Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ivanhoe Mines First Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are under the Sononi mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 on your telephone again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Matthew Keeble, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Aubrey. Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our first quarter 2022 Financial Results Conference call. My name is Matthew Keeble. I'm the Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications dialing in from sunny Vancouver this morning. On the line from Ivan O. Mines, we have founder and executive co-chair Robert Friedland, President Marna Cloutier, Chief Financial Officer David Van Hamden, and Senior Vice President Corporate Development and Investor Relations Alex Pickard. We will finish today's event with a question and answer session. You can submit a question using the Q&A box on the webcast page as well as through the conference operator via your phone line. Please do contact our Investor Relations team directly for follow-up questions that are not addressed during the call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone 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 3rd news release as well as on CDAR and at www.ivanhomeminds.com. It is now my pleasure to introduce Ivan Home Minds founder and executive co-chair Robert Friedland for some opening remarks. Robert, please go ahead.

Thank you. I hope my voice is coming through from Beijing, China. I want to welcome everybody to this call after we've had another amazing quarter of achievements by our people working so assiduously in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa. It's been an amazing quarter and there's more to come and there's a lot to talk about this morning. So with that, I welcome all of you to this opening slide, which you can see the enormous extent of growth in Kamogakula, and we'll turn this over to Marna to begin going through the highlights. Thank you very much. Marna?

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon and good morning, everyone. I'm speaking from sunny South Africa, and we are all very pleased to announce another quarter of operational excellence. A few key highlights. and this quarter and beyond include the completion of our de-bottlemaking program in February of 2023, again, ahead of schedule and budget. And this enables us to produce 450,000 tons of copper on an annualized basis using our phase one and phase two plants. Kamowa Kakula also achieved a record month of production of close to 35,000 tons of copper in March. post the completion of this de-bottlemaking program. We have also seen a vast improvement on throughput and recoveries, which my colleague Alex will take you through later this call. Post the quarter, Kapushi signed a term sheet for a 250 million off-track and prepayment facility with Glencore and Jechemys. And we published our sixth annual sustainability report. And I invite our audience to carefully study this report as we illustrate how we mine with a greater purpose. Our quarterly results speak for itself. To name a few key metrics, Kamal Kakula produced on a 100% basis over 93,000 tonnes of copper, of which it sold over 86,000 tonnes of copper, resulting in net revenue of $689 million and EBITDA of $452 million. Our cash costs for the quarter was $1.42 per pound of copper produced. And that was again at the lower end of our cash cost guidance. Our phase three expansion at Kamaukakula is also on track for completion in 2024. And this will increase our copper production up to 650,000 tons on an annualized basis. One of the key statistics highlighted in our 2022 sustainability report is our constant improvement on health and safety. We had a 40% reduction in our total recordable injury frequency rate across all sites during 2022. This was operating, expanding, and building new projects. Safety is a team effort, and we are immensely proud of our staff and contracted commitment towards our zero harm policy. In the first quarter, we have continued this trajectory with a marked reduction in our total recordable injury frequency rate across all our sites. And our performance is well below the industry standard of 2.9 at our respective sites. This is a lovely picture of community members in front of a newly built church close to Kamauka Kula. They are participating in our livelihood restoration program receiving citrus saplings. Our group-wide sustainability team have gone to great lengths to showcase the work we do in our 2022 annual sustainability report. But the statistics and pictures speak for themselves, and I will highlight only a few. We have increased our female employment across the group from 9% to 10% against an increase in workforce of 20%. and 76% of our group-wide energy consumption is from renewable sources. This slide depicts a graphic representation of the world-class Kamoa Centre of Excellence that is scheduled for completion in September of this year. The centre will be used as a training facility, ultimately providing access to DRC students to participate in internationally recognised programmes. Some further interesting facts. Kamau Kakula contributed 4% to the GDP of the DRC in 2022, and this has dissipated to approximately double in 2023. Kamau Kakula paid $311 million in government taxes and royalties in 2022, the first full year of production, and we spent $95 million on our group-wide payroll with $70 million in local payroll taxes. This is a picture of our top academic scholars in Mokopani, where we have over 644 scholarships on a group-wide basis, and we have formed 332 formal and informal local enterprises. This is up from 66 in 2021. We have spent in excess of $20 million on socioeconomic development, and it's important to note that most of the businesses we incubate or assist deliver services or goods outside of our minds too. With that as an introduction, I will now hand over to David van Dierden, our CFO, to take you through our quarterly financial results. Over to you, David.

