Aya Gold & Silver Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to AYA Gold and Silver's first quarter 2024 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the CEO's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Ruth Hanna, Manager of Investor Relations and Communications of AYA. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to AYA's first quarter 2024 results conference call. My name is Ruth Hanna, and I'm dialing in with the IR team from Montreal and Marrakesh this morning. On the call today, we have Bruno Lassalle, President and CEO, Hugo Landre-Tolzuc, CFO, Raphael Beaudoin, Vice President Operations, and David Lalande, Head of Exploration. We will finish today's event with a Q&A session with the team. Please contact our IR team directly with any follow-up questions that are not addressed during the call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that today's event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in our May 15th news release, as well as on CEDAR Plus and on www.aya.goldsilver.com. With that, I would like to turn the conference over to AYA's President and CEO, Benoit Lassalle. Benoit, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you, everyone, for being on the call this morning. As we indicated last time, 2024 is a transition year into a new AYA with a new production profile. So let me take you through some of the highlights of the quarter. So I will be on slide number three of the presentation that you have. So as the first milestone of the quarter, which I think is probably one of the most important ones, we've continued advancing the secondaire mine expansion to plan. We are on time and we are on budget for commissioning in Q2 2024, which means in June of 2024. An important element we had indicated previously that we were aiming for a stockpile of 260,000 tons of ore to start the commissioning. And I'm pleased to say that at the end of the quarter, we are at 275,000 tons of ore for commissioning of the new mill. Another milestone, we've delivered a steady quarter that provides runway for delivering objectives and guidance. We are maintaining guidance. In the quarter, we produced 366,000 ounces, which is lower than what some of you expected, but is in line with our planning because we knew that we were getting into lower-grade material. In the benches of the open pit mine, we had to strip the first two benches, which we knew were lower-grade and were oxidized. We also were getting into the underground stope extension. And in the stope extension, we had seen that there was lower grade material, but we wanted to get that material out before we start backfilling those stoves. So, and in addition, there's always some, you know, sequencing. The revenue for the quarter stand at 5.1 million. clearly lower than anticipated, but we know that we took 157,000 ounces of silver that we have now in inventory, and this is why we say that there's a temporary increase in silver concentrate, and we pushed those over to Q2, where we were able to get $4 an ounce improvement on the selling price. Hence, there's a net loss for the quarter of 2.5 million, and which also has directly affected our cash costs because of the lower production and the lower sale. It has directly affected our cash costs, which is at 20.31, which is not representative of the cash costs of this company going forward, nor it's a question of denominator in the quarter. As well, we end the quarter with improved liquidity. We closed the quarter with $111 million in cash and cash equivalent. You know we're reporting in U.S. dollars. So $111 million, which is a major improvement from the previous quarters. We threw down an additional $25 million on our EBRD loan for a total of $85 million. We won last yesterday a prize on the EBRD loan for Africa as one of the top natural resource loans in our industry. We finished the quarter with a strengthened portfolio. We delivered an updated Bumadid mineral resource on April 15th of this year. and which is a very strong baseline for continued development and expansion. Furthermore, we've also increased the land package at Boumadine. Currently, we've increased our land package by 346%. Moving on to slide number four, it's extremely important for us to tell you and to reiterate that we are maintaining guidance for the year. Though the production for Q1 is at 366,000 ounces, we're maintaining guidance between 2.6 and 3.2. We're maintaining our cash cost guidance between 13 and 14.5 and the average grade process between 215 and 240, regardless of the fact that in Q1 we were lower because we knew And I explained why we are lower and it was planned accordingly. The mill recoveries were at 81.8 in this quarter, lower than what we normally see. And this is because of oxidized material coming from the open pit. The oxidized material with our current two plants doesn't get the same recovery. In the new plant, it will get the same recovery of the high 80s or low 90s, but in the current two plants, it doesn't. So this is why this quarter we have a lower recovery. On the other hand, we have a very good availability KPI. The two plants were available at 96%, therefore extremely high KPIs on availability. Moving on to slide number five, just a quick chart. on tracking the last five quarters. So you see that the silver production is lower this quarter, but as we indicated 2024 is a transition year into a very strong 2025 year where the new plant will be in production. Same thing when you look at the bottom left, when you look at grade at 173, this is where, you know, this is the reality of what we mine in this quarter, but it does not represent the long-term grade of this project. Mill recoveries, I just explained it to