Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Regis Resources Limited Full-Year Results Briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jim Beyer, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, Ryan, and thanks everybody, for joining us. Good morning. I would point out that we have released our results. There is a, a Word document along with a PowerPoint slide that we will be referring to. So, that's how you can keep up. So thanks for joining us on the FY 2024 results. In the room with me, I'm joined by our CFO, Anthony Rechichi our Chief Operating Officer, Michael Holmes, and our Head of Investor Relations and External Affairs, Jeff Sansom. Pardon me. I'll also point out our release yesterday afternoon that related to the immediate impacts of Minister Plibersek's declaration of a Section 10 over the McPhillamys project. I'll touch on this briefly now, as there are implications of this decision that have been reflected in our accounts.
Firstly, I'd note we continue to assess all legal options available to respond to this decision, and we'll be chasing every one of these. As I've said before, Minister Plibersek's decision did take us by surprise, and it has meant that Regis has been required to assess the consequences of this action, and this has resulted in some material adverse commercial outcomes for the company. Firstly, Regis has withdrawn the outcomes of the recently released DFS. This has given the failure to achieve one of the key assumptions, which was a satisfactory resolution of the Section 10 application process. As we've said, the decision means we cannot construct and utilize the planned TSF, and as a result of this, Regis and investors can no longer rely on the outcome of this study.
With this in mind, and taking into account the complexity and the length of time required to find a potential alternate TSF location, and with no certainty that a viable option can be identified, we have impaired the carrying value of the project to the tune of AUD 192 million. That is the immediate cost of this decision. With this Section 10 decision, we've also assessed the McPhillamys ore reserves, and we can no longer declare 1.89 million ounces of reserves related to the project. As a result, our group ore reserves have been reduced from 1.89 million to zero. Now, I'll let somebody else put a value on that gold. We also reviewed the mineral resource estimate, and while the risk profile has changed considerably, the key assumptions remain valid and unchanged.
As I said earlier, we also continue to assess our legal options available. However, I want to weigh risks that are available to respond to this decision, but I do want to reiterate that these actions that we've taken, as part of this in relation to the reserves and the writedown, have not been made lightly. The decision and the resulting actions that Regis has had to take in response have had a material impact on Regis. But more so, the impact to the communities in New South Wales is equally as significant. Regis can no longer deliver the expected 580 jobs in the construction phase, and the 290 full-time jobs when in production.
The Blayney community can no longer rely on the socioeconomic benefits that were to stem from the project in the form of jobs, procurement, training, infrastructure, upgrades, and other associated benefits. New South Wales can no longer rely on the AUD 200 million of royalties from the project, let alone the hundreds of millions of dollars from rates and taxes and revenue that were contributed to the Australian economy over this project's life. Now, to change gears a bit, I'd like to discuss the Regis's overall FY 2024 results. So if you could turn to slide two. Well, move on from the disclaimer, and now move to slide three, please. Have a look at that. During FY 2024, the rest of the Regis business delivered very impressive results, both from an operational and financial perspective. But I'm also pleased also on the ESG outcomes.
Firstly, on these, ESG, from an ESG perspective, we delivered meaningful outcomes across safety, diversity, workplace culture, rehabilitation, decarbonization, and Indigenous engagement, with Working Together Agreement and Heritage Management Agreements at our Duketon operation, where our mutual objective is to build capacity, not dependency. As you can see, and as we discussed in our June quarter release, we either met our FY 2024 predictions on production, all in sustaining costs and growth capital, or outperformed by coming in a little under, where we spent less on exploration and McPhillamys. Now, getting into this performance, I want to point out some high-level metrics. Anthony will certainly drill deeper and put some more detail and context in later slides. Regis remains one of Australia's largest 100% unhedged. It's unhedged, not unhinged. A 100% Australian-centric gold producer listed on the ASX.
In FY 2024, we delivered several records, largely due to the fact that we were no longer delivering into our own historical hedge commitments. And as we've pointed out before, we ended the year with record cash and bullion of AUD 295 million. And our operating cash flow is also a record at AUD 475 million. If we exclude the impact of hedge and one-offs in FY 2024, we delivered an underlying net profit before tax of AUD 106 million. So now, to demonstrate the value of the business since we became unhedged, the AUD 297 million of EBITDA that we made over the year, we generated AUD 234 million of that since the closeout of the hedge book.
