Aurelia Metals Limited

Aurelia Metals Limited

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJanuary 20, 2026

Operator

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Aurelia Metals Limited December quarter activities report. All participants, I am listener only mode.

There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad.

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr Bryan Quinn, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Bryan Quinn

Thanks, Kaylee. Look, welcome and thanks for joining us for the Aurelia Metals quarter two results for FY26.

We appreciate your time to join us and allow us to present some very positive results for this quarter and a bit of an outlook as well. I'm joined today by Martin Cummings, the Chief Financial Officer and Andrew Graham, our Chief Technical and Business Development Officer.

Angus Wyllie, the Regional General Manager for Cobar is on a much deserved leave at the moment, he won't be joining us. We'll obviously take questions at the end of the call and presentation.

Please just refer to the forward looking statements on our pack. I would now like to talk through the highlights for the quarter before moving into some more details.

If you can just move on to the highlights slide. We're very proud to announce we had a very good quarter with cash flow, with 42.9 million operating cash flow after sustaining capital costs.

This was supported by strong commodities prices and obviously strong gold production for the quarter. Our Federation mine is performing well.

Our ore mine is up 21% on previous quarters and continues to grow each quarter for the remainder of the year. We're also continuing to increase in ore grades and recovery from the ore in line with our reserve model.

Great Cobar project is performing well with our own operator teams delivering a 13% increase in metres from the previous quarter as we continue to build momentum in the project. This continues to place us well in the copper market with increasing demand in the future for copper, obviously.

The three other expansion projects at the Peak mill are also tracking and will deliver in line with our expectations for the expansions. Obviously, the first is our Thickener project, which is being ready for commissioning quarter four of FY26, a ball mill project in quarter one FY27, and a materials handling quarter two FY27.

We're very happy with the progress of those projects and we'll talk a bit more of that soon. Lastly, and very importantly, our balance sheet remains very robust and continues to allow us to grow our business in line with the commitments we've made, achieving the 85.6 million at the end of the quarter, which Martin will talk more to.

If I can just move on to the production and cost slide. I would like to reinforce the strong production and cost outcomes which we're delivering within guidance for the full year.

Importantly, I want to highlight some of the details of that guidance. Obviously, we've been sequencing our mine to feed the ore to the mill this quarter, very much delivering a gold, lead and zinc ore, which obviously is focusing on maximising cash.

The next quarter and the sequence of next quarter is obviously focusing more on higher copper and higher lead-zinc from Federation also. Importantly, we're building a nice stock level in front of the mill, and we're achieving very close to nameplate capacity for the mill, which I'll talk more to soon.

That's the mill before the expansion. All our costs are in line with guidance.

Sustaining capital appears a little bit higher year to date, obviously, and for the quarter. Obviously, we've done some purchase of equipment that Martin will talk more to, which skews the numbers at this point in time.

Those costs have been taken already and we don't have that in the future. Growth capital is slightly under as well, but within guidance also.

In terms of production and costs, I guess we're really looking to say that we're well and truly within guidance for the full year. In terms of sequencing, we do expect to obviously move into more copper, gold in these next couple of quarters, which will, as I said, bring up those copper numbers in the sequencing for the full year guidance, which obviously looks a little bit low for year to date, but the plans, other plans for the full year.

If I can talk to the group sustainability slide, unfortunately, we had four recordable injuries in this quarter, which involved hand injuries and slips and trips. Management is really focused on preventing injuries before they occur and having people really look at hazards and risks on the job and making sure that the proper precautions and actions are taken before doing work.

Largely, we've had injuries involving short-term contractors on site and we're going to continue to have supervision really focusing on making sure that there's adequate supervision and making sure that as a management and leadership that we're really looking at behavioural-based safety going forward to improve the performance of safety. In terms of our environmental reporting, we've had a good run in terms of compliance and over quite a couple of quarters now, very much in good shape and good results coming out of that reporting process.

I'll just move on to the peak slide. Really, our focus is maximising throughput and recoveries to really take advantage of the revenues and the cash flows of our commodity mix.

As you can see, I'll just talk on each one of the graphs. Our mine development metres is definitely heading in the right direction, as we've committed.

