Okay, good morning.
All right, it's 11:00 A.M. Good morning. Welcome to AGM of AIC Mines. I'm Joseph Oraghi, the Chairman of AIC, joined by my fellow directors. On my left is Aaron Colleran, the CEO of the company and our Managing Director. We have Jon Young on my far right, Linda next to me, and Audrey Ferguson, who is on the far left. Representatives of KPMG are in the audience here today, and Brett Montgomery is unable to attend today. Over the past 12 months, your company has continued to strengthen its asset base through operational delivery, exploration, and development. Eloise continued to operate reliably, producing 12,863 tons of copper in concentrate, generating revenue of AUD 198 million and operating cash flow of AUD 79 million in financial year 2025.
Jericho access drive, access to within 240 m of the J1 lens, an EPC contract for Eloise processing plant expansion to 1.1 million tons per annum was awarded to GR Engineering. Importantly, all major approvals for Jericho development and the Eloise processing plant expansion have been received, and financing is in place. The next 12 months will be transformational for AIC. The Jericho access drive is expected to cross the J1 lens in December 2025 and reach the Jolly Shoot by March 2026. Development at Jericho will then ramp up to achieve a combined production rate from Eloise and Jericho of 1.1 million tons by December 2026. The expanded Eloise processing plant is expected to start commissioning in the December 2026 quarter, all against a backdrop of historically high copper and gold prices.
For the year past, I'd like to thank our employees, contractors for their hard work and dedication, our shareholders for your ongoing support as we deliver this transformation, and importantly, the tireless CEO sitting on our left who has put in another huge year to get us to where we are today. We'll go through the formalities of the AGM now with the formal business opening. In respect of today's meeting, I note the following. We have a quorum in attendance in accordance with the requirements of the company's constitution. Proxies have been received from 234 shareholders representing ordinary shares, being 46.94% of the company's issued share capital. The notice of meeting was dispatched on the 17th of October 2025 to all registered members, and I propose that this notice of meeting be taken as read.
Also, the minutes of the previous extraordinary meeting of shareholders held on Wednesday, 20th of August, are available for inspection if required. To streamline the meeting, details of the resolutions and the proxy votes for each resolution will be displayed on the screen. I do not intend to read each of them out to you. Voting on all resolutions at today's meeting will be taken by way of a poll at the end of the meeting. Our share registrar, Computershare, will oversee the conduct of the poll and act as scrutineers. We'll now proceed to consider the formal business of the meeting, resolutions one to five, which will be displayed in sequence on the screen behind me. If there are any questions on these resolutions—is that resolution one?
Two? Three? Four? Five? These are all ordinary resolutions. Are there any questions or comments on these resolutions? Thank you. These resolutions will now be put to a poll. We'll conduct the poll on resolutions number one to five. All persons entitled to vote on the poll are all shareholders, representatives, and attorneys of shareholders and proxy holders who hold green admission cards. On the reverse of the green admission card is your voting paper and instructions. Proxy holders have attached to their admission summary of proxy votes, which detail the voting instructions. By completing the voting paper, you are deemed to have voted in accordance with those instructions. In respect of any open votes a proxy holder may be entitled to cast, you need to mark a box beside the motion to indicate how you wish to cast your open votes.
Shareholders also need to mark a box beside the motion to indicate how you wish to cast your votes. Please ensure you print your name where indicated. Sign the voting paper. When you finish filling in your voting paper, please lodge it in the ballot box, which will be passed around to ensure your votes are counted. If you require any assistance, please raise your hand. Okay?
Yep.
Thank you. That concludes the formal business of the meeting, and I formally close the poll with these last couple being put in the box. Final results of the resolution will be announced on the ASX later today. There being no further business, I now declare the annual general meeting closed at 11:06 A.M. Thank you for attending. With that, we'll turn the floor over to your CEO for a presentation on the company's activities.
Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, we got good. I do not have to talk too loudly. That is a bit weird up the front. I can hear myself echoed back. I hope that is not annoying for anyone, but it just does make it easier for me. I do not have to yell. Good morning. Thanks for coming along. Also for those who have dialed in, if there is any, if you have dialed in, thanks for dialing in as well. As Joseph alluded in his opening remarks, the last 12 months have been great. The next 12 months are going to be even better. Let me tell you why. Let me take you through the story. Let us start with our people, the team. We recently bolstered the executive team with the appointment of John Callagher as CFO.
He's been with us for seven months now and has done a great job of locking in the funding for Eloise, for the Eloise plant expansion. John's here today. Please say hello to John after the meeting. The auditors. No, you don't need to. The auditors just leave him alone after the meeting. We've also rounded out an excellent development team over the past 12 months. That's led by Tim Kindred and supported by Tom Filby, Peter Cassidy, and Joseph Sabara. I'd love to be able to introduce you to those guys, but it'll come as no surprise to you that they're not here today. They are 100% focused on the Eloise expansion, and they're out there. You know our strategy. Our aim is to create value through production growth, and we are well into that journey.
We have a great mining team led by our COO, Tim Benfield, who is here, and the Eloise GM, Ben McInerney. We have a great exploration team led by Mike Taylor, hiding at the back of the room, and with his team members, Dave Price and Vasek Metelka. Please capture these guys, say hello afterwards, and have a chat. We now have a development team in place, as I've just mentioned, and we will put them to the test over the next 12 months. The fourth pillar there, acquisitions, will be an obvious focus for us in the year ahead. However, we cannot take our eye off the ball at Jericho, and we will not. Also here in the room, Seb Casey, who heads up people and safety, say hello to Seb afterwards, please.
Duncan Bristow, for those who do not know, Duncan looks after investor relations and business development for us, an important role. Please introduce yourself, especially if you have complaints. Lodge them through Duncan, not me or Joseph. That will be the preference. It has been a tough year in the market, and our capital raise in June was not particularly well timed. It was important, though, to maintain momentum at Jericho, and I thank shareholders for their support in the placement and the SPP. The last weeks, the last eight weeks have been good, though, as investors start to recognize our growth profile and also the great Aussie dollar copper price at the moment. There are a lot of reasons to be bullish copper. Although these reasons have been in place for a number of years now, they are really starting to play out.
Copper supply is decreasing just at a time when copper demand is increasing. It's a perfect storm for the copper price. Copper demand is increasing. Importantly, the additional demand is both durable and multifaceted. New demand is coming from growing industries such as data centers, electric vehicles, and the emerging economies. Copper demand is now predicted to grow at a rate of 2.6% per annum out to 2035, compared to 2% compound annual growth rate over the last 15 years. That difference sounds small, but it's set against supply that can't keep up. Copper suppliers experienced a series of disruptions over the last year across three major mine sites: Grasberg in Indonesia, Kamoa-Kakula in Congo, and El Teniente in Chile. These three sites produce about 7% of the world's mined copper, creating a short-term production headwind for the metal. We're seeing that flow through to prices now.
The International Copper Study Group now expects the copper market will move to a supply deficit of 150,000 tonnes in 2026. That's a small deficit, a deficit nonetheless, possibly within the margin of error, but it's nice to see a forecast deficit moving into 2026. Over the longer term, there are not enough new copper mines being discovered or brought into production to replace mines that are closing. There has been a persistent decline in major copper mine discovery since the early 2000s. Looking ahead to calendar year 2026, we expect global copper supply to tighten as inventories fall and supply disruptions continue. We expect demand to rise due to cyclical and structural features. There is only one outcome: higher copper prices. UBS agree. Last month, they updated their copper price for continued supply disruptions.
