Regional focus hubs. A hub-and-spoke model where they consolidate assets in 100 km radius to build a centralized operation. I refer you to the map and insert box one, where we have the potential to grow this centralized operation into a 700,000 oz per annum center, which I'll take you through in a minute. A 12.6 pro forma market cap, which puts us in the top three miner in Australia and top 20 globally. The merged minerals will have a pro forma cash and bullion position of over AUD 600 million, with AUD 1.4 billion in pro forma liquidity. Noting that both companies in recent times have been producing over AUD 200 million per quarter of underlying cash flow. We'll have an immediate 600,000-700,000 oz per annum production center all in Western Australia and 100% owned.
There'll be 9.4 million oz in gold reserves, 86% of which will be in the Leonora-Laverton District, which provides 15 years of reserve life at circa 650,000 oz per annum. This will be a globally relevant scale and liquidity sought by global investors, including potential index inclusions and up weighting. To be clear, this is an outcome, potential reward for shareholders, not a reason for doing a deal. As far as the transaction summary, Vault shareholders will receive Genesis scrip and cash under a mix and match facility, applying the value of the AUD 5.27 to a Vault share. Upon implementation, Genesis shareholders will own 59.8% of the merged group, and Vault shareholders will own 40.2%. The transaction is targeted to be implemented by November 2026. On the transaction rationale, the why, if you like.
I'll provide more details on each of the four points below in the body of the presentation. Number one, immediate creation of an Australian gold major with 600,000-700,000 oz per annum, puts us in the top three in Australia and top 20 globally. There'll be AUD 2 billion worth of synergies, rare savings of CapEx and OpEx unique to this transaction due to not only the location but the timing of this deal. With Vault rolling off peak capital and production into the future, the Genesis current capital and growth making it a perfect pairing. We'll have an enhanced flexibility, optimization, and future-proofing opportunities across the portfolio. It has sector-leading combination of scale, liquidity, leadership, flexibility, cash flow and organic growth. The merged group board management and governance. The board of seven, all Genesis three, Vault is in line with the ownership ratio.
I'll be transitioning to Managing Director of the group, focusing on integration and conducting a strategic review of the entire business. We welcome Russell Clark to Non-Executive Chair of the group and also welcome Kelvin and Rebecca, subject to completion. Tony Kiernan will step into the role of Non-Executive Deputy Chair of the merged group. Matt Nixon will continue running the day-to-day business in the role of CEO. Likewise, Morgan Ball as CFO. Subject to completion, we welcome Len Eldridge to the role of Corporate Development Officer, heading up our business development activities, and Troy Irvin will continue with investor relations and strategy. Genesis will seek to retain Vault key management personnel to ensure the merged group can continue to deliver strong results. This extends to the entire Vault team. We hold them in high regard for both their technical and operational excellence and their exceptional track record.
To be clear, this merger is not a fix-it job. All mines across both portfolios are running well. We want people to continue the safe delivery as we ramp up Tower Hill and introduce it to the King of the Hills plant. With regard to vision and values, we'll be developing these again under our new set of visions and values. Very much a bottom-up approach. This will be drawn up from the frontline, not from the boardroom. Ultimately, we want to get buy-in from the entire workforce, and we want people to own this business to take it forward. A very similar process we conducted in 2023 when Genesis took hold of the Leonora assets. Draw your attention initially to the Vault strategic pillars. The top one there, diversified immediate gold business today, underpinned by strategic long-life assets in the prolific Leonora District.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a perfect pairing. They're at that peak production profile at the completion of the transaction as the King of the Hills plant is expanded to 80 million tons per annum . It's perfectly paired with Genesis, with sector-leading compound annual growth rates right next door. On the Genesis side, the vision and values. I draw your attention to the vision. The trusted Australian gold miner, aggressive, high quality, +500,000 oz per annum. That's obviously the updated entry cost. Also, draw your attention to the core values and specifically people first. We're very driven with our career development within Genesis, and we feel this transaction creates multiple career opportunities for all personnel on both sides with the merged entity. We're also very big on our people thinking and act like owners.
