Welcome to the Liontown Resources December 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 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 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 homepage under Asking Audio Questions.
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Thank you, Michelle, and welcome, everybody. Thank you for attending Liontown's quarterly presentation. With me today, we have Grant Donald, our Chief Commercial Officer, Ryan Hair, our Chief Operating Officer, and for his first quarterly with us, I welcome Greg Jason, our new CFO, who's been in the role for a month, and, it's his first presentation for Liontown. We'll support, Greg, in the course of the presentation, given he's just fresh in the job, but I'm sure he's got most things covered. So let's kick off. We have the first information slide, so please. And then we'll move to this first slide. I mean, the best way I can describe this quarter, in that it represents a genuine inflection point for Liontown. We've delivered our mine transition, and the open pit is done on schedule.
Kathleen Valley is now Australia's first and only underground lithium mine, and we're completely focused on scaling and ramping up the underground production. We're on schedule for that, too. Ryan will go into that in deeper detail in his presentation. Now, let me walk you through now what the quarter actually demonstrates. Underground ore has been increased by 37% quarter-over-quarter. We're adding equipment, we're opening new mine fronts, and the ore body continues to reconcile to plan. This production momentum is real. On cost, both unit operating cost and All-in Sustaining Costs have improved by 17% and 22%, respectively. That's operating leverage coming through as we scale, and this will accelerate as volumes continue to build. We've achieved neutral operating cash flow for this quarter, which is a significant milestone, given we're still in transition.
We've finished with AUD 390 million in cash. This gives us both runway and future optionality. The plant has high availability and is delivering. Recoveries have improved to 63%, up from 59%, and the pathway to 70% is in front of us, and it's driven by feed mix. As underground ore becomes the dominant feed, recoveries will follow. And again, Ryan will talk about that in his slides. So with the mine's transition complete and cash flow improving, we're well positioned for the lithium recovery, and that's the story of this quarter. So if we go to the next slide, please. Well, let me put some of that, the numbers around that improvement. Production came in at 105,000 tons, up 21%.
A solid result, but the real story is the trajectory as we scale towards 1.5 million ton run rate by March, end of March. Sales were stronger at 112,000 tons, up 45%, as we cleared inventory and we moved to the up our shipping run rate. Pricing has lifted to AUD 1,365 a ton. That's $900 a ton on a SC6 equivalent basis, up 28% from the prior quarter. Consistent with our standard QP pricing methodology, we have embedded price upside that will be realized in quarter three. Revenue hit AUD 130 million, up 91%, our strongest quarter since operations began. That's where production plus pricing leverage delivers.
Finally, the direction is clear: production up, revenue up, margins improving, and we're achieving this before the full benefit of the lithium price recovery flows through our contracts. So now I'll move over to Ryan.
Yeah, thanks, Tony. So we'll just have a look at the safety and ESG slide. Thanks, Michelle. So safety remains our core operational focus, especially as we're scaling the underground operations. Our Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate increase reflects a higher number of manual handling injuries across contractor work groups. We've implemented targeted actions to strengthen field leadership and contractor oversight.
Preventing high consequence incidents through strong field leadership is the priority. This is reflected in the leading indicator, safety observations per thousand hours increase, showing sustained workforce engagement in proactive hazard identification. Our hybrid power station performed reliably through the quarter, 85% renewable penetration, reinforcing our commitment to be a low carbon intensity operation. We continue to focus on building an inclusive workplace, and we were thrilled to have supported the completion of our first apprenticeship by a Tjiwarl community member at site, reflecting our genuine intent to meaningful local employment and skills development. Now moving on to our operations summary. Thanks, Michelle. Completing the open pit on schedule has been a key milestone at Kathleen Valley. This has been an outstanding achievement. The original plan was conceived back in 2022 and has been executed flawlessly.
Of particular note is the additional ore mined in the last quarter, positively impacting strip ratio and costs, and highlighting the quality of the ore body, and is a testament to the focus of the team. A sincere thank you to the whole open pit team, including our mining partner, IMC. Over its life, the open pit played a strategic role beyond just ore production. The waste rock supported construction of the ROM pad and the tailings facilities, and open pit ore enabled early commissioning of the plant, which accelerated validation of the flow sheet and the operating envelope. The resulting ore and OSP stockpiles, including the additional ore mined in the quarter, enhanced our feed flexibility.
