Jupiter Mines Limited ($JMS)

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to the Jupiter Mines' Q3 call. Today we have Jupiter Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Brad Rogers; and Chief Financial Officer, Megan North -- pardon me, Melissa North, to provide a brief update on the third quarter of the 2026 financial year, and then we will open up to questions from callers. Thanks, Brad. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Cameron, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call today. For those of you who have had the time to see our quarterly activities report released to the market this morning, you will have seen that this March quarter was another strong operational result against the backdrop of improving prices and margins through the quarter. So I'll dive into more detail and tease out some of the key points that are stated in that quarterly activities report, and then we should have time for any questions on the line after that. Operationally, as I said, a very solid quarter, in line with expectations, including no lost time injuries for the quarter, which was pleasing, and a material improvement in our LTIFR (sic) [ TRIFR ] to 0.37 by the end of the quarter. The mine sold 839,772 (sic) [ 839,989 ] tonnes of manganese ore during the quarter, which was slightly down on last quarter, but up 8% on the prior comparative period, and importantly, in line with our expectations for the end of the 30 June financial year. You'll recall that we are typically targeting 3.4 million tonnes of ore sold. We've achieved that every year since Jupiter has been listed, and we're on track to achieve that again this year, including this March quarter result. We sold, we produced rather slightly more tonnes than that, 849,772 tonnes produced, and that was slightly up on last quarter 1%, and slightly down on the prior comparative period by 1%. So effectively flat, and again in line with what we need to achieve the full year. We moved 869,000 tonnes, a little over, to port, which was slightly up on last quarter. That did not include any trucked tonnes. So all of those tonnes that were moved to port were either via rail to Port Elizabeth and our other ports, to East London or out through Namibia to Luderitz. Quite a lot going on in prices for the quarter, and I'll come back to that in terms of my comments about the market in a moment. But if we just focus on the March quarter, average CIF manganese prices for the March quarter, average, were USD 4.35 per dmtu, and that compared to the average for the December quarter, $4.10. By the end of the March quarter, we saw CIF prices of $5.16 per dmtu, and we're around that level now as well, slightly on. So again, I'll come back to the reasons for those movements in a moment. But just bearing in mind, one of the key themes for this March quarter against what we've just heard pretty steady sales quarter-on-quarter was improving prices, both on average, but in particular by the time we came to the end of the March quarter, prices that were moving up more materially. Unit costs also increased. You'll see quarter-on-quarter in U.S. dollars per dmtu, and it's important to understand the foreign exchange impact of this. We moved from $2.24 average cost per unit in U.S. dollar terms in the preceding quarter to USD 2.50 per dmtu this quarter. That movement was entirely because of the weakening U.S. dollar against the rand during the period. And I included in the quarterly activities report, for example, that if you were to have recalculated the rand costs at last year's, the March quarter, prior comparative period quarter foreign exchange rate, that cost of $2.50 would have been $2.21. So underlying that movement, headline movement, because of the movement in foreign exchange rates is actually fairly contained rand cost. Tshipi's costs are almost all in rand. And so that movement, whilst that is material, was driven entirely by the foreign exchange rate. And part of the reason why manganese prices are increasing is because all of the manganese producer currencies, not just the rand but also in Gabon, Australia and elsewhere are strengthening against the U.S. dollars, and that's one of the reasons why the manganese price is increasing. So you're not seeing a compression in U.S. dollar margins per dmtu. Quite the contrary, we're seeing an expansion, which I'll talk to in a moment. But that U.S. dollar increase in unit cost was a step-up in the quarter, but that was entirely because of foreign exchange rates. All of that, higher prices, steady sales resulted in profit for the quarter, which was a material improvement on the last quarter. EBITDA was up 49% for the March quarter compared to the December quarter, and NPAT was up 44%, and that was because of high manganese prices that we've just discussed. Cash was down slightly, but that was only because of the payment of the dividend during the month of March actually. And so the fact that cash was almost steady, notwithstanding that dividend payment during the month was quite good, and that was because operating cash flow was up materially, up 29% on last quarter. So again, steady sales, improving margins because of manganese prices has driven EBITDA, NPAT and cash higher for the quarter compared to the December quarter. So then back to the market. As I mentioned, quite a bit going on there. CIF today is $5.13 compared to $5.16 at the end of the March quarter. But that's materially up on the average for the December quarter, which was $4.10. FOB today is $4 -- it's rather $4.25 and end December was $3.46. So what we saw through the March quarter, prior to the commencement of the Middle East conflict, was manganese