Thanks very much, Marna, and thank you for everybody joining the call today. I'm very pleased to present our first quarter results for 2023. which once again includes a number of records from Kamal Kakula. Today's presentation is, of course, only a high-level summary of our results and should be viewed in conjunction with our condensed consolidated interim financial statements and MD&A for the three months ended March 31, 2023. Kamal Kakula recorded record revenue for the quarter with almost 87,000 tons of payable copper sold. The microcooler sold less than was produced during the quarter, resulting in higher finished wood inventory at the end of the quarter. There was approximately 18,000 tons of concentrate in inventory at the end of March, with approximately 14,000 tons of that told to the Lualaba copper smelter for smelting prior to sale. with the remainder either in bulk or bagged in preparation for export. C1 cash cost was kept stable quarter on quarter, and I will discuss that a little bit more on a later slide. Record revenue and stable cost lead to record quarterly EBITDA for Kamau Kakula at the continued high margin, which leads nicely into the next slide. The increase in revenue for the quarter was driven by the higher copper prices during the period, with copper sales realizing at a copper price of $4.04 per pound of payable copper during the quarter. Kamaukakula maintained its excellent margin, which was only marginally down from the fourth quarter of 2022, due to Q4 revenue including a $52 million remeasurement. compared to only $30 million in the first quarter of 2020. So 66%, just an exceptional margin once again. I know everybody is pretty used to seeing the slide breakdown by now, but we want to continue to emphasize the underlying profitability of Kamauka Kupa. Revenue included a re-measurement of $30 million, as I mentioned, with provisional sales at the end of the period re-measured at $4.05 per payable pound of copper. It's important to point out that the finance costs of Comarch Kula of $89 million is mainly interest on shareholder loans used to fund initial capex, but that represents income for Ivano and Amshijin, who provided that funding. The tax expense for the first quarter of $116 million was $76 million of that was income tax, with the remainder being deferred tax. Often the non-controlling interest of the DRC government, the market had profit attributable to its shareholders of $167 million, $83 million of which was Ivanhoe share. On this slide, I would like to firstly focus on the chart at the bottom left of the slide, as we view the consistent cost level achieved by Kamoa Kokula as a real achievement. And we are proud to highlight that. We obviously track the results of our peers as well. And I think everyone there on this call who does the same would agree that Kamoa's results should be applauded. If we turn to the C1 breakdown to the right, you would note that processing costs increased quarter on quarter due to the power tariff increase that became effective in December, as we warned in our guidance, as well as higher diesel usage during the quarter due to power interruptions. Logistics costs eased slightly due to lower ocean freight. We continue to focus on further cost saving initiatives. And one of the key initiatives is, of course, the 500,000 tonne per annum on-site smelter, which is being constructed as part of Phase 3. We expect the on-site smelter to drive us to the lowest cost quarter and below $1.20 per pound of available copper. As was shown a few slides back, Ivano's share of profit from Kamaoka Kula was $83 million for Q1, and Ivano recognized $47 million of financial income from Kamaoka Kula, bringing the total income from Kamaoka Kula to a record $130 million for the quarter. Ivano spent $3 million on Western Portland's exploration, while the development of Platt Reef and Kapushi continued to be capitalized at the end. IBANO therefore recognized a profit of $113 million before the impact of the revaluation of the convertible note. We recorded a $31 million loss on the fair valuation of the derivative liability linked to the convertible note, and that's principally due to the increase in our share price from $10.70 to $12.21 at the end of March. This brought Ivanhoe's profit for the quarter to $82 million after the impact of the non-cash convertible bond revaluation. This slide shows our impressive adjusted EBITDA and definitely impressive adjusted EBITDA growth. and also includes how we suggest our adjusted EBITDA should be calculated. Our EBITDA of, or our adjusted EBITDA of 168 million includes our share of Kamau Kukula's EBITDA, and we look forward to adding revenue from Kibushi and Blackreef to our adjusted EBITDA next year. Our CAPEX guidance remains unchanged, and we would like to reiterate that. The first quarter spend was on the lower end, but largely the curve we expect. And as Marna, Alex, and Robert will report later on, the progress continues swimmingly. Kamawa Kokula continues to fund its CAPEX with operating cash flow and Kamawa had a healthy cash balance of $390 million at the end of March. Ivano in turn had cash and cash equivalents of $497 million at the end of March. We expect to spend between $207 and $257 million on Platt Reef in the remainder of the year, where we are progressing well with $150 million senior debt facility, as previously disclosed. And as you would have seen from the recent release on Kapushi, construction activities there are progressing ahead of schedule. the terms for the $250 million financing facility has been agreed. Ivano is also evaluating a bank facility of up to $80 million in addition to $250 million financing facility. And lastly, we showed this slide when we presented our annual results, and a lot of shareholders picked up on this, and we thought it was good to just update the numbers with the latest results, and once again, emphasize that Ivano will receive distributions in excess of our ownership percentage. Once the development for Blackreef and Kabushi has been completed, and once we start to receive shareholder loan refinance from Kamal Kapoor, I would just like to hand over now to Alex Pickard, our Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, for an operations update on Comocacom.

