Good morning everybody. Thanks very much for taking the time to join us today for the full year results for Whitehaven Coal's financial year 2025. I'm joined here as always with Kevin Ball, our CFO, and our IR team with Kylie and Karen here to support as well. As usual, Kevin and I will go through the slides and you bear with us and we'll get to the Q& A session for what's been a very good year for Whitehaven as our first full year of our expanded footprint with our now enlarged portfolio of assets. Quickly turn over. Of course, there's some forward looking statements here, so I draw your attention to the disclaimer that's there. Let me just start the highlights and I'll start with safety being an important feature of our business. First and foremost, safety performance has been good.
We're pleased with the result now with our expanded business and our TRIFR was 4.6 for the year. I've given you just some numbers there, incorporating some historical data. The New South Wales and Queensland combined performances are there for you to see. On a five year average basis, which is how we set our targets, you can see that we're doing pretty well relative to the average of the last five years. We're pleased with the progress, but more work to be done. Another pleasing aspect of our performance here is that our environmental enforcement actions performance has been pretty good. Three years without any incidences at all. The team is very focused on this, making sure that we manage ourselves appropriately in compliance with all the various conditions.
There are thousands of them upon us on any given day and we need to make sure that we are compliant with all of those. I'll turn over now to the highlights. You've seen some of these, but it's important just to call out some of them. We've had a very good year and certainly execution has been excellent across pretty much every dimension of our business. We're pleased with it. Of course, Daunia and Blackwater successfully integrated into the business and have either met or exceeded their guidance at 39.1%. We've a very good result, 60% better than last year. The top end of our range, equity sales also in the very good part of our range at 26.5% as a result of the Queensland acquisition, a good step forward. The average price for the year at AUD 215 was broken up in two parts as you can see.
Queensland AUD 232 on average income for the average revenue for the year. New South Wales AUD 193. Our costs at AUD 139 were at the bottom, just below the bottom end of our guidance, which was a terrific result. Nice to bring that round. The total revenue of AUD 5.8 billion split between Queensland at AUD 3.5 billion and New South Wales at AUD 2.2 billion. The underlying EBITDA at AUD 1.4 billion. You would have seen one of that accrue in the first half and in the second half AUD 400 million. Broadly consistent with the downturn and experience. Certainly in that second half, certainly have a year of two halves. In this particular financial year, the underlying NPAT AUD AUD 31 9 million was a decent enough result given all that I've just mentioned. The statutory result is actually double that at AUD 649 million.
Our underlying NPAT at AUD 649 million because it includes the one-off gains associated with formation of the joint venture. As a result of these good outcomes, the Board has seen fit to declare a fully franked final dividend of AUD 0.06 per share which will be paid on 16th September and an equal in value buyback of up to AUD 48 million will be engaged in over the next six months. Aggregate of this works out to be about 60% of our underlying NPAT in line with the capital allocation framework which has been updated. We'll talk in a bit more detail on that a little later. Now those highlights are great and it's easy to look at that at a superficial level, but let's just dive very quickly just to the structural change within the business that I wanted to highlight for you.
This is an important point, I think, for our shareholders to see. Now what we provided here for you is the attributable tons per share and then also the attributable EBITDA per share. That's now analyzed across pre and post buyback and then pre and post acquisition. What you can see here is a really interesting story where because we haven't used new equity, the buyback obviously drives a significant step forward in terms of attributable tons per share and attributable EBITDA per share. When you overlay the acquisition across the top of that, then you can see the big step forward that the attributable EBITDA per share also takes as a result of that.
You can see in the context of EBITDA per share, you're actually three times what it was if you're a shareholder, as you've taken this ride with us through this very short period of time through which we've executed both the buyback and the acquisition. Obviously the chart or the bar to the right on both these scenarios just points to a bright future. As you can see, there'll be volume growth as we know there will be. We're driving hard to move our costs down. Productivity improvements and costs out will drive better margins, and our margins are pretty low based on the cyclical low position we're in at the moment. Of course, the continued use of our buyback is going to amplify the positive effects of all the above as we go forward.
Nice structural change for our shareholders to be in, moving over to markets, and I'll just focus on this again. You saw, I know you watch many of these aspects, but I will just summarize quickly. Obviously, two sides of our business with the thermal and the met side of our business now, which are much more balanced and lower risk business, which is great. The POV performance during the course of the year certainly has taken more of a cyclical turn and has dropped 32% down to AUD 196 for the year, whereas the thermal side actually a little less dramatic than that, 11% down year down to AUD 121. We've seen some good signs since June that say the thermal side has firmed, which is good.
On the met coal side of things, also there would appear to be some nice policy announcements coming out in China in particular, focused on constraint of surplus production of coal and, of course, surplus steel production, which I know there's been lots of conversation about that. I think those two factors and also a settling position potentially on the side of the trade discussions, tariff related movements, does point to hopefully further stability in the market. With the effects of those policies in China, we expect there to be a firming of the market and prices will go along with it. Overall, you've seen this slide before. 64% of our revenue was generated on the met side, 36% on the thermal side of our business, and you can see the distribution of the sales by destination. Japan clearly remains the stand for our business.
Terrific market, takes nearly half of our total volume, which is good. India's actually emerged as it's always been a part of our business, but India's emerged 11% now, which is good because that footprint we know will expand considerably as we go forward. A new thing for us, of course, is sales into China. That's obviously met based, having never sold really any thermal coal there, and then Malaysia and Korea taking up 7% of the business overall, and there's a spread of other smaller destinations. Japan continues to be an excellent market for us and we remain confident about the outlook for the business because there's a supply demand gap here that we know is going to continue to drive robust pricing into the future.
On the thermal side there, on the left hand side of the page, you can see out to 2040, a projected gap from Commodity Insights, who are assisting us with our views on these things. It's about 150 million tons difference between the runoff of mines and the growing appetite for thermal coal across our region. On the metallurgical side, perhaps more modest growth, but this is actually a more modestly sized market. The 61% is actually really important in a market that's much smaller in total volume. Both of which give us the confidence to move forward and we look forward to enjoying the tension that the supply demand delta creates in the pricing market. The upside of things, I'm not going to go over too far because I know you've seen all that through the procession of quarters during the course of the year.
Only really to summarize that we've had a very good year operationally and we've done well relative to the guidance we gave you at the beginning of the year. We took a conservative position in doing that and I'll get to guidance in a moment. We've done the same again in this year in terms of taking a conservative view. The 39.1 is in the upper end of our guidance, very good, and the sales are similarly so at 30.2, so very good results across the business. If I move over to the actual operations themselves, the 24 Queensland, very good start to our first year of ownership and we want to continue to see that momentum going into the new year. Both new mines, Blackwater and Daunia, have certainly exhibited better than historical performance over the last few years and that's terrific.
