MGX Resources Limited (MGX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Assuming everyone can hear me okay. My name is Simon Bird, Lead Independent Director at Mount Gibson. Our Chairman, Mr. Lee Seng-Hui has been unable to attend due to an urgent personal matter in China and has asked that I chair this meeting in his absence. Before we begin, it's important to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we gather and recognize their continued connection with the land and waters of this place in addition to the land on which we operate our mine. We pay respects to elders past, present, emerging and extend respect to all people's present. Today, we've elected to hold a hybrid AGM as we did last year, which enables shareholders to attend in person or alternatively online by the Computershare platform. I'd like to introduce my fellow nonexecutive directors, Alan Jones, Professor Paul Dougas, Evian Delfabbro. Unfortunately, Mr. Ding Rui is also unable to attend in Perth today. Also I'd like to introduce our executive team, Peter Kerr, our CEO; Gill Dobson; our CFO; and David Stokes, Company Secretary and General Counsel. A copy of the minutes from the 2023 Annual General Meeting are available for inspection at the entrance to this room. I'm advised by David that we have a quorum of members present today, and therefore, I formally declare the meeting open. I'll begin with the Chairman's address, following which we'll go through the formal business of the meeting, and then I'll hand over to Peter Kerr to provide CEO's address on operations and an update. Following this, all shareholders and guests are invited to join us for tea and coffee afterwards, where we're all open to answer further questions. In 2023/2024 fiscal year was a successful one in which the company generated significant cash flow through increased exports in high grade -- of high-grade iron ore from our flagship Koolan Island mining operation in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Group sales revenue increased to $667.7 million Free on Board while total high-grade ore sales were near the top end of the company's guidance of 4.1 million wet metric tonnes, grading an average of 65.3% iron. This compared with revenues of $452.6 million on sales of 3 million wet metric tonnes in the previous year. The company recorded a modest net profit after tax of $6.4 million compared to $5.2 million in the previous year. After tax, accounting and impairments totaling $159.1 million and the derecognition of deferred tax assets totaling some $30.2 million. These noncash expenses primarily reflect the impact of lower iron ore prices on the accounting carrying values of the Koolan Island operation and effectively brought forward depreciation and amortization expenses that would otherwise have been booked in future years. Importantly, though, total profit before tax and impairments doubled to $211.6 million compared to $105.9 million in the previous year. While operating cash flow trebled to $284.3 million. Consequently, the company's total cash and investment reserves increased by nearly $280 million to a total of $442.3 million by period end, this compared with $162 million the previous year. This excludes the value of the company's 8.6% shareholding in Fenix Resources Limited, which had a market value of approximately $20 million at the end of the financial year. Mount Gibson has subsequently increased the equity interest to 10% by exercising a tranche of equity options received as part of the consideration of our sale of the Mid-West mining infrastructure assets to Fenix in July 2023. Mount Gibson's operational and financial improvement during the year reflected both consistent ore production from the Koolan Island Main Pit, complemented by processing of previously assembled high-grade iron ore stockpiles. These stockpiles were monetized in late December 2023, after which shipments became more closely aligned with mining extraction rates and closer alignment of iron ore production and shipments will remain the norm going forward and have been factored into our sales and cost guidance for the current financial year. Our guidance also takes into account a temporary slowdown in production, mostly in the recently concluded September quarter. While works are completed on reconfiguring the Koolan Island Main Pit to deal with ground stability conditions and to optimize the extraction of the high-grade ore reserves that remain. We anticipate stronger sales over the remainder of this current financial year and into future periods. With iron ore markets and global economic conditions being increasingly volatile, and Koolan Island moving closer to its scheduled closure within the next 2 to 3 years, Mount Gibson is focused on 2 main priorities: firstly, maximizing cash flow over the operations remaining mine life, together with looking at new investment opportunities. Your directors are therefore -- have therefore been cautious in preserving capital so that the company is well positioned and has the flexibility to act decisively on appropriate acquisition and growth opportunities. The strength of the company's position is further enhanced by recent market volatility and lack of funding being readily available for many projects and operations that we've been looking at. I note the company made new investments in a number of operating and development companies during the financial year, which have more than trebled the combined value of these equity holdings to approximately $17 million worth, excluding the strategic holding in Fenix. While a dividend for this financial year was not declared, the Board is constantly reviewing the options for capital management. And accordingly, an on-market share buyback has commenced as a value-accretive capital management measure. In closing, I would like to thank my fellow directors, and in particular, employees and contractors of Mount Gibson for their commitment and efforts over the last year. I'd also like to thank you, our loyal shareholders, for your continued support. And we look forward to maximizing the value from our existing assets as well as growing our business for the long-term benefit of all shareholders. That concludes the Chairman's address. I'll now turn to the formal business of the meeting. This meeting will be held both in-person and online via Computershare platform. All online attendees can watch a live webcast of the meeting. Shareholders and proxies attending in person or online, both have the ability to ask questions and submit votes. For today's meeting, we will be tabling the financial statements as well as 3 resolutions, which we will table first and then answer questions shareholders may have or have submitted on the financial accounts and the resolutions once we've tabled the 3 resolutions. Following that, as I mentioned, I will be inviting our CEO, Peter Kerr, to provide his operational update. Now to explain the process for asking questions and voting today. For online shareholders, [Operator Instructions] The Company Secretary will manage questions before tabling them to remove any duplication. For this meeting, all resolutions will be decided by poll and announced to the ASX immediately after the meeting. Mr. Rod Somes from Computershare Investor Services will act as returning officer for the poll. For our online attendees, if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, once voting opens, press the vote icon and all resolutions will be activated for voting. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There's no need to hit the submit or enter button as your vote will automatically be recorded. You'll receive a vote confirmation notification on your screen. You can arrange your vote up until the time I declare the voting closed. For attendees here in the room, at the time of registration, those entitled to vote, as shareholders, representatives of shareholders or proxy holders would have been given a green admission card. If there's anyone who believes they're entitled to vote, have not registered, please raise your hand. Thank you. On the reverse side of your green admission card are the voting paper and instructions. I'll now run through the procedures for filling in the voting papers. David, this is a lot of instructions. Attached to the admission card of proxy holders is a summary of proxy votes, which details voting instructions where these have been directed by the shareholders. By completing the voting paper, when instructed to vote in a particular manner, you are deemed to have voted in accordance with those instructions. In respect of any open votes, a proxy holder may be entitled to cast, you need to mark the box beside the resolution to indicate how you wish to cast your open votes. Shareholders also need to mark a box beside the resolution to indicate how you wish your votes to be cast. Please ensure you print your name where indicated and sign the voting paper. When you finished filling in the voting paper, please lodge it in one of the ballot boxes being circulated to ensure your votes are counted. If you need any help, please raise your hand. Summary of the proxy votes and meetings are presented on the screen behind me. I confirm that I'm holding undirected proxies in my capacity as chair, and it's my intention to vote all such proxies in favor of resolutions 1, 2 and 3. Any indicated proxies that are not voted at the meeting will automatically default to me as Chairman of the meeting, and I'm required to vote those proxies as directed. Thanks, David. First item of business today is the financial statements and reports, which is to receive and consider the financial report, the directors' report and the auditors' report for the financial year ending 30 June 2024. These reports are all included in the company's annual report and are available on the company's website. Jemma Newton, our auditor from Ernst & Young is here today and able to answer any questions on the financials or the audit as required or if needed. We will respond to questions on the financial statements and reports after resolution 3 has been tabled. Item 2 is to consider three ordinary resolutions. I'll now move to the first of those resolutions. And for good governance because it affects me personally, I'll hand over to Professor Paul Dougas to chair this section of the meeting.

