I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Aaron Colleran, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Darcy. I'll provide a brief overview of the September quarter and then open for questions. The September quarter was a great quarter. Eloise produced 3,324 tons of copper and 1,722 oz of gold in concentrate, and an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 4.97, $3.23 per pound of copper sold, and an all-in cost of AUD 5.29 or $3.44 per pound of copper sold. Eloise achieved guidance for the ninth consecutive quarter and generated net mine cash flow of AUD 11.8 million after Eloise's capital expenditure. AUD 11.8 million free cash flow. Of a realized copper price of AUD 6.72 per pound, realized gold price of AUD 5,442 per ounce, and realized silver price of AUD 63 per ounce. All great prices, but today's prices, as you would well know, are 10%, 20%, and 30% higher respectively. Today's prices would have generated an additional AUD 7 million in free cash flow, a 60% increase.
You can see why we're excited about what the December quarter might deliver. In fact, we're massively excited about what the December quarter might deliver. At the end of the September quarter, we were 380 m away from the J1 lens at Jericho. You know where that puts us at the end of the December quarter. Yes, it could be a jolly good Christmas indeed. You'll also see on page four of the quarterly that we will mine a lot of Lens 6 in the December quarter. We are expecting another good quarter guiding 3,200 tons - 3,400 tons of copper and 1,600 oz of gold in concentrate. While I'm talking about Lens 6, take a look at the Lens 6 drilling results on page five of the quarterly. These results are up to 50 m below the current resource. Sensational results. Great copper grades and great gold grades too.
ED529, 5.2 m of estimated true width, grading 3.5% copper, 0.8 g per ton gold. ED547, 8.8 m estimated true width, grading 3.2% copper and 1.8 g per ton gold. ED548, 9.3 m, 3.4% copper, 1.2 g per ton gold. ED549, 3.4 m, 4.9% copper and 0.5 g per ton gold. Sensational results. Now let's get back to the quarterly result. The AISC might be a bit higher than some people are expecting, but you'll see that underground development costs were relatively high due to the higher than average capital development completed in the quarter. This is largely timing related, and these costs should normalize over the remainder of the year. Capital expenditure was broadly in line with guidance. That is, most of the line items were at about the 25% mark of full year guidance. Being one quarter into the year, that's where they should be.
Those CapEx items that are ahead of budget are Eloise mine development, Eloise resource definition drilling, exploration expenditure, and corporate expenditure. Let me run through these exceptions. Eloise underground mine development is guided at AUD 25 million for the year, and we spent AUD 8.8 million in the September quarter, so 35% spent. As I just mentioned, this will normalize over the rest of the year. Eloise resource definition drilling is guided at AUD 2.5 million for the year, and we've spent AUD 1 million, so 40% of full year guidance. That is effectively over budget, but what would you expect us to do when we're drilling holes like ED548? Let me repeat it. 16.2 m grading 3.4% copper and 1.2 g per ton gold in Lens 6. Exploration expenditure, that's at 33% of full year guidance. This will wind back as the wet season rolls in. It happens every year.
Corporate expenditure is at 30% of the full year guidance. This will wind back as we continue to tighten our belts. There's no more Tim Tams in the head office. More importantly, the big ticket item. The Eloise expansion project is progressing well, and although it is early in the construction period, it is on budget and on schedule. Expansion project funding and expenditure is very clearly set out on page 15 of the quarterly, and I would direct analysts there. As we note there, the funding parameters for the project remain in line with the sources and uses outlined in the equity raise presentation we issued on the 20th of June this year.
Over the next 15 months, i.e., through to the 31st of December 2024, we have AUD 69.2 million remaining to be spent at the Eloise plant expansion, AUD 53.3 million required to complete the Jericho link drive and commence mine development, and AUD 33.7 million remaining to be spent on non-plant infrastructure for a total funding requirement of AUD 156.2 million. We have current liquidity of AUD 128 million with cash and the Trafigura facility, and we expect Eloise and Jericho to generate roughly AUD 70 million over the next 15 months. Funding sources continue to match uses comfortably. As noted earlier, if current copper prices persist, then sources are well in excess of uses. If any of those numbers are difficult to calculate or you're having trouble running those through your model, please call in this afternoon to either myself or Duncan, and we'll clarify and lead you through it.
