Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining me on the update of the first half of FY 2026. We'll just flip through the results, and then I'll give you an update on where we're up to with our existing operations and our projects. Usual disclaimers, please do your own research before you buy or sell our shares. About Bathurst. Look, anyone that's been following the company for a while knows this story, but if you're new to us or you want an update, we are an operating company. We've got four operations in New Zealand: Takitimu, Stockton, Rotowaro, and Maramarua, and we'll show you in a sec where they are located within New Zealand. We've also then got the Buller Project, which is a extension project of the Stockton mine.
Tenas and Crown Mountain are both in British Columbia, in Canada. They are all development projects which add to our story. Just where we're up to today, well, at the end of December, we had a share price of around AUD 0.69, market cap of AUD 166 million, and a very low enterprise value of AUD 32 million. We had NZD 155 million in the bank at the end of December. The team on your right is our board. Peter, myself, Russell, and Francois have been together since about 2015, when we restructured the company. Really, that was based around a strategy which I'd like to take you through now.
It was always about getting stable operations, stable, safe, profitable operations, which really centered around Takitimu and our Canterbury mine at the time, and our one West Coast operation with the project of Escarpment as well, and obviously the other add-on parts of the Buller Projects, which we've had held since 2010. With the addition of Stockton, Maramarua, and Rotowaro in 2017, we really then escalated into the export business and also, probably just as importantly, increased that base of domestic production. That's really been a matter of ensuring those are profitable, ensuring that we're operating, you know, good, safe, both in terms of our people, but also the environments we work in, and then also looking for growth opportunities.
This manifests itself in some extension projects that we've got within New Zealand from existing operations, but also two projects in Canada. Really, the goal here is to have good capital return. The way we were structured to get into some of those operations has been less than ideal in terms of our interactions with joint ventures, but the path forward has us generating a lot more free cash, 100% owned by Bathurst, and then that leaves it then up to us, as directors, to return that cash back to shareholders as we need to. You know, our products, we export steel-making coal into the international market. We've got customers across Asia. We sell coal domestically into steel production. We sell coal to domestic electricity generation.
In New Zealand, that's not base load for coal, it's actually the last thing turned on and the first thing turned off. It actually keeps the lights on when the wind's not blowing or the hydro schemes have got issues or if gas is not available. It's actually the sort of the peaker, if you like, which is a little bit different to some jurisdictions. Also, one of our important parts of our business, which has changed considerably over time, is process heat, which is really providing energy for value-added New Zealand prime production, and that's gone from being a large part of our business, 100%, down to about 5% of our overall revenues now.
In New Zealand, we've got Maramarua right to the north, just south of Auckland. We've got Rotowaro in the historic Huntly Coalfields. Our head office in Wellington. On the west coast of the South Island, we've got Stockton, with the Buller Project right beside it, and we'll talk more about that. We've got our BT office and Buller office in Christchurch, distribution yard in Timaru, and our most southern mine, Takitimu, providing process heat coal to the lower South Island. Each of these projects have got their own sort of reserve bases, own production profiles, and very much based around the markets that they're in. I mean, one of the key strategies here has been making sure that we are reacting to changes with, particularly within the domestic market. We're still seeing strong demand for our coking coal.
You know, some of our customers have been taking this coal for 50 years this year. Some of the Indian market has been well and truly over 20 years. That demand is not decreasing because of the low ash, high vitrinite, you know, leading to a lower overall fuel rate for those coke makers and steel makers. That has been the mainstay of our New Zealand export business. We are seeing a drop-off in demand for domestic coal, particularly for process heat, as, you know, a number of strategies from New Zealand government has kicked in, and business as well. Obviously, we've ameliorated our development plans to actually meet that same demand profile, so we're not gonna end up with a stranded asset.