Thank you, David, and good day to everybody on the line. It's Alex Pickard here speaking from also a rare sunny day in London. As David mentioned, we will take you through the latest update from our operations exploration efforts and our projects. But first, maybe I'll just talk quickly about the slide that we have in the background here. What you can see in the foreground is the Kamoa phase one and phase two concentrator lines today. And the long gray building in the background or in the middle of the picture is the concentrate building where currently we are bagging and dispatching up to 90 trucks a day containing copper and concentrates. In the background of the image, in the blue, you can see a rendering of the 500,000 tonne per annum directed blister smelter that will be completed next year. And it just really gives a sense of the scale of that project. It will be the largest smelter in Africa, and indeed the largest smelter of its kind anywhere in the world. So first looking at Kamoaka Coolers operations in the first quarter. I think Marna mentioned the strong copper production we had, which was close to 94,000 tons for the quarter. But what we were really pleased to see was the record of close to 35 tons achieved in the month of March. So really now we are viewing this level as a benchmark of what the plant is capable of following the completion of the debottlenecking program, but also taking into consideration that during this month, we achieved that production level despite experiencing some grid instability. And I will come back to that on the next few slides. In March and continuing through April, we've also achieved better and better copper recoveries, achieving over 88%, which compares very favorably to our design rate of 86%. But on some days, we are well over 90%, which is an outstanding achievement by the concentrate team. We've also achieved several times now a daily milling rate in excess of 29,000 tons, which if you look at it on an annualized basis, is significantly higher than our debottleneck nameplate plant capacity of 9.2 million tons per annum. So for this quarter, we are reiterating our 2023 guidance of 390,000 to 430,000 tons of copper in concentrate. Obviously, Q1 was always going to be a bit of a slower quarter with the tie-in of the de-bottlenecking and then also the electricity availability, but we've got more than enough time to make that up, especially with the full capability of the plant following the completion of the de-bottlenecking program. So moving on to the power situation in some more detail, I think the first thing to say is that actually we experienced much better grid stability during the month of April. So what we saw is Snell, which is the DRC state-owned power utility, introduced some infrastructure management and maintenance facilities, and it was also helped by a 60 megawatt hydro facility coming into the network. That being said, we've made the decision to protect Kamoa Kukula from any potential future grid instability by investing in backup generation capacity. So what you can see in this image is our currently installed generator farm at Kukula, which is providing 32 megawatts of backup power. We use that today for emergency facilities as well as powering one line of the plant. And then added to that, we have another 11 megawatts arriving by the end of this quarter, which will be installed. And we're aiming to get to over 90 megawatts by year end. Coincidentally, 90 megawatts is around the maximum power draw on site today. So we will have the capability to run the phase one and phase two mills using backup power if necessary. Longer term, we're looking to roll out up to 200 megawatts, which will basically account for the phase three expansion and the smelter. And we're also definitely considering renewable energy as part of the mix here. And finally, and something that will help the broader DRC grid in the shorter term, we're in discussions with the Zambian government to secure up to 100 megawatts from the DRC Zambia interconnector. This will be gradually phased into the DRC grid, starting with 30 megawatts in the short term. This slide is just moving back to the bigger picture. And what you can see here is the main trunk line, which connects the Inga Dam complex where we are working on turbine five with the Colwazy substation. So that's a 1,700 kilometer line with a maximum capacity of up to 1,000 megawatts that runs very close to the Kamoa Kikula mining license in the Western Portland. So over the years, we've been working with Snell since 2017. on hydro power refurbishment projects, and we've developed an excellent relationship. And so in response to the recent power instability, we completed with Snell a grid stability study, and this identified key areas of the transmission network that will provide significantly improved stability for all the users on the network. And so in the coming months and years, we will be working closely with Snell on those initiatives going forward. I'll take you through a few slides now, which just show you in images the excellent progress that we're making on phase three. But the main message here is that everything is well on track for commissioning by the end of 2024. So first, what you can see here is the concentrator. In the image, you can see that the concrete foundations and the civil works are rapidly advancing in preparation for the steel work, which is arriving imminently. and the major pieces of equipment that will be arriving over the course of this year to be prepared for installation. This slide is just showing the underground mining progress that we're making in the Kamoa 1 and Kamoa 2 mining areas. So these mines will really be the backbone of the phase three concentrator in terms of supplying feed. So that will be five million tons per annum to begin with. from next year as the phase three concentrator ramps up. In terms of the progress that we've made there, we've already completed well over two kilometers of development in the Kamoa 1 and Kamoa 2 declines. And then the plan is to open up the Kamoa 1 mine later on this year. I think the Kamoa 2 mine is not scheduled to begin until 2025. We can rely on Kamoa 1 in the meantime and the existing stockpiles that we've already built up at the Kansoco mine. From a mining perspective, it's important to add that it's very similar to what we've already done at Kukula. You can see we're using similar style machinery, similar scale, and we will also be using drift and fill mining. And then this slide is coming back to the smelter that I pointed out earlier, and you can see that the reality is already very much taking shape on the ground. So this is showing the foundations of the directed blister, furnace building, and we are preparing for the arrival of the equipment also later on this year. So I think across the Kamoa site, we're really moving into an exciting phase of the build where we will start to see the installation of the major equipment items that are currently en route to the mine or finishing off the fabrication process. And then perhaps just to come back to the hydropower at the end, What you can see here is the work underway at turbine number five at Inga. So that is also progressing on schedule with the intention to tie in with the start-up of phase three at the end of 2024. Turbine five will bring an additional 178 megawatts of green hydropower into the grid for priority use by Ivanhoe Mines and Kamoa Pikula. What you can actually see here in the image is the rotor and the stator. And just as an interesting fact, It itself contains about 40 tons of copper, which gives a great example of the huge copper intensity of renewable energy infrastructure. So with that, I will pass to Robert for an update on our exploration activities. Robert, just in case you can't see the slides, we're on the western foreland.

