Regis Resources Limited (RRL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Welcome, everyone. My name is James Mactier, Non-Executive Chairman of Regis Resources, and I welcome you all to the 2023 Annual General Meeting. We welcome shareholders again here in person and also virtually via the Computershare meeting platform, and I'm glad that allows more shareholders to join us. Can I first acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we're meeting today, the Whadjuk People of the Noongar Nation and also acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we're operating, the Mantjintjarra Ngalia People at Duketon, the Spinifex and Wongatha People at Tropicana and the Wiradjuri People at McPhillamys and we recognize their ongoing connections with the land, waters and community, and we pay our respects to their elders past and present. The agenda today, I will give an address before we move to the formal part of the meeting for some administration and voting on resolutions. There'll be opportunities for questions during this time. And then after the closure of the formal meeting, Jim will give a presentation on the year and the outlook. Both Jim's presentation and my address have been lodged on the ASX this morning. I'd like to introduce my fellow directors: Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer; Jim Beyer, Non-Executive Directors Fiona Morgan, Paul Arndt, Lynda Burnett, Steve Scudamore; Chief Financial Officer, Anthony Rechichi; Company Secretary, Elena Macrides; and our recently appointed Chief Operating Officer, Michael Holmes. I'd now like to make a few comments on the past 12 months and the outlook ahead. Operationally, 2023 was a record year for gold production, revenue and operating cash flow. Despite continued industry-wide cost pressures and a very tight labor market, our strong operating cash flows enabled us to continue to invest in our projects through mine development, feasibility studies and drilling. We declared commercial production at the Garden Well underground mine and at Duketon and the Havana open pit cutback at Tropicana. After year-end, we completed the exploration drive under the Garden Well open pit, with our objective of cost effectively converting our large exploration target in that area into resources and reserves in the near term. On that note, we continued our aggressive exploration program, including this exploration drive at both Duketon and Tropicana. A highlight was the drilling and prefeasibility study of the Havana underground with looks -- which looks set to add at least another 7 years of mining under the Havana pit. The Tropicana project with its production profile and mine life extensions continues to be an exceptional asset. Importantly, we were able to achieve all of this whilst maintaining our better than industry average safety performance and safety at Regis, which will always be a focus, includes sexual harassment, bullying, and other antisocial and harmful behaviors that we do not tolerate. At McPhillamys, we received development approval from the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission. This followed an extremely rigorous, thorough and transparent process involving submissions from Regis, regulatory bodies, local government, traditional owners, the local community and general public. The IPC considered the project's potential impacts and benefits including, but not limited to, environmental, biodiversity, social heritage and economic. Regis had already incorporated design and operational changes to reduce impacts and improve outcomes through our extensive community liaison and consultation. At a federal level, we also received the necessary environmental approval, but frustratingly still await the decision under Section 10 application under the Federal Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act. In the meantime, we continue with our definitive feasibility study. Building on our sustainability efforts in recent years, we completed the installation of a 9-megawatt solar farm at Duketon, which will save approximately 5 million liters of diesel per annum with associated carbon reduction and cost benefits. At Tropicana, the joint venture announced it's commitment to construct a 62-megawatt hybrid wind and solar energy system, including battery storage, one of the largest projects of its kind in the Australian natural resources sector. This commitment also reflects the high level of confidence that the joint venture has in the long-term future of Tropicana, a genuine Tier 1 asset. At Duketon, we also significantly reduced the use of bore field water and increased rehabilitation materially. I encourage all stakeholders to read our 2023 sustainability report, which is on our website, which details more of our achievements and our plans. In relation to governments, we welcome Paul Arndt as a Non-Executive Director. And also, at year-end, we altered the composition of our Board subcommittees to spread the workload, to gain different insights at the subcommittee level and to provide directors with greater exposure to all aspects of our business. Financially, our results were significantly impacted by deliveries into our historical fixed price gold hedge contracts and ongoing cost inflation. This impact will continue in FY '24, likely to an even greater extent as we close out the remainder of these hedges and forecast