Good day, and welcome to the Base Resources FY 2024 Half Year Results Briefing. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press Star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your pre-question, press the Star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press Star zero, and finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Tim Carstens, Managing Director, to begin the conference. Tim, over to you. Thanks very much, and thanks everyone for joining our half year results call. Today, I'm joined by Kevin Balloch, our CFO, and Steve Hay, our General Manager of Marketing. They'll be providing some additional, more specific color a little later on in the presentation. I guess this half year, you know, more than any other period prior to it, has really marked a transition, if you like, for us. You know, we're in the middle of a transition from the Kwale operation. That was the operation we developed, operationalized back in 2013, and has very much been the engine room around which we've developed, our business, our team, our reputation, and, you know, unfortunately, with a relatively short mine life, as we understood it at the time we commissioned it, we're now coming to an end after 10 years or so of really strong operational performance. We're now transitioning to the development of the Toliara Project. Now, obviously, when we acquired the Toliara Project back in 2018, our intention had been for there to be something of an overlap. That hasn't played out quite that way, and so we're in a bit of a choppy period at the moment as we're sort of transitioning away from having been a very strong cash producer and dividend payer into the new paradigm, if you like, as we close Kwale of reserving cash to progress the development of Toliara. And now we've made some strong progress. If you look at the sort of key features of the period we've just gone through, as we are getting towards the end of Kwale, we're in the lower grade ore bodies that really are gonna characterize the remaining life of Kwale through to the end of this year. That has constrained our production and consequent sales volumes. We've made a transition to campaign operation of the mineral separation plant, because the constraint for us now is very much our concentrator. So we've got that absolutely running flat out, but it doesn't produce enough concentrate to be able to keep the MSP running all the time, so we're campaigning that. Steve will talk more about this shortly, but we saw sales prices soften for all products across the period, delivering $73 odd million in sales revenue. So quite a bit lower than the equivalent period, as a consequence of volume and to a certain extent, price. As we announced in the final quarter of last year, Kwale Operations will come to an end at the end of December 2024, with all reserves being fully depleted. We have undertaken quite a comprehensive exercise trying to find further mine life extension. Have been unable to get that to demonstrate the requisite volume and/or grade. And so we've reached the, you know, not entirely easy decision that Kwale needs to close. Towards the end of the period, after sort of having a very quiet engagement period with the government in Madagascar, as we headed towards the presidential elections in November, at the very end of the year, the government reached back out to us and said, it's a matter of priority for government to get the mining industry moving again, and they wanted to reinitiate discussions with us. That's included discussions about the inclusion of monazite on our license. We've spent quite a few weeks in Madagascar over the last month or two, and have made some quite positive headway in coming to a landing. It's fair to say that what's different now is a real sense of urgency on the part of the government to get the mining industry going again, including some quite public comments in Madagascar, including by the Minister of Mines, in addressing the Senate, about that, the importance of the mining industry to Madagascar, and, very specifically, the need to get two new projects off the ground this year. We were very much discussed as one of those two projects. So, that's the backdrop. Discussions are making really good progress, and with that headway and our sense of, you know, where we're at, I guess, the board made the decision that applying our capital management policy, which we've rather studiously stuck to over the last several years, since October 2020, when we first paid dividends, that the time is now to reserve cash and not pay an interim dividend. So, that's behind us until such time as we have Toliara up and running and generating the sort of cash returns we believe it can generate into the future. Jumping across to, I guess, some of the other aspects of our business that are extremely important to us and do play an important role in our success. We do have a very clear understanding of the direct linkage between ultimate performance and our approach to all things sustainability. It's not a nice to do, it's not something you should do because it's what's expected of you. We see it very much as something that absolutely drives performance and outcomes. Those of you who have been following us for a while would understand the way that expresses itself around our business. I mean, for example, during the last financial year, over 80% of all of our purchases for the Kwale Operations were sourced from Kenyan suppliers. You know, we represent the