We will move to consider the first resolution, which relates to the reelection of Mr. Simon Bird. Mr. Bird is due to retire from the office and being eligible presents himself for reelection at this meeting. The Board, in the absence of Mr. Bird, unanimously supports his reelection to the Board. I move the reelection of Mr. Bird as a Director of the company. The proxy results for this resolution are detailed on the screen and support the reelection of Mr. Bird. We will leave any response to questions on this resolution after the third resolution at this meeting. Thank you. And I'll now hand back over to Simon to run the rest of the meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Paul. That brings us to resolution 2, which is right back at you, Paul, reelection of Professor Paul Dougas. We move to consider the second resolution to reelect Professor Dougas, who is due to retire from office and being eligible presents himself for reelection. The Board, in the absence of Professor Dougas, unanimously supports his reelection. I move the reelection of Professor Dougas as a Director of the company and the proxy results shown on the screen, support the reelection of Professor Dougas. As Paul mentioned, we'll answer questions on these resolutions after resolution 3. Moving on then to the third and final resolution for the meeting today. This involves the adoption of the company's remuneration report. The Corporations Act requires that at an AGM, a resolution that the remuneration report be adopted is put to the vote. Remuneration report details the company's policy on remuneration of nonexecutive directors as well as senior executives. The vote is advisory only and does not bind the company or the directors. I move the adoption -- I move the adoption of the company's remuneration report. The proxy results for this resolution are detailed on the screen and support that this remuneration report be adopted. Thanks, David. That concludes tabling the 3 resolutions, and I'll now invite questions on the items of business today, which include any questions on the financial statements. The resolution to appoint myself, resolution to reappoint Paul Dougas and the resolution regarding the remuneration report. Can I ask the company secretary to read out any written online questions if there are relating to today's resolutions.

