...on the last quarter and an outlook on the future. We have a video too which we'd like to share with you, which we'll be sending some details for you at the end of this video.

I'm going to hand it over now to Simon and we'll have some questions at the end. Thank you, Simon.

Thanks, Peter. Good morning or good afternoon, wherever you are.

Thank you very much for for joining us. Yes, we've were able to publish our quarterly report this morning.

I will share that on the screen so that we can I can run through some of the highlights. Hopefully you can see that.

Obviously our fourth quarter is the end of our financial year as well, we're able to sort of bring 2025 to to an end and summarize that as well. Look, we were able to ship just just under 2.1 million tonnes in the fourth quarter.

That takes our total for the year to roughly 6.2 million wet metric tonnes of of shipments for the year. I'd describe that as as a solid outcome.

It's been another record output from from Metro from the Bauxite Hills Mine, roughly just over 9% up on 2024. Look, another stepping stone on our way to the full realization of our expanded capacity.

Look, the I I'd say solid result. I think we I we were certainly hoping for a little bit a little bit more.

We planned on, another two vessels to from the beginning of the quarter, from from when we when we spoke at the end of of Q3. We were planning roughly around that 2.3 to 2.4 for for this quarter.

Look, we we did have some maintenance issues at at the barge at the barge loading facility in in October, and that we reassessed our guidance at that point. Then, look, things we were we've been managing some mining and stripping issues, which we had to throw some additional costs at during October and November.

That was successful, and we were able to bring the the pre-stripping and work back up. This has been partly about moving into a new mining area where we were getting some some slightly different outcomes from a from a yield point of view that we had than we had originally originally planned, and we'd also indeed sort of were managing some grade issues for the some of the different contracts, which were still outstanding.

Look, I think that's been the, that that's been certainly a, a a an outcome that that that we've been working on and been able to to get to get our arms around this this in in this last quarter. Then we sort of had to curtail shipping around the 23rd of December, and were so that was due to a vessel that had been delayed by by weather in North China.

Then when it arrived, the unfortunately, the the monsoon season had already set in. Last year we benefited from a late a late monsoon season, was sort of third or fourth week of January where that sets in where that set in last year, and this year it's been a rather early one.

We we considered we waited for a couple of weeks to see whether the the the weather would give us a break, but the that didn't turn out to be the case. With the agreement of the owners and customer, we have deferred that vessel to be shipped in the operating season when when we restart.

It's still the vessel is still is still in the in the schedule. Like I said, yeah, solid a solid outcome.

From a from a pricing and contracting point of view, this this quarter was was a slightly cleaner quarter in terms of being able to sort of look through our We had a a larger number of CIF contracts, and they were all negotiated under market conditions, and so you can see a pretty good look-through to the market price that we were that that we were able to achieve with the Metro product. That was just under A$74 per per wet tonne.

Normally, we would just have freight and a number of other small adjustments to come off that, roughly about $13, $14 a tonne, and that would normally show what our FOB netback would look like. The as as as we explained in the last quarter, we did take out a 3 million tonne contract in 2022 to which was under fixed prices.

That was to underpin the lending that we we took out. The the lenders were looking for some certainty for forward-looking price, and I guess it's always a always a bit of a coin toss at that point as to whether you're doing the right thing with respect to the market, but irrespective of that, that did enable us to get those that lending in place.

As it's turned out, the market has continued to run since then, and and those prices have been been out of the market, and you can see the impact there, as we saw last quarter, of that the FOB netback prices being being hit quite badly by by those legacy contracts. Now, that's the bad news, but the good news is that we've effectively finished that contract.

We've got one more cargo to deliver sometime in in Q2 of of this year, but that means that they're they're all done and dusted. We're back to pretty much market market pricing.

All all said and done, that means we've ended the year just under $60 million in in cash in in cash on hand, and I think that's, again, even with those legacy contracts playing a big role in Q3 and Q4, that we've been able to still end the year quite close to net cash. Our debt payments have continued through Q4, and we're sort of just over now Aussie dollar equivalent of sort of $62 million in in in senior debt left to repay.