We will continue to optimize sequencing into the plant as higher grade underground ore becomes the dominant source of plant feed, which will give us further flexibility during the ramp up. Now, with the open pit complete, we can turn our full attention underground, supporting improved operating leverage as we scale. So now moving to the underground. The 37% increase in ore mined is tracking well to the planned ramp up. In the last quarter, we noted that the mine achieved a run rate of 1,000,000 tons per annum in September. For Q2, the overall run rate was just under 1,250,000 tons per annum, leaving us well placed to achieve the 1,500,000 ton per annum run rate by March.
Importantly, development is also progressing well, with just over 2,100 meters in Q2, opening additional work fronts across multiple levels in the mine. As Tony mentioned, reconciliation to both resource and grade models have been good, which confirms the consistency of the Mt Mann ore body. As per last quarter, stope performance and dilution continue to remain in line with expectations. We've mobilized additional haulage capacity and expanded support infrastructure during the quarter. The summary is: infrastructure's in place and performing well, the ore body continues to meet expectations, and we are ramping up to plan. Now moving on to the plant. Again, as Tony indicated, the plant performed in line with expectations as we progress through the planned transition in mill feed composition. Tons processed increased with fewer shutdown days in the quarter and ongoing circuit optimization, increasing the net throughput per operating hour.
Recovery improved 4 percentage points in absolute terms to 63%. This reflects both a deliberate feed sequencing decision during the open pit to underground transition, as well as ongoing circuit optimization. The feed mix moved from 35% underground in Q1 to 45% in Q2. Open pit ore will continue to comprise roughly 50% of the feed in Q3, before progressively transitioning to predominantly underground feed during Q4. The next slide puts this into context. We've shown versions of this picture in previous updates. The first half of FY 2026 builds the foundation. We completed plant maintenance, delivered process improvements, achieved a run rate of 1 million tons per annum underground, and completed open pit mining on schedule. The second half is the inflection point.
We're scaling to 1.5 million tons per annum by the end of Q3, and we are showing visually in orange the additional ore mined in the open pit being processed in Q3 before the shift to predominantly underground feed in Q4 and beyond. Our recovery target of 70% at the end of Q3, Q3 remains as clean ore becomes that dominant feed. In FY 2027 and beyond, we reach a sustained 2.8 million ton per annum run rate underground at the end of FY 2027. Remaining open pit stock piles will be processed opportunistically, again, as you can see with the slight orange area in the graph. Resulting improved plant recoveries drive increased production, which deliver lower unit cost. With that, I'll hand back to Tony to talk in more detail about guidance.
Thanks, Ryan. Okay, so if we go to the next slide, please, Michelle. Right. Let me give clarity on what we expect for the rest of the year. We've been consistent in stating that our FY 2026 is a transition year. Again, open pit was completed, underground is scaling, and we're becoming the dominant feed source for the mill. We have the ingredients to hold firm, firm on our guidance. By the end of Q3, we expect the underground production to reach around the 1.5 million tons, as Ryan has already mentioned, and the 70% recovery target remains unchanged. This is clearly a function of the feed mix, and the mix is shifting in our favor. Production in Q3 will account for planned maintenance and fewer operating days. That's scheduled and shouldn't be a surprise. The key point is that cash flow will improve from here.
Every ton of underground ore that replaces open pit delivers better grade, better recoveries, and a lower operating unit cost. That's structural. Our guidance remains unchanged, as it's stated in the, in the diagram or in the slide, and we're looking beyond this year. Unit costs will trend lower in FY 2027 as we reach steady state in the underground mine at 2.8 million tons. That's when the operating leverage really compounds. So if we go to the next slide, please. Now I hand over to Greg to present his first financial performance.
Thank you, Tony. Good morning, everybody. It's a great time to have joined Liontown. I've joined an amazing team, and I look forward to working with them to deliver the strategy for our shareholders. Starting with revenue, some of this Tony's gone through, AUD 130 million. It's the strongest quarter we've had since operations began. About half of that increase was driven by the increase in tons shipped, and half was driven by the increase in realized price. We had slight tailwinds on FX, but they had a negligible positive impact quarter-over-quarter. As Grant and Tony have discussed in previous teleconferences, the Liontown offtake agreements are anchored to a range of pricing indices that include spodumene, hydroxide, and carbonate, and there's a range of quotation periods that are both backward- and forward-looking.
