I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Dirk Treasure, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Excellent. Thank you, Melanie, for the introduction. Good morning, shareholders, and welcome to our December quarter 4C investor update. Today, I'm joined by Brett Coventry, our Chief Financial Officer, and for a change, we're both actually sitting in our office in Adelaide, albeit the next couple of months look fairly action-packed with travel. Together, Brett and I will be running through an operational and financial report for the quarter, and after the presentation, we'll be available for Q&A. Please ensure that you're dialed in rather than connected via the web link if you would like to ask a question. Slide three, please, operator. Chrysos has closed out another strong quarter of growth, with revenue up 57% year-on-year, or 13% quarter-on-quarter. If we consider PhotonAssay revenue only, the year-on-year growth increases to 63%.
We're experiencing strong growth in minimum monthly assay payments associated with our deployments and are sustaining a relatively consistent portion of additional assay charges, which accounted for 12% of Q2 revenue. We've closed out our 20th consecutive quarter of achieving record sample volumes with a modest 1% quarter-on-quarter growth, and that's despite seasonality related to the Christmas period. From a year-on-year perspective, volumes are up 29%. We're well-funded to sustain future growth, with AUD 85 million in cash following our November equity raise and a further AUD 95 million available debt from CBA, which was announced just before Christmas. Deployed units increased to 25 units, made up of an additional two during the quarter and one post-quarter, somewhat shy of our targets. We have two units currently being installed, oner into Canada and another into England.
During the quarter, we have experienced some challenges related to our customer readiness to receive and begin installation of PhotonAssay units. While we've continued to manufacture units on schedule, this lack of site readiness introduces the potential that we will miss our forecast of deploying at least 18 PhotonAssay units in FY 2024, with some of these deployments only to be completed in Q1, FY 2025. As we shift to deploying more units directly to mine sites rather than laboratories, we are experiencing new complexities related to deployment. However, we consider that the related modest delays to the commencement of revenues are well outweighed by the benefits of working directly with miners, and we're committed to this mine site-focused global expansion strategy.
We've continued to build out our deployment capacity and are partnering with our customers earlier regarding their deployment requirements in an effort to avoid similar delays in the future. Slide four, please, operator, and over to you, Brett.
Thanks, Dirk. This slide is a strong visualization of our revenue growth. Quarter on quarter, we can see the improvement in minimum monthly assay payments, or MMAP, which is the minimum take or pay amount due monthly from our deployed units and is secured and forecastable. This quarter representing 88% of our revenues. We can also see the additional assay charges, or AAC, the amount we charge each month for assays over the minimum monthly assay payment. This quarter was 12% of revenue. As we move to the new, to the new quarter, our exit rate of baseline revenue from MMAP is now AUD 48 million, a continued strengthening of our underlying revenue. Next slide, please.
With a further two units deployed last quarter and one subsequent to the quarter, the global fleet of PhotonAssay, Photon, PhotonAssay units continues to be expanded, and it's great to see ongoing increases in quarterly samples with a slight increase on the previous period. Utilization remains in line with expectations and expected fluctuations in the utilization rate as we deploy more units, particularly with mine site deployments, where we generally do expect a lower utilization rate. These rates are reflective of the ramp-up from installation and the impact of industry cycles, of course, remembering we have the baseline MMAP as a revenue floor. Our strategy of deployment in global mining hubs has continued with these recent units deployed to existing regions. This allows us to leverage operational efficiencies and existing in-country infrastructure.
Along with the commercially available assay services for gold, silver, copper, and moisture analysis, solution analysis has been introduced during the quarter, with our technical services team spending time focusing education in a number of mine sites for this service. Alongside of this, elements that frequently coexist with gold are a focus of expanding analysis. However, our deployment development team is starting to turn their mind to other elements, as you can see in this chart. Next slide, please. Across the globe, we can see the continued concentration of deployments reflective of our global hubbing strategy and the high-quality customers that underpin this. Equally, the orange dots here show the demonstration of the widespread inquiries of PhotonAssay across the globe, which continues, especially on the back of the recent announcements around Barrick. Next slide, please.
During the quarter, we had two events which saw us improve our funding position to continue the growth of PhotonAssay across the globe. The first being a well-supported AUD 75 million institutional placement, and the second being the Commonwealth Bank's continued support of our business, providing a further AUD 65 million of debt, taking our total debt facilities to AUD 95 million, which, with the repayment of the outstanding balance at the time of AUD 8 million, leaves us with undrawn facilities available to fund future growth. We are well-funded to continue growing. Thank you. Back to you, Dirk. Next slide.
