Welcome to Liontown's half-year results. Following the formal presentation, there will be a Q&A session for the investor, analyst, and media. Participants can ask both text and live audio questions during today's call. To ask a text question, select the messaging icon, type your question in the box towards the top of the screen, and press the send button. To ask a live audio question, press the request to speak button at the top of the broadcast window. The broadcast window will be replaced by an audio question interface. Press join queue, and if prompted, select allow in the pop-up to grant access to your microphone. If you have any issues asking a web question today, a backup phone line is available. Dial-in details can be found on the request to speak page or on the homepage under asking audio questions.
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Thanks, Billy, and good morning or afternoon to listeners. Thank you for joining us today. There is joining me, Tony Ottaviano, the Managing Director, Jon Latto, our Chief Financial Officer, and Adam Smits, our Chief Operating Officer. Today's presentation is really a build from our 21st of January presentation on our physical quarterly and cash flow results. We have now presented today our half-year financial results. If we move along to our next few slides, there's the important information. We'll get to the first slide, please. The next one, please. Okay, just summarizing, we should start with our safety and ESG performance. Again, I'm very pleased to announce some very good results. We know the journey for safety is never complete, and we're vigilant.
In fact, my message to our staff today on these results started with our safety measure that we need to be vigilant in how we focus on the well-being of our employees, our contractors, and all our other supporters and partners. In terms of our ESG, for the half, we delivered over 80% renewable power from our hybrid power station, and we continue to optimize the performance of that hybrid power station as we build our power consumption or our power draw from the plant. Our female participation in our workforce is in a strong 23%, and we continue to focus on that. We had International Women's Day only last week. Also, very, very pleasing for me personally is we've awarded two significant Tjiwarl contracts over this period, one being one of the largest Aboriginal contracts in the Goldfields with our ROM Loading Contract.
I'm very, very pleased to be able to announce that today. We achieved three significant environmental approvals over that period as well. If we go to the next slide, please. I'm just summarizing the key operational and financial metrics for simply five months of operation, which I'm very pleased to announce. We produced almost 117,000 tons of concentrate and shipped 92,000 tons of concentrate. Our lithium recovery for the period was 52%, but in December, we achieved 59%. I'm pleased to announce today that we've gone even better over the next few months, which Adam, our Chief Operating Officer, will allude to in his section. We've built some strategic stockpiles ahead of our transition to underground mining of 1.3 million tons. On the financial side, I'm pleased to announce we're now earning revenue in AUD 100 million, which is a nice round number for the period.
We realized a price of $811 for that half. On the second quarter operating cash flow, again, as we mentioned on our 21st of January announcement, we're very pleased to announce that we did get a positive operating cash flow for that period. Again, a greater result given we're in ramp-up. We've got a strong cash balance of AUD 193 million at the end of December 31st, and our unit operating cost is $652 . I think it's important to note for the analysts and for the media on this call that this operating cost is based on a 6% concentrate. When you do your benchmarking, please normalize for concentrate grade. The second element I will note is the exchange rate we used for that is at $0.65. Okay, next one, please. Operational performance. I'll now kick over to Adam Smits.
Hi, good morning, everyone. I think, as Tony has highlighted, we've only been running five months, and I think the key metrics sort of speak for themselves on the screen. Big ones for me are obviously the plant availability and recovery. What we're achieving, and this is not boasting, but more just a quietly confident view on the world. What we're achieving or have achieved with our team and our plant on site in the first five months is what many operations are operating at after five years. With 92% availability and sort of 59% recovery, that performance has continued through January and February with similar numbers recorded in January. That recovery has stepped up to 64% average in February. We are well on our way to that 70% target that we put there in front of ourselves. We actually had nine shifts during February that exceeded 70%.
It is not a pipe dream. It is actually real. The team on site is working out of their skin to make this happen. In terms of ramp-up and production, the annualized run rate there at 2.4, we are actually exceeding that already in the coming months. Underground is performing exceptionally well with our partner, Byrnecut, and we are very much getting ready to start stoping and paste filling underground. All the key equipment and contracts and everything that needs to facilitate that underground works is in place or will be in place to start stoping and paste filling in April and May. We are well on track there to meet that goal of having that underground wall coming out from underground.
I guess the big point there, re commercial production being declared in January, just reflects the performance of the plant and the operation in general over the last sort of five, six months of operation.
I think it's important just to build on that commercial production declaration. We based that, as you should, on data, data analysis, and then what information we were able to glean. We wanted to be very deliberate and cautious around calling commercial production. Given the data was very, very positive, we had the confidence to call it. Next slide, please.