The AUD 297 million in EBITDA over the year, AUD 234 million since we closed out the hedge book. Our record cash and bullion of AUD 295 million was built with AUD 140 million adding to it in the second half of 2024. Our record cash flow from operations of AUD 475 million, we generated AUD 349 million of that in the second half after the hedges, seeing a pattern. There is some excellent more detailed analysis on our profit as well that Anthony will go into. So all in all, all a very strong underlying business, demonstrating the profitability and cash-generating capacity of our current suite of assets as we've broken free of the shackles of the hedges. And now, with that, I'll pass over to Anthony Rechichi, our CFO. Over to you, Anthony.
Thanks, Jim. That really covers a lot of it, but I'll focus on some areas a bit further. Looking at slide four now, so you could turn to that. Slide four of the presentation, and the numbers show an improvement in several areas since last year, but also out on the right-hand side of that slide, we've shown the dramatic improvement that we've seen half- on- half in FY 2024. Across the top few lines there, you can see that, we produced 418,000 ounces of gold, and we sold 424,000 ounces of gold. As you can see, pre- and post-hedge closeout, with the hedges being closed out in the first half of the year, the realized average gold price received was 27% higher in the second half.
I said this in the June quarterly result call, and recapping it now, looking back on the hedge book buyout in December, it did in fact turn out to be a beneficial outcome as we'd expected. Taking into account the difference between the average buyout price of those 63,000 ounces we closed out, and the average spot gold price we got for selling them into the spot market, we're about AUD 14 million better off for having closed out the hedge book when we did. We generated a very strong underlying EBITDA of AUD 421 million. Noting that number is the statutory income statement result, adjusted for the non-cash impairment charges of AUD 194 million, the AUD 98 million hedge book buyout, and AUD 26 million of non-cash inventory, net realizable value write-downs.
Going down the page, as Jim noted, the strong gold price and unhedged nature of the second half's gold sales drove a record FY 2024 operating cash flow of AUD 475 million. Going over the page now to slide five, and regarding cash and bullion, we talked about this in the previous June quarterly release, so I won't dwell on this again too much, but what it shows is that the operations generate significant cash flow, even when considering their capital expenditure requirements. Regarding CapEx, we spent AUD 230 million on mining capital expenditure and an additional AUD 66 million on exploration and McPhillamys. Now, look at the profitability over on slide six. If you turn the page, please. This slide reconciles our underlying profitability to our statutory net loss.
If we look at FY 2024, excluding the impact of hedges and one-offs, we see a very profitable underlying business. From the top down, in FY 2024, record gold prices offset lower gold production to generate AUD 1.3 billion of gold sold at spot. Our cost of sales went up, as we stated in the quarterly, due to the impact of deeper open pits, longer haulage distances, and we mined more underground, ore which is a bit more expensive on a unit basis. We also saw an impact of wet weather-related interruptions on our costs later in the year, especially at Tropicana, due to the lower production.
Our depreciation and amortization was down 10% on, based on lower volumes mined versus the prior year, and after corporate and finance costs, the underlying net profit before tax was AUD 106 million, up from AUD 83 million in FY 2023. Impressively, post closeout of the hedge book, the business generated a AUD 57 million pre-tax profit. Then below that line, we have the one-offs and hedge impacts to come to our final statutory net loss after tax of AUD 196 million. Moving on to the balance sheet over the page, slide seven.
I think that the main point to focus on here is that we are at a net debt position of only AUD 5 million. Our balance sheet is strong, and while we have corporate debt of AUD 300 million maturing at the end of June 2025, and now considered current, we generate sufficient cash to repay this if needed. However, we are currently assessing our debt options in light of the recent McPhillamys outcomes. Well, that's about it from me, and I think I can safely reiterate Jim's sentiment. The operating business is in great shape, shown particularly in that second half of the year, with it providing a glimpse of what it's capable of delivering when unhindered by what was a very restrictive hedge book. Thank you all, and back to you, Jim.
