Welcome to Liontown Resources June quarter results call. Following the formal presentation, there will be a Q&A session for investors, analysts, 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 bottom 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 will be replaced by the Audio Questions 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 question via the web, a backup phone line is available. Dial-in details can be found on the Request to Speak page or on the home page under Asking Audio Questions.
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Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining the Liontown quarterly and our full year results presentation. Joining me is Graeme Pettit, our Interim CFO , Adam Smits, our Chief Operating Officer, and Grant Donald, our Chief Commercial Officer.
If you can move to the first s lide, please, that's the usual disclaimer. Now I'd like to set the context for today's presentation. Before I do that, I think it's important that we sort of reflect on the years just gone. I mean, we started production in July, but if we look at the macro environment, we've seen the price of spodumene fall 36% and it's fallen even further in the last quarter. Notwithstanding, we've seen some green shoots in the last couple of weeks. It's a very volatile environment and it's just best reflected by the fact that the spodumene price went up AUD 60 a ton on Friday and it came down AUD 50 a ton last night. This is the macro environment we've had to ramp into and what we can control is the way we perform and our business, and we've got to execute and execute well.
We've seen that through two operational levers that we've had to pull. Firstly, our business optimization and we've got a slide in that today. Secondly, the performance of the plant. We've effectively ramped up the plant in six months and then had five months to optimize the plant so that it can treat our strategic stockpile that we've spoken about. We valued that stockpile six months ago at AUD 93 million. That stockpile is a combination of our open pit, some underground ore and our OSP material, which is effectively our low-grade, high-gabbro ore material. The plant's had to, we've had to tune the plant in order to understand the operating settings that will see us going to FY 2026. Notwithstanding that, if we look at our demonstrated capability, we've delivered 320,000 tons of concentrate in 11 months, which is an outstanding effort for a plant in ramp-up.
That's 294,000 tons on a dry basis, because that's what we get paid on. In terms of physical production, we produced over 320,000 tons. The underground operation has commenced on schedule. We've delivered AUD 125 million of cost savings and deferrals against a AUD 100 million target. We've got a robust cash balance of AUD 156 million. We've delivered on our second half guidance for all-in sustaining costs. Even more pleasing, in this last quarter, our net cash flow from operating activities was a record of AUD 23 million. We've also provided in this presentation our look ahead for FY 2026. We've said for some time that FY 2026 is a transition year as we bring the open pit to closure and we ramp up the underground. We've also had to continue our business optimization because of the market and the way it is.
Finally, the last point, we must maintain a relentless focus on maximizing value, the focus on cash, and we'll continue to do that in FY 2026. We've also got one eye on the future and all our expansion options are preserved in the event we see a market rebound. Next slide, please. Next one, please. Okay, here's a summary of FY 2025. We've further strengthened our ESG credentials and we've got a slide that shows that today. As I've mentioned, we've produced over 320,000 tonnes of concentrate and we've done that in 11 months. The plant has ramped up and performed reliably and has given us flexible options, which we'll talk about later in the presentation. We've commenced our underground operations and there's no surprises there. Things are progressing well. Those of you that are on the site visit on Thursday will see that firsthand.
We're on track to conclude our underground operations at the end of this year. We're responding very quickly to a volatile market, as demonstrated in our cost savings today and the way we've preserved cash. Next slide, please. Okay, ESG at a headline level, we've hurt fewer people this year than we did last year. In fact, we've hurt fewer people in the last quarter than we did last year. The results are not where they need to be and we will continue to focus on this. It's an ongoing focus, actually. The pleasant thing is not only are we focused on lag indicators like TRIFR and lost time injury frequency rate, we're also getting our leadership focusing on the lead behaviors, the observations that we need to do, the field leadership we need to do on the ESG front.
Consistently, we are delivering between 79% and 82% renewable power into our operations. There are times where we run solely on renewable power for a dial sum. Our diversity, we continue to maintain the focus on getting equality of gender in our workplace or, more importantly, diversity of thinking. Next slide, please. I will now turn to Adam Smits who will talk through the physicals that we delivered not only for the quarter, but also for the year.
Thanks, Tony. Good morning, everyone. I think the number one point I'd like to make, reading this slide, is that as Tony's already alluded to, we've only been in operation 11 months. That's not a defensive comment, that is just a statement of fact. These figures very much reflect, certainly the annualized figures reflect the annualized and how we've done over the last 11 months from startup of a brand new operation, with a brand new team, with a brand new plant and ramping it up at that time. In terms of the quarter that's just gone, just over 85,000 tonnes of concentrate produced. Sales of just under 100,000. Lithium recovery this quarter was a little bit down versus Q3, and we flagged that in Q3 where we said we were going to deliberately be processing our OSP. I've got a little bit about that later in the slide deck.