Just building on those earlier comments, geology-wise, I think we've had excellent reconciliation out of the pit from a tons perspective versus a grade control model. We're talking like 99%. In terms of metal, about 88%. We've got a lot of confidence in what we're doing in the pit in terms of mining and reconciliation. That's continuing and flowing through to our underground. We've got our second program of underground grade control drilling underway now to stay ahead of the underground stoping that's just about to commence. The pit continues to perform. Our contractor, IMC, like Byrnecut, is performing exceptionally well in the pit, along with our team driving that team. We expect to be finished the open pit as scheduled by the end of the year. The stripping ratio has come down as we've worked through the large ore zone that we've just finished mining.
Ore cleanliness remains a massive priority. It is something that, like every other lithium operation, I think in the state, we have learned a little bit about over the last 12 months. We continue to focus on that. Underground, look, no surprises in underground. Byrnecut doing an exceptional job. We are targeting stoping to start, as I said, next month with paste fill and final commissioning of the paste fill plant targeted for late May. That AUD 100 million plant is ready and waiting for commissioning. The process plant, as I say, continues to be in a ramp-up phase, but the team and, I guess, the support team off-site continues to push that plant as hard as we can. We are not just sitting back, though, and accepting what we have got.
There is a small sustaining work happening, and we're targeting everything to do with recovery that we can improve on and specifically operability. There is a fair bit of work happening there to really set ourselves up for the next phase of success.
Adam's got a slide to support that later in the presentation. Thanks, Adam. If we go to the next slide, please. Okay, I will now hand over to Jon, who will go through our financial results.
Okay, thanks, Tony. In front of you on page 10 of the presentation, you'll see the Liontown profit and loss statement for the six months ended 31 December 2024. As Tony mentioned, we recorded a loss for the period of AUD 15.2 million. I'm going to walk through a couple of points to explain some of the key items in the P&L. We commenced production at the Kathleen Valley operation on the 31st of July 2024, and in the five months to December 2024, generated sales of AUD 100 million, as Tony mentioned, from the sale of 92,172 dmt of spodumene concentrate. You can see in the profit and loss statement in front of you that we had a nil gross profit for the period. That really is just an accounting construct.
We were in ramp-up and pre-commercial production at the Kathleen Valley processing plant for the period to 31 December 2024. Whilst we're in the pre-commercial phase, we are required to recognize our revenue in the P&L for the period, and that's exactly what we've done. In relation to our operating costs for the same period, we have used a new margin approach, which sees us recognize sufficient operating costs to offset our revenue, with any excess operating costs being capitalized to assets under construction as a commissioning cost. To arrive at a nil margin outcome for the period ended 31 December 2024, we capitalized AUD 39.3 million in commissioning costs for the period. Importantly, the Liontown board, as Adam mentioned, approved the declaration of commercial production at the Kathleen Valley processing plant with effect from the 1st of January 2025.
Our board has approved the declaration of commercial production at the processing plant because we are producing commercial quantities of concentrate, and the plant is performing as intended with availability, throughput, and recovery, all performing strongly, and production actually tracking ahead of forecast at 31 December 2024. As a result of the declaration of commercial production at the plant from the 1st of January, there will be no further capitalization of commissioning costs in the profit and loss statement going forwards, and all operating costs, including depreciation on the plant, will flow through the profit and loss statement in the normal manner. The rest of the items in the P&L are pretty standard, but I will touch on two of them. Firstly, the fair value movement, excuse me, on the financial instruments for the period of AUD 43.7 million.
This relates to the convertible notes issued to LG Energy Solution on 2 July 2024. Because LG Energy Solution can convert their debt into shares in Liontown from the 2nd of January 2025 onwards, at $1.80 per share, this is effectively an option for LG Energy Solution, and that option has value, and we have to get that option externally valued as a result. When the convertible notes were issued on the 2nd of July 2024, this option was valued at approximately $68 million, and that was effectively taken off the face value of the debt owing to LG Energy Solution, and these were both shown as current liabilities. At 31 December 2024, the value of that conversion option has now decreased to $25 million, which creates a gain in the profit and loss statement as the corresponding liability has fallen.
The value of the conversion option has decreased primarily because of the decrease in the company's share price between the 2nd of July and the 31st of December and the expiration of time, meaning that there's less life in the option. The last item I'll touch on in the profit and loss statement is the foreign currency loss of $30.4 million. This has been driven by the significant devaluation of the AUD/USD exchange rate across the period from $0.6715 on the 2nd of July to $0.6217 on the 31st of December, meaning that the Australian dollar value of the US dollar debt increases. Of course, we do have a natural hedge here, and that is that our revenue is denominated in US dollars. If I can go to the next page, please.
