MGX Resources Limited (MGX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for joining today's teleconference for the release of Mount Gibson Iron's March quarter activities report. Mount Gibson Chief Executive Officer Peter Kerr will be leading the discussion; and is joined by Chief Financial Officer Gill Dobson and External Relations Manager John Phaceas. There will be an opportunity to ask questions. Due to time constraints, only institutional participants will be invited to ask questions at that time. A recording of the call will also be available via the Mount Gibson website shortly after completion of today's teleconference. I will now hand you over to Peter Kerr. Thanks, Peter.

Thanks, Lisa. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss Mount Gibson's March '25 quarterly report. As usual, I'll give a brief overview before handing back to Lisa for any questions. And just as a quick reminder: All of the currency we mention on this call is denominated in Australian dollars unless otherwise stated. From an overall perspective, Mount Gibson delivered a solid performance in the March quarter given we're experiencing a relatively heavy wet season, which has to date brought numerous wet weather interruptions. In particular, as some will know, we experienced our closest cyclone in many years when Tropical Cyclone Dianne passed just 15 kilometers east of Koolan Island at the back end of the quarter. Thankfully, we have well-established cyclone readiness protocols, as you'd expect. And this ensured that our team remained safe and that there was no damage to site infrastructure or equipment. For context: Koolan Island recorded over 1,600 millimeters of rain in the quarter alone, and that includes 730 millimeters in the last 2 weeks of March. Despite the wet season impacts at this time of year, we have maintained steady production and shipments and remain on track to achieve our targeted fiscal '25 iron ore sales guidance of 2.7 million to 3 million wet metric tons at an average cash operating cost of $95 million to $100 million per wet metric ton FOB. And that's obviously per tonne shipped. We also continued to add to our cash and investment reserves balance and -- putting us in a strong position to capitalize on new investment opportunities in the currently volatile market conditions. And I'll talk a little more about that a bit later. Firstly, in relation to safety, we continued a good performance following steady improvement over the last 2.5 years. The rolling 12 months lost time injury frequency rate remained at 0. And our rolling 12-month total recordable injury frequency rate, which picks up LTIs as well as other types of injuries, was unchanged at 1.5 injuries per 1 million man-hours worked at the end of the period. And that was down from 4.4 at the end of June. These are welcome results when compared with applicable industry standards. And obviously, safety is highly correlated with production performance. And our operations personnel are continually focused on achieving further improvements at the Koolan operation for what is a remote and frequently challenging site. Operationally, on the island, mine performance was steady despite the weather interruptions. Total material movement and ore production were 2.2 million tonnes and 0.6 million tonnes, respectively, but the waste-to-ore strip ratio declined as planned to 2.5:1 in the quarter, excluding rehandled material. And that compares with 3.3:1 for the year-to-date. All mining for the year-to-date totaled 1.7 million wet metric tons. As you may notice from the pictures in today's quarterly report, the eastern half of the Main Pit will be the source of high-grade ore over the remaining 18 to 24 months of the Koolan Island operation. The twin focus of activity is to maintain high-grade ore extraction from the eastern benches in the pit whilst we finish removing the adjacent former eastern haul ramp. This activity will widen the eastern half of the pit and enable future access to the lower levels of the high-grade ore body. Removal of that old haul ramp remains on track for completion in the September '25 quarter. For processing, plant throughput was consistent with the prior quarter at just over 0.7 million tonnes, enabling us to maintain steady sales of 0.7 million tonnes of iron ore grading 64.9% Fe and taking sales for our 9 months period to 2 million tonnes. This keeps us on track for our guidance range, as I mentioned, of 2.7 million to 3 million tonnes by the end of June. The remedial ground support program on the central footwall, where we suffered the rockfall failure back in August 2023, as many will remember, has also gone well. On-wall drilling and cable bolting in the overhang area above the failure zone was finished in the period. And installation of protective mesh and safety barrier fencing is on track for completion in the middle of this year. We're now rehandling waste rock material to build a temporary access ramp to mine out the protective high-grade ore buttress which was left behind below that rockfall zone. In relation to financials, operating cash flow, as we've mentioned, from Koolan Island increased to $22 million in the quarter, compared with $15 million in the December quarter, from ore sales revenue of $106 million. That cash flow equates to a solid cash margin of approximately $31 per wet metric ton of iron ore shipped. Our cash operating costs totaled $70 million in the quarter, which equated to $98 per tonne FOB. And that was before capital projects of $4 million, and that was mainly the footwall ground support works; and government and third-party mineral royalties of $10 million. That was marginally higher than the cash operating cost figure of $94 per wet metric ton shipped in the