I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bryan Quinn, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thanks for joining us today. Glad you could attend the Aurelia Metals half-year financial results for FY25. I recognize we've delivered, we released detailed operational, exploration, and project information for Quarter Two only a month ago, so my introduction and update will be reasonably brief and focus on highlights and alignment to strategy. I will allow Martin Cummings, this Aurelia Metals CFO, to present the financial results in more detail. I'd also like you to know that I have Angus Wyllie, our Regional Operations General Manager, and Andrew Graham, our Technical and Business Development Officer, on the call with us today to allow us to work through any questions you may have at the end of the presentation.
We'll be using the presentation that was released today to the market, and we'll call out the slide numbers as we progress so you can obviously follow along and understand what we're talking about. I'll just move to the first slide, Slide 3. Firstly, and most importantly, I would like to highlight the safety performance has continued to improve through the first half with a 34% reduction in total recordable injuries. Importantly, this focus can never stop, and we need our people attending work and departing work injury-free. We finished the first half at 5.68 total recordable injury frequency rate. Operationally, all guidance ranges for production and costs are on track at the end of the half, and our forecast is on track for the 4-year numbers also.
Gold was at the lower end of guidance and copper at the upper end of guidance, and this is all about the sequence of stoping within the 12-month plan, which will be ironed out over the remainder of the year. Federation processed 16,500 tons through the Peak mill, and Fed has said the results have exceeded our expectations with quality of concentrates in lead, zinc, gold, and copper. The ramp-up plan for Federation is still focused on 100,000-140,000 for the FY25. Our group operating costs have been lower for this half, FY25, noting that Dargues' costs were only reported in Quarter 1 and not Quarter 2 as compared to FY24, which had both Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 in the numbers. Group operating costs for FY25 is slightly less than FY24, which is a good outcome. Overall, on costs, we are tracking okay.
We've got significant work to do, obviously, in terms of productivity improvement and reducing relative costs, but we're still on path with our overall plan and strategy. We've delivered stronger operational performance with the assistance of stronger gold prices. We are still, however, managing our way through challenging inflationary issues in wages and mining construction materials, but overall, underlying EBITDA for this half is AUD 49.7 million, which is up 53% from Half One FY2024. More importantly, the business is now profitable with an underlying NPAT of AUD 15.6 million, which is up AUD 17.4 million from previous. Additionally, and importantly, our underlying EBITDA margin continues to improve half on half as our business ramps up in production. These positive results all contribute to our cash balance being very healthy at AUD 96.7 million.
I think the standout item to note for Aurelia Metals is the balance sheet has continued funding the Federation project capital and exploration capital in Half One, also with cash flow generated mainly from Peak. In fact, cash flow from operating activities, excluding Dargues, has moved from AUD 14.8 million in Half One FY2024 to AUD 50.7 million in Half One FY2025, which reinforces our focus on improving our underlying business performance and productivities. This goes to show our business and focus as an organization on reliably delivering our commitments in productivity and generating cash is setting us apart from our peer companies as a solid investment. What's important to highlight is we are if I could move to Slide 4, the next slide.
What's important to highlight is we are on a journey to build this company to be very profitable as we continue to execute our strategy, which is to operate with discipline, which is basically delivering our safety, costs, and volume each quarter through our modified operating system being implemented properly. It's about having the right people, the right mindset, seeking to recruit and retain people who have loyalty with our work and want to grow with our business. We have a very high focus on growth at the moment in terms of delivering our Federation project into commercial production in Half Two FY2025 and hit the various milestones we need to deliver against that and also bring our next set of projects in Half Two to the board for FID. We also focus on sustainability, delivering value.
That is basically continuing to work with our community on growing our business, looking at ways to reduce water, energy, and build a long-term sustainable business in the regions we work. I might just hand over to Martin now to run through the financials, and then I'll come back and talk about our growth plans.
Thanks, Bryan. Turning to Slide 6, and just to recap on our production and cost outcomes this half, it was a very solid start to the year. Our gold production at 21.5 thousand ounces was slightly behind where we'd planned but was driven by the sequence of high-grade gold stope, which is now being mined and processed. Important to note that the prior period on this slide included a full half from Dargues, which produced just over 17,000 ounces in that period versus only about 3,500 ounces in this period. Underlying Peak increased from around 14,000 ounces to 18,000. The mining sequence in H1 mined more copper ore and resulted in the higher copper production, with mining at Peak in Half Two more dominant in lead, zinc, ore as a result of, and as a result, much higher volumes of Federation ore will increase production of those metals.
