Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Chrysos Corporation Limited Q2 FY 2025 Quarterly conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Dirk Treasure, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Excellent. Thank you, Rachel, for the introduction. Good morning, shareholders, and welcome to our December Quarter FY24 Investor Update. As usual, I'm joined by Brett Coventry, our Chief Financial Officer, and together, Brett and I will be running through an operational and financial report for the quarter. After the presentation, Brett and I will also be available for Q&A. Slide three, please, operator. Chrysos has had continued growth in revenue, up 53% year-on-year and 12% quarter-on-quarter. A substantial component of our revenue is increasingly coming from outside of Australia, with our EMEA revenue up 42% year-on-year and our Americas revenue up 305% year-on-year. Both of these regions offer substantial further growth potential for Chrysos. We've achieved another quarter of record sample volumes as the global rollout of our PhotonAssay technology continues, with more and more miners using our technology around the world.
This is our 24th consecutive quarter of record PhotonAssay sample volumes, illustrating continued strong demand for our technology. We remain in a strong financial position with AUD 26.6 million in the bank and our AUD 95 million green loan with the Commonwealth Bank currently undrawn. This nets us AUD 121.6 million to invest in future growth. We closed the quarter with 34 operating PhotonAssay units, including three that were deployed during the quarter. We continue to broaden our relationship with SGS, one of the world's largest laboratory companies, with SGS's PhotonAssay deployment in Orange completed during the quarter. Deployments also include our second unit for Barrick's NGM, Nevada Gold Mines site, and our first unit deployed into Alaska. Our focus remains on building out our pipeline of deployment opportunities, and we've secured two new lease agreements during the quarter, bringing our total number of contracted units to 56.
This includes another unit to be deployed to SGS to bolster their PhotonAssay capacity in Kalgoorlie, as well as the upcoming OceanaGold deployment, which will also be operated by SGS but as a direct contract with the mining company itself. Next slide, please, operator. And over to you, Brett.
Yeah. Thanks, Dirk. It's great to see the continued momentum during the quarter with the units deployed at Orange and the two U.S. sites with a further two contracts signed, particularly that OceanaGold rounding out the various engagement models we have to deploy PhotonAssay. We have contracted directly with the miner, and they have engaged SGS to operate for this for them. The year has started with a new deployment commencing in Namibia, and as we've spoken in previous quarters, we have units ready to deploy at the moment. Currently, that is 12, and we look forward to deploying these units with a long-term goal of reducing this to a handful of units available on an ongoing basis. Next slide, please. Revenue growth continued this quarter to AUD 15.3 million, a 53% growth year-on-year.
Considering the regions, we see Australia, as we've talked about in previous quarters, remaining relatively flat across the industry despite record gold prices, with EMEA and Americas demonstrating sound growth with continued adoption of PhotonAssay technology. With the additional contracts sold across APAC during the six months to 31 December, we expect revenue growth to increase reflective of those. Americas, including LATAM and EMEA, present the more significant growth opportunities in the near term. A good quarter of cash collections across the globe, reflective of the seasonality we see for December, remaining overall positive at AUD 1.5 million, and we've seen a good start to the current quarter's collections. The falling due of terms and extended terms saw a heavy quarter of property and equipment cash flows.
Of course, as we manage our supply commitments closer to our deployment schedules across the globe, the corresponding capital commitments reduction is of similar value. We do expect to make an additional drawdown of the Commonwealth Bank Green Loan this quarter, and cash collections remain a strong focus across the finance team. Next slide, please. The next few slides highlight the way that we operate in the industry and why we've been so successful in PhotonAssay's global adoption by major miners around the world. We work closely with miners and laboratory companies to tailor a solution that works for our customers. You can see on the slide that we operate under one of four different contract models.
From a return on investment point of view, each of these models is around the same value for Chrysos, though they offer different risk, return, and control models for the laboratories and the miners. On the left is our hub labs. This is where we lease a unit to a laboratory company, generally in a prolific gold mining region. This lab then services multiple miners in that region and is typically aiming for a high volume of samples to maximize their profitability, and this flows directly through to Chrysos. Chrysos's revenue from these operations is secured by the minimum monthly assay payments, but there is substantial upside potential related to movements in the gold exploration market. The other three models are various mine site models.