prior quarter, mainly due to the weather-related interruptions, but remains within our cost guidance of $95 to $100 FOB sold this year. For the 9-month financial year-to-date period, Koolan Island's cash flow totaled $42 million. And that's from iron ore sales of $266 million; and other revenue, predominantly insurance proceeds, of $28 million, less cash operating costs of $192 million. And that's, year-to-date, at $97 per tonne. Capitalized mining costs of $24 million, capital projects of $10 million and royalties in the 9-month period totaling $26 million. From a group perspective, cash flow for the quarter totaled similar to Koolan, obviously, at $21 million. And that comprised the $22 million figure from Koolan Island plus interest and other income of $6 million and less corporate administration and exploration costs of $7 million. For the 9 months year-to-date period, the group cash flow at this point is $42 million. So at the end of the quarter, after working capital movements and also the share buyback purchases that we've made which totaled a little over $5 million, the group's total cash and investment reserves increased to $460 million at period end. And that included the $22 million holding in Fenix Resources. And that was up from $451 million at the end of December 2024. The 31 March balance equates to around $0.39 per share; and does not include revenue receipts, obviously, from the final March shipment, which were banked in early April. Turning to pricing and market factors. Conditions, clearly, for many participants remained volatile. Although, iron ore, and that's similar with some of the other bulk commodities, has been a little steadier than some of the other metals. The average benchmark 62% Fe iron ore price increased slightly from USD 103 a tonne CFR in the prior quarter to USD 104 in the quarter just gone and traded in a range between USD 97 a tonne and USD 109 per tonne in the period. It's currently trading at a very little bit under USD 100 a tonne amid global tariff-related uncertainty. Of more relevance to our business, the high-grade 65% Fe price averaged USD 117 per tonne CFR over the quarter and is currently sitting at around USD 112 a tonne. That means that the grade-adjusted premium relative to 62% material averaged 7.6% for the quarter and has averaged 8.6% for the 9-month year-to-date period. That's obviously important for our business, as we sell that higher-grade ore and pick up that premium in our revenues. Shipping freight rates also eased slightly in the quarter to average around USD 11 per tonne shipped from Koolan to China. Consequently, the business realized an average price of USD 96 a tonne FOB for its high-grade fines in the March quarter. The weakening of the Australian dollar to the low 0.60 level is providing an offset to U.S.-denominated metal price weakness, with the current 62% Fe CR (sic) [ Fe CFR ] index price equating to an average Australian dollar price of around AUD 156 or AUD 157 per tonne CFR. We continue to monitor the iron ore and foreign exchange markets for suitable hedging opportunities to protect our future margins. At quarter end, we held commodity hedging contracts covering 240,000 tonnes over the period April to June 2025, at prices between AUD 157 and AUD 163 per tonne for 62% Fe equivalent. So slightly above the current spot price. We also have foreign exchange hedges in place covering USD 21 million in revenue for the April-to-September period, with cap prices ranging from $0.65 to $0.665; and floor prices, below which we don't participate, ranging from $0.578 to $0.604. And with that exchange rate weakness in the last week, we've also taken the opportunity to add a little to our foreign exchange hedge book. Regarding our share buyback program, we've accelerated purchases, as people will be aware, since lifting the maximum scope of the program from 5% up to 10% in February. And we spent a little over $5 million in the quarter to buy back 17.4 million shares at an average price of $0.313 per share. To date, under the program, we've bought 37 million shares. And that's just over 3% of the shares that were on issue at the start of the program last year. Before we close, I wanted to reiterate our current strategic tasks, which are twofold. Firstly, the management team here is obviously focused on safely maximizing production and cash flow generation from the Koolan operation. It is a terrific mine but requires constant focus from our experienced team on that site. And secondly, underpinned by Koolan's cash flows, the business is building cash reserves sufficient to pursue meaningful investments and acquisitions to create a larger and more profitable company. And as we've disclosed, we've assembled a handful of initial investments in resources companies where it's considered that future financing or strategic opportunities may arise, where we're utilizing the skills and experience within the business and other consultants and advisers that we've built up over many years to assist. These holdings are currently valued at approximately $17 million, in addition to our circa $22 million investment in Mid-West iron ore producer Fenix Resources. Reviews are now underway on a number of potentially significant longer-term investment opportunities within Australia, and we look forward to reporting on these going forward. So in summary. The March quarter reflected steady production and positive cash flow generation, which means, in relation to our fiscal '25 outlook, that we're on track to achieve our sales and cost guidance, subject of course to no major wet season interruptions; and to generate cash flows from Koolan to execute on our growth plans. With that, I will now hand back to you, Lisa, for any questions anyone may have.