They increased their 2026, 2027, 2028 copper price estimates to $5.20, $5.95, and $5.80 a pound. That compares to $4.85 today. Jacking them up by $0.50 to $1.00 a pound, $0.50 to $1.00 a pound. Citibank too. Last month, they noted that a recovery in the global growth expectations in early 2026 and associated growing confidence in physical deficits will be sufficient to drive copper to average $5.44 per pound by the second quarter 2026. Higher copper prices are not just good for AIC Mines. They are very good. They have a magnified impact on our free cash flow, which then allows us to unlock upside sooner. Let me put some numbers to it and run you through. You will get what I mean by magnified.
In FY 2025, so last financial year, we produced 12,863 tons of copper and sold it at Aussie—sorry to jump around—US to Aussie pounds a ton. Just bear with me. We sold our copper last year at an average price of AUD 14,128 a ton. Currently, copper is trading at AUD 16,500 a ton. Now, that's only about 17% higher than what we achieved last year, but the margin that we achieve, our margin, would be up 105%. And that's the point. Last year, Eloise produced AUD 27.4 million in free cash flow. If we'd sold that at today's prices, we would have produced AUD 58.4 million in cash. At Eloise, we're guiding a similar to slightly better year this year, this financial year compared to last year. Analysts thought that we might make about AUD 30 million again in FY 2026.
They're now rushing to update their numbers to that $50 million-$60 million mark. What this means is that we are no longer overly reliant on debt. Our funding position is not tight, and our aspirations to move to the second stage expansion at the Eloise processing plant are not an FY 2032 aspiration. They're an FY 2028 imperative. What this means is that we are no longer a company with a clear pathway to 20,000 tons per annum copper production. We're a company with a pathway to 25,000 tons copper production. A first-world copper project with a pathway to 25,000 tons per annum copper is a rare and valuable thing. It's a key and important takeaway from today. Investors are starting to realize this. Everyone in the room knows that, I know, but the rerate is slow. As annoying as that is, it is underway.
It obviously requires us to deliver rather than to promise. As you know, though, our style is to under-promise and then over-deliver. We achieved production guidance at Eloise in FY 2024 and in FY 2025. We're off to a good start to again achieve production guidance in FY 2026. The plant expansion is underway. Earthworks have commenced. It's early days, but the relationship with GR Engineering Services is excellent. Their management of risk and safety has been first-class. We plan to be commissioning the new plant at 1.1 million tons per annum this time next year. We have an exciting year ahead of us. It'll be a bloody interesting AGM next year. Over the last six months, we've been talking a lot about Jolly, the new lens at Jericho at the northern end, and what that would mean for the ramp-up of Jericho mining. It doesn't seem to have got through.
Today, we've put it in bold. It's at the top of the slide there. The Jericho access drive is expected to reach ore earlier than expected, about six months earlier. The Jericho access drive will cross the J1 lens in December 2025. That's December. That's a few weeks away. It's expected to reach the Jolly Shoot by March 2026. Development will then ramp up to achieve a combined production rate from Eloise and Jericho of 1.1 million tons per annum by December 2026. We have an exciting year ahead. This is my excited face. You want to see my grumpy face? The combined resource base we now have for the Eloise plant, 28.4 million tons, grading 2% copper and 0.4 gram per ton, is larger than at any time in its 30-year history.
Regionally, we're now exploring for transformational discoveries, discoveries that will make a material near-term impact to production. Discoveries that are higher grade than Eloise or materially larger than Jericho. That means that we will move on from prospects that return average similar results to what we have in that resource base. We'll come back to them later because what we're looking for is something better than what we already have. That's a very high bar for our exploration team. We have the tenement holding. We have the knowledge, the geophysical, geochemical, geological, and structural knowledge that can only come from mining. Test the guys at the back of the room, though. They're here for that.
What I want you to take away today, without any doubt in your mind, is that we now have the ore body knowledge, the people, and the funding ready to deliver Jericho and the Eloise expansion over the next 12 months. Developing a new mine and commissioning a plant expansion always involves some risk. We are entering this next phase from a position of strength. At Eloise, we have delivered a genuine turnaround of a 30-year-old mine. Over the past nine quarters, we have consistently delivered on our promise. That hard-won operational experience and the discipline it reflects gives us real confidence in our ability to execute safely and successfully as we embark on the exciting year ahead. Thank you. Keen, keen, very keen to take any questions you might have.