In all of these cases, this refers to a unit that is physically deployed at or near to a mine site, which is where an operating miner gets the most value from the technology. Our engagement around each of these models is a little different. In the second model, we lease the unit to a laboratory company for a specific mining operation. For context, this is the way that we operate for Barrick, where either MSA or SGS have contracted with Chrysos directly and then provide a broader service to the miner, inclusive of PhotonAssay. This allows us to leverage the laboratory company's presence in the market, easing Chrysos's market entry, and often this provides the simplest option for the miner.
In the third model, we engage with the miner directly, where the PhotonAssay lease sits with the miner, and the miner operates the unit and their complete laboratory. This method offers a lot of opportunity for Chrysos because it allows us to work directly with the miner regarding the value proposition of PhotonAssay to their broader operation. This is our method of operation at Ravenswood Gold. Lastly, in our fourth model, we lease the unit directly to the miner. The miner then contracts a laboratory company to operate the unit. This provides full transparency of cost through to the miner and means that our direct counterparty is the actual beneficiary of the technology, similarly to the third model. The first use of this model by Chrysos will be the recently announced OceanaGold deployment, which is a direct contract with OceanaGold but will be operated by SGS.
Our ability to operate under each of these different models allows us to be very transparent when it comes to key contract terms, both across laboratory companies and to the miners directly. This empowers the miner to choose the best option for their specific site. The models themselves largely exist at the behest of the miners and are a product of us working directly with mining companies around the world. We operate with a total addressable market that is dominated by direct-to-site opportunities, and we consider that this flexible way of working with the miners will support our ongoing growth. Next slide, please, operator.
I won't go through the slide in detail, but suffice to say that under the various operating models that I've run through in the previous slide, we see a massive opportunity in the PhotonAssay value proposition, which goes substantially beyond simply replacing an existing analytical technique. Our increasing proportion of mine site deployments, supported by our recent deployments to Barrick's North Mara and NGM sites, and our upcoming deployment to OceanaGold, continue to provide Chrysos with better direct access to the geologists, metallurgists, and mining engineers that run these sites, allowing us to continue to hone PhotonAssay's performance and maximize the value proposition for these customers. In our last release, I discussed our upcoming videos developed in collaboration with Ravenswood Gold.
These are now released, and I would encourage you to view them via our website to learn how PhotonAssay has been a game changer for the Ravenswood Gold mine. There's a link to these videos on the summary slide in this presentation. Next slide, please, operator. The value proposition and our tailored solution for miners is supporting our penetration into the industry. The chart on the left here illustrates our current penetration into the mining industry. Mindful that we've only had PhotonAssay operating for six years in an industry that is conservative and often slow to adopt new technology, we consider this to be a huge achievement, and it showcases the near-term future potential. Each slice represents one of the largest 15 gold mining companies by production.
The yellow slices indicate those companies that actively use our technology across one or multiple sites, either directly or via one of our laboratory partners. Each one of these companies still offers potential future growth as we're not yet running all of their samples across all of their sites. The blue slices represent those companies where we've completed one or more paid feasibility or implementation studies. For some of the larger companies, this often spans multiple deposits and ranges through exploration geology, production geology, and metallurgical analysis. These companies are each near-term conversion opportunities where we remain in active discussion regarding either technical or commercial aspects of PhotonAssay. All of these studies have successfully illustrated PhotonAssay's applicability to displace existing analytical techniques. Lastly, the gray slices represent future potential.
With a little further information around these, two of them are in active dialogue with Chrysos, and two we have paused and remain paused due to geopolitical constraints. On the right-hand side is a chart illustrating our ongoing sample volume growth. I mentioned earlier that this quarter represents our 24th consecutive quarter of record sample volumes, and this is in spite of a gold exploration market that has largely moved downward or sideways over the past few years. Next slide, please, operator. I'm pleased to announce that we remain on track for our FY 2025 guidance, which was a revenue range of AUD 60 million-AUD 70 million and an EBITDA range of AUD 9 million-AUD 19 million. Next slide, please, operator. Summarizing the quarter, we've had continued top-line growth with revenue up 53% year-over-year. We've had our 24th consecutive quarter of record sample volumes, which are up 53% year-over-year.
We've signed two additional contracts during the quarter, building out the depth and diversity of our pipeline, with both of these units slated for near-term deployment. We continue to expand our relationship with SGS, with both new contracts for the quarter related to that relationship. We are positioned with three of the world's biggest laboratory companies operating PhotonAssay on an international basis, being Intertek in Australia and Ghana, ALS in Australia and Canada, and SGS in Australia, Tanzania, and soon to be New Zealand. This complements our relationships with MSA and Britannia, who continue to broaden their PhotonAssay offerings around the world. The quarter also saw us complete our second deployment into the Nevada Gold Mines operation, jointly owned by Barrick and Newmont, the world's two biggest gold mining companies.
