© 2024 Alpha Spread Limited. All Rights Reserved.
www.alphaspread.com is not operated by a broker, a dealer, or a registered investment adviser. Under no circumstances does any information posted on www.alphaspread.com represent a recommendation to buy or sell a security. The information on this site, and in its related newsletters, is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, investment advice or recommendations. The information on this site is in no way guaranteed for completeness, accuracy or in any other way. In no event shall Alpha Spread Limited be liable to any member, guest or third party for any damages of any kind arising out of the use of any content or other material published or available on www.alphaspread.com, or relating to the use of, or inability to use, www.alphaspread.com or any content, including, without limitation, any investment losses, lost profits, lost opportunity, special, incidental, indirect, consequential or punitive damages. Past performance is a poor indicator of future performance.
You don't have any saved screeners yet
Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Aurelia Metals Limited Quarterly Investor Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Dan Clifford, Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Bernadette. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your time today. With me, I have Ian Poole, Peter Trout and Adam McKinnon. We have a slight change to how we will update this morning, and it's particularly driven off the back of our recent market announcements covering exploration updates across all our sites, the mineral resource and reserve report, the latest June quarterly activities report and the accompanying FY '22 guidance contained within that report. As such, we'll be referring to a presentation lodged this morning on the ASX titled June 2021 Quarter Update and Outlook. This is our first opportunity to review the year both in terms of commitments made for the year and the steps taken to get our strategy executed on the ground. I'll move to Slide 3. The combination of the sustainability effort and the results with our asset base has put us in an incredibly well -- has incredibly well positioned us with a footprint that is gold dominant, contains incredibly high value-based metals, including Federation and well-advanced organic copper exposures, namely Great Cobar. Setup with the diversity of 3 operating assets with fantastic exploration potential in front of all 3 is driving improving reserve and cost basis, commodity mix and mine lives to see us through the cycle of relevant commodities. Moving on to Slide 5. Let's now home in on the year and call out the key aspects of the year's performance. The momentum gathered across sustainability, particularly health and safety and environment community and more recently diversity and climate change has been great to see with substantial reductions in events causing harm across our business. FY '21 guidance was, in its entirety, met or beaten. We've added and integrated Dargues into the portfolio and continued a large investment into exploration across Federation, Great Cobar and Kairos and Dargues with results on all 3 fronts. These results have driven a large bow wave of material in our resource and represents a 63% increase in resource growth across the business. And with the completion of the Federation scoping study, enabling works and feasibility study underway and with the PFS at Great Cobar, there is a potential to unlock significant conversion of resources to reserves through FY '22. Moving on to Slide 6. Our operations leadership and all our people and contract partners have lent into this performance to achieve a 58% reduction in injuries and a remarkable 82% reduction in reportable environmental incidents over the year and is an absolute credit to the whole team for that performance through the year. Moving on to Slide 7, with performance against FY '21 guidance. Gold was on with a 13% year-on-year increase. Underlying that, an increase of 22% in Peak's contribution to gold, the addition of 6 months of Dargues. And Hera was down, as has been previously flagged, approximately 30% on a year-on-year basis. Lead was a beat and zinc was on. The combination of these 2 commodities, up 23% year-on-year, predominantly driven by Peak and following the upgrades in 2019, '20 to the mill. Copper was a beat, although down on previous years. All-in sustaining cost was also a beat with OpEx costs on target, sustaining capital slightly under and a solid base metal pricing, giving our all-in sustaining credits a boost. Moving on to Slide 8. Honing further down into the June quarter. It was primarily impacted by Hera's quarter-on-quarter flagged reduction in gold and, to a lesser extent, Dargues being under plan for the quarter. Moving through to Slide 9. Underlying and cost throughput performances across the site were met or beaten, including the Hera and Peak site mills. Both saw a 10% improvement in throughput from the FY '20 year. Peak although did experience some headwinds from labor shortages, particularly through the early stages of half 2 and later into Q4. And Dargues saw delays in some planned high-grade stopes pushing into FY '22. We will go further into Dargues with this shortly with Peter. But noting and contained in the reports that July, we're seeing a 47% increase in grade in comparison to June and a 19% increase in grade compared to the full year performance, with the investment thesis well intact. I'll now hand over to Ian.
