to $40 million. That's, I think, the broadest range across the assets, but it's also at the upper end, potentially the most across any of the assets. And obviously, that's for an asset that Lawrie was kind of indicating might not even really have room to grow in the portfolio for maybe 5 or 7 years. So can you talk through, I guess, here, what's driving that range? What's the sort of opportunities that you're seeking? And is that sort of budget reflective of that's just the cost of reserve replacement at Red Lake? Or is there other specific things that you're sort of targeting there?

Glenton Masterman

executive
#53

Yes, there's a number of things there, Matt, inside of that. We do have a large range because a lot of -- we have some contingent funding that's in there that would -- that is contingent on positive results being delivered by the existing program. We believe we will get those and we'll be able to award some of that to continue those drilling programs, but that's all success-based. So there's a portion of that up to $40 million, if you like, that's allocated there. The other thing, if you look at the reserve to resource, basically conversion factor, it's at about 25% at the moment. And so that means there's a long resource tail. And part of the mission at Red Lake is to start improving that conversion factor, so to get it up to closer to at least 40% -- I think between 40% and 50% is about as good as you'll expect at a mine like Red Lake. It's very similar at Mungari, the similar types of systems. So the idea is to -- there's a fair bit of resource definition drilling that's going to be done that consumes that budget, but that comes back to delivering that -- those future high-value ore sources. So it's not going to take us long to work through the underground reserves. We need to keep a lot of it in front of us. So that is really what we're doing. We do have some other exciting extension targets that we're drilling, and I hope to be able to talk about that in the next 12 months, but we've got to do the work first.

Matthew Frydman

analyst
#54

The extension targets you're talking about, is that the sort of contingent funding component that you were just referring to? Or yes, can you maybe just give us a bit of color on what the upside case could look like if some of those contingent programs come through positively?

Glenton Masterman

executive
#55

Yes. So look, I think we're looking at areas such as aviation. So right now, that constitutes one of the largest resource areas. It's where we have a considerable amount of our reserve and production in FY '27 coming from aviation. So we've been looking or working pretty hard on extensions. And I expect to be able to award more of that contingent program into some of those extensions around aviation as we work through the year. So we will definitely be consuming some of it.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#56

Just turning to Ernest Henry. You say that there is an additional 10,000 tonnes per annum copper from regional exploration. Can you tell us where you'll be focusing to make up that 10,000 tonnes?

Glenton Masterman

executive
#57

Yes, I can. I go back to Ernest Henry. Stay with me. I'll not only tell you where we're doing, I'll show you. So this is probably the best image to use. We don't have all of our targets displayed. But what we're -- essentially, this ground came together, most of it anyway. We've sort of -- there's been 3 acquisitions over the last several years. But a big chunk of it came from when we bought about just a little over 1,000 square kilometers from Rio Tinto. So Rio had done -- been up in the district for many years, have done a lot of work. They had screened it for Rio-scale copper gold systems in the IOCG space. Now we would love to find a Rio-scale IOCG copper-gold deposit, but we're probably not going to given that Rio are pretty good at what they do. So what Rio did, they found a number of mineral occurrences. They screened them at drill spacing that would essentially filter out anything that was going to be of a scale of interest or that would move the dial. But because we are looking at targets, and you can see the radius here, so that's pretty much everything is within 50 kilometers haulage distance at Ernest Henry, we're looking for much smaller style resources. So there are mineral occurrences where we feel that we can deliver small open pits. And I'm envisaging in the range of 3 million to 5 million tonnes. I'd love them to be bigger, but let's just be modest for now. And if we -- and we do have targets that we're currently drilling. So for example, 10 kilometers north of the mine, just in here is our SC4 target. We have a diamond rig on there right now. And we're just drilling in this area here. So we'll be able to share a bit more color on some of the outcomes of this exploration in the regional sense at the -- towards the end of the summer. So we'll drill right up to the summer -- start of the summer period, which is the wet season in Cloncurry and in that part of the world. And then we'll essentially pull together all of the results to determine where to next. And so I expect to be able to have an update later in the year around sort of what we're getting.

Daniel Morgan

analyst
#58

Daniel Morgan again, Barrenjoey. Glen, I'd just like to understand Northparkes a little bit more. If you could expand on what is a resource, what is a reserve, what needs to happen to bring a resource into reserve? Is that drill density? Is that you need a concept study, you need a feasibility study? And then as we're looking at some of these resources, what is the historical conversion of resource into reserve? And when I look at these resource blocks of different locations, what would you think about with regard to grade when you go from a resource to reserve? Because I imagine you're taking the center of a bigger pit.

