Nickel Industries. Welcome to this annual general meeting of Nickel Industries. My name is Norman Seckold, and I will be chairing today's meeting. It's 11:00 A.M. A quorum is present, and I declare the meeting open. Today's meeting has been convened in accordance with the Corporations Act. The notice of this meeting has been sent to shareholders and is taken as read. All resolutions today will be decided by way of a poll, including valid proxies submitted before the meeting. Computershare has been appointed as scrutineers for each poll. The blue voting cards will be collected, and the poll will be conducted after all the business of the meeting has been completed. The formal results of the poll will be notified to the ASX after the meeting and will be posted on the company's website.
As chairman of the meeting, and having been appointed as proxy for shareholders entitled to vote, as stated in the notice of meeting, I will vote all directed proxies in accordance with the directions provided by shareholders, and where authorized, I will vote all undirected proxies in favor of each resolution before the meeting today. I'd like to introduce you to our board of directors who are with us at the meeting today. Joining us here in person are my fellow directors, Chris Shepherd, CFO, and Non-Executive Director, Emma Hall. Company Secretary, Richard Edwards, is with us, as is the company's auditor from KPMG, Partner Adam Twemlow. With us on Zoom, our Managing Director, Justin Werner, who's currently in London on a roadshow, non-executive directors James Crombie, Muliady Sutio, Haijun Wang, and Yuanyuan Xu, as well as our Chief Development Officer, Fanfan Zhao, and Investor Relations Manager, Andrew Coleman.
William Shangjaya unable to join us and sends his apologies. When you registered for your attendance this morning, you were issued with an attendance card. People with a blue card are shareholders entitled to speak and vote at the meeting. Your blue card will serve as your voting form and will be collected at the end of the meeting. People with a yellow card are shareholders entitled to speak but not vote at the meeting. People with a white card are visitors. I now propose to deal with the formal business of the meeting, and following that, Justin Werner will give a short presentation. There'll be a pause for members to ask questions about the business of the meeting and later about the company's activities. If we can now move to the slide summarizing the proxies received. The annual report.
The first item of business as set out in the notice of meeting is to receive and consider the annual report and statutory financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025. Are there any questions in relation to the financial statements or the report? If there's no discussion, we can record that the annual report and statutory accounts have been received and adopted. Resolution one is the remuneration report. Resolution one, as set out in the notice of meeting, is to consider a non-binding ordinary resolution, the adoption of the remuneration report as set out in the company's annual report. Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll open for resolution one.
Please be good enough to record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution one on the blue card provided. Resolution two, as set out in the notice of meeting, is an ordinary resolution to consider, and if thought fit, to re-elect Chris Shepherd as a director. Chris is required by the Corporations Act 2001 and the company's constitution to retire and offer himself for re-election. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen. There we are. I'm back. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution two on the blue voting card.
Resolution three, as set out in the notice of meeting, is an ordinary resolution to consider, and if thought fit, to re-elect Muliady Sutio as a director. Muliady is required by the corporations law and the company's constitution to retire and offer himself for re-election. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll open for resolution three. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain boxes for resolution three on the blue card provided. Resolution four is being withdrawn for the simple reason it was an administrative error. It has been withdrawn. As resolution five concerns the issue of performance rights to myself, I'll hand the chair to Emma.
Resolution five, as set out in the notice of meeting, is an ordinary resolution to approve for all purposes, including ASX Listing Rule 10.14, to grant performance rights to Norman Seckold under the company's performance rights plan on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. Are there any questions or comments in relation to the resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll open for resolution five. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution five on the blue card provided. I'll hand the chair back to Norm.
Thank you, Emma. Resolution six, as set out on the notice of meeting, is an ordinary resolution to approve for all purposes, including ASX Listing Rule 10.14, to grant performance rights to Justin Werner under the company's performance rights plan on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll open for resolution six. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution six on the blue card provided.
Resolution seven, as set out on the notice of meeting, is an ordinary resolution to approve for all purposes, including ASX Listing Rule 10.14, to grant performance rights to Chris Shepherd under the company's performance rights plan on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll open for resolution seven. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution seven on the blue card provided. Resolution eight, as set out on the notice of meeting, is an ordinary resolution to consider and, if thought fit, to re-elect William Shangjaya as a director. William is required by the corporation's law and the company's constitution to retire and offer himself for re-election.
Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, I declare the poll open for resolution 8. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution eight on the blue card provided. In a couple of minutes, I'll close the polls. Please ensure that you've cast your vote on all resolutions and that you hand your blue voting card to the registry personnel now coming around to collect them. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, voting is now closed. The results will be made available to the ASX later today. I now declare the formal business of the meeting closed.
As I said at the start of the meeting, we will now give a short report on the company's operations. I hand you over to Justin Werner for that presentation. Your questions are welcomed, of course.
Thank you, Norm, and apologies everyone that I cannot be there with you today. Just confirming that everyone can see the presentation?
Okay. The Nickel Industries is now Australia's largest foreign investor into Indonesia. It's the world's largest listed pure nickel producer. Operates a suite of integrated low-cost assets from mining through to processing facilities. We sit at the very bottom end of the quartile. We produce a diverse set of nickel products. We have over 4,700 employees, and we are the sustainability and ESG leader in Indonesia. On the right there, you can see a summary of our business, starting with the mining business. We mine low-grade limonite ore. That goes through a hydrometallurgical process, which is high-pressure acid leach. It uses sulfuric acid to leach nickel and cobalt and other elements into solution and then recover it. That process produces an intermediary product, which is a mixed hydroxide precipitate or MHP. That can then be further refined into nickel and cobalt sulfate and to nickel cathode.
These nickel products are destined for the EV, battery, aerospace, aeronautical, and super alloy industries. Saprolite ore is a high-grade ore, sits below the laterite ore. It goes through a pyrometallurgical process, which is a Rotary Kiln Electric Furnace that produces nickel pig iron or NPI, and the end use for that is stainless steel. We have an irrevocable undertaking with our largest shareholder, Tsingshan, to purchase all of the NPI that we produce from our 12 RKEF operations at the market price. In terms of our full year 2025 results, group financials, $1.65 billion in revenue, $283 million in adjusted EBITDA, and we sit with $866 million of net debt. In terms of our processing facilities, we produced 133,000 tons of nickel, and that delivered adjusted EBITDA of $207.7 million.
On the mining side, we mined a record 9.9 million wet metric tonnes for adjusted EBITDA of $91.6 million, and we're pretty pleased to announce that we've actually received an increased quota for 2026 of 14.3 million. That's against the backdrop of many of our peers receiving significant cuts to their quota. It was very busy on the corporate front over the course of the year. We had a very successful bond issuance, $800 million, five years senior notes at 9%, replacing the previous notes, which were at 11.25%. We signed a 14 million tonne MOU for our Sampala Project, and we were very pleased just recently to announce the resource upgrade there, which delivered over one billion wet metric tonnes, making it a truly world-class project.
We're also pleased to announce an investment at the asset level by Sphere, a Korean-listed super alloy manufacturer who is a supplier to SpaceX. It means that nickel from our ENC operations will be going into SpaceX rockets. In terms of safety and ESG, LTIFR of zero, TRIFR of 0.68. We worked 17.7 million man-hours for 2025, so a tremendous achievement. We've been able to work 26.6 million work hours since our last reported LTI in 2021 at our Hengjaya Mine. We're very proud of our university scholarship program. We currently have 20 students at university doing ranging degrees, and we're expanding that to 30 by year-end. I think a lot of the initiatives that we've undertaken have been reflected in our improved S&P ESG score, which was 33, and that's above the metals and mining sector average of 27.
On the other side there, in the right-hand side, you can see some of the awards that were received during the course of 2025, as well as our 262-megawatt solar project and 80-megawatt battery energy storage system, of which is Indonesia's largest, and we will be an offtaker of that project. The green chart here is the LME nickel price over the last couple of years. You can see in December 2022, it was sitting at around $30,000. Over the course of most of 2024 and 2025, we sat at cyclical lows of $14,000-$15,000 a tonne. Despite that, in a period when we had more than 500,000 tonnes come out of the market and either go out of business or go on care and maintenance, we were still able to maintain a very robust EBITDA profile.