In moments like we feel at the moment with gold price coming off and cost inflation, we feel it's really important to have our workforce thinking like owners because they are owners. We have various mechanisms we want to put in place to make sure we have all of our people being owners of the business as well. For me personally, I spent a lot of time in the last week working through the combination of this business with the market. From the end of this call onwards, we'll be focusing heavily on integration and getting buy-in on both sets of teams to drive this business forward. This transaction delivers a valuable gold endowment to both sets of shareholders, with 34 million oz in resource. The second largest in Australia, with 25 million oz in the prolific Leonora-Laverton District. We'll have over 9 million oz in reserve.
That's circa 15 years of reserve life, with over 8 million oz in the Leonora-Laverton District. FY26 production of 622,000 oz will rise to 685,000 oz by FY28, putting us third on the ASX. All of these with a modest market cap of AUD 12.5 billion and an EV of under AUD 12 billion. This is one of the important slides in the deck, so I'll spend a bit more time talking through this. This is essentially where long wall meets long milling. With 8.1 million oz in reserve in the Leonora-Laverton District, coupled perfectly with 12.4 million tons of installed milling capacity by the time this deal completes. That equals long life, with 17 years at current production rates in reserve. I mentioned earlier about the potential to expand this hub into a potential 700,000 oz center.
That still gives over 10 years at 700,000 oz production rate. We also get to unlock significant synergies, most of which come from this district, as we move into a capital-light business with regard to infrastructure. This is really important considering the current volatility we're seeing in the gold price and cost escalation across the entire sector. Protects us on the downside via cost savings, makes us more robust, essentially builds a moat. Importantly, it doesn't cap our upside. In fact, it enhances it. Back in 2013, when our CEO of Saracen presentation at Diggers & Dealers was titled, "Pick a Gold Price, Saracen has a Strategy." This is a very similar set of circumstances now, where a lower gold price environment, we have a lot of upfront cost-saving synergies that will come through immediately to make us more robust in a declining gold price environment.
Also, we have the second-largest resource position in Australia, with unlimited upside as far as organic growth opportunities within the portfolio. Coupled with that, is a strong balance sheet, strong free cash flow, material upfront synergies, plus the numerous organic growth levers that all could be fast-tracked in productive areas like Laverton. Just on the map, I'll draw your attention to Genesis tenements in the blue, Vault tenements in the orange. On the left-hand side, the west, with Tower Hill coming into development and into production soon. Very quickly, this asset can turn into a 500,000 oz operating center. With the visibility of these high-grade assets coming from Genesis, being able to access the high tonnage, low-cost mill at King of the Hills. The snowball effect of that is on the eastern side, the eastern side, the Laverton assets.
With being able to put all of the Leonora mines through the King of the Hills plant, we're able to fast-track the grade delivery to the existing Laverton plant. With the circa 100,000 oz of current production, being able to ramp up to around 150,000 oz on grade delivery and potential scope to get in excess of 200,000 oz with future mill expansions. Taking this dot on the map to potentially in excess of 700,000 oz per annum, + 10 years of reserve life. Laverton at circa 110,000 oz, as I mentioned, has the capacity to increase it to 150,000 oz simply by adding the better grade profiles coming out of Beasley Creek and Lady Julie, which I'll take you through in a minute.
That's all utilizing the existing 3 million tonnes of milling capacity at Laverton. This has the potential to step change in excess of 200,000 oz with increased capacity, particularly coming from being able to fast-track this asset with strong free cash flows coming out of the portfolio, enhanced by the synergies and cost savings from the combined entity. Leonora, circa 350,000 oz, will increase to circa 450,000-500,000 oz, particularly as we unconstrain the development of the Tower Hill open pit at 2 g per tonne, displacing only 0.3 g per tonne cost open pit low grade from FY 2029. The combined Leonora-Laverton potential regional focus hub to 700,000 oz all within a 100 km radius. Even Leonora standalone is a 500,000 oz center, will be second only to Boddington.
All underpinned by one of the newest and lowest cost mills in Australia. I now take you through the producing assets in Western Australia. We're 32 million oz in the Goldfields region. Firstly, Leonora. It's long milling coupled with long-life bulk open pit. As the high-grade sweeteners of Gwalia, Ulysses, and Tower Hill has the potential to ramp up production in this region to 500,000 oz per annum. Laverton, circa 100,000 oz, moving to 150,000 oz, and potentially north of 200,000 oz as we prioritize grade and margin, defer high-cost assets and high strip ratio assets like Westralia, all on the back of being able to fast-track exploration and expansion opportunities. In Kalgoorlie, we have some hidden synergies.
