Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Regis Resources Limited full year results. 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.
Thanks, Zari, and welcome everybody to our call on the full year financial results for FY 2022. Joining me is Elena Macrides, our CoSec. Ben Goldbloom, Head of Investor Relations. Tony Bevan, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, and Stuart Gula, our Chief Operating Officer. All right. You should see on your screen two things. A PowerPoint presentation, which we'll step through, and a photo of myself, unfortunately for you. All right. Turning to page, slide 2 please, operator. I'll just draw your attention to the cautionary statement. We do make some forward-looking comments and discuss targets later on, so I just draw your attention to that statement. Slide 3, thanks. Look, we've had a year with record production, as we've noted earlier, and it's great.
It's been our first full year of production from Tropicana, contributing to our performance as well. At the same time, we've been making a considerable investment in the future and our future production levels. Overlaid with this has been a very challenging environment with the impacts of COVID and the inflationary conditions clearly having an impact on our results, on our financial results. Our EBITDA was AUD 336 million. That was after a AUD 74 million write-down, giving us an EBITDA margin of about 33%. Our cash flow is still reflecting the strength, I think, of our operating business, AUD 347 million. We ended the financial year with 30 June of cash and bullion at AUD 231 million.
That's after getting an AISC through the full year of 1,556, giving us a margin of $756 an ounce. Also noting in there that we had $161 million in growth capital through that period as well, as I mentioned before, considerable investment in our future. That led us after a non-cash post-tax adjustment of $60 million to a statutory net profit of $14 million. Now, with this context, as I mentioned, of the external impacts, and importantly, a couple of aspects here, the conservative nature of our balance sheet and what we see, and our board sees, as a positive outlook for our operations. The board had confidence in delivering a full year dividend of 2 cents fully franked shares.
That's a bit of a high-level summary of our financials. If we turn to slide four, and I know that today has a focus on our financials, but there was a couple of things I just wanted to touch on around our ESG front. Slide four, please, operator.
Yes.
The first thing is I just highlight the fact that our safety as measured by Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate is still quite a pleasing level. I mean, you're never happy until the number is zero, of course, but we do sit more than 40% below the industry average. Our diversity is very strong, I think. We have around about 23% female as a measure of diversity, which is certainly above the industry average, which is sitting a few percent below that. Looking at our environment, we had zero non-compliances and no significant incidents.
Pleasingly, I guess, the one thing I did want to also highlight on this slide was we've approved and are underway with the construction of a 9 MW solar farm at Duketon. Now, of course, this has got two advantages to it. No doubt, people, you know, are pleased to see that the impacts of carbon reduction and the reducing our carbon intensity over time with this. Also importantly, this has a quite significant impact on reducing our power costs, as this will be fed into the power grid that we have down at Duketon South. A great project that will take about 12 months or so to get that online completely. We're pleased that we've been able to get that one moving.
What I'd like to do at this stage now is hand it over to Tony, who will talk through a little bit more of the detail of our results and background to the full year. Thanks, Tony. Over to you.
Thanks, Jim. If we could turn to slide five, please. This is just a highlight summary and some of the further slides will talk in more detail around the net profit and cash flow. I'll just highlight there the increase in production and revenue. Revenue increased by about 24% over the year, and cash flow from operations also increased as well to AUD 347 million. I suppose that's you know largely as a result of the impact of the full 12 months of operations at Tropicana. The other point I'll make on figures on this page are the EBITDA for the current year of AUD 336 million. That's after a AUD 74 million non-cash adjustment for NRV write-downs.
If you could just turn to page 6, we'll go into more detail on the net profit result. Profit was obviously below expectation, and I suppose that's been impacted by two significant events or two factors. The first is the non-cash write-downs and impairments, which total AUD 85 million before tax and cost increases that, you know, have particularly hit in the second half of the year with fuel and the effects that it has on the broader business as well. Just in terms of the non-cash write-downs and impairments totaling AUD 85 million, AUD 74 million of that was a write-down of net realizable value of the ore stockpiles. The two major factors contributed to this write-down.