Thanks, Anthony. Nice job of going through the numbers there. On the last slide, slide eight, is our FY 2025 guidance, which should be no surprise to you, considering we presented that a few weeks ago. The only change to our guidance is that we continue to review our spending at McPhillamys, so we've withdrawn that, and that's obviously in light of recent events, and we'll provide further guidance on that in due course. I'd also indicate that we expect the production profile to be reasonably flat over the full year, with a little bit of variation between each quarter. It's not not a perfectly flat profile. So overall, from a cash flow business position, we've got good operations in our portfolio and strong cash-generating capacity and a strong cash-generating capacity outlook.
Look, finally, I guess it, I should turn back to the very disappointing Section 10 declaration. Obviously, we're still shattered by the result and frankly, a little bit perplexed on some of the perspectives that have been described. Overnight, I read some commentary about how somebody could compare the TSF site in question with Juukan Gorge is a little bit confusing. Particularly as the area in question has long been cleared for farming, I think in the late 1800 s, and has been farmed ever since. Just as concerning is the comment about the approved project destroying the river. I'm not sure how that could be taken as a view. Maybe for a little bit of accurate context, the springs at the site in question are ephemeral. Now, that's a technical term, meaning that they don't permanently flow.
They're quite seasonal and obviously quite dependent on rain. They don't. They're not fed from under. Some of these ephemeral springs have actually long had dams dug up on top of them to trap the water for the farming process, and any photos from the region demonstrate that, and you can see it if you go there. Further, as anyone who's been to site would see in this area, we're talking about a small flowing creek most of the time at the Belubula, and certainly when I've been there and seen it multiple times. Obviously, that was a little bit different a couple of years ago when there was some recent flooding in the area, when bridges were out all over the place further downstream and extensive flooding through the region, of course. So, that period was different.
But perhaps to just sort of give a little bit further context on, that's data-driven, I could describe the impact of the flows into the Carcoar Dam. Now, the Carcoar Dam is a water reservoir. It's about 10 or 15 kilometers in a rough south direction from the site of the deposit. And over the years, our team's been measuring and modeling, and our experts and consultants have been modeling the flows from our site into the creek, and then down, in addition, down the river, in addition to the multitude of tributaries that also feed into the Belubula River, that flow into this dam. Our modeling is telling us that during the period of maximum ground area disturbance, so when the mine's at full roar and we've got maximum...
Because it's a zero-discharge site, we manage the water, or it was. The reduction of flows that actually ran down into the Carcoar Dam were reduced to the tune of 4.1% on average. So with the site running, the flows were reduced into the dam by 4.1% down the Belubula. This is obviously quite low, and as I said before, there's multiple tributaries that actually flow into this river. Further modeling also indicates that after the mine's closed, after all of the rehabilitation is finished, the reduction in water flow into the dam is less than 0.5%. So I'm not sure how that could be considered to be an action that destroys the river.
Look, but I guess on a final note, our biggest concern, the bigger concern for us is after years of work, testing, surveying the land, surveying for heritage, drilling, investigations, expert advice, state and federal approvals, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars, a decision can be made that overturned all of this, and we really don't know why. If there's one thing the country needs, it's consistency. Back to our operating business. Regis remains one of Australia's largest 100% unhedged, 100% Australian-centric gold producers listed on the ASX. We look forward to a period of strong cash flow generation, particularly in this environment of strong gold prices. With that, I wanna thank you for your ongoing support. Look forward to FY 2025, and throw it back to you, Ryan, for questions.
Thank you.
... Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while we poll for questions. Your first question is from the line of Meredith Schwarz with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jim and team. Thanks for the call. Just a couple of questions from me. You know, obviously, McPhillamys has been the dominant talking point of late, but can you perhaps talk through catalysts you see for Duketon and Tropicana over the next 12-18 months, please, and, you know, where there's potentially some upside there? And then I'll come back with the second question.
Yes. Okay. So the catalysts for upside in value at Duketon and Tropicana. I think first to Tropicana, we certainly see that as it comes out of the very significant impacts of rain that have occurred in the prior quarter and are flowing into this, we'll see that the business will get back to being more stable. And for that reason, we expect the production to lift, and that's reflected in our numbers. We're also anticipating probably a more longer-term value or medium-term value, a piece that's going to come out of Tropicana will be the Havana Underground, the completion and the messaging of the Havana Underground project assessment, which will be a new potential production zone sitting underneath the Havana pit, which will add to underground production.