Resource definition drilling results at the Jolly shoot at Jericho are worth highlighting. We announced these on Tuesday this week. Jolly is still at resource status, but it looks imminently minable. Reasonable grades, reasonable widths, and as at the 30th of September 2025, the Jericho access drive was only 380 m away. This means that we could be grade control drilling this shoot from underground this quarter, and mine development could commence as early as the March 2026 quarter. The Eloise processing plant has spare capacity to immediately treat any early Jericho material, and early mine production will also allow for a good stockpile to be built ahead of commissioning of the expanded processing plant. This de-risks our startup and speeds up our ramp-up. This is great news for shareholders. Regional exploration, I know a lot of people were looking forward to those holes.
Unfortunately, no results to report this quarter as we pushed the Jolly samples through the lab ahead of the regional targets. We should get results over the next four to six weeks, so we'll likely do a mid-quarter exploration update announcement. That concludes my review, so I'll ask the operator to open the line for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speaker phone, please pick up the headset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Richard Adams, Private Investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, Aaron. Well done, the great quarter. I've got a few questions. Firstly, Deep's West. Why are we drilling so deep at the moment? I know there is an aspirational target of getting to 1.5 million tons per annum plant, which is going to cost an extra AUD 10 million. Is that part of it? Is that, you know, are we just going to go deeper as well as Jericho?
Richard, fair question. I think you've emailed me some questions a week or so ago, and apologies for not having gotten back to you on those. I will. The Deep's West, that was the hole we put in for downhole EM work. That's where we intersected it. Yeah, I recognize, I agree with exactly what you're saying. That's deep. It'd be nice to find ore at the top of the mine rather than the bottom of the mine. You know, we found ore at the bottom of the mine. It's not that far away from development, and the task is to trace it upwards. You'll see when we did the downhole EM, that in-mine loop is paying for itself already. The EM plate does move upwards and will continue to, we're planning to put some more holes up dip rather than down dip.
Richard, the intersection currently deep, yep, but where will it lead? Let's see if we can trace it up dip.
Okay. On.
Sorry, sorry. In the more important part or the other component of your question was about 1.5 million tons per annum. Now, fully developed, Jericho can do 1.5 million tons per annum alone. We're not reliant on Eloise currently or future Eloise exploration success for a 1.5 million tons per annum run rate. Although, you know, that said, while we're not reliant on it, I expect Eloise will be there for a long time. Maybe not at the 600,000 tons per annum run rate, but, you know, 300,000, 250,000 tons per annum of nice high grade out of Eloise, I think could be there for a long, long time, you know, as we continue to have this sort of exploration success. I hope that fully answers your question now.
It does, if I can carry on, I'm sorry.
Yes, absolutely.
What are, at the board level, and again, I don't need to know any intricate workings, what are the traffic lights and the roadblocks to that 1.5? I know there's, you know, yes, you're going to do some underground drilling, which will be, what, 206 m, 208 m lower than you would have had to before, and you're going to do that probably March quarter to infill and further definition at Jericho. You must be getting closer to the point of committing to 1.5. You've said in the past it would cost an extra AUD 10 million. According to the report today, you've got an extra AUD 25 million in the bank over the next nine months. What is going to make you and the board commit or change from 1.1 t- 1.5?
Is it not better to do it earlier rather than later, or is that just you don't want to mill at 1.2, 1.3? You want it at 1.5 when it gets to that point. What's going to make you tip over and say, and, you know, send an ASX announcement at 8:24 A.M., we've now committed to 1.5?