When we reviewed the life of mine in the second half of the year, we pushed out the timing for when we were gonna process those stockpiles. As a result, by pushing the timing of that processing further out, the gold price used in the NRV assessment is slightly lower because it's based on the consensus price. That has an impact on the NRV assessment. That was the big factor in the write-down. Also, the other factor is the cost to complete have increased. That was the other factor. That, as I said, NRV write-down was AUD 74 million. It's a non-cash adjustment, which is included in the EBITDA.
I'll also, just on that slide, point out the significantly increased depreciation and amortization associated with the Tropicana purchase. This obviously does have an effect on net profit, but does not impact cash or EBITDA. If we could turn to slide 7. This is a summary of the waterfall with the cash flow for the year. You can see we started the year at AUD 269 million of cash and bullion on hand, and finished the year with AUD 231 million. Cash from operations of AUD 378 million. That's, you know, the operations generated a very positive, very healthy cash flow.
Those next three bars, the 219 mine development, the AUD 56 million exploration in McPhillamys, and the AUD 78 million of other CapEx, they're all investment in future growth. We generated AUD 378 million, and we spent AUD 353 million on the future. I think that's a, you know, that's a very positive message. Really that's the cash flow summary for the year. That includes the dividend of AUD 22 million, which was paid during the financial year. If we then turn to slide eight. The cash and bullion balance, as I've mentioned, is AUD 231 million.
In our quarterly report, we did highlight the fact that since year-end, there have been some significant one-off payments which have reduced this cash balance. That related to the payment of the stamp duty on Tropicana and also a property purchase in New South Wales. The total of those two transactions was about AUD 60 million, which has reduced the cash balance since year-end. Our net debt is AUD 69 million as at 30 June. That's made up of the AUD 231 million cash and bullion on hand, less the AUD 300 million syndicated finance facility, giving you that net debt of AUD 69 million.
That AUD 300 million finance facility matures in the last quarter of FY 2024, and we're obviously looking at refinancing options associated with the McPhillamys development. Our hedge book, we've reduced the hedge book by 100,000 ounces during the year, and there's 220,000 ounces remaining as of 30 June, and that'll be, that hedge book will be closed out in the next two financial years. Currently, 75% of our gold ounces sold are unhedged and exposed to the spot gold price. I'll now hand back to Jim.
Thanks, Tony. Okay. Well, look, if we just turn to slide nine, there's not a lot to point out there. That's our guidance, which we've already noted earlier this financial year. Our group guidance in total, 450-500 thousand ounces, all in sustaining sitting between AUD 1,525 and AUD 1,625. Our growth capital, as noted, AUD 145 million-AUD 155 million, and our exploration and including McPhillamys is around AUD 72 million. No change on that front. If you could turn to slide ten, please. This is again something that isn't new, but it's just a good point for us to show this. This is where we're heading.
When we talk about the investment that we've made this year or, sorry, in the prior year, it's all part of our plans and our approach to target this 500,000 ounces per year by FY 2025. We see that by our two operations. Duketon, we see, you know, our target there is to get that up to around 350. At Tropicana, we're anticipating the target there of 150 is quite eminently doable. You know, the key change coming through Tropicana this year is actually the Havana cutback.
While it will continue for as a pretty significant area of activity for the next year, it will start to be a significant contributor to production as we expose a lot more ore and can really start feeding that into the mill and displacing some of the lower grade feed coming off stockpiles at the moment. This plan, of course, as you can see, it does involve a steady reduction in the growth capital, decreasing through FY 2024. As you look out to FY 2026 and beyond, it's sort of a hazy, sort of bluey mixture of colors. We do look at the potential out there for McPhillamys, although we obviously haven't included that in that growth capital from Duketon and Tropicana.
