Coronado Global Resources Inc

ASX:CRN

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Coronado Global Resources Fourth Quarter Investor Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Chantelle Essa, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Chantelle Essa, executive]

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining Coronado's Fourth Quarter Investor Call for 2024. Today, we released our quarterly report to the ASX and SEC, in which we outlined our production and sales statistics as well as our key information related to safety, coal markets and financial performance. A more detailed outline of our financial position and results is expected to be released to the market on the 20th of February with our Form 10-K.

Today, I am joined by our Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Douglas Thompson. Within our report, you will see our notice regarding forward-looking statements and reconciliations of certain non-U.S. GAAP financial measures. We encourage you to review these statements in conjunction with our other filings with the ASX and SEC. I'd also remind everyone that Coronado quotes all numbers in U.S. dollars and metric tonnes unless otherwise stated. I'll now hand the call over to Douglas.

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

Thanks, Chantelle, and belated Happy New Year to all, and thank you for taking the time to join us today. In summary, it's been a better quarter for us. We held the opening of our Mammoth underground mine, which included the cutting of first coal, which was achieved on time and on budget. And both our business units delivered a strong quarter. We finished the new series of notes that was oversubscribed with improved pricing and terms, and our safety results remain better than industry averages. And we finished the year with mining costs back below $100 a tonne, a strong closing inventory position and a solid balance sheet.

Key metrics achieved in quarter 4 were our group ROM production was 6.9 million tonnes, our saleable production was 4 million tonnes, and our sales volume was 4.1 million tonnes. At the group level, our total recordable injury rate was 1.18, remaining well below industry averages in both the United States and in Australia. Our improvement journey is positive and ongoing.

If you turn to Page 2, you'll see our operations and sales summary there. On a year-to-date basis at December, Coronado achieved ROM coal production of 26.6 million tonnes, up approximately 5% on 2023 and on 2022, reflecting improved planning and efficiencies across all of our operations. The Australian business unit experienced a better December quarter. Curragh complex delivered ROM coal production of 3.4 million tonnes, which is 29% better than the prior quarter. At the last week of December, Curragh was impacted by unplanned electrical outages, which impacted our coal processing plants and overland conveyor. Production was impacted for about 1 week, while we attended to the repair work required after the outages and the impacts. The outage meant that we built ROM inventory in this period that we couldn't process, which is expected to benefit us in quarter 1 in production and sales and actually is.

Due to the improved productivity from our dragline system, the previously announced additional fleet was idled in late October. The idle fleet consisted of a company-owned shovel, T282 trucks and associated ancillary equipment. This is the fifth fleet removed from our open cut operations since April 2024.

Results achieved from actions taken over the last 18 months to enable our productivity. Our mine site cash cost decreased by 37% to $90 a tonne in the quarter. This shows the efforts of our people to follow our plan in a determined and disciplined manner is delivering opportunities for improvement. And this plan is focused on optimizing performance by enabling productivity and removing system complexity.

Efforts in the quarter have been focused on continuing to improve productivity from our dragline, dozer and cast blast system. And this dragline system continues to exceed our improvement targets with the ratio of waste moved by draglines compared to truck and excavator now at 52%. And this is 8% up -- above our plan for 2024, and it's up from what was 37% back in '23.

And in the quarter, the next major milestone in this plan was delivered, and that was to secure an alternate coal source and a coal source that was at a lower cost per tonne in our current operations. The now operational Mammoth underground offers that milestone. First coal was mined on time and on budget, and now we're in ramp-up phase.

Moving to our U.S. business unit. We had our planned longwall move and associated maintenance in the month of November at Buchanan. The U.S. continues to improve quarter-on-quarter throughout 2024, delivering higher production, sales volumes and lower cost per tonne. And the U.S. operations delivered a ROM production of 3.5 million tonnes, a positive and sustained trend. Buchanan continued to achieve improved skip-efficiencies following the work that was undertaken earlier in the year with skip-counts remaining at their best rate in the last 2 years. And the ROM production from our U.S. is up 10% on 2023.

Moving to our financial position and a bit of market outlook. The December quarter group revenue was $558 million, and the December year-to-date group revenue was just over $2.5 billion. Revenues reflect an 18.9% fall in PLV Hard Coking Coal Free On Board Australian Index, combined with lower annual U.S. domestic contract pricing if we compare that to December 2023. In the December quarter, the average PLV index was $203, and the group average realized price per tonne of met coal sold for the December quarter was $163 a tonne.

