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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, my name's Hayden Bairstow. I'm from Argonaut Securities in Perth. The next session this morning, we've got a fireside chat with the managing director and chief executive Officer of Northern Star Resources, Stuart Tonkin, who's also flown in from Perth. We've enjoyed a long trip over here; Stu Welcome back to Denver.

It's been a pretty good year for Northern Star. Obviously, gold prices are, are going well, but your business as a whole, if we look back five years, you had a market cap of 4 billion us. It's now 12 billion us. Really keen to just flesh out and understand the core pillars of the business and how you, how you guys have managed to deliver such impressive growth. Yeah, thanks Hayden. And it's a pleasure and I, you know, credit to go former Americas for this event and it's, it's a pleasure to be back here. Yeah, really important that just reiterate we've, we've been on an organic growth journey in recent years. We've got a really simplified portfolio. We're focused on low risk jurisdictions. So we've got three main production centers in two low risk jurisdictions of Australia and, and Alaska. and with one commodity gold and that's been principled on what we're focused on and what we've invested in. And we've got a very, very large endowment across those three assets. So 61 million ounces of resources, and probably, you know, 10 years back to reserve life, with 21 million ounces there. So that's been, that's been a lot and and enough, I guess in recent years and the next five years when we looking for hopefully similar sort of growth, I mean, can we talk a little bit about, you know, your core assets that are, that are gonna deliver that push towards the 2 million ounces that you, you've set yourself? Yeah. So we'd set out three years ago on this, this, this organic growth journey and look, we're, we're through that Hump year. And we're really on the Homeward stretch, we've derisk the delivery of those projects whether that's, you know, mine expansions or mill constructions, we've really invested in those assets. So as you can sort of see on the slide, we've got those three main production centers at around KCGM, the Super Pit. and then coupled with the Yandall Belt in the, in the Northern Gulf fields of Western Australia and then Pogo in Alaska. So it's really about delivering those, those last couple you know, last 18 months, I guess of that pla plan next financial year, effectively delivering the 2 million ounces. Excitingly, the year beyond that is the mill expansion, adding, adding growth again. And then that final happy place we've got on the on the strategy there, which effectively is that 3 to 5 assets that 1.8 to 2.2 million ounces, and really importantly migrating down the cost curve, that's, you know, we, we're not worried about gold price. We're worried about our, our all and sustaining costs and activities that deliver us to a to a much much lower cost base. The market does love a growth story. But the minute you start growing, the focus comes on Capex, we just talk about you controlling that and particularly with assets like Thunder Box and those expansions just how that's how that's tracking. Yeah, and look when we embarked on this organic growth, you know, we had a view with things that were in our control that we could, we could immediately start to reduce our, our operating costs. and it was some Capex investment, but essentially we, we would get that enjoyed reduction. The opposite was true as experienced you know, throughout the COVID period and through escalation inflation across the sectors as well in Australia, competing with other commodities, there was a lot of pressure around, you know, lithium nickel iron all those in, in concerts. So for us, it's, it's really about trying to you know, efficiently grow those things out and deliver into those lower cost things. And, and Capex could was the key to that. having owner operated teams really firming up form of contracts. and fist and Mill expansion is a great example where, you know, hard pricing, long lead items, secured deposits, paid owner teams managing the spend, and it being, you know, being present, it's there in your backyard in a, in a mature jurisdiction and, and, and city where you can control those costs closely protects investors from these blowouts in time or, or capital money because returns is what we're doing it for and, and a large focus on, you know, the capital allocation is really key for us. 2024 was a great year for the business. But I think the real measure is, is getting those returns on, on capital as you say. And, and you know, the, the performance on, on a, on a rookie basis has been excellent. You just sort of flesh a little bit of that as you've obviously gone through a growth phase and an M and a phase to, to get to that position, but just how you're, you're starting to flesh that out and, and, and hopefully repeat those sort of returns that we saw in 24. 