slightly lower production at higher costs. Once the existing hedges are closed out, operating cash flows increased dramatically on a like-for-like basis. And we're looking forward to that moment. Our decision not to declare a dividend in FY '23 reflects our net loss for the year and our focus on building balance sheet strength and funding capacity for the McPhillamys project. This includes an expected tax refund, the size of which depends on available franking credits, which total approximately $20 million. Importantly, our net debt position remains low and our total shares on issue, amongst the lowest in our peer group. Post year-end, we rolled the maturity date of our loan facility through to June 2025, which gives us time to refinance and upsize, if required, when we have more clarity on the funding requirement for McPhillamys. Finally, on behalf of the Board, I'd like to thank our Managing Director, Jim Beyer, and senior leadership team, our employees, contractors, joint venture partner, AngloGold Ashanti and the communities in which we operate. I'll now move to the formal business of the meeting. I'll advise that a quorum is present and the meeting properly constituted, and I declare the meeting open. The Notice of Meeting dated 24th of October 2023 is being provided to all Regis shareholders on the company's website in accordance with the Corporations Act, and I therefore take that as read. This meeting is being held both in person and online. There's some housekeeping that I'll run through. The online attendees can watch a live webcast on the meeting on the Computershare meeting platform. In addition, shareholders and proxy holders have the ability to ask questions and submit votes. For this meeting, we will table each resolution and then answer any shareholder questions after each resolution is read. There will be a short time delay between our meeting here and those listening online. So we'll just allow a little bit of extra time for those questions to come in and before voting is finalized. There's an online meeting guide link in the Notice of Meeting, and there's also a help line that you can call, which is on the screen here. Online attendees can submit a question at any time. To ask a question by the Q&A icon, type your question into the text box. And once you hit the -- once you finish typing, hit the Send button. And questions, we'll endeavor to answer all questions, of course. If there's repetition, we might just aggregate those to make it speedy for everyone. Those shareholders who wish to ask a verbal question, there's an audio questions facility on the website -- on the web broadcast and there's instruction there. And if you're in the room today, can you please come up to the microphone at the back there actually. And that's important because it feeds through the online platform. So we'll now move on to voting, being conducted today by way of a poll. We have Mr. Rod Somes here from Computershare Investor Services. He is present and will act as Returning Officer for the poll. If you're eligible to vote, once voting opens, press the Vote icon and all resolutions will be activated with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit submit or end button as the vote is automatically recorded and you'll receive a confirmation. on your screen. You can change your vote up until any time up until I declare the voting closed. If you're attending the room today, you can use the green voting cards that you've been provided with when you came in at the registration. I now declare voting open on all items of business, and will remain open until questions related to those questions have been answered, and I'll give you a warning before I close the voting. Proxy votes have been received. The total number of valid proxy votes and the manner in which the proxies are to vote will be displayed before each resolution is considered and voted upon. Where proxies have been provided to the Chairman we have voting instructions, in all cases, the Chairman intends to vote in favor of the resolution. First item of business of the meeting, which is to receive and consider the financial report, the Directors' report and the Auditor's report for the year ended 30th of June 2023. These reports are all available on the website and in the company's Annual Report. We have Derek Meates and Michael Bohn from the company's auditors, KPMG, here today and can answer any questions on the audit if needed. Are there any questions on this item of business? Any online? Okay. Thank you. Now we turn to the resolutions. Resolution 1 is the adoption of the remuneration report. We will now consider that first resolution. The Corporation Act requires that at the Annual General Meeting a resolution that the remuneration report is adopted be put to a vote of shareholders. The remuneration report details the company's policy on the remuneration of directors and senior executives. This vote is advisory only and does not bind the company or directors. For the purpose of today's Annual General Meeting, I ask that shareholders to consider, and if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution, that the remuneration report for the year ended 30th of June 2023 as set out in the 2023 annual report, be adopted. The proxy votes have been received and will be shown on the slide. I now move the adoption of the company's remuneration report.

