Ramelius Resources Limited

Ramelius Resources Limited

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Feb 23Next Earn

Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJanuary 29, 2026

Operator

I'd now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Darren Millman, CFO.

Please go ahead.

Darren Millman

Thanks, Darcy, and good morning, all, and thanks for taking the time to join us this morning, and firstly apologies on the link issue we had this morning. In addition to the quarterly report, we've released a presentation that we'll be speaking to during this call.

It also encompasses information from our exploration update released last week. Both documents have been uploaded to the ASX platform and will be available on our website shortly.

As some of you may be aware, Mark Zeptner, our CEO, is not on the call today. He's taking some well-earned leave.

Mark will be back on deck come February. Initially, I'll be speaking to the highlights for the quarter, then we'll pass on to Tim Hewitt, our COO, who will speak to the details of our operational performance for the quarter.

On some of the operational slides, we have included some important exploration results received during the quarter, to which Peter Ruzicka, our Executive GM of Exploration, and Jake Ball, our Group Resource and Mine Geology Manager, will add some commentary. We have done this deliberately to provide an indicative on how exploration success might influence the production profile details in our five-year outlook released in October last year.

I will then provide an overview of the financial results for the quarter and upcoming H1 financial reporting. While the presentation is relatively high-level, I do note that a lot more detail can be found in both our quarterly report released today and the exploration update released last week.

As usual, there'll be an opportunity for listeners to ask questions at the end, whether that be through teleconference or the webinar, depending on how you have joined the call. For those that have the presentation deck handy, I will now be initially speaking to slide 3.

Gold production for the quarter was 46,510 oz at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,977/oz. Production and costs were in line with our expectations, with both metrics impacted by a lower milled grade, as flagged in the prior quarter.

Tim will talk further to mill grades and expectations for the remainder of FY2026 shortly, but importantly, our FY2026 guidance remains in place and unchanged. Pleasingly, our high-grade exploration strategy is delivering results with new discoveries, some of which we will highlight shortly, but I do encourage listeners to have a look at our recently released exploration update if you have not already.

The operations generated $149.7 million in cash flow, with underlying cash flow of $54.7 million after growth capital and exploration investments, along with a put option purchased during the quarter of approximately $12 million. Some analysts may in fact not include this hedge payment in calculating free cash flow.

Closing cash and gold balance was just shy of $700 million. I will talk through this in more detail shortly.

In regards to our project work, we hit several milestones in the quarter with the release of the Never Never PFS, along with our plan for upgrades to the Mount Magnet plant, the completion of Rebecca-Roe DFS with an FID board approval received subject to environmental permitting for Roe. Lastly, late in the quarter, we executed a native title agreement for the Rebecca-Roe projects.

With the studies now complete, showing compelling financial metrics, we are now getting on with the job, initially increasing mill throughput capacity at Mount Magnet, followed with construction of Rebecca-Roe. From a corporate point of view, we announced a $250 million buyback program, along with an increase in our minimum dividend to 2 cents per share, both applicable over FY2026 and FY2027.

We are focused on increasing returns to our shareholders even though this period of relatively heavier capital investment, and we have the balance sheet to support such initiatives. Slide 4 shows a breakdown of our ore sources during the quarter.

What really excites me the most in the short term is adding Dalgaranga into the mix, with initial infill drilling results boding well for initial ore to be delivered of Never Never to our Mount Magnet hub. That's enough from me, and I'll pass it over to Tim.

Tim Blyth

Thanks, Darren. Good morning, all.

I'll move on to slide 5. I'll discuss the production metrics.

The December quarter saw us mine 550,000 tonnes of ore compared with the last quarter, but at a slightly lower grade. The grade is in line with the lower grades at Cue.

The model's still performing well as we progress into fresh rock in some of the bigger pits there. At Galaxy, our mine grades were comparable to the prior quarter.

However, at Penny, we saw a higher grade compared to the prior quarter. At the processing plant, tonnes processed were up compared to the prior quarter, and that was the combined benefit of the new lifter design, which was introduced at the start of the year, optimizing our ore blend feed, and we had high mill availability, overall a higher throughput rate than the last quarter without sacrificing recovery, which remained above 95%.