No questions today.

Thanks, David. Have you had any online shareholders wanting to ask verbal questions today? Last but not least, members in attendance, is there anyone who has any questions on those 3 resolutions or the financial statements? Makes it very easy. There seems to be no questions on those resolutions for today. With that in mind, I would ask online shareholders to please finalize their outstanding votes on resolutions 1 to 3 by selecting the polling icon and casting your vote. But I also ask shareholders attending in person to please complete your green card and raise your hand so they can be collected by the Computershare representative. [Voting]

Has everyone attending in person who intended to vote now voted? It appears to be so. With that, the voting process is now completed. I therefore declare the poll closed. The final results will be published on the ASX this afternoon. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes the formal proceedings of today's Annual General Meeting. If there are any questions that anyone wants to ask of me while I'm up here, more than happy to answer that now. Otherwise, I will be handing over to Peter Kerr to take you through the operations update. And then we will be open to questions and answers after that, if the room is comfortable with it. Thank you very much. I'll hand over to Peter.

Good morning, all. My name is Peter Kerr, I'm the CEO of the company. Welcome this morning. I really appreciate you attending. I have about a 20-minute presentation to run through, and I'm happy actually to take questions as we go. If people have any concerns or queries, please feel free to speak up. And certainly at the end, we'll have the opportunity to do so. The usual disclaimer, this presentation has been lodged on the ASX early this morning. One milestone to note for those who perhaps don't realize it, Mount Gibson has been an iron ore producer this year for 20 years. And there are some pictures up on the left-hand side of the screen here, showing you some of the assets we've mined and operated in the past and some of the assets we're currently mining and operating. For those who aren't aware, we listed on the ASX in 2002. Sales commenced from a mine called Tallering Peak in 2004. And following various other Mid-West assets and mines, including Extension Hill and Shine for a period, and at Extension Hill, the Iron Hill operation, we exported 50 million tonnes of iron ore over that period up until the point where we decided to package those assets together and divest them as a package, along with the related rehabilitation liabilities that attached to them to a credible buyer and that buy was Fenix Resources, and we are a key shareholder in Fenix going forward. The Koolan Island operation, which is our current operation, was acquired in 2006 and in effect, under full control of Mount Gibson from 2007. And if you combine Koolan and the Mid-West together since that time, we've exported about 87 million tonnes. So clearly, we are not the biggest producer, but we have been a very clear niche producer, selling a mixture of standard grade products, lump and fines and high-grade products from Koolan Island. Koolan is, as you'll see from some of the pictures I'm going to show you, and there are quite a few pictures in this presentation to give you a feel of what we do at Koolan, the highest grade direct shipping ore DSO hematite operation in Australia. And we're benefiting from that. It is a challenging operation, but it is a self-contained operation on 1 Island. The remaining mine life is a couple of years. Hopefully, we can try and eke out a little bit more from that, but that's -- in terms of our mine plan, that's the time limit. I do want to point out the strong relationship we have with the Dambimangari traditional owners, and we do pay respects to their elders and the leaders of that group. We have a really valued relationship with them. They are the custodians and they are the traditional owners of Koolan Island as well as islands in that Buccaneer Archipelago. And we work with them very closely on a range of operating activities where they're employed in our business through to rehabilitation work that's coming up. And hopefully, some post mining opportunities on the island that may relate to the use of Koolan's infrastructure for some years yet, and that's something that's evolving now. So that's an acknowledgment, and I really want to call out to all of the people who work for Mount Gibson, many people in this room, all of the shareholders who've supported us for what has been a pretty strong ride for a small company over many years. And we've had challenges, and we've overcome many of those. But we have opportunities now as well with the cash flow we've generated to try and go to the next leg and reset what the company is doing. And I'll talk to you a bit about that as we progress. Corporately, just a quick update on this slide on the top left, the market capitalization, as many of you will know, has reduced. That's a combination of various factors, but an outlook for the iron ore price that's currently mixed. But we're trading below cash backing. And that's obviously a position that we're working very hard operationally and corporately to reverse. We have paid dividends extensively, $332 million over 10 or so years and -- or actually longer 12, 13 years. And we're looking to try and do that, but there are various constraints on what we can do, and we also have to weigh that up against what we're doing with the actual business acquisition reviews and how we want to go forward from here. We'll talk about that a bit more later, too. In terms of the shareholder mix, there's been a bit of a change in some of our institutional presence. We have a handful more institutional shareholders that sit there, but APAC Resources out of Hong Kong is our largest holder with 37%. Australian and New Zealand institutions sitting at around 18% to 19%. Shougang Fushan, which is an entity within the broader Shougang Steelmaking Group in China is sitting with 13.5%, both APAC and Shougang have a contractual