Perseus Mining Limited

Good morning and welcome to the Perseus Mining Investor webinar and conference call. All attendees are in a listen-only mode. If you would like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the raise hand function within Zoom. For those phoning in, dial star nine. Alternatively, you can enter it into the Q&A panel within Zoom. I'll now hand over to Perseus CEO and Managing Director, Jeff Quartermain. Thank you, Jeff.

Thanks very much, Nathan, and welcome to Perseus Mining's webinar to discuss our December 22 quarterly report. Now, as in the past, I'm joined on this call by our CFO, Leanne de Bruyn, who will be available to answer specific questions as needed later in the call. Now, both Leanne and I are joining you this evening from our Yayoi Goldmine in Cote d'Ivoire, where we are currently engaged in our quarterly program of reviewing the operations. Now, the internet and the power supply are usually very reliable at site, but if we go missing partway through the webinar, it will be because of telecommunications problems. And so I'll apologise in advance, but let's hope that that apology is not necessary. Now, what I plan to do today is firstly to provide an overview of what Perseus has achieved operationally during the periods ending 31 December 2022, and then follow that up with a Q&A session. I'll keep my presentation as brief as possible. There's all the details that you need to understand what Perseus has achieved this quarter, fully documented in the market release that was published earlier this morning. But let me highlight a few key points and then we'll discuss the detail if you wish. I'd like to start off by saying how really pleased I am that I'm able to report that in line with the trend that Perseus has followed for some time now, we've delivered yet another strong goal production and cost performance this quarter. It's resulted in us outperforming both our market guidance for goal production and costs in both the December 2022 half year and the full 2022 calendar year. Now for the half year, we produced 268,371 ounces at an all in site cost of US 9.30 per ounce. And in the full calendar year, we produced 521,220 ounces at an all in site cost of US 9.41 per ounce. Now, both of these results outstripped our production and cost guidance. As I said, in other words, they were above the top end of the guided production range and below the bottom end of the guided cost range in each case. Now, in this regard, I also note that both the Etican and the Sasingi mines outperformed their guidance ranges as well, while Yayori finished the year in the upper half of its guidance range. So a great result all round. Now, as importantly, we've continued to deliver on our promises, and that's a core value of our company, as you well know. Now, in the December quarter itself, we produced 130,911 ounces of gold, which was slightly less than our quarterly production record set last quarter, but still a very solid result. Our weighted average all-insight cost for the quarter at 983 per ounce was less than the commonly used benchmark of about $1,000 an ounce. and being based on a weighted average production cost of US $8.81 per ounce, this is a very solid result given the challenges that exist with the cost inflation as well as logistics and procurement in the world at the moment. This all insight cost places Perseus towards the bottom end of the global cost curve, a position to which we have not always been able to lay claim. Now, like everyone else in the mining industry, Perseus has had to battle hard against the global trend of rising costs. We are managing to keep our costs reasonably in check, but this certainly doesn't happen without effort. And full credit must go to our side teams who are certainly proactive in looking for opportunities to reduce costs. The strong performance by Perseus over the last few years continues to demonstrate quite clearly, I think, that the benefit of our corporate strategy of transforming into a multi-mine, multi-jurisdiction company. This approach has enabled us to not only materially increase our production and cash flow, but also reduce volatility for investors by spreading our risk over three operations in two different countries. Our very strong and reliable operating performance has also transformed our business financially. In the 2022 calendar year, helped by a strong gold price, which averaged about $1,714 per ounce over the year, our operating performance generated notional cash flow from operations of US $402 million. And after repaying debt, funding inorganic growth, paying overheads and declaring not only a dividend, but a bonus dividend as well, we ended the year with US $405 million or almost $600 million Australian dollars of cash and bullion on the balance sheet. Now, this represents an increase of about US $76 million net cash relative to the end of last quarter. which translates into an increase of about 242 million US dollars or Aussie 324 million year on year. And that's about 149% increase. This result clearly set the company up for a very promising future. But before discussing that, let's talk in more detail about the immediate past as reported in the quarterly report. Now, for the past few quarters, our Yoyori mine has been the standout performer. And this quarter, once again, it contributed nearly 50% of our gold production, producing 65,352 ounces of gold at an all-in site cost of US$7.98 per ounce, which of itself places Yoyori well down the list in terms of the global cost curve. This amount of gold production was very much in line with our expectations, and while it is less than the previous quarter, the result reflects an expected change in the mining location in the CMA pit to a slightly lower grade material zone. Now, all other KPIs at Yayoi were at