Ramelius Resources Aktie

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ramelius Resources Full Year Outlook and FY '27 Guidance. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mark Zeptner, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ash. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to dial in for the presentation of Ramelius' full year outlook and FY '27 guidance. In addition to the ASX release, we have also released a presentation that we'll largely speak to during this call that outlines our pathway to 600,000 ounces of gold in FY '30. Both documents have been uploaded onto the ASX platform and will also be available on our website shortly.

I am joined today by members of the executive team, our COO, Tim Hewitt; and our Chief Development Officer, Alan Thom, who are both in the room; and our CFO, Darren Millman, who is online from the U.S. Initially, I'll be speaking to the highlights included in the outlook, and then I'll pass on to Tim to discuss operations and exploration. Alan will touch on the Mt Magnet hub expansion progress and associated execution, and then Darren will speak to the balance sheet and capital allocation, before I close with enough time for some detailed Q&A.

For those who have the presentation deck in front of you, I'll initially be speaking to Slide 3. We can move that on. Thank you. As many of you know, our business is built around two high-quality hubs, Mt Magnet and Rebecca-Roe. Underpinning both is a large long-life resource base, 14 million ounces of mineral resources and 4.3 million ounces of ore reserves as reported in our August R&R statement. We'll note that, that resource figure does include Edna May, which we completed the sale of, earlier this month.

For this financial year, FY '27, production will be between 205,000 and 225,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of between AUD 2,150 and AUD 2,350 an ounce. That continues to put Ramelius in a peer-leading cost position. And our full year outlook takes production to between 560,000 and 610,000 ounces by FY '30. Importantly, we expect to do that with an all-in sustaining cost of between AUD 2,100 and AUD 2,400 an ounce, holding our low-cost position while the business grows nearly 3x. The Ramelius business is underpinned by scale, growth and margin. It is also worth mentioning that we have well over AUD 200 million in listed investments, by way of our 10% holding in Benz Mining, and also 9.5% holding in Forrestania Resources.

On to Slide 4. Ramelius is a high-margin Tier 1 producer that is growing strongly with both the balance sheet and the track record to deliver it. We are delivering a 205% increase in production from FY '26 levels through to FY '30, and we're doing it without margin dilution. Secondly, we will generate significant free cash flow. At gold prices between AUD 5,500 and AUD 6,000 an ounce, by FY '30, we will be a business generating more than $1.5 billion of free cash flow a year. And we'll do this through maintaining a leading position on cost. We currently sit in the first 1/3 of the cost curve, and all of our assets are in Western Australia, a low-risk Tier 1 jurisdiction.

While we grow, we'll continue to generate capital returns. It should be noted that in FY '26, we returned 65% of our cash flow back to shareholders, while at the same time, funding one of the strongest growth pipelines in the sector. We don't see these as competing priorities. We've shown that we can do both. We have the resource quality, and it is getting better through execution of our Exploration program. Our resource and reserve inventory provides a high-grade, long-life base to support 600,000 ounces a year well into the 2030s. And last but not least, on shareholder returns, over the last 10 years, we've delivered total shareholder returns of around 25% a year, initially by way of fully franked dividends alone, but supplemented more recently with a comprehensive share buyback program.

On to Slide 5, we have what we believe is a world-class gold portfolio. On the left is the Mt Magnet Hub, which will produce more than 200,000 ounces this year, in line with our group guidance. This Hub alone has a mineral resource of 157 million tonnes at 1.9 grams per tonne for 10 million ounces. The mill at Mt Magnet is currently running at just around 2 million tonnes per annum. And our focus is on upgrading this to 4.3 million tonnes initially, but being capable of doing up to 5 million tonnes a year by FY '30, when we expect this Hub alone to produce between 420,000 and 460,000 ounces.

On the right is Rebecca-Roe, 150 kilometers east of Kalgoorlie. This is our greenfield development project with a mineral resource of 60 million -- 67 million tonnes at 1.5 grams for 3 million ounces and a planned 3.25 million tonne a year plant at that site. The DFS is complete. The Native Title mining agreement is signed, and we have a final investment decision in place. Rebecca has all of its approvals, both environmental and mining, and we expect the environmental approval for Roe to come through in the December 2026 quarter. That is next quarter. So in summary, we expect to be fully permitted within 6 months and actually planning more early works this financial year than we previously planned as we gain increasing confidence in the permitting time frames. Mill construction is scheduled to start in the December quarter of 2027 with first gold remaining in the December quarter of 2028.

So let's get into a bit more detail. We'll go to Slide 7. The transformational high-grade growth at Mt Magnet Hub underpins our near-term production and cash generation that supports both shareholder returns and the expansion itself. Rebecca-Roe adds a second leg of growth. It brings further scale and extends our overall mine life. As I mentioned, gold production goes from 205,000 to 225,000 ounces this year to between 560,000 and 610,000 ounces in FY '30, on a midpoint basis from FY '27, that's still 172% increase. At the same time, all-in sustaining costs are essentially flat, AUD 2,150 to AUD 2,350 an ounce this year and between AUD 2,100 and AUD 2,400 an ounce in FY '30. And milling capacity goes from 2 million tonnes a year to 8.25 million tonnes a year across both hubs over the same time period, which is a 300% increase.

The result is a high-quality, long-life portfolio that positions the group for reliable delivery while maintaining high margins. And because near-term production generates strong cash flow, the expansion is fully funded with the balance sheet remaining strong across the gold price scenarios that we've modeled.

On to Slide 8, we see the profile. Dark blue is the Mt Magnet Hub with the lighter bars being Rebecca-Roe and the all-in sustaining cost is the gold line. Mt Magnet grows steadily from a little over 200,000 ounces in FY '27 to around 260,000 ounces in FY '28 and 350,000 ounces in FY '29. In FY '30, after the expanded plant is fully operational and the Never Never underground mine is at full production, Mt Magnet will produce approximately 440,000 ounces. Rebecca-Roe comes in from FY '29, contributing around 80,000 ounces in its first year and closer to 150,000 ounces in FY '30.

Three key points to note on the production outlook. Firstly, we're leveraging existing infrastructure at our primary production asset, Mt Magnet, and execution is already underway. Expanding from an operating hub is lower risk and lower cost than starting from scratch. Secondly, the two processing plant builds a sequence rather than built at the same time. We believe this reduces execution risk and gives us continuity of production and in time, will mean that we're not reliant on a single asset.

Third, our costs are disciplined. All-in sustaining costs sit around AUD 2,150 to AUD 2,250 an ounce in most years with the temporary lift you see in FY '29 as Rebecca-Roe kicks off with higher strip ratios in the first year, although it is worth noting that the Mt Magnet Hub continues to operate at an all-in sustaining cost around AUD 2,300 an ounce in FY '29. More ounces at leading all-in sustaining cost levels mean more cash generation and more capacity for returns. You'll be getting fantastic growth without erosion of margins at Ramelius.

On to Slide 9. The believability of any plan, we believe, should be confirmed by the ability to deliver historically. And as we can see on the left-hand chart, we have met or beaten production guidance range for the last 6 years running. When we put a number out there, it is not done likely and always with the expectation that we will deliver and we'll do it safely, which is one of our company's core values.

In terms of all-in sustaining costs, it is a similar story in many ways with guidance achieved up until the year just completed, where if you adjust the all-in sustaining cost range to account for the positive situation around early commercial production at Dalgaranga, we again were within the guidance range. To be clear, early commercial production meant that Dalgaranga was cash flow positive, that is after all costs 3 months earlier than we expected when guidance was set at the start of the year. And this outperformance actually increased our all-in sustaining costs for FY '26 to the tune of some $130 an ounce. I suppose that's accounting for you.

On to Slide 10, this compares our all-in sustaining costs with the peer group average and also against the [indiscernible] gold price. You'll see there that from FY '23 to FY '26, Ramelius averaged an all-in sustaining cost margin of around 50%. Over the outlook period, FY '27 to FY '30, that average rises to around 62%, roughly 12 points higher despite the cost inflation the whole industry has experienced. Based on consensus estimates, our peer group sits around $2,900 to $3,100 an ounce, so let's call it $3,000, while Ramelius sits between $2,150 and $2,550 an ounce. This is between $400 and $900 an ounce lower than the peer average in each year.

And this is consistent with historical performance. Ramelius has generally outperformed peers on an all-in sustaining cost margin over time, and we expect to maintain a meaningful margin premium all the way through FY '30. That means we can execute on our growth projects without compromising the quality of the business. And it also means that more of every dollar of the gold price flows through to cash, which gives us flexibility on both reinvestment and returns. In short, we're growing, and we're remaining one of the highest margin gold producers in the sector while we do it.

I'll now hand over to Tim to talk through our exploration success.

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. On Slide 11, this slide demonstrates a key part of our strategy in action, that is displacing low-grade material in the mill feed with high-grade material discovered from our FY '26 Exploration Program. The chart compares Mt Magnet's planned FY '30 mill feed in our October 2025, 5-year plan with today's full year plan, noting that the mill tonnage is consistent in both columns. What has changed is the quality of that feed. Our FY '26 Exploration success has displaced around 1.3 million tonnes of low-grade ore with high-grade ore. As a result, the average head grade rises from 2.9 grams to 3.4 grams, a 16% uplift. This flows directly to production with FY '30 Mt Magnet output moving from 380,000 ounces to 440,000 ounces, an additional 60,000 ounces. The benefit from our Exploration expansion has started, and we currently see this from FY '29 onwards.

Moving on to Slide 12, and the next three slides demonstrate that return on our Exploration investment. Firstly, let us review Galaxy, a great example of our strategy at work. At Galaxy, our closest active mine to the Mt Magnet mill, we have significantly extended the planned mine life after a successful 12 months of drilling with two underground drill rigs. With these results, we have taken the mine life from around 3 years to well out beyond FY '30 and also have the potential for additional ounces per vertical meter for both Hesperus, which you can see on the left-hand side of the screen and also from Perseverance South.

Perseverance South, that sits out of the page, around 250 meters from the Saturn, Mars area, and that is one of our exploration targets. Our total inventory at Galaxy is now 36 million tonnes at 1.7 grams per tonne to 2 million ounces, noting that of our total resource, we have over 9.2 million tonnes with grades above 2.5 grams per tonne. It is also important to note that the apparent reduction in strike, length at Saturn, is merely related to drilling locations, and we expect an increase in strike as we have widened the drill pattern with some purpose drill drives that we're developing this year. Our exploration targets are 400,000 to 600,000 ounces at Galaxy and 200,000 to 400,000 ounces at Perseverance South.

On to Slide 13, Cue, which, as we know, has been a real success from an open pit space, also continues to impress in the underground area, too. Not only extensions at the Break of Day underground, but also adding the Lena underground to the north, which will combine into a significant underground operation. This was not envisaged at the time the 5-year plan was put together last October.

The deepest results at Lena, 19.7 meters at 5.7 grams per tonne and 9 meters at 12.9 grams per tonne are only 400 meters below surface, but importantly, below our conceptual underground design, which suggests significant upside still remains. There is a budget of $16 million in this financial year to determine this.

On to Slide 14. So out of Dalgaranga, very similar to Galaxy, we have had two drill rigs drilling away underground for the bulk of the year. These have primarily been drilling at the Gilbey's underground area below the pit. But periodically, we swing one of the rigs back to Never Never to do some infill drilling ahead of the mining front. Often, we intersect as series of excellent results at Never Never. Too many to talk through on the left-hand side of the slide, but these do include 3.6 meters at 996 grams per tonne and 13 meters at 34 grams per tonne.

And just quietly, we can't wait to mine these two areas in the next 18 months. At Gilbey's, with almost 600,000 ounces of resources, we can see a sizable underground operation developing that will be an excellent incremental addition to the main game at Never Never and further evidence of the depth of opportunity across the Mt Magnet Hub.

On to Slide 15. This slide sets out how the Mt Magnet expansion comes together over the next 4 years. This is an update of a similar slide in the 5-year plan from October. The key message from this slide is that the plan is appropriately sequenced and planned so it is achievable. And it's not a plan on paper. Work is well underway and our projects owner team is in place. The mill expansion to 4.3 million tonnes per annum is progressing with an optimization phase in FY '28, where we can test optimal mill throughput, grind size and recovery to maximize ounce production, noting that the mill expansion supports the mill throughput moving to 5 million tonnes per annum at a course of grind in time.

Supporting infrastructure is delivered in parallel, the camp at Mt Magnet, a paste plant at Dalgaranga, the haul road between Mt Magnet and Dalgaranga and a power upgrade that includes a 14-megawatt wind farm. Target exploration also continues with annual resource and reserves updates feeding back into the plan, looking for additional high-grade material.

On the mining front, Dalgaranga is ramping up to 1 million tonnes a year. Galaxy, based on this year's drilling begins to build production to 800,000 tonnes per year and Cue now extends to FY '31 with an estimated 600,000 tonnes a year. And Eridanus, which we are currently mobilizing, to begin the Stage 3 cutback, ramps up to 1.8 million tonnes a year of ore by FY '30, providing our long-term baseload feed. Each of these pieces is timed so that ore supply, plant capacity and infrastructure all come together as the expanded mill ramps up.

I'll now hand over to Alan.

Thanks, Tim, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call. As announced previously, the Mt Magnet upgrade will result in the operation getting both an upgraded existing circuit, Circuit 1 and a new circuit Circuit 2. The rended schematic of the new Circuit 2 is shown on the slide with a common back end with Circuit 1 and Circuit 2 combined. The new circuit honors the metallurgical parameters of the existing Mt Magnet plant, which was constructed many years ago and which Ramelius has been successfully operating for the last 14 years.

The new Circuit 2 design takes cues from this plant and benefits from the wide-ranging feed sources and various blends, which we have treated for years and know well. The upgrades to the existing processing facility are relatively simple and are well progressed. The need to grind the Never Never ore finer to get improved recovery only requires refurbishing the existing third ball mill, along with some other enhancements such as the installation of a new leach feed thickener and providing some additional CIL residence time. If and when the finer grind is no longer required, we can ramp it back up to the current 2 million tonne per annum runway.

There is also nothing unusual about our Circuit 2. We have gone down a very conventional proven flow sheet typical of the gold industry and is currently being used on the Mt Magnet feed blends. It is designed as a 3 million tonne per annum circuit with enhancements in line with the long life of the hub to improve flexibility to a range of feed types and allow for future increases in throughput for the combined Mt Magnet plant potentially 5 million tonnes per annum or relaxing the Circuit 1 grind size, as I mentioned earlier. With this in mind, we've also considered future downstream debottlenecking and also any low-cost equipment sizing opportunities have been incorporated into the design where it has made sense to do so. This includes CIL tankage and thickeners.

Since completing the PFS, we've had a chance -- a second chance at optimizing the design. One key change was the installation of new shared leach and CIL tanks of a larger single size rather than reusing the smaller Dalgaranga tanks for the plant circuit. This reduced the footprint, improved the layout operability and maintainability and achieved savings in top of tank steel while improving oxygen addition capability, optimizing the distribution of leach absorption and resonance times and ensures a more robust and flexible design to cover a range of feed types.

In taking this hub approach, with two grinding circuits and a largely shared back end, we feel we have achieved the right balance of a conventional gold processing plant with a robust, well-proven design and flexibility in grind size, leach residence time and gravity circuits that allow us to not just treat any free milling ore that comes our way, but to optimize recoveries on different blends. That is the right feed for the right mill. At the same time, we also do -- we have applied the right mix to repurposing the Dalgaranga plant to reduce predevelopment capital without compromising the integrity of the new 3 million tonne per annum plant. This leaves the Dalgaranga plant largely intact and provide future near-term milling capacity at that location, should we choose to use it.

Slide 17. This slide outlines the capital spend for the project. The PFS estimate was $223 million, including contingency. Our current estimate when comparing similar parameters of work is approximately $280 million to $298 million, with the difference reflecting contingency as shown in the table on Slide 16, under Mt Magnet processing expansion. The variance in estimates reflects the maturity of engineering in the current market. Like everyone in the sector, we've seen inflation since the PFS. We also moved from a PFS level estimate to now an EPC pricing for Circuit 2 and a more detailed engineering and refined estimates for processing infrastructure and Circuit 1 refurbishment. The other variance in growth capital is scope enhancement. That is increased scope, not just higher cost.

This is also shown in the table on Slide 16 on the mine infrastructure upgrades. It includes extended, sealed and upgraded haul roads, high capacity power and water infrastructure plus camp and other enabling works. These are deliberate choices with better roads, water security and a robust power network, maintenance will be reduced, haulage efficiency is improved and operational uptime strengthened. It's investment today enabling future upside and resilience to the Mt Magnet hub. This is shown on the slide with a current total estimate of between $340 million and $360 million, including $24 million of additional contingency, which provides a reasonable buffer to completion. The EPC contract is now appointed, representing a large lump sum of the overall plant upgrade work. This structure helps mitigate further escalation risk. Finally, the plant is built with future capacity in mind, including back-end capacity to support the 5 million tonnes per annum. The incremental capital today delivers a more robust operating platform, greater certainty and better long-term value.

This slide, Mt Magnet's scale and quality justifies this investment. To put it into a global context, this chart shows the top 20 primary gold mining projects in Tier 1 jurisdictions. At the top, you'll see big names, Nevada operations, Detour Lake, Boddington, Tropicana, et cetera. These are world-class assets that global gold investors know well. In FY '26, Mt Magnet produced about 192,000 ounces, placing at the far right of this chart, just outside the top 20.

By FY '30, based on the midpoint of our outlook, Mt Magnet is expected to produce around 440,000 ounces. That will place it inside the top 10 producing hubs in these jurisdictions alongside operations like Tropicana, Fort Knox and Cote. That is a significant shift in scale. It moves Mt Magnet to position as a globally relevant gold producing hub. We see scale bringing operating efficiencies and cost advantages and increases Ramelius's relevance to a much broader pool of global capital, which supports both liquidity and valuation over time. That is Mt Magnet alone even before the addition and contribution from Rebecca-Roe.

Thank you. I'll hand over to Darren.

Thanks, Al, and good morning, all. I'm initially speaking to Slide 20. Just a quick recap on how the technical information detailed by Tim and Al ties back to the financials. Our FY '26 Exploration investment of $100 million has resulted in FY '29 production increasing 30,000 ounces using the midpoint and FY '30 production increasing 60,000 ounces compared to our prior plan. At AUD 6,000 gold price, this is $540 million in additional revenue at our 60% margins detailed earlier by Mark. This equates to an additional margin of $300 million, and this excludes additional revenue and margin beyond FY '30 with many of our mines updates today extending beyond this time frame.

This is why we continue to focus on grade displacement with an additional $100 million exploration investment plan this year with an exploration target of 1.6 million ounces. Others detailed, our Mt Magnet expansion changes with a real focus not only what is required in the next 4 years, but for multiple decades with technical changes for all sources known today and potential new sources in the future, along with the elevated mill throughput levels beyond the nameplate of 5 million tonne per annum.

We have locked in the Mt Magnet schedule and importantly, locked in a lump sum price minimizing future cost inflations while still maintaining a healthy contingency. With that all being said, our balance sheet is now in amazing shape to fund our growth with cash on hand of $800 million following receipt of the Edna May proceeds and liquidity of over $1.3 billion, which takes into account our undrawn credit facility. We will also be generating significant free cash flow, which I'll touch on shortly.

In FY '26, we have returned $255 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks. This equates to a 65% payout ratio. We will continue to execute on our buyback $250 million program with room to grow given our financial strength. We have a disciplined approach in our capital allocation with every dollar invested requiring high rates of return. This is demonstrated by a historical average return on investment of 270% and a historical IRR at 50% with our existing portfolio in this gold price environment, we feel we can beat historical returns and have longevity, which I'll highlight shortly.

I'll be now speaking to Slide 21. This breaks down operating free cash flow and CapEx over the next 4 years. As you can see, even whilst we're investing back into the business, we have continued to generate free cash flow. In FY '27, up to $200 million in free cash flow at $6,000 gold price with a focus on the Mt Magnet mill upgrades and some early works at Rebecca-Roe. FY '28 up to $120 million as we focus on the Rebecca-Roe development, remembering in March 2028, quarter at Mt Magnet will be at the targeted 4.3 million tonne run rate and high grade Never Never at Dalgaranga will be at that 1 million tonne per annum run rate, delivering ore grade at over 6 grams per tonne, which we're very excited about.

The Mt Magnet cash machine, which really kicks in for the entirety of the year in FY '29, at the mine site level, generate over $1.1 billion in free cash flow and Rebecca-Roe in its first year of contribution over $100 million. FY '30 really speaks for itself, generating over $1.5 billion in free cash flow with no significant CapEx. In our mine planning, we too have a line of sight from FY '31 to FY '35, with FY '30 being the minimum in the free cash flow generation. This is why we feel the description of a free cash flow machine is appropriate.