We see that there is a number of options for us to be able to get to 500, our target of 500, and also to be able to certainly maintain that going forward from FY 2025. If I could just turn to slide 11, please, to wrap it up. Thank you. What we see here is, just as a reminder, we have a strong financial platform. Tony just talked through the net debt position, and we're certainly in a position to start being able to generate more cash in the future as we move from our recap, this capitalization phase that we've been in. We are generating, from an operating point of view, strong cash flows. Long reserve life with a production profile that does grow, as I've indicated.
We do operate clearly in a tier one location. We have a progressive and measured approach to ESG, and by that means we are moving forward. We are making appropriate, we're not making outlandish comments or commitments. We've been steady and considered, but also we are making very strong progress, as identifying and highlighting in my earlier points on ESG. We are looking and our business is to return to a more consistent plan in delivery, although we do continue to see, as you normally get with a bit of ebb and flow with movements from quarter to quarter. We are getting our operations back on a more reliable basis from where we were at the end of calendar 2021, which is very pleasing to see.
We don't touch on it, but I have mentioned earlier some of the very exciting exploration results we're starting to see come through from our exploration program from the last couple of years that we've been stepping up, particularly around areas such as Maverick and the like in that Rosemont-Baneygo trend. Anyway, we'll pull it up there. Today was about the financial results, so I'd like to hand it back now to Zari and open it up to any questions.
Thank you. 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. Your first question comes from Daniel Morgan from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jim and Tim. Excuse me. Just on the
Go again.
Hi. Just the stockpiles under the impairment. Could you talk about maybe what the break-even gold price you think you need to process that? You know, just to help us think about, you know, if the gold price goes up or assumptions change, you know, might these come back into the mine plan? Thank you.
These are in the mine plan, Daniel. From a cash point of view, these stockpiles are actually quite valuable. The write-down was because the way that they are done from a statutory reporting point of view, those stockpiles they carry a cost, if you like, of historic. When we sat down and looked at the timing of it, and as Tony said, we've pushed some of those stockpile treatments because we've been able to reschedule things. We've pushed them out in time a little bit, and we also see some increased cost to processing. From a profit point of view, they were in the red, which is why we had to take the write-down.
From a cash flow point of view, those stockpiles are still highly valuable and the gold price would need to be considerably lower than what it is today for them to be not worth the price of processing. They're actually quite valuable to us because from a cash point of view, they're basically all paid for. All they've got to cover going forward is the cost to pick it up and process it through the mill. Any gold price involved in not processing those stockpiles would be pretty low. Understand they've been written down from an accounting point of view. They are still stockpiles that sit in our mine plan because they add considerable value from an NPV basis.
Just further on that, when do they roughly sit in the mine plan, and does it relate to Moolart Well, or is it throughout the business? Thank you.
It's throughout the business. It's varying between, you know, at Moolart at the moment, it could be a couple of years out. Whereas down at Duketon South, it could be certainly 4 or 5 years out.
Just could you refresh us on Moolart Well? What is the plan on mining, processing and life there, or life extension there?
Sure. At the moment, based on our reserves, we will be moving to. We'll be mining ore and direct feeding into the mill this year and into part of next year. After that, we start to deal with some of those stockpiles that we've been talking about. However, we have some opportunity, some growth opportunity there, in an area called Commonwealth, which is sitting well and truly within the economic haulage distance from the Moolart Mill. We haven't finalized our reserves on that, but we've been out there drilling over the last couple of months. The results there are particularly encouraging. We're anticipating that as those come through, that life at Moolart will gain something from that.
We've got a few other things that are interesting there that we're not quite ready to break cover on. As a minimum, we see probably that including the stockpiles that we've got there, I think Moolart will be around for at least another three or four years. There's a couple of years of stockpile treatment. If we manage to deliver on the plan that we're following, we'll be able to feed in some good material coming from deposits such as Commonwealth, which will add another, you know, well, as many as we find it'll add, I guess.
Thank you. Just switching to Tropicana. There's an asset review called Full Asset Potential. What does that involve? Are you providing input into it? What do you expect the timing will be on that? I know you said first half of this fiscal year, but just wondering if it's later or. Thank you.