Proportionately, Daunia's had a step up which has been really good. Blackwater is doing the same. We want to see more momentum in this year from both of them and we're encouraged to think that will come. We did set ourselves a target of AUD 100 million out of cost by 30 June of the year. We did achieve that, which is very positive. The teams have done a great job there in Queensland in delivering on that undertaking and you saw the benefit of that come through that cost at AUD 139.40 a year. We'll continue to see further cost outs and benefits and productivity improvements in the course of the new year. New South Wales did a good job as well at 19.1. That rounded out a solid year. The open cuts did very well.
Narrabri obviously less than what we would have liked, but it did have a very long and extensive change out for eight weeks as we did some serious refurbishment work on many of the legs with that change out. 19.1 off the back of that was actually a solid outcome all round and we're looking forward to seeing that continue in this new year. As far as Narrabri goes, we have some revised CapEx news for you which was the action item I'd asked to come back and release that to the market once we've gone through the various hurdles with our joint venture partners. We have done that. I'll speak to that shortly. The only other thing to mention off the back of this is similarly with last year where we had AUD 100 million out of Queensland. It was our cost out target in this year.
In this year we are seeking to take another AUD 60 million -AUD 80 million of cost out of the business and that is across the whole business. As I mentioned in the quarter just gone by, our focus has turned to New South Wales as well just to make sure that we are optimizing the underlying structure of the business there in the same way as we've been doing in Queensland. The AUD 60 million-AUD 80 million that we're intending to take out here covers both New South Wales and Queensland and corporate by the way, and that is outside the guidance range that we'll talk about a little bit later on. With that I'll hand to Kevin.
Thanks Paul. I'm over on the five year financial graphs. As you know, 2022 and 2023 were really strong years with Brentwood coal prices compared with FY 2025, which you'd have to think you're at the bottom of the cycle in the second half of FY 2025. Full year underlying EBITDA, as Paul said, of AUD 1.4 billion in FY 2025. You can see the scale and the benefits that have been delivered to us by acquiring Daunia and Blackwater, with nearly AUD 900 million of EBITDA contributed by those two mines. Underlying NPAT at AUD 319 million, a pretty strong first half and a pretty soft second half with coal prices where they were at a statutory level. I've got to apologize, these accounts have got a lot of noise in them as a result of that acquisition and divestiture.
We are going to take you through that and we can explain those in slides that are coming up. Our results are translating really well into cash. You can look at the cash generated from operation versus the underlying EBITDA and you can see that's translated into net debt coming down from AUD 1.3 billion in FY 2024 to AUD 600 million in FY 2025. We're pretty happy with that. We reported AUD 1.355 billion of underlying EBITDA. The DNA combined at AUD 607 million includes AUD 238 million for New South Wales and AUD 369 million for Queensland. That's lower than what we initially guided and that really reflects the settlement of the acquisition. Accounting within the 12 months of ownership, we had net underlying financial expenses of AUD 289 million. About AUD 190 million of that relates to the interest payments on the $1.1 billion credit facility.
The balance of that is drawn from a number of places: other interest charges of AUD 40 million, lease interest of AUD 14 million, some non-cash unwinds of provisions of about AUD 50 million, amortization of the upfront fees on setting up that facility for AUD 20 million, and then we had some interest income of AUD 27 million, which was down substantially from last year. An underlying income tax expense ratio of about 30% continues to hold, so you can use that in your models. It came to an underlying NPAT of AUD 319 million. As I said, there's plenty of noise in these numbers, but it's good noise. We've got AUD 330 million of net gains from recurring items on a post-tax basis, and that's all spelled out in note 2.2 to the financials. If you've got questions, just give us a call and we're going to take you through those things.
We booked a post-tax gain on the sale of the 30% of Blackwater of AUD 274 million. Because coal prices were lower than we expected when we went into the contingent process, contingent price mechanism with the BMA, we remeasured that at the end of the year and we booked a gain of AUD 289 million. That just simply reflects that we haven't paid BMA what we expected because coal prices softened. We had about AUD 37 million of post-tax transition and transaction costs when we sold the 30%. We fleshed out SAP and we had a little bit of redundancy and restructuring costs in Queensland. Those are the explanations and as you know, the U.S. denominated debt, the cash, and the deferred consideration is all in U.S. dollars. When we retranslate that, we pick up some gains and losses here. The total of these are about AUD 195 million after tax.
If I take you over the page, we said we'd give you a little bit better detail on depreciation, amortization, and finance and hopefully we do that. If you look at the depreciation, amortization, net finance for FY 2025, D&A came in at AUD 607 million. As I said before, we said we'd be about AUD 750 million on guidance when we talked to you earlier this year. We're better than that because it just reflected the acquisition accounting where we rebuilt or restructured that cost of acquisition just at the end of the year. The FY 2025 D&A for Queensland, there were some one-off adjustments. There were some assets in there that we'd had on the books when we brought them on that we found were surplus. We took the hit on that.
For depreciation, we estimate it's about AUD 16 - AUD 18 a ton of owned coal sold for New South Wales and about AUD 23 -AUD 28 a ton for Queensland. Because a lot of the depreciation charge is based on a units of measure, it's a function of how well we produce in the pit, how well productivity forms. On the amortization side, that's about AUD 6 a ton and I think that's pretty safe to use in your models. I think the net financial expense, we've told you where that is historically but there's plenty of noise in that number. With AUD 568 million of net finance expense, AUD 219 million of that in cash and non-cash is about AUD 350 million this year. In this financial year, you should expect that we will look at refinancing the U.S. $1.1 billion. The non-call period for that finishes in March 2025.
We would expect to be talking to potential providers of debt capital over this next year. Stay tuned for that as we go through the year. The segment result over the page on that, we give this to you. I think this is a really handy slide from this. You can pretty much work out what the unit cost is at each of those bases, New South Wales and Queensland. What you really do see is New South Wales, sorry, Queensland contributed AUD 3.5 billion of revenue, close to 60% of overall revenues and nearly AUD 900 million in EBITDA. The acquisition is really helping diversify. Whitehaven Coal has helped to diverse Whitehaven Coal quite well. The net finance expense of AUD 289 million, the underlying components we talked about, I expect that to be down next year.
