Champion Iron Limited (ASX:CIA)
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Earnings Call: H2 2024

May 31, 2024

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Champion's Q4 and year-end results of the financial year 2024 conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press the star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Friday, May 31, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Marcotte. Please go ahead.

Michael Marcotte
SVP of Corporate Development and Capital Markets, Champion Iron

Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for joining us to discuss our Q4 results today. Before I turn it over to our team to discuss these results, I'd just like to go over a few elements, including where you can find this presentation that we'll be referring to, which is on our website at championiron.com, under the Investors section and Events and Presentations. I'd also like to highlight that we'll be making forward-looking statements throughout this presentation. You can read more about these forward-looking statements, risk and assumptions in our MD&A, which is also available on our website. I'd also like to remind people that we'll be referencing to CAD for all figures, unless otherwise stated. Joining me on this call today is David Cataford, our CEO, who is going to be doing the formal presentation.

We also have our COO, Alexandre Belleau, and our CFO, Donald Tremblay, and our Executive Chairman, Michael O'Keeffe, will also do closing remarks. With that, I'll turn it over back to David, our CEO, for the presentation.

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Thanks, Michael. Thanks, everyone, for being here. Very happy to be able to discuss the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024, that just completed our sixth year of operation here at Bloom Lake. We'll be able to see that we've done quite a lot in the past six years. In terms of the highlights for the quarter, we, so we produced about 3.3 million tons and sold about 3 million tons during the quarter. Cash cost of about CAD 77 per ton and an EBITDA of roughly about CAD 85 million. In terms of sustainability, I think the main highlight, once again, this quarter, is the fact that no major environmental issues were reported at site. So since the recommissioning in 2018, there's been no major environmental issues reported at site.

So the investments that were made have really paid off because we have a very sound site in terms of environment. If we turn to community governance and sustainability, one of the big highlights during the quarter is the five-year Collective Bargaining Agreement that was signed with our unionized employees. The impact of that contract is roughly about CAD 1 per ton on our operating costs. But realistically, we had some catch up in terms of salaries when we compare with our neighbors, and we want to stay competitive in the talent war to get the best employees to allow us to deliver the results like we have in the past six years. We've also appointed Mr. Ronnie Beevor to the board of directors, which brings decades of valuable experience in the mining industry.

In terms of ESG disclosure, well, you've seen that we've now published our 2023 sustainability report. Quite a few highlights that we can be very proud of within the company. One, we maintained our positioning as leading First Nations employer in the region, and we continue to work very closely with our First Nations partners to make sure that we can operate in a sustainable way. We also have 100% compliance with our tailings monitoring program. So all the investments that were made in the past really help us to stand out in terms of one of the safest tailings infrastructures in the world. We also have a very big highlight, 99% water reusage rate at Bloom Lake.

So again, we've invested to be able to protect the environment, and we're a leader also in terms of water reusage. And final highlight is that we managed to reduce by about 8.7% our GHG emissions year-over-year. In terms of operations, and when we look at the iron ore price, so you've seen that it's been pretty volatile in fiscal year 2024, but when you look at the sort of average for the year, it's been pretty healthy in terms of iron ore price. So we saw a dip in Q4, but we've since seen the price recover, if you look at the past few weeks.

In terms of freight, there has been some impact due to the Red Sea, and the conflicts in the Middle East, but we've also seen the C3 Index stabilize today in the orders of about $23-24 per ton. In terms of opportunities at Bloom Lake, so as you know, one of the main challenges we have is to work with the rail operator so that we can match our production with the logistics and also start bringing down our stockpile. Today, our stockpile lies at about 2.7 million tons at site, continuing to work with the rail operator to be able to not only match our production, but start bringing down those tons.

Happy to report that the first train conductors will come into the project as of June of this year. The second group comes into August. So as of June, we should be in a position to match the production with the capacity. And as of August, we should be in a position to start bringing down tons from our stockpile, as we had mentioned at the January meeting. So again, a little bit disappointing in terms of the performance of the rail operator, but realistically, I think we're on the right track to be able to solve that issue and put that behind us.

In terms of quarterly production, roughly about 3.3 million tons, and that allowed us to have a full year of 14.2 million tons, which is roughly about 95% of our nameplate capacity. If we look at the operations a little bit more in detail, one of the highlights is we have increased our strip ratio, so the mine is healthy. We have moved about 0.69 as our strip ratio during the year, sorry, during the quarter, and we moved about 6.5 million tons of waste during the quarter. So again, following the mine plan, and the mine is in a very healthy position right now. In terms of financial highlights, so for the quarter, about CAD 330 million in revenues.

