Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Mineral Resources' call for sell-side analysts following the release of our June quarterly release this morning. My name is Chris Chong, MinRes' Investor Relations Manager. Shortly, I will hand over to James Bruce, EGM of Corporate Development, to provide a short introduction before opening the lines for questions. A little bit of admin before we kick off. Please be aware that today's call and a written transcript will be uploaded to our website to the investors' financial report page. This call is a Q&A with our sell-side analysts to discuss our quarterly production report. We will not be able to answer questions that relate to our FY 2022 results, which will be released on August 29th. If you wish to ask a question via the phones, you will need to press the data key, the star key, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand. The moderator will then open your line and invite you to speak. Please start with your name and company for the record. If you wish to ask a question via the web link, please type your question into the Ask the Question box. This is meant to be an interactive and free-ranging discussion. With that, I'll pass over to James. Great. Thank you, Chris, and good morning to you all, and thanks for joining us today. It's great to have Chris as part of the team. He's been with us now for six months, and it's been fantastic the way he's embraced the role and got to understand our business to help you guys all understand our business better. This is our second sell-side quarterly call for what is going to be an ongoing quarterly engagement. The intent is to provide an opportunity for you to ask questions so that you can better understand our Q4 results. It's been a very active quarter for the company. The safety performance has been strong with no LTIs. Our mining services, we produced record volumes in line with guidance, and margins have been consistent. In our iron ore business, production was at the upper end of guidance, with a great result in the current environment. We'll be in line with the guidance range. I did want to make a comment about realizations and, you know, I just want to make the point that the FMG SSF discounts are the best representation of our product quality, and it's more liquid than the 58% market. We also sell on a two-month quotational period. During Q2 and Q3 of this year of our financial year, the discounts in the 57%-58% market were historically very high. In the last few months, these discounts have narrowed significantly. In July, this has improved further, which is a function of demand, steel mill profitability and coking coal prices, which have recently been pulling back. We report realizations versus the 62% index price in line with industry practice. The volatility, you know, of our realizations is reduced if you look over a longer period of time. Long term, we expect 80% realizations versus the 62% index, and our average realization since FY 2020 has been 79%. I just provide that as context. During FY 2023, moved to a quotational period of one m onth rather than two months after shipment, and this should reduce volatility of our realizations on a quarterly basis. Wanted to move on to lithium. We're ramping up on all fronts. We're benefiting from record high pricing. Mount Marion production grew but was marginally below guidance. Costs will be within the guidance range. We also converted for the first time, Mount Marion lithium to lithium hydroxide sales as part of a tolling arrangement, and we achieved 30% EBITDA margins for that product. Wodgina ramped up, and Trains 1 and Trains 2 have gone very well. We're producing product. At Kemerton, we've also started producing from the first Train and going through the qualification period right now. They're just some comments I wanted to make at the start of the call. I'll hand over back to Darcy and happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. If you would like to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box. Your first question comes from Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi, Chris and James. Hope you guys are well. Thanks for the opportunity. Look, firstly on Mount Marion, this tolling arrangement, a great result and good addition to the EBITDA. Could you perhaps provide a bit of visibility, if you can, on sort of how we should think about these volumes going forward, considering this was an interim contract as far as I can remember? I just wanted to sort of get a feel for how we should be modeling this going forward. Yeah, thanks, Rahul. This is a new revenue and income stream for the company. We exercised our right to take our share of our offtake from February of this year. We originally said that it was a seven-month period. We've recently extended that to November of this year, and we've got the option to extend it further. Our clear intent as a company is to convert all of our share of spodumene production into higher quality lithium hydroxide and those sort of products. I think we've been very clear about that over the last six months and year. Our expectation is that that will become part of an ongoing part of our business. You know, I think that should give you some idea about where we're going and our longer term expectations around hydroxide production from our operations. Perfect. Okay. In terms of Mount Marion, I just wanted to perhaps talk to the high grade, low grade splits. I mean, you know, they've moved around a bit, but I don't think that really matters because you're just adjusting to the market. 