Mineral Resources Limited (MIN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi. Good morning. Welcome to the MinRes half year results. I'm Chris Ellison, Managing Director of MinRes. I'm going to be joined by Mark Wilson, CFO. I'm going to run you through the first half performance of the business from an operational point of view. Mark is going to take us through the financials. I'll cover off then on where we're heading, where I'm taking the business over the next 6 to 12 months and highlighting the priorities that we've got. And then we'll have some Q&A towards the end. I'll try and be fairly brief. I'm sure everyone is fairly anxious to get down to some of the questions you'd like us to answer if we don't cover it off in the report. Past 6 months have been pretty tough. And looking forward to the next 6 months, we've got some really good things happening in the business. We're ramping up Onslow Iron. It's been a great success, the project. I'm going to say we've probably got the design and the construct on that thing. We've probably got a good 95% right across the board. We've got substantial capacity built into that project with over 40 million tonnes of capacity out of the mine on mining crushing. We've got plenty of capacity on the haul road. The transhippers are good for about 7 million tonnes per transshipper and we're getting that better and better. But clearly, I mean, we've had no cyclones last year. This year, as luck would have it when we first opened the project, we've had 5. How lucky can you get. Collectively, the water we've had across that road is probably the worst the region has ever had in over 40 years. We're dealing with it. We're managing it. It hasn't going to -- it's not going to affect the ramp-up much. It's probably pushed us back 1 month or 6 weeks to where we wanted to be. And we're probably in the overall scheme of things, going to be missing a miniscule 3 million tonnes, so not a big deal. Trucks are running and life is still going on. Onslow, as you know, it's cash flow positive. And these cash flows coming out of this business are going to be substantial moving forward for a long, long time. And they're going to help us deleverage the balance sheet. We're also primed to profit from the lithium assets as we see the MinRes mines are reducing their costs. All-in sustaining costs have been coming down month-by-month and we'll talk about that shortly. And we've seen the markets incrementally increasing in demand and the prices are slowly improving. Look, for me, personally, the issues that I faced over the last 6 months, we're done on them. They're behind me and I'm finished. They're behind the business. The Board has provided clarity on the market where it stands. I don't think we could be any more clearer. They're backing me to move the business forward. And the Board and I are clearly in lockstep. Our focus is on creating value for our shareholders alone. And I'm going to walk you through where we're taking the business to be able to achieve that. First half summary. Bit of a mixed half. The revenue was up, underlying EBITDA at $302 million, down from around 55%. Mining Services delivered a record EBITDA of nearly $380 million, an outstanding result. But we've said from '24 through to '26, that business is doubling, already a very strong long-term annuity business, just getting better and better. The commodities made a small loss, a bit under $30 million. Iron ore and Onslow made money. Yilgarn, of course, high cost and just become unprofitable to be able to keep that going. So we made the decision to close that down. Bald Hill, we decided we wanted to pull some tonnes out of the market. And the Bald Hill costs were slightly higher than the other 2. So we've shut that down. And we've started to realize some really great cost benefits coming out of Marion in December for the second half is going to be much, much better and we'll talk about then how we've achieved that. Balance sheet remains our key focus, strong liquidity in the business. We've got over $1.5 billion available to us. There are no new projects happening over the next 18 months to 2 years. And our focus is simply on banking cash and minimizing spend. And of course, there'll be no dividend coming out of us. Average ROIC over the last 19 years has dropped down to about 9.25%. But regardless, we've got some assets parked up that aren't earning cash. And as they come online, we'll get back closer to where we want to be with our 20%. Operational review. We're going to cover off on the operational progress across the business. Again, at the AGM, I outlined the focus for the year was on balance sheet, Onslow ramp-up, pulling costs out of lithium and growing the Mining Services business. And we've made good progress across the board on all of those areas. Another standout performance of course from the first half from Mining Services, I mean, this business over the last 19 years has continued to grow around 15% per annum. In some years, we've got a lot better than that. And we're in the midst of doing that again. It's not just a contractor anymore. It's becoming a major infrastructure owner of quality assets, a lot of those contracts that it has on a lot of those great assets at 20 to 30 to 40 years in duration. So we had record production EBITDA of $350 million, production volume 136 million tonnes, steady year-on-year. We increased the volumes from Onslow on the ramp-up. So that added to the value of the Mining Services. But then we shut down the Yilgarn and Bald Hill, of course, and that was a negative. Production EBITDA was sitting around about $2.60 a tonne, which is up from the $2.20 last half. And that's, of course, influenced by shutting down some marginal costs that we had down in that Yilgarn region and bringing on Onslow. First, EBITDA on the haul road for the tolling sitting around $29 million for 100% ownership. Mining Services is built on innovation. It's the world's largest crushing contractor. We've got over 29 plants running through our joint ventures and our external client sites. We're the world's largest operator of single engine jumbo road trains. We've got 110 in operation. Of those 110, we've got about 80 now on the onsite project. But we've also got about another 31 with external clients spread across 3 different sites. We've been operating these larger units now for close on 5 years, both internally and externally and they've been a great success for us. And of course, the 20,000-tonne transhippers, sort of the world's first in terms of innovation. And as we all know, they are operating above expectations. We've got 3 operating of Onslow. And right now, we're commissioning the fourth unit up there and the fifth is only a few months away. We've got a really great, strong relationship with external clients. And it's all built on being able to deliver performance and being able to provide services at a lesser cost than our clients can. And that's simply because we focus and specialize in that area where we've got the design build capacity to be able to get product on the ground at a capital cost that's reflective of our charges. So, we commenced 2 new contracts during this half. We've got 4 crushing contracts that were renewed. And we've got 3 other contracts that are under negotiation. So, strong business, going well. The iron ore business, first half, 9.7 million tonnes exported across 3 hubs. Central Pilbara, steady operations, 4.9 million tonnes shipped at about AUD 74 FOB. Iron Valley, we took full ownership of that from BCI. And Wonmunna, we opened up another new pit. So everything just sort of steady state in the Central Pilbara. Yilgarn, of course, 2.3 million tonnes shipped. And that costs us some money. 780 people from that region, I'm proud to say we've redeployed them across other sites as we're ramping up Onslow Iron. And we have the project -- sorry, and the sales process is underway for the Yilgarn region. We've got a number of interested parties. And there is no doubt that smaller, more focused parties with a much smaller focused operation. We'll be able to make some money out of that going forward. And we're supportive of trying to keep that region where we've got employment coming in. It's so important for those country areas. Onslow Iron, the ramp-up has gone to schedule in the first half, excluding the cyclones we've had, of course, that have hit us in January-February, produced 6.3 million tonnes. The project shipped 4.6 million. MinRes share, 2.5 million at FOB on the ramp-up of $77 where we're sitting in that run rate of around December of about 18 million tonnes. The product we've got coming out of there is well received by customers, 85% realization. Project cash flows are positive from November and growing with every month. So a bit of detail around Onslow Iron. It's the biggest and most innovative project we've ever delivered. As we know, it's taken up some capital and some effort, so huge progress pit-to-ship. The project ramp-up to $35 million continues. And we'll talk about that shortly. The -- as of December, we were running at 80 million tonne run rate. We've got 3 next-gen crushing plants. Each of them is capable of delivering about 13 million tonnes per unit. We've had them idling at 13.3 million tonnes, so certainly capable of delivering a bit over 40 million tonnes capacity. And with a couple of mods, we probably get them to about 45 million. The auto truck loading system continues its commissioning. We've got 4 lanes in there. So we can simultaneously load 4 units at a time. We've got 2 of those operational now. And we'll progressively do the other 2 as we move forward towards the end of February and early March. Airport is operational. The resort is fully occupied, 500 couple rooms that we're very proud of where we are creating better diversity in our workforce and, of course, a much safer work environment for our female staff to be in. So the haul road, operational, we got 71 trucks on that. We'll talk about where we're going with that in a sec. All the port infrastructure is complete. It's got a very comfortable capacity at 35 million tonne run and 3 tranship is operational, as I said, about 21 million tonnes capacity out of those 3 units. And TSV 4 is commissioning. And of course, they're providing a service beyond expectations. We've loaded over 26 ships in the first half while we've been ramping up. So onsite haul road, as I said, we've had the worst rain events through January into early February. And downtime, we lost about 8 days of loading in January and another 7 days in February through those cyclones. We've had a huge volume of water dumped on us. We've now got a very clear indication of where all the water pulls around that road and how long it takes to move away when you get that sort of rain. We've had some scarring and some washouts. But regardless of that, the road is still operational. And we are carrying out repairs on the road. So, the other issue we had, too, was we had a cyclone sitting up at the Cocos Island for a few days. And that just sat there and generated a 4- to 5-meter swell that sent it right down the Pilbara Cast, so none of that was helpful. And we're overcoming it. And it's not going to interfere with the ramp-up of the project much. As I said earlier, we're probably going to drop forecasting about 3 million tonnes of overall production, which is nothing in the overall scheme of things. The Onslow haul road, it's the most substantial heavy haul road that's ever been built in the world. Of course, we were out. We were using internal, when I say internal, national designers, civil designers and international experts were involved in the design of the road from all aspects. It was reviewed by main roads and also the Australian Road Research Board were heavily involved. And through all of that, I mean, we got it built well. It's about 95% or 96% right, except for these washouts. And then we've recently decided that if we put another asphalt coating on top of it around 40 to 50 millimeters in thickness, it will make it bulletproof for a long time. It will reduce our operating costs by about $20 million to $25 million. We have to do that sooner rather than later. We want to do it on the ramp-up so that gives us minimum disruption and we can manage the traffic around that. It will take us through to probably end of August to get all of that done in a way where we don't interfere with the production. So what we've done so far over the road, to give a bit of context, we've done about 18,000-plus trips up to the port. About 3 million kilometers have been traveled. So, I mean, considering the roads held up incredibly well. And look, by the time we finish that, we're going to do -- where we've got water ingress and damage, we're going to do some, what they call cement stabilization. And then as I said, we'll lay some more asphalt over the entire surface, which will give us a long-term bulletproof road. The other thing that's really important to acknowledge is that we don't want to do it in patches over a couple of years because until we can get everyone off this road, we can't start the autonomous journey. And of course, the autonomous journey does 2 things, most importantly, no humans on the road. So no risk to human life once we get the trucks autonomous. And then the second most important thing, too, is that it is a fairly significant cost saving when we get the drivers out of the -- out of it. So we're going to be spending about -- over these next 6 months, about $170 million on that patch work and the coating. And then we're probably going to add about another $60 million-ish in FY '26 and that will pretty much wrap us up. So I hope that gives you a good understanding of the road. So it's not that big a deal in the overall scheme of things. And it's something that's highly manageable and controllable. It's a civil issue. It's not where you've got engines falling out of the sky or anything dramatic that's a problem, that's going to put the project at risk. It's just something that we're going to manage. So lithium for second -- first half '25, I think we've probably got the best hard rock business in the world. We've got in excess of 340 million tonnes of resource sitting in the ground. Less than 25% of Mt. Marion is being drilled out across the prospective ground. I've spoken about that before. And of course, at Wodgina, we're mining in a pit that's one of 17 prospective targets. So we've got a couple of hundred million tonnes of reserve and resource sitting in the Wodgina pit. I'm sure you've got some questions about that. Pretty tough conditions. We've had -- over the last 12 or 18 months we've had a downturn on the price of spodumene, mainly because the demand anticipation coming out of the U.S. and Europe was not as strong as what it was anticipated going back a few years ago. We've focused over the last 12 months on reducing costs. So we've reduced the workforce by over 25% across our lithium business. We've stood down over 150 pieces of equipment that we're moving on. And we started to realize some great cost benefits coming out of this operation, particularly when we got