Glenton Masterman

executive
#59

So I'll start answering the question, and I might call a friend if Nancy has got more to add. So look, if we go back to this image here, and I'll just get rid of the topography. It's just a bit -- I'll get you back down there -- confuses matters a bit. So everything, Dan, that we're showing here, I'll just explain that again. So just to give you some perspective here. Everything in blue is reserve. So that's the Lift 1 North. Here, you can sort of see E48, SLC22 in reserve and then the reserve for E28 Northeast. That is essentially the reserve base at Northparkes at the moment. Everything in brown, so these footprints are resources. So we have sufficient drilling in them to at least classify inferred, but most of them are better. We have a reasonably high proportion of indicated resource at Northparkes. And so really, some of these ore bodies require a bit more drilling. That's mainly because particularly as we're investigating block caves, it's really important to know where the edges of your cave footprint are going to be and not all of the edges have been that well defined in the drilling. So that's essentially what the drilling program is doing. In terms of grade continuity within those footprints, it's really good. These are porphyry systems. So the grade continuity is geologically in the record, they are typically the best for continuity. So when you talk about reserve conversion, you basically get most of the resource converting within the footprint. Now the dilution is the thing that really affects the grade. It's just how much waste are you going to take around your ore body and incorporate it into your block cave, and that's the thing that's going to drive the grade. But if you could mine perfectly to the edges of these footprints, the grade wouldn't change by much. Nancy?

Nancy Guay

executive
#60

Yes. I can just add that most of them are quite well drilled, and we understand quite well the, I would say, mineralogy or grades and content of them, but we have to do the study. So that's why we have those big program in study, so we can have the study numbers and there's some geotech information that needs to come in those studies as well.

Brenton Saunders

analyst
#61

Brenton Saunders from Pendal. Glen, sorry, just back on Ernest Henry, Greater Duchess, where and what is that?

Glenton Masterman

executive
#62

So the Greater Duchess is down in here.

Brenton Saunders

analyst
#63

And what stage of development or exploration? I mean, I see you've got it in a profile, you've got a copper and gold number next to it. Is that a satellite ore body?

Glenton Masterman

executive
#64

Yes. These are the satellite ore bodies that we would be looking to truck to the Ernest Henry plant. Currently, at the moment, we've looked at the open pit resources, which do have studies that Carnaby has completed on them. And once we take the keys, we will be progressing those studies in terms of the open pits. Other opportunities there looking at sort of underground beyond the open pits and other exploration opportunities would need to be drilled. So there's a fair bit more work to come in terms of how we would expand that resource. But we've essentially acquired on the basis of the existing open pits.

David Wilson

analyst
#65

[ David Wilson ] for [ First Sentier ]. Just back to Northparkes. So there's already quite a large resource at E26 South. I don't know how many tonnes, but the grade was at 0.5%. So you're drilling off to the side of that. Are you just chasing more grade? Or is there more size that you need to convert that area into reserves?

Glenton Masterman

executive
#66

So I think there are 2 opportunities there. One is we -- the thing that stands out to me the most, and I'll just -- let's put the new assays put the new assays on. So that's the drilling so far. If we really come into it, the thing that excites me the most is the proximity to E26 and the existing infrastructure. Now we don't have a resource on this. This is a long way off that. We've got a lot more drilling to do. I'd say it's another 12 months away from being a resource in terms of what we understand. So what we're going to be doing is we're starting to track it up plunge, so up towards surface. And there's a lot of space up in here. When I switch -- when we look at the existing drilling, there's a lot of space to keep one of these. So I think the opportunity is we've got grade, copper dominant down here. Where it fits in terms of the sequence, et cetera, we don't know that yet. But the real opportunity here in addition to being adjacent to existing infrastructure because that's really important. We've got the extraction level here already established. There's crushers, there's access to the material handling system, all of that. So that's one really important aspect. I also spoke about as we move out of the -- do I have it here? Yes. Out of this, you recall, I was talking about the stock -- so as most of the drilling at the moment, you can see sort of is in the stock over the contact here. So what we're seeing is 200-meter runs of 0.35 with shorter intervals within that of 0.5. So that's -- it's got to be 0.5 to make a difference. The way we're going to look at that is to bring it up out of the stock because as I said, we know that when you transition out into the volcanics, that's where you get -- typically get the best grade. So we're following it up, and then there'll be a surface program in here to determine whether or not we have something meaningful.

David Radclyffe

analyst
#67

David Radclyffe again from GMR. If we could go back to Ernest Henry -- so that deep hole is obviously really, really interesting. So could you maybe talk about how it is in the context of what you had expected as you were drilling down? So is it typical what you've seen in the deposit as you move down plunge? So you said it was in the right position, but is the tenor of the grade about what you expected? And then what actually happens if you are successful with that program of the holes you put up? Does this promote potentially rethink of what you were working on in terms of the infrastructure? Or is this why this program is happening because you identified it as a potential upside risk?