best part of 70% of the Kenyan mining industry. Almost 99% of our workforce are Kenyan. You know, we've got a very significant focus on improving the environment in which we operate, and a large part of that has been our nursery that's been able to contribute quite significantly to an enhancement of the environmental quality of not just our mine site, but the area surrounding us. Now we're you know comfortable we do all that for particularly good reasons, but it's always nice to be recognized for doing things a bit differently and a bit better. At the Indaba Conference a couple of weeks ago, out of the 10 awards for sustainability matters, I guess, we won three out of the 10, including the overall award for excellence in best practices. We're clearly doing something right, and we're you know we're being recognized for that. It has all manner of benefits in terms of framing the discussions we have with, you know, new governments. We're engaging with, you know, in Madagascar in particular, in attracting the sort of employees that we wanna be attracting. It's got some real, real value to us. As we announced last year, I'd said we're heading towards Kwale closure in December 2024. We've been very clear in our objective here, and that is to really conclude Kwale in the same style in which we built it and operationalized it and optimized it. And that is to close it in a manner that cements our reputation for excellence in the full life cycle of mining. It's not often in a mineral sands context that you get to open a mine and close it as well within one management cycle, but, you know, we're seeing a real opportunity to do that. We started planning for closure a long time ago. In fact, in a lot of respects, we started before we even started building it. And, you know, the mantra that really guided us, our thinking in those early days was that, you know, with a 10-year mine life, if all we leave is a memory of how good it used to be, we've failed. And, that really did help to focus us on what we needed to do in the design. We've got a very healthy provision for mine closure, just short of $50 million at the end of the period, and obviously, as we progress through our closure, planning and get greater resolution, we'll tune that. But, you know, we're comfortable that we've got, you know, a very adequate buffer for uncertainties. And, we've done a lot of work over the last few, several years in fact, on post-mining land use, identifying a series of complementary options that have been progressed through feasibility studies. And we're now working with the government to look at how they get implemented and by whom. But, you know, it's, it's demonstrating that there's some really good options post-mining to continue to generate really good value for our government and for the community. One of the key focuses for us as we head towards closure is maintaining excellent performance all the way to lights out. That obviously extends well beyond operational performance and, you know, covers our safety performance. It's not uncommon when you have a change in circumstance for a mine that people lose focus. We've got a lot of activities underway to make sure that isn't the case with us. And certainly to date, we've been able to maintain that exceptional safety performance we've become known for. We haven't had any lost time injuries or medical treatment injuries during the during the six months. We've only had those two lost time injuries in the entire operational history of the project, so very focused on maintaining that. I might hand over to Kevin now just to talk about a bit of the context for the financial results. Thanks, Tim. So, operationally, Kwale has transitioned into the lower grade part of its ore bodies now, and the bottom of the South Dune and the lower grade material, and the North Dune as well. And, guidance for this year was in that mid twos, 2.39%. Sorry, 2.23% for the year. The first half of the year, we've been operating slightly above that, and the second half we'll be operating slightly below it. But you can see the impact on production, and that's pretty much straight back to ore grade. We finished mining on the remnant parts of the South Dune in January and transitioned the mining operations over a two- to three-week period up to the Bumamani pit, where they'll stay for the remainder of this year until that is fully depleted. But the remainder of Kwale is going to be pretty similar, around 2% grade, that we've seen in this half, and we will be producing more or less the same sort of volumes through the remainder of this year. The ore mined this year was slightly, or in this half, compared to the, the comparative period from FY 2023, was slightly down, and that's a factor that has been present with us since we started in the North Dune. The lower ore zones of the North Dune are slightly more compact due to the higher slimes and a little bit of oversize. That means that slightly slower in mining those. We need to use additional mechanical equipment to break it up first before we can use the hydraulic mining units effectively. That has been something that we've managed as well as we could, and we're only a little bit behind on the mine volumes. As the grade is low, lower than the same time in FY 2023, we produce a lot less concentrate. And with the lower concentrate, as Tim mentioned before, we moved to a campaign process or batch process called the Mineral Separation Plant, which sees us operate the plant while we can