you. The reason we lost five points is because of the oxidized material, something that will not happen again as we have taken off the two benches, the top benches of the open pit, and now we're into fresh rock. And the ton process, that is very, very good, and that's an extremely good point. The two plants are running extremely well, and we were running almost at 900 ton a day. You remember that when we took over four years ago, we were running at 200, 300 ton a day, and now we're running above main plate capacity, even above 15% main plate capacity. So this is a very strong KPI. Moving to page six, cash flow from operation, clearly because of the fact that we've delayed revenue and that we produce a little bit less than anticipated. We have a negative cash flow. However, the 10 million is overstated as we also reduce the payable by 9 million. So the operating cash flow from activity, if you remove the payable, is more like negative 1 million. The gross margin is affected because of the low revenue, which is a function of the fact that we pushed over 157,000 ounces of silver to Q2. Cost of sale is in line with the revenue that we've recognized. And the cash cost, as indicated, is a function of the denominator and does not represent the cash cost going forward. Moving to slide number eight, the Gounder expansion. We've been showing you monthly videos of the expansion. You can track it. You can see it. The expansion is moving smoothly. Very happy to say again at the end of this quarter that, you know, we are on budget and that we will be completing the planned expansion by the end of June before we get into commissioning and that we will be on budget as all the items have been secured. All the equipment is on site, and now it's really a matter of construction. The underground development is on track as well. 94% of the lateral development is done, and 83% of the vertical development is completed, though the vertical development is not the one that's needed for the commissioning. It's really more the lateral development. The important items that can always affect your timing, the power line, Merrill Crow, silver room, all of that is on time and on budget. It will all, you know, be completed in the next few weeks. The haulage and the open pit road, you've seen those on the videos. They're really looking very good. They're well done. and are functional at the moment. And the garage, you will see that hopefully in the next video. We have a beautiful underground garage that is complete and has been completed and is very well built. So all the civil and the concrete work is completed. The cyanidation tanks are there. the electrical substation you will see warehouse and workshop have been completed. So we are coming to the end of the construction in the next few weeks and getting into commissioning. Another element is we've been through a fourth audit by EBRD on all of our ESG for the loan, the $100 million loan that we have. So you see this on page 9. You see one of the water reservoir. You see the 87% completion of the plant, the electrical substation. And we have, therefore, completed the audit with EBRD. And for a fourth time, we are in compliance with all the requirements. Moving to slide 10 in the presentation, it's about exploration. AYA in 2024 will be drilling 145,000 meters on Boumadzine and on Secondaire, mainly obviously on Boumadzine, and at the end of the quarter, of a program of 15,000 meters at Gunder Main Zone, we have 8,700 meters completed. We have five drills, between five and six drills turning at Gunder at all time. And on this Gunder Regional, we've completed 3,000 meters out of 10,000 meters. There, we're working with the team on identifying targets and testing some targets on this Gunder Regional. Whereas on the secondaire mine, we're drilling the main structure, which we are mining now, and some very close structures that are to the east and to the south of the current mine. At Boumadine, where we're drilling, we have a program of 120,000 meters. At the end of the quarter, we were 11,332 meters done. That 120,000 meters, you recall, is divided into 60,000 meters to expand the 4.2 kilometer strike that was part of the resource update that we published on April 15. That is ongoing. And there's 60,000 meters on new targets. That is also ongoing. Furthermore, the mobile MT geophysics is probably 80% completed at Boumadine, and it just been completed at Tirzit. Moving to page 11, just in the quarter, we had some, again, very strong drill results at the main zone at Secondaire. We are 50% completed, as I just said, and some of the results, especially the ones getting closer to the granite at the bottom of the structure, we are hitting some very, very nice zone of 1,000 gram per ton over 13 meters and 322 gram per ton over 17 meters. So again, this is ongoing. There'll be more results. The drilling's going well. We have four underground drills that are turning 24-7, and we intend to have all of this drilled in the coming months. On page 12 is a review of the Boumadine permit. That's the first permit. That's the original permit. that you see on page 12. That's the one that we acquired in 2012, way before our time. And that's the one we did the geophysics 18 months ago and understood that there was a mineralized zone, which we've drilled. And that's on that mineralized zone that we've put out a resource of So as we indicated, it's 120,000 meter drill program. As of now, year to date, we're 27,000 meter done. At the end of the quarter, we were 15,000 meter done. And just recently this week, we put out some results. So it's post the end of the quarter, but it's within this week where we've announced that we've extended the mineralized zone from 4.2 