For the full year, CAD 1.5 billion, which allowed us to have CAD 85 million of EBITDA during the quarter, and just over CAD 550 million of EBITDA for the full year. In terms of cash costs, so you've seen it increase slightly during the quarter. We were on a good trend, bringing down our operating costs as we were ramping up the project. As you've seen during the past quarter, the main elements that impacted our cash costs was one, the lower production, so the main area for us to reduce our costs is to have the right production during the quarter.

Second element was the two major shutdowns, and if you remember Q3 of fiscal year 2024, we delivered a run rate of roughly about 16 million tons per year, but we had quite a lot of equipment that we that we pushed to sort of its maximum, that we had to repair during the the fourth quarter. That was to be expected. If we want to debottleneck the facilities, we need to understand what equipment we need to work on and when that equipment fails. So we had a lot of run to fail strategy for pumps, for pipes, for conveyors, for various elements at the plant.

So this quarter, we had two major shutdowns and also had quite a lot of downtime that was unplanned, but that allowed us to be able to pinpoint the different elements that we need to work on to debottleneck the site. We're currently working on those right now, and in the coming quarters, we should start seeing improvements in terms of our nameplate capacity, and our target eventually is to be able to debottleneck between 17 and 18 million tons per year.

If we look at provisional price adjustment, so if we go back to the 31st of December 2023, we had forecasted to settle 1.8 million tons that was still on the water at roughly about CAD 150 per ton, and we settled those tons at about CAD 136. So the delta of about US$13 per ton for the 1.8 million tons that were on the water, had a negative impact of about CAD 24 million. To divide that by the 3 million tons that were sold during the quarter, has an impact of about US$8 per ton.

On the flip side, when you look at the March 31, we had forecasted to settle the next 1.8 million tons that was still in transit at about CAD 113 per ton. But you've seen in the past weeks that the price has recovered, and we should be able to see a positive provisional price adjustment in the current quarter. If we look at the net realized price, so you can see that our gross realized price was lower than the P65 Index during the quarter. This is not due to the fact that we're getting significant discounts for our material or because we have lower quality.

We still maintained high quality and still sell our tons at a premium, but the 1.8 million tons that were still in transit, that we had to book at the end of the quarter at $113 US, had a negative impact for our average during the quarter. But as we mentioned, that should reverse in the next quarter as we potentially have a positive provisional price adjustment. In terms of cash, well, we increased slightly the cash during the quarter by about CAD 13 million and continued to invest in our flotation plant, investing about CAD 35 million. If you look at our balance sheet, we're still in a very good position to be able to continue our flotation plant.

We're in a net cash position of about CAD 56 million, and, when you look at our balance sheet and the projects that we have in line, well, it allowed us to declare a sixth consecutive semiannual dividend of CAD 0.10 per share. If we turn to our growth projects, so the main focus for us right now is obviously the flotation plant that we're working on. Also, continuing to speak with various groups to be able to bring in a partner for the Kami Project. There's been quite a lot of interest from different strategic groups, so, continuing our discussions on that and also starting the permitting process for the Kami Project here in Newfoundland. So, very happy to announce that we're continuing on that project.

No significant CapEx to be invested in the next two years as we go towards the permitting, but again, do feel that this is one of the best resources in the world to produce DR grade material in the future. The second project, apart from the DR flotation plant that we're working on right now, is bringing Bloom Lake over 15 million tons per year. So as you know, in the past quarter, we saw a little bit of noise in terms of reliability and us repairing various equipment.

But as we do that, we should be on track in the coming quarters to be able to increase our nameplate capacity beyond the 15 million tons per year. If we look at our flotation plant, happy to report that we're still on track to deliver the project on time and on budget. We spent now about CAD 95 million, and we still have roughly about CAD 375 million to invest to be able to deliver the project in the second half of 2025. The other highlight is that we are continuing our discussions with various potential clients to be able to position that material with the right type of clients that are, as we had mentioned in the past, closer to home, to minimize our impact on shipping.

I think it's very well timed because when we look at the market, we're starting to plot on the world map all the different projects that are being worked on for new DRI facilities, to be able to service the electric arc furnaces. We can see that there's over 160 million tons of DR quality iron ore that will be required to supply what has been announced now in terms of DRI capacity. We see that the bulk of that is going to be in Europe and Middle East, which is where we're spending most of our time discussing with various clients, to be able to position our material for the future. We do think that investing in this flotation plant is where we need to go.