We processed just over 600,000 tonnes of ore through the processing plant. That's a run rate of about 2.5 million tonnes per annum on an annualized basis, and June alone represents an annualized run rate of about 2.7 million tonnes. You see you've got this brand new plant that is already running at a not far off nameplate. In terms of the year, as Tony's alluded to or mentioned, 320,000 wet metric tonnes of concentrate produced in 11 months. Without being anecdotal, we don't know how many more startups have produced that in the first year of operation. Concentrate sales of just under 300,000, annual recovery 58%. That was a tale of two halves. Half one was 55, half two was 60. We processed just over 2 million tonnes. Again, a total of two halves. Half one was about 0.8 million, half two was 1.2.
You can see the steady improvement and the continuous improvement in the plant through that period. The other thing that isn't on this slide, but it's really critical to mention, and I think it really reinforces the money and the time and the effort we spent in the early phase of the project, is our availability for the plant for 2H25 was 93%. Just think about that for a second. Brand new processing plant, 93% availability. Very much the newness has worn off in half two. Not only was it built well, but it's been maintained and operated well. I think that's a key point to make. Next slide, please. In terms of underground, this is very much a key focus of everyone, Tony down. The key focus is getting that underground to ramp up. Because as Tony said, the open pit finishes in December of this year.
Underground is very much about being ready. You can't just turn an underground mine up and expect it to produce the tonnes. You have to plan, and we've been planning for years to be where we are today. The infrastructure that's going in and the development that's going in is all planned well and truly in advance. What we are seeing now that we're out underground and we have done significant development is the ground conditions are excellent. We thought they were excellent from the geotech work. The priming will be excellent. Our mesh and bolting and the ground support we're putting in is per the budget. We've had no surprises.
The initial stopes that we've drilled. Blasted and mined now are sort of running between 4.5 tonnes and 8.5 tonnes per meter of drilling. It's what we planned. We're getting great fragmentation. You can see that in the bottom left picture. Our enabling infrastructure's on track. There's AUD 100 million in that base plant. Between the contract we let and the owner's costs, that's Australia's biggest paste bay and it's been being built and commissioned in advance of requirements. Ventilation is now nearing completion. You can see that in the top left picture there. That's a AUD 15 million investment just in ventilation and primary ventilation. Probably 18 months to two years of planning to have that in place today when we need it. Our productivity underground for the jumbos, we've been touting that for some time. That continues at that pace.
Even though we are now stoping, paste filling, and doing a whole bunch of other activities underground, we continue to focus on the mine in terms of making it efficient. We've stuck with our dual declines. We're looking forward to getting some bigger stopes coming through in the back half of 2026, up to sort of 40,000 tonnes. Stopes at 80,000 within the next two years. We've already ramped that underground up to a run rate as of sort of today of about 0.6 million tonnes per annum in sort of three and a half months. In the next two to three months that'll be closer to one. At the end of Q3 it'll be about 1.5. It shows there's a real progression of that underground mine and there has to be because the open pit is finishing and that's where our focus is. Next slide, please.
This is something that Tony alluded to back in November last year. We really pivoted in the low cost environment to focus on how do we pull spend out of what w e're going to what we were going t o put out the door going forwards.
One of the biggest levers we pulled was cutting back on development and revising our mine plans so that we dove down to the higher grade, thicker zones of the ore body faster. What that meant was we took a lot of development out, we slowed the overall development down, and it put a little bit more pressure or it made us pivot to processing our ROM and our OSP stockpiles earlier. We reduced our target in terms of what the concentrate that we were going to produce from sort of 6 to 5.2. It makes more money and it certainly saves more money in terms of development. We commenced trialing how we would best treat this OSP material. Now this OSP material is essentially clean or mixed with the gabbro, which is the host rock, in anything between 5% and 30%+ .
For those that are not aware, that gabbro is very, very, I guess, negative in terms of processing recovery. It's hungry in power and it's hungry in reagents. In terms of, I guess, our peer companies that run DMS and DMS float circuits, they simply cannot process much over 5% because the actual SG of the gabbro is very near the SG of the spodumene. You literally have no selectivity. What we've demonstrated over the last few months is our ability to not only sort, which many others are doing and there is some benefit of ore sorting, but we've also demonstrated the ability of the plant to take direct OSP feed in levels of north of 20%. The graph to the right there shows that we're still making saleable grade concentrate at levels 15%- 20% gabbro.
This is truly, truly, truly impressive. It reflects the massive effort of the team on site and it reflects the flexibility of the plant to handle this type of feed and it gives us another lever to pull in terms of what we do with the OSP. The OSP is very much a finite issue. It's very much an open pit mining problem to have. If you ask any of our peers that have open pit mines, they will tell you that we're certainly not seeing that percentage of OSP coming from underground. In fact, quite the opposite. We continue to work with that OSP and will do for 1H26. The messaging to all that are listening is that we have a plan and we've got it under control and we're making it work. Not only are we making it work, we're making it work w ell.
I think I'll hand over to G raeme at that point.
Next slide please.
Thanks, Adam. Good morning to everybody on the call. This slide outlines some of the key financial highlights for both the current quarter and also the year to date. Starting with cash, we generated positive cash flow from operating activities for the quarter of AUD 23 million, which was particularly pleasing given the challenging pricing environment. This is the third consecutive positive cash flow from operating activities reported since the commencement of operations just under a year ago. Our closing cash balance remains strong at AUD 156 million and excludes the return of AUD 25 million used to cash back a guaranteed facility that was mentioned in last quarter's presentation. These funds are now expected to be received during the next quarter.