The Full Asset Potential is something that Alberto's got running right throughout AngloGold Ashanti. It's actually quite similar to a program that was running in Newmont back when Goldberg took over, so that was several years ago now. It basically looks at the business, looks at each site, looks at their bottlenecks. Looks at opportunities for, you know, how's the place being run. I guess it's one of these activities where long-held sacred cows might get questioned, for example. There's also an examination of, and looking at how the mine is being run at an optimum point.
I would describe it as a great opportunity where the can gets kicked over and everybody has a look and sees whether it's actually there's a more valuable way of running it. It's a well-structured process. It's common. It's Bain, the group that are partnering with that. You know, our role is the same as management's role. It's really a senior management's role. It's an oversight to see what happens. The team there is a very well-structured process that basically breaks down you know cost mapping exercises and things like that. We watch and provide a bit of input and you know maybe suggest areas to look at, but it's a pretty thorough process on its own.
It also looks at other elements of the cost to see whether there is, you know, opportunities to, you know, for the more general cost reduction of, you know, do we need to use as many Post-it notes as we do? Okay, it's obviously a lot more serious than that. It's a really quite well-structured approach that comes in from both ways. How's the business run? Has it got the right mine plans? And are there, you know, where are there cost-out opportunities to make the business more efficient, just running with the existing plan. Time-wise, it's underway at the moment. We won't, you know, nothing's changed from the timing expectations that we've given before.
You know, I think there's an update due in the next couple of weeks, I think. Don't hold me to that. I can't remember exactly what that date is. Or actually, I think it might be after the Denver Gold Forum. You know, there's a program that where there'll be some quick hits, but there's also anything that does get worked on will probably take several months to follow through. We're particularly pleased that it's being done early in the cycle, just running throughout, running right across Anglo. The feedback from other operations that it's been done already have been very positive. We look forward to talking about the results in due course.
Okay. Thank you, Jim and Tony.
Thanks, Daniel.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Bowler from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good day. Had a couple more on ancillary. Just after a bit more color on how you're thinking about divvies over the next couple of years, just, obviously, given the potential for Filo mine spend to start in the next little while. Cheers.
Yeah, look, it's a good question. Thanks, Andrew. You know, I think the idea that the dividend was paid, and obviously there's a fair bit of discussion about it, but it's as much a recognition of how confident we feel about all the work that we've been doing, not just in the last year, but the last couple of years really is starting to set the business, you know, how that's looking. You know, what we will do with dividends, we will consider at the time, as we've been asked on a number of occasions, do we have a policy? We don't.
We also recognize that the intention of a business is to make profit and return a combination of that profit to the shareholders while retaining some of it to continue to build the business in the future, which, of course, is so critical for mining resource companies. I think the payment, you know, Regis has got a great history of paying a dividend, and we're certainly well and truly over half a billion AUD in dividends being paid since we kicked it off.
We will look at the future as to, you know, a combination of both the profitability of the business over the next 12 months and also what the demands might be for capital around McPhillamys and its timing, and also how we would decide to take an approach to try and fund that all out of cash flow, or whether we do it with a combination of a bit of cash and a bit of debt, which is probably more the way we're thinking at the moment. You know, it's not a flash in the pan. It wasn't a decision that was made quickly.
It was a recognition that both we were in a position where we could pay, but also where we were confident with the way that the company was gonna be performing over the coming twelve months in the future.
No worries. Thanks. That's all for me. Cheers.
Thanks, Andrew.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter O'Connor, from Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Hey, Jim. Hey, Tony. Congrats on the results.
Thanks.
Some random questions, Jim. Firstly, back on the dividend, do you have a must-pay view at the board level?
No, because that would be a policy. No, but
All right. Let me put it another way. Do you think that shareholders would expect you to continue because of your continuity of dividends? Is that something that's front and center of discussion when you have those deliberations?
I think the payment of dividends is front and center of the conversation. I mean, it's a reason to be, right? It's part of, well, why does the business start? There needs to be a combination of growth and return. Ultimately, you've got to look at your return. You know, it's certainly we've had a great record of that in the past. It's pretty safe to say that over the last couple of years, it's been a little bit harder for us, but that's also in part because we've been dealing with some of the historic hedges, which have had an impact on our ability to pay dividends at the levels that they were before.