Are there any questions on the remuneration report? Yes, Brooke. Yes, if you wouldn't mind as it feeds through into the online platform.

David Brooke, the Australian Shareholders Association. I've got a couple of gripes which I really want to try and put. One of them is concerned with the relative to the total shareholder return metric that you have within your LTIs. And the other one is also concerned with that as well. But the first question is that you actually compare it to a group that you select. Many of those people in the group are not actually very typical of yourselves, either in Africa and other places like that. Other companies have actually adopted an index as a way forward, which is independent, and therefore, not something which I can accuse you or other people may think is biased in any particular way. Why don't you adopt an index as a comparison group rather than expose yourself to criticism in that area? Do you want me to put second question or wait?

Let me answer that one. Certainly not concerned about exposure to criticism. We believe that peer group is a very representative group of peers in terms of what investors on the Australian Stock Exchange. They're sort of many of comparable investee companies, if you like, and it's -- and we believe it's very comparable. We -- there's no fixed formula for it, and it's certainly not manipulated or biased in any way, shape or form. Companies come in and out of that. You'll see over the years it's there -- generally is the fortunes decline that fall out of. But typically, we're looking for companies that are of a comparable size, but some smaller, some much larger and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. We're agnostic as to where they are producing their gold. So there are companies on there that produce exclusively in Africa, others that produce around the world. We're actually one of the few companies that produces in that peer group, predominantly, well, whole in Australia. So we believe it's a very representative peer group and a good way to judge our relative total shareholder performance over that 3-year period.

I hear you. It's just that you don't expose yourself to that criticism, if you adopt an index.

Sure. I hear you. Yes.

The second thing is that Northern Star now moved to 4-year LTIs. And we -- that's our policy as a group is to go to 4 years because we think that's a much better way of going. You're still on 3 years. Are there any proposals to adopt what the largest gold miner in the business on the ASX has now done?

Look, there's not -- I mean we're continuing to review these things. And if the market sort of moves that way, maybe that happens. But at this stage, we're very comfortable with 3 year. There's a lot of levers, strategic decisions and milestones that can be achieved and should be achieved over a 3-year time frame. And it's a good -- obviously, we have our STIs, which are over a 12-month period. And then the 3 years is an adequate and very good time frame, which judge our senior executives on their performance over that period and hopefully deliver value through to shareholders.

I mean on STIs, again, they've moved to a 2-year period as well. So I mean it is trying to obtain a longer term over which performance is there. And from a shareholders' perspective, that's...

We'll continue to look at our remuneration. I mean it's 98% have voted in favor. So I don't think it's horribly wrong and there's always ways we can tinker with it. And I think it's -- I did challenge the Shareholders Association to come and deliver a better remuneration report, maybe Northern Star is, but 98% are in favor. I think it's a very -- I think that we will continue to view and tinkered over the years as we have. There's things there. We've been leading actually in many things in remuneration, fatality clause, environment -- catastrophic environmental sort of gateways, having 50% of the STIs payable in script deferred for 12 months. So I think actually, we've been leading in many aspects of remuneration amongst our peers, but we'll continue to look at things and take your comments on Board. Thanks, Brooke. Any other questions? Any online? Okay. So that goes to the poll.

Resolution 2 is reelection of Lynda Burnett. Mrs. Burnett is due to retire from office and being eligible presents herself for reelection. The Board, in the absence of Mrs. Burnett, unanimously supports her reelection. And I'll ask shareholders to consider, and if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution, that Mrs. Burnett, who retires in accordance with Clause 12.7(a) of the constitution and Listing Rule 14.4, and being eligible for reelection, be reelected as a Director. The proxies are tabled on there. Overwhelmingly in favor. I move the reelection of Mrs. Burnett as a Director of the company. Are there any questions? Okay. Resolution 3. Resolution 3 relates to my reelection as a Director, and accordingly I'll stand down as Chair of the meeting for the purpose of this resolution, hand over to my fellow Director, Steve Scudamore, to chair.

