Aurelia Metals Ltd

ASX:AMI

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Aurelia Metals Limited March 2024 Quarterly Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bryan Quinn, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Thank you for calling in today for Aurelia Metals third quarter results for financial year 2024. Firstly, my executive leadership team members Martin Cummings and Andrew Graham, who will provide some updates and then join me for the Q&A. We will be using the presentation circulator today as a reference if you would like to follow this presentation. Let me start by highlighting that our solid third quarter production performance has been underpinned by Peak North and South Mine delivering 10% higher ore mining volumes and 13% higher processing volumes and the Dargues Gold Mine delivering slightly above target for all our on target for processing, all efforts towards delivering our FY '24 budget and delivering quarter-on-quarter improvements that we've discussed in our previous quarterly presentations.Our project and exploration teams are continuing to build our future pipeline for our growing base metals portfolio with some exciting releases and milestones presented during this quarter also. Federation Project has delivered many achievements and there are more planned over the next 2 quarters, including first stope ore in Q1 FY '25 which I'll talk to later.Our focused efforts to remain on disciplined capital management to keep our balance sheet robust with the cash balance remaining steady since last quarter reporting of $106.9 million and $144 million liquidity available. This is very important for Aurelia and a platform to build our credibility for our ongoing journey and commitment to sustainably grow our business in line with our vision, values and strategies. With a strong outlook in gold and base metals demand and with our established infrastructure and resource base and our recently revised regional operating model being implemented in the quarter to achieve our goals, we remain committed to deliver the best performance possible in FY '24 so we can continue on the journey of building our base metals business into FY '25 and beyond to create shareholder value.To support this growth potential, we released some exciting drilling results at Federation this quarter and also at Nymagee to confirm the high-quality resource potential at both of these locations. There are significant results for Aurelia as we continue to review our work -- to review and work on our portfolio and pipeline of opportunities beyond what we already have in our resource model of [ 26 million ] tonnes in the Cobar region. The results also confirm our direction and transition to base metals business, which is a positive upside, and Andrew will talk to more of this in his section.If I can just move to Slide 4 on the production and costs. In summary, during the third quarter Aurelia produced 14,500 ounces of gold, 4,300 tonnes of zinc, 5,800 tonnes of lead and 300 tonnes of copper. Notably, zinc and lead were up 30% and 46% relatively this quarter, in line with our narrative in the December quarter report.Our group production was however largely impacted by Peak processing plants online streaming analyzer, which reduced our recoveries of base metals and forced management to move to low grade feed to prevent a loss of high grade base metals that we had planned in quarter 3 and I'll discuss this in more detail. These results generated positive group operating cash flows of $4.2 million. This $4.2 million does not include cash flow, which was impacted by timing of shipments and sales from Peak, where we are sitting with stocks on hand of [ over 40 million ] at the end of the quarter 3 that will largely transfer into quarter 4. We're anticipating a stronger quarter 4 cash flow based on production and sales in our plant. Martin will unpack some of these details in his section. The impact of these operational issues impacted the inability to sell our products this quarter, which resulted in all-in sustaining cost per ounce being higher than planned, which is expected to reverse in the June quarter. We also had some higher costs from Peak, which I'll talk to you in the Peak section.Overall, we're committed to deliver on the upside of gold guidance, remain on guidance for lead and copper and have revised our zinc guidance down and our all-in sustaining costs upwards. Also slightly reduced the growth capital guidance to comment on the delays on non-critical path project work Federation in addition to our expanding capital guidance which we are partly managing through our capital management framework.If I just move on to Slide 5, safety and environment. We continue to put safety on oils and have some improvements this quarter. However, our people having incidents and injuries, and we cannot rest until all these people on site return home every shift injury-free. We've continued a disciplined process of reviewing fatal risk and business material