kilometers up to 5 kilometers. You recall that this is a geophysics anomaly that we see at surface on 6 kilometers. We're also seeing it on surface, but not with the geophysics, to go all the way to the north of the border and going south as well. So this is our boom at the end project. And it's continuing, we're drilling on it, and we've added many, many new permits to increase the footprint of this district that we're currently developing. The MET tests were announced last year. Nothing new except that we're continuing the test and we're continuing the work to identify what method will be used in the processing, but that's going to come much later in the year. On page 13, you have just some recent highlights. of the drill results. Again, seeing some very good grade at Boumadine, a very good goal grade, you know, 6 gram per ton, 116 gram per ton silver, zinc, lead, and copper. This project is polymetallic, and the results that we showed you at the beginning of the week are, you know, extremely strong results. Moving to page 14 and 15, just a quick update of the resource that we put out on April 15. We had indicated an inferred resource. The summary is on page 15. What we were showing is in silver equivalent, it's 352 million ounces in silver equivalent and gold equivalent. it's 4.1 million ounces of gold equivalent. But at the end of the day, if you look at the metal per se, it's 72 million ounces of silver, and it's 2 million ounces of gold in the actual metal, all of that at very good grades. So it's a strong project. We will be reporting more results as we keep drilling. But that, on April 15th, we put out the first resource from our team, which is the beginning of many more updates to come in the months and years to come. Closing on the ESG and on page 16. As you all know, we're extremely involved locally. The ESG values are really within our values at AYA. and hence the reason where we were able to obtain that $100 million funding with EBRD. So we have, on health and safety, we have, you know, four small incidents this quarter. We had none last quarter. Four small incidents this quarter with subcontractors that, you know, where we had a few lost days. On the training, though, we've increased the number of hours by 150%. to almost 3,000 hours of health and safety training in the quarter. If you are part of our LinkedIn group, you will see pictures of the health and safety and all the programs that we have in place because we do post regularly what is being done on site. On the EBRD CTF, Milestones were 90% completed for the second milestone. You recall that this gives us a rate reduction, an interest rate reduction on our CTF funding. So we're almost there. We should be there in the next quarter. On community development, we have launched classrooms for children and for some of the villages on literacy classes, on math classes. And we have very good participation from the local communities. We also organize health clinics. So we had audiology clinics, mobile clinics in two of the villages around the mine. And we also have agriculture, which you know is a key value to AYA. And we do help the local population with agriculture. In the region where we are, it is saffron that is being cultivated and we are helping the local families and small farms with new technology and we're really helping them in getting better yield from their small farms to conclude um and and the takeaway and is that we uh is is is really moving on all cylinders uh with 120 thousand meters of drilling, seven drills are turning 24-7, results are coming in and this is a key asset to AYA and we are on track with the program and we are waiting for the geophysics because you see the picture on page 17, the helicopter with doing the geophysics. And we are on track to get the geophysics in June and the inversion of the geophysics in June in order to identify additional targets on all of the new permits that we have obtained and on our original permit as well. The second takeaway is 25,000 meters of drilling at Zgundea and Zgundea Regional. That is On tract, there's a team on this as well, and we're looking at many new targets. On the construction, the 2024 milestone for the plant expansion, as we indicated, commissioning will start. We will communicate when we start and what section of the plant is being commissioned, and you can expect that in the coming few weeks. We expect commercial production in Q4 of 2024. We're maintaining, again, guidance. We're maintaining cost and production guidance. So that is a fact, and we're saying it again. And we're also maintaining our ESG milestones and values. It's part of our values. It's part of our team. And that's something that we have completely integrated from top to bottom of the organization. And on page 18, I'd like to show you our power line. We're very proud of our power line. It is 340 pylons. It is beautiful power line high voltage that is coming from the bottom of the valley all the way up to 2200 meters where the plant is we have started commissioning it slowly or we with the government and it's it's where we're almost done we're almost done it's high voltage you remember it's green energy and It's a PPA. It's a 20-year PPA signed with the local company. It's green energy. It's high voltage. And it's less expensive than the current energy that we're receiving, which is you know, the regular grid. So this is almost done. It's an important project for the mine and it will be ready and commissioned for the beginning of commissioning of the other parts of the plant. So operator, that completes the official presentation of Q1. We are ready for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Eleanor Magzynski from SCP Resource Finance.