I'll now be moving to Slide 22. For those that have followed the Ramelius story we have historically presented and look back scorecard on our cash generation from our investment, what this slide is looking to do is to give you a sense of what our portfolio looks like as we move forward. A few key takeaways. We have extended the Penny mine to December. This mine, once all said and done, will have generated close to $2 billion in cash flows post initial acquisition and the capital investments over the years. Interesting thing here, Cue will be even better, which we never expected when we set out on the acquisition of the mine. The updates to that extensions of Cue underground with the addition of Lena has given its life now to over 8 years with a $60 million exploration investment planned this year to extend even further.

The Galaxy mine area now has established a 10-year life with a life of mine free cash flow close to $3 billion. We will continue to invest in mine. Last year, we generated just under $90 million with 600,000 tonnes of ore. We are now targeting up to 800,000 tonnes, a high-margin mine with mineralization extending at depth and grade even getting better based on recent drill results. Rebecca-Roe remains a key new hub for us. We're expecting receipt shortly of the permits connected with Roe, which will enable us to potentially bring forward some of the higher-grade open pits, increasing production in the medium term.

In FY '26 and FY '27, we see upside coming from Rebecca, so we plan on providing the reserves and resource update next year. Finally, the star of the show, Dalgaranga. Grades have outperformed and with recent infill programs, we see a 10% uptick in grade in FY '26 and FY '27. This mine will put Mt Magnet Hub as a top 10 global producer. Long-life grade and significant cash flow generation is a true rare combination, but this is what Dalgaranga is, a once-in-a-generation mine. The addition of Gilbey's underground mine and future optionality will also bring higher returns to this asset group.

With that, I'll hand back to Mark.

Thanks, Darren. Thanks for laying out what is quite a compelling investment case. And what we've talked through so far is primarily base case. And that's the description we gave the 2025 plan also. So on Slide 23, what options are there for further growth. At Galaxy, there's growth beyond the current reserve at both Mars and Saturn, but there's also the Perseverance South and the Hesperus deposits as well nearby. At Cue, there are underground extensions both along strike and at depth, potential for improved metallurgical recoveries, particularly at Lena and also regional targets to the north. Around Mt Magnet more broadly, Eridanus remains open at depth, and we've intersected some very high-grade mineralization below the Franks Tower pit not far to the north. And our established infrastructure means any new ounces we do find, they are low cost to bring into production.

At Dalgaranga, as we've mentioned a few times, Never Never will produce over 1 million tonnes per year. Gilbeys underground offers additional material, and there is further upside from improved recoveries and processing optionality that does remain at Dalgaranga itself. At Rebecca-Roe, once the approvals are in place, we'll optimize the mining schedule to improve FY '29 and FY '30 performance. And it is also possible that we will see underground extensions below the currently planned pits.

And tying that all together is portfolio optionality. The FY outlook is now our base case, displacing low-grade ore with high-grade discoveries increases margins, this growth is capital efficient. And as the Galaxy and Cue examples show, our Exploration success is already being demonstrated. Our Exploration results will lift average grade, extend mine life and drive production well into the 2030s.

Okay. That's been a fairly comprehensive overview of the business. So if I can just summarize on the last slide, Ramelius returns to shareholders, both dividends and buybacks position us well within our peer group producers. We have long been a high-margin free cash flow business, and this will only strengthen going forward. Our production growth profile is unmatched in the sector and as we start to demonstrate the benefits of our low-grade displacement strategy. Our Exploration upside is evident with another $100 million committed this year to replicate the strong gains made in FY '26. We are a consistent and reliable operator with a long track record of delivery, and we also sit in key gold and ASX indices, which give us the benefit of scale and liquidity.

That concludes the presentation. And I'll now hand back to the operator, Ash, if you can please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question on the phone line today is from Hugo Nicolaci with Goldman Sachs.

Firstly, congrats on the outlook. Clearly, a lot of work has gone into this one. Firstly, just if I compare it to the last update, you gave life of mine metrics across the 2 hubs. And today, sort of commenting around the free cash flow machine from FY '30 to '35. Apologies if I've missed it in the pack, but can you maybe just walk us through as well what those life of mine metrics look like on the update as well?

Hugo, it's Mark. I learned a couple of years ago that putting out mine plans to 2043 and 17-year mine plans and the like doesn't really help you. So I suppose we're focused on our 2030 target, which is really once Mt Magnet and Rebecca-Roe are fully up and running and CapEx really does fall off a cliff, which is a positive thing. So no, we've purposely not provided details around full life of mine plan. Suffice to say, Mt Magnet does run out plus 15 years. Production is at around that 600,000 ounces at least until FY '35. And you don't really see the benefits of additional Cue, Galaxy and Gilbey's. But obviously, they are there beyond FY '30. But we just don't see any point in running out longer mine plans than 4 or 5 years.

Got it. That's helpful. Obviously, you want to see that resource work come in before you put numbers around that. I guess in a similar vein then, the cost profile from '27 to '30, obviously seeing some sector cost pressures. Are you able to just comment on where you're seeing the biggest cost pressures come through in that updated all-in sustaining cost outlook?

Darren, do you want to take that one? I know you're on the line.

Yes, sure. So as we provided with the FY '26 results update, we saw that 8% cost inflation or inflation, which also incorporated both diesel prices and the gold price we use, noting we're using $5,500 as our base case here. So that's been applied again through to FY '30. We're also having Galaxy mine being extended from the FY '28 now to FY '32. We've flagged in the changes in plan that we've got $140 million in additional sustaining capital. That's going to be spread between FY '27 through FY '29. So that sustaining capital will see that uptick in all-in sustaining.

They're probably Cue -- as we've now established the additional mine life, you'll see some sustaining capital flowing through that. We haven't sort of put out publicly those numbers. They're going to be less than Galaxy. But once again, we'll put out a new or PFS connected with Cue early next calendar year, that will give you the breakdown that you're looking for, but it's lower than Galaxy is probably my reference point for you.

FY '28, the overall denominator come down slightly on our guidance range, but we're processing some more higher-grade material on an overall basis, and we've moved that initial commercial production targeted from December through till the March 2028 quarter. So that will increase the all-in sustaining costs slightly. They're probably the major items. And what we've just got to work through but the opportunity is with Cue in particular, to continue to do some work on that, refine the metallurgical results so that will also some opportunity, I think more so in that FY '29, FY '30 year. So at a high level, they're probably the things I'd highlight Hugo on the all-in sustaining movements.

And if I can squeeze in a third, just the Dalgaranga mine profile looks a little bit more variable on both tonnage and grade versus your last study. If you could just comment on what the moving pieces there are?

Are you referring to the chart in the appendices?

Yes.

Yes. Hugo, Tim here, I'll take that. Look, I think it's just refining the mine plan. Obviously, we're updating with the grade control drilling, getting a greater look at the ore body now. So it's just a mine plan update essentially. I think it's probably just more information, a bit more knowledge on that mine plan now. So nothing material.

[Operator Instructions] your next question comes from Paul Kaner with Ord Minnett.

Just first one, just on Gilbey's and the Dalgaranga plant infrastructure. I guess, what do you need to see from the Gilbey's exploration front to potentially restart that plant?

That's a bit of a hypothetical, Paul. Thanks for the question. Look, I'll throw a number out there, 20 million tonnes at 10 years at 2 million tonnes a year. As a starting point, I know we've got, what, 7 million tonnes in the Never Never -- and a decent Never Never ore body and a decent few million tonnes at Gilbey's. So there's a bit more work to do. I'd say that will take another year or two of drilling before you seriously consider that as an option. But as Al pointed out, a lot of the plan is still in place as a result of the upgrade that we're doing.

Yes, too easy. And just on capital management. Now that you've got that cash for Edna May, on my numbers, it doesn't look like you'll need that to fund this growth. I guess, what's the plan for that cash?

At the moment, it's sitting in the bank. And we will continue on our buyback program, and we'll be back in there continuing our $250 million. I think we have about $100 million left. That is designed to run out this financial year. We'll continue to assess along the way, but we haven't made a definitive decision one way or another with that additional cash is, I suppose, the short answer.

Our next question comes from Ben Wood with UBS.

This one is just on -- a lot of in the presentation has been on margin preservation whilst growing. In your presentation on the 5-year outlook last year, you called out sort of an average AISC of AUD 1,975 per ounce over the next 5 years. Just in how that cost profile has evolved to the numbers that you've released in today's presentation, would you mind just stepping through the elements of how much of perhaps any increases is due to sustaining capital versus just cost inflation generally as you sort of continue to look to bring forward higher grade material and displace some of those lower grades?

Yes. Thanks, Paul. Darren, if you're there, I believe you basically partly answered that question with the cost inflation, but is there any additional parts that you can provide Paul? We might have lost him. So I'm not sure if you heard the answer before, Paul, but we had 8% that we baked in, in terms of inflation costs, which is made up. And it includes fuel increases, which we detailed and also the increase in gold price going from AUD 4,500 in October's plan to AUD 5,500 in this plan. And then there were some sustaining cost increases, which were not insignificant. Galaxy in FY '27 is like $130 an ounce because the mine rather than being in harvest mode with no sustaining capital, now has sustaining capital for '27, '28 and '29 to buy that life to build the mine out well into the 2030s and similar but at a lower level at Cue.

So there are a few moving parts to that. Investing sustaining capital in mines that were assumed to be running out makes total sense. It just means you're paying a little bit more on an all-in sustaining cost basis in the near term, but you'll get that benefit for a number of years going forward. So the increase from $1,975, I'm not actually sure what the average number is, the low 2,000s, I think it's totally within market and totally reasonable.

Probably just worth adding to -- and Mark touched on the peer group, the peer group we look at, they've seen basically a $300 an ounce increase in consensus. We haven't seen that level that we've been under because we've continued to displace this low-grade material with high-grade material. So it's just probably worth flagging as well that we're probably even below the market movements, once again, because we've got high grade and because we continue to displace. So that's something we watch and ensure we are competitive. And given what we're seeing in the numbers, we're able to do that.

There are no further questions on the phone line at this time. I'll now hand the conference back to Mark Zeptner.

There's no questions on the webcast either. Obviously, we covered it. It's quite a comprehensive presentation. Thanks, guys, and thanks, everybody, for dialing in and your attention this morning. Bye.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ramelius Resources FY '26 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Zeptner, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Harmony. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to dial into our FY '26 results conference call. Alongside me this morning is our General Manager of Finance, Ben Ringrose, who will drill down into the numbers after I've covered off on the highlights. Darren Millman, our CFO; and Tim Hewitt, our COO, are also both in the room for any Q&A that might come up after our initial comments.

We have uploaded to the ASX platform along with our website, a number of documents this morning, including our FY '26 financial results summary, our audited statutory financial report and a presentation that we will be speaking to today.

So if we start on Slide 3 and look back at the year for Ramelius in which we increased returns to shareholders and also focused on consolidating our asset base to achieve production of plus 500,000 ounces per annum by FY '30. We made a commitment to shareholders in December to maintain our returns through this period of investment into the business. Pleasingly, we were not only able to maintain these returns in FY '26, but grew them with our $250 million share buyback program. I will touch more on our shareholder returns later in the call.

From an asset point of view, we continue with our focus on the high-grade, high-margin projects with the acquisition of the Dalgaranga gold mines early in the financial year. We also entered into an agreement for the sale of our noncore Edna May hub for $300 million, which we expect to complete in September.

It was a very busy year again in FY '26 with the obvious focus being on the world-class Dalgaranga asset, where we announced a maiden Never Never underground ore reserve of 1.6 million ounces at 7.3 grams per tonne and completed a PFS with an NPV of $3.5 billion at a base case of AUD 4,500. At $6,000 per ounce, closer to today's price, the NPV increases to $6.4 billion. Along with the PFS, we selected a preferred milling option for the Dalgaranga ore with a single processing plant at Mt Magnet with a capacity of up to 5 million tonnes per annum. We look forward to updating the market with a full year production outlook to FY '30, including full FY '27 guidance details in September once we have finalized the EPC contract for Stage 2 of the Mt Magnet mill upgrade and also settled on new life of mines at our Mt Magnet assets.

At Rebecca-Roe, we completed the DFS in October 2025, which showed an NPV of $692 million, noting that at $6,000 per ounce gold price, this increases to $2.1 billion. On the back of the DFS and the compelling economics, the Board made an FID on the project, subject only to Roe environmental approvals.

Before we get to the financials, I wanted to touch on our track record of delivering on guidance on Slide 4. FY '26 was the sixth consecutive year we have met our production and cost guidance, which is something the team here is very proud of and is front of mind whenever we consider our commitments we make to the market.

As I said earlier, we will be providing an updated full year production outlook. At this stage, we are targeting the week commencing 21 September. This outlook will include full production and cost guidance for FY '27. But what we are seeing here, like our peers, is inflationary pressure on costs, higher royalty charges from higher gold prices and higher fuel costs with the ongoing Iran conflict.

In addition to this and as a direct result of exploration success during the year, we have extended the life of mine at our Galaxy operation out to 2032, noting that this was previously only out to 2028. And also with the planned production rate looking to increase to 800,000 tonnes per annum compared to 600,000 tonnes per annum in the previous plan. It is expected the additional development required in FY '27 will add approximately $30 million to all-in sustaining cost, which is equivalent to around $130 an ounce. I will note that we have already provided exploration guidance of between $90 million and $110 million for the FY '27 year.

With that, I'll now hand over to Ben.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning to you all. For those following on the presentation, I will initially be speaking to Slide 5 and our financial highlights for the year. The business generated an underlying EBITDA of $765 million from the sale of 192,000 ounces at a record 74% margin, which is exceptionally strong in this year of consolidation and transformation. As we've said throughout the year, it's a fantastic time to be a gold miner, and that is evidenced with the EBITDA per ounce of over $4,000.

Now whilst we have seen a drop in production with the completion of operations at Edna May in the prior year, what is really pleasing to see is the increase in the EBITDA margin. With further high grade to come from Never Never in the following years, it is going to be exciting to see Mt Magnet fulfill its potential becoming a top 5 production hub in Australia. The underlying NPAT for the year was just shy of $320 million with higher D&A charge being incurred with increased tonnages mined, particularly at Dalgaranga, Penny and Cue, which are mines that have a related acquisition cost being amortized.

We have today announced a $0.03 per share fully franked final dividend for FY '26, taking the total for the year to $0.06. Mark will discuss the dividend and shareholder returns in more detail shortly, but what I will highlight is that this paid -- the paid and declared dividend for FY '26, along with our share buybacks, results in $256 million being returned to shareholders for the year. This represents 65% of our underlying free cash flow.

Now throughout the documents released today and the presentation itself, we do refer to underlying earnings to give you a better understanding of the operational performance. A reconciliation of the underlying and statutory earnings can be found in the appendix to the presentation. But these adjustments do include, firstly, Spartan acquisition costs of $133 million, of which $131 million relates to stamp duty on the transaction. This stamp duty has now been paid, but was recognized on our balance sheet as a payable at 30 June.

Secondly, the Spartan private royalty obligation fair value adjustments of $55 million. This is a noncash adjustment to the current earnings and relates to the fact we expect higher revenue in the future based on our increased confidence in the ore body with the maiden 1.6 million ounce ore reserve and higher consensus gold price forecast. Ultimately, this is a positive. However, we must recognize an expense to earnings with the future royalty payments associated with higher revenues.

And lastly, during the year, we closed out our remaining FY '27 gold forward contracts at a cost of $28.4 million. We can see the positive impact this had on cash flows in Q4 when there was no hedging in place.

Moving on to Slide 6, and the cash performance and closing position for the year. As you would expect with the completion of Edna May and period of capital investment, the cash metrics, while still exceptionally strong, were down on FY '25. The business generated over $700 million in operating cash flow, which after growth capital and exploration resulted in underlying free cash flow of $393 million or over $2,000 an ounce. After considering the net cash to acquire Spartan, income tax and hedge book management, the overall free cash flow was $149 million. After shareholder returns, the closing cash and gold position was $650 million, which, when coupled with our undrawn credit facility leaves us with liquidity of $1.1 billion. Again, the appendices provide a reconciliation between these cash metrics and the statutory cash flow in the financial report.

Still on cash and Slide 7, I want to highlight the cash returned to shareholders in the year. A total of $255 million of cash was returned to shareholders, a 263% increase by way of the final FY '25 dividend, the interim FY '26 dividend and share buyback program. In addition to this, we returned $38 million to shareholders by way of our dividend reinvestment plan in the year. This clearly demonstrates that not only did we maintain shareholder returns in FY '26, we grew them, which in this period of lower production and higher capital is a testament to our balance sheet strength and confidence in our growth plan to in excess of 500,000 ounces per annum by FY '30.

Capital investment in the business by way of growth capital, exploration and the acquisition of Spartan grew 19% to $390 million, making up just over 50% of our use of operating cash flow.

On the chart on the bottom left of this slide, we show the quarterly cash flow across the year. And what could be seen here is a notable increase in the underlying free cash flow in the second half of the financial year, particularly in Q4 with production from Never Never and no hedge book commitments.

Finally, before I hand back to Mark, I want to touch on the balance sheet on Slide 8, which has seen a notable change with the acquisition of Spartan. Our working capital position remains strong after capital investment and shareholder returns at just over $460 million, whilst net assets increased to $3.9 billion. Importantly, our balance sheet and future production cash flow leaves our development pipeline fully funded without drawing on our credit facility.

I will now hand proceedings back over to Mark, who will give a recap on our operations and projects before discussing the dividend declared today.

Thanks, Ben. I'll be picking up on Slide 9 at the Mt Magnet hub, starting with a recap on the year. We certainly achieved a lot making solid progress on multiple fronts. From a projects point of view, following the Never Never PFS and integration studies, we focused on both Dalgaranga infrastructure and the Mt Magnet plant upgrade. Work on the Mt Magnet plant upgrade focused on the front-end engineering and design and commencement of Stage 1 of the upgrades, that being the refurbishment of the existing 1.9 million tonne per annum ball mill drivetrain.

A major planned shutdown is due to occur in October this year, in which a lot of the new equipment will be installed and modifications made to the existing plant, again, all associated with Stage 1. In conjunction with this, we are close to finalizing the EPC contract for Stage 2 of the mill upgrade, which is the new 3 million tonne per annum circuit, and we'll provide an update to the market with the full year production outlook and FY '27 guidance, as mentioned earlier.

At Dalgaranga itself, capital works across the site progressed well with a focus on the paste plant. You can see the picture on the top right and refurbishment of site infrastructure, including the camp offices and workshops. Also by the end of the year, the underground -- main underground pump station was commissioned and in use. In the coming year, we will complete the remaining capital works, including the paste plant, obviously, which is nearing commissioning and other site infrastructure as well as commence road upgrade works on the 65-kilometer strip stretch between Dalgaranga and Mt Magnet.

Operationally, for FY '27, we will further increase mining rates at Never Never as we ramp up towards our targeted 1 million tonnes per annum at that mine. At Mt Magnet, we will commence the Eridanus Stage 3 open pit in November, whilst at the same time, increased mining rates at Galaxy and extending its mine life.

There's also promising underground potential at Cue, specifically at Break of Day and Lena, which we'll explore further in FY '27. Again, details will follow later this quarter.

Just also noting that our 2026 resources and reserve statement will be released next week, which will form the underlying basis or underpin our new Mt Magnet hub life of mine.

Moving to Slide 10 on Rebecca-Roe, our next processing hub, we have made great progress in bringing this exciting new project to fruition. In addition to the DFS and FID mentioned, we did reach a native title mining agreement with the Kakarra Part B Native Title Holders. And also late in the financial year, we had confirmation from the EPA that the Roe environmental approval pathway will be streamlined through the established Part V process. Looking forward at Rebecca-Roe, we'll work to obtain the Part V works approvals and relevant licenses, further optimize the mining schedule upon Roe approval, but also continue exploration down deeper the current open pits to extend project life and also commence early works such as access roads, camp, airstrip and borefields.

Lastly, before we open up the presentation, we're on Slide 11 now. We have the final dividend for FY '26. We are proud of our track record on dividends and shareholder returns. And today, we are declaring an eighth consecutive final dividend, this time, $0.03 per share fully franked. This, coupled with our interim dividend paid in April, takes total dividends for FY '26 to $0.06 per share.

We announced our shareholder returns in FY '26 to increase -- to include, sorry, share buybacks, which for the year totaled $142 million of our $250 million program. With earnings now reported and our resources and reserve statement to follow shortly, our blackout period will soon be lifted, and we'll look to recommence this buyback program.