That's been certainly one of our targets for this year was to get pretty close to that. That that's where we've ended up.

Really look, that just to wrap up 2025, I think it's been a I guess it's a solid a solid year, stepping stone. What I see if I look at if I if I sort of jump straight to the to the I guess the the table on financial outcomes is what I see is huge opportunity, and that that's where we're at at the moment.

With those legacy contracts gone, our FOB price will benefit significantly from from that in 2026. Our freight costs are largely fixed, as we've we've mentioned before.

We we took those out, and that's been that's that's been a good move. The the the the spot freight market has pretty much been $1, $2, $3 above our our freight positions through last year, and and we expect that to be similar this year, so that's been a good move to to lock those in.

You can basically predict what those are going to look like, and as I said, around that $13 to $14 sort of differential between CIF and FOB. Site costs suffered from the the lack of the volume.

The unit costs obviously We've got a very high fixed cost base up at Skardon River just from its remote location and what we have to do up there. Obviously when we don't produce up to that that top end, sort of about 10 10% below where we were hoping to to be in in Q4, that does hit the cost line, and you can see that that happening in the in that cost line there.

We would normally expect to be in the low 20s if we were producing it sort of that 2.3, 2.4 million tonnes for the for the quarter. We've had a bit of a royalty timing difference, which, has added $1 to $2 in there versus versus last quarter, which, again, that's just based around the accruals and revenues from the the accrual for the for the state the state royalty.

That's not a that's not a continuing a continuing factor. When I look at that that sheet, and we've still been able to produce double-digit EBITDA margins with that with all of those things, what I see for 2026 is a firm intention for us to to meet our strategic target from the realizing our expansion.

That that is also going to be met in a way that we've gone back and looked over the last two or three years what has kind of been impacting us from a from a reliability and ability to meet to meet our our our our run rates. I think we've mitigated, and we talk a bit about that in in the report, all of the things that we've been doing to to deal with those issues, from indeed maintenance, a new maintenance structure, a new approach to critical spares and to preventative maintenance, and indeed things like, the the channel collapsing in the first half of of last of last year, the the mid the mid-season bed leveling.

We got an external contractor in to widen that channel. We've already widened it from 60 to 70 m.

That gives us a 5 m sort of leeway on either side should that should the side start to slump again. Our intention in the beginning of this year is to take that over to 80 m, a 10 m a 10 m margin of error on either side should we sort of get that the same thing happening again.

Trying to mitigate against some of the the things that have been been hitting us, and indeed that bed leveling, we may even sort of seek to go towards our limits so we can bring we can bring that channel down to sort of 2 m if we get the opportunity. That would extend our operating window every day and allow more tonnes on each barge on average as well.

These are the things that that are going to be underpinning our work in 2026. As I said, we're already looking forward to that for for for 2026.

Part of that's been also around the resetting the structure internally, it's been a bit of we've brought a very experienced operating executive general manager in to run the whole of the site, and we've moved some other we've moved some other responsibilities around. We haven't added that that's not an increase in in management headcount, but just effectively some changes there.

Paul Green is very experienced operating GM, worked up and down the East Coast of Australia, coal sites and metalliferous sites, and also been involved in in large change management programs, and so bringing him in is a is a good win. Indeed we've also added Troy McMillan as our director of HR and people and organisation.

That is certainly another strength to to to our bow there. There's been a few changes, working, Nathan will be will have certainly carriage of the the new management operating system that we are putting in place to sort of drive that integrated planning, cost control, performance, etc.

on a a week-to-week, month-to-month, month-to-month basis along along with Paul. A few changes to to, I think, open up open up these these channels of opportunity for for 2026.

Let me just come back to the market a little bit. As usual, we we sort of just do a bit of a recap on where we're at.

Another record year of bauxite trade in the Asia-Pacific. That's obviously driven by China, although, India and Middle East have also taken a few more tonnes this year as well, but we use China as a sort of proxy for the Asia-Pacific.

They've just busted through the 200 million tonnes for the year in terms of of imported bauxite. That's partly been through growth in in alumina alumina production in China, but also through the reduction in domestic bauxite supply.