We've concluded the quarter with 34 PhotonAssay units deployed around the world, following the addition of three new units during the quarter, and finally, we remain well funded for future growth, with over AUD 120 million available for investment into PhotonAssay units, mindful that we are operating cash flow positive. I'll pause there, and we can 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.
Good day, Dirk and Brett Coventry. How are you guys?
Good, thanks, Josh.
That's the way. A few questions from me, if I may. The first, just on the deployment pipeline. So you've obviously sort of shifted a little bit from pairing up with some of the labs, and you've now got your own direct sales force, and have sort of scaled that up. Can you give us a bit of context just around how the pipeline, and I guess maybe a bit around the cohorts in terms of how their conversion efforts are improving as you're sort of bringing the sort of new salespeople on board, and how we should sort of think about the staging of those deployments over the next few years as you get back up to your deployment, your manufacturing sort of cadence?
Yeah, absolutely. So it was probably around 18 months ago now that we've changed that approach from working through the laboratory companies to really driving our own sales force and focusing on that direct relationship with the miners. That doesn't mean that we don't work with the laboratory companies. It just means that we really facilitate that direct relationship with the miners, allowing us to highlight the value proposition of the technology as opposed to just that like-for-like replacement of Fire Assay to PhotonAssay. What else can we do with the technology? How does that add to the bottom line? How does that improve productivity, etc.? So how does the pipeline look? Look, I think it's very strong with respect to the engagements that we're having around the world with more and more mining companies. I mean, we've talked about Nevada Gold Mines giving us an avenue into Newmont.
I think that that certainly applies and allows us to have engagements with Newmont where they're seeing all of the data that's coming out of that NGM operation. The other unit that we've talked about that we've just finished installing is our Alaska unit. And there are two main mines around Fairbanks, one being Pogo and the other being Fort Knox. So Fort Knox is a Kinross project. So you can imagine then that we're in their backyard. We're starting to engage more with Kinross. And they're on the, excuse me, they're on the blue section of that pie chart that I showed before. So continued strong engagement with those major gold miners around the world, supported by growing relationships with the laboratories as well. I mean, you can see quarter on quarter that we're having a growing relationship, particularly with SGS.
If anyone's looked at their marketing, particularly around LinkedIn, of what they're saying around PhotonAssay, Chrysos, the technology, I think there's excellent positive engagement there.
Right. And just more so on the sales team as well. It does sound like, as you've sort of brought more on board and obviously, as they take more time, they're sort of getting more traction. Can you give us a bit of a feel for, are you seeing that sort of incremental improvement as you've sort of added that headcount? And how should we think about what you're doing in terms of the sales effort, scaling up that or keeping it flat over the next sort of year or two?
Definitely an incremental improvement. And again, just talking about that model between labs through to miners. There are four major labs, plus obviously companies that we work with like MSA and Britannia, but a very small number of laboratories. When we start talking about the miners, there are many more miners and particularly many more mines. A lot of the mines operate somewhat independent of one another, even if they are run by the same company. We have added to our sales team, really looking at putting the sales team at or near to those mines. You have seen that we have grown the sales team into Africa, in North America. We recently announced that we have grown a sales team or started a sales team in South America. It is much more proximate to those miners. We are certainly seeing that engagement increase, positive conversations with major miners.
Are we going to keep growing that team? I think from where we are, we're fairly comfortable. I see a model where we've got a couple of salespeople in each key region supported by our more technical staff. And the technical staff are more geologists, metallurgists, this type of thing. We call them our technical services team. So I think we're well serviced in that space with maybe a little bit more growth to grow.
Got it. And it sounds like so within that, that gives, and that pipeline gives you confidence that you can sort of get back to that 20-plus sort of manufacturing sort of cadence over the next couple of years as you sort of scale up again and some of those conversations come to fruition.
Absolutely. So our plan remains that we've increased manufacturing capacity now to around 20 units a year. We want to get that deployment cadence up to that level through those relationships with both the miners and the laboratories.
Perfect. Just on that, that's a good segue for Brett, just on the cost side, Brett, if that's all right. Just I'm keen to understand a little bit around just how you think about the incremental OpEx. Dirk obviously mentioned on the sales side, that seems relatively set. It doesn't seem like there's as much OpEx maybe coming through the business, but how should we think about it as investors in terms of the OpEx profile over the second half, but also into sort of 2026 and beyond?