with the available concentrate, and then we turn it off, allow the concentrate stockpiles to build back up to allow us to batch again. So with the fall in grade and the slightly lower ore mined, production volumes are down about 50%. There's a bit of variability in there, depending on which product, and that's simply a function, mainly of assemblage, where we saw zircon in greater proportions in the assemblies during this half, versus the ilmenite, where we had a little bit lower recoveries. We had some higher crime areas that we had to do a little bit of management and reject some of that, impacting on recoveries a little bit. But overall, it's about 50% lower on average than the same time in FY 2023. But still on track very much to hit a FY 2024 production guidance, and so you should expect us to be in the previously released range. Turn over to Steve Hay, General Manager of Marketing, who will now run us through what he's seeing in the markets over the last half. Yeah, thanks, Kev. Yeah, so despite some of the economic headwinds that we're building through the half, on the whole, we've managed to have a solid sales performance for the half year. Prices have come off for all products, but still remain at historically high levels. So turning to rutile in a bit more detail, western pigment producers managed their production levels to align with the sluggish pigment demand during the half. With pigment production capacity levels as low as 70% through the period, demand for high-grade feedstocks, which includes rutile, diminished as we progressed through the half. However, our pre-agreed sales for rutile have continued as planned, and the overall pricing outcomes for the period were positive. The build-up that we've seen in high-grade feedstock supply has created an overhang, which has been weighing on the market recently. So into the start of the second half of FY 2024, we're definitely seeing some pressure or some further pressure on rutile prices. But we do expect that some recent announcements of significant rutile and synthetic rutile supply that's now been taken out of the market for 2024 will relieve some of the pressure on rutile as excess feedstock inventories run down. Turning to ilmenite. Ongoing sluggish conditions in the Chinese economy has kept pressure on the Chinese domestic pigment sector, and that has impacted ilmenite demand. However, the weak domestic conditions have been offset to some extent by the ongoing solid pigment exports from China. So the major Chinese pigment plants are continuing to operate at high rates as they have been growing their export sales, and that's been supporting firm demand for ilmenite. The overall global weakness of the pigment sector and increasing pigment production costs in China has been eroding ilmenite prices through the half, and while the demand for base ilmenite remains solid, prices have been gradually trending downwards. There's current signs in the Chinese market of some stabilization in the pigment sector, and in recent weeks, we've seen ilmenite prices stabilize and hold quite steady. And finally, turning to zircon. Some weakness in the Chinese and the European economies, and particularly the ceramic sectors, saw pressure on zircon demand and prices through the first half of FY 2024. Destocking occurred in the lead up to the end of calendar year 2023, as major consumers moved to reduce their working capital. However, there's been some restocking in recent weeks, as we've commenced the second half of FY 2024, and that's seen market conditions stabilize and prices have been flat for zircon from December quarter into the March quarter contracts. So June quarter prices will depend largely on how long this current bump in demand for zircon continues, particularly in the Chinese market, so we'll have to see how that unfolds. So that's the summary on market. I'll hand back to Kev. Thanks, Steve. So all of the production and sales performance plus is added to a P&L that looks a bit like this, and you can see the sales volumes and slightly reduced prices have impacted on revenue. We're down a fair bit from the same time in FY 2023. Operating costs a little bit lower, and that's really just a factor of lower volumes all round both in production and sales and shipping. The lower operating costs have had an impact on in that front, but because of the reduced production, the actual unit cost of producing a ton has increased from $169- $314 over the period, or compared to the same time in FY 2023. Other impacts on profit and loss during the half were the provision for Kwale redundancy costs following the announcement of closure. We've got $7.7 million in the P&L for this half, and those costs will obviously be paid out in cash later at the end of this year or early into 2025. We had some of the exploration work that we had been doing in Kwale East and the Umba South Project in Tanzania. Both of those were concluded during the half, and unfortunately, nothing to really pique our interest or provide additional resource from which we could further leverage the Kwale mine life, and result in both programs being discontinued and cost written off to the P&L. Depreciation, a little bit lower, or quite a lot lower than last year at this time, and that's as a result of the impairment that we took on the Kwale Operations carrying value in late FY 2023. Of course, taxes just are a feature of the—everything else we've talked about. Looking at the EBITDA waterfall chart between periods, the