The backward-looking QPs create a lag effect on realized price increases, and the forward-looking QPs are favorable when prices are increasing, and we're already seeing uplifts start to come through between provisional and final pricing during Q3. We expect to realize further increases in the realized price during Q3, given the indices have continued to climb since December. We finished the quarter with AUD 130 million of cash, very strong balance, and I'll provide some more commentary on that when we get to the next slide. Moving now to unit costs. The operations team has delivered a 17% reduction in unit operating costs at 910 AUD per ton sold. This was well within the FY 2026 guidance band of 855-1,045 AUD per ton.
Importantly, it fell below the realized price of AUD 1,159 per ton at the actual lithium grade delivered. The reduction in unit cost was driven really by three key things. We had a very low strip ratio in the final quarter as the open pit came to an end, and so the unit cost of open pit ore was significantly lower. Underground mining led to the improvement in recovery, and we also had less OSP ore being processed, which contributed to that factor. And then finally, we're realizing, realizing economies of scale as the operation continues its ramp up to steady state production. All-in sustaining costs also benefited from a reduction in sustaining CapEx, with no capitalized waste from open pit operations as they came to an end.
We note that underground capital development is being reported as growth CapEx, with the front-end loading of that activity, and that will remain the case until we declare commercial production, at which time it will then be reported as sustaining capital and go back into the all-in sustaining calculation. Would you please move to the next slide, Michelle? So talking about cash flow and cash balance, key highlight was obviously delivering an effectively break-even operating cash flow at the same time as ramping up underground mining and transitioning the plant feed from open pit to underground ore. Cash receipts of AUD 128 million were broadly aligned with AUD 130 million in revenue during the quarter.
Cash costs increased to AUD 122 million, and this reflected a decrease in open pit mining costs, the ramp-up in activity for the underground mine, and ocean freight, selling costs, and royalties all increased with higher sales volumes and pricing. The growth capital of AUD 22 million was predominantly underground development, consistent with Q1. Sustaining capital reduced materially. It was a combination of the open pit activities coming to an end and not capitalizing the cost there, and just a lower number of projects in that period. Financing costs of AUD 5 million were broadly unchanged from Q1, and hence the net result as we closed the year with AUD 390 million of cash and 48,000 tons of saleable concentrate. This positions us very well to take advantage of market conditions and pursue growth with a continued focus on cost, capital discipline, and shareholder returns.
I'm going to speak briefly about the LGES convertible notes. You would have seen the announcement came out this morning, whereby LGES issued us with a notice to convert 100% of their notes into equity. This will significantly strengthen Liontown's balance sheet upon conversion by reducing debt and the associated derivative liability. On a pro forma basis, using the underlying debt values, our gross debt will reduce from approximately AUD 760 million to AUD 360 million.
Our net debt will reduce from AUD 370 million to net cash of AUD 30 million, and gearing ratio reduces from 50% to 24% on a gross debt basis, or 33% to 0% on a net debt basis. Notwithstanding the conversion that will occur in H2, the accounting standards require us to fair value the option component at December 25, and while still subject to review by our auditors, we expect to recognize a non-cash fair value charge in the half one P&L of approximately AUD 105 million. The primary driver of the high fair value was the increase in Liontown's share price over the half from June 30. A further fair value adjustment will be recognized on the conversion date to align with the final option value. I'll now hand over to Grant to talk about the market outlook.
Thanks, Greg. We can go to the next slide. Great, thanks. So a quick recap of our off-take book here to make it easier to follow. You can see in the graph on the right-hand side, the makeup. To fund the project, we created a suite of off-take contracts with strategic customers, and we have really taken a portfolio approach in our management of pricing exposures, with contracts in aggregate referencing spodumene, carbonate, and hydroxide, as Greg mentioned. Now, these prices don't always move in lockstep, but they do tend to move together when viewed over a longer horizon. And in this quarter, spodumene has certainly led the price to move upwards, with chemicals following at a slower pace. But this is not always the case, and you can see the opposite, particularly in falling markets.