Glenton Masterman

executive
#68

All very good questions. And some of them we don't really have the answers to at the moment because we still -- we just don't have the level of information. But in terms of where we're taking it. So to come back to the first part of your question, is it what we expected to get? Look, I was a little bit nervous that this thing may have disaggregated into a series of lenses, but in fact, it's just held together. So it's the main ore body that we've intersected in this hole. And I'll get that off, take that around. It is exactly where it should be, right? In terms of -- you can just see how it lines up beautifully. That's dipping down that way. It goes right through. So we know -- and that's about the thickness of the main ore body, plus or minus 10, 15 meters, it's pretty close. So in terms of where to next, so if we just take a look at the west, so Nancy was talking about the study that she's doing below the 750 RL, which is the bottom of the reserve here. So that was down a couple of hundred meters through there. What I'm giving to Nancy is, well, we have a look at another 200 meters down because we're essentially -- so that's at the 750. We're down at the, call it, the 220 here. It's another 500 meters of potential mineralization that can be factored into the study that we're doing. Obviously, we need to drill it, but that's the direction which we're taking.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#69

Yes. So Dave, what Glen's objective this year is to finish that drill program to see if there's enough mineralization below that study area that Nancy has got to hand that over to Nancy to say, well, okay, how deep does this go? What does it do to the infrastructure? What do we do with the mine longer term? And that's what we're targeting by the end of this year. Glen, as much as everyone wants to keep going through all your -- you have to move on to finance, tell us what she's doing with all this money that everyone else is making for it.