through to December. So the -- both mines were profitable in December. And they're going to continue to improve as we move forward over the next 6 months. Mt. Marion, we shipped 100,000 tonnes of SC6 equivalent, USD 667 a tonne FOB. We reduced costs, improved recoveries with better ore feed down in that region. We lowered our throughput to match the demand. And we've got additional mag separation we've put in, which has helped us in removing a lot of the iron content before it goes into the plant. And of course we paused the underground decline. Wodgina, we shipped 101,000 tonnes, USD 628 FOB. We slowed the mining down, of course, to match the market conditions. We're now running 2 trains with quality ore feed. And we're going to be able to do that continuously. We've only been able to achieve that from December going forward. So again, Wodgina was profitable and cash flow positive in December. And we expect Wodgina is just going to continue to improve and get better and better over the next 18 months. So by the time we get to 18 months out, we'll have enough fresh continuous feed for 3 trains. In fact, we've got enough for 4. And Train 3 will be turned on subject to demand and pricing. We also expect that the lithium market is going to continue to incrementally improve. We don't think that it's going to get anywhere back to where it was. But it's certainly going to get back over the next couple of years to a pretty decent business. Bald Hill, of course, we shut that down. And we shipped 60,000 tonnes out of there before we put it into care and maintenance. Energy, we sold off 2 of our 10 tenements in the Perth Basin to Hancock for $780 million. We created a great JV with them. And we're going to be in partnership in both the Carnarvon and the Perth Basin going forward. And we'll jointly go and find some more gas in those regions. The opportunity to earn another $327 million is subject to drill results that we get out of the Moriary Prospect. We drilled that in January. The results take a number of months to be able to analyze and get a clear understanding of where we are. And we're currently drilling Lockyer-6 and we're down currently there. We're down probably about 3,800 meters and we're heading about 4.5 kilometers deep. So we'll get down to the target depth probably by the end of this week. It will probably take us through till end of June to come out and analyze what those results are. Carnarvon Basin, highly prospective, it's adjacent to the Chevron offshore tenements. And we completed an area of survey at the Ashburton region late last year. So people and our workplace, sustainability, all incredibly important to us. It's an area I think MinRes has done a huge amount on over the last 5 years. Safety and well-being, we still sit in the top 5% of the mining industry and what we've been able to achieve. Our TRIFR is up to 3.83. That's pretty much impacted by the ingression of 2,500 people that we brought into the business to be able to build the Onslow Iron project. And as you know, we've scaled that down substantially. But commending our people on the way they manage the safety through that project, it went extremely well. We did have one subcontractor on the job that regrettably we lost. Mental and physical health for our people remains a strong focus. We've got 4 doctors, 3 nurses at Head Office. We've got 6 nurses and 3 paramedics -- 13 paramedics spread across our site. And we have 7 in-house psychologists, 5 of them are on FIFO going on to our sites, very -- become a very integral part of our business and looking after our people. The mental health area is getting a great result. We've had 622 consults with people over that 6-month period. Very important to us that we make sure that we're there to support our people. Diversity, we're growing the workforce in the future. We currently got 121 apprentices employed, 31 trainees. And we've got 38 Uni-graduates in the business full time. We've also got another 23 part-time Uni-grads that are working within the business. 22.3% of our workforce are female and 3.5% are indigenous. Employee experience in the business, we're getting better and better at creating a safer, better environment for all of our people, both in the Head Office and around our sites. We're investing in industry-leading facilities for our people to support retention. Retention is incredibly important with our people. We've put the resort-style accommodation into Onslow. We've got 500 couple rooms up there. Very important that we've created a community type environment and it's going better than expectations. Head Office, platinum well-rated facility where we've got great facilities where people come into the office in the morning and they've got a whole range of facilities to be able to make their stay more pleasant and to make them want to be in the office. We've recently opened up a new day care. 105 children can be accommodated in the day care. It's probably -- we consider probably the best in Perth. It's an educational day care. And the parents and the kids are loving it. MinRes Air, 340 flights in the first half, great feedback. Most important thing we're getting out of that. The reason we started this is so that we could deliver our people to sites at a time of our choosing. And that meant that we have had much, much less downtime in the changeover of our process plants and our mining fleets, saving us tens of millions of dollars a year. The bonus with that, of course, is that we get our people directly to and from site efficiently and in comfort where they're well taken care of. So, employee experience continues to grow, which is really important to us as a team. Sustainability. We think WA is probably the most ethical jurisdiction in the world. Its exceptional working conditions for people and its exceptional environmental standards and a high caliber of mining company that knows how to rehabilitate and manage and look after the environment. We're focused, of course, on cleaner energy. We're looking at cutting emissions wherever we are. We're focused on that right across the business. And we are more focused probably on reducing our diesel burn across the business. Not a lot more options coming out of how we do that. We've got the solar. We've got the wind. We're using all of those tools that are available to us. And we are trying to reduce, as I said, those emissions in every way we can. We introduced decarbonization fund last July, so all MinRes operations are charged for every tonne of carbon that they emit into the atmosphere. That incentivizes the business to be more energy efficient. But we also, in turn, use those funds to be able to put into green energy and to be able to multiply the speed that we're moving out of emitting emissions. Early projects, fuel reduction, automation, electrification of equipment and, of course, green energy sources continuing to grow. Our traditional owner partnerships. I had the pleasure again of giving out some contract awards over this half. So we've awarded 6 new agreements with traditional owner businesses. We try and get them out 5- to 10-year type agreements. And it's all about making sure that we create long-term sustainable jobs so that our traditional owners and partners in the region we work can afford to have the housing and the health and all of the benefits that we all have grown accustomed to. So that's sort of where we've been over the last 6 months. I'm going to hand over to Mark now and he'll take you through the financials. Thanks, Mark.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everybody. My name is Mark Wilson. I'm the Group CFO for MinRes. And it's a pleasure to be here this morning with you to walk you through the financial results for the half. There's a lot to get through. I'm going to start just with a few comments on governance. Last week, the Board provided an update on the progress being made around internal processes and controls to strengthen governance. I'm not going to speak for the Board on these matters. But what I will say is that progress is being made. It's progressing well and that it's progressing with their oversight and with the full support of the management team. In terms of the new Chair, that recruitment process is well progressed. It's being undertaken with the assistance of an international search firm. And the Board anticipates making an announcement by the June quarter at the latest. In terms of the Ethics and Governance Committee, that continues to be supported by internal and external resources. And it's progressing the recruitment of a new governance-focused internal function that will report directly to the Board. Turning to the financials and beginning with the P&L. And as always, there's a full reconciliation available in the appendices of our underlying statutory results. As Chris mentioned, the group delivered an underlying EBITDA of $302 million for the half. There are a few aspects I just want to call out. First is the Mining Services result. As Chris said, $379 million, that's a record for us. The production volumes were consistent period-on-period, but the result was delivered as Onslow turned on. That's a project that's going to last for decades. In terms of the commodities, Chris called out the small losses in iron ore. I do want to emphasize or point out that the Yilgarn loss was $87 million. So sitting within that $302 million profit was an $87 million loss in the Yilgarn as we moved that operation to care and maintenance. That loss was almost fully offset by Onslow and by the Pilbara Hubs with Onslow delivering $54 million of EBITDA for us in that half. So the total iron ore EBITDA loss was $9 million. Lithium was a loss of $15 million. But each of Marion and Wodgina were actually marginally profitable for the half. In terms of the corporate and the intersegment, corporate come down to outflows of $53 million through the half which is half the prior period. We expect over '25 for the full year that to be about $110 million, reflecting the savings that we've identified. And we'll talk through that in a little bit more detail later. In terms of reported NPAT, that was a loss of $807 million, driven predominantly by impairment charges taken on Bald Hill and on Yilgarn, moving to care and maintenance and $230-odd million of post-tax translation impact on foreign currency on the bonds. The next slide takes you through the -- effectively the delta in the performance of the underlying EBITDA. You can see there the strong impact of the adverse movements in lithium price and iron ore price. As Chris said, we've taken steps to address cost structure in the lithium, in the Lithium segment, lithium business. And Onslow, of course, is fundamentally transforming the nature of that iron ore business going forward. In terms of cash flow, as reported in our quarterly a few weeks ago, we finished the quarter -- finished the half with a closing cash balance of $720 million. We did have a negative operating cash movement and an outflow of $0.5 billion. That was largely related to the increase in the Onslow carried loan of $300 million and a working capital impact of $0.5 billion with trade payables decreasing as CapEx started to unwind. In terms of investments, obviously, we -- as Chris said, we realized $1.7 billion net of cash from the sale of the haul road and also of the gas transaction, offset by the payments to Red Hill and BCI for Iron Valley. In terms of CapEx, CapEx for the half, $1.4 billion, of which $300 million just under referable to the carried loan. Most of that CapEx, not surprisingly, on Onslow is outlined on that slide. Turning to the balance sheet. The next few slides cover the balance sheet. We recognize it's a concern for many of you. We hear those concerns. I want to talk you through how we think about it. In terms of the balance sheet, you can see capital employed has grown to $8.9 billion over the period. It's funded in part by recycling of capital from existing assets within the group. Sitting on the balance sheet is $794 million loan payable to us by the joint venture parties at Onslow. That loan is paid from 80% of their pretax free cash flow. Repayment of that loan has begun. It started last half. We expect to receive that loan back over the next few years. In terms of the debt, the net debt number, as you can see, has grown to $5.1 billion. On the following slide, we've tried to make it as easy as possible for you to follow that transition period-on-period. You can see the impact of the investment proceeds, the capital expenditure, the working capital movements and so on. And as you know and as we've talked about on the quarterly call, $300 million of the movement was referable to the foreign exchange translation impact of the Aussie dollar falling at balance date to $0.62. I just want to spend a bit of time on this slide because it's important. We took -- Chris and I took a decision 2019 as to how we would look at the balance sheet going forward. And we took a decision to go to the U.S. bond market to fund the growth of the business. We made that decision because of the flexibility that market provides us. In 2019, we were able to secure or obtain 8-year unsecured money with no credit history. We've had incredible support from that market since that time. The first of those bonds that we've raised matures in May '27. From May '25, a few months' time, it's callable at par by us. That gives us enormous flexibility in terms of how we think about that instrument. Our ability to repay it, refinance it, extend it, repay it in part. We have enormous flexibility going forward with that instrument. We have no financial maintenance covenants on those bonds, as I've said previously, none. We have -- as you can see from the chart on the right, the bonds have traded above par since we last went to that market in the tail end of '23. And that market understands the benefits of the ramp-up of Onslow and its ability to service commitments we're making going forward. I want to emphasize that the movement in and out of that market is very quick. We can refinance very quickly. It's a very streamlined process. Sitting behind the bond structure that we have is the revolving credit facility, $800 million. We have 9 banks in that facility. It's a fully secured facility. So it sits at the top of the capital structure. It is secured by over $10 billion worth of assets. We had other banks who wanted to join that facility, but we didn't make room for them. The relationship with each of those banks is incredibly strong and supportive. Next slide calls out a few considerations that I just want to point you to as you think about the balance sheet. We believe we've reached peak leverage. We believe that our earnings will grow with the ramp-up of Onslow and that you will see that net debt-to-EBITDA ratio come down naturally. We also believe the debt will come down as we generate free cash from Onslow and the rest of the business. Sitting on the balance sheet, as I said, is at -- an $800 million carry loan. $250 million of that is considered to be current. That means in the next 12 months, I expect to receive payments from our JV partners