Resolute Mining Limited

Thanks, Melanie, and good day to everybody. I'm pleased to be able to report to you today on our sixth consecutive improved quarter on Q1. And at this stage, everything went to plan, and as it is right now for Q2. I'll go through the highlights. I'll give you some color on the operations, and then I'm going to hand over to our new CFO, Chris Egger, who I'd like to welcome to the company formally on this call. He'll take us through the corporate, and then I'll do a quick wrap at the end before handing over to questions. I think starting with the highlights in terms of safety, we're starting to have a few medical injuries here. So our TFIRs kicked up a little bit. However, I'd like to reassure you, we're still not having LTIs. That's the bottom line on safety. We're not hurting anybody. I remind you that Siama kicked over in February four years without a lost time injury, which is a tremendous record. And Mako is coming up to about 20 months now without a lost time injury. And that is the bottom line. We're not hurting people. And obviously, we are focused really hard on improving our safety record at all times. The gold production, 92,000 plus ounces, slightly more than the Q1, as our last six quarters have demonstrated these slight improvements. I'm very happy with that, and this was all underwritten by grade. As you know, over the last 18 months, we've been focusing really hard on getting the mining correct, getting the grades right, getting the practices right. Now we've managed to do that, and we're focusing on Obviously, the productivity is there to maintain these numbers now. So you're going to see a little bit of flattening out now, I would suggest, over the next few months, next few quarters at these sort of numbers while we coast in to do our 350,000 hours plus guidance. Very comfortable with those numbers. Before we take off, start taking off next year with the improvements to the, say, Armour circuit further. We're all in costs. I think we're starting to turn the corner now. We've been talking about costs. You remember I've said to you that it's very difficult to focus on the cost side of the equation when we're focusing hard on the revenue side of the equation. The initiatives that we started out mid next year, they're starting to come through. I'll give you a little bit more color on those in a moment, but we're starting to see improvement in costs. And as a result of that, we're starting to generate cash as we expected this year. which is a big plus for the company right now. Chris will give you some more information on debt. Our debt's coming down nicely. And as I say, cash costs, we expect those to start reducing systematically over this year. In terms of the oil reserves, you've seen that we put out our statement. We had 18% increase in oil. Mineral resources, and we had a 15% increase in all reserves, this all after the depletion. Very excited about our SIAMA North. That project is progressing exceptionally well right now. We are starting to get to the point in the study, the pre-feasibility study, where we're looking at potentially long lead items. We're focusing in now on a four megawatt mill as an addition to go to SIAMA from four mills to five mills. It's only a small increase, but it'll have a huge impact on our ability to treat the Sayama North material in parallel with the underground mine material. I'll give you a little bit more information on that shortly. And as I mentioned, guidance. Yes, we're comfortable with our guidance. We're slightly ahead on the ounces, as we expected to be in the Q1. Essentially, MACO's put in a tremendous quarter, 33,000 ounces. MACA will calm down a little bit to about 29,000 to 30,000 ounces for the rest of the year for the three quarters as we go through the low-grade patch. And then the following year, 24, we'll be back up to the 33 plus. It will actually deliver more ounces than the 33 it's delivering now once we get through this lower-grade patch. So we're looking through to a far better year next year with MACA. OK, if I go to the operations overview, as I mentioned, it's all about grade. Our underground grade for the full ops was 2.24 grams a ton. If you remember, we were sort of just on the two grams for most of last year. We finished out about 2.1. This is just systematic improvements on the undergrounds and in the open pit. All that grade control that we did last year in Q1, Q2, just in front of the rainy season is paying dividends now. We're starting to get the grades through in the oxide plant. Things are coming together. We're not reliant anymore on Golden Circuit as we were last year. Now we're in control of our own destiny, and we're very excited by the way it's going forward. What is very encouraging to me, if we just move into the operations, is that at Seama on the sulfides, grades are 2.86, record grades coming out from underground. The design was 2.71, if you remember, and at that we're doing over 2.4 million tons at that grade. And remember, the design of the underground was 2.1 million tons at 2.71. It really shows that these guys are taking control of that operation. What is also encouraging on the sulfides and sea armor is we shut down, we had a plan shut on the roaster to do some work on ancillary lines. We took the roaster off downtime five days, tools on, I would say, five days, couple of days out of the side floor. heat up and cool down we managed to get the work done on schedule and we managed to recover because the extra capacity we built in to that unit in q1 last year we managed to get the recover that metal that was put into the ponds we recovered that in the quarter just to demonstrate we're in full control of that circuitry now on the oxides grade coming up nicely 1.8 gram a ton remember last year we We battled with about 1.35 with all the issues we had. We're now in a strong position, 1.8, and we're starting to accelerate the 821, which is the top layer of the Seama North, but not necessarily the Seama North ounces that we're recognizing in our PFS. That is the metal that we've always looked at taking off the top of the oxides. In terms of Mako, Mako has been operating exceptionally well this last quarter, 1.99 grams a ton. That was a good number. We managed to mine 775,000 tons. We've got a new excavator. We call it Excavator 5, came in last year. Slightly bigger than usual units, so it's given us ability to excavate a little bit more and be a bit more selective on the grade, as you can see, as we've put through the plant, 2.26 gram a ton. However, I will caution that that's not sustainable. That was this quarter. Those grades will come down to about the 1.99 sort of level for the rest of the year. And as I mentioned, we expect MACA going forward to do 28,000, 29,000 ounces the rest of this year per quarter before the following year it goes up to 35. Exploration, the drills are still turning. We're getting very excited still about the Seama North We've been doing quite a lot of work now on the geotech drilling for the large open pit area in A21. Those results will come out shortly. There's no surprises there. As I mentioned, we're starting on the PFS to focus in on long lead items, the mill. Looks like whichever way we go, it'll be a four megawatt mill, same size as the oxide plant. That'll give us the ability to put about four million tons through the sulfide circuitry and still maintain the oxides. And it also gives us the flexibility. We can swing the oxide plants to full sulfides as necessary and then store in the ponds. And then when we switch back to oxides, then we can actually use the smelter, sorry, the roaster, the roasters to recover that material. So the oxides, sorry, the Seama North, 854,000 ounces, that in our world, that's normally the kickoff for the number once you get above 750 where you just build a standalone mine. We're very excited with that. Remember, it's 2.9 grams a ton, significant number. And that's underwriting the PFS. The PFS, we will have a draft internally in May for our board. We've got an AGM and a board meeting coming up in May. We will be presenting some numbers there for approval to look at going on long lead items, the mill. So we can get this going in early 2025. So we're really excited about that. Pre-feasibility study, I think I've covered that. ESG, all on track. You know, we did the ISO certification. We did the 45,001. We've done the 4,001. All on track there. We've got against the World Gold Council's RGMPs. We are at 88% as per our audit last year. We've got our audit coming up in this quarter and we are expecting to hit 100% there. and achieve exactly what we've told you about two years ago. So we're really excited about that. And with that, I think that's really the operations. I say it's all about grade at the moment, which is in control of our own destiny fully now. Focus on the operations is on costs. I think we've turned the corner. And I'll hand over to Chris, who'll take you through the corporate stuff. And of course, he's been making hay while the sun's shining. The gold is good price at the moment, so we'll be able to give you a bit more color on that. Thanks, Chris.