right, which arose many, many years ago to nominate and appoint one director to the Board of Directors. And so those nominees, you can see in the list on the bottom right. Lee Seng-Hui is the nominee of APAC. He's the Chairman of the company; and Ding Rucai is the nominee of Shougang Fushan, management team we've previously introduced. In terms of fiscal '24, I think it's a bit of old news now. But on this slide, we've just summarized for the purposes of the AGM, what we've done physically and financially. It was a strong year. We mined 3.7 million tonnes at Koolan and the strip ratio was very low. And by strip ratio, we mean how many tonnes of waste do we need to move to extract a tonne of iron ore and the iron ore is all high grade, you can see that above 65%. That strip ratio changes over time and impacts costs. We're now in a period where actually we're rebuilding ramps, which is now completed and moving other waste material. So that strip ratio picks up for a period. But we're now looking forward on average from now for the next 2 years, it will be just under 2:1, right, which is important for our cash flow generation. During fiscal '24, we generated the revenue that's listed there just under $670 million, and our costs were AUD 74 per tonne that we sold. So we created a reasonable margin through what we were able to do there. Although the year was split in halves. The first half had higher sales and higher iron ore prices. The second half had weaker iron ore prices and lower sales. So we did have a mix, but that's the overall performance. In terms of financial results, what that means is the operating cash flow was $284 million from Koolan, which is very strong relative to what it's been in prior years. But we know Koolan's an operation that does go in cycles, with ore and waste movements and other factors. So we're good happy to bank it while we're there, but we're being very cautious with it going forward. And I'll talk to you about the cash flow growth and the cash build in the company a bit later. The group's cash flow was a bit above that at $290 million. So it meant we ended the year with cash reserves of about $442 million plus our investment in Fenix, which arose from the sale of the Mid-West assets. Our profit before tax and impairments, as you heard from Simon before, was $211-odd million, which was a strong number, but we did have accounting impairments recognizing the outlook and consensus views from the market as to where iron ore might be heading. And basing our cash flow forecast on that, we were required to write down $159 million relating to tax assets and carry forward or carrying value of assets at Koolan. Those assets would have been expensed anyway over the next 2 to 3 years. So in effect, we've accelerated that, but they're noncash from the purposes of our results. So we ended with a net profit after tax of $6.4 million. In relation to other business, I talked about our asset divestment and shareholding in Fenix, and we have now exercised 1 of the 2 tranches of equity options we received from that sale. So our shareholding has just moved a tad above 10% in Fenix. And we look forward to working with them and seeing what they can do with their business, which is different to ours. It's half logistics and half mining, and we'll see whether there's an opportunity in the future going forward. The investments in junior resources companies, and we have 4 or 5 of them. They're designed to build relationships, get us into the position where we can have financing opportunities and discussions potentially about M&A activity. And that's something we're really pushing and accelerating now as you'd expect. So the value of those investments lifted over the year, and we're sitting at around $17 million at year-end. Regional exploration as well. We're picking up some of our activity. We have our Chief Geologist in the audience, Brett, on the front here. So he'll stay for coffee afterwards, if you're interested in chatting about the kind of things we're looking at. But ideally, we're looking at base metals, regional exploration work in areas where we know we've either been before and have prospective interests or areas which we've identified as part of our due diligence and M&A reviews where they might be near other operations that could make sense for us. In relation to fiscal '25 outlook, in the bottom right-hand chart, we're targeting 2.7 million to 3 million tonnes. We're on track at the minute for that. But we know with Koolan, we'll have a wet season ahead of us. Things can be challenging. I really do acknowledge the key effort of everyone in Perth and on site. We have a great team of people, and we'll be striving hard to get there for that physical target and our cost target. The strip ratio I talked about will be increasing at the minute. And you may have seen that in the September quarter results. So expect them to go through a period where our sales will increase in the next financial year and the rate after that will also increase before the mine comes to an end. Key focus on costs and efficiencies right now in the operational terms. Our remaining ore reserves, we have released our resource and reserve statement as at 30 June '24, and you can see the figures there on the bottom right that support our mine plan. Just one note on safety. It's of critical importance to us. If you are invested in mining companies, it should be the first thing that they talked to you about. This is what's called an injury frequency chart. So the red line is called total recordable injury frequency rate. It's basically looking and saying, if you look back 12 months, for every 1 million man hours you worked, how many injuries did you have? And there are 3 types of injuries in that red line: lost time injuries, which is the line on the bottom in blue where actually for the last 12 months, we haven't had any, which is outstanding work; medically treated injuries; and restricted work injuries. Restricted being someone's injured, but they're able to go back to work, but not in the role they were doing before. And there's a very strict