Impala Platinum Hldgs Ltd

All righty, good morning, morning all. Welcome to Impala's financial year results for 2023. It's such a pleasure to have you all in the room with us today. We're going to be live streaming on the webcast as well, and there's also an opportunity for people to dial in on chorus call. But as always, when we get to the Q&A site, I'll give an opportunity to people in the room to ask questions first and then we'll go to chorus call and, and on the web, just ask some household issues. Um, we are running off, uh, supplementary electrical power, green power. So there shouldn't be issues with, with power. Um, in, in the event that there is an emergency, the evacuation is just straight out the back as you come in, but, there shouldn't be any, any issue. So with those few words, I'm going to give you a, short video a little bit of a flavor of our results after which i will introduce our ceo nikku miller who would then just focus on a couple of the key focus areas for the results and then we can jump straight into q a but let me also just welcome patrick on on the stage here you'll see patrick marutla he's recently joined us as the ceo of the garage retirement He's a strong mining engineer, so please save your toughest questions for him. Thank you very much.

The financial year 23 was quite a remarkable year for us. When I look at the year-on-year production, we've actually seen a 7% increase in ounces produced from our operations. Regrettably, as a consequence of loads of tailment, we were not able to process and refine and sell all of those ounces. So that's had a detrimental impact on our financial results. In addition to that, we have seen a very sharp decline in particular palladium and rhodium prices in the second half of our financial year, and that has had a very negative impact on our earnings and therefore profitability.

FY23 has been very challenging in terms of the economics. However, from a company perspective, we've been able to get going on a number of programs that we have committed to, including our construction of a solar plant at Zimplatz that will increase our portion of renewable energy to some 36% group. In Canada, we're already at 100% renewable energy, so that helps a lot. The other aspects of business performance relate to how much we have been able to contribute for socio-economic development, almost doubling our previous year's contribution. We build legacy infrastructure, we look after suppliers and develop them to become our own suppliers in the value chain, and also schools and bridges for our communities.

Our performance on safety has been quite encouraging. Little regret that we have lost five colleagues, but we have reduced our fatality frequency rate by 29%. We close the year with an LTFR of 3.92, which is 7% better than last year. In fact, it's the best LTFR that we've had for the last 10 years or so. And we've also had a 5% improvement in our total injury frequency rate.

The key financial highlights for this year were generating EBITDA of R36 billion, as well as headline earnings of R18 billion. In addition, we finished the year off with net cash of R25.3 billion, considering the fact that we spent R11 billion on capital, as well as just under R5 billion on acquiring a portion of RB Platt. I think that was quite a notable achievement.

I think the company is well positioned. We are continuing with the major capital projects that we have committed to. We believe that it will assist us in improving our competitive position long term. And I think that we are well positioned to brace the current low price environment and make sure that we provide security and sustainability for our operations and the communities, as well as efficient capital allocation to our shareholders.

From an operational perspective, The work done by our management teams to keep inflation at bay, as well as the fact that we've tried to successfully navigate through the low curtailment, which you've seen through this year, I think is testament to the hard work from our operational teams.

We're constantly assessed and reviewed by various rating agencies, and it was reassuring this year, for the second consecutive year, that we will have made the S&P's Global Sustainability Yearbook, as well as having maintained our A rating with the MSCI ESG Rating Agency. And I think to keep it all off, it's really great to welcome the 11,000 strong colleagues from former RB Plates, and we look forward to joining forces for a greater impact.