Can everyone hear me okay?

Can you speak up a little bit?

Oh, yep. Classic headphone case. Can you hear me better now?

Much better, yes.

Okay, wonderful. Okay, well thanks very much Benoit and team for the presentation this morning and great work to everyone for the efforts over the last quarter. I just wanted to ask a question about upcoming, I guess, throughput while commissioning. We kind of anticipate the grades to be a bit on the lower side because that's typical in the commissioning stages, but just curious what the plant capacity is kind of budgeted or expected over the next, I guess, Q2 and Q3 while commissioning takes place.

So Eliana, first of all, we're going to be running this with the stockpile. So clearly, as you know, now we have at the end of the quarter, we have 275,000 tons on the stockpile, which runs around 170 grams per ton, which we've been accumulating. And that's what we're going to be using. And on the commissioning front, well, look, we'll We'll start at the end of June and very slowly. We hope that we're going to have – we have completed that at the end of September, beginning of October, where technically the new plant is 2,000 tons. But I don't believe we're going to be running at 2,000 tons to start. That would be a dream. But we – it would be very, very difficult. It's still very difficult to say. The beauty is the two older plants are running at almost 900 tons a day. That's going to continue. And after that, it's going to be a normal ramp up. Raphaël, is there any number you have in mind to

Well, the plant is designed for 2,000 ton a day, and we've taken nominal contingency on it, as we should. So as we maintain guidance, we start commissioning in June, and we'll have a ramp-up of, we hope, that is fast. to have commercial production in Q4. So we'll have a ramp up during Q3 and hopefully achieve full capacity through Q3 and have stable operation in Q4.

Okay, awesome. And just one last follow-up, I guess. So in Q4, I mean, assuming kind of everything kind of goes as planned over the next little bit of commissioning and you have steady state at 2,000 tons per day, for the new plant. What sort of grades are, I guess, are expected or anticipated for the end of year? Because it does seem like you will be kind of end-loaded, which makes sense given the timing for the commissioning and things like that. But just curious if you could speak on that at all and how that's expected to change over the next couple of quarters.

So for the grades, it's elsewhere guidance. So GRADE will continue to go up through the year and we have the stockpile, but we won't only feed the new mills from the stockpile. We'll feed the new mills from the stockpile and also the ongoing two mines that we have. So we have three different stores that we can feed the new mills and adjust accordingly. But as for guidance, the grade will continue to go up through the year and we'll adjust with the open fit, with the underground, with stockpiles to benefit as much as we can from the performance of the new plan.

Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. That's my only question for today. I really appreciate it and I look forward to chatting soon.

Thank you. Thank you, Elena. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of John Sklodnik from Desjardins.

Yeah, thanks, guys. I can take my question, and yeah, good to hear the expansion is on track and budget. I guess just following up on Eleanor's questions there, and I guess trying to get a little more specific on the quarterly cadence of production, is it fair to think that, you know, in Q4, we could be getting roughly like 40% of the annual production in that quarter alone?

That's 40% of the 3 million, just for simplicity, would be 1.2. Look, it's difficult to say. It will depend on the wrap-up, John. But we know that the grade is getting better, that we know, because the open pit has got better grade, and so does the underground.

Like Don last month, I think, you know, we give annual guidance. We're in a ramp up. Our objective is to hit annual guidance for sure. I think we gave you guys a pretty good idea of, you know, when we think commissioning is going to be, when we think ramp up is going to be. So, I think we'll stick to that and look, we expect to meet guidance from here to the end of the year.

Fair enough. Yeah, it was a sticky way to ask for quarterly guidance. And I guess the other one, just out of curiosity, in terms of that, the concentrate that was held in inventory, that was just a shipping timing issue, I'm assuming?