You know, I think the fact that we've done it and the fact that we've you know it hasn't been a great from a pure statutory accounting point of view. It's been a challenging year, but we still feel that it's appropriate to be paying a dividend. As I said, combination of where we currently sit and how we think we're going to be in the future. The board certainly takes a very strong consideration as to our ability to pay dividends, certainly in the full year. Whether you know whether you're talking interims, I guess is maybe a different question, but certainly every full year at least. It'll continue to do that.
It, you know, if it means putting balance sheets at risk, then I think just for the hell of paying a dividend, and, you know, effectively if we're saying, will we pay a dividend if we didn't think we could afford it or the business was positioned right, I think, I don't think we'd be pressuring ourselves to do it just to continue to feel good.
Okay then. Thanks, Jim. Back to the impairment. You make a really good point. You said it, Dan, about it's non-cash impairment, and these stockpiles are actually very valuable. Could you just put some numbers around that? You took it, you got to pick it up, AUD 2 a ton. You've got to process it, AUD 20 a ton. Is that kind of all I'm looking at from a cash perspective when I process that material?
Pretty much.
Okay.
Pretty much.
From capital gold price of AUD 2,500, AUD 2,600 Aussie, I've got a pretty solid cash margin on those ounces, despite the fact from an accounting perspective, they may be more marginal.
Well, you know, as you say, it's a couple of bucks to pick it up. Processing costs per ton are probably mid- to mid-20s, mid- to high 20s. You know, so you got to put a little bit on for tailings, the cost of build, putting a tailings, you know, the tailings dams, we always estimate at AUD 0.50 per ton. You've always got to put it somewhere. This is, you know, it's pretty, it's low cost up. Some of the stockpiles are actually quite low grade. You know, I've always said we put the, we just make some stockpiles are very low grade, and we specifically from an accounting point of view, we don't put any, they don't carry any value because they're the ones that you just, you know you're gonna get caught up with.
These stockpiles where we took the write-downs on, they were sort of middling. I don't know, Stuart, I guess the grade probably be sitting about 0.4 grams, something like that.
Yeah.
About that sort of grade. You know, they're not. You know, if they were ripping tons, put the damn thing through the mill already. It's, you know, it's all part of the classic Kenneth Lane cutoff grade theory of, you know, grade management. Yep, but it's still. They will still make reasonable cash.
Should the recovery decline with grade? Is that how I should think about it as well when you put that 0.4 grams through the mill? What's the recovery?
Oh, yeah, we adjust it. You know, as you quite rightly point out, recovery is usually related in as much to. There's always a bit of gold that goes out in tails that you just can't get, and therefore your recoveries drop as the grade goes lower. Yep, that's well noted, and that's all taken into account.
Okay. I'm just intrigued about the use of consensus price deck. I'm sure your auditors must have had some flexibility what you presented, but why wouldn't you have presented a forward curve?
Yeah, it's a good question. That is, it does become a point of discussion. I guess the more conventional way to run it is with a consensus price deck. If you know, arguably, if you're gonna use a forward price deck, you could use that if you actually had locked everything in, which we haven't. We use data from the consensus price deck, which is pretty conventional.
Just thinking philosophically, you're using data from a bunch of muppets like us instead of a forward curve, which is a much deeper liquid market. Seems odd. Okay, my next question is, corporate admin costs are up about AUD 5 million. Is that just Tropicana additional costs, or what's that?
Sorry, what was that last question? I was still trying to come to terms with you describing yourself as a muppet, Pete.
No, I was speaking in the third person, not me.
Okay. All right.
Corporate and admin costs up AUD 5 million year-on-year. Is that Tropicana and just the additional work with that, or is that the ongoing rate going forward?
It's a little bit. There was a little bit of spillover, a last bit of cash that had to be paid out for some fees for the Tropicana deal, which is sort of a non-recurring piece that pushed it up a bit. I think that was about AUD 6 million or AUD 7 million, sitting in there.