risks across the sites and business every month. And we continue to have our leaders focus on safety interactions in the field to observe safety in action and risk control effectiveness that must be in place at all times to prevent fatalities. As indicated last quarter, our recorded [indiscernible] continue to be reported as mainly hand injuries, splits and trips. Subsequently, we've introduced some expertise into our organization to assist raise awareness on how to prevent these injuries and use our tools better.I can shift to operational efforts. Slide 6 on Peak to start with. At Peak we continue to expect the base metals production and grade this year to be weighted to the last quarter after some operational resequencing had to occur when the online streaming analyzer failed. The online streaming analyzer, which we call OSA, receives plant slurry samples from the different streams within the circuit and tells how much lead and zinc is in the feed concentrate and tallying streams that can manage the chemical and [indiscernible] recoveries. Premature failure which was caused by potentially power and moisture issues from the regional supply and required the mine and processing plant to change gears and stop producing high-grade lead and zinc due to loss of recoveries that were being caused with the [indiscernible] out of action. Zinc was down for nearly a month with this particular issue. In the meantime, we ran low-grade lead and zinc and then lower grade copper production to prevent losses and recoveries and grades. This was rectified in February and production of high-grade base metals prioritized for March.Unfortunately, throughout the quarter, more particularly in March, Peak had over $3 million of maintenance and repair costs associated with changing our [ tower loads ], major repairs to jumbo loaders as a result of some tougher conditions in South mine. These tougher ground conditions also changed the sequence of 2 high grade stopes, which will be extracted in the June quarter. Pleasingly developed meters were also higher at Peak by 5% for the quarter, which continues to set up the mine for optionality of production.Having these development meters ahead of plan continues to provide options for stopes if conditions are providing challenges. I'll move on to Slide 7, Dargues. Dargues continued to produce in line with their plan with production, drilling and stoping keeping up with the monthly production targets. The plant has been re-sequenced to bring additional ounces into FY '24 from FY '25 to allow a smaller tail of production and move to closure sooner in FY '25.At present, stope is sequential and providing good reconciliation grades. Closure planning is well underway [ with that ]. So we're ready to execute the preferred plan post Q1 FY '25 once production is completed. And the sale process is well underway with several supplies in the processing plant, which we finalized in the coming quarters. We're now at the end of underground production. The teams at Dargues are also looking at extracting valuable items from the mine that we can reuse at Peak or Federation to offset future capital requirements.At Federation on Slide 8, we continue to be firmly committed to deliver Federation first stope ore in Q1 FY '25 with the team modifying the mine plan to accommodate the lost time in January where we experienced rainfall events that we did report. At present, the project is slightly behind [ our deep volume ] development, which we have plans in place to recover in the coming quarters. With all the focus on infill drilling work during this quarter, the geological team is setting -- is getting ready to release the block model in late April for the production profile of the Federation Mine.Other key milestones include 2 shafts being completed and a third nearly completed, all incident free, which is a fantastic result to the team and also decreases the first stope ore risks as it relates to having ventilation and the unknown geotech issues that we get with shaft raising.[indiscernible] road construction and sealing has been completed and now fully functional and accessible under [ orbit ] conditions with our heavy equipment. As highlighted, we've downgraded the capital for FY '24 based on several non-critical projects slipping in, including earthworks on the surface for future ROM areas, delivery of main ventilation fan and other items that we decide to re-scope or remove from the project none of which will stop first stope ore or the associated ramp-up.Operations readiness is progressing as we employ the operations management team to assist builder on the operations into the future in line with the regional operating model. The team has taken the best information from Peak and rebuilding for the Federation site. Lots still to be done over the coming quarters, but the team is committed to the plan to achieve our goals.Now I'll pass on to Andrew to talk more around the exciting exploration results we've released recently. Over to you, Andrew.