Thank you, Johan. Inspirational video. I did notice I wore the exact same suit and shirt on the day that we recorded that, so I need to be a bit more attentive. Listen, from my side, welcome to everyone. Johannes, welcome, Patrick. I just also want to welcome for the first time people from Avi Platt. We've got sitting in the corner there, or not in the corner, but on the side, I see Lindy is here. So it's very nice to have you guys part of the family. It is coincidentally Steve Perry's last day in the office today. And so we want to wish him all the best with his retirement and hope he continues to do great things. So it's not my intention to do a very detailed presentation. We've got this on the website. We've got a very lengthy thing. So I'm just going to touch on a few points, really as an opener for us to ask some benign question to the esteemed panel here. Before I start, as always, just a caution on the forward-looking statements for those big investors wanting to make big decisions today. Always risk associated with our information going into the future. I'll start off on a macro side. We all understand that we have had a significant decline in metal prices over, particularly the last six months. If you look at the dollar prices of palladium and rhodium, that reduced by 20% and 29%. But fortunately for our South African-based operations, we've had a weakening RAND, US dollar currency. that offset some of the decline in the dollar prices. Unfortunately, in Canada and Zimbabwe, we did not have the same benefit. So if you look at what is giving cause to this, there is a uncertain and weak global economy that is impacting on demand. Combined with that, we are seeing continued discounted cash flows of metal from Russia. And so what we've seen is a lot of the OEMs and industrial customers are in the process of destocking. They don't believe that there is a strategic and compelling reason for them to continue holding the stocks that they have. So that has resulted in a bit of a dislocation between what we see as market fundamentals and the actual price behavior. And we do believe in the near term that we are going to see some strengthening. I mean, already we've seen in the last few months, at least hitting a floor, another continual slide. From our side, from a company's point of view, of course, we have been clear that we do not support any loss-making assets, and that will continue to be the position. From an operational point of view, there's operational excellence, efficiency, cost management. We are a company that has a declared material capital investment program. That is something that we're going to have to test with the prices. If there's any further decline in prices, we're going to have to prioritize our capital, and we will uphold the things with the most strategic value. And for us, it's capital programs associated with addressing critical constraints in our business. Right now, it is the smelting capacity. And second to that, it is base metal refining capacity. And so if there is a further decline in pricing, the company will prioritize capital projects and mitigate the prices by reducing the capital expenditure. Fortunately, when we initiated all these projects, we did define exit points for each of these projects for this exact purpose. If I go into sustainability, in the video, Dr. Joe did speak about the safety performance. Very happy that all the metrics indicate positive direction and as Joe said, our last time injury frequency rate is at a 10 year low. We just really regret the fact that we did incur five fatal injuries in our operations and we will continue to work hard to make sure that we get to a point of zero harm. As far as environmental performance is concerned, there's a whole list of metrics on the slide there. I just want to touch on two that have big variances. The first is the environmental incidence. We've had zero level four and five, that's material incidence, but we did have an increase of level three environmental incidence from four to seven, and most of that is associated with uncontrolled releases of water due to unseasonal rains during the summer. We have instituted preventative action to make sure that that won't happen again. And then on the carbon emissions avoidance, we've taken a step forward. We increased the carbon emissions avoided from 61 to 121 tons of carbon, and that is as a consequence of the 50 megawatts of renewable energy that was a contract that was concluded between Zemplats and Zesco, the Zambian energy supplier, And that entire contract is renewable energy. If I go to production, we are very pleased that we have recorded, notwithstanding load curtailment and all the operational events, we recorded a 2% increase in group production. This provides a waterfall graph to indicate the movement at various operations. Of course, the biggest negative impact was at our third-party toll refining. And this is a consequence of the loss of two contracts during the course of the year. But then I do want to highlight specifically Impala and Impala Canada. We had two exceptional years. Marula this year was absolutely stellar compared to the issue. But this year, all credit must go to Impala. They were able to increase their production by 5%. And they were able to mitigate the unit cost increase to only 7%. And then Impala Canada, that really got traction with their mold decoupling project to improve the efficiency of the surface infrastructure, but also they were able to, through the flexibility of the ore body, to mine higher grade areas and to increase the underground production by 17%. And then Just last mention of Abhi Platt, the 43,000 ounces increase there is just by virtue of us not having reported that before. So this was one month from the date of which we got control. And so I suppose there's nothing stellar about that. It's really the omission of historical inclusion in reporting. If I go from the 6E ounce production, which is really concentrate or mat to refined production, You can see that there's a loss from the 3.25 to the 2.96, and that's as a consequence of, first of all, load curtailment, because we switch off our furnaces when we are asked to curtail our electricity consumption. That was the one. The other reason is the rebuild of our furnace number three and four, which coincidentally is also... An effect of load curtailment, the fact that we have to stop and start the furnaces and we have got these varying temperatures, it creates increased fatigue in the infrastructure and therefore we are now on an accelerated rebuild program. If I look at the unit costs, that's probably the most concerning or distressing part of our results is the 14% increase in unit costs. It is similar to what I've seen in the rest of the industry and this is driven by this hyperglobal inflation. So our 14% unit cost increase is as a consequence of 9% inflation. Then also the weakening of the exchange rate always results in a higher RAND cost for our dollar-based cost. And so that added another 3%. And then the recovered grade added another 1%. The capital expenditure... That was in line with our capital program. It went up by 27% to $11.5 billion. The majority of that is our stay-in-business capital of $7.3 billion, and that is constituted by capitalized development, a capital project associated with our processing, as well as fleet replacement. And then the replacement of $2.3 billion is essentially mine replacement. The majority of that, 1.7 billion, is associated with BEMA and Mupani extensions in Zim, as well as 11 and 12 shaft