0 look, and we, we see improvement year on year. Historically, we we were able to retain or maintain return on capital return on equity. And so the double digit numbers obviously, with the consolidation of Saracen, there was a sort of rebase of the, of the capital base and balance sheet, but as we've seen as this conversion and growth is occurring, great improvement on return on capital employed. and, and we will see continued growth in that regard. And that's the true demonstration of a, of a healthy mature business that's that's able to improve those return on capital elements. And that's been through our, you know, shareholder return lens. It's, it's how our board thinks, it's how our management thinks. It's not about growing for growth's sake, it's about really enhancing those returns and we're demonstrating that now, fantastic returns generally creates a lot of cash. You've got a business that has traditionally been holding net cash. Can you just talk a little bit about how you think about the balance sheet and, and particularly going forward once you get through the, the, the, the Capex profile that you've got at the moment. Yeah. So historically, we've used a balance of, of debt and, and equity when we've acquired assets and then we've used cash flow from those assets to reinvest in them through exploration or, or mine expansion or even, you know, mill upgrades. And it's always been that sort of balance and, and, and you know, really looking at the return on shareholders, you know, money, money put up in the front. So when we look at the balance sheet, we were quick to retire debt, we were quick to build cash, and then redeploy that proudly, we've been, you know, dividend paying for for over 10 years or 12 years. And if you look at things like the buyback as inclusive on this, we've returned over $2 billion Australian dollars to shareholders through dividends and through that buy back. And so the, the the dividends currently sit at a policy 2020 to 20 to 30% of our cash earnings. Last year, we knocked out $1.8 billion of cash earnings. So, you know, $450 million return to shareholders plus exploration is key in our DNA, you know, nearly $200 million 100 and $80 million in exploration, replacing and growing resources and reserves, building cash strong balance sheet, we got $2.7 billion of liquidity. It's, it's the sign of a very solid mature business and it's, it's something we think a lot about. It's something that surprised me a little bit this week that with gold at 2500, do you think some of these metrics will need to get revisited that 30 the 30 to 40% of cash flow the, the money you'll have beyond that will quickly build into a decent cash pile pretty quickly. How are you thinking about, you know, more capital management or is it, is it time to start looking at further acquisitions? Where, where's your headspace at with that? Yeah, so II I think the people, they, they're looking at the gold price where it's at and particularly in Australian dollars, $3800 an ounce in Australian dollars. And a lot of our costs are do not domiciled in in Australian dollars so that the margin and the cash margins generated are significant. I think the immediacy of investors think, oh, gold miners rotate it, throw it straight back in or, or take higher cost ounces out of the ground. Remembering that our growth and our capital commitments were done in previous years to get us to a lower unit cost base, not because of gold price escalation. So what we're about to enjoy is, you know, a heavy capital of the year this year. But and as capital winds down, gold price is elevated, our our production is growing in hundreds of thousands of ounces per annum. to that ounce profile, the margin expansion is significant. So yes, we will revisit things like the dividend policy, but naturally, it's linked to cash earnings and it's not affected by, by growth capital. But importantly, things like the buy back were very effective. We've we've, you know, bought back shares at eight, nearly $9.08 8 A I think we were averaged in, you know, we're trading close to $16 today. The, these are really, you know, prudent prudent ways to return capital, efficient ways. We still have some and international investors probably don't care about franking credits, which they do back in Australia, but we, we're still unranked for probably another year. And then we're back taxpaying and, and, and generating franking credits as well. So yeah, capital returns, dividends, share buybacks, organic growth through exploration resource reserve or even just a a acquisitions is, is in the mix, buy or find. but it has to be pretty special to, to meet the criteria that, that, you know, drives shareholder returns for us. We're not about just to grow for growth's sake and, and these returns that you've delivered are off a core set of impressive assets. Your biggest one KCGM or the Super fit as we call it is being expanded at the moment, should have a, an all in cash cost below 1000 us. Your position on the cost curve is in the is in the bottom half. But unlike a lot of your peers, you're not doing it with by-product credits. It's all just pure gold. Can you just talk about the, the quality of the, of the business in, in terms of those assets? And, and how you see the importance of being where you are on the cost curve. Yeah, so I'll, I'll, I'll touch on. So the asset that gets us to this point with the cost curve. And this is an interesting chart where we're looking at here with the, with the global cost curve and what's occurred in recent history. So, you know, at the top end of the cost curve, it's really steep and, and as people have brought on, you know, used gold price to really open up new, new production. And we've seen nearly a 9% increase a across that end of the the cost spectrum, but it still stays fairly flat. or, you know, o on the first half of the cost service, which is where we want to position our overall average business, but also our assets, the lowest quartile. and, and the larger darker bars, they are effectively the gold only assets and they're the low low risk jurisdictions, tier one jurisdictions. So sitting down in the