Earnings call transcript: Fenix Resources Sees Strong Q1 with Record Shipments

Fenix Resources Ltd (FNX.AX), with a market capitalization of $1.36 billion, reported a robust performance in its Q1 FY2026 earnings call, highlighted by record shipments and a notable increase in stock price. The company shipped 885,000 wet metric tons and maintained a strong cash balance, while its stock surged by 8.51% following the announcement. According to InvestingPro data, the stock is trading near its 52-week high of $118.57, reflecting strong investor confidence in the company’s performance.

Key Takeaways

• Record shipments of 885,000 wet metric tons in Q1 FY2026.
• Stock price increased by 8.51% post-earnings call.
• Commissioned third iron ore mine, Beben W-11.
• Strong cash balance of $58 million AUD.
• Paid $8 million in fully franked dividends.

Company Performance

Fenix Resources showcased a solid start to FY2026 with record shipments and a strategic expansion of its mining operations. The commissioning of the Beben W-11 mine and the maiden shipment of a 62% grade product underscore the company’s growth trajectory. The operational efficiency was evident in the logistics team’s ability to haul 932,000 tons, supported by an expanding haulage fleet.

Financial Highlights

• Cash balance: $58 million AUD.
• Operational cash result: Over $40 million AUD.
• C1 cash costs: $75.70 AUD per wet metric ton.
• Group realized CFR price: $147.60 per dry metric ton.
• Current iron ore price: $106 USD per ton.

Outlook & Guidance

Fenix Resources projects FY2026 production guidance between 4 to 4.4 million tons, with a C1 cash cost guidance of $70-$80 AUD per wet metric ton. The company aims for a December quarter production target of 1 million tons and has ambitions to reach 10 million tons per annum by FY2029. A potential break-even cost target of $50-$55 USD per ton reflects Fenix’s focus on cost efficiency.

Executive Commentary

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, emphasized the company’s commitment to shareholder returns and operational efficiency: "We have a very clear dividend policy that says the board will look to reward shareholders with an annual fully franked dividend." He also highlighted the reduction in C1 cash costs from $92 to $75 this quarter, showcasing operational improvements.

Risks and Challenges

• Market volatility in iron ore prices could impact revenue.
• Regulatory approvals for the World Range project could face delays.
• Expansion plans depend on successful development of private haul roads.
• Global economic conditions may affect demand for iron ore.
• Potential environmental regulations could increase operational costs.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the approvals process for the World Range project and the company’s strategies for cost reduction. Fenix Resources is exploring larger scale mining and private haul road development to support its expansion plans. Additionally, the company confirmed no port capacity constraints for its 10 million ton expansion goal.

Fenix Resources’ strategic initiatives and strong financial performance in Q1 FY2026 position it well for future growth, as evidenced by the positive market reaction and ambitious guidance.

Full transcript - Fenix Resources Ltd (FEX) Q1 2026:

Mick, Moderator: John Welborn soon, but before I introduce him, just a bit of housekeeping. This webinar is being held using Automix’s online marketing platform, which lets shareholders participate as well as ask questions. You can submit them at any time. Just press on the Q&A icon at the bottom right of your screen. That will open a new screen, and at the bottom of that screen, there’s a section where you can type your question. Can I just please ask, if you do ask a question, can you start by typing your shareholding S-R-N or H-I-N? That just lets the moderator identify you as a shareholder. Once you finish typing, just hit Enter on your keyboard to send. As I said, you can submit questions at any time, but we won’t get to them until after John has had his say.

If we do get multiple questions on the one topic, obviously we won’t ask them all. If we run out of time and don’t get to your question, they will be answered in due course via email or posting responses on the website. For now, it is time to get started. We will hand over to the Executive Chairman of Fenix Resources, Mr. John Welborn. John, over to you.

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: Thanks very much, Mick, and welcome everyone to this another record quarterly for Fenix. It just continues to be a really exciting time. It’s great to get the feedback this morning from being able to publish such a positive quarterly. I will talk about the game-changing transaction that we announced during the quarter, which is the right to mine exclusive 30-year license over the 290 million ton World Range iron ore project, which continues to demonstrate every day how big a game changer it is for our business. First of all, looking at the operational performance, the numbers are told on the first page of the quarterly in big boxes. Another record shipment, 15 ships, leaving Geraldton with 885,000 wet metric tons of high-quality iron ore. We’re looking to continue that record-setting agenda.