On this slide, you can see that we returned a prima facie EBITDA of AUD 66 million for the period ended 31 December 2024. However, we do need to acknowledge that we are in pre-commercial production and ramping up the plant during this period, and as a result, we capitalized AUD 39 million of commissioning costs as discussed. In steady state, these costs would typically be considered operating costs, and taking this into account, our adjusted EBITDA for our first half year of production was AUD 27 million. It's a good result for the first five months of production in a challenging price environment for spodumene concentrate and lithium chemicals. This slide then provides a reconciliation of EBITDA to the AUD 15.2 million loss that we made for the period.
I have spoken about many of these items that are displayed on the chart, but what I have not spoken about yet is depreciation and amortization. Depreciation and amortization charges for the period were AUD 88 million. In reality, this bar really should just be called amortization, as there was very little depreciation. The amortization all related to our open pit mining at the Kathleen Valley open pit. It was, in essence, amortization of the capitalized pre-strip costs and amortization of the capitalized deferred waste costs. These charges are necessarily high because the open pit has a relatively short three-year life, and the amortization of these costs only commenced in February 2024 with the declaration of commercial production at the open pit. If I could move on to the next slide, please. In front of you now, we have Liontown Resources' balance sheet at 31 December 2024.
There are just a couple of things I'd like to point out. Firstly, as Tony mentioned, we've got a strong cash position of AUD 193 million at 31 December 2024. You can see in the balance sheet the substantial growth in inventories that we've had, where in six months, our inventories have grown by AUD 107 million to approximately AUD 130 million at 31 December 2024. AUD 94 million of this inventory balance at 31 December 2024 relates to ore stocks, where we have built a stockpile of ore, and that's both clean ore and ore sorting product, or OSP, of 1.3 million tons to assist with our transition to underground operations. I am going to pause here for a moment and note that we have a working capital deficit at 31 December 2024. By that, I mean an excess of current liabilities over current assets.
I want to stress here that this is a technical working capital deficit only. What I mean by that is it is caused by us having to classify the debt owing to LG Energy Solution as a current liability. We have to do this because LG Energy Solution have the option of converting their debt into equity in the company from the 2nd of January 2025 onwards, and therefore, we do not have the unconditional right to defer settlement of that obligation for 12 months, which is the necessary requirement for this debt to be classified as a non-current liability. What I really want to stress is that even if LG Energy Solution were to convert this debt, it would have absolutely no impact on our cash balances, and that is why it is a technical working capital deficit only.
Our property, plant, and equipment balance increased by AUD 119 million during the period, and that was predominantly driven by material items such as capitalized underground development costs of AUD 65 million, capitalized commissioning costs at the plant of AUD 39 million, construction costs for the paste plant of around AUD 30 million, with these costs being offset by depreciation and amortization charges for the period. Touching briefly on our debt, our current interest-bearing liabilities include the debt host owing to LG Energy Solution of AUD 345 million, the value of the conversion option that I spoke about previously of AUD 25 million, and a small amount of debt due to Ford within the next 12 months of approximately AUD 15 million. Our non-current debt relates primarily to the debt and capitalized interest owed to Ford of AUD 312 million.
We also have non-current lease liabilities of AUD 139 million, and they primarily relate to the right-of-use asset that we have for the hybrid power station on site. If I could get you to move to the next slide, we have a brief slide on working capital. The point of this slide is really to demonstrate that we have spent AUD 94 million on building a 1.3 million ton stockpile of clean ore and OSP, which we will draw down on as we transition to underground operations. In addition to that, we had 25,000 wet metric tons of concentrate on hand, as well as $20 million of receivables, half of which relate to product sales for which we have not received the cash at 31 December. If I could get you to move on to slide 14, please. We now have our cash flow statement.
Now, this slide is really self-explanatory, and I don't propose to go through each bar in the waterfall other than to note a few things. Again, I'll note our strong cash balance of AUD 193 million at 31 December. As Tony mentioned, we had positive cash flow from operating activities of AUD 16.7 million in the December quarter whilst we were still ramping up the processing plant. Finally, I would note that there are payments for investing activities of AUD 253 million outflow for the half, and these were all related to property, plant, and equipment for items such as payments for construction of the processing plant, commissioning costs associated with ramping up the plant, underground development expenditure, and general sustaining capital costs. I'll now get you to move on to page 15, please. What we're really providing here is a summary of the debt that we have.