That's right. That's what we waited for the concentrate. We were looking at the $21 price. We did not like that. And we had $157,000 we could have shipped before the end of the quarter or after the end of the quarter. And we waited and we didn't do that in the past, but this, if you look at Q1, the, the average selling price was lower and, you know, we kind of made the right decision because we got $4 extra.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. That's kind of a bit of a new approach. I know it's been a, yeah, I guess in terms of getting, getting a bit of leverage, what do you ever think about adding, keeping a little bit on the balance sheet?

silver well we normally do if you look at every time you look at the the quarter end there's always you know because of the delivery time because of the ingots there's always some at the end we haven't used this as a you know it's not we're not in the business of holding on like others do and but look we have the liquidity to be patient and we do have the liquidity so we were patient in q1 perfect yeah no no appreciate that and uh yeah great to see you guys are in a

Good financial position to finish this wrap-up, and then it's on track and on budget. So, yeah, congrats and looking forward to more. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, John. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Suk from Stifel.

Hi guys, thanks for the presentation. Great to see the ramp, or sorry, the end of construction still going apace here. Just a quick one for me, you know, the oxide material going through the mill obviously impacted recoveries this quarter. Should we expect a degree of that through Q2 and maybe Q3 as well, or is that pretty much all flush through? So,

We try to keep as much of the oxidized ore for the new plants because we expect performance to be excellent. We do process a little bit and we've adjusted since the plants because we do have the luxury of having two mills in operation. And we expect recoveries to be up in Q2 and even more as we go along in the rest of the year and as we expose fresh ore from the open pit.

Perfect. Yeah, okay. Makes sense. And then just one other one from me here. On the cost side now with the open pit, really kind of getting into the the heart of mining, are costs coming in kind of as expected? Are you seeing any sort of early indications of variation from the tech report on the cost side there?

Yeah, on the cost side, and we make reference to it, like the contractor is going very, very well on both on cost and on performance. So it's as we expect.

That's great to hear. That's it for me. I appreciate the answers and I'll leave the line open for someone else. Thanks.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Don DeMarco from National Bank Financial.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, Benoit and team. Congratulations on reiterating guidance and development on time on budget. So I'm going to shift over to Boumadine for my questions. First, can you just refresh on the timing of the regional geophysics? And if you're drilling any of these regional targets outside, so the main zone or tizzy zones, when first assays might be available on those other targets?

Well, Don, on the geophysics, and David is on the line, so he'll be able to add, but the geophysics was about 80% completed when we took the helicopter over to Tirzit, because in Tirzit, we know it's a flat structure, and we wanted to see what would be the readout of the geophysics on this flat structure, which was a mine historically by the previous owners. So we did that, and we were waiting for the helicopter to come back to Boumadine, and as soon as it's back, we will complete whatever is missing to the east and to the west for the geophysics program. But once we have that, then we're going to get the inversion of the geophysics data, which will show at depth the structure and what we could be looking for or will identify some targets. And only then will we look at drilling those targets. So we will review the priority targets, either on our ground or on the additional ground that we have obtained, and then with David and his team are going to decide what are the priority targets. Obviously, the deeper target to the south east is the southwest, sorry, is extremely important. But until we have the data, we don't know if it's how deep it is and what, you know, how big the target is.

Okay. Okay. Well, we'll stay tuned for that then. Thank you for that. Also, speaking with Boumadine, I recognize that the processing method is not finalized. You're looking at a number of different options, ruling out some. But based on the testing that's been done to date, what's the range of recoveries that you might expect for the different metals?

Well, we have it on the presentation. If you go back to the presentation that we've given you, let me just go to it. On page 12... On page 12 at the bottom, through the initial metallurgical test work, the initial recoveries for silver, gold, Lead and zinc were are shown there. So obviously this is just the beginning It's the it's the it's we did quite a bit of work, but it's just the beginning of what we're going to be doing this year and and and and for the beginning of next year in identifying what's the best method but we wanted to debug the system and to show that regardless of the fact that that you know the the second transformation uh is where the the the gold and silver gets liberated and the technology exists it is available and it's just a matter of completing the pea but for us to complete the pa we need to know quantity and the size of this deposit and that we don't know yet and and that's it's all about geology so david is has got a um a very large budget, as you know, to drill this. And if we need to drill even more, we will to understand the size. And with that, then we'll be able to define what method we want to use.

Okay. And are you seeing that you would potentially apply the same method over all areas, or are you seeing sort of differences in mineralogy that might warrant different methods for some areas, for some zones?