Shareholder returns, including buybacks, interim dividend and declared final dividend, as Ben mentioned, totaled some $256 million or 65% of our underlying free cash flow. The total dividend represents a yield of 2.1% based on the 30 June 2026 share price and a total shareholder return over the last 5 years of 13.1% per annum and over $1,300 per ounce sold, more than 3x the $430 per ounce we noted last year. The final dividend will be paid in October.

So in closing, I would like to highlight the investment case for Ramelius on Slide 12, consistently pay dividends and have done so for the past 8 years and have enhanced shareholder returns with the introduction of our $250 million share buyback program. Our focus on high-margin production leaves us with sector-leading cash flows along with now long-life assets at both Mt Magnet and Rebecca-Roe. We have a credible pathway to 170% production growth to plus 500,000 ounces per annum, underpinned by the world-class Never Never underground mine.

We have doubled down on exploration, repeating our budget from FY '26 and FY '27 of a midpoint of $100 million, focusing on quality high-grade targets. As mentioned, we are a reliable operator doing what we say we'll do, having met production guidance for the last 6 years. Lastly, we also offer the benefits of both scale and liquidity with inclusion of the key indexes, the ASX 100 and the GDX.

That concludes the presentation. I'll now hand back to you, Harmony, if you can open the line for audio questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Jonathon Sharp from JPMorgan.

Just the first question, I just want to clear something. When you say the FY '27 costs are trending 8% higher, does that refer to the absolute costs before the benefit of higher production or to just the all-in sustaining cost per ounce?

Absolutely. So that 8% also factors in where we put out the October 2025 5-year outlook using a $4,500 gold price. So it factors in both the step-up. We're probably leaning towards a $5,500 assumption as we go forward into FY '27. We used $1 diesel price in our FY '25 5-year outlook plan. We're now probably trending to $1.25. So those 2 factors also incorporated into that sort of 8% number.

And with the other piece, which I'm sure you might touch on the next question was the sustaining capital. Important to flag, this is a real positive. We are looking to extend the Galaxy mine from FY '28 at this stage alone to FY 2032. So we're making this investment in FY '27. And when you think about a $30 million sustaining capital investment in FY '27 and Galaxy alone in FY '26 generated just under $90 million in free cash flow. So real capital intensity is amazing result, I think we will see. And we're not done yet. We think about Galaxy investing another $25 million, $30 million in Galaxy alone given what we're seeing and looking to share those results on exploration next Tuesday is probably what we're targeting on that reserves and resource update. So long-winded answer to your question, but I think it's worth to flag a few of those points.

Yes, that's great. And you answered a few things there that I had to follow up with. Just one other one there on the cost. What are you assuming for diesel in FY '27?

At the moment, we're probably landing -- we were landing at around $1.25 a few weeks ago. That was sort of more factoring in a higher cost for the first 6 months and then a lower cost in the preceding 6 months. But I guess we'll see what Mr. Trump does next week to see where that lands, but that was sort of the basis of that 8% within there.

Yes. I understand. It makes it hard with what's going on. And then just second question, should we think just with Never Never production, is that materially second half weighted in FY '27?

Jon, yes, that is. Yes, the back half of the year, we really start to see the decline that we're driving down really expand those production areas. So it will have further weighting towards the back half of the year.

Yes. Okay. Any ratios there you can give us?

Not at the top of my head.

Your next question comes from Adam Baker from Macquarie.

Just a follow-up on Dalgaranga. And I know you've got the 5-year plan coming out next month. So I don't want to jump the gun too much here. But now that the paste plant is nearing commissioning, and I know you still got the upgrades to go, but are we seeing any upside to that 0.6 million tonne number that you had in last year's outlook, potentially getting to that 1.1 million tonne run rate quicker?

I'll grab that one, Tim. Sorry, it's a little bit hard to hear you, Adam, but your question was around whether we see upside on the 600,000 tonne ramp-up at Dalgaranga. Look, I think we'd be looking to be in line with the ounce profile. Remembering we're going from 0 in March to sort of -- and completing FY '26 with 200,000 tonnes, around 600,000 tonnes in '27 and getting to 1 million tonnes. So I think that's a pretty aggressive ramp-up, and I'd like to think that we're in line with that. I don't think there's a lot of upside that we could be putting on the table at this point in time.

Yes, that's clear. And it's actually just a follow-up to John's. But on that 8% higher cost year-on-year, just to clear this up, it's 8% higher on everything. Or is it just 8% higher on cash operating costs? And then if we're looking at an AISC basis, it could potentially be a bit higher than that number given the uplift at Galaxy.

Yes. We'll try to keep it simple. As I said earlier on that one, we're sort of -- if you look at the 2025 guidance we had for FY '27, sort of looking in ballpark of the 8% on top of that plus the sustaining capital we're talking about on Galaxy. Within that 8%, we're factoring in employees sort of wages increasing around that sort of 6% to 7% range, obviously, explosives and different elements as well. So that's the whole [indiscernible] per se within that 8%. And as I said earlier, gold price do so. So I think we've maintained it pretty well. We're always looking for that competitive process when we enter tenders. And I think probably the thing that we will obviously get into when we issue in September the outlook, we do see that creep moving into the capital element, if not at a higher level than that. So just be mindful of that.

Your next question comes from Levi Spry from UBS.

I guess looking forward to these updates in the next couple of weeks. Just ahead of that, I just want to make sure I got the cash number right. So can you just confirm the stamp duty being paid for Spartan and then what your sort of expectations are around the net proceeds after some tax on Edna May, I think you said completes in September.

Levi, it's Ben here. So the first question on the stamp duty, yes, that has been paid in July. And the second question on the net Edna May proceeds. So $210 million is the cash component of that, as you would have noticed. We're expecting the tax on Edna May to be $40 million to $45 million. We'll settle that in around December this year. That's also -- it's reflected in our balance sheet as well, that tax payable. So you'll see it there.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs.

Congrats on a cracking year. Look, firstly, just the Mt Magnet mill expansion. Again, I appreciate you give that guidance next month. But if I look back at the last outlook, I think your mill expansion spend was about $220 million, including the water pipeline. You've touched on your operating costs going up about 8% year-on-year. With the final tenders for that EPC work for the mill in hand, what level of cost escalation are you seeing on that mill CapEx?

At least sort of 10% to 15% is sort of where the numbers are landing. Obviously, we're going through a competitive FEED process. So we have different numbers. So I can't be any more definitive than that. And we're working through not only the cost side of it, the time and the quality of the design. There's obviously more than one factor there. But if you look at what everyone else has done in terms of updating their CapEx numbers, I probably see us being not too dissimilar to that, even though the idea of having a competitive FEED process is to try to keep a lid on that as much as possible, Hugo.

Yes. No, it makes sense, impacting everyone with a number of projects going on. And so essentially, that's the next couple of weeks or sort of early to mid-September, we should expect that update then?

Yes. I said 21 December (sic) [ 21 September ] for the full cake, if you like, the full year plan and FY '27 guidance. But obviously, ahead of that, we'll be looking to finalize the EPC, and that's a key part of obviously that plan.

Your next question comes from Richard Knights from Barrenjoey.

I just wanted to follow up on something you said earlier on the call, just around the sort of potential ramp-up in volumes at Galaxy towards 800,000 tonnes per annum. I mean, again, understanding that you have the mine plan coming out in a month. I mean, can you give us any indication of what the timing of that looks like?

Yes. Just on Galaxy, it's -- we're ramping up and we should sort of hit that sustaining level around FY '29. So there's a couple of ventilation upgrades we need to do and also that capital investment that Darren talked about earlier just to open up some more levels. That's probably the key thing there.

Yes. And just one more just on the dividend. In terms of the mix of base dividend versus the buyback. Looking into next year, should we think of that base dividend as you'd like to have that as a sort of progressive -- a base for a progressive dividend? I mean is that fair to think? Obviously, we have to make forecasts around dividends for next year, and there's a lot of moving parts, and it depends on what the year looks like at the end of the year. But yes, how should we think about that in terms of sustainability that $0.06 per share?

I think -- it's Darren. Richard, the maintain and grow was the philosophy that the Board put to us back in December. We established a $250 million buyback. We set that minimum $0.02 per share per year. And obviously, we're now at $6. I would put forward come September, October, we'll revisit sort of what that looks like. But I think your working assumption should be $0.02 is the minimum. We will -- as you know, we can pivot or the Board can pivot between what we use that $250 million, if not more, on between dividends and buybacks. So we will react accordingly on best use in our view for our shareholders. So -- we saw the opportunity. We set that $250 million based on AUD 4,500. And a lot of that upside we saw in the dividend, we've decided to push towards -- in the gold price, we pushed towards the dividend. So that's how we saw that. We'll make another call once we see the gold price is at AUD 5,500 over the next 4 years, and that will also dictate where we go with the dividend policy. But at the moment, I think your working assumption still should be at that $0.02 minimum.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from [ Ashley Cheng ], a shareholder.

Excellent result. I just got a question more for the longer term. If we look back the last 10 years, see Ramelius has a very good capital turn, at least going up 8x, so that's about 22.5% per annum. So looking forward, do you see that there are -- in your current assets, you've got enough options there to take advantage of -- if gold prices were to significantly move higher, do you have enough indicated and inferred resources to bring into production? Do you have enough spare capacity at your existing plant or potential to expand plant? And can you call on additional labor easily to ramp up production from indicated and inferred resources if gold prices were to be significantly higher?

I'll take that one. I will attempt to. You'll see next week our resources and reserve statement, and that underpins obviously a very long life. The last I saw was at Mt Magnet out to 2043. The other thing with capacity to process more tonnes at a higher gold price, at this stage, high gold price just essentially means we'll make more cash flow. We're one of the lower-cost producers. But in terms of flexibility on processing, we're purposely talking about whilst it will be targeted initially at a 4.3 million tonne per annum plant at Mt Magnet, we have got the capacity to go up to 5 million tonnes. And whilst we will be taking some bits and pieces from the Dalgaranga plant, we still have an approved footprint tails dam and a large proportion of that plant in place if we are to have ongoing exploration success at Dalgaranga. So I think we do have options to increase production over what we've called our base case, and we'll see some of that come through. It will be flagged in the resources and reserves. But obviously, the rubber will hit the road with the full year plan 21 September.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back to your speakers.

Thanks, Harmony. I'm not sure if it's working or not, but I don't see any questions on the webcast. We have had half a dozen questions. So it doesn't sound like there's any more. I just want to thank everyone for their time. Have a great Friday.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ramelius Resources June 2026 Quarterly Conference. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Zeptner, MD and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Darcy. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to dial in this morning. In addition to the normal quarterly report, we have released a presentation that we'll speak to during this call, noting that it also includes information from our exploration update that we released last week. Both documents have been uploaded to the ASX platform and will be available on our website shortly.

This morning, I am joined by members of the exec team, our COO, Tim Hewitt; CFO, Darren Millman; and also our EGM, Exploration, Peter Ruzicka. Initially, I'll speak to the highlights for the quarter and for FY '26 before handing over to the team to go through their specific areas before I close with some comments on our shareholder returns program. Whilst the presentation is relatively high level, there is a lot more detail that can be found both in the quarterly activities report released today and that exploration update that was released last week.

As usual, there will be an opportunity for questions at the end through both the teleconference and the webinar depending on how you have joined the call. For those that do have the presentation deck handy, I'll be initially speaking to Slide 3.

Gold production for the quarter of 53,500 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 1,973, and after a couple of leaner quarters, which were in line with our mine sequencing and expectations, we are now at a normalized run rate at our Mt Magnet hub, considering that current throughput capacity of around 2 million tonnes per annum. The positive impact of the Never Never ore feed is now coming through, and we look forward to a higher contribution from that mine in the year ahead.

Work on our 3 key projects: 1 being the ramp-up of the Dalgaranga mine; two, the Mt Magnet plant upgrade; and three, environmental approvals for the Rebecca-Roe Project have progressed well across the quarter. The operational project focus has been at Dalgaranga, with the paste plant construction, ancillary site infrastructure, including underground pump station, which has been commissioned and is fully operational, which Tim will talk to further shortly. At the Mt Magnet plant, engineering and execution success are the priority with the owner's team now largely in place. The refurbishment of the existing circuit we call Circuit 1 progressed with a third-party contractor appointed early in the quarter. Circuit 2, the front-end engineering design, or FEED, is nearing completion, and we expect to award an EPC contract in the September quarter.

Also during the quarter, we received EPA authorization for the Roe mine area of the Rebecca-Roe project to proceed through the established Part V works approval and licensing process. This approval process is the last major hurdle for the project with the same approval already in place for the Rebecca part of that project.

On the corporate front, we continued our share buyback program and have now completed $141.7 million of our $250 million program or 57%, noting that this does include an additional $1 million over the numbers you see in the deck as the last trade actually settled in early July. It would be difficult to find any of our peers as active on buyback execution, and in addition to that, we paid a $0.03 per share fully franked interim dividend in the quarter. Towards the end of the presentation, I'll touch on our shareholder returns in more detail with a final dividend, obviously, to be considered by the Board upon release of the full financial results in late August.

Lastly, we have entered into a sale agreement for the Edna May hub, which we expect to complete in September. The sale proceeds of $300 million further complement the exceptional cash flow from that investment over the past 8 years. And Darren will talk to this value generation in more detail shortly.

FY '26 on Slide 4, it's been a very busy year, which is nothing unusual in my experience here at Ramelius, but we want to highlight the results of some of the work that's been undertaken. Annual gold production was just above 192,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,983 an ounce with production guidance being met for the sixth consecutive year. Early in the financial year, we completed the acquisition of Spartan Resources and then went on to finalize the Never Never underground mine PFS and also complete the Mt Magnet integration study with a maiden ore reserve of 1.6 million ounces.

Our Rebecca-Roe DFS was completed with FID approval from the Board, subject to environmental permitting for Roe, which is advancing as I just talked about. And we also executed a Native Title Mining Agreement with the traditional owners in December.

In terms of exploration, we invested just over $100 million in FY '26 with excellent results being returned across the portfolio, focusing on displacing lower grade ore in our 5-year mine plan that we released last October. On the back of these promising results received to date, we are doubling down on exploration with a similar budget already approved for FY '27. We released a lot of great results in FY '26, but we are confident there are plenty more to come.

On shareholder returns for the year, we returned $294 million by way of both buybacks and dividends with $255 million of that in cash and $39 million in dividend reinvestments.

Slide 5 shows a breakdown of ore sources during the quarter and the full year. What's quite obvious here, you can see the impact of the introduction of Never Never ore in green in Q4, making up about 40% of the gold production. We're currently in the process of updating our mine plan in conjunction with updated mineral resources and ore reserve statements. We will provide these details along with FY '27 guidance later in the quarter.

With that, I'll now pass over to Tim.

Thanks, Mark. Good morning to you all. Firstly, I would just like to acknowledge the fantastic effort by the teams at Magnet, Dalgaranga and Penny for the quarter's results. I'll start on Slide 6, looking at the production metrics for the quarter, all of which show an improvement over the previous quarter. We mined 636,000 tonnes of ore at a grade of 3.3 grams a tonne, representing a 16% increase in tonnage and a 35% increase in mine grade. This was driven by 2 factors: firstly, the increasing contribution of the Never Never underground mine; and secondly, a notable increase in tonnages from Galaxy mine, with 213,000 tonnes being mined at a grade of 2.22 grams per tonne. As highlighted in previous releases, Galaxy is delivering on both volume and mine life and is an important part of the FY '30 plan.

At Cue, open pit mining continued in the quarter with comparable material movement to the prior quarter. Operations at Cue focused on Stage 2 of Break of Day, Leviticus, Lena and Big Sky pits. Penny mine performed well again with a total of 66,000 tonnes being mined at a grade of 8.52 grams per tonne, a combination of Penny West and North stopes in those tonnages. Whilst tonnages were slightly down, the all-important grade increased 35% quarter-on-quarter. Operationally, the Penny mine is planned to extend production into the December '26 quarter.

At the processing plant at Mt Magnet, tonnes processed were up compared to the prior quarter, which is impacted by the planned 6-day mill shutdown. A total of 515,000 tonnes were milled at a grade of 3.59 grams per tonne, a 38% increase from the prior quarter. And this is a result of the increased tonnages we saw from Never Never underground and Galaxy and the improved grades at Penny.

Overall, plant recovery dropped marginally as expected with the introduction of the higher ore contribution from Never Never. However, it is pleasing to note that recoveries on a daily basis on the Never Never ore have been as good, if not better than the model recovery.

Further analysis is to be completed over the coming months of mill throughput to confirm an updated recovery percentage to be used until the completion of the Mt Magnet plant upgrade. The result in gold production for the quarter was 53,466 ounces, a 40% increase on the March quarter, taking annual gold production to 192,182 ounces.

Moving on to Slide 7, looking at some of the site progress at Dalgaranga, the key projects and operational progress for the quarter. I guess the key point here is that we have transitioned quickly to commercial production. That was 3 months earlier based on better than initially modeled mine grades and the improved gold price environment and reflective of the quality of the geological work we've done on the orebody at Never Never.

Site infrastructure work continues with 8 key packages being worked on at the moment. The key one is the paste plant and paste establishment, including the paste boreholes, which are now in place. The surface workshop and mine offices are progressing well, and the underground pump station has been commissioned and is in use.

Lateral development of just under 6,000 meters under the period of Ramelius ownership from the 1st of August, with 1,800 meters completed in Q4 with the metric improving quarter-on-quarter. Focus is on the decline for vertical advance and the ventilation drives to support the mine volume as it increases.

The underground mine generated a total of 115,000 tonnes of ore mined at a grade of 5.95 grams per tonne, taking FY '26 to 181,000 tonnes at 5.3 grams per tonne. This was a combination of stope and development ore with 4 stopes mined for the year, and stope recovery and dilution has been excellent.

We continue to progress the Never Never open pit, which has been mined ahead of schedule to reduce the impact on adjacent infrastructure. A total of 69,000 tonnes of ore was mined in the quarter at a grade of 2.15 grams per tonne. The ore was not processed. We preferentially treated the high-grade underground ore, and the peak will continue into the December '26 quarter. Of this, 146,000 tonnes of Never Never ore was processed at a grade of 5.37 grams per tonne.

I'll now pass over to Darren to discuss the financials and cash flows for the quarter.

Thanks, Tim, and good morning all. I will now be speaking to Slide 8. For the June quarter, we sold 52,000 ounces of gold at an average gold price of $6,230 per ounce. The higher gold sales reflected the increase in gold production from operations and the realized gold price, which is 8% up on the March quarter, with the June quarter hedge book commitments pre-delivered in March.

The all-in sustaining cost for the quarter was $1,973 per ounce, a strong improvement with the all-in sustaining benefiting from the higher mill grade. Even with the recent change in gold price, it's really -- it is really a great time to be a gold miner with the highest margins ever recorded at the company at 68%. The margin has led to underlying free cash flows of $138.3 million and the closing cash and gold balance at just shy of $650 million.

The reported all-in sustaining costs for FY '26 is $1,933 per ounce and warrant some further discussion on Slide 9. We reconciled the original guidance and actual all-in sustaining for the year. By far, the largest driver in our higher all-in sustaining costs for the year has been the earlier-than-expected transition of the Never Never underground mine from development to commercial production, resulting in mining costs, which were assumed to be growth development not forming part of the all-in sustaining are now considered sustaining operational costs. This is attributable to both the better grades that were modeled early in development at Never Never and the higher gold price environment.

There are 2 important points to make on this. The total mining costs for the Never Never underground for FY '26 is in line with guidance. It is just the classification that has changed. When preparing our 5-year plan in October last year, it was assumed that the mine would transition to commercial production of 1 July 2026, as we don't -- and we don't expect this reclassification to impact the all-in sustaining costs in FY '27 and beyond.

Still on the all-in sustaining costs, as with other peers, our cost base has been impacted by higher diesel prices across the second half of the year. This increased our all-in sustaining costs by $25 -- $24 an ounce with the impact of which we'll be able to manage with our proactive diesel hedging program, which saves Ramelius approximately $5 per ounce. Our initial guidance for the year was based on assumed gold price of AUD 4,750 per ounce with the actual gold price -- average spot price for the year being $6,129 per ounce. This increased our cost base by $6 million or $33 an ounce.

Moving on to Slide 10 and the cash flow for the business for the quarter. Operational cash flow was $191.2 million, an increase on the prior quarter with improved production in gold price. This operational cash flow funded growth capital for the quarter, $42.1 million, which is primarily related to the Dalgaranga infrastructure and the development of Stage 2 cutback in Break of Day and the Big Sky pit, both at Cue. Our investment in exploration and resource definition for the quarter totaled $33.9 million and was focused on Dalgaranga, Mt Magnet and Cue. Peter will shortly highlight the exciting results we're seeing from this investment.