Let's look at some of the financials for the half year. Revenue was pretty close, actually, only about NZD 4 million down. We were pretty close, as we'll see, with the export business, but it was all around volume, not so much price. The price was quite a bit lower than what we experienced through FY 2025, but we had an increased volume in the first half because, again, anyone that's been following the company, we had an issue with, on the main rail line going from Stockton through to Lyttelton, with the Tawhai Tunnel that was out for a number of months. We had to truck around that. We were down about 150,000 tons for the quarter, for the half, sorry. 2025 versus half one versus 2026 half one.
EBITDA is down, mainly around increasing costs. I mean, we're doing development cutbacks at Maramarua and Rotowaro, and we've had also an increase in strip ratio at Stockton. Cash in the bank's actually gone up. We did a capital raise in the first part of this financial year, and so, yeah, last financial year, and that cash is still flowing through as on a 100% basis into our accounts. Profit is down. You know, again, we're down on export revenues, down on export EBITDA, sorry. We are spending a lot of money on these various projects that we'll cover in a second. Just looking at the individual components, as I said, you know, the actual production sales were up.
Production and sales were up for the half versus the 2025 half, due to the tunnel being in 2025. The pricing was quite a lot lower. Revenue was slightly higher. We have incurred higher costs. EBITDA is down a little bit versus where we were in first half of 2025. We are expecting, though, to come home strongly with the forward curve at the moment, going out to about NZD 240 by the end of the financial year, versus our budget or forecast of around NZD 200. Rotowaro, again, we're still in quite a large cutback phase. You know, we're just a bit under 5 million BCM for the half year, against 4 million BCM for the same period in 2025.
We have had elevated costs, mainly around plant hire and labour, to try and make up some of that shortfall we were experiencing. We've had some quite large equipment outages, which has then led to an increase in hire plant. Again, we are getting towards the end of that quite large hill of overburden, and then we'll get in a position where we'll be back to more steady state overburden removal and coal sales. That coal is all fully sold into our two major markets, which is steelmaking and electricity generation in the North Island. Maramarua, we are seeing quite a significant change in our market here. We're pretty much just aligning with those two larger customers, as I was sort of saying before.
The process heat market is disappearing quite quickly in the North Island. Again, it was not unknown, and we've reacted to that. The next part of that review process is that we'll be moving from a six-day week back to a five-day week, single shift. That'll be occurring in the next couple of months. Rotowaro is actually going through a similar phase, where we're going from seven-day operations back to five-day operations. We'll have the gear available and maintenance crews available on the weekends to try and increase the overall liability and availability of that equipment and try and reduce some of the plant hiring costs. Takitimu, we've had quite a significant shift here from last year. The original plan was that we would maximize production and rehabilitation through this financial year, 2026.
In reacting to the market, we've seen some more coal come out, but we've actually have got more coal in the pit than what we originally anticipated. We are gonna continue on a full basis for FY 2026 and into FY 2027, but we're also accelerating some of the rehabilitation work. The idea is, we will generate slightly less cash this year than what we're anticipating, but we will then generate cash in the next financial year at about the same level, while we complete the rehabilitation. It's probably a better situation in some ways, in rather than trying to do a complete stop at the end of June this year, and then going into a full rehab mode. Even though we are down a little bit on profit, we are still a significant part of the New Zealand's economy.
You know, about NZD 350 million pumped in the economy for FY 2025. You know, we've got about 700 employees. We're paying them about just under NZD 90 million a year. Taxes, royalties, and government fees are down a little bit. Obviously, a lot of that's profit-driven. We are seeing, as we've shown, you know, our profits are down from where they were at in subsequent years. This is a number that some of our opponents quite like to concentrate on, of course, they like to ignore the fact that we are actually then pumping about NZD 260 million into New Zealand-based suppliers, whether that's diesel, explosives, parts, all the myriad of things that you've got to keep supplying to be able to keep operating.