You look across the top there, you can see in 2022, it was $339 million. 2023, it was $403 million. 2024, $326 million. 2025, $283 million. First quarter of this year was very strong with $135.5 million just for the first quarter alone. How we've been able to maintain this very robust EBITDA profile has really been volume growth. You look at our attributable processed nickel, in 2022, it was 56,000 tonnes. That's growing to 156,000 tonnes for 2026. Our mine ore sales at 3.5 million, that's increased significantly as well to 14.3 million tonnes. We've also, as you can see in the chart there, we've had a strong uptick in the nickel price. That's supported some very strong margins across the business for the start of 2026.
During those last few years, you can see we've been a material dividend payer except for last year. In terms of the corporate highlights, the acquisition by Sphere of 10% of ENC for $240 million. We were very pleased to announce that at the end of last year. Our ENC HPAL is now commissioning, and we're looking to ramp up and hit nameplate of 72,000 by October 26th. With HPAL margins on MHP currently sitting at close to $10,000 a ton, we're ramping up into a very strong nickel price environment. I mentioned we were very pleased to announce the increased Sampala Project resource upgrade and the mine development there is also progressing very well. We've done a lot of work on optimizing our debt stack and debt refinancing, which I'll talk about a little bit later on.
We have funded volume growth, which will deliver significant cash flow and we're looking at in excess of $1 billion EBITDA on a consolidated basis. We should be at that run rate by the end of this year. The 10% acquisition by Sphere, as I mentioned, a Korean-listed superalloy producer, one of only three accredited vendors to SpaceX, and the only one with a long-term, 10-year contract. We think this is very strong validation of the business, particularly given the slightest impurities in superalloys, in nickel and in particular, in rocket ships can lead to catastrophic failure and be very expensive. We think it's a very strong endorsement and it certainly opens up other supply chain opportunities in the North American Aerospace and aeronautical markets. We have a number of very strong strategic partnerships. Tsingshan, our largest shareholder, 23%.
How we've been able to grow the company so quickly and to the point where it is today since our IPO in 2018, is through a unique set of guarantees that we realize through our relationship with Tsingshan which is a CapEx guarantee, a nameplate guarantee with a make whole if nameplate isn't hit, and a timeframe guarantee of no more than two years for every project that we've done. So that's really what has allowed us to grow very quickly because investors know that we're not going to come back in 18 months time with cost and timeframe blowouts. We were pleased to welcome United Tractors onto the register, sitting at 20%. They're a blue-chip Indonesian mining company. Their ultimate beneficial owner is Jardine Matheson, which is a Fortune Global 500 firm with a very strong track record in and across Southeast Asia.
The Sphere, SpaceX deal that I've mentioned earlier. When ENC ramps up to nameplate at the end of this year, you can see where that will position us among global nickel producers. I mentioned at the beginning, we are the world's largest listed pure nickel producer. If you look to the left of that chart, you can see Shandong is Chinese, Nornickel is Russian and diversified, Jinchuan, Chinese, and Tsingshan, Chinese. Looking to the right-hand side, Huayou, Harita, Lygend. Really we're the only Western-listed pure nickel company of any scale, and we're very highly leveraged to the nickel price given our significant volume. That was very well demonstrated in the December and March quarters. In the December quarter of last year, our RKEF business delivered $35 million in EBITDA.
In the March quarter of this year, that had grown by 145% to $85 million, and that was off just a 19% increase in the NPI price. Very highly leveraged to an improving nickel price. We've recently really transitioned the business into high-pressure acid leach. The reason for that is the superior margins. We're currently seeing at HNC, which was our first investment where we took a 10% interest. March quarter EBITDA of $9,992 a ton. That project has been operating very well at over 40% above nameplate capacity now for a long period of time. The HNC project is the beneficiary of a 15-year tax holiday, so we pay no tax for 15 years, plus an additional two years at 11%. ENC, which is in the commissioning stages, that's the first HPAL globally to produce mixed hydroxide precipitate, nickel and cobalt sulfate and cathodes.
It gives us product diversity. I mentioned targeting hitting nameplate by end of October this year and the nameplate's 72,000. We currently have a 46% interest and ENC project is also the beneficiary of a 15-year tax holiday plus another two years at 11%. Assuming EBITDA margins stay where they are at around $10,000 a ton, you could see that by the end of the year, ENC on a consolidated basis should be delivering around $720 million of additional EBITDA. Our processing operations are underpinned by world-class mine operations and resources. Our Hengjaya Mine, that has three million tonnes of contained nickel metal. First quarter, EBITDA of $30 million. I mentioned we're the only company that I'm aware of that was actually able to increase its ore quota from nine million last year to 14.3 million this year.