The underlying free cash flow for the quarter was $138.3 million. This underpinned our ability to return cash to shareholders, which comprise the payment of the FY '26 fully franked interim dividend and share buybacks, of which totaled $84.6 million or 60% of our underlying free cash flow for the quarter. This resulted in a closing cash position, which has improved $45 million across the quarter to $649.6 million.

Whilst we provide a full year -- whilst we will provide a full report of our Q4 '26 results in August with our annual reporting, I would like to take this opportunity to provide an overview of the cash flow for the year. The operations produced 190,000 ounces of gold, generating $764.2 million in cash flow and $624.6 million after factoring in the hedge book. We invested $163 million in development of Dalgaranga and Mt Magnet across the year and over $100 million in exploration, focusing on displacing the low-grade ore within our 5-year plan.

Total cash returned to shareholders was $255 million or 65% of the underlying free cash flow by way of fully franked dividend and share buybacks. In addition to this, $39 million was returned via our share -- our dividend reinvestment program. We paid $74 million to Spartan shareholders for the acquisition of Dalgaranga, net of the $199 million of cash acquired from Spartan. I also note that we have now in July paid the outstanding stamp duty on the acquisition of Spartan being $131 million. We paid $180 million in income taxes, including $130 million for FY '25 earnings and a prepayment of $50 million of FY '26 earnings. Closing out the FY '27 hedge book with 90% of FY '27 production being available to sell at spot with the remaining 10% relating to 22,500 ounces of 0-cost collars with a ceiling price of $5,906 per ounce.

Before handing over to Peter to discuss the exploration activities and results, I want to touch on the sale of Edna May on Slide 12. Edna May was initially acquired in 2018 with the project further enhanced across its life with our hub-and-spoke additions of Tampia and Symes. Up until the end of 2025, Ramelius produced just over 600,000 ounces from these mines, generating $430 million in pretax cash flow. The total sales proceeds, which we expect to receive in September upon completion, is $300 million, with $210 million in cash and $90 million of Forrestania shares, allowing Ramelius to retain upside in the future development of the Edna May hub. Edna May has been an exceptional investment for Ramelius with the total value delivered pretax of $590 million on a $140 million investment.

With that, I will now hand over to Peter to provide an update on exploration activities.

Thanks, Darren, and good morning all. I will be initially speaking to Slide 13. Many of you would have seen this slide in the past. A reminder that our exploration strategy differs from our peers and that we're not looking to extend the back end of mine lives. We're focused on displacing low-grade ore material from our 5-year outlook, with the primary focus at Mt Magnet. The real impact of successful exploration will be evident in FY '29, as we look to displace the 1.9 million tonnes at 0.8 of low-grade ore and in FY '30 displacing the 1.8 million tonnes at 0.6 grams per tonne.

On today's call, I'll be speaking to some exploration success at Cue, Galaxy, Eridanus and Gilbey's underground. And you'll see that most of those are actually listed as opportunities on the right-hand side of that slide.

Moving on to Slide 14. This is a long section of the Lena and Break of Day mineralized system within the broader Cue complex. For information purposes, the Break of Day underground mine has only 50,000 ounces in the current 4-year mine plan and no contribution from Lena. Our initial FY '26 exploration plan was to focus on Break of Day underground potential. Following our significant assay results shown there, including 6.2 meters at 60.3, 7.5 meters at 35.8 and 4.6 meters at 15.2 grams per tonne gold, all showed on the figure there.

However, as a result of operational constraints, we weren't able to position the drill rigs at optimal locations for Break of Day, so we've taken the opportunity to do some work at Lena. Assay results have come back extremely positive from Lena, including 19.7 meters at 5.73 grams per tonne and 9 meters at 12.9 grams per tonne in the same drill hole, indicating 2 load positions. Those results are situated 50 to 100 meters below the current resource model and highlight the depth potential of the 400-meter long system. Scoping studies are suggesting a significant expansion to our underground plans at Lena, as represented there by the conceptual design shown in the image.

On to Slide 15, noting there the existing underground resources at Cue before drilling updates. The Break of Day, 250,000 tonnes at 8.9 grams per tonne for 72,000 ounces and at Lena 910,000 tonnes at 3.6 grams per tonne gold for 110,000 ounces. In FY '27, we plan to aggressively drill out both Lena and Break of Day. We'll continue surface drilling for conversion of Lena underground inferred mineral resource to progress scoping study while exploring down-dip extensions of Break of Day mineralization. The dash lines there on the figure represent planned drilling. And just highlighting that link again back to Slide 13. We're looking to displace low-grade material in the long, grading from 0.6 to 0.8 grams per tonne gold.

Slide 16 is a long section of the Galaxy mining area. Both Saturn and Mars are operational and due to finish up at the end of FY '28 in the current 5-year production profile. About 6 months ago, we set an exploration target of 6 million to 7 million tonnes at a grade range of 2.1 to 2.6 grams per tonne for 400,000 to 600,000 ounces. And we're quietly confident that there's further upside to this system.

And you might ask why. If you look at the image, it shows the exploration target area. The Galaxy mineralized system is open at depth with the same BIF host and structural continuation. It's constrained only by drill density. Comparison with the Hill 50 system on the right, developed to 1.5 kilometers depth and still open and that shows the excellent depth continuity of these BIF-hosted systems.

Infill and lateral extension results from drilling during the reporting period include 20.2 meters at 40.7 grams per tonne, 10.5 meters at 3.16 grams per tonne and 8 meters at 4.42 grams per tonne. Two dedicated purpose-built drill platforms for depth extension drilling are being established, and we're increasing from 2 to 3 underground drill rigs to expedite.

Moving on to Slide 17, Franks Tower. This is a long section of the Eridanus corridor. Both the Eridanus and Franks Tower lie along the same granodiorite intrusive dike. And the exploration focus at Franks Tower is focused around replicating the high-grade success at Eridanus for another conceptual high-grade open pit. Whilst early days, we have some positive results proving up the concept. Assay results include 14.8 meters at 54.6 grams per tonne and 3.6 meters at 113 grams per tonne. And the long section highlights the shallow depth of drilling along the granodiorite away from Eridanus and the scope for higher grade at Franks Tower.

On to Slide 18, Gilbey's underground. In April, we provided the market with the Dalgaranga exploration update, setting an exploration target of 2.1 million to 4.7 million tonnes at a grade range of 1.5 to 2.0 grams per tonne for 100,000 to 300,000 ounces of gold. Conceptually, we're looking to turn this exploration target into production as early as FY '29. Assay results continue to bode well for that target to be achieved but still early days, and we don't want to get in the road of Never Never's underground development. We're looking forward to sharing the resource and reserve update on Gilbey's underground with our exploration teams viewing the FY '26 drilling programs as a success and more exploration upside to come.

And with that, I'll hand back to Mark.

Okay. Thanks, Peter. Final slide, Slide 19, shows our shareholder returns for FY '26 and also an indication of what this could look like going forward. We are indeed living up to our vision to deliver superior returns for stakeholders with our $0.03 per share fully franked interim dividend along with over $140 million in share buybacks.

We'll note that we're now in a blackout period and have been from the start of July through August until we release our FY '26 results. We will use this time to further assess our preferred mix of dividends and buybacks accounting for internal valuations and the like but also recent changes to capital gains tax laws and their possible impacts. As it says at the top of the slide, we want to maintain returns in FY '26 and '27 at levels that we established in FY '25, whilst we go through our expansion projects but then grow returns in FY '28 and onwards as these projects complete and cash flows increase.

That completes this morning's presentation. We'll now open the line up for questions if we can please, Darcy.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question from the phone today comes from Jonathon Sharp from JPMorgan.

Just on costs, all-in sustaining costs on a unit basis. Look quite good just with the extra ounces there, and you've given some good detail just before on cost increases with diesel. On an absolute basis, costs have gone up. But just some insights into -- so it sounds like you've given some numbers there for diesel. But what about -- are there any other cost concerns? We're seeing costs sort of go up with -- across the sector, in your peers. Are you seeing cost inflation with labor or anything else? Some detail on that would be great.

Yes. Thanks, Jonathon. It's Darren here. Yes, you've just seen a few of our peers have sort of reported out. We've seen, I think, sort of ranging from the 8% to 12%, largely seems like the inflation we're seeing probably salary relates within that of ranging from the 5% to 7%, but then you've got some piping that's sort of significantly higher than that level. So yes, we are seeing those cost inflation increases. I guess the great thing or the benefit for us is, one, we are increasing our capacity for Mt Magnet. We are getting higher grades as we introduce more Never Never ore. And obviously, as Peter said, we've got some potential offsets with looking to identify higher grade material.

So we are -- we have got that pressure that the peers are getting, and we'll put out that update sort of the end of the September quarter with our 4-year mine plan and our cost profile capital then. So you'll see that full picture as we go forward.

Okay. Great. And without giving sort of formal guidance, can you just outline on Slide 27 maybe just some detail on operating assumptions with progression? Like how should we think of it building sequentially with Never Never ramping up in terms of volumes? Is it second half weighted? And then also just on costs, are we expecting to see -- are costs going to flatline now on an absolute basis? Or should we still expect some inflationary pressure?

Yes, Jonathon, it's Mark. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait for all of that detail. We'd rather give you the whole cake rather than just a slice. We've already indicated that Penny is going to go until later this calendar year. The ramp-up will continue at Never Never. I would use the PFS ramp-up schedule as a baseline until you're told otherwise. But a lot of the other stuff, we're working through that, pulling that together. Obviously, some of these cost things on again, off again, Iran wars, fuel price going up and down. It's a little bit hard to pin a number down while we're pulling it all together ourselves. So we're just going to be a little bit patient on that, I'm sorry.

It's fine. There's some good detail there. I appreciate it's difficult.

Your next question comes from Michael Scantlebury from Euroz Hartleys.

I was just wondering just around how much detail you can give on the recoveries at Dalgaranga. Obviously, you've got indications, 82% to 84%. Is there anything special that you're just seeing there? Or is it just a conservative kind of nature with the study work there on that?

And then maybe just a follow-up just around the grades coming in slightly higher than what you've previously guided at 5 grams as opposed to what you're guiding at 3.7 grams. Is that higher grade reconciliation? Or is that just stopes coming online a little bit earlier than expected?

Michael, it's Tim Hewitt here. I'll just answer that question around the recovery. So our model recovery is 81%. And what we've seen in this last quarter is sort of on a monthly basis, that's sort of ranged from 82% to 84%. Given we've got 7 million tonnes of this material put through the mill, we do need to run for a little bit longer, so we can sort of pin that number down, given we've got a couple of nuggety ore sources that also go through that mill with Penny and also some of the Cue oxides.

So it's definitely a positive. It's not below the test work, which is a good thing. But we do need a few more tonnes through the mill before we can sort of lock that number in and obviously, prior to the Magnet mill upgrade, which does obviously compensate for that finer grind.

Grades.

Grades. Look, largely, obviously, as we got closer to the orebody, we've done more grade control drilling. So that has seen, again, probably as good if maybe not better grades than what we originally thought and the sequencing of the stoping is what the grade is. So the actual reconciliation of the grade is what we expected. So no surprises from that perspective. It's just where we are in the orebody.

Awesome. No, that makes perfect sense. And maybe just a quick follow-up. I know Mark touched on it right at the end there just around the payout ratios. But is there any kind of plans for an increase given the cash coming in from Edna May just around increasing the buyback in the short term?

Yes. That's assuming that Edna May obviously completes in September. We also have noted in the [ stance ] that the net number will be more like 150 after we have to pay the taxman yet again on that sale. And we'll consider what we use that for. Obviously, we're very confident that our 5- or 4-year plan is fully funded. That mix between buybacks and dividends is worthy of a larger discussion, and we'll have that over the next couple of months as we pull our plans together. So no, we don't have anything definitive in mind with the cash from Edna May, but we'll work through that over the next little while.

Your next question comes from Richard Knights from Barrenjoey.

Just a follow-up on the previous question regarding grades at Dalgaranga. You mentioned that it's reflecting where you are in the orebody rather than it being a reconciliation issue. Well, not really an issue given it's reconciliating better. But I mean, if we roll forward for the next sort of 6 to 12 months, is it fair to say that, therefore, you think you can access higher grade parts of the orebody earlier? Or should we be thinking that the grade should sort of fall back and reconcile more closely with what was in the previous mine plan?

Richard, I think the -- we're not chasing grade. We will stick to the mine plan. We're at the top of the Never Never orebody, so the ability for us to manipulate that is fairly narrow to do that. So we'll stick to what the mine plan is. So the overall grade will be reflective of what the stope grades are. So no, we're not sort of trying to high grade the mine at all. We just need to work through the next 12 months. It's a part of setting up the mine for that higher tonnage, so it's very important we get that infrastructure in there.

Yes, maybe I can add something. Hopefully, it's helpful, Richard. The 3.7 grams per tonne that you see in that first FY '26 is really the first quarter, and perhaps the assumption is that we would be mining largely development ore. But we got into stoping a bit earlier, and this first stope, for example, is right in the middle of the orebody. So I think it's just -- the 3.7 is probably a little bit of a red herring. It's the 5-plus grams from thereon, and we seem to be hitting that a bit earlier. There might be a little bit of upside, but I wouldn't be factoring in too much again until we get more data, and we can be confident because we know that it's going to be a long-term mine and we don't want to have false or expectations that are above where we're actually going to land. Thanks for the question anyway.

Your next question comes from Adam Baker from Macquarie.

Just wondering if you could give us a bit of a status update to Rebecca-Roe. I guess what does it mean now the Environmental Protection Authority has authorized the Roe area? Are we fully permitted there now?

I'll take one. It's not fully permitted, but it provides a clearer pathway that we go through the same process for the main environmental approval that we went through with Rebecca, which has already been through, rather than going through a Part IV process, which, as you've seen with a couple of others of our peers, can be quite lengthy. So we're on a much more defined time frame. And that will give us some added flexibility, we believe, in the mining sequence, which -- so it's good news. We don't have the final approval, but we're on a shorter pathway than we otherwise would have been, and that's what we've been trying to indicate along the way. Did that answer your question, Adam?

It does. Yes, yes. And I guess just noting there's like a preexisting mill nearby with a depleting ore source, noting it's a different company. Just wondering, could there be a change approach when it comes to FID? For example, could tolling be something that you could look at? Or would you potentially be open to looking at a data room if, I guess, this peer decides to carve off some noncore assets?

From my experience, and I've been on both sides of it, tolling is not ideal. And it's not something you do if you can otherwise avoid it. You tend to want to be all purchase, but that's a whole another discussion. But tolling is not much fun for either any party.

And we've really -- we're moving forward with our projects team. We've set a projects team up now to build Mt Magnet and then go straight into build Rebecca-Roe. We've got some Rebecca-Roe personnel already in the office here working on that project, working on early work. So we've moved on, if I want to put it that way, and we're building Rebecca-Roe straight after building Mt Magnet. Have I answered your question there?

Yes, that's crystal clear.

Your next question comes from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs.

Look, firstly, FY '27, appreciate you give us guidance later in the quarter, but you've reiterated the 5-year outlook numbers today. Should we interpret that '27 production number then is in line or skewed to the upside next year on some of the exploration piece, and it's maybe just the costs that are getting worked through?

Yes, in line is probably the best place to start with perhaps a smaller amount of upside, but look, I'm trying not to give you numbers here when we're still pulling it all together. And really, what we need to incorporate is these pieces of exploration upside and mine extensions into quite a complicated mine schedule to obviously optimize not only ounces but costs, cash flows, et cetera. So it's something that we're working on. And as I said to Jonathon at the outset, from J.P., is that we're just going to be a little bit patient until we get those numbers through.

Yes. Great. Just good to clarify. So risk is not to the downside. It's excellent. And then maybe, Darren, one for you. You've noted the classification impact to '26 all-in costs from Never Never being early. I think that sort of implies about $27 million in the second half that you, therefore, expensed to Dalgaranga, which then sort of in turn implies it's about $165 a tonne in the second half. Is that the right way to think about it? And going forward from here, should we expect that dollar a tonne cost to continue to come down as you ramp up the volumes there?

Yes. Keep it short, yes.

Yes. Obviously, as you'd expect, as the ramping up infrastructure has been the real focus for the last 6 months, getting it ready and so that's been what Tim and the team have been focused on, and we've seen some really positive upticks in level of volume. We've seen ending June quarter, we expect that to continue on to hit these numbers. And obviously, the name of the game with the prize is the 1 million tonne per annum coming out of Never Never. So yes, that's -- you should see them decline quarter-on-quarter.

And excitingly, yes, I think we've got the extension on Penny as well for December. So as per the norm, we'll always be prioritizing the high grade. So we might have been in a great situation where we've got a stockpile of some of this ore. So...

Great. Helpful. And just lastly, sustaining capital, pretty modest spend for FY '26. Any catch up there in terms of plant works or anything like that we should think about going forward?

Yes. So some of the expenditures, especially on the Mt Magnet mill will be moving from the FY '26 into FY '27. So we'll be -- and then we will see some consideration given the recent great news on Roe whether we bring forward some expenditures or some capital connected with the Rebecca-Roe project. So that's all that sequencing work we're doing. The other one probably to highlight, as Peter flagged, we've got -- Galaxy is looking very positive in mine life extensions. So we need to evaluate what does that look like in the spend needed for the next sort of 24 months to be extending beyond the existing FY '28 sort of planned operational finish.

So that's sort of why it's taking a little bit longer, Hugo, on some of these pieces. They're all positive, but it's just taking a little bit longer. So you will see an elevated level of capital than what we initially planned in the October 5-year plan.

I might just add that we expect to get the results of our competitive feed process end of this week. And obviously, that's a key part of the Mt Magnet upgrade in terms of not only cost but also schedule. Pretty hard to put a reliable mine plan out when you're largely relying on PFS numbers from late last year. So that's a key part of it as well as all the other bits. So hopefully, that gives a good explanation as to why we're taking as long as we need to, to have all the bits to be able to put together a reliable mine plan.

There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll hand back over for any webcast questions to be addressed.

Okay. Webcast question here from [ Monty Graham ]. Could you please shed some light on the Never Never ore recoveries of 82% to 84% through the mill? Does this plan increase with upgrades at the Mt Magnet Checkers mill? Tim?

Yes, the answer is yes. I think we touched on this one, but to the Mt Magnet, yes, definitely, that's part of the engineering to improve the recovery.

Yes. To be clear, the 82% to 84% as compared to the 81% that we expected was on the assumption that goes through the Mt Magnet mill as it's currently configured and has been configured for some time, which is a much coarser grind then we will ultimately achieve for the Dalgaranga orebody but the Never Never orebody specifically. And once we have the finer grind, we are looking more like 93%, to be really clear on that answer. That's a short-term lower recovery.

Question from [ Chris ]. Can't pronounce the surname, apologies. With a focus on core operations ramping up of production and improving grades, would $1,500 all-in sustaining cost be an achievable target?

I'll let the finance guys answer that, but I think that would be world beating. I'm not sure if that's in Aussie dollars. But I think the days of $1,500, unfortunately, are behind us. I think $2,000 and being below $2,000, we didn't trumpet that as much as we perhaps could have, but not many are doing that. $1,500 seems to be unachievable in my mind.

No, nothing to add there, Mark.

Yes. What else have we got? Are we looking to incorporate electric trucks at any of your mines?

I suppose we have contractor-based operations, both underground and open pit and also surface haulage. So we are a little bit dependent on those guys. We would happily look at electric options or support them in their adoption of electric. I think that will start on the surface haulage. I did see an article from a haulage contractor where they're looking at those.

We know for sure, underground, you can actually potentially get more production and require less ventilation as a result of less diesel equipment. So there's a positive in it, but we're not at the point of the end of developing that. So it's something that we're dependent on through our contractors and OEMs.

Anything to add to that, Tim?

No, I think you're spot on there, Mark. We do keep an eye on what's going on in the market. But yes, we'll definitely keep those conversations with our main mining contractors.

Where are we? Nearly 50 minutes in. No more questions. There's a few comments, but no more questions online. We'll wrap the call up there. Thanks, everybody, for your attention this morning. Have a great day. Thank you.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ramelius Resources March Quarterly Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Zeptner, Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for dialing in this morning. In addition to the quarterly report, we have released a presentation that we'll speak to during this call. Noting that it also includes information from our Dalgaranga exploration update released last week. Both documents have been uploaded on the ASX platform and will be available on our website shortly.