Thank you very much. I do see the slides. I got them on my handphone. To everybody on this call, From day one, expiration is in our DNA, the lifeblood of our company. Expiration requires both patience and determination. But it's my considered opinion that we will soon realize additional reward. The Avenue of Minds group historically finds a Tier 1 discovery around every four years or so. And so the time is coming up for us to come up with another one. In the Western Forelands, we've drilled 70,000 meters on our target for this year. We've drilled about just under 5,000 meters of that in the first quarter, which was the rainy season, but we're now entering the dry season where things really get a lot easier. We're budgeting $19 million worth of drilling. We have four drill rigs on site, and I've got that feeling in my bones. We're going to come up with something that's going to make everybody in the Congo and all of our stakeholders very happy. Makoko and Keala, in the opinion of our senior management, are going to be a mine. It's really just a question of how big. We're working on the maiden resource estimate for this project that is wholly owned by Ivano Mines. The geology, the genetic setting is identical to the other mines. in the Copper Belt, we have a lot of understanding of these systems, both a genetic understanding of what causes them to be birthed over eons of time in the first place and how to find more of them. So the preliminary economic assessment of this mine is underway. Since we own it all, it's going to have quite a big impact. And if we find a big one out here, we can start dreaming about being second largest copper complex in the world, or ultimately even the biggest. But I think what's not getting enough attention is the next slide, our moka potty feeder exploration. I think, apart from the fact that our Platte Reef project is the largest precious metals project in the world under development, with a hell of a lot of copper and nickel required for the electrification of the world economy, as byproduct, it remains a fundamental fact that the Bushveld Complex in South Africa is one of the world's greatest mineral endowments, certainly in the top three, if not the largest mineral endowment of any geologic structure I can think of on a planetary basis. The question is, where did the Bushveld come from? I mean, how did it come up from the middle of the Earth? come up from great depth in the Earth like toothpaste. And they have to have a source. So we're doing a high resolution magnetic survey. And we're doing gravity work. And we're going to start drilling on the Mokopani feeder. And the Mokopani feeder is an unbelievably powerful gravity anomaly, something very, very heavy. exists at the Mokopani feeder. It's only about 10 kilometers away from our shafts that you see in this picture with the yellow airplane. The critical zone of the Bushveld, which hosts our enormous endowment of precious metals, is very heavy rock. If you pick it up, it's just astonishing how dense that rock is. And so the gravity anomaly is very significant. An academic geologist believe that the mokopani feeder is named because it fed the mokopani area where all this metal really is. And so if there was ever a visionary exploration target on this planet, it's the mokopani feeder. And I would urge all of the analytical communities to come to understand it and pay it a lot more attention. And then on plant reef, we are rapidly It had to be a producing mine. You know, the original idea was the same philosophy as Kukula. Start small and then expand. So the phase one concentrator is under production. The underground development is advancing very rapidly. And recently we've come up with some new ideas. on the optimization of shaft 3. Alex, why don't you pick it up and explain to people some of our thinking about shaft 3 and why this could be such important good news.