extensions at Rustenburg of roughly 300 million, as well as the first 300 million for our Marula Phase 2 extension. And then lastly, the expansion capital of 1.9 billion, Most of that is associated with processing, 1.7 billion is associated with the concentrated smelter and refinery in Zim, and another 150 million is associated with the debottlenecking of the base metal refinery in Springs. I'm gonna talk to the projects, but we have communicated that we are, that we have embarked on a large list of very important capital projects, This slide just demonstrates where we are with most of them. If you look at the schedule, those two columns, it really indicates that most of the projects, all but one, are either on schedule or ahead of schedule. The only one that we have experienced a delay in is the Zimblatt smelter expansion and SO2 abatement, and that's associated with delays because of supply chain procurement. And then notwithstanding that, There's not a single project which at this stage is forecasted to end or be completed above budget. Generally, a clean bill of health on most of the capital projects. If I go to the financial side, it's affected by three things. The reduction in price, the increase in operating costs and capital. If you look at the refined 6E ounces sold, that declined by 6%. The Rand revenue basket is 4% lower at 36,118. So if you look at the 6% and the 4%, they combine to the minus 10% for gross revenue, which declined from 118 billion to 106.6 billion. And that resulted in the EBITDA margin decreasing from 45% in the previous year to 34%. and our EBITDA declining from 53.4 billion to 36 billion. We did record a free cash flow of 14.2 billion, and that compares to the 28.8 billion of the previous year, and that allowed us to declare a final dividend of 1.65, which for the year ended with a total dividend of 5.85 per share, or 5.1 billion that was reallocated back to shareholders. We did end the year with a strong balance sheet of 26.8 billion, which is pretty similar to what it was the previous year, 26.5 billion. But of that, 11.4 billion was earmarked for completing the RB Platinum transaction. I am happy to say that post the transaction, post year end, once we paid for the whole transaction and dividends, we still have a balance sheet of around 11 billion. So I think the company is well-positioned for the next year. I look at the profitability. The graph on the left-hand side shows the margin. So you can see Marula has got the highest margin. That's by virtue of the price that they receive per ounce compared to the cost and capital. And you can see for group, it ends up at a 29% operating margin, without margin, operating margin, The only thing that is a concern to us, if you just look at that graph and you take away a spot today, spot is roughly $25,500, which if you look at the group average cost, it is around the same mark. So there is definitely work to be done for the company to make sure that it continues to protect value and cash flows, particularly if you want to allocate dividends to shareholders as well. On the right-hand side, you can see a distribution of cash generated. And again, interestingly, the contribution of Impala Rassen, which is often touted as a problem asset by the industry, but for us, it does contain significant cash value. As far as Obby Platt is concerned, I think when we were here at the interims, we promised that when we came at final year, we would have concluded a position one way or another, and I'm just very thankful that it has turned out into us finally securing full control of our plan. The process is underway for us to delist the company by the 18th of September. As I said, Steve Pree is on his last day today, and Grant has been appointed as chief executive of the operating company. He's based in Rustenburg, and he will report directly into our chief operating officer, Patrick. Their corporate office, today represented by Vicky, who's also in the audience, they will be integrated into our business. So for us, there are a number of key things to focus on. First, efficient integration. Every person has got a place to go to, and if we start very quickly on to start optimizing shared services, people, infrastructure, in order to start making an improvement in the overall cost efficiency. Secondly, I think I did mention it, the two big constraints from an operational point of view is the throughput through the concentrator suite, the two of them, as well as the recovery, which I think I did mention, which is at 80% compared to 89 or 90%. And then the other one is the ramping up of style drift to its full production capacity. And then there is a long list of synergies. I'm not going to go through all of them, but obviously there will be a synergy program to make sure that we leverage them as soon as possible. That brings us to the last slide, which is the guidance that we want to give for the next year. If you look at the production guidance, generally most of the operations are at mature stage, and the guidance range is around the production that we achieved during the past year. There are a few exceptions that I just want to touch on. The first one is Zimplatz. You can see that we achieved 611,000 ounces, and the guidance has arranged upward from that, and that's as a consequence of the growth that we expect through the third concentrator that has already been commissioned. The next one is Two Rivers. You may know that they have the Mariinsky expansion project that's well underway. And similarly, If you look at the production guidance, you can see the early benefits of that expansion project being reflected in the guidance. And then lastly, RB Platte, as I said, the 43,000 ounces being reflected is only for the last month of June. And if you look at the guidance, that is now the guidance for a full year. The only area that we are guiding down is the third party. contribution through IRS, and that's purely as a consequence of the existing contracts that we have in place. And I mentioned the fact that they are now two fewer contracts. If you look at the refined production, just a way to think about it, it is the group production, and that includes saleable ounces from Obby Platt as well as Impala Canada. But when it goes to refined production, We exclude the losses that is associated with the off-take agreements because we don't process in-house either RB Plat or Impala Canada that's done by external parties. So we deduct the losses that we incur as a consequence of that. So that's how you get to refined ounces. And then group unit cost is guided between R21,000 and R22,000. Then if you take the midpoint, that represents roughly an 8% increase in unit cost. And group capital is now inclusive of RB Platt, and I just want to caution again and say that is dependent on metal pricing. If there is any further decline, then the capital will be revised downwards, and we'll report back on that at year end. And that's the story. I would now like to ask Johan to return and to coordinate the Q&A session for us. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Nico. We've got some microphones in the room, so I'm just going to ask that we circulate that. You can just raise your hand and receive a microphone, and we'll first take some questions in the room, after which I'll also make sure that people on chorus call. There is a function you can queue so long. We'll pick up that you are in the Q&A queue. I see there's already two people in there, and I will make sure that we also return there for an opportunity to ask questions.

