Thank you, Michelle, and welcome, everybody. Thank you for attending Liontown's quarterly presentation.

With me today, we have Grant Donald, our Chief Commercial Officer, Ryan Hair, our Chief Operating Officer, and for his first quarterly with us, I welcome Greg Jason, our new CFO, who's been in the role for a month, and it's his first presentation for Liontown. We'll support Greg in the course of the presentation, given he's just fresh in the job, but I'm sure he's got most things covered.

Let's kick off. We have the first information slide, please, and then we'll move to the first slide.

The best way I can describe this quarter in that it represents a genuine inflection point for Liontown. We've delivered our mine transition, and the open pit is done, on schedule.

Kathleen Valley is now Australia's first and only underground lithium mine, and we're completely focused on scaling and ramping up the underground production, and we're on schedule for that too. Ryan will go into that in deeper detail in his presentation.

Now let me walk you through now what the quarter actually demonstrates. Underground ore has been increased by 37% quarter-on-quarter.

We're adding equipment, we're opening new mine fronts, and the ore body continues to reconcile to plan. This production momentum is real.

On costs, both unit operating cost and all-in sustaining cost have improved by 17% and 22% respectively. That's operating leverage coming through as we scale, and this will accelerate as volumes continue to build.

We've achieved neutral operating cash flow for this quarter, which is a significant milestone given we're still in transition. We finished with $390 million in cash.

This gives us both runway and future optionality. The plant has high availability and is delivering.

Recoveries have improved to 63%, up from 59%, and the pathway to 70% is in front of us, and it's driven by feed mix. As underground ore becomes the dominant feed, recoveries will follow.

Again, Ryan will talk about that in his slides. With the mine transition complete and cash flow improving, we're well positioned for the lithium recovery, and that's the story of this quarter.

If we go to the next slide, please. Let me put the numbers around that improvement.

Production came in at 105,000 tonnes, up 21%, a solid result, but the real story is the trajectory as we scale towards 1.5 million tonne run rate on March, end of March. Sales were stronger at 112,000 tonnes, up 45% as we cleared inventory and we moved to up our shipping run rate.

Pricing is lifted to A$1,365 a tonne. That's US$900 a tonne on a US SC6 equivalent basis, up 28% on the prior quarter.

Consistent with our standard QP pricing methodology, we have embedded price upside that will be realized in Q3. Revenue hit $130 million, up 91%, our strongest quarter since operations began.

That's what production plus pricing leverage delivers. Finally, the direction is clear: production up, revenue up, margins improving, and we're achieving this before the full benefit of the lithium price recovery flows through our contracts.

Now I'll move over to Ryan.

Thanks, Tony. We'll just have a look at the safety and ESG slide.

Thanks, Michelle. Safety remains our core operational focus, especially as we're scaling the underground operations.

Our total recordable injury frequency rate increase reflects a higher number of manual handling injuries across contractor work groups. We've implemented targeted actions to strengthen field leadership and contractor oversight.

Preventing high-consequence incidents through strong field leadership is the priority. This is reflected in the leading indicator, safety observations per 1,000-hour increase, showing sustained workforce engagement in proactive hazard identification.

Our hybrid power station performed reliably through the quarter at 85% renewable penetration, reinforcing our commitment to be a low carbon intensity operation. We continue to focus on building an inclusive workplace, and we were thrilled to have supported the completion of our first apprenticeship by a Tjiwarl community member at site, reflecting our genuine intent to meaningful local employment and skills development.

Now moving on to our operations summary. Thanks, Michelle.

Completing the open pit on schedule has been a key milestone at Kathleen Valley. This has been an outstanding achievement.

The original plan was conceived back in 2022 and has been executed flawlessly. Of particular note is the additional ore mined in the last quarter, positively impacting strip ratio and costs, and highlighting the quality of the ore body, and is a testament to the focus of the team.

A sincere thank you to the whole open pit team, including our mining partner, IMC. Over its life, the open pit played a strategic role beyond just ore production.