Frances Summerhayes

executive
#70

Well, today marks my first year anniversary with Evolution. And over the past year, I have been continually impressed by the commitment of our people, the quality of our assets and the opportunities within our portfolio. It is a privilege to be part of Evolution, and I'm excited about the value we can create for all stakeholders going forward. Across more than 20 years in the resource sector, including almost 17 years with BHP, across multiple commodities, geographies and market conditions, I have seen that long-term value is consistently created through a combination of quality, high-quality assets, strong margins, disciplined capital allocation and financial resilience. These attributes are highly relevant to Evolution today. Our portfolio of high-quality assets provide us with the foundation for a high-margin business. We then remain focused on operating discipline and continuous improvement, converting favorable metal prices into significant cash flows. Now the real value doesn't come from just generating cash, but from consistently directing that capital to the highest returning opportunities across the portfolio while retaining balance sheet flexibility and delivering cash returns to our shareholders. The life of mine planning process that Nancy has discussed with us today gives us confidence both in the quality of our operations and future projects. It provides a framework to our disciplined capital allocation and long-term value creation. So what our long-term plans demonstrate is that our high-margin operations will generate the cash flows and resilience needed through the cycle. Our balance sheet provides the flexibility to execute our strategy through the cycle. Our disciplined capital allocation prioritizes the highest returning growth opportunities, and we're continuing investing in the longevity and uplifting the quality of our portfolio while also rewarding our shareholders with fully franked dividends, supported by our increase in dividend policy, targeting 60% of annual group cash flow. Sorry, I was on the wrong slide. I can see it down there. Okay. So the quality of our portfolio is demonstrated by the financial outcomes on this slide. While we have benefited from strong gold and copper prices, our focus remains on converting favorable market conditions into record EBITDA margins and record free cash flows. In FY '26, we delivered a record EBITDA margin of 57% and generated approximately $1,958 per ounce in group cash flows at an average realized gold price of around $6,000 per ounce. Looking ahead, at a gold price of $6,200 and based on the midpoint of FY '27 guidance, as shown on this slide, we estimate operating mine cash flows of approximately $3.6 billion. Our focus then turns to the disciplined deployment of that cash to the highest returning opportunities across the portfolio. In FY '27, we are expected to invest approximately $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion in sustaining capital, major growth projects and growth initiatives, while increasing exploration investments by approximately 65%, as shared by Glen, as we continue to unlock the value across the business. Now Mungari is an excellent example of this in action. The mill expansion was delivered around 9 months ahead of schedule, 15% below budget and successful commissioning and ramp-up in FY '26. The resulting uplift in margin is shown on this slide. And cash generation highlights that value is created through disciplined investment and strong project execution. As Lawrie noted earlier, we prioritize maintaining a sector-leading all-in sustaining cost through productivity, operational excellence and cost discipline. Now Red Lake is a great example for this on the left of the slide and demonstrates this well. Despite operating in a high tariff Canadian environment, the team held the all-in sustaining cost broadly flat while increasing the EBITDA margins to 62% and delivered record net mine cash flows of $286 million in the year. As a result of banking the upside, we enter FY '27 with a significant financial flexibility, holding approximately $1.4 billion of cash and undrawn $525 million revolving credit facility and in a net cash position. We have a fully unhedged gold and copper portfolio, allowing our shareholders full exposure to strong metal prices and the substantial cash generation of the business. As we have said before, we do not intend to hold excess cash on the balance sheet. If favorable metal prices persist, then capital will be allocated in line with our approach to reward our shareholders with higher returns. Our low-cost debt structure is aligned with our long-term plans with no debt maturities until November '28. This provides certainty and flexibility, allowing us to remain focused on operating and enhancing our portfolio rather than near-term refinancing requirements. Our investment-grade credit rating and our strong relationships with a diverse group of global lenders provides us access to attractive long-term capital and further financial flexibility. We are comfortable to operate with a gearing of approximately 10% to 15% through the cycle. This reflects our philosophy that the balance sheet should enable long-term shareholder value creation, not constrain it. We have also demonstrated the ability to temporarily move outside the range while compelling value-accretive opportunities arise. For example, in FY '23, net gearing peaked to 33% through strong operational performance, higher metal prices, disciplined capital allocation and robust cash generation, we returned to a net cash position in FY '26 ahead of plan. Our focus remains unchanged, operating high-quality operations safely and reliably, generating high cash margins and allocating capital in a disciplined manner to maximize long-term shareholder value. As demonstrated on this slide, we do this via accretive deals, organic growth and shareholder returns via fully franked dividends. Importantly, our cash flow and our balance sheet provides capacity to fund organic growth without having to sacrifice rewarding our shareholders with fully franked dividends. A key differentiator for Evolution is our disciplined use of equity. Historically, equity has been raised only to support value-accretive acquisitions, not to repair the balance sheet, refinance debt or address operational challenges. This track record is reflected on this slide, with shareholders who have participated in acquisition-related equity raising benefited from strong long-term returns. As Lawrie called out earlier today, our success demonstrates the value is not created through acquisitions alone, but through the integration, optimization and growth delivered thereafter. As Glen and Nancy have outlined, Evolution has multiple growth opportunities supported by intensive technical work, scenario analysis and financial modeling through our annual life of mine planning process. This planning process is one of the most important disciplines and underpins capital allocation across the business. It takes a long-term portfolio view, assessing opportunities across different metal prices, operational scenarios and development pathways to ensure that capital is directed to the highest risk-adjusted returns. It helps preserve future options by continuing to invest in studies, exploration, drilling, permitting and technical work. The process also identifies operational constraints and bottleneck, helping us target investments that can increase productivity, extend mine life and enhance returns. And I particularly like this slide because it demonstrates the value created through our disciplined planning and capital allocation approach. While internal rate of return is only one of the several factors considered in an investment decision, it does provide a useful illustration. At current gold and copper prices, expected project returns are materially above the original Board-approved assumptions, highlighting both the quality of our portfolio and the significant value upside available to our shareholders. We continue to reward our shareholders. We are a consistent dividend payer. Our record FY '26 final fully franked dividend of $0.21 per share marks our 27th consecutive dividend and reflects both the cash generation of our portfolio and our commitment to sharing the benefits with our shareholders. In August '26, the decision to increase our target dividend payout ratio to 60% reflects the confidence in our operation, the cash flow generation expectations and the flexibility of our balance sheet. This decision was not made based on current metal prices or our current financial position. Rather, it represents a structural increase in shareholder participation in our cash flow generation. We continually test our portfolio and our balance sheet across a wide range of operational scenarios, development pathways and metal price assumptions. This includes funding all current approved projects, advancing future opportunities as shared by Glen and Nancy and maintain appropriate balance sheet investment grade through the cycle. As the graph on the left shows, we have delivered significant value for our shareholders, with total shareholder return of 258% in the last 3 years. Now this equates to 53% annualized total shareholder returns. So as I reflect on my first year at Evolution, what stands out most is the caliber and energy of our people, the quality of the portfolio and the way we operate the business. Throughout today's presentation, we have highlighted a portfolio of high-quality option-rich operations that generate strong margins and robust cash flow with significant leverage to both gold and copper. We have also demonstrated that our financial strength is not an outcome of the current metal price environment. It reflects 15 years of disciplined operational execution, balance sheet management and thoughtful capital allocation. Looking ahead, we are in exceptionally well positioned. Our high-margin operations provide the cash flow and resilience to invest through the cycles. Our balance sheet gives us the flexibility to execute through the cycle, and our capital allocation ensures we continue to direct the capital to the opportunities for the greatest long-term shareholder value. Thank you. I will now hand you over to Lawrie for final remarks.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#71

Fran left the stage too quick. I'm sure there's some questions for Fran. So we will open it up for questions before closing remarks. I do reiterate, we do have a hard close because if we miss our flight slot this afternoon, we'll be spending the night here in Sydney. I'd prefer you to be out at the cold of [ Parkes ] tonight.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#72

Any questions for Fran? Well done, Fran. Here we go. Matt, come on...