Very pleased to keep our costs, our C1 cash costs at Geraldton right in the middle of our guidance of between $70 and $80 AUD. The performance average on the September quarter was $75.70 AUD. That’s obviously all of our operating costs across our mining, our haulage, and our port business to get those great results. Given that our group average realized CFR landed price on that production was just under $150 AUD, actually $147.60 per dry metric ton, it demonstrates that we’re making a great margin in the current iron ore price environment. Today, the iron ore price remains well above $100 USD a ton. It’s actually $106 a ton. It’s a great time to be an iron ore miner and particularly an iron ore miner with an expanding production profile, opportunities to continue to bring down our costs, and a very, very expansive growth program.

The quarter saw us commission our third iron ore mine on time and on budget. That was the Beben W-11 mine. That is the keyhole that has unlocked the World Range project. We initially had a right to mine 10 million tons. The success of our development project and production has given our partner, Baosteel, the world’s largest steelmaker, confidence to expand our partnership significantly with the World Range project. We increased our cash balance over the quarter just marginally to just under $58 million AUD in the bank at the end of September. That’s a very impressive performance given that we wrote out a check for $20 million as part of the World Range acquisition, the first payment. We paid just under $8 million in dividends to our shareholders in a fully franked final dividend for FY25. We completed the CapEx on Beben W-11 and other projects.

A very, very strong operational cash result of more than $40 million allowed us to build cash in a quarter where we had significant expenses. The operating performance allowed us to confirm our guidance for the current financial year, which is to produce 4 to 4.4 million tons and maintain those C1 cash costs FOB Geraldton between $70 and $80. An 885,000 ton quarter is a record. To get to our guidance, we maintain it and we’re confident, given that we commissioned Beben W-11 towards the end of the quarter, we’re really at a quarter mark right at the moment. December, team Fenix, we’re aiming for a million ton quarter, another record that will demonstrate that we’re on track for that positive FY26 performance. Breaking down the numbers a little bit, Iron Ridge continues to be incredibly consistent money making.

You can see the mine behind us, six shipments total, just over 350,000 tons from that mine. Shine, again, our second iron ore mine, steady state, seven high-grade shipments, totaling 414,000 tons. Beben W-11 has made its maiden shipment and grade is performing there really well. Record 15 shipments, logistics team hauled 932,000 tons, lots of expansion there. If you’re in the Midwest, you’ll be seeing our bright blue new haul trucks that Craig and his team are running so effectively for the Fenix machine. The growth strategy is hugely significant. I’m sure we’ll get some questions on that. The World Range project gives us control over the largest iron ore resource of high-grade hematite not currently controlled by the majors. We have existing production. We’ve started and are progressing Garn Seat and his expanding study team, a feasibility study on a 10 million ton a year project.

There are two things going on at Fenix. The first one and the most important is we’re continuing our high margin production and looking to expand that over FY26, FY27, and FY28. The feasibility study on a 10 million ton a year project, increasing the volume, bringing down costs. We’re working on defining that. The feasibility study will obviously guide the timeline, but our current intention is that that is an ambition for FY29. Highly profitable production demonstrated by the September quarter, continued expansion, a near-term focus, and a long-term growth strategy that will make us a major iron ore producer in Western Australia. Mick, that’s a good summary of the quarter, and I look forward to some questions.

Mick, Moderator: Yeah, great. Thanks, John. It does sound like an exceptionally positive quarter for Fenix Resources. Well done to everyone. You’re right, we do have a lot of questions from investors and participants, so we’ll get into them. Firstly, from some of the analysts who do cover Fenix, Michael Bentley from MST has a series of questions. If you can just quickly touch on each of those as we go through them. He kicks off saying, can you provide an update on how you are progressing with the approvals process for the production expansion at World Range?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: We’re going very well there. The important point to note, if you look at the World Range project, is that we’re now in a position of incremental approvals. The biggest approval we’ve had recently is the heritage and environmental clearance we needed for the 18-kilometer private haul road that we’ve constructed between Iron Ridge and Beben W-11. W-12 and W-10 are immediately contiguous almost with W-11, so there’s no additional infrastructure required to unlock those ore bodies. We’ve started the process, and we’re moving from what has been very sensitive heritage areas to areas that are much less exposed to heritage issues. We see the approval process from here as straightforward for the expansion of our mining activities in the Beben and Madoonga areas of the World Range project.