The resulting gold production for the quarter was just over 46,000 oz. On slide 6, let's take a more detailed look at Mount Magnet.

From a safety perspective, we had four restricted work injuries at Magnet, some significant room to improve there. Our safety focus continues to be on our application of critical controls in the field, including that vision with our contract partners with respect to our principal mining hazards.

We continue to drive towards a proactive safety culture, and it's one of our key objectives for the next few years. Open-pit mining continued at Cue, and late in the quarter, we commenced the Never Never open-pit mine at Dalgaranga.

The Never Never open pit, which was highlighted as a scoping study released with the Never Never underground PFS, is a small open pit. We'll mine that over 12 months, and contains approximately 15,000 oz of gold.

Underground mining activities across Magnet continue to focus both on Galaxy and Penny. Looking forward, production is expected to be slightly lower in Q3, with the planned preventative mill shutdown before production increases in Q4 when we have that high-grade material from Dalgaranga displace low-grade material in the mill.

In the quarter, the team's focus at Mount Magnet on operational excellence and cost management continues to deliver strong results. This is evidenced by the fact the quarter, when compared to prior quarters, there's a lower production, we still manage to deliver a sub-$2,000 all-in sustaining cost, which is well-placed amongst our peer group.

We move now on to slide 7 and talk about Penny. We saw a significant improvement in mining metrics at Penny in the quarter, with 59,000 tonnes mined at a grade of 9.85, a increase of 63% and 20%, respectively, on the prior quarter.

Processing largely aligned to the mining in the quarter, with a recovery of over 97%. For the remainder of the financial year, tonnages are expected to align with this quarter at a slightly lower grade.

I'll now pass over to Jake for a few comments on exploration at Penny.

Jake Ball

Thanks, Tim. Morning, everyone.

A lot of focus past quarter has been on extending the remaining mine life at Penny. We suspected there to be another high-grade plunge on the Penny North lode to the south, just 50 m from the planned development.

The underground drilling confirmed the existence of the Penny West-style laminated quartz vein, although the strike extent was limited to less than 100 m, where gold grades were reduced significantly further to the south. Where the quartz vein was confirmed to host mineralization, we saw reasonably high gold grades, such as 0.7 at 41.7 g/t, 0.8 m at 77.1 g/t, and 0.5 m at 16.7 g/t.

We are now in the process of modeling and assessing the viability of the Penny North extension. Overall, the mineralization at Penny is controlled by a northerly trending structural corridor called the Penny shear zone.

The plan figure on the right side of the slide shows the association of surface gold geochemistry of the structural trend, highlighting the Magenta-Columbia area to the north of Penny. Recent exploration drilling at Magenta has returned results including 3.4 m at 6.94 g/t, 0.7 m at 15.5 g/t, and 0.62 at 14.1 g/t.

The mineralized system remains open down-plunge, and further work is being planned.

Tim Blyth

Thanks, Jake. For those familiar with the Ramelius story, Penny's production under our existing five-year plan is due to cease at the end of this financial year.

The exploration at Penny North, we are looking to conceptually extend this into FY2027, whilst Magenta and the other close regional targets will need further work. The grades of just under 7 g/t are very encouraging at this early stage.

Moving from Penny over to Cue on slide 8. At Cue, we mined 341,000 tonnes at a grade of 1.44, both metrics being down on the prior quarter due to the aforementioned mine grades at Cue and the operation focusing on the Break of Day stage 2 cutback, a little less productive in that cutback.

Haulage to Mount Magnet was uninterrupted in the quarter, with 240,000 tonnes being processed at a grade of just over 2.

Jake Ball

I'll just add a few words for Cue, Tim. The resource definition and exploration drilling is ongoing at Cue, with the aim of converting and extending inferred resources beneath the Break of Day planned underground mine from the Twilight and Velvet lodes.

We've also begun some near-mine exploration along the Starlight basalt corridor, which extends several kilometers to the north. Due to the relative size of the area, we suspect that there could be another deposit within the same style as Break of Day and White Heat within the basalt, and we're testing that hypothesis now.

