Chrysos Corp Ltd
ASX:C79
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Earnings Call Analysis
Summary
Q1-2024
The company reported a solid quarter, with unaudited revenue of $8.9 million and a 9% quarter-on-quarter growth. Operating cash flow was positive at $1.1 million, and with $55 million in funding, the company is well-positioned for continued expansion. With 22 units already deployed and plans to install at least 80 units by fiscal year-end, the growth trajectory is on track, highlighted by a 14% uplift in minimum assay payments and 9% actual quarter-on-quarter revenue growth after adjustments. The business is expanding its assay technology applications, processing over a million samples this quarter, and receiving strong interest from North America, where they expect significant growth. The company remains confident in meeting guidance for revenue, EBITDA, and deployment of at least 18 units during the year.
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Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Chrysos Corporation Limited Q1 Fiscal Year 2024 Quarterly Update Call. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Dirk Treasure, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good afternoon, shareholders. We're pleased to be presenting our Q1 FY '24 quarterly financials too. And this time, both myself and Brett Coventry, our CFO, are presenting from North America, which is quickly becoming one of our fastest-growing regions.
Unfortunately, on what's been a fairly hectic travel schedule across North America, I've managed to pick up a bout of the flu and losing my voice. I'm on the mend, but Brett will be presenting most of today's results.
So thank you, Brett, and over to you.
Thanks, Dirk. Slide 3, please. It's great to be talking to another quarter of growth across our business, solidifying the position in existing regions. With the 2 new units installed being -- installed in existing countries. The current for deployments being undertaken also consolidate our presence in the established regions. This means we have 22 units deployed and are on track to deploy at least 80 units during the financial year.
Looking at our other metrics for this quarter, we had unaudited revenue of $8.9 million, underlying quarter-on-quarter assay revenue growth of 9%. And for the first time, we processed over a million samples in the quarter. Our quarterly operating cash flow returned to positive with $1.1 million of positive operating cash flow. We remain well funded for growth with a combination of cash on hand and available debt totaling $55 million.
Slide 4, please. During the quarter, 87% of our revenue came from the minimum monthly assay payments or MMAP. And quarter-on-quarter, this graph shows a continued growth in MMAP. A quick reminder, the MMAP is the minimum table pay amount due monthly from our deployed units. We can also see the additional assay charges of the AAC was about $1.1 million of revenue for this period.
As we spoke about at the end of the financial year, we have moved away from jar sales with direct supply to our PhotonAssay clients in place. The baseline revenue from MMAP is now $2.9 million monthly or on an annualized basis, $35 million.
Slide 5, please. With a further 2 units deployed last quarter, the global fleet of PhotonAssay units continue to be expanded and the distinct clusters across the regions demonstrate our hubbing strategy. We've also illustrated our ability to move and reinstall a PhotonAssay unit with what was previously the Morila PhotonAssay unit now having completed redeployment into a commercial facility within Bamako, Mali. With our valued partners and deploying on contracts we have signed, we remain focused on delivering sustainable growth.
Slide 6, please. It was great to process over 1 million samples in the quarter. Remember, it took around 2.5 years to process our first million samples. As we've touched on in previous quarters, we do expect to see fluctuations in the utilization rate as we deploy more units reflecting their ramp-up from installation and some impact by industry cycles. Of course, remembering that we have the baseline MMAP as a revenue floor.
I'd also like to call out the growing application of our technology. As you might be aware, gold, silver, copper and moisture have been available for some time. As part of our ongoing research and development activities, we are now actively working with 2 mining customers and solution analysis. This aligned our focus on the gold assay market and adjacent applications to increase adoption of our assay technology.
Slide 7, please.
Thank you, Brett. We've hit the ground running coming into FY '24 as well as installing 2 units, the reinstallation of our Morila unit to Bamako is an exciting milestone for the company. While we've built our units designed with an intention of being able to relocate them when necessary, successfully undertaking a reinstallation is really the only way to know how it will go. So I'm very pleased to have successfully completed that.
We're pleased to report that we remain on track for each of our guidance metrics, being revenue, EBITDA and at least 18 units to be deployed during the year. We haven't called that out specifically in the 4C, but that's -- things definitely on track.
We're currently undertaking 4 concurrent installations with a number of other systems on route to their deployment locations either already on the water or in-country trucking to site.
We have had solid growth to financials with a 14% uplift in MMAP aligned with newly-deployed units, and our 4% headline revenue growth is actually a 9% growth quarter-on-quarter once adjusted for other income. Other income being the sale of sample jars, which was discontinued at the end of last quarter.
Basically, as we shored up supply of those jars introducing direct relationships between suppliers and our customers, we no longer needed to stand in the middle as a middleman in that transaction. That revenue stream as well was a lower margin revenue stream for us, and the PhotonAssay revenue is really where Chrysos makes its return.