That's where we're going to benefit potentially from the highest premiums for our type of material. And what's interesting is, yet again, when we look at the end of this quarter, while we don't see any projects being announced to be able to produce or to fill in that gap of 160 million tons of DR quality iron ore. So we're very well positioned with what we're doing at Bloom Lake, to be able to service that and fully benefit from the premiums in the future. With that being said, well, I'd like to thank our staff for making all these results possible for another great year, fiscal year 2024, and ramping up fully towards not only our nameplate capacity, but also over our nameplate capacity.

That being said, I'll turn it over to the Q&A portion of the call.

Operator

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then the number one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then the number two. Again, please press star one to ask a question. And your first question comes from the line of Orest Wowkodaw with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Orest Wowkodaw
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Scotiabank

Hi, good morning, David. Just a clarification, one of your comments earlier. Did I understand correctly that you were saying that Bloom Lake is still operating below the nameplate of about 3.7 million tons per quarter, because you're still basically fixing from what happened a quarter ago?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, basically, what we, what I said, and sorry if I, if it wasn't positioned clearly, but it was more on the logistics side, where we felt there was, there was still an mismatch between what they can bring down and what we can, what we can deliver, towards the, towards the port.

Orest Wowkodaw
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Scotiabank

Okay, so Bloom Lake's back at producing at full run rate, you just can't ship it?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, well, order of magnitude, we're pretty close now between what we can produce and what is being shipped, but still not to the full, to the full level, correct.

Orest Wowkodaw
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Scotiabank

Okay. Your comments about the shipping. Did I hear you correct, that you don't expect to destock until August?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Correct.

Orest Wowkodaw
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Scotiabank

Okay. How many quarters do you think, say, beginning August, I mean, how many quarters do you think it's going to take to drive down that 2.7 million tons of inventory?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, there's quite a lot of things up in the air. So when you look at that rail, right now, you have Tacora that's operating or that's bringing down tons. You have IOC ourselves, and during the summer months, there's also Tata. So depending on the performance of the, the other groups, that can potentially benefit us to bring down more tons quickly. With the new, rail, operators that are coming in in June and then in August, we do feel that, potentially we'll be able to bring down more tons even than what is being forecasted. So when we look all in all, to bring down the full 2.7 million tons, we had said in the past, roughly about a year and a half, would be the timeframe to be able to bring it down.

But there is some potential upside scenarios if we can deliver quicker than what is being forecasted. But again, it's something that's outside of our control. We try to put as much effort and time in working with the rail operator, but as you know, it's been a pretty annoying journey for us having to deal with that portion.

Orest Wowkodaw
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Scotiabank

Okay, but the base case is about a year and a half starting August?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Correct.

Orest Wowkodaw
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Scotiabank

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Lucas Pipes with B. Riley, please go ahead.

Lucas Pipes
Managing Director, B. Riley

Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, everyone. David, not sure if I caught you right there in your prepared remarks, but did you say you're looking at 17-18 million tons of capacity post debottlenecking projects?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Correct.

Lucas Pipes
Managing Director, B. Riley

Is that a nameplate capacity, or is that the level at which you would expect to kind of operate, and how quickly do you think you'd get there?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, I'm not too sure what the difference is, sorry, Lucas, on is it nameplate or what we expect to produce. But realistically, once we start doing those debottlenecking projects, our average head grade at the mine is pretty stable, so that doesn't change. Our recovery should be pretty stable as well, going forward as we continue to improve it. So when we look at the debottlenecking portion, that's where we don't have the fixed number yet because we're still in engineering to see the exact elements that need to be modified and how they can be modified, but we do expect to be, in the future, between 17 and 18 million tons, correct.

Lucas Pipes
Managing Director, B. Riley

... That's helpful. Two follow-ups there. How quickly would you be able to get to that level? And then any impacts on the cost side, call it fixed cost absorption or things like that, that could maybe help? Thank you.

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, it's going to be a gradual sort of increase, so there's some elements that are easier than others. As we had mentioned in January, we've already ordered some mining equipment to be able to increase the capacity at the mine. That should be delivered by the end of this calendar year. So as that comes in, we should be able to increase a portion of the production sort of target. Then when you look at the coming sort of 2-3 years, that's when we believe we'll be able to have done most of the modifications to get us between that 17-18 million tons.