Thanks, Dan. On Slide 10. During the June quarter, Aurelia maintained its cash on hand. At the end of June, there was a cash balance of $74.5 million. During the quarter, the company funded from operations growth capital of $14.5 million, which is primarily represented by $8.2 million of exploration, including infield drilling at Federation and $5 million of growth mine development at Peak and Dargues. It also repaid $4.1 million relating to Aurelia's term loan, which is scheduled to be fully repaid by September 2023. Aurelia also cashed back $4.3 million of its bank guarantees, which are used for environmental bonding. During the quarter, we made $8.9 million of tax payments. And working capital fluctuates from quarter-to-quarter depending upon the timing of trade receivables, prepayments and payables. And during the June quarter, there was a cash inflow of $9.9 million. I'd now like to hand back to Dan.
Thanks, Ian. Moving on to Slide 11. And before we shift into forward-looking for the company, it's really worth reflecting on the continued strong track record in growth from 2014 to now. This is across exploration, development and operations at Hera, acquisition, operations and expansions at Peak and now an acquisition and operations to date at Dargues. This has -- and whilst the chart shows gold production, it actually resulted in a gold equivalent record for the company of approximately 180,000 ounces with both expansion and extension opportunities at all 3 complexes, setting us up for the next 3 or 4 years for the continued growth of the company. Moving to Slide 13. Looking at guidance for FY '22, gold's lifting 13% at the midpoint, and that's ranging between 112,000 and 123,000 ounces. Underlying this, Peak is steady. There's a full year of contribution from Dargues this year. And Hera is actually halving, as has been well flagged to the market, as gold grades reduce when we switch to higher-grade base metals over the coming 2 years. Lead is steady at 24,000 to 27,000 tonnes. And zinc is rising 30% at the midpoint to 31,000 to 34,500 tonnes, with both Hera and Peak contributing to that lift. Copper is falling 25% at Peak to 3,500 to 4,000 tonnes with medium-term ore body phasing and lower grades this year. AISC is rising to $1,500 to $1,700 an ounce, driven by Peak and Dargues' first full year and continued ramping of gold grades. Sustaining capital lifts to $61 million to $69 million as a result of no further growth capital development at any of the sites and the inclusion of Dargues into the estimate. Growth capital subsequently reduces as a result of the shift away from growth capital and is wholly directed at Federation and Great Cobar projects growth in the company. Exploration rises, $28 million to $31 million, reflecting directing dollars to the best return and an increasing footprint on the ground. I'll now hand over to Peter for the detail of the individual assets.
Thank you, Dan, and good morning to everyone on the call. I'll be talking to the FY '22 guidance at an asset level, and that's shown on Slide 14 of the presentation deck. I'll also give commentary around the production ramp-up at our Dargues mine. Looking at the individual sites. Peak mine will continue to ramp up processed ore volumes in FY '22 in line with higher mine tonnages. This tonnage increase will partially offset lower planned gold, lead and copper grades, while we're expecting a slight increase in zinc grade. Year-on-year change in operating unit costs and all-in sustaining cost reflects a doubling of sustaining capital expenditure compared to FY '21. There are 3 major contributors to the higher sustaining CapEx. The first is that all mine capital development has transitioned to sustaining CapEx following the completion of growth capital development in the Kairos mining area. And mine development in the sustaining CapEx accounts for approximately half of the site sustaining CapEx budget for FY '22. Secondly, we're also embarking on fixed plant refurbishments on some of our long-serving infrastructure and compliance upgrade projects to meet current regulatory requirements. We're also raising the TSF embankment, and that will be about 11% of the total capital spend for the site. Looking at Hera. The operation in FY '22 reflects the planned reduction in gold grade and the higher base metal grades. And these higher base metal head grades will bottleneck at the concentrate filter, and in turn, that will lead to a slight reduction in the mill feed tonnage. The unit operating costs are expected to be comparable to FY '21 as we see less underground mine capital development expenditure, which offsets the lower tonnage processed through the plant. At the Dargues Mine, we'll see our first full year of production under Aurelia's ownership. Gold production is expected to range between 45,000 and 50,000 ounces as the mine grade improves and ore production moves towards the permitted cap of 355,000 tonnes per annum. The site's unit costs are forecast to be similar to those achieved in the second half of FY '21, with FY '22 decline development now being classified as sustaining rather than growth capital expenditure now that the operations ramped up to nameplate capacity. And no further growth capital expenditure is planned at Dargues