Quarter o n quarter, a closing cash balance declined by AUD 17 million, or approximately 10%. I'll discuss the movements in the cash balance in a bit more detail on the next slide. Running through the quarterly financial stats, revenue was AUD 96 million, which represents an 8% decrease quarter on quarter and reflects a decrease in average realized price offset by a small volume increase. The Q4 average realized price of $633 per DMT SIF, which was $75 lower than the previous quarter in AUD terms. The average realized price was AUD 9.84 per DMT which represents an 11% decrease Q on Q. The average concentrate grade shipped remained in line with the previous two quarters at 5.2%. Unit operating costs of AUD 898 per DMT sold FOB and all-in sustaining costs of AUD 1,227 per DMT sold FOB were mainly impacted by an inventory charge reflective of the drawdown in stockpiles.
As we had outlined in the Q3 quarterly presentation, we had expected to see an increase in unit operating costs in Q4 as we reintroduced ore sorting and drew down the stockpiles. I won't spend time on the year to date financial stats, but what I want to draw your attention to is the note in the quarterly report discussing ROM ore stockpile valuation. Through the preparation of our FY 2025 full year financial statements, we identified the requirement to adjust the carrying value of our ore inventories down to their net realizable value. The adjustment of between AUD 75 million and AUD 85 million is in accordance with our accounting policies and mainly relates to our OSP inventories. I just want to make it clear that this is a non-cash accounting adjustment and is driven by the current low lithium price environment.
The write-down does not impact our reported unit operating costs or AISC and the production of OSP as Adam mentioned is mainly associated with the open pit mine which is scheduled for completion in December 2025. Next slide please.
Just before we go off this slide, if I can just reinforce a point that Graeme has made that AUD 23 million of net cash from operating activities is the highest figure we've done so far, but that is on the backdrop of a price that has dropped AUD 75 a ton, our realized price. To put that into context, it's a better outcome at a lower price and that just reflects the business optimization work and our focus on cash.
Next slide please. This slide has a cash flow waterfall that broadly shows in chart form the same information that is in the 5B cash flow statement that we released today. We provide an additional split on investing activities to clarify the working capital benefit of drawing down on stockpiles. Starting at the left of the waterfall, we had a positive cash flow from operating activities of AUD 23 million this week. Outlined as Adam mentioned before, the underground mine commenced production stopping during April, so this is the first quarter where we have started to see some underground mining costs flow through the operating cash flows. Cash flows from investing activities was AUD 49 million for the quarter and we've provided an indicative split based on the cost weightings.
Growth capital was estimated at AUD 30 million and mainly covers the initial tailings storage facility construction costs and underground infrastructure and development cost. As mentioned, underground operating costs have started to flow through the operating activities. However, given where the underground is at in its development and ramp up, it's not yet reached commercial production for accounting purposes and it's not expected to do so until Q3 FY 2026. Sustaining capital mainly related to open pit, deferred waste and minor capital projects. The open pit is planned to continue to focus on waste stripping throughout the next quarter before reaching the final major ore zone in Q2 FY 2026. Cash flows from financing included the proceeds of a AUD 15 million loan gratefully received from the WA State Government under the Lithium Industry Support Program. The loan is interest free and repayable over two years.
Following the end of the interest free period, we have highlighted a cash AISC of AUD 1,099 per DMT sold. This was done to highlight that our reported AISC of AUD 1,227 per DMT sold for this quarter is being inflated by non-cash inventory charges and as a result the actual cash unit cost that we realized for the quarter was lower. Finally, we ended the quarter with a strong AUD 156 million closing cash balance and 11,000 tonnes of concentrate on hand. Turning to the next slide please, this slide outlines our actual performance for H2 FY 2025 against the guided ranges. For context, we provided our H2 guidance three months after turning on the processing plants. Very few producers provide guidance during ramp up as we have running through the cost metrics.
Concentrate sold on an SC6 basis was 165,000 DMT, which was 3% below the bottom end of guidance, partially impacted by the lower concentrate production. Concentrate produced on an SC6 basis was 155,000 DMT, which was 9% below the bottom end of guidance. This was a result of lower OSP recoveries than initially contemplated when guidance was given, and Adam, this covered off how we've been dealing with that unit. Operating costs on an SC6 basis were AUD 931/DMT, which was 9% over the top end of guidance. This was mainly a result of the lower production and high inventory charge resulting from a drawdown on inventories. Total capital expenditure was AUD 94 million, which is 3% below the bottom of guidance and partly reflects capital reductions and deferrals from the business optimization program. Finally, when taken together, AISC on an SC6 basis was AUD 1,256/DMT, which was within the guidance range.
Although there were a few misses to guidance, the outcome should be viewed in the context of a new facility being ramped up and a challenging pricing environment requiring operational adaptations. To that end, we are pleased with what has been achieved. I'll now hand back over to Tony.