During Q2, we established our partnership with Barrick Gold, one of the world's biggest gold miners, who have indicated an intention to include PhotonAssay in all of their major gold mines around the world. This is a substantial milestone for the company, and it presents the opportunity to work with Barrick on application and use of PhotonAssay in their mines around the world. It's also a huge endorsement, and we expect that this relationship will lead us to further PhotonAssay adoption. Similarly to Chrysos, this partnership is an endorsement of MSA Labs, which are currently committed to deploy 21 PhotonAssay units, a large number of which will now likely be deployed to those Barrick mine sites. MSA's success on this front builds their profile in the industry and is likely to lead to additional samples processed through their hub labs and further opportunities for site deployments. Slide nine, please, operator.
Summarizing the quarter, we remain well positioned for continued strong growth. We continue to see substantial revenue increases quarter-over-quarter. Our strategy of clustering units is helping to keep our costs under control, and the 49 contracts that we currently have support our continued rollout of PhotonAssay units. As I flagged earlier, we have seen some delays to deployment, which mean we're a little behind where we had expected to be on this front. Manufacturing continues on schedule, but challenges around customer site readiness are impacting our ability to deploy units. It's important to note, though, that these delays don't reduce the overall contract value, but rather delay commencement of revenue. As a result, we are tracking toward the lower end of the FY 2024 revenue range.
Meanwhile, we are able to delay related costs to the installation, which provide controls on our profitability and capital outlay, and we're guiding to being comfortably within our EBITDA range. Looking forward, we remain confident in our, in our ability to continue to increase our market share in the gold analysis space, particularly in light of our recent endorsement by Barrick. And we're now well supported financially, with around AUD 180 million available between debt and cash on hand to continue deployment of PhotonAssay units. I'll now move to questions.
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 speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Josh Kannourakis with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Dirk and Brett. Can you hear me okay?
Got you loud and clear, Josh.
Perfect. Thank you. First question, just around some of the installation and customer readiness issues. Can we just maybe go into a little bit more detail about maybe some anecdotes of events that have sort of contributed to that? And I guess more importantly, what can you do to sort of mitigate these in the future to, you know, I guess give us confidence that you can re-ramp up to 18, 21+ units a year again?
Yeah, look, great, great question, Josh, and I think the mitigation there is really partnering earlier with these miners as we go forward. The difference between deploying to an established laboratory, particularly in a Western country, and going into, you know, directly into a mine site, there's just additional complexities around making sure that there's a building available, suitable concrete, power, that type of thing. So linking that to a couple of anecdotes, where we've gone to deploy our latest unit into Africa at the moment, in the DRC, we did run into, for example, the rainy season. So trying to build a shed in an African rainy season generally leads to some delays. We also made a number of changes around where these units were going on the back of Barrick and really progressing this mine site deployment focus.
What we've seen there is just if we were to partner earlier, if we know ahead of time exactly where these units are going, then, you know, our ability to deploy on schedule is improved. So we really do see this as a temporary item for us and nothing that we expect to continue in a long-term capacity.
Got it. And I imagine with the MSA and Barrick sites, like, they were effectively either redirected, you know, at probably a relatively not last minute, but obviously the timeframe's probably shorter. So has that sort of contributed as well in terms of the,
Um-
Yeah.
Look, absolutely, and without calling out sort of specific miners, definitely where we are deploying to mine sites. And there's a maturity here that we are learning to operate in these countries along the way as well. And I think those learnings, both for us, for our mine site customers, and for MSA, will lead to improvements on that front. Getting the commercial deal done and signed off is the first step, and then it's really getting the units on site. So as you said, there's a short turnaround in a couple of the instances where we've been installing lately.
Yeah, makes sense. Great. Just second point, just around, I guess, the new pipeline and, you know, in terms of new potential, signings. Can you, can you give us a bit of context around how that's progressing? You know, obviously, the splits around some of the lab versus mine site conversations, partnering with labs to do that or going direct. Can you just give us a bit, bit of a flavor of how that's sitting in terms of the forward-looking pipeline?
Yeah, absolutely. The pipeline continues to build out, and cognizant that the Barrick deal was only announced in the last quarter as well, and we continue to get now a number of inbounds on the back of that. Because it really is an endorsement and a de-risking for other companies to take up the technology as well. The pipeline, as it stands at the moment, the 49 contracts obviously leaves us at the moment with 24 units still to deploy. We do want to maintain that 15-18-month pipeline, and just to give us that support with continuing to build out more units. With regard to labs versus miners, we're definitely going in this strategy of mine site deployments.
We're relatively agnostic as to whether that's through a laboratory company or directly to the miner, as long as we are engaging there directly with the mining company. Because it does give us access to the additional points that I've called out in, say, the Barrick notes around application development, site partnering, really growing sort of customer acceptance and delight of this technology. And we get that in a much more intense way if we're directly on site with the miner.