[Andrew Graham, executive]

Thanks, Bryan. And it certainly was a very strong quarter for exploration. I want to take the chance to recognize the entire exploration team who are really doing an amazing job. For those following along, we're on Slide 9 which talks about the Federation exploration update that we released to the market on the 5th of April. If you hadn't had a chance to read this, I would strongly recommend that you do. The release included 2 standout results. Firstly, we drilled below the main thrust at Federation and hit some very high-grade mineralization over very good meters.Now I'm talking kind of 27.9% combined lead zinc over 14 meters. So the question I suppose is why is this result important and why are we so excited about it? Previous drilling below that main thrust yielded kind of disseminated and sporadic sulphides. This high-grade result was our first high-grade result below that thrust. It's offset about 35 meters to the south and it really gives us strong suggestion that the high-grade eastern lens at Federation continues to dip.Now perhaps more excitingly in that release, the exploration team tested a concept to the west of Federation, really testing whether it's offset actually to the north in this area. Now what we had seen to the west is strong alterations, but we weren't getting the mineralization. So it really pointed to something being there.The team did some excellent work to chase this concept of an offset and drill hole 215, intercepted massive sulphides, about 140 meters north of the strike of the main deposit. Now if you do go to our release from April, you can see a photo of this outstanding core. The results of that northern offset are visual at present, and we'll provide assay data once it's available. But it's a great result that demonstrates the potential for the high-grade federation mineralization to continue out to the west.Now just turning the page. The other very strong exploration result this quarter was from Nymagee, which was the subject of a release on the 22nd of February. We touched on this, I believe, at our half year result call. The exciting piece here really for us as well as the very high-grade zinc mineralization in the western lead zinc zone were multiple thick high grade copper lenses. And now I'm talking 29 meters at 2.3% copper in one of our holes. So a really good result and certainly, we'll be back at Nymagee in financial year '25 doing further drilling.Now, not to be outdone, we were also very busy at Peak, and we've touched a little bit on that in our quarterly report. We haven't gotten the assay results from that drilling to share with you today, but we will bring you those results from those programs throughout this current quarter. Suffice to say, look, we've been very pleased with the results we've been seeing for our efforts at Peak.I'll pass on to Martin now, who's going to cover off on balance sheet.

[Martin Cummings, executive]

Thanks, Andrew, and I'll turn to Slide 11. And as you can see, our balance sheet remains very strong with just under $107 million in cash on hand at the end of March. Our loan note is undrawn and that results in available liquidity of over $140 million.It was, as Bryan said, another strong quarter from Dargues and they generated $10.5 million of operating cash flow. And we expect that strong cash flow to continue in the June quarter.As for Peak, cash flow was negative this quarter, but mainly driven by the timing of concentrate production. After we resolved the issues that Bryan talked about in the plant and completed the shaft work, the operation had a very strong March which benefited production but left us with elevated stocks on hand at the end of the month. We're working with our logistics partners and have secured additional capacity to move that product this quarter.The silver lining from this is that production is likely to be sold at higher prices than what we achieved. Peak also did incur some additional maintenance costs, which were not planned this financial year. In addition to the [indiscernible] repairs, we had the unplanned repairs to a loader and a jumbo, and we had to replace the tail ropes on the cage after wear was detected during our regular testing regime.We do remain focused on lowering our unit costs through productivity and cost-out programs, and $100 a tonne mining cost remains our goal. The material that we plan to mine in the June quarter, coupled with the sale of concentrate that built up this quarter, is expected to result in a materially stronger result in terms of cash flow.For Federation, we spent $20.4 million this quarter, and that was lower than we had planned, driven by the interrupted quarter due to weather, but pleasingly did include spend on completing the sealing of the Burthong Road and development of the surface ventilation shafts. The spend this quarter takes year-to-date to just under $50 million, and we're forecasting around $15 million to $20 million to be spent in the final quarter. With this, we've therefore reduced our guidance slightly at Federation for capital to $65 million to $70 million, reflecting that some of those non-critical items have been deferred. The project does continue to track within the approved capital budget of $143 million.Andrew just touched on exploration and the spend was consistent with the previous quarter and it does continue to deliver some fantastic results. We've spent $8.5 million on exploration year-to-date and tracking well within the guidance issued of $10 million to $15 million. And you'll finally notice on the chart that we did receive the tax refund in January, which I've talked about previously. So whilst not specifically called out on this slide, I just want to make a few further comments on our all-in sustaining cost this quarter.The Dargues, their all-in sustaining cost was in line with our expectations, and I just want to commend Angus and the team there on how they're managing the operation in its twilight period. At Peak, their all-in sustaining costs this quarter really suffered from these lower sales. The cost of sales adjustment that we put through in all-in sustaining costs doesn't recognize the same benefit that we get when we sell the concentrate. And we're also not able to recognize the gold in the concentrate in our all-in sustaining cost denominator.So with the strong production that Bryan ha flagged for the June quarter and the additional sales from production this quarter, we expect Peak's all-in sustaining cost and therefore the group all-in sustaining cost to reduce materially. I've mentioned previously that we'll look to changing our cost metric for reporting purposes to better reflect the business that we're moving towards, which is focused on base metals.Thanks for your time. I'll hand the call back to Bryan now.

