Ecora Royalties PLC (ECOR) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for eCora's first half 2024 results presentation. In the H1 period, we saw strong portfolio contribution of 52 million, and that was driven primarily by a high volume production within our Kestrel royalty area. During the period, we acquired a royalty over the advanced stage Palabora rare earths project. It's a high quality rare earths development project that's targeting first production in the latter half of this decade. We also saw the underground mine extension project at Voises Bay approach completion. A key milestone for ramp-up was achieved in the first half of the year, and a second key milestone is expected to be achieved in the second half. In light of a weak nickel price environment, BHP has temporarily halted the construction of the West Musgrave project with a restart to be considered by February 2027. And this is of course disappointing, although we do remain very confident in this asset's potential as a low cost, long life, fully permitted nickel and copper project. Capstone Copper released a feasibility study or an updated feasibility study on Santo Domingo, which confirmed the project's robust economics as a low cost producer of copper. We ended the period with net debt of approximately $86 million and a leverage ratio of 1.4 times, which is well below our financial covenants. And with that, I'll hand it to Kevin, who will discuss financial performance in more detail. Thanks Mark. So turning to our KPI slide and we'll go through these in a little more detail over the next few slides. But the key summary here is that the first half saw a very good performance from Kestrel coming in at the top end of our guidance and this was the driver for the growth in portfolio contribution. Our revised capital allocation f...