Chris, maybe you can start us off. Good morning. It's Chris Nicholson from R&B Morgan Stanley. Thanks for the presentation. A few questions. Just two relating to Royal Buffer King Platinum in particular. I think that the offtake agreement is 50-50 between Amplats and RBP. You've indicated RBP is one you would like to trigger to process post-2027. The Amplats stake, I think, comes up for potential renewal at the end of 2024. Given that you're constrained on smelter and base metal refining capacity, would you have capacity to take that? Should AMPAT exercise not to process that anymore? So that's the first question. The second question on RB Platts, I noticed in your mineral reserve and resource statement, you've still got Impala, Rustenburg Lease kind of running off in the middle of next decade. With RBP now integrated, is it safe to say that When that is updated, we should be assuming something much longer for Impala Rustenburg, 20 years plus. And then just final one, sorry if I may, just while we're talking life of mine, you talked to Impala Canada, potentially mining some high-grade areas. What does that do to the mine life at Impala Canada? Thank you.

Thanks, Chris. There's three strong questions there.

So I have to ask, if you can ask, is Tim on the line?

Yeah, Tim is on the line.

So maybe if you can start with Chris's third question, and maybe Tim can just comment on the impact on the life of mine by virtue of high grading.

Tim, did you get that question?

I did. Good morning, everybody.

Can you hear me all right?

Yeah, we hear you perfectly. Thanks, Tim.

Yeah, so our body is unique in that it allows us to choose higher grade zones when the place does not support the lower grade zones. It will have an impact on the life of mine. At this point, we have a five-year life of mine, and if the price falls further, we will indeed have to increase our cut-off rate, and it will have an impact on the life of mine. I do not have a specific answer at the moment as to what that will end up doing at the at really low prices. So I hope that answers your question. It does have an impact on the life of mine, yes.

And then as far as the life of mine is concerned, of Rustenburg. So if you look at the life of mine profile, there's a very long tail which we would cut off when it falls below a base load required for the smelting complex. So that is what we would have done historically. So what you will see, Chris, is you will see a significant extension, albeit at a much reduced capacity. But I mean, that was one of the key synergies that we looked at when we contemplated the transaction is in the absence of a baseload, which Abhi Platt now represents, As soon as you get, was it 500,000 ounces or 400,000 ounces, then it would come to a catastrophic end. So now that will be able to continue for a much longer period. And then as far as the processing capacity is concerned, we do have a constraint as far as processing capacity for the first two years. But our ambition is to sit with Anglo. So we do have these off-take agreements. there's been some movement in terms of their planning with Galaquena, and so it is our ambition to sit as two parties. We do have the off-take agreements that we can rely on, but I think that there is good sense in the two partners sitting together, and if there is overlapping requirements to try and optimize between the two companies exactly how to deal with the concentration coming off Royal Wofford and Platinum. I will ask more of the team. Even this morning, I have a habit of answering too many of the questions, and I want my team to also contribute to each other. I will ask them to help.

Maybe just for the people on the line, just state your name as well, so people know who's asking the question. Gerrit? Thank you.

You spoke about integration of RB Plats and what needs to be done. We saw their first off results. Metal prices have declined since. I'm just wondering what you need to do to get this business where you want it to be. What's it going to cost? And how long do you think it's going to take? I know it's early days, but can you kind of guide us on that?

Patrick, do you want to mention onsen? I will support you.

Yeah, I think as Nigel said, so far what we have identified is that we have an opportunity to optimize our throughput and recover from our concentrators because that will really bring some more ounces on the table and later above 30,000 tons a month that will also bring us on the table. It is the early days, but it's something that will take us between a year or two to really get it to where we want it to be. But it is a good asset. We believe that with the help from the technical team from Inplex, we should be able to get that operation back on track, like I say, in a year or two.

Am I hearing correctly? Is it more a processing intervention than a mining intervention?

There are two things. Grant has messed up his concentrating processes. And even that has got two parts to it. There is the capitalization of the infrastructure. And they do have a program to, for instance, to improve the logistics and the tipping points because everything going to massive plants is currently trucked. And so to get all delivered and to get the throughput up, that's a constraint. So they've put in a second tipping point, but there's also capital provided for a conveyor belt. So in part, there is capitalization that has to happen. The other part is that the way in which we operate and manage the processing on both the operation as well as preventative maintenance and breakdown repairs, there is improvement that has to happen on that side. If you wanted my honest opinion, nothing... happens overnight. When we acquired Impala Canada, that was in 2019, they had a stellar year this year. So all of a sudden this year, you saw Tim sparking, getting 17% up. When we originally acquired, so when I was at the Abbey plant, it took us two years to get the IMEs, the flexibility I think the plant is probably going to take between 12 and 24 months to get to exactly where it should be. If I look at style drift similarly, so they have traditional issues. Grant, you can help me if I'm wrong, but the two big issues there is face flexibility, IMS face length, and the other one is infrastructure position relative to the faces. It is not an overnight task. Again, I would suggest a 24-month period is realistically what it takes. I mean, I would like to declare next quarter, but I've never been successful in having a very sharp turnaround. I think we're looking to a year, between a year and two. Anyone who's got better views, what can Sayo say?

We've got that long, two years.

We've got Rene and then Arnold from Kron.

Hi, Nika and team. Thanks for the presentation. I'll be just carrying on from Gerard's point. Is there any way that you can get the grade at Steyldrift up? Because that, to me, seems to be the crux of the whole problem, that the grade is not high enough and that There's too much dilution in that operation. Patrick?

Yeah.

So we are doing work on improving the grade, and I think we're starting to see some early shoots, green shoots. With the more development that we've been doing, there has been dilution. But most importantly, we have been mining areas of low grade. So we're starting to move into areas of high grade. So it will improve over time as we set up the face line that is required to sustain the ramp up.

