Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Westgold Resources Limited full year results conference call. Your speakers today are Wayne Bramwell, Managing Director, and Tommy Heng, CFO.
Thank you very much, Shane. Thank you, listeners, for patching into today's call. Today, I'm joined by our Chief Financial Officer, Tommy Heng. Tommy, how are you?
I'm very well, Wayne. Thank you.
Very well. Okay, let's, let's get this party started. Straight into the slide deck. Slide three. FY23 was a turnaround year. What we'll talk about today is really a, a story of two halves. During the first half, we set about stabilizing and resetting the business, and in the second half, we built cash. Decisions made started to pay dividends, and what we started to see in the business was improvement in production.
Certainly, record production at Bluebird and Big Bell in the second half. The drilling, investment in drilling paid dividends internally by increasing the size of the resource at Great Fingall. But probably most importantly over the year, and a key enabler to the performance, was a significant reduction in our safety stats. Long story short, for the full year, we did deliver the top end of production guidance and the midpoint of All-in Costs.
Jumping forward, slide four. At first glance, production and costs compare unfavorably to FY22. This is really key to, in terms of setting context. FY22 for Westgold was a wake-up call. We produced a lot of gold. We lost a lot of money. That drove changes into FY23. This is not really the full story. I'll hand over to Tommy now to talk about the detail.
Thank you, Wayne. slide five, financial metrics improved in FY23. It was a strong year-on-year financial performance, despite increasing cost pressures in H1 FY23. I think Wayne has hit the head, nail on the head with regards to reviewing these results in the context of being a transformative year for the company. This slide here talks to a high-level financial metrics. We maintained revenue year on year.
The operational changes has resulted in lower production as we transitioned to mining profitable ounces, and was offset by increasing revenues from our greater exposure to the spot gold price, as our fixed forward hedges reduced in the second half of the year. For FY23, our EBITDA and NPAT were materially better year on year, mainly as a result of the impairment we booked in FY22.
On an underlying basis, our FY23 EBITDA and NPAT were impacted, as previously mentioned, by the reduction in operating mines and higher H1 operating costs, partially offset by lower D&A from the reduction in operating mines.
I'll go into our profit movements in more detail shortly. Free cash flow being our operating cash inflows, less our investing cash outflows in FY23 of AUD 10 million, benefited from our exposure to the spot gold price, cost improvements in H2, and reduction in growth development capital expenditure, as Big Bell and Bluebird became in steady-state production and the reduction in our operating mines. Slide six. FY23 is a tale of two halves. A AUD 2 million build in cash, bullion and liquid assets position achieved through a AUD 33 million uplift in the second half.
It's important for me to talk about our transformation in FY23 as a tale of two halves. To provide context for the year that was, as we embarked and focused on resetting and stabilizing the business and realizing the turnaround in generating and building cash. Just to recap, in H1 FY23, in the first quarter, we put three underground mines into care and maintenance and paused all open pits.
This was on the back of significant inflationary cost pressures and increases to the diesel fuel price, along with key consumables and labor costs. By the end of Q2, we managed to stabilize the business as some of the changes we undertook in Q1 started to generate returns. In H2 FY23, at the beginning of Q3, we began to materialize a cash build of AUD 9 million by the end of Q3 as our cost base reduced.
By the end of Q4, with our fixed forward hedges unwinding and greater exposure to the spot gold price and maintaining the operational and cost discipline, saw a cash build of AUD 24 million. Slide seven. Cost out strategy began to see benefits. A AUD 17 million reduction in All-in Sustaining Costs from H1 to H2, or a 12% reduction from Q1 to Q4.
This slide illustrates the stark difference between the two halves when it comes to the reduction in our cost base. Ultimately, it has resulted in AUD 17 million, a 12% reduction from Q1 to Q4. A great result, which powered our turnaround and cash generation in the second half. Slide eight, FY23 NPAT impacted by H1 reset.
From a net profit after tax perspective, the year-on-year comparison needs to be looked at by backing up the after-tax impact of the FY22 impairment, i.e., to get to our underlying NPAT. Year-on-year, our gross profit was lower as our production was down and our costs were higher, particularly in H1. Other income is a result of our operational rationalization and the divestment of our open pit fleet.