or above targets, including grade reconciliation, where the contained ounces of gold in the ore feed to the mill equaled almost exactly the contained ounces as per the block model. So notwithstanding a slight pullback in production, Yayoi is going extremely well. The Etikun mine, which had a troubled start to 2022, has continued to show the benefits of the turnaround first reported in the September quarter. In the December quarter, Etican produced 53,850 ounces, about 3% more than the last quarter. And that represented about 40% of our quarterly production. And that took place at an all-inside cost of $1,058 an ounce, a vast improvement on the costs reported earlier this year. And a performance that meant that on a half-yearly basis, gold production was above market guidance for the mine and all-inside costs were below average. The guidance range, as I said earlier on, the half year on half year increase in production of 58% was quite pronounced. And I'm very pleased to say that so far this quarter, you know, that we're getting similarly strong results at Etican. So it certainly seems to be hitting its straps very well. Now, last but not least, has been our Sasingi mine, where we had another strong performance relative to plan this quarter. In the December quarter, Sasingi produced 11,709 ounces of gold at an all-insight cost of US$16.72 per ounce. Now, both of these metrics were slightly better than our expectations at this stage of the mine life, and in fact resulted in Sasingi outperforming the half-year market guidance as well. Now, in part, this performance, the improved performance, is the result of a positive 6% reconciliation in ounces contained in the mill feed relative to our block model. But most other metrics were also very strong relative to the internal targets. Now, I should point out that during the September quarter at Sasingi, we processed low-grade material from small pits around the main Sasingi pit. due to us being in something of a holding pattern until ore in the Fimbiaso East and West Fids could be accessed. Now, I'm very happy to say that we're now mining higher grade ore from Fimbiaso East, and we'll be starting to haul this back to the mill towards the end of the current quarter. So a step up in the contribution from Susingi is not very far away. So all in all, it's been another very good quarter for Perseus in terms of gold production and costs on all three sides, as I said. And looking to the future, we expect that this level of performance will continue. So our market guidance for production and costs for the next half year is 230,000 to 260,000 ounces at an all-insider cost of $1,000 to $1,200 an ounce. which on a full year financial basis translates to something like 498,000 to 528,000 ounces of gold that in all insight costs of $1,000 to $1,100 per ounce. Now, I should also note that in conducting our mining and exploration activities across the company, we have sought to do this in a manner that is in line with the globally recognised sustainability standards that were set out in our fiscal 22 sustainability report. Now, the exact metrics of our ESG performance this quarter are documented fairly clearly in the quarterly report, but I will highlight just a couple of these achievements. In terms of safety, our lost time injury frequency rate across the group reduced from 0.26 to 0.25. The sites combined achieved a safety milestone celebrating something like 1.6 million hours without an LTI for Etican, 17.2 million hours without an LTI for Sasingi, and more than 2.4 million ounces without an LTI for Iori. So that was a fairly decent kind of a safety performance. On the social front, Perseus' significant economic contribution to our host countries of Ghana Cote d'Ivoire and now Sedan continued and for this quarter it came to about roughly US$116 million or about 33% of revenue. This included about $99 million paid to local suppliers representing 80% of our procurement on a purchase order value basis. $9 million paid in salaries and wages to local employees, $7 million in payments to governments, taxes and royalties and other payments, and about $1.4 million in social investment. These sums are very important to our host countries, some of which are struggling financially at the moment, and we're very proud to be able to continue to contribute in this way. Local and national employment has been maintained at above the 95% of our total workforce. Our gender balance across the group slightly altered this quarter, with female employees reducing from 13% to 12%, Consequently, male employees increasing from 87 to 88 male. Given the industry in which we operate, but more particularly the cultural orientation of our host countries, these ratios are quite reasonable. To illustrate the point, I note that in our corporate office in Australia, the female to male ratio of employees is about 31 to 69. And the senior management team, 40% female, 60% male. So that reflects the cultural orientation of Australia as much as anything, as opposed to our African host countries, which have a different approach. um we had no environmental incidents of any type during the quarter and in absolute terms our total scope one and scope and two greenhouse gas emissions has increased marginally from 0.47 to 0.5 which is not anything to be too concerned about so on an esd front we're performing reasonably well and we remain quite committed to continuing to incrementally improve our ESG performance relative to the internally adopted standards, which, as I said earlier, align with internationally accepted standards in the vast majority of cases. Turning to financial matters, during the quarter, national cash flow generated was 101 million US dollars, which, as mentioned earlier, meant that for the full year, a total of 402 million of national cash