With the Genesis Bardoc assets previously, having 1 million ozs in reserve and 3 million Being able to couple with the Mount Monger processing facility. In Deflector, an asset that keeps on keeping on. Excellent drilling, providing mine life extensions, recent successful transition from contractor to owner-operator underground mining, and significant district exploration potential in the area. With regards to synergies, we have AUD 2 billion of undiscounted post-tax synergies. A rare AUD 1.5 billion in cost savings unique to this deal, both as a combination of location and time. Particularly relevant under current gold price and cost regime, providing downside protection and making us a more robust business. The synergies are a combination of CapEx, OpEx, corporate metal transaction costs, and unlocking cash flow of projects like Bardoc.
Our reversion to more bullish conditions has the potential for further NPV enhancements with the likes of fast-tracking the Laverton operations. Other potential synergies and operational flexibilities. Noting it's hard to claim or quantify synergies on assets we didn't own when we released these synergy numbers a week ago. A couple of examples include mine optimization, not just at King of the Hills open pit Stages two to five, but also including the development of the Tower Hill projects. Optimization, both looking at staging, utilization of fleet, and the scheduling. All of that deriving the highest value for the combined portfolio. Deferral of high strip ratio Westralia open pit, which is 23: 1 strip ratio, being able to access lower strip ratio and higher grade assets like Beasley Creek and Lady Julie.
Material increased production from King of the Hills, providing significant economies of scale and water flexibility across Leonora, with adjoining tenure and access to water from the recently dewatered Tower Hill project. This is a really important slide, and I bet it's going to be the time I explain one of the key pieces as to why now. The KOTH open pit reserve served 110 million tonnes at 0.6 of a gram for 2.2 million oz from an open pit above a 0.23 g per tonne cut off.
Genesis has done extensive due diligence on this asset over numerous years. Our diluted high-grade streaming, taking into account actual performance over that due diligence period, has roughly half of that tonnage at an average grade of 0.9 g per tonne and a bit over 1.5 million oz in that category. Roughly 50% of the tonnage and over 70% of the metal in the higher grade streaming of the open pit. The low grade is 55 million tonnes at 0.3 of a gram, circa 0.5 million oz, which is 50% of the tonnes and around 28% of the metal. The image on the left-hand side there shows you the split between the high grades in the peak, which is above 0.5 g per tonne cut off and has an average grade just below 0.9 of a gram.
The green material is a low grade that will continue to be streamed to the stockpile. The reconciliation data was released by Vault in the month of June. These are really important catalysts to answer the question as to why now. The Vault and KOTH personnel have done a tremendous job on firstly delineating this by grade control and obviously the actual performance or actual versus reserve has started to really flow through over the last four quarters. As I mentioned, this is critical to the ability for us to be able to stream off the low grade to enable Tower Hill to be able to enter the mill at around 2 g per tonne at the loss of only 0.3 g per tonne material.
This has the potential for KOTH to become a 300,000 oz per annum operation, with Tower Hill totaling 500,000 oz when we add Gwalia back into the mix. With the potential of Tower Hill to displace 2 million tonnes of KOTH, low-grade ore, so 2 g per tonne versus 0.3. Important to note, last Friday, we upgraded to the market a pre-release of our quarter. We showed some updates about development of Tower Hill open pit. Clearly ahead of schedule, but reasonably constrained under a stand-alone basis on the basis that we still need to build a mill ahead of the mining of that ore body. We've always articulated is first ore to be delivered from Tower Hill in early FY 2028, with processing to start at the back end of FY 2028.
At the very least, even without fast-tracking, we're going to build up circa one year's worth of supply of feed for the Tower Hill mill ahead of processing, acknowledging there's a 3.5 million tonne planned for feed from FY 2029. This transaction enables us to bring ore into the KOTH plant sooner, and obviously reduces our stockpile and working capital requirements. Tower Hill has the potential to add 100,000 oz per annum from the same amount of material processed. We also get significant optionality and future proofing with a 0.6 million oz low-grade stockpile being built up over the course of the life of mine plan. That can either be treated end of life or potentially further growth and potentially bring some of that production forward.