Just on your debt position, you have a debt position with Trafigura?
Yep. That is right.
You have a debt position with Trafigura. Is there any hooks in that debt position? Have you effectively hedged?
What we have at the moment, $40 million prepayment facility with Traf undrawn. We've hedged our Aussie dollar exposure to that so that it is AUD 60 million. Consider that AUD 60 million of debt available from Trafigura would start drawing that. We're looking at February, March next year. With the current copper prices, it might be March, April. Are there hooks? We disclosed the debt position, very low level of debt. Sorry, very low interest rate on that. You'll see almost all, almost all, I would say all recent base metal fundings have been by off-takers. That's because they want the off-take. They need the off-take.
As everyone in this room knows, all the Australian smelters owned by Glencore or Trafigura are desperate for concentrate, competing against the Chinese smelters that are paying zero TCRCs for it. The trading companies, the smelter companies are very aggressive. Their debt terms are very good. That was unequivocal, David, in the process we ran against banks and smelter companies, the traders and smelter companies. They were three percentage points, not percentage points, different. Then the hooks. Ours is very simple. Although we have locked in some off-take from Jericho, so they obviously want our concentrate. That's what they're buying, effectively, our concentrate. That number, straight off the top of my head, I think it's about 400,000 tons. 400,000 tons of concentrate, not copper, of concentrate. Divide by about 1/3 of that is copper. We deliver 400,000 tons of concentrate at benchmark rates. Yes.
There is no—back to your question on hedging, no price hedging, no copper price hedging, no copper price participation, no funny business, normal M plus three terms, very vanilla terms on how we sell, clear benchmarks, so transparent terms on the TCRCs we pay. What else can I tell you? Only the things you already know, really. It is a beautiful, clean concentrate. It is only chalk up higher right and gold in it, effectively. So the whole penalty element, deleterious element thing is irrelevant. There is not any high normal payabilities. That is the other thing to question occasionally. Our payabilities on gold and silver are good. They tried that one on us. One of the off-takers offered us a 95% payability. We are 96%, 1%. We do not produce a lot of gold, but at the moment, even a small amount of gold is a hell of a lot of money.
No, no, Bute terms. Those off-takers are known for being rapacious, but they are currently so short concentrate that they are aggressively competing against each other. I do not know. I am new to this game, really. I think almost for the first time in history, miners are getting a reasonable deal. Sorry, long answer, but I think I have covered your question. Beauty. Beauty. Yeah, fine. Just go shout.
Assuming copper prices are going to keep on going or stay where they are, do you have a strategy yet on future dividends?
Just in case those online did not hear the question, it was about a dividend strategy. Yeah, look, a great question. There are two things. There are two ways of answering that. The first way is we are a growth company. I would like another asset to build to grow the company. That would add value.
We've now got the team. I don't want to disband that team. It's not easy to put a build team together, and I feel as though we've got a really good one. I would like to be moving on to another asset. That is not easy either. As I sort of—well, exactly what I said. 25,000 tons per annum project, permitted, funded in first world is a rare, rare valuable asset. They're hard to find. Assuming we don't, and at today's copper prices, let alone those UBS and Citibank numbers, we would pay down our debt very quickly and be very quickly in a position to pay a dividend. Without making a promise here in front of you, the simple answer is yes.
If we were a standalone Eloise vehicle in a couple of years' time, I know major shareholders, all of represented at the front, would like to see that. My background and evolution. Also, we had a very strong view, and I still hold this, is that it's your money. Companies should return cash, should pay a dividend. If at a time in future we come along an opportunity where we need that back, that's fine. We'll go and ask for it. We'll go and do the raise. In the meantime, deliver it back to shareholders. That's my personal view. It's not a board position at this stage in time. It's not something we actually need to answer a couple of years, but that's my thoughts on the matter. Come on. Yeah, there's plenty. I'll ask questions if I have to.