Thanks, James. We'll now move to the third resolution, which relates to the reelection of James Mactier. Mr. Mactier is due to retire from office and being eligible presents himself for reelection. The Board, in the absence of Mr. Mactier, unanimously support his reelection. I now ask shareholders and if thought fit to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. Mr. Mactier, who retires in accordance with 12.7(a) of the constitution and Listing Rule 14.4 and being eligible for reelection, be reelected as a Director. I note the proxy votes have been received are shown on the slide, majorly supporting Mr. Mactier. I move the reelection of Mr. Mactier as Director of the company. I now call for any questions on this item. Nothing online? If you'd like to vote on this item now, please mark your voting card or select the voting icon and cast your vote. I'll now hand back the role of Chair to Mr. Mactier.

Thank you, Steve. Thank you, all. Resolution 4 is the reelection of Paul Arndt. We'll now move to consider -- Mr. Arndt is due to retire from office and, being eligible, presents himself for reelection. The Board, in the absence of Mr. Arndt, unanimously supports his reelection and asks you also consider and, if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution that Mr. Arndt, who ceases to hold office in accordance with Listing Rule 14.4 and being eligible for reelection, be reelected as a Director. The proxy votes are up there, overwhelmingly in favor. Are there any questions? Okay. Thank you. Resolution 5 is the grant of short-term incentive performance rights to Mr. Jim Beyer, which relates to the approval of 80,279 short-term performance rights as detailed in the Notice of Meeting. The performance rights issued to Mr. Beyer represent 50% of the short-term incentive component of Mr. Beyer's remuneration package. The other 50% is paid in cash. The short-term incentive rights will vest on the 1st of July 2024, if Mr. Beyer is still an employee of the company at that time. The Board, in the absence of Mr. Beyer, unanimously supports the award of the short-term incentive performance rights. Please note there is a voting exclusion on this resolution as detailed in the Notice of Meeting. I ask the shareholders to consider and, if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.14, shareholders approve the grant of up to 80,279 short-term incentive performance rights to Mr. Jim Beyer, Managing Director of the company or his nominee under the plan, on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. Proxy votes have been received. Again, overwhelmingly in favor. Are there any questions? No. It takes us to Resolution 6, grant of long-term incentive performance rights to Jim Beyer, which relates to the approval of 535,059 long-term performance rights to Jim Beyer as detailed in the Notice of Meeting. The performance rights proposed to be issued to Mr. Beyer represent the long-term incentive component of Mr. Beyer's remuneration package. And the performance rights will only vest if he achieves his respective threshold and target levels of performance during the performance period. The Board, in the absence of Mr. Beyer, unanimously supports the award of the long-term performance rights. And please note there is a voting exclusion on this resolution as detailed in the Notice of Meeting. I ask the shareholders to consider and, if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.14, shareholders approve the grant of up to 535,059 long-term incentive performance rights to Mr. Jim Beyer, Managing Director of the company, or his nominee under the plan on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. Proxy votes are there. I move that the resolution -- are there any questions? Nothing. Takes us to Resolution 7, which is a special resolution for the inclusion of proportional takeover provisions in the constitution. If passed, the resolution will renew approval of provisions in the company's constitution that enable the company to prohibit the registration of a transfer of shares resulting from a proportional or partial takeover unless shareholders approve the offer. This provision gives all shareholders a say whether or not to allow a proportional takeover, and we believe this is in the best interest of shareholders in the company. I ask the shareholders to consider, if thought fit, to pass the following resolution as a special resolution, that pursuant to and in accordance with Section 648G of the Corporations Act 2001. The existing proportional takeover provisions in the form set out in Rule 7 of the company's constitution are renewed for a period of 3 years commencing on the date of this meeting. Proxy votes have been received. Again, overwhelmingly in favor. Are there any questions? It's been a hot weather. Okay. So that's the end of the resolution. So now Mr. Somes will walk around and collect voting cards from people here in the room and people online. You should complete your votes if you hadn't already because I will be closing the voting once Mr. Somes has collected the ballot papers. [Voting]

Any more voting cards in the room? No. Confirm all voting cards been collected and sufficient time has been provided for online attendees, I now formally declare the poll closed. Once counted and reviewed, the results of the poll will be announced on the ASX later today. This concludes the formal proceedings of today's meeting. I'd now like to invite Jim to give an update on the company.