Yeah, look, okay, wonderful question. If anyone's not sort of 100% clear on this, we have, we effectively have committed to 1.5, Richard. As soon as we added in those oversized items into what we are currently building, that was the commitment. We will ramp up to 1.5 million tons per annum. There is nothing stopping us. There is no decision required. We've got the ore in front of us to do that. Sorry, we've got the mineral resource in front of us to do that. Just in case the JORC police are online, this is a resource-based decision. What is holding us up is development. As simple as that. There is a ramp-up period to 2 million tons per annum. Sorry, of course, to 1.5 million tons. Getting ahead of myself already.
That was a bit Freudian slip there.
It's all about underground development. We've got one jumbo at Jericho at the moment, obviously. It's in the link drive, the access drive. Once we've got room and ventilation, we could have two. Once we've got room, ventilation, and money, we could have three, we could have four. That's what does it. We are capital constrained. That's the constraint. It's not about commitment. Richard, your comment on how much more money we would make at these prices really helps us to bring that forward. We don't need to bring the commitment forward. We need to bring the expenditure forward, the underground development to open up the full line of strike at Jericho. It's not Jericho access drive intersects J1. Bang, we're mining at 1.5 million tons per annum rate.
Sorry, not to labor the point, but there is a number of years, and I think we have referenced that in the past, about how quickly we can get to the 1.5 million tons per annum rate out of cash flow and lower copper prices. That takes us quite a few years. Out of higher copper prices, we get there. We can get there before FY 2030 on low prices and doing it out of cash flow. It's around FY 2030 or a little bit later. It's all dependent on capital.
Okay. If I can have one last question before you move on. Kevin Downs. We're obviously waiting on Arlington, Yukon, Defiance, Baghdad. Those seven holes seem a bit late, as you say, you prioritize Jolly. Can you give us some more color on Kevin Downs?
I probably need to be cautious there. I don't think I can. I think you'll have to wait for us just to tell you what those results were. Any hints or updates? We've drilled the hole. We know what it looks like. We're waiting for the assays to come back. We need to put a full release around all those areas, go through the MT, the results, what those results mean, how we're interpreting what the follow-up is. There's a bit of work to be done there to make that nice and clear for you. To sort of hint at those sort of things is just not right on this call.
Okay. Absolute last question, absolute promise. The spend passing at the moment at Eloise, which you're likely to fill in in March quarter, what percentage is that? Is that sort of 5%, 10% extra ore can go in at the moment, or more or less?
Yeah, it's around that. It's around 5%. What we've got is on a good day, a mill can do 725,000 tons per annum of Eloise ore. It's a complicated equation here, but let me run you through it anyway. We're currently putting in the order of 625,00 tons - 650,000 tons per annum of Eloise ore. Somewhere between, on an annual basis, not on a daily basis, but on an annual basis, 75,000 tons- 100,000 tons of spare capacity there. Jericho's a bit harder than Eloise. It's got a little bit more silica in it, so it's slower through the mill. We've got anywhere between, in terms of spare capacity, 50,000 tons- 75,000 tons per annum of Jericho could be squeezed through.
Beyond that, you can start to look at displacing Eloise because obviously, in any sort of build-up of Eloise ore, we've got the beautiful high grade from the deeps and some of those lovely remnant stopes from the upper levels that are running close to 3%, if not 4% copper. Nothing trumps them. Elsewhere, when we're getting towards the end of a stope, end of a level, all those sort of things, we're taking 1.8%, 1.6%, maybe 1.5% ore through. We can hold that up and start squeezing some Jericho through. It's closer, potentially running 1.8%, better gold recoveries, all those sorts of things. Like I said, a complicated equation, let's call it somewhere between 50,000 ttons- 100,000 tons per annum of capacity and more capacity if we need it. If the grades are better, we'll just displace Eloise ore.
We'll build up our stockpile, which will be great. It will mean we'll have a stockpile ready to go just to thump through when we complete the expansion and see if she really can run at 1.1 million tons per annum and get it chugging along, I reckon, at 1.2 million and see how we go if we've got that stockpile built up. I hope that answers your question, Richard.