What should we think about long term?
Well, what we had.
20 million bucks? About 20?
A little bit more than that. From a total corporate, maybe AUD 20 million-AUD 24 million.
Okay. You had another impairment, a non-current asset impairment of AUD 11 million, which was below the EBITDA line. What does that relate to?
The stockpiles are actually not impairments, they're writedowns.
Write-downs. Okay
I mean, having just spent the last
Yep
Two weeks discussing this in some reasonable detail, as you can imagine, with the auditors, they do get technical on the titles. The write-downs were on the stockpiles. The majority of that was non-current, meaning that it was in the future, expected to be in the future. That impairment was related to was about AUD 10 million or AUD 11 million, I think, AUD 10 million or AUD 11 million. It related to some exploration ground that was dropped that had some value that we had to impair and take that. For impairments, it's taken off, you know, in this below the line terminology, whereas write-downs are incorporated and have taken off even if they're non-current.
Got it. O n D&A, clearly the big step up, we know it's Tropicana. How you review your mineral reserve and resource position, if your Anglo does as part of the JV every year. When do we expect the next meaningful review of that, and when could we expect that unit depreciation charge to step down as you extend the reserve base? Will they drip feed you on it, so it'll never really change, or do we get a large step at some point in that D&A charge because of that?
Yeah, good question. Look, I don't think we're gonna. I mean, we'll see steps here. I think like last year in the resources, I think sorry, in the reserves at Trop, it went backwards a little bit, but it did include the first reserve statement for the Tropicana underground. I think what we're going to see, you know, understanding the mine plan and the timing, I think it will be. It's probably more likely to be steps than, you know, a little bit dribbling in every year. Although, we've just gotta wait and see how that plays out just based on, you know, the.
I think the extension of reserves, for example, at Boston Shaker, are likely to maybe be a reasonably steady rolling addition because it's got well-established development and it's an extension of known geology. Whereas when we look over at Tropicana, there's areas there that have basically historically have had no drill holes in. Now we're putting them in, we're starting to, you know, as we were expecting, we were finding mineralization. They've got to plan and put the development in to make sure they can access that. Which is, it's a bonus that it's being found, which is what we think is great. It just, it's not quite as smooth in its ability to sort of roll forward. I think that might come in spits and spurts.
The other area that they're looking at over there is the Havana underground, which I think you know. Well, there's nothing in the plans for that. There are no reserves there at the moment for the underground.
Okay
We've already got the, I can't remember what it's called now. The link drive, isn't it? The link drive that's been commenced, where there's a drive that heads out there and we'll be doing some resource and drilling there for the next phase of a feasibility study on that area. You know, I think there'll be some sections that will underground that will roll quite steadily, and the others will come in steps and not quite so smooth while they get into the rhythm.
Okay, my last question. Page 10, the growth outlook, plus 500,000 ounces. You talked about McPhillamys and other internal sources. Is that other internal, is that Havana? Is that the undergrounds at Trop? Is it that middle ground that you talked about at the quarterly between in Duketon area that you're looking at at the moment? Are they the type of opportunities that you're thinking about?
Yes. Yeah, certainly, we see opportunities in like Garden Well Main is probably one of the more exciting areas from an underground point of view we see significant potential in. We're just working through the process of finalizing the details of that big exploration or not big, but an exploration drive we wanna put out there. We see some rolling additions for Rosemont underground as well. Pardon me, beyond the existing reserve life. We also see, as I mentioned earlier, there's deposits like Commonwealth, Ben Hur, we see extensions of it. They've got potential there. Then a little bit further afield, we've got underground potential at Gloucester, which is some great intercepts, but complex geology that we're trying to work on as well.
We certainly see the potential. You know, getting to the 350 at Duketon is really squeezing some of our assets just a little bit harder, and we're a bit wary of being too quick to run into that. We also see additional production coming from new production sources and, you know, like Garden Well Mine, like Commonwealth and like a couple of other areas that we're just working our way through that we'll let people know about when we're a bit more clear on what their contribution is.