So there are high grade areas?

Yeah, there are some high grade areas, but like I said, as we're developing the mine, sometimes you have to mine the low grade areas, which we find ourselves in some of those. I think on another side of the mine, There's a bit of low-grade error that we made, but we're going to be moving to relatively high-grade soon.

Okay, thanks. Can we go back to slide number 44, if possible?

I'm not sure. I have 44 slides. Is it the results presentation of this morning that you saw? The profitability one.

Yeah, the profitability one. Yes, that one. At the moment, the... The revenue is about 25,000 rand per ounce. And as a group, it looks like you're right on that position. Sure, there are individual operations which are below that. But considering that that is FY23, and you're going to probably put another 6% to 10% cost onto that, the picture doesn't look very good, assuming that we remain at spot. Obviously, my view is that we're not going to. We're going to be at 30,000 or so, which gives you a little bit of headroom. But if it does remain at spot, which are the first ones that you're going to look at starting to shut down?

So, I mean, I've previously spoken, and I did make the comment, that we want to tolerate cash losses. But now... Also, it is not correct to assume that that means on day one if you have a cash loss for one month, one quarter. I think we'll take a longer-term position, but the operations that are most under threat are not on this slide. It should be on this slide because the cost per ounce of the last quarter, I apologize, Grant, but that exceeded the cost of our niche area. And so I would suggest that is an operation that requires significant improvement in order to remain cash positive, particularly given the fact that there is still a remaining capital investment element associated with that. Then I think the second operation of concern to us is Two Rivers, and it's because of the capital of the Mariinsky project. So as a just cash operating cost, the operation is fine. but it's the funding associated with this Mariinsky project or the remaining funding that is a big concern. And then one cannot have a conversation and not touch on Canada. Canada is under threat by virtue of it being a single commodity business, and that's where we've seen the most significant decline. And so as an example, the capital investment in the tailings disposal facility, that decision has been delayed, and that will have an impact on the life of mine as well. The only strength of Canada is their significant improvement in performance, and I think there is some potential to take that more. And the fact that they do have flexibility to alter the grade, which we don't normally have in the South African PGM businesses because of the uniformity of grade distribution across the all body. So I think those are probably the biggest areas of concern. Now, if this becomes a longer-term crisis, the company will have no other recourse other than to consider suspension or restructuring. And it's not something that we will wait 10 years to get to. And by 10 years, I don't mean I don't really literally mean 10 years. It'll be It's not something that we will tolerate for a long time.

Thanks very much, Nico.

Good afternoon. It's Arnold van Graan from NetBank. A couple of questions from my side. The first one, Nico, talks to the impact of load curtailment on your operation. It seems to me that you've suffered know where's the impact in your peers so my question is is most of that related to the rebuilds of the number four smelter was does it talk to the general uh constraint in your processing capacity And are there any short-term mitigation measures that you are thinking of to address that? So that's the first question. The second one, I guess, for Patrick. Patrick, are you still carrying excess labour at Rustenburg? And I know at Marula as well there's some excess labour there. Can you just give us a sense of that and the role that could play in this metal price environment? And I'm not referring to RB Platt's employees when I ask that question, but I guess on that trend, are there any restrictions in terms of the ComCom outcomes that prohibit you from taking necessary action, as you've alluded to now, if metal prices stay here for an extended period of time? Thank you.

So I want to introduce you to our super metallurgist, Mary Nishan. to deal with the question which pertains to what percentage of the inventory lockup or lost ounces is load curtailment versus the furnace three and four and perhaps copper theft and so forth.

So in the 245,000 that we ended up at the end of the period with, I remember we started off with 40,000 excess. So that was there at the beginning of the year. Then there was 111,000, which is really directly as a result of load curtailment. and cable theft, 10,000 of cable theft is in there. The other remaining, I think it's circa 94,000 ounces. That's because we had furnace four down for the full rebuild. It went down in December, came up in April. The reason probably why we were more affected by load curtailment is that when we run three furnaces and we need to drop the load, we can balance the load across three furnaces, right? When you have a smelter that's down for a full rebuild, you're now running two furnaces on its own And when we are required to do low curtailment, they look at consumption at that point. So our ability to use those furnaces to buffer the operations and, in fact, to maintain other smelters operating gets limited. So that really is the constraint we dealt with in this year. And going forward with furnace 5 going for rebuild, we're going to have to deal with that again in FY24.

David? On the second question pertaining to labor, I will just answer one part and then Patrick can talk about how much extra freaking labor you are carrying in a group that's contributing to this high cost. So from the transaction point of view, we gave an undertaking that there won't be a single rechangement as a consequence of the transactions. And we didn't do that because it was a demand or a competition commission or anything. It did not make sense. There's sufficient national attrition in a business under normal conditions to continue operating, to integrate. And so we had no intention, either at corporate office or at the operation, to, by virtue of the transaction, cut the costs. by having forced retention because of the transaction. But now I also want to say there is clearly a difference in restructuring because of a transaction and restructuring because of a change in economics. So don't confuse the two with one another. To the extent that we have businesses running into cash losses, any one of them, it represents a material threat to the company. And the company will consider various avenues, and restructuring or suspension always is one, but it's one that we keep always as a last resort. I mean, we have loyal people that have worked for us for 30 years, so it's not our impression, but I just want to make sure you understand the difference because of the transaction and by virtue of economic fortunes.