Very interesting shareholders on the register.
Mount Gibson Iron, which sits on AUD 450 million of cash, they have not gone up now. They just stayed there. I would like to know what your thoughts on Mount Gibson Iron are, if you can. The other one is Hawks Point Capital, which only this week sold AUD 100 million worth of [Orlando] that had very many investments with the core to six. One of them is you guys. They are a strategic investor. That was in your presentation when they came on board. How do you see them moving forward? Do you think they might go up in percentage, and would you like them to go up in percentage?
Gee, you will not get an invite next year, Dave. It is a complicated question, really, with a number of—it is a bit of an octopus. Let me answer it in a couple of ways. I will answer your question.
I have no problem doing that. Firstly, Mount Gibson at 4.9%—they're not our only, they're not our largest shareholder. In context, I've got other shareholders. It's not a democracy. Not every shareholder gets a vote. Every share gets a vote. A large shareholder is important, I get that, but they're not currently our largest shareholder. It's also very true of Hawks Point. They're at about 2%. I just want to keep in context, we're talking about a 4.9% shareholder, of which we have a number, and your own clients included. At 2%, we've got quite a few of those. Keep it in that context. I'm happy to answer your question directly. I met with Peter Kerr at Mount Gibson Iron yesterday. I really like the guy. He's one of the nicest CEOs I've come across.
They have done a lot of work, as you'd well expect, on a copper strategy, a copper strategy in Australia. It almost comes as no surprise that they own shares in AIC. What they do with that strategy, where they take that strategy, I'm obviously not 100% privy to. We've had a lot of discussions over what we could do together in the copper space. Some opportunities we could need some firepower assistance with. Not all. We've got our own firepower. Those discussions are ongoing. That relationship is ongoing. It's a relationship that's—I know this is an unusual thing to say from a stock market day-to-day point of view, but we're early in that relationship. One year, two years is actually quite early in a relationship. I know it feels like a long time from a shareholding point of view.
From an institutional shareholding point of view, unfortunately, it's a very long period. We're early in that relationship. We're both still looking at what we can do together, separately, in the region, all those sort of things. I hope that goes some way to answer the question because I don't have a specific answer. There isn't a specific answer. Hawks Point, an incredibly diligent, smart team, literally one of the best teams I've ever come across for focus, intellect, and detailed due diligence. They've got to know us over two years, four-five visits to site. From logging core through to CV and background checks on the CEO, they've proved without a doubt I have a very boring background. That relationship, again, is relative; it's not early. That relationship is now developed.
Yes, that's great to have a relationship, two relationships there, with two shareholders who have a lot of money at their disposal and want to do more. One wants to do more in the copper space. The other wants to do more in AIC. You have seen the announcement. For those who have not, it came out at exactly the time of the capital raise in June. David referenced Hawks Point as a strategic shareholder. We have entered into an agreement, an agreement to agree, effectively, an agreement that they get certain rights as a shareholder if they go above 9%. Those rights are not really unusual. To be quite honest, any shareholder with over 9% could exercise those if they chose to. We just do it in a very transparent, upfront way.
Say we agree to these rights, and there's a bit of information sharing and a few other opportunities similar to all the other investments they've made. David, that's where we're at with Hawks Point at the moment. We've got a 2% shareholder who, as you nicely identified, put AUD 100 million back in the bank last week, and I'm sure it's looking for a house. Yeah, that was the two—I have covered your question. Good. Okay.
Aaron, can you talk to the exploration budget in terms of value, and then where it's split in terms of near mine and/or regional?
Yeah, broadly. Yes. Hate to say it, especially in front of my board and my exploration team who are very pro exploration. No matter how hard I try, we fall into that same trap that every junior company falls into.