was generated from the operations. And as I said, after deducting exploration, development costs, corporate overheads, et cetera, gross cash bullion and cash and bullion on hand at the end of the period was 405 million US dollars. That was made up of 361 million of cash US and 24, 431 ounces of bullion that was valued at spot at about 44 million US dollars. Now, as I said, 149% more than at the same time last year. So that represents very, very strong growth in this area. Now, during the quarter, we did repay the outstanding balance on a corporate debt facility. So that has left the debt balance at zero. Now, you may recall also at the end of the last quarter, at the end of September, we were carrying 93,634 ounces of bullion on hand as a result of some timing issues that we were dealing with. But as was promised, this gold, whose price was fixed at the time of reporting, was delivered into forward sales today. contracts this quarter, reducing gold inventory, but more importantly, boosting our cash balance, just as we said it would. Now, speaking of gold price hedging, Perseus currently has a mix of designated forward sales contracts and spot deferred contracts, covering about 345,000 ounces of gold at a weighted average sale price of $1,906 an ounce. Now, this represents about 23% of our production on a three-year rolling basis and is important to us as even if the gold price weakens below current levels as a result of strong USD or some other factor, Persis' projected cash flows are to a large extent underwritten. Now, right now, Persis is generating a lot of cash and its balance sheet is very strong. placing us in the position to fund all of our activities, including exploration and the development of new projects such as the Maya Sand Gold Project in Sudan and the continuation of our dividend policy from existing cash balances, let alone any future cash balances. A very nice position to be in. Now, speaking of business growth activities, this is another area in which we've been very busy and pleasingly productive this quarter. um turning firstly to our our latest acquisition the maya sand gold project which was formerly referred to as block 14 in sudan um now as reported last quarter we we had awarded a 100 000 meter drilling program to capital drilling a very highly regarded international drilling company and during the december quarter they mobilized the site and have started drilling at the site of the Maya sand project. Their designated task is to firstly perform infill drilling on the main deposit at Maya sand to convert inferred mineral resources into measured and or indicated mineral resources that we can incorporate into an ore reserve estimate and a mine plan. In addition, they and another local drilling company are tasked with performing sterilisation drilling to ensure that proposed sites for plant waste dumps and tiling stamps have not inadvertently been located on top of valuable mineral deposits. During the quarter we also continued to work closely with Lycopodium, our engineering contractor, to advance the front-end engineering and design study. Like, of course, prepared the definitive feasibility study for the previous owner of the property. So they're very familiar with the project. And of course, having worked with our construction team before on a couple of occasions, they're also very familiar with the exacting standards that Perseus will require when the project is to be built. Now, at this stage, it's a case of checking assumptions and incorporating the extensive lessons we have learned from the development and the operation of both the Sasingi and the Ayori plants, both of which were built by Locopodium on our behalf, and both of which are running very, very well, I might add. And very importantly, the other task that needs to be done is to confirm the capital budget. Now, as part of the feed study, we've also completed confirmatory pressure testing of the water aquifer in Area 5 that will ultimately supply water for the Maya sand operation when it's up and running. Once again, the contract is used for this exercise. Age Hydrology have a lot of experience in Sudan, and based on the results we've seen to date, we expect that it'll be confirmed that the aquifer has you know, more than enough capacity to satisfy all of our water requirements for the entire life of the Mayas Sand gold mine, as well as to satisfy a number of community projects that we're currently considering. Aside from the above, there is a lot of work happening on the ground in Sudan in preparation for an influx of a large number of workers to the Mayas Sand site once construction starts. Things are tracking very well in this regard at the moment, and we are grateful for the terrific support of our project that we're receiving from key ministers and the departments within the Sudanese government. Now, given the above, we're currently targeting taking a financial investment, a final investment decision on the development of the Mayors Sand project in the second half of this year, most likely early in the third quarter. Now, in terms of funding the development project, we expect to be able to fund the entire capital costs of development from existing cash balances available at the end of the current quarter. So this assumes that our earlier cost estimate of something in the order of $450 million to develop the mine is confirmed by our current feed study. Notwithstanding a strong cash balance, we are investigating several debt financing options, and if we proceed with one of them, we'll be able to not only fully fund the development of the Mayors Sand Goal Project, but we'll also have significant capacity to pursue other growth opportunities should they come along. I have to say that ownership of the Maya Sand Gold Project gives Perseus a distinct first