Great. Thank you, Terry. And good morning to all, and afternoon. I also just want to highlight, very excited to be part of the Resolute team. As Terry mentioned, it's been a very strong quarter, and we've generated some very strong results across pretty much all of our metrics. So look, highlighting a few of the key numbers, obviously you can see on the documents that our production was at 92.3 thousand ounces and an ASICs of $1,453 per ounce, which were both better numbers versus the prior quarter and also better than our internal budgeted numbers. From a cash flow perspective, we generated good cash flow for the quarter and had a meaningful reduction in on that debt. So operating cash flow was $38.1 million. And then after CapEx, effectively our cash flows were $25 million from operations. We then, as highlighted in the documents, made a meaningful reduction net debt by paying down our term facility as well as our revolver. So today we have around $155.8 million of free liquidity, which is a very different position to where the company was last year. We've put in a few more hedges, and so today we roughly hedged 60% of our material for Q1 of next year at an average price of $1,920 per ounce. But we'll be pausing hedges at this stage as the business continues to prove in its operations and with a focus on driving costs down. So quite happy. with where our hedge book is at this stage, but the priority will be really to continue to work with the company on reducing its costs and delivering on its results. So like I said, a very strong quarter from an operations metrics perspective and also from a financial perspective. Key focus for the business, at least from my perspective, in the coming months and quarters, one will be to continue to facilitate the transition from a Perth office to London. I think as Terry highlighted in the past, We're moving the bulk of the operations out of Perth and to London to be much more in line with where we operate, which is going very smoothly and it's allowing us to also change how we operate the business and push a lot more responsibilities down to site, which I think is key. Another key focus will be obviously to continue to work with our sites to reduce our costs. You may have seen from our financials that the business has also carried a fairly high inventory value over the past coming years and has grown. So there's great opportunities in reducing our inventory values, both at Altex and CapEx, and that additional free cash will be used to help fund our internal growth activities, mainly the Fiamma North PFF study that's been coming out in the coming months. And then finally, look, as I'm new to the business, I see great opportunities in continuing to optimize our balance sheet. We've had very strong quarters here in the past few months. And so we'll be looking to refinance our balance sheet in the coming months slash quarters. There's no pressure to do so as we have sitting on a fairly low established level of liquidity. So again, very excited about the business and where we're heading and see great opportunities in the future. With that, I'll turn it back over to Terry. Thank you.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks very much. And just a couple of items. If you look at the cost issues, we've got some major initiatives coming down the track. I think the key ones, it's the on the underground now. We've completely refurbished all our mobile equipment or equipment underground. And now we're seeing the benefits on that. But we've also just completed an underground workshop. So that will save, on average, two hours per vehicle per day on vehicle availability. So we don't have to truck these vehicles which travel pretty slowly onto the surface to maintain them. We'll be shortly maintaining all those vehicles underground. That's really exciting for us. That's going to improve our productivity significantly. And then on the MAKO side, you've heard me over the last sort of 18 months talk about the work we've done on the mill, the software that we've put into the MAKO mill to optimize power. That project is going exceptionally well. We're seeing about, on average, about a 7% increase in throughput there. As the next step, we focused on the classification circuits, the cyclones, and we're looking to gain another 4% there on throughput going over the next year. So huge gains are being made in those operations. We should see the benefits of those over this year. And with the other cost initiatives in place, which are many, we expect to be able to comfortably improve on our guidance numbers for our costs. So with that, Melanie, I'll hand over to questions.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Reg Spencer with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, Terry, and welcome aboard, Chris. Congratulations on another good quarter. I was just wondering if we could dive into that cost, let's call it a cost optimisation program that you're about to embark on. And when you mentioned that you would look to improve on your cost guidance numbers, are you in a position to provide a range as to what kind of percentage terms you think you can get your oil and sustaining costs to over the next year or so?