regime as to how we define that and report that to the mines department. But what you can see here over the last 3 or 4 years, we have worked really hard to bring that down. And that's come from an area where we were up at well above sort of 12, 13, 14 injuries per 1 million man hours worked. And over time, and it's a lagged indicator, right? It doesn't tell you exactly what's going to happen in the future, but it's a good measure as to how your people working and are you hurting people. We're now down at 2.9, which is right up there, better than many other companies. Now we have to keep watching that because it won't take much for an injury or two to kick us back up, right? It's important, but it's a really important acknowledgment that I make for the teams on site. Stepping back then for what we do in selling iron ore, there are 4 charts on the screen here. The top left chart is the U.S. dollar iron ore price over 5 years. And the colors are in red, the 65% Fe high grade price. In black, the nightly news, newspaper price, which is a 62% Fe price. And in yellow, the 58% Fe price. So they are the 3 key metrics. This comes from Platts, S&P Platts, and we use this in our contracts. When we're selling 65% material, we referenced that red line. So it's very important for us. Now today, that's actually kicked up for a couple of dollars from those numbers that are shown on the chart there. But importantly, as well, on the top right chart, when you convert that to Australian dollars, you can see that those numbers remain reasonably attractive for us. We have had prices that have been AUD 20 or AUD 30 per tonne higher in the last 12 months. But for what we're looking at now, this is a world we live in, we're trying to make our margins at those levels. When you look at the difference between the high-grade 65% and standard grade 62% Fe and adjust for the grade, but compare a premium there. That's the bottom left-hand chart, and that red line is showing that at the minute, steel mills or people buying iron ore are prepared to pay about 10% more per iron content in high-grade material. And they're doing that because it has lower impurities, it has benefits for helping work in blast furnaces and basic oxygen furnaces, and we'll talk about how that works for coal and material. And the bottom right is obviously the foreign exchange rate, which is picked up in that top right chart. In terms of quality, as I mentioned, and we've used this slide a number of times, so apologies if you've seen it before, but it's important for us to emphasize. When you make steel, you need iron ore, coking coal is a key ingredient, plus a range of other smaller ingredients, but the quality of the iron ore has a big bearing on what happens in terms of costs and output from blast furnaces and basic oxygen steelmaking furnaces. So from what we know at Koolan, it's high-grade iron, very low alumina, very low phosphorus, big ticks for those things and moderate silica. So we know that silica is an impurity we do deal with, and we get charged a bit for it. But the silica side of things doesn't affect the actual quality of the steel that's ultimately made through this process, but it does increase the level of slag in a blast furnace. And when that happens, there are additional costs required, additional coking coal required to make that slag molten and to move that out of the system. So that's a penalty that we do have. But otherwise, Koolan material sits at the very advantageous end from a purity perspective. And by example, 3 charts that you may have seen before but have been updated recently. What they show in the gray or silver dots are a sample of West Australian iron ore operations. On the left-hand scale of each chart is the iron grade and on the bottom scale of each chart or bottom axis, from left to right is phosphorus, alumina and silica. Koolan is the yellow orange dot. And so you can see that it's -- in terms of grade, it's right up there as we talked about and expect. But in terms of both phosphorus and alumina, it's also at the right end of where we want to be, i.e., the left-hand end of this chart. Silica sits in the middle, but we deal with that through our standard penalty structures. So it's really important for us, our offtake is sold under life of mine offtakes. We are not a huge producer like a BHP or Rio but we are a niche producer with that high-grade material that attracts that premium price. Okay. So just before we get into some pictures, and sorry for the words on this, but given it goes to the ASX, many people will be reading rather than listening. In the September quarter, we released our September quarter results in October, and these are the key statistics. So as I talked about, we knew that in the September quarter, we would be doing quite a bit of work in the pit with the establishment of our ramp. Our mining has a bit more waste attached to it. The ore was a bit lower. But actually, we were pretty close to our plan for what we achieved in the quarter. The strip ratio rose to 4.7:1, that's temporary, right? That will start to come down. But it's part of what we need to do to set up this pit, which is effectively a 2-kilometer long, big inverted triangular wedge. Mining is now focused on the high-grade material in the Eastern end of that pit, and I'll show that to you in some pictures. Our ore production is rising. Our grades in the September quarter were a bit lower. We were blending to maximize the volume, but we're right back up to 65% as of 1 October. So financially, we had revenue of $61 million. That also reflected a knockdown of about $6 million of provisional pricing adjustments. And by that, I mean, when we sell iron ore, the price we get at the time is based on the average around that time. But the actual final price can be 1 or 2 months later, the average of that month 1, 2 months later. So we can get hit with positive or negative adjustments. It's a standard pricing practice. And in this period, as iron ore has weakened, of course, we've been caught up with some negative adjustments, which gets booked in our revenue. Our cash flow overall