Health and safety is very much at the forefront, you know, in everything that we do, whether it's existing operations or moving into our projects. Whereas, and as we are assessing our projects, we've had a number of low-level incidents over the last six months, a lot more than we're very happy with. It's led to a number of minor injuries and, you know, some sort of high-potential incidents during that as well, which have really required attention. We've strengthened our field leadership program. We see that as being when we have really concentrated on that program in the past, we've seen a significant drop-off in the number of injuries and incidents, and we're working on it again.
One other thing that came out through significant either incidents or reviews, audits, is that our training, record-keeping, and our compliance to our training plans wasn't always the best. We've done a full rollout of a comprehensive training system, and that's now been completed across all the operations and all of our offices. The next sort of really important part of that whole program is then looking at our critical risk program. This is looking at making sure that we've got adequate controls that are high enough in the hierarchy of controls to mitigate for catastrophic type risks that have got high consequence and may have low probability, but if they occur, you could end up with multiple fatalities.
There's a large program that's just been kicked off at Stockton and at Rotowaro, and we are moving forward with that across the whole of the company over the next 12 months. Looking ahead in terms of our guidance, we're sticking to what we said at the start of the year. We're gonna generate in a range of NZD 35 million-NZD 45 million EBITDA by the end of June. We're down a little bit in export, as we've already explained. You know, the pricing is quite a bit lower than what we had in the last couple of years.
North Island's gonna be slightly higher, a combination of some, as we drop off in the overburden, plus some of the corporate costs, and we are seeing a reduction in our South Island, as I've already explained, with the reduction of the sales tons coming out of there, but we will see that go forward for another year. Pretty much no change with the expenditure in Tenas or Crown Mountain. Just sort of put this up, anyone that's familiar with us and these presentations has seen this graph before, but I think it's important to note, you know, we have always been cash positive through the, basically the life of our enlarged company since we took over the Exxon LNG assets back in FY 2018.
Highly dependent on the international coal price, that's the red wriggly line that you see running through the middle of the graph. You know, as we're seeing at the moment, we are seeing, you know, that graph rising, but I think the important thing is that sort of mix between the domestic and the export business. The export basically underpins particularly the growth profile, but also the corporate costs and overheads. Just looking ahead, we've seen a bit of an uplift in the coking coal pricing, the benchmark price. There was obviously some after-effects of Cyclone Kirrily had some effect on some of the Queensland production, which led to a high of around about $252 per tonne recently.
It's dropped back to around $240 at the present time, and the forward curve sort of has us going back to about $220 by the end of the financial year. Sorry, I might have said $240 before. You know, we've the overall forward curve, if you look at the longer one, the TXS for, TSS, for instance, has us going out to about somewhere around $230. You know, I think there's still a lot of confidence in the market that we are going to see demand coming back, particularly out of China, with some of the innovations that are being put forward there. But, you know, we're not seeing a hell of a lot of future growth in supply. Coming back to strategy.
You know, existing operations, we are, you know, we've got positive and consistent EBITDA within the realms of what we control. Obviously, we don't control the export coking coal price, but we do control the costs that underlie it. You know, we are generating cash. We're experienced operators, both in terms of project development and operation, but also our operators and our people that support us. These operations are stable. You know, we've had a very little changeover in personnel at any level, whether that's board level, my senior leadership team, or down into the mine site teams. You know, we've got a solid base to work from.
The idea is we've got some extension projects within New Zealand, so that's really to continue that positive EBITDA and to also over time, as we'll show you in a second, extend the Bathurst cash generation. Maramarua has got the M2 project, which we are in the final stages of getting consents for, and we've got the Buller Plateau coal project, which is the combination of Buller and the existing Stockton operations. That's really taking that Stockton infrastructure hub and then supplementing coal into that supply chain as we deplete the resource out of Stockton.