mover advantage in Sudan, a country endowed with enormous mineral wealth and one that is keen to welcome foreign investment. And I'm pleased to say that several other exploration, pre-development opportunities are starting to emerge as a result of our presence on the ground. It's much too early to be talking about any project beyond Maya Sand Gold Project at this stage, but given that rich mineral endowment, it's not difficult to envisage that Perseus' operating footprint in Sudan could expand the fullness of time, and we're very well positioned to make that happen. Now, while I'm the subject of Sudan, I should say that Perseus does not take sides in political debates in our host countries, but we are greatly encouraged by recent moves in Sudan to bring together all sides of politics to reach a court on a mechanism for guiding the country forward in a peaceful and stable manner. Now, whether this results in a civilian-led government and peaceful democratic elections within a couple of years will be evident very shortly. In fact, I was reading today that they think that might be the case in early February. But from all outward appearances, the goal certainly appears to be within reach, which is good for all stakeholders, including the citizens of Sudan and, of course, Perseus. Now, moving on to other organic growth initiatives, as announced recently, we have through exploration success close to our existing infrastructure made pleasing progress towards being able to sustain our targeted production of 500,000 ounces plus of gold per year out towards the end of the decade without taking into account any M&A or greenfield development activities that might come our way. Following the end of the quarter, we issued a market release detailing the results of ongoing exploration during the quarter at our Yeori gold mine, where drilling has returned high-grade gold results from the CMA Northwest and CMA North targets, down-dipped from the recently announced underground ore reserves. And what this does, it demonstrates that there is really a significant potential for further underground resources growth, which will lead to the development of an underground mine here at Yayoi. Now in Ghana, following the release last quarter of an indicated mineral resource at Nkosua, as well as completion of a feasibility study on the project, resulting in a probable ore reserve containing about 332 ounces of gold, We've recently applied to the Ghanaian Minerals Commission for the land covered by our Aguacusu exploration licence that hosts the Yengasua deposit to be incorporated into our mining lease. Now, last week in Ghana, I had very encouraging discussions with the authorities that should result in that expanded mining licence being issued fairly shortly, which will allow us to upgrade our life and mine plan to include an operation involving trucking ore from Nkosuo to the Yetikin plant for processing. During the quarter we also exercised options to buy the adjacent Agikusi DML and Nominasi exploration licences. The transfer of these licences into Perseus' name has received ministerial approval and the transfer process should be completed within days if it hasn't already happened actually. This will enable us to start drilling three more exploration targets that have been identified on our land package near Etican, and if they live up to the potential shown, or even one or two of them, this could provide further extensions of the life of Etican operation. Now, having recently invested time and money in turning the Etican operation around, being able to extend the Etican mine life has a lot of merit in terms of upgrading the quality of our asset portfolio. So in conclusion, as I said at the start of the call, each of the December 22 quarter, half year and full calendar year has been outstanding for Perseus on all fronts, including goal production, all inside costs, cash flow generation and business development. And pleasingly, this work's been conducted in a safe and sustainable manner in line with our targeted standards. We have delivered goal production and all insight costs. It's comfortably beaten our half year and full year market guidance. And in doing so, we've outperformed a lot of our peer group. Our all insight costs are currently very competitive in terms of our global peers. And we are managing our business successfully in a tough economic environment. We've excellent growth potential in front of us in the form of the Maya sand gold project. And from the exploration successes that we're clocking up adjacent to existing infrastructure at our mines, we're traveling pretty well. But I guess as importantly in this respect, we've got the human capacity and the existing financial means to successfully execute and unlock the value as we've demonstrated several times in the past. In an equity market sense, our share price is holding up well and we're performing reasonably strongly relative to our market peers. In fact, I think that in terms of market cap, we're now Australia's fourth largest listed gold producer and we present a very viable alternative to investors seeking to invest in high quality gold stocks. Before concluding, I do want to acknowledge the contribution made to the success of Perseus over the last 12 months by all of the men and women in four countries that make up the Perseus team. They've done an outstanding job, and I'm very fortunate that on my current round of site visits, as I said at the start of the call, Leanne and I are currently on site at Yayoi. I've had the opportunity to thank them all personally for their great efforts in delivering on our promises. So thank you very much for your attention today. This brings my presentation to a close. And now we're available, Leanne and I are available to take any questions that you may have.