was $5 million, which is modest. And really, that was greatly assisted by the receipt of insurance proceeds from the business interruption component of the claim we had from a couple of years ago when you might recall, we certainly do a plant fire in the Koolan or one of the screen areas of the Koolan processing plant. So we've received money from the property damage side of that insurance policy. We've repaired the asset, and we've also now in the quarter, received $27 million for the business interruption losses that we had under that policy. So our cash and investment reserves were $412 million plus our Fenix shareholding as at the end of the quarter. In relation to other business, I talked about our Fenix investment. Our other asset investments were maintained at $17 million, and there's a range of activities that are occurring, not only on the exploration I mentioned but also on the business acquisition and key investment initiatives. And that's something that you'll hear more about going forward, but obviously, very difficult for us to talk about given the confidentiality of some of these things. Given where we're trading as well below cash backing, really important for us to restore value to that share price. And one of the measures we're doing is we announced the on-market share buyback. We've commenced that in the middle of September. And up until today, we bought about 8.7 million shares at $0.314 average. So that's going to continue. We have initial approval to buy up to 5%, and that maybe will be considered by the Board to increase another 5% in due course. Okay. So just looking at the Main Pit, if you haven't seen these pictures before. Here's a picture where you're at the Western end, looking to the East, see the water immediately below you. That's because the Western part of the pit is now fully mined out. We can't go any deeper. We gouged as deep as we could. We rebuilt the ramp and what's labeled there is the central switch back of that ramp, and we're now mining the Eastern end of the pit. And it's hard to see from the perspective of the picture, but the Eastern end of the pit is a kilometer long, right? So it is actually a long, narrow open pit. And we will be going -- or in the West, we have gone down to about 170 meters below sea level, and that's a mean tidal level. In the East, we plan to go even deeper, about 215 meters below that mean tide level. So there's a fair bit of work, you can see it's wider in the East. We'll be cutting that back and then trying to maximize the extraction of that ore, which is the darker color you see on the left. One thing there. I'm just going to actually take you back a picture. Halfway down the pit on the left-hand side, you might see in this picture, we did have a rock fall last year. We reported that in August 2023. It's one of the main challenges we have at Koolan. And the team has come up with a very good plan, and we've utilized similar plans previously. But above that rock fall area, we are going to -- we're in the process of actually inserting drill bolts to basically penetrate anywhere from about 20 to 30 meters into that wall, a whole series of intensive bolting that then get grouted and tension plated to provide, in effect, man-made strength to the stability of the rock. And we do that because very important for us underneath that area in the center of the pit is quite a large quantity of high-grade iron ore. So it's investment-wise, it's a strong return on us -- on investment for us to do that work. And this picture you're seeing here is a group of contractors from a firm called Ausdrill. You may be familiar with them, and they have 2 small drill rigs suspended by cables right from the top of the wall and teams of people who actually operate those drill rigs and are drilling those holes, inserting the anchors and doing the cement work and then the tensioning of them. We're about 60% through, actually a little ahead of 60% through. So our objective and our mine plan is to be able to mine this material after the wet season next year at some stage, probably in the middle of the year, very important for us. Had we not had that rock fall, our mine plan would have been quite a bit simpler. We would have just moved towards from the West to the East of the pit. So we've had to adjust and change and modify along the way, but we still aim to extract the ore reserve that we have. So if I look -- or take you up, looking above the Eastern end of the pit, looking in the other direction now, what you'll see here in the red hashed area is the high-grade iron ore. That's our remaining reserve. So that's the 6.5-odd million wet metric tonnes that we have in the pit to mine and that goes down another 50 or so meters from that level. And on the left-hand side, the former Eastern haul ramp where we used to haul out of the pit, we're now actually mining. So that's waste material, and we're removing that. Looking in closer just to give you a proper view as to what it is because it is a large area even though those pictures may not designate it. You can see how we're mining the waste, which is the lighter color. And then on the right-hand side, and we zoom in a bit further, then mining the high-grade ore on the footwall. And you can see as we go deeper, it's a continual exercise of making sure our ground support and safety is properly installed and then extracting that 65% Fe material. This is a fly-through. So as we go through, it only takes just over a minute. It's sped up. So don't get confused and think our haul trucks run at this speed. But here you are, you're actually looking to the Eastern end of the pit on top of that old haul ramp that's being removed. You're running down and seeing some of the drills that are set up and some of the benches we are currently mining to remove that waste material. As you get to the very Eastern end of the pit, you'll see ground support and shot creating that's spread over the rocks for safety purposes. And now you're right above the iron ore. So that had -- that black color is the high-grade iron ore. And it extends actually a little under to the