The waste rock supported construction of the ROM pad and the tailings facilities, and open pit ore enabled early commissioning of the plant, which accelerated validation of the flowsheet and the operating envelope. The resulting ore and OSP stockpiles, including the additional ore mined in the quarter, enhance our feed flexibility.

We will continue to optimize sequencing into the plant as higher-grade underground ore becomes the dominant source of plant feed, which will give us further flexibility during the ramp-up. Now, with the open pit complete, we can turn our full attention underground, supporting improved operating leverage as we scale.

Now moving to the underground. The 37% increase in ore mined is tracking well for the planned ramp-up.

In the last quarter, we noted that the mine achieved a run rate of 1 million tonnes per annum in September. For Q2, the overall run rate was just under 1.25 million tonnes per annum, leaving us well placed to achieve the 1.5 million tonnes per annum run rate by March.

Importantly, development is also progressing well, with just over 2,100 meters in Q2, opening additional work fronts across multiple levels in the mine. As Tony mentioned, reconciliation to both resource and grade models have been good, which confirms the consistency of the Mount Mann ore body.

As per last quarter, stope performance and dilution continue to remain in line with expectations. We've mobilized additional haulage capacity and expanded support infrastructure during the quarter.

The summary is, infrastructure is in place and performing well, the ore body continues to meet expectations, and we are ramping up to plan. Now moving on to the plant.

As Tony indicated, the plant performed in line with expectations as we progress through the planned transition in mill feed composition. Tonnes processed increased, with fewer shutdown days in the quarter and ongoing circuit optimization, increasing the net throughput per operating hour.

Recovery improved 4 percentage points in absolute terms to 63%. This reflects both a deliberate feed sequencing decision during the open pit to underground transition, as well as ongoing circuit optimization.

The feed mix moved from 35% underground in Q1 to 45% in Q2. Open pit ore will continue to comprise roughly 50% of the feed in Q3 before progressively transitioning to predominantly underground feed during Q4.

The next slide puts this into context. We've shown versions of this picture in previous updates.

The first half of FY26 builds the foundation. We completed plant maintenance, delivered process improvements, achieved a run rate of 1 million tonnes per annum underground, and completed open pit mining on schedule.

The second half is the inflection point. We're scaling to 1.5 million tonnes per annum by the end of Q3, and we are showing visually in orange the additional ore mined in the open pit being processed in Q3 before the shift to predominantly underground feed in Q4 and beyond.

Our recovery target of 70% at the end of Q3 remains as clean ore becomes that dominant feed. In FY27 and beyond, we reach a sustained 2.8 million tonne per annum run rate underground at the end of FY27.

Remaining open pit stockpiles will be processed opportunistically, again, as you can see with the slight orange area in the graph. Resulting improved plant recoveries drive increased production, which deliver lower unit costs.

With that, I'll hand back to Tony to talk in more detail about guidance.

Thanks, Ryan. If we go to the next slide, please, Michelle.

Right. Let me give clarity on what we expect for the rest of the year.

We've been consistent in stating that our FY26 is a transition year. Again, open pit was completed, underground is scaling and becoming the dominant feed source for the mill.

We have the ingredients to hold firm on our guidance. By the end of Q3, we expect the underground production to reach around 1.5 million tonnes, as Ryan has already mentioned, and the 70% recovery target remains unchanged.

This is clearly a function of the feed mix, and the mix is shifting in our favor. Production in Q3 will account for planned maintenance and fewer operating days.

That's scheduled and shouldn't be a surprise. The key point is that cash flow will improve from here.

Every tonne of underground ore that replaces open pit delivers better grade, better recoveries, and a lower operating unit cost. That's structural.

Our guidance remains unchanged as it's stated in the diagram or in the slide, and we're looking beyond this year, unit costs will trend lower in FY27 as we reach steady state in the underground mine at 2.8 million tonnes. That's when the operating leverage really compounds.

If we go to the next slide, please. Now I hand over to Greg to present his first financial performance.

Thank you, Tony. Good morning, everybody.

It's a great time to have joined Liontown. I've joined an amazing team, and I look forward to working with them to deliver the strategy for our shareholders.

