Perseus Mining Limited

throughout the meeting.

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. I'll now hand over to Perseus Mining Executive Chairman and CEO, Jeff Quartermain. Thank you, Jeff.

Yes, thank you, Nathan. And welcome everyone to Perseus Mining's webinar to discuss our December 23 quarter report. As usual, this morning here in Perth, I'm joined by our CFO, Leander Bruin, who works with me here in Perth and who's been very good to get up at six o'clock in the morning to participate in the call. And we'll be available, both of us, to answer questions a little bit later as needed. Now, the agenda for today's call is that firstly, I'll provide an overview of what Perseus has achieved operationally during the quarter and as relevant post the end of the quarter. And as I said, then we'll have a Q&A session in which Leanne and I'll be happy to address any questions that you may have about either the quarterly report or our business in general. I expect that given our recent announcement regarding our intention to make an offer to purchase all of the outstanding all-corp shares, you may have some questions on this. And if so, I'll be more than happy to discuss this with you at the end of the presentation. Now, as usual, I'll try and keep the presentation as brief as possible. That's all the details that you really need to understand what Persis has achieved this quarter, fully documented in the market release that was published earlier today. But let me highlight a few points. And for those of you who are listening to this call on your computer, you should be able to track my comments visually on your screens with the presentation. Now, I guess it's starting to become a little bit repetitive on these webinars, but once again, This quarter, our team at Perseus has delivered another very strong operating performance, not only in terms of gold production, but also all inside costs and cash flows. But right across the company, including the business growth area, where we are endeavouring to expand and upgrade the quality of our asset portfolio. The strategic benefits of having multiple mines in our portfolio has once again been ably demonstrated this quarter. Sasingi, the mine that had an awful September quarter due to Very heavy rainfall has improved dramatically. Etican just continues to power on, performing on target week in, week out, much to the surprise of some of the commentators who were critical of Etican in its early years. And Yayori, for the first time in its history, has experienced a few challenges, but is still the powerhouse of our business. So across the three operations, things have balanced out and the group has done very well so far. Now, notwithstanding the ups and downs of mining, you know, we've, as I said, done very well, comfortably achieving production guidance and comfortably beating our cost guidance and simply continuing to do what we promised to do. A bit boring perhaps, but good from our point of view. So without further ado, let's turn to the scoreboard, as they say, and just see what I'm talking about. So... If we look at the operating results for the quarter, so 128,773 ounces were produced, which is slightly down on the prior quarter. All insight costs averaged US$1,023 an ounce. That was slightly up as well on the pre-prior quarter, reflecting the ounces as much as anything. The average sale price was US$1,963. So that was up a little bit on the prior quarter, about US$27 an ounce. giving us a cash margin of US$940 per ounce, which converted to notional cash flow of US$122 million from the operations, and leaving us at the end of the quarter with a net cash and bullion balance of US$642 million. So that was up about 8% on the previous close of the period. And we'll talk about that in a moment. So Purchase is firmly on track to, you know, with what we're doing to continue to fund growth and to continue to return capital to shareholders. Now, if we look at what that means in terms of half year, which is how we guide and the calendar year, it's similarly very strong. I mean, on the calendar year, 23, 528,486 ounces in the upper half of the guidance range, 984 US dollars, per ounce all-insight cost, and that was below the guidance range. We were selling it for about $199 an ounce more than we did in the prior year, and cash flows were very strong. Notional cash flows were strong. In fact, US$492 million notional cash flow in calendar 23, delivering that cash balance that I mentioned earlier on. I've got on the screen there now a chart that has been tracking our performance in previous quarters, and you can see that quite clearly. All three mines are performing very well and are achieving or exceeding production guidance and in line with all insight cost guidance as well. Now, while this has been going on, the production and the costs have been quite consistent now over a long period of time, period on period. But what has occurred, of course, is that the gold price has been rising during this period, which has led to a steadily growing cash margin, which has been the thing that has driven that cash balance that I referred to earlier. If you look at how we've performed relative to our guidance over a similar period, we're well matched to the guidance that we've given, certainly in terms of production. In terms of costs, we've actually been running below the guidance range in the last three half years, and I'll talk to that in just a moment, but certainly we're keeping a lid on things. Now, the only times that we've missed the guidance ranges was in the first six months of COVID, and I don't think too many people would hold us to