in FY '22. We also expect to see a significant reduction in all-in sustaining cost in FY '22. Guidance of $1,500 to $1,700 per ounce is driven by the higher gold production denominator, as shown in the top table on Slide 15. That compares the FY '22 outlook against the FY '21 actual performance. Moving further to Dargues. We've had mixed performance over the quarter from the asset. The production physicals traveled well and met our expectations with the operation demonstrating required monthly development or production, backfill placement and mill throughput volumes. However, quarterly gold production of 5,200 ounces was below plan, primarily because ore was mined from lower-grade sources that are outside the original mining schedule. The third high-grade stope ore from quarter 4 is now being delivered to the process plant, and we're seeing the head grade increasing throughout July as this material enters the plant. We're also gaining more knowledge of the deposit, especially from the recent 12,000 meters of close spaced infill drilling, mapping of new underground development exposures and production reconciliation. And this knowledge is being used to engineer the underground environment and refine the mine layout to suit the local conditions. The information from our recent drill campaigns and analysis has been incorporated into the mineral resource, ore reserve and production target statements that were released last Friday. And I should point out that these statements don't include all the drill results that were released for Dargues earlier this month. The lower table on Slide 15 compares the life of mine parameters from the June 2021 production target against the acquisition models outlook as of November last year, and recognizing that these comparisons are across different time periods, there are 3 points to note. Firstly, the production target contains 200,000 ounces of in-situ gold with other scheduled measures being consistent with our expectations at the time of acquisition. The recent drilling and work has confirmed that the gold grade increases with depth, leading to the life of mine outlook. And the average grade is expected to be towards the lower bounded acquisition model, which has led to an uptick in the forecast all-in sustaining cost. I'll now hand over to Adam McKinnon, who will discuss our recent mineral resource or reserve and production target statements.
Thanks, Peter. Now with reference to Slide 17 of the presentation. It's been an absolutely standout year for resource growth across the group. A record 141,000 meters of surface and underground drilling was completed which, along with the acquisition of Dargues, resulted in a group resource total of 27 million tonnes, an increase of 63% net of depletion. At Peak, resource growth of 51% included strong contributions from Great Cobar and Kairos, while the resource growth of 67% for the Hera/Federation complex is primarily the result of doubling the resource tonnage from the exceptionally high-grade Federation deposit over the year. Dargues also saw resource growth of 35% after only 6 months of drilling. The strong resources growth has flowed through into a 53% increase in the group's production target, now sitting at 7.8 million tonnes. Supported by new data and modeling, the production target now includes material from the Great Cobar deposit for the first time. Group reserves of 4.4 million tonnes have remained relatively steady for the year. FY '21 saw a significant increase in reserve confidence with over 50% of the group tonnage upgraded to the proven classification. The company is also now very well positioned for strong reserve growth in FY '22 with a maiden reserve for the Great Cobar deposit expected in the December quarter of this year and a maiden reserve and production target expected for Federation following the completion of the feasibility study mid next year. Moving on now to Slide 18. The focus on infill and extensional drilling at Peak has seen a 48% increase in the production target to 5.6 million tonnes. Strong copper/gold and also lead/zinc results from Great Cobar have seen resources there grow 43% to 5.8 million tonnes, now containing more than 120,000 tonnes of copper and over 130,000 ounces of gold. Upside potential at Great Cobar remains exceptionally high. And late in June, the company reported high-grade copper intercepts, extending mineralization at depth. This included 7 meters at 6.3% copper, 6 meters at 3.4% copper, 7.5 meters at 3.3% copper and 6.1 meters of 3.1% copper. Due to assay timing, these results were not included in the new resource for Great Cobar and leave the deposit completely open at depth. With drilling to continue into FY '22, the decline development access from the new Hera mine permitted and the maiden reserve declaration expected in the December quarter, Great Cobar is likely to be a strong value driver for the Peak operations into the future. Adding to the results of Great Cobar, ongoing exploration and evaluation work has seen resources at the high-grade Kairos deposit grow 68% to 1.6 million tonnes. Recent drilling has demonstrated high-grade mineralization remains open at depth and along strike. And with the development access in place and production commenced, Kairos is