of over $250 million. In addition, as Chris called out, we have the potential to earn over $500 million in additional consideration on the road and gas transactions. I said it on the quarterly call, I want to repeat myself again. The quality of the earnings that this business is generating now, now, and the quality it will generate into the future, fundamentally different to where we were a few years ago. We've had to invest heavily to do that. We've had to fund our JV partners to do that. But it's been a great decision that sets the business up for decades to come. From that earnings growth, from the cash generation, we can see a clear pathway to our target of gross leverage of 2x in coming years. Turning to guidance. Chris has talked through these, so I'll just move through it quickly. Chris referenced 3 million tonnes coming out of Onslow in 100% terms. Our share, we think, is a little bit less, obviously. So we're calling down guidance at Onslow to $8.8 million to $9.3 million, previously $10.5 million. We've got FOB costs going up a couple of dollars a tonne just because of the impact of the next 6 months with less efficiency than we would have otherwise had. And the flow-on impact is a call down to Mining Services production of 15 million tonnes. We're maintaining guidance for all other operations. In terms of CapEx guidance, we said on the call recently that CapEx was weighted for the first half. In August, we guided to about $1.9 billion. We subsequently identified in September $300 million in cost savings across CapEx and OpEx. To date, we've realized over $150 million of OpEx savings annualized. And that's come out of head count reductions, IT, off-hiring of gear no longer required and so on. We did identify $180 million of CapEx savings in September. We put a hold to a whole range of programs, exploration programs, upgrades, particularly at the lithium projects. And we put projects on hold that we had intended to incur. We announced the transaction with Hancock in October. And those funds give us a little bit more flexibility. We are committed to drill as a result of that deal, that's about $50 million of extra spend. But just as Chris said, a reminder that we have contingent outcomes resting on the outcome of those drilling results, which could be significant. We have increased our spend at Onslow. The road is going to cost us some money, as Chris said. It's a 30-year operation. It's the right time to make this decision now. We could have deferred it. We could have delayed it. We could have pushed it back. We could have increased the road risk of degradation over time. That would have been the wrong decision. It would have been a short-term decision. That's not how we run this business. Cost of that repair this half, as Chris said, we will be pushing up towards $200 million. The remainder of the spend at Onslow started a whole range of items. There's autonomy, increased capacity through the system, debottlenecking, cost at the airport and so on. But overall, that construction project is well over 90% complete. With that, I'm going to pass back to Chris to talk about our outlook and how Onslow will transform the business going forward. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks very much. Okay. Let me walk you through briefly where we're heading over the next 6 to 12 months. First of all, Mining Services outlook. Again, this is the heartbeat of the MinRes business. We focus on this. It's part of everything that we do in our joint ventures. And it's been a phenomenal track record this business has had over 32 years. And we have never been in a better position than we are right now. Chart shows you the progress we made over the last 5 years. We've got compound EBITDA growth of around 21% per annum despite having some idle assets sitting out there and the Onslow project ramping up. A lot of talk -- a lot of negative talk around this business, which I'm not going to say it doesn't get annoying. But is this possibly the best Mining Services business on the planet and it's got phenomenal growth ahead of it. More than 70% of its long-term contracts sit in the 20-year plus range. I believe that there's no organization that gives better value to our clients. I mean, better value, better service. We can get product for them continuously on the ground. We don't -- we've never shut a mill down. Our operations are flawless through the quality of the people that we have. The relationship we have with the clients is incredible. We have never had a legal dispute with our clients. And we're very savvy about what they want. It's a great business. And I know I'm a little passionate about it, but we really focus on this. It's probably -- without doubt, without saying it's in the strongest growth period it's ever been in. I've probably said that 4 or 5 times over the years. It just keeps getting bigger and better. Onslow Iron, of course, is a game changer. I mean it's the real model. It's what we aim for. And again, that model has brought a project to life for our joint venture partners that otherwise would never have happened. And we've done it in a very innovative way with very unique equipment. And of course, the Mining Services annuity stream is totally not dependent on commodity prices. I mean it -- the rates and charges are there for the long term. Significant opportunities sitting externally and we anticipate exceptional growth going forward for, look, through the next 3 to 4 years where we can see we're talking. Onslow Iron, it's a brilliant project. And by the way, just back on Mining Services, fast forward, I mean, get me through to July-August this year. This is a pretty miserable time at the moment with the inbounds that we've got. But get me through to July-August next year and have a look what Mining Services will be producing and what iron ore will be producing. If you have a look at a P/E ratio of 10 on our Mining Services business, I would say that we are a touch undervalued. And that will give us a whole different complexion on our debt ratio. So Onslow Iron, 35 million tonnes, 3 earnings streams are coming out of that for MinRes, of course. On an average year, it will make us around $1.5 billion a year. MineCo, this CFR cost into China around USD 46 a tonne. So it's about $30 FOB, $9 for shipping and about another $7 in the royalties. At spot around $100, we'll have a received price of about USD 79 a tonne. So that's a 15% discount for impurities and another 7% discount for moisture. So that delivers us a margin of about USD 33 a tonne or about $1.2 billion for the EBITDA -- for the JV. MinRes' share of that is around about $1 billion a year. So get us through to June, July, August of this year, about $1 billion coming out of Mining Services, about another $1 billion coming out of iron ore and fingers crossed on where we're heading on the others. So the 4 life of mine contracts sitting in the Mining Services, so that's crushing, haulage, port services and transhipping. About $280 million a year EBITDA sitting in there, and of course, the toll road. It's on a 51% basis. It's about $144 million a year EBITDA and about the same goes to our partner. And by the way, I mean, that was a really good decision we made going back some time ago, we brought Morgan Stanley on board, their infrastructure partners. They've got a 49% share in that road and a great partner. I mean we've been very fortunate over the years to be able to choose some pretty amazing joint venture partners. So the relationship is very strong and it will continue to grow. Lithium outlook, challenging market conditions. We all know that. Lithium is in the toilet. We responded quickly to the downturn. International investment lithium going into projects has certainly stalled, so not a lot of new lithium coming on the market. And it sort of lost its gloss, one could say also. We've seen some price movement from mid last year coming forward. So we sort of bottomed out. There was some sales going through at $720, $730. Our last cargo that we sold in February, SC6 equivalent was $920 a tonne. So we can see incremental movement. And we are certainly feeling the demand curve is growing. We have a long-term focus on maximizing the hard rock portfolio. We think it's probably close to the best in the world. We've got 3 operating plants, of course, one on care and maintenance. And we've got a huge amount of resource in the ground untapped, undiscovered. We'll be putting more drill rods in the ground, not in the immediate future, but 12, 18 months down the track we'll be sort of looking at trying to improve that. The other thing, too, we have no offtake agreements with anyone. I've always been very strong on that. With our iron ore, with the exception of Onslow, we've kept that, we sell into the spot market. That's where we maximize best value. And we can move with market prices and we react very quickly. Near-term focus on the lithium is simply being able to cut costs and maximize recoveries and make sure that we're getting good feed to the plants. And by the way, I mean, we're taking the dirt as it comes. So there is no high grading going on in these mines. I mean we're mining these responsibly with a view for the next 30 to 50 years. Mt Marion outlook, for the next 18 months, probably got to put another stage of winds in there, very low cost to be able to do that. I think we've got them sitting in storage. Float plant study going on. We're looking at what we would do if we added a very small incremental floats plant down there. We've got several million tonnes of ground dirt sitting in the pit that we could get at for a very low cost. And then there is a certain amount of tonnes that go through Mt Marion that doesn't react to the dense media separation and it needs float. So that would overall kick our recovery up significantly without adding any cost for drill and blast mining, crushing and processing, et cetera. So it would probably be a smart outlook. We'll make a decision on that probably towards the latter half of this year. Keep you informed on that. We'll also have a look at bringing the underground back into play, but that again, that will be sometime down the track. And again, we want to keep these things cash flow positive. So we are doing some near exploration around Mt Marion. We've got probably, as I said earlier, 80% of the ground that's never had a drill rod in it, highly, highly prospective. And we're targeting any close pits where we've got low strip. Wodgina outlook is quite simple. When we slowed down Wodgina some time ago with the downturn, that also significantly slowed down the rate of strip back that we were doing to pull the top off the mountain to get down to a life of mine strip ratio. So our strip ratio has been a little higher than expected. What I can say is we've got enough good, clean dirt now to feed 2 trains continuously going forward. So that means recoveries are going to up. They'll be -- they're up now. And they'll continue to grow. Moving forward, we're probably 18 months away from being able to feed 3 trains with clean, efficient dirt. And when I say 83 trains, we can probably feed 4. I'm not -- but there's no -- there'll be no decision to go and build a fourth train, of course. So just a bit of clarity around Wodgina. There is a report come out by Albemarle. And I did send them a message thanking them for the heads up. But the strip ratio at Wodgina, to be clear we're the mining operator up there, it's under 6:1 this year. And it will be -- within the next 12 to 14 months, it will go under 5:1 strip ratio. Life of mine strip up there is around about 4.75:1. So we're heading in that direction. We'll probably be there within 18 months. And that gets us down to an all-in sustaining cost that's going to be very profitable for us going forward. So 12 to 18 months out from now, I mean, it's going to be a great mine. We're also working on the recoveries incrementally. We've got a pathway where we're heading on those. And we expect once we've got clean feed in the plant, we've done a few minor alterations again over the next 18 months. We're looking for a recovery down there of around about 70%. So we're going to be in the same order of magnitude 18 to 20 months out down at Mt Marion. Energy outlook, not a lot to mention in there. We've done well with it so far. We brought in Hancock. We'll continue drilling under a joint venture. We're yet to get that -- all the documentation stamped and signed off on that. But the deal was done, the money is banked. And we simply need to get the few final issues done. And we can sit down as a JV and start planning out where we're going and what we're going to do going forward over the next 12 to 18 months. So the business focus, of course, just to wind up, focused on the balance sheet, banking cash, minimizing spend. That's our key focus. We've got a few issues that we're dealing with and I can't emphasize enough. The haul road that we've built is quite exceptional. It's unique in the world. There's never been one built to take that traffic movement. I mean, typically, the quad road trains that we're running into Port Hedland hauling 130 tonnes payload. They've got axle loadings of about 8 tonnes. These trucks have got 20-tonne axle loading to give you a bit of order of magnitude. When we built the Carina Road, we spent about 15% of what we've spent building this haul road at Onslow per kilometer built. And for the last 2 years, we've been running these 300 tonnes on that Kareena haul road with zero damage. So this road is just simply -- it's brand new, it's settling. We've had the worst weather event. You can imagine in 40 years, we've had more rain than that region has ever seen. And that was followed by another low 5 days later that come down the coast, followed by this most recent cyclone. So we've had it all. It's not doing too much to us in the overall scheme of things from January through to June. I think we're going to be missing 3 million or 4 million tonnes. I mean no big deal. It's a civil problem. It's got a solution. We have the solution and we are building it. So please don't turn into civil engineers and panic, just stay out there as analysts. And we'll be able to do what we always do. So look, I mean, going forward, huge opportunity, as Mark said earlier, come July-August this year. We'll be spending $1 billion a year coming out of Mining Services. We're probably doing the same coming out of iron ore. Lithium is starting to look more promising. And we're hoping that's going to be adding cash to the bank account. So all in all, I mean, this is a great business. Nothing has changed. I'm totally focused on where we're heading with this. I'm in lockstep with the Board and subject to all things being normal and people getting positive on us again. I've put the past behind me. And the Board has clearly outlined where this business is heading. And I've told you operationally where I'm taking it. So look, we're done with the presentation. And I think any questions, please direct them. I'll get Mark up here to join me, so we can answer anything financial.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley.