Part of that is from our productivity project focus to get our metres well and truly ahead, we have optionality for where we're going to produce and scope. Also, in addition to that, is actually our Great Cobar metres as well, which are on track, as I'll talk about soon.

Very much our development at peak is moving in the right direction. We still remain focused on fleet availability and utilisation of the fleet, and that's about really having the right planning systems in place, which they are now evolving and maturing, and also making sure we have the people on the job day in and day out to ensure that we can drive equipment that is available.

That's obviously a key focus for the team to continue to focus on the productivity, safe productivity of our development and our mining area. In terms of the throughput, I've added a slide this month, this quarter, and we'll do this ongoing now, obviously as a focus on the throughput through the plant.

We continue to report that we are ramping up the throughput through the mill at peak, with the key message I'd like you to take away is that we're very close to nameplate capacity and we have stocks in front of the mill from all the mines. At the end of the quarter, we're actually at 36,000 tonnes of stock in front of the mill, which is a great place to be and something we haven't experienced for a while.

Importantly, on an average monthly volume year to date, we're actually at record numbers since FY20, and we see obviously upside on these monthly averages going forward, as we will now have stocks in front of the mill of high-quality ore as we continue to build that level ready for the expansion. Then no doubt as the projects we'll talk about continue to commission over the next quarter four this financial year and quarter one FY27, we only expect those averages to continue to go up to the next nameplate capacity that we've reported from the project point of view.

With regards to recoveries, really good news still continues on. Very pleased that our gold recoveries are at all-time highs for this quarter, and in terms of that's exceptional considering the high throughputs as well.

Lead and zinc recoveries are also very good and definitely worth noting. We're very happy overall how the business is working in terms of the processing of this ore.

Higher throughputs and higher recoveries is a really good place to be for Aurelia Metals to deliver maximum value to our shareholders. If I turn to the Federation slide, just in terms of our mining and our ramp-up process we're going through, that we've talked to the shareholders and investors about for a while, we continue to ramp up.

As you can see, on average, the metres are continuing to head in the right direction. We're slightly down in December due to some utilisation of equipment, with resourcing challenges of our main contractors.

That's obviously been rectified in January and we're back on track. Still, overall the average is in the right direction, which we're happy to report, and we have plenty of production opportunities to grow from the development being ahead.

In terms of ore mining, you can sort of see from the graph, we've continued at a 21% increase high this quarter. Obviously, we continue to expect that to increase quarter on quarter for the rest of this financial year, which is also a great story for Federation.

In line with that story, we're also seeing continuation of grades increasing from the previous quarter this quarter, which we expect to basically be in line with the reserves that we've reported to the market. Costs remain on track for the full year also.

Halfway through the year, we're halfway through our costs. Very much in line with the previous slide for the full year guidance numbers.

I'll just turn to just a couple of bits of information around the Federation Mine. Obviously, we're just putting an update on the mine plan, where we're tracking year to date and where we're going.

You can see that the Federation Mine is going very, very well. We're pushing the decline down.

As we push the decline down, we're setting up infill drilling and also resource drilling from the various locations, and that's what we've talked about at previous quarterly and annual results. If you look at the actual results, we're targeting around 1,500 metres a quarter.

That's being achieved. Infill drilling is progressing very well and giving us results that allow us to firm up our stope design, we can maximise throughput.

Obviously, if we can maximise grades and throughput, we can actually reduce our logistics costs of ore putting on the road to the Peak Mill to be processed, which is obviously a key driver for us. Obviously the ore body is reconciling very well at the moment, and we're seeing that coming through the Peak processing plant as we process the ore for Federation.

Overall, I just want to leave a message that, yeah, definitely Federation ramping up as we've committed and doing a good job of getting the ore in front of the Peak mill at a very good quality for the processing to occur, and hence we get the grades and the recoveries out of processing. I'll just talk briefly about the expansion projects for Andrew to talk about the exploration and our future growth options there.

If I can just talk to the Great Cobar Copper project. If you look at where we are, and this is a bit of a visual on the slide of where we're going to be in the next couple of years.

Very much mine development is tracking well. As I said, there's been a 13% increase in development from the previous quarter.