To show all that graphically on the left-hand side, KOTH stand-alone on a tonnage feed basis. You can see the Darlot, KOTH underground, and KOTH open pit high grade. Whilst this plant's been pre-expansion, been running around 5.5 million tonnes per annum, they have been the ore sources. The expansion to 8 million tonnes per annum would have seen KOTH open pit low grade added to the blend up to 8 million tonnes per annum. The philosophy we'll have as a merged entity is to displace that low-grade material by adding in Tower Hill open pit grade at 2 g per tonne.
What that does, it takes a meaningful jump in the production profile from circa 200,000-230,000 oz per annum, up to 300,000-330,000 oz per annum from the KOTH plant. Add back in the Gwalia mill, which will be processing the Gwalia underground and Ulysses projects, and that's how we arrive at potential 500,000 oz production profile out of the Leonora district. One of the other synergies within the deck is Mount Monger unlocks Bardoc free milling ore. The circa 1.3 billion oz of free milling resource within the Bardoc tenure. This also allows you to unlock the permits, it's terrestrial underground mine, 3.8 gs per tonne reserve grade to supplement feed into the Mount Monger processing plant. This asset is ready to go.
It's fully permitted, actually already had 35 m of development put into it under St Barbara. Before we owned this asset, it was going to truck this ore 185 km to the north to Leonora. It can now head south 125 km and start providing feeds to Mount Monger as required, especially with the completion of Daisy Milano, if that asset ever ends. Again, fantastic effort from the exploration team, geology team to continue to find extensions of mine life there, along with the Rumblers open pit, which is also looking very attractive near-term. From a pro forma production point of view, it's an immediate 600,000-700,000 oz producer, all in WA based on existing guidance numbers. This is a pre-optimized sum of the parts and pre-synergy set of numbers.
We'll work through to make sure the right ores are hitting the right mills. Production upsides through port portfolio optimization is obviously Tower Hill coming into the cost part I just talked through. Acceleration of development of the Laverton assets, particularly on the back of stronger free cash flows, particularly in light of CapEx savings to be able to fast-track exploration. Obviously accessing Bardoc through the Mount Monger mill and a significant amount of resource to reserve conversion that I'll step you through now. With a strong balance sheet to fund significant growth opportunities, there's 25 million oz of conversion opportunities in resource but not yet in reserve. The absolute definition of long haul. Murchison has three + 1 million oz , + 1 g per tonne open pits at Tower Hill, Lady Julie and Karridale.
Perfectly paired with long milling, with 12.4 million tons of installed capacity and significant organic growth upside. This does not include the high-grade sweetness, not yet in resource, let alone reserve. There's a bunch of examples I'll now step you through quickly to give you a flavor of what they look like. First cat off the rank is Lady Julie, the shiny new toy in the portfolio, unmined and constrained by the tenement boundary until now. All under the same ownership, pairing Focus with the Magnetic Resources acquisition which just completed. An overall generous drilling program over the fence is underway. With the first hole within the unconstrained pit optimization shell, you can see in the image at the bottom, underway.
Access to the existing Laverton 3 million ton per annum mill could be fast-tracked, particularly in the context of the access to the King of the Hills mill on the Leonora side, meaning mines like Admiral and Bruno-Lewis have optionalities to which mill they go to. This also enables the deferral of the high strip ratio Westralia open pit I mentioned earlier. At this zone, Beasley Creek, an overall generous drilling program is ongoing, with first results released in June. The Lady Julie to Beasley Creek is a 12 km trend of highly prospective under-drilled tenure. With a strong balance sheet, strong free cash flow generation, this will enable more exploration and sooner.
The Beasley Creek/Lady Julie potential has the potential to unlock for a new standalone milling facility, or at least expanding of the existing facility to deliver in excess of 200,000 oz from the Laverton district. Moving over to the Leonora side, the forgotten Gwalia Uppers has been delivering exceptional high-grade results. 27 m at 17, 8 m at 43, 36 m at 7, 25 m at 7, 20 m at 8 from a combination of remnants and unmined lodes. Again, a strongly balanced sheet and free cash flow generation enables potential development and mining of these areas into expanded milling facilities in the district. The King of the Hills underground. There are multiple reserve conversion, resource definition, and exploration opportunities with an unconstrained budget to extend mine life visibility right adjacent to an 8 million ton per annum processing facility.