As I said at the half year, the financials really do show the benefits of that diversification. As Paul said earlier, you see that in the participation per share all without issuing a share in the process. A good outcome moving forward. We've told you we think we can do better at Daunia and Blackwater. That's certainly the focus in FY 2026 and we're really well placed, I think, to look at a recovery in coal prices and see that translate to better economic performance over the page. As I said, we think we can continue to improve at the group level. We realized $215 a ton and a unit cost of AUD 139. We paid the various governments an average royalty of AUD 25 a ton. In Queensland, you know, that's a tiered structure.
The average royalty in Queensland was about 12.5% and the average royalty in New South Wales, as you know, is a flat structure. It's about 10%. On the cost side, guidance was about AUD 140-AUD 155. We thought it'd be a high year and we expected it to be a high year because we'd closed Werris Creek, put that into rehab. That was a really low cost operation, bypass 100% closer to the port, and we brought on Vickery and we're digging a box cut at Vickery where we're mining through the hill at Tarrawonga. You know, 2025 and 2026 are periods of higher cost in this operation. Productivity improvements, we've focused on that pretty heavily in Queensland and in New South Wales we're seeing benefits from that and we've reduced the costs in Queensland. I think there's still more to go there.
As we said, we'd rebuild blasted stocks at Blackwater. That's helping us. There's still more to go on the productivity front there and ROM volumes. I think overall in the bottom of this market, it's been a pretty good outcome. That'd be my summary for it. I'm pleased with the second half result and I'm pleased with the strength of the balance sheet. If I take you over the page, this is just a standard bridge that we use each year. It'll help you understand how we think about things. You can see a New South Wales price was softer and this is trying to bridge you from AUD 1.4 billion EBITDA which had one quarter of the whole operation in to AUD 1.355 billion which had all of Daunia for all of the year and 3/4 of Blackwater in there for the year. You can see softer coal price.
We're down on volume because of Werris Creek closing and Vickery is starting up. Our costs were up as a result of that switch in proportion of coal from different places and higher cost operations. You can see AUD 600 million in EBITDA which is the proportion of the year from that operation that's come through in here. It really has contributed quite strongly to performance. If I go over the page on the net debt again, it's been a really busy year. You can see that the business delivered AUD 1.1 billion of cash. We had to pay BMA AUD 1.104 billion which is a combination of the $500 million, the AUD 363 million in stamp duty that we paid and then there was about AUD 56 million that we got back in a completion adjustment from BMA. That's how you get to the AUD 1.104 billion.
The AUD 1.719 billion is the sell down of AUD 1.08 billion to Nippon Steel and JFE. In that process of selling down Blackwater and in that process of remeasuring that contingent liability there were taxes that had to be paid. That's about AUD 150 million. The AUD 1.719 billion is more like AUD 1.55 billion net. The capital expenditure and other acquisitions of AUD 448 million is what we've spent on capital expenditure, what we spent on the remaining 7.5% or the final payments there for the 7.5% of Narrabri. We also bought a seat at the table at the DBCT coal terminal in Queensland. That was AUD 24 million and we gave shareholders AUD 200 million. It rounds up to that in here.
The next line in there is really the leases that are paid for and we've got some foreign exchange variations and others, but we finished the year with net debt at about AUD 600 million, which we're really pleased with. I think the balance sheet with 10% gearing and a leverage ratio of less than a half is really well positioned to get through the bottom of this cycle. We've seen the coal prices.
In.
That late in, late in the half or late in the year anyway. A strong balance sheet with gearing of 10% and leverage that's less than half a turn. We've got plenty of liquidity on the balance sheet. I think that's good. The sell down or the receipt of the proceeds from selling down that 30% joint venture interest in Blackwater improved our liquidity. We're holding that cash on the balance sheet, or AUD 500 million of that, to meet the second payment to BMA next year. Coal price contingent payments. We paid AUD 9 million in July 2nd. That structure, which was really an upside downside sharing structure, is working as anticipated. If I look at where we're up to in July, year to date, we don't expect to pay anything out of the first, the May, June or the April, May, June, July period.
Coal prices need to recover in order for us to pay to BMA out of this. As I said, we intend to reposition our funding sources. I think a very busy year, but a pretty good year of business. Really well positioned, bottom of the cycle with a turn coming and looking forward to 2026. With that I'll hand it back to Paul.
Thanks, Kevin. I'll just switch it over now to the refresh of Whitehaven's capital allocation framework and just reminding everybody, I suppose we're not looking for wholesale change with the capital allocation framework. It's certainly served us very well. We get good feedback on the clarity that this provides. We have said that with the acquisition that we would revise that at the end of the two years, but because we've been able to accelerate the de-risking of the balance sheet with the sell down of Blackwater, we committed to revising that and announcing that with the full year results. This is the outcome of that process. As I say, it served us well in terms of balancing the needs for CapEx within the business. I'll just go through the parameters that we've changed within the capital allocation framework itself.
As Kevin's mentioned, we're modestly geared and we'll continue to stay that way, both on a gearing metric but also on a leverage basis as well, depending on how you'd like to measure it. If we look at historically, we were in a business which was half the size. The payout ratio from group NPAT was 20%- 50%. That was wider than what we think is necessary now with a broader-based, lower-risk business. We are narrowing the range of that and elevating the top end. We're going from 20%- 50% to now 40%- 60% of our underlying group NPAT. That's an improvement and that is total returns. When we look at that and the two instruments we're using in which to deliver those returns are through dividends and buybacks.
Basically, we're going to take a position where we have a balanced and value approach to dividends and buybacks now within that 40%- 60% range. As we've already noted at the beginning of the presentation, we're at 60% in this current year. That's the changes to the structure of the capital allocation framework itself. Of course, money to be spent on, you know, well, in the internal competition for the allocation, that incremental dollar capital remains the same. Whether it be money for internal projects, Vickery or Stage 3, or M&A from time to time, they must go through the same hurdles that this dictates. As I say, it's served us well. We don't have any M&A on our agenda at all. That part is not part of the immediate considerations for how to allocate capital within the framework.
If we look at the outcomes, on 16th September we will pay, as I said earlier, a AUD 0.06 fully franked dividend which totals about AUD 48 million of capital. We intend to buy up to about the same amount, AUD 48 million in shares back over the next six months through our buyback program. A balanced by value approach as we've mentioned takes the full year dividend outcome to AUD 0.15 per share, fully franked, and with the buybacks added in, that's AUD 191 million of capital returned which represents, as I said, a 60% payout ratio of the underlying group NPAT. I hope those changes, everyone can process those. I think it's a better outcome where we fall. It should be a more consistent, more consistent payout ratio than what we've had before with the 20%- 50%.