Lucas Pipes
Managing Director, B. Riley

That is very helpful. And I assume you have confidence that the rail will keep pace with that as well?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, I'm confident that the rail can deliver, for sure. We need to work with the rail operator to make sure that they actually get there. But the rail itself can handle about 80 million tons per year, so there's no reason why that could not be done. But as you can imagine, it's something we'll follow much more closely because it hasn't been delivering as it should have in the past.

Lucas Pipes
Managing Director, B. Riley

Very helpful. Thank you, David. And then, switching topics real quick to Kami. You mentioned you're in good conversations with a couple of strategic groups. Could you maybe give us a flavor for what sort of groups those are? I'd assume they are steel makers, but maybe you can elaborate and point to specific region, size of the potential partners. Just, would appreciate anything you could round out there. Thank you.

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, thanks for the question, Lucas. So when we look at potential groups, for us, what makes the most sense is to align ourselves either with a group from Japan, Middle East, or from Europe. So they're the three markets that we feel make the most sense for us. They're markets that need to decarbonize, that want to invest in or are already investing in DRI and electric arc furnaces. And Japan's maybe a little bit far, but there is potential, even with Japanese, as you've seen in the various press releases in the past year, that they are also starting to invest in the Middle East to be able to do DRI production. So there's potential alignment there.

So it has to be a large steel maker, and that operates in one of those regions.

Lucas Pipes
Managing Director, B. Riley

Would you expect to have one partner or, or maybe multiple?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

With the size partners that we're discussing with, it would potentially be one partner.

Lucas Pipes
Managing Director, B. Riley

Excellent. All right, well, we really appreciate the detail. Keep up the good work and best of luck.

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

No, thank you. Thank you, Lucas.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Gordon Lawson with Paradigm Capital. Please, go ahead.

Gordon Lawson
Mining Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Hey, good morning. Thank you very much. Can you provide some color on the high premiums in the quarter? What you're seeing in the current quarter, what you expect for fiscal 2025?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, thanks for the question, Gordon. So when we look at the premiums you've seen, even if there has been no environmental restrictions in China and Europe has not recovered fully, we still saw the premiums for the high grade increase in the past few weeks. So, not to the historical levels that we've seen, that is sort of low twenties, but we have seen it high teens in the past few weeks, which is a slight improvement from where we were before. But when we look at it. It's very tough to forecast what's coming next. But what's interesting is, as we've seen, every time the iron ore price dips below $100 in the past two years, well, it's recovered pretty quickly.

So we feel that the iron ore price is well positioned right now, and we do see some potential upside scenario on the premium for the high grade.

Gordon Lawson
Mining Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Okay, thank you very much. And then back to the stockpile. Are there any considerations to expanding your rail fleet, including the possibility of another locomotive?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah. So the, the IOC have got, three locos that have been ordered, so that's going to be delivered in the coming months. We've also purchased quite a lot of new rail cars, which was not necessarily required for the current production, but it's going to add also some flexibility. They'll start being delivered in October of this year, and it's also going to help as we debottleneck the project. But as you can imagine, with the rail cars, they don't all get delivered at once, so that's going to be a gradual delivery over a few quarters, starting in October of this year.

Gordon Lawson
Mining Analyst, Paradigm Capital

Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Thank you, Gordon.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Craig Hutchison with TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Craig Hutchison
Mining Equity Research Analyst, TD Securities

Hi, good morning, guys. Just on the Kami Project, I think you mentioned that you don't anticipate spending any CapEx for the next couple of years. Is that the duration you anticipate for the updated permits, about a two-year process?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, I would say, thanks for the question, Craig. We'd say about two years for the prior permitting process, and that should give us enough time to also secure the partner, finalize the agreements there, and then be able to see the next steps once we're in 2026. And I think that's a pretty good year to be able to evaluate a project like Kami.

Right now, if you remember, the economics were maybe a little bit underwhelming, but when you look at what can happen in the next two years with the potential list of critical minerals here on the federal side and the discussions also with the Newfoundland government, and also the delivery of most of the DRI and EAFs in the next two years, we should have a better view on the pricing mechanism for DR pellet feed and also the various economic improvements that we can have on the federal and provincial side.