It certainly does. Thank you again. You've been very generous. Thank you.
No, thank you, Richard. They were excellent questions. It's helpful that you ask these questions because, you know, as you know, we're very close to this. Sometimes when we summarize it or put it into the public domain, it's very summarized or high level, and maybe it's not as clear as it should be. Thanks for asking those questions because they're all important, important points.
All good. Thank you. Thank you again.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from David Coates from Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Aaron. Thanks for the call.
Hey, David.
Thanks for your time this morning and nice work on starting the FY 2026. A couple of questions, or main question for me is just some interest in your comments around the Jolly shoot and getting the access to the Lens 6. Can you just run us through, I guess, the sort of mine development requirements in order to actually fire that up?
Yeah. If you zoom in on the diagram, it's probably number one or two, on figure one, you've got to really sort of zoom in. You'll see where the link drive is, where it turns out, where it crosses J1. It then heads north. You know, we can head north to Jolly, south to Matilda. Ideally, we'll do both of those things. We're about to get sort of stockpiles in place. Once those stockpiles are used, they'll be drilling platforms for Jolly. The upper few levels we can grade control, drill. We hit the J1 lens, as it says in the quarterly, then turn out to the north, head up to Jolly and start developing, head south as well at the... That means we need a little bit more equipment there.
We either need to miraculously invent that equipment or bring some across from Eloise, bring stuff across from Eloise as possible, and to get us stuck into Jolly early if that's the decision we make at that point in time. Does that help? I'm probably a bit vague, but.
I presume there's some extra ventilation required in there, or is that sufficiently in place yet, or?
Yeah, that ventilation shaft that's shown on that same diagram, figure one, internally called JS3, you'll see it just immediately right of the title Matilda North. Yep, all focuses on that. You've correctly identified a critical piece of work coming up, that vent shaft.
Cool. Sorry, I probably should know, but the grades in those Jolly shoot lenses?
No, you probably shouldn't know because I don't either. The infill drill results that we've released, probably the reason we don't know is that resource status.
Resource status, yeah.
We're running to keep up ourselves. Matt Fallon, if he's on this call listening in, hang up. You're supposed to be doing this, Matt. You're not supposed to be listening to me talk about it. Matt's running that sort of reserve work now. We'll put some stope shapes around it shortly. It's been a bit difficult to talk about because from a true JORC perspective, we can't talk about Jolly because it's not even in, it's all inferred other than you saw all that drilling we did and released on Tuesday. That brings the status up, and then the grade control drilling we'll do from the JAD will get us through to stope shapes around it. The likelihood is we could be taking mineralized material out of there before we've even put it into the reserve. Sorry, to answer your question, though, run with average Jericho grade.
Sure thing. Okay. Thanks, Aaron. No better person than Matt to be running those reserves. Excellent. Thanks very much.
Exactly. Exactly. I can almost guarantee he hasn't dialed in. He will be working. We'll have seen at his desk at 6:00 A.M. this morning. Thanks, David.
Cheers, Aaron.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Kaner from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, Aaron. Thanks for my questions. Just on the mill performance for the quarter, throughput sort of increased 20,000 tons. Anything to call out there to drive that sort of increase relative to historical performance? Is it just a function of having a few extra stocks left over from the last quarter, considering you're not?
Correct. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Paul, you know, a simple answer, really. If we've got ore on the ROM pad, you know, we'll thump it through and it through hard and even to the point of, you know, relaxing the grind size a bit to get it through because, as you know, this chalcopyrite off this Eloise ore, you know, it almost, you know, jumps onto the concentrate. It doesn't even need bubbles to get it there. Also, in the mill performance, we had three months. The shutdown we started on, I think it was first, second, and third, or second and third of October. No shutdown in the quarter and a very good run. Yeah, just a good quarter.
Yeah, too easy. Just on the link drive, congrats on getting that vent shaft through. Can you maybe just talk about how this sort of improves your productivity of both the link drive and maybe even Eloise as well?