Thank you, Robert. I will take that over. And Robert indeed says we are working on an optimization study at Flat Reef where shaft 3 with a diameter of 5.1 meters is currently being reamed. And we've got approximately 150 metres of the 950 metres completed to date. And we're planning to complete that work in the fourth quarter of this year. The study envisions accelerated production from phase two. And this study will consider converting this 5.1 metre diameter ventilation shaft into a production shaft. with the capability to hoist. So what we are saying is that we are planning to pull forward production at Platte Reef. We always get a flag from Robert that we're taking way too long to bring this mine into production and we are now trying to pull everything forward and bring this mine into its fullest potential. Just maybe to follow on from what Robert was discussing, A lot of the listeners do not have the opportunity to visit our site, so we've changed our presentation slightly, and we're taking you through a bit of a visual library so you can see what our projects look like on surface and underground. So this is an underground beach at Platte Reef. Maybe let's go back to surface. And this is the 10-meter diameter shore of two that is currently under construction, and it will have a hoisting capacity of 8 million tons, By annum, the shaft 2 headgear complete structure has been completed to a height of approximately 79 meters and shaft 2's overall height will be approximately 100 meters above ground, including the steel structure housing the main winders. Drilling of the pilot drill in shaft 2 down to the shaft bottom commenced during the first quarter and a total of 680 meters have already been completed with drilling on schedule to finish finished during the second quarter of this year, where after reaming of a 3.1-meter diameter hole is planned. So things are very exciting at Platte Reef, and when you drive into town, you can see the headgear miles away. Over to Kapushi, last but not least, we've made significant progress at Kapushi. In late April, we issued a press release announcing that we signed a term sheet for the offtake of zinc concentrates and the $250 million facility with Blenco and Jechemins. We are also negotiating a breach facility with local banks for up to $80 million, and this will be used to fund ongoing capital expenditure at Kapushi. Just back to our visual library, this is underground at Kapushi, where our development is 30% ahead of schedule, with 682 meters completed in the third quarter. and mining of the big zinc ore body with grades in excess of 35% will commence ahead of schedule in January of 2024 and it will be stockpiled pending plant commissioning. Then we go to surface on the processing plant. Our fabrication is on schedule with all major equipment currently being fabricated. The bulk of the earthworks and civil works is nearing completion and as you can see in the picture, steel erection has started. Our first concentrate is on schedule for the third quarter of 2024. And then lastly on Kapushi, and this is an initiative I'm personally very excited about. We have entered into negotiations with the provincial and the national government for a new commercial border crossing at Kapushi. And this new border will benefit both Kapushi and Kamoa. and should assist in alleviating congestion at the existing border crossings. The Capuchin border will also benefit the town of Capuchin through creating an economic hub for the town, and we are currently doing a study on the road conditions and upgrades required on the Zambian side of the border. So this concludes our operational update on all our exciting projects. I will now hand back to Matt Keevil to handle the Q&A for today.