This morning, I'm joined by members of the executive team, our COO, Tim Hewitt, CFO; Darren Millman; and our EGM of Exploration; Peter Ruzicka. Initially, I'll be speaking to highlights for the quarter, and we will then pass on to Tim, who will speak to the operating highlights. Peter will obviously talk to the exploration results, and Darren will speak to financial highlights before I close out with our priorities for the remainder of FY '26. While the presentation is relatively high level, I do note a lot more detail can be found within both the quarterly report released today and the Dalgaranga exploration update I just mentioned.

As usual, at the end, there will be an opportunity for listeners to ask questions, whether that be through the teleconference or the webinar depending on how you have joined the call. So assuming you have the presentation deck handy, I'll initially be speaking to Slide 3.

Gold production for the quarter was 38,093 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 2,211. This was a solid result, generally in line with our expectations given the planned 6-day mill shutdown and weather-related disruptions late in the quarter. This has resulted in some production moving into Q4. But importantly, our FY '26 production guidance is unchanged with a strong fourth quarter expected. Tim will talk further to mill grades and expectations for the remainder of the financial year.

It was exciting to see the processing of the first ore from Never Never in the quarter, marking a significant milestone as we transition Dalgaranga into the Mt Magnet hub mix. We look forward to a more significant contribution from Dalgaranga in this current quarter.

For full year guidance in terms of all-in sustaining costs, we have updated the range to $1,900 to $2,050 per ounce, reflecting three things: the earlier-than-expected declaration of commercial production at Never Never, which Darren will talk to shortly, diesel price escalation and higher royalties from stronger gold price. I will note that the $175 increase in the all-in sustaining cost midpoint is pretty much accounted for by these three items alone.

Work on the Mt Magnet plant expansion has accelerated across the quarter with a strategy to front-end load the engineering design work. We have commenced preliminary site works and the establishment of the project execution team. There are 2 areas of focus for the engineering design. Firstly, the existing 1.9 million tonne ball mill drive train refurbishment is underway, and we did appoint a third-party contractor subsequent to the end of the quarter, who will oversee the project, and we're referring to this project as Stage 1. And secondly, the new 3 million tonne circuit, we are focused on the Front-End engineering & Design, FEED. And then the EPC contract is targeted to be awarded early in the September quarter, and we're referring to this part as Stage 2.

On the financials, we have completed $110.2 million worth of share buybacks, equating to 44% of our announced share buyback program, which I know is one of the largest amounts by value spent in the quarter by any Australian gold producer. But in addition to this, we closed out our FY '27 hedge book and pre-delivered the Q4 FY '26 hedge commitments. And despite this, we still finished the quarter with a very strong cash and gold balance of $606.5 million.

Our growth projects are fully funded, and we remain focused on increasing returns to our shareholders as we grow the company. And Darren, obviously will talk to this in more detail a little later.

On Slide 4, we'll see a breakdown of ore sources during the quarter. What you can see here, as mentioned, that Q4 will be our strongest quarter with Dalgaranga expected to contribute over 30% of production. Haulage to Mt Magnet is expected to materially increase in the June quarter with haulage rates ramping up as we speak.

The 56,000 ounces planned for Q4 puts us right in the midpoint of FY '26 production guidance and with no further hedge commitments leaves this strong quarterly production 100% exposed to the current strong A dollar gold price.

With that, I will now pass over to Tim.

Thanks, Mark. Good morning, all. Moving on to Slide 5 to discuss the production metrics. We mined 550,000 tonnes ore at a grade of 2.45 grams a tonne, with both metrics being comparable to the prior quarter. Open pit tonnes mined for Cue were 26% down on the prior quarter with a focus on Stage 2 cutback of Break of Day and the commencement of Big Sky pit. Both of these are in a higher life-of-mine strip ratio for the quarter. This was offset by increased tonnages from the higher-grade underground operations from Galaxy, Penny and Dalgaranga, all increasing quarter-on-quarter. Mined grades, while marginally down on the prior quarter, were in line with the model expectations.

At the Mt Magnet processing plant, tonnes processed were down compared to the previous quarter due to the planned 6-day mill shutdown. Grade was similar to the previous quarter, resulting in the gold production of just over 38,000 ounces.

Moving on to Slide 6. We take a more detailed look at the Mt Magnet operations. Open pit mining continued at both Cue and Dalgaranga with operations impacted by significant rainfall associated with Cyclone Narelle towards the end of the quarter. All underground mines delivered strongly on development meters with focus on capital development at both Galaxy and Dalgaranga. Significantly, production commenced at Dalgaranga with the first stope fired in Never Never. Galaxy's ore delivery was much stronger in this quarter compared to prior.

Looking forward, production is expected to be significantly higher in Q4 with increased haulage of high-grade ore from Dalgaranga. The team's focus will continue for the remainder of the year on operational excellence, safe production and cost management.

On to Slide 7 and Penny. Mining at Penny totaled 80,000 tonnes at a grade of 6.33 grams per tonne. However, given the weather-related events late in the quarter, not all of that material made to the processing plant, with 74,000 tonnes milled at a grade of 6.72 grams a tonne for just under 16,000 ounces of recovered gold. Production has now commenced in Penny West and stoping at both Penny North, and Penny West will deliver similar ounces in Q4.

On to Slide 8 and Galaxy. Here, we combine both the operational statistics and some recent drilling results. We saw improvement in both tonnages and grade at Galaxy in the quarter with Galaxy delivering their best quarter this year. 145,000 tonnes of this was processed at a grade of 2.24 grams for just under 10,000 ounces.

Peter will speak to Galaxy exploration plans later. But as noted on the slide, we continue to see mineralization at depth within the target zone. Some of the high-grade drill results to highlight are 4.1 meters at 22.4 grams per tonne from 463.9 meters, 8.1 meters at 10.3 grams per tonne from 109.7 meters and 14.2 meters at 3.07 grams per tonne from 473.8 meters.

Now moving on to Cue. As mentioned earlier, the focus on Cue the quarter has been on the development of Stage 2 cutback at the Break of Day pit and Big Sky. So we did see that reduction in tonnes mined. Of the 253,000 tonnes mined, 128,000 tonnes were processed at Mt Magnet at a grade of 2 grams per tonne for 7,900 ounces.

Haulage was down in the prior quarter, with the fleet prioritizing the additional high-grade ore from Penny. And the reduced mill requirements with the planned shutdown. The photo there shows Stage 2 cutback. And in the background, you can see some of our recent progressive rehab on the waste dump.

Moving on to Dalgaranga, Slide 10. The image on the left shows the current underground development, both the incline and decline positions on the Never Never deposit, with the right image showing progress made to date on the paste plant. You can see the paste plant in the background.

Total lateral development at the underground was 1,690 meters, which is largely in line with the prior quarter, while good progress was made in the open pit.

Still with Dalgaranga on Slide 11. As you can imagine, there's a lot going on at that site besides the underground and open pit mining, including the paste plant and workshop construction and the completion of the first underground pump station. The team fired their first stope successfully mid-March, containing just under 41,000 tonnes at a grade of 7.41 grams per tonne.

At the end of the quarter, there's a total of 58,000 tonnes of ore at a grade of 3.23 grams per tonne, ready and awaiting haulage to Mt Magnet. Haulage is expected to increase notably in the current quarter.

With this, I'll now pass over to Peter.

Thanks, Tim. On to Slide 12. This is the 5-year production profile for Mt Magnet, and we wanted to highlight a few key points from an exploration perspective. Firstly, Mt Magnet's growth profile, significantly increasing to up to 400,000 ounces per annum by FY '30.

On the graph on this slide, at the bottom of each year, you'll see the low-grade ore currently planned to be processed in that year, especially in the years FY '29 and FY '30. So you'll see in those years, FY '29, 1.9 million tonnes at 0.8 grams per tonne. And in FY '30, 1.8 million tonnes at 0.6 grams per tonne.

Exploration opportunities in each year are highlighted at the top of the graph and are clearly linked to improvement of our future production profile at Mt Magnet by replacing that lower-grade material. We currently have 10 surface rigs and 4 underground rigs devoted to the Mt Magnet hub.

Our exploration commentary today will focus on Galaxy and Gilbey's.

Moving on to Slide 13. The Galaxy mineralized system is open at depth with both the depth host and the controlling structures continuing undisrupted at depth.

I'll draw your attention to the ounce per vertical meter profile on the left of this figure. The drop-off below around 320 meters below surface is a function of drilling density only, continuation of geology, just not enough drilling.

In January, we released an exploration target below the current classified resource based on a continuation of geology and assumptions around the average ounce per vertical meter profile of around 2,300 ounces per vertical meter. That work saw an exploration target of 400,000 to 600,000 ounces defined.

Current underground programs are looking to achieve 3 objectives: identify relatively shallow lateral resource opportunities, increase resource confidence for resources to reserve conversion, and upgrade the exploration target below the classified resource. This is a real opportunity to displace lower-grade ore in the mine plan for FY '29 and FY '30.

Moving on to Slide 14, Gilbey's underground. We've highlighted results from the Dalgaranga exploration update we released on the 22nd of April. Conceptually, we're looking to add minable ounces to the production profile again in FY '29 and FY '30. Additional high-grade drill results from Gilbey's underground drilling include 3.9 meters at 21.2 grams per tonne, 6.1 meters at 10.4 gram per tonne and 7.7 meters at 5.94 grams per tonne.

There's currently a mineral resource of 6.9 million tonnes at 1.9 grams per tonne to 380,000 ounces for Gilbey's underground. We're trying to add to this with conversion of an exploration target below the current resource. That exploration target set at 2.1 million to 4.7 million tonnes at a grade of 1.5 to 2 grams per tonne for 100,000 to 300,000 ounces. That exploration target is based on existing sparse drilling data, which confirms extension of the mineralized shear zones and the same host rocks at depth. Again, looking to displace low-grade 0.6 to 0.8 gram per tonne ore in FY '29 and FY '30 with Gilbey's underground material grading at 1.5 to 2 grams per tonne, this will have a meaningful impact.

Moving on to Slide 15, Dalgaranga open pit potential. From an exploration lens, Dalgaranga remains the corridor for future discoveries both to the north and south of the Gilbey's mine area.

Surface drilling during the quarter has evaluated a number of targets in the Southern Gilbey's area, at Plymouth-Sly Fox and Gilbey's South. Last quarter, we reported a result of 4 meters at 42.6 grams per tonne gold from Plymouth, highlighting the high-grade potential. More recently, we've recorded a number of encouraging results from Sly Fox, including 16.5 meters at 2.5 grams per tonne gold.

And with that, I'll now hand over to Darren.

Thanks, Peter, and good morning, all. I'll now be speaking to Slide 16. For the March quarter, we generated $101.9 million of free cash flow. This is up on the prior quarter, even in a period of reinvestment into the business.

The all-in sustaining cost for the quarter was $2,211 per ounce, and we've driven higher -- driven by higher maintenance costs associated with the planned mill shutdown in the period and associated impact on mill throughput.

Also impacting the all-in sustaining cost was the higher gold price, which increased royalty costs and added approximately $20 per ounce for the quarter. The year-to-date all-in sustaining costs of $1,987 per ounce remained below the $2,000 and leaves us well placed compared to our peers.

During the quarter, we sold 38,150 ounces at an average realized price of AUD 5,795 per ounce, which included a mix of spot and committed forward sales. We pre-delivered 8,000 ounces of the June quarter hedge book commitments, which leaves us unhedged position for the remainder of FY '26 with full upside to this remarkable gold price.

In total, sales revenue for the quarter was $221.1 million. The realized gold price for the quarter was up 12% on an average improving spot price and also included the impact of the hedge commitments. The Aussie gold price itself improved over the quarter by 5%.

The resulting all-in sustaining margin, which is the average realized gold price less the all-in sustaining was $3,584 per ounce, our best on record and represents an all-in sustaining margin of 62%.

Moving on to Slide 17 and the cash flow for the business for the quarter. Operational cash flow was $171.3 million, an increase on the prior quarter despite the lower production. After taking into account the cost of the Q3 hedge book deliveries of $16.1 million is reduced to $155.2 million, which is still an increase quarter-on-quarter.

This operational cash flow funded growth capital investment for the quarter of $51.2 million, which mainly related to underground development of Never Never, the Stage 2 cutback at Break of Day and infrastructure across both Dalgaranga and at Mt Magnet. Our investment in exploration and resource definition for the quarter totaled $26.4 million and was focused on Dalgaranga, Mt Magnet, Cue and Penny.

As highlighted by Peter, we're seeing the returns on investment in our exploration results to date. Resulting underlying free cash flow for the quarter was $101.9 million. This underpinned our ability to make a total cash payment of $110.2 million in share buybacks to reward shareholders. This equates to 44% of the $250 million share buyback program announced back in December last year.

Lastly, we closed out FY '27 hedge book and pre-delivered the June 2026 quarter hedges. The FY '27 hedge book closure costs equated to $28.4 million, and pre-delivery of the June quarter hedges in this quarter totaled $30.6 million, assuming these ounces were sold at the average spot price for the month.

The remainder of FY '26 is unhedged and no further forward contracts are currently being considered. The result in closing cash and gold position was AUD 606.5 million.

On Slide 18, we provide a table noting key updates to FY '26 guidance. We have increased our all-in sustaining cost to $1,900 to $2,050 per ounce, still remaining in the low-cost quartile with the 3 main drivers of this increase being one, the declaration of commercial production at the Never Never underground, 1 quarter earlier than planned, resulting in an additional $100 per ounce in all-in sustaining. It's important to note that this is merely a reclassification of costs from growth capital to sustaining, aligning with the fact that the mine is now profitable earlier than we expected with high gold price at high initial grades initially modeled. So all in all, a positive for the business.

Secondly, higher gold price, resulting in higher gold royalties, which is expected to increase all-in sustaining by approximately $40 per ounce in FY '26. And thirdly, diesel costs, which at current prices are estimated to impact the all-in sustaining by $35 per ounce or $20 after factoring in our diesel hedge book.

On growth capital, as mentioned earlier, we have updated our Mt Magnet plant construction strategy to front-end load engineering design work, which has resulted in some expenditure originally planned for FY '26 to be now incurred in FY '27. But importantly, there is no impact on our overall project timing.

Overall, at the group level, we have revised PP&E growth capital from -- for FY '26 to $90 million to $100 million. On growth capital mine development, the reclassification of mine -- of Never Never mine development from growth to sustaining that we just discussed has resulted in reduction in mine development growth by approximately $20 million, which is the midpoint of our production guide and equates to $100 an ounce impact. Again, I can't stress enough, overall, the sustaining and mine development costs for the Never Never underground are unchanged and it's just a classification of costs for this in the fourth quarter.

On depreciation and amortization, the earlier-than-expected commercial production from Never Never underground has resulted in utilization of the mine property, which resulted in the acquisition cost of the project commencing sooner than initially expected. Revised guidance for the depreciation and amortization for FY '26 is $310 million to $330 million.

On Slide 19, we are highlighting our historical returns to shareholders, predominantly in the form of dividends with buybacks added to the mix in FY '26. As previously disclosed, the Ramelius Board wants to ensure shareholders' returns are maintained during our investment period in FY '26 and FY '27, then we grow the returns.

In FY '26, we have already exceeded FY '25 returns with interim dividend of $0.03 per share paid in the quarter, along with the $110 million share buybacks made. We look forward to continuing this trend as we move forward.

I'll now pass it back to Mark to wrap up.

Thanks, Darren. We're on Slide 20, where we have summarized our key focus areas for the remainder of the financial year. At the corporate level, we will continue to drive improvements in our safety performance and also closely monitor diesel fuel supply and usage whilst continuing our share buyback program.

Our exploration team will remain focused on high-grade targets as discussed by Peter, particularly at Mt Magnet and Dalgaranga.

We'll continue to ramp up at Dalgaranga underground and also ramp up the ore haulage quantities to ultimately match production levels.

On the Mt Magnet plant upgrade, we will continue with both Stage 1 refurbishment of the existing plant and complete the front-end engineering design and award the EPC contract for Stage 2.

Lastly, we expect to hear back from the EPA on our Roe environmental approval during this June quarter. These key focus areas will drive our next phase of growth and value creation.

We'll now open up the line for questions if we can, please, Katie.

[Operator Instructions] Your question comes from Hayden Bairstow with Argonaut.

Just a couple for me, Mark. Just on the drilling and doing at Mt Magnet. I mean how quickly do you think you can start defining some of those open pits because pushing that Eridanus feed into stockpile rather than through the mill would be obviously pretty material on a 3-year outlook. And then also, can we just have an update on where the Edna May process is at too, please?

Thanks, Hayden. Unfortunately, bringing in new open pits that aren't currently in the mine plan that may be a longer lead time to bring those in than we'd all like. And I'm thinking you're thinking Hesperus, maybe Windbag, maybe a bigger Franks Tower and those sorts of things. There is an investment at Eridanus, which we think is worthwhile, because ultimately, once we're down into the higher grade material, that will supply decent grade baseload feed to the mill for the long term.

In terms of Edna May, we're still considering our options there. There's obviously a lot of value on the table at Edna May. At the moment, the nice thing is we don't need any ounces to deliver on our 5-year plan, but we're still considering what we do with in Edna May.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Ben Wood with UBS.

My question is just on some of the CapEx that we'll see go from FY '26 to FY '27 relating to the FEED project and potentially Rebecca-Roe early works. How much do we sort of expect of that $100 million, say, do we expect to be carried forward? Is it the full amount? Or is it potentially a bit less than that?

Yes. On the Mt Magnet plant expansion, probably thinking somewhere between $50 million to $75 million of the FY '26 number. So a lot of that given our new strategy that Mark just spoke to. And Rebecca-Roe, we just really wanted to double down on Mt Magnet. So probably about 75% of those costs will move into FY '27 or so.

Hopefully, we answered your question there, Ben.

Yes.

[Operator Instructions] As there are no further questions, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ramelius Resources Half Year Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mark Zeptner, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Travis. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our half year results to December 2025. Alongside me is our CFO, Darren Millman. Today, I'll start with a brief overview of the operating performance and some recent updates at Dalgaranga before Darren goes through the underlying earnings and financials in more detail.

We have uploaded to the ASX this morning along with our website shortly, a number of documents, including our half year '26 financial summary, the half year accounts, interim dividend and a presentation that will largely be speaking to this morning.

So we start on Slide 3. Here, we set out our gold production for the last 2.5 years. Operationally, performance was in line with our expectations highlighted in the 5-year growth pathway released last October. As you can see in the graph, this period is our lowest production level with 101,000 ounces produced with Edna May being placed into care and maintenance in FY '25 and the Cue mine performance returning closer to geological model predictions. Production is on track to deliver FY '26 guidance, which is a touch below 200,000 ounces for this year.

Moving on to Slide 4. We announced yesterday that first ore from the Never Never deposit at Dalgaranga has been hauled to the Mt Magnet processing plant. This is a key milestone in realizing our vision to become a 500,000-ounce producer by FY '30. Thanks to the dedication of our team for this achievement and it's an important milestone just over 200 days over the closure of the combination with Spartan. And at the end of January, we had a healthy 31,000 tonne stockpile of Never Never ore at a grade of 3.6 grams per tonne at Mt Magnet. Now whilst this grade is below the reserve grade of 7.3, it should be noted that this ore is all development ore and from the top part of the ore body.

From March, we are planning to blend this initial lower grade ore with other Mt Magnet ore sources. Higher grade parts of the stockpile will be introduced in the June 2026 quarter once fine-tuning has occurred at the Mt Magnet plant.

On to Slide 5, you will see the Never Never mining schedule. We are on track, both in terms of tonnes and grade. And from FY '28 onwards, these metrics significantly increase as the main section of the ore body is accessed.

Turning to Slide 6. Key mining and production highlights. Pleasingly, tonnes mined were up 64%, with the introduction of a third fleet excavation fleet at the Cue pits and mining also taking place at a lower strip ratio. The mine grade was down 46% to 2.66 grams per tonne, but we are comparing this to a period which included mining from the Break of Day pit at a grade of 7.9 grams, which is quite remarkable for an open pit.

At the group level, milled tons were down due to Edna May now being placed into care and maintenance. However, at Mt Magnet, throughput improved some 18% with a new line of design that we had discussed previously being an optimized material blend and very high mechanical availability. As expected and planned, mill grade and production was down as we await the introduction of Dalgaranga high-grade ore. The half year financial performance benefited from strong [ $8 ] gold price with reducing hedge book commitments, resulting in a 36% increase in the realized gold price.

Without stealing too much of Darren's thunder, I would highlight that we delivered a very strong all-in sustaining cost margin of $2,921 for every ounce sold. And I think you agree this is a very impressive return and one that we see is only increasing with our reduced hedge book commitments going forward.