Export sales volumes was 69.6% of total sales volumes and met coal revenues were 95.2% of total revenues. The year-to-date sales volumes for the group at December '24 was 15.8 million tonnes. This is in line with the same period in 2023. We continue to see steel markets and raw coal material demand coming under pressure and the PLV index at a 3-year low since early September.

China stimulus measures so far have not proved the confidence in the steel market. Steel raw material prices remain subdued with the main met coal index staying range bound at that $200 level. And during the quarter, the anticipated positive momentum from India didn't eventuate, neither was the recovery from hot metal production outside of China. The long-term outlook for seaborne met coal remains very positive based on the fundamentals that we see within the market.

Turning to our finance. We ended the year with a net debt position of $85 million with closing cash position of $339 million and available liquidity of $468 million. And we successfully issued $400 million at 9.25% of senior secured notes due in 2029 in our offering that many times oversubscribed. The proceeds from this was used to redeem the remaining $242 million of the original senior secured notes due in 2026 and provided additional balance sheet strength. To note, the tenure of the extension put the finance date beyond the expiry of the coal supply agreement with Stanwell, after which Coronado's earnings and cash flow are anticipated to significantly improve. And in the quarter, we also announced our new Chief Financial Officer, Barrie van der Merwe, and Barry will be starting with us on the 1st of April 2025.

And lastly, I'll give you a brief update on our projects, and I'll start with Mammoth. The Mammoth underground project at the Curragh complex is now operational. And we're in execution phase, and we're going to be ramping up over the rest of 2025. Mammoth underground offers Curragh complex several strategic improvement opportunities.

Firstly, reduced cost per tonne. The cost per tonne for Mammoth mine is forecast to be in the second quartile, and this will reduce the overall cost per tonne from the complex. Diversified coal production, the underground mine will de-risk production continuity as it offers an additional coal supply to our processing plants, and this additional supply is not affected by wet weather as the open cuts are. And increased capacity. Once fully operational, the project is expected to deliver 1.5 million to 2 million tonnes per annum of saleable production in the first phase and further expansion is possible and evaluated once the results are determined from the first phase. And Mammoth mine has substantial high-quality met coal. The reserve base is more than 41 million ROM tonnes with a coal quality expected to mirror the existing products that we get from Curragh North open cut.

Now if I turn to the U.S. and give you a quick update on our organic expansion projects at Buchanan. Both of these projects remain on budget and on schedule. In the December quarter, major components installation on the second set of skips project progressed and the shaft collar foundation was completed on this project. And then with the excavation works completed, the construction of the reclaimed tunnel and the screening building on the new surface wall coal storage area was ongoing.

Full completion of both projects is on budget and on track to be completed in quarter 2 of this year in 2025. Ultimately, the increased hoisting capacity and storage area will reduce the risk of bottlenecks, allowing our Northern longwall and Southern longwall districts and equipment to operate at higher capacity and improved productivities.

And with that, I'll hand over to the operator, Mel, and take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We also have Sandeep Deoji on the line to answer any questions you may have. Your first question comes from Paul Young with Goldman Sachs.

[Paul Young, analyst]

Doug, first question is on Curragh, just around the performance there with respect to mining costs and also that power disruption. Just starting with that power disruption, which impacted you late in December quarter. Can I just confirm, was that Curragh -- isolated to Curragh? Or was that actually more regional?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

Paul, we actually had a number of events. So as the storms rolled through Queensland, we were impacted by a regional outage that impacted our supply to the mine. And then we also had some on-site impacts. We actually took -- and this was the lingering impact of the event, because when you have a power outage, as you know, it stops your prep plants and their crash stop. So you have to start them up in a methodical manner and clean up some of the mess that unfortunately gets made. That is well dealt with.

The impact we had is we had a direct strike on our reject spin and on the overland conveyor that impacted the control systems on both that had lingering impact. We got that prepared after the first -- that first major outage was on the -- on Boxing Day. And then the second one was on New Year. There was another big storm that came through that knocked out the power in the area that impacted us for that period and we kept mining. So a combination of on-site direct impact, but then also regional.

[Paul Young, analyst]

Okay. All right. And then the next question is on the mining costs. If I just look quarter-on-quarter, really good reduction at Curragh. I think it was about $35 million quarter-on-quarter reduction or about 6% when I look at just site cash costs. And I know you pointed out the increase in dragline mining, which is obviously great because the costs are so much lower than the truck shovel.