Thank you, Jeff. Just repeating, if you would like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the raise hand function within Zoom. For those phoning in, I'll start nine. Your first question comes from Reg Spencer at Canaccord. Go ahead, Reg. You're on mute, Reg.

How's that? Much better. Thanks, Nathan. Morning, Geoff and Leanne. Just a couple of questions from me. FID for Mayors Sands or Block 14, as it was formerly known, when might we expect some updated metrics, be they CAPEX or OPEX, for that project? Will that be ahead of FID, noting that there still does appear to be some relatively strong inflation or industry inflation around at the minute. And then as part of that question, how acute might those pressures be in Africa versus somewhere like Australia, do you think?

Well, let me say this, that the estimate that I mentioned of the $450 million is 130 million more than the capital cost estimated by the previous owners. So in coming up with that estimate, we've already factored in quite significant cost inflation on the basis of shipping costs and logistic costs, in particular steel costs. that we were seeing about you know six months ago now some of those cost pressures have actually abated so we're very confident that that number will come in around that level if not below so You know, we'll have to wait and see. But as to the timing of the release of that information, Reg, I can't say to you today precisely when it will be, but it will be when we're comfortable with those numbers and we're confident that we know exactly where we're tracking.

Right. That's good. Thanks, Jeff. And just over at the thingy, looks like you have finally some progress in this bag way. Can you just remind me of what the rough grade profile might look like at Fimbiaso until you get into Bagway? Is there any change from the previous life of mine plan or should we just stick to what was in there previously?

Yeah, no, it's no changes to the grade that we've reported in the past. I mean, I think the average over the next couple of years of gold production runs, I think it's 72,000 ounces a year on average. You know, one of those years is quite a bit better than that and one of it's a little bit lower. But I think that what we've given the market to date is what we're expecting to see.

Okay, excellent. That's all from me. Thanks, Geoff. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Reg.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll now hand back to Geoff for closing remarks. Okay, well thanks very much.

Hopefully the lack of questions means that we've answered all of your thoughts. It has been a good quarter, as I said. We are very pleased with the way things are tracking and certainly this quarter is delivering more of the same. We are in a fairly healthy place right now, and we're certainly looking forward to bringing further updates during the course of the quarter to you as news comes to hand. But anyway, we are in a very strong position, and we want to thank our shareholders very much for the support that they've given us over a long period of time. It is certainly starting to pay off. Anyway, thank you very much. We'll talk again in a few months' time.