FY 2023, FY 2024 half years, it's a sales volume story, small contribution from sales prices, some cost savings as well, the redundancy costs in there, but it, it's clearly a sales volume-related piece. The actual sale prices, despite being lower volume on average, were pretty stable. We had 681 in the same time, FY 2023, and 682 for this half, and that's a factor of more zircon and rutile in the sales mix than in the previous year. Unit costs of sales 335, giving us a revenue to cost of goods sold ratio of two to one, down from a record in FY 2023 of 3.5%, which is round about what Toliara would do on mineral sands alone for every year for 38 years. On a cash basis, the operating cash flows from Kwale and the other sort of parts of the business, the corporate parts, were $25 million, and that benefited from a drawdown on receivables during the period. We tend to have a fair amount of receivables build up at the end of each financial year as we clear the sheds at the end of June each year, so that flushes through into the first half. Those operating cash flows were put to good work at Kwale with the extension of the mining into the new areas, requiring additional CapEx for land acquisition, construction, earthworks, and infrastructure development. We were doing a lot of work during the last half on both government engagement, community work in Kenya, in Toliara, but also significantly, a lot of work on the Toliara rare earth study and the monazite PFS in particular, which concluded and was released in December, and Tim will touch on in a minute. Of course, we paid out a FY 2023 final dividend during the half. That was just under $30 million. I'll hand over to Tim, who will talk us through a bit more on Toliara. Thanks, Kev. So when we acquired the Toliara project back in 2018, it was very much a mineral sand project. It had a monazite component to it, but at the time, it was sort of seen more as a problem than the opportunity we see it as today. So the DFSes that we completed on the project, with the most recent of those completed in late 2021, was focused on just the mineral sands and, you know, looked at a 38-year mine life or contemplated a 38-year mine life, but that was on the basis of, you know, about 30% of the ore body. So the opportunity was, is there for a much longer mine life. We had planned to implement it in two stages, 13,000,000 tons to begin with, and then in about operating year four, ramping it up to 25,000,000 tons per annum. And we had that ready to go. That was the basis on which we were having fiscal terms discussions with government. And, you know, we had been suspended for an extended period of time while, I guess, the government in, at first instance, got some sensible advice on where it should be going with its mining code and the value it should be expecting from mining, and then talking to us about the specifics of our project. Now, while that's all been happening, we've been progressing with the study to consider the Monazite project or the Monazite component. It's very much a bolt-on. So while we describe it as a PFS, to a large extent, all of the, you know, all of the components that it borrows from in the mineral sands project are already at DFS level. So it's really only the concentrator, and some of the enhancements to the port facility that are at a PFS level. The overall picture is DFS standard. And what makes it so valuable is that, in effect, we're processing what would have been a waste stream from mineral sands production, which makes us quite a different source of REO feed, from a lot of other projects, where it's the primary commodity. The combination of the two gives us quite a diverse revenue stream that aren't really correlated with one another in terms of their end uses and, and therefore, markets per se. So when you combine those two together, you end up with a rather remarkable project with the monazite PFS looking at an incremental CapEx of only $71 million, but adding about a $1 billion NPV. So when you combine the two, Toliara becomes, on an integrated basis, a $2 billion post-tax real NPV, that's, you know, looking to spin off around $370 million a year in annual EBITDA. So a really, really robust project that has a really interesting risk profile. Because of the monazite and how that plays into the geopolitical narrative around security of supply around critical minerals, it really does open up some of the funding options, for the project and, and its ability to carry that financing. We're running with a pretty exciting project. In terms of timeline, the fiscal terms discussions are the, I guess, the critical gate at this point. Lifting of suspension comes with that. For the sake of the exercise, you know, if we assume that we, we're able to get the lifting of the suspension and fiscal terms agreed, by July of 2020 of this year, we've got about 11 months of work to do to get to a final investment decision, which should see us around June of next year. The construction and operationalization of the mineral sands component of the project is about 27 months, which would see us wave goodbye to our first vessel around about August 2027. The monazite project takes a little longer because of the sequencing. You know, we need to finish some of the other stuff first before we can build that on. It'll take a little longer, and we'd be looking at our first shipment of monazite going out around January 2028. So as I said before, from a fiscal terms point of view, we're