Look, the first one is obviously on the most important topic of the release today, which is obviously the haul road. You have talked about it to some extent already. I guess my -- just to provide a bit of context. Obviously, as the quarterly cyclone impact was flagged and potholes and cracks on part of the road were also flagged. And there was also an understanding that some safety upgrades were being brought forward to avoid further truck rollovers and potentially also save on the OpEx. I guess with the magnitude of the CapEx spend today and also the fact that we're asphalting the entire road now, is there perhaps more of a problem here than that was perhaps appreciated at the time of the quarterly? And I guess, in terms of the repair works that you've carried out so far, what signs have you seen that kind of give you the confidence that you can actually ramp up to nameplate within the next 6 months? That's the first one. I'll come back with the second.

Okay. There were a few questions in there. Well done. Okay. Let me be very clear here first and foremost. So the condition of the road, as you're just putting it, that was outlined in the quarterly. It was outlined accurately. It's just somewhere in the background. There's momentum gathering on it. So I've explained the road very clearly on where we're at with it. Mark did so in the quarterly and nothing has changed. Most importantly, the construction of the road and the issues that we've had with a couple of trucks going over are not related. So the road is not dangerous. The road is, as I said, built by -- designed by national and international designers, including the main roads and including the committee that sits behind main road, so the design. And I'm going to say that we've got it about 95% right. I want to remind everyone, too, that when every rail that's been built in the Pilbara, I mean, that first 12 months or 18 months when they come into operation, they go through hell. I mean they don't get the culverts right, they get washouts. They get bits of rail disappearing. And it takes them a couple of years to get them to settle in. This is no different. This is a transport right away. It is no different. So there is, as I said, overall, for this calendar year, for the tonnes we're running at, we're probably going to be about 3 million tonnes short, not even significant enough to report. So this thing is progressively being fixed. How do we know it's going to work, because we've done some trial work on it over the last couple of months. We've got probably -- I'm going to go, we've probably got [ 100 million ] of the new type of remediation we're putting in. Both in putting some stabilization into it and then putting the 40 million to 50 million layer of hot mix over the top and it's working just fine. We've actually put it in areas where there's ramps. So you've also got the trucks drive tires are really trying to grind into it and it's gone extremely well. So look, I hope that answers your question. I hope it answers everyone's question on the road.