Thanks, Graeme. Just to set the scene, we're now moving to FY 2026, and what we're seeing with FY 2026, as we've said for some time, it is a transition year and we're ramping up the underground. I'll now hand over to Adam. That will give you some color as to what we're seeing in FY 2026.
Next slide, please. Thanks, Danny. I think I alluded to a little bit earlier, but I think the 2026 is very much a transition year. The big focus is on enabling infrastructure. A learning for me as a non-mining engineer is how much infrastructure and how much pre-planning needs to go into one of these underground mines. Our team, certainly, who many have been on board now nearly three years, have certainly done that work and that's why the infrastructure is coming on as planned in this quarter. That includes the ventilation, which should kick off in about a week's time. The first big vent fans will be brought online.
Our biggest stopes will kick in in the back half of 2026, where we're talking north of 40,000 tonnes per stope, and that'll enable us to get that sort of ore delivery out of underground that we need to support the processing plant. We're looking at completing the open pit on schedule in December this year. The better ore from that pit now comes out in October, November, and December. That's a project, or that's a contract, that was let nearly three years ago that basically has finished almost within a month of the date that we awarded it. It's a pretty stellar achievement by Pete and his team. With the open pit, we're still targeting our recovery of over 70% in Q3. People may ask, given that we're 57% for the quarter, how we're going to do that.
It is very much ore related, and I've got a slide that talks to that. Clean ore equals better recovery, and we've already demonstrated that in Q3 of 2025, and all of our ore will be coming from underground as of Q3 in 2026, and we're on track to achieve that. In terms of the processing plant, we think our availability is best in class. 96% feed on, feed off availability is truly sensational. We're restructuring the ROM pad. Currently, the ROM pad initially was set up as an all stockpile. Given the way the ore came out of the open pit, it is now being very much set up around feeding the crusher and reducing tramming distances. The processing plant had a lot of tech built into it when we started up, including an on-stream analyzer from Metso.
That technology has taken us a while to get it to work, and it is now working. We are now trending lithium online. We haven't stopped there. We've continued to spend money and deploy capital on things that make sense. We've just through the final stages now of an advanced control system on the mill called Manta that enables us to control grind significantly better than just the standard PLC. We've also just installed what we think is Australasia's first online particle analyzer using cameras in pipes that give us a particle size distribution every 20 seconds. It's pretty revolutionary technology and we continue to push these types of projects through. You may have seen a recent video where we're talking about a regrind mill that should be commissioned in August where we're looking at regrinding a fraction of our tailings.
Again, focused on recovery and we continue to refine how we process that OSP. OSP is a very finite issue as I mentioned, but we continue to focus on what proportion we sort, what proportion we feed, and whether we blend or direct feed to the mill. Next slide please. I mentioned earlier a tale of two halves. FY 2026 is very much a tale of two halves. Half one is very much focused on processing those stockpiles, completing the open pit, and fitting in the underground. That's half one. Half two is very much focused on ramping up that underground and really cashing in on the benefits of that clean underground ore. That's why we're so confident that we're going to get that sort of 70% recovery based on the work we've already done processing straight underground ore through the plant.
First half of FY 2026 is obviously ramping down that open pit production. We finish in December. We've still got about 400,000 tonnes of clean ore to come out of the pit. We're continuing the focus on maintenance. We've just had a large maintenance shutdown in the plant that was not maintenance per se, but a lot of it was actually improvements to the plant to make it even better. We continue to optimize that OSP strategy over the next two quarters in terms of Q3 and Q4 of FY 2026. It's all about scaling up that underground. The underground is very much about scalability. We've built that scalability into it in terms of the dual declines, the level development, and even the equipment mobilization. The contract we put in place over two years ago with Byrnecut is very much structured around ramping up the underground. We continue to focus on availability.
To put that in perspective, the underground is sort of producing say 70,000 tonnes- 100,000 tonnes a month currently, and 36 stopes in the first half. It'll be ramping to 100,000 tonnes-1 70,000 tonnes per month at about 48 stopes in the second half. That ramps up to 230,000 tonnes a month and sort of 80, 90 stopes annually in 2027. You can see there's a plan. It's the same plan that we've had in place for a while, and we continue to execute that plan and we continue to be ahead of the plan. I think that's a key learning or a key driver of how we've always gone about business at Liontown is to be ahead of the curve and ahead of where we need to be.
That's where we are, or we believe we are, with the underground in terms of the infrastructure, the people, the systems, and just the general ramp up that we're pushing.
Thanks, Adam. We come to the next slide. Adam's got one more slide to do. I do want to say I want to thank Adam. This will be his last quarterly with us. I am deeply indebted to Adam and his entire commitment to the organization. You can see he loves the technical stuff. He is the engineer's engineer, and I can say that because I am one. I want to thank you, Adam, for your work you've done and the way you've set us up. Okay, we move into FY 2026. There's a lot of stuff that we've already discovered, but there are two points that I want to draw out here.