The increase in corporate cost is a result of restructuring the business, and we end FY23 with an underlying profit of AUD 10 million. Note that in FY23, we have no significant items, meaning that our statutory and underlying profits are the same. Slide nine. FY23, closing cash, bullion, and liquids up AUD 2 million to AUD 192 million. The FY23, closing cash, bullion, and liquid assets has grown to AUD 192 million.
This graph shows our cash flows for the year and depicts our closing cash bullion and liquids, which again, to repeat, grew by AUD 32 million year-on-year. Our revenues increased due to the spot gold price exposure improvement and fewer fixed forward hedges, partially offset by the reduction, reduced production, while operating costs increased year-on-year. Overall, our operating cash flow inflow for the year was AUD 140 million.
That's basically our revenue, less our operating cash costs, less sustaining capital. With Big Bell and Bluebird in steady state, our production in FY22, we stabilized our growth development capital expenditure year-on-year, while still investing in our Clean Energy Transition initiative, comprising gas and solar hybrid power stations, the first of which at Tuckabianna, became fully operational on the tenth of August this year.
Our investment in exploration continued over the year, aimed at extending mine lives, in our existing operations. With all that, we finished the year with AUD 192 million of closing cash, bullion and liquid assets. The last point I'd like to make on this slide is that we remain debt-free. Slide 10. This is my favorite slide.
Westgold's fixed forward program completed. It means basically an additional AUD 4.4 million in monthly revenue from August 2023. In FY23, we continued to unwind 148,000 ounces of our fixed forward hedges to just 10,000 ounces at the end of June. Our fixed forward hedges is now fully unwind, with the last 10,000 settled on the 28th of July.
From August 2023 onwards, we are fully leveraged to the spot gold price, with our last sale yesterday at 2,000 ounces at AUD 2,969. The opportunity cost in FY23 of these hedges was circa AUD 43 million, and in FY22 was AUD 37 million. Sobering numbers. Look, this is a great position for the company, as you can see, that's me in the slide, very happily. With that, I'll pass it back to you, Wayne.
Thanks, Tommy. Straight to slide 11. FY23 is behind us. It was a tough year at Westgold. It was a year that had to happen. Full credit to all our staff who leaned into the new strategy of resetting and reshaping this business. As Tommy has explained, FY23 was a tale of two halves. It puts us in a very strong position for FY24.
The FY24 strategy is laid out there. I'll just touch on these points as a closer. We continue to work on it in inorganic growth opportunities. The market has seen recently the commit to Great Fingall. We've been drilling all year with a focus to increase mine life. We've done that on all our four main operating assets. Those results will be seen soon.
We will continue to sensibly invest in technology that drives cost reduction. As Tommy said, our first hybrid power station came online in August. The additional three will be all online by the end of this year, this calendar year. We'll continue to safely and efficiently optimize our assets. What am I really trying to say there?
Simplistically, there's more work to do here. We know that we can further enhance our productivity and drive more costs out of this business. No longer is it about ounces at all costs, it's about margin over ounces. The margin is what we're interested in. The last point is key: continued free cash generation. That is what the business is about.
Case in point, if we deliver the full year production at today's gold price and do nothing else in terms of improving our costs, it will generate circa AUD 60 million of additional revenue. Let's just say that. If we do nothing but just deliver the ounces, there's an additional AUD 60 million worth of revenue because we're fully exposed to the gold price.
This is a really exciting time for Westgold. The business now has got momentum, it's structured well, financially well set up. We're in a really strong position to deliver the mission for FY24. On that point, I might close the presentation and open up to questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, please feel free to type them into the question box on the webinar software. We'll just pause now to allow time for people to enter questions. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we've got no further questions at this time. It's obviously a very busy time for results. I'll hand back over to Wayne for any final comments.
Thank you, Shane. Tommy, thank you for joining me today to do this presentation. FY23 is behind us. We start FY23 in a really strong position with a business that's in much better shape. Again, full respect and credit to the operating teams and all the staff within Westgold to deliver the FY23 result, and I look forward to bringing more good news to the market this year ahead.
Thanks very much, everyone. That ends today's call.