No, it does. Chris. Look, I'll move on to the second question. Perhaps a bit of a focus change, I guess, on to Mining Services. Obviously, that's a business that you call the heartbeat of MinRes. And I just wanted to work through the numbers. Obviously, the EBITDA margin today was quite good at $2.60 a tonne, and it's a bit of a rise, obviously, from the $2 that you got in the last fiscal. So I just wanted to understand sort of is there elements there in terms of the Onslow ramp-up that are helping that margin? And how should we kind of forecast that margin going forward? Is there going to be margin expansion alongside the volume expansion that you've already highlighted for us to understand potentially the upside in that EBITDA? That's my second one.

Look, I'll let Mark answer that mostly. Look, to be conservative on that, from an operational point of view with the ups and downs of stuff where we're changing and bouncing around, I would use a number of about $220 million, but Mark, what's your thoughts?

What I've said previously is that the establishment of Onslow gives us a great opportunity to reposition the Mining Services business to another level. It's already operating at around $0.5 billion a year. It has been for a number of years. This is the opportunity to reset that and take that to the next level. I've said that when we framed those contracts, we were taking on risk and we needed to be rewarded for it. And if the market thinks that we would take on that risk and frame those contracts at historical rates, that's probably too conservative. We do expect margin expansion as well as volume growth out of Mining Services. When we set Mining Services rates for any of our contracts, we have different rates through ramp-up. We try to protect ourselves if the ore isn't available. All those protections exist. So we're doing what we normally do, but you should see some expansion.

Our next question is from Kate McCutcheon from Citibank.

Just to the Onslow. I noticed the mine life there, you're now creating that as 30 years as opposed to the 50 years in the AGM deck. What is the rationale there for that change in presentation? And then secondly, how soon does there need to be an agreement around consolidating the ownership of some of those tenement packages there, like the APIJV, and how should we think about that?

Yes. Look, thanks for that. As you probably know, I wear 2 hats, some on MinRes and I'm also on the other side on the Aquila side, which is MinRes owns 15% and Baowu owns 85% of the Aquila organization who is in JV with the API joint venture. That's quite a mouthful. So MinRes out there, I'm going to say we probably own 600 million, 700 million tonnes of ore out there and resources and tenements, and we're looking at putting that into the JV, and we're probably going to ask our partners to do something similar. And then look, I would simply suggest from a practical point of view, we're working on putting the Hardy Project into the Onslow JV. That's been progressing for the last sort of 9 or so months, and we'll get there, I'm hoping over the next 3 months. Of course, Hardie is a long way out, but that adds some fairly quality blending dirt. And look, we'll keep progressing that over the next few years. I mean this is the only pathway really to market for not all the ore, but a lot of that ore all the way down that valley towards Tom Price.

Kate, if I might add to that, as you know, Morgan Stanley, and Chris has referenced, what a wonderful partner they are, came in and bought that road with a 30-year view. They did the diligence on that, as you would expect them to do. They got comfortable with where that 30 years was going to come from. We've got a long runway before we need to worry about bringing other tonnes on. But as Chris said, those conversations are well progressed.

So we don't need to think about anything -- any material payments coming out in the near term to true up with that ownership?

No, you don't.