So in this environment where you still got a bit of a CapEx program ahead of you in this half, noting CapEx did fall in the quarter, but it'll -- I think you're guiding to a bit of a step-up or expecting a bit of a step-up this half. Where coking coal prices sit at the moment, Curragh is still struggling from a cash flow perspective. And I know you've got some inventories that have built up. But on mining costs, what further can you do with respect to removing truck shovel, et cetera? And what's your expectations this half on dragline percentage on mining and mining costs? So I'm just looking for the trajectory into this half with respect to what can you do, what's controllable around reducing your cost this half?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

So without getting forward-looking just yet, I think if one took quarter 2 of last year, how we performed from a volumes perspective, but also the cost-out exercises, and that went through quarter 3, but we obviously didn't see it in the results because of a denominator, I'd say quarter 2, quarter 3 is probably a line one can start using to trend where we want our costs to be from the initiatives that we've put in place to make Curragh more productive and reduce our absolute cost base by taking those fleets out. So that's the first thing.

What do we expect going forward? The dragline performance continues to be at the levels at which we've planned. Our forward look for this year, we've actually not held the percentages we're presently achieving. We've actually stepped that back a little bit to ensure that we can deliver the dragline ratio, where I'm talking about 52% of waste moved by draglines versus truck and excavate. We got a mine plan that is slightly less than that to ensure that it's sustainable, so we're comfortable with that. We've seen those results bear out month to date.

The cost out to the cost out, we've still got some cost opportunities in what I call removing the complexity from Curragh operations. And what I mean by that is the historic model that the prior owners ran was a very outsourced model. We had many contractors involved, marginal margins, many overheads crossover. Part of what we did last year was thin out our contractor services quite disciplined-ly. And that has a linger because you ought to give people notice, and they've got to go through a turnoff period contractually. That work is now behind us. So we're looking to start enjoying the fruits of that benefit. So you should see that coming through in our costing.

And then our mine plan in quarter 1, because of the -- draglines performing better than what we had in the '24 plan, and we brought that into the plan for '25, we've got an opportunity to idle -- temporarily idle another truck and excavate fleet, which we're going through the analysis of -- and that will give us another opportunity to address our cost. So those are the sustainable long term, "putting your mine plan, engineer and have a systemic change in your cost base," that we've been working through.

There are obviously other levers that we can pull. The first one is making sure that we've come into the year with a strong cash position and the discipline that we've held this business around our balance sheet, I think, plays out to the liquidity. And we've always said that's what's important to us. That $200 probably is the business is now growing with the underground $250 million is the liquidity discipline we want to hold on our balance sheet. And we've taken that into the new year. And you'll see from September through a very -- you look at low pricing in the fourth quarter, we've held a good cash position from quarter-to-quarter showing the discipline.

But we do have other levers that we can pull, for example, capital management. We're all looking at our capital programs. But it's not the levers one wants to pull in a systemic manner because it sets you up for a challenge in the future and some of the challenges we've worked very hard at Curragh address like the cc COVID maintenance deficit on key infrastructure, like our full draglines. We spent a lot of money on those, getting them up to spec and getting the reliability where we can see that in the system now in our prep plants and overland conveyors. Obviously, those are levers one can pull, but we have others as well and the efficiencies in our systems and cost out are the systemic ones that I'd like us to focus on.

[Paul Young, analyst]

Yes. Okay. Really good detail, I appreciate that. And just lastly, on realized pricing in the U.S., which was, I think, domestic sales focused, which probably -- so I just want to clarify why was that. Was it just a timing of deliveries? Because I noticed the Buchanan export price really bumped up in the quarter, so it's unfortunate you couldn't deliver it into the export market in the quarter. So can you maybe just step through and explain why we saw that variability in those deliveries? Is it domestic stimulus rather than seaborne -- the seaborne market?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

I think -- I want to go and make sure I've got the numbers right. But from what I evaluated, it's timing. So it's about contract volumes on timing and then seaborne availability. And actually, we'll see that play out a little bit more in this year with what we're seeing in the United States with the positive sentiment in that market.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Rob Stein with Macquarie.

[Robert Stein, analyst]

Just to follow up on Paul's question around pricing. Can you provide a bit of context around the sales mix change Q-on-Q? And whether we can expect to sort of average mid-75s met coal going forward as sort of trended '23 and the like?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

I'd say, yes, that percentage of met coal, yes. It's -- a lot of it is around timing. So it'll be quite difficult for me to give you that. Our clients, albeit that the market is under pressure, has kept taking their volumes. They want our product, clearly, so our sales volumes into contractors stayed stable to our plan. So I think the swings you'd see would have been timing. If you cast your mind back to last year, we see the difference between this year and last year was some of the arbitrage advantage that we took between thermal pricing at the time and it was the wind out of those contracts or opportunities we took up to this year a bit, quarter-on-quarter, would have been timing.