Thanks, James. Okay. Well, welcome everybody today, and thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for coming along to the AGM. So first off, I will acknowledge that James has already acknowledged our traditional owners. But what I'd like to do now is introduce the rest of the executive team, we've already had Elena, Anthony and Michael. But in addition, sitting over here is Wade Evans. Wade is the [ AGM ] of Business Development and Exploration. And I'm looking for -- at the back here is Tim Conversi, who is our AGM of People and Capability. And Ben Goldbloom is -- Ben is our Head of Investor Relations. So after the meeting, if you want to have a chat with them, please wander up and introduce yourself. All right. Well, I'll move through this reasonably quickly, but it's been 5 months since the end of the financial year, and our reports have been well and truly released and gone through in quite a bit of detail. So if anybody's got any specific questions they might want to ask, I'll leave that to the end with -- and you can discuss it with Anthony. However, what I would like to do is to basically spend a little bit of time just running through what the future looks like for Regis. There's the usual cautionary statements and there's a piece here on the exploration target as well, which is important because we do talk about some pretty exciting opportunities that we've got at Garden Well. So I'd ask you to make sure that you've read that visitation. All right. So for those that -- just as a reminder, this is an important slide, actually. I'm sure everybody is familiar with where our assets are, but the one -- and what the -- what we're doing. But I think this is an important piece to look at because this slide shows the great foundation that this company has got moving forward. We've got a mine life at Duketon and it's operating and it's got 6-plus years. We've got a mine life at Tropicana and it's running, and we've got 10-plus years. And we've got a project over in New South Wales that's got a 10-year mine life. This is a great foundation for gold business that we've been working on for the last few years. It has operations that are running that have life and also we have future growth opportunity. So just touching briefly how that all starts to fit together and what were the highlights from the last 12 months, as James said, record gold production. Very pleasing when you measure safety as our Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate, well below industry average. Good solid all-in sustaining margins. Cash flow from our operations, and I think this is really important to understand that our operations generate good cash flow, $455 million. Our cash and bullion at the end of June was $243 million. And, I guess, then now you start to see, particularly if you look -- you start to see the impacts that the hedge book has been having on our ability to generate cash, overlaying the significant investment in capital that we've been undertaking for the last couple of years. Now since the end of the June quarter, our cash has increased by $7 million; to the end of the September quarter, up to $250 million, which doesn't sound like much from considering the scale. But if you look and peel away the impacts of our hedge book on that, we would have nearly earned $50 million during the quarter. And what -- the reason that I'm sort of diving into that is that it's very important to understand the capacity that sits underneath what I see as being a bit of a screen that they're hedging or a vial that the hedging shows on the strength that this company has underneath. And that's particularly important because we're 7 weeks -- 7 months and 1 week away, at the most, from that hedge book falling away. Other highlights for the year. Just to make sure I'm on the right slide. We declared commercial production. So we talked about that capital investment. We declared commercial production at Garden Well South in the underground at Duketon. And we also declared commercial production at the Havana open pit. And if you've been following the business, there's been a significant amount of capital invested in both of those assets over the last couple of years. We've -- well, we haven't finished it by the end of the financial year, but we have commissioned it now. There's a solar farm. It's great. It is a significant reduction in our carbon requirements and keeps us within the requirements of the safeguard mechanism for at least the next couple of years. But it's also reducing our costs because all of the power and all of the energy -- all the electrical energy that we use on site at Duketon is all generated by diesel capacity. So it's expensive and it's carbon intensive. And the solar farm has been able to achieve 2 things: reduce our carbon emissions; but importantly, do that by actually reducing our cost as well. We have a good 21% female numbers in our workforce, which is slightly above the industry average. And during the year, and as I mentioned before, we identified -- I think James touched on it. We identified an exploration target. We've got the brains trust of the geologists together, which was quite a task. And we spent quite a bit of time looking at the technical information, and the team came away with a target of looking to say that area, and I'll show you a picture of it in a minute. That area has got the potential of 800,000 to 1.3 million ounces, sitting somewhere in a grade of between 2.3 and 2.9 grams per tonne. This is a significant potential target that we're chasing here. I'll talk a bit more on how that's looking at the -- in a few moments. We also increased our rate of rehab. Now you might look at that and saying what are you doing that for. Rehab is always commercially and cost-wise better to be doing