Mick, Moderator: In your early works on the World Range expansion, have you come across any surprises, good or bad, or are things tracking as you expect?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: I think there’s a very exciting exploration upside. We’ve been looking at the World Range as the most obvious incremental expansion for Fenix for so long. We always knew that Sinosteel and its forebear companies before the consolidation of the project have done extensive drilling and defined a series of really high-grade ore bodies. I think the geological review of the portfolio that we now control has been really exciting in terms of the further exploration potential there is, not just for bulk tons, but high-grade tons across the World Range. That’s a long-term positive surprise. I think also the opportunities we have to bring down our costs continue to be exciting. We’re obviously now looking at product strategies as to how that comes together. There haven’t been any negative surprises. I have said to many people that I’ve underestimated how much of a game changer this project is.

Almost on a daily basis, we come across new opportunities around the strategic implications of having such a large portfolio matched with our logistics capabilities.

Mick, Moderator: Just mentioning grade there, Michael says the grade for the Beben W-11 first shipment was 62%. Is this the sort of grade we can expect for the near to medium term?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: It is in the near term. In fact, it wouldn’t be unlikely to expect a low grade incident where we’re not yet into a fix. We’re actually taking the top off the Beben W-11 ridge. Actually, our supplies on the grades insert that’s oxidized in time and have outperformed our expectation. We would expect, based on our grade control, really good that continues. Long term, we expect the ore body will perform to our expectations. That’s good news because we know that it will get, particularly with the index going from 62% to 61%, really strong pricing for the Beben W-11 ore body.

Mick, Moderator: 95% benchmark realization during the quarter, driven by more high-grade shipments versus low grade. How do you expect that plays out going forward with the ramp-up of Beben W-11? Market discounts more broadly have also tightened up a bit. Should we be thinking 85% plus realization going forward, all else being equal?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: I think 85%. We’re obviously opportunistically selling low-grade material from Shine that wasn’t originally in our mine plan. We actually have seven products at the moment: a lump and fine from Iron Ridge, a lump and fine from Beben W-11, a lump and fine from Shine, and then a low-grade product from Shine. That low-grade product is really an opportunistic plan to use our available capacity. It also demonstrates the strong demand we see across the market for our high-grade products and all the way down to low-grade hematite products. That low-grade product from Shine is profitable, but it obviously brings down our average realized price across the tons we’re shipping.

In the medium to long term, our expectations, and particularly with the index up to 2% and 1%, we will continue to aim to build index pricing to the point we’d like to do it long term with the high-grade products from Iron Ridge. With customer acceptance we’re getting for the quality and consistency of the product, it gives us confidence and can target that going forward. As Michael points out, the discount on low grades is spread between the market. We’re taking advantage of that to save premiums for products that used to be outside. My expectation is that we will try and get very close to the index across as an average as we go from 4% to 5%.

Mick, Moderator: Just staying on Beben W-11, can you give us some guidance on the potential to increase production at Beben W-11 and what your strategy is there?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: The strategy has always been that Beben represents an ore body that we can increase production on. We’re working on updating the market on the exact mine closure plan for Iron Ridge as we come to the end of that mine during 2026. Similarly, we have a decision ahead of us on stage two at Shine. The intention is we will be able to maintain, and in fact, increase our production as we transition from our current three mines, Iron Ridge, Shine, and Beben W-11, to a Beben production focus. As I mentioned earlier, Beben W-11, Beben W-12, and Beben W-10 are effectively one mining area. We’ll have multiple pits there, but one crushing and screening operation and one ROM pad. That’s why we’ve outsized the installed crushing and screening plant at Beben W-11.