Firstly, the first half and the continuous focus on the OSP and get those stockpiles out of the way so we can set ourselves up for the really prime and good quality underground materials so that we can maximize our recoveries. The second bit is the Q1 scheduled shutdowns for the mill and the dry plant. Now that's planned. We've been operating the mill for over a year now and we needed to go in and do the scheduled maintenance. If you look at the actual parameters for FY 2026 and the guidance, I mean the production, if you take the midpoint, it's a 39% increase from this year. It is a significant increase. The costs, a lot of that costs associated with drawing down the stockpiles. Again, the focus on cash maximization.
Okay. There is no change to our recovery target and our underground plan production.
If we move to the next slide, please. We'll ask Adam to finish off on this one.
Yeah. One of the key mine takeaways for FY 2026 is that it's really a transitionary year, and that's to be low cost and scalable by FY 2027. The plant or the underground is designed for scale. We've de-risked, or we are de-risking progressively, the underground, and we've been doing that since day one. The target of the underground is always a lower cost per tonne. What do I mean by designed for scale? We put dual declines in from day one. We know we've got big stopes, and they're coming in half two, FY 2026, where we crack the 40,000 mark and up to 80,000 in the next two years. That's 80,000 tonnes from a single stope versus the smaller stopes we're hitting now, which are around the 10,000 tonne mark. We also hit the bulk levels where we've got over 125,000 kilotonnes of material per vertical meter.
You can see the annualized production run rate. We're already at about 0.5 today, 0.6 actually by the end of this month. We're going to crack a million tonnes in the next couple of months, and then at the end of March, about 1.5 million tonnes. That comes with a combination of equipment, mobilization, systems, and actually a lot of prior planning and a lot of development that we've been doing over the last few years to drive that type of ramp. It doesn't come just because you throw a few more bits of equipment down underground. It comes because you've actually got a plan for it. You can see this in other companies' results over the last 12 months. If you don't have the levels available, if you don't have the space available underground, you can't physically ramp that underground up. We've planned for that from day one.
In terms of the de-risking, I think a lot of the de-risking has focused heavily on infrastructure. It's focused heavily on people, and where we've seen gaps, we've bolstered the team. That's happened in the last quarter as well. We're pushing very hard not only on the physicals, but also the people and systems. What does all that give us? It gives us that lower cost per tonne. FY 2026 is very much about development. It's a lot more development going in underground, it's about 12,000 m going in, 8,500 m, sorry, going in in FY 2026 versus about 7,000 m in the last 12 months. That's very much focused on staying ahead of the curve. We're obviously ready for that expansion, 2.8 to 4. We haven't lost sight of that. It's very much price dependent. Where the price goes is where the price goes.
Certainly the mine's always been designed to expand, and we've just got the ability to turn that on and off. I don't think there's much more to say on that. Thank you.
Thank you, Adam. If we move to the next slide, please. This is where we sort of wrap up, you know, the continual continuing. Let's focus on maximizing value. We go to the next slide, please. We promised the market that we would deliver on our cost out targets, and we delivered 112 m, a target of 100 m. The split is 71 m which is recurring and then 41 m as a result of deferring. A lot of the deferral was due to the northwest flats being pushed out and all the development costs associated with northwest flats. In 2026, the focus continues. We've got our. The market is what it is. If we look at where we will tackle this next horizon of cost optimization and business optimization, it will be around better sourcing of our product and our consumables.
Buy better, improve the outcomes of our top 10 contracts, a lot of them done during the peak market, and removing waste and duplication in our processes and activities. We've got our program underway at the moment which will continue through 2026 and deliver outcomes. Go to the next one, please. Okay, now we'll turn over to Grant Donald, who will take us through the next two slides. Thank you, Grant.
Thanks, Tony. Look, we thought it was worth emphasizing the extremely attractive debt package that we secured from customers. This is covenant-light and it's a real differentiator for us versus bank debt or project finance debt. If we can start with the Ford facility, the AUD 300 million debt facility had no interest payments until the offtake started, which means the accumulated unaudited balance is at AUD 336 million as at the end of June 2025. The term is five years from the start of the offtake, which was agreed at Ford's request to be 1 July 2025, meaning the debt matures in June 2030. 60% of the principal is annotated over the five-year term with a 40% loan repayment at maturity. The interest rate is 1.5% above BBSW, which is equivalent to about 5.6% today.
The first interest and principal repayment is due at the end of September 2025 now that the offtake has commenced. Moving to the LG Energy Solution convertible note, this is denominated in U.S. dollars to match our revenue line. Again, a five-year term, it's $250 million, equivalent to around AUD 370 million at the time of conversion. The share price conversion is AUD 1.80 and interest rate on this is so far flat, which is currently around 4.3%. This also has biannual interest, which is capitalized for the first two years, after which Liontown can pay any cash or equity until maturity of the facility in July 2029. Deciding to use customer-backed financing to build Kathleen Valley has given us really good alignment with customers who also want to secure the product for the long-term supply chains they're building.