Some remarkable results from the Twilight and Velvet underground extensions included 4.6 m at 15.2 g/t, 7.5 m at 35.8 g/t, and 1.8 at 139 g/t. That's all from within the currently inferred mineral resource area, as well as 1.2 m at 27.1 g/t from beneath the currently estimated resource.

Tim Blyth

Thanks, Jake. Again, in relation to our five-year outlook, our current production profile has the Break of Day underground coming in in FY2027, and currently only has one year of production.

However, the grades just mentioned by Jake, in addition to the early drill hit of 6.2 m at 60.3, validates that we've got continued mineralization below the existing underground mine designs. Whilst they're still conceptual, we're quite upbeat on extending the mine life.

Moving from Cue now to Galaxy. Mine tonnes and grade were in line with the prior quarter, 132,000 tonnes at a grade of 2.17.

We processed 155,000 tonnes at a grade of 2.18 and a recovery of 92.4%, just under 10,000 tonnes of recovered gold from Galaxy. Processing exceeded mining in the month.

We had some existing stockpiles that were able to draw down upon.

Jake Ball

Looking at the resource definition and exploration activities, you can also see that both the surface and underground drilling at Galaxy was very positive, along with the results that we had from underground drilling beneath the Saturn and Mars planned developments. The drill results we've had observed so far, including the 5.1 m at 47.3 g/t, 1 m at 238 g/t, and 4.4 m at 13 g/t, it's a continuation of the high-grade plunges within the BIFs that host the deposits.

Based on a continuation of the calculated ounces per vertical meter contained in the resource estimate, we envisage an exploration target beneath Saturn and Mars in the range of 6 million to 7 million tonnes at a grade of 2.1 to 2.6 g/t for 400,000 to 600,000 oz. In effect, we aim to double the current resources estimated at 6.2 million tonnes at 2.7 g/t for 530,000 oz from the planned drilling shown on the slide.

Tim Blyth

Thanks, Jake. As you can see, we are looking to double the resources here so we can extend Galaxy for many years beyond FY2028 2028.

As we highlighted in the past, the current Mount Magnet plant is running at capacity, if we can displace any low-grade material in the medium term, it makes a lot of sense. In FY2029, our existing plans at the Mount Magnet hub, we have 1.9 million tonnes of low-grade material grading at 0.8.

Given the exploration target here has a midpoint of 2.3 g/t, a great opportunity to increase the overall mill grades from FY2029 onwards. Now pass on to Peter to discuss Hesperus, but just before I do that, it's just worth highlighting on slide 9 on the right-hand-side picture there how close Hesperus sits relative to our mining activity at Galaxy.

Thanks, Peter.

Peter Ruzicka

Thanks, Tim. Morning, all.

I'll initially be speaking to slide 10. The Hesperus pit sits just to the south of the Saturn pit, southern end of the Galaxy mine area.

Our drilling has been focused around a mineralized granodiorite sill, called the Hesperus sill, and expanding outwards to other adjacent target areas. Worth noting here that the intrusive-hosted geological model is one based on other significant deposits in the Boogardie Basin area of Mount Magnet, including Eridanus and Bartus East.

The significance of that comparison is that those deposits contain high-grade zones in areas of favorable structure, and we're looking for the same high-grade controls at Hesperus. It's exciting that we're seeing some high-grade validation with recent results including 22.7 m at 10.8 g/t gold, 35 m at 3.14 g/t gold, and 0.5 m at 8,590 g/t gold.

Those latter two are shown on the cross section there. On the following slide 11, we have a photograph of the high-grade intercept at Hesperus that I've just mentioned, 0.5 m at 8,590 g/t gold.

It's one of our highest assay grades ever. It comes from a quartz vein within a mafic, just below the mineralized granodiorite.

Again, just refer to the section for some geology background there. This is just another reiteration of the high-grade potential of the area when we have the right structure.

Tim Blyth

Thanks, Peter. Back to operations, focusing on Dalgaranga on slide 12.