A narrow range but the top end is higher and a balanced approach value to delivery of the dividends and buybacks. One of the other action items we had or commitments we made to you to come back to you with was obviously revision of the Narrabri Stage 3 capital. I did want to spend a little bit of time just going through that. I've got a couple of slides here which does that. A couple of key points I should just mention which are influential in terms of the revision of CapEx. The much delayed approval of Stage 3 was something which was grinding on us for some time, unfortunately, which had been very annoying. That consumption of time going through that process also diminished the opportunity for the walk on, walk off scenarios we mentioned before.
We have jettisoned the idea of having the walk on, walk off and we've now deferred the decision on a new longwall for 10 plus years. The other decision which we've taken, which is influential, is to look at changing the direction of mining and under those other scenarios we were going to go from north to south. In the scenarios we've now adopted, we are going from south to north. That makes a number of different changes relevant here. That means access will be used through the 201 mains for the 300 series panels. You only incrementally drive the 201s as you need incremental access, but the 300 series mains and the 301 mains are no longer required to be done upfront. In fact, the 300s, not at all.
301 access is only required in the same vein as 201 as you need to incrementally drive it to get access to develop the next panel. That will be incremental over time, not something which was going to be a large liquor capital up front with the previous iteration of Stage 3. Much lower CapEx profile now as a result. I'll walk that through. The assumption in terms of volumes for us modeling out Narrabri, we're in the 6 million- 7 million tons range. I think as we talked about, I got the question last quarter about this as well and that's how we think about the average volumes for Narrabri over the life of mine. I'm over the page now just to go through what the implications of this are. The previously discussed AUD 800 million-AUD 850 million capital has changed dramatically.
Narrabri Stage 3 capital is now AUD 260 million-AUD 300 million, the bulk of which is actually deployed to the maintenance of our existing longwall. We will make this last longer. There's clearly a trade-off there in terms of less capital up front, more in maintenance over time to make sure we keep this wall in good shape. Of the AUD 260 million-AUD 300 million we spent, we've already spent AUD 40 million. There's about AUD 15 million in the new guidance that we're giving you. Then there's a bit more that's got to go into this, what the balance of capital goes over the next six years outside of guidance. A big reduction from the AUD 800 million-AUD 850 million as I say.
If you looked at like-for-like basis on an inflation adjusted basis, that'd be well over AUD 1 billion in capital for this project, which given Narrabri has been producing less in recent times, the deferrals in the receipt of approvals, and our view on the direction of mining, this is a far superior outcome from our perspective in terms of capital management. Also, given the competing demands that the enlarged business has for capital, this obviously needs to fight for each capital just like every other site does within the portfolio. I think there are positive changes to be made. Just to go through quickly some of the other outcomes from that, we've given you some numbers there in terms of the sustaining CapEx requirements for the mine. Life of mine is AUD 8-AUD 9 in the next couple of years.
That does go higher in the short term just to be setting up balances of infrastructure needed over the next two years, but life of mine is the AUD 8-AUD 9 that you should use in your model. Remaining CapEx for the 200 series panels is. There's about AUD 80 million in that and AUD 60 million of that will be spent between 2026 and 2027. Overall, we feel like a much better optimized plan for Narrabri. Big reduction in capital required for Narrabri. The trade-off in tons is not too difficult at six to seven, we feel that's an appropriate thing to do. Overall, a much better outcome for our investment in Narrabri. I'll flick over now just to our guidance. I'll start by saying look, last year and the year before we took a measured approach to guidance.
We took quite a conservative position which we thought was prudent to do. We feel it's prudent to do that again. We're only a year into this bedding down these assets and there's more bedding down to do. Even though the year has shown great promise and we delivered good outcomes at the upper end of our guidance, our intention is to do the same. We are going to start the year with sensible guidance that doesn't bank in everything. Just for everybody's understanding, it's the same approach as last year. We're talking about 37 million- 41 million tons of ROM at the group level. We're talking about managed sales, 29.5 million- 33 million tons across the group as well. Obviously, just to remind everybody when they're comparing year to year that of course the sales guidance at the equity level is only 70% for Blackwater.
I'm sure everyone understands that, but just to remind everybody because when you look at the numbers year on year you think oh what's the difference? Of course, we've sold 30% of Blackwater and very happy to have done that. The cost guidance itself at AUD 130-AUD 145. Reminding everybody, we came at AUD 139 just at the bottom, below the bottom end of our guidance and we're certainly aggressively targeting costs again to try and drive a better outcome. Let's just be conservative to start off with here. The AUD 60 million-AUD 80 million I've mentioned already, that run rate change of annual cost savings we want to see by the 30th of June at the end of this financial year 2026. We did deliver on the AUD 100 million last year. We intend to deliver on this as well, but that is outside of the guidance.
On top of the guidance range that we've given you there, there are other levers to continue to drive improvements. Blackwater, obviously we're continuing our journey with the pre-strip inventories being rebuilt. We are continuing to see good opportunities with the AHS system and the productivity that we can deliver by driving that harder with the support of the OEM. We're always trying to maximize our margins by tweaking and refining not just the marketing strategies but also the cost base of the business more generally. There will be more of that in this new year as the 60 to 80 highlights. As I say, we intend to deliver that on top of the cost outcomes that naturally form from our guidance. Given what we've done with Narrabri, you can see the CapEx profile for this year is lower than last year.
Our CapEx guidance there, AUD 340 million-AUD 440 million, reflects not just the times and markets being what they are, but also that lower CapEx expectation for demand for Narrabri with the revised approach to Stage 3. With that, I think we'll finish up the formal presentation. Very good year from us. We're happy to have got through the first year well, setting ourselves up for FY 2026 in a positive way and look forward to the questions in the session with the sell side analysts. Thank you.
Thank you, sell side analysts. 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 Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, Paul and team. Thanks for the call.
Two from me.