Okay. And the Wodgina tech report, I appreciate there's a bunch of shortcomings with that and there's a new optimization subsequent and you just told us that you still expect 70% recovery, but it does flag some issues around ore reconciliation and a big delta on where recovery needs to get to. What are the recoveries running at now at Wodgina and what drives the step change in that 70% level?

Look, the main thing that drives the step change is the quality of the feed going into the plant. So that has taken us time to get to where we are now. And then we've got some incremental changes and they're quite minor changes that we've got to effect in the plant. Look, we expect it's a 2-year journey to get to 70% and the recoveries at the moment, sort of they bounce around a little bit depending on what's going in the front end. Look, as we said, July through to November was pretty average dirt going into Wodgina. December was all fresh feed and you see the -- in fact, you probably can't see what that looks like, but we've still got that fresh feed happening now. But look, the answer is it's a 2-year journey to get to 70%. What is it sitting at now? We're probably sitting around about 55% on average, and we have days where we're touching 63%. So -- And again, that's feed dependent. So if you took an average at the moment, we're going to head from about 58% through to 70% over 2 years would probably be fair and reasonable.

Kate, again, what I would say is that there are aspects of that report we don't agree with. We have our own analysis external that has very different views. That work that was done, was done off what we believe to be an outdated pit model, pit shell. So I appreciate you can only work with what you have in the public domain. But as Chris said today, we've got a very different view in terms of fundamentals like recovery and strip.

Yes. Look, I would certainly -- I don't want to say the wrong thing, but I certainly wouldn't put any emphasis on the information that came out the other day from Albemarle. I mean it's something that we'll be discussing with them over the next period of time and see if we can give them a bit of help to get that fixed.

The next question comes from Kaan Peker from RBC.

First question is on the haul road. Just trying to understand if the upgrade relates to the capacity of the road or the ability to handle the seasonal wet weather? And additionally, is there trucking capacity included in that CapEx? Also, I'll just had another one. How much capacity can be used in public access roads?

Sorry, just to be clear on the public access, are you saying if we put third parties on the public roads, how much capacity is there?

Yes. How much can be truck through public access roads?

Yes. Look, not something we need to do. I mean there is no need to do it. I mean, up in that part of the world, you could probably put -- let me guess, if you wanted to put 5 million or 10 million tonnes on the road, you probably could, but going and getting those, not something that we would do. We don't need to. I mean, as I said earlier, and I know everyone -- I mean, look, we've gone from being extremely worried about transhippers, then we moved on to trucks. Now we've moved on to the road. We are managing the road well. It's not -- I mean, I was out there 8 days ago, and I drove the entire length of the road, got out, looked at it. There were parts of the road that are absolutely perfect. In fact, a lot of the road, no marks and there's some delineation in it. There's some washouts or scarring down on the side, but nowhere near where the bitumen is. I mean, this road has got -- once the cyclone passed -- I mean, we have full stockpiles at the port. We've got emergency stockpile out of Onslow with several hundred thousand tonnes in it. We've got full stockpiles down at the mine. So this thing is getting legs, it doesn't need to get. So it's -- we will be able -- we've told you the tonnes that we'll be able to deliver on the ramp-up as we progress through, and we'll be doing these repairs and we'll be putting this fresh skin on the road. So, I don't know how much more. Mark, can you?

Yes. Kaan, just to be very clear, none of the spend that we're talking about is designed to increase the capacity of the road.

I mean the road's probably got 80 million or 90 million tonnes of capacity.

The road's got huge capacity already in it. What we've decided to do is we've taken the decision to put an asphalt surface over the length of the road. We hadn't made that decision previously. We didn't think it needed it. But we think now what we've seen over the last 1.5 months in particular, it's the right decision. And this is -- these are live conversations that have been happening over the last week or so. The reason we're doing that is it will give us a stronger sale, and that will guarantee us a better chance at hitting those tonnes month after month, year after year. It has the associated benefit of reducing maintenance costs on the road. We estimate somewhere between $20 million and $25 million.

Per annum.

Per annum, sorry, per annum. But as I said, not intended to provide us with additional capacity, don't need it.

Sure. And on Wodgina, I know we've been talking about getting access to clean ore for quite some time. What's changed over the last 3 to 6 months to be confident that there is sufficient ore for the 2 trains?

So look, over the last 9 or so months, we've put quite a few more drill rods in the ground up there. We were operating the mine for a number of years with minimal drilling, wider spacing. We've closed all that spacing up, lots more drill rods in the ground now, and now we've got a fairly clear picture of exactly where we are, and we're in a good place finally. But it took some time to get there because at a point in time, we had -- while the prices were up, we had a couple of mining fleets out there just going at the strip. When the downturn happened, one of those mining fleets went off site straight away, and that's basically doubled the time it's going to take for us to get down to fresh dirt. So cash conservation dictated that. And it was -- it's a bit of a catch-22. But yes, look, the answer is drill rods will give us the clarity on where we are.

I think -- just to expand on that, I think in the first quarter, we put 91 hauls down in that quarter. So as Chris said, it gives us much more confidence in terms of understanding that ore body.

The next question comes from Lyndon Fagan from JPMorgan.

My question is back on the road as well. You mentioned the maintenance costs fall by $25 million a year. What are the actual rain costs of the road, both in terms of OpEx and CapEx? And just wondering if the JV partner bears in those costs as well as the repair bill of $300 million or so that you're talking about today?

So the answer is no, the JV partner does not bear any of that cost. That's totally our risk.

Well, we own them both.

Yes, we own it. So that's for our account. In terms of the OpEx and CapEx, we had an allowance in our modeling of a cents per tonne figure for the operation and maintenance of the road. We expect that number to come down significantly as a result of this decision to asphalt. That's why we're getting to that number of $20 million to $25 million. We also have benefits associated with improved fuel efficiency and tire wear as well that factor into that.

So you've got a figure we can use to model running cost or in terms of cents per tonne?

Yes -- No. The answer is no. It's not material, not significant.

Okay. And then my next question is just more at a high level. I mean we can see the kind of future outlook in terms of the business becoming more free cash flow generative. What's the sort of plan B, look, like if we get 20, 30 tonne fall in the iron ore price? Obviously, not something we want to see, but I mean, can we talk through some contingency type scenarios there given commodity markets could be volatile?

Sure. It's USD 75 a tonne, which we don't expect it to get to, by the way. And we haven't spoken about our view on iron ore price, but it's shown a lot of resilience around $90. But even if it got to $75, this project is still making $1 billion for us. And on top of that, we still have the Mining Services income. And what I will say is in a low-price environment, Mining Services -- our Mining Services business does better. We get better inquiries, more inquiries, more work. So what I would say is even at that low commodity price point, and obviously, we have FX impact as well at that point on earnings, we still feel like the business is very robust from an earnings perspective. We have, as I've said today, $800 million of carry loan that will come back to us. I don't think the market is really giving us credit. I appreciate it's on the balance sheet, but it sits within that $5.1 billion net debt figure. That's funded that carry loan. That will come back to us. At the moment, we expect it's a few years of a $75 price. It will take a few more years. It's still earning 7% plus interest today. So -- and we've got that other $500-plus million of contingency on the various transactions. And then on top of all that, Lyndon, we've shown over the last few years, we can affect transactions if we need to. We don't think we will need to, but we have the ability to do so. We've got a $10-plus billion balance sheet. We've got lots of assets. We're getting a lot of inquiries from other parties about aspects of the business, the assets. A lot of interest in what we've done with the road and the infrastructure within the business. So we have other things that we can do, but we're not focused on those at the moment. We're focused on Onslow and transforming the business.

The next question comes from Rob Stein from Macquarie.

Just on the Mining Services business, Slide 27, you've outlined historic in the future and it does include Onslow's internal volumes in that number. I was just wondering, if we strip back your equity share of those Onslow contract tonnes, which eliminate in the intersegment and we exclude the other lithium and iron ore intersegment charges, what's left in terms of EBITDA contribution that you expect from that services business? And how much of that is third-party volume? Just percentage terms will be fine. Just trying to get a handle on what -- where the risk profile lies.