With that, I'll hand over to Darren.

Thank you, Mark. For those following on the presentation, I'll be initially speaking to Slide 7 and our underlying earnings. It's important to talk about our underlying earnings as there were significant one-off and noncash adjustments between the statutory and underlying earnings in the half, primarily relating to the Spartan acquisition. We have previously highlighted these 2 significant adjustments that were recorded in the period. These included $133.2 million of nonrecurring acquisition costs, which with estimated stamp duty payable of $131 million of this.

The other adjustment of note is the $46.6 million noncash fair value adjustment to Spartan's pre-existing royalty obligation. This reflects 2 things: firstly, high consensus gold price forecast since acquisition; and secondly, a high level of confidence of the ore body with the release of the maiden ore reserve for Never Never deposit. While this is a cost to earnings, it is reflective of higher expected future revenue.

This will be a recurring adjustment every reporting period, whether it is at a level or not seen today, but will be largely attributable to gold price and changes in oil reserves across the Dalgaranga mineral properties.

Moving on to Slide 8. Earnings were generated from revenue of $485.6 million, which is down 4% from the prior period with lower gold production being the offset almost in full by the improved Aussie gold price and reducing hedge book commitments at a higher realized gold price. The resulting underlying EBITDA of $347 million at a margin of 42% is a H1 record for the company and up 13% on the prior period. Again, the driver behind this is the improved realized gold price. The reported underlying net profit after tax of $160 million was comparable to the prior period of $170 million despite lower production.

On Slide 9, we have provided more detail on the Mt Magnet earnings and operations, Mt Magnet which generated a gross profit of $244 million, which is comparable to the prior period, albeit at a slightly lower margin. The lower margin was driven by higher cost per tonne and a lower milled grade. The operating cost per tonne was in line with expectations, was higher than the prior period due to increased tonnes from Cue, which was of a higher grade, was higher strip ratio, incurs a higher haulage charge to Mt Magnet and attracts a higher amortization charge relating to the purchase price initially. Also contributing to the higher operating costs in the reporting period was an increase in underlying tonnes in the ore blend. The resulting gross margin increased to $2,413 per ounce sold. The Mt Magnet hub will only be benefited with future introduction of the Dalgaranga ore feed.

Moving on to what really matters, cash, which is being detailed on Slide 10. Operating cash flow of $311.6 million was largely in line with the prior period. However, the free cash flow, which is cash flow from operations less the cash used in investing was an outflow of $40 million. This was not unexpected given the acquisition of Spartan and an increased exploration budget and the final FY '25 income tax payment.

The closing cash and gold balance was $694.3 million. Secondly, we invested $211 million back into the business. This includes $73.4 million for the acquisition of Spartan, net of $199 million cash acquired, investing in the development of the Never Never and Dalgaranga infrastructure and our exploration focus. Last, we paid $148 million in income taxes in the period with $130 million of this relating to the final FY '25 payments.

The last of these large one-off income tax payments have now -- were more regular payers in advance of income tax. Looking forward for the remainder of FY '26, do keep in mind the stamp duty, which is payable on the acquisition of Spartan of approximately $131 million. The timing of payment -- the timing of this payment is out of our hands, but it could be reasonably expected at back end of FY '26.

Moving forward to Slide 12. I would just want to touch on the acquisition relating to Spartan. As you will see on this slide, the total acquisition of fair value was $2.8 billion, which includes our initial $19.9 million investment. What is worth highlighting is the cost of the asset to Ramelius is $2.3 billion, which takes into account the cash we acquired and the cost of initial investment as proposed -- as opposed to the fair value.

As noted, there are tax synergies available to the group from the acquisition. First, the use of Spartan tax losses, which we have now concluded our analysis of the tax losses and obtained the external tax advice. The analysis shows that tax losses with a net cash benefit of $105 million can be transferred to the group, the use of which compares favorably to the $90 million we initially flagged in a growth pathway presentation back in October. This is a real and immediate benefit to the group with a net amount of just under $20 million losses being used in the December half year.

And moving on to the balance sheet on Slide 13. Ramelius remains in a very strong financial position with just under $600 million in working capital and net assets of $4 billion. Subsequent to the end of this period, we have further enhanced our balance sheet flexibility and funding optionality for replacing our existing $175 million credit facility with a $500 million credit facility. We later put this new facility in place in recognition of the company's significant change in capital structure post the acquisition of Spartan and pleasingly, we've been able to improve our overall commercial terms and increase the tenure.

Before handing back to Mark for closing remarks, I just want to highlight our recent activity with our hedge book on Slide 14. We have closed out our FY '27 hedge book at a cost of $28.4 million, and we have committed to, in fact, they've already started predelivering the June quarter forward contracts in the March quarter. The outcome being from the end of March, we'll have no forward contract hedges in place, and we'll have more exposure to the Australian gold price.

The chart on the left of the slide shows the historical cost of the hedge book. That is what is being eliminated by the actions we have taken on our forward contract positions. We do still have a level of cover in FY '27 and FY '28 with [ collars ] in place for FY '27 of 22,500 ounces of a floor of $4,200 and a ceiling of $5,906 and put options in place for FY '27 guaranteeing a minimum price for 40,000 ounces at $5,750 per ounce.

With that, I'll now hand back to Mark.

Thanks, Darren. Slide 15 shows our capital allocation and priorities and one that you perhaps are familiar with. The phase that we are in now is in the middle section, reinvestment in the business. And as we have highlighted previously, we have committed to a $0.02 per share minimum dividend for FY '26. And as such, it is pleasing that $0.03 per share fully franked interim dividend has been declared this morning, exceeding the minimum annual amount.

This interim dividend is discussed on Slide 16. So if we turn to Slide 16. This is the second consecutive interim dividend paid by Ramelius and this equates to a total amount of $57.7 million or $574 per ounce produced. It takes the total shareholder returns over the past 5 years to almost $320 million at an average of 18.8% per annum.

In summary, this was a solid half year result delivered during a transition phase for the business. We entered the second half with a strong balance sheet, significant liquidity and improving production outlook and leverage to a strong gold price environment. That concludes the presentation. I'll now hand back to Travis to open the phone line for questions firstly.

[Operator Instructions] The first phone question today comes from Richard Knights from Barrenjoey.

Just one on the dividend. I mean it's certainly a beat versus consensus in my numbers. Just wondering how you're thinking about dividend policy over the next couple of years with the relatively high sort of CapEx burden we've got in terms of development.

I'll take that one. Thanks, Richard. Yes, look, we had a look at our dividend. Obviously, the gold price has run very strongly while I've been on holidays, I was tempted to extend in fact. But looking at the dividend, we look at the dividend and the buyback sort of together. The fact of the matter is and whether we're a little more conservative than others than we actually haven't been able to access the buyback much since we announced it in December.

So a very small number of shares buy back will be freed up going forward more so. But the whole period through January and February pre these results has really limited our ability to buy back. So we thought a slightly stronger dividend was warranted in this case. In terms of moving forward, we'll look to reassess our dividend policy as we ramp up production as cash flows increase.

Yes. Okay. Maybe just one more just on the ramp-up at Dalgaranga. Can you give us an indication when you're going to be mining stope ore as opposed to development ore?

In the June quarter, very early in the June quarter, if not before. We're obviously getting back this week coming up to [ speed ] with what's going on. The mine is progressing very well. We're drilling paste fill holes, we -- as you see, we've got a decent stockpile of development ore. So it means we've put in a number of ore drives. The paste plant foundations are in place. And so we'll be ready to be stoping March, April at this stage, which is on schedule, if not slightly ahead.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, we're showing no further questions via the phone. I'll hand the conference back to Mark.

Just checking on the webcast. It doesn't like there's any questions there either. This has got to be some sort of record for one question. It must be the time of day or the comprehensive nature of the presentation. As there's no further questions, we'll wrap up. Have a good day, everyone. Thanks for tuning in.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ramelius Resources 5-Year Growth Pathway and Studies Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Zeptner, Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for dialing in this morning, especially those on the West Coast, much earlier than normal.

I do have our CFO, Darren Millman, with me in his usual supporting role. We are currently live on the webcast, but also on the normal telephone conference.

As you would all be aware, we released 3 documents this morning, the Rebecca-Roe DFS and the results of the Never Never PFS, combined with the Mt Magnet-Dalgaranga Integration Study and our 5-year growth pathway to plus 500,000 ounces, which also includes detailed FY '26 guidance. All documents have been uploaded on the ASX platform and will also be available on the website shortly.

Firstly, a big thank you to all those involved in pulling together these very detailed documents, recognizing it's only been 89 days since we closed on the Spartan transaction. Among the documents released today is the presentation, 5-year growth pathway to 500,000 ounces that we will be speaking to.

Noting that you'll be happy to hear, I won't be speaking to every slide, and we'll also make reference to slide numbers as we do go. My focus on the call will predominantly be on our 5-year growth pathway, but also the Never Never PFS, along with our planned upgrades to the Mt Magnet Hub, which will need a little bit of explanation. I will also speak to the Rebecca-Roe DFS results, but focus on the key changes from the PFS released in December 2024, along with key milestones and also an update on permitting.

So based on the level of information we will be going through, we expect this to run a little longer than our typical quarterly or financial results call, but we'll endeavor to make it as efficient as possible, making sure we don't miss any important detail. So I do suggest you make yourselves comfortable.

I think we're starting off on Slide 4. I do encourage you to read Slide 2 as I will be making references from time to time that are forward-looking statements. So on Slide 4, on March 17 this year, we announced the merger of Ramelius, an operator that has a reputation for delivery and Spartan, an explorer with one of the best high-grade gold discoveries in Australia in the past decade.

In combining these 2 companies, there was a vision to become a leading Australian gold company with highly profitable operations, supercharged growth profile and exceptional exploration upside.

All this remains true today with our increase to our midpoint of our FY '30 production outlook from 500,000 ounces to 525,000 ounces following the delivery of the various studies.

With the release of the technical studies today, I can now state with confidence that our pathway to over 500,000 ounces is fully funded. Remember, we do have $827 million in cash and gold and also an undrawn $175 million credit facility and continued strong cash flow generation.

Our new group ore reserves are 4.2 million ounces. Our engine room that is the Mt Magnet Hub has 3.1 million ounces in the reserve category, which is a 212% increase on FY '24. Importantly, though, with a 29% increase in grade, driven by the Never Never underground deposit, which is now contributing 1.6 million ounces at an average grade of 7.3 grams per tonne.

I'll now jump to Slide 6. Without any exploration success, and I reiterate that we are spending up to $100 million on exploration and resource definition drilling this year, we will deliver on our promise by FY '30, producing 525,000 ounces of gold at the midpoint for that 12-month period.

The other key takeaways from this slide, aside from it being a base case are, we have deferred the construction and production at Rebecca-Roe, moving initial production from FY '28 to FY '29 as we want to focus on the upgraded Mt Magnet plant first and foremost. Our all-in sustaining cost remains very low compared to our peer group, in some years more than $500 an ounce lower than the average.

In FY '29, Rebecca-Roe comes online with the first year of production seeing slightly lower grades and a higher strip ratio. As operations from Rebecca-Roe ramp up, grade increases and the strip ratio decreases and so all-in sustaining costs will reduce. In the longer term, which we have classified FY '31 to FY '35, the outlook is even brighter with higher production levels and an all-in sustaining cost at under AUD 1,900 an ounce. Put simply, this is a no frills, no smoke and mirrors 5-year plan that would deliver a heck of a lot of value for shareholders.

On to Slide 7 of the presentation. This is where we're looking to highlight our sequence plan for both Mt Magnet and Rebecca-Roe, all on one slide, which we believe is both realistic and achievable. A few points to make here. The upgrade and expansion works at Mt Magnet will start in the second half of FY '26, but predominantly sit in FY '27 with the new circuits being operational in the September 2027 quarter. The project team will transition from Mt Magnet to Rebecca-Roe in that December 2027 quarter as plant construction commences at Rebecca.

The last point I'll make is that there does remain an opportunity on the Roe mine development to move the time line forward under a Part V environmental approval process as opposed to continuing under Part IV, which is not contemplated in the current production profile in the Rebecca-Roe DFS. I will expand on this point further a little later.

Slide 8 is our FY '26 detailed guidance. As you will note, we have provided a further breakdown on growth capital here. But firstly, on production, we are estimating gold production within a range of 185,000 to 205,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,800 at the midpoint, which is broadly in line with the March 2025 Mt Magnet plan.

As highlighted in the detailed ASX release, there are 3 areas to note in relation to production, and we mentioned it yesterday on that call. Cue gold overperformance has now normalized closer to ore reserve grades. Production from Penny is moving from the super high-grade Penny North to the lower-grade Penny West deposit, remembering that Penny West still has a respectable 9 gram per tonne resource grade.

And thirdly, at Dalgaranga, contribution in FY '26 will not be significant. And we've also assumed a conservative 80.5% recovery through the Mt Magnet plant until the modifications at Mt Magnet are completed.

As we have detailed in the Never Never PFS and the Mt Magnet-Dalgaranga Integration Study, the focus in FY '26 will be continuing development of the Never Never underground, along with associated underground infrastructure.

From a capital expenditure perspective at Dalgaranga, investment from mine development and PPE perspective at Dalgaranga will be just under $160 million for the year. In terms of the Mt Magnet plant expansion, total cost of that is $223 million, of which $80 million will be spent in FY '26. For Rebecca-Roe, we took the opportunity just recently to execute on 40,000 put options at AUD 5,750 per ounce, the underlying hedge representing the approximate value of the Rebecca-Roe mill and camp spend in FY '28, which is approximately $230 million.

As highlighted previously, our exploration and resource definition budget has been increased up to $100 million a year, and I will discuss some of the key exploration targets and their individual spend and also drilling programs in the expanded portfolio shortly.

It is also important to highlight some of the FY '26 cash flow one-offs detailed in the 5-year outlook announcement released today. And we do that so that the market isn't surprised by them when they happen. Well, that's the theory anyway. The most notable of these is an income tax payment of $118 million due in December and also the stamp duty payment of approximately $135 million on the Spartan transaction due later in the financial year.

Slide 9 is our updated ore reserves statement, a summary of that. It's important given that our total reserves now sit at 4.2 million ounces, putting us in a much better place on reserve metrics with our peers. The big change since we reported our reserves and resources on October 1 is obviously the Maiden reserve declared on the Never Never underground deposit. 7 million tonnes of 7.3 grams to 1.6 million ounces, to my knowledge, is still the highest-grade undeveloped mine in Australia.

I will now hand over to Darren, who will take the next few slides. Thanks, Darren.

Good morning, all. On Slide 10, we have incorporated into our technical studies and cash flow projections, the synergies, but I feel it's important to highlight what they are and the quantum. Firstly, there are synergies and then there are real synergies. We haven't simply applied a percentage factor of supplier spend as part of the synergy.

On Slide 10, we have broken down synergies into 3 main groups and quantified the value on each. The first being capital savings, looking at the difference in cost between a single plant operation versus 2 separate processing facilities with amounts validated by third-party engineering firms.

Secondly, we look at operational savings, quantifying savings on the processing cost under a single plant operation, offset by additional trucking costs from Dalgaranga to Mt Magnet.

And the last being the cash tax benefit validated by third-party accounting firms. All this adds up to $1 billion, validating a synergistic transaction with Spartan. For information purposes, we've also quantified the additional working capital required by Spartan, had it remained a stand-alone business.

On Slide 11 -- Slide 11 has been a shareholder favorite historically being referred to as the jaw slide. We have plotted the historical gold price achieved from FY '21 to FY '25, along with actual all-in sustaining cost over this period. On a forward-looking basis, we have plotted the midpoint of all-in sustaining cost and used a gold price of AUD 4,500 an ounce. With the inclusion of the high-grade Never Never deposit, the jaws now become more of a whale mouth, but it's important to remember that lower all-in sustaining costs from FY '31 to FY '35 is expected, so the jaws will open wider again from FY '31 onwards as we enter the heart of the Pepper zone.

Slide 21 -- Slide 12 provides an indicative look at free cash flow generation going forward on our production outlook at different gold prices. We have purposely sequenced the Mt Magnet and Rebecca-Roe spends to ensure we remain free cash flow generating. And as you will note, it is increasing every year with FY '26 being a higher capital spend year.

Mt Magnet will predominantly feature in today's call, but our Rebecca-Roe should not be forgotten in regards to cash flow generation. As you will note on Slide 36, the Rebecca-Roe project will be generating annual free cash flow of $200 million per annum from FY '30 to FY '36 at a gold price of $4,500 per ounce.

To my knowledge, there is no other mid-tier gold company out there globally that can demonstrate 107% production growth, the increasing free cash flow generation year-on-year. And once they pass a heightened investment period, be generating over $1 billion annually in free cash flow.

A reminder, this is not a new phenomenon at Ramelius. In FY '25, we ranked second in our peer group of free cash flow generation, generating just under $700 million for the year. We're just behind Evolution Mining and considering Evolution produced more gold than us, we have came in at #1 on underlying free cash flow per ounce producing basis metric. We are very proud of this metric as it speaks to the quality of our ounces, the high-grade, higher margin business that is Ramelius. And if you refer to Slide 49 of the deck, you will see the comparison to our peers on this metric.

Finally for me, Ramelius' 5-year outlook is fully funded with growing balance sheet after FY '36. And the Ramelius Board has recognized this with a new capital framework to be released in the first half of the calendar 2026 in recognition of growing free cash flow with a focus to maintain and grow returns to shareholders.

Just pass it back to Mark.

Okay. We're looking at Mt Magnet. We're on Slide 14. And this slide is a key slide from a COO or an engineer's perspective. You may have heard me say in the past that this is the best Mt Magnet mine plan since I started with the company back in 2012. And I think on this occasion, I can say the same thing again.

And those -- for those who have followed the company for some time, 100,000 ounces out of Mt Magnet used to be a good outcome. Over the past few years, we've elevated that production to over 200,000 ounces, almost 250,000 ounces in FY '25. But with the inclusion of Dalgaranga, we're even above 350,000 ounces, within reach of 400,000 ounces possibly from one hub, and I'll talk a little bit more on what that means in terms of Australian gold hubs shortly.

So as you can see in the bar charts, the contribution from Dalgaranga is obvious as the mine ramps up. And as discussed earlier, we're looking to have the expanded Mt Magnet plant operational at 4.3 million tonnes in September 2027. The all-in sustaining cost is peer-leading for the next 5 years, averaging less than $900, post FY $1,900. Post FY '31, the average all-in sustaining cost reduces to less than $1,600.

With gold obviously moving around a bit, but I believe currently trading around $6,000 an ounce, that's a margin of over AUD 4,000 an ounce. And if gold prices hold into the future, Mt Magnet margins will increase to over AUD 4,500 an ounce, truly incredible. Great time to be a gold miner.

In terms of reserves and resources specifically at Mt Magnet, this slide also captures the impact of Dalgaranga. We've gone in terms of total ore reserves up to 3.1 million ounces. But importantly, there is a 29% increase in overall grade compared to FY '24.

In terms of the mill, obviously, there's a lot of work. There's a lot of detail in the releases, but the metallurgical aspects of the Dalgaranga ore body were key to all of this work. And we have mentioned before that we wanted to make sure we made the right decision on the final plant design, whether it be at Mt Magnet or Dalgaranga or a combination of the 2.

As you can see, no matter which way we went, the final option requires a 53-micron grind size to maximize recoveries at 93.3%. We might have mentioned 75-micron in the past, that will give you something closer to 90%. We think it's worth going after that extra 3.3% on the Never Never and Pepper ore.

We also ran test work with residence times of 24 and 48 hours. Important to note here at the very right-hand side of the chart, there is no material difference assuming you're at 53 microns. That's another very important point. So with this information in hand, we moved to assess the best option between Mt Magnet and Dalgaranga.

So on Slide 17, happy to share the final option that we have selected did originate from the Mt Magnet operations team in consultation with our technical team in Perth and also external consultants. Firstly, while upgrades are underway, we will, as we've said before, be running Dalgaranga ore through the current Mt Magnet plant, which is currently approximately 2 million tonnes per annum capacity at 175-micron grind. And we'll take the hit on recovery for Dalgaranga, which, as mentioned, is just above 80% for that time period.

The ultimate plan is to reconfigure the Mt Magnet circuit to enable it to run at 1.3 million tonnes per annum, so downgrading the throughput, but at the optimal 53-micron grind size processing Dalgaranga ore. Later in the mine life, we do have the ability, this is the flexibility that this plant option gives us, to increase capacity back to 2 million tonnes per annum by relaxing the grind size out -- back out to 175-micron, and that's post depletion of Dalgaranga ore sources if and when that occurs. This is Circuit 1 as labeled on the plan.

