Develop Global Limited

Develop Global Limited

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Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJuly 27, 2026

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bill Beament, Managing Director.

Please go ahead.

Bill Beament

Good morning and thanks for joining us. It's been an absolutely cracking quarter for Develop on every front.

We now have a very well established pipeline of production and cash flow growth both in the immediate, medium, and longer terms. Basically, we're now reaping the benefits of the investments we've made over the past 2 to 3 years and the hard work by all our teams.

The production results at Woodlawn are excellent, with recoveries continuing to increase, underpinning record production and record revenue. The resource growth drilling at Woodlawn is delivering in spades.

I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. At Pioneer Dome, we are in the countdown to first sales of direct shipped ore lithium in the December quarter.

Again, the drilling results are a standout, with the average grade of the infill drilling program exceeding the resource grade. The potential impact on this on the project's cash flow is very substantial.

The higher the grade, the more money we get per tonne. We're very close to a final investment decision on the underground development at Pioneer Dome.

It has also been a highly successful quarter in our Mining Services division, with a major contract win and the starting of 2 major contracts. The Bellevue Gold contract finishes this month, and we have plenty of uses for the amazing and highly skilled people and equipment this will free up.

I'll now run through each of the divisions in some more detail, and then I'm happy to take some questions. Just switching to very busy quarter, we made 2 final investment decisions: one on Yidada, which is the old name is the new name for Sulphur Springs project, our copper-silver-zinc project, and Pioneer Dome lithium projects in Western Australia.

We also secured a $400 million US debt facility and warrant package signed with Trafigura to fund both projects and to refinance the existing Woodlawn facility, all on highly favourable terms. We greatly thank the Trafigura team because that's a huge package that now funds our projects in the coming years.

I guess these agreements really do position Develop for substantial free cash flow generation on the back of 3 producing projects in Australia, plus the cash flow generated by our Mining Services. It shouldn't be understated that we're basically building 3 mines in 3 years.

On to Woodlawn, as I said, record quarter across production, revenue, and recoveries, with Woodlawn really delivering its strongest performance since commissioning. The team have done an amazing job there.

Our copper equivalent production was 4,625, very close to an annualized basis of 20,000 tonnes per annum. That was up 47% from the March quarter.

Record revenue earned of $84 million. We sold 4,500 copper equivalent tonnes, which is up 244% from the March quarter.

One of the real things that I'm super excited about is the processing team and what they've been able to achieve. This is a 3-stage concentrator.

It is a complex set of chemistry, but massive improvements in recoveries across the plant from the March quarter. Copper total recovery is now sitting at 80%, that's up 15%.

Zinc recoveries at 75, that's up 6. Lead sits at 80, which is up 23% quarter-on-quarter.

The real win that we're seeing is our precious metal content, both silver and gold. Silver recoveries at 71% and gold's at 48, and they're both up substantially quarter-on-quarter and expect those trends well and truly to continue.

We're seeing a lot better recoveries of the precious, and definitely well into the month of July. Our feed grade, as we said, when you commission a processing plant, you don't want to put high-grade material through that.

We commissioned last year on lower grade, and we're steadily bringing more of the high grade out. Our feed grade for the quarter in June was 2.73% copper equivalent.

That's up 27% from the March quarter. That's really starting now to get in line with the overall reserve grade of 2.8% copper equivalent at Woodlawn.

I think there's upside in our grade moving forward because we're still really yet to put the real big high-grade stuff of Kate through the processing plant. The resource growth drilling at at Woodlawn is really kicking off.

We're extending all the known mineralization in the lenses. A second rig has just been commissioned.

That is part of our our DM15 project, which is we want to drill and define a mine plan of 15 years. That has gone extraordinarily well, and again we'll put more information on that in the in the coming week or so on on an update of the drilling results of that.

Visually, we've had really, really good success of extending these lenses, and it's really good to get the second rig in there, which was really the the rig that we wanted to get in there for that DM15 project. On to Pioneer Dome lithium mine, again we made final investment decision on that.

We have hit the ground really quickly on this. Open pit construction is underway.

We signed a $70 million mining and crushing contract awarded with Kalgoorlie-based contractor MLG, and we are on track for first direct shipped ore sales in the December quarter. We're very close to awarding the haulage contractor and very close to signing on Esperance port, and we secured quite a bit of capacity down in in the port there.

That is coming together extremely well. We're very excited about how that goes.

If there's any investors there, we're doing a site visit Tuesday next week. Pretty excited to take people down to the site and show them the project and how quick it is evolving.

Part of the quarterly is we finished off the infill and exploration drilling program, about 20,000 meters. To say it exceeded expectations is an understatement.

We've put out a raft of results across that project. We are getting numerous results greater than the resource grade of 1.2%.