[Robert Stein, analyst]

And just on Mammoth, can you provide us an update on just ramp up and how we're expecting to see that impact costs and production going forward?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

With pleasure, so firstly, on costs. As that volume ramps up and we bring more of that volume into Curragh, which is second half, we'll see some material volumes start coming through in the ramp-up program. That'll start helping reduce the cost base from an overall complex perspective. The ramp-up profile that we've planned looks like there are 3 continuous mining units that we planned in the first phase, and we're busy building up the first panel for the first year. So that started in mid-December when we announced the project.

That'll build up and then we'll have the second unit get delivered in the back end of quarter 1, and we'll build out that second panel through quarter 2. And then to the middle of the year, we'll build out the third panel And that'll include the primary infrastructure for the mine, so putting in the conveyor belt lines and the like. The opportunity that'll start playing out in the second half, predominantly in the ramp-up is, it's a 5-meter coal seam. So you, on production, take the top cut, bolt it, secure it, spend quite a bit of your investment money in the primary development, and then you come back and you rip the floor. And that's very, very productive and cheap tonnes that you bring into the system as you go on retrieve on those floors with that coal seam that we have. So that will offer us those opportunities.

What we'll also speak about in expansion is if it proves to be as productive as what it is, there's a second phase that we could see ramp up where we could bring more units in, probably in about 18 to 24 months' time from now in the mine and we built out sufficiently for it to be productive, bringing on additional tonnes. And then from a processing perspective as well through our plant, we'll get opportunities in our bypass circuit as a like, which will help us with our processing costs. Those will be evaluated as part of Phase 2 in the project. So there's quite a bit of upside opportunity we see out of this that we'll be exploiting, but we don't want to make commitments to that until we see it evidenced in this first phase.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Glyn Lawcock with Barrenjoey.

[Glyn Lawcock, analyst]

I was wondering if I could just ask what the normalized costs were like at Curragh in the quarter, given you capitalized. This feels a little bit like what we saw Q2 last year where costs have been gapping around quite a bit. I mean what would be normalized costs for the quarter if you hadn't capitalized the inventory move?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

The -- part of the movement in the quarter-on-quarter is also inventory. So we built [ on ] inventory in quarter 4, so that causes some of it. That will stabilize out, I think, as the underground comes online as well, and we stop having some of these events that impact us. And our plan, as it's been playing out, you can see the amplitude of those impacts are starting to flatten and Curragh will be more stable. So it's denominator inventory that probably moves it around. Quoting a number, I don't want to preempt it, we're going to be doing in a couple of weeks' time. But if you thought about $105 million with some of that normalized out, that's probably where the number would be.

[Glyn Lawcock, analyst]

Okay. So if I think about the trajectory over the course of '24, given you've been -- Q2 had massive capitalization of inventory, the opposite in Q3, then again in Q4. I mean, that number you just given then, is that sort of the right base effect for Curragh than about $105 million or something?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

I'd say about sub-$105 million for the first half. And then obviously, as these projects come online, as you said, capital winds out. But the benefit from the capital starts flowing through is -- that'll change, otherwise...

[Glyn Lawcock, analyst]

Yes. No, no, I appreciate it. I mean it's just obviously the volatility of the capitalization when you're swinging from $120 a tonne to $90 a tonne, the truth is somewhere in the middle, roughly, it seems like.

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

Yes. And that's the inventory you're on.

[Glyn Lawcock, analyst]

Yes. And then just on the cash flow, I mean, I know it's very small, but it's a game of interest with this company, it feels like, on cash flow. You made a very small reduction in net debt. Was it just a working capital contribution in the quarter to help you make positive cash reduction in your net debt. And if we look at today's environment, I mean, prices are obviously a bit weaker than we'd all like them to be. Is the business making cash at today's prices as we stand today?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

The net -- the -- paying down our debt net position first going there is a combination of the effort. The costs are not coming down. But yes, there are some working capital in it. You mentioned the inventory. The first quarter is going to be tough in this pricing environment, I think, for everyone, as you said. It's going to be tough. The fact that we've got a fairly large capital program in the first 6 months of this year is going to be tough. We've set the business up and we continue to hold the business to the long-term intent of playing out in '25. or finishing these capital projects, holding the discipline on what was needed to sort out the productivity and efficiencies at Curragh in particular and drawing benefit from those. So that work is largely complete, but it needs to bear fruit in this first half. So the first half is going to be hard while we finish these projects off and where we're seeing pricing at the moment.