So that's a, that's another value catalyst. Of course, there's always exploration in that area as they, as the area starts to dry out and the team can get back out there doing stuff. And I think also, the team's working hard there to lift with, in conjunction with the contractor there, Macmahon, to lift their, lift Macmahon's performance. And what we can see with that is, that will also give us a potential improvement over what we're, we're currently seeing, but we'll wait to see how that, continuous improvement work looks to deliver. If I turn to Duketon, I think at Duketon, we're really sitting on, you know, bringing, the Garden Well main business, into commercial production. We've really just started that. And, you know, every new mine is a little bit of a, a money pit.
You've got to put your cash into it, which is what we're doing there. We're investing in shafts, power, reticulation, adits, a number of more declines. We'll see some value starting to come out of that once it heads into commercial production, which will be next year, next financial year, I would expect. So, you know, and then as well, I think if you look at our the other works that we're looking to do to add to our strategy at Duketon of four to five underground mines, we've got opportunities to identify more additional underground mines from the three that we'll already be running with Rosemont, Garden Well South, and Garden Well Main. You'll see Ben Hur has got potential to be underground, which we're assessing.
You'll see Tooheys W ell, and maybe a little bit longer dated would be an area called Merlin, which will take a little bit more work to do. It's got both open pit and underground potential. So that's sort of a bit of a summary of what we see now. And of course, there's always our exploration team working hard to find the big whale of additional value, but that's still in its process of being discovered.
Thanks, Jim. And just kind of a question on the stock piles left at Duketon North. You know, with the high gold price environment, is there any potential for those to come into play for some feed source at Duketon South at all?
Yeah, good question. I guess the short answer to that is, with the improving gold price, there is, and we're assessing that at the moment.
Great, thanks. And then just one more, if I could. You know, obviously now that the McPhillamys CapEx requirements have been taken out of your profile, and with the, you know, stronger cash generations, does that influence, you know, potential dividends, you know, into the future? Or, you know, are you looking to potentially preserve that cash for inorganic growth opportunities?
Well, I'd certainly say it's a genuine agenda item that the board has been discussing. Even we had obviously met yesterday to approve these accounts. So it is certainly on the agenda for discussion. I would point out a couple of things at the moment. We still have AUD 300 million in debt that we can't lose sight of. And also, I think we've chewed through, for now, all of our franking credits, which is not a key driver, but it's certainly an aspect to be considering.
The answer to your question is, it's back on the agenda for discussion, but clearly there's a couple of things, and certainly by no means the debt sitting in front, that's a key factor to consider as well.
... Great! Thanks very much, Jim, and I'll hand it on. Thanks.
No worries. Thanks, Meredith.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Alex Papaioannou with Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jim and team.
Hey, Alex.
One of your peers this morning reported that labor tightness has come back a bit. So what is Regis seeing around cost pressures, particularly labor in WA?
When you say come back a bit, you mean has eased a bit?
Yeah, it has eased.
Yeah, look, I think, generally speaking, there is a bit of that. Probably what we, where we've seen it in the first instance is, roles get filled by people who are confident in their, in that role, you know? I think I've mentioned the story a couple of times that, within a week of some of our underground, of the, you know, not our underground mines closing, but the ones in Australia, in WA, the nickel and Barminco's operations, or where they were running. Unfortunately, you know, and we take no glee in the struggles of some of our brother and sister commodities. But that immediately released people that meant positions that we'd been trying to fill were filled within a week, which is great.
Naturally, a supply of labor into the market, I mean, it's pure supply and demand. I wouldn't say I've seen salaries reduce. We'll keep an eye out for that. But I certainly think that, you know, there, there's more availability, particularly, in the trade area. Michael's telling me in the trade area. But, you know, good experience roles there. You know, finding good talent is still a challenge, but it always is, finding the right people. The short answer to your question is, it's certainly easing. It's easy to find people. The trades in particular, we're seeing some softening there, but I wouldn't say that anything's going backwards. Not yet.