Firstly, we see the AUD 300 million debt that we have with Ford plus capitalized interest. That is Australian dollar debt. Secondly, we see the $250 million of debt that we have with LG Energy Solution associated with the convertible notes that issued in July 2024. The key point here is that both components of this debt are low cost and low covenant, and it is from our off-take partners. Having said that, I'll hand back to Tony.
Thank you, Jon. Very comprehensive overview. Again, I just want to reinforce this debt structure. It is not to be treated or conceived as a typical project finance facility. We do have the benefit of the low covenants and the low interest facilities. If we go to the next slide, please.
This slide, I think what I'd like to convey is it may be a little early for Liontown to be thinking around capital allocation, but again, we want to demonstrate to the market that we want to be ahead of the game and not catching up. As a board, as a company, we've put our mind and we've had our capital allocation approach approved by our board so that we are confident as our returns start, our cash flow starts building, how we manage our overall capital in managing this business. There are three conventional pillars to this. Clearly, we want to support the business and continue to have efficient and productive operations. The sustaining capital element of it is the foundation. The other elements to it are growth. We've mentioned in our strategy, we want Kathleen Valley to its full potential.
Adam's already spoken about some of the incremental improvement projects that we're building now, but also we're screening because we want to lift our eyes above the horizon and screen for potential opportunities given the current market. We want to be strong in our debt management, and we've put a slide in there to demonstrate to you how this debt looks and then how we're going to approach its management. There's the shareholder returns. The dividends, the share buybacks, and growth and debt management. All those three things contribute to a competing set of priorities that the board will manage with the management team. Next slide please. I'll now hand over to Adam.
Thanks, Tony. I think just to sort of build on what Tony was saying in the previous slide, we're very focused on being very resilient in this tough market.
The three key pillars that underpin that are our continued business optimization. We've already realized savings of these are real savings of AUD 31 million to the end of December. That's in areas of both operating costs, labor, capital deferrals, and there are no risk deferral. In other words, we can turn them back on as the situation demands. We are definitely focused on saving money. As I mentioned earlier, and I realize this is a half-yearly call, but certainly that focus on lithium recovery hasn't stopped at 31 December. We are very laser-focused on recovery, and that's why I've highlighted that that recovery improvement continues to be a focus, and it continues to improve. The 70% target that we put ourselves for FY 2026 is not aspirational. It's within reach, and we are chasing it.
There's a lot of time, effort, and what little money we have allocated for sustaining works is going on recovery improvements. In terms of the transition to underground, our underground team has been basically getting ready for the season for some time. Getting underground has, and with over 7,000 meters of development to date, it's all about getting into stoping and that transition from the open pit to stoping and to underground mining. To enable that enormous amount of work, time, effort, preparation has had to go in so that we're ready to go.
On a recent DEMIRS inspection, they complimented us on how clean and tidy and just organized our underground looks, and that's a real credit to our site team, and it also gives me a bit of confidence as to where we're going next, which is actually making more out of that underground, not just pushing meters in. We are very, very focused on that underground ramp-up, and everything we can do to enable that underground ramp-up is front and center in our minds. We've obviously got the ROM inventory of over 1.3 million tons that Jon mentioned. A lot of that is transitionary, so we actually cover ourselves from when the open pit finishes and when we move to underground ore. Probably about half of that is OSP or sorting potential material.
We've already got initiatives underway to prove up how to process that, what we can process as direct feed, what needs sorting, and how we can best treat that material because it's a real part of our inventory.
Thanks, Adam. I'll just maybe add two more points to that last section. Firstly, the guidance we provided the market in November included three months of underground production. We've built in what we believe are the operating costs of underground mining in that guidance already. The second point that I'll add, especially around this OSP material, I mentioned in our 21st of January announcement that we'd started trials in the plant on how to process this ore sorting material, which we basically use contact ore and ore that is high dilution. For us, this is a very important part of our overall mix.
How the plant processes this, whether we blend it, whether we throw it in completely as is, or whether we ore sort it or a combination of all three, is what we've been doing in January and February in testing the plant. Given how well the plant has gone and has given Adam and his team confidence that we can push this harder.
Yeah, no, I think that's a fair comment, Tony. I think it's a key focus of where we're going to, and the team has done an exceptional job on site in treating that ore.
Okay. Next slide, please. Market update. Next, please. I think having just come back from Bank of Montreal conference, for Liontown and for what we can see in the market, the demand growth profile and thematic continues to be strong.