If we move to the market slide, I'll talk briefly on some of the key figures. We look in the rearview mirror calendar year 2025 was really a breakout year for both EV sales with 3 months of the year actually exceeding over 2 million global EV sales for the first time, ending the year with over 20.7 million EVs sold, which is 20% up year-on-year. But of course, the big news story for the year was another year of outperformance for battery energy stationary storage, or BESS, which grew by 51% in 2025. These strong growth figures across both BESS and EVs pushed global lithium-ion battery demand to almost 1.6 TWh, almost 30% higher than the prior year.
In this last quarter, we also started to see the emergence of a lithium supply-demand deficit, which has caused strong movement prices over the past quarter, and this has continued into January. The expectation of continued deficits in 2026 is likely to provide further price support, and as you can see in the bottom chart here, while the moves off the bottom may have taken some market participants by surprise, history would suggest there's still further room to run. With that, I'll hand over to Tony.
Thanks, Grant. Now, let me turn over to growth, and specifically how we think about deploying capital as cash generation improves. We're not chasing growth at any cost. Every capital decision, we run through this framework. First, we fund sustaining capital for safe, efficient operations, and that's a non-negotiable, as we're required to maintain our business. And having a maintenance background, this is very near and dear to my heart. Beyond that, we have three priorities that continually compete for capital: growth, realizing Kathleen Valley's full potential, that's first up, the first pillar of our strategy. Followed by debt and management, and you saw the announcement today, and then, shareholder returns. On the debt management, we still have the Ford facility and the WA government loan, but maintaining the balance sheet strength gives us the flexibility through the cycles.
On the shareholder returns, you know, we get to cash as cash generation improves, dividends and potentially other mechanisms become part of our conversation. I'm sure our chairman will demand that. We're not there yet, but that's on the horizon. The framework matters because the market is re-rating lithium, so we're seeing that, and as we see that, the framework ensures that we allocate the capital properly, not just spend it because it's there. So if we go to the next slide, please. So this should be familiar to most of the listeners on the call today, and what it reinforces is that we're well positioned for the lithium recovery, and providing that lithium recovery is sustainable. We've kicked off a study to refresh the 4 million ton expansion case that we had in our original DFS.
A lot of that is around ensuring that the DFS expansion is current with all our latest knowledge from our operating experience that we've gained over the last 12-16 months. This is a brownfield expansion of an operating asset. There's a certain amount of already invested infrastructure, and that all our approvals are largely in place. This dramatically reduces our execution risk and time to market, compared to a greenfield project somewhere else. The capital intensity is also lower because we've already made foundational investments, as I already mentioned. Incremental capital for expansion is far more efficient than starting from scratch. As we get the scale, we then it impacts our unit costs as we move forward. So we have a competitive advantage, because we've recently been a developer.
We've got a lot of that experience, we know how things are done. There's a lot of stuff that's fresh and current, so we can move that and apply that to our expansions. So looking at the mine plan on the right, I thought, if people recall, when we published our strategic pivot in November 2024. We said that there was a certain amount of tonnage that we would park, as market conditions improve, we'll go back. So that is a potential area of examination that we are now looking at. In addition, we've completed the open pit, so we've got access to Northwest Flats through the bottom of the pit. That's another area that we're prosecuting as part of this study refresh. So to be clear, any expansion is subject to the study outcomes, a sustained market improvement, and finally, board approval.
We're not committing to capital until the conditions are right, but we are preparing so that when we move, we can move quickly. So if I move to the next slide, please. So finally, just to recap, as we bring all this together, the December quarter represents an inflection point. The mine's transition has been delivered, the costs are within guidance, and cash flow is improving. We've done that, what we've said we'll do. The open pit is completed on schedule, and the underground mine is ramping up. Recoveries are improving as the feed mix becomes dominantly underground, and costs are reducing. We need to ensure that as this price improves, that we maintain our operational credibility, so the focus on operational excellence is front of mind for us.
We're scaling production as a recovering market, so every price increase flows through to the bottom line as we expand volumes. The leverage is significant, and we have optionality with a strong balance sheet now that we've converted our convertible note with LG, and the expansion study is being refreshed. Capital allocation framework is in place, and we can be opportunistic without being reckless. I want to acknowledge the Liontown team and our contractors. This has been a demanding quarter, but completing the open pit while simultaneously scaling up a fairly large underground, and we've delivered it. So we need to continue to deliver every day. Our focus is clear: execute the underground ramp up, optimize the operation, generate the cash, and create the value. Thank you for everyone for listening, and happy to take questions.