That's been a function of both both of those things as as has been the trend over the last couple of years. Certainly, you can see a lot most of that most of that has been absorbed by by by additional output from from Guinea that ramped up during the year after the strong pricing environment from the end of 2024.

There's certainly been increased supply. When you get increased supply, we've seen increased supply in both alumina and you've seen, the price drop down.

It's sort of stabilized. The cost curve in alumina is probably sitting around that 2,700 RMB per tonne, so we're sitting we're seeing a number of refineries starting to sort of struggle to to make cash in in that environment.

I do expect a bit of a shakeout where some of the new the newer refineries ramping up and some of the older inland refineries ramping down or or closing. At the moment, you we've got, decent low-priced caustic, low-priced energy, and and and and slightly lower-priced bauxite that's that's probably delaying that at the moment, but during 2026, I do expect to see some closure of inland refining.

That won't affect the the traded bauxite market a huge amount because a lot of them will be relying on on some of the older domestic bauxite in China, I still see a a pretty strong a pretty strong year. In Guinea, there's there've been there've been a lot of a lot of volatility out of the Guinea market.

I do expect that to to still have an impact on supply during 2026 and beyond. The government there has made it very clear, and now they've become a legitimate elected government rather than a than a military government, they've they've they've effectively transformed themselves.

They're they're really focused on the mining industry in making them pay their way, we're going to see certainly see taxes and royalties and increase in Guinea, along with the the the higher freight rates, will certainly, I think, put a bit of pressure on the fourth quartile of of the cost curve. We've seen bauxite prices they were, down a little bit, a bit softer during Q4.

You can see at the back the far right-hand side of that graph that they were a little bit softer during that that that fourth quarter. We we did pretty well to maintain our CIF prices.

I think there will be a bit of further pressure, a bit of further pressure on the bauxite price during this Q1 and Q2. It's already probably a couple of dollars lower than that now from a spot from a spot perspective as we move into move into February.

Look, long run, I think as as we've been talking about for a while, I think the Guinea once that price for Guinea gets to round about that sort of $65 a tonne, they also, there a few suppliers there do start to struggle to meet meet their cash cash costs, and I think that's where you'll see start to see a floor in that sort of $60 to $65 range. Look, I think there's a bit more richness in the, in the the back half of the of the report.

I I will just call out the fact, oh so just some exploration, just to say that's been progressing this year through the north part of the Skardon River, so that's on EPMs 16755. We've been conducting some exploration work up on the northern part of Skardon River there where we have two to we have some some tenements.

We've also started to negotiate conduct and compensation agreements with the traditional owners down on our leases near the Aurukun township, which is sort of about 250 km south of Skardon River from where we are at the moment. We're in process of agreeing those.

I will also sort of call out the fact that for the second year in a row we've won an award from the Australian Mining and Exploration Companies. Last year it was around our environmental the rehabilitation of the legacy kaolin, the kaolin area, which we spent a couple of years rehabilitating.

This year for our community contribution award for, in particular, the joint venture that we've have with the Jonathon Thurston the Johnathan Thurston Academy for high school high high school interaction, particularly around empowering and and and providing students with some, sort of strength in the in decision-making, in in looking at their future, etc., and hopefully we can convert a few of those into future Metro Mining employees. Look, that's that's another another really good aspect and a sign of our strength, our regional impact beyond what we do at the mine site itself.

I might just pause might just pause there and see whether we've got any questions. Peter, is anything you'd like to, you've got any questions coming through?

Always lots of good questions, Simon, yes, and we've got a couple we're going to kick off for Nathan today. Is there a point at which the cash-backed financial assurance can be replaced by bank guarantees?

Absolutely. That's a really good question, and no doubt people would have noticed the increase in our required cash surety this year of around $10 million, most of which is a function of obviously the increased activity, particularly in the last quarter there where we really invested further in the clearing and pre-stripping activities, which has a natural consequential effect on that cash surety.

It's been a fairly sizable increase. We're certainly at the point now and we're in an active process with a number of interested parties who would like to be in a position to provide that bank guarantee, and that will be a focus for us over the next couple of months to obviously release what's now getting to be a fairly large balance on the balance sheet.