Starting with revenue, some of this Tony's gone through, $130 million. It's the strongest quarter we've had since operations began.

About half of that increase was driven by the increase in tonnes shipped, and half was driven by the increase in realized price. We had slight tailwinds on FX, but they had a negligible positive impact quarter-over-quarter.

As Grant and Tony have discussed in previous teleconferences, the Liontown offtake agreements are anchored to a range of pricing indices, including spodumene, hydroxide, and carbonate, and there's a range of quotation periods that are both backward- and forward-looking. The backward-looking QPs create a lag effect on realized price increases, and the forward-looking QPs are favorable when prices are increasing.

We're already seeing uplifts start to come through between provisional and final pricing during Q3. We expect to realize further increases in the realized price during Q3, given the indices have continued to climb since December.

We finished the quarter with $130 million cash, a very strong balance, and I'll provide some more commentary on that when we get to the next slide. Moving now to unit costs, the operations team has delivered a 17% reduction in unit operating costs at A$910 per tonne sold.

This was well within the FY26 guidance band of 855 to 1,045. Importantly, it fell below the realized price of A$1,159 per tonne at the actual lithium grade delivered.

The reduction in unit costs was driven really by three key things: we had a very low strip ratio in the final quarter as the open pit came to an end, and so the unit cost of open pit ore was significantly lower; underground mining led to the improvement in recovery, and we also had less OSP ore being processed, which contributed to that factor; and then finally, we're realizing economies of scale as the operation continues its ramp-up to steady-state production. All-in sustaining cost also benefited from a reduction in sustaining capex, with no capitalized waste from open pit operations as they came to an end.

We note that underground capital development is being reported as growth capex with the front-end loading of that activity, and that will remain the case until we declare commercial production, at which time it will then be reported as sustaining capital and go back into the all-in sustaining calculation. Would you please move to the next slide, Michelle?

Talking about cash flow and cash balance, the key highlight was obviously delivering an effectively breakeven operating cash flow at the same time as ramping up underground mining and transitioning the plant feed from open pit to underground ore. Cash receipts of $128 million were broadly aligned with $130 million of revenue during the quarter.

Cash costs increased to $122 million, and this reflected a decrease in open pit mining costs, the ramp-up in activity for the underground mine, and ocean freight, selling costs, and royalties all increased with higher sales volumes and pricing. Growth capital of $22 million was predominantly underground development, consistent with Q1.

Sustaining capital reduced materially. It's a combination of the open pit activities coming to an end and not capitalizing costs there, and just a lower number of projects in that period.

Financing costs of $5 million were broadly unchanged from Q1, and hence the net result was we closed the year with $390 million of cash and 14,000 tonnes of saleable concentrate. This positions us very well to take advantage of market conditions, to pursue growth with a continued focus on costs, capital discipline, and shareholder returns.

I'm going to speak briefly about the LG Energy Solution convertible notes. You have seen the announcement came out this morning whereby LG Energy Solution issued us with a notice to convert 100% of their notes into equity.

This will significantly strengthen Liontown's balance sheet upon conversion by reducing debt and the associated derivative liability. On a pro forma basis using the underlying debt values, our gross debt will reduce from approximately $760 million to $360 million.

Our net debt will reduce from $370 million to net cash of $30 million, and gearing ratio reduces from 50% to 24% on a gross debt basis, or 33% to zero on a net debt basis. Notwithstanding the conversion that will occur in H2, the accounting standards require us to fair value the option component at December '25.

While still subject to review by our auditors, we expect to recognize a non-cash fair value charge in the half-year P&L of approximately $105 million. The primary driver of the higher fair value was the increase in Liontown's share price over the half from 30 June.

A further fair value adjustment will be recognized on the conversion date to align with the final option value. I'll now hand over to Grant to talk about market outlook.

Thanks, Greg. If we can go to the next slide.

Great, thanks. A quick recap of our offtake book here to make it easier to follow.