Yep. Yep, that's clear. And then just following the ruling around McPhillamys, has your appetite around inorganic growth in Australia changed? And would Regis look at opportunities outside Australia?
Yeah. I guess it certainly... The decision has made us a little bit more wary. I mean, you know, the decision's not even a week old, really, so, we're still getting our minds around what it means from that type of strategic, inorganic perspective. There are areas of the world that this, I guess, is part of the concern, there are areas of the world that we'd long considered to be too much of a sovereign risk, too much uncertainty, too easy for things to look like they're going well and then be flipped for no reason. So we didn't want to go there. Probably didn't think that that would happen to us, but here.
So yes, it does generate a question of what you want to do in Australia, but I think, I think for now, you know, we continue to look within Australia, but we've always looked offshore, just in, not as not too hard, I suppose, just for a simple way of describing it. But it definitely means that we need to be considering the sovereign risk that we'd considered in other places and the challenges there. It means that, you know, local, particularly in some areas, local investment comes with a similar risk profile. So it's pulled the attractiveness back of some parts of Australia.
Yep. Thank you. All right, I'll pass it on.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Hugo Nicolaci with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Jim, Anthony and team. Thanks for the update this morning. Obviously, a few on McPhillamys already. I guess just looking at the broader portfolio, I mean, obviously from where we are today, taking McPhillamys out of that medium-term outlook, leaves the portfolio with, you know, a bit of production decline on a five-year view. When you previously talked to some medium-term production targets, where do you see those resetting to, based on where things are now?
I think our medium-term production expectations and targets for Duketon and Tropicana have not changed. I think if you look at the material that we've indicated, we're anticipating and really driving a strategy for Duketon of producing between 200,000-250,000 ounces per annum. And that's off the back of a shift from our current mix of production, which is underground and open pits. And this is notwithstanding the new open pit discovery, of course, because that just changes the game completely for Duketon. But our plan continues to drive to four or five underground mines, which allows us, we feel, with, you know, if they sort of live up to the which they are at the moment, live up to the two years of reserves, and will do for the next 10 years.
Then having four or five mines allows us to be able to sustain that rate out of Duketon. So that's our, that's our target that we drive to for Duketon. And for the near term, we see Tropicana in that, in the zone, which is, I think, you know, 120-150-ish range, I think, and, you know, we see that certainly running out towards the end of this decade. Obviously, as the Havana pit potentially will start to wind down, we'll see the operation fall back to being, you know, in the, again, similar in the absence of any large open pit discovery, which we think there's plenty of potential.
But in the absence of that, it would settle back into just an underground operation, which would be larger, arguably larger than it is at the moment. Because at the moment it's just Boston Shaker and Tropicana, and we see, as I said, the consideration on this Havana underground means that we have three. So they're the sort of ranges that we indicate and feel that those two assets have got the capacity to deliver, at least into the medium term. And, you know, the happenings, if you like, of McPhillamys really hasn't changed that view at all.
Thanks, Jim. That's good to hear. And then maybe a slightly more niche one for Anthony. Just looking at the Duketon South asset base. Looks like after CapEx and D&A, you've added about AUD 80 million to the asset base. So I was just wondering, is that just from, you know, a higher gold price that you test those against or what might be driving that?
Which asset base are you referring to there, Hugo?
Duketon South. So I think you've got an asset base of about AUD 700 million at the end of the period, which implies you've added about AUD 80 million or a bit over 10% after reported D&A and CapEx. So just curious on that one.
Yeah, look, I guess, a lot of that's come over the course of the year with the, the development at, Russells Find and, Ben Hur as well. There was also some underground development there. We did bring some, costs over from exploration and evaluation, that, also related to the new underground mining areas, at, at Duketon South, Rosemont Stage III, and, the Garden Well Main. So those costs have been brought over and allocated to the mine properties, in Duketon South as well. So there's been some growth there for that reason, Hugo.
Yeah, thanks for that. I was wondering whether it was gold price or not, but that's clear. Thanks, I'll pass it on.
Thank you.
Thanks, Hugo.