The feasibility study identified a 1.5 million ton per annum mine, which allowed us to have a six or seven-year mine life based on the 10 million ton right to mine. We always design the operation to be able to double and, in fact, increase production from Beben W-11. We’ll update the market on that transition as soon as we finalize those plans. You can expect that we will be able to maintain or increase our current production for the foreseeable future based on those deposits and obviously the broader Beben deposits. That’s before we get down to Madoonga where we’ll be able to increase to 10 million tons and perhaps beyond.

Mick, Moderator: Now you mentioned in your prelude the cash costs for the quarter being bang in the middle of guidance for FY26. Is that with Beben W-11 having presumably a high cost quarter? Is it fair to say the cost should trend to the lower end of guidance, or can we expect that some increased costs from the other mines?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: It’s a good question. Iron Ridge and Shine are going really well. Beben W-11, the strip ratio at the start of the mine is effectively one to one because we’re straight into the ore body. Although we do have higher costs because it’s a startup mine, we did also have the advantage of currently a very low strip ratio. We actually see costs on an average basis across our operations of staying about where they are because of that balancing factor. It was a great performance from the team. We continue to look at where we can control costs. Obviously, we will be aiming to bring them down from this quarter, but it is within our guidance and that’s the appropriate thought looking forward.

Mick, Moderator: Can you please give us a bit more detail on the $13.1 million of CapEx for the quarter on Beben W-11?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: Sure. About half of that, so just over $7 million, was the final pre-production capital on Beben W-11. We’re really pleased that that project again for Fenix has come in on budget. There is $3 million of post-production capital just to complete the mine, which we’ll spend in this quarter. The other capital that makes up that $13 million is just under $3 million as part of our exciting residential program in Geraldton. That’s a really important project for Fenix. It’s absolutely critical for our expansion plans and our employment base that we can house the new jobs and the new staff that we’re employing. There was a couple of million dollars spent on the final stages of the brand new depot that we’ve built in Nungalu. That’s a part of our haulage maintenance area. It’s also our driver wellness training area and our refuel and truck cleaning bays.

That’s a fantastic facility on the edge of Geraldton. A number of other projects across the business make up that capital number.

Mick, Moderator: A final question from Michael. Can you just give us a bit of a rundown on the new debt facility with Westpac?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: Yeah, really pleasing support from Westpac. Fenix, originally in Fenix New Venture, took advantage of higher purchase asset-backed security-style finance in order to build and stand up road trains in that fleet. They’re giving the Earth probably about $1.8 million each to buy a new one. You can see that that’s a significant investment. We continue to look to expand the fleet where we’re going to expand production. Centralizing that in a lower cost and more flexible facility makes sense. The headroom in that facility is around $115 million, very roughly made up of $80 million in rolling stock in haulage and $30 million in the residential project funding that residential housing in Geraldton. Debt has only marginally increased from what we last reported at 30 June in terms of drawdown. I think we had around $60 million debt on the balance sheet at 30 June.

It’s probably around $70 million at the end of September. We’ve got lots of headroom. As we expand the fleet, expanding the fleet makes sense because it means that we’ll be expanding production, expanding profitability across the business. Obviously, the debt that we use, we’re buying hard assets. We have this considerable asset base across the business now in land, in depot, in port facilities, in rolling stock, and in residential housing. It’s a significant asset base against a very, very manageable debt. Obviously, servicing the debt is included in our operational cost numbers that we’re reporting.

Mick, Moderator: Okay. We’ve got a couple of questions from James Williamson at Bell Potter, but a couple have just come through from the shareholder. I’ll quickly get onto those before we hit James’s. This one, will Fenix implement a dividend reinvestment scheme if they continue to pay dividends?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: First of all, I can confirm that we do intend to continue to pay dividends. We have a very clear dividend policy that says the board will look to reward shareholders with an annual fully franked dividend subject to the profitability of the company. Obviously, with the first quarter done, we’re looking good so far. Guidance is maintained. The iron ore prices are strong. We do have a very expansive growth profile. We have demonstrated in FY2025 that we can continue to invest in growth and continue to look to pay dividends where it’s appropriate to do so, is the first part of that question. We’re not looking to complicate our dividend picture with interim dividends or with a dividend reinvestment scheme. I’d really encourage shareholders who want to reinvest, bank your dividend and buy more shares. That’s what I do.