Well, any deposit would have different lithologies and different sections, which would react differently to process. So part of the PEA and the next studies will be to include geometallurgy to try to capture that, which we have done a bit so far. I mean, this test work was done on composites from all current sections of the deposit.

OK. Okay, well, thanks a lot. That's all for me. And, Ben, good luck with the startup commissioning this quarter. Thank you, Don.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Puneet Singh from 8 Capital.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. I just want to stick with Boumediene. I wanted to talk about the tizzy zone. The geology there looks different, and you had that big hit, 8,000 grams per ton. I just wanted to get David's view on why that looks different, and what are you initially seeing there?

David is on the line, so we're going to use his skills

Okay, hello Punit. I'll try to answer the question as good as possible. First of all, TZ is very similar to Boumadin. The only geological difference is that we have a little bit more of mafic dikes in the surrounding. But otherwise, TZ is the same massive sulfides as we have throughout the deposit. The intersection with the 7,800 gram as mentioned in the press release is related to a different geology, different events that cross cuts the deposit. So this is an intersection of the east-west structure that we know we have through the whole property. But the further drilling will target those expressively, so we'll know a bit more. But so far we see a low sulfidation epithermal geology, so a quartz carbonate vane breccia type with some bandings epithermal texture with lots of silver-rich galena and most likely silver-rich sulfur salts in that. So this intersection does not represent TZ, it mostly represents east-west late structures that cross-cut. So it's a new type of intersection that we haven't got much so far on the property because we were never drilling those specifically. So those structures are basically parallel to the main drilling section that we are doing in order to test TZ and before that, Pumat, the main trend. But as we progress during the year, we will have some specific drilling targeting those structures.

Okay, got it. So it's kind of too early to say kind of how this fits in with the other targets, right? You guys use geophysics and then you'll kind of decide what you want to chase.

Yeah, exactly. For the geophysics, the geophysics will probably show more the Bumadin type structures, the Tizzy type structure because of the abundance of pyrite and other sulfides, so highly conductors. But we are tracking closely the North 30 and the North 70 and the East-West structure, both with the mapping and the field work and also the drilling. But that will progress and evolve as the year goes on. And we will always reallocate a priority where we have the belief it can return more ounces in the resource or the value.

Okay, got it.

Thanks.

Thank you. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference back over to Benoit Lassalle, President and CEO, for closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator. In closing, let me just walk you by, walk you through some of the key milestones of the quarter. And as we indicated, it is a transition quarter. It is a transition year as we're gearing up for a new production profile next year. But the highlight of the quarter is the construction of the new plant is on time and it's on budget. And the commissioning will be starting in a couple of weeks. One of the highlight of the quarter is there's 157,000 ounces that was produced in Q1, but sold in Q2 and will come into the revenue of Q2. And that was done creating a profit or an additional revenue of $4 an ounce. So in hindsight, we can see that it was the right decision. The open pit is now ready to expose higher grade ore, which is what we were looking for, and now that is done. The stockpile is an important element because it is security for commissioning. And at the end of the quarter, we were at 275,000 tons. As of now, we are at 290, which is, as I indicated, the original planning was to be at 260. So we're ahead on mining, and we have almost three months of stockpile once we're up and running and throughout the commissioning. And to finish, the Boumadine program is continuing. There's seven drills starting. We are drilling this, the 60,000 meters on the current geophysics anomaly, which we know is six kilometer long. We now have drilled it on five kilometer. We've reported resource on 4.2 kilometers. And this will continue. And as we will receive the geophysics interpretation and the inversion of the data, we will identify new targets and we will drill on some of the new targets. And to close, I would like to say that we are fully funded. You saw that at quarter end, our cash position is $111 million U.S. dollars. Zgounder, as you know, is cash flow positive on a yearly basis. It pays for all of its exploration. And we will be spending this year in exploration approximately $35 million between Boumadine and Zgounder. And we do not expect to need money. We will always maintain a cash position that will exceed $50 million. So we are in a very good position to see through all of our exploration programs. Of course, the construction is just about done, and that is fully funded. So we have a company where we have a lot of geological upside and where the construction risk and the financing risk is behind us. So thank you for your time. Thank you for being there today. And we will obviously talk to you during the course of the quarter. And if not, at the next conference call. Thank you. And thank you, operator.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. you Thank you. Thank you. music music Thank you. you Good day and thank you for