The key highlights for the quarter at Dalgaranga include we completed 1.6 km of lateral development to date and the commencement of all mining development material only at this stage from the Never Never underground mine, which totaled 16,000 tonnes at a grade of 3.52. The ore's been stockpiled, awaiting haulage to the Mount Magnet processing plant.

On the long section on the left-hand side, you can see we're pushing both the incline and decline for Never Never. We've established three production levels.

We're commencing stoping late in this quarter. I'll note the picture on the right-hand side shows the Barminco Rhino rig cutting the first boxhole for our first stope.

As noted earlier, we also commenced operations at the Never Never open pit in the quarter, with ore mining there commencing in this current month. Our recent five-year plan included this open pit in FY2027.

However, we took the strategic decision to start this earlier to set ourselves up for future success at Dalgaranga. Waste material was moved at the Never Never pit in the quarter, with ore mining commencing this month.

Establishing this pit now gives Dalgaranga optionality for another access point for mine access, haulage, or ventilation options. Mine development and site infrastructure remain in line with our plan, and we're very excited to get this ore into our processing plant imminently.

Jake Ball

All right. On slide 13 and the resource definition and infill drilling taking place at Dalgaranga.

Darren Millman

Underground infill drilling continued in the upper levels of Never Never, and some resource definition drilling took place at Four Pillars. Some outstanding results received included 13 m at 38.4 g/t, 35.3 m at 16 g/t, and 11.3 m at 22.9 g/t at Never Never, as well as a 4.2 at 3 3.35 g/t at Four Pillars.

All the drilling conducted during the quarter confirmed that the average thickness, position, and grade of our current mineral resource estimate, with potential for upside where the ore-controlling Never Never fault was found to be further to the north than expected. The resource definition drilling at Four Pillars aims to convert the existing inferred resources to indicated, and we aim to provide a reserve update once the drilling is complete.

Peter Ruzicka

From an exploration lens, Dalgaranga remains a corridor for future discoveries, as noted on slide 14. The broader corridor remains a key target for both resource addition and new discovery.

We have a significant budget expenditure of $19 million allocated to Dalgaranga in FY2026. That includes extensive underground programs at Four Pillars, West Winds, and Applecross, all shown on the previous long section, as well as surface drilling along southerly extensions of the Gilbeys system at Sly Fox and Plymouth, an exploration evaluation of a 6-km-long mineralized corridor extending northwards from the mine area.

The southern Gilbeys area is a structurally complex area, with a number of mineralized trends interacting with an antiformal fold closure. Structural complexity is always a favorable outcome for exploration upside.

Significant result of 4 m at 42.6 g/t gold has been reported from surface diamond drilling at Plymouth, extending and adding confidence to mineralization. With that, I'll now hand back to Darren.

Darren Millman

Thank you, Tim, Jake, and Peter. I'll now be speaking to slide 15.

The December quarter has been another strong quarter for Ramelius, with $54.7 million free cash flow being generated. Whilst overall this is down on the prior quarter, we're in a period of reinvestment into the business.

I will talk to the cash flow for the quarter in more detail shortly. The all-in sustaining cost for the quarter did increase slightly, partly due to lower grades milled, but also the higher gold price, which, as noted in the quarterly report, added approximately $30/oz for the quarter.

Pleasingly, the all-in sustaining cost of $1,977/oz remained below the $2,000 mark and leaves us well-placed compared to our peers. During the quarter, we sold 55,610 oz at an average realized price of $5,175/oz, which includes a mix of spot and committed forward sales.

This resulted in total sales revenue for the quarter of $236 million. The realized price for the quarter was up 14% on an improved spot price and less hedge commitments.

The Aussie gold price itself improved 11% over the quarter. The resulting all-in sustaining margin, which is the average realized gold price less the all-in sustaining, was $3,198/oz and represents an all-in sustaining cost margin of 62%, both metrics improving on the prior quarter and being the best ever achieved by Ramelius.

Looking forward, our hedge book commitments on a monthly basis are between 1,000 to 3,000 oz, and a total of 21,000 oz over the calendar year, increasing our exposure to the remarkable gold price over the year. Moving on to slide 17 and the cash flow for the business for the quarter.