Yeah, thank you. So let's start with Marula. Marula, you'll see there's about 300 people that we brought year on year. But it's not necessarily a compliment. It's the people we brought for Phase 2 project to do the early works. So that labor is really needed to get us that head start on Phase 2. Rastimbek, you know, for the last few years, the team has been working to create face lens. So they had to bring additional people for that. We have our face lens now. So we, you know, as we have natural attrition, we're not replacing the people. So most of that over complement, I think, has been eaten into because of natural attrition. Thank you.

Can I just add to that? There's a number of cost-saving mitigations that we institute in the company. One of them is a moratorium on recruitment, certainly at corporate office, but in certain positions at the operations. Obviously, if we have a jacked, an operator that's directly required for production. That's something different. But we have already instituted a moratorium on recruitment in various positions across the company. So I do believe that to the extent that there is remaining excess labor, that there is a very rapid program towards corrective action.

Thank you. One more in the room, and then I'm also going to give people on the call an opportunity, Leroy. Thanks, Jan.

Could we talk a bit about the commodity prices? Looking at your market balances, it does seem like you're still forecasting deficits for this year and into next year. But that doesn't reflect in the price action that we've seen. So I was just wondering what your view is on how long it will take for for all the destocking that we've seen over the last two quarters to sort of get absorbed into the market and for us to see a price reaction again. And then my second question, I was quite interested in your comments, Nico, on the accelerated furnace rebuild program and how load shedding has sort of taken its toll on your furnaces. how it does seem like these rebuilds are more frequent than what they used to be um you've got another one coming towards the end of the the calendar year how does that sort of feed into your thinking of your capacity so if you think about on a normalized basis has your capacity sort of come down um and do you need to do anything about that in terms of you know allocating additional capex to that and then I know you've you've covered it partially but just sort of your initial impressions looking specifically at stale drift to things have sort of The RB Platts team has under-delivered there relative to what they've guided, particularly on sort of reaching steady state. You were quite actively involved there a couple of years ago. How does the footprint look compared to what you'd envisaged, and what are some of the bottlenecks there? Are there any sort of low-lying fruit that can drive a sort of near-term turnaround?

Okay, so let's start with the markets. Do you want to comment on the dislocation between price behavior and our market balances?

So Leroy, certainly when, especially for the minor metals like rhodium, but also for a byproduct like palladium, when there are acute shortages and the prices are moving up, we are seeing people buying and outbidding each other and driving these prices up to unsustainable record highs. Unfortunately, on the downside, the same thing happens. So when you have weak China and you have a weak outlook for the economy in the US and commodity prices started coming down and people are sitting on these assets that they bought up and probably more than they need at that point in time, you have this selling down frenzy that happens and you get that dislocation. Now certainly we're also seeing metal out of Russia flowing into key areas like China at a discount. So all of these things have conspired where we would suggest that the prices you're seeing today are somewhat dislocated from the underlying fundamentals. But the fundamentals have weakened. But we do see in the second half of the year China picking up. We're seeing some of these destocking has to be restocked again. It's just a question. We kind of pushed our view out by a quarter. So we were hoping or projecting it to be quarter three, but it's probably only going to be quarter four and into next year because I think specifically China has come out weaker than what we've anticipated. But we certainly see an upward momentum starting to build probably from fourth quarter of this year. I hope that answers the market question.

As far as the processing capacity is concerned, there are two B VINs. So firstly, internally we've re-planned the furnace repair and rebuild program to account for a shorter interval period between major repairs. The commissioning of the Zumplatz new smelter will be absolutely critical in order for us to have sufficient capacity. And then the outcome of the concentrate off-take agreement of Abbey Platte, as Chris asked earlier, is a second one. And so we are short-term capacity constrained. I think in due course, when we've got number five furnace done and we've got the Zimplat smelter resolved, not resolved, commissioned, we will have sufficient capacity. And then you had another question.

Style drift. Yeah, just your views on stale drift compared to what you initially expected, if there's any kind of low-lying fruit there.

So, we had to look at the number of performance metrics. When I look at the ore body, the ore body is not disappointed, it's still there. If I look at the safety record associated with relatively shallow mechanized. I mean, their safety performance is like twice as, if you look at their last time energy frequency rate, it's half of ours. If you look at labor productivity, it is, as I said, double, but it may even be more than that. But if you look at total labor complement and per ton or per ounce delivered, so many of the fundamental drivers of our view of value is definitely there. So, it's really got to do with the ability to execute on your exploitation strategy. Now, you are feeding into the question that was earlier asked now, and I would suggest that there is probably a hope and expectation that we can talk about low-hanging fruit. I'm very cautious to do that, because in my opinion it has never happen, most certainly not where I've been involved where you can in a very short amount of time make a big change. What I can comment on is that you guys did ramp up to 220,000 tons a month compared to the 160 or 170. So there is a history of them having moved up but then they had this loss rate because of geological conditions, bottles and so forth, and it was in that process and the inability to secure new phase that the production started to decline. I am not convinced I can sit here with an honest heart and say, lowing fruits, give us one quarter and we will be back. But there at least has been an upward trend over the last six months at the operation. Not because of us, but certainly I know that having studied the numbers, there has been an upward trend.