We have three platforms of development remaining to get to our platform before we start drilling to unpack potential future information on infill and also resource. Then we have about four holes to get to production.

Like I said, we see very much conditions in the Great Cobar area being very, very favourable. As we continue to sequence our teams, hopefully we can see some improvements and go beyond our targets.

Overall, I guess one of the key messages is with this copper project not far away, and with the current pricing of copper and the demand for copper going forward, we do see a material upside on the value of this project as well to what we've presented in the past. Great news for Aurelia on the basis of copper and gold prices going forward.

I'll just talk to the next slide, which is on the plant upgrades. Obviously not too far away, we're on track to deliver our plant upgrades, just firstly on the tailings and process water management.

That project is on track to deliver in quarter 4. We will see improvements in copper recoveries, obviously some cost improvements through cyanide consumption reductions.

Obviously that project will be ready in this financial year to start those improvements for us, which is excellent in above what we've been presenting now. The tertiary ball mill will be commissioned in quarter 1 FY27.

Once again, it's on track. We've been pulling apart the ball mill down at Dargues and it's ready for trucking, as is the power substations, etc., ready to move their way to Peak in the coming period.

Definitely you can track that as we go every quarter by quarter. Just on the photo, that's actually the footings for the tailings and process water management.

We actually poured that largely before Christmas when it was nice and sunny and hot, and the team's done an amazing job to continue progressing that concrete foundation steelwork in anticipation of this tailings and water management being ready for quarter 4. All of the major parts from overseas have arrived and the containers on site.

They arrived before Christmas, and obviously we're getting all those parts ready to install. Very, very exciting for the first part of the project to be moving into the next couple of quarters to be ready to commission.

Lastly, our crushing materials handling project, which is focused on quarter 2 FY27, is very much in the process of detailed work to have that ready to start the process as we speak. All three projects are streaming very well, on track, and will only enhance what we're currently delivering.

With the stock building in front of the mill, once we have these projects in execution commissioning, we'll be basically really ready to chew through those stocks and deliver significant value to shareholders in not too far future. That's kind of the upgrades we're up to.

I'll now just pass on to Andrew to talk about exploration. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Graham

Thanks, Bryan. It's certainly exciting to see construction progressing there on site at Peak on these projects that we've been really keen to see progress.

Just on exploration, those who follow us closely will have seen we put out a release in December on Nymagee. It was our only release for the quarter in the exploration front.

Certainly interesting items there from our drilling. Nymagee North extended up dip by about 100 metres and also along strike.

Interestingly, some gold, which we haven't seen at Nymagee before, and so hopefully that progresses as we drill further in Nymagee North. The recently discovered Metropolitan Lens was also extended 40 metres up dip.

We're seeing good continuity of thickness and grade. Back on Nymagee Main, the main part of the old workings and the ore body, this largely forms the basis for the resource.

We got a good extension along strike to the north and also an extension 250 metres down dip, which was also extremely pleasing and supported some of the results we'd seen from down hole EM previously. Just mentioning down hole EM, we did through the quarter do an additional survey at Nymagee North and we're still awaiting the results of that.

We'll use that to really focus our efforts around drilling Nymagee North going forward, a key target for us in the exploration space. A couple other bits just to touch on that aren't on the slide, but they're in the quarterly report.

Importantly, we drilled out New Occidental tailings through the quarter. Here this morning we finally got all of our assays back on that, we'll progress now to developing up the resource on those two tailings stockpiles.

They're stockpiles, they're not a tailings dam. We'll just develop up a resource on that and at the same time use the assay results from the drilling to do some further metall testing, which will then feed into a pre-feasibility study that we'll bring to you once it's together.

We are initiating permitting on those as we speak as well. From an exploration point of view, currently we're drilling out Federation West from underground, doing some additional exploration drilling there.

It will be a little bit drilling and then back on resource infill and then back on Federation West, but we'll bring you those results as we get them through. Peak, we're underground drilling at Chesney Deeps and also Kairos Eastern Copper at the moment.

Again, once we get results, we'll bring those to you through the quarter. Going forward, you can expect to see information obviously on New Occidental.

