Aeris Resources (ASX:AIS) Q1 2027 Earnings Call

0:01 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the RSE Zoologist quarterly results presentation. As usual, we'll run through a high-level result at a group level and then we'll have a bit more detailed discussion around the operations and projects. As everyone knows by now, RSE has got two operating mines. We've got the Tritton copper mine in New South Wales and we'll go into the detail which has been with the company for a long time, and as we've talked a lot about, is working on a big growth plan to set that business up for a substantial life. And then we've got the Crackdale Goldmine in Queensland, producing around 40,000 ounces of gold, and has been around for a long time, and as we'll talk about, his golden battle is a really exciting story, and we did release some results. from that in the last quarter.

0:57 And then the two projects, the Jaguar Copper Zinc Mine in Western Australia and the Stockwell Project in Victoria and we'll touch on those as we go through the presentation. At a group level, once again, was a solid quarter for Harris with popular production ahead of plan, specifically driven by good production coming out of Britain and at 9,000 at a total what we call production 9,300 tonnes. Thurston production was head of plan, Krakow was, production is on track to achieve guidance, the quarter grades was a bit lower because of sequencing of stoves, but that will be made up in the next few quarters.

1:43 and the annual guidance, as we discussed before, we're in fact to achieve that and it's mainly driven by the consolation deposit. It is on track. The growth capital which we spent to set that mine up and really set it up for a 10-year mine plan is now on track. A waste of it is underway and we see post-production coming out of there around March. As I said earlier, Golden Platter is an exciting story. We'll talk a bit more about it and then cash receivables at $178 million. It's down in the last quarter, but it is due to a significant amount of growth and sustaining capital investments we're making in the business to set it up.

2:32 When we look at Britain's specific proper production at close to 6,000 tonnes. That was lower than last quarter but as expected that was always planned. In fact they were ahead of plan for the quarter and the mill run rate is running at 1.8 million tonnes. There it is, so there it goes to plumber month which was running at an annualised rate of 2 million tonnes. So the mill is showing if you put tonnes in front of it, it can handle between 1.8 and 2 million tonnes and that is driven currently by the significant amount of tonnes coming out of the Moriwambi pit and that pit as we discussed before will finish off towards the back end of November with final tonnes that will settle on the stockpile which will be processed in the next, in the next, till the end of FY27.

3:33 What was a critical call is a VOCA tank. As we've said before, we're drilling a VOCA tank out to convert the inert resource to indicate it so we can put a mine plan around it. but all the way through there was an area which we looked at and I might just jump there, sort of you can see this area where we expected to just put the development through and keep going to get to the next levels as we pull them out where there's a bigger whole body sitting down below we just convert some of those areas to scopes and we've added those tons into the FY27 plan. What that means though is we are spending more money on sustaining capital as we work through but also we're getting additional tons from AvocaTank.

4:25 The real exciting story for AvocaTank is of course what you see on that image from 4700 down is the future of AvocaTank looks really strong and the building is confirming that there's a significant resource there to be mined in the future. Then if we look at a constellation, the construction is underway, a lot of good work by the project team, you can see a lot of work has been done on the site, the constructor, the offices, the lay down areas, the casting dams and then There's a 25km haul road, which already 5km has been completed and sealed, so they sit it in 5km sections, so the next one will be done within the next month.

5:20 and that will then be ready for all haulage starting in March to get the tons to the Triton Mill. There you can see that this thing is well underway, we're already in oxide ore that has been stockpiled and as we said we're expecting first ore to come out of that in March and then everything on both capital costs, the capital and the project timeline is online to achieve those dates. That is a key feature for Curtin at the back end of this financial year where we see significant amount of good, great funds coming out of this and will feed the mill in quarter four and the back end of quarter three which will really set Curtin up for a very strong finish to FY27.

