Thank you for standing by, welcome to the Pilbara Minerals December 2022 half year report. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question and answer section. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Dale Henderson, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead. Thanks, Winnie, and good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, depending where you're calling from. Welcome to the Pilbara Minerals half year results call. Big, warm welcome. Firstly to start with, I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which our businesses operate. In Perth, the Whadjuk Noongar people, and up north, the Nyamal and Kariyarra people. We pay our respects to the elders, past, present, and emerging. For introductions today, the speakers we have are Brian Lynn, our Chief Financial Officer, Vince De Carolis, our Chief Operating Officer, but we also have in the room, Greg Jason, our Assistant CFO, Gavin Spoors, who's our acting IR lead, and we've also got Nicholas Read and Paul Armstrong from Read Corporate. Welcome everyone. Before I get into the formalities of the call, I'd just like to pay acknowledgment to Brian. This is his last sort of public call for us. The last two quarterly calls, I'd sort of flagged Brian would be sort of departing. He's been very kindly staying on to support us as we progress the CFO recruitment process. Yeah, this will be Brian's last hurrah, essentially, for Pilbara. You know, for Brian, it's been a hell of a journey from the tin shed in Freo, surviving the downturn. Here we are today with our inaugural dividend. A hell of a journey for business and for the CFO who stewarded that. Brian's contribution has been immense. You know, Brian has been the chief architect for all of these key growth steps that we've gone through to date. He's driven, he's hyper-conscientious, and he's an absolute live wire in terms of humor. He's been good fun to work with. And there's just a little teaspoon of grumpiness that every good CFO has to have, so emphasis on teaspoon. Fantastic contribution, Brian. A big, big thank you to you. On behalf of the board, the team at Pilbara, our shareholders, our customers, our many stakeholders, thank you, mate, for the big 6 and a half years that you've contributed to this company. You've been a stalwart and a massive key ingredient for everything that just happened. Thanks, mate. Brian will has got a right of reply a little bit later. Hopefully, he forgets about the grumpy bit. We'll see how we go. Now, as to the call outline, what we'll step through is a few summary remarks from myself. I'll then hand to Brian for the half year financial results. We'll then go to Vince, who's going to talk a little bit about the guidance for the financial year. Then back to myself to talk about strategy, growth, and a few final comments around the market and our views of what the outlook looks like. Having gone through that run sheet, we'll then move to Q&A. Given that we've only got an hour today, we'll have approximately 20 minutes for the analysts, 10 minutes for webcast, then we'll wrap it up on the hour. Referring now to the presentation and stepping to slide five, it has been an absolute stellar set of results. It's just remarkable to think that where we are as a business, Pilbara is in the box seat, and we are ready to continue to thrive. It's just remarkable to think we're only just getting started. Here we are with this fantastic set of results, inclusive of our inaugural dividend being an AUD 0.11 interim dividend. It's just an absolute delight to be, you know, highlighting this milestone and, you know, a key maturity step for the business and obviously a reward going back to many of our loyal shareholders who have gone the full journey of this business. There was some dark times. For those long holders of Pilbara, shout out to you. Enjoy this first dividend, and yeah, delighted that we're able to issue this back out to our shareholders. As to the numbers, yeah, what an incredible set of financial results. The percentages, as you can see, they're enormous. Big step-ups on across revenue, EBITDA, net operating profit, healthy cash balance in excess of AUD 2 billion net cash, and of course, the dividends that I mentioned a moment ago. Before I get Stephanie further into the presentation, I do wanna reflect on what we see here today is really the contribution of years of work coming to this point. There's many teams and people involved in bringing one of these assets and businesses to life, whether it be the Nyamal community, the original customers whom their offtake enabled us to get financing, our financiers, our engineers, our construction partners, our operating partners. The team of Pilbara who have been and have since gone, and of course, the team we have today who are working incredibly hard, and frankly, we're still stepping through our own growing pains. As recent as last week, had some time with the team who took me through some of those growing pains. A big shout-out to those whom have passed, those who are carrying the baton forward. Here we are, a great set of results. Big thank you to the broad team effort which has contributed to this. Moving from slide 5 to slide 6. Yeah, for those not familiar with Pilbara, we're developing one of the world's best hard rock assets. It's in Western Australia, southeast of Port Hedland. A tier 1 asset offering a 26-year mine life at 1 million tons per annum, of which we're only halfway up that expansion profile at a 580,000 ton per annum run rate. Plenty more growth to come and potentially more growth in the asset itself. We are busy drilling as we speak. We'll see how we go. Long life asset, great location, and a team which is shooting the lights out in terms of operating performance. Moving to slide 7. A couple of highlights on sustainability. Community investment, we've signed off on a couple of funding pieces recently. The Airbus Foundation, a 5-year agreement there to provide some air screening and medical services to the communities near our operation, being Yandeyarra, the Australia area and around South Hedland. Also some funding to the Smith family for some learning scholarships. As it relates to decarbonization, a 6 megawatt solar farm that's plugged in, turned on, and generating green energy as we speak, displacing 3.8 million liters worth of fuel per year. Great to have that first step of decarbonization underway. As it relates to indigenous engagement. The most recent update is our cultural nights, camp nights out in the bush with the Nyamal people. There was a female night head. Great, great to get that underway and a fantastic way for our team to learn more about the Nyamal people and the local area. Thank you to the Nyamal people and shout out to Miriam Stanborough, one of our directors who opted in to join that. Moving to slide 8 on safety and people. TRIFR. Bit of a step up on TRIFR, care of reclassification of 2 injuries which occurred in the December quarter. A bit of an increase there, unfortunately. As it relates to our lead indicators, our safety interactions, they're going well above our target. Our first cultural survey, a fantastic participation rate, 87%. This was our first broad, deep cultural survey. Good to have that done. The team are working through that feedback now. Yeah, really important step to understand our strengths, understand our areas of work, and to work ahead to continue to bolster out the great culture which is the Pilbara Minerals way. As it relates to female employment, at 22%, it's come down slightly. We were about 24%, so, more work to be done there, but 22%. Yeah, more to happen in that regard. So that's a quick snapshot on the highlights. At this point, I'll now hand over to Brian to step through the financials. Great. Thanks. Thanks very much, Dale. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, depending where you are. Firstly, look, I'd just like to thank Dale for his very kind comments earlier. I would suggest there's been a bit more than a teaspoon of grumpiness on my part, but what I do know is that we've had a lot of fun along the way as well, and that's the part that I'll take away with me. It's been an absolute pleasure serving the PLS shareholders, working alongside a very supportive board, and also with so many fantastic employees and contractors and suppliers at Pilbara Minerals. It's just been an absolute blast. I'm very proud of having been part of a team that has taken the company, as Dale said, from a tin shed in North Fremantle to being part of the ASX 50 today. I do hope, during my six and a half years with the company, I have contributed in some way to the success of the company. I feel pretty pleased to be handing over the baton knowing that the company is certainly in rude financial health. All right. That's just a quick summary from me. In terms of just saying thank you to everyone and saying what an honor it's been to serve at Pilbara Minerals. Moving on to the financial results, referencing slide 10. I have to say that I'm, I think I'm very fortunate that my last rodeo for Pilbara is to be presenting a stellar set of half year financial results that reflect strong profitability, strong cash flow, a strong balance sheet, and importantly, the company's inaugural dividend. With all financial measures significantly higher than the prior corresponding period. In a nutshell, this strong financial result has been driven by three main key metrics. Firstly, we were able to increase the level of spodumene concentrate production. This was driven partly through the Ngungaju plant being ramped up to nameplate capacity, as well as the decision we made to implement a revised production strategy, which is really to target delivering more tons at a lower grade into the market. Secondly, we were able to put most of those tons on a ship. We increased the level of shipments to satisfy strong customer demand. Finally, you know, there was a significant increase in the realized selling price received for our product. This is really resulted from our strong market conditions and meant that we averaged a selling price of just under US $5,000 a dry metric ton, which is significantly higher than the prior corresponding period. Moving on to slide 11. It's clear that those three metrics that I just discussed really drove some very good financial outcomes. Higher sales revenue at $2.18 billion. EBITDA of $1.8 billion. Net profit after tax of AUD 1.24 billion. Importantly, cash flow from operations of AUD 1.8 billion. All of that contributed to a cash balance at the end of the year, at the end of the period of AUD 2.23 billion, and a net cash position after debt, of secured debt of just above AUD 2 billion as well. Certainly a very good set of numbers there. For the half year, Pilbara Minerals achieved net profit before tax of AUD 1.77 billion and net profit after tax of AUD 1.24 billion after applying an effective tax rate of 30%. That was all, it was all about what we achieved at our operation up in Pilbara, Pilgangoora, which delivered a very healthy gross margin for each ton of concentrate that we sold of, for about, in Australian dollar terms, AUD 6,311 per dry metric ton for the 287,000 tons that we shipped. The in Aussie dollars, the average realized selling price was just under AUD 7,450. Our unit operating costs, including freight and royalties, was AUD 1,136. That gives you the margin of AUD 6,300 odd. So if you apply that to the 287,000 tons shipped, and we also include the margin from the middlings product that we also sold during the period, the operation generated a gross margin of $1.84 billion. Whilst costs were higher during the period, this was largely driven by higher royalties linked to the selling price. This improved margin was achieved almost entirely on the back of a significant improvement in pricing outcomes. This was largely due to, you know, just a very positive market demand conditions for battery raw materials. Some exceptional results that we were able to achieve for cargoes which we sold on the BMX platform, also the completion of offtake customer price reviews that we undertook during the period. Moving to slide 13 now. This gross margin obviously translated into a significant improvement in EBITDA. EBITDA of AUD 1.84 billion. That flowed into the net profit before tax and then the headline profit after tax, which as I mentioned before, was AUD 1.24 billion. Now moving to cash flow and balance sheet. Referencing slide 15 now. The strong EBITDA position also reflected in the cash that the business was able to generate from its operations, with the operation generating AUD 1.8 billion of cash from the operations. We spent about AUD 128 million on capital investments and another AUD 46 odd million on servicing debt and repaying lease liability obligations. You sum all that through, and we end up with a closing cash balance of AUD 2.23 billion, which is a AUD 1.6 billion improvement from the cash balance at 30 June 2022. In terms of capital investment, the main areas that we invested were obviously the ramp up of the Ngungaju plant, the investment on the P680 project as we move to increase our production profile. Capitalized waste, mine development activities. I'll mention the installation of the 6 megawatt solar farm, as well as expansions of the tailing management facilities. Referencing slide 16. The strong operating performance clearly has added further strength to the company's balance sheet with a cash balance of AUD 2.2 billion and a net cash position after secured debt of AUD 2.08 billion. A very strong position. Moving to slide 18, and I think this for me, is the one, this is really the, you know, the one that, really makes me very happy when I see it. You know, they say that a picture paints 1,000 words, and I think that there's no more obvious example of this when you look at the impact that the company's half year results has had on the company's cash balance. It's just important to remind everyone and remind ourselves that, you know, over the, over the last three or four years, when, you know, business conditions were very tough, Pilbara took some very deliberate steps to position itself to take advantage of any market uplift when it came. This certainly has played out in spades during the December half with a AUD 1.63 billion increase in the cash balance. Finally, I'd just like to talk about the dividends, so referencing slide 19. Back in November, we obviously released our capital management framework. In that we noted that we noted the dividend policy, and we said that that would apply for the first time for the 2023 financial year results. Given the stellar half year performance, the directors have resolved to pay an inaugural interim dividend of AUD 0.11 per share with a record date of the 3rd of March and a payment date of the 24th of March. This dividend represents a payout ratio of 30% of free cash flow as applied to the half year results. The dividend will be fully franked, with franking credits starting to be earned when the company commences paying tax from late February, so this month. Once we lodge our 2022 tax return, we will then enter into a monthly installment system and through that build up franking credits. We are very confident that there will be sufficient franking credits to ensure that a fully franked dividend is, can be paid. That's everything I wanted to do in terms of highlighting the key parts of the half year results. I'd like to now hand over to Vince, our Chief Operating Officer, to cover off on our updated guidance, which we released along with the half year results. Over to you, Vince. Thank you, Brian. Starting on slide 20, starting with the production guidance. We previously guided to 540 to 580 kilotons of spodumene, and we're now guiding to 600 to 