We'll give you an update around Peak and the various drill programs we've had going on there, which are detailed in the quarterly report. Also as we get results from Federation West exploration drilling, we'll bring you some of those.

Pass over to Martin, I think it is now to talk about the balance sheet.

Martin Cummings

Thanks Andrew. I'm up to slide 15 in the pack, and we're just showing the cash flow waterfall here for the quarter, and as you can see, pleasingly we finished with cash of 85.6 million, and along with our undrawn loan note, which did step down to US 20.4 million this quarter, takes our overall liquidity to around 116 million.

Still very strong on the liquidity front. We did have to add some cash to our restricted cash this quarter, 7.9 million was added, and the balance of that restricted cash now is up to 27.8.

We don't report restricted cash within this number. This is in addition.

How to unlock that restricted cash is through a refinance of our performance bond facility primarily, which is well underway, and we're in the due diligence process at the moment, and we'll look to close that refinance process during the second half, at which time we'll get that restricted cash back. In the meantime, there will be a few more amounts that we will have to add to restricted cash over January and February of around 10 million dollars.

Look, Bryan mentioned for operating cash flow it was an excellent quarter for the Cobar regional operations with 42.9 million dollars generated, and that's after sustaining capital, driven by the very strong production and sales and obviously commodity prices. You will recall last quarter I talked about some concentrate that we did have on hand in September quarter, we did sell that during the quarter and realise some of that in the operating cash flow.

Bryan touched on sustaining capital before at 15.6 million, our year-to-date number of around 31 is a little bit above the midpoint year-to-date, but as you also mentioned, we have invested in our fleet at Peak. In the first half, and we've been talking through that investment and some of the improvements around availability and operating costs that we'll get from that.

We're quite comfortable with where we're at with sustaining capital in terms of the full-year range. On the other hand, our growth capital is below the midpoint year-to-date, but really the spend profile of those planned expansions that Bryan just took everyone through, the spend profile on that is weighted to the second half.

Again, we do expect to see growth capital tracking to the guidance range. A couple of other things this quarter.

As you will know, in the 30 June accounts we did report a tax payable number of over 12 million dollars, and we did make that payment in this quarter. Within that is 12.2 related to the FY25 tax year.

The balance of that is monthly PAYG payments that we're making in relation to FY26. As I said, we also put through the 7.9 million dollars of restricted cash, which we report within the financing cash flows.

Working capital was pretty flat, but within that we did make our annual insurance payment in this quarter, so that was a net outflow, but overall working capital was largely flat. I'll leave it there, but I just want to leave you with the balance sheet being really strong, driven by another really strong quarter of production and operating performance in Cobar.

That has really set us up well, and we're on track to meet all of our guidance metrics. With that, I'll hand it back to you, Bryan.

Thanks, Martin.

Bryan Quinn

Look, if I can just go to the key focus area slide, the last slide. Obviously we are very focused on safely executing the plan towards our 40,000 copper equivalent tonnes that we've talked about, which eventuates in FY28.

To get there, very much we are focused on discipline capital allocation and the cash balance is obviously coinciding with the results today. That makes sense that we continue to deliver those cash back to the business to fund our growth, but to build our balance as well to have that robustness.

We are continuing to fill the peak plant to maximum capacity. As I talked about, we're obviously close to nameplate.

We expect to hopefully exceed nameplate over the coming quarters and deliver really high quality ore, which we have in stocks now, continue to build our stocks in front of the plant and really have that available for the plant just to chew through and maximise our revenue and our cash flow. The real key message I want to get across to all the shareholders is that we do have that stock in front and we continue to focus on building that so the plant can really be maximised now and hopefully increase as we've just committed to get the full year results and get the expansions ready as well to go.

In terms of ramping up Federation, it's definitely a key focus. We're very focused on delivering more at Federation this year and obviously in line with that is also the infill drilling and exploration work to extend the mine life as well.

Pushing the decline down to the bottom of the current ore body as we know it now, infill drilling to unlock more potential from the current stoves and obviously getting great performance in terms of grades and volume out of Federation is very much a focus. In terms of the focus on Great Cobar, obviously achieving the project milestones, we're well and truly on track and we do see some upside there in performance as we're only two quarters into developing and as we build up our routines and our process around that, there's obviously some improvement areas always to build on.