also likely to provide significant upside over the coming years. If we move now to Slide 19. In late June, the company released a set of exceptional exploration results from the Federation deposit including, amongst numerous others, 70 meters at 18.4% lead/zinc. For context, on a length weighted basis, this is believed to be the best base metal intercept released to ASX this year. The focus on exploration and evaluation of Federation has led to a 45% growth in indicated and inferred resources since the February 2021 update and is now sitting at 5.1 million tonnes at 14.8% lead/zinc, 0.9 grams per tonne gold, 7 grams per tonne silver and 0.3% copper. Drilling at Federation continues to see the incredibly high grade extended with the new resources having an average zinc equivalent grade of 17.9%. For those who like to think in terms of gold, this is roughly equivalent to around 8 grams a tonne when calculated using a similar methodology. The latest resource numbers have firmly cemented Federation as one of the most significant discoveries in the region in the last 30 years with a Tier 1 grade profile. For comparison, Federation now has 40% more tonnes than the entire underplated Hera Mine to the north at a 27% higher grade and containing nearly 80% more metal on an equivalent basis. Strong growth in the Federation resources are expected to continue into FY '22 with an accelerated resource conversion program currently underway to support the Federation feasibility study. The completion of the study will allow a maiden reserve declaration for the Federation deposit in the first half of the 2022 calendar year. Moving on to Dargues now on Slide 20. After the acquisition of the Dargues mine in December last year, Aurelia commenced an intensive surface and underground evaluation program, and we have now drilled close to 20,000 meters in the 6 months to June. In addition to infill drilling to increase confidence in the existing resources and reserves, the company has confirmed the presence of gold mineralization in a number of high potential extensional targets, which were identified as a part of the acquisition process. The drilling has seen an increase in resources of 35%, inclusive of mining depletion since mine production commenced. The Dargues mineralization remains open in a number of directions, and extensional drilling is continuing. The area along strike to the west of Main lode and to the east of Plums lode remain very vastly drill-tested and are separately targeted in FY '22. Thanks, Dan.
Thanks a lot, Adam. With that, Bernadette, could you please open to question-and-answer time, and I'll do closing remarks after the Q&A, please?
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Dylan Kelly of Ord Minnett.
Congratulations on some pretty impressive shots at the beginning, showing TRIFR coming right down. Two questions from me. Just can we go back to Peter's point on Slide 15? Can you just help us understand what's happened to Dargues in terms of the tonnes coming back and the grade being where it is? And just explain to us what's happening with the resource model since you've recapped the numbers. And do you have any indication as yet as to what the reconciliation is looking like? Or is it too early to say?
Dylan, it's Peter here. I'll take your questions. Firstly, we saw the tonnes and the grade in quarter 4 come down, and we had a couple of delays in different stoping areas there that deferred high-grade production into this current financial year. And that was supplemented by lower-grade feed from other sources. So some stopes, we're able to bring forward and significantly a high proportion of development than we scheduled over the period. So if you look back over the half year, we talked about 40% of the stoping tonnage that we planned in the schedule as a result of a couple of delays in stoping areas. We've now got some better information around that, particularly when it comes to ground support, better definition around the ore zones that we're feeding forward now into our mine designs, grade control models and resource/reserve estimates. So having had that experience with the site, we're feeling more confident now about some of those parameters. You also asked about the reconciliation, and it is an early mark. I can say though that we've gone through a process of routine grade control updates. And now we've got the infill drilling coming through and also the mapping and phased sampling from development. And what we've seen from the great control model, that it's in line with what we've reconciled through the mill. So it's in 5% of the grade and [ pretty much ] bang on, on the tonnage. If we go back and compare to the acquisition model, which we have done, the acquisition model actually called lower grades than what we mined and similar tonnes. So overall, we think from a big picture point of view, at the resource level, they're actually tracking pretty well. We have had learnings at the local levels, but that's not surprising when you go from 50-meter spacings on surface drill holes down to something like a 25-meter intervals that we're seeing with the grade control drilling. So right at this point in time, globally, we're not seeing any areas that cause us concern with the resource model.