To follow that up further, we've got growth projects in British Columbia with the Tenas project, 100% owned greenfields project, and Crown Mountain, which we own 22% of through a joint venture with Jameson. The idea there is that we then increase the EBITDA generation, increase the cash generation in a stable jurisdiction of British Columbia, Canada. Looking at the Buller project, very much centered around Stockton. Stockton holds the infrastructure hub. Obviously, we've had the Buller project, which is to the south of the Escarpment Extension Park. Since 2010, we've done a lot of work on that project over the years. We've had a pre-feasibility study out since 2017. We've updated that at various times, and then we updated the whole project PFS in October last year.
we, you know, we know a lot about that area. We actually have started mining there. We've got the our Cascade mine, which just sits off the plateau, and we've also got the Escarpment mine, which was commenced in 2014, and unfortunately, put in care and maintenance in 2016. The key thing there was it needed $200 million-$250 million worth of expenditure in capital to replicate all of the capital that's sitting within Stockton infrastructure areas. That was part of the purchase, sort of philosophy that we went into, when the Solid Energy assets were available. We've got that infrastructure now.
The key now is to join the two plateaus together with a haul road, which then also allows access into Mountford South, which is another development area, which is jointly held between BT Mining and Bathurst 100%. 65% owned by Bathurst and BT, and 100% owned by Bathurst with the other mining permit applications. We're gonna use Fast-track to try and bring all this together. The reason we're using Fast-track is not to try and usurp any environmental management or anything else, it's just that that gives us the opportunity of getting all of the consents, all of the authorizations, all of the permits that we require to go mining through one single process.
Whereas traditionally, we would have had to go and get land use consents, wildlife permits, access arrangements with various landholders, Crown landholders, and heritage orders. Each of those have, you know, have a slightly different test, they have a slightly different timeframe, and most of those timeframes aren't locked in. There is an open-ended process. The thing about Fast-track, though, is it's very much front-end loaded. You get a very short period of time. If there's issues come up during the assessment periods, you need to be able to answer them straight away. We are taking a bit longer than what we anticipated, but because we're extensively consulting with the people that matter.
You know, regional council, district council, our landholders, both between LINZ and DOC, and just as importantly, our communities. We're actively communicating with them as we speak today. We've got a range of community meetings going on in the small towns that support our operations, that'll be concluding tonight. You know, it's all about listening to those concerns, modifying the project if we have to try and meet them, or explaining to them why we can't meet them, and that's where we're intending then to have that completed by the end of March. We'll have an application ready to go, and we will then be in a position to go into an assessment period starting in April. I'll just go back one.
I mean, the profile of production, the orange on this graph, is the remaining coal within Stockton. We then look to supplement that with coal from Buller. Then supplement that further with coal from Mountford South, which is the area sitting between the two sort of larger mining areas. You know, the beauty of this project is it basically utilizes capacity in the Stockton washery system and coal handling, which gives us access to the coal loadout and rail, and then access to existing logistics path through the Port of Lyttelton, through to the markets. The markets already exist as well. This is the same quality coal being fed into the same markets to the same customers.
You know, we're looking at around about NZD 104 million to bring it into stream at the present time. Right, Tenas. Tenas project is in middle BC. It's very close to the port of Ridley, which is at Prince Rupert, which is really the top of the coastal strip that actually belongs to Canada. The rest that comes down from the U.S. is belonged by the U.S. The other project is down in the sort of southeastern British Columbia in the Elk Valley. That's the Crown Mountain project. Just looking at Tenas, we had an update to the DFS last year, and it's showing the continued profitability of this project.
We obviously had a significant update in costs, but also we had a significant update on the underlying coal price, or the expectations around coal price. You know, we're looking at a start-up capital around $140 million US, an operating cost of around $80 million, $80 U.S. per ton on a boat. Based on the long-term coal price decks, we're looking at around about an average price received of $175 per ton, and leads to a post-tax NPV of about $270 million US. A good greenfields project. You know, there is no other coal mines in the area. That can be a little bit scary for the local communities. You know, they're a little bit uncertainty, but there's...