Rob, I'd flip the question on its head. I mean in the past, we've had a lot of criticism about profit out of Yilgarn. We've turned Yilgarn off. We've put almost no tons through and look at the profit we've delivered. Yilgarn was 100%, and we were being criticized by the market for thinking about those tonnes. The reality is there's very little margin sitting in our business in Mining Services where the assets are 100% owned, very little. All of those assets, all of those earnings come from contracts that have been negotiated with -- in the case of Onslow, very heavily negotiated with the joint venture. In the case of the other joint ventures, negotiated with the joint venture partners. So I think it's an opportunity to reframe the way you think about Mining Services because it's truly an external-facing business. And the other point that we should make is that Onslow has been a wake-up call for groups here and a long way away around the capability of that business. There's a lot of inquiry coming in around opportunities to work with others. And so not only am I saying it's an external-facing business very much so, but the opportunities in front of it are huge.

Take the point, Mark, and other than sort of framing it positively or negative, I'm just looking to get an indication of what is that sort of JV share of services rent that you get and what's exposed to third-party volumes? And it's really the third party that I'm interested in as well to sort of understand what's your contract book, what percentage of that contract book is coming up for renewal over the next year, 2, 3 years, just to get a feel for what the risk is to that margin because it was received so positively? I just wanted to understand how sustainable it is? If you can provide some color on that?

Yes, sorry, Rob. And just -- and sorry, look, I wasn't directing my response to you as a person. I was directing it to the market generally. So please don't misunderstand that I was coming back at you on that. I think the way to think about it is we've had relationships, incredible relationships with -- and we've listed them out previously, top-tier mining clients for 3 decades, well before the company was listed in some cases. We've said previously, a lot of those contracts are less than 3 years just for a whole range of reasons, particularly their own approvals processes. But more often than not, and Chris is standing next to me, he can give you half a dozen examples of contracts which started as 1, 2 or 3-year contracts and are now 20-plus years long. So we couldn't -- the answer is we've got a number of contracts that do mature over the next 3 years, but ordinary course, we would expect them to roll. The record this half shows that with 6 contracts. So maybe we take it offline and give you a little bit more context and walk you through your question. But I think that the volume risk going forward is low is the way I would put it.

The next question comes from Lachlan Shaw from UBS.

A couple of questions from me. Just to clarify with the slight delay of the haul road, what's the impact there, if any, on the timing of full autonomy, please?

Yes. So that -- the reskinning of the road that we're going to do is probably pushing the autonomy out by about 3 months beyond where we were anticipating getting it started. Now when I say pushing it out, I mean understand all of the trucks at the moment from a mechanical and computerized point of view are autonomous now. And we've been running these trucks down in the Yilgarn in an autonomous configuration prior to coming up to Onslow. So I think that we're going to start that journey about between September and October of this year is the answer. And what we'll do, we'll be working closely with the agencies, the government agencies here in WA because it's the first. Certainly, we'll progressively bring them up the road -- 2 or 3 quarters of the way up the road of something driverless, but we'll have drivers in the trucks to start as we always do. And we think we'll move to full autonomy fairly quickly. Look, I would say by early into next calendar year, we're anticipating being fully autonomous.

And then my second question, so it's just around, I suppose, the balance sheet and the debt maturity profile. Mark, I did note the first tranche, you have $700 million due in May '27 from May '25, becomes fully callable. How do you think about the timing there? Is that something that ideally you'd look to move on well ahead of maturity? Just maybe if you can help us understand the thinking around timing?

Sure, Lachlan. The nature of the bonds that we have on issue are very flexible. We have, in my opinion -- and I know markets can close quickly, but then they reopen at some point. We have low execution risk on the refinance of that amount, low execution risk. It becomes a question of price. We are getting pushed by debt market participants to actually go and raise new bonds now. There's enormous appetite in the U.S. There's a wall of capital looking for a home. It's a question of time and what's the right time for us. We have particular windows each half when we can do it, when our results are current. So we think around that. But I would expect that we will be looking to refi well before the maturity in '27. And I don't anticipate any risk or issues in doing that.

The next question comes from Jonathon Sharp from CLSA.

Chris, I know you said that you got the road 95% right. But if I'm honest when I hear that, I can't help but be taken back at an old boss that I had at a particular Swiss mining company who would say that 99% right is wrong. So I know you can't be happy about it, Chris. So my question is simple, what has gone wrong, because something has gone wrong. Do you know if it's the design or the build?

Ye2s. No, look, I can't emphasize this enough. Nothing has gone wrong. I mean we've built a road over 150 kilometers of terrain. It's surveyed. You think you get where the pooling and the damming is all going to occur and where you think water is going to disappear quick and it doesn't when you get a 40-year event and you just get a lot of water that's just -- I can't describe how much water this thing has had. If I had to build this thing 5 years ago, 0 water damage. If I had to build it 1 year ago, 0 water damage. We just happen to be lucky enough to get a 1 in 40-year event. So it is just the volume of -- look, there's been a couple of railway lines I've seen built up in the Pilbara. And they need -- when they get those first cyclones that come through, they -- you go through and you go and put extra culverts in and you go and move things around. That's what's happened. So there is no -- I want to emphasize this really clearly. There is no design fault in this road. It is just that the heaven sent us more water than anyone kind of expected. This thing, if it was -- if it had settled in for a couple of years and it had the weight going over it and it would have packed down, probably would have had minimal damage. But regardless of that, we still would have wanted to go and put this new topping on it. It saves us money. And it means that we don't have road repairs out there happening incrementally. We don't have humans on that road, and it just makes it bulletproof for the long-term. So -- and look, I mean, if anyone ever says they go and do a project or they go and do something or they analyze a mining company and they get it 100% right, I want to be that person. I mean it's not possible to go and build a project like this and get everything 100% right. I mean we've got everything sort of 95%, 98% right. But then we do what we do to get it to that mark. So this -- if you have a look at the tonnes we're forecasting, that should tell you that the road is 95% fine, and we're going to keep running those tonnes down while we're doing road repairs with traffic management. We can do all of that and still move the tonnes. So if I could get you more focus on the share price, if you could get that up, that would get my debt ratio down. That's your part.

Okay. And just a follow-up question on that. What's Onslow's stockpile capacity? And how are you expecting to manage that?

So we've got about 220,000 tonnes under cover. It's probably the biggest storage shed in Western Australia. And then we have sitting outside that in stockpile outside of -- well outside of town, we've got about another 0.25 million tonnes. And we will continue to monitor the opportunity for the road to get closed through massive flooding. I mean we've just had a great experience on that. We feel like we've got more than enough capacity where we are. However, if we needed to grow that out to 0.5 million tonnes of capacity, we can do that easily. But at the moment, we've modeled the project, and we've just had the whole new bunch of figures with rivers running over the road that will tell us that 0.5 million tonnes is more than adequate.

The next question comes from Glyn Lawcock from Barrenjoey.

First one, just Wodgina. You sort of mentioned 18 months away from being able to run 3 trains. Is that because you're going slow on the strip because of just preserving cash? If you had the cash tomorrow, could you accelerate it? And how fast could we get it back to 3 trains?

Yes. Look, the answer to your question is yes. It's cash conservation. It's -- we are nibbling away at the rock that's sitting on top of the ore body. So we've got enough clear ore now to feed 2 trains continuously. But yes, it's simply cash conversion. And the answer is that if we doubled or tripled the mining fleet, we could do it twice or 3x quicker. So -- but we're just not doing that. We just want to -- and we're pretty much always grown the business doing it this way is, I mean, a focus on cash conversion is always sort of front and center with us because from day 1, I mean, we started the company with $10,600. We were a touch undercapitalized then, and we've grown up that way. So look, unless we saw a significant improvement in the market, we'd really just keep going the way we are. I mean we think within 18 months, we're going to have all-in sustaining costs on those 2 mines down -- substantially down on today's cost substantially. And I'd be thinking if we're sitting at USD 1,200, USD 1,300 a tonne sale price for SC6 spot, that business would be in a very, very strong position, and it'd be a major contributor to MinRes.

And then just secondly, I understand the debt and your reticence to do anything about it because of the cash flow coverage you've got. But you're going to get a new Chair in June quarter, you've made it pretty clear. If the new Chair comes in and thinks the leverage ratio is too high and wants to raise equity, would you be supportive of the new Chair's position?