We are on track and definitely ahead of plan to where we want to be to deliver our performance there. In terms of our growth options, we're going to obviously continue to look at both, as Andrew's talked about, some of our organic growth options, but also keep a look over the fence of inorganic options that may be sort of progressing around us.

That's going to be a continued focus for us, but obviously not a priority, but a focus in terms of looking at what we can do both with our current resource and what potentially can be done around us. Lastly and really importantly, making sure we attract and retain quality staff in the region and in Brisbane.

We've got a really good team and obviously as we continue to build the organisation, we'll continue to look for talent to enable us to perform even better than we are today. Realistically, it's a good news story for Aurelia Metals and we're really proud of how the team's performing to get us where we are today.

With that in mind, I'm going to hand it back to you, Kaylee, to pass us over to questions and answers before I wrap up.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.

Your first question comes from Paul Kaner with Ord Minnett.

Paul Kaner

Thanks, Bryan, Martin and Andrew. Just a couple from me, if I may.

Just firstly on that refinancing piece there, Martin, you said you expect that to complete this first half. Do you think that's more likely to be this quarter, or maybe the June quarter?

Bryan Quinn

I'm targeting end of this quarter, but yeah, it may be early in the following quarter. I guess the message, Paul, is I'm not targeting June.

It'll be earlier than that. We're well underway with DD at the moment, and, yeah, it'll just, around the middle of this half is what I'm aiming for.

Paul Kaner

Yeah. No, that's fine, it might slip into the beginning of the June quarter.

That's all good. Then maybe just a couple there for you, Andrew, just on exploration.

Obviously some exciting results there from Nymagee. I guess how should we think about this deposit for, I guess, the longer-term opportunity?

Is that a Hera restart opportunity, or can that material go back on the truck down to sort of the Peak processing plant? I guess how are you guys thinking about it at this early stage?

Andrew Graham

Probably important, Paul, your comment. It is an early stage.

At the moment we're really trying to understand what we've got. There's certainly ore there.

Certainly can be economically treated. We just need to see whether we get enough for an economic project.

Assuming we do, and it's growing quite nicely, the easiest thing to do is put it on a truck straight back to Peak. If there's enough inventory, then we can consider the possibility of restarts of Hera.

It has to do a little bit too with Federation and how that evolves, and Peak and how that evolves. There's a lot of moving parts there.

The beauty is we have processing plants. We have Peak.

It's recovering well. It will expand well, and we have Hera as an option.

The beauty is as we delineate ore and prove up mines, we can actually process that material.

Paul Kaner

Great. Then just on Federation West, adding to that optionality, I guess assuming this sort of shores up a bit further, when's the earliest you could potentially access this material from the current mine plan, given where it sits?

Andrew Graham

We're in our life of mine process at the moment, so that's something that the team at Federation will think a bit about. It really just depends how it competes with material that's right there on the decline.

We'll think about that, think about when it makes sense. Obviously at the moment we've got a rig there doing exploration, which is really stepping below those hits we had previously.

As we get results on that and have a bit more of a story around how it all sits together, we'll bring that to you, obviously. It'll be a little bit on and again off again at the moment because obviously we're trying to do infill drilling as well.

We've got three rigs at the moment doing exploration. We'll go back to infill, and then later in this financial year we'll be back on exploration, targeting the eastern side of Federation.

As we get some assay results and some information, we'll bring that to you. We are thinking about when and how that makes sense.

Bryan Quinn

Too easy.

Paul Kaner

Thanks for that. I'll squeeze in one more if I can, just for you, Bryan.

Ramp-up of Federation's going well. I guess the infill drilling you've done more recently, has that changed your thinking about, I guess, FY28, or is it still too early to say, given, I guess, FY26 and 27 is predicated on a slightly different mining method?

Bryan Quinn

Look, the infill drilling for FY26 and 27, we've got a fair bit of confidence over, in terms of what's in front of us. We still have a lot of from the drilling being done, we've still got a lot of results to come back in still.

As we've said before, we're going to continue infill drilling all the way as we push the decline down. As we get towards the June period, we'll be updating against our guidance numbers for what that looks like.