We're hoping to shave at least $100 off. It's as simple as that. We're talking $1,400. We want to be in the $1,300 this year, and then we want to be approaching the $1,200 next year without unnecessarily increasing our units. Those are our target numbers. Do I think that's reasonable? I think it can be. It's a lot of work, but we do have a lot of initiatives in place. And it's a combination also of cost and productivity. I mean, just to give you an example, the oxygen plant that's coming in on Mako in Q3 is going to give us a 2% improvement in recovery. That's as simple as that. So it's a combination, but I do think our costs we can get down and start talking in the 13s. And with a view, you know, the following year we'll be starting to talk about the 12s.

Okay. So this is not just a temporary thing, so this will be an ongoing cost optimisation program. Correct. And I get the part that reflects your improving confidence in the way that your operations are now running. Okay, that's useful. Thanks, Terry. My next question is on Simon North. You guys have provided quite a lot of very useful detail there. in terms of the shape of it and what it's going to look like, especially the cost. But when you talk about capex being 30 to 40 million, that sounds like that's what the pre-feast capital number's going to be. You've provided a lot of detail around the configuration of the two process plants and how they're going to come together and the flexibility there. In terms of the oxide and sulphide flexibility there, Is that being designed in a way to allow you the optionality given that there may be the potential for the discovery of further oxides in and around the place over the course of the rest of the mine life there? Correct.