Okay, now that's helpful. And then just one quick question on the numbers. So obviously, you mentioned around being comfortable in the EBITDA guidance range, and I assume because of the, the deployments, you're not wearing those sort of operating costs that you usually would throughout that period. So I guess, are we sort of reading the EBITDA range as, you know, maybe not being at the middle, but sort of, you know, somewhere between the, the lower, the middle sort of end of that, given the sort of where the revenue is sitting?
Thanks, Josh. Yeah, you've interpreted that fairly well, and I think as we go forward, if we're not deploying the unit, we are actually able to make some savings on our costs that we had forecast. So that's allowing us to, you know, provide that guidance back to the market. And equally, we are starting to see some operational efficiencies flow through from those, you know, those hubbing strategies that we've talked about. So, there is a combination of those things happening there, and, you know, certainly you summarized it well.
Okay, got it. And final one for you, Brett, just on working capital, just to give us a feel for, obviously, there was a bit of a, you know, a slight negative working capital impact in this period. Just to give us some context on that and how you're sort of thinking about that for the full year, given the, you know, current outlook.
Yeah. Thanks, Josh. Yeah, we see, you know, December, and then traditionally, our December quarter has always been a funny one in terms of getting payments from our customers and working through that timing, but we do see the rest of the year, you know, to continue to be operational, cash flow positive, and this is just part of the seasonality of our cash flows during that window of time. And as, you know, we've seen it over the last couple of years as well. So no-
Yeah
- issues there. It's really about the timing of, you know, payments through that, you know, Christmas and holiday period.
Awesome. Thanks, Dirk. Thanks, Brett. Appreciate your time, guys.
Thanks, Josh.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Jules Cooper with Shore Capital Partners Limited. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the call. Dirk, if I could just follow up on one of Josh's questions there around contracting. I guess I just wanted to get a sense in the second quarter, was the contracting in line with your expectations? Is it a sort of a key focus for the business to expand the number of contracted units and the breadth of customers that you contracted to in the second half?
Yeah, look, I mean, was it on schedule? I mean, if anything, if you consider that, again, the Barrick deal was done in that quarter. For us, that is what we're targeting, and I think it's what we've led to ahead of that time as well. The best outcome for Chrysos is where we have a customer working toward global adoption of our technology. And when you've got someone at the scale of Barrick, being the second biggest gold miner in the world, partnered with a lot of the other big gold miners around the world as well, that endorsement does allow us then to really leverage that with customers.
If you consider that the industry itself is a group of fast followers rather than first movers, being able to point to something like a global adoption by Barrick just reduces the studies and trials that need to be undertaken by other customers as well. So certainly from our side, you know, the goal is to continue to convert mining projects around the world to PhotonAssay, and we'll continue to update the market as we go with that.
Excellent. Thanks for the question.
Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Joseph House with Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Dirk and Brett. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two. Firstly, when in the quarter were the two PhotonAssay units deployed? And, maybe not specific dates, but generally within the months. And, when would you expect those two installations that are currently in progress to be completed in this quarter?
Yeah, great, great question. So the way that we look at deployments is that typically they take in the order of about eight weeks. So when we guide to having units under installation at the moment, you can expect that then within the quarter, so in around eight weeks, certainly within sort of 12 weeks, that unit would then become operational. And then just looking at the last update that we did on the previous Q1, that we had the three units being installed at the time of that update, and obviously then those units were installed during the quarter. We haven't sort of specifically guided to particular dates of those installs. Some of the customers may have disclosed that, though, anyway, because obviously it's new locations that suddenly now have a PhotonAssay service.
I'd have to follow up on what disclosure they've done as well.
That's all right. No, that's really helpful. And my second question, how would you describe the deployment schedule over the remainder of the financial year? I mean, assuming everything goes to plan, and you know, given your guidance today, your guidance update, and given your existing deployment capabilities, should we maybe expect a stronger skew in the final quarter of the year?
Yeah, I think, I think that's a fair statement. So look, we're, we're introducing a degree of conservatism here. You know, at this point in time, if all of our customers were actually ready to go, we would actually still achieve at least that 18 number during the year. So we are introducing a degree of conservatism here that flows through to the forecast, et cetera. But certainly you would be expecting an increase in deployment into the tail end of the year, to be able to sort of get toward that number.
Great. Awesome. Thanks for that. That's all my questions.
Thanks, Joseph.
Thanks, Joseph.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Treasure for closing remarks.
Thank you, operator, and thank you, shareholders. Appreciate your continued support and look forward to providing our next update corresponding with our half-year results at the end of February.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.