Like I said, the Federation ore deposit is a very good deposit, and we continue to see some really good results coming out of it. It's exciting, and it's a shame we haven't got the infill drilling new results to share right now.

We'll get it as it comes up, and we'll report it accordingly.

Paul Kaner

No dramas. Thanks for that, Bryan.

That's it for me. Cheers.

Bryan Quinn

Thanks, Paul.

Operator

Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Roy Gillespie, individual.

Good morning, team. Thanks for a good result.

I've got two questions basically. One is I had a quick look through the quarterly report and could not see silver production listed.

Can you tell me what the silver production is and maybe where to find it in the quarterly report? The other one is the hedging of gold.

You've got gold listed as valued at 4,500-something. That seems well below what is the spot price at the moment, and it's for over 10,000 ounces for the rest of the year.

Can you comment on this, please?

Martin Cummings

Hi, it's Martin here. I'll take that.

Firstly on silver, if you go to page 4, from page 14 onwards in the report, we've got full data tables that shows all of the various production. Production for the quarter was 33,500 ounces.

In terms of hedging, yeah, the hedge book we put in place quite a while ago, and as noted in the report, we haven't added any hedging for some time. The average price you're seeing there is a result of the forward prices that were executed at the time the hedging was done.

Obviously the gold price has run significantly since then, but that's just a function of when the hedging was done. It just seems, it's well below.

It's listed as Australian dollars, 4,500. With gold price at the moment, 7,000 Australian, it's well below that, isn't it?

Yeah. Seems quite a penalty to the company.

Bryan Quinn

We made that hedging decision based on protecting, I guess, the revenue source for our expansion projects. While we're doing our company and putting a lot of capital into the business to get us to the 28,000 copper equivalent tons, which will give us significant cash flows as a company, we've obviously taken that option to, in line with our policy, to be prudent around protecting that capital and revenue source.

That decision was made at that time, and so we'll continue to anything we over-deliver against gold will obviously be at spot as well, and that's really the sort of position we're taking. Obviously, if we'd not taken it and the price has gone down, I'm sure everyone would be having a different opinion to us as well about that.

We are very capital intensive. I understand, the reason why.

That begs the question, going forward, in the next year, what will the strategy be with hedging? Will the need for it reduce, or will it stay the same, or what?

Martin Cummings

As Bryan mentioned here, we're using hedging as a way to protect our balance sheet. I look at hedging all the time.

Right now the spot price itself is giving us some protection, just given the price today versus where our cost base sits. We continue to monitor it.

We're not actively in the market right now, but it's something we'll continue to consider. As Andrew mentioned, we're going through our life of mine process now, and we'll assess our cash flow outlook and our capital requirements.

As I say, but it's a constant conversation internally. It's fair to say we've been through a very heavy capital spend period with Federation, obviously going into commercial production in July, and obviously we're in Great Cobar, and obviously getting that up and running and moving.

These expansion projects are sort of coming up in the next six months. Really the life of mine will sort of look at what is our exposure, what is our capital sort of outlay beyond these projects, if there is some, and we'll assess it accordingly with the board.

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Daniel Roden with Jefferies.

Daniel Roden

Thanks for taking the call. Just a couple of quick ones for me.

Just looking at some things the TCRCs, cost line seems to have increased in the quarter. I just wondered if you have any commentary around how you're seeing TCRCs going at the moment globally?

Some of the majors' looks are quite positive. Just are you expecting any benefits from that over 2026?

Martin Cummings

Hi, Dan, Martin. Your line's pretty average, but I think you're asking about TCRCs and the variance quarter on quarter.

There is a bit higher TCRC this quarter, primarily driven just by the amount of sales that we've put through and the amount of shipments that we've made. There is sometimes a little bit of a timing mismatch between when revenue is recognised and when the TCRC is recognised.

In terms of our outlook, the outlook for FY, well for calendar year 26, indicates that there's still a bit of opportunity for us in TCRCs, but we'll wait to see what the benchmark setting process looks like. The market intel is positive, yes.

Daniel Roden

Awesome. Hopefully that line's better.