Our next question comes from the line of David Coates with Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, everyone, for the presentation this morning. Just, again, I'm just trying to sort of follow up on McPhillamys. You know, you've mentioned the legal options to be pursued, and I, as you said the other day, I understand you don't want to go into those in too much detail. But can you... Are you able to give us any indication of like what the timeline of, you know, that might look like? What sort of milestones might be coming up that we should be looking out for?
In short, not at this point in time. The team's on it now, and we're obviously engaged in the process. How long and what the timeframe for that is is probably less clear.
Sure. You mentioned receiving or requesting a statement of reasoning from the department. Have you – is that to be forthcoming?
Yeah, look, all of that is part of the process, and what I'd prefer to do and think is probably appropriate is just to step back from that a little bit and not make too much more comment on it, Dave.
Sure thing. No problem.
It's probably the best thing.
Cool.
I understand the importance of your questions, but I just think it's, you know, we gotta let it run its course.
Yep. Yeah, completely understand. And just for leaving this alone, any sort of feedback from locals, local community or industry peers, on you know, the decision and how what its implications, wider implications might be?
Probably safe to say yes. Quite extensive. And you know, I think it's... You know, there's been some articles, in fact, there's another article this morning in the press about how some of the locals feel. You know, the mine at Blayney was, you know, there was 70% of the population supported it or strongly supported the mine. You know, and that's the local population. 15% were undecided, and 15% were against, as you know, you probably just get those. You know, there's always people that take an anti-development stance, so you understand that.
And so, you know, I think everybody in the local community there, and the council, and the local businesses, they all see that this has got a significant impact on their livelihood. I think multiple groups, you know, both across the board, all types and styles, it's the whole idea of these, the opportunities that mines bring, training, education for some, and a future. You know, in the future, you get training and you get an education, you get support and you get a job.
... It's not just, you know, positions people for long term, not just while the mine's there. And, you know, I've heard some great stories from people that have had the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of mines that have opened outside their communities elsewhere, and I think a lot of people were anticipating that was going to be the case here, and they've just seen it disappear. So it is quite quite stressful for a lot of people, and I could imagine. So our sympathies and empathy goes out to them. So yes, there is. In answer to your question, there's a lot of commentary comes in that supports us, and encourages us, but and we appreciate that.
At the end of the day, we just have to knuckle down, get on with trying to deal with the decision and working out, as you sort of asked, working out what our legal options are, but also, you know, what next? What can we possibly do?
Indeed. And just a couple sort of more technical questions, and probably for Anthony. Just quickly, are you able to give us any more color on the debt refinancing? And secondly, just flipping the earlier question around about inventories. Are there write-downs this year, but should we expect any in FY 2025?
Yeah, look, to deal with your debt question first then, David. Look, the McPhillamys outcomes mixes up the plans and strategies a little, as you can imagine, on what we planned on doing with the debt and whether that was gonna become part of a bigger piece or not, so although that's up in the air, as we're saying, you know, the two obvious options for us at the moment is, we go ahead and make those repayments. We've got cash, and we expect to generate plenty of cash, more cash this year. The other option, well, we don't have an option to extend as it currently stands, but depending on what else comes up, we may seek to go and see if we can do an extension.
There are a couple of options there. The good part about it is, we've got the cash flow to be able to handle that without any stress or duress, and that's the key thing on the debt front. Your question on the inventory and the NRV situation. Look, we wrote down another, was it 26 this year? Wrote down 30 last year. Look, in a nutshell, the 26 this year comes off the last of what was at Duketon North. Now, and that's the really full value of the 26. Predicting NRV movements is almost impossible. There's a few market factors that go into those valuations and calculations.
So, I'd like to say that the worst is behind us, but you can never predict that with the effect of gold price, cost inflation movements when you look at future processing costs and that sort of stuff. But you know, as we sit there at 30 June 2024, we've got it squared up again. And like I say, the AUD 26 million this time was for the end of what was left of stockpiles at Duketon North.
Excellent. Thanks very much, gents. I'll pass it on.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Alex Barclay with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hi, Jim and Anthony.
Hello.