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 Ben Lyons, from Jarden. Ben, please go ahead.
Hi, Ben.
G'day, Tony. I was waiting for the beep, but well, proceed. Mate, might start with the growth and that rapid pivot that you've made back from austerity back towards growth. Firstly, what sort of timeframe have you allocated to the expansion study? And then secondly, I was just hoping to dive a little bit more into the possible capital intensity of, you know, what ultimately will be a brownfields expansion. And maybe you can just paraphrase what components of the non-process infrastructure are already sized for that 4 million ton case. Like, obviously, the paste plant's an obvious one. The Zenith PPA, I assume, can readily accommodate the incremental power draw. You've got the massive vent infrastructure in place already, and that processing plant is best of breed.
So, you might just need a bit more sort of milling and tank capacity, but yeah, just trying to get a better perspective on the likely capital intensity if you pull the trigger on the 4 million tons. Thanks, Tony.
Okay. Thanks, Ben. There was a lot in that question, so hopefully I can cover off everything, and I'll also lean on Ryan as well. Look, I wanna stress that no commitment per se has been made. What we're doing is we're dusting off that study that was done in 2021, and ensuring that it is development-ready, fit for purpose, and includes all the understanding that we've built in the last 16 to 18 months of operation. So we want to be able to ready, to be ready, so if the market is definitely sustained improvement, that we can be in a position to pull the trigger.
In terms of duration, I mean, the team have just kicked that off, but typically, I would say that we wouldn't see anything until the end of the financial year and into the new financial year before we sort of announce anything specifically. So therefore, I don't want to talk too much around capital costs, because, you know, we don't have a definitive number, because we've only just kicked it off. So we'll hold on that particular point. Is there anything else on the embedded optionality that we've got in terms of infrastructure?
Look, I think, Ben, you covered it off pretty well in so far as, you know, the infrastructure we've already invested in, and the type of things that we'll have to have a look at. As you said, you know, milling is gonna be a key one. Flotation, you know, a flotation cell or two might be the other thing. That's fundamentally what we've got to look at in the plant. There's some mining services infrastructure, which we'll have to have a look at. Obviously, the acceleration of whatever we might need to do in mining.
And then, you mentioned non-process infrastructure as well, and, as you quite rightly pointed out, we've got a lot of that in place, paste plant and the like.
Ventilation is another one.
Yeah, ventilation. So the issue, the things that we'll have a look at is to make sure we've got water, village accommodation are probably the two kind of main ones. But as you can tell, that a lot of it's in place, and there's a few kind of known constraints that we'll need to have a look at if we're gonna be running at circa 4 million tons.
Yep. Okay, cool. That's, that's helpful. Thank you, Ryan and Tony. Maybe just one quick follow-up on that. I seem to recall that the initial concept was, I think, 4 declines, but now that you've mined out the open pit, you're talking about possibly accessing one of the ore bodies through the bottom of the pit. Just whether the concept is still to have sort of 4 declines in place to, at 4 million tons, just annual material measures? Thanks.
Yes. Yes, the concept is to still pursue the four declines. But if there's an opportunity that is capital efficient to get into the ore sooner... Because what we've said in our presentation is that we don't want to sort of—if we decide to expand, we want to give progressive capacity uplifts, not just sort of sit at 2.8, and then bang, you get four. We want to incrementally increase capacity. So if we can get access to earlier tons through the bottom of the pit, then that'll be highly value accretive. So that's why we're sort of looking at everything again, Steven, because we've now got far more options and levers to pull than we did back in 2021.
Yeah, Tony, two points on that. The first is that, and I think we've included that in the, in the note that goes in the quarterly, that the Kathleen's Corner pit is around about 150 meters deep. So if you think about it, we've already mined down that far, so it actually gives us a much closer to the ore body and depth and also in terms of horizontal distance as well. So as Tony's indicated, it does provide some good optionality.
The second thing is, and Tony's touched on it, but to be clear, the expansion is less of a, a, you know, big bang expansion, and much more of a, almost incremental debottlenecking as it comes to the plant, which, supports Tony's comments about being able to release, capacity incrementally rather than a traditional, study FID, amount of time before you actually get those incremental tons. So that's certainly the approach we're trying to take with this, the study exercise at the moment.