lowest quartile effective if you got gold mines with a with a copper revenue, by-product credit giving their unit costs and benefit and also potentially some more exotic locations which are all great, but it's, it's not our strategy. So where we're positioned is really gonna be in the lowest half of the cost curve in that second quartile on assets like KCGM, which we're taking from last year at 450,000 ounces. It's gonna be built out in the next three years to 900,000 ounces per annum. It's gonna be a top five global gold mine in Kalgoorlie and the Golden Mile in Western Australia, very low jurisdiction. So when you start to grow out from that and the answers that can feed into that very efficient mill, we're gonna be able to sustain this in, you know, for, for for decades across that asset and really show the quality of that key base. When you look at things like you know, the Yandall Belt, again, economies of scale and the upgrade of of those production hubs allows us to com migrate those assets further down. and then pogo in its own right. You know, we delivered 91,000 ounces last quarter at a 1090 us oil and sustaining cost. The cash margins are significant. You know, it's about restoring these assets back down there by driving productivity. So we look at cost curve, it's probably the last piece of the Northern Star portfolio where we differentiate not positively, but we're very focused on driving that capital investment and the productivity improvements into our assets to migrate down at cost curve. We don't think we're live in that first quartile, but we certainly can generate a lot of cash living exactly where we are there and how does that sort of overlay into your hedging strategy. You do have hedging even though you don't have a lot of debt. What's the policy behind that? And how do you see that playing out as you go through the Capex cycle at KCGM? Yeah, look HED hedging unique to, to other commodities where you can genuinely forward. So, you know, sell volume at a mixed price,, versus, you know, trying to get TCR CS and offtake agreements and, and understanding of delivery of concentrates and quality gold is gold. You can pick a date, you can pick a price. You can lock it in where we've made capital commitments to drive returns. We've been able to hedge those outcomes to underpin those reserves. Fiston expansion. We did the, we did the, the final investment decision on 26 700 Aussie Gold. and effectively it drives a 19% irr when you can hedge in an outcome when it turns on at 36 3800, you do that and you dr you bring your pay back periods from sort of 4.5 to 3 years. And that's why we've built up these layered hedges to deliver those financial returns. And then w unwind that as it as it really is, is free carry. So yeah, we, we use he hedging as an instrument. We're pretty low, you know, low hedge, probably 20% over the, the forward three years. Anyone that looks at our hedge book and says, Mark to market, you're out of the money. Please give me your goal price outlook, curve because every bank has it falling off and yet our hedge price increases. So you can get with Contango and interest rates today. A hedge at $4400 an ounce., I don't know many banks or, or outlook that have gold price sitting at $4400 an ounce., that far out. I think there's, there's a couple who probably have it at more than that, but I think everyone probably has tapered in. So I think hedging just needs to be understood and it's unique to gold and it's,, it's an important prudent instrument to use on winter investing capital. Yeah, we're not overly imaginary when it comes to gold price forecasts. Unfortunately., the super pit, the mill expansion is the critical part of the business. It's one of the world's best sight tours if, if the audience ever gets down to Perth., please go and have a look at it. But how is that tracking? That's what the market's really focused on, I think in the next two years. Absolutely., and it's, it's half our business today and it's, it's taking a lot of attention., it's the golden mile. It's got 100 and 30 year history. We acquired this off, off the majors in 2019. And consolidated Saracen Northern Star on the back of this asset. And we're reinvested in it. So it, it's really important. We've addressed the East world remediation that's rectified. We're back into the high grade in the pit floor. That's the next step to take us up to that 650,000 ounces per annum. And then in concert with that, the mill expansion comes on the year later to take the plant from 13 to 27 million tons per annum. And effectively, it's underpinned by the insurance policy of 100 and 40 million ton 3 million ounce stockpile. So that stockpile, we don't have mining risk. The incremental growth on the expanded plant to take us to 900,000 ounces comes from that 3 million ounce stockpile sitting adjacent to this plant. We're expanding capital to the South, which is the, the great Boulder cut back. We're also cut 66 new portals there this year. Essentially getting drill drives in fone underground development happening and expanding the Mount Charlotte mine. So we'll end up, you know, in short order, we'll end up with 468 million tons per annum coming from large undergrounds, supplemented with high grade from the pit floor. And ultimately with the Stockler Insurance that's KCGM and being a 900,000 ounce a year top five global gold mine in very short order in three years. And then we've got a lot of ground around us and a lot of great discoveries occurring that can also supplement and feed and displace that low grade into that mill. So very excited