Mining is certainly not unheard of in the area, and also a lot of people that live in the local area actually work in mines, but have to fly and fly out, so the attraction for them is having a mine on their doorstep. In terms of taking this project forward, we're going through the Environmental Assessment Office process at the present time. We've had significant information requests, which have been answered over the last, well, couple of years actually. That's sort of culminating in this, in this quarter. The effects assessment, we're looking to get into the final stages of that over the next two quarters, and then we'll then commence the mining permit documentation, and then the approval phase. That can be a little bit of a piece of string in terms of timing.
Some get through in six months, some take two years. We're being conservative. We're saying 12 months, compiling this thing, 12 months getting through it. I think, again, you know, it's putting a level of conservatism on a book. There is some pre-work that we. Once we get further through the effects assessment phase, we'll then be prepared to put some more money into some of the pre-work, which will then lead to the detailed design around the coal handling plant, things like the maintenance workshops, and also the access road and rail loadout, so that we've got some more concrete plans as we lead into, you know, the. Once we get the final permit, we lead into the civils and mining, we're aiming for first coal in around October 2028.
We're looking to produce around three-quarters of a million tons out of here. There's plenty of rail capacity, there's plenty of port capacity, and generally in the area, we've got good support. The key to these projects, as it is in probably most other jurisdictions now, is the traditional owners, the First Nations. We've been working very closely with them since we took the project over a couple of years ago. On a number of levels. Obviously, at the land ownership level, we are working very closely with a couple of the individual houses there, but also at that larger and more regional area, looking to try and partner with First Nations to take this project forward.
Most certainly listening to what their main concerns are, which, you know, isn't a lot different to what the main concerns we've got in New Zealand, you know, with water. Rehabilitation after the mine's actually completed or during the mine completion, that's something that hasn't been well done in British Columbia from our observation, and that's something that's gets brought up quite constantly with our discussions with local community, but also with First Nation groups. Very important that we get these various partnering things in place prior to us actually moving, trying to move forward with the project. Otherwise, we do risk having the sort of the, that situation turning against us. Just coming back to a snapshot of the business.
You know, we've got NZD 150 million odd sitting in the bank. We've got no debt, apart from some minor lease finance for some yellow goods. We're gonna generate somewhere between NZD 35 million-NZD 45 million EBITDA again for this financial year, and we've got a net asset backing at the end of December, after going through the audit process, of around NZD 1.49 per share. If we translate that into Australian dollars, yeah, we're looking around AUD 1.28. We've got a share price today of about AUD 0.79, and we've got a cash backing on that of AUD 0.56 as well. I know CEOs always say they're undervalued, but I think it's pretty clear we're undervalued.
I mean, one of the things that has affected our share price has been ongoing litigation. We had litigation since 2016 with L&M Coal. We fought that through every court in the land, through to the Supreme Court, and won. That is now concluded, as far as we know anyway, at the present time. Now we've got an action being taken by our joint venture partners, the Talley's Group. That's directed at directors. You know, that's a personal attack on directors. It's not an attack on the business. In fact, you know, one of their things is they're looking to try and take over and operate as Bathurst. This is what we're trying to resist, but it really doesn't affect the underlying business.
I said right from the start, you know, the strategy has always been good, consistent operations that generate cash, aren't hurting people, and aren't damaging the environment. That then gives us the right to be able to grow out of those businesses, and then take on further growth into other jurisdictions, you know, utilizing our experience and our teams and, you know, the support from our shareholders to take those projects forward. You know, we've got profitable operations. We hold good cash. We've got Fast-track process to be able to use for the Buller project. The PFS, which was came out in October, shows that this is a good, profitable project. DFS is being worked on as we speak. You know, we have got the Fast-track Act to work under.
Metallurgical coal is on the New Zealand Critical Minerals List, as it is on the U.S. and the European list. You know, we are taking forward under a DFS and with confirmation of reserves of our Tenas project. Thanks very much, everyone. I'd be more than happy to answer those. Thanks very much, and thanks for your attention.