Understood. Thank you. Maybe, Johan, just one follow-up. We've heard a lot of comments around Norilsk selling metal palladium at a discount into China and into some of the other regions. Do you have a sense of what that discount is or just how that mechanism works in the market and how that feeds into the actual palladium price that we see declining.

Yeah, so we've heard numbers. I'm sure you've heard the same kind of numbers. We don't have specific insights. I can't give you a number 20 or 30%. I think it also varies. But I think what people also forget is that the U.S. have imposed importation duties. So Russian metal that finds its way into the U.S. is also discounted by by, you know, that levy. So cash in the pocket of the producer in Russia is also impacted in that way. So you can also see when the cash constraint and where their traditional marketing paths have been cut off, you know, that they will find paths to the market. We've got no doubt about that. But, you know, it's higher risk metal. Some jurisdictions, you know, are pushing back and it will come at a discount when it comes to the market. I can't give you the exact number, but we've heard anything from 10 to 30%. But I can't stand by that. I mean, it's like you, we are reliant on the market networks. Thank you. Alrighty, I'm going to give people on the call also an opportunity. I see there's already two people that are queued into the Q&A. So I'm going to hand over to the bridge. Mafedi, if you could just take them through and queue them in.

Thank you. The first question comes from Adrian Hammond of SPG Securities.

Good day, everyone. Thanks for the presentation. Four questions for you, please. Quick ones. How many months of pre-developed reserves do you have at the lease area and secondly at RBP? Second, will you legally consolidate the RBP assets into the lease? Thirdly, what's the status of the BE deal and when will that conclude? Lastly, I still don't appreciate the buildup in stock that you're forecasting when your peers don't seem to have such an issue. And furnace repairs is being done by everyone. So the lease did more than a million ounces platinum at one point. So why is processing now a constraint? Thanks.

Patrick, do you want to comment on the pre-developed oil reserve IMS that we have at the Lease Area compared to our plans?

Yeah, I think at the Lease Area we now, like I said earlier, there's been a lot of work that's been put into developing the face land. By the end of the year, we're sitting on 26.5 kilometres of face land. uh that really give us the flexibility to maintain a lasses production of uh 1.2 million ounces uh so so compare that to uh rb players are we players uh brpm because you've got you've got two side brpm and we use more conventional and still with uh rb players uh so brpm you have a a good uh face length that supports the production That's why that area has been 20 months straight above core. But coming to stale drift, it is very tight. Panel-to-cool ratio, we're sitting at about 1.3. The whole idea is now to try to push it to 1.5. So Rusty is in a better position compared to the plants at this point in time.

Thanks. Thank you. Johan, do you want to comment on the processing capacity and what gives cause to this constraint?

So I think there's two things. I don't think we are more constrained than our competitors. I think we've got more flexibility and more spare capacity. We are certainly robustly ensuring that our infrastructure is world-class and robust. The fact that you have to cycle up and down, up and down, does add a huge amount of risk to these operations. What would be catastrophic is to have an incident on one of these furnaces. So the protocols under which we operate, we've built in a margin of safety and security that obviously we feel is justified in this period of time. It's very unusual for us to do two full rebuilds in the same year, which is what we've done this year. The guys have done a remarkable job and both those furnaces were put back online at the right time, completely right. I think what has impacted us more than anybody is when we were ready to feed both of those furnaces, Eskom delayed the startup. They just didn't have the power available at the time to switch another 35 megawatts onto the network. So we probably lost almost two months of full production on two furnaces just because we couldn't tie them into the network. But those furnaces are humming, they're hot, they're working beautifully, and they are being used on a daily basis. And soon we will have another monster furnace in Zimbabwe. And those four big furnaces are clearly going to put us in an enviable position, in my view.

Thanks.

Sorry, there was another question that we might have missed, Adrian.

The legal consolidation and the BE deal.

Do you want to comment on that?

Yeah, so Adrian, we're clearly busy in discussions with the BE partner to get consensus around terms and value. And once we've completed that, we will make an announcement to the market at the appropriate time.

On that note, I would like to welcome Landani and Imran, who are actually present here. I just don't see them right now, but they are. I think that process is well under track and I look forward to making announcements to Kothania in due course. In terms of the legal integration, it is our intention to keep the companies apart for the short term. That's for a number of reasons. It is driven by The fact that we've got NUM on the one side, AMCO on the other side. The fact that we have got different models of success in terms of management, methodology, style, community relationships. It is not foreseen to be the position into infinity. There is our integration plan that is being led by Leanne Samuel, our HR Director. And the point is, at some point, to have the two entities combined, subject to tax and tax efficiency and all of these things. But the end goal is always to have a lease area or a buffering area in the Western Limb that will ultimately be integrated. But that will be done very systematically and structured over a period of time. That's clear. Thanks, Nico.