Look, I'll be supportive of the new Chair, full stop. I mean, if that's the position that he and the Board take, yes, absolutely. We, at the moment, as a company, we don't think it's necessary. As Mark said, we've got just under $1 billion in loans that are owed from our joint venture partners. I mean, we could probably monetize that at a discount now if we wanted to. We've got opportunity of another $500 million. I mean, if you properly value my -- just my Mining Services business and get the rest for free, the debt ratio kind of disappears. So we just don't want to panic on that. But look, the answer is, of course.

Chris, I understand the equity market clearly thinks you've got too much debt, but I understand your position as well.

The next question comes from Ben Lyons from Jarden.

Two questions from me, please. Firstly, another one on haul road and then secondly, one on related party transactions. So firstly, given the issues with the haul road surface, I'm really interested if there's any underpinning protections that Morgan Stanley infrastructure partners may have written into the contracts to protect their investment and ensure that they will deliver to road that is fit for purpose? So to be clear, I'm not talking about the $200 million contingent payment that flows to MinRes if a 35 million tonne run rate is achieved within a certain period of time. I'm asking if there are any penalties or clawbacks that may cause cash to flow back to Morgan Stanley infrastructure partners if certain volumetric targets are not met by certain dates? Can you please be specific?

Yes. To be very specific on that, Ben, there are 0 clawbacks whatsoever, 0.

So there's no penalty.

Okay. Sorry, Mark, did you want to add anything there?

No.

Just there are no penalties. There's no clawbacks. There's no penalties, Ben. Ben, this is a purely operational decision by MinRes.

In response to damage that occurred to a haul road from a weather event that occurs in the March quarter of every year?

Again, let me repeat what I've said earlier. So this is the worst events we've had in 40 years. It's volumetric to do with water. If it happened -- it didn't happen any year. It didn't happen last year. It didn't happen the year before, Ben. It's only happened this year. And the share volume has -- and it's not $200 million worth of damages. We've probably got $60 million or $70 million worth of damages. The rest is doing -- as we've said, we're putting another surface on the road that's going to give us certainty over the next 20 to 30 years.

Happy to move on to the second one. Intriguing reaction from the market today, and I'd really like to look forward as well, but we haven't had the chance to speak to you for, let's call it, 6 months whilst there's been a litany of disclosure about related party transactions, et cetera, within the company. So my specific question regards MinRes's investment in the Northern Gateway Master Trust? And using the Board's language, this is not treated as a related party transaction. However, they also refer to compelling commercial benefits to MinRes when dealing with related parties or associates. So I'm just intrigued as to what commercial benefit that is compelling to MinRes shareholders flows from spending $45 million for a minority investment in industrial land on the absolute fringes of Perth where there's no chance of it being developed as an intermodal hub given the distance from Fremantle, Kwinana, et cetera, and you sit in your personal capacity on the other side of it as majority equity holder? So I'm just curious as to why this would benefit MinRes shareholders when the balance sheet clearly doesn't appear to have capacity for such investments at this particular time?

Ben, I'd love to answer that for you. The net result is that Min has a need. We've been looking out there for about 4 years trying to get industrial land. So that's on the northern side of Perth. All of the industrial land in Perth is generally on that southern side of the river. So instead of being, let's say, 50,000 south of Perth, it's 50,000 north of Perth. That means that all our goods and services get dropped off out there. When we pull out of the southern half, we bring single trailers up and then we form road trains in the north, it costs an enormous amount of money. We can pull triple road trains. We are not interested in intermodal or rail or anything. We only want to have workshops up there in storage and have all our goods and services delivered to that region, and we can pull triple road trains straight out of there and up to the north. Why did MinRes get involved in? It is the only industrial land out there that's zoned industrial, the only. We looked high and low for other blocks for about 3 years, just simply to stay away from that. Couldn't be found. And then the deal we've got now, I hope to be able to report back to you in less than 12 months and say MinRes has got 30 hectares of land for no cost. That's where we -- that was the original thing we're looking at, and that's probably where we're going to land. Mark, do you want to add to that?

Yes. I should add to that. So Ben, the answer is that, that land is strategically valuable to Min for the reasons Chris identified. It is important for the future of the business. We've got a workshop facility down in Kwinana, which is in the South. We've been operating out of that for almost 30 years. We've outgrown that facility. All of our operations have migrated to the north other than Marion. We've got huge volumes coming out of Onslow. We knew a few years ago that we'd have huge volumes coming out of Onslow. It's all about efficiency. That's why that decision was taken. And can I say, and I'll make it very, very clear, Chris was not involved in that decision. Chris was not present when that decision was made. That decision was made with the support of an arm's length valuation. And to top it off, we bought at cost what a sophisticated international player had paid for a number of years earlier. I think it's a great deal. It's the right deal for MinRes.

The next question comes from Matthew Frydman from MST Financial.

The first question is on the leadership transition, Chris. I'm wondering if you've had a discussion with the Board around what sort of capacity you might be able to continue contributing to the business in the future after transitioning from the Managing Director role? Is it your hope that you'd be able to continue contributing in some capacity? And what might that look like in your view?

Look, at the moment, I mean, we've sort of outlined through the Board's announcements how we're going to progress that. Look, as I've said some time ago that the Chairman, James McClements and I have been talking about transitioning this role for some time, probably 18 months. We've been looking at succession planning. Originally, what happens if I get hit by a bus. And then I'm not getting any younger. So we've been working on this for some time. And Look, I'd like to think somewhere down the track, I can get a bit of time to go and do some different things. I'm not -- look, I'll always be obviously supportive of MinRes. My intention is just to retain my shareholding once we do the transition. I believe strongly in this business. I love it. I started at my lounge room. And I've said openly, look, I'm available to the Board to support this business in whatever way necessary going forward. I mean, I'm dedicated to it.

Maybe secondly, and I kind of had to be the devil's advocate on this to a certain extent. But Mark, you talked about the carry loan sitting in receivables, and how that's sort of contributed to the building of that net debt balance? But on the other side of things, you've also got a prepayment sitting there in payables, I think, if I understand correctly. Can you remind us what the current value of the prepayment is and how that's going to be amortized over the coming few years, please?

It's USD 400 million, and it will be amortized over the next 3.5 years.

And has there been any, I guess, interest or sort of carrying value adjustments to that original USD 400 million value over the intervening period? And going forward, should we expect that?

No.

The next question comes from Mitch Ryan from Jefferies.

You've outlined a roughly $330 million increase to Onslow CapEx in FY '25. I was just wondering if you could quantify how much CapEx remains for Onslow Stage 1 in FY '26 and also potentially beyond?

The answer is we're still working through our budgets now. It's only February, so we're not in a position to provide a hard number. We have some components that we've pushed back to FY '26. We've got a little bit of the road spend that will carry over into FY '26, as Chris outlined, about $60 million. We've got transhipper payments for 6 and 7, which give us that additional capacity up to 40 and beyond, which will come in next year. We're looking at options around what we do with the resort camp in Onslow itself, but I don't have a hard number for you today.

Obviously, some of it is outstanding, but can you quantify the quantum that has been deferred then?

I would say maybe $100 million that we've deferred.

My second question just relates to the weather impact on the quarter. Obviously, you've outlined the 5 cyclones that have gone through. Can you please just remind us the number of days you've factored in, weather impacting transshipment or loading of ships? And then how many you've actually -- so how many days have you been out year-to-date -- calendar year-to-date?

So calendar year-to-date, we've lost, let me think this through, 8. We've lost 8 in January. We've lost another 7.5 in February.

Plus another 2 with the most recent cyclones earlier because we left and then had to come back.

Yes. Plus 2.

So, it's 17.5 actually that we've lost, Mitch.

And look, we factor in around about, so for cyclones for irrational oceans and then some incremental maintenance and the like. If you used about 45 days a year, it would be about right. I think we've probably got a bit more than that up our sleeve, but 45 would be a safe number.

There are no further questions. That concludes today's webcast. Thank you for your time, and have a great day. Please reach out to the MinRes team if you have any follow-up questions. You may now disconnect.