as you go rather than leaving it all to an ugly bucket at the end. And we're increasing our rate. So we're also -- it's part of acting responsibly, but it also makes commercial sense to do that as you go rather than leaving that to the end. And some of our efforts, it's well on reducing our abstracted water, the water that we actually extract from the aquifers. We've been able to do some great progress there on reducing our drawdown. All right. So that's a little bit of what we've done. What's the future look like, which is really the important part, and what have we been doing? Well, in FY '23, as we said, we've completed the 2 -- some significant elements of our production -- our forward-looking production profile with the Garden Well underground and the Havana open pit cutback moving into commercial production. They are very significant in the future of our business. What we've also done, or I guess what's looking in the near future in this next 12 months is we'll see the initiation of a ramp down. So at Tropicana, we've been running flat out on the Havana pit, moving waste, doing everything that we can to expose as much or as quickly as we can. Now at the end of FY '25, so the end of next financial year, that will start to wind down. Production will still stay at its targeted levels, but the total material movement starts to drop. And what that means is that part of our business will start to generate more cash flows, assuming a steady gold price because your overall expenditure drops. So that part of our business starts to generate more cash. Importantly, at the end of this financial year at the latest, our hedge book will drop off. We will finish selling into it, and that is a hugely significant financial event for us. The impact of the hedge book this year on lost revenue, lost cash flow, lost profit at current -- at the spot price of today is $170 million. If you have a look at our stats on our profit and our cash generated last year, the impact of the hedge book was $115 million. Without the hedge book last year, we would have made a solid profit and we would have made a very good cash flow. So it's very important when you're looking at our business to look behind the hedges and just understand what's sitting in the -- what value is really sitting there. So these are 2 big things that we see occurring over the end of this year and into next year. So if we look a little bit further out, what are the plans for our assets? This is how we see at the moment, the 3 key assets that we've got starting to perform and how we anticipate they'll look like in the future. Duketon is probably maturing. It's -- without a very significant find, to be quite honest, its best days are probably behind us if you measure best in terms of maximum production. But it has still got a solid life in front of it, producing at a lower level, but still with good margins off the back of undergrounds and some satellite open pits that we'll continue to run. So we see it sits in this easily -- in this 200,000 to 250,000 ounce range. Tropicana has been lifting its production in the last year or so off the back of the high grade from Havana, and will sit at that range, $135 million to $150 million. At -- towards the end of this decade, probably around 2029, we'll start to see that drop away without any new discoveries, but the underground there just continues to grow. So there's great potential there, well out into the end of next decade. And McPhillamys, of course, which is the project that we've got, we see that producing, particularly in the early years, 165,000 to 180,000 ounces. So when you say, what are we looking for Regis to look like in the future? This is the target that we're aiming at, both in terms of driving the assets that we've got and also bringing on a new project. So what gives us some confidence that Duketon's got a bit more life, particularly from an underground perspective? Well, this slide here shows us -- this is what our view was and how we were looking at Garden Well, just a couple of years ago, August 2021, it's probably a slide from AGM back there. And you can see there was an area over there on the left-hand side of the screen where we just recently approved a mine that we're going produce from and then we had a little bit of a twinkle in the eye. We're sitting underneath Garden Well mine, where we're starting to stick some holes in from the surface to see whether we could make anything of it. So a couple of years later, what does that look like? Well, we got a lot of holes, and we're hitting a lot of gold. We've been -- the area over on the right, and I'll have to favor one side to the other. But given our shareholders are on this side, I'll put to this side. So we've been producing now. We've been producing from Garden well for -- since the beginning of the financial year. We've been drilling in this area. This is where that decline is that James mentioned. We've put a decline across from the south towards the north because it gave us, by far, the best access to this potential mineralization zone, and we're now drilling off that. We are getting good hits here in the middle, which was kind of interesting for us. But our real target initially is over here on the northern end. And we're in there now furiously drilling away looking to prove that up and get some confidence as to how many ounces and when we can bring that into production. Once we've got that information coming in, watch this space, we'll be letting you know what that area looks like. So this is illustrative of what we thought was there 2 years ago. And what we know is there now and what we think is starting to shape up. Similar story at Tropicana. You've got the Boston Shaker underground, which is quite mature these days. But all of these underground mines at