6:19 New York to Krakow once again. Krakow, as it has been over the last few years, achieved a plan. They did a great job on the mining side. They mined the tons, although the grade was slightly lower than the internal budget because we had to re-sequence the plan. but those higher grade funds will come out in the next few quarters. The real upside, we are also at Cracow working on a tailings dam uplift. That will kick off early in the new year and then that will set it up once again for extending the mine life. The real opportunity of course is what we announced earlier, what we announced last week. mostly golden plateau resource updates and you can see there there's already on the resource base now three million tons at two, two gram a ton gold of which two and a half is open pit Now as we said before that is where we see a significant potential life increase for certain if you think about the process longer than 600,000 tons.

7:28 We have been saying consistently that the neutral program which we're working on has got a high potential to extend that even further. Now we're working on the mine plan on this. We're doing the mine designs. The Tarrant mine design as you can see there looks like an open pit mine on the left hand side with the potential to go underground. The location of Golden Plateau is literally, if you look at this map, less than two kilometers, it's nearly one kilometer from the process plant, so location wise it's on the mining lease. The work we're doing now is to convert this current resource into a life of mine plan and add that to the current Cracow Life and we've been saying this consistently, we will come out with a new updated plan, a life of mine plan for Cracow and Fulton within the next three to six months and that will then define both of those operations in terms of life but also in terms of the opportunities so for the next step for Golden Plateau is a drill program which we are working on and then the conversion of of course of the the mine planning of the resource into mine plan but at the same time we busy working on and lodging the mining application with a department to get all the necessary approvals to start Golden Plateau within the next 12 to 18 months. And that then plus what we're mining out of this Western

9:01 Rainfield will give us the life we're looking for at Krakow. On the project side, we've done some base metal drilling as we discussed in FY2026. Anomalies, we've done eight holes. Three of them really looks very interesting. The team we're doing, we've done Dano EM in Panther. This looks like there's a conductor and the guys are doing more technical work to refine the targets and then we will look at potential further drilling on those eight targets. At the same time, we've discussed before, we have done some gold exploration targeting and the plan is still to target some of those gold anomalies in FY27.

9:55 On Stockman, we have finished off the draft feasibility study. We looked at further opportunities. The team are taking that on board and there would be a another review of the feasibility study and we will bring it out within the next three to six months. From project we just think there's more opportunities now that we simplified the process we're looking for opportunities on capital and recoveries to improve the position. At a group level cash receivables down to 78. Really it goes around the growth investment in the business. You can see Hilton and Krakow with the operating cash flows and then the capital at 64 million dollars. The bulk of that was for growth capital and that is really just setting up consolation for that 10-15 year mine plan as we discussed.

11:03 So that sort of summarized the quarter. Once again, we're very happy with the outcome. Good quarters, strong results. Boston Capital well managed within plan and on time. And we're really excited about the growth investments as we move Constellation and Krakow into longer life assets. And we will come up with that in the March quarter.

11:32 I'll close it off there.

11:36 I'm happy to open for questions. If you want to put a question, please just put up your hand and then I'll open it for you. Morning Paul. Morning

12:07 Andre. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple quickly. Just on that growth spend over the year, how should we think about it I guess on a quarterly basis? Is it going to be peak spend sort of this quarter and next and then sort of rolls over significantly in the fourth quarter as Constellation hits commercial production?

12:33 Yes, the next two quarters will be the big stand from an infrastructure and the piece of point of view, but then once that is in production, that will come back just to sustaining capital.

12:48 Yeah, great. And then just on Golden Plateau, I guess I know it's still sort of early days, but when should we be expecting that to potentially come into the mine plant?

13:00 We expect it to come into the plan within the next 12 to 18 months. Once we lodge the application for approvals, the expectation is that it will take about 12 months. We should have mine plans and specifically for open plant mining in place in the next few months so we can lodge the applications.

13:23 Okay, great. So first of all, what, in sort of 18 months to...

13:29 Yeah, I would say, because it's not a big cutback, I think you'll be in all pretty quick once you start.

13:38 Okay, that's it from me, Andre, thank you.

13:41 Thanks Paul. I don't know if there's any other questions. Anyone else want to put up their hand, I'll open it up. Or if you want to ask a question, you can also pop a question into the chat box. Alright, I don't see anyone else putting up their hand on that. I would thank everyone for joining the presentation and we'll talk again in three months time.

14:35 Thank you.