Okay. Fair enough. And just turning to the reserve and resource update from last week. I could see that there's -- the resources increased to just over 2 million tonnes. Do you have any update as yet around including a submission to increase the mine life from its current levels? Or is that something that we should be thinking about more towards the end of '22, start of '23?
Yes. We've got more work to do, Dylan, around that. There's some very good results that came through late in the quarter that weren't picked up in the resource modeling. It hasn't flown through. So we need to bring those in, and we've got some more infill drilling coming through and more results, and we need to understand the big picture first of all before we go and take that through the mine design phase. We will certainly be looking at what's required from long lead items there and particularly understanding what permitting requirements and modifications we might require.
Okay. Understood. Do you mind if we just switch into Peak? I'm just trying to -- could you just help us understand why perhaps gold output is remaining flat year-on-year based on the guidance or slightly weaker? Could you give us some color around where the targeted -- or where the ore is coming from in terms of Peak North, Kairos contribution, some of the different moving parts just so we can understand what's happening?
I'll take that one, Dylan. It's Dan here. I think the -- I have had -- I headed the call this morning on a number of questions relating to particularly Kairos contribution. What's important to remember here is that Kairos is one ore body amongst 4 or 5 that we are feeding to the Peak processing plant. It is a different ore body to the comparisons of Chronos. And we have indicated previously that Kairos plus or minus a bit, roughly around 20 -- will be at roughly around 20% of the mill feed over the course of the next couple of years. As that resource grows, its life grows. So in essence, for us, that's the limiting factor. It's narrow. It's deep and it's tight. And with overall volumes going up into the Peak mill, it will form about 20%, give or take.
Okay. Understood. I didn't realize there was buried in the presentation throughput rates for the sites. Do you have any sense as to what the regional work downs or how that could impact your gross tonnes over the next couple of months? Or is that probably a bit too early to say?
Dylan, it's Peter here. Probably it's too early to say. I can say that with the Sydney lockdown and more recently Victorian and Queensland border restrictions, we have seen an impact over the last week with a number of employees from our contract workforce. It's too early to say what the implications are for that over the full year. And certainly, from a guidance point of view, we have not made any allowance of COVID -- extended COVID disruptions to the sites.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question is a follow-up from Dylan Kelly of Ord Minnett.
Okay. I'll keep at it. If Adam's on the line, I just wouldn't mind asking about the reserve replacement from last year -- or sorry, from last week. If we look at the bottom of Slide 17 now, could you just help us understand why reserves came back from 2020 levels from just above 3.5 million tonnes back down to 2.5 million? Am I correct in thinking that you haven't, in fact, replaced depletion for the year?
Sorry, which slide were you talking about there, 17?
Slide 17, bottom left, under ore reserves.
Yes. So that will be correct. We have replaced some of the material we take away over the year, but not the entirety of it. What we'll see coming into FY '22 is that we -- as Dan said at the start of the presentation, we've got this our way with our resources. And as we get more and more drilling and then some of these studies coming through, we'll see the big increase in reserves in FY '22.
Okay. Understood. And just so you can help us out here, what volumes from Great Cobar is going to be coming through into the reserves at this point? Is it -- I mean, there's 5 -- just over 5 at the moment. How do we think about -- I didn't see any breakdown of that. Is it going to be like a 1.5 million, 2 million tonnes, that order of magnitude?