Darlot is another example of an underground mine that keeps on keeping on. It's had a rolling three years reserve for as long as I've been in the industry. There are multiple zones and new mining fronts that can be explored, expanded, and obviously delivering into an expanded mill at King of the Hills. Speaking of high-grade sweetness, Sugar Zone has progressed substantially over the past 12 months, a credit to the whole team. Drilling has continued to extend the lodes, life of mine, and obviously the new Sugar South. Underground development has officially restarted on the 1st of July, a significant milestone for this team. Servicing has progressed materially, giving visibility on the pathways of recommencement of operations. To summarize, the merger will create a new and unique top three Australian gold miner.
The new group will clearly fill the vacuum between the Aussie leaders and the rest of the pack, which both Genesis and Vault have come from. This will provide a new vehicle for investors and particularly generalists to get Aussie gold exposure. The combined group will have significant liquidity with circa AUD 70 million average daily volume. We will have 17 brokers with coverage, keeping the market very well-informed. This change is actually a genuine win-win for all shareholders, with benefits to both sets of shareholders by the creation of an immediate 600,000-700,000 oz producer, a top three in Australia, a market capitalization of AUD 12.6 billion, 34 million oz in resource and over 9 million oz in reserve. There is AUD 2 billion worth of synergies to be unlocked.
The combined entity has a cash balance of net cash in excess of AUD 600 million and strong cash flow generation to fund the growth opportunities and shareholder returns. The increased scale, index weighting, liquidity, and cash flows are sought after by global investors. Again, this is an outcome, not a reason for the transaction. Benefits specifically to Genesis shareholders are access to a large low-cost milling facility at cost and a strong balance sheet and cash flow generation. Noting recent cash flow generation of circa AUD 200 million underlying cash flow the last three quarters. Benefits to Vault shareholders, an immediate premium plus exposure to emerged group assets and access to higher grade and lower cost ore sources to make the business more robust through the cycles. Finally, we will be rebuilding our foundations, and we will provide the launch.
We will report to the market of our strategic plan in the June half 2027. On that note, I will hand back to Darcy to open the floor for Q&A.
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, press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Hugo Nicolaci with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Raleigh and teams. Obviously, congrats on the deal. First one, just a bit of a clarification. Now that the multi-year outlook, assuming the deal goes ahead, probably moving to March or next year, should we still expect FY 2027 or maybe a first half guidance for both companies in the coming weeks on, and particularly around costs? In that vein, is there any CapEx from either side you've previously talked to for FY 2027 that you'd now potentially look to defer as you're completing that strategic review?
Yeah. Definitely, Hugo. Certainly, I can only speak from our side, obviously, till the deal completes in November. Certainly, from our perspective, our FY 2027 guidance and including all sustaining costs and growth capital, which you're correct, there'll be some growth capital coming out, particularly around the Tower Hill mill, that will be provided with our quarterly on the 28th of July.
Got it. That's helpful. Second one, Raleigh, just noting the announcement from your contractor this morning around looking to optimize the outcomes on the work to date and the long lead items already ordered for the Tower Hill mill. Given you've currently got a slot in an otherwise busy W.A. build pipeline, can you redeploy that build to Laverton to support the acceleration of Lady Julie and the Focus assets? Is there a bit of a bottleneck in terms of permitting, and your ability to do that?
Yeah. Fantastic question. Probably the first point I'd make is the deal obviously is not done yet, there's a vote coming up. One of the key conversations with Tony is, if the vote doesn't go through, we obviously want to make sure that we can proceed with the Tower Hill build. We'll keep everything on foot until at least that date, normally November. A really good point around the Laverton side. That's obviously one of the key considerations here is, being able to potentially fast-track expansion on the Laverton side and potentially a new milling facility. Having said that, we've only just completed, obviously, Lady Julie, and we've only just started drilling out the Focus assets. The first step's actually probably 12 months worth of drilling.
Yeah, we'll try and keep that slot warm, so to speak, but the exact timing of that will obviously depend on how quickly we can get those results coming in to make sure we make the right decision with feasibility, a new facility or expansion of the existing Laverton mill.
Got it. Thanks. Probably a bit cheeky, squeezing a third, given that Vault already have their capital management program in place. You've noted the additional balance sheet strengths. Obviously, gold price and CapEx outlooks vary, but do you see room for ongoing capital management near-term with the combined business, potentially supported by divestments? Do you prefer to keep a bit of optionality given the number of growth options you've outlined?