account too much on that. If you look at the individual operations, Yaori, as I say, it's been going reasonably well. It's down a little bit this quarter. It's still producing 47% of our total production. The slight dip in production was driven by grade relative to the prior period. The production cost at $7.94 an ounce and onsite cost $9.60 was up on the previous quarter, but we did flag last quarter that we were going to be increasing the total material moved to make up for lost production during the quarter when we had very heavy rain, and that did occur and will continue to occur going forward. So in the next six months or so, we are going to see further increases in the all-insight costs as we bring to account accelerated mining rates. Now, Perseus, when we report all-insight costs, it's a little bit different to how other people do it, but included in that number is all of the costs that we incur. So a lot of people capitalize stripping costs and things like that. We don't, we reported in the all insight costs. So in fact, it isn't anything to be overly concerned about. We will be back on track fairly shortly and things will settle down from there. But as you can see from that guidance slide earlier on, there were a few periods where we were moving less material than we'd planned as a result of weather and other things. but we have set a plan in place to get back on track and there will be some costs associated with that additional work. Notwithstanding that, you know, things are tracking pretty well. We're getting very good reconciliation against the block model. So, you know, it's about negative 1% on contained ounces across the block model for the last three months or so. And, you know, that's fairly tidy. We also released during the quarter an updated technical report for Yeori, which gave an updated life of mine plan. And it also demonstrated the technical and economic viability of putting an underground mine down off the CMA pit, which is something that we will be doing in years to come. And that will extend the mine life for about another 12 years or so from now. So that's a fairly important piece of work that was done during the quarter. At Etican, as I said earlier, it's been going along very well during the quarter. 50-odd thousand ounces produced, about 39%, 40% of our overall production. It's actually been a very solid result. I mean, you know, run time of 95% grade of about 1.1 gram, recovery 92%. Those are metrics that are not normally associated with African operations, I have to say. But at Etican, they're running exceptionally well. And an all-insight cost of $930 an ounce is a very, very creditable result in global terms. The cash margin from Etiken, a bit over $1,000 an ounce. National cash flow around $51 million. So it's actually really working very well. And I guess it's validating the change in strategy that we implemented a few years ago with Etiken of pursuing cash flow rather than pursuing production. So rather than producing... low margin ounces, we elected to produce high margin ounces. It did knock our production down a bit, but certainly has benefited the bottom line. As at Yayoi, reconciliation is pretty good. We're about plus 5% on contained ounces there. So that's encouraging. And we will be looking to open up a new mining area in coming periods. This is the Enkasua mining area, which is just to the north of the project. And with the mining lease, the license was approved by the Minerals Commission during the quarter. And so we're looking forward to getting started on that mining operation later in this year. Now, Sasingi, I said at the outset, Sasingi had bounced back from a very dismal September quarter where we had quite serious rainfall. And it's done very well. I mean, production's up about 70% quarter on quarter. The metrics of the operation are pretty solid. They're about 94% runtime. Your recovery is 91% or so. So very good, very good performance. The costs are down quite a lot from the previous quarter. I think it was a bit over $2,000 an ounce in September, and it's down at about $1,500 an ounce at the moment. So that's quite a drop, and it will continue to drop in coming periods as our production steadily increases at Sasingi. The cash margin was $520 an ounce, $521 an ounce, and we made about $10 million a quarter. So, you know, fairly handy little cash generator, very tidy operation, and, you know, contributing well to the bottom line there. Once again, reconciliation's been good. I think it was plus 7% on ounces, so that's encouraging. The ESIA, the Environmental and Social Impact Statement that we needed to prepare for the Bagway mining operation. You might recall we acquired the Bagway operation a couple of years ago. That feasibility study was approved and the mining license has gone through the inter-ministerial committee and is waiting signature by the president. So we should get that fairly shortly. So the three operations have done pretty well. Now, looking forward, the guidance that we're giving to the market is down a little on the production in the December half year, and that does reflect what I was saying earlier about the impact of doing the catch-up mining at Yeori, but it's still fairly strong in relative terms. And I should say at this point, I mean, we're 20-odd days, 21 days or so into the first month of the quarter, and I think we're running at around 12% above our budget. So it may turn out that our Forecasts are a little conservative, but we'll see how things pan out as time moves on. Now, in terms of the financial position, I'll pass to Leanne to speak to this slide, if you wouldn't mind, Leanne.