Dylan, its Dan. It's -- with respect, it's way too early for us to be answering those sorts of questions. We're drilling it. The ore body will be what it is. Then we'll put the mine design around it, and then we'll be able to be a lot more accurate on what actual tonnage will come from that part of the asset. But you can see what it looks like in the production target and the growth and the flow-through of that material. But when we lock down on the studies and the decline and ongoing exploration, we'll home in on what that looks like.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Michael Evans of Acova Capital.
On your guidance and your mill throughput, you've sort of got there on the separate slide, 800,000 tonnes at Peak, 480,000 at Hera, 355,000 at Dargues. Is there -- I mean I haven't crunched through the numbers yet for FY '22, but are those the throughputs we should be assuming, the 3 operations for next year?
Mike, it's Dan. The indications we're giving for throughput to individual assets are on Slide 14 on those ranges from the left-hand vertical access of each of those individual asset descriptions. So you can see Peak rising from 560,000 in '20 through to 625,000, 630,000 in FY '21 and then up to that range in and around the 700,000 for the year. [ That's ] what you should be assuming. Production targets -- the production target descriptors in the slides sort of 17 through are implied from those -- are implied from production target.
Great. And can you -- just the second question. On the production targets released last week, if we take Peak, for example, you've got a cutoff of 100 in Peak gold production that utilizes $150 per tonne NSR cutoff for most areas. I think you've got $130 for Chesney and Jubilee. And then you look at your costs and they're sort of significantly higher than that, correct me if I'm wrong, around $230 in the last quarter. Do you have to get -- the way I have to think about this, you have to get those costs down to access all that ore in those production targets? Or is that all those production targets accessible at your current unit cost mining, milling, admin rates, your cost per tonne? Is all that production target accessible? Or do those -- all those costs have to come down?
Michael, it's Dan. We've just got a technical issue there with Peter. Adam, is that something you can handle? Please bear with us, Michael.
Sorry, Michael. It's Peter here. I've lost the call. I had to join it. Sorry.
That's okay. Do you want me to repeat the question?
No, I got the question. I just [ fumbled ] the response when I hit the cancel button rather than the mute button. Turning to your question, the $150 cutoff is the lower limit, and the average value sits above that. So the key point is that the average grades going through have to be above that NSR to be economic. And with that, when we put a stoping outline around a block, we look at the total value inside that block and determine whether it goes to the mill or not.The other part to note is that, I think you hit on this before, there is capacity in the plant, and we're desperately working to get the mill volumes up through ore delivery from the mine. And with that will come a natural reduction in the unit cost. Does that answer your question?
Yes, I think so. So I mean those unit costs, I suppose, in forecasting was just sort of keeping the same in an absolute basis and any reduction was more likely to be driven from an increase in the mill throughput other than other operating factors as such.
There's certainly other things we are working on to drive down our cost, and you'll see that trend in the Peak performance in particular. So I wouldn't just attribute it solely to volume. We're working on the cost side as well.
Yes. And just while I've got you, sort of shying on from Dylan's question because it seems to be key. You missed your Dargues production for the quarter, but what -- the ore that you did in that mining, that grade reconciliation came within 5% of what was expected. Is that a fair comment, summary?
Yes, there's 2 components. One is the in-situ estimation, and that's the response I gave to Dylan on reconciliation. And the second one is spatial compliance with the schedule. And in quarter 4, most particularly, it was a miss on the spatial compliance that led to high-grade stopes being pushed into the current financial year. And they were substituted with lower-grade feed, both from stoping and development.
[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Clifford for closing remarks.
Thanks, Bernadette. In closing, we're well down the path of the strategy and setup with gold dominance, high-grade base metals and copper ready. During the year, we've seen a quantum shift in harm event reductions across our business. Our guidance was met, and that guidance included increased throughput commitments from both Dargues and Hera -- sorry, Peak and Hera. And with extensive success in drilling adding to a significant growth in our resource of 63%, our plans are being met with an asset added and strong expectations of reserve conversion during FY '22. And with that, I'd like to say thank you to everyone for your time this morning. We look forward to further updates of the company over the coming months. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.