Outside of the bank guarantee process, there's other elements there within that surety that's important in terms of other levers. There's also just reducing that amount through processes that we can engage in to start to get some credit for ultimately what is really a best-in-class environmental rehabilitation program.

Starting to get certified around some of our rehabilitation will also help us just reduce the quantum of that number. Then also obviously as we've matured as a business and now in a really strong financial condition, is then working with the Financial Provisioning Scheme to make sure that our risk assessments and requirements around surety continue to make sense.

There's a few prongs to that, but certainly, some element of that will probably required to be cash-backed, and we should see some movement on that in the next couple of months.

Thank you, Nathan. That was pretty comprehensive.

We're getting a few questions on the dividend forecast. The company's reduced debt extremely diligently over the last year or so.

We've got a great cash balance now, which is strengthening. What is the company's plans for a dividend payment?

Look, capital management's now regular part of our considerations at the board, we've been cash positive through the last three quarters of 2025, so that's allowed us to start to consider that, and we did publish a dividend policy, capital management policy, through the course of last year. We've got a board meeting at the end of February where we consider the annual results for 2025, and that will obviously get published by the end of the month.

It's a standing agenda item. By that stage we'll have very good sense of where the maintenance programs are at for this current wet season, and also looking forward as to when we're going to be resuming operations, where Ikamba is at with her dry docking, and we'll be looking at any sort of future capital needs from the project's point of view or indeed any external opportunity.

They'll all go into the mix at the same time. I think the fact that we're doing that and the fact of the question means that we are now in that zone where we can consider these sorts of things.

Look, I won't preempt things any further, but that will obviously be a very important consideration at the board meeting at the end of February.

Thank you, Simon. Possibly for Nathan, this question is around the currency hedging strategy given the volatility in markets, and there's some movement in the major currencies at the moment.

What is the company's current hedging policy and how much do you balance that across your contractual arrangements?

Obviously hedging and any general risk management is something that we're looking at very closely, particularly with, as we'll all see, just really increased volatility. What you'll notice within our quarterly is our current currency hedge position is $165 million USD, that's locked in at a strike rate of 64 cents.

Relative to current spot rates, we're in a healthy position there on our hedge, but most importantly, as a relative proportion, very well hedged versus sort of USD exposure into 2026. At this stage, I would consider us to be pretty close to about 100% hedged on Q2 and roughly sort of 50% for both Q3 and Q4 out for 2026.

I think we're in a good position, I think we're striking the right balance at the moment, and then we'll just continue to watch and monitor volatility for additional opportunity to continue to build that hedge book.

Thank you, Nathan. Some questions here around expansion and exploration.

Simon, what are Metro's 2026 exploration targets and budget, and are there any insights from the quarter four '25 drilling campaign that you can share with us?

I'll take the last one first, Peter. No, we haven't yet we haven't yet got results from the drilling we've done the exploration we've done in in Q4 yet, so that's still to come.

Obviously, we have a large a very large grade control drilling program that that takes precedence. We've got to make sure we've are ahead of the game in terms of getting our grade control drilling analyzed.

The the budget The the plans for this year is to continue to explore firstly around our current operations. We currently have about 40-odd million tonnes of resource that's not in the reserve sitting around our current pits in the south of Skardon River.

We'll continue to look at those. We're working on an an MDL conversion within our current mine plan to to convert to an ML as well over the next 12 months, and so we'll look at extension options to our current current pits.

The north of the Skardon work will continue. You there's, as I said, there are a couple of photos of that.

We're going to continue to kind of step out from Depending on where on the results that we get, we'll continue to step out and look through that whole north of the Skardon. I'm hoping that we can conclude those agree- those negotiations with Ankamuthi in the Aurukun in Aurukun.

We can then get onto those tenements once the dry season kicks off. We can get onto those tenements in Aurukun.

Look, budget-wise, the drilling programs are not very expensive, it's almost a rounding error. Obviously we don't go that deep when we when we drill.