Thanks very much, Marna. We'll now begin the question and answer session. I'm just going to quickly hand it back to the operator to populate the line. We'll take questions off the phone first, and then we will field anything through the webcast subsequently. So, operator, please do proceed with questions on the line.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. One moment while we prepare for questions. Okay, our first question is coming across. Can you as well please wait for your name to be announced before you start with your question? The first question is coming from Gorton Lawson of Paradigm. Your line is open.

Oh, good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. So my first one is regarding your tax rates. It was a little high this quarter. Can you provide any guidance for the rest of the year and how much of that is related to shipping concentrate versus smelted products?

No problem. Just to confirm, are you referring to income tax and deferred tax, or are you referring to our royalties and indirect taxes that's disclosed in our C1 reconciliation?

No, I'm referring to the current and deferred taxes.

Okay. The current and deferred tax would not change irrespective of whether we toll or whether we self-concentrate. The tax for this quarter does include provisional tax adjustments on provisional assessments received, so just a minor accrual for that. So it's slightly higher than we would expect that to be going forward, but not necessarily so. I think a fair modeling percentage going forward would be sort of what was experienced for the average for last year, and with just a rate of slightly above 30%, which would be normal.

Okay, thank you. And my second question, if I may, the payable copper versus copper sold has been a little light the past few quarters. Should we expect some of these tons to come back in the next quarter or two?

I think yes. I think we can definitely expect some of the copper to come back. We do just like to mention that the inventory levels of finished goods at the end of December was pretty low. we were able to clear almost everything on the floor just before the end of the year. So inventory levels have sort of normalized, but of course we will try to clear those and have our inventory levels as small as possible. So they will definitely flow through the income statement in the coming months.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you. One moment while we prepare for the next question. And please remember to wait for your name to be announced before you follow with your question. The next question will be coming from Andrew of BMO. Your line is open.

Hello. Just a quick question. Maybe we could get some commentary on the trajectory of the logistics costs. They seem to have peaked, I guess, Q3 of last year, and you guys have recording significant improvements since then. Is that a trajectory that can continue, or are the new levels that we see now in Q1 what we should expect going forward?