Operational cash flow was $149.7 million, slightly down on the prior quarter on lower production. It's also worth noting that the cash flow includes the purchase of a put option for FY2028 production, which cost $12.3 million.

This operational cash flow funded growth capital for the quarter of 91 of $51 million, which mainly related to the underground development at Never Never, the commencement of stage 2 cutback at Break of Day, and the infrastructure across both Dalgaranga and Mount Magnet. Our investment in exploration and resource definition for the quarter totaled $24.8 million and was focused on Dalgaranga, Mount Magnet, Cue, and Penny.

As highlighted by Jake and Peter, we are seeing the returns on this investment in our exploration results to date. The resulting underlying free cash flow for the quarter was $54.7 million.

From this, a total cash payment of $60.3 million was made by way of final fully franked FY2025 dividend of 5 cents per share. The total amount was $95.7 million, with that being a 30% take-up on the dividend reinvestment plan, which resulted in the stated cash dividend payment.

Lastly, we've had a total income tax for the quarter of $127.8 million, with $118.2 million of this related to FY2025 and the balance being income tax installments made in advance for FY2026. Importantly, we do not expect this large final tax payment going forward, as we're now paying income tax in advance.

The resulting closing cash and gold position was $694.7 million. On slide 18, we show our track record of generating significant cash flow.

This has underpinned our ability to reward shareholders through a recently announced $250 million share buyback program and an increase in the minimum dividend to 2 cents per share, both across FY2026 and FY2027. We see the business generating significant cash flow once this investment period at Mount Magnet is complete, and we are focused on increasing shareholder return when those cash flows are realized, all of this while maintaining a robust balance sheet and self-funding the development of Rebecca-Roe.

As you will see, we have $0.9 billion in available liquidity, which is made up of cash and gold at 31 December and the available undrawn debt facility, which leaves Ramelius in a very healthy position. On slide 18, while not technically required, relating to the quarterly reporting, I wanted to take this opportunity to provide some guidance around the H1 FY2026 earnings, specifically the impact of the Spartan acquisition.

There are two key points to be made here. Firstly, the existing private royalties over the Dalgaranga mine, which were reduced to 2% in Q1.

Upon the acquisition of Spartan, we are required under accounting guidance to recognize the future royalty liability on our balance sheet, determined at fair value, the primary driver which is prevailing gold price and production profile. At the date of the acquisition, the fair value of those royalties was approximately $80 million.

Now a lot has changed since the acquisition date in July, specifically we have increased the confidence in the orebody with the release of our maiden ore reserve of 1.6 million oz, and the consensus forward gold price over the life of Dalgaranga has increased 36% from $3,789/oz at that time of the acquisition to $5,147/oz at the end of December. The combined impact of this, we expect a fair value adjustment of between $35 million to $45 million, which is required under accounting standards, which will be expensed in earnings during the quarter.

This is not a cash cost for the current reporting period. Secondly, the costs related to the Spartan acquisitions, which we are estimated at $135 million and includes an estimated stamp duty of $130 million to $132 million, are required to be recognized and expensed to earnings in the quarter.

On slide 19, we have summarized our key focus areas for the remainder of the year. We wanted to continue to improve our safety performance.

We acknowledge we have some work to do in this area. Progress the environmental approvals for Roe, noting that approval has already in place at Rebecca.

Significantly increase exploration activities. We have 12 service rigs 12 surface rigs and four underground rigs drilling at the moment.

Our increase in exploration of $80 million to $100 million for FY2026 is paying dividends, as noted today. Continue with the excellent progress made by the site team at Dalgaranga, the development of Never Never underground, the open pit and infrastructure across the site, and importantly, get the ore to the processing plant at Mount Magnet, which we expect in the March quarter.

Finally, commence the plant upgrade works at Mount Magnet. These are the key areas that will drive value and will be our focus.

We will now open up the line for questions, if you could please, Darcy.

Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question via the phone, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad.

If you would like to cancel, please press star two. If you would like to ask a question via the webcast today, please type your question into the Ask a Question box and click Submit.

Your first question today comes from Adam Baker from Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Adam Baker

Morning, Darren, Tim, Peter, Jake. Just a couple on the exploration, if I may, since you've got the whole team here.