As you can see in the graph on the right-hand side, the makeup. To fund the project, we created a suite of offtake contracts with strategic customers, and we've really taken a portfolio approach in our management of pricing exposures, with contracts in aggregate referencing spodumene, carbonate, and hydroxide, as Greg mentioned.

Now, these prices don't always move in lockstep, but they do tend to move together when viewed over a longer horizon. In this quarter, spodumene has certainly led the price move upwards, with chemicals following at a slower pace.

This is not always the case, and you can see the opposite, particularly in falling markets. If we move to the market slide, I'll talk briefly on some of the key figures.

Really, in the rearview mirror account, the year '25 was really a breakout year for both EV sales, with 3 months of the year actually exceeding over 2 million global EV sales for the first time, ending the year with over 20.7 million EVs sold, which is 20% up year-on-year. Of course, the big news story for the year was another year of outperformance for battery energy stationary storage, or BESS, which grew by 51% in 2025.

These strong growth figures across both BESS and EVs pushed global lithium-ion battery demand to almost 1.6 terawatt-hours, almost 30% higher than the prior year. In this last quarter, we also started to see the emergence of a lithium supply-demand deficit, which has caused a strong move in prices for over the past quarter, and this has continued into January.

The expectation of continued deficits in 2026 is likely to provide further price support. As you can see in the bottom chart here, while the moves off the bottom may have taken some market participants by surprise, history would suggest there's still further room to run.

With that, I'll hand over to Tony.

Thanks, Grant. Now let me turn over to growth and specifically how we think about deploying capital as cash generation improves.

We're not chasing growth at any cost. Every capital decision we run through this framework.

First, we fund sustaining capital for safe, efficient operations, and that's a non-negotiable as we require to maintain our business. Having a maintenance background, this is very near and dear to my heart.

Beyond that, we have three priorities that continually compete for capital: growth, realizing Kathleen Valley's full potential, that's the first pillar of our strategy; followed by debt management, and you saw the announcement today; and then shareholder returns. On the debt management, we still have the Ford facility and the WA government loan, but maintaining the balance sheet strength gives us the flexibility through the cycles.

On the shareholder returns, as cash generation improves, dividends and potentially other mechanisms will become part of our conversation. I'm sure our Chairman will demand that.

We're not there yet, but that's on the horizon. The framework matters because the market is rerating lithium.

We're seeing that, and as we see that, the framework ensures that we allocate the capital properly, not just spend it because it's there. If we go to the next slide, please.

This should be familiar to most of the listeners on the call today, and what it reinforces is that we're well positioned for the lithium recovery and providing that lithium recovery is sustainable. We've kicked off a study to refresh the 4 million tonne expansion case that we had in our original DFS.

A lot of that is around ensuring that the DFS expansion is current with all our latest knowledge from our operating experience that we've gained over the last 12 to 16 months. This is a brownfield expansion of an operating asset.

There's a certain amount of already-invested infrastructure, and then all our approvals are largely in place. This dramatically reduces our execution risk and time to market compared to a greenfield project somewhere else.

The capital intensity is also lower because we've already made foundational investments, as I've already mentioned. Incremental capital for expansion is far more efficient than starting from scratch.

As we get the scale, it impacts our unit costs as we move forward. We have a competitive advantage because we've recently been a developer.

We've got a lot of that experience. We know how things done.

There's a lot of stuff that's fresh and current, we can move that and apply that to our expansions. Looking at the mine plan on the right, I thought if people recall when we published our strategic pivot in November 2024, we said that there was a certain amount of tonnage that we would park as market conditions improve, we'll go back.

That is a potential area of examination that we're now looking at. In addition, we've completed the open pit, we've got access to Northwest Flats through the bottom of the pit.

That's another area that we're prosecuting as part of the study refresh. To be clear, any expansion is subject to the study outcomes, a sustained market improvement, and finally, board approval.

We're not committing to capital until the conditions are right, but we are preparing so that when we move, we can move quickly. If I move to the next slide, please.

Finally, just to recap as we bring all this together, the December quarter represents an inflection point. The mine transition has been delivered, the costs are within guidance, and cash flow is improving.