Again, really good question. Obviously, that will come out with the full summary. Obviously, with the new board coming together, and as I said, we're very big on getting buy-in from the shop floor, so I sort of speak on behalf of the company yet. I think one of the key observations, we obviously put AUD 500 million on the table as a mix and match facility to Vault shareholders. I think that indicates that we're very comfortable with our AUD 600 million bank balance post-completion. On that basis, I think we can actually allocate to growth, fast-tracking exploration, potentially fast-tracking the Laverton side, but also shareholder returns. We'll update our capital management policy with that launch in the second half of FY 2027.
Great. Thanks, Raleigh Finlayson.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Kate McCutcheon from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, Raleigh. If I think about you'll have half a million tons of mill capacity.
Okay.
Yeah.
Sorry, Kate, I literally can't. I can hear a whisper. I can't hear anything.
Can you hear me now? Is it better?
Slightly.
Okay. If I think about Leonora and Laverton, you have 12.5 million tons. That's the highest standalone plan ever seen from Genesis or pro forma, 17 million tons. Essentially, there's gold that's displaced from the system. That was a standalone Genesis plan. I guess what is the trade-off here? Why is not building your own mill a better kind of option?
I'm sorry. Very hard to hear you, Kate, sorry, are you referring on the Leonora side or Laverton side? Or both?
On the Leonora side, Raleigh.
Yeah.
Well, what's our standalone? Well, standalone, you were going to go to 9 million tons.
Yeah.
At Laverton and Leonora.
Yeah, sure.
That gold. Yeah.
Yeah. As I mentioned, I think the benefit of this transaction is on the Laverton, I'll start with that. The ability to have the CapEx savings and obviously stronger balance sheet, free cash flow generation enables us to actually fast-track exploration and all of our development plans on the Laverton side. I think we're actually in a stronger position to actually potentially bring that forward subject to drawing, obviously. I think that's pretty clearly part of our strategic plan that we'll be doing in the next six months. On the Leonora side, it really depends, as I went through on that slide talking about the King of the Hills displacement. At the end of the day, we can continue to feed all of our best available ore through both the KOTH mill at 8 million tons and obviously existing Laverton plant at 1.4 million tons.
What it means is, under all scenarios, we're basically only displacing 0.3 g material now. It obviously becomes an economic conditions question. If gold price continues to run up, all of a sudden, that 600,000 oz stockpile build of the low grade becomes highly valuable, and there's obviously optionality at that stage to put more milling capacity in to take advantage of that. But the environment we've got at the moment, to be blunt, I'm pretty happy to be in a capital light infrastructure business because if gold price keeps peeling off, obviously to have that savings on CapEx in this environment, obviously pretty important. We'll just have to wait and see. Yeah, the bank's emissions, which will be about the same time the deal goes through in November, and then we can obviously keep an eye on that option as well.
Okay, that's helpful. Then in terms of more color on the plans, what's core, what's not, the medium-term production. You've said that strategic plan will come to the market in 1H FY 2027.
Yeah.
I know that you don't have the keys yet, you've obviously done DD. Why the 12-month wait there? What are the key things to kind of work through?
Probably not quite 12 months. The deal will complete in November. We're talking about second half FY 2027, so it'll be months later. Not too dissimilar when we bought the Leonora assets from St Barbara, we completed that in July, we came out with a plan in March, so nine months later. This is actually going to be a bit quicker than that. We are cognizant that we've delayed this a couple of times with acquisitions. I know the market is very keen to see what that plan looks like. It obviously enables us to do that review. Like I said, at this stage, like I think you observed, we don't have the keys yet.
Also, we want to spend a bit of time on the ground, to be blunt, getting to know the people, getting to know the assets, that's going to be the priority from this day forth. At the end of the day, we'll obviously work through all that come out with a plan early next calendar year where we can articulate exactly what that looks like.
Okay. Thanks, Raleigh.
Thanks, Kate.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Radclyffe with Global Mining Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, Raleigh, and everyone. I had a question on the Tower Hill and cost synergies, which are obviously key to the deal here. With Tower Hill, there's obviously a significant grade advantage, you know, delivering 90,000- 100,000 oz plus a lot of-
Sorry, David. Can I just jump in there, mate? Our comms aren't the best. We can't quite hear you. Can you just maybe speak a bit louder into your mic just so we can get that question?