Tropicana are all open at depth. So the production arrangement there is, we're producing from the Havana pit, which is a big orange blob sitting in here. We produce here from the underground, the Boston Shaker and Tropicana. I mean when we first bought the place, Tropicana was half a dozen stopes that they thought they might go over and have a look at, basically pave for its way, see what we find, pretty well expecting that once we got there, it would become a new production zone, which is exactly what happened. To the tune now where, whatever the distance that is probably about 300 or 400 meters down plunge of the existing mineralization does it hit 3 meters at 8.3. That just tells us that, that mineralization continues on. And we have been drilling way down plunge of Boston Shaker to give us the confidence, and if you looked at the reserves you think of this thing hasn't got much of a life beyond well into the end of the decade. But what we've got, we've been drilling way down plunge of the existing classified mineralization, classified meaning inferred resource and the zones, and we are finding the same geology, same lithology, the same thicknesses, same grades as we have further up. These are ore bodies that will just continue down. We are yet to find the bottom of them. In fact, not shown on here, but just recently in the last few weeks, we've been drilling way down plunge of Boston Shaker to the tune where the hole is about 750 meters, which would place it down around here somewhere, 750 meters down plunge of the nearest inferred resource, and we've got -- we're waiting for the grades to come back, but the geology is the same. It's got the right mineralization. It's very exciting and telling us, as we'd expected, and we were looking at when we bought the asset, this thing is much bigger and much better than you would interpret from just reading the simple reserves. The last piece to our jigsaw, it's not a particularly complex jigsaw, there's only 3 pits to it. So it's pretty easy to figure it out, is the McPhillamys project. 2 million ounces sitting over in New South Wales. As James described it, very thorough, very detailed approvals process that you go through. But pleasing to say that during the year, the team managed to get the IPC approval, which was a major step for us. We're still waiting on the decision on the Section 10 from the federal EPBC group on the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act. We think there is a very strong case, as does the local Lands Council, for us to -- for the query to be not supported, but we just have to wait. Now this is an asset that will take a couple of years to build. It's got a 10-year mine life once it's running. And this is another key asset to how our business will structure, as I was showing you on that diagram before. Now the good thing about it is it's grade improves with depth. And in fact, the mineralization continues down plunge. We just -- it's mineral -- our modeling doesn't stop because the orebody stops our modeling just ups because we haven't got any holes down there. So that's got great future potential growth as well. And other elements of McPhillamys that tell us that there's more than just 1 orebody. About [ 30 kms ] away, we've got the Discovery Ridge deposit, which is just under 400,000 ounces of resource. And that's the potential for us to bring that into production, potentially track that to our plant. And then the other one that's on this PowerPoint chart here is Kings Plains, which is literally right across the road, across the Mid Western highway. It's a deposit that we actually drilled several -- quite a few years ago, and we weren't able to get back on the land, but the property became available for sale, so we bought it. There's only 1 hole in it. 85 meters at 1 gram a tonne is not too shabby. So we think that, that will be a pretty interesting one for us. So what this is saying is once we get going, we think this is a great province. We just need to get the final approvals to satisfy ourselves on how much it's going to cost to build, get clarity on how we fund it and get on with the task. So wrapping up, what you've seen there is why we're going through those 3 or 4 slides is why we think that Regis has got a very bright future. There's a clear plan for us to build on the existing business and, in fact, to grow it both with the assets that we've got and currently running plus the project -- the Tier 1 project that we've got sitting in our portfolio. We've got a strong financial platform. We have robust operating cash flows, as we -- as I just spoke about before. We've got good scale, excellent leverage off the gold price with the gold price sitting where it is, our cash-generating capacity putting aside the hedging is quite significant. We've got an upcoming cash flow inflection point, that being the ending of the hedges. We have growth projects. We're exclusively in Tier 1 locations. And we really see that at the moment, we're trading at a discount. So look, thank you for your attention. Before I wrap up and hand back to James or I think hand back and we'll open it up for questions, I'd just like to thank the Board for their support. I do appreciate it, especially James, thank you very much for the last 12 months of support and advice. And a special thanks, of course, to the ExCo team who I work with, I really appreciate their support and -- as well, clearly, the much larger, broader Regis, the Regis Group or family of employees and some of them here today, and I'm sure there's some online having to listen and there'll be others that we talk to later on when we get back to the office and to our contractors, of course. Everybody is a very important part of the contribution to making Regis what it is and what it's going to be.