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

I'll just move on to the key focus areas for the final slide. Look, as I highlighted in previous quarters, we're very committed and focused on delivering the right mining sequence, the right value, lower cost at Peak. And as Martin highlighted, we had a tough first couple of months, but the third month of the quarter, the Peak management team really dug in and got great results considering the headwinds faced and it's a credit to them to bring home the back end of the quarter strong despite the challenges. So obviously, going forward, there's still much work to be done in terms of reducing our costs and inefficiencies and the utilization of our equipment and getting better productivity, but the team have that all in front of them which is they're fully aware of.In terms of maximizing cash generation from Dargues, obviously, as Martha highlighted, it's been a strong quarter for Dargues. We foresee this will continue on for this current quarter. The team has got a very clear plan in front of themselves and like I said, it's been a good quarter result and they continue to sort of deliver exactly to the plan, which is fantastic. First stope ore at Federation in quarter 1 FY '25 and the ramp-up. So all efforts on really getting the decline development done getting ready for the ore development to commence for the first stope ore is a high priority. And with our contract partners on site and management on site, everyone's got that first stope ore and the ramp up as a key sort of focus area right now as does the leadership reorganization.In terms of progressing optimization of the Cobar region, Andrew Graham and his team are really looking at what -- how we're progressing our optimization work in terms of taking the current base case and seeing it's more value and potential value upside in doing a few things differently. We'll continue to work on that and present it to the Board in the coming months, and then we'll obviously release it straight quarterly at the right time.Exploration to deliver future growth, obviously Andrew talked about that, some really exciting results both that have been released and that will be coming. And like I said, it's one of those things that's going to help us really define where we go and what we do next, beyond great Cobar, which is obviously fundamental to our organization in terms of our growth in base metals position.And last but not least, without the right people, it's obviously very hard to build a business. And our focus at the moment is really attracting the right talent into our regional -- into the Cobar region under our regional management team or regional operating model. That's obviously still key to us and we've been able to attract and retain some very good talent both -- have started and are coming soon to the team to really look at how we can build our organization going forward. So really, obviously, our focus, in summary, is to safely deliver our operating performance and our growth agenda, which is really about filling our mills with quality ore, as I said, from time to time. And that's still on the agenda and still very much our medium-term objective.Nothing is changing. And obviously, this quarter results are sort of a testament to we've got the capacity, we've got the horsepower. We've had a few headwinds, but we've pushed through them, and now we're seeing ourselves up to FY '25 as well as delivering FY '24.So last but not least, I'd like to thank the team, really a team. Everyone's really worked hard this last quarter to make the results come out the way they have and this ongoing team that's going to continue to deliver us going forward.So, Rachel, hand it back to yourself and to pose any questions people may have.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Daniel Roden with Jefferies.

[Daniel Roden, analyst]

Bryan, Martin, Andrew, I was just wondering, it's probably just given Dargues is coming towards the end of the [ 12th year ], we're in a pretty standing gold price environment. So I just wanted to, I guess, ask and unpack if and what the ability for some legacy stopes there to be, I guess, reclassified into a reserve component. And is there any opportunistic ore that you might be able to sneak out from the asset?

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Dan. At this stage, we reviewed that -- management has reviewed any opportunistic or stopes that may sort of fit into the current sort of economic situation. There is actually one stope that actually bought into this financial year and resequence into this financial year. They continue to look for those opportunities, but at current -- that's the only one we've identified so far.But obviously, that is part of their agenda. If they could get extra stope ore and it's economics, they will go into that. But currently we don't have any other options on the table that -- on the recovery of the mine?

[Daniel Roden, analyst]

Yes, yes, noted. And I guess just with Federation, obviously Q1 FY '25 first ore. I just wanted to, I guess, unpack the ramp-up profile a bit more of the asset in the underground there and I guess understand what that transition looks like to the asset becoming free cash flow positive standalone so it's not drawing down additional funding. It looks very healthy at the moment, but just unpacking that a bit more to see as it's becoming closer.