620. This is on the back of a couple of primary factors. Firstly, continued consistent and strong production performance. Secondly, as flagged in previous quarterly updates, we've progressively tweaked down product grade to facilitate higher lithium production yields. As such, for half two, we are targeting a slightly lower product grade to maximize product yield and production given the strong market for lithium. Moving to unit costs. We previously guided to AUD 635 to AUD 700 per dry metric ton of con, excluding freight and royalties. We are now guiding to AUD 580-610 per dry metric ton, where we've tightened the range and lowered our guidance. The previous guidance was higher due to headwinds such as COVID, freight, and labor shortages in the resource sector. Some of those headwinds have lessened, such as COVID and elevated freight, and we're observing increased stability. As such, we've improved confidence on our expected cost base. I would also note the first six months of the financial year performed at AUD 595 per dry metric ton of concentrate sold. This performance improved cost base confidence, and in combination with increased production volumes, has translated into this improved unit cost guidance. Moving on to capital. P680. We recently announced an increase in P680 spend, of which we forecast to spend AUD 195 million for the full year, with the balance to be spent in the following year. Waste mine development. Our previous guidance was AUD 130 million-AUD 160 million, and we're now guiding to AUD 140 million-AUD 160 million, which is largely in line. Given the importance of our mining performance on the overall business performance, we are very much targeting the higher end of this guidance to ensure our strip ratios are healthy. Which leads to broader base of ore sources that enables improved mineral feed strategies, which have positive downstream impacts in our processing plants. With respect to project development and sustaining capital, previously we guided project development to AUD 10.6 million, and now guiding to AUD 37.9 million. Sustaining CapEx was AUD 32.8 million, and we're now guiding to AUD 72 million. Those key drivers here are ramping up investment into our business from an earlier period of underinvestment through tough market conditions. We're now prudently targeting capital through a strong capital approvals process to areas of business improvement such as plant performance and reliability, NPI, technology, and employee hygiene areas strongly linked to our improving culture. We expect to see continued business improvement through these investments. With that, I'll hand over to Duff. Thanks, Vince. Now just moving to a quick recap on our strategy to slide 22. Our aim is to be a leader in the provision of sustainable battery materials products. The way we think about that is through four key legs. First and foremost, it's about delivering on our operating commitments, making sure the operating platform is shooting the lights out, quarter on quarter. The second is about expanding that operating platform and making the most of this incredible tier one asset that we have, the Pilgangoora asset, where our mine site is. Thirdly, it's about extracting more value through downstream involvement. Then the last plank of our strategy is around diversifying our revenues outside of the Pilgangoora asset base. Importantly, I just want to highlight, we think about these priorities in that order. Operating platform, 1. Expanding the operating platform. 3, downstream involvement. Fourth, the diversification into other areas. Just to touch on each of these areas in brief. Moving to the operation, slide 24. A fantastic graph here, one for the fridge door. It's almost as nice as Brian's cash balance curve. It's a close second, and looking forward to seeing this continue to incrementally step up in the years ahead as we bring on the next leg's expansion. Speaking of which, moving to slide 26 and talking about our growth. Just wanted to quickly update on the executive team updates here. The team is growing. We've got 2 of the key execs now signed up. Sandra McInnes, our Chief Sustainability Officer, started this week. John Stanning, our Chief Development Officer, he started last week. Paul Laybourne, we've got his photo up already, he starts next month. Yeah, delighted to have these executives join the family. They all come with, you know, a fantastic pedigree of experience in their respective domains, and they couldn't wait to join Pilbara, and who could blame them with where this company's at and where we're heading. There's one more to go, which is the new Brian or the new Abacus, as he was politely termed yesterday. We're still working through that process. We are down to the pointy end. We've got a couple of fantastic candidates, as you'd expect. Yeah, looking forward to the full set being completed. And this just really speaks to gearing up the business for more growth and to create more value for our shareholders. Now, bringing it to the growth pathway that we have in mind, so moving to slide 27. Just a quick reminder on our staged expansion profile. The P680 project, which bolts on another 100,000 tons of production capacity, that's busy being constructed at the moment. It was great to be on site last week to see the civil works essentially complete and materials flowing to site to support that project. And delighted that we've got Primero engaged, our long-term engineering construction partner, busy building that for us. Beyond the P680, the P1000 project. This is gonna step us up to 1 million tons per annum total production. That project is coming up to FID this quarter. Last quarter, we did approve AUD 38.3 million of pre-FID funding to get the long leads underway to preserve schedule. Our team's busy pedaling fast on both those fronts and, yeah, all going well. We look forward to updating on that full FID in the coming weeks. Moving beyond our base growth strategy around expanding production and moving to value add, slide 30. Value add, this is all about creating more value through more downstream involvement. The two pathways principally here are... Well, in the first order, it's about participation in chemicals conversion. Our joint venture with POSCO is underway. They're busy building that plant, We're looking to be delivering our first product late in the calendar year to support commissioning. Then we've got our midstream joint venture with Calix. What this is about is an R&D project to deliver a different lithium product to market. One in which we think will be superior to the spodumene concentrate we deliver today. Superior in the sense that it's a big uplift in lithium concentration, 6%-35%. 2, a big reduction in waste. The aluminosilicate, which is normally present with spodumene concentrate in the order of 90%+ is removed and left at the mine site. So that's the second benefit. The third benefit is about a step-down in the carbon energy intensity of the product, and we look to achieve that through the application of Calix's vertical electric calciner. We think it's a winner. The test work is great. The scoping study said yes. We're moving forward with the next levels of study to support a demonstration plant. We're quietly optimistic around this piece. We'll see how we go. The demo plant's a key piece to demonstrate the validity of what we're exploring here. Look, if that all goes well, this could be a game changer for our business and for the industry, but we'll see how we go. Beyond these couple of pieces, we do have more downstream opportunity potential. That's made possible through this massive production profile that we've got stepping up to 1 million tons per annum. We have, you know, quite a chunky proportion of that unallocated. Of course, we're turning our mind to what's the best location to commit those tons to. Plenty of work happening behind the scenes as we think