It's really the sampling the sampling costs that that are that we need to budget for. Look, we're still in in the region of, probably $1 million to $2 million over the next 12 to to 18 months, this is not a huge impost on on the budget, but we're going to continue to, follow through those those exploration targets that we've got there.

We've got a couple more that we haven't a couple more that we haven't yet started. There is a a tenement that's to the east of of Rio Tinto's Aurukun deposit.

We haven't really put much much effort into that yet, so that's certainly going to come onto the radar screen, during the next 12 months. Just in terms of, I guess, work on on new things, what I would say, though, is that we are working pretty hard on screening, both dry and wet screening.

Our team under Matt Graham is really We've already done some bulk test work on site and bulk test work off-site for both dry and and wet screening, and so we are developing plans to be able to So some of our resources are grade limited, we to be able to bring them into reserve, we're going to need to find a way to in particular reduce the silica levels. It it's something, wet wet beneficiation's been done by Rio Tinto for six sort of 60 60 60-odd years down down in Weipa, it's a pretty well-known technology.

We are also looking at dry screening as well, which is a much cheaper methodology. It it it has less of a yield impact in terms of what we're doing.

Most likely because we don't supply our own refineries, we can probably employ a a hybrid approach, we can look at both combination of DSO, direct shipping ore, look at dry screening for some parts of the ore body, and then, where required, wet screening, which which, as I said, is a fairly well understood technology. That that's the strategy that we're working on, and we are making some good some good progress.

As I outlined in the AGM last year, that would would be a focus, and I'm hoping in the next sort of three, four months, we'll have a bit more information to share about the results of the of the screening work. Further to

that expansion or growth topic, Simon, a couple of questions here which I'll summarize. Are there any other opportunities in the marketplace for the company to expand its operation given the experience and the track record that has built over the last few years to grow the business via M&A facility or such?

No look, interesting comment. Obviously, look, we're running our ruler over Rio Tinto and Glencore, now that they're both in play, we're going to be, no no, seriously.

Look, the it Look, it it's something that we we are starting to look at. Obviously the focus remains on adding value at Skardon River and and and the tenements around it.

That those are the things we can control right now. We we need to execute on 2026 has alway- always been, since we first started looking at at once we'd stabilized the business in '22, '26 has been has been our plan for the full execution.

That's still our very much our our firm focus. We do need to also now start to look at other opportunities.

Look, we are looking around at bauxite opportunities generally and, look, getting access to those. Obviously, we're in the market in bauxite, it does make sense.

We also, as as we outlined in the AGM last year, we can't rely on the bauxite opportunities. There aren't It's not like gold or copper where I can sort of list 10 or 15 opportunities that that that are available out there for us to to to look at.

We've been looking at where we can find the right kind of opportunity to deploy our remote operational expertise, our logistics expertise, particularly around transshipment. Also, I guess, the fact that we have a a strong marketing team in in in China, and and and we've been able to add significant value through the logistics and the sales space in in China as well.

We can leverage all of those and and look at other bulk mining opportunities. Obviously, I think we need to sort of make sure we stay fairly close to what to what we do at the moment, but I think there are in- interesting bulk mining opportunities that that are around in Australian Queensland in Australia, and and and maybe in some safe jurisdiction jurisdictions overseas.

As we said in the AGM, that's, if we're going to step away from bauxite, we'll be there'll be a firm a firm cap on how much risk we take in those spaces. Of course, that that that will the board are taking a very kind of, let's say, disciplined view over over what we look at.

Thanks, Simon. At the moment, the company's one of the lowest-cost producers, if not the lowest-cost producer, in the world at the moment for bauxite production, which means you'll go through to the lower part of the market more profitably than others.

What is the state of the global market? What are the opportunities there for Metro with some of the higher-cost producers perhaps borderline or in reducing their operations?

Look, cost curves are how commodity markets tend to work. The elasticity of the response, it varies between different products based on barriers to entry, and I guess they can be distorted by things like trading relationships, integration between supplier and buyer, and things like large take-or-pay contracts, etc.

There've been some growth from existing integrated groups, but there's also been a number of groups who are less integrated or not integrated at all, and are very much sort of working on a spot basis. Using contractors for mining, using contractors for transshipment, using spot freight, etc.