Thanks, Josh. That's a really good question, and Dirk's description of the sales team there and the technical service team really gives some insight to that because you've heard me say over the past probably 12 months, our cost base becomes increasingly incremental. We've built that sales team. Maybe there needs to be one or two more headcount, but we've gone from having one salesperson to a technical service and sales team that is close to 20 people. We've built that over the period of time, and similarly, the finance team, we've built a strong finance team. We don't need to double the headcount, so increasingly, we're seeing as we grow now that incremental spend and some of that growth that we've seen in previous years can continue to move to being incremental.
And it's smaller adjustments as opposed to having to build those teams, like I said, the sales team or the finance team or the P&C team. So they're the sorts of things that we continue to see that incremental improvement in our cost base too or incremental growth in the cost base, obviously incremental improvement in EBITDA as we go forward as well.
Okay. That's helpful. And the final one, just on the guidance, you've got guidance set at currency AUD/USD of $0.65. Can you just remind us a little bit of either some of the sensitivities there or we can work it out of how much of the sort of revenue cost base are in US dollars?
Cost base still remains predominantly Australian in our units, predominantly Australian. Incrementally, our people are starting to spread more across the globe, which is directly tied to the USD, given most of our African revenues are generated tied to the USD, even if they're built in local currency. Obviously, the U.S. itself, USD, and there's a reasonable correlation between Canadian and the USD as well. So there is a significant bond there in terms of our revenue, and our cost, obviously, is incrementally moving towards some more U.S., but predominantly still Australian-based.
Okay. Great. I'll take a pause and give someone else a go. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Josh.
The next question comes from George Cooper with Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Dirk, good update. Just one question from me. You've clearly improved the rate of contracting, particularly in this fiscal year to date, relative to last year, and when we sort of think about the macro cycle on the exploration side and utilization for labs and etc. and the whole industry around assaying, it still feels like it's tough out there, but just wondering, when you talk to your customers, what's the sort of consensus view on exploration volumes and that capacity sort of utilization in 2025, and whether you think some of your customers might be starting to move ahead of a change there, and if we do see a change, how does that maybe impact across your business in terms of business development, etc.?
Just really, we look to be at a really interesting point, and I'm wondering how we should think about that and the implications for your business if it does turn?
Yeah, absolutely. So with respect to where is the industry going to go, I'm certainly not an authority on that side. Apart from being able to say within where we see volume coming through to, say, our laboratory partners, which has shown through an 18% quarter-on-quarter growth of volume, we are seeing good volume growth coming through in, say, the last quarter. Will that continue? Not entirely sure. We also don't entirely know whether that is new miners, new exploration companies, or if that's an expansion of use within existing miners. So we've talked that there's really two origins of these samples, whether this is on-site or to a lab. It's either existing miners running more samples, or it's more miners and explorers running samples. And there's a bit of opacity in what we see from the labs.
So where we engage directly with the mining companies, with the on-site deployments, our technical services team that I mentioned before is working directly with those companies, working on the value proposition, how do we use PhotonAssay to improve operations. We can see growth in the volume coming through from those miners. So that would indicate that some of this is coming from existing miners. When you look at sort of ABS data, Australian Bureau of Statistics, it's a bit delayed. I mean, it's not showing much of an uptick yet in Australia, but I certainly think that people are getting a little bit more, let's say, excited about where we are in the industry, that it's really bottomed out. We're bouncing along the bottom, and everyone's starting to position for when that starts to turn up. So will that be 2025? Unsure.
Any increase from where we are is good for us. And I think that there's a general consensus from what I've seen that it's either going to go sideways or up. It's not going to go down. So I think that, again, that's positive for us. I mean, what does that mean on the sales front is more of the same for us. It's banging down the doors of all of the different miners around the world, working with them on their projects. Sort of motto on the wall in the sales team is, "Convert mining projects to PhotonAssay." And that remains very, very much our target and our focus.
Thank you. Very insightful.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Julian McCarthy with E&P. Please go ahead.
Just firstly, just a question on the CapEx for the period. Can you just sort of talk through that? Because it looks like $9 million per machine that was built in the period. How does that compare with the sort of $4 million costs that you've talked about in the past?