Anyway, thanks for your attention, and I'll now throw it open for any questions. Yes, please.

David Brooke , Australian Shareholders Association. One -- 2 questions, Jim. One is that we've still got some things to do under McPhillamys under Section 10. Is that really in waiting mode for the New South Wales authorities to return to us? Or do we have to contribute anything more?

No. Well, the Section 10 is actually a federal issue. The major approval that we require from the state, from New South Wales, we've received with the IPC, with the Independent Planning Commission approval. They've given us all the conditions, nearly 300 of them, I think. So the Section 10, we have submitted all of the information that has been requested plus a little bit more, and that was the last of it was submitted back in May, I think it was. The department has indicated to us that it can take 6 to 9 months for a response. So we're actually now in that zone. So we're waiting. We -- it's not as if we've been sitting, we've been contacting them on a regular basis to find out. But you can't rush good decisions.

Second one is, I believe there were some limitations put on us and some issues that we had to settle with the approval. So it wasn't unconditional approval that we received. There were things we have to do. What's the impact of those obligations that we have under the approval, which we've gained?

This is on McPhillamys?

[indiscernible] yes.

Yes. Look, there wasn't -- I mean the way the process works there is, the IPC doesn't wander off into a dark room and come out a week later with the tablets and say here are the rules. It's quite an engaging process over a period of probably, what we put in our initial application in mid-2019. Through that time -- subsequent to that, there was a lot of engagement with various government departments and Department of Planning. And through that process, the Department of Planning kind of works out what conditions to your operation do you think -- or do they think we should be put under things like noise, noise management, light management, fixing the road, so we don't create a dangerous turn off, all those sorts of things. They're all the conditions that the Independent Planning Commission received from the planning department. They looked at them all after they considered our project and listened to the public. They could decide whether they wanted to add a few more. I mean they might say we want you to paint all your buildings pink. They didn't, which is a matter of question of whether that's good or not, but we -- there's still extensive number of conditions, but that's still the conditions that we operate under. Nothing in there that have we looked at and gone, we can't build this with that condition.

Just nothing too onerous...

There's plenty of onerous stuff in there. I mean this is New South Wales. It's a reasonably highly populated area. I would expect that we would have some pretty onerous conditions so that we just don't run off like a bunch of cowboys, really nearly digging holes and making noise and chopping down trees. But they are conditions that we think a responsible operator would find acceptable and appropriate for us to run on. But they -- we can't just run off and do our own thing. We have things that we can do and things that we can't, but we accept that. That's what responsible miners do.

Thank you very much, Jim.

Good questions. Thank you. Anyone else? Anything online? Nothing is showing. All right. Okay. Well, we'll wrap it up here. Any final words, James?

Final words, other than thank you all for attending. And there is tea -- cup of team at the foyer. So I look forward to mingling a little further.

Great. Thanks, James. Thanks, everybody, for coming along. Appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your day.