Thanks, Adrian. We have time for one more question. I see there's one person still in the queue. I'm going to give Nkoteko an opportunity, which will then be the last question. I do apologize for the people on the web. I see there's three or four questions on the web. We'll certainly come back, but they are in the same line as what we've answered, but we'll certainly make sure we circle back to you and answer. So maybe we can conclude with Nikoteko on the conference call.

Thank you. That's Nikoteko Matonze of Investec. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Johan, for giving me an opportunity. I have a follow-up question on labour, especially focusing on Rustenberg. If you look at FY20, compare the total labour complement versus FY23, there's about 4,500 employees higher. Has the base for Impala Rustenberg lifted to the 4,300, 44,000 employees, or is there still room to actually get back to the 2020 levels? I always looked at that number and thought you were getting excess labor as a result of the COVID environment. So just help me understand what am I seeing wrong as far as the labor complement of Impala Rustenberg is concerned. And then I also have a question for Nico as far as the group capex guidance and the scenarios that you show on slide 43. So under the scenario of Feb 23 guidance plus weaker RAND, I mean, capex does fall significantly. Which projects will be likely deferred? And how should we look at it in relation to your production profile if the Feb 23 guidance plus weaker RAND scenario actually plays out? That's it for me. Thank you.

Do you want to comment on labor, Patrick?

Yeah, I can. It's a bit far back. Probably to Mark to try and answer that for us. Is the speaker for Mark?

Do you want to comment on, again, the excessive labor?

Yeah, I can answer the current one, but four years later.

Lucky I've got Moses sitting next to me, yeah? He's got to love him. I think the way we measure the labor is on the average for the past year as well. So I think currently the lease is around $42,000. So the number has already come down. Then the way we also measure the labor includes contractors that would come and go. And especially at the lease, you've got the dryer that we build in the process division, and you've got two underground capital projects. The one is coming to an end now, the 12 shaft with the decline and that equipment. So those capital people responsible for the equipment of that shaft and everything are leaving site. And the big part of the dryer is completed as well. So I think that is where the 42,000 hours already happened. We did carry in the past a bit extra on what we call cadets and the learnership. So we did beef up there to keep the pipeline full as well. which also paid on a stipend basis. So what you see in a labor number doesn't transfer to a full cost number either. I think if you, and I think just the way the lease has come back to 7% year-on-year cost increase, part of that much lower than you probably expected cost increase was attributed to the reduction in labor from the COVID times. The nurses are by and large out there, access nurses, medical staff, catered for all that time, have come out the business already. And of course, on natural attrition, we have about 100 to 150 natural attrition. So I think there's still some refinement to do on the labor and improvement, but by and large, it is where it should be.

With regards to the capital guidance, I'm being asked a moving target question. What is our ability to curtail capital expenditure and I think that if we had to, we can cut the $12.5 to $13.5 billion quite significantly. What will the impact, and I'll talk to the project, I think I did answer that before, but what will be the impact on the production guidance? Absolutely zero. The production guidance that we've given is not dependent on much more. So the capital investment has got to do with future production. production, not the year one production. So there won't be any impact. And I believe that the group will be quite comfortable to produce at the 3.3 million ounces per year, even in the absence of this capital investment. But as I said earlier, it's probably easier for me to answer which projects we won't cut. The smelting project in Zim. is critical. That is the critical constraint of the company. The base metal refinery optimization that we've done in Springs actually has yielded positive results. We believe that there is, in fact, a higher capacity being created than what we had originally earmarked. That possibly puts the base metal refinery project in Zim at risk, or at least at risk of being delayed. When I look at The life extension projects like Phase 2, 11, 12, 14 shafts, those are the projects that if you don't have the funds to invest in long life, if it becomes important to have a short-term focus on cash preservation, those are typically the kind of projects that will be cut.

Maybe just a word from me on the capital guidance, Nkuteko. The slide that you're referring to is our capital guidance over the next five years, which now is to the best of our abilities in the current environment, subject to an ongoing market review. And you see that we've incorporated RB Platts into that capital guidance. What you refer to as scenarios is not really scenarios. What it's referencing is our prior guidance that we've done before. But we're just cautioning there that half of our capital expenditures are using US dollars. And by virtue that the prior forecast was done at $15, and we're now closer to $19, $20, that automatically just lifts the capital profile by about a billion rand or so. And then the next thing is by incorporating RV flats, which we've had to do, and we wanted to give the market that sort of guidance to the best of our current understanding, you know, lifts it by another one and a half billion or so over that period. And then hopefully what you can see is in this year and the next couple of years that we've already affected some capital rationalization and prioritization. And as Nico has explained, that's an ongoing and moving target. But we've got huge flexibility and ability, and we will certainly be robust in the way that we manage that in line with profitability. So it's not scenarios. It's just trying to give you the best forward guidance with some context. I hope that helps.

It helps. Thank you so much.

Alright, it then falls on me to thank you everybody on the line, on the webcast and in the room here. We do have some drinks available, so I invite you to come have a drink with the Impala team. This will be an opportunity here for people to ask some further questions, formally and informally outside. For the people on the call and on the web, We hope to see most of you on the road very, very soon. And to the extent that you have any pressing questions or we didn't get to you, please refer back to me and my team and we will answer and get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you very much. Drive safely. Thank you.