If you look at that 824,000 ounces, 8% of that is oxide and it's patchy. So the key would be As you're mining in there, you stockpile your oxide until you've got to, again, it's high grade. It's 2.9 gram a ton. So it represents the highest grade oxides we've got on the mine. We stockpile that material. And once we've got a significant amount, you know, six to eight weeks of material, then you switch from sulfide to oxide. And that switch, we're focusing on that design. We can do that switch cleanly within eight hours. But you don't want to do that every week. you want to do a campaign of six weeks of oxides and that gives the roaster the opportunity to to recover any concentrates in the that we've built up in these sulfides sorry in the ponds again because we're running the front end faster than the roaster and so we're going to you know it'd be a systematic look at the economics okay we've got the plant here should we run it on oxides have we got enough material have we got enough material in the ponds ready for the so that the roast is enough to slow down while we're doing the oxides. That's the cleverness, I think, of the operation. That's why it's taking a little bit of time to make sure we get all that engineering right. Because once we get there, and this is not uncommon in industry to have a plant that you can flip over from one to the other and in such a short time. But it gives us the flexibility of attacking some of the best oxides we've got on site once we've got them into a stockpile.

OK, that's understood. Well, you know, is it safe to say then, Terry, that, you know, an FRD at the board level is almost a fait accompli? You know, it does look like it's quite robust in terms of the plan. You've got a solid resource there now, and this is just a matter of process more than anything else. And then, you know, we can expect you to be potentially, you know, opening up Simon North in early 2025. Correct.

You know, and we are, you know, we're stripping the existing old oxide areas in in say alma north with a view that this is going to be a larger pit so we're not sort of you know messing it up so we have to go reclaim the areas and then before we carry on so we're already starting to think of that as our our key design now um so it's all a you know we've got the pit shells on site we're looking at then we're just confirming with the geotechs we've done 20 out of 24 geotech holes when we did the original scope study And in fact, the oil reserve, we were very, very conservative because we had no geotech work. So we actually had pit angles as low as 30%. And I haven't seen a 30% pit in this type of material for a long time. It should be between 45% and 60%. So I think with the PFS work, that 854 will also get a kick up as well.

OK. Very good last question. Just contacted on the turn up a lot of everyone's time. I'm assuming the one last piece of the puzzle there is Simon North that you guys haven't helped us with today. It's just around the OPEX. That all seems pretty straightforward. Is it safe to say that we should see some overall improvement in the Simon North and sustaining cost profile as a benefit of Simon North coming in? Definitely.

It's going to be cheaper than our existing operations on oxides and Because the strip ratios are sort of between five and six. And I'm not giving costs out at the moment because I don't believe that we'd be mining a pit at 33 angles at the top. Once we've got those accurate numbers and all the geotech holes are showing that we've got competent rocks there, we confirm those angles, we can reduce those strips to where we think they should be. That's obviously the major cost. But the boon on this is you're going to get the grade. The grade is going to be over 2 gram a ton, whereas we're, you know, even with the smaller pits, we're mining particularly well now. We've got the grade control in control, but we're sort of, you know, we're coming up at 1.8 gram a ton feeding the milk. We're going to be replacing that with over 2 gram a ton. So, yeah, so the overall costs are going to come down. It's just what is the correct ratio. That's going to be the fun part of it. We're going to be looking at each area and saying, well, that's the best economic area. That's the one we need to focus on now. But then if you've got an issue with that area, some problems, what's the number two swing to that? So we'll have a lot of flexibility until we can build more plants. And I do think this modification we're doing is phase one. This is really to prove that there is a bigger plant project coming down the track at some stage.

That's fabulous. Thanks, Terry. Appreciate it. Congratulations again. Thanks, Reg.