about this asset, I could talk about 100 million ounce acid all, all day long stu but the growth of the business prior to KCGM was still largely driven by M and a 10 years ago, Jund D was a foundation acquisition for you guys. Can we just talk about how you've delivered that sort of impressive growth and returns out of that JD acquisition over the last 10 years. Yeah, giv given the technical bench strength and the, the, the prudent way we look at due diligence on assets, we look for the mineral first, we look for the, the high quality multimillion ounce gold systems. and we'll go through some slides here just on examples. So on Jundi particularly, it was an asset we bought from a major, it had two years of, of reserve life. We acquired quite cheaply. And then ultimately, we reinvested it. We, we drilled, we, we got it in cash flow. We essentially increased the mining volumes and then started to upgrade the plant. But here a great example, 10 years ago, we acquired this for $82.5 million in cash flow, we reliably built and expanded and each year. You can see the cumulative cash flows to $2.2 billion in the last decade and we still sit there with another decade outlook in reserve backed life. So this is the DNA of what Northern Star looks at these assets renovates and reinvest it can be seen as brown fields or renovation. But ultimately, we're looking at these multimillion ounce systems. and we're, we're applying our skill set, our productivities, our local knowledge and we're, we're just generally putting investment back into it. It's a different risk de approach to the majors, but we feel with a very modest investment, the risk, the, the the the rewards far outweigh the risks. And I think there's points in time either through a gold price or, or, or other reasons why people divest things. You know, that's when I guess, you know, we, we have been opportunistic. but it doesn't also matter what you pay it. It's what you do with that asset next. And essentially has had a 12 month payback period. We're generating great returns from 100 and 21%. Irr. The next example is is Paygo, which we're really just getting started on. Well, it's been a little bit of a labor of love. It's the only asset that's not in Western Australia in the portfolio with since acquisition it was, we're gonna get to 300 ounces, 1000 ounces a year we're going to get there and then last quarter knocks out over 90,000 ounces. I mean, what, what's the outlook from here? Look this asset? I, and I think,, a lot of North Americans thought we were a little bit crazy., turning up in, in Alaska. but again, through that same formula, that same lens, the, the, the Geological Endowment multimillion ounce high grade underground system, effectively an Australian mining method of underground cut and fill. We, we looked at this, you know, zoomed right out and looked at what we could get there, you know, great team, great infrastructure and, and the bones of something special. So we, we paid 260 million US for Pogo six years ago. We, we brought some expats and skills and modernized the fleet. We changed the mining method along a doping. And we basically empowered the US team that were there to, to, to innovate and grow. We've expanded mining volumes who had developed you know, rapidly and also upgraded the the mill slightly to, to 1.3 to 1.4 million tons per annum. And all these things in the exploration upside are, are coming, coming to the fore. So you can see on this chart again, like the Jundi version. you know, in the last year, we've, we've got back to a cumulative 1, 100 and 50 odd million. cumulative cash flow, but importantly, what's in that year. So this is ultimately gonna be knocking out its purchase price on an annualized basis. It's just poured 5 million ounces. It has 6.7 million ounces at 10 g resource in front of us still in the mountain. So this is where we just, we just look at this special asset and it's worth the heartache, the the the criticisms, the, you know, the quarterly calls over the journey because w we genuinely see the quality of this asset and we're proud to, to, you know, highlight the, the, the effort that the US team have done up there. It's been absolutely fantastic. We're getting close on time stu but I did want to touch on exploration. A few of the presenters early this morning were lamenting that no one seems to do it. But you guys have had a lot of success on exploration, the Hercules discovery green fields within less than 50 ks of the super pit. Just the focus on that and, and how, how you're delivering that success on a consistent basis. Yeah, with a, with a large team across our group, we've allegedly got around 350 geologists in our business. We've got, you know, at any point in times that are 30 40 50 rig spinning and spending, you know, 100 and 80 million bucks, 200 million bucks on, on exploration per annum. and replacing that ounce profile but also really looking at new discoveries a around our infrastructure. So yeah, really, really pleased with the success. Hercules is a great example that will fast track high grade underground oil into the Fone plant. You know, it's in that, in that Hooper Kalgoorlie. So yeah, really proud of the team that it's part of our DNA and, and Alaska. I'm very excited on the exploration upside on, on that region around Pogo But particularly around that goldfields hoop. Now, we have a very low cost mill that enhances value. Great. We're right on time. Stu So thanks very much for taking the time to have the chat today. Much, appreciate it. Thank you very much, Aidan and thanks for Denver go forum. Thank you.