We believe this is a competitive advantage versus where we would have been if we'd taken a traditional debt finance from project financiers. Next slide please. We'll finish on the market. In the short term, we are beginning. To see signs of a policy shift to halt the irrational competition or involution as it's termed. This shift was signaled by Premier Li Qiang at a State Council meeting in mid-July, and this year it was specifically referenced as relates to the EV sector, emphasizing a shift towards quality and innovation as opposed to price cutting.
Local authorities have also been directed to discourage overinvestment in redundant projects, and this has filtered through to a number of audits or restrictions placed on lithium producers in China, which is impacting the supply side. You can see the very tangible impact of these stories on futures exchange in China on the lifetime chart. On the demand side, the company continues to see a robust outlook for lithium, underpinned by strong demand for high quality spodumene concentrate.
In the first six months of 2025, lithium demand has continued its double-digit growth rates, driven by strong electric vehicle sales and battery energy storage systems. Global EV sales increased by 28%. To put that in context, that's the equivalent of 2 million more EVs sold, taking the total to 9 million sales in the first half. The silent sleeper here is really the battery energy storage systems, where installations have increased by 54% year on year. BESS is set to be a very material driver of demand on a go-forward basis. We tried to show this in the chart on the right-hand side to show you that one out of every four incremental units of lithium demand over the next five years is going to battery energy storage. In summary, our view is that the current lithium price environment really reflects an evolving supply-demand dynamic.
We anticipate a return to more normalized conditions as demand continues its robust long-term growth trajectory. Thanks, Tony.
Thanks, Grant. If I can go to the final slide before we open up for Q and A. Just to summarize our position as the CEO, I'm very proud of what we've been able to achieve since we started production in July of last year. We've had to battle that ramp up against a very, very tough low price environment. I think the team has done an outstanding job in getting us there. The focus has been where the focus should be, and that is to perform well and operate as best we can with preserving cash. We've done that with a cash balance of AUD 156 million at the end of June. We know what we've got in front of us in FY 2026. Adam's already articulated how we're planned and we're well positioned to deliver on those outcomes.
Finally, the relentless focus on maximizing value should be a theme regardless of the market, but it is even more in sharp relief as we enter in this period of uncertainty. With that, I open the line for Q and A. Thank you.
Thanks, Tony. If you have not yet submitted your text question or joined the live audio queue, please do so now. We kindly ask that today's questions are limited to two per person. 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 Adam Baker from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi Daniel. Tony, thanks for the call. Thanks. Sorry, got my name wrong there. Just very interested in the slide on page 14 with the underground ramp up, with your run rates, you know, getting to that 370 kt by the 3Q FY 2026 and then you've got your progressive ramp up to the 2.8 million tonnes by the fourth year FY 2027. Just wondering what sort of drop off we see in the milling rates in that first half of FY 2027 as you're kind of dovetailing that ramp up in underground and that's offset obviously by the reduction in stockpiles and the remaining open pit material and what a kind of percentage of reduction in throughput plant capacity that would be.
I think there isn't a drop off. We tried to keep it steady state, which is how we're managing the stockpiles and the transition.
The mill rate will be the underground production.
Correct.
Okay. It appears just on the Y axis it's dropping off a little bit. Maybe that's just my.
Very much. Yeah, the annualized rate is stylized. The annualized rate for 2027 is 2.8.
Thank you. Just secondly, on the offtake with Ford, I just saw that there was an agreement to resell 150,000 tonnes of spodumene. Do you think there'll be any future agreement to resell more spodumene offtake? If that did occur, would there be a change in the timings of the P&L repayments?
Go ahead.
Yeah, look, thanks Adam. I guess the reality is the EV landscape has changed materially over the last few years, and we saw an opportunity for us to place these tonnes on behalf of Ford with another customer who wanted the product. Ultimately, that is ongoing business as usual as far as we are concerned. If we see an opportunity to place product with a different customer for more value and it works for everyone, then those are opportunities we would pursue. I don't think that necessarily is any portent of the future. I think that's just what we've done in the short term given the current demand position that Ford has for its own internal consumption.
The next question is from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs.
Morning, Hugo.
Good morning, Tony and team. Thanks for the update. Congrats on your first year of production. First one from me, Tony. You've always focused on giving volume and cost on an SC6 basis, noting your FY 2026 guidance today is on a 5.2% basis on production and costs. Why the change?
We, being consistent with the rest of our competitors, have found that it's been a challenge to continually revert to SC6. Frankly, if the product we're producing is 5.2%, that's the cost structure that it's based on. It's basically falling into line with the rest of the market.
Got it. We've kind of moved to the same as everyone else does. That makes sense. On the cost savings piece, you've touched on a little bit already. Can we just confirm whether you've now changed rosters and reagents already and if that's in the AUD 71 million of recurring savings, and then maybe just elaborate a bit more on what magnitude of cost savings you expect to get through FY 2026 from buying and sourcing better and removing duplication.
Yeah. The rosters remain unchanged, so it's not included in that figure. The reagents, we still have the reagent that we've been using. We've been playing around with consumption rates, so that is still an opportunity to look at an alternative reagent, but we need to do a bit more test work and that's planned for FY 2026. In terms of a target for FY 2026, we haven't put anything out there because we're still working it through to establish the size of the price. Until that work is done, Hugo, I'm not prepared to put a target out.