Those are the ones that are sitting, they're probably further away from the ports than the players who've been in the market for the last five five or more years. They're 100, 200, 300 km away.

Their grades are also not as good as the established suppliers. Those are the ones that are going to be under pressure.

Like I mentioned earlier, I think the third-party cost curves that we subscribe to tend to show that fourth quartile of West African product around that 65 US dollars per tonne. We're getting close to that now from a Guinea perspective.

Some that's got a standard grade attached. Some are selling below that standard grade, they'll have a discount to that price already.

We should expect to see the cost curve come into play if those prices sort of hit $65 or below in Guinea. As I said, I think the costs in Guinea are only going up, it's not like there's a huge, I think, cost reduction opportunity over there.

I think they will be going up above inflation. I think those are the sorts of trends that we're seeing in the market.

What that means from a pricing point of view is we should start to see some reaction from supply when you hit those numbers. It might need to overshoot, or it might take a little while for that to happen, but it'll be months, not years, I think, for that to occur.

The important point there is that us hitting our strategic target this year is all about that delivered cost, right? As a bauxite supplier, we've got to be able to survive in these markets.

I think what you can see from that table I showed earlier, the potential to generate $20-plus per tonne in almost kind of any market is there. That's what I'm targeting as a sort of worst-case scenario for us once we get into the full swing of things.

That's the power of investing in Metro, that we are at the bottom of the cost curve, we're close to the market, we now have those firm offtake customer relationships and contracts that we've been working on over the last few years. I think we've got the team in place to deliver on that this year, both the efficiency and the reliability that we need to be able to do that.

I think it's from my point of view, this is where I think the investment strategy in Metro is precisely that.

Thanks. Great comments, Simon.

I'm sure all our audience will be happy to hear that, and a comprehensive report. I'm going to remind everybody that this will be recorded and available.

Yes? Sorry to interrupt.

Can I just share my screen again briefly? Is that okay?

Yes.

Yes. This is the landing page on the Metro website.

Is that coming through?

Not yet. Usually takes a minute or two or a second or two to come through, but here we go.

Coming up now.

Look, when you click on MMI, or sort of metromining.com.au, you get to this landing page, and I just want to highlight something, or a couple of things. Firstly, clicking on this little aluminium symbol takes you to an Australian Aluminium Council sort of background information on aluminium.

All the stuff I've just been talking about with respect to the uses of aluminium and all of those things, if you click on that symbol, that'll take you through to understand a bit more about how aluminium is being used and so on. If you go to the bottom here, there's some highlights from this year.

What I would encourage you to do is, if you haven't already, subscribe to Metro's newsletter, and so that will enable us to contact you when we've got news. Obviously, we use the ASX, but also there's some sort of non-market or non-price sensitive stuff that comes out around the company or about the market, which we do use, and I intend to use that more often during 2026 to reach out to people interested in the company.

Then I would just point out, if you go to our company dropdown, and you click on Metro Mining, we've just published a video, about a 5.5, 6-minute video, which, and by the way, a shout out to our friends and colleagues at mining.com.au and to NWR Communications and our own internal team here, led by Holly Freeman, to pull together this video, which gives a little bit of background on the aluminium industry, but mainly focuses on Metro's Bauxite Hills operations. If you do want to have a look at how our operation looks, and it goes right the way from tree clearing and stripping right the way through to the ship loading side of the business as well, you get some really great footage, drone footage and footage of the teams at work on the mine site, if you're interested to have a little look at the operation, that's available on Our Company, Metro Mining, and you'll be able to click on that.

I just wanted to highlight those couple of things to anybody who's on the call.

Thanks, Simon. I'll just say that we would have played it, but I couldn't get the sound going.

I'm sure our audience will enjoy it. It really does give a good synopsis and background on the company that they are invested in or looking to invest in.

This recording will be recorded and sent out to everybody both on the call and available to everybody else as well for viewing at their leisure. Thank you very much for your attendance today.

Thank you, Simon, and thank you, Nathan.

Thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining.

Thanks, everyone.