... with that McPhillamys impairment, does that loss contribute to any offset in upcoming cash tax payments, or should we expect roughly 30% going forward? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Alex. Good question. No, look, this is an accounting timing thing. It's not gonna. It doesn't affect future cash flows. It doesn't affect our tax cash flow positions either. So, going forward, you know, we've typically been the nature of our business is that typically our profit has always been, or our tax has always been 30% of the pre-tax position, and it still looks to be that way at the moment. So, you know, there's no tax cash implication there.
Yeah, okay. Sure. Yeah, I didn't see much change in the deferred tax asset. Okay, thanks very much, guys.
Thank you.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Daniel Morgan with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jim and Tim. Can I just circle back to operations and specifically Tropicana, a longer term sort of holistic outlook? When is the latest expectation, your expectation of the pit being finished? And in the longer term fullness of time, you know, how many undergrounds would you hope, if everything goes right from a development perspective, how many undergrounds do you think you'd be running, and what sort of tonnage might you be pulling out? Just thinking about the, you know, how much you fill the mill, or would it have to be down rated in the very long term? Thank you.
Yeah, there's some pretty, pretty big questions you're asking there, Dan, so I'll do my best to answer them. Tropicana, the open pits, really, the Havana pit will be starting its end journey in probably FY 2028, 2029. By, you know, by the end of the decade, well, and truly it's done in the absence of-
... you know, making any other kind of more cutback decisions or something like that, but there's nothing, nothing immediately being considered on that front. In terms of the underground, that's a big, big ask. You know, the mill, maybe to put a bit of perspective, the mill's nine million tons, circa. There's, you know, I don't think there's an underground mine in Australia that runs at nine million tons. I think Olympic Dam has a crack at it. You know, so that's possible, but not likely. I think in terms of areas underground, what we know at the moment, as I said, there's Boston Shaker, and you can see that continues down into the bowels of the earth with the diagrams that we've provided in the past. There's the Tropicana area, and then there's the Havana South.
What is intriguing, and we think has got some real potential value, are some of these holes, and if you have a look at any of the releases that we put out, I think the last one, you can see that there's some. As a result of some opportunistic drilling that was done, some deep hole drilling, the team there went chasing the concept that there was some offset faulting of some of the existing mineralization, and came up with a few winners where they put holes in and found some pretty good intercepts. There's things like the Cobbler, I think it's called, the Cobbler underground area, a couple of meters at nearly 30 grams, 13 meters at 1 gram, and there's other Havana offset faults that have been drilled, and holes in them.
You know, I mean, they've only got one or two holes in them, so I don't know whether that's a new production zone at all. I'd like to think it is, but I can't. It'd be just entirely inappropriate to pin anything additional on that. But I guess my view on that is, I'd much rather have a hole that's a couple of meters at 29 grams than have a hole that's barren, 'cause that's, and it's all the same geology. So what does that all mean? That means that we think that the underground has certainly got significantly more potential than we currently have it producing. But how much? I'm not sure.
Wouldn't be prepared at all to put an indication on it, apart from saying, I just don't think you could keep that mill full at nine million tons per annum, not without an open pit.
So maybe talking about what is in plans and execution, you know, what is the tonnage that you think you could pull out of the undergrounds in plans that is in execution?
Yeah, look, we don't give. We've given a high-level indication of what the guidance is. You know, we can really talk to that, where it stays at its current level out towards the end of this decade and then drops down, and you can see that. In any more detail as to what that means for tonnages from underground or otherwise, we're just not in a position to provide that level of granularity at this point in time. But, you know, we continue just to indicate that its current production profile can run out towards the end of, as I said, FY 2028, 2029 , then you'll see it step down. You can, you know, you can see how much production's coming from the underground at the moment from two zones.
You know, a high-level kitchen chemistry will tell you what you think you might be able to do with three, but you know, there's no detail around that that we're in a position to provide.
That's all fair enough. Maybe circling back to, I guess, some of the other questions that have been asked by our analysts, but just tying it together. I mean, your guidance, the gold price, would all seem to think you're gonna make a meaningful amount of free cash flow in this year. You've got a question on your three hundred mil debt facility on whether you extend or pay it off. What are your plans to do with this free cash flow? And I guess, does debt belong in your business or not? Thanks.