Just moving on to Slide 7, and this is quite a comprehensive set of metrics, but it really shows the improvements in profitability culminating in an underlying profit of AUD 15.6 million after tax and a statutory profit after tax of AUD 18 million, which equates to just over 1 cent per share for the 6 months. Onto Slide 8, where I've just called out a few of these metrics, and you can see here that really shows the journey of where we are to ramp up productivity and profitability. Our underlying EBITDA margin for the half was around AUD 50 million, which lifted the business back into profit after tax, as I said, 15.6 underlying and 18 million on a statutory.
Really, the pleasing thing for us is in that lower left chart where you can see the improved cash flow from operating activities with the contribution from Dargues isolated to give you an underlying result, with Peak benefiting from higher production volumes and higher prices, but also importantly, its ability to keep costs in control. As you can see on the Group All-In Sustaining Cost chart, it means that we have been able to realize the benefit of the higher gold price to further strengthen our balance sheet as we invest in Federation. Looking ahead to the second half, we do see opportunities to do better than this. Firstly, in line with our guidance, we do plan to deliver higher production this half.
Most of that production lift comes from the ramp-up in volumes from Federation, with all indications that we'll be able to achieve the commercial production milestone by the end of the half. Secondly, we see opportunities from ongoing higher commodity prices and the weaker Australian dollar, which ultimately translates into higher revenue for us. In particular, the average gold price realized in this half was just under AUD 3,700 an ounce, which is well below where gold is currently trading. Finally, we do see opportunities to keep making inroads into our costs, particularly in mining and maintenance. Our focus at the moment is on improving productivity of our mine development activities, but we're also looking at identified opportunities to lower costs for contractors and through our contracts, through effective management of them and continuing to recruit Aurelia employees to reduce contractors in full-time equivalent roles.
Just moving on to the group profit slide, as you can see, we're building up from a zero base here rather than from the prior period movement. I really just wanted to show that Peak is currently our engine room with almost AUD 48 million of EBITDA for the half. As we transition commercial production from Federation and ramp up those mining rates, that number will continue to grow. As I said, we'll continue to monitor the performance of Federation and look to declare commercial production this financial year.
Worth noting as well on this chart, there was a sale of zinc concentrate from Federation in these results, but as I took you through on the December quarterly call, the way we're accounting for pre-commercial production at Federation is that the revenue's reported with an offsetting operating cost, so it's actually reported as a zero EBITDA for this period. Finally, just onto the balance sheet, and as the slide says, our balance sheet is in great shape. We started the year with AUD 116.5 million in cash and finished it with a balance of AUD 96.7 million.
Our operations generated AUD 45 million in free cash flow that only included a couple of months from Dargues, but it exceeded what we'd invested in Federation and our exploration programs. This has been a pleasing theme for a while now, and it's a key reason why our balance sheet strength has been retained.
I just want to note that that net depletion of AUD 20 million over the half, about AUD 10 million outflow of that was to cash back a performance bond. We will still have some smaller amounts that we have to cash back through this half as our rehab estimates are updated, but this cash is sitting in term deposits earning interest, and while it's restricted for now, once we work through the upsize of our performance bond facility, that cash will be able to be returned. In summary, it's been a really pleasing half with a strong operating performance resulting in Aurelia returning to a profit after tax and retaining a very strong balance sheet to continue executing our great ambitions. I do just want to call out the Aurelia Finance team and the EY team for their efforts to prepare this release.
Some of you are on the call today, so thank you. It's been actually a very smooth half year end, so thanks for all your efforts. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Bryan.
Thanks, Martin. I'll take a few minutes to summarize where we're up to in our growth journey in the business and cover at a very high level where we are, noting that we spent a fair bit of time in the Quarter 2 results talking about the projects and also exploration. It's fair to say our growth work is at full strength at the moment. We have several streams of work underway to grow the business to be much more profitable, resilient, and have strong cash flow in the future. We have a Federation project, which is on slide 12, which basically is definitely on track within budget, as Martin said, is ramping up to basically meet commercial production in this half.
If you look at what we've achieved over Half One, service work has been completed, the first concentrates have been produced, power upgrades have been completed, a ventilation fan was installed and commissioned, and obviously, we're progressing our haulage submissions through the government at the moment as well for increased volumes. We also have on slide 13 continued progress, the Great Cobar and Peak Optimization works through our studies, which is moving very, very well, and we hope to have both of these 2 projects progressing through to FID in H2, which means we can basically commence the work in FY26 H1. Realistically, with these projects underway, they're not significantly complex.