Matthew Frydman

analyst
#73

It's a bit cheeky and facetious, but obviously, balance sheet is in a really strong position, net cash, business is generating strong operating cash flow, so you can fund CapEx, you can fund more than the CapEx that you've outlined. Why not pay out 100% of group cash flow? I mean it's post CapEx. So if you wanted to increase your CapEx budget, you could. Yes, what are the considerations that drive that? And could that change going forward?

Frances Summerhayes

executive
#74

Yes, sure. So I guess the 60% was done over the life of mine plans as we sort of done various growth programs and its structural change. As I mentioned before, if the metal prices continue to persist, then we will absolutely be back looking at all forms of allocating out that cash to our shareholders.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#75

Yes. I mean, Matt, we do have projects to invest in, and we've got the debt coming up in a few years. So our position is -- and it's fair that over the last 12 months, the most feedback we've had from shareholders is what we should do with the money. What we -- that extra 40%, what do you need with that? And it's a good problem to have. And as Fran said, we're not going to build up this large amount of cash. I think going from 50% to 60%, paying out 1/3 of all of our dividends over the last 13 years in 1 year is not a bad way to look at it. And as our franking credit balance has lifted nicely in the last 18 months, that's another avenue for us to look at.

Daniel Morgan

analyst
#76

Just while we -- Daniel Morgan, Barrenjoey. That debt piece that you've got, are there rights to potentially buy back that debt? I mean, noting that interest rates are very much on the rise, that 4.47% is quite low. So I imagine that if you were to repay it, it might be profitable.

Frances Summerhayes

executive
#77

Yes. So we have looked at it as part of our decisions going to the Board. And we won't stand and just look to gearing for the sake of gearing. We'll do it to make sure it maximizes shareholder value. You can pay it back with a make provision. But given it's at a fixed average of 4.47%, it made sense to hold that on the balance sheet. It's long term and matches our life of mine cash flows.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#78

Do you want to just touch on that you can pay out the cheaper ones?

Frances Summerhayes

executive
#79

Yes, earlier in the years, you can look to them and balance them with the longer-term ones, which have a higher interest rate attached to them, absolutely. But as I said, we did look at that, and it made sense to keep the debt on the balance sheet. We'll continue to reassess every reporting period when we go to the Board with our recommendations.

Lawrie Conway

executive
#80

Yes. Our cheapest one is the first one, Dan. So you could pay those without any sort of penalty. The ones that are longer dated are higher interest and they're the ones that have the make-whole. So right now, our view is that we'll let them sit where they are. All right. Thank you for your time this afternoon. Really do appreciate you coming along and showing an interest in Evolution and where we're trying to go and to enable us to give a bit of an insight as to the company, the strategy, where we're heading over the next sort of 3 to 5 years and then go a little bit deeper into Cowal, Ernest Henry and Northparkes, which have got most of the exploration upside right now and have also got the projects that are underway at those assets. I'll leave you with the key messages from the start of the day. I think what we've shown over the last 11 years is that we've acquired well, we've sold assets at the right time. And what we've done with the assets once we've acquired them has really generated a significant value for our shareholders. In the last 5 years, with the portfolio we've got, we've demonstrated growth in production, but also growth in margin by keeping our costs focus and discipline in place and by having an approach whereby it is margin over ounces in the way that we manage the portfolio. I do think that copper in Ernest Henry and Northparkes provide a differentiator for us in the industry and provides a differentiation for us in an industry where short-term supply is not matching the increase in demand in the short term and the ability to bring long-term production into the mix for what is needed in terms of a 50% uplift in demand for copper over the next 15 years and us having ore bodies at Ernest Henry and Northparkes with ready available ore sources to bring into production is certainly going to be a differentiation for us. We do look forward to those who are traveling out to Northparkes and Cowal over the next 2 days for you to firsthand see each of those operations. But thank you on behalf of all of us at Evolution for your ongoing interest and support of us and for making the time today. Thank you.

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Programmatic access to Evolution Mining Limited earnings transcripts and 255,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.