Thank you, Jim.
Thanks, Peter.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Alexander Papaioannou, from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jim and team. Just one question from me. One of your peers has reported easing input costs since they'd set their initial FY 2023 guidance in July. Have you noticed any easing at your costs at your operations?
Well, yeah, look, probably the most obvious one is fuel. You know, fuel was actually quite significant. I mean, it was amazingly, FY 2022 was like the year of two halves. The average fuel price that we paid in the first half of last year was probably mid-80s, and then the fuel price that we paid in the second half of the year was probably AUD 120 or something like that. If you look at our sensitivity to fuel, in rough terms, a 10-cent movement in fuel price is worth about AUD 15 an ounce, something like that. We have certainly in our all-in sustaining costs guidance, we made some...
We were assuming that the fuel price as it was back in June would stay that way for probably at least a quarter, and then some easing back to AUD 1.40. I think our average, the average fuel price we used for AISC was about AUD 1.475 per litre. You know, has it moved? Fuel's actually softened a little bit, I think, in the last month, which is nice. Not enough for us to charge out and restate our guidance at this point in time. We'll probably wait and see what happens. Other costs, less so. Fuel is clearly the one that has the biggest impact representing, I think, around about 20-25% of our costs.
You know, that is a single point that is probably the most big leverage. All the rest, no, that's direct. I mean, fuel then has other flow-ons to everything from how much it costs to move things to site, to how much it costs to run planes and all those sorts of things. That's. We have seen a little bit of movement, but nothing at the moment that's caused us to go back to our guidance and say, we're nervous about the runs that we've already expressed.
Yep. Perfect. Very helpful. Thanks.
Thanks, Alex.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Patrick Collier from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hi, Jim and team.
Patrick.
Two, yeah, two from me, please. Just firstly, on the stockpile write down, are you able to give any insight on what the split was between the gold price assumption change versus processing costs? Just knowing those are the two main factors.
No, we haven't got that detail to go into. I think, I mean, I don't even know what it is off the top of my head. There was a reason. I mean, the gold price that we were seeing, certainly for the DSO ore or stockpiles, was, you know, at least AUD 200 lower because it was pushed further out in time. The operating costs were, yeah, I don't know. I'd be guessing if it was half and half. Yeah, we haven't got the breakdown, and it's probably, I think, getting into a little bit too much detail, but both of them were significant contributors to the outcome.
Okay. That makes sense. Both significant. Thanks. Just looking at the refinancing and looking at funding with McPhillamys, are you able to comment on what level of debt, you know, you'd be comfortable with and just any metrics that you're using to assess that, or when the time comes?
No, we haven't. You know, we've. Well, there's a couple of things that we've actually, you know, got be thinking about. One is, you know, obviously, what's the capital cost gonna be? We've done quite a lot of work on that, as you can imagine, but there's certainly in the last 6-12 months have been significant pressures on the cost of building anything, both in terms of the availability of people and the raw inputs. Although we do note that things like steel and some of the others have dropped in price a little bit, which is helpful.
What we need to consider with our funding is, as Tony said, we have about AUD 300 million worth of debt sitting on the balance sheet that's due for the bullet in mid two years, a bit over two years' time. A bit less than two years' time, I should say. That, no doubt, would form part of how we would restructure our debt around that in incorporating McPhillamys. We haven't set ourselves any metrics of, in the likes of, you know, debt ratios and the like. We're just starting to turn our mind to how that looks.
You know, obviously also wanting to understand what our cash flow generating is as we get closer to the time will be an important one as well. When we bought Tropicana, you know, one of the things that we liked about Tropicana was once it got through this high pre-strip phase at Havana, which was last year and continued this year and starts to drop off from next year. It then moves into a much more significant cash-generating phase for the right gold price. If we wanted to, we could potentially fund it out of cash flow. 'Cause we'll also. So, you know, there is a lot of levers and a lot of moving parts in that at the moment, Patrick, so I can't.