Thanks, Julian. We've set out in previous slide decks when we make payments for these units across the cycle of deploying them. During the quarter, there was circa AUD 3.5 million spent on infrastructure and R&D projects. So that firstly comes out of that number. And then the timing of our payment terms, whether that's the warranty payment, which is due 12 months after the unit is deployed. We've had a significant number of them go out in the quarter. And just the general terms that we have from our suppliers, those payments all fell due in this quarter. And obviously, a bigger outflow, we do expect that to normalize back to the previous rate in the next quarter.
Right. And in terms of cash collections, has there been some sort of a slower collection in that final month, and that catches up this month?
We always tend to have a slower December quarter in terms of collections. Just the reflective natures of our customers and the Christmas period and payment cycle, we would expect to see a return in the current quarter, and we've already seen a strong start to the quarter in terms of collections.
Cool. And the question, Dirk, so with the move to sort of more direct marketing to the miners, and that pretty much shows up what the actual cost of using the units are, how do the labs sort of take that? Because they kind of lose their ability to sort of mark up to what they probably were at the moment.
Yeah. Look, it's a good question, and it's something that we've wrestled with through the process as to how best to showcase the technology, and when we were previously running through laboratories, we did at times have laboratories that were aiming to charge a premium on the service, where we were pricing to allow the lab to charge the same as what they would charge for a Fire Assay, as in their profitability would be similar, but sometimes they would come through and charge a premium, and that's part of what we're trying to avoid here. Rather than the money really just going into the laboratories' pockets, is working with the miners that they are getting maximum value on the way through. So that means that their actual cost, because we reduce sample preparation requirements, their direct cost should actually be lower by transitioning to PhotonAssay.
And then you get all of these additional benefits for free. So the idea of being able to use faster data to make better decisions to effectively add to the bottom line. And again, encourage everyone to have a look at the Ravenswood video because they talk directly about some of this, really enabling the miners to go in that direction. How then are the laboratories responding? I mean, the labs are really at the behest of the miners as well. If the miner turns around and says to the laboratory that they want PhotonAssay, there's not really an avenue for them to say no, particularly given that we work with multiple different laboratories, each of which could provide that service. So it makes a really even playing field. It also means that we're not playing favorites with one lab over another because everyone has quite transparent pricing.
It really then means that it's up to the miner as to, okay, do they want to take on the risk for the whole lease term? Do they want that to sit with the laboratory company? What does the contract look like between the lab and the miner as opposed to us in the lab or us in the miner? So talking before about the three different business models that we run for direct to site, that's really the product of what the miners have asked us to do. And I think that shift in focus toward us really listening to the miners and building these models for the miners rather than the labs is what's going to keep us sort of stepping through to the next stage of our growth.
Mindful as well that if you look at the Total Addressable Market, we put about 200 of that TAM being the laboratory companies and 400 and a bit of that TAM being the miners. So we are dominated by those mining companies as well.
Yeah. Cool. And just finally, with the order or the pipeline order book, best I can tell that is with Britannia, is there any update on how those deployments are expected to come out?
No. So we've staged the deployments with Britannia, and we've kind of kept this the whole way through. We've always wanted Britannia to be operating a couple of units, getting experience, showing that they can build out their model before us deploying a really substantial amount of capital. So they are committed to a large number of units. So there's 12 units committed there to Britannia. So we're still in that cadence of having rolled out the first couple, then moving toward rolling out the next. But there's never been an intention of rolling them all out at once.
Right. Cool. Okay. Thanks, guys.
Welcome.
Your next question comes from Liam Higgerty from Morgans Financial. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I gather in the past, there have been some instances with appreciable installation hiccups for new machines. Is it safe to assume now that with two of these brand new units installed being in developed markets, that teething issues for these might be less? And broadly speaking, I presume that over time, you're getting better at the installation process anyway. Are there any stats or details you can give us in that sort of initial take-up of volume for new machines?
Great question. Probably something we haven't kind of packaged up and shared publicly, but certainly, as we grow our expertise in these regions and the teams, we have improved the rate of deployment, and that's from the point that the unit hits the ground into the shed. The site's already ready. The time to get from landing in that shed through to operation has definitely contracted. I think as well, as we've built out various teams around the world, things like radiation licensing have become a lot simpler. So to provide a little bit of context here, I think our first Canadian installation, mainly because of licensing, took us about 270 days. So when we talk about kind of an eight-week installation, that's the installation time, but the licensing took us a lot longer.