There is nothing that gives us the impression that this will not continue. In fact, we're seeing elements of the demand profile exceed forecast estimations. The one that I want to draw out is energy storage systems. If we look at this and see the growth we've experienced over the last 12 months and what has been projected, we see this as a tremendous growth engine for demand of lithium units. Just to give you a bit of color, I don't know how many people have seen the recent CATL Prospectus, but they're projecting a significant increase in battery shipments for stationary batteries. If they're accurate in their forecast by the end of the decade, they believe that market will be as big as, in terms of lithium carbonate equivalents, the EV market today. That's how strong they believe this market will grow.
Now, whilst there's strong demand, I know people have viewed the supply side, but for us, when we look at the supply projects that are planning or were planning to come on in the next 18 months, we internally have doubts whether these projects will come to fruition. Given the current pricing in the market, the inducement price is far too low. I might ask Grant, our Chief Commercial Officer who's in the room, who might want to add anything more to this.
Yeah, look, I mean, maybe going a little bit future-facing, which is EV sales and demand so far this year. I mean, we've seen pretty strong numbers come out in February, usually a weak point given Chinese New Year.
This year, it fell a little bit earlier, and we've seen 50% growth year on year in EV sales globally, but driven, obviously, a large portion of that in China. We've seen strong growth in North America. Despite the rhetoric around tariffs, etc., we've seen 20% growth year on year in February. We've seen, as Tony talked about, fairly large energy storage system awards in the Middle East go to a couple of Chinese players, which are 20 GW hours per project, which is very significant demand and roughly equivalent to what Kathleen Valley produces in a year. I think we continue to see signs of positive demand, and now it's really around where does the supply come from to meet this demand.
Thanks, Grant. Next slide, please. Just to then now summarize.
On the left-hand side, you see our strategy, and this presentation is very much focused on Kathleen Valley and ensuring that we bring it to its full potential. We delivered the project on time and completed it in 19 months. We achieved strong EBITDA sales for the first six months, and we delivered a positive operating cash flow for the December quarter. We continue to experience strong operational ramp-up to the point where we've called commercial production for the plant. Strong balance sheet and strategic inventory build that will set us up for the transition to full underground operations. We're working through, as we speak, our planning and our assessment of our next year's budget, which we will provide guidance to the market in July as per required.
As we've already alluded to in the presentation, we expect to meet our guidance for the second half of this financial year. Okay. Next slide, please. Okay. That brings the presentation to an end. I love this picture. It just demonstrates to the investors and the shareholders, look, if you look at it, it's got three quarters of this drive is ore, is pegmatite. The consistency of the ground conditions, the cleanliness of the rock support and the meshing, I think more to come. Okay. I'll hand over now to Q&A.
Thank you, Tony. If you have not yet submitted your text question or joined the live audio queue, please do so now. I will introduce each caller by name and ask you to go ahead. You will then hear a beep indicating your microphone is live.
Our first question comes from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead after the beep.
Go ahead, Hugo.
Sure. Hi, Tony. Adam. Jon. Grant. Thanks for the update. Hope all well. First question just relates to the declaration of commercial production. Can you just confirm, is that just an accounting declaration, or does that apply to your commercial offtake contracts as well, i.e., do you now need to start delivering to Ford and repaying that debt?
No, it's purely an accounting declaration as it relates to the plant. We've already called commercial production, as you know, on the LG and Tesla contract, and we're planning to do that for the Ford contract in July as previously announced.
Got it. Thanks. That's clear, Tony. And then maybe one for Jon as well.
Just how have discussions progressed on potential for new debt capacity with potential lenders to maybe help improve that liquidity piece through the underground ramp-up?
Yeah, good question. I mean, I think we've made it pretty clear that we do have the capacity to secure an additional AUD 100 million of Australian debt. Absolutely, we continue to look at what the best option might be for Liontown. So we are talking to a whole range of groups at the moment.
Are there any particular sticking points on just getting a new debt facility in place and not drawing it down? I mean, do lenders want to see kind of more progress on the underground first or anything you can sort of talk to there?
No, not in particular. I mean, for us, the focus has been very much getting the ramp-up and getting into steady state delivering.
We've got a strong cash balance. We haven't made it a number one priority, Hugo. We'll continue to monitor how the market moves, especially pricing, given the impact that has on our overall cash balance. It's a work in progress, really.
Got it. That's clear. Just a cheeky third one, if I may. Adam, I think you mentioned the paste plant spend was now about AUD 100 million. I go back to the EPC contract from May last year. I think the plant was first cost AUD 71 million. Any major changes there to call out and maybe any broader commentary on how you're seeing costs at the moment?