Mick, Moderator: This one from David Brennie says, hi John, congratulations on the results. Read the full year C1 cash cost guidance of between A$70 to A$80 per wet metric ton. What are the main factors that will get you closer to A$70 or closer to A$80?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: In the longer term, if we think, our existing business with three separate mining locations, the scale that we’re mining at, I think we’re doing a great job maintaining the industry and the scale of operation that we run. There are really no fears to Fenix Resources’ abilities based on our infrastructure, but also the skill of our operating teams across our West Mine mining business and our Fenix-Newhaul haulage business and our Geraldton port facilities. Longer term, when we think about the feasibility study on a 10 million ton a year project, there are opportunities to significantly change our cost base. The most obvious one is spreading your fixed costs across more tons. We’ve seen the advantage of that in going from 1.5 million tons to 4 million tons. It’s not a magic fact.

For the five years that we’ve been in operation, there’s been double-digit inflation in the Western Australian mining industry. If you look at any of our iron ore peers, they’ve seen cost escalations. During that period, since I joined Fenix Resources, we’ve brought our C1 cash costs quarter on quarter down from $92 to this quarter $75. We’ve done that very consistently. That is related to a number of cost efficiencies that we’ve implemented, as well as the fact that we’ve tripled our production and spread our fixed costs over more tons. We’ll have the same advantage when we get to 10 million tons. In addition to that opportunity, there are three really large cost savings that we’re targeting. One is larger scale mining activities. If you think about centralizing our mining in one area of Beebyn W11, we use a bigger digger.

Instead of having someone employed operating a burning diesel, operating a 100 ton digger, we’ve got the same person employed using about the same amount of diesel with a 200 ton digger. You’re moving twice as many tons out of the pit for a similar cost. There are structural advantages as we scale up our mining activities in the World Range where we’ll look to capture big cost savings. In our haulage business, we’re currently running 150 odd ton payloads on public roads. Our plan is to build a private haul road. It cuts in the order of 120 kilometers off the haulage route. That’s a direct saving. You’re just driving less distance. We’ll also look to use heavier scale gear in that project. There are big savings in a key part of our cost, which is getting our iron ore from the World Range to port.

In Geraldton, we’re shipping 60,000 ton boats. Outside of our C1 cash costs, there’s a $15, $16 U.S. dollar number, which is to get the product to our customers. We’ve already trialed a transshipment model. We’re looking at how we could actually, without fundamentally changing our port activities, using the existing infrastructure, have access to cape-sized vessels and potentially again have a significant cost saving. You know that at the moment, if you add in our all-in costs, we believe we’ve got a break-even against the index of about a $70 U.S. dollar number. The feasibility study will answer how low we can go. There is certainly an ambition that we could change that to be much more like a $50, $55 U.S.

dollar number break-even in a 10 million ton a year business, which is very exciting because you can calculate the margin, times it by 10 million, and you get big numbers. That is what excites everyone at Fenix Resources about our feasibility study. We’ve got a great business at the moment. It’s making really good money. We’ve got an even bigger one out there in the future.

Mick, Moderator: That’s great. John, your microphone drops out every now and then. Apologies to the people that are listening. It comes in and out, but it’s been pretty good at the moment. Apologies, and we have noted that. We’ll move on to some questions now from James Williamson at Bell Potter. He says, can you elaborate on how the production of multiple iron ore products allows Fenix to adapt to changing market conditions? How will it enable Fenix to maximize value from the three operating mines?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: I’d love to say that we play around with our products based on the market spec. The reality is the geology of the deposits we’re currently mining, given that until we secured the World Range, we didn’t really have much choice. James, we’re standing on top of the rocks that we could mine, and we’re mining them as best we can. We’re maximizing the revenue by maximizing our lump out of those three mines. Also, as we’ve demonstrated at Shine, creating new products where we can in the low grade from Shine. In terms of demand, we see strong pricing across the product spec at the moment. Adrian Third, who’s our Commercial Manager who runs our marketing team, has done a fantastic job in dealing with our off-take partners, dealing with commodity traders, but also establishing direct connections with customers.