left where the haul ramp and ultimately, that ramp will come out and it extends all the way through. And you can see where there's that bit that now juts out. That's a couple of shipments worth of high-grade material immediately on the right there, where we've had to leave it in place while we do that Ausdrill work. And we'll extract that once that work is completed. Keep coming down and effectively at the base of this road, you're now in the middle of the pit, and we've mined out everything that's now ahead of us. So we're now starting to climb with the trucks. And as they climb here, the trucks will turn a hard left and go back up to the top of the pit. We're going to fly over the pumping systems and the excavator undergoing service, the sump that we use to manage the water. And there you see it. And if you look and geologically inclined and you can see that angled black color material in the right-hand side of the wall, that's what we've mined out. It was sitting on the footwall on the right-hand side. In the Eastern end of the pit, that's what below the pit floor now we're seeking to take out. Okay, processing and ship loading has proceeded well. We put money, as some of you will know, into a small circuit, we've added on the back end of the plant, a tertiary crossing circuit. That helps then regulate the material sizing that goes through the whole plant, and we don't need a contract crusher to actually crush oversize material. So basically, now we have the ability, if we have hard material to do the occasional lump shipment, that's difficult with this material. It's very friable. It breaks up. But we also have a homogeneous, 65% fines material that we ship. Sustainability, just before we come to the corporate side. Our sustainability report is I describe it as really sensible, fantastic work, fit for purpose. We don't go crazily out of control here with our sustainability activities. But what we do, do is some really good pieces of work on the mine site in terms of energy consumption, diesel fuel consumption, which is our biggest fuel, as you would expect, on a remote operation, the diversity of our workforce, the safety. And I really encourage you to -- if you're interested to look at this. It's got some great statistics when we put it up on the website shortly related to what we contribute to the economy, the community, the traditional owners and a whole range of other factors in terms of what Koolan Island and Mount Gibson does. Our reports are high quality that don't take ages to read. But if you're interested, please do. Right. So just stepping back now, I have a couple of more slides to -- before we finish, I wanted to talk about, well, where to next, right? The key piece that we've obviously been working on for some time aside from the operational aspects at Koolan is what do we do next? This chart shows in the yellow columns, the cash balance, cash and investment balance that we've built up pretty rapidly, only over the last 12 to 18 months. You might recall, we actually spent pretty much all of the cash we had on doing the big cutback at Koolan Island and setting that up for its final few years, and we had the real hope and ambition that we would actually get that cash back and more. And so over the '23, '24 financial year from an operational perspective, that worked well. You can see in the last little while, some of the cash from June, we've had to hand back provisional pricing adjustments and investments in the September quarter in the pit, as I talked about. But overall, that cash is now sitting at plus $400 million is a really important asset for us. So what we do with it is really the key to the future of Mount Gibson. So last slide here. In terms of our focus, 2 key relatively simple strategies for the business, as I'm mandated by the Board to pursue. One is run the existing operations safely and well, maximize the iron ore sales and maximize the cash flow generation. It would be great if iron ore went up another $10 or $20 per tonne. That's terrific. But we manage what we can control, and that's the costs. So we'll be trying very hard to ensure we can get the most out of Koolan going forward. The mine life at Koolan is a couple of years, then there's rehabilitation required after that and some opportunities for the assets as well. In terms of business growth, this is really the key for us. Exploration aside, that's really longer-term business growth. We're focused in Australia. We're looking at acquisition opportunities in companies or in mines in either bulk materials or base metals. You can see them listed there on the chart. It's very difficult to talk about some of these things because we are in active engagement and discussions with groups about how we could actually start some of those sizable investments or acquisition opportunities, but that's our ambition and a real focus from the Board and myself and the team. In terms of attributes, ideally, we would like a producing or near-producing asset. That's really important for us given the skill base in the company, but we can also bring a whole range of other technical and other operational capabilities to investments as well. And our focus is on things that are going to be cash flow generated. Maybe they're not in the first instance, but with additional capital or investment, they can be. So that's our key focus going forward. And over the next 12 months, this is really the area that we hope to be able to talk to you more about and more specifically on. So with that, bring it to an end. We're an established company. You've known us if you've been invested for some time. It's been a rough ride on the share price. I appreciate that, but we're still maintaining a very clear focus on what we're trying to do with the business. We have that strategy, as I've just described, for maximizing the production and cash flow generation and looking at the investments, and we have supportive major shareholders, which is really important for us. And so with that, that's the end of the presentation. I'm very happy to open to the floor or online any questions that may arise.