Craig Hutchison
Mining Equity Research Analyst, TD Securities

Okay, great. Just, I was, my follow-up question was going to be just on sort of price discovery on DR pellet feed. Is, is there any kind of indications you guys have had in terms of what that might be over the last sort of year discussions you've had? I think the premium you guys assumed was somewhere in the range of an additional CAD 30 a ton on top of the 65. Is that still sort of the case, or do you think it could be higher? Any kind of color you can provide on that would be great.

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, thanks for the question, Craig. So as, as we've done in the past, what we're trying to do is really link proper formulas in terms of the pricing mechanisms. And what we want to make sure is that we link those towards the DR pellet premiums. We want to slowly move away from the P65. We don't know what will happen to that index once projects like Simandou do get delivered, and we do feel that our material is going to be sort of in a subclass of its own. It's a unique product that'll be used for DRI, for electric arc furnaces, when groups want to produce high-quality steel. So for us, we want to make sure that we link all of those pricing mechanisms to the DR pellet.

Discussions up to now with various clients have been very successful in terms of having that sort of mechanism put in place.

Craig Hutchison
Mining Equity Research Analyst, TD Securities

Great. Thanks, guys.

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Thanks, Craig.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Stefan Ioannou with Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.

Stefan Ioannou
Mining Analyst, Cormark Securities

Yeah, thanks very much, guys. Just maybe on Kami again, just curious, again, mentioning it's sort of probably a two-year-ish time horizon to permits. Just when we think about advancing the potential partnership negotiations, is that something then that dovetails with the receipt of permits, or do you think we see a, you know, a partner firmed up well before that?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Well, we have groups that are extremely interested in the project, so I would... You can never be sure. But, right now, if things continue at the speed they are, I'd be confident that we'd be able to have a partnership before the permitting process. But then again, there's quite a lot of variables that are there. But again, there's quite a lot of interest, and, if we maintain the sort of speed of discussions right now, there is a possibility we could align with a partner pre, permits.

Stefan Ioannou
Mining Analyst, Cormark Securities

Okay. Okay, great. Thanks very much, guys.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian MacArthur with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Brian MacArthur
Managing Director and Mining Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Just going back to Lucas's question, and when you expand Bloom Lake to 17-18 million tons, and you're confident that the railway will be there, you know, it has been iffy up to now. What actually, and you talked about 8 million tons of capacity, but what actually has to be done to get those extra 3 million tons? Does somebody else have to order some locomotives? Are you in control of all the rolling stock you need? What actually has to be done to sort of guarantee that you'll be able to move 18 million tons at that time?

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Yeah, unfortunately, thanks for the question, Brian, but unfortunately, as you know, we're not in control right now. But then again, when you look at what has to be done, it's mainly track availability, a little bit of locomotives and train operators. We're obviously going to manage this differently for the increase in tonnage because, when we signed the contract with operator, we thought they would be able to deliver on what they said, which did not happen. So we're going to monitor that very closely once we sign a potential contract for the extra tons.

But again, if we go back just a few years, we had signed a contract for 7.5 million tons, and we had produced 8 million tons, pretty constantly, and there was never any issues on that rail, so they were able to take the extra tonnage. I think this is the first time that the rail operator has been stressed in terms of the actual operations of the rail. But what we definitely need to do is work on the efficiencies of that rail. We don't believe there's quite a lot of CapEx that's required to double track any portions to get to that full 18 million tons. We just believe it's better efficiency, a bit more locos and a bit more train operators.

Brian MacArthur
Managing Director and Mining Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

Great. Thanks very much. That's very helpful.

David Cataford
CEO, Champion Iron

Well, thank you, Brian.

Operator

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, simply press Star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to Michael O'Keeffe for closing remarks.

Michael O'Keeffe
Executive Chairman, Champion Iron

Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for attending the call. You know, it's harder for me to do summaries these days because David covers so much. A few years ago, I used to be able to pick some gaps every now and then and and make comments and and add value to the conversation. But I did notice, though, that if anyone's read the train book called Tootle, it wasn't the conductors that were trained up to to ride the trains. It looked that conductor wasn't doing that, and I noticed they always took their conductors. Maybe that's the problem. But anyway, seriously...

We are training up, or the operators are training up the train drivers, and you know, our big issue is that when we've ever dealt with infrastructure, it's always areas outside of our control that have caused the problems. And you know, that was so with the port, and we've taken more control of the port now with the Quebec government. David's on that board, and if anyone has seen the port when we took it over in 2017 and now, it's gone from a you know, beaten up old car to a Rolls-Royce. So and that's been a huge effort.