prices that were already moving higher, moving higher in a more gradual manner. And that was because of a couple of things. One of them, as we discussed on the last call, was downstream demand that was more robust than people had expected. Alloy demand last year and continuing into this year in China has been quite robust. Likewise, in steel production has seen slight growth. And so you had real demand downstream being reasonably solid. And then you also had the impact of foreign exchange, which is what we just mentioned a moment ago. You obviously need more U.S. dollars to cover the same amount of local currency costs, including in South Africa. So those were the main drivers, gradually moving the manganese price higher prior to the commencement of this conflict in the Middle East. Since that conflict has commenced, there has been an increase in energy costs, an increase in shipping rates, and that has driven manganese prices higher. There has been an acceptance amongst manganese ore buyers that those costs need to be covered. And so what we have not seen is any compression in margins for manganese producers like Tshipi. In fact, we've seen a slight expansion, I'd say, but we've certainly covered all of these drivers that I've mentioned, shipping rates, diesel costs and also the movements in foreign exchange rates. On freight rates, we've seen those moving around as well. At the beginning of the March quarter, freight rates were about USD 25 per tonne, and that's around what we would think is a normal level. By the end of March, because of the Middle East conflict, those freight rates had increased to $36.90. They have moderated slightly today to about $32.10, so still elevated. And obviously this is still a bit of a watching brief, but we've seen a material movement up and then a slight moderation back to $32.10 in terms of shipping rates as we sit here today. So obviously, shipping rates are factored into FOB costs and FOB -- rather FOB prices. FOB prices net of shipping rates of $4.25 today, end of December $3.46. And the long run sort of last 4-, 5-year average FOB price, I'd say, is about $3.34. So sitting at $4.25, that is factoring in a movement in the FX rate and some higher diesel costs, but we see that as a fairly healthy price. And you can see that in Tshipi's EBITDA margins and NPAT for the quarter as well, which moved materially up. So we're seeing an expansion on margins, and that's because Tshipi is well situated on the producer cost curve. And so any upward movements in price tend to benefit Tshipi quite well. We haven't seen any impact outside of movements in cost and prices from the Middle East conflict. Tshipi has a decent amount of diesel storage at site. We've got about 13 days of consumption. The site actually doesn't consume too much diesel. It's not all that energy-intensive. We are connected to the grid, and we have had continuous power supply from the grid. The grid in South Africa is predominantly domestically coal supplied. And so from that perspective, whilst we do have our own diesel-fired standby power station, we haven't needed to use that very much for the last year or so, and that continues. We do need diesel for mobile equipment, including dump truck and diggers, et cetera, for mining operations on site. But we have continued to receive daily deliveries of diesel as expected at normal levels. We have had assurances from our long-term diesel suppliers that they don't foresee an issue or an interruption in that regard. We also are not trucking any volume through South Africa at the moment. So we do truck some across the border into Namibia before we go on rail in Namibia. But our diesel footprint from a land logistics perspective is smaller than it might otherwise be. The main rail operations to Port Elizabeth are not diesel-fired, they're electric. So overall, whilst obviously this is a watching brief, we haven't seen any impact on operations from the conflicts, and we don't expect one either. We have seen, obviously, as I've mentioned through these opening comments, impacts on cost of diesel, impacts on freight but we've also seen a big movement upwards in the manganese price to compensate for those costs and potentially also to compensate for expected further movements in those costs. And so all of that sums up, we've actually seen good margin improvements through the quarter, notwithstanding there's been movements in terms of some of the input costs and movements in terms of foreign exchange rates as well. We've had a good steady operating quarter. We're on track for the full year. All of the sales production and land logistics have set us up for a good June quarter operationally and in line with our expectations for the March quarter. So hopefully those comments have been helpful in overview. Cameron, I'll just turn back to you in case there are any questions on the line.

[Operator Instructions] We are currently showing no questions at this time. So I'd like to hand back for closing remarks.

Okay, Cameron. And okay, everyone else, thank you very much for joining. As I said, that was a good quarter from our perspective, and I trust you've all seen it that way as well, very solid operationally, improving safety performance, sales in line with expectations, production and logistics slightly higher than sales, setting us up for a good June quarter. Prices moved quite pleasingly, and that has resulted in, as you would expect, an improvement in EBITDA and NPAT and actually a really strong operating cash flow performance, up 29% on last quarter as well. So hopefully that's been helpful. Look forward to talking to you after the June quarter.

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