[Martin Cummings, executive]

Yes, Dan. Hi, Martin here. I'll preface this response by saying we are working through our life of mine planning process at the moment. But -- so that might just be something we talk further about when we come to guidance for next year. But essentially, first stope ore in the September quarter, we are looking at the commercial production rate somewhere 6 to 9 months after first stope ore is the timing. That really hasn't changed too much, you will recall from our previous calls and conversations.And again, I'll retest this when we do the life of mine plan. But around 20,000 tonnes a month of mine production is where the operation is commercial in the sense that it breaks even from a cash flow perspective. The ramp-up period from then is around 12 months after that, 12 to 18 months, where you get to that 50,000 tonne a month. And really, the key deliverable there is getting the decline progress deep enough so that you've got those multiple levels that you're stoping on.Andrew, I might just throw to you just for any other comments.

[Andrew Graham, executive]

No, look, nothing more than what you've talked about there, Martin. I think the ramp-up profile we've previously shared largely still holds. We'll obviously update that once we have life of mine. But we are looking at being ramped up the full production in about 18 months from when we do start stoping.

[Daniel Roden, analyst]

Yes. Perfect. And that life of mine guidance, is that coming with FY '24 results as well?

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Yes, that's the intention at the moment. Whether it's -- also whether it's at the June quarterly, we'll -- it'll be somewhere in there.

[Daniel Roden, analyst]

Awesome. Awesome. And I might just sneak one more in. Bit of a [ light effort ], one, but the Glencore arbitration process, you've mentioned, that's going to be confidential now. I'm assuming that indicates that there's not likely to be a financial outcome in that that is disclosable. So what options are being explored there, I guess? And can you share any additional information on that?

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Well, what we're progressing at the moment is the arbitration process. So that is our preferred option to get resolution on the application of those historic contracts associated with Hera. So that is the focus right now.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from David Coates with Bell Potter Securities.

[David Coates, analyst]

Bryan, Martin and Andrew, thanks for the presentation this morning. Just a couple of questions there. Can you just run us through the -- obviously [ you sort of ] provided the guidance that some of the projects have been deferred. Can you give us an outlook on the CapEx profile for the next 3 quarters with those changes updated?

[Martin Cummings, executive]

So, Dave, we're going through that reforecast process at the moment as part of the life of mine. So we've got $15 million to $20 million for this quarter. I've been previously talking about it's around about $30 million capital build to get you first to commercial production. And then from there, that would be a cumulative spend of around $100 million. And then you progressively spend the balance over the next 12 months or sort of 18 months really, because there's a bit of a tail in that capital. But I prefer to just confirm $15 million to $20 million for this quarter. And then when I come out with guidance, I can give you full detail on what that updated capital profile looks like for '25.

[David Coates, analyst]

And just a quick one. The all-in sustaining costs, and you mentioned you [indiscernible] change in methodology. But if you did include -- if you backed out the costs related to those sales, what would your all-in sustained costs have been this quarter roughly?

[Martin Cummings, executive]

Look, yes -- I've got an estimate. Group all-in cost would be around $200 low.

[David Coates, analyst]

Right. Okay. And just finally, the exploration below the thrust zone, you talked about that in the presentation, look, it sounds like it's about 140 meters away if I read that correctly. Assuming hypothetically, if that was to evolve into a exportable deposits, [indiscernible] what kind of infrastructure would need to go in there? Would it just be an extension from current workings? Would you need extra ventilation or how could that possibly -- in what way might that work?

[Andrew Graham, executive]

Might run with this one, David. It's Andrew here. Just a couple of things. So 2 things. Firstly, the --there's 2 elements there. There's the exploration below the thrust and then there's the northern offset down to the west, 2 very different things. The exploration below the thrust is also about 30-odd meters to the south. It'll just be a continuation of the mine as we know it. The stuff to the west, it's early days to know what that evolves into. I think the real success was there was the fact that the ore body continues to the west.We really thought it would. We're getting some, some really good alterations to the western extent of the deposit there, but we just weren't getting new ore that's great. Our teams got on to this offset extension only 140 meters underground mining so far that we would use existing infrastructure assets accesses and all the rest of it to access that. And the real plus, if it evolves into something, is the potential for additional tonnes per vertical meter, which would be great. But early, early days. You put a hole through it. Certainly an exciting result, but we need to do a lot more work there.

[David Coates, analyst]

Yes, I understand that. But it sounds like one that's got a pretty past exploitation finding the right exploration success.

[Andrew Graham, executive]

Absolutely. Agree, totally.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Adam Baker with Macquarie.