The next question is from Lyndon Fagan from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much for the call. G'day, Tony. Just looking at your cost guidance, I guess if I take the midpoint, multiplied by the midpoint of production, we've got site cost just under AUD 400 million. I'm wondering if that's kind of setting the benchmark going forward to operate the site. Obviously, underground ramps up, open pit ramps off. Maybe you could give us a bit more of a sense of what the dollar million looks like as a pure underground. Just trying to get a handle on this number to try and forecast forward.
Excuse me t he AUD 400 million is a fair representation of the gross costs going forward. Underground basically replaces the open pit for FY 2026, and we roll around broadly within that AUD 400 million range.
Volume goes up.
Yes, volume goes up.
Volume goes up.
Yep, yep, got it. Okay, that's helpful, thanks. Yeah, look, that's pretty much all I had. Thanks, guys.
You're going to change your rating on us, Lind. Next question. Thanks.
The next question is from Kate McCutcheon from Citi, please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, Tony and team. The next two quarters, you've got the OSP material going through in your all-in sustaining cost. What is that stockpile adjustment component, please?
Just so I'm clear, Kate, and good morning, are we talking about the adjustment to the carrying value of the stockpile, or are we talking about how much of the unit cost is the inventory piece?
The latter. In that dollar per tonne asset, what amount is the stockpile adjustment?
Got it. Kate, we estimated between AUD 40 and AUD 50 per tonne on an AISC basis.
Thank you. In slide 16, you've told us that you expect FOB cost to come down 20%-2 5% in 2027. That implies a little over AUD 800 a ton , which is kind of similar to Lyndon's question. Is that level of cost out also how we should think about all-in sustaining costs, and would it be unfair to assume that's a level going forward?
A lot of the drop in FY 2027 is because we start getting efficiencies. A lot of the mining costs underground are fixed, and as we ramp up volumes, we wash the fixed costs more cleanly over more tonnes from a sort of go forward perspective. I think as you can see in the middle chart there, we do have high capital development costs at the moment, and we expect those to moderate over time.
As we've previously, just to build on what Graeme said, Kate, as we move into the thicker bulk zones of the ore body, which we anticipate doing in the back end of FY 2026 and into 2027, we will definitely get economies of scale. We will be able to wash over the fixed costs of the contract mining over more tonnes as we get into those larger stopes.
Yes, standing on a gross basis will drop over time.
Yeah.
The next question is from Glyn Lawcock from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Tony
did not do the thing for you.
Sorry I missed that, Tony. You broke up.
Did you notice we did that cash flow calculation for you in our cash flow?
That was very much appreciated. Good to see you appreciate my skid mass, Tony.
Yes, we did.
Which everyone's talking about now, just not calling it skid mass. If you go back to Linden and Kate's questions though, it's AUD 400 million spend. Your inventory movement actually sits in your cost of production as per your prior guidance, I assume. The AUD 400 million, given you've got, well, you had AUD 100 million of inventory. Your AUD 40-A UD 50 a tonne inventory movement to Kate's question only suggests AUD 20 million, is that right? I would have thought the AUD 400 million, you should be able to pull quite a bit of inventory down with new over 2026. What is the dollar millions figure that you expect will be inventory movement?
I don't have that number with me, Glyn, but the estimate of AUD 40, AUD 50 is over a higher sort of sales base, and it's, you know, we only bet we consume most of those inventory units in the first half. Yeah, apologies, I don't have the gross number to have.
The way to look at it, Glyn, is the inventory drawdown will be an exercise in two halves. We'll have a lot of it in this first half of FY 2026, and as you can see from our results of FY 2025, we did a drawdown in FY 2025. As we ramp up the underground, there will be much more pulling coming out of that inventory. In the back half of FY 2026, it will be predominantly fed from the underground.
I'm now building inventory over time so that AUD 40 is a net inventory charge that rolls through. You don't see the full whack of the drawdown.
I guess I'm just trying to, if I run a very simple model of the midpoints of all your guidance including CapEx, et cetera, plus all the interest payments, principal payments, you're going to spend over AUD 660 million this year before inventory adjustment. That means your break even is about AUD 1,050 U.S. a ton on an SC6 equivalent basis just based on your guidance, just running the skid math, saying you haven't had chance to do that.
Yeah, what's the question?
I guess you know that would at today's price of AUD 800 a ton, cash burn of AUD 100, got AUD 156. That's fine because I guess just you know like what are you doing? You've got your extra AUD 100 million of debt you're allowed to get. Maybe you can get Ford to defer. I'm just curious, what are you doing to make sure you have additional liquidity.
Okay, so that's the question. Look, there's a couple of things we're going to focus on. Clearly we're going to focus more on cost optimization and we're going to pull that lever. The second thing is, you know, we've got a strong balance to start with, AUD 156 million. Thirdly, you know, we've got a track record. There's a bit of a price improvement, but we've also got a track record of finding funding solutions with our customers and other parties. We will continue to look at those funding options as we progress forward. As simple as that. It depends really on where the market goes.