Good to talk to you again.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Richard Hatch with Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Yeah, morning guys. Thanks for the call and well done on another good quarter. Just a couple of questions. Just firstly, just on North again, you've talked here about potentially looking to expand the roaster capacity as well, a bit further down the path. So can you just sort of talk a little bit about kind of your thoughts on that and where you think you might be able to get that to and...

and you know the ore feeds that that would then feed in into the front end to support that that's the first one yeah thanks richard um you're probably aware i know because you've just been outside um we've just had our our fundy our our expert alexandros from the university of frankfurt on site with the team and we've just done quite a study on the roaster at this point in time it has that 30 extra capacity we've always said if we put oxygen on there We could double the throughput on that. We've confirmed over this last two weeks that we could double it in terms of sulfur oxidation. There is a bit of an issue still. However, we wouldn't get necessarily the high burn of the carbon. So we burn about 90% carbon. It would come off to about 85%, which is not acceptable. So we're looking at that as part of the longer-term modification. We think we could do somewhere between 60% to 100% step up still, above the 30% extra capacity we've got at the moment. But we'd have to do some refinements probably on the grinding, and we'd have to do a bit more of a pre-grind to liberate more of the carbon, open it up so we can actually burn it. There is another option that we're looking at. The roaster does operate at 710 degrees centigrade, The integrity of the equipment can handle up to 900, but you don't want to go there. You want to keep a lot of ballast on that system. But we are thinking, Alexandros is saying we could still get that carbon burn at 90, sorry, at 745 degrees centigrade. And that could double the size of the roaster. But we just need a little bit of test work to confirm that. But that is firmly for the phase two. it's ongoing and it's quite exciting. I think there is a lot of good options coming out after that workshop this last month.

Yeah, okay, gotcha. And then just on North, just on the cost on North, I mean, just kind of looking at it on the back of an envelope sort of standpoint, if you've got good grades that you're pushing through the mill, that's going to help you on an ounce basis and absorb some of those costs. So you know, last, this quarter we've just done with sort of 16, 1700 on, on the, um, on the oxide circuit. I mean, would it be, I mean, is it too early for us to start chucking numbers around like 1200, you know, below for the, for, for, for North or, or do you think that that's a bit optimistic or, you know, what, or is it too early and we got to wait?

I think it's too early, but I'm sort of looking, you know, 1400 less, you know, um, it is, It all depends on the patchiness of the oxides, and we're getting all that information now. When I say it's patchy, it's not little bits here and there. They are significant size blocks, and I'm just waiting for the engineers to give me those numbers now. I'm not quite there yet. I would suggest I'll be there within a month or so.

Yeah, okay, cool. And then last one, Chris, just on the hedge, I mean, gold price is up at 2,000. You know, you've got 216,000 ounces hedged at 19.20, and you just put in another one a little bit below that. You know, just give us an update on your thoughts around, you know, the hedge book, how you see that, you know, with debt refinancing potential over the next sort of couple of years. You know, do you still think there's merit in having a hedge in there, or would you like to see it ease down over time? What's your view?

Sure. So look, look, the hedges were put in place historically, as you know, because of our syndicated debt facility that required hedging. And so we've been maintaining the levels required for that, for that book. We put a little bit more hedges in this year, actually at around the 2000 mark when we, those levels hit in just to ensure kind of our profitability for the next 12 months. So I think we're very comfortable with what we have at this stage. Yes, we would like to ease out of the hedges over time. I don't know. We have not landed on our plans post-Q1 of next year. That's something we will discuss in our next board meeting. The reason the hedges were put in place was obviously at the time the business was focusing on stability of operations and we had a high cash cost. Now that we've stabilized operations, working down the cash costs, as Terry highlighted, we see real strong opportunities to reduce our cash costs by over 10%. The reliance on hedges won't be as needed. So I think, like I said, we're not going to put any more hedges on at this stage for the rest of the next 12 months. And then we'll reassess what we do long-term in the coming quarters. But that's kind of how we're thinking about it at this stage.

Cool. Gotcha. All right. Thanks very much. Keep it up. Cheers.

Thanks, Richard.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Houlihan for closing remarks.

Once again, thanks for taking the time. And I think if you've heard what we've had to say today, I think it's very clear that we're focusing this year on consolidation of the operations further, hitting those grades, hitting those tunnels consistently. And we're very comfortable we're in that place right now. Focus on cash and growth. So it's operations, cash, and growth are the recipe for the rest of the year. Thank you very much.