We've done what we've said we will do: the open pit is completed on schedule, and the underground mine is ramping up. Recoveries are improving as the feed mix becomes dominantly underground, and costs are reducing.

We need to ensure that as this price improves that we maintain our operational credibility. The focus on operational excellence is front of mind for us.

We're scaling production as a recovering market, every price increase flows through to the bottom line as we expand volumes. The leverage is significant.

We have optionality with a strong balance sheet now that we've converted our convertible note with LG, and expansion study is being refreshed. Capital allocation framework is in place, and we can be opportunistic without being reckless.

I want to acknowledge the Liontown team and our contractors. This has been a demanding quarter, but completing the open pit while simultaneously scaling up a fairly large underground, and we've delivered it.

We need to continue to deliver every day. Our focus is clear: execute the underground ramp-up, optimize the operation, create the cash, and create the value.

Thank you for everyone for listening, and happy to take questions.

Hi, Ben.

Good day, Tony. I was waiting for the beep, but anyway, we'll proceed.

Mate, might start with the growth and that rapid pivot that you've made back from austerity back towards growth. Firstly, what sort of timeframe have you allocated for the expansion study?

Then secondly, I was just hoping to dive a little bit more into the possible capital intensity of what ultimately will be a brownfields expansion. Maybe you can just paraphrase what components of the non-process infrastructure are already sized for that 4 million tonne case.

Obviously, the paste plant's an obvious one. Does the NPI, I assume, can readily accommodate the incremental power draw?

You've got the massive vent infrastructure in place already, and that process plant is best of breed. You might just need a bit more, sort of, milling and tank capacity.

Just trying to get a better perspective on the likely capital intensity if you pull the trigger on the 4 million tonnes. Thanks, Tony.

Thanks, Ben. There's a lot in that question, hopefully I can cover off everything, and I'll also lean on Ryan as well.

Look, I want to stress that no commitment per se has been made. What we're doing is we're dusting off that study that was done in 2021 and ensuring that it is development-ready, fit for purpose, and includes all the understanding that we've built in the last 16 to 18 months of operation.

We want to be ready so if the market is definitely sustained improvement that we can be in a position to pull the trigger. In terms of duration, the team have just kicked that off, but typically, I would say that we wouldn't see anything until the end of the financial year and into the new financial year before we sort of announce anything specifically.

Therefore, I don't want to talk too much around capital costs because we don't have a definitive number because we've only just kicked it off. We'll hold on that particular point.

Is there anything else on the embedded optionality that we've got in terms of infrastructure, Ryan?

Look, I think, Ben, you covered off pretty well in so far as the infrastructure we've already invested in and the type of things that we'll have to have a look at. As you said, milling is going to be a key one.

Flotation, a flotation cell or two might be the other thing. That's fundamentally what we've got to look at in the plant.

There's some mining services infrastructure which we'll have to have a look at. Obviously, the acceleration of whatever we might need to do in mining.

Then you mentioned non-process infrastructure as well. As you quite rightly pointed out, we've got a lot of that in place, paste plant and the like.

Ventilation is another one.

Ventilation, and so the things that we'll have to have a look at is to make sure we've got water, village accommodation, probably the two kind of main ones. As you can tell, that a lot of it's in place, and there's a few kind of known constraints that we'll need to have a look at if we're going to be running at circa 4 million tonnes.

Yep, okay, cool. That's helpful.

Thank you, Ryan and Tony. Maybe just one quick follow-up on that.

I seem to recall that the initial concept was, I think, four declines, but now you've mined out the open pit, you're talking about possibly accessing one of the ore bodies through the bottom of the pit. Just whether the concept is still to have, sort of, four declines in place to get to 4 million tonnes.

Just any illumination on that? Thanks.

Yes. Yes, the concept is to still pursue the four declines, but if there's an opportunity that is capital efficient to get into the ore sooner, because what we've said in our presentation is that if we decide to expand, we want to give progressive capacity uplifts, not just sort of sit at 2.8 and then, bang, you get 4.