[Operator Instructions] We do have a question; and it's from Glyn Lawcock, Barrenjoey.

Peter, I know it's very early on and I always ask this question of you, but you've got one of the -- obviously your major shareholder is one of the bigger mills in country. Do you have any feedback you've got from them on what they're thinking, a, that impact of tariffs? May be a bit early. But also one of the things that market is talking a lot about is the potential for a 5% mandated cut by the government. It doesn't seem like that's more talk than anything at the moment, but just any feedback you're getting through Shougang in terms of those 2 issues?

Look. At the moment, Glyn, the feedback has been obviously cautious because it's really not quite known what will happen. The discussion we've heard is focused on exports being redirected elsewhere. And we know that inventory levels and orders still seem to sit there. I don't know what the mandated reduction outlook might be because that hasn't really come through in our discussions to date, but I guess you'd describe the feeling from our customers as cautious. But the demand does still seem to be there for certainly our products.

Yes, okay. So I guess we'll just have to keep watching the export data and see what the tariff impact it has. Does it...

[indiscernible].

Yes. Does it in any way impact your business indirectly or directly as well, you think? I mean you're probably not buying a lot of equipment now or anything, anyway. So just wondering whether there's any tariff read-through.

No. I don't think there's really any tariff direct impacts on our exports from Koolan. We're certainly not buying plants and equipment at Koolan at this stage because we're in the rundown of the last couple of years. Some of the acquisition opportunities we're looking at do have foreign purchases of plants and equipment associated with them, so that comes into it but, at this stage, pretty early days. But from an overall perspective, it's really a China story, as you know. And so we're watching that really closely.

Yes. And then Peter, just finally: I mean you've got obviously the cash in the bank and you've got the buyback operating. I mean, at what point do you -- like, is that like you've got enough investments now that you think you can utilize the cash plus the buyback? Or are you still looking for more?

We're actively looking for more acquisition opportunities. We have some that are accelerating in review. And obviously, whether they come off or not, we'll see, but -- and if they do, we'll obviously be announcing it. In terms of that investment portfolio, we're comfortable with that portfolio running as it is. And the opportunities sit within that portfolio and outside it, so I guess it's a measured mix of investments, but we'd like this year, obviously, as our key focus to execute on something.

Yes. So I mean you've -- you lifted the buyback, I think you said, from 5% to 10% in February. If I heard you correctly, you've done only 3%, so far, [ of shares in ] issue, so I guess -- is 10% the upper limit? Or if we get to August and -- [ is there ] scope to go beyond the 10%, do you think?

Look. There's always scope. We started it in September. So you can only do 10% in a 12 months period, but the way that the Board has approved it at this point, it's up to 10% in that period. If we have transactions that look like they're going to come to fruition or certainly to execute, then clearly that buyback can be on and off, depending on what's happening at any time, but it's always a possibility it could be increased. 10% is the limit for the moment.

Okay, so reviewed at the full year result. All right, perfect.

[Operator Instructions] Okay, Peter, we have no further questions.

Okay, thanks, Lisa. And thank you, for everyone on the call. I appreciate your time. You know where to reach us, if you do have any further questions. And otherwise, have a good day. Thank you.