The next question is from Levi Spry, from UBS. Levi, please go ahead.
Yep, good day. Thanks, Tony, and Ryan, team. So you're just following up on the, I guess, the growth optionality, and as you optimize the infrastructure in the ore body progressively, incrementally, what does that mean for, you know, how you view a sustained market improvement in pricing? What are the goalposts, what have we learned through this last cycle? And given that maybe some of these are, you know, incremental capital steps, you know, how, how, you know, help us think about how, what, what you'd need to see to commit to that.
Well, I think, I think I've been on record in saying, Levi, that, given the volatility that we see, look how quickly the lithium price has scaled up since December, as an example. We've got to be able to have a confidence as a board, that we're seeing this price recovery, and, and the supply and demand signals are strong over a longer period of time, whether that's six months, eight months of consistent price improvement, that's something that the board will have to subjectively make a decision around. Right? But it can't be six weeks. So while we're doing the refresh of the study, we'll be, we'll be monitoring the market dynamics and fundamentals, and the board will make a decision if it feels confident that the market has turned, and turned in a positive and sustained way.
But we don't want to start everything once we say: "Oh, look, it's here." Uh-huh.
Yep. Okay. Thank you. And just on to the realized pricing piece, just trying to understand, I guess, the lag on the way up. Can you just remind us of the pricing mechanisms behind those, you know, pieces of offtake that you've laid out there on the slide?
Yeah, sure, Levi. It's Grant here. So, we have one contract, which is Q lag, and that's the traditional Q lagging you see in iron ore, so kind of four months back. So you know the price when you put it on a vessel. That's not unusual for cargoes going into Japan and Korea, for example. Then you've got the spot you mean price through the renegotiation of the Tesla contract and the carbonate exposure this year from those offtake tons that were resold to Jensen. And then from next year onwards, that will be spot index linked.
Thank you. The next question is from Stuart Howe, from Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Oh, good day, Tony. Just on the expansion case again, you spoke to sort of conditions arise and sustained improvement. I was just wondering, would you look to secure additional offtake arrangements to underwrite that expansion and potentially lock in some pricing?
That's a good question, Stuart. I think, in our previous quarterly call, we gave some feedback around our visits to mainland China, and when we were starting to see the real increase in demand when refiners and other players in the battery value chain were looking for additional tons. So we haven't seen a customer that hasn't inquired about those expansion tons. So we will look at that in a very strategic way and see how it pans out. But the interest is there for those expansion tons. But again, because the interest is there, it's got to come with the right pricing environment.
Right. And then just secondly, on the balance sheet, and obviously the converting of the note, vastly simplifies your debt position, to the extent you'll be in effectively net cash. But just wondering, you know, how you think about your liquidity going forward. Do you go back to the banks and look at, you know, back to the syndicates potentially for a replacement of the Ford facility? What are the options you see around your balance sheet?
Well, Stuart, the Ford facility is a very attractive, debt facility. We've, we've said that numerous times. It's very, a very competitive, coupon rate. It's, 1.5% above Bank Bill Swap Rate. I mean, you don't get a home loan at that rate at this stage, and it's very, very, low covenant. So it's hard to see us, at this stage, getting a better deal elsewhere, but we'll be open to it, and we'll continually track and assess our capital structure in the context of our capital allocation. And therefore, if the situation arises where we want to do something, well, then we'll look at our capital structure accordingly.
The next question is from Reg Spencer, from Canaccord. Reg, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon to all. Good morning, Tony, and so congrats on a quarter. Looks like everything seems to be seeing touch wood in terms from an operational standpoint and from a market. Most of the other guys have covered off on the questions I had, but maybe just on pricing, and maybe this is one for Grant. That auction you guys ran late last year was a great price discovery tool. Will you continue to run auctions like that, knowing that you've you are fully committed from an offtake standpoint, but if we see any wobbles in the market or for whatever reason, you know, may you run auctions like that again?
Yeah, thanks, Reg. For sure. I mean, when we announced that first auction, we did note that we would continue to do auctions throughout the course of 2026. We have deliberately, as a company, retained 10%-20% of our book for spot, and exactly for these reasons, to try and help that price transparency and create open markets for people to bid for cargoes. And that will continue to be a very key strategy for us, as we move forward. And it could actually be, you know, what we end up deciding to do for any expansion tons, if we do move ahead, to create a bit more flexibility in the, in the book.