Firstly on Narrabri. Very good rationalization there, obviously on the renewed mine plan and I think absolutely makes sense to allocate capital judiciously to the asset, given its history and growth options that you have within the portfolio now post acquisition of BHP assets. I just wanted to touch upon some of the guidance that's been provided and updated for Narrabri. Obviously you've gone to 6 million- 7 million tons. There's minimal impact to the mine life there as well. How should we think about, I guess, the coal quality impacts, cost impacts, and potentially where you can make up the lost tons from within the portfolio? Where would your targets be? That's the first one. I'll come back with a second on the guidance, thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Rahul. I'm not sure how you managed to be the first question every one of our calls, but well done to you. Look, we're very happy. We're happy to have bottomed out the CapEx revisions for Narrabri. We think that's a more sensible approach. As we've said, and you rightly point out, given its recent performance, this is the right answer given the competing demands of capital within the business. The coal quality does. We've said that the ash does increase over time and so that changes its profile. As everybody knows, it sort of sits just under GC Newc spec today, and that does drift further into, say, if I can just use in round terms, it drifts further over time into the Korean market. At the back end of its life, there's actually some 5,500 as well, and that's okay.
It's still our cheapest coal by some margin, and at that 6 million- 7 million ton rate, even less, it's still our cheapest coal. That's the right way to think about it in terms of volumetrically. The blending opportunities across our business with that coal is the bit that is very interesting to us because just to use the most extreme example, you know, you all understand what the API5 number is today relative to GC Newc, and to be able to capture that benefit with blending is part of the reason why Narrabri continues to be very interesting to us. Of course, that's part of the reason why Vickery continues to be very interesting to us because the two of those married together, that's essentially $40 up for grabs there in blending benefit across the difference between API5 and GC Newc. That's how we think about it.
There's, of course, more tons. I think the other part of your question was just what are the other ton options in the business. Vickery, of course, is one of them. That requires capital that's off the tail for the next 12 months. As everybody has heard from us in the past, that's prudent given where the market's at. As I say, Vickery itself is a very interesting prospect and in the right market is going to come on at some point in time, if I can say that. The returns as a standalone project, very interesting to us, as is that blending benefit I've just highlighted. Then Maules Creek continues once more, continuation project is approved. We'll be able to reorient the pit and we feel that that is the key to getting close to the 13 million ton approval.
Moore's continuation projection is actually set at a 14 million ton approval, actually, but that's just to cover the spikes. We'd be very happy to see the continuation project deliver the 13 million tons. That would be very positive. That increased strike length that reorient in the pit run north to south would deliver, that would certainly give us the productivity benefits that we struggled to attain in the back end of the, in the southern end of the lease at the moment, where pit intensity, mechanical intensity in the pit is the enemy to good productivity. We think that will free up out the fleet in a much more positive way. That's where we certainly expect to get more tons. Queensland's just another story altogether, of course, in terms of incremental tons. We've got great aspirations for both sites up there and of course Winchester South in time.
As many of you visited the sites, you'll see that the potential there, we're delivering on that potential. We delivered more tons than they've seen in recent years in this past year and our plan is to do that again now. We've given you conservative guidance, but I think that's the right thing to do. Great.
Now you've kind of answered my second question, but I'll bring it up anyway. FY 2026 guide, obviously you just touched upon Queensland, so the guidance is basically FY 2025 production already sits at the top end of guidance for next year. FY 2025 was basically your first year, you had weather impacts there and yet you produced quite well. If I think about New South Wales as well, very marginal lift into guidance for next year. Narrabri I think just has this current longwall move, but none others planned for next year, and then Maules as well at 11.5 rate. A bit of gap between the 13, that's nameplate. Admittedly, you don't get there without the investment, but you would think that you can potentially year on year do a bit better.
I guess the question is, is this basically just being too conservative in terms of guidance, or are we missing some impacts that you're potentially expecting to production from Queensland or New South Wales into next year?
Right, we're just being conservative again. I think that's the right thing to do. I wouldn't say too conservative, I'm just saying conservative. We think that, as you rightly point out, the midpoint of guidance is what we did last year. That's factual, and as we did in this past year, we plan to get in the upper end of our guidance and we certainly want to do that. Now we're at the beginning of the year, not towards the end of the year where that's obviously, you could say it with greater confidence, but that is our intent and we feel like we've got the momentum to carry that into the year. We're not going to bank that all at the beginning of the year and I think that would be the wrong posture to take as far as guidance setting goes.
All of what you just summarized is appropriate. We have had weather, there's no doubt, so you just have to look out the window. Not for you if you're in Melbourne, but here in Sydney and New South Wales and Queensland. We've had certainly some weather, so we've taken that into account of course, and Narrabri is back and cutting, but it's had a slow ramp up, so we've factored that in as well. I think it's the right thing to be conservative in this instance and we certainly plan to under promise and over deliver, to use that overused turn of phrase. That's the intent here, not just on the volumes but on the cost as well.
Understood, that's very clear. Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.
Your next question comes from Paul Young from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Paul. Kevin, I take my apologies just to touch on I think the under promise over deliver strategy, which is the right one I think for FY 2026. Just to dig into the Queensland guidance a bit more and considering we were up on site in June and we just saw how well the Daunia truck fleet's performing and also what you managed to achieve at Blackwater. I'm just curious around the, like, is it a simple approach how you set the guidance? I'm not disagreeing with this. I'm just obviously the site to come through with their budget for the year. Are you just applying like a simple safety factor and the same safety factor across both Daunia and Blackwater? I'm just wanting to understand what the strategy is and how you've come up with that guidance.
Yep. Yeah, thanks Paul. Look, we're just being conservative, Paul, as everybody, you included, would have seen the opportunity up there. We are delivering on that. The weather in the first month of the year has been unseasonably annoying, but that's okay. This is, we're at the beginning of the year and the momentum, the team is doing really well. We're positive that we can do well, but we have taken a conservative position. I think it's the right posture to take. I mean, this is only the second year and whilst we feel like we got our hands around the assets better, we still got some work to do in terms of getting that pre-strip where we want it. The fact that we've mined faster has actually chewed into the incremental improvement in the pre-strip inventory balance. You would have seen that.
We talked about that when we were up there. We need to step that up again because we're mining faster and that's a high quality problem. Daunia itself, no doubt, can do better. It's had a very good year. Proportionately, it's done better than Blackwater. That's easy to say because it's a smaller mine and the things we're able to do there have a more immediate effect than the longer term systemic alignment that we need in terms of getting the dragline system working better. The AHS system is delivering a good step up and we want to see that continue in the year. It still needs to get to manned equivalent basis. That's our target and that's the pressure you're keeping on CAT to help us achieve that.
Yep.
Now, understood. With respect to the strategy over the medium term, Paul and I think you know we've come out with on focusing on just brownfield CapEx and reducing Narrabri really sensible and returning more to shareholders capital shelters which is great as well, and you've obviously got the deferred payment, second deferred payment to BHP, I think in Kevin in the June quarter of next year, so it's still got some cash outflows with the BHP payment.
Is it Paul?
I know you're option rich if I call that as far as like a few projects are shovel ready, you've got working through synergies with Daunia, with Winchester South, but you've got a lot of organic options. There's also a lot of organic potential options as well. I'm not going to go through them all, but you know them up in Queensland and close to both your assets, so is it more the fact that.
We just get through.
You just get through this fiscal year, get through that payment, assess everything, and then just make a decision on where you think the best opportunity is.
There's a lot in that one. There's a lot in that question. Gosh. Or comment. There's a bunch of stuff in there, Paul. Look, the next bullet payment is well in hand. We have the money in the bank, it'll stay there, that won't be touched, so rest assured the balance sheet is in good state to be able to deal with that as and when it arrives. You've obviously just got the $100 million , that's the further 12 months, then from then on the third year anniversary, and again that's not something which would trouble the business too much at all. You're quite right, we have internal options. Those internal options are all about sweating the assets today, making driving what we've got harder.
As I said, Vickery, which is the obvious answer for some of the reasons I've mentioned earlier, Vickery is obvious and fully approved to do so, but not in this market. We've taken that view and the board's 100% behind the notion of that. Let's sweat the assets and continue to drive the returns and let's get the cost base even sharper. That's our focus for this year, just margin protection, because the market has been a little bit variable to say the least, and margin protection should be the balance of that. The assets you're talking about around our space, they're not particularly compelling from our perspective given the other options we have, and that's how we think about it. Don't expect to see us playing in any of those spaces at all.
That doesn't mean we don't have a look at stuff, of course we look at everything as you know, but they don't form part of our strategic picture, if I can say that. We've just got two, as you say, we don't have too many options. We're options rich. I think you coined that phrase. Prioritizing those options is the job we have before us. We're keen to make sure we make the right decisions in maximizing our returns to shareholders.
Yep, understood.
Okay, thanks. Thanks, Paul.
Our next question comes from Chen Jiang of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning Paul. Morning Kevin. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is a follow up on Narrabri Stage 3 on slide 26 and 27. It's good to see you have AUD 500 million CapEx reduction, which is very significant because you don't need to purchase longwall or construction of ventilation, et cetera. I'm wondering, I guess you have assessed the economics benefit of mining the 200 versus 300, but I'm just wondering is there any other trade off in volume, quality, or geopolitical conditions not mining you previously planned? Also, what stops you to mine Narrabri beyond the 7 million tons per annum? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks Jiang, that's. There's a lot in that question too. I'll try and get through it all. Look, our view of Narrabri is that this is the right answer given its recent history and, you know, quite frankly given the other options within the business, Narrabri still forms a very important piece of our puzzle and so six to seven is the right answer volumetrically given that you, you know, we're not contemplating the walk on walk off scenarios as I said. You will have change outs and that tempers the total volume that you might have otherwise achieved had you been able to eliminate the change outs by virtue of having two longwalls on a walk on, walk off scenario. As I say, it's an important piece of the puzzle.
It is our cheapest coal and there's certainly very good lending options within the business with the high quality thermal that we have coming out of both mines and, of course, as I mentioned earlier, Vickery, so there's nothing else that stands in our way in optimizing that. There's the 200 panels. It's not a 200 versus 300 type thing. It's just a sequencing; 200s will get done before we get into the 300s. Now, there is preferentially obviously a desire to stay on the shallower side of the mine. As you can see in the diagram there, the panels that we're highlighting that sort of get taken first are the ones in that shallower end before. We don't take all the ones in the 200. We flip over to the 300s to stay in the shallower side of the mine.
That is just us optimizing what we believe to be the right answer from a volume and cost perspective in the mine. It also actually coincidentally corresponds with the better quality side of the mine as well. There's a little bit more CO2 as you go to the western boundary and the ash certainly creeps up a little bit more there too on that side of the mine. It's about all us just pulling the right levers we feel to make sure we optimize our investment in Narrabri.
Thanks for that, Paul. Maybe a question for Kevin, please. Kevin, you mentioned earlier in the call that why haven't we refinanced the $1 billion debt? Are you happy to carry the $1 billion debt on your balance sheet, or is there any plan to deleverage from here given you have changed your dividend policy based on the group NPAT? If you deleverage your balance sheet, that will improve your dividends going forward. Thank you.
Oh Chen, that is a really good question. I'm going to say, like for us, $1.1 billion of debt, we are collateralized well beyond that from a security perspective. What we're looking for is a better price structure, a little more flexibility in terms, and we're probably going to look to see if we can put more in the capital stack outside of private capital. We'll be looking for a lower rate and we'll be looking to try and push this business or help get this business towards that top end of that double B, if not investment grade, investment grade credit. The feedback from investors through this last few years is they've been delighted with providing us that capital. We've been delighted in taking that capital and buying these two assets. It's been a great deal for all of us.
We're two years in, it's settled down, we've got reasonable numbers, we should be able to go to market and tell.
A pretty good story, I think.
I'm looking forward to doing this over, the whole team is. Kylie, as the GM of Capital Markets, is leading this charge. We'll be busy in 2026 doing that. To Paul's point, the focus of the CFO in 2026 is about putting the funding structure in place for the long term, not on M&A.
Sure. Just a follow up on your answer. There's a plan to reduce your interest payment going forward after you retire?
Reduce the interest payment.
I think we'll finish up building, managing, keeping debt on the balance sheet, but managing the cash position to get to a net debt position. That works because the business of funding a coal business is about maintaining relationships with providers of capital, and you want to keep those relationships warm. You manage that through a net cash position, and that gives you flexibility through facilities and cash to manage whatever comes your way in the process. Underlying that, Chen, is a plan to keep sufficient liquidity on the balance sheet that no one calls you up and says, oh, you're in trouble, aren't you? We've done that pretty well, I think, for a few years now, the best part of the last decade, to be honest.
Sure.
Thanks for that, Kevin. Thank you. Yeah, I'll pass it on.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Lyndon Fagan from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning. Just wondering if you're able to give a split of the Queensland production guide between Daunia and Blackwater.
Thanks. Sorry, Lyndon, was that what you wanted, the split? Is that what you said? Yeah, okay. No, we prefer to keep it aggregated. We took the decision now over a year ago that we would provide guidance on a state basis, and you can see where we ended up last year. You can infer a split there pretty reliably, but we won't be giving guidance on an individual mine-by-mine basis.
From a qualitative point of view, I guess if ROM coal's up 3.5% at the midpoint, which of the assets is one doing better than the other? Obviously, it's going to be heavily weighted to Blackwater, but any color?
We're happy.
With the guidance that we've given you, and you can use the average realizations that we've given you, you can see where that implies, obviously, a product mix which we've also given you. You've got enough there for your models, I think.
Okay, no worries. I guess on the cost out front, is this year the last year that you expect to realize sort of cost out related to the new management sort of regime, or do you expect that to be a multi year thing still? I'm just wondering if at the end, the exit rate of this year is sort of a steady state Whitehaven operating regime.
Yeah, fair call, fair call. Look, I do think in terms of overt cost reductions initiatives that we publicly discuss, I do feel like this would be the second and probably last year of that. Now that's really as a result of cycles dictate cost focus as and when as you know. This is not the first time we've focused on our cost base and it's the right time to do it. Obviously Queensland with the transition in it was right to deal with that then and the continuation of that in this year. We didn't turn our attention to New South Wales just because we had our hands full. We will be doing that this year. In terms of overt expression of further cost targets over and above guidance, yes I think you can say this is the last of those, last of that.
That doesn't mean the cost journey will stop or that you should use that as the exit rate because what we do see what takes over is a productivity drive. That's where we think the real upside comes. Say for instance, just to use a case in point at the end of this year, we would like to see the continuation project at Moores Creek done by say 2028 and the productivity benefit with the same fleet of being able to manage the fleet across a much bigger strike going north to south is going to be a really nice productivity benefit for us. Obviously the cost base of Moores Creek, so the conversation in subsequent years will all be about productivity and that will manifest itself in improvements in our cost base.
I think yes, the 60- 80 degree table for this year is at this point in time, it's the last time we need to be talking explicitly about a separate program outside of our normal cost and productivity focus.
A quick follow up of that cost out number. How much would you apportion to New South Wales considering you've been running those assets a long time? I can't imagine too much fat.
Yeah, that's right. Every side of the business creeps over time, right? Particularly when your focus over the last few years has been drawn to something else, and inflation has had its way with the business and the cost base. You're right to say that New South Wales has been ours all along, and therefore it should be reflective of how we want to operate. I would say to you that turning our gaze to New South Wales is already unearthing opportunities for us. We are saying, and that's not to mention that the corporate side of things shouldn't also—everybody should share the load in the cost focus. Rather than trying to split it up for you, I'll just say that Queensland's got more to do. New South Wales needs to tip in, and we'll report to you how this is going during the course of the year.
Right, thanks, Paul.
Your next question comes from Rob Stein from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi Paul and Kevin. Thank you very much for the update. I've got a question on the capital allocation framework. When we look at the 40%- 60% of NPAT, when we're thinking about this from a half to second half point of view, are we to infer that the first half you're going to keep a bit of your powder dry, conservatively, so that on a full year financial basis you'll meet the target or are we to think about this as in any given period you'll pay out 40%- 60%? I've got a follow up. Thank you .
I can answer that one really quickly. It's as simple as this. We've typically been conservative in first half. We've typically always been conservative in first half. We view our numbers as being an annual result, so we would generally be conservative in the first half and then true up in the full year. I don't see that changing. This is not a real estate investment trust, it's a commodity business.
Thank you for that. That's useful for forecasting. I appreciate that. Just on the refi or the upcoming refi, we expect this to come as one big chunk. Are you thinking about it as diversifying your funding sources? How should we think about this as a combination of bonds, loans, and particularly the flexibility that long term debt can give you? Just any steer on that would be interesting.
We've been sitting in the steering committee.
Have you?
The short answer for that is I think yes, we'd like to diversify capital sources, but we're really happy with the group of investors we've got. That group of investors or capital providers also have different arms that provide funding at different levels and pricing structures. We're really early in this process. We are seeking to diversify for your modeling purposes. I think what you need to consider is that today we're probably paying about 10.5% on this thing and I think you'd be looking at somewhere, you know, with a 7% handle on it, 7%- 8% for a funding price that comes through it. If I got better than that I'd be pretty happy. At the moment markets are priced pretty well actually. They're really constructive. If I got to a 6% I think I'd be delighted. For your modeling purposes I think 7%- 8%.
Pick a number in that range and that's probably where we're aiming to get to and it's probably likely to get concluded after the non call period expires in March next year.
Thanks, that's really helpful. Appreciate it.
Your next question comes from Lachlan Shaw from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning Paul, Kevin and IR team. Thanks for your time. Just a couple of sort of clarifications I guess. Just on the capital guide for FY 2026, the range AUD 340 million- AUD 440 million. Can you give us a bit of a sense in terms of what's in the bucket market and what, how do you think about what's going to put you at the top end of that range versus the bottom end? I'll come back on my second. Thank you.
Happy to. Look, there's money in there for the development projects Winchester South and Vickery as we keep pushing those a little bit forward. We're very careful in what we commit to and spend there, but clearly we're looking to move those forward. We've got about half of that that I think is a component maintenance.
Right.
Which is really our major overhauls on gear that we've acquired. I think we're going to spend that money because it really does support the productivity of the business over the coming years, and we need to do that. The balance of that is material that we're working our way through, and traditionally we revisit and review as we go through, and we're very tight on how we spend that. Our underperformance in capital or underspend on capital in the past has been really around the non-major overhauls and about those things that we take a good look at through the year. That's probably the answer I give you, Lockie.
We've really hit. We've always been relatively parsimonious in our capital. I would say last year obviously didn't hit one of our guidance and obviously when the market's in this state of condition as well, we'll look very, very judiciously at the capital. I think that the number's already pretty, pretty tight. For the sake of your modeling, take the midpoint and we'll update you during the course of the year how we're going to be safe.
Yeah, got it. That's really helpful.
Thanks guys.
Just maybe back to Narrabri. The 6- 7 sort of capacity kind of guide is helpful. Did you have a sense in terms of, you talked about the mine plan, shallower cover versus deeper cover. Do you have a sense about how that might vary when you're moving between the shallower sections and deeper sections, just given all the learnings in the past of the.
That's an interesting topic. We have a lot of learnings that came from the 100 series panels, of course. You've been there and seen with us the journey as we've moved from the shallow side of the mine to the deeper. We have seen lower productivity in the deeper grounds for sure, and an increase in costs associated with increased roof support that goes with that. When you're on the shallow side of the mine, you can unwind the roof support to some degree, so there's an improvement on that side and just productivity generally improves when you're in that shallower ground. That's just weighting event related. Our desire for sure, and this is the lead times associated with developing these panels. As you can see from the diagram, the panels are not of equal length between the 200s and 300s.
They're six kilometers long in the 300s, so the lead time associated with developing a panel there is longer than what you would otherwise take in the 200s. That dictates how quickly you can actually get into the 300s. The plan as depicted there is sculpted in a way that allows us to get over to the shallow side of the mine as soon as we can because we know there's productivity and cost benefits in doing that. Qualitative, as I mentioned earlier, in the mine, the coal quality is actually better on that side of the mine too.
All right, thank you.
I have one more, but I'll pass for now and come back. Thanks.
Your next question comes from Glyn Lawcock of Barrenjoey.
Please go ahead.
Morning, Paul. You've obviously outlined conditions impacted your business in the first six weeks of fiscal 2026. Can you help me understand what did that shave off your guidance this first six weeks and the weather we're experiencing outside.
Yeah, look, the guidance is the guidance. I'm not going to go into a raging exercise, Glenn, on if you had weather or you didn't have weather, but we've obviously had impacts. We've had impacts on both states in weather. The most notable, obviously, as you would have seen, has been flooding in the Kannadar region. That was nowhere near as significant as the last flood we had. Broadly, we've lost about a week there across our operations there. Now, the mines themselves are fine. It's just, as you know, it's the access into them that causes us the grief. If the river's rising and the access is about to be cut off, we've got to evacuate everybody. We've lost a week across the operations in New South Wales, whereas in Queensland it's been wet. That's been more of a productivity issue as opposed to having to evacuate everyone.
You're still there and working, but productivity can drift off when you're parking up equipment because of damage to roads and things and so on. We have taken into account, that's, that's, that would be prudent to do and we have done that.
Okay, thanks. You made a comment about Narrabri. It's obviously starting back up, next panel in. You said slow ramp up. Just what issues now are we experiencing, and just how, leading into that, you gave us some idea of CapEx and sustaining for Narrabri. Now that you've had Queensland for, you know, a good year and a bit, what do you think the sustaining capital is for the business as a whole as well? Thanks.
Yeah. Look, we've given you Narrabri sustaining capex. We haven't given you guidance for the business as a whole because there are different profiles to that. We'll give you annual guidance there anyway and we'll tell you if there's other issues. There's no particular lumpy capital in there other than the fact we're getting into a new rhythm with the draglines and shovels and the chunkier stuff. We are uncovering that there's a little bit more maintenance required there than what we probably planned, but it's well manageable within the envelope of what we thought we would be doing. Of course, there's fleet renewal over time, which both in New South Wales and Queensland will update the guidance for you as and when Narrabri.
The only thing that I'm pointing to there is that we've been just cautious just because we went through a very significant overhaul of the longwall and we'll continue to do that because we didn't get to give all the chocks a birthday. Half of them got a good birthday, which is nice. It's just a matter of how much time you've got. We'll rotate that through successive maintenance periods as we give them a birthday. It's easier, obviously, to do it during a changeout, but there's only so much time you can get that done. We can do some of that work in our maintenance days and we are doing that as we go through this year.
We had a few commissioning issues just because of such an extensive, extensive refurb that we gave the longwall, so there were a few commissioning issues that went on and that contributed to slower productivity rates with waiting events when you stopped, as you know. Overall, we're in reasonable form. We're taking it cautiously and we're in better shape now. We're taking it cautiously just because we want to make sure that we understand all the areas where targeted maintenance is required, because we have laid in, as you can see from the guidance we've given you, a little bit more, a little bit more sustaining capex required to make this longwall last longer.
All right, what do you think a new longwall would cost us, Paul? I know it's 10 years away, but if I had to buy one today, just roughly.
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I mean, I would have said to you a couple of years ago, AUD 300 million-AUD 400 million, but I don't think that's real anymore because there's no one. That would have been a European procurement, whereas I don't think that's the case anymore. I think the numbers will likely be half that and it'll come out of China. Given that they are the experts in underground mining and 60%- 70% of their volume comes from underground, longwall being a big piece of that, they are the experts and we're obviously using Chinese technology in our trucks now. The big refurb that we've been through incorporates a lot of Chinese gear, so we're comfortable with that and we understand the quality dimensions. Generally, it's been pretty good. I would have said half that cost, that historical cost. Clear.
Interesting. I guess that option then to push it out 10 years just for the sake of 200. I guess you've done all the maths?
Yeah, we've done all the maths. We looked at it all. There's lead time associated with it as well, and then there's the other competing uses of capital, and then there's the point in the cycle you're in. All of those things have to be married in that capital allocation framework, and we're comfortable with the decision in terms of the approach we've taken now.
All right, thanks Paul. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Rob Stein Macqurie, please go ahead.
Thanks for the follow up. Just on the contracts with Horizon for malls, noting that that contract's been restructured, is there any implication on what that means for malls going forward in terms of upside capacity? Do those savings, do they amortize to 2026 or 2027?
Yeah, thanks, Rob. That's been an important development for us. It does provide us a structural change in our cost base for New South Wales, not just mines. That contract is for New South Wales and that starts on July 1. We're still under our current arrangements with both PN and Aurizon for the balance of this financial year. We need to make sure that everyone remains focused in what's otherwise a transition period for PN to take on the balance of work. It was a very competitive process and from our perspective it results in a material improvement to our costs on a per ton basis. Kevin?
AUD 3-AUD 4 .
Yeah, it's between AUD 3- AUD 4 a ton improvement on New South Wales, so it's in 2027. Yeah.
In effect, as Paul says, we've right sized the number of consists or train kit consists for the task that we have, and we've created enough flexibility to deal with growth in periods to come. We're really pleased with the outcome and the process we went through.
Yeah, I mean there's two dimensions to that. Just to highlight that the number we've given you, the AUD 3- AUD 4 range, is the aggregate of two things. We took the opportunity to ensure that we were able to minimize surplus take or pay exposure, which we were carrying for some time. That's gone. As Kevin says, we've now got flexibility to surge as required with these new arrangements. Then there's just the straight out cost out opportunity which came from that tender. The aggregate of those two impacts is in that AUD 3-AUD 4 range for New South Wales. Half that, obviously, when you consider the group on a per ton basis.
Thank you.
That sounds like a really good result.
Thank you.
That concludes our question and answer session. I'd now hand back to Mr. Flynn for closing remarks.
Thanks everyone for your time and interest in wrapping up the year end financials. Another good year for us. Business is doing well. If there's any outstanding questions anyone has, you know where to find us. Look forward to engaging with you all over the coming weeks. Thank you.