Andrew, my name is Arkan. We've managed to get a good handle on our logistic costs, and obviously what we've seen trending down was the shipping rights. We are, however, hopeful that in the longer term we can get our trucking rates lower too. We do foresee a bit of a backlog period as Tinky starts exporting over the next couple of months. But we have put in place mitigation measures by negotiating dedicated trucking supplies for Kamoa Kakula. So we do not expect a massive increase in cost on our side. But in the long term, we would like to see our transport costs trending slightly lower than what it was.

Well, it's obviously going to be a lot lower. Obviously, it just depends how far you want to look forward or how much of a nitpicker you want to be for the next quarter or two. This is a 100-year mine. We're going to have a railroad through Angola, and we're going to be shipping finished metal at 99.7% copper. So obviously our shipping costs are going to plummet to much lower levels if you're willing to wait a year or two in the mining business. That's a nanosecond in the mining business, young man.

Thanks, Robert, for putting that into context.

Yes, thank you.

I'll hand the microphone off to the next questioner.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. At this time, there are no more questions in the audio queue. I would like to turn the call back over to Matthew.

Thank you very much, operator. We have a few webcast questions. I will kind of group them as there's a few that are a little bit similar in theme. First and foremost, just another follow-up, I guess, Marna, on logistics. This one on the Kapushi crossing. There's a lot of moving parts now with the railway and Kapushi coming on. If you could just give a bit more color on how these are all going to work together and sort of the timing of how these might ease logistics.

Thank you, Matt. So the Kapushi border, in our mind, is a short- to medium-term solution. We are planning to implement it as soon as we get sign-off, which we anticipate to be in the next couple of months. That will alleviate border congestion that's currently exacerbated by the fact that all the trucks in DRC goes through one main border and then there's a second border that recently opened up. The third border will allow us to have a dedicated line for both Kapushi and Kamawa to use, reducing standing time significantly for our truckers. The Angola Rail will service Kamoa more directly with a direct link into Angola, and that should then also alleviate traffic out of the country. We cannot put in place enough measures. There's a lot of projects ramping up in Congo. There's a lot of growth in Congo, and we think all these initiatives that we are embarking on are complementary to each other, but we sort of, box them into short, medium, and long-term solutions. And the border is sort of the immediate focus. Obviously, the rail remains strategic and is also a greener solution. So we work closely with Traffic Rura in terms of being a key participant on that corridor.

Great. Thanks, Morna. And next, I guess, one for Robert, maybe a little bit more of a macro-themed one. There's been a lot of news recently on Copper M&A and sort of the widespread interest vis-a-vis the Glencore tech deal, et cetera. Robert, where do you see Ivanhoe Mines fitting into this world of heightened copper M&A? And where do you see the company going post the three assets we currently have under construction?