That just reflects the overall cost. The EPC contract, I think, was AUD 71 million, but there's an owners' component to that. There's a whole bunch of other costs that ratchet into the overall cost of that plant.
That's all being paid for and behind us, Hugo. There's no tail there.
Yeah. It was finished in November.
Yeah.
There's no secret blocks of money set out elsewhere. That is the cost. We've actually allowed for it, budgeted for it, spent it. I think, yeah, commissioning is in 14th of May, if I'm memory.
Thank you. Our next question is an audio question from Levi Spry from UBS. Levi, please go ahead.
Yeah. G'day, Tony. Thanks for your time. Maybe a couple of quick, simple ones. Jon, D&A going forward? How do we think about that as you work through the open pit?
Yeah, that's an interesting question, Levi. What we sort of see looking forward is obviously the amortization of the capitalized pre-strip and the amortization of the capitalized deferred waste.
Clearly, that's going to come to an end relatively shortly, but in its place now with the declaration of commercial production, we'll obviously start recognising the depreciation of the plant. Clearly, as we ramp- up the underground, in addition, we'll see amortization of capitalised underground development spend coming forward. I think it's fair to say that for FY 2025, we will see you've seen what it is for the half. It will be slightly less than that for the full year. There'll be the same amount again, perhaps slightly less. As we look across to FY 2026, probably similar, but we will see a drop-off going forward. Obviously, as all of the open pit stuff is fully amortized, we expect to see a really decent drop-off in amortization depreciation charges from FY 2027 onwards.
Okay. Thanks, mate. I'll try and triangulate that.
Just operationally, Adam, I think you said recovery's averaged 64% for February. Is that correct? Can you just give us a couple of other numbers that go with that? Was that on similar grades to last quarter?
Yeah, that's right.
Including this batch treatment, OSP.
There's a couple of bits to unpack there. That's on similar concentrate grade mates as in the December quarter, somewhere between 5%-5.5%. That 64% also included, from memory, it was a three or four-day trial processing that OSP material, which has lower recoveries and grades associated with it based on that last trial and still room to move there. That factors all of that in. It included those sort of standout shifts where we had over 70% recovery.
The messaging there, I guess, as I said earlier, was to try and highlight that whilst December was an excellent month, January backed that up, and February continues to improve.
There is one other point that I would add, Levi. When you are comparing us, is head grade or the feed grade into the mill very important that you look at that when you look at recoveries? Because we know the relationship between head grade and recoveries. The better the grade, the better the recoveries. We are achieving these, I think, great recovery results at a fairly modest head grade of 1.2, 1.25, right?
Thank you. Our next question comes from Kate McCutcheon from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, Kate.
Hi, morning. Hi, Tony and Jon. I was going to ask about the capital return slide, which you talked to.
What was the catalyst to present that strategy now, or what gives you confidence that it's not premature given pricing has been pretty sticky? You've just declared commercial production. There's a lot going on. Just trying to understand the catalyst for bringing up dividends, etc., now.
Kate, without sounding overconfident, we wanted to be confident. We want to be ahead of the curve. We want to demonstrate to the market that we are maturing as a company, and mature, well-run companies have a capital allocation strategy. We wanted to put it out there to tell the market that we're thinking in the right way. As we increase our cash flow, improve our performances, we will put money to work in the right way.
Okay. Got it.
Following on from the liquidity piece, if spot pricing stays at these 840-870 levels, how are you thinking about the liquidity available? If pricing was to hold here for 18 to 24 months, would additional liquidity be needed in the form of that debt or other options? I know you have a more optimistic view on lithium prices to me, and you did just allude that you wanted to look at acquisitions or screen for opportunities, I think you said. As a bookend, just trying to understand your confidence in the balance sheet here or how we should think about it if pricing doesn't bounce back.
There's a couple of points I'll make there.
If the current spot price, both for spodumene, hydroxide, and for carbonate, was to continue for another two years, Kate, I think you'd be asking that question to a lot of lithium producers, right? Because we all know that it's completely unsustainable that this continues at these levels. When you look at the non-integrated refineries in China, no one is making margin, positive margin. No one. It's a bit of a hypothetical for the next two years. In the short to medium term, as I think we mentioned earlier on in the conversation, we are monitoring our cash balance. We've got a cost optimisation underway. We continue to prosecute that. We've got more levers to pull in order to preserve cash. On the funding side, we've got the AUD 100 million Aussie facility option available to us that we can push in alongside LG.
We will, when the time is right, commence discussions with others around that and potentially look at other options such as a revolver with the commercial banks. We will progressively look at this. At the moment, we are in a strong position with our cash balance.