We continue to operate cash flow positive with a little over $1 million cash inflow throughout the quarter. This, coupled with our cash on hand of $33 million and undrawn debt of $22 million, puts us in a good position to maintain our growth trajectory.
Lastly, I want to say that we've had an excellent reception in North America, and we continue to see this as a strong growth market for PhotonAssay. We're seeing continued growth of MSALABS customer base with their fleet of 3 Canadian units.
Mindful that MSA will soon be joined by both ALS and Britannia, each of which are shortly going to have their first North American units operating. We anticipate continued adoption on this side of the world and anticipate it being a growth center for us over the coming years.
Lastly, I want to thank the Chrysos team for all the effort and hard yards that they've put in to making the company successful. There's a lot of work that goes into the type of growth that we've been able to sustain and our growing team all around the globe are what make that possible.
Thank you. I'll end there, and I'm happy to open for any questions.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Josh Kannourakis with Barrenjoey.
Obviously, you mentioned you're in North America, be keen to talk a little bit more deeply about that how your sales efforts are going there? And how should we think about your go-to-market strategy in that market in terms of going -- partnering with labs or sort of going direct to mine sites?
Yes, absolutely. Thanks for the question, Josh. Always good ones. Look, over here, it's been an excellent trip. And we really do continue to see uptake of the technology and obviously, over here, we're working at the moment with laboratory partners. I commented that MSALABS have 3 units, and we're soon to have both ALS and Britannia up and running.
So definitely working very closely with channel partners in growing adoption in the region. Keeping in mind that these units are deployed into very prolific gold mining regions. So as you see the volumes increasing in Canada, for example, it basically means that we're picking up more and more Canadian customers and seeing it as a very fertile market.
At the end of the day, all of the samples that come through PhotonAssay whether through our laboratory partners or through our mine site deployment directly, all of those samples are coming from the miners. So certainly, from our perspective, we work directly with the miners.
We're very much partnering with them on how to use the technology, education around it, implementation studies even when those are necessary and making sure that we have a direct voice to the miners that we're not just standing behind the laboratory partners. But both of those partnerships are equally important for us.
At the end of the day, though, the mandate for the business development team and myself and Brett when we put a [ BD ] hat on as well, is converting mining projects to PhotonAssay. That is the real goal of our [ BD ] efforts, and then that brings additional volume through those laboratory partners, and it presents us with opportunities for direct-to-site deployments, keeping in mind as well that those direct-to-site deployments may be directly contracted at the miner or they may still be through one of those laboratory partners.
Got it. And in terms of how we should think about -- because obviously some big players over in those markets like when you're thinking about the next 12 months and obviously the guidance that you've put out there, how do you think compositionally it will be made up of larger multiunit deals versus sort of single-unit deals within that and other markets?
I think it's an interesting market in itself, both the laboratory space and the mining space are very consolidated markets. When we talk about the total addressable market in say the mining space being our 410 units, keep in mind that the top 30 gold miners in the world produced somewhere in the order of 70% of gold production.
So certainly, we're mindful that each of the parties that we're talking to, again, whether that be a miner or a laboratory provides us with plenty of additional sale potential. Each unit that we deploy to a miner, we want to make sure they've got the best experience from it. Each -- same could be said for laboratory as well that they're getting the best experience from the unit such that they will take more units.
So whether we see immediate transition to multiunit deals or whether sort of smaller deals can grow into bigger deals, from our perspective, we're just trying to make sure that we're getting that conversion of the mining industry and that understanding of the technology showcasing those benefits and what can be done with broader application and then converting the mining industry along the way. As to exactly how it's going to be broken down, well, we'll keep the market informed as we go.
Got it. No, that's helpful. And then just wrapping up with that, in terms of -- you mentioned before on the funding side, on the debt side that more units in those developed markets such as North America will certainly lend to expanding your existing facilities under either current or other sort of Tier 1 sort of debt providers.
Can you maybe just talk to a little bit of an update on that positioning as I know you love getting that question each time, but I think it's worthwhile just to remind people where you're at and your comfort levels around the current thing and then what it means for that debt positioning and expansion if you win further contracts in the U.S.?
Thanks, Josh. I love this question, as you know. We're having good progressive discussions with Tier 1 vendors and remain very confident about achieving and increasing our facilities and being able to use that funding to move forward with. And as you commented, should there be an opportunity to expand more or even faster into North America, there is the opportunity that those units become easier to fund against rather than somewhere in Africa. But that doesn't roll Africa off the table as being an opportunity for funding either. It's just a little bit simpler in this market.
[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back over to Mr. Treasure for closing remarks.
Thank you very much, and thank you for attending. We look forward to seeing shareholders at our AGM in late November. Hopefully, there's a number of you on the call that are able to attend. That's going to be held in our new facility in Adelaide, which we're currently in the process of moving into.
We've come a long way from renting 2 small offices from CSIRO as we did back in 2017. And it's going to be nice to show off that new facility to those of you who are able to attend. So thanks very much and look forward to that next event.
That does conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.