We've now got that entire combined timing, so the physical installation and the licensing, down into that eight-week period. So that's been really positive for us. As we go into those markets where we've already deployed units, we have all of the operating knowledge and timing expectations to really run that quite smoothly. We are, though, always going into new regions as well. If you consider that we're going into Namibia at the moment, we'll soon be going into New Zealand. These are new locations for us. But I would say that we've got better about pre-planning a lot of those things as well. So looking at the country setup, the entity establishment, the licensing side of things. So certainly not flagging any expectation that Namibia will be delayed. If anything, what we've done in the lead-up to Namibia will allow us to then be on time.
So on a global basis, yeah, certainly, as we roll out more and more units, we have more understanding, and we're getting better at managing that process.
Okay. And just a bit of a more boring one. As the units out there are getting older, are you still happy with the rough metrics that have been in the previous annuals in terms of useful life for these assets and the various components you have? Are you still happy with that breakdown?
Yeah, absolutely. And there really hasn't been any indication at the moment that we would change that. We were quite conservative with some of those numbers initially. We did allow for, after a 10-year period, that we may rebuild the linear accelerator. But I think that the first, so our first unit was deployed middle of 2018. At the moment, there's no indication that we would need to be replacing that Linac in 2028 as well. So we're probably thinking that we have erred more on the side of conservatism than the opposite.
Okay. And just finally, we've talked to, or you talked previously in the Q&A about the sales cycle. I understand the value proposition for the miners direct with the one all-body being sort of makes more sense for a sales pitch from Chrysos. But as time's gone on and the big labs have sort of, I guess, given the field approval for PhotonAssay inadvertently just by using it, can you talk about how the sales process has changed in terms of the miners direct? And what's the biggest hurdle with that slice of miners in the blue in the above pie chart and the pack? Is it now price and contract more than it is education? And how has that main hurdle in negotiation shifted over time?
I touched very briefly on some of this earlier, just in the idea that the mines, even though they're quite often owned by the same company, are quite separate to each other. We had Gold Fields talking at our site visit day last April, I want to say, and they were talking about their adoption and the fact that for each individual site, they were undergoing quite a comprehensive test work campaign. Even though they already had four sites using the technology, the fifth site would go through the exact same campaign. We're seeing something similar with other big miners where, even though they are using it in these different locations, they still want to go through and do their final due diligence on each of those sites. So when we say that we focus on the miners, we really are focusing on those big miners.
Unfortunately, those big miners can be quite conservative and slow-moving. When we talk about the other end, where it's kind of your smaller miners and your exploration companies, we're not actually kind of banging down their door. And we see a lot of those just starting to use us without us needing to drive that process because the laboratories are out there putting their stamp of approval on PhotonAssay, and it's in the backyard. This is something where I look at, say, SGS's marketing, and I think that that's been excellent. And we do have that growing relationship with SGS because they are out there banging the drum of, "Come and use PhotonAssay. It's better than Fire Assay." It is a two-pronged approach.
Okay. Thank you.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Joseph House with Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Dirk and Brett. Thanks for taking my question. Just maybe an extension to the last question. You spent a bit of time talking about the business development initiatives and the test works with miners to potentially win more contracts for mine site labs. Just keen to get any update on how your business development initiatives are going with some of the commercial labs and just how we should be thinking about those. And you mentioned before with SGS and their marketing initiatives for PhotonAssay, just how we should be thinking about potential contract wins with commercial labs.
Yeah, absolutely. And so some of these will be driven by the conversion of these mining projects proximate or near to some of the laboratory hubs. So we would consider that we'll continue to get conversion of those labs. If you think that out of the top four laboratory companies, we are already working with the top, well, with three of the top four. There's talks at the moment that SGS and BV might be merging as well. I don't know how true that is. But if they do, then it will be the PhotonAssay is within three of three if that were to occur. So growing relationship with SGS being the biggest laboratory out of there, I think, well, I would hope that we will see that continue. But that doesn't mean that we've diminished what we're doing with any of the other laboratories as well.
So Intertek have a large presence in Australia. They've got a couple of units over in Africa. We've obviously got ALS in Australia and over in North America. We would certainly be looking for that to expand as well. And in all likelihood, end up with a laboratory partner in South America as well.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, guys.
There are no further questions at this time. And I'll hand it back to Dirk for closing remarks.
Thank you very much. Thank you, shareholders. Appreciate your continued support as always and look forward to providing our next update, which will be in about a month in our half-year results. Thanks for attending today.
It does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.