[Glyn Lawcock, analyst]

Yes. So capital will be up on '24? Or we'll wait for guidance next month?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

If you could wait, wait for guidance.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Chen Jiang with Bank of America.

[Chen Jiang, analyst]

Just a follow-up of the mining cost from Australia quarter-over-quarter. I know you mentioned about the dragline, the inventory, the capitalized of inventory, et cetera, et cetera. But by looking at the volatility quarter-over-quarter, for example, from Australia in first quarter, the mining cost was USD 126; and then dropped significantly second quarter, USD 91; and third quarter up again, USD 123; and fourth quarter, it's USD 90. So I guess what exactly is -- has happened in the last 12 months? You have such, quarter-over-quarter, a big volatility in the cost. And also maybe give us some confidence. I know you will provide the guidance the next month for the average of FY '25 mining cost. And maybe give us some like sort of confidence that you can maintain the mining cost from Australia at a relatively low level this quarter, like, below $100 and also the levers to achieve that.

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

From -- Chen Jiang, most of what you said, I think, helped me answer the question and the prior response as well is volatility in those quarters was driven by a number of things. The first quarter was inventory balances, like you said, first. Yes, that does the swing in the quarter, and then the denominator. If you look at Curragh in the year that's been, we started the year off where the Australian Eastern Seaboard was hit by those big storms and then the cyclones that impacted our input inventories and our opening inventories to process and produce product. So from a sales perspective, denominator was severely impacted in the first quarter and also low production.

The second quarter, the mine was set up, and we produced really good ROM production, sales production as a result. And that started reflecting the kind of numbers that we were looking for in our plan, and that's also when we started taking tangible cost based out of the business. By taking fleets out, you're not only taking that cost, but you're also taking all of the people associated with those costs and the knock-on effects. That came out as we announced as we parked off the first 2 fleets. It was at that timing when we finished the historic works on recovering the pre-strip and setting up the new working areas for the dragline efficiencies. And then as the productivity of that system played out, we could park up the second 2 fleets. And then in the last quarter, the unplanned at that stage with a fifth fleet that came out of the system as the efficiencies played out. So that's the underlying costs coming out of the business.

The third quarter was, once again -- August had, I think, the highest rainfall from 2013. That impacted operations. And then we had our overland conveyor damaged with a belt ripping -- a belt getting ripped by a crusher plate coming loose and a substantial amount of damage that took volume out of it as well. So those are the key items that played out that then took the denominators out. So that's why I'm saying, look at Q2 and look at Q4, and you can kind of see the systems' capacity that it can produce at the moment. And you can also start seeing what the cost that it can operate with the cost out that we've been doing.

So then to answer your question, we look forward here that for -- $105, probably below that. And then particularly in the second half, as the volumes start coming through post the investments that we've made in capital, we'll start enjoying the return on it. And then the other point is you get systems stability as you have that additional volume come along. This is -- I know it's laborious and it entertains my mind, but it's an engineering solution that we've designed and we're disciplined-ly executing it as we can afford it to get the business there and time is the most valuable commodity for us. So we've been working through it as quick as we can to get the system stability that was engineered-solution for Curragh and we can see the results. We've demonstrated the results. We just needed to be sustainable going forward, and that'll play out in costs.

[Chen Jiang, analyst]

Okay. Much appreciated. I'll pass it on.

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

No problem. As offered in the past, we'd love to host you out at the site and show you this.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Daniel Roden with Jefferies.

[Daniel Roden, analyst]

Good job on the quarter. I just wanted to, I guess, understand. You've called out the potential for, I guess, removing another load in coal fleet just due to the dragline efficiency seen through December. I just wanted to understand basically what the decision process is for switching those fleets, both off but then also back on? And what -- I guess, what are you doing with the actual fleets themselves? Are they remaining on site? Are you offloading them to a different site and contractor? And I guess the premise of this is just, I guess, trying to understand what the medium-term risk is of falling, I guess, behind on your medium-term pre-strip requirements for coal [ recovery ]?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

Very good call out. To answer your question, and let's go to where it is. Look at Curragh as a resource. It's now 3 mines. So through the group, we were 10 operations. We've got 5 in the Logan complex; 4 undergrounds, 1 open cut; Buchanan, the 2; and then 3 are now in Australia. So the addition of the underground and the incremental tonnes that can come out of it, we've got a fully permitted long-life asset with the amount of reserve in front of us offers, as I've called it in the past, the small -- this board of opportunities for an engineering mind or what can we do.