Yeah. That vent shaft was a great success. I think, you know, almost, you know, literally black and white compared to the first one. With that piling that we did in backfill with cement, apparently, obviously, definitely the right way to go about it. The raised boring almost went without hiccup, came straight through. It was nice. No issues with it at all. Sprayed it, a little bit of water, that's dried up. All good there. Installed ventilation and quickly and moved quickly to independent firing. We do not have to, what that means is blasting or firing is no longer on the same schedule as Eloise. At Eloise, we fire twice a day, once a shift. At Jericho, we can now fire when ready, fire whenever there's a loaded face, shut the area down, evacuate everyone, and blast while Eloise can continue on.
What that does is speeds up Jericho development. You asked what's the impact on Eloise, which is interesting. There's a positive impact on Eloise because it benefits their ventilation. As you know, good ventilation at the bottom of that mine is very important. There is, you know, it's not a quantifiable benefit, but there is a benefit to Eloise as well. Broadly speaking, Paul, we're getting around 180 m a month development with blasting twice a day, blasting 2.2x, 2.4 x a day. We should get over 200 m, maybe in the order of 220 m a month of development.
Yeah, that's great. I appreciate that granularity. Just a final question on your debt with Trafigura. I see that you've hedged the currency there. Any thoughts on further currency hedging for your sales as you progress through this expansion phase or even the commodity?
Yeah, and on granularity, Paul, you know us. We're always ready for granularity. On hedging, yeah, great question. I think this gold price is too good to believe, but my board doesn't. We're not gold bulls. We're not hedging copper. Of course, we won't hedge copper. It's dirt cheap as it currently stands. I think it's dirt cheap all the way through to $6 a pound . The gold, yeah, maybe, maybe, but that's only a maybe. Don't read too much into that. Currency, you know, with that concern that the currency could get to AUD 0.70, you know, that makes a difference locking it in at sort of 6x4. 6x is just we know what we're getting out of the $ 40 million. So that was useful to lock that in.
We now know, you know, it's also a, I think, you know, the reason we reported that's also a signal. There's one or two people who think we don't, we're not going to draw that debt, you know, that we've just held it there. We'll be drawing that debt, of course, we will. It's very cheap debt, you know, and Trafigura's a great partner. We now know what it's worth in Aussie dollars. No, to be honest, Paul, I suspect that's the extent of our hedging. We're certainly alert to the benefit of the gold price. To be honest, the benefit of the Aussie dollar at these sort of 65 numbers there. It's great. It's a bizarre market. You and callers will all have your own views and probably more educated than mine, but it just seems too good to be true.
It feels like an everything boom at the moment. You've got oil down, gold up, copper up, Aussie down, iron ore up. They can't all be right. Something's going to change. We locked in the Aussie.
Yeah, no, understood. Thanks, Aaron. That's it for me.
Cheers, Aaron.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Paul Hissey from Moelis. Please go ahead.
Good day, Aaron. A couple of quick questions for me. I apologize. I might have missed your description earlier on. I think you were talking about being 35% full of the full year run rate, and I didn't catch. Was that sustaining capital? If it wasn't, can you just comment a bit on the pace of the sustaining capital spend over the year?
Yep. Yep. What we do with our guidance, you know, the line items that we break out, the guidance, the one is underground mine development. FY 2026 guidance was AUD 25 million. September quarter actual was AUD 8.8 million. That is effectively at 35% of the full year guidance, and we're only 25% of the way through the year. I just went through each of the ones that are exceptions. The exceptions were Eloise underground mine development, Eloise resource definition drilling, exploration expenditure, and corporate expenditure. The one you asked about, the 35% one, is that Eloise underground mine development. We did more capital. We did more development in the quarter, higher than normal rate. We expect that to pull back, you know, to be that to normalize over the rest of the year. Don't be concerned that CapEx or underground mine development CapEx is over budget.
What I'm telling you is it's a timing issue. Is that clear?