Just firstly on the exploration target at Galaxy, the 6 to 7 million tonnes, looks like you've got pretty high confidence in extensions to the mineralization at depth there. I saw you previously called out OVMs of around 2,300 per meter.

What are you seeing at depth here? You're seeing grades in line with historical norms or what are we seeing with regards to grade?

Are you seeing it increase or decrease? In addition to that, is there any structural change in the structural nature of the mineralized resource?

Thank you.

Darren Millman

Adam. Good to hear from you.

I think that overall the grade seems remarkably consistent at Saturn and Mars, the very similar structures to what was mined at Hill 50, although they seem to be laterally discontinuous, they are offset by maybe less than 10 m and then continue at depth as we chase those BIFs down. Once we've located them with drilling, the overall mined grade and reconciled grade from the areas that we've mined so far are consistent, and we're still seeing similar results, even though they look quite outstanding.

Once we do the estimations, we're more or less seeing those same grades come through in our current mineral resource estimation. We expect to see similar grades at depth, not generally increasing or decreasing.

Adam Baker

That's clear. Do you have any timings of when you could see that getting integrated into a resource?

Obviously a lot of drilling ahead, but any kind of rough timeline?

Darren Millman

I think we're going to probably target sort of late August, early September for our next reserve and resource update, we'll look to incorporate additional drilling we've done then. At that time as well, we'd probably look to update that sort of four-year guidance being FY2027 through to FY2030.

I think at the moment FY2028 is the timeline in which the Galaxy mine was due to finish up, and obviously given this exploration target and our ability to displace this lower-grade material, we do expect potentially to have production extending out beyond then.

Adam Baker

That sounds great. Secondly, on Penny, some pretty positive drill intersections at depth here along this new laminated quartz vein.

Just wondering if you could call out what's in the life of mine at Penny at the moment? What's the current mine life at Penny?

In addition to that, what's the likelihood of these new mineralized veins being incorporated to an updated mine plan to potentially give you a bit more of a mine life?

Darren Millman

I asked the same question to Jake sort of a week or so ago, I can answer that one. Basically, it pinches out at depth, which was sort of seen from time to time at Penny.

We are undertaking a study, a desktop study on that work. The final results will be looking to incorporate in that August-September timeline.

At the moment, Penny operationally, as Tim mentioned, is due to finish up at the end of FY2026. In an ideal world, we extend that into FY2027.

Our expectations, at first glance, it won't be a long extension into FY2027. Whether we can get somewhere between 3 to 6 months is probably what we're kind of expecting, but once again, with caveat that we need to do the work.

Adam Baker

Thank you. Maybe just finally, just one for you, Darren.

Not much of a hedge book remaining, only 21,000 oz, but have you given any thoughts to just pre-delivering to clean the books up?

Darren Millman

It comes up every sort of board discussion, and then the gold price runs another $100/oz, it sort of gets more costly. When you reflect, we were quite impacted in this quarter.

Probably hit us around $50 million in the context of additional free cash flow that could have been generated, it's not a small number. As we head into Q4 or the back end of actually the H2, the percentage of production that's being hedged is only around 13%, as we've flagged.

It will hurt us a little bit, but the hurt won't be as big as we go forward. That being said, we may clean it up, but we'll probably chat with the board on that end of February and make a call.

As I said, it's not going to hurt us as much as it has this quarter and previously, but it still hurts.

Adam Baker

Thanks, guys. I'll hand it on.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question today comes from Levi Spry from UBS.

Please go ahead.

Levi Spry

G'day. Thanks for your time.

Maybe just a couple quick ones. Firstly, on Dalgaranga, can you just remind us of the ramp-up in volumes there over the next 18 months as you start stoping later this quarter, and maybe talk to any potential upside of the amount of ounces you can pull out of there in the short to medium term?

Darren Millman

This financial year, we've got a target around 200,000 tonnes of ore, and then the ramp-up the following year. We're about three years we're at the run rate, and obviously this is our first production at a new mine, we're being conservative in nature, but we're quite confident that we'll achieve that 200,000 tonnes mined this year and getting that over to Mount Magnet.