Well, I don't know. Back to the previous question. The Congo is the absolute epicenter of copper development on this planet. President Felix Sissakedi has recently met with President Joe Biden, he's about to go to China to meet with President Xi Jinping. Everybody on the planet wants copper metal, not only for the energy transition, could there be enough copper to even have one? And national security demands, given that it's going to take an ocean of copper to rebuild Ukraine, if we can ever generate a just and lasting peace there. People don't really understand that... Katanga is a happening place. The economic growth there is exploding. Places like Canada and the United States are sleepy by comparison. When people get to the site, they're amazed that we have 5G wireless and they see such intelligent young Congolese writing code and to see how advanced things really are there. When that railroad gets going through Angola, bringing everything into this part of the Congo will be cheaper, whether it's steel or cement or any other material and the hydroelectric capacity expanding just makes us literally the best place in the world to be mining copper. According to independent observers, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has just nosed out or is in a dead tie with Peru to be the second largest producer of copper in the world. Where does this audience think more copper discoveries are going to be made? in the next 5 or 10 years, the DRC or Peru or Chile for that matter. Today, Codelco announced miserable production numbers for the Chilean government with $2.04 a pound cash cost and for 10 years, Chile has not been able to grow production. Where is the production exploding is right here in Katanga. Glencore knows it and we agree this is the best place in the world. to be mining copper and we're proving it quarter by quarter. So please stay with us and understand this is a long-term business. The average age of a person in the Congo, the median age is only 18 or 19 years of age. It's a young, hungry population eager for a better life. Having operated in over 60 countries around the world, I took a lot of heat when I stood up in London and said, I'd rather be mining copper in the Democratic Republic of the Congo than in Chile. But given the government of Chile announcing partial nationalization of their lithium metal, it's obvious that they've fallen on the wrong path. And the leadership in the transformation of the world economy, depending on this copper metal, we're right here at the epicenter. I might add that we get a lot of visitors from the industry. One of the largest major mining companies in the world had a technical delegation underground at Comocacula, and they said that Comocacula is the best mine in the world. And they also noted that they never could have done it themselves. It took 30 years of dedicated effort by thousands of people to go to where the copper actually was. and to participate in the rebirth of the country. So we'd like you all to join hands and enjoy the experience of watching Ivano Mines become a major diversified mining company, carrying the best of ESG and Canadian practices, idealistic practices, and the sort of United Nations of people who work together to find this metal that we desperately need. We need to mine it in a green and clean way. And that's exactly what we're doing. And so hats off to Marna and her team. Hats off to our board of directors, which is continuing to get stronger. And let's put our hands together and pray for the next big discovery, because we're certainly working on it in the Western Forelands and at the Mokopani Theater. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Robert. And next one, a rather popular question as well, maybe one for David. A few questions on the shareholder loan, specifically in terms of Kamoa and scheduling on cash flow, as well as consideration of potentially an upcoming dividend.

Thanks, Matt. I think it's been evident from previous quarters that Kamoa Kukula is just a cash flow machine. We are currently doing what we feel is the most value accretive and obviously using the majority of that cash towards development of phase three. At current copper levels, I think we definitely see Kamawa being able to successfully fund its proportionate share of that capital expenditure. And then, who knows? Shell, the loans might start to be repaid sometime next year. With Kamoa's cash generating ability and the fact that Ivano, as everyone on the call would know, has very limited debt, which is basically the convertible notes maturing in 2026, any additional cash flow could be Yeah, either used to distribute back to shareholders. But who knows? It's fully dependent on other successes. Maybe we need the cash flow for building another mine at the Western Foreland. So I think the future is sort of open to us. But yes, we do have a very strong cash-generating business. especially from 2025 onwards. And I think shareholders can expect to reap the rewards of that.

Great. Thanks, David. And I think we have time for one more, so maybe a little airtime for PlatReef as well. Alex, I think maybe this one might be for you. Just on the scoping for SHAF3, just some questions on sort of what the market can expect in terms of new slope from that study and a little bit more detail on that. when that might actually impact plant reuse development?

Yeah, so it's a work in progress is the answer, Matt. You know, currently we're working on the study on an internal level, and clearly we will want to update our 43-101 at the right time, but we also have to figure out how to do that within the slightly complex confines of 43-101. where we already have a feasibility study on Flat Reef, and this will be a slight amendment to that feasibility study. But in terms of the critical path, the only real decision, which is not a major CAPEX decision, is whether we equip that shaft or not. And I think we're basically willing to go ahead with that because irrespective of the timing of phase two, equipping that third shaft will give us a lot more flexibility in terms of the ramp up of phase one. It's not a big ticket capital item and it de-risks the flat reef proposition overall. So that's really what we will be looking to do over the next couple of years. And then hopefully we can bring forward that start date of phase two from where it was originally constrained was the completion of shaft two sinking in 2027. Hopefully we can do better than that, as Marla mentioned.

Great. Thanks, Alex. And we are coming up on the 60 minutes and have sort of run our way through questions. So, operator, I'll turn it over to you to conclude the call. Thanks again, everyone, very much for joining us for Ivanhoe Mines Q1 2023 Financials.

Thank you. Thank you all for joining today's conference call. You all may disconnect now and we want to enjoy the rest of your day.