I think it's reasonable to say that debt has a role in businesses. That's how you leverage value, as long as you're not putting your business at risk by taking, you know, extreme positions. We've always been comfortable with the debt that we've currently got. You know, as we look forward, what are our options? Pay the debt, invest in, you know, there's clearly some investment, not... We're not talking hundreds of millions, but each underground mine requires, you know, I don't know, depending on its complexity, AUD 40 million-AUD 60 million, AUD 70 million to set it up. We got another one or two of those we'd like to do. But beyond that, I mean, you know, we see ourselves being much capable of generating significant cash above that. Yep, it's the debt.
It's, I think, Meredith asked a question about the dividends. That's certainly an option as well, and then there's some other growth opportunities, as well, and in the meantime, you know, in the distant background, we hopefully tick away and see what in the blazes we can do with the McPhillamys, but we have to certainly redirect our near-term growth, at, you know, other project opportunities or growth through, the, you know, corporate, which is code for M&A.
Thanks very much, Jim, for your perspectives.
Thanks, Dave. Thanks for your question.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Andrew Bowler with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
... Good day, Jim and Anthony. This is probably a question for Anthony. Just noting that you've fully impaired McPhillamys today in terms of exploration and evaluation. I'm just wondering if you can share your thoughts on, you know, the base case, residual value for McPhillamys. I mean, obviously, you've got some freehold farmland there. You've got some water rights. I think this is under the, you know, the worst-case scenario that the gold resource is worth nothing, which is up for debate. But what, you know, what's the sort of water rights worth and what's the farmland worth, roughly? Could we expect any sort of value from this in the next sort of six months or so? Or is that something that's a bit longer term than that? Cheers.
Yeah, Andrew, it's Jim here. Maybe just to give the high-level answer on that. You know, we definitely... I mean, it's still too early for us. We definitely have land holding values. AUD 50-plus million in land, I think, is sitting there. AUD 60 million that we didn't write off for obvious reasons. Although, we're still trying to understand what the impact of the value on that freehold land might be from this Section 10 declaration, because it does impact, it does appear to impact the usability of that land, but that's a separate question. You know, we will our... You know, it's a bit too early for us to go anywhere as to how hard or soft and what we do with that at the moment. You know, this decision is days old.
We're still trying to figure out and understand really what our approach should be. You know, at the end of the day, you know, we've said that our approvals are gone. It's almost, it's basically back to square one in terms of our approvals. You know, we'll look for alternative solutions to this, the TSF. We think that could take between five and 10 years without any certainty. But that doesn't mean that it's not still attractive to try and do. We've just got to figure out how that looks and how long that takes. And therefore, yeah, that sort of leads into how much we plan to spend there going forward.
But what we do with those assets that have got real value is really dependent on, you know, where we land on that plan of what to do with that deposit with McPhillamys in the future.
Okay, thanks. I mean, it sounds like, you know, approvals aside, there is certainly some value, still left in that part of the world for Regis. Thanks very much for your answer.
Yeah, that's right. There is, but, you know, beware. Beware and understand.
No worries. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. As there are no further questions, I will now hand back the conference to Mr. Jim Beyer for his closing remarks. Jim?
Yeah, thanks, Ryan. Thanks, everybody, for your questions. We do appreciate it. And also, I take the opportunity again to thank the team over at McPhillamys and, you know, recognize that the challenges that they're going through, and I guess in some respect, the heartbreak that they're going through and the, as the news came through, are certainly. We're doing what we can to support them, and I just wanted to make this public thank you for them and for everybody else that has supported the project to this point. So I take that opportunity, and I also take the opportunity to thank those people that have been contacting us directly and offering their words of support. We do appreciate that as well.
So, but fundamentally, look at our business beyond, you know, we're not just McPhillamys. We are not a one-project company. At a basic level, our Duketon and Tropicana are great assets, and they will be, as we've demonstrated and will continue to demonstrate, they are good, solid cash generators. So, you know, this is, there are options that are sit in front of, Regis is not just McPhillamys, and our business and our strength of our business tells us that we've got more that we can offer and more that we can do, and more that we can certainly, deliver to our shareholders. So thanks, everybody, for the call. Have a good day, and as always, if anybody's got any questions, please, give us a yell.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today.