Yeah, sure. Okay. In terms of Tower Hill, obviously there's a greater advantage that's going to be 90,000-100,000 oz. You've got a lot of processing costs partly offset by trucking costs.
Yeah.
There's also a sizable strip difference between Tower Hill and KOTH. I'm just wondering to what extent does the strip difference offset most of that lower processing cost advantage? Just wondering how you're treating that in the synergy calculation. That's the first question.
Yeah. I suppose Tower Hill, on our current assumptions, there's no change at all with our mining schedule at Tower Hill yet. Now, there could be. I'll come back to that in a second, but at the moment, there's no synergy gain or loss because we're keeping the Tower Hill mining schedule exactly the same. Frankly, we're keeping the King of the Hills mining schedule exactly the same. The observation I made as far as unquantifiable synergies will be obviously pulling the two together. The best way I can think about it is we've got our Genesis Mining Services fleet being deployed in about March next year to do the mining at Tower Hill. That's the 600 ton digger and 240 ton digger truck class that we ticked over the update last Friday. As well, early next calendar year as well.
What we can do is obviously look at all that fleet, optimize the utilization of that. I still look at it as a fixed cost, then we can work out not only the staging of the pits, both pits, but also the scheduling to optimize that outcome. I think this is actually a base case. I think there's far more optionality and improvements to come with that schedule. We'll certainly utilize all the equipment. Just trying to make sure we get the best bang for buck and bringing PV forward.
That kind of leads into the next one then. In terms of what you've just outlined today, in terms of the ability to, or the goal there, to stream higher open pit grades from off, how should we think about how that could work in terms of the mining volumes from the pit? How much does that grade streaming the additional Tower Hill material mean that you slow the KOTH open pit mining? I think they were looking at 30 million-40 million tons a year of total material movement and building stockpiles, but obviously that's going to change. Can you give us some color on how that might look now?
Look, obviously, as we'll obviously bring both schedules together. When I mean King of the Hills and Tower Hill, put them together and obviously work out how we best utilize that fleet. It could well be slight slowing up of the mining rate at King of the Hills, acknowledging we're obviously building up stocks. The other option is looking at ways we can fast-track Tower Hill. As I mentioned in the presentation, we do build up the size of the stockpile during FY 2028. At Tower Hill, obviously, we need to make sure we've got enough ore to feed into the plant when we turned it on under the base case base plant. Basically, what happens now is every truckload that comes out of Tower Hill, post completion, has the ability to go straight to the King of the Hills plant.
We can certainly optimize that. We haven't done that work yet. That's something we can do, is optimizing between those two assets. Just the other point I'd like to make is that fleet that we've ordered for Tower Hill is larger than we originally contemplated in that 2024 plan. That was actually predicated on being able to see longevity for that bigger pre-strip fleet to go across to Lady Julie. It also can go across to Beasley Creek, but obviously now it's got the benefit of going into Tower Hill. Sorry, to King of the Hills, particularly Stages four and five. We can actually hook into that pre-strip, get that cost a bit lower. That's another benefit of a synergy we haven't quantified yet.
Okay, perfect. Thanks for that. I'll pass it on.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Allen-Morgan with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Raleigh. Just a couple of questions. Maybe starting with the King of the Hills plant. I'm going to presume that you've done due diligence last year. Let me know if that's an incorrect assumption. On the King of the Hills plant, any modifications needed to optimize or change it to account for Tower Hill ore coming into the mill? Would you have to change grind sizes or anything at all, to bring this in? Thanks.
Yeah. Fabulous question. If you go back to the existing plant, it has a large SAG mill, which meant that the King of the Hills ore is not grind centric. Again, fantastic recoveries at quite a coarse grind, up to 200 microns. What the expansion, Stage one's obviously been built and commissioned very well one of GRs, that's all underway. Stage two will be complete by December quarter. One of the key step changes with Stage two is the addition of a ball mill. That was a really important step, and again, another part of the reasons for why now. Prior to that good point, if we had to put Tower Hill to any of our other ore sources in the main ore area through that plant, that coarser grind, we would have had recovery loss, which would have been too great.