Hengjaya Mine will be supplying 100% of the limonite requirements via a dedicated slurry pipeline to the ENC HPAL project. HM is also located only 16 kilometers from our processing operations. Our new project, Sampala, covers 6,654 hectares. We just announced a revised resource of 648 million dry metric tons or over one billion wet metric tons. With current margins of in excess of $10 a ton, you can see the value of that project. To bring it into production, we need to complete construction of 24 kilometers of haul road. We've built the first eight kilometers and we're just waiting for some forestry permits to be able to complete the remaining 16 kilometers. Permit dependent, we are targeting to full first production towards the end of first half of next year.
I mentioned earlier that we've signed a 14 million tonne a year offtake for limonite for an expansion to the ENC project, which Tsingshan is currently undertaking. We have a third project in West Papua, the Siduarsi project. Current resource of 52 million dry tonnes, and we're advancing a feasibility study there for approval for a two million tonne per annum mining operation. Where does that position us globally? You can see there, basically the second-largest owner of nickel resources globally. Our intention is to continue to move right over to the right-hand side of that curve, and so to be the owner of the largest known nickel resources globally, which will underpin our assets for a considerable, our processing assets for a considerable period of time. Debt refinancing over the course of last year has certainly strengthened the capital structure.
We've been able to improve the coupon. I mentioned the bond coming down from 11.25 to 9%. We've been able to remove or push out some of the amortizing loans. We've had very strong support from a syndicate of banks. We have pricing there of SOFR plus a range which anywhere from 2.25%-4.5%. The three catalysts that are really going to transform the company and drive us towards that $1 billion in EBITDA is the Hengjaya Mine increase from 9 million to 14.3 million tonnes. The ENC commissioning and ramp-up, which I mentioned at a $10,000 a tonne margin at 72,000 tonnes is at $720 million. Given the outperformance of Huayue Nickel Cobalt at 40%, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that we would also most likely see outperformance of the ENC HPAL. Then development of our Sampala mine.
Very low CapEx remaining, about $30 million. We're looking to get that to about 15 million-20 million tonnes a year. At the current $10 a tonne margin, that's another $150 million-$200 million in EBITDA. Looking forward to this year, through the course of this year, a number of catalysts which are going to drive very strong cash earnings for the business. That's the end of the presentation. Happy to take any questions. If there's no questions, I'll hand back to Norm.
That concludes the meeting, but if there are any last-minute questions, more than happy to address them. Sure.
If you don't mind, I'd just like to ask you. I can see all the metrics are fairly strong here. The nickel price is gradually increasing in price. As somebody who retired two years ago and kind of banking on dividends, I've been somewhat disappointed that you've stopped the dividend payments. Is there any thought to reinstating those payments anytime soon?
It's certainly part of our policy to pay dividends. We've gone through a significant expansion phase, which is just allocation of capital.
Yeah
In good order. Certainly, it's high on the agenda, and hopefully be reinstated relatively soon. I can assure you, as a reasonably large shareholder, I'd welcome a dividend as well.
Are you guys getting performance rights?
It's a pretty small part of my-
Is it really? Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Quite worked out.
Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to be quite open on that. Even after a divide by two in recent years on a domestic scenario, I've still got in excess of 60 million shares. Performance rights are great.
All right, lovely. Thank you. Just on a little side note, can you tell me about the roadshow that's going on in the U.K. at the moment?
Yeah, I can take that one. Can you hear me online?
Okay. Yep, okay. We've been attending in the last two weeks, several conferences in the U.S. I was over there with Justin as well. As part of that, he's now continued on to London with our head of investor relations, Andrew Coleman. Totally non-deal roadshow. There's nothing on the horizon. It's just when you're over in North America, it's best to get over to the European investors at the same time.
Okay. What actually takes place on these roadshows? Who are they targeting?
Targeting equity and credit investors.
Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you.
Thanks.
Any other questions? Well, there being none, I'd like to thank you all very much for coming out today in this miserable weather. Look forward to seeing you all next year. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.