about that. In the meantime, we move to slide 31. Just in the last couple of days, we announced a spot sale linked to lithium hydroxide pricing. This is pretty neat, and this piece of work has been in motion for quite some months as we look to explore effectively a tolling construct, to effectively parlay our tons, for more benefit through more economic benefits through tolling. If I just take a step back, historically, quarter to quarter, we've talked about our unallocated tons, and we've talked about preserving flexibility. The reason we've done that is, A, retain flexibility such that we can choose the smartest pathway to market. Those pathways to market, we've always spoken about several, one of which is the BMX platform, spot sales. Two, offtake, either short-dated or long-dated offtake, working with our existing customers or new customers. Three, a tolling construct. The tolling construct, here it is. This is our first toe in the water exploring this type of construct. The reason we've elected to do this is we think it gets us further downstream, which supports our strategic initiatives. Secondly, it's a great economic return. For those reasons, we've elected to have a crack at this, and we'll see how we go, but we like the idea of moving forward with more. That slide 31 offers more detail around the makeup of that construct. It talks to timing, it talks to the volume, and there's a reference to broadly around pricing. I can assure you it's a great outcome for Pilbara and Pilbara's shareholders. Yeah, as I say, looking forward to exploring this further in the months and years to come. Whilst we're talking about this piece, I do wanna address two points. One, about some of the recent articles, and the second I wanna speak to is disclosure. Yeah, we had some articles which really snowballed effectively, reporting on rumors that there'd been a failed auction by a raw materials lithium supplier. Well, as per our announcement, I just want to make it clear unequivocally, there was no BMX auction undertaken by Pilbara Minerals in the last few weeks. There was none. As we've articulated in an announcement, we did do a pre-auction bid, which we've done from time to time. What that is about, is about testing the market for pricing. Sometimes we've awarded on those pre-auction bids, as we've done historically. If you look back at our 13 or so BMX auctions, sometimes we've elected to do a pre-bid auction, sometimes we've gone forward with a BMX auction. In this instance, we chose not to do that, and we chose to elect this other opportunity which we've been having working in the background. That's the truth. That's how it is. There's nothing more to be said really, but I just wanted to make people very clear about what's driving Pilbara Minerals' actions. As I say, unequivocally, if there's a thought that there was a failed BMX auction for Pilbara Minerals recently, it is simply not the case. The second item relates to disclosure. You know, our guiding principle here as a ASX listed company is if we've got a material update, we will update the market. We absolutely will. We have to. As we think about future BMX spot sales, will we be disclosing that to market? If we think it's material, yes. In the current environment, if we were to do a BMX auction, yes, we would disclose it in the current environment because the view we would take is it is material. I just wanted to make that point clear as well. Before the question comes, what will we do in terms of the next BMX auctions or more tolling? As we've said in these past quarterlies, we will retain flexibility, and we will continue to explore each of those pathways to market simultaneously in parallel, and we will select the best option we think for the business. With all of these are basically bridging steps as we move to more long-dated downstream involvement, because that is the key prize, and that's what our sights are trained on for the long term, a la POSCO joint venture. Moving to the home straight, I'm conscious of time, and just to offer a couple of comments on the market. Moving to slide 33. The sky is not falling in. It looks pretty good to me. There has been some pullback in pricing, particularly within the China domestic market. I would point out that January Spring Festival is always a soft month. Even in the short history of the lithium industry, if you look back at 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, this is the time you see a pullback. Domestic pricing is a function of the slowdown in the China market. We are seeing a bit of that. What I'd put to everyone is just remind everyone of the structural shift which is underway. You know, what we see is, which everyone sees through the headlines, more EVs, more investment. That is definitely moving forward. The other piece I could offer is what does Pilbara see as a major lithium materials participant? It's all positive. Our engagement with customers is all positive. They ask for more tons. They want more tons. Inbound inquiry continues with non-participants, existing participants, et cetera. Pilbara enjoys the enviable position of being one of the few major lithium operators who's producing, who's got a readily expandable platform to deliver more tons to market, and with no shortage of inquiry of groups wanting to partner with Pilbara. The long game remains positive and we've got our sights firmly set on continuing to grow our business in this category. Lastly, to finish, yeah, the lithium deficit. This data is care of Benchmark. This is a refresh of the data they provided us recently. I'd point out that in 2030, this graph, the last version of this graph, there was no gap. Demand equals supply, but there's a gap now. At 2040, that gap has now widened. At 2040, that 2.6 million ton LCE deficit, that's the equivalent of 18 Pilgangoora operations. Don't forget Pilgangoora, one of the largest hard rock operations globally, and that 18 in size of the million tons per annum. I'd remind everyone of that and also remind everyone of how long it takes to bring these assets to life. For Pilbara, it was 4 years from first drill hole to operation, and that is break-neck speed. The world needs heaps of lithium. It's gonna take time. Existing operators like Pilbara Minerals are in credible position. You know, pay homage to our founders and the team which followed, who had the conviction and the vision to see the opportunity which is unfolding. Here we are today, Pilbara Minerals, enjoying the benefits of being that first mover, and the dividends we have today really speak to that. Thank you to all those who have come before. That's, that's a wrap from us. We went slightly longer than I hoped to, and in the closing sort of 25 minutes, keen to take some questions. At this point, we'll hand back to Winnie to take some questions. Over to you. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first phone question comes from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi, Dale and team. Thanks for the update, and congrats on the inaugural dividend. My first question was just more of a clarification on the guidance. You used to disclose capacity, production capacity that is on an SC6 basis. Now, noting slide 6 footnote that the current capacity is on a 5.7. I just wanted to clarify, firstly, that's driven by Ngungaju performance, and if that's one of the growing pains you mentioned, Dale. Then, you know, noting that grade change, how much of the production guidance increase would you attribute to the lower grade, higher volume strategy? I'll come back with a second. Cool. Thanks. Thanks, Hugo. So on the first point, as to product grade, yeah, for last quarter, we were approximately about a 5.2. We will look to probably tweak that down slightly. As to the why the product grade is lower, that is in no way related to any sort of production performance issues. We were quite comfortable about both the Pilgan and Ngungaju operations. They're tuned up. They're working well. There'll always be further optimization, but they, like, are controlled and we're happy with that performance. To the reference around growing pains, that was more actually to do with just some of the support infrastructure we have around mining. Nothing relating to the processing plant. We've got some simple enabling infrastructure we need to get in place, which supports the larger fleet, that we have. Yeah, that's about it. Did that cover your questions there, Hugo? Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Dale, for the clarification. The second one, I guess, a two-part on pricing. I mean, firstly on the toll-linked price, were you given an option to lock in a forward hydroxide price rather than taking that market pricing risk? If so, you know, how different or how far below versus, you know, the current forward pricing, with that lock-in pricing have been? If you can give a guide. The second part on pricing, obviously recent price movements that you touched on. One of your peers this morning was pointing to regional indices, convergence and geographic exposure, potentially shielding them from the Chinese chemicals price declines. I was just wondering if you can give us any commentary around the discussions with offtake partners now looking forward to the next quarter, or I guess more directly, how does the $6,300 price you referenced in December look today? Thanks. Sure. Okay, there's a bit in that one, Hugo. In terms of the way we've approached this area, we've engaged broadly across the industry to see what the options are in terms of who we want to partner with with tolling. That's been quite a thorough process. Then within that, we of course, looked carefully at how we consider pricing. But as per the announcement, you'll see that for this particular construct, pricing is timed all around the shipment and the shipments essentially leaving in terms of spodumene and the arrivals in terms of chemicals. This is all about us effectively sharing that pricing risk with the converter. I'd point to that as a bit of a guidance. As to the convergence or the pursuit of various different pricing regimes, the philosophy we've had with our offtake partners has always been about marrying our pricing mechanisms to the products and markets in which they're selling. That's the broad principle. That would be the broad principle I think we'll look to use as we move forward. The good thing for Pilbara is we have got a broad base of the tier one chemical converters who export internationally. You'll note that pricing is holding up well relative to the domestic pricing at this moment in time. Pilbara feels pretty well placed for that. You might also note from our spot tolling sale that pricing is tied to that export pricing as well. Hopefully that helps and gives a bit of detail there, Hugo. Yeah. No, that's great. Thanks, Dale. I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks. Thank you. Your next question comes from Max Vickerson from Morgans. Please go ahead. Good morning, Dale. Can I ask a little bit about capital cost inflation? There seems to be pretty different rates of inflation in those different parts of guidance you mentioned earlier. Firstly, What are you seeing in terms of forward-looking inflation? Is it kind of settling down now? How should we think about the 1 million ton per annum expansion in terms of, you know, does it kinda sit at the lower end of the capital inflation guideline or is it maybe potentially towards the higher end? Yeah, sure. I'll offer a couple of comments and then Brian can probably weigh in on this one as well. As it relates to capital cost inflation, we're feeling more comfortable that the inflation and largely is more under control. We're certainly seeing that at the operating level, which is good. There's some sub points around, say, for example, freight, which is really has come back from the highs to more what we're used to have historically, which is good. We have factored in, you know, higher costs into as we think about capital. We have a fairly good feeling around that given our recent market engagement. We're doing long leads, et cetera, et cetera. That all sort of flows into the estimates we have, which gives us more confidence. Obviously we can't be too sure what happens in the future. Nobody can. We're feeling that we've got a higher degree of confidence. As it relates to the P1000 capital decision, you know, we'll provide obviously much more insight once we do that FID. If you could wait for that one, we'll obviously be fulsome in that response there. Brian, anything to add on this? No, I think you've covered it pretty well there, Dale. Yeah, that's it. I've got nothing else to say. Sure. Okay. Excellent. Thanks, Dale. Thank you. Your next question comes from Levi Spry from UBS. Please go ahead. Good day, afternoon, morning. Thanks, Dale and team. If I can just go back to the tolling agreement. I had a few questions around the duration risk. Can you just confirm that it's T plus one, i.e., the price is set on the 20th of March? What index is it referencing? Is it one that we can look at, like Fastmarkets? The timelines are fairly narrow that we've given on that slide 31. As to the specific reference, no. Yeah, we're not gonna be disclosing that sort of level of detail on that one. Sorry, Levi. Fastmarkets is a good one to look at. There's a few others there. The price is one month? It's one month from when it sets sail from the 20th of February? It's the price is split in 2 parts. A quadrain price, and then a corrective piece later, which is detailed on slide 31. Okay. Cool. I might come back to that. Thanks. Just in terms of the, you talked to the unallocated portion in time. Can you just give us in terms of the growth to 1 million tons, and bearing in mind that it might be running a bit above that depending on what grade you're producing, how much of that is unallocated? Can you maybe just remind us of the breakdown there, i.e. the 315 that goes to POSCO? How much is left? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Levi, once we're fully expanded around 1 million tons per annum, there's approximately 300,000-400,000, depending where we take offtake agreements and depending whether we go a bit higher as a function of the product growth. It's broadly 300-400 unallocated. Okay. Thank you. Thanks very much. All right. Thanks, Levi. Thank you. Your next question comes from David Feng from China International Capital Corporation. Please go ahead. Oh, yeah. Good day, Dale, Brian, and the team. This is David from CICC. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is in terms of your definition for free cash flow, may I ask why only CapEx on sustaining capital instead of the total amount of all your CapEx is included in your free cash flow calculation? In terms of your free cash flow in the second half of FY23, given that you just started paying tax from February and a potential high CapEx compared with the first half, does it make sense for us to expect a lower free cash flow in the second half over the first half of FY23? I'll come back with the second one. All right. David, it's Brian here. I might have a go at those couple of questions. In relation to the free cash flow, and why it only includes sustaining capital, it's all linked to the percentage of cash flow that we're allocating to pay a dividend. The view is because we're only paying between 20%-30%, that means you're holding onto, you know, notionally 70%-80% of the cash flow. That's all around having cash available to expand the business and look for other both organic and inorganic growth opportunities. That's what's driving that sort of decision around how we think about the capital and sustaining capital. In terms of the free cash flow in the second half, well, you know, it's very, you know, today we sit here, it's really is gonna be price dependent. You know, what we can control is we can control, I think you know, the level of production and sales. We can hopefully have a red-hot crack at controlling our costs. The price, you know, is unknown. It's very hard for me to sit here today and tell you know, I think we're gonna have a dividend and that dividend is gonna be higher or lower than the first half. What's, you know, what I can certainly say is that given we're now in a regime where we're paying tax on a monthly basis, the issues around whether we have sufficient franking credits goes away. Cool. Understood. Okay, just may we have any color on how should we expect your mid to long term CapEx on sustaining capital and waste mine development? Would your expenditure on the sustaining capital grow proportionally with your volume or it will just largely stay flat in the future? Yes. David, I think sustaining capital as it relates to the mine effectively stables, save for once we've obviously expanded, you know, the absolute number will increase, but from a percentage basis for the processing plant, it will be effectively the same. Okay. Cool. Thank you so much. That's all from me. Okay. Thanks, David. Thank you. Your next question comes from Matthew Sarich from Red Door Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you. I just wanted to ask a quick question about, again, about the tolling arrangement. I guess it's probably got two parts, but I guess simplistically, when you say... I'm just trying to work out what aligned actually means. I think last auction you had 8,299 SC6 equivalent. Does that mean you're getting somewhere over, at the current lithium hydroxide price, not the future price, which we don't know yet, but does that mean you're getting something over $8,000 a ton under this arrangement? I guess that would be the inference given that it's aligned with it. What we've tried to do here is give a broad guidance without closing too much. At the end of the day, this is commercially sensitive and we need to be respectful to our counterparty in this regard. Absolutely appreciate that everyone's looking for as much detail as possible. I'm sorry, we can't spell it out and all the detail, but is it a number north of 8 or based on January's pricing? Well, it would be. Excellent. That helps a lot. Just as a follow up to that, I guess, does it imply, given it's a tolling arrangement, that the amount of the hydroxide or, sorry, carbonate or hydroxide, the hydroxide price, you're getting a bigger share of that end price and the toll treatment is a much thinner margin than, say, the toll treater would take in a normal situation if they were just buying carbonate from you and taking the price risk themselves? The way we think about toll treating is you're, the broad idea is you're effectively fixing a processing cost and then there's a floating pricing point. It's a case of how do the proceeds get split. Whether that's the best economic outcome's a function of what we can get to with your other pathways to market. We've got comfortable with this construct. As I mentioned in the opening, it's a toe in the water. It's a spot sale. It's our first crack. We think there's merit in continuing to explore this type of model. No, I'd agree. Think it makes a ton of sense, especially if there's spare capacity out there, in the market for sure, to process this material. Can I just ask one other question? I've sort of lost a little bit of track with the POSCO joint venture. All things going to plan and, assuming you exercise your 30%, or your, to go from 18% to 30%, your option, you'll have 13,000 tons per annum around about the 43,000 tons in total by around mid calendar year, 2024. I guess, when does that get to full? When, what's the timeline of the ramp given we've been seeing probably in the market a little bit of a few delays around it? How are POSCO feeling about the ramp up of that production? I guess will that be, I mean, you'll take your share of revenue. That's 30% of, you know, if we say hydroxide price is AUD 75,000 on Fastmarkets today, you know, something like AUD 1.4 billion of Aussie revenue at the current exchange rates. Is that, is that ballpark? When, when is that, when do you think that'll be at 100%, I guess? No. Thanks. Thanks, Matthew. Look, I think later, in subsequent quarters, we'll start to provide a bit more insight into what the outlook is for the project. As you can appreciate right now, it's still coming out of the ground. What POSCO has guided us is at least their current plans are quite elongated. They've taken a modest ramp-up profile for the operation. But I'd add that, you know, POSCO is quite conservative, which we like. But it was in the order of sort of an 18-month sort of period to ramp up. But as to the split of the winnings, as per that equity split that you mentioned. Excellent. Thank you. Sorry, just one last question I just thought of. It's a pretty simple one, but it looks like the last six quarters, you've probably shipped around 50,000 tons less than you've produced for the last year and a half. I guess, is there any plan, because I guess it's, you know, $300 million or $400 million in material. Is there any chance that you'll get back, you'll be able to draw down and ship more or, what's the...? Is that right? I'm just taking the sales and, what you've been producing. No, the in-inventory levels should be that high, from memory. Maybe if I can have a go at it. There was one shipment that we were hoping to get out in end of December, which didn't quite make it because of port congestion. That would have been another 20,000 tons that would have gone out, which ultimately went out in early January. If you exclude that, sort of the level of concentrate inventory that we that we would normally carry, which is, you know, in essence about three weeks worth of sales, would have been about normal. There's about 50,000 tons of concentrate at the end of at the end of December. 20 of that went sort of within a couple of days of the end of the financial... Or the end of the half year. Okay. My number might not have included the middlings sales that you made last quarter and stuff like that. Yeah, sounds good. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from Luke Smith from AustralianSuper. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, Dale. I've got just a follow-up question on your first phone call. From the first question. The P680 and P1000, those capacity numbers, are they based on less than 6% SC now? No. No, they're based on SC6. Okay. Just current guidance of 580 is based on 5.7? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Luke. Thank you. Your next question comes from Milan Tomic from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. You mentioned revenues from middlings products in the half. Do you have any potential to maintain these sales, and what kind of demand are you seeing for these lower grade products? Yes. As it relates to middlings, as part of the ramp-up of the Ngungaju plant, teams stream to middlings stream, which was effectively through a commissioning sort of phase. We're not doing that anymore as a function of having completed some of the optimizations. The, you know, the full circuit has taken, you know, it's processing and upgrading everything, which is of course what we want to do because we want the higher grade sort of SC6 or SC 5.4, et cetera, products. We're not looking to produce middlings. As to those middlings we did produce, what was the market like? We had quite a few offers for that product. We had no issues moving it. Yeah, as I say, it's not a product we wanna do because it's lower value. Just if I can get a second one in as well. With regard to tolling arrangements, you know, it's giving you the benefit of revenue diversification and incremental exposure to hydroxide. Do you think there is appetite for these partnerships in the future? You know, how are you thinking about weighing up direct investment in downstream versus lower CapEx tolling products? Yeah. No, good question. We, we think deeply about these different constructs. You know, one thing we're sure about is that the highest order prize is to be a downstream participant. You know, that's without question. What the thinking is, well, which, how do you go about that? Is that, where is the location? Do you do it in partnership, et cetera? I think the way we think about tolling is a, as a bridge to that end destination. It's, it's a pretty good bridge, we think. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Mitch Ryan from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, Dale and team. Thank you very much for this. I've just got 1 question, and it's with regards to the toll treating agreement, just for a change. One of your peers has reported toll treating costs of between AUD 8,800 and AUD 7,800 a ton today. Is that in the realms of what we should be thinking for the conversion selling costs that would be in your agreement? Yeah, yeah, we haven't guided on that one, but that sounds really high. It's my honest sort of reaction to that. Yeah. Yeah, they were all, they were Aussie dollar numbers. If you put it on U.S., it's probably $5,500. I get it. That sounds high. Okay, thank you. I really appreciate the color. Yeah, no worries. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Hugo Nicolaci from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Oh, hi, guys. Thanks for taking the follow-up. again, just on the tolling, I guess more strategically. I mean, now you dipped the toe in the water on the tolling mechanism, what do you need to see to, I guess, validate, that mechanism to get further into the water and maybe take on some hydroxide marketing? How do you think that test, sort of test your capabilities to market, maybe future sort of midstream lithium salt products? Thanks. Welcome back, Hugo. What do we need to see? I think the things we're learning here are what's the right commercial construct. You know, there's some complexities around executing these sales. There's VAT taxes, and there's some tax and legal implications. There's a category of learnings there. There's also a category of learnings around product quality and the way those responsibilities are handled. The third piece is probably a strategic one around whom is that tolling group and where does that relationship go, given that, as I've mentioned earlier, ultimately we're looking to be outright downstream partners. That's another factor. Those are the three things we will continue to think through as we explore this avenue. Great. That's great. Thanks, Dale. Just one other one. Appreciate on cost performance, you're no longer disclosing your Ngungaju plant costs. Are you able to maybe give us a little bit of a guide on how cost performance at Ngungaju fared this half versus maybe the last half? Thanks. Yeah. It It fared okay, Hugo. Probably be the answer there. Vince, did you wanna add anything on that? It's performed well. As you can see in our cost guidance, probably can't really disclose too much more, but it's gone well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we're purposefully, you know, the way we think about it, Hugo, we've got the one mine, multiple processing pathways to deliver different products to market. Yeah, we don't wanna really get into subdividing the unit costs within the operation and communicating on that. Understood. Thanks for that. Cheers, team, and again, congrats on the dividend. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, Hugo. Thank you. Your next question comes from Thomas Hayes from CLSA Limited. Please go ahead. Hi, Dale and team. Thank you for taking the time. Congratulations to Brian. Just got one. Are you able to give us an indication for your average SC6 contract price as it stands today? Yeah. Good day. Well, we'll leave that for the quarterly, would be the best way to go. I don't wanna give you a bum steer on that. I don't have those numbers on hand. Okay. Thanks, Dale. Thank you. Your next questions come from Kate McCutcheon from Citi. Please go ahead. Hi, Dale. Good morning. Apologies if you've covered this. I just jumped on late. Has CapEx guidance lifted on project development and sustaining CapEx? Can I just have some color on what's driving that? The second part to that question is P1000 FID. Can we still expect an announcement this quarter on that? Yeah. Good day, Kate. I'll do the second part, and I'll throw to Vince to recap on the first part. The P1000 FID is on track for this quarter. Obviously that is subject to board approval, FID, et cetera. Yeah, the team's busy sort of finalizing the papers for that. Vince, on the CapEx. Yeah. On the CapEx, the sustaining CapEx, as I sort of mentioned earlier, we did go through a phase of a very tough market, and we weren't able to spend as much as what we wanted. Conditions have changed, and we are actively going after areas of the business to spend in those areas of improving productivity, recoveries, some of our NPI infrastructure and also some of our hygiene items, which are linked very closely to our culture and then continue to improve that. We expect to see improvement in our productivities and performance through a prudent spend in those areas. Okay. That's the same for the development or the project development CapEx as well? That's in there. If you're referring to the mine development, that's really around strip ratios, and we want to continue to increase how much we strip, which opens up more ore fronts and gives us greater flexibility and optimized feeds into the processing plants. Yeah. Okay. My second question, I think Brian may have touched on this. Just on the dividend, that franked. Does that mean that you're pre-paying tax to be able to declare that fully franked now? How does that work? No, no, that's, Kate, it's not quite how it works. If to be able to declare a fully franked dividend, you need to make sure you've got sufficient franking credits. As at 30 June of each financial year. We've obviously worked out how much tax we'll be paying between now and 30 June. As long as we've got those franking credits during the financial year, then, you know, you can pay the dividend now and actually use those franking credits that get generated when we pay the tax. Yeah, that's we haven't had to prepay tax to actually achieve that outcome. Okay. Perfect. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Your next question comes from Glyn Lawcock from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Morning, Dale. Look, just on this tolling agreement again, if I just read slide 31 correctly, you get the cash from the spodumene sale as it leaves the port. Hypothetically, if the hydroxide pricing collapsed to a point such that it's not sufficient to cover, you know, like, you end up, you've got to pay a fixed price to the toller and it comes back and you don't have enough. Do you then have to reconcile back and get money back from the spodumene sale? Is that what you meant by corrective price? Do you both share the pain on a collapse in the spodumene, I mean the hydroxide price? Yeah, look, I'd have to go back and check that one, Glyn. Yeah, the construct de-risks Pilbara to secure, you know, the lion's share upfront is the way we think about it. There is a true-up to happen. It's fairly well geared in Pilbara's favor. That's probably as much as I could offer. Okay. Yeah, just, yeah. Fair enough. You don't expect to get money back, at least out of the... Whatever you lock in for spot, that's your worst case. Then if there's no upside left, that's so be it. That's the way I think about it. Yep. Okay. Just second one. how do you think we should think about capital intensity of P1000 versus P680, you know? Yeah. Well. Similar capital