Having that ball mill being installed there, it does enable us to maintain that grind at Tower Hill, to get not only the benefit of the larger plant and lower cost, but also not have recovery losses. The good thing about all this timing, I mentioned timing being one of the key reasons there's synergies. The deal completes in November. It's about the same time that Stage two will be up and running, commissioned. Not far after that, we'll be having Tower Hill ore potentially available. All of a sudden, they all come together nicely on timing.
Thank you. Then, just on the assumption that you have conducted due diligence last year, are there any thoughts you could share on the life extension potential at various parts of the Vault portfolio, which is viewed, I guess, by the market as relatively shorter life? Here I'm talking about King of the Hills underground, Darlot underground, Deflector. Any thoughts on potential life extension of these ore bodies?
Yeah. The assumption's probably a fair one. Probably argue the same for every other gear throughout that as well. One of the things that I'll just highlight, if you go back to have a look at the reserve life, I suppose, three, four years ago on these things, and they're very much the same. They tend to be rolling on a sort of a rolling three-year reserve life, as I mentioned at Darlot. One of the things I think that Bob's done very well in the last 12 months is certainly increase exploration spend on the back of that strong free cash flow generation. That's really started to lead to good visibility on some of those assets. Not necessarily converted all the way through to reserve yet. Certainly, on a resource, and inventory point of view, we can see that starting to come through.
On the last information we saw, starting to see some visibility on that. As I mentioned before.
Some of the portfolios to benefit from the cost savings up front, obviously the stronger portfolio free cash flow generation will be on the Leonora side. Lady Julie and Beasley Creek went through, the Gwalia Uppers, which have given some nice numbers, being able to fund the development and mining of those would be something else that we prioritize. Then of course, the other ones would be, particularly Darlot, KOTH underground and Deflector, all of which have had this sort of rolling short life. Again, Vault's done a really good job starting to identify some of those opportunities and those results are starting to come through. Obviously keen to keep that work going, if not fast-track some of that to get that visibility.
Okay. Thank you so much, Raleigh.
Thank you. Next question comes from Paul [Hookey] with Moelis. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good day, Raleigh. I hope Morgan's on the call. I had a couple of boring financial questions.
He certainly is.
Good day, Morgan. Hey, just quickly, on the basis that you guys fork out something like AUD 220 million or AUD 230 million in stamp duty for the Gwalia acquisition, wondering what kind of placeholder you might have in your sort of forward-looking estimates for this deal?
Hey, yes. Yeah. Obviously, when the deal completes or as we lead up to completion, we will do a bunch of work because it is not a simple calculation. A good rule of thumb is about 5.5% of EV, so circa AUD 230 million stamp duty.
Right. Secondly, second and last question, just what does the consolidated sort of tax loss position looks like? Again, I am sure there will be a mountain of work that goes behind this.
Yeah.
On a pro forma basis for those of us on the outside, what does that look like post-deal completion?
Yeah, that's what we need to work on. Obviously, that will come out with end book, in the section of end book on the pro forma. Really, we've referred to the tax uplift that will happen when the purchase price we're paying for these assets on the Vault side uplift to sort of that circa AUD 4.5 billion. Then we can clearly depreciate that over time as we mine. Then 30% of that sort of gets you to that AUD 1.2 billion tax benefit initially. Then from that, we've sort of factored the stamp duty and the Regis break fee and also acknowledged that because we will have these synergies and operating cost savings through, that reduces the tax benefit a bit as well. That sort of gets to the AUD 500 million tax benefit we refer to.
The actual losses themselves, let's have a look at the consolidated accounts for the same book.
Yeah. Okay. A bit more to unpack there. Should we assume some kind of cash tax holiday upon formation of the new business or can't say?
It's early sale. I will say both ourselves and Vault have generated pretty decent profits in FY 2025, 2026. Certainly from the Genesis side, our losses are used up. As we mentioned to the market, we're now paying monthly tax installments on the back of it. Vault, I think, are in a similar position. I haven't seen the latest details. The last I probably mentioned last time we looked in detail at this was previous year, but I think you'll find they're pretty much used up their tax losses as well. The benefit will be in that additional depreciation charge on the uplifted assets.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Raleigh Finlayson for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. As much as I enjoyed running around last week on the integrity tour and taking a bunch of phone calls, just like to remind everyone, Troy's back from holidays in Africa. Can we all start calling Troy again? As I mentioned, we'll be immediately focusing on people from here on forth. Looking forward to updates in due course. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.