Obviously, we’ve got a very strong partnership with Baosteel, the world’s largest steelmaker. We have a number of other key partners across the business, both traders and steel mills. That allows us to market a range of products. The question about our existing business is really we’re mining the ore bodies, and we maximize the value out of the products that’s in them. Looking forward to the World Range, there’s a much greater opportunity for us to look at the available ore sources and decide what products we want to meet. That’s obviously looking at, if you look at the grade tonnage curve we included in the 290 million ton right to mine agreement announcement, you’ll have an indication of the sort of cut-off grades and the ore bodies that we can look at to maximize grade.

I spoke earlier about our ambitions to aim for index pricing or as close as we can get to it. That’s something to look for when we complete the feasibility study.

Mick, Moderator: Right. James continues to say, realized pricing was impressive quarter on quarter. How should we think about the lump and fines ratio across the remainder of FY2026?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: I think we’re expecting that to be fairly consistent, 40% at Shine, hopefully a similar number at Beben W-11. The ratio at Shine really depends on how much space we have for additional low-grade shipments, which really augment our production. We continue to see really strong lump quantities consistent with what the last couple of quarters of Shine.

Mick, Moderator: You touched on some of these regarding the several cost reduction initiatives being explored, such as the use of transshipment, transporting around diesel. How are the trials progressing? When can we expect outcomes? What is the potential impact on the unit costs?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: I described that earlier. When we can expect outcomes is an interesting question because most people who are completing a feasibility study then have to raise money and then have to build the project from the ground up. Obviously, we’re already running a mine. First production was in December 2020, so opportunities like transshipment or incremental opportunities for CapEx to OpEx trade-offs in our mining business, we can look to implement earlier than the planned construction and ramp-up of a 10 million ton per annum hauling operation. The team are very actively looking at that. As soon as we have clear guidance on the investments we’re going to make and the returns we’re going to make from them, we’ll be updating the market. Suffice to say, we see opportunities to increase our current production and decrease our costs before we jump to 10 million tons per annum.

Mick, Moderator: On the other side of the opportunities, what do you see as the key risks regarding the World Range project and Fenix’s pathway to 10 million tons per annum? What is Fenix implementing to mitigate them?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: The flip side of what I’ve just said is to say the key driver of being able to boost our production to 10 million tons and potentially beyond is the transition from public haul roads to private haul roads and potentially the transition at Rivadini or nearby to rail access into Geraldton. Therefore, the biggest risk to when that happens is how quickly we can decide on what the best plan is and then get approval for the construction. We’ve built two private haul roads in the World Range, albeit 12 kilometers and 18 kilometers. That’s a good proxy for the process that we’ll go through when building what would be a much longer haul road connecting the World Range all the way to, for example, Rivadini or a location that’s suitable nearby. Heritage clearance, environmental clearance, and all the other associated approvals.

We have the advantage of obviously the previous work that was done clearing both from a heritage and environmental approval basis, the Oakagee Rail Corridor, which runs from the World Range all the way to the planned port at Oakagee, just in the north of Geraldton. That work is underway. The timeline on us expanding to 10 million tons will be driven by the approval process on the private haul road. That’s the biggest risk to the implementation of a 10 million ton per annum project from the World Range. The good news is that that doesn’t impact our existing business, which currently is guiding 4 to 4.4 million tons, or our ability to incrementally scale that up while we’re working on the bigger project.

Mick, Moderator: Again, you might have covered these, but I’m going to ask it. Something might come to mind, and if it doesn’t, it’ll be a short answer. What further debottlenecking or capacity upgrades are required at Geraldton to align with that 10 million tons per annum throughput?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: None is the short answer. We know we can do 10 million tons today at Geraldton Port. We have actually started our negotiations with the Midwest Port Authority on what terms we would secure allocated capacity on berth five of 10 million tons per annum. That’s available, and we’re very confident we can do that right now. There are ways that that could be increased in the future, and there are also ways where the efficiency of loading 10 million tons per annum can improve at Geraldton Port. The shorter answer to what do we need to do to the port to get to 10 is really nothing. Carrara are doing 8 million tons per annum on their berth at the moment. Mount Gibson did 8 million tons, and they weren’t constrained by capacity. They were constrained by their mining production. We actually have larger scale.