Levi Spry

Yep. Nice one.

Thank you. Then just on Edna May, is there any updates on any processes that may be running there at these high prices?

Darren Millman

No update at this stage. We're pulling together the data, making our own final call whether it continues to be part of the portfolio or process potentially may run, so that's yeah, that's still in progress at the moment, Levi.

Levi Spry

Thank you. Thanks for your time.

Darren Millman

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

Your next question today comes from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hugo Nicolaci

Morning, guys. Thanks for the update.

A couple from me, if I can. Just sort of extending from Levi's point on Never Never, you highlighted in the release that you're going to potentially declare commercial production earlier is partially a function of gold price, but then how much of that is just the mine tracking ahead?

To your point around the 200,000 tonnes being reasonably conservative, can you elaborate just in terms of how conservative you feel you've been there? Thanks.

Darren Millman

As I said, stopes are ready, I think we're kind of a bit conscious not to count the chicken before they hatch, to speak. I think, as Tim said, we're on plan.

There might be some upside, but we'll see how we go the next several months. It'll be a telling stage.

I think come April, hopefully we'll have that data, we'll see the grade reconciliations, and we'll probably provide more of an update then, I think, on that particular issue. Obviously, we've had some pretty strong infill results, 16s, 22, 38, 25, mentioned in the exploration update.

The reconciliation at the moment's looking positive. Don't be expecting Cue-like reconciliation grades of that 30%, but once again, we won't know the final until we start getting it through the mill.

We'll know a lot more come April and share that, but everything at the moment is on track. Grade reconciliation on the infill looks good, and we'll see where we sit come end of April as we do and report out.

Hugo Nicolaci

Got it. That's helpful.

Then

Darren Millman

The other piece was the commercial production. At the moment, it's largely purely driven by where the gold price sits at this point in time versus where it was when we put out guidance for FY2026.

Hugo Nicolaci

Can you just remind us what you're planning on sort of capitalizing on the development in the second half of this year in terms of what we should think about sort of shifting magnitude over to AISC?

Darren Millman

Obviously we'll look to provide a bit more color on what that breakout is at the moment on the growth capital we've spent, but predominantly a lot of that to date is on Never Never. We'll call it 80%, even potentially even as high as 90%.

We are ramping up the underground development, 600 m a month. It will be slightly higher, will be similar levels as we did in the quarter.

It just depends on whether that gets capitalized. That's kind of the ballpark on what potentially will move from growth capital to sustaining capital.

It'll still be capitalized, it's just that allocation. What we're trying to flag here is, okay, well, there may be potential push of some of that into all-in sustaining cost because of sustaining capital, and that might hurt us in the context of simply that reporting metric, but it's a positive overall in the context of the mine and the profitability.

Hugo Nicolaci

Fantastic. That's helpful.

Then just to some of the things you highlighted in terms of financial impacts for the first half, can you just clarify whether those sort of come through your underlying result or whether they're considered one-off? Then just can you just confirm if I'm interpreting the comment correctly around the stamp duty that that will also hit your P&L this half?

Darren Millman

The one-off is on the stamp duty and the initial acquisition cost associated with that. On the royalty, we'll see that big hit the initial acquisition won't go through the balance sheet, but any change in gold price and/or extension of mine life will continue to have to make on a recurring basis every quarter or every sort of 6 months from an external perspective.

We'll look to establish we'll call it normalized earnings and flag that to the market as we go forward, just so it's clear, because, as I said, it is a non-cash component when we report out publicly.

Hugo Nicolaci

Got it. That's helpful, guys.

I'll pass it on.

Darren Millman

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. As there are no further phone questions at this time, I'll now hand back for any webcast questions to be addressed.

Darren Millman

Thanks. We just checked.

There's no webcast questions logged in, with that, I'd like to close the call. Thanks all for dialling in.

Thanks for some color this quarter from Jake and Peter, and yeah, we'll look to provide sort of some more color on exploration as we deliver some high-grade results. Thanks, all, and have a great day.

Operator

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

You may now disconnect.