really comfortable with where the government discussions are at. The government is making all the right noises externally in terms of media commentary and the like. And, you know, we feel we're, we're in a, in a pretty good place for this to be able to move forward, in the not-too-distant future. So on the back of that, we, we felt comfortable that applying our, capital management approach, it was appropriate to, hang on to the cash now to, to see Toliara or contribute to getting Toliara through to, to the FID. We have applied that in a very disciplined fashion since we first started paying dividends in October 2020. We've paid out, you know, the, some $185 odd million in, in dividends over that period. And I guess we hadn't previously reached the level of comfort that, with, with Toliara timing, that it was, was quite the right time to, to hold cash. I guess that's the point of difference at this point. So when you bundle all of that together, for those of you who've been following us for a while, you know, we've always been a mineral sands company. But with Kwale coming to an end and the sort of profile that Toliara has as a very significant source of monazite and the rare earth production that can come from that, you know, it very much is becoming a critical minerals business. Once that monazite is processed, Toliara would be a source of some six or seven of the 50 critical minerals, if you like, on the U.S. list. So a very, very broad-based critical minerals business. We've got a track record of excellence in all aspects of sustainability. I think everyone recognizes that we're able to develop Toliara to plan. Originally, we've developed it and operationalized it in a way where it's done everything we said it would. We're certainly looking to make sure we close it in the same fashion. But that same discipline is well and truly embedded in this organization, and we're ready to crack on with Toliara and approach it in the same fashion. So, you know, we certainly see ourselves emerging again as a company of strategic relevance in critical minerals, with our foot on, you know, the best undeveloped asset in the space. So, a lot to look forward to, although we're in a bit of an odd transitional period at the moment. So with that, I might turn it over to questions. Thank you. And we've now opened the floor for questions. A reminder to please press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the question queue. If you are using a loudspeaker and are selected to ask your question, kindly switch to your handset to ensure your question can be clearly heard. And your first question comes from the line of William Dalby from Berenberg. Your line is open. ... Hi, good morning, or good evening to you guys in Aus. Thanks for taking questions. Yeah, mine is on Toliara. Obviously, now it's very much, it's very much focused going forward for investors. You guided to July for concluding the fiscal terms agreement, but, you know, I wonder if you can give any more granularity and detail around the critical path to achieving this target. You know, beyond just the fact that there's been engagement with the government, you know, what has that engagement involved? Are there specific procedures you're going through with any agreed timeframe? Do you have meetings with the authorities set up, you know? I appreciate, appreciate it's a moving picture, so there's only so much guidance you can give. Yeah. But I think investors are looking for a bit more context here on the steps- Sure. you expect, you know, to reach that July target. Well, I've just come back from spending the best part of three weeks in Madagascar, meeting with five or so ministers, spent two hours with the president. We have an understood process that we're working through as far as getting the sort of documentary framework in place to lock down our fiscal terms. So we're working our way through that. And that's pretty much all I can give at this stage. It's very active engagement, with feedback flowing backwards and forwards, you know, on a weekly basis. Okay, thanks. And then maybe just as a quick follow-up, on the monazite rights, do you see that as a critical step before progressing to pre-FID works? Or could there be, you know, a fiscal terms agreement before that, and then the monazite rights process can continue in the background? No, it's all part of the one and the same thing. You know, the monazite rights are part of our negotiation with the government. They're very happy for that to be included. And it's just part of the deliverables required for us to secure the fiscal terms we need to move forward with the project. So it's all being done. It, it's not the critical path, to be honest. There's some stuff that needs to happen, but it, it's not like a new license being issued. It's the specified minerals we're allowed to exploit just get expanded with that added. Okay, understood. Thank you very much. A reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now, and we will pause for any final questions. There are no final questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back over to Tim for closing remarks. Well, thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining the call, and thanks for the questions. If there are any, you know, questions that come to you after the event, please feel free to reach out to any member of the team to discuss that further. Look forward to seeing you all soon. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect.