Elevra Lithium - Earnings Call - Q4 2025

Transcript

Speaker 2

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hello and welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Sayona Mining's June 2025 Quarterly Results Presentation. I'm joined today by Sylvain Collard, Chief Operating Officer and President Candidate, Dougal Elder, Chief Financial Officer, and Andrew Barber, who heads up Investor Relations. This was a milestone quarter for Sayona Mining, one where we not only delivered record production at North American Lithium, but also improved our cost structure, achieved our best safety performance in almost a year, and progressed the transformational merger with Piedmont Lithium. Today, I'll walk you through our safety performance, operations, sales, and cost results, our exploration progress, and finally, the steps we are taking to position Sayona Mining, soon to be Allegra Lithium, for the future. Unless stated otherwise, all dollar amounts discussed today are in Australian dollars. Let me start with safety.

I'm pleased to say that May and June were lost-time injury-free months, which is a fantastic achievement and our best safety performance since September 2024. This outcome reflects strong field leadership, proactive hazard identification and reporting, and an ongoing focus on embedding safe behaviors across our workforce. On the environmental side, we progressed baseline studies to support a potential expansion at North American Lithium. Importantly, no significant environmental concerns have been identified to date, which is a positive sign as we look to grow in a sustainable and responsible manner. Turning now to operational performance, it really was a standout quarter. Ore mined for the quarter increased to 361,883 wet metric tons, up 12% quarter on quarter, as we focused on improving ore availability to feed the mill. Ore processed jumped even more sharply to just under 358,000 tons, up 24% on the March quarter.

This throughput came alongside a record mill utilization rate of 93%, which is 13 percentage points higher than the March quarter. This is a direct reflection of the reliability and efficiency improvements that Sylvain and our operations team have been driving over recent months. Lithium recovery was also at a record 73%, up 4% quarter on quarter, reflecting excellent operational process discipline and improvements in the plant. All of this translated into record spodumene concentrate production of 58,533 dry metric tons, up 35% on the March quarter. It's worth noting that even with this higher throughput, our concentrate grade remains steady at 5.2%, so we're increasing volume without compromising product quality. On the sales side, we executed well on our strategy to weight shipments to the second half of FY25, when forward prices were more attractive.

In the quarter, we sold 66,980 dry metric tons, up 148% compared with the March quarter. That resulted in revenue of $71 million, which is the second highest quarterly revenue result we've achieved since restarting production at North American Lithium. Average realized selling price came in at $1,054 per ton on an FOB basis, $682 US per ton. That's 8% lower than the March quarter, but still a strong result considering lithium index prices were down 15% to 20% across the quarter. Our forward sales program has proved its worth, helping us secure high revenue and achieve stronger price outcomes than the market benchmark. The cost story also reflects continued and sustained improvement. Unit operating costs on a ton sold FOB basis fell 10% to $1,232 per ton sold, or $791 US per ton, reflecting the benefits of high production and continuing efficiency improvements at North American Lithium.

On top of that, our unit cost of production dropped to $737 US per ton. Combining these improvements in realized pricing and unit cost of production narrowed the cash operating loss to just $55 US per ton for the quarter, despite the weak pricing environment. In recent weeks, we've seen spot lithium prices improve, with spodumene pricing having recently touched levels of more than $150 US per ton since quarter end before settling lower. We're entering FY26 with positive momentum on both cost and pricing fronts. Turning now to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $72.3 million in cash, down from $88.9 million at the end of March. This decrease reflects the reality of operating in a low-priced environment, with operating losses at North American Lithium due to pricing pressure, broader group operating costs, and non-recurring merger transaction costs.

We received $8 million in contributions from joint venture partners, which partially offset these outflows at North American Lithium. In exploration, the focus has shifted from drilling to evaluation and resource modeling. We've now completed more than 268,000 meters of drilling across North American Lithium and Moblan over the last two years, and updated mineral resource estimates for both projects are on track for release by the end of August. In Western Australia, we made progress at Mount Edon, particularly on its rubidium potential, and we signed a research partnership focused on rubidium processing. Work also advanced at Tabba Tabba and across other Pilbara lithium and gold targets. Finally, our merger with Piedmont Lithium is progressing as previously communicated. All regulatory approvals are now in place, and shareholder meetings are scheduled for the 31st of July.

This merger creates Allegra Lithium, a premier hard rock lithium producer with a leading position in North America and dual listings on both the ASX and NASDAQ. Importantly, and subject to shareholder voting, the merger will also deliver $69 million equity investment from Resource Capital Fund, RCF, at a significant premium to the current share price, strengthening the balance sheet and providing the funding capacity to drive forward our growth initiatives. To summarize, we delivered improved safety performance with zero lost-time injuries in May and June, record production and cost reductions, progress on resource growth projects, and a clear pathway to completing our transformational merger and launching Allegra Lithium. Despite challenging lithium marketing conditions, the team's resilience and focus have positioned us strongly for FY26 and beyond. Thank you for your time today, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Speaker 2

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 question today comes from Austin Young with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Morning, Lucas and team. Two questions from me, please. The person who is on the recovery was quite good at the 73%. Could you just please provide more color on that and how sustainable this high recovery rate is into the next financial year? I will come back with a simple question. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Austin. Yeah, look, I think I'll pass to Sylvain in a moment, but I think just probably a couple of overarching comments. I think the benefits and the improvements you've seen in the mill have been a sustained effort over the really last 18 months. There's been ongoing work around refinement for the use of collectors and how we dose and getting the right collector aligned with our ore type. There's been a number of factors. I think, Austin, we'd like to be able to probably just string a couple more months together, we're certainly encouraging what we've seen in terms of performance. I'll hand over to Sylvain, and he can give you a little more color in terms of what the metallurgists have been up to.

Thanks, Lucas. Yes, you're absolutely right. The focus on the team right now is mostly on the magnetic separators. We know when we optimize the operation of these two critical equipments, we can decrease, let's say, the loss in terms of recovery. That is the first major point. The second one, like you explained previously, optimizing all the parameters related to the flotation, the collectors, and so on is making a huge difference. We're pairing that also with operator training, how to react when they see some specific outcome in the flotation and loss in recovery. The operators have been trained, let's say, very, very focused on specific parameters by the metallurgist lead by Talboso. All these parameters altogether have been reflecting the good recovery we had in the last quarter.

Austin, we've banked some of that into our FY26 guidance, which will be out at the end of August. There's probably a little bit more that we just want to be able to really nail down. We want to be known as a company that delivers on what we say we're going to do, and we want to be able to make sure that those elements are sustainable. All the indicators are certainly positive of that being a sustainable outcome.

Thank you, Lucas, for that. Just a second question on the sales. Was there any kind of a slippage of shipment in this quarter, or was it just everything being kind of carried out to schedule? I had a probably more higher shipment in this quarter than what's been delivered. I recognize you have achieved the full year guidance, nevertheless, any color would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, Austin, no, we certainly went according to plan. As you noted, our sales profile was back-ended in quarter four. No, we delivered upon that. We hadn't seen any slippage in terms of shipments. We finished the quarter, finished good stockpile at just over 25,000 tons of stock.

Thank you for passing that on.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Austin.

Speaker 2

Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We'll now pause a short moment for questions to register. Once again, if you did want to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Thank you. It appears there are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back over.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Ashley. Just taking a couple of questions off the webcast. First question is, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, who started ESG reporting, has openly confessed the program was somewhat of a disaster and has been withdrawing these policies from their organization. Why is Sayona Mining still involved in measuring reporting on ESG? It seems that it's a waste of time and effort administering these policies and costing the company money. Would you please comment, Lucas?

Speaker 1

Thanks, and thanks for the question. I think probably a couple of things just at the outset. Clearly, I think ESG, the pendulum has swung back from where it had been. Importantly, across different jurisdictions, it's quite different. Obviously, in the U.S., the pendulum's probably swung further back. Australia's been probably some moderation, but not to the same extent. I think the other component as well is that those principles that ESG are founded upon around environment, sustainability, and social license and good governance are basic principles that we have got in our business in any case. Shareholders shouldn't be sitting there thinking that we're spending additional money on ESG. It's just good practice. I can tell you, a safe operation is a productive operation. We need to be complying with our environmental obligations. Making sure that we're hitting those aspects is imperative.

Obviously, social engagement with First Nations and so forth is critical to potential expansions in our ongoing operations. Those principles really still stand the test of time. You know we can certainly assure investors and shareholders that we're focused around where our expenditure is going. The work that we're investing on around the ESG element are all very much focused around being able to enable continued operations, the successful continued operations at North American Lithium (NAL), and also our growth prospects at both NAL and Moblan.

Speaker 3

Okay, thanks, Lucas. I have a further question on, in particular, some historical short selling in Sayona Mining stock, which I might just take the question if that's okay. Firstly, I just want to reiterate that short selling in the Australian market is a legal practice. Whether we like it or not, it is something that is available. It is regulated to the degree that the regulators have set the boundaries. The company monitors it but has no ability to influence it. Whilst it can be frustrating for shareholders to see that going on at times, unfortunately, from the company's perspective, there's not actually anything we can do about this. At the end of the day, I've been in the equity markets for 20-odd years, and those who've shorted ultimately have to buy it back. You do tend to find that these things work through the market over time.

I think you can be reassured that the company does keep a close eye on this, but any issues really are down to the regulator. Another question that we've now received is, what's the expected decrease in all in sustaining cost when the merger is completed?

Speaker 1

Obviously, we're going to see, let me go back a step. We've identified synergies in the order of $15 to $20 million U.S. as part of the merger, and we're on track to be able to deliver those. There's been a lot of work done around the planning for the merger. A number of those will be across, if you like, corporate headcount, corporate efficiencies, but then also operationally, the collapsing of the off-take agreement, and also logistics as well. There's really a broad spread across there, but we've seen in that sort of $15 to $20 million U.S. annually being achieved through the merger synergies.

Speaker 3

Ashley, no further questions from the webcast at this stage.

Speaker 2

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