We have three facilities, and Mount Gibson were only using two. There’s a very simple answer there about that. That’s exciting because when you look at the Western Australian coast and think about new iron ore opportunities, they’ve invariably and historically always been constrained by port capacity. In Balabalar infrastructure, Cape Preston, Anketel, the Utah Point, all of these opportunities have been around accessing stranded ore bodies. Work backwards from the port. We know we’ve got 10 million tons right now. That’s why we’re working on that. We’re very confident. If you look at the Midwest Port Authority PMax project, it’s a public document on their website. You can see that in the future, with the investments the WA State Government are making in Geraldton, we can aim for even more tons out of Geraldton.

Mick, Moderator: That was a long way to say no, but it’s great. This one, what technical or funding support, if any, is Fenix providing Athena Resources to progress its biomagnetite project? How does Fenix assess the future of the green steel market?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: We’ve invested in Athena Resources. We have a 37% shareholder position, and we’ve invested and supported the company in the same way all the other shareholders are. We’re a very, very excited shareholder. We think Athena Resources is an amazing opportunity given the metallurgical characteristics of that ore body, particularly matched with Fenix Resources as the major shareholder with our logistics capabilities. Also, what we see in the market longer term is an increasing appetite and an increasing premium for arc furnace quality magnetite concentrate. That’s a project Peter Jones and his team are working on, updating the previous management scoping study. We’re really excited to wait along with the market and shareholders to see. I think there’s a huge value opportunity there for Athena Resources and therefore for Fenix Resources.

Mick, Moderator: The final one from James. Did the third-party Gold Valley contract commence during the quarter? How hard is Fenix pushing to win further third-party contracts?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: The Gold Valley contract is no longer on foot. The focus we had on the very successful work that we did with third-party material, originally with Couffi and their iron ore mining activities. We had a million tons go through the Geraldton sheds from Couffi. We’ve had arrangements with 10M and Gold Valley. It was really about filling our available capacity and generating third-party revenue. The reality about Newhaul at the moment is every single truck that we have is appropriately used to haul Fenix’s tons. Today, at $106 per ton, we’re making a $50 margin on every ton that goes in a Newhaul truck. On a daily basis, we’re asking, where’s more trucks? The reality is that business is generating an exceptional return for Fenix, hauling Fenix iron ore. There may be opportunities where third-party business can increase our capabilities or decrease our costs.

At the moment, the pleasing reality is that 100% of Fenix’s available capacities are being deployed as they should be to generate maximum return for Fenix. That’s hauling tons from Shine, Iron Ridge, and Beben W-11. You see that in the quarterly numbers.

Mick, Moderator: Just a final question, this one from Fenix shareholder Steve Bull. He says, I note there was a $13 million CapEx in the quarter to commission Beben W-11. Is any more CapEx required to fully operationalize Beben W-11 this quarter? Is there any other CapEx spend planned for the coming quarter?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: I answered some of that question earlier. There’s no further pre-production capital at Beben W-11. There’s a small amount of capital on some ceiling work, which is less than $3 million in the current quarter, which is always planned. I think it was announced in the feasibility study as post-production capital. It’s on track, and that’ll be delivered, and it’s operating fantastically. The sustaining capital in our existing business is very minimal going forward. If that changes, we’d provide guidance.

Mick, Moderator: John, all very positive. Any other sort of closing comments from you?

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: Exciting times at Fenix. I just wanted to thank the team across our business, our advisors in what was an incredible deal. This is a cracking deal with Baosteel. The support we’re getting from the broader Chinese SOEs market, from a marketing sense, from a finance sense, through that Baosteel partnership is really exciting. I think in closing, I just wanted to thank everyone, our shareholders, for your support, particularly the team. I include our advisors and our contractors. This has been an exceptional period for Fenix. Commissioning Shine, commissioning Beben W-11 successfully, and operating our business as successfully as we are comes about through a really motivated unified team across our West Mine mining business, our Fenix-Newhaul haulage business, our port business, our corporate team, and all of our advisors and contractors. Well done. Thanks. There’s more to come. It’s going to get even more exciting from here.

Stay tuned.

Mick, Moderator: Fantastic. Look, that does conclude the seminar. John, thank you for your time and your enthusiasm. It was great results for you. Thanks to all the shareholders for tuning in, and enjoy the rest of your day.

John Welborn, Executive Chairman, Fenix Resources: Thanks, Mick.

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