I think the average intersection to date that we've published on the ASX is true width of close to 16 meters at 1.45% lithium. I think there's an opportunity there to improve the grade of the resource.

Also in particular, keep an eye on the underground drilling component is probably being well in excess of 1.5%. What does that mean?

The higher the grade, two things: the higher the grade, the more revenue we get per tonne, and also the higher recovery we get through the converter. We get a double a positive jaws there, expect the underground revenue per tonne would be much higher than the open pit revenue per tonne.

What does that mean? With the drilling, we'll update the resource and grade control model, that's only about 3 weeks away.

That'll be done in the September quarter. We're very well into the stage 2 underground getting evaluated.

We've basically got a year's worth of DSO in the pit. Obviously, the company's goal would be to not have a production gap between the open pit and the underground.

We're very close to it doing all the final work on the underground, and as we say here, we want to make a final investment decision and put it to the board in the September quarter of the underground. On to our third asset, Yudada copper-silver-zinc mine.

Again, we made final investment decision on this. We've got the total capital expenditure to bring the mine into construction of $450 million that we published last month.

First concentrate is targeted for the June quarter 2028, and I should emphasize that's less than 2 years away. Our construction is progressing across all work streams.

Access road, earthworks on site are well advanced. The site is basically cleared.

Most of the pre-development works for for the processing facility have all been completed. The connection of the haul road is well advanced, and that'll be completed in September.

Our underground development there, I think we're 24% ahead of schedule, but we did close to 900 meters for the quarter in a single heading decline, which is no mean feat, which is an amazing job by the team up there, and we've done over 2,300 meters to date. Again, we're severely de-risking the mining part of a of a new project build, which is super important.

Most people really stuff that part up and undercapitalize themselves. Very happy with that.

A lot of key reports have been recruited, and we're obviously in the in the final throes of of the processing contract with GR Engineering, and that'll be done in the next couple of weeks. On to the Mining Services: record external revenue of $63 million for the quarter.

Again, very busy. We were awarded the $274 million contract with Core Lithium at their amazing lithium project up in the Northern Territory.

We kicked that off. I'll be up there today, looking forward to seeing the night shift.

That's really advancing quite well, and I think we're ahead of schedule on that. We commenced mining at the $200 million OceanaGold tunnelling job in Waihi, which is which is going well as well.

On to Bellevue, as I said, we conclude that contract in the coming days, and really excited about the highly experienced and engaged workforce we had there. We've got a very large mobile fleet.

I think we've got a $30 or $40 million fleet that we can deploy to our other business units, which is really, really great in this environment, which is probably one of the tightest labor markets I've seen in my 30-year career. We get to redeploy that talent to our other mining services clients that are excited about that, and and also importantly into our own assets, because we've got multiple underground mines we're building ourselves.

On to Corporate: record quarterly revenue earned, $147 million for the quarter, up 108% from March. Cash balance sat pretty flat at $123 million.

Trafigura debt drawn at $112 million, which is where it was before, because we just basically one in, one out, refinancing Woodlawn on the new facility. We have $388 million remaining of undrawn facilities.

We ended up with unsold concentrate stockpiles at Woodlawn of close to 10,000 tonnes, probably round about $25 million sitting on the deck. We spent $27 million of growth capital.

Obviously part of our deal with Trafigura in in June was we also entered in into a very important cooperation agreement with Trafigura, which makes it puts us both our companies aim to partner on you know potential future opportunities outside our current asset base, and already working on a couple of them as we speak. Again to wrap that up before questions: huge quarter of activity.

I think a couple of our staff members needed a week or two off in July in the school holidays, but come back. We're now into the second quarter of this business and super excited about executing on the the final investment decisions and the funding we've got off Trafigura, and can't be more happy with how the business is performing.

With that, moderator, I'll hand over for questions.

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.

We'll now pause a short moment for any questions to register. Thank you.

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

Beament for closing remarks.

Bill Beament

Yes, thanks for that. Again, thanks for everyone coming on the call.

Just re-emphasize what we put together last month was really 4 years of heavy lifting. I want to thank all my teams and all the great work to put 2 new projects to a board for final investment decision and get funding of that magnitude to build it is no mean feat.

Massive job. Thanks for shareholders supporting us there.

Pretty excited about entering chapter 2 with Woodlawn really starting to hit its straps now and making great cash flow. We're on the cusp of more cash flow from Pioneer Dome in the December quarter, and we're less than 2 years away with Sulphur Springs.

It should not be lost that you wake up today and we are now sitting at the highest Aussie copper price and one of the highest zinc prices since we started this business 4 years ago. Super excited to build another couple of mines and capitalize on those higher commodities.

We're very well leveraged in this company. Thanks again, and I look forward to talking after the September quarter.

Cheers.

Operator

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

You may now disconnect.