intensity? We'll obviously update on that one, Glyn, with the FID announcement when that comes out. You know, without question, there's been capital escalation and projects across the board, inclusive of our own P680 project. Yeah, these expansion projects have gone up in the Western Australian market. There's no doubt about that. Yeah, the P1000 project will be more expensive than we contemplated way back in the day. As I say, we'll be fulsome in outlining that as part of the FID in the coming weeks. Okay. That's on a dollar per ton basis then, you know, 'cause you're adding $100,000 in P680, and you're adding over $300,000 in P1000. Yeah ... that sort of mean you should be thinking not almost triple despite, you know, the dollar spend? It's, yeah, I wouldn't recommend necessarily, just sort of pro-rata-ing. The reason being that the capital on each of these investment cases is quite different in that, you know, the P680 primary ejection building, it's a building screens, pumps and pipes. The P1000's gonna be more fulsome. It's a ball mill. It's a whole float circuit. There's some mining infrastructure to go on for larger operation. It's not an apples for apples kind of scale up. My advice would be wait for that P1000, FID detail. All right. Thanks very much, Dale. Appreciate it. No worries. Thanks, Glyn. Thank you. Your next question comes from Tim Huff from Canaccord. Please go ahead. Hey, congratulations on the outcome, guys, and Brian, for your efforts throughout the journey. We see a few different prices for ex works, hydroxide price out of China, that are quite a bit lower than the North Asian price. Is it fair to say that your tolling partner is aligned to customers that utilize that North Asian pricing? Well, I think we've, yeah, we've kind of referenced that. For the, you know, if this is regards to the spot tolling contract, the answer is yes. We've referenced that. As you'd expect, you know, we've contemplated all these factors, to make sure that we get a really, really good construct, for our shareholders. I guess the, my implication there is that your tolling partner's not some Johnny-come-lately, that they have got bonafides in the industry. That's it, Tim. Yeah. No, we don't. We ignore the Johnny-come-latelys. Yeah. Excellent. Great work, guys. Thank you very much. See you. Okay. Thank you. Shall we, Wendy, we might move to, sort of 10 minutes of the retail questions. 10 minutes? Yep. Yeah, we'll do 10 minutes of retail questions and then we'll wrap up. Over to Nicholas. Thanks, Dale. We have got a lot of questions, so I'm just gonna pick the eyes out of these. We did cover a number of issues earlier, so I'm just gonna go to the relevant ones here. There's a couple of questions around your growth strategy. The first one here is, in terms of deploying cash, do you see scope to increase the dividend ratio in future? How do you think about your priorities in terms of deploying available cash with respect to your relevant growth options? Yeah, sure. As it relates to a growth strategy, the way we think about it, sort of what we stepped through on the presentation that, you know, highest order priority is make the most of this incredible asset. Expand the operating platform, move downstream, et cetera. As that relates to the capital management framework, that's the way we think about it. We wanna do that. As per that capital management framework we communicated to market, we talked about a 20% to 30% free cash flow measure to be the sort of guideline for dividends. You know, is it up for grabs to reconsider that? I think that's possible, but I think that would be quite far down the track. That would follow probably a strategy re-reviews and the like. I think the capital management framework we have would stand for quite some time. Would be my thoughts. Thanks, Dale. There's 2 questions around whether you've considered an offshore or dual listing for the company on an exchange like New York or any other. Occasionally the idea has come up. Yeah, we don't explore too much. You know, that's quite involved to do that listing. Given that we're a single asset operation in Western Australia, it makes good sense to stay ASX listed here. If one day Pilbara was to somehow expand into other jurisdictions, well, that would probably be the time to consider what's the right listed vehicles. Thanks, Dale. Question about whether you have any plans to considerably increase solar or in the future, wind generation on site, and also whether you're looking at next generation trucks such as battery powered trucks up on site? Yeah. No, absolutely. You know, As with all, you know, mature organizations, we've got an objective around pursuing a net zero pathway. Within that, the... I guess the easier things to tackle are displacing some of that base load power, of which our first 6 megawatt solar is our first incremental step. The way we think about it is, yes, we should do more of that, and we've got studies underway to look at that, and I see us investing in that in time. Having sort of pulled the easy, you know, the easy to reach fruit, you then have to work on the harder stuff, which is inclusive of heavy mining equipment, which we will turn our mind to. In sort of rank order, that's down the list. Thanks, Dale. Another question here. Is there a strategic point at which you would consider holding additional inventory in the shed rather than BMX and tolling, avoiding potentially short-term dips in the price? Yeah, I think unlikely we would use inventory to manage dips. You know, it's probably worth highlighting that spot sales get a disproportionate amount of attention. The vast majority of our production profile is very long-dated offtakes and in the main there is a smoothing of pricing contemplated in that. I'd also note that further downstream, particularly outside of China, my understanding of most of those contract relationships are generally longer dated, more smoothing of pricing through the supply chain, which helps counter that volatility. To an extent, we do have some defense against that volatility. As I said, I don't think we would invest in large stockpiles as a method by which to either sidestep or sidestep down dips or capitalize on upticks. Thanks, Dale. Just one final one. Would you consider diversification into other battery metals or minerals outside of lithium? I think it's not off the cards. The inorganic growth plank, as I sort of outlined earlier in the presentation, is number 4 down the list. We're very much early in the thinking of what does inorganic growth mean for Pilbara Minerals. Very much early in the thinking. You know, Chief Development Officer, John Stanning, will start to unpack and progress some of the thinking for us in this regard. Meanwhile, we'll keep focused on that core business of delivering more lithium units to market. Thanks, Dale. I think we've covered the key issues there. I'll hand back to you to close. No, thanks, Nicholas. Thanks everyone for dialing in. An absolute stellar half year results. Fantastic to announce the inaugural AUD 0.11 dividend. A big thank you to those long holder shareholders of Pilbara Minerals who've gone the full journey. You know, we appreciate the notes over the years and I hope that this is a bit of vindication for your faith in the company and the team. Thank you. A big thank you just to all the different parties I touched on who've been part of the success today. The customers, their contracting partners, the Nyamal community. The team that we have, the team who progressed us to this point and the team who's carrying the baton forward. A big vote of thanks and, you know, look forward to a fantastic future for the company. We are just getting started and looking forward to updating on the big growth leaps in the quarters to come. Thank you all, and look forward to talking again in the future. Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.