7% this quarter, is that something that we should be thinking about in terms of the splits going forward as well? No, absolutely not. Okay. It's, y ou know, we're transitioning through the pit as we expand right now. That is a very low number and that will probably be the lowest that we see in, you know, going forward. You know, our expectation and as we've previously announced, is to expand production to 900,000 tons of mixed grade product. On an equivalent basis, that's 600,000 tons of 6% spodumene. We've also previously stated that we expect, you know, to be about 50% high grade and 50% of the low grade product. You know, we will, as we expand production, we will also recover a greater proportion of high grade going forward. You should not assume a 7% high grade going forward. It's just a reflection of where we are in the pit right now. Okay. Perfect. Just one final one from me before I pass it on. On Wodgina, pleasing to see that the Trains are now starting to come online and start ramping up. When do we expect to be at nameplate for Train 1 and Train 2? We've ramped up Train 1 very successfully and the ramp up has been very, very quick. Train 2 is starting, you know, as we speak right now. You know, I think you can see the numbers we've got. We do expect to take that production and convert into hydroxide. That's our strategy across our business. Yeah, Chris, just go on. Yeah. I think from September, all things going well, the way we're seeing it, we should be at nameplate for both those Trains. Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you, gents. I'll pass it on. Thank you. Your next question comes from Matthew Frydman of MST Financial. Please go ahead. Sure. Thanks. Morning, James and Chris. I guess firstly, I'll carry on from those questions on Wodgina. You made a comment there in the quarterly, and you repeated it just then when you're talking about the cargoes from Wodgina being exported for conversion. Just wondering if you can give us some information on where that material's gone, you know, why you have to wait until it's converted in order to realize the revenues and the earnings from that product? I guess just wondering if you can give us any more information on what your economic interest is there? Thanks. Thanks, Matt. Congrats on your new role, buddy, and all the best. Thanks for initiating coverage on us. Thanks, James. Yeah. Look, we will, as we go forward, you know, I think we'll have more to say on that at our full year results. That's, you know, I think, you know, today we're talking about what's happened in this quarter, and we'll hold off on any of those sort of disclosures for our guidance that we'll give at our full year results. Okay. No problems. Secondly, you just talked then about, I guess, the ramp up of the Trains in terms of nameplate throughput. Wondering whether you can give us further information on, I guess, other aspects of the ramp up, you know, recoveries, yield, grade of the concentrate being produced, how all of those things are tracking. You know, even if we really wanna get specific, you've produced 20 kilotons, you mined 61. Can you tell us how much you actually put through the plant to produce that 20 kilotons to give us an idea of some of those other factors? Yeah, Matt. I mean, as I said in my commentary, the plants have ramped up very quickly and very well. We're not in a position [audio distortion] to give you know, the specifics of that data that you're asking for. You know, I can tell you that we are on, that it's on spec product. You know, we'll disclose some more information on that at our full year results. You know, the volumes have been good, and we're very pleased with how it's gone, especially in a tough labor market. You know, I just point out that we first gave guidance that Train 1 would start in July, and we brought it forward many months, so I think it's been a pretty successful operation, and technically it's going very well. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. No problems. Yeah, look forward to that additional disclosure. I guess maybe to put it another way, you know, it's early days in the ramp up, but are you guys seeing opportunities to improve yields and recoveries, and ultimately throughput, you know, maybe in the same way that you've realized on the Mount Marion circuit? I think we've got many options, given our experience at Mount Marion of how to operate and successfully operate, you know, these plants and these operations. Yeah, I think we've got good opportunity to continue to maximize the value of the ore body, minimize the amount of material going into the tailings and, you know, that ultimately and especially at a time of high prices and very high demand is the most valuable thing that we can do. You know, we are very conscious of the value of the ore body and the unique assets that we have located in tier one jurisdictions. We know how to operate these assets, and we've done it for many years. We've also got a management team that is very stable and knows how to do this. Yeah, I think there are some big opportunities for us, but you'll just have to wait for some of the detail around that and maybe in the meantime, just give us. I can be very patient. [crosstalk] I can be very patient, I promise. Maybe one last question. I've got lots of others, so maybe we'll loop back. Just lastly, can you give us an update at all on the discussions around moving to 50% staking Wodgina? Yeah. Look, I'm not able to at the moment, Matt. When we've got more to say, obviously we'll disclose it in the normal course of events. No problems. Okay. Thanks, James. Cheers. Thank you. Your next question comes from Hayden Bairstow of Macquarie. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. James, just on the Mount Marion sort of disclosure into the results. You'll have separate, effectively profit centers for the hydroxide part of it, and that'll be ongoing. We can sort of think about that as a, you know, Mount Marion selling effectively spod at the realized pricing you put in here. Then that's just a sort of an additional earnings on top of that, effectively running it like a merchant plant. Absolutely right, Hayden. That's the right way to think about it. Okay. Commentary on the Wodgina spodumene sales. I mean, that. When you first talked about ramping this up, it was like, "Oh, we've got an opportunity to sell spod into the market." Now it seems that it's all you're gonna target, I guess, toll treating or using downstream plants that Albemarle sort of owns or is gonna ramp up. Is that sort of the plan now, or is that because of the money you're making out of what you're seeing with Ganfeng? Is capacity opening up that you didn't think was there before? I mean, just 'cause Albemarle hasn't really accelerated anything as yet on downstream plants in China. What I would say, Hayden, is demand is extremely strong. We've got significant inquiries from multiple parties. You know, our intention is to convert all of our share into hydroxide and, you know, you'll just have to wait to see the form that that takes. We can use, though, a similar model to Mount Marion in terms of running a separate profit center that's selling spod at the market price and then converting? Yeah. I think the only thing that you might need to think about is just the timeframes and the cash flow implications. You know, the tolling agreement we've got with Ganfeng is slightly different to owning, you know, depending on what the structure is in how the cash flows would work through. You know, there is typically, I don't know, a four- or five-month timeframe between going from spodumene and converting it through to hydroxide, depending on where in the world it's being converted and how long it takes to get there and how long it takes inventory management and so on through the system. You should just think about that as you model it going forward. Yeah. Okay, great. Just one final one on the gas stuff. Were we expecting anything sort of nearer term? Obviously, you're talking about, there's some commentary around potential drilling in later this year. What about the overall strategy of what you might do with that asset? Look, I think we've got to, you know, in terms of the overall strategy, I think we've, you know, we've talked about it at our AGM and other, you know, earlier this year at our financial half year results. You know, I think our strategy is pretty clear. We need to define the size of the resources. We've got the largest land package in WA onshore, across both, you know, near Perth and up in the north as well. We've got a significant opportunity to, you know, leverage our resource and hopefully reserve base that to, you know, supply low cost gas to our own operations, to our joint venture partners and others in WA and to help us decarbonize our business. Also, I think given the potential scale, we could also consider other gas opportunities to monetize and to commercialize the opportunities. It's an important first step that we, you know, we've had very good success with the first well, and we've got, you know, we need to do additional drilling, and then that's what we've disclosed in today's release. I think this is an important step and we're gearing up to be able to complete those wells. Okay, great. I'll leave it there. Thanks, mate. Cheers, bye. Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Young of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thanks. Morning, James. Morning, Chris. Good day. How are you? Good, mate. Good. Thank you. Keeping on the topic of Lockyer Deep, James, I know you've got, you know, four wells to drill over the next year or so. Can you maybe just from your expectations, you know, what's the talk around or expectation around potential maiden resource, you know, timing around that? You know, timing on entering FEED and, you know, what that process looks like. Yeah. I mean, this call is a quarterly results call and, you know, you're asking about, you know. I think we'll have more to say at our full year results on that. You know, I'm not. We're going to do some drilling and that's what we can confirm at the moment. You know, let's get to our full year results, and we'll have some more to say about it. I'll ask some specifics on the quarterly then. Just on, back on to Mount Marion, the 6,700 tons of lithium hydroxide sold in the quarter. From a production perspective and, you know, percentage of, you know, nameplate or what can be fully converted, what does that represent? Like, is that, you know? I know we've got the rules of thumb on converting from spodumene to hydroxide, but, you know, what should that be if that's a, you know, fully maximized, you know, fully