The Great Cobar project is effectively 2 declines and a ventilation shaft and some various service works, and then the processing upgrade of the Peak Optimization is also not a complex project, really involving the installation of a ball mill and some power system circuits and some material handling systems. Both those projects are well and truly on their way to look at FID for H2 and on track. If I move to the exploration slide, obviously, as Andrew presented in the Quarter 2 results, we continue to unlock the potential base metal basin Cobar region. I'm not going to report back on anything new from what Andrew spoke about at the end of Q2, but basically, we continue to fill the pipeline of options for this region, and we're tracking well against that work.
The focus has been on really extending the deposits in the North Mine at Peak, recommending drilling at Federation West and to assess the potential of the extension, and lastly, to basically move through the Nymagee program to understand what the resource potential looks like at Nymagee. All of our growth work is well and truly on track as we've committed and spoken about at the end of Quarter 2. If I just move to slide 15, our focus areas, it's fair to say our real focus areas have continued to be making sure that we have people being safe and working in a sustainable way. Obviously, we're really focusing on getting more productivity improvements out of Peak, but obviously, that will improve our fundamental cash flow base for our business as we progress from South Mine to North Mine.
It's to really focus on maximizing the cash generation via our productivity and costs to make sure that we can utilize the benefits of the stronger prices, but also make sure we've got the right quality and right volumes going out in line with our budgets and plans. Ramping up Federation, like I said, to commercial production is well underway and will likely be completed in H2 of FY2025, which is a great result, all within budget as well, which you don't hear of very often. As I said, the Peak O ptimization and the Great Cobar project is going to FID is well and truly on track as well.
As we just mentioned, we're spending the right amount of money to really look at the next set of options and projects that we can take with us into the business to grow our business as we go forward as well. Obviously, what's important when we look at our growth options in our business is that we're looking at how to use our facilities we have and how to use the resources around us to fill those facilities as we've always talked about in the future. That's why the pipeline of exploration is really important organically for us as a company. Obviously, to slide 16, I just want to make it clear our strategy and direction remains unchanged and is working to support our business being much stronger in the near future for our shareholders.
Having the right people, the right culture, and the right values is a fundamental foundation for our business. Having a strong focus on operating discipline, delivering quarter-on-quarter results really starts at the shopfront where we have shift by shift, day by day, week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter results delivering in a wired way to deliver our 4-year budgets and our life of mine numbers. Having our focus growth on low capital intensity and organic is the best way for us to maximize our shareholder value at present. When our business is fully valued and realized, we'll start to consider what inorganic options might be around us. Right now, close to our right now, setting up plans to use our processing facilities, which are close to delivering full value at 1.5 million tons, is where our focus is right now.
Once we've sort of got all those plans in place and we know we can maximize value through our current processing facilities, obviously, we can continue looking to what options might be out there. Rest assured, we're ensuring every dollar of capital is being prudently assessed for alternatives, and our shareholders are getting the best bang for their dollar right now. With that said, I would like to go to questions, please.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask a question. First question comes from Paul Kaner with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi gents. Thanks for the call. 2 questions from myself, if I may. Firstly, on Federation, thanks for that additional granularity on slide 12. Just for accounting purposes, when are you anticipating to hit that commercial production at the asset? I think you mentioned this half. Is that right?
Yeah, it's this half, Paul. To be fair, if it was in the half, it would be in Quarter 4. I know my accounting team would prefer it to be 1st of July, but it would be somewhere in the fourth quarter if we went earlier than 1 July. I think from 1 July onwards, it's safe to say we'd be there by then. The way how I'm monitoring it is just looking at the mine production coming out each month. Obviously, the price environment will play into it because we're working to essentially a zero or positive EBITDA. Yeah, sometime in the fourth quarter.
Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Martin. Then secondly, the CapEx for Great Cobar. I think the PFS had sort of AUD 35 million of pre-production CapEx back in 2022. Obviously, we're in a higher inflationary environment now, but anything you've seen or changed in the mine process that could potentially offset some of these inflationary impacts?
In terms of the capital cost, obviously, we're taking that to the board for FID with this half. It's fair to say that obviously, all these projects will have inflationary pressures based on just costs, materials, and everything else. The team is still working through the Capital Optimization, looking at what is in the capital, what's in the growth. The mine sequence and the shaft sequencing is all very similar. It's not substantially different. Effectively, like I said, we're just trying to optimize that now, and that's what we'll come back and report to the market once we have that sort of lockdown.
Yep, no, understood. That's fine. Thanks, Bryan. That's it from me. Cheers.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Daniel Roden, an analyst. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. First one, I just wanted to get a bit of clarity just around the financing cost of AUD 8.3 million. Just given the interest-bearing loan balance, I just wanted to break down what was behind that 8.3 figure on the panel.
Yeah, so Dan, what's in there is the performance bond margin, and we also are amortizing costs relating to the refinance that we did back in 2023.
Perfect. Second one, just following on with the Great Cobar and Peak expansion. Obviously, FID part 2. Just wanted to get a sense on, I guess, timing of the CapEx for both of those projects. I assume the plant expansion is going to be over 2026, but Great Cobar as well, is that going to be a financial year 2026-2027 kind of CapEx outlay if it is approved by the board?
Yeah, so it's likely at the moment that the capital subject to FID would commence in FY 2026. Now, as you know, when you're developing declines, it's sort of the capital cost of developing declines is a month-by-month cost as you push your declines down. Getting down towards where the shaft will be installed, obviously, then ringing the shaft up would have a cost. It's not like any big lumpy numbers in there. It's more like a, I guess, a cash sort of spend as we progress the declines and the shaft over a 2-year period. It's pretty fair to say at this point until we finalize the actual project. Yeah, that's kind of where the capital flow or cash flow side would look anyway over a 2-year period.
Maybe just on the quantum as well. Your major capital items for Great Cobar development, obviously, the lateral decline from the existing underground infrastructure and some shafts that are going in. Outside of that, are there any other major bits of CapEx that need to go into, I guess, the Great Cobar development itself?
At the moment, obviously, there's the major ones. The other capital really required is some small adjustments to workshops. There's a good old sort of power work that we'll need to do, some additional services work that will need to be done. In summary, the major capital will be focused around the development and the shafts.
Okay. I suppose just following on from that, I suppose different scale of projects, but I would assume that on a relative basis, the Great Cobar CapEx for the developments and everything should be relatively similar to what was expended for Federation. Would that be a fair comment?
Look, I think the difference with Federation versus Great Cobar is Great Cobar already has a pit top. It's got ventilation in place from the Chesney fans. It's got workshops. It's got an office facility. It's got bathhouses. You are really using a lot of existing infrastructure already, where if you think about Federation, Federation was kind of like a new mine site from scratch type thing. We will be using a lot of additional, we will be using a lot of the existing infrastructure already in place using the New Cobar access into the area and basically mining off a road which already exists. It is sort of you are already in the mine effectively when you start Great Cobar. On a cost per meter basis, we expect the conditions to be probably better than Federation cost per meter.
Obviously, like I said, you're using existing facility, existing infrastructure, which is a big plus to us from a capital efficiency point of view. Andrew, was there anything you want to add to that at all?
I think that sums it up pretty well, Bryan. Just thinking about big capital items, Bryan did mention electrical. That certainly is one, but the benefit we get compared to Federation is the work we do puts us on grid as opposed to being off-grid. We get the benefit ongoing of grid power at grid power prices and also the decarbonization that comes as the grid decarbonizes. The other one, which is slightly different to Federation, is there is an old underground working that sits at Great Cobar, which will be not attached to where we are mining, but sits above. The intention is to dewater that, obviously, for safety of the underground mine, but also as a source of water for the plant. There is obviously a cost for that, but the benefit we get is then being able to process using that water.
Awesome. No, thanks guys. Very clear. Appreciate it.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. The next question comes from Roy Gillespie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Congratulations on getting your PAT in the first half. My question is, has the processing of ore from Federation continued through January and February? Is the 140,000 tons production from Federation planned to be processed as well in that period?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Roy. Look, obviously, we're doing stoping and stockpiling at Federation, and then we'll basically send a bulk sample, truck a bulk sample all at once to Peak. Over January, February, we've been processing the Peak material, and then we'll basically be campaigning into March, April, the Federation material. It is very much a bulk campaign at the moment as we progress. In terms of the total volume that we've processed in the financial year, it won't be the whatever we do mine and stockpile at Federation won't all be processed, obviously, because we've got to bulk sample it, sorry, bulk haul it to Peak and put it through in campaigns. It's important for us to get the campaigns and understand what the ore is processing like before we start looking at how to blend the ore.
It is kind of like, I guess, a methodological process to do the batches, understand, and then look at how, with the metallurgists on site, how we can actually blend it to optimize the flow through as well. Is there any comments, additional comments I can get to that?
No, we're on track within the guidance. As Bryan touched on, there'll certainly be material on the ROM pad at the end of the month, at the end of June, that won't get trucked up. We'd hope to minimize that. I think we've just restarted trucking on Sunday, so we're aiming for the next campaign of processing early in March.
Does that answer your question? I understand the context.
Yes, it did. It did. It made sense.
Thanks so much.
Bye.
The next question comes from Anthony Wallace, private investor. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jens. A terrific half, really disciplined finance, and you can just see the change, which has been fantastic. Just a very simple question on one of your slides was your infill drilling to inform mine design. Is that a normal thing that as you're getting deeper in, you're changing your resource model at all?
Yeah, look, I think we infill drill across Peak, Peak South, Peak North, and obviously Federation. As we reported at the end of the quarter two, there were some changes in orientation and lens sizes in Federation that we obviously want to understand more. It is prudent for us to make sure that we're designing our mine to maximize productivity. The more you can infill drill, the more you can sort of lay out your stopes and efficiency of your development, the best you can, which reduces costs and maximizes volume. It depends on the deposit of the mine. It depends on what the sort of structure of the mine is. In our case, we're doing this. We do it quite regularly at Peak, and we're doing it now at Federation as well. Andrew, is there any other comment you want to add to that at all?
Yeah, look, spot on, Bryan. The reality is underground base metal mining, indeed most mining, you're always infill drill. So we'll drill a fairly wide spacing to clear a resource. Then as we get closer to mining, we'll tighten that up. For example, we'll have a resource on about a 50-meter spacing of drilling, whereas we will have infilled to about a 12.5-meter spacing before we mine. Very normal. Also manages cash flow. No point spending all that money to infill long before you're going to be there, but also you need to be there to efficiently do it. You need the underground accesses in order to do the efficient drilling from underground. Yeah, very normal process. Certainly, a process we do across our entire business. I'd say everyone in the base metal space is doing exactly the same.
What does that drive to? I think it's important because obviously, our processing, we want to maximize efficiency recoveries of our processing and the campaigns we have. Having that extra information allows our mets to really plan the campaigns well and the throughputs well as well so we can sort of really get our quarterly forecasts sort of on target as we need to, rather than sort of having a high-level guess.
Yeah. Okay. No, look, that makes perfect sense. I thought there would be something like that. Just one other quick question is, what's your thoughts at this stage of what you're going to do with the Hera processing plant? Any further thoughts on that one?
Yeah. So basically, our view at the moment is with the work we're doing on optimization, which is focused on taking all the Peak material and the Federation material to Peak and processing it, that gets us to 1.1-1.2 million tons, which is significant if you consider that against FY2024 numbers going through Peak, that's double basically what Peak is producing. Really, Hera, if that goes ahead as far as the project is concerned, then we're on track to deliver those sort of volumes, which is going to significantly uplift our copper equivalent numbers as a company and profits. Therefore, Hera is obviously left ready for other options. We're obviously continuing to look at exploring around that region. We have the Federation extension drilling. We have the Nymagee drilling. They're all within 8-10 kilometers away from the Hera plant.
There is also some interest from third parties looking at wanting to potentially toll material through that plant. In a nutshell, once we sort of move past the Great Cobar project and the optimization project and move into FYD, we will be looking very carefully in the next phase at what we do with Hera in terms of how we generate value out of Hera. That takes us from 1.1 to 1.2 to 1.5 million tons throughput, again, allowing us to significantly increase our copper equivalents. Whether it is our volumes or someone else's volumes that we are tolling, it is making a commercial decision on what makes sense and makes money for us and the shareholders.
Yep. Okay. No, that's great. Look, thanks very much for that. Appreciate all that. Thank you.
Thanks for the question.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand it back to Mr. Quinn for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much for everyone dialing in today. Thanks very much for the questions, for clarifying those points. Look, I just want to once again call out a big thanks to the Aurelia team, our contracting partners, and the community, and the people that support us. I think as a company, as you can sort of see, we really are focused on delivering quarter on quarter, half on half, and delivering what we're committed to as a company. We have a really good, strong leadership team, really focused on making those results work for our shareholders. Obviously, we really appreciate the support we're getting from the current shareholders and hopefully future shareholders as well. Once again, thank you very much for today.
I look forward to communicating our next set of results in quarter 3 for this financial year and look forward to the questions that come with that. Thank you, Ashia.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.