[ Rosario ]? Do you want the microphone actually that might be -- can you -- online, they'll need it, I think. Can you guys turn it on, please?

You probably touched on this already about over the next 12 months with acquisitions and investments. But I mean, really how close are we to making some kind of announcement? I know you can't say too much you already mentioned. But is there any idea, any guide?

It's really difficult to answer that because things can change at late notice. All I can really say, [ Rosario ], is that we've got a handful of irons in the fire and active discussions ongoing. I think the outcome of those, some of them could be recommendations to the Board for investments of strategic stakes and some of them could be potential acquisition opportunities or a phased approach. But they are along the lines of what I talked about there.

Okay. And with the current investor such as myself, I've been with you guys since before the first shipment after the Board got repaired. Once these announcements are made with new acquisitions, what have you, are you looking at possibly considering a special dividend for those people who have been in your book all this time versus new player incomers that might join the investors, knowing that, okay, it's ready to go?

You're not the only person to ask that question. It's a really important question, and we're all shareholders as well. So it's critical for us. Everything is on the table. One of the things just to be aware of is depending on where the iron ore price goes, that will influence the generation of franking credits. And so there is an impact to dividends on franking credits and what that does. But at the same time, we could realistically pay unfranked dividends, but maybe there are better other capital return options. So really, I think where I'm sitting as a part of the management team and the instruction from the Board is let's look at the growth and get the mine life in the business and then assess what we need and what is a sensible strategy thereafter. If we get to the end of Koolan and there's rehabilitation and we're still looking at things, we'll then different discussion perhaps to have. But for the moment, it's focused on the acquisition side.

And I understand we need to cash balance and ready for the up-and-coming challenges, Trump included, I guess.

Yes. If you could let us know what that's going to do. That would be really helpful.

I had a look at your 6 KPIs on your last annual report, and I'm just wondering whether you could probably review item 6, which was personal performance, 30% whether you'd probably put that down to 20% and add 10% for shareholder value and returns. So what gets measured and tracked gets done usually, but taking account that you've already mentioned on the slides and I understand all that.

Okay. It's a good point. Take it on Board. The 30% is obviously part of what's the personal effort and performance. And for this year, actually, that 30% encompasses safety as well. So rather than a safety metric, which is numbers, safety behaviors, communications falls in there. But I understand your point about shareholder returns...

The context in following the next financial, not the current. You're going to get more sales in the next periods. And also a dividend policy, why don't we have a dividend policy? I know we review when the time comes. But I think it will give confidence to the market, if you have a policy in place and a succinct one, not one like Fenix has which is fairly broad. Is it based on NPAT or sales or you guys determined it? But I think if you've advised the market what your policy is, I think, the share price should iron ore price.

Understood. Maybe I'll pass that to Simon.

Peter is doing very well. Peter was doing very well with all of those. But I think that's one does keep coming up. And it's a fair question. And as Peter said, we're all shareholders, too, so I have a keen interest in dividends personally, as much as anybody. Something to factor in though and you made a good point yourself that acquisition opportunities, which we're looking at very keenly at the moment. And we're very alert to capital management. We always have been. But to have a dividend policy when we've only got 2 to 3 years of mine life, if we had a longer mine life, you could put something out where you say a percentage of our NPAT from the Koolan Island will pay out. Just at the moment, there are -- as Peter said, a number of irons in fires. So we're keeping our powder dry to some extent. We've also had quite a year of building up the reserves. It wasn't that long ago, we didn't have many reserves. And secondly, the switchback that Peter talked about. That's cost money rehabilitating the wall as cost money. So we're just being cautious. But it doesn't mean that we have to only look at dividends once a year and a policy, if we had a policy that might lock us into something like that, giving us flexibility now, the Board, I suggest would have. And once we've got some clarity on resetting the business post-Koolan Island, then we'll be in a position to do something. Hopefully that answers your question.

Questions from others. If you are not comfortable in this forum, afterwards, tea and coffee is available. We're going to stay around. So please do come and see us and ask whatever you want to ask. Anything more from anyone? Okay. Thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate you attending this morning. And please do join us for just tea and coffee afterwards and come and chat. Otherwise, have a good day. Thank you.