We want to incrementally increase capacity. If we can get access to earlier tonnes through the bottom of the pit, then that will be highly value accretive.

That's why we're sort of looking at everything again, Ben, because we've now got far more options and levers to pull than we did back in '21.

I think, Tony, two points in that. The first is that, and I think we've included that in the note that goes in the quarterly, that the Kathleen's Corner pit is around about 150 meters deep.

If you think about it, we've already mined down that far, it actually gives us a it's much closer to the ore body and both depth and also in terms of horizontal distance as well. As Tony's indicated, it does provide some good optionality.

The second thing is, and Tony's touched on it, but to be clear, the expansion is less of a big bang expansion and much more about almost incremental debottlenecking as it comes to the plant, which supports Tony's comments about being able to release capacity incrementally rather than a traditional study, FID, amount of time before you actually get those incremental tonnes. That's certainly the approach we're trying to take with this study exercise at the moment.

Yep. Good day.

Thanks, Tony and Ryan, team. Just following up on the, I guess, the growth optionality and as you optimize the infrastructure and the ore body progressively, incrementally, what does that mean for how you view a sustained marketing improvement in pricing?

What are the goalposts? What have we learned through this last cycle?

Given that maybe some of these are incremental capital steps, help us think about what you'd need to see to commit to that.

I think I've been on record in saying, Levi, that given the volatility that we see, look how quickly the lithium price has scaled up since December as an example, that we've got to be able to have a confidence as a board that we're seeing this price recovery and the supply and demand signals are strong over a longer period of time, whether that's 6 months, 8 months of consistent price improvement. That's something that the board will have to subjectively make a decision around, right?

It can't be 6 weeks. While we're doing the refresh of the study, we will be monitoring the market dynamics and fundamentals, and the board will make a decision if it feels confident that the market has turned, and turned in a positive and sustained way.

We don't want to start everything once we say, "Oh, look, it's here," right?

Yep. Thank you.

Just on to the realized pricing piece, just trying to understand, I guess, the lag on the way up. Can you just remind us of the pricing mechanisms behind those pieces of offtake that you've laid out there on the slide?

Sure, Levi. It's Grant here.

We have one contract which is Q-lagged, and that's the traditional Q-lagging you see in iron ore, kind of 4 months back, you know the price when you put it on a vessel. That's not unusual for cargoes going to Japan and Korea, for example.

Then you've got the spodumene price through the renegotiation of the Tesla contract and the carbonate exposure this year from those offtake tonnes that were resold to Chengxin. Then from next year onwards, that will be spodumene index-linked.

Oh, good day, Tony. Just on the expansion case again, and you've spoke to, sort of, conditions are right and sustained improvement, I was just wondering, would you look to secure additional offtake arrangements to underwrite that expansion and potentially lock in some pricing?

That's a good question, Stuart. I think in our previous quarterly call, we gave all some feedback around our visits to mainland China.

When we were starting to see the real increase in demand when refiners and other players in the battery value chain were looking for additional tonnes. We haven't seen a customer that hasn't inquired about those expansion tonnes.

We will look at that in a very strategic way and see how it pans out, but the interest is there for those expansion tonnes. Again, because the interest is there, it's got to come with the right pricing environment.

Right. Then just secondly, on the balance sheet, and obviously the converting of the note vastly simplifies your debt position to the extent you'll be effectively net cash.

Just wondering how you think about your liquidity going forward? Do you go back to the banks and back to the syndicates potentially for a replacement of the Ford facility?

Now what are the options you see around your balance sheet?

Stuart, the Ford facility is a very attractive debt facility. We've said that numerous times.

It's a very competitive coupon rate. It's 1.5% above bank bill swap rate.

You don't get a home loan at that rate at this stage. It's very, very low covenant.

It's hard to see us at this stage getting a better deal elsewhere, but we'll be open to it, and we'll continually track and assess our capital structure in the context of our capital allocation. Therefore, if the situation arises where we want to do something, well, then we will look at our capital structure accordingly.

Thank you. Good afternoon, good morning, Tony and team.