That's probably the best I can give you on context.
No, that's been really helpful. Thank you. That's all from me. Thanks.
No worries. Thanks for your question.
We have a follow-up question from Peter O'Connor, from Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Jim, just with that last question in mind and looking at slide 7. Just trying to think about the cash flow generation going forward, as you're probably doing every board meeting. Mine development, exploration, and McPhillamys and other CapEx, can you just walk us through how those numbers will look? I know you've given us guidance for FY 2023, but more like 2024, 2025. You talked about the drop-off at Tropicana and the drop-off at Duketon. It's a big step down in mine development.
Yeah, I'll give you some context around in using the guidance that we've already provided. I'm not in the position or desire to continue to expand on that at the moment. You can see what our cash flows are gonna be roughly looking like over the coming this coming twelve months. You know, it's the whole idea of AISC and growth capital and the other key elements that we give there.
If I look a little bit further out, I don't think that's certainly made no secret of the fact that at Tropicana, you know, Tropicana's total material movement last year was a little bit lower than we were all planning on, and it was sort of some significant impacts on there from COVID-related labor availability. I think the site's back running on its plan now, which is great to see. We'll see total material movement levels, I think, at Trop are roughly the same this year as last year. After that, it
What's that number, Jim? How much TMM?
I think it's about AUD 8 or 9 million. Actually, that might be 30%, I think. At 30%.
Yeah.
It's gonna be a similar level. You know, we outline that. When you look at our physicals in our quarterly reports, you can see how it's been traveling. It's probably continue along those lines for the next 12 months, and then it starts to drop down by at least 10 or 15%, depending on their performance this year. Then, as you do with open pits, it starts to drop away. Then any of the real growth work just sits in underground development, which is more routine in nature as we just continue to roll down plunge.
At Duketon, it's as these things are, if you look at the plan at the moment, for example, at Moolart in Duketon North, the total material movement, I mean, we're moving almost half as much material, a little bit more than half as much material this year at Duketon as we did last year. You know, that's obviously quite a reasonable drop in material. But that's on the basis that we don't bring in any more new open pits. If Commonwealth comes in, then we'll see some pickup. You know, you've gotta do a little bit of pre-mining before you get into that. But that's not part of our guidance at the moment.
As they come in, we'll provide an update, and if that has an impact on, you know, we'll give an indication of what the impacts of that are at the time. In the near term, Tropicana levels of activity on site are probably staying pretty much where they were last year, at least for this year, and then they drop off. Duketon has already started its drop off because of, you know, a lot of the capital work from last year. We see, as I said, the physicals drop off unless we find and incorporate into our plans new open pits, then that'll continue to drop off.
Obviously, what we'd like to do is to not have it drop off to nothing because that's the least desirable outcome. We're expecting that we see some easing this year, but not a complete drop to zero in the following years. It'll, you know, stay at the levels and depending on how successful we find more material, it might lift a little bit, but we don't have a clear picture on that to give yet.
There's another way to think about it, Jim, that over the next year or two, your capital total will be close to depreciation, but post that, it drops away quite sharply.
What are you saying? The capital-
Depreciation is about AUD 300 million, and your capital spend last year was about AUD 300 million. It sounds like this year's gonna be about the same, AUD 300 depreciation versus AUD 300 capital. That's similar. Beyond that, when you get the things you've just talked about coming back, you'll be spending less than you're depreciating, so you get that tax benefit and the P&L, and you see a cash flow benefit as well.
Yeah. I mean, for the current year, you might be right, but beyond that, you know, well, it's not too complicated. It's just that we don't give guidance that far out.
Thank you.
Thanks, Pete.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Beyer for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
All right. Thanks, everybody. We appreciate you joining. We realize it's a very busy time. As always, if anybody's got any follow-up questions, please touch base with Ben, and we'll do what we can to help you from there. We do appreciate everyone coming on the line and especially the questions. It helps to expand and elaborate. Hope everybody has a good day, and we'll hopefully catch up with people soon. Bye.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.