But you know, if I reflect back and look at what's happened in infrastructure since we gained control of the feasibility study and brought on phase one in 2018, we've been in a continuous area of construction. It's phase one, up and running, then phase two, up and running. Now, and the massive amount of civil works that was done on the tailings dam, you know, our COO, Alex, has been up there so much of the time, and I think he'd become bored if there wasn't a new project, but there's plenty of those happening in the form of the concentrator and the high grade.

Which puts us into a whole different category of the, you know, the 69%, Fe, coming out of the material, which is going to be obviously feed for the electric arc furnaces. So, and just recently, Mr. Marolf and myself were in L.A. and also at the Bank of America conference in Miami. And at that conference, all the big boys are sitting up there, Jakob from Rio Tinto, et cetera, et cetera, and they all, their opening subjects was how, you know, we're going to decarbonize the steel industry with green steel. And it was very interesting to reflect on that because, you know, everyone's now talking about microwaves and how that's going to be the answer to the business.

I listened to a podcast on that, which was interviewing the people at Rio who are the main proponents for this and the university in the United Kingdom. And look, there's some very smart people at Rio, and maybe they should be on the rail. But anyway, my point is this, is that even they have been able to produce a probably 2-gram ingot from this microwaving, now, 2 grams. So the next stage is pilot plant, but they still haven't uncovered a vessel that you could use for this conversion process. And, you know, they even say they're decades away from it, but you've got the CEO of these companies standing up there saying that it's imminent.

Probably Fortescue is probably the most, because we had a lot of people coming to us on these one-on-one meetings saying that the answer is there. Well, let me tell you, the answer is not there, and it's decades away. And even the people that are working on it are saying the same thing. So if, if you take that and then put, you know, simply what we're doing here is we're taking the ore from the ground at 30% iron content, upgrading it to 69%. Now, the interesting thing for me is David talking about, you know, how we want to get away from the indexes, and the only way you're gonna do that is if you've got a quality product that allows you to do that, and that, and that's what we'll have.

So, progress is always being made on that, because we don't want to be going forward every time the index of the 62 drops, the 65 drops, and then hence, the gap between the premium for the 69 will drop. So, you know, we're on the move on that process, and that will be a game changer. But if you just reflect today on the numbers and said, "Okay, you know, we're earning CAD 500 million-CAD 600 million EBITDA a year in a reasonable year." It can be higher than obviously when the iron ore grades are higher.

But if you just take the 69 today and say, "Well, there's a CAD 27 premium above what we've, what we've got for the 65," and, you know, these tonnes will be, will be, moved into jurisdictions that is not as far to ship it by China, I mean-- there's CAD 10 freight differential. So, you know, CAD 37 on that, and then you have the two lines up and running, you can just, you can do the numbers on the EBITDAs, and, and they're serious numbers. So, and this is, this is not, this is not pie in the sky either. This is going to happen. Me recommissioning the first stage of the, 7.5 million tonne stage two in, in, 2025, the second half of 2025, and we're shipping the tonnes out.

So it's happening. It's happening before our eyes, and interesting talking to people, it just, it hasn't hit home, it hasn't resonated. But what, as David correctly points out, is that the people that are developing electric arc furnaces know exactly what's happening, and that's why we're having so many regular visits. But, I've got no doubt, you know, that the future is in green steel. And remember, we also have energies from hydro, so it puts us in a very strong position. Now, just if you take that and look at Kami, and I know David's given you a good summary on Kami, but if I just sit back and look at it and say, "Okay, well, we have people are coming in.

People are interested in wanting to help us develop that because they need the feed. Now, if you start attributing some of these values that we're talking about for the end product back into Kami, I mean, it's a totally different project. And, you know, people are paid to pay today at the numbers. So imagine what it's like if we, if we have this, iron ore as a critical mineral, the tax implications for us on that and, but also the value of this material. So I'm very confident that, you know, that's the longer term for us, but near term is imminent, and that's, you know, we're talking 2025. And, as shareholders, I think you'll be happy to hear, you know, what's going on in the company.

The fact that, you know, we have delivered every project on time, on budget. The only thing that's caused us issues are people that operate outside of our control. So, we'll get on top of that, and, by, you know, by persistence and negotiations with the, with the parties, and, that, that will be a, a handsome outcome for everyone. So thank you all for your support, and, look forward to talking again soon.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

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