Congrats on a quarter. Looks like everything seems to be, touch wood, in terms from an operational standpoint and from a market.

Mostly, the other guys have covered off on the questions I had, but maybe just on pricing, and maybe this is one for Grant. That auction you guys ran late last year was a great price discovery tool.

Will you continue to run auctions like that, noting that you look fully committed from an offtake standpoint? If we see any wobbles in the market or for whatever reason, may you run auctions like that again?

Thanks, Reg. For sure.

When we announced that first auction, we did note that we would continue to do auctions throughout the course of 2026. We have deliberately, as a company, retained 10% to 20% of our book for spot exactly for these reasons, to try and help that price transparency and create open markets for people to bid for cargoes.

That will continue to be a very key strategy for us as we move forward. It could actually be what we end up deciding to do for any expansion tonnes if we do move ahead, to create a bit more flexibility in the book.

Will you guys likely release the outcomes of those auctions? I know some other companies stop doing that, but, from my perspective, it seems to be a great little prod for the market to be able to get a reminder as to what's actually going on and where pricing actually is relative to what price reporting agencies might put out there.

It's a good question, Reg. Look, again, we made clear in that announcement that it's kind of business as usual when we run these auctions going forward, and therefore we won't be necessarily reporting every single one to the market in a standalone ASX release.

You can be sure that the whole purpose of doing this is to create credible, tangible pricing data points to feed into the PRAs to make sure that the price actually reflects fundamentals. Every single time we do a transaction, it will be reported to all of the PRAs to ensure that that's taken into account in their assessments.

Indirectly, it will be published by the PRAs.

Understood. That gets reflected somewhere, we'll see it one way or another.

That's great. Thanks again, Tony and Grant, team.

Appreciate it. I'll pass it on.

We miss you, Reg.

Morning, Tony and team. Just a quick question follow-up on this expansion plan.

You mentioned that you will take a staged approach and unlock the capacity. I'm just keen to understand how should we think about the sequence?

Is that coming from the underground first, you want to unlock more stopes, or you will start looking to increase the flotation, other circuit capacity? Thanks.

I think the way we would tackle it, Austin, and I don't want to preempt the team because they've just kicked this off, but intuitively, you'd start with the longest lead items, right? Things like the ball mill, in understanding what we need there and then placing an order, would be first cab off the rank.

Then what we need in the underground, given the lead time it requires to do the development work in the underground and in the open pit if we're going through the bottom of the pit. Those are the sorts of things we would prioritize, and then subsequently the other stuff can be done within that timeframe.

If it's ordering two flotation cells and installing them and getting an improvement in recovery while we're waiting for the ball mill, the team will prioritize that. That's work that will be done as part of the next phase.

Thank you, Tony. Just a quick follow-up on that.

Assuming, in a way, where you unlock the capacity from underground first, coming to a tight lithium market, would you consider DSO product again straight to the market?

You mean DSO?

Sorry, DSO, yeah.

Yes. Okay.

Look, I haven't turned my mind to it. I've seen some recent press on that by some other party.

Look, at this stage, DSO doesn't really factor into any of our planning. Last time we looked at it, the prices were much, much higher, but at these sorts of prices, I can't think we'd make the economics work, to be honest.

Anyway, we haven't actually turned our mind to it. I'd rather be selling processed con, to be honest.

I think to add to that, Tony, we've built a process plant. Last time we looked at it, Austin, it was really around early cash flows in the context of building a project when we started open pit mining earlier because we needed the waste rock for infrastructure build.

It's quite unique set of circumstances. Our business is not selling DSO.

We'll leave that to the Africans. The

Oh, Happy New Year, Tony and team. I'm still just a little bit unclear about the 4 million tonne expansion and the timing.

I heard you've just kicked off the studies. You probably won't come back till the end of the fiscal year, early next fiscal year.

Everyone's now talking about turning capacity back on or their expansion cases, which is obviously not good for the market psyche. When could you actually get there?