As soon as money gets tight, we stop the Tim Tams in head office. I've spoken about before. We do less drilling. We don't want to do that. We want to maintain the momentum we've got. We are maintaining the momentum. I am very happy and confident, or I am happy with where the current copper price is to go back to that point I made earlier where we are now comfortably funded. That is not seeing us slow down, defer exploration. We have a good team. We are predominantly—so that budget is somewhere between AUD 7.5 million and AUD 8.5 million a year. It could be AUD 10 million if we need it. I know I have a very supportive board when it comes to spending money on exploration if the results flow.
Now, between AUD 7.5 million and AUD 8.5 million a year , very Eloise or very Jericho, then Eloise regional- focused. We do have tenements outside of the southern Cloncurry area. In Queensland and New South Wales, we're spending a little bit of money there. The best bang for our buck is literally the line of strike at Jericho. It's phenomenal. You've seen me post, and they're not exaggerations of the more we drill, the better it gets sort of thing. We've got a lot of targets to test. We've got 1,700 sq km out there. Geophysics is always—it's all undercover, so we're only relying on geophysics. Geophysics will show us sulfides. It will not show us copper. We've got a lot of work to do following up on that. Not all of the targets are shallow. Today, even Eloise is a 4% copper deposit.
That'd be great to find, and we'll give that our best crack out there. The only thing that stops us is the current; it's the wet season. You can drill through it if you're on a project, but to be moving around is nonsense. It's cost prohibitive. We have backed off a bit, as you'll have seen, at Jericho. It's because we're almost there. We're 240 m away. We've got drill positions underground, and we'll do a lot of that drilling from underground. We're almost ready to switch from surface to underground drilling at Jericho. We can do that year-round. That's perfect. Chris, I hope that answers the question. $7.5 million-$8.5 million. I'd guess like 75%-80% Eloise Jericho, Eloise regional- focused.
Last question from me relates to M&A. You've been very disciplined over the history of the company.
In terms of the region that you're operating, are there many stranded assets, deposits which don't have the infrastructure?
Yeah. Look, thank you for calling us disciplined. We just haven't done anything for a little while. It's better than having done something stupid, I do admit. We dropped off this slide. The other nice thing, just to go back to your previous question, we're adding copper through exploration for $0.02 a pound at Jericho. That's why we're drilling so much there. Then the region. The stranded deposits is not the one. Let me just—let's cross that one off. Not trying to be difficult, but we go back to that 28.4 million tons at 2%. We don't need a 1% ore body within 40 km, within 50 km, within any kilometers of Eloise. We've got 28.4 million tons at 2%.
We've got Artemis, Sandy Creek, Roberts Creek, if we need small near-surface 2 million ton 1% deposits. If you take that 20 km circle out to the 50 km, Chris, you'll find not as many deposits as you'd think. Most of them—and all of them—none of them—sorry, all of them—none of them are better than what we've currently got. On a stranded deposit thing, that's not our focus. More broadly, when we're looking for another asset, another Eloise, we look at Australia only, not Indonesia, Chile, or the Congo. We're only looking in Australia. The more we look—and I think I may have even said this last year, but I do say it a lot at conferences—the more we look around Australia, the more we look at assets, the more we come back to the Mount Isa-Cloncurry Belt.
For a second asset, the Mount Isa-Cloncurry region is probably where we'll find it because what we're seeing is that 80% of the opportunities exist, and it's 100% of our expertise. Not that that expertise isn't sort of transportable, movable within Australia, but the base, the expertise, the knowledge, the permitting knowledge that we've got, the lay of the land out there is incredibly valuable. That's the right place for us to be. Long answer to your question, didn't mean to obfuscate. I was just trying to give you the full picture. Does that cover it? Perfect. Thanks, Chris. All right. With that, oh, sorry, John's parking is about to run out. We'll wrap up. Please hang around and have a chat to the AIC guys that I pointed out earlier.