[Adam Baker, analyst]

Apologies, I might have missed the start. Just on the zinc guidance reduction at Peak, could you just quickly delve into the onstream analyzer and exactly what occurred there and if it's expected to be reoccurring or not?

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Yes. Look, so the onstream -- and streaming analyzer generally has a life of about 7 or so years. And this is actually [indiscernible], which is over 3 years in. So it hasn't failed to our knowledge beforehand in the same way. So what actually eventually, as I said, this machine actually -- it takes the material from the slurry samples as the different streams come into the circuit and tells the operator exactly how much lens actually coming into the feed and then -- and also the concentrated tailing stream. And then they can adjust the chemicals and also work with the concentrate grades and recoveries.So if that goes down, you really require both the metallurgists to visually look what's going on and then take the samples every 4 hours to check in hindsight what [ was through ] and what actually happened. So during that period, we obviously -- as soon as the on stream analyzer went down, they moved to lower grade lead and zinc. So we didn't obviously throw the good stuff out into the tails. And that was obviously something we had to do very quickly. And then obviously, they went on to a copper -- a lower grade copper as well, which has lower variation in the feed or lower variability in the feed so they can actually visually keep things in control as much as possible. And then once they ran out of lower grade copper and lower grade lead, zinc they had to move on to higher grade, which we actually did lose some of the higher grade into the tails, unfortunately.So the OSA has been obviously put back in order, and you would expect it's not going to have the same situation again. However, we are working through -- looking at changing that out to sort of a variation based circuit, which is available in Australia. And that's something we're looking at right now to sort of change that system out as soon as we can and once all the sort of assessment work has been done on it, to have it localized anyway.Does that answer your question?

[Adam Baker, analyst]

Yes, that's really good color. And just on the underground unit mining costs at Peak, obviously, up until today, you've been pretty -- going pretty well, getting that unit mining cost down. And I suspect it's just a blip on the radar in the short term. But do you have an aspirational target of when you think you can get to that $100 a tonne mining cost level?

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Yes. Look, some of the costs were one-offs. The tail ropes was actually planned next financial year and that was planned and had come forward. And then we had 2 loaders that had actually a bit fair bit of money to be spent on them in terms of one was over $1.5 million and another one was a couple hundred thousand. They were actually damaged in the stopes in Kairos, which is obviously where some of the tougher. But we also had a jumbo damaged as well, with its boom in the same area.So effectively, they're one- off costs. We haven't seen them before, obviously, and conditionally, based on what we saw in the underground working area. Look, the overall challenge is to keep that focus there in terms of we've got a sort of working smarter process, which is looking at how do we load every truck to get full productivity on the trucks. We're looking at increasing utilization by cage riding to improve people on the job, much an hour a day longer than what we're currently getting now. So there's a bunch of initiatives which sort of drives down to that sort of $100 to sort of focus we have. And obviously, that's going to come out of this next budget process we're going through for FY '25. But there's plenty of initiatives and plenty of different activities we're working on to bring that cost down. And it's just a matter of these one-off costs hit us this month and this quarter.

[Operator]

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

[Unknown Shareholder]

Thanks everyone for great result, great exploration results. I just got 3 questions as a shareholder. First one is, I guess, the positive one. Are you able to give any color on the target or size for Federation West and Nymagee? Are you looking at something that's incremental target -- incremental production -- incremental target, sorry, whatever you can say and take into account ASX rules. Was it something that's significant? Or are they company-making targets?The second question would be on hedging. And in the future, do you see that before you make any hedging policy that you consult with the major shareholder and active institutions and also get an independent consultant to review any potential hedging policy that's independent of lenders.And the third one is bearing in mind your competitor, comparable peer company, what level of flood or weather event protection do you have? Are we protected against the 1 in a 100-year flood or 1 in a 500-year flood or against a 1 in a 1,000-year weather event?

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Thank you for the question. I might get Andrew to answer the first one, then Martin and myself in the order. Thank you. Andrew?

[Andrew Graham, executive]

No problem, Bryan, and Ashley, thanks very much for your questions. On the -- neither of the drilling programs, Nymagee or the Federation results if we can sit here and say it'll be X, it'll be Y, it'll be company making [indiscernible]. From my point of view, the Federation discovery was company making from the point of view we've got all that infrastructure there in Cobar, and we can exploit it with super high grade, in that case, lead, zinc material. Certainly, getting particularly that western extension offset piece at Federation is very exciting from the point of view it has the potential to extend Federation to the west, but until we put more holes and we really won't know.On Nymagee, there's already a reasonable resource in our reserve and resource statement on Nymagee, had some pretty good copper grades. This drilling will hopefully extend that, and we'll do that through the [ MRE ] process in a few months' time. But it does actually flag the possibility of there being much, much more of Nymagee of really great -- good grade material and of copper material.I think in the past they really chased the lead, zinc material when they thought about Nymagee. So for us, it's about putting more holes in really understanding what's there and then seeing if that flowed through to a mine plan. So the goal, obviously, is to see a mine at Nymagee.

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Thanks Andrew. Actually, I'll jump on to Martin here, just around hedging. So I'll just give you a bit of background as to you're obviously looking at a hedge book that's out of the money at the moment. So just [indiscernible] that we put in place and how we think about it. So if you cast your mind back, we put the financing in place in May last year. And we were embarking on quite a capital-intensive process starting in August, where we were going to commit significant balance sheet capacity to deliver Federation. At the time, we had Dargues coming to an end and Dargues is an important funding source for funding Federation, and we wanted to lock in the returns from Dargues.$3,000 an ounce gold price generates an attractive return for us, and we hedged it as I updated you before. I'm still comfortable with the hedging that we did. It was the right move to do at the time. I'm very happy with the fact that it's out of the money because we did retain exposure to upside price movements and we're benefiting from them now as I mentioned in my section.In terms of consultation, yes, we did consult with major shareholders before did the hedging program, and the overwhelming feedback was that if we could lock in the returns from Dargues and get that good cash and really provide a bit more protection -- balance sheet protection in terms of [indiscernible] then that was the right move. Some of those people are on this call [indiscernible].And certainly around advice, yes we do get advice. We have a group that we use on a retainer basis who are advising us on the market and advising us on what is happening in the hedging market, what is happening in the forward market. So we do get that advice. But ultimately, it comes down to the management team and the board around managing the balance sheet, and we make the final call on whether we want to hedge or not. But we do take input from externals. So I hope that answers your question.

[Unknown Shareholder]

Yes, it does.

[Andrew Graham, executive]

Look just -- your question around protection from rainfall events relative to our peers, obviously, we've had some major rainfall events in the Cobar region and Nymagee region. And obviously, our people perform and then deliver and can handle those events. If I just reiterate in terms of Federation, Federation is a project, and we are in the process of building the infrastructure and establishing all the infrastructure in that region as we build that project. And in January, we were obviously caught short of having all those things in place. By nature of the project, they weren't due to be in place. We are also looking at some additional mine water dams, which were planned to come on board in the future, bringing them forward to also provide additional insurance and working through those optionalities right now as well, so we can really sort of secure ourselves to not be affected by these one-off major storm events that we actually have seen of recent. So I mean, that's kind of the storyline we're going at the moment.And if you look at Dargues, Dargues have a large capacity of water. They do experience significant amount of rainfall. They will finish the mine obviously, in quarter 1, FY '25, with obviously excess water that we need to actually remove as we close the site. But there's no risk of those -- of that rainfall affecting that dam or the operations either.So in summary, yeah, we are very cautious as it's a risk on our register, and we're working our way through it and effectively, we'll fund the various activities we need to to make sure those risks are reduced for us in terms of operations.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand it back to Mr. Quinn for closing remarks.

[Bryan Quinn, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Rachel. Look, our vision is to be a developer and operator of choice of critical base metals. And we believe we're well on track to do that. We obviously have a lot of foundations we're putting in place to get there. We are transitioning ourselves to the Cobar region over the next 12 months.We're actually an exciting business. We have one sort of project under study, one project being built. We have an operation that we're optimizing and we have an operation that we'll be shutting in the coming period of time. So there's a lot of work going on and the team is really well set up to deliver the plans we have, especially for FY '24 that we've already communicated against the guidance. And we're preparing ourselves for a long work to get that final over FY '25 and beyond.So we thank you for dialing in. We thank you for your questions and we look forward to providing results in the next quarter. And once again, I'd like to thank Aurelia team bringing to these exciting portfolio we have right now. So thank you very much, and we will speak to you at the next quarter.

[Operator]

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