Yep, thanks. New Occidental, just wondering if you could, I might have missed it, but if you could provide some, expectations on maybe scale or grade range around that, and what's the strategy there?

It just goes into the expanded peak mill once it's finalised and assuming it's all economic, of course? Andrew, you're running that project.

Would you like to explain, please?

Andrew Graham

Absolutely. Hey, Dan.

Look, I don't really want to presume tons and grade, because that's a process we're going through at the moment with the assays. I think we've previously suggested something in the order of 2.5 million tons at half a gram, is roughly where we thought it might end out.

We'll know more about that in the coming couple of months, and we'll put that out. The earlier question about resources, we'll probably put that out ahead of the usual resource update for the business, just because it will form the basis of a pre-feasibility study that we've got active at the moment.

The intention is to feed it effectively while we're feeding Federation material, and the reason is that we don't need the third ball mill, the tertiary ball mill, on Federation ores and lead-zinc ores. The intention of that is to use that on copper.

That mill will be available. At this stage, the study would suggest we pop it through a scrubber and take out any pieces we don't want to get into the slurry and put it through that mill.

From there, straight into the CIL, and we would have CIL capacity to deal with that material. The intention is we'd be feeding it in the order of quarter of a million tons a year for a prolonged period and getting additional gold through the existing plant and not interrupting what we're intending on doing around Federation.

Daniel Roden

Awesome. That makes a lot of sense.

Thank you very much. Just final one for me, I know because you mentioned it, the inorganic options and opportunities that you're keeping an eye on.

That's been, I guess, been something in the market for a couple of years now around some of those opportunities. Are you seeing any more, I guess, progression on some of those?

Do you have a bit more confidence on progressing some of those opportunities through, and what might they look like?

Bryan Quinn

Look, I won't talk about what they look like because they're obviously not fully defined. Effectively, we've always been in a position as, we've got a great resource within our current lease holdings, and if we can drill that, establish that as a resource reserve and mine it, and keep it in our control, we can deliver a lot of value without paying a premium.

However, we will continue looking over the fence at opportunities that maybe add better value for the shareholders in the future. I don't think we're going to define what that looks like at this point in time, but it's one of those things that, as a business, we will get to.

The next sort of 18 months we'll be getting Great Cobar moving. We'll have the Federation at full capacity.

The plan will be at full capacity. We'll be generating excellent cash, and we'll be considering, where do we go next and what do we do next.

That's sort of what the next six to twelve months is all about for the management team as well, to put some ideas to the board at some stage. Yep, that sounds good.

Daniel Roden

Awesome, thank you guys and congrats on a good quarter. Cheers.

Bryan Quinn

Thanks.

Andrew Graham

Thanks, Dan.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr.

Quinn for closing remarks.

Bryan Quinn

Thanks, Kaylee, and thanks for everyone joining us today. Just want to reinforce, good cash flow from the business this quarter, really funding our future, and really based on good strong production, especially leveraging gold, we still very much have a good gold stream coming through our business in the production area.

Federation ramping up in line with our commitments, and hopefully we can do better than that for this full year. Grades and the overall outcomes for the business looking very good from Federation.

Peak processing plant, said, near capacity. It's got a ROM stockpile in front of it, which it hasn't had for a long time, and that's going to continue to build.

Really putting the pressure now on the bottleneck of the plant, which is where it should be, which I'm excited to tell people about, filling our mills, and excellent throughputs and excellent recoveries. Really, great results for the team and what they're delivering there.

Just to reinforce, our growth projects are well and truly on track and advancing in the right direction, and so we're only seeing upside in terms of throughput and potential recoveries and potential value coming out of the business going forward in the next twelve months. Really set up well.

We'll come back and report next quarter on how we're going in those particular projects and performance, but I think the business is in good shape, and the balance sheet supports that. Look, just want to thank obviously the shareholders for ongoing support as we continue to build our business, but also importantly the management and the workforce.

Everyone's working very hard to deliver this value, and without them we wouldn't be where we are now. I really want to thank everyone for the big efforts and support they're putting in.

Without further ado, thanks everyone for joining, and thanks Kaylee very much for the call.

Operator

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating.

You may now disconnect.