Will you guys likely release the outcomes of those auctions? Well, I know that some other companies stopped doing that, but you know, from my perspective, it seems to be a great little prod to the market to be able to get a reminder as to what's actually going on and where pricing actually is relative to what Price Reporting Agencies might put out there.
Yeah, it's a good question, Reg. Look, we again made clear in that announcement that it's kind of business as usual when we run these auctions going forward, and therefore, we won't be necessarily reporting every single one to the market in a standalone ASX release. But you can be sure that the whole purpose of doing this is to create, you know, credible, tangible pricing data points to feed into the PRAs to make sure that the price actually, actually reflects fundamentals. And every single time we do a transaction, it will be reported to all of the PRAs to ensure that that's taken into account in their assessments.
Yeah.
So indirectly-
Understood.
It will be published via the PRAs.
Okay. So, yeah, that gets reflected somewhere, so we'll see it one way or another.
Sure.
That's great. Look, thanks again, Tony and Grant, too. Appreciate it. I'll pass it on.
We miss you, Reg.
The next question is from Austin Yun, from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Morning, Tony and team. Just a quick question to follow up on the expansion plan. You mentioned that it will take a staged approach and, you know, unlock the capacity. I just came to understand: How should we think about a sequence? Is that coming from the underground first, you want to unlock more stocks, or you will start to looking to, you know, increase the flotation out of the capacity? Thank you.
I think the way we would tackle it, Austin, and I don't want to preempt the team because they've just kicked us off, but intuitively, you'd start with the longest lead items. All right? So things like the ball mill, and understanding what we need there, and then placing an order, would be first cab off the rank. And then what we need in the underground, given the lead time it requires to do the development work in the underground... and in the open pit, if we're going through the bottom of the pit. So those are the sorts of things we would prioritize, and then subsequently, the other stuff, can be done within that timeframe. So if it's ordering 2 flotation cells and installing them and getting an improvement in recovery, it while we're waiting for the ball mill, the team will prioritize that.
That's work that will be done as part of the next phase.
Thank you, Tony. Just a quick follow-up on that. Assuming, like, you know, a scenario where you unlock your capacity for underground first, coming to a tight lithium market, would you consider OSP product again, straight to the market?
Um-
Like DSO.
Yeah. Oh, you mean DSO?
Sorry, DSO, yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay. Look, I haven't turned my mind to it. I saw some recent press on that by some other party. Look, at this stage, DSO doesn't really factor into any of our planning. Last time we looked at it, I mean, the prices were much, much higher. But at these sorts of prices, I can't think we'd make the economics work, to be honest. But anyway, we haven't actually turned our mind to it. I'd rather be selling processed con, to be honest.
Yeah, I think to add to that, Tony, I mean, we built a process plant. Last time we looked at it, Austin, it was really around early cash flows in the context of building a project when we started open-pit mining earlier, because we needed the waste rock for an infrastructure build. So it's quite different, unique set of circumstances. You know, our business is not selling DSO. We'll leave that to the Africans.
Next question is from Glyn Lawcock from Barrenjoey. Glyn, please go ahead.
Oh, Happy New Year, Tony and team. I'm still just a little bit unclear about the front-end tonne expansion and the timing. I heard you just kicked off a study. You probably won't come back to the end of the fiscal year, early next fiscal year. But everyone's now talking about turning capacity back on or their expansion cases, which is obviously not good for the market psyche. But when could you actually get there? I understand you want to do a bit of debottlenecking, so maybe you can creep beyond the 2.8, but, like, when would it go to FID, and when could you conceptually get the forward if everything, if the stars all aligned? Thanks.
Well, you know, it comes back to this point around, has the market turned, and turned in a sustained way? It's a difficult question to respond to, Glyn. You know, we might do the study, refresh the study, find out what we've got to do, and then the market comes back off, and we just put it back on the shelf, right? So at this stage, you know, if... It's all hypothetical. If I decide to-
Okay, let-
Go ahead.
I was just gonna say, let's just assume the market needs it. What's the best case you could do?
Well, I think given underground development would be the, probably the rate-determining step, I would think it would be an 18- to 20-month program to get to the full capacity throughput. But we would see smaller increments along the way.
That's from when you FID it, or you're talking about?
Yes.
-from today?