Part of that has to be played to what the markets do. So we've got the opportunity. If the market moves, we can install additional capacity, we can ramp up production, and that'll will always be our goal is does it make sense in the market to get additional capacity through? And I think for Curragh, volume does work. So we will be pushing that lever. I think we've signaled that in the past. What we've done disciplined-ly to date is simplify their operations, get them really focused and drive productivity. And to do that, you pull back.

Now that the draglines are performing where they can, we can start looking at the truck and excavator fleet, as you've suggested, that in a particular market, do you wind it back without dropping revenue out of the business, obviously, and then when can you wind it back up again. So to get into the level, the next part of your question is, well, is the accessibility that fleet is still there to you if it presents. So the shovel is ours. We own it. That equipment is parked on site and will remain on site. So yes, that capital is available.

All the other fleets that we've parked have been contractor-owned fleets, and those fleets have been [ de-modded ] and removed off site. The fleets I'm talking about of consideration in this year is probably about a 400 tonne class fleet. So it's not a primary pre-strip fleet. 600- and 800-tonne fleets is our primary fleet. But it still has a substantial cost base that can come out with the dragline sitting at what we're planning them to do this year. That pre-strip can get done by draglines in the middle of that fleet. It probably will get done to the back end of quarter 2 if the performance keeps on going the way that it is. And that will play out for the rest of '25, but it will come back into production probably in '26 at some stage when we look at our stripping ratio profiles and pre-strip draglines.

So we'll try and keep that fleet accessible. But in our procurement process, it's going around, there is fleet available in the market. Everybody is getting cost out of their business at the moment. So there are avenues to pursue fleet in a reasonable amount of time if you can preplan it properly. So we don't see any of these decisions that are taken at the moment to impact us long term in managing the stripping ratio of the mine.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from [ Luca Mariani ] with [ NUMI ].

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes, I just wanted to clarify something on cash generation. So pro forma for the new issuance last quarter, what was the effective cash burn on a quarter-over-quarter basis? And is there a minimum cash level you want to keep for the first half of 2025?

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

Look, I don't want to get too deep into the details of it because we're going to be coming out in a month and putting out all of our financials. So we don't want to get across our skis on your first part of your question. But what we believe as a team and our Board and what we've been putting [ into ] the market is liquidity of about $200 a mark is what we've been managed as we're growing the business with both the expansion in the U.S. and Australia. We're probably looking at $250 million is the kind of liquidity level we want to hold as a business, and we're sitting at just on $470 million of liquidity at the moment and cash of just under -- just on $340 million. So we've got comfort level in both of those with the discipline, with managing the balance sheet and our cash positions and strategies around that is working.

[Operator]

That concludes the question-and-answer section of today's call. I'll now hand back to Douglas for any closing remarks.

[Douglas Thompson, executive]

As one year draws to an end and the next opens, one sits back and reflects some opportunities of learning and growth. A review of our plan long term for all of our assets is the right plan. Our strategic intent is the right. We've got Logan, the 5 mines there. They've been a very reliable, constant performer. Excellent team, very experienced team, delivering good results.

Buchanan, with having both longwall operations in 2024, now proven to work and that we can manage the mine a lot better, particularly yields going forward with both of them going. I'm really excited in '25 with the debottlenecking as we allow additional throughput through the system and have the flexibility that will enable the team at Buchanan.

And then at Curragh, a lot of the milestones that we've spoken to, the team have delivered. We now have 3 mines. The regulators approved 3 mines. The complexities, out. We've taken out a lot of our cost base and that has helped simplify it. And we're seeing the results come through in our productivities and in our cost.

So I don't see the first half of '25 being easy for anybody on any measure. Things beyond our control like market that we need to and want to and have a business that's responsibly prepared for. And then the efforts to finish these capital projects like we have been. To build a coal mine in Queensland on budget and on time is kind of unprecedented, so I'm incredibly proud of the effort put in by the team. But we know we've got more to do and these assets have got more to offer. And that's where our focus is, and that's what excites me about the year ahead.

So as I've said previously, please take us up on the offer. We'd like to get you out to these mines and show you what we're doing. It's far easy to show you then explain it. With that, thank you very much.

[Operator]

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.