Yeah, no, that answers the 35% comment you made. Just with regard to the FY 2026 sustaining guidance in totality, I think the number's AUD 41 million when you add up the, I guess there's three line items to it. It looks like you spent about AUD 12.9 million in the first quarter. Not just your underground development, it seems like maybe all sustaining CapEx sort of, and by that I'm taking the cents per pound in your quarterly grossed back up.
Yeah, you're well.
You're a little bit ahead, not just on development, but other sustaining items as well.
Yeah. There's only three line items there. Plant and equipment. That's at 24%. That's sort of bang on. The underground mine development we've talked about. The other one was resource definition drilling. FY 2026 guidance of AUD 2.5 million. We spent AUD 1 million during the quarter.
That was the other one. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, correct. Look, you know, because it's, you know, that's small. You know, AUD 2.5 million, we probably guide on, you know, if, you know, somewhere between, I would say that's average success. Now, we did spend a little bit more in the September quarter than we probably will in the December quarter. We're also happy to where, I would say, we're a little touch over budget there on that res dev drilling. We're in the sort of hundreds of thousands of dollars, Paul. It's not really meaningful. As I sort of referenced, those results we're getting were great. We bang on. Plus, some of the drilling in the upper levels of remnant drilling we do, some of that's difficult, not always successful, it's not always there, and so on. A tough one to really get too accurate on it. Like I said, full year guidance at AUD 2.5 million.
If that comes in at AUD 3.5 million, don't shoot the messenger. That's not a bad thing.
That's fine. Low 40s is still the right number. Low 40 is still the right number for some of your sustaining.
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Great. Just to back over this, I don't want to put words into your mouth regarding having already committed to your one and a half million ton expansion. Just, I mean, to take that at face value that, you know, it's an extra AUD 10 million to get you the extra 300,000 tons- 400,000 tons of annual capacity. In practical terms, what does the timing of such a AUD 10 million bill look like? I'm assuming that's an incremental number that sort of gets lost over the journey rather than you get to the end and then you spend AUD 10 million more.
Correct. Yep. Yeah, in one word answer, Paul. To be honest, to give you more detail than that, it's non-material. You'll see that go through over three years. I could talk about lead times for the equipment we need. I could say that AUD 10 million is the equipment. There could be a knock-on to some rooms in the camp and things like that. It could be some AUD 10 million, AUD 12 million, AUD 13 million. Over the next three, five years, you'll barely notice it.
Sure. Last question just around, and you might have touched on it with your response to Paul earlier. Are we at sort of normalized working capital slash, you know, concentrate inventory stockpile levels at the moment? I know there has been a little bit of build and draw over the last few quarters. Would you consider us to be at a somewhat normalized level now?
Paul, that's a complicated question. I don't think there is a normalized. Remember, it's all about the wet season, really. The September quarter is our best quarter in terms of drying weather, in terms of weather. September quarter's bloody beautiful up there. Heading into December, we've had some rain recently. From November onwards, things can get a little bit more difficult. You can see us potentially with more concentrate on the pad at the end of a quarter or ROM stocks on the ROM pad at the end of the quarter. That messes up some of our reporting. I get that. It's difficult to avoid. It's weather dependent. There is no perfect world. It's really like we've just done with close to zero, close to nothing left on the pad, either ROM pad or con pad.
Yep, no, that's the answer I was looking for. Okay, that was all for me. Thank you.
That's a great relief, Paul. Cheers.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Colleran for closing remarks.
Thanks, Darcy. As we just heard, honestly, the September quarter was a great quarter. Eloise again achieved guidance and produced good cash. FY 2026 is a transformational year for AIC Mines. The expansion to 20,000 tons per annum copper is underway. The Jericho access drive is progressing well. We're de-risking the mine ramp-up with infill drilling success. Our exploration drilling is showing that sizing the major plant upgrade items for 1.5 million tons per annum was absolutely the right decision. Question time drew that out nicely. Thank you to the questioners. Eloise is performing well, and commodity prices are providing a tailwind. What more could you ask for? Thank you for dialing in. That concludes the call.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.