No, FID it.
When could be the earliest you could FID it, do you think? Again, assuming everything goes well.
Well, again, it's a hypothetical. I mean, I don't want to be saying... If, if we say... I'd rather not answer it, Glenn, to be honest, because again, I'm just sort of speculating. I mean, maybe I'll-
Yeah, I guess I just hear it.
Well, well, Glyn, what Tony already said is, you know, we wouldn't expect to have the results of that study until the end of this financial year. So, I mean, assume that's delivered, that would be the soonest you could ever make an FID.
Okay, that's cool. I just wondered if that was preliminary stages to get more work. And then, Tony, you, you're sitting on another asset, which, you know, the market puts no value on Buldania. I mean, is that something that exercises your mind again now, or is now a good opportunity, maybe in this market, to offload it? Just how do you think about that? It's sort of off to the side, obviously.
That's a good question, Glyn. We've got a lot of talented people that have now concluded their work as part of the open pit, and some of those folk will turn their mind to what Buldania could look like. Right? So that's work that we're going to kick off and do on a slow burn.
Thank you. Next question is from Andrew Harrington from Petra Capital. Andrew, please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks, Tony and Co. Happy 2026. Great, great outcomes expected over the next couple of quarters with where prices are, you know, looking if they stay that way. I mean, obviously, performance and price are the key element here in your stock performance. What are your customers saying? Have they shifted in the last week or in the last month, or did they shift last year? How did this come about?
Do you wanna-
I'll take this one. It's Grant here. So, look, I guess I covered a little bit in my market slide that the market is starting to anticipate supply-demand deficits into 2026, 2027, and 2028. You can see that IC Insights chart that I included on my slide on page 16. What that means is, you know, you typically see inflection points in the psyche of customers ahead of that move, and I would say that happened in the last quarter last year, so that December quarter that we're talking about today. And it's very clear when we went to China in the very beginning of that quarter, that customers were focused on growth and getting access to more resources to enable that growth.
So we expect that this expected deficit will continue to support prices throughout 2026 and beyond. And, you know, we're trying to make sure that we're well positioned to participate in that, as we move forward.
Okay, thank you. My second question would be around M&A. That's something that was spoken about in previous calls. What is your outlook on that, or is that off the table now?
On the growth front, I think we've gone into some detail around where the focus is initially. It's organic growth. The best and most value-accretive option is to develop Kathleen Valley to its full potential, so that's one primary focus. And then we continue to opportunistically focus more broadly around inorganic growth. So we'll continue to do that. Grant's got a very small team that does this, and we'll continue to focus on opportunities if they make sense.
The next question is a written question from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs. Following LG converting their debt to equity, can you confirm what happens with the capitalized interest so far? Do you have to pay that back this quarter with the issue of new shares?
Yeah. Go, Greg.
Yeah, Greg here. The capitalized interest also converts and effectively gets repaid in shares. It's not a cash repayment of interest.
The next question is also a written question from Dan Newell from Datt Capital. First off, congratulations to the team on the execution. It's been impressive. Just on tantalum, can you give a brief update on how the byproduct is tracking and how meaningful it's becoming, and the cost offset as underground operations stabilize?
Yeah, Grant here. So, I mean, we made a very conscious decision at the beginning of the project not to contract our tantalum so that we could focus on ensuring we maximize recovery and lithium, which is the main focus. But we did make the investment in a significant tantalum plant, which allows us to capture that byproduct revenue. We have consistently been selling that on the spot and making money from that. And, you know, our focus will continue on that basis at the moment, while we make sure that we manage that transition to full ramp up on the underground and steady state production of both products.
This question is from Tom Lynn, from BIZB. Tom says: Congratulations on a good quarter. There has been previous mention of interest in brines as a way to diversify. Given the move to re-look at expansion, what's the current thinking regarding brines and M&A more generally?
Thank you. I'll take that. Look, the demand outlook is very strong, and we believe that all forms of lithium units will have a place. So we believe, as a pure play lithium producer, that we need to have an understanding and a skill set in both of those areas. We've got a very strong skill set in hard rock, and we want to build our understanding and skill sets in brines. So, the focus is dual. Any more questions, Michelle?
No further questions.
Okay. Well, I'd like to thank everybody for attending the call. Appreciate your time, and I thank my team, and we look forward to 2026.