Yeah, and Glyn, just to add to that, I mean we haven't pulled the lever on pre-tenders like a lot of our peers have done. We, you know, as we've just demonstrated in 2027 and beyond, we have a significant amount of more volume to place. You know, that could be spot, could be long-term offtake. You know, we still have quite a lot of options ahead of us.
The next question is from Stuart Howe at Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Team, just a question and apologies if this has been asked, but the guidance balance for first half versus second half because you've got a rough percentage split across those, and obviously taking into account the shutdown in Q1, and I'm assuming also costs will be correspondingly conversely balanced to that.
Sorry, Stewie, you're sort of a bit muffled, but can you tell us, you want to know what the cost split is between the first and second half of FY 2026?
Sorry, no, the production balance between first half and second half of FY 2026.
Right. It will be more back ended, so I don't have that figure off.
We've got about 170,000 in there at the first half and then 250,000 in the back.
Yeah. Within range. Just look. Yes, sure.
Just on plant flexibility, you've obviously pointed to the ability to sort, to use the ore sorting material and process that pretty well. That's great for obviously this coming fiscal year. Once you enter underground, only those flexibility benefits probably fall away. Are there other ways we can think about how you might be able to use that going forward from an underground only perspective?
I think the point that we were trying to make there, Stu, is that the ore sorting product material is essentially an open pit phenomenon where in open pit about 30% of what you mine will typically report to this OSP category. As we go underground, by definition we'll be far more surgical in our product extraction and we won't have anywhere near this amount of OSP to deal with. We'll just blend whatever OSP material we get from the underground. It'll just form part of the blend going forward.
The next question is from Reg Spencer from Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Not sure whether Reggie's. Hey, Tony, Grant, and Tone, thanks very much. Forgive me if you've covered off on this, but I just wanted to dive into recoveries and the OSP between now and Q3 FY 2026, when you expect recoveries to start to pick up. What you delivered in the June quarter, should that be indicative of expectations on recoveries in terms of that blend of OSP?
Yeah, good question, Reg. I think we're targeting around 60%- 65% over the half one as we progressively put more clean ore i n the back of the half. Q1 will be sort of 55 %-60% . Is a real number to use, and then Q2 of 2026 will be slightly better, and likewise Q3 and Q4. It's about the focus to get a lot of that OSP done and dusted this calendar year.
Yeah.
That's by accommodation.
That's good to help me,
Ying, and all sorting. Not just straight feed. That's why we.
That's great. Thanks very much, Adam and Tony. That's super helpful. I'll pass it on.
The next question comes from Andrew Harrington from Petra Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gents. Well done, Tony and team. My question's more about what's happening with logistics. As you're ramping up, what are your challenges or how smoothly or otherwise are things going with ground transport, the port shipping, what's happening with those costs? If you can provide some color on that, that'd be useful.
Yeah, no problem. Look at logistics side, you know, we made a very deliberate decision to use Too. You know, they're a very established operator, very professional. We're using quad road train, so four trailers take 140 tons per truck, road truck, and you know, we're cycling through those. They do a figure of eight loop between Mount Magnet and site and then Mount Magnet and Geraldton. Everyone gets to sleep in their own bed. The logistics so far have been extremely smooth and efficient. Of course, you know, Geraldton's known for having some swells and weather activity, but you know, that's all just part of going out Geraldton. On occasion there's a bit of a rush at the end of the year, but no, no problem so far.
I think to add to that, a key part of that contract with Qube, which is not only the logistics strength, but also the contract included an established shared and outload facility at the port, which is fairly unique. A previous facility that was built by others, but massive difference to just rolling up as a new customer in the port. You already had an established outload facility and 40,000 tons- 50,000 tons of storage capacity within the port itself.
Right. Very good. If I may, a second question. Can you provide some color on movements and in terms of sentiment in China and how you view the market? Relatively small changes in policy seem to have outsized impacts on sentiment at the moment. If you can comment on that, it'd be useful as well. Thank you.
Yeah, look, I mean to me what that basically indicates is that the market is very positioned towards the short end of things, and so there is quite considerable short positions that built up on the GFX. I think just as some of those stories start to come through around supply curtailment, that pushed some of those short positions to unwind. That unwind had actually been taking place a little bit before some of these news flows came on the basis presumably that people felt market was at the bottom. I mean it's always difficult to tell fundamentally on supply demand. We entered the year with around 100,000 tonnes of oversupply. If you look at the numbers, there's always different views on projects coming in.
The reality is with the 28% growth we just talked about, had best growth, we've seen over 100,000 tonnes of new demand just in the six months gone. We're probably entering that point now where some of these challenges of getting new products wrapped up, new projects ramped up is starting to translate into physical tightness, and certainly what I see from customers in terms of inbound inquiries and a lot of people are looking for a physical product because you can put p aper in a battery.
Thank you. That's all the questions we have time for today. Please reach out to the Liontown team if you have any follow up questions. We thank you all for your time and have a great day. You may now log out.
Thank you very much.