I understand you want to do a bit of debottlenecking, maybe you can creep beyond the 2.8, but when would it go to FID and when could you conceptually get to 4 if the stars all aligned? Thanks.

It comes back to this point around has the market turned and turned in a sustained way? It's a difficult question to respond to, Glyn.

We might do the study, refresh the study, find out what we've got to do, and then the market comes back off, and we just put it back on the shelf, right? At this stage, it's all hypothetical.

If I decide to

Let's

Go ahead.

I was just going to say, let's just assume the market needs it. What's the best case you could do?

I think given underground development would be probably the rate-determining step, I would think it would be an 18 to 20-month program to get to the full capacity uplift, but we would see smaller increments along the way.

That's from when you FID it, or you're talking about from today?

No, FID-ed.

When would be the earliest you could FID it, do you think? Again, assuming everything goes well.

Again, it's a hypothetical. I'd rather not answer it, Glenn, to be honest, because, again, I'm just sort of speculating.

I

guess I was just curious.

Glyn, what Tony already said is we wouldn't expect to have the results of our study until the end of this financial year. Assuming that's delivered, that would be the soonest you could ever make an FID.

That's cool. I just wanted if that was preliminary studies, to go to more work.

Then, Tony, you're sitting on another asset which the market puts no value on, Buldania. Is that something that exercises your mind again now, or is now a good opportunity maybe in this market to offload it?

Just how do you think about that sort of off to the side, obviously?

That's a good question, Glyn. We've got a lot of talented people that have now concluded their work as part of the open pit, and some of those folk will turn their mind to what Buldania could look like.

That's work that we're going to kick off and do on a slow burn.

Thank you. Thanks, Tony and Co.

Happy 2026. Great outcomes expected over the next couple of quarters with where prices are looking if they stay that way.

Obviously, performance and price are the combination. You haven't really spoken a lot about price.

You seem reticent. I know it's volatile, but I guess that's the key element here in your stock performance.

What are your customers saying? Have they shifted in the last week or in the last month, or did they shift last year?

How did this come about?

I'll take this one, it's Grant here. Look, I guess I covered a little bit in my market slide that the market is starting to anticipate supply-demand deficits into '26, '27, '28.

You can see that SC Insights chart that I included on my slide on page 16. What that means is you typically see inflection points in the psyche of customers ahead of that move.

I would say that happened in the last quarter last year, so that December quarter that we're talking about today. It was very clear when we went to China at the very beginning of that quarter that customers were focused on growth and getting access to more resources to enable that growth.

We expect that this expected deficit will continue to support prices throughout '26 and beyond. We're trying to make sure that we're well positioned to participate in that as we move forward.

Thank you. My second question would be around M&A.

That's something that was spoken about in previous calls. What's your outlook on that, or is that off the table now?

On the growth front, I think we've gone into some detail around where the focus is initially. It's organic growth.

The best and most value accretive option is to develop Kathleen Valley to its full potential. That's one primary focus.

Then we continue to opportunistically focus more broadly around inorganic growth. We'll continue to do that.

Grant's got a very small team that does this, and we'll continue to focus on opportunities if they make sense.

Yep. Go, Greg.

Greg here. The capitalized interest also converts and effectively gets repaid in shares.

It's not a cash repayment of interest.

Grant here. We made a very conscious decision at the beginning of the project not to contract our tantalum so that we could focus on ensuring we maximize recovery in lithium, which is the main focus.

We did make the investment in a significant tantalum plant, which allows us to capture that byproduct revenue. We have consistently been selling that on spot and making money from that.

Our focus will continue on that basis at the moment while we make sure that we manage that transition to full ramp-up on the underground and steady-state production of both products.

Thank you. I'll take that.

Look, the demand outlook is very strong, and we believe that all forms of lithium units will have a place. We believe as a pure play lithium producer that we need to have an understanding and a skill set in both of those areas.

We've got a very strong skill set in hard rock, and we want to build our understanding and skill sets in brine. The focus is dual.

Any more questions, Michelle? There are

I'd like to thank everybody for attending the call. Appreciate your time, and I thank my team, and we look forward to 2026.