converted, what should the quarterly hydroxide production and sales be? Yeah. Look, what we've done is we've now converted all of February. From February to June 30, we've converted all of the spodumene into hydroxide. That's what's happened. You know, you can work through those numbers. Yeah, that's what it is. Okay. Last one, James. On the mining services volumes. You know, I thought there might have been a little bit of a tick up in the June quarter considering it, you know, it's a dry quarter and there's quite a bit of activity in the Pilbara with the majors. What is your expectation of, you know, when, you know, mining services volumes might start, you know, trending upwards quarter on quarter? Yeah. I mean, you know, we don't give quarterly guidance on mining services volumes. I think we've just produced our best result ever in mining services. You know, the margins continue to be very stable. We've had good growth over the last year. We've had good contract wins and retention. You know, I think I'm not going to get drawn into quarterly guidance on volumes for our mining services business. I think you as well as anyone know the trends in the industry and you know, we, the business is going very well. Yeah. All right. Thanks, James. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Paul. Thank you. Your next question comes from Glyn Lawcock of Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. James, Chris, good morning. I joined a little bit late, so apologies. I did catch you mention you've produced on-spec product at Wodgina. Can you just remind, what is on-spec? Is that the proper 6% as we know it? If you could just help me understand that. Yes. Is that the short answer, yes? Okay. That's it. 'Cause you. The rest we'll have to wait for then, like, by the sounds of it. Yeah. Um. Yeah. The second question is, could you just help me understand the conversion then? Like you say, you've converted all the spodumene to hydroxide since February. What sort of tonnage is that? Like how many tons of spodumene is going into this tolling? Are we sort of looking at something closer to 10 tons to give 1 ton of hydroxide given the grade? Just trying to understand the mechanics of it. I mean, if I can give you some help with that, Glyn. I mean, you know what our production rate levels have been from, you know, and that, well, more importantly, our sales of spodumene, and that those sales have been converted into that amount of hydroxide. Yeah. You say from February, so I'm sort of halfway through a quarter, so I can't quite put that. Yeah. All right. Yeah. You know, you're only missing one, you know, one month there. You're missing January. I mean, I think you can maybe do some ratios and work it out. Yeah. I know we've disclosed the revenue, we've disclosed the EBITDA, of that conversion, you know, to that extent, EBITDA. You know, I think you can, you know. I think we've disclosed sufficient to be able to help you model what you need to model. Yeah. I get that. As the grade for Mount Marion spot I think will obviously continue to trend down, you're not at the low point yet, are you, in terms of the combined spod grade from Marion, or are you there now? Yeah, we produced very small amount of high grade in this quarter. I made some comments earlier about that. Maybe look back through the transcript. You know, we expect to use more high grade over you know. We expect as we ramp up to 900,000 tons of mixed grade and 900,000 tons converts to 600,000 tons at 6%, and we expect 50% high grade and 50% low grade. You know, that's what the project does. Yeah. Look, one final question, and I think I know the answer, but I'll ask it anyway if it hasn't been asked. Ashburton, the 30th of June has come and gone. Am I just a bit like the odds of 50/50, just don't hold my breath and keep waiting? We've made some comments about, you know, the Ashburton project, you know, in the past about our intentions and, you know, we have done long lead item orders and so on. You know, when we have agreement, we will obviously need to disclose it. You know, that will occur in the normal course of events. You can't share why it's dragging on past the date you were hoping to get to? No, not at the moment. We'll have more to say at our full year results. Gonna have a lot to say in a couple of weeks' time. Yeah. Look, Glyn, the only thing I'd add to that is, you know, we're dealing with large companies, right? There's significant process there, but I wouldn't, you know. There's nothing sort of untoward. No, no. That's fine. Thanks a lot for your time. Thanks, Glyn. Thank you. Your next question comes from Lachlan Shaw of UBS. Please go ahead. Oh, pardon me. Your next question is from Rob Stein of CLSA. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for the opportunity to ask a few questions. Thanks, Glyn, for asking that about Ashburton. I was gonna ask that. I'll move on to realized pricing. Noticed obviously the provisional pricing impacts of the in the realized price ratio. Just wondering, given the 68%, 62% index really came in quite aggressively through that quarter, were you expecting that to then flow into, I guess, your 1Q realized pricing given the two-month lag that you speak of? I was just interested to see it was 62%, and I was, you know, expecting a little bit greater. Yeah, Rob, I mean, it's very formulaic, right? We do have a two-month lag, which is longer than some others. We are over the next year going to reduce that to a one-month lag. That will reduce some of the volatility and some of the reporting that you see. You know, what the implication of your question is correct. You know, that's what happens. Thank you very much. That was it. Thank you. Thank you. Once again, if you would like to register for a question, please press star one on your phone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Lachlan Shaw of UBS. Please go ahead. A couple of questions on Mount Marion. Obviously realized price was very, very strong. Can you just give us a bit of insight around the marketing strategy there? Is it all spot? Are you signing contracts? What sort of terms are you preferring? So Lachlan, I mean, we've taken our share of Mount Marion production and, you know, we're converting it, you know, as a separate revenue and income stream into hydroxide. You know, the prices are formulaic based on the spodumene prices that we sell, and this is important from a tax and the WA government royalty point of view and all the rest of it, you know, as it goes onto the ship, there is a pricing point which is based on there are five indices and it's the average of those five indices over the quarter. That gets you the number that we disclosed. Okay, that's spod. What about the hydroxide? Well, the hydroxide was sold in the market and we've given you the price that we sold it at. You know, as we continue to sell into that market, it's a tolling agreement with Ganfeng. You know, Ganfeng look after the sales. Okay. Got it. Thanks. Just with Ganfeng and the tolling agreement, can you give us any insight in terms of that toll charge, you know, fixed versus variable split? You know, is it based on the chemical price? Can you give us a bit of a sense of how to think about that toll cost? I mean, look, we've disclosed the margin for you, so you can work out what that toll cost was for the quarter. I mean, I would note that, you know, for a fully, you know, if you own your own plant and if you look at other people who report, you know, across the industry. If you own your own plant, the margins are typically 45% or thereabout through the cycle and so on. You know, our margin that we achieve, that's if you own your plant and you put the capital into the. You know, we reported a 30% EBITDA margin, and that's probably appropriate given that we don't own the capital of the plant. Got it. Okay. Just one last one just on Wodgina. Ramp up's going really well there, but just, you know, how's it sort of looking for Train 3 to Train 6? Yeah, look, I mean, I've said it a couple of times, but this is a quarterly. You know, we're not gonna get drawn into you know forward-looking statements about that sort of thing. We'll have more to say at our full year results on that Lachlan. All right, great. Thanks, guys. I'll pass that on. Cheers. Thank you. Your next question comes from Alex Ren of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Morning, James, Chris, and team. Just two quick ones from me, please. Mount Marion hydroxide price, $77,000 a ton. I suppose that's a Chinese price. Just wondering if that's inclusive of VAT? You know, if we need to take that 13% as an additional cost in addition to the feed, you know, conversion, toll cost, et c., in order to derive that EBITDA? Second one is just on that, Mount Marion toll treatment again. I know you mentioned, you touched a little bit on that, but, just wondering, have you guys started the discussion on locking a long, say, longer-term contract just to provide some, you know, certainty for the market on this part? That's it. Yeah. Thanks, Alex. The first part of your question is that the VAT is included in that margin, you know, that we've disclosed. It's not on the revenue side, it's on the cost side. That's included in the margin that we're able to achieve. You know, on the second part of your question, you know, we'll answer that in time. Not able to disclose that today. Got it. That's it. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Your next question comes from Alexander Papaioanou from Citi. [audio distortion] cost. Is it best to think of these as lagged four to five months? Hey, Alex, how are you? We couldn't actually hear your question. Can you just repeat it, please? Sure. Mount Marion tolling agreement. Input spodumene cost, is it best to think of these as lagged 4four to five months? Yeah. There is a timeframe around it, and that's what I indicated previously. Okay. You said before that, you've converted the spodumene from February to June 30, and that's 6.2% for your share. In that case, would the next time you report hydroxide numbers be in December quarter? No. I mean, I think this will become part of our quarterly disclosures. Okay, sure. Anything else, Alex? No. Sorry. That's it from me. Great. Thanks, buddy. Thank you. As there are no further phone questions, we will now wait a brief moment for webcast questions to come through. Pardon me, we've just had some other, phone questions come through. No. No. As there are no webcast questions, I'll now hand back to Mr. Chong for any closing remarks. Thanks. We hope you had a good opportunity to ask your questions today, guys. Thanks for the interest, and we hope you have a great day. Obviously, if there any other questions, follow-up questions, just please come through and happy to take that. Thanks, guys. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.