In parallel, we will install a new circuit, Circuit 2 with a nameplate throughput of 3 million tonnes per annum and a grind size of 175 microns, which basically suits the current grind size for Mt Magnet ore. We'll do that by refurbishing and repurposing various pieces of equipment from the Dalgaranga plant, including the largest SAG mill and gravity circuit. And as you can see, we will be adding some new items such as a new crushing plant, ball mill and some tankage.

Total CapEx on the Mt Magnet plant upgrade is $223 million. Increasing throughput from 2 million tonnes potentially all the way up to 5 million tonnes, we believe this is quite capital efficient as opposed to the option of having 2 separate processing facilities at Mt Magnet and Dalgaranga with the same 5 million tonne processing capacity. The cost of this option, and it is detailed in the releases, is $327 million. So we are banking a CapEx of just over $100 million on the option we've chosen.

One of the reasons why the Mt Magnet option is superior is the leverage to lower power prices. And that's further exacerbated by the Mt Magnet hybrid power station that we're partway through installing. You can see here a picture of our solar farm, which will continue to expand. But probably more importantly, we'll be soon adding 14 megawatts of wind power in FY '26.

These renewable sources will predominantly power the Mt Magnet mill over time and have, as I mentioned, further enhanced the overall economics of the Mt Magnet option. which already enjoys an advantage having piped gas versus trucked gas that Dalgaranga would require.

In terms of our mill benchmarking, we always believed that Mt Magnet and further to that, our Edna May mill run at a very competitive cost per tonne through the mill, and that's borne out in this slide here. As you can see on the chart, Mt Magnet running at an average around 1.9 million tonnes per annum is one of the lowest cost mills of that size compared to peers. And as we look to increase tonnage, that cost per tonne, as you would expect, will decrease. And as evidence, it might be a little hard to see as the arrows go from the blue dot to the yellow dot at 4.3 million tonnes and ultimately on to the orange dot at 5 million tonnes.

So what you actually have as a result is the option we have chosen has both a CapEx and an OpEx advantage over the alternative, plus a number of intangible benefits that we have listed in the release. These include doing CapEx projects at one location rather than having 1 ops team rather than 2, et cetera, et cetera.

Where does that put Mt Magnet? We're on to Slide 20 now. Here, we actually have an overview of the top Australian gold production hubs. And as you can see, once in full flight, the Mt Magnet hub will be producing 360,000 ounces of gold at an average of AUD 1,585 per ounce. So based on comparative FY '25 stats, it will be the fifth largest gold production center in Australia with the second lowest cost profile, truly amazing from modest beginnings when Ramelius involvement in the project back in 2011 and also remembering that there's 100 years or so of mining history at Mt Magnet.

Moving on to Slide 22, the Never Never production schedule. Point I'll make here is, as opposed to Penny and to a lesser degree, Cue, Never Never has grade, but it also has life, 11 years in the first instance. The Never Never mine will provide the horsepower we need to become a 500,000-ounce producer. As you can see in the schedule, at peak mining, we'll be mining approximately 1 million tonnes per annum, with grades increasing in time as we get into the heart of the ore body, especially when we get to the point of combining ore from the Pepper zone with Never Never.

For comparative purposes, Penny over its life of mine to date has contributed 456,000 tonnes at 12 grams. Never Never is expected to contribute 9.3 million tonnes at 6.45 grams over its current life of mine. We no longer have to require high-grade supplementary feed for the Mt Magnet Hub. We have a high-grade baseload and high-grade prospects on our own ground to add further ounces.

Not surprisingly, the PFS results for Never Never are pretty impressive. At first glance, this is inclusive of Pepper, I'll also point out, will contribute to the Mt Magnet Hub from a PFS point of view, 1.8 million ounces in gold produced at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,128, an NPV of $3.5 billion at a gold price of AUD 4,500 and free cash flow ranging from $4.6 billion at a gold price of $4,500 up to $6.4 billion at a gold price of $6,000 an ounce. And this is based on only what we know today.

With 75,000 drill meters planned for Dalgaranga in FY '26, there is scope to derive significant additional value from places like Four Pillars, West Winds, and Applewood and in time, look to extend Never Never at depth, remembering there's some very good deeper hits at Never Never to follow up on.

Moving ahead to Slide 27, which looks to highlight simplistically the upside potential we see on our 5-year plan, which we claim as a base case in which production year -- and in which production year that upside could eventuate. We do remain optimistic that there will be an extension to our existing Penny North high-grade deposit to the Southwest.

As everyone would know, Penny is our highest grade mine in operation. So any extension will add value and production ounces as early as FY '27. See Slide 28 of the deck for our detailed underground drill program, which, as Tim mentioned, Tim Hewitt, our COO, mentioned yesterday, has recently commenced.

Cue underground is the next target with potential additions to production in FY '28 and '29 on success based on known high-grade mineralization below the existing mine plan. Our interest here particularly stems from the deeper intercept of 6 meters at 60.3 grams per tonne. So see Slide 29 for the target areas, noting we have already drilled a number of holes and are just waiting for the assays to be returned.

The Galaxy mine has 2 operating areas with depth extension potential as well as recent drill results at Hesperus and Perseverance South, suggesting the potential for new underground mines relatively close to surface. The impact to production here, given existing mining plans would be as early as FY '29 and then beyond, Slide 31 shows our drill plans that are upcoming, utilizing new underground drill platforms put in this year as part of our increased exploration budget.

Finally, we have Dalgaranga in the area below the Gilbeys pit, which you can see on Slide 32, where there is underground potential to the south with 3 key prospects, West Winds, Four Pillars and Applewood, which will be the focus of this year's resource extension drilling as well as obviously carrying out a lot of grade control drilling into Never Never and Pepper.

We'll now jump on to the Rebecca-Roe DFS, initially speaking to Slide 35. Firstly, I want to recognize the hard work from the technical team in preparing the updated technical studies that we refer to as the Rebecca-Roe DFS that has formed the basis of financial investment decision approved by the Board. Now if I can just touch on the key changes rather than running through the whole detailed document, changes from PFS to DFS, remembering the PFS was delivered back in December 2024.

As discussed earlier, we have pushed construction back by just over a year to allow us to focus on the Mt Magnet plant upgrade firstly. We have declared a Maiden Ore Reserve on the Bombora Underground of around 260,000 ounces. This follows on from the technical work, geotechnical and hydrology work undertaking that was identified as needed doing from the PFS. We also have consolidated mine villages from 2 separate villages into 1 larger camp and increasing the overall room numbers to 460 to account for construction. peak periods as part of that. And we have also slightly increased the throughput of the processing plant from 3 million tonnes to 3.25 million tonnes.

Not unlike others, we have also seen some mining cost increases, both due to total material move going up, but also higher mining contractor rates, somewhere just above 5% is the sense that we're getting in terms of those cost increases. Factoring in all items, we have seen a modest cost increase in both operating and capital costs. However, the project, as you can see from the numbers, remain highly profitable and importantly, it's perfect for us to take advantage of our hub-and-spoke model in what we believe is an underexplored mining region relatively close to Kalgoorlie.

So Slide 36 does have these results. And on the back of strong economics displayed, the Ramelius Board has made a positive financial investment decision, subject to certain milestones being met. This is a real endorsement of both the technical work undertaken by the team, but also our commitment to moving this project forward.

A few points quickly to highlight here, 26.3 million tonnes at 1.4 grams per tonne for 1.1 million ounces of recovered gold. PP&E growth capital of $340 million, $1 billion in cash flow generation at a $4,500 an ounce gold price. Production over the life of the project averages around 130,000 ounces a year, but closer to 140,000 ounces between FY '30 and FY '36 at an all-in sustaining cost of $2,625 an ounce.

And whilst we can acknowledge that Rebecca-Roe will be a higher cost operation compared to Mt Magnet as most are, it does compare pretty favorably to our peers at this cost level without naming names, which generally sit between $2,600 and $2,800 per ounce.

We have a few key milestones on Slide 38 for the Rebecca-Roe project, I'd just like to run through. Probably a little-known fact, we haven't really made a large fuss of it, but Rebecca has received environmental approval under Part V of the Environmental Protection Act, given the company confidence around this Part V process. We are requesting Roe's application also to proceed under Part V to potentially advance the Roe project earlier, and we should have clarity from the regulators on that request in the coming months.

And we're also working with our traditional owners, the Kakarra Aboriginal Corporation to complete a Native Title Mining Agreement, which we're at the final stages of which.

Okay. We're on the last slide. Firstly, we are a reliable team. We've demonstrated that with our last 5 years of delivery to guidance, both from a cost and production perspective. We believe that's a peer-leading track record. Our balance sheet proves our position as a sector leader in cash flow generation. We're confident that this will continue for the next 10 years.

In terms of dividends, our dividends are well above mid-tier gold producers with our Board committed to going forward, maintain and grow shareholder returns in the future as our cash flow, particularly as our cash flow generation increases.

We have mentioned that we have a production growth plan with significant growth that importantly is fully funded. This has all led to our inclusion in the ASX 100. And last but not least, we have exceptional exploration upside at all of our sites with a real focus in the short term of both Mt Magnet and Dalgaranga to enhance our base case production profile.

Thanks for listening. That concludes the presentation. Let's please move to Q&A, if we could, [ Harmony ]. We'll initially go to the audio questions or the phone questions first.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs.

Firstly, congrats on the update. No doubt, a lot of work has gone in from the whole team. So well done. First one for me, just more on the cost and CapEx piece, and thanks for setting out sort of the underground mining costs and growth CapEx piece.

Just noting in the Mt Magnet study, you've highlighted that you need further tailings from 2028. Are you able to just step through what the plan is there and what the associated capital cost and timing of that would be if it's not included in that 5-year CapEx outlook, please?

Hugo, yes, it's all included in that 5-year plan. I guess I'm probably referencing at Slide 22. It's more I think classified as sustaining capital in that instance. I think our plan isn't probably out until 2028 from memory and then it starts to kick in some rises for that to occur. So it is included in that -- in the profile. I can dig in further after the call if you want to try and find that.

Yes, it's definitely in there, Hugo. I think we get to '28 on sort of a super cell over the current and then beyond that, we move forward, but we've accounted -- we like to think we account for everything. We're reasonably conservative in my plans, base case, everything should be in there.

Yes. And it's still PFS level as well.

Yes. No, fantastic. That's great. That's all in there. And then in and around the recycling of Dalgaranga plant and then taking some equipment across the Mt Magnet expansion, what equipment would that leave you with? And is there a scope to potentially monetize that to potentially further increase the cash piece and derisk the CapEx further?

We're taking the SAG mill and the gravity circuit, remembering that the Dalgaranga plant, the front end is not really fit for purpose. So it doesn't leave a lot, and there's no ball mill there because remembering that Spartan to process hard rock needed to install a ball mill.

There's obviously the gold room and the tanks, and we'll be taking those as well. So we'll take what we can. It won't leave a lot. But I think one point to make is that the mill is fully permitted. And there's a footprint there that on the basis of significant exploration success, then you retain that option. But we will take what we can.

And the most significant part of that is the SAG mill. It may not be well understood, but that SAG mill was considerably larger than the one we have at Mt Magnet and much better suited to running at 3 million tonnes per annum than the current one at Magnet.

So the fact that the Mt Magnet circuit as it stands is basically going to treat Dalgaranga ore and the Dalgaranga circuit in parts is going to treat Mt Magnet ore might sound a bit of odd, but there's some really sound logic behind it.

Your next question comes from Andrew Bowler from Macquarie.

Just looking at the Never Never underground outputs of around about 1 million tonnes per annum. Just wondering how notional that figure is. Is there a potential to flex that up as the strike extents increase as you head more into Pepper? Or is that something you've looked at closely in that sort of 1 million tonnes per annum is a pretty sticky number coming out of Never Never?

Look, I'd like to think that our guys, when they give us a number both in terms of production and then also in terms of grade, it's a number they can deliver on. So there's been a lot of work. We've had to put in extra work into the ventilation piece to make sure that you can get the number of pieces of kit down the hole, so when you actually hit the wider parts of the ore body, you can capitalize on that.

When you start looking 5 years out, whether this mine can go, I know Spartan had aspirations to go to 1.25 million tonnes per annum, 1.3 million tonnes per annum potentially. It's just not in our guys' nature to put that on the table in the first instance. We'll see how we go when we get there, but possibly. The similar thing applies to grade. We have a 9-gram resource at Penny West, and we've got a 7-gram reserve. The reason I mentioned that is because you've got some parallels here. You have a 9-gram resource and you've got about a 7-gram reserve. Is that conservative? Potentially, but I'd rather have a number that I can deliver at least rather than coming back and explaining why we're not delivering to a reserve.

Understood. And also, just obviously, this study is based on Never Never only and Pepper as well. What's the potential for a restart of the Gilbeys pit now that you're looking to truck material the way to Mt Magnet? I mean is that sort of that decision to go with the unified processing option at Mt Magnet pretty much preclude a restart of Gilbeys? Or is that something down the track that could be explored?

We will -- thanks, Andrew. We will try to exploit the Never Never pit on the top of the Never Never ore body, and that's in the -- in one of the documents. That's important. It adds a few ounces, but it's quite important from having another access, another ventilation access into the top of the ore body. In fact, we'd like to have that now according to the team.

But the reality is that even if we wanted to mine another cutback at Gilbeys, there's a number of things preventing that. One is that it's still got a considerable amount of water. Probably more importantly, our portal access into Never Never underground is in the wall of that pit. And the third thing is that it's somewhat restricted on both sides, a cutback that is from the waste dump on one side and an old tailings dam on the other side. So we see that as pretty impractical.

We'll access pretty much that ore where we can from underground, particularly to the South. Based on drilling success, we do see potential for a second access into a southern part of the mine whilst we're concurrently mining in Never Never and Pepper ultimately.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Alex Barkley from RBC.

Just firstly, understanding that cumulative free cash flow growth chart you've got Page 3 of your main release. Is that before CapEx? I know you talked about FY '26, maybe the cash balance falling, but that looks like you've got some rising free cash flow scenarios?

Yes. So Alex, it's Darren. We've got the -- I was using different $4,500 an ounce, $5,250 an ounce and $6,000 an ounce. So that's what we've modeled.

What it doesn't include is exploration dividend and acquisition costs. So some of the one-offs in FY '25 that we'll be paying in FY '26 aren't included in that piece. So if you look at the actual FY year growth pathways to 500,000-ounce release, we actually made commentary, I think it's on Slide 2 of H2. Using a $5,000 -- sorry, $5,000 gold price, we are expecting the cash balance to get down at a low of $500 million from the current level. So that's sort of what we've modeled. But obviously, gold price is a little higher than that at this stage. So that's probably a good reference point for you, Alex.

But importantly, it includes CapEx.

Okay. It's just one-offs, yes, no problem. And you called out a $200 million working capital build. Was that around stockpile increase? I think you called out? And was it to be used in FY '28? I could...

Yes, the synergy referenced, Alex, working capital?

Yes.

Yes. So what we've done there is we just wanted to -- obviously, if Spartan had taken their own path, then there would be a need to build up substantial stockpiles before their plant was to be recommissioned at a 1.3 million tonne level.

So we just wanted to calculate there, okay, what would that have looked like? Basically, the mining costs are approximately $7 million a year -- sorry, $7 million a month. So we just wanted to flag that on what that looked like. We haven't included that working capital number as synergies. It's just more for information purposes.

It's not included in the $1 billion.

Yes. Okay. So you've taken it out. That's all good. Last question. You talked about milling nameplate 5 million tonnes per annum, but sort of processing 4.3 million tonnes per annum. Is that something around extra residence time or just being conservative or what kind of ore blend you're looking at? Just what's the difference between those 2 numbers?

Essentially, it's -- you can go to 5 million tonnes, but remembering we have a 3 million tonne train Circuit 2. And then we have the second train Circuit 1, which will be processing for some considerable time, the Never Never and Dalgaranga Hub, which notionally is going to be coming in at 1.3 million tonnes per annum.

So there are some other sources. There's a startup at the -- I think it's the Four Pillars. We call it Gilbeys underground. We've got the Never Never pit as well. So it's primarily Never Never and then ultimately Pepper. Whilst you have those ore sources in, it makes sense to be down at 1.3 million tonnes per annum because you want that 53-micron. If you ran it at 2 million tonnes, which you could, you obviously need to relax your grind size, you'll take a big penalty. And we're talking about 13% recovery, which is massive to run that at a higher throughput. So it's 4.3 million tonnes per annum because of the ore sources that you have and the need to get to 53 microns. If you didn't have that restriction and it's all -- let's for argument's sake, call it all Mt Magnet do it, you would run both circuits at the max and you'd get 5 million tonnes per annum through.

Yes. I think for our modeling purposes, Alex, with the depletion of the Dalgaranga, we've modeled come FY '37 is when we'd step up from the 4.3 million tonnes per annum to 5 million tonnes per annum. But obviously, we're spending a significant amount on exploration. So we expect that to extend, but we're purely modeled on what we know today on reserves and resources.

There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back to your speakers to address any webcast questions.

I just got a few, operator, on the -- Harmony, on the webcast here. You mentioned share buybacks at some stage. Do you have an idea when that would happen?

So yes, so we had quite a good chat with our Board last week while at site reviewing the option, which they finally approved both for Rebecca-Roe and for Mt Magnet. And one of the other decisions or conversations was around capital allocations.

The Board very much gave the message to management, we want to maintain and grow our shareholder returns. That could be in the form of dividends and/or share buybacks. In the first half of the calendar year 2026, we'll be releasing our new capital allocation framework in which that will all be shared to the market. So that is something the Board is mindful of, especially as our free cash flow generation will significantly increase.

Another question here from the webcast. Can you please discuss any upside potential at Rebecca-Roe, if any?

We're obviously spending, I think, $10 million out there on exploration, probably more so in the Rebecca area, the Jennifer Lode, which is the sort of the high-grade lode in the center of the Rebecca pit, the Rebecca deposit, which is the main deposit on that Rebecca lease has got underground potential, plus a number of other exploration targets.

So we've got our own potential, plus there's a lot of smaller resources, a bit of a patchwork quilt of ownership around us. So there are potential hub-and-spoke opportunities that we mentioned on the call.

And then I think I did mention also in the call, if we get a positive outcome on permitting, then we can bring the Bombora pit, which is part of the road section of the project to bring that forward, which will actually add value to the project and give us a bit more production flexibility where at the moment, it's a year later than Rebecca because of that permitting assumption that we've made.

There was a second follow-up question. I think I basically answered it in my answer to the previous question. And another question came in, sorry. On Slide 16, you show 53 micron was a target grind size for increasing recovery of Dalgaranga with ore leaching at 24 and 48 hours yielding the same result. Is there scope merit to reduce the leach residence time? Or is the mill the bottleneck still?

One of the things I didn't mention on that mill plan is that it's basically we share the leach circuits. So if needed, the beauty of having that combined circuit is that you can actually increase your leach time. What the test work is telling is that we don't need 48 hours at 53 microns. But if for whatever reason, we wanted to increase that grind out to 60 microns or 65 microns, we can play and we've got flexibility with that circuit, which is the beauty of it.

Also, if one circuit is getting a -- we're doing a shutdown on one, we can still be operating the other. So there's a lot of flexibility within that circuit. And only time will tell when we actually start processing the Dalgaranga ore. In terms of how it performs in the plant as opposed to test work, there's always subtle differences between the 2.

Will there be a recorded webcast of this event? Yes, I believe so. And we will make that available on our website.

What are the near-term plans for Edna May? That one always comes up every call. We will get to that later this year in terms of the Board considering our options there, and we'll come back to the market early calendar 2026. In terms of our plans for Edna May, significant engineering works proposed, has RMS capacity or requires substantial outside engineering input. We are building a project team under the stewardship of Alan Thom, our Chief Development Officer. We are building that team up. We'd like to think, in some cases, we're getting in front of a few others who are looking at expansions in new mills. That's one of the reasons why we haven't dared, tried to do an upgrade at Mt Magnet and build a mill at Rebecca-Roe at the same time.

The idea is to build the project team, which we're partway through, get that commenced in the new year at Mt Magnet and then roll that team pretty much into Rebecca-Roe and try to keep that team to basically do 2 projects.

We haven't built a mill from scratch. We've upgraded mills. We've done refurbishments. We're confident that we are using and we have been using Tier 1 engineering consultants all the way through.

What is the time frame on the Eridanus cutback now? How does the capital profile look?

From memory, the answer to that one is we pushed Eridanus cutback because we have Dalgaranga ore coming in down the road, we pushed it back from April 2026 start to later in the year, something like about October, November. So we pushed that back a little bit to cater for more ore coming down the road from Dalgaranga. So we don't need to start that quite as early.

And the capital profile is pretty similar. I think it's about $350 million -- $370 million. So they just bumped up a little bit from the $350 million that we would have had 12 months ago over 3 years starting in FY '27.

In Penny, any qualitative statements you can make about extensional drilling at Penny and Cue? How much excess capacity do you have at Mt Magnet or how much potential low grade?

There is a slide out just on that last question first. In years '28, '29 and '30, we actually put on those bars the low grade that is being processed. And that's the real potential, particularly in those last 3 years where as it is the production ramps up significantly that you are able to potentially displace significant quantities of low-grade ore.

In terms of Penny, the drilling has just started. We've released all the results that we do have. And at Cue, we've put in a number of holes. I think they're shown on the section on Slide 29. So there are some green boxes on there. We're just waiting for results to come back. So I can't really comment on those just yet.

Mindful of time, the market is going to open soon. There's no more questions on the webcast. Nothing else from you, Harmony?

Thank you. There are no further questions via the phone lines.

Okay. Thanks for your listening in. It's quite a long call this morning. There's a lot to get through. Thanks for your attendance. Have a great day.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ramelius Resources September Quarterly Report. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Zeptner, Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to dial in this morning. In addition to the full quarterly report, we have also released a presentation that we'll speak to during this call. Both documents have been uploaded on the ASX platform and will also be available on our website shortly.

This morning, I'm joined by our COO, Tim Hewitt; and our CFO, Darren Millman. Tim and Darren will provide some detail on the operations and financials after I run through the highlights. Whilst the presentation as a whole is relatively high level, I do note that there is a lot more detail that can be found within the quarterly report itself. As usual, there will be an opportunity for listeners to ask questions at the end, whether that be through the teleconference or the webinar depending on how you have joined the call.

So for those who have the presentation deck handy, I'll initially be speaking to Slide 3. The September quarter for Ramelius has been a period of both operational transition and strategic progress. Our quarterly production of 55,013 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,836 an ounce was in line with our expectations with grades at Cue reverting back closer to ore reserve estimates following several quarters of overperformance.

Given this and mining at Penny moving more to the Penny West deposit as opposed to Penny North, Mt Magnet production grades will be slightly lower going forward until such time that we see material quantities of Dalgaranga, specifically Never Never ore available in late FY '26.

Tomorrow, we will be issuing full year FY '26 guidance and a 5-year outlook, and we encourage you to dial in for that call as well, noting that we will be a little earlier, 9:00 a.m. Eastern, 6:00 a.m. Western Standard Time.

Our production for the quarter was achieved without any lost time injuries, but unfortunately, there were 5 restricted work injuries recorded, which resulted in a marginally higher 12-month moving average total recordable injury frequency rate or TRIFR. Now whilst the RWIs were minor in nature, this result is still disappointing and our focus continues to be on ensuring a safe environment for all employees and contractors, particularly as our exploration activities ramp up and Dalgaranga increases its development rates.

During the quarter, Ramelius launched its Life Saving Rules, which complement our principal mining hazards as we continue our journey towards improving our proactive safety culture.

The closing cash and gold balance for the quarter was $827.7 million, up from $809.7 million at 30 June, which was after the Spartan acquisition and related costs of $74.3 million, which was net of the cash acquired from Spartan.

During the quarter, we released our 2025 resource and reserve statement with mineral resources of 12 million ounces and ore reserves of 2.4 million ounces, which were up 38% and 118%, respectively, on the 2024 numbers, but also noting that this does not include a Maiden, Never Never, Pepper or Roe underground ore reserve. Stay tuned tomorrow for updates on both of these.

Our exploration and resource definition activities for the quarter focused on drilling at the Galaxy Mine at Mt Magnet, specifically at Perseverance South in Hesperus to further target the BIF mineralization. At Penny, drilling was focused on extending the mine life beyond FY '26. As you're no doubt aware, the Board has approved an increased FY '26 exploration budget of $80 million to $100 million and with $18.8 million spent in the quarter. And Tim will also talk to this a little later also.

Work on the Rebecca-Roe DFS is currently being finalized and is planned to be published tomorrow, along with our Never Never PFS Mt Magnet Dalgaranga integration studies and our 5-year plan.

Our transformational combination with Spartan Resources completed on the 31st of July via a scheme of arrangement. Spartan Simon Lawson and Deanna Carpenter have joined the Ramelius Board as Deputy Chair and Non-Executive Director, respectively, while other members of the Spartan team have crossed over, bringing with them a great deal of enthusiasm and plenty of new ideas. We're grateful to have them on board.

I'm on to Slide 4, where you can see the chart on the left, which breaks down the quarterly production. This sequential decline is not surprising and reflects the gap left by Edna May as that operation is now in care and maintenance and the outperformance of Cue subsides as the pits transition from the oxide and transitional zones into fresh rock.

With that, I'll now hand over to Tim to discuss the operations in more detail.

Thanks, Mark, and good morning to everyone on the call. I'll start on Slide 5 of the presentation, where we'll discuss the mining and production metrics. The September quarter saw us mine 560,000 tonnes of ore, an increase of 63% on the prior quarter, contributed by the mobilization of the third fleet at Cue and a lower mine strip ratio. As Mark previously mentioned, the mine grade of 2.74 grams per tonne has decreased, and this is in line with Cue mine performance now being closer to the model predictions and lower grade mining locations at both Penny West and Galaxy.

Total tonnes processed for the quarter was comparable to the prior quarter at a grade of 3.3 grams per tonne and an excellent recovery of 97.1%. Whilst mill throughput was comparable to the prior quarter, lower grades, as mentioned, resulted in lower gold production in the quarter compared to the previous.

On to Slide 6, we take a more detailed look at the Mt Magnet operations for the quarter. As Mark mentioned, safety is still not where we want it to be with the 3 restricted work injuries at Mt Magnet. We continue to focus on our critical controls and our leadership responsibility around our highest risks in the business.

Open pit mining is solely focused on Cue. The Break of Day and White Heat pits recorded an average mine grade of 3.63 grams per tonne and 3.47, respectively, during the quarter. We have now progressed past the weather zones of the ore body and are now mining in the fresh rock of Cue.

As flagged in prior quarters, we had expected the ore body outperformance to reduce as fresh rock is reached, and there are detailed tables on Pages 7 and 8 of the quarterly report, which show the performance of the Break of Day and White Heat ore bodies since commencement.

Haulage at Cue was uninterrupted in the quarter with tonnages increasing 36% on the prior quarter.

At Galaxy, total mine tonnes are up on the prior quarter with additional stoping fronts available now we've seen the benefit of the second jumbo that we added last year.

The mine grade increased from the prior quarter with higher grading stopes making up the majority of the schedule from Mars. And the team's focus on operational excellence and cost control continues to deliver strong results, positioning us well for the quarters ahead.

Now on to Slide 7 and Penny. Both mined ore tonnes and grade were down the prior quarter. Ore body reconciliation performance was excellent, though, and we achieved an average grade of 8.21 grams per tonne. Gold production totaled 11,109 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,928 per ounce, generating cash flow of just over -- or just under $21 million.

Despite the lower production, Penny continues to generate strong cash flows and our underground drilling campaign is aimed at extending the mine's life and unlocking further value, noting that this drilling has just commenced in the target area, which is just below Penny North.

Moving on to Slide 8 and Cue. A total of 399,000 tonnes at a grade of 2.4 grams per tonne were mined across Cue in the quarter. Mine tonnes are up 95% on the prior quarter. As stated before, we've mobilized the third fleet at Cue and with a declining strip ratio, we're able to access more ore.

Selective stockpiling and processing allowed us to mill 202,000 tonnes of Cue ore at 4.4 grams per tonne, which while down the prior quarter is still remarkable grade to be mined from an open pit.

Gold production totaled 30,625 ounces at all-in sustaining cost of $1,365 per ounce, generating an operational cash flow of $73.1 million. It's hard not to mention the cash flow that this asset has generated since mining commenced with that amount now up to $420 million.

Slide 9 takes us to Dalgaranga, where we've really hit the ground running, the mine being successfully integrated into the release group during the quarter. Just like to shout out the team, both in Perth and at site for the successful transition. A lot of hard work has gone into it, and we're really hitting the ground.

During the quarter, 920 meters of lateral development was undertaken in the Never Never underground mine with 628 meters of this done under Ramelius from 31st of July. The planned addition of the second jumbo will accelerate development in the upcoming quarter, including the start of ore driving to set up the first production levels. As noted in the quarterly report, Barminco was successful in the mining tender with a 4-year contract executed in the quarter also.

We're making rapid progress of key infrastructure items, including installation of the interim primary vent system and extension of the electrical supply underground. And we look forward to releasing our Never Never PFS and integration studies tomorrow and taking you through those.

Now on to exploration. So Slides 10 through to 13 talk through our exploration activities. At Dalgaranga, we drilled across Never Never, Pepper and Four Pillars. Never Never and Pepper drilling were focused on infill drilling with the results continuing to reinforce our geological model. Results for the quarter at Never Never included 25.4 meters at 11.4, 3.5 at 11.7 and 27.6 meters at 14.4 grams per tonne. While at Pepper, drilling intercepted 13.5 meters at 6.22 grams per tonne.

At Four Pillars, we are resource definition drilling as we look to add to the inventory of the mine and results for the quarter include 6.92 meters at 4.85 and 2.26 meters at 4.51 grams per tonne.

At Mt Magnet, Slide 11. Perseverance South, we continue to follow up after encouraging results in the June quarter, and we're targeting the prospective Banded Iron formation or the BIF. This is immediately east of the Galaxy underground mine. Results for the quarter include 9.44 meters at 8.8 and 3.2 meters at 10.1. These high-grade intercepts reinforce the potential for further resource expansion in the Mt Magnet area.

On Slide 12, we talk to Hesperus pit, which sits a few hundred meters from Saturn and was historically mined solely on the granodiorite geology. We continue to test for the granodiorite posted mineralization with deeper drilling extensions of mineralization and a biff in the footwall of the main granodiorite. Results for the quarter include 42.5 meters at 3.54 grams per tonne and 25 meters at 3. These results again support our strategy of targeting near-mine opportunities to extend mine life and enhance value.

Mt Magnet has huge potential, and we just need to continue drilling. Our commitment to this is reflected in our increased exploration guidance for FY '26 of $80 million to $100.

Slide 13 talks to Rebecca-Roe, where we continue RC drilling of the near mine targets T1, T1 North, T4, Cleo and Rebecca Footwall. The Rebecca footwall drilling has also validated the previously defined Jennifer Lode in the process of reaching the target footwall position. Recent results there include 51 meters at 2.91 and 37 meters at 1.78.

With that, I'll now hand over to Gareth.

Thank you, Tim, and I'm glad to be joining everyone today. I will be initially speaking to Slide 14. On Slide 14, we show our M&A scorecard, which many of you will be familiar with. This is an important slide for us as it clearly illustrates that our disciplined approach to M&A continues to pay off.

The figures in the square brackets represents the cash and gold generated by our operations over the quarter. As Tim touched on, Cue has been a remarkable investment for Ramelius with $420 million generated in free cash flow since commencement in early FY '25. That investment contributed $100 million over the quarter. We look forward to discussing our Rebecca-Roe DFS and plans for Dalgaranga at Mt Magnet tomorrow and watch our cash bars grow over time.

Moving on, let's turn to the financial highlights for the quarter on Slide 15. The September quarter has been another strong quarter for Ramelius with $129 million of free cash flow being generated. What is really pleasing about this is that despite our lower production in Q1, which was in line with our expectation, cash flow remains very strong, demonstrating the high margins being generated by the business.

During the quarter, we sold 54,773 ounces at an average realized price of $4,528 per ounce, which includes a mix of spot and committed forward sales. This results in total revenue for the quarter of $248 million. The realized price for the quarter was up 2% on improving spot price and less hedging commitments. The Australian dollar gold price improved 15% over the quarter.

The all-in sustaining for the quarter was $1,836 per ounce, which was impacted by the lower grades as previously discussed. The resulting all-in sustaining margin, which was the average realized gold price less the all-in sustaining cost was $2,692 per ounce and represents an all-in sustaining margin of 59%.

On Slide 16, we show a breakdown of the quarterly movements in cash and gold. Operational cash flow was $159.1 million. The operational cash flow funded growth capital investments for the quarter of $19 million, which mainly relates to the underground development at Never Never and at the camp expansion at Mt Magnet.

Our investment in exploration resource definition for the quarter totaled $18.8 million and focused on Dalgaranga, Mt Magnet, Cue and Penny. Resulting underlying free cash flow for the quarter was $129 million. From this, a net amount of $74.3 million was paid for the acquisition of Spartan and transaction-related costs. This is net of $199 million of cash held by Spartan on the date of the scheme implementation. We also paid $4.4 million to Dalgaranga royalty holders in the quarter to reduce these royalties in aggregate from 2.5% to 2%.

Lastly, we paid total income tax of $20 million with $12 million of this related to FY '25, and the balance being income tax installments made in advance for FY '26. We expect to pay the final FY '25 income tax payment of approximately $118 million in the December quarter. As we are now paying income tax in advance and have been for some months, we do not foresee these large one-off tax payments to continue. The resulting closing cash and gold was $827.7 million.

Now on Slide 17, we show our track record of generating significant cash flows. This underpins our ability to reward our shareholders with dividends and investments in growth, all while remaining -- while maintaining a robust balance sheet. As you will see, we have over $1 billion in available liquidity, which is made up of cash and gold at September and our available undrawn debt facility.

With that, I'll now hand back to Mark.

Thanks, Darren and team. On Slide 18, we have summarized our key focus areas for the remainder of the calendar year. We continue to look to improve our safety performance. We have work to do in this area. completion of the Rebecca-Roe DFS, which is to be delivered tomorrow, significantly increase our exploration activities, leveraging off the Spartan exploration D&A, which is evidenced by our increased guidance and our almost $20 million spend in the first quarter, noting that we are ramping up from a lower level previously.

And finally, complete the integration studies and 5-year outlook, which is also scheduled to be released tomorrow. The study will include our selected processing option at Mt Magnet/Dalgaranga, our 5-year growth plan for the company, which include Dalgaranga and Rebecca-Roe as well as detailed guidance for FY '26. These key focus areas will drive our next phase of growth and value creation. If we can now open up the line for questions, please, Harmony.

[Operator Instructions] Your first phone question comes from Knox O'Neil, a private investor. Your next question comes from Alex Barkley from RBC.

A question around the costs for this quarter. They were maybe a little bit higher than what you flagged in your outlook in March, and I appreciate that does change tomorrow. Was there any one-off costs to call out this quarter, maybe around the Spartan deal integration, redundancy, something like that?

Alex, it's Darren. Nothing sort of that's material for mine. As you know, looking to target or the previous guidance for the March 2025 subsequent to the acquisition of Spartan, I think we're targeting around the $1,800 all-in sustaining cost sort of space at $1,900. So for us, we're not seeing anything sort of coming out of the blue in the context of the Spartan transaction. We've obviously paid that $74 million for all the costs that came through. So nothing that's coming out. It's really just the grade that we saw process in the quarter versus that of Q4 that has sort of largely just increased that cost. So nothing of material substance.

Yes. If I may, Alex, it's Mark. The $0.25 per share as part of the transaction represented about pretty close to $270 million. And remembering that Spartan had about $200 million in cash reserves at the time. So there was that delta, which there may have been a feeling in the market that the cash required to pay out that $0.25 as part of the transaction was matched by the cash balance, and it wasn't quite the case. And that's the large really, the transaction costs on top of that were pretty minimal. It was really the balance of that $0.25 a share.

And just a comment on cost inflation. I think there's a little bit of inflation in the market from when we put our mine plan out in March, you're probably seeing sort of 5% -- between 5% and 10% inflation with wages and things like that, just bumping up our costs a little bit. Obviously, the lower ounces also played into it.

Yes. And obviously, paying a higher royalty connected with a higher gold price compared to March 2025, too.

Sure. And I think at the time you had that -- you said the outlook Penny reserve grade was maybe 14 grams per tonne and since it's kind of come down to 8. Was that -- was a higher number in your thinking when you gave that outlook? Or did you have an idea that it might be coming down pretty soon?

14 -- thanks, Alex. 14 is pretty close to the Penny West ore reserve grade -- sorry, the Penny North ore reserve grade. Penny West is pretty much half that, around 7. So if you assume that we're mining for argument 50% of each going forward, then you should get a combined grade closer to 10. So no, that wasn't unexpected. 14 is Penny North, but obviously a lower grade at Penny West, which is high grade but narrower than Penny North. So yes, we expected those grades to be coming down as we mine what's left currently at Penny.

Okay. Last question for me, another one around Penny. The exploration, have you learned anything new about when the mine life ends? It's still sort of end of FY '26? Is there a chance that pushes on? Or are you more looking for repeat [ lenders ] that could add meaningful life down the track?

The drilling -- we still have to complete the underground drilling. The surface drilling certainly looks like there's potential there, but we need to finish that drilling off. And we're trying to get that done as quick as we can. So we can, I guess, visualize that and hope that it does add life there, but we can't really comment on that yet until we get those results.

The underground drill rig has only just started drilling, as Tim mentioned. I think currently, even on the mine plan that we currently have, I think it goes into the first quarter of FY '27, not by much. And the surface rig is continuing to do drilling to the north. We're following up some of the drilling there with some geophysics as well. So no, we're still working on that, Alex.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Paul Kaner from Ord Minnett.

Just obviously, we're going to get a better understanding of this tomorrow. But just your thinking at the moment around sort of capital allocation, capital returns, noting you're going to go through a more capital-heavy phase over the next 5 years, so dividends coming down. Just thoughts on buyback, considering how strong your balance sheet is and noting your dividend policy is linked to free cash flow.

Yes. Thanks, Paul. It's Darren. Yes, our Board is very conscious. We are -- on two things. One, we are in an investment period for FY '26 as the market is aware of. We are having consideration to capital allocation and timing around Rebecca-Roe, and that will all come out tomorrow. But we're also -- our Board is also recognizing this free cash flow will significantly grow very, very quickly.

So we did have a chat, the Board. I've had a full Board meeting up at site last week and very much the mantra of we want to maintain and grow in the context of shareholder returns. So we'll sort of speak to a little bit of that tomorrow. But the decision will probably the first half of next year is when we'll really dive in. We are both looking at dividends and also buybacks, but it's just something probably for the first half of next year, and we'll get that clarity to you.

There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back to your speakers.

Yes. We do have one question on the webinar from Paul Davidson. What is the current hedging position? And when does that hedging end? I'll let you take that one, Darren.

Yes. So we no longer put in place forwards. We're basically just running that book off. We actually even repaid some of that hedge book early. There's about 8,000 ounces. And so basically, the forward is largely done at the end of FY '26. We are probably 8,000 ounces left there. So there's that component. We have some 0 cost collars in place, 22,500. I think the top end of the price is $5,900, 2,500 ounces that's FY '27. And we are just considering whether to potentially look at some puts or 0 cost collars in FY '28. But that's sort of -- once again, that will be put out there in tomorrow's release. But once again, nothing significant and probably the clear message is that our Board and our shareholders want to have full gold price participation. So we're taking that into consideration as we move forward.

That's all the webinar questions that we can see. There might be one more question, Harmony, that's come on the audio.

We do have another audio question from Michael Scantlebury from Euroz Hartleys.

Just a quick one from me. timing on the stamp duty payment, just when that would likely fall given -- I know it's up to the state government and when they give that termination to you. And then just maybe some quick comments on Edna May, given kind of lack of value in the market for the asset. What's your kind of current thinking around that asset at the moment?

It's Darren. So we estimate approximately $135 million due on the stamp duty. Our kind of working estimate is somewhere between 6 to 9 months post-transaction close. So sometimes they'll sort of look for it earlier, but we've actually still got some stamp duty outstanding on previous transactions. But given the quantum, we're kind of estimating either December quarter or the March quarter in this financial year.

I guess on Edna May, basically, we are getting a lot of incoming interest, but our focus has been to deliver the Rebecca-Roe DFS, the Never Never PFS/Mt Magnet, Dalgaranga integration study in a 5-year outlook. So we've been pretty busy, and you'll see that tomorrow. But I think the BD team here, I think, will then turn their mind to Edna May and look to respond to some of these incoming interests probably in the first half of next year and look to really recognize that value in some way, shape or form. So it's a probably job for that first half of next year in Edna May.

There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back to Mr. Zeptner for closing remarks.

Yes, nothing more to add. Obviously, tomorrow is a big day. We've actually decided to split the calls because there's a lot of information to come tomorrow. I look forward to talking to you then. Have a good day. Thank you.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.