Thank you. Our next question is from Glyn Lawcock from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Glyn.
Hi, Tony. Hi. Thanks for your time. I just want to—well, well done on holding the guidance. That is great. If I just play it out for the guidance, it is probably, if you include interest plus your capital—oh, sorry, your corporate charge, which is excluded outside of your guidance, it is about a $100 million burn for the half, including also your $60 million of preferred capital that you have got. You are probably $40 million burn operationally and another $60 million because of your capital lag. Is that about right?
I mean, the market seems to be looking at your net debt going up by about $100 million over this six-month period.
I'll have to check the numbers. I mean, you skid maths. I don't know if it's right or not. I'll have to work it through.
I mean, there's a lot in that question, Glyn, to answer straight away. I'd probably have to take that.
Maybe I can ask it a different —
Yeah.
Yeah, that's fine. Maybe I'll ask it a different way. If you just assume the market is right, the brokers have all got their numbers right, and you do end up with cash now below $100 million by June, when do you put this facility in place, the extra $100 million, given that?
Are you comfortable having your cash balance now down below $100 million if you're going to be burning $50 million a half pre any lagging capex? Maybe, Tony, can you also expand upon what are the levers that you can pull to stem the bleed? Everyone's in the same boat. I totally agree with that. Right now, no one sees any upside short term. We're just trying to understand what you can do to make sure you get through this.
Okay. Look, I think the safe way to answer the first part of your question is we don't assume what the analysts are saying is our cash balance at the end of June is what you say it is. That's the first thing. Secondly, in relation to other levers, we're five months—well, now seven months into operation.
We're starting to understand our wear rates in our plant. We're starting to understand the consumption of key consumables like reagents and all the other reagents that we use for processing. We've stabilized our workforce. There will be mining coming to an end and underground mining started. We're bringing all that together, and we're looking at other options. We're starting our paste fill. We've just secured our cement at a very good price. We'll start factoring all those things in. If we have to push further operating levers, we're confident we can.
Okay. That's fine. Maybe just a very quick one to finish on. Just the admin charge of $20 million, roughly, for the half, it's been there the last three halves now.
Is that sort of what it now takes to run the corporate centre, about AUD 40 million, or can you pull that down quite a lot from here?
Yeah. Thanks, Glyn. We do expect it to drop. Obviously, we've got the ongoing impact of the business optimisation program, and now we have had a couple of one-off costs that we don't expect to repeat. We do expect it to come back. I'd say perhaps we'd probably look at it coming in more around AUD 35 million, something like that. No, I don't expect it to continue at the current level.
Just to build on that, for example, when you're setting up a business, things like installing the enterprise reporting system, the ERP, that's a one-off cost that's in our corporate cost, but will tailor off and disappear. As Jon said, we're expecting that to drop.
Thank you.
Our next question is a text question from Hayden Bairstow from Argonaut. When does the underground ore get fed through the plant?
It's a good question. We've actually got a trial scheduled for this month of about six days. We're putting about 60,000 tonnes, the first parcel, through, and that'll actually help us with the Q4 and the CY 2026 planning. What we've been doing first is prioritizing the ore sorting, potential material, and the other ore. Now we have a decent parcel of underground ore that's just primarily development ore. Let's be very clear. It's not stoping ore. It's development ore. That's grading around about 1.5%. It's good quality, well-represented ore, and we're going to do a decent trial through the plant to see what that looks like.
Just to build on that, some of that will come from this photo.
Secondly, we're very excited about processing this underground ore from sort of three aspects. First, the ore hygiene. It's going to be a lot cleaner. Secondly, fragmentation. We're getting very good fragmentation. Thirdly, grade. It's bloody good grade.
Our next question is an audio question from Adam Baker from Macquarie. Please go ahead after the beep.
Thanks, Tony and team. Maybe that's a good segue into my next question just around the grades from the underground material. You're pretty close to your first maiden stope. Just wondering what sort of underground grades we can expect for these early-stage stopes.
That's a good question. Off the top of my head, they're all around 1.4, north of 1.4.
Okay. Thank you. As a follow-up to that,
1.5 coming out of the development ore, so.
Okay. As a follow-up to that, once these higher underground grades start feeding through the processing plant, you've obviously got your recovery target of 70%. Can you just give some indication how you think recoveries will go with the grades that will presumably ramp- up once the underground material starts coming through?
It's a good question. I think we're still learning the plant as a team, and especially the site team have made some real step changes, the met team, over the last two months and really starting to understand the levers that we pull in that plant to change the outputs. What we're finding, and Tony's already alluded to it, that the number one parameter that we chase is ore cleanliness. The ore cleanliness is probably more important even to plant performance than the grade.
Getting that ore clean and managing that cleanliness, that the ore and what we then add to it in terms of OSP or otherwise, is probably the number one lever. We put an enormous amount of effort into grind, grind size, and the float circuit. We have a number of improvement projects that have already been initiated around grind, grind size, grind improvements, regrind. We're not as, I guess, laser-focused on grade, I guess, as you're sort of alluding to. We're more focused on anything north of, say, 1.2-1.3 that is good, clean ore and that we can consistently feed to the plant. One of the most pleasing things we've seen with the plant performance over the last few months is that availability. The plant hasn't stopped for the last 22 days, I think it is as it sits today.
That availability is what is enabling the team to trial different things within the plant to either tailor the grade or focus on recovery, which is the primary goal. Does that sort of answer what you're after?
I suppose I would add to what Adam has said, Adam, the following. We've given you a target and a timeline to hit that target for recovery. I mentioned earlier on in my presentation that we're delivering good recoveries at a 1.2, 1.3, and I asked you to look at our competitors and see what recoveries they got at that sort of grade. We're very, very comfortable that the plant is doing what we thought it would do, right, especially at those lower grades. As we get better grades from the mine underground, ipso facto.
It won't perform any worse.
It won't perform any worse.
We're hoping it performs better, but until we do it, I'm not putting any numbers out.
Our next question is an audio question from Levi Spry from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hey, Levi. John's still working through the question.
No, I got cut off in my last one about the recovery. I want to ask about the OSP material and how I think about it for FY 2026. If half of the 1.3 million tons stockpile is clean ore, how do we think about the buckets for the other half of that OSP material? Is that upside to potential production for next year, or is it something you work through over the next couple of years? Can you talk us through what you've learned with these trials to date?
What we're learning in these trials is we're trying to ascertain how much of the OSP—how do we process this OSP through the plant? Do we treat it as a discrete product? One week we do just 100% clean, and the other week we do 100% OSP, or do you blend it in on a mixture, 50/50, or 20%, 80%? How much of that OSP do we actually want to ore sort to give an even cleaner blend to act as blending power to improve the OSP and lift its overall percentage? These are the sorts of things. Because we've got that much confidence in the plant, we want to play with those levers. We want to process that OSP material. That is a given for the next 18 months or 12 months because we've paid the mining costs.
It's sitting there, so we want to utilise it, and we can. That's the sort of thinking, Levi. We need to do a bit more work. Once we bring out our guidance in July, we should have a better handle on this.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question is a text question. Several private investors have raised, "Do we foresee issues with the tariffs forthcoming with what is happening in the U.S.A.? Do we see issues with our dealings with the U.S. offtake partners, Ford and Tesla, on this front?"
Okay. I'll answer that. The whole tariff debate and tariff issues that are unfolding in the present time, for us, we're monitoring, but our contracts are long-term, and that's where we're looking. Whatever situations are occurring now, we're not letting it influence our overall strategy. We're in a strong position. We're a tier-one jurisdiction.
We have a good long-term relationship with the U.S., so that's what we're backing.
Our next question is a text question. Several online have asked, "When can Liontown expect to pay dividends?"
That's a very good question. The capital allocation framework is one step towards understanding how we best deploy the capital. I won't give you a date right today because it factors on a number of things, mainly the price. Until we get very confident in our outlook in terms of pricing and the plant where we want it to get, I'm not going to put a number on it. As a significant shareholder personally, and the management team and the board collectively own 18% of this company, it's very much a live opportunity that we look at as well as growing the company.
Our next question is from Melville Leslie. Congratulations to our staff and management on their efforts and achievements under the duress of shortages, and thank you for the efforts on our behalf. Do we have any feedback from our largest private holders as to her intentions towards our company of champions?"
Thank you. In terms of our largest shareholder, we keep a very open dialogue with her management team. As I've previously mentioned on a number of occasions, having Australia's wealthiest person on our register is a positive, and we see it that way as a board and company. During presentations like this and our quarterly announcements, we will present to them like we do most investors and shareholders around our results and performance, and they've been very positive and cooperative.
Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions. I will now pass back to Tony for closing remarks.
Thank you, Billy. Thank you for the listeners, and thank you to the investors and analysts for the great questions. I hope you've got an appreciation. We're working hard here to deliver a great result in a very tough environment. We're optimistic. We're energetic. We won't let the macro conditions deter us from what we can control, and we will relentlessly continue to pursue the key levers to drive a better business. Thanks, everyone.