Perseus Mining Limited

the meeting as an attendee and will be muted throughout the meeting.

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

Thank you, Nathan, and welcome to Perseus Mining's webinar to discuss our June 24 quarter report. I'm joined on the call today once again by Leanne de Bruin, our CFO. Both Leanne and I will be available later in the call to take any questions that you may have. Now as usual, the agenda for today's webinar is firstly I'll provide an overview of what Perseus has achieved operationally during the quarter and indeed the full fiscal 24 year. Then we'll have a Q&A session to dive into any specific matters that have not been addressed during the presentation. For those of you who are listening to this call on your computer, you should be able to track the presentation visually on your screens. Alternatively, though, the presentation was released to the market this morning and you can follow that manually if you wish. I'll try to keep the presentation as brief as possible. All the details that you need to understand our achievements this quarter are fully documented in the release. But let me first highlight a few key points. As the title of our quarterly report says, our team here at Perseus have delivered another impressive operating performance this quarter, and indeed the full financial year, not only in terms of gold production, all insight costs and cash flow, but also in the area of business growth, where during the quarter we enhanced the quality of our asset portfolio by successfully completing the acquisition of the Nansaga portfolio. gold project in Tanzania. We also advanced our CMA underground mine development at Yayori in Cote d'Ivoire, where a final investment decision will be taken very shortly. Now, once again, the June quarter, half year and full year were characterized by the consistency of our operating performance and a strong commitment to deliver as guided. Doing what we say we're going to do is a key value in which this business here at First East is based. The financial year, we produced 509,977 ounces of gold at an all-inside cost of US$1,053 per ounce, so making us one of the lowest cost gold producers of this scale in the world. Our gold production for the last three financial years has averaged about 513,000 ounces, I think it is, at an average all-inside cost of a touch under $1,000 an ounce, $988,000. US dollars per ounce. So this year we're pretty much on track with these averages and what a great time to be doing it when the gold is selling at around $2,400 an ounce. This is not to say that we don't face challenges from time to time. We certainly do. And we did during the quarter and we will again in the future. But the positive thing is that our team seems to find a way to deliver. And once again, they've done that very, very well. So without further ado, let's take a look at the scoreboard and just see what I'm talking about. So looking at our results for the quarter, 120,929 ounces, slightly down on the prior quarter. All in-site costs were 1,173, just up on the previous quarter. I'll come back to that later on to explain what's going on there. The average sale price was up $92 an ounce to $2,000. The margin was US$944, and the notional cash flow, US$117 million for the quarter, just slightly down on the previous quarter, leaving us with cash in bullion at the end of the period of US$587 million. Now, converting that into the full-year performance, as I said, the production is around 510,599.77, in fact. Oil and site cost of 1,053, similar sorts of gold price and margins. National cash flow for the full year was at 490 million US dollars, which means that Perseus is very firmly on track to continue to fund growth and continue to return capital to our shareholders. Over the last three years, as I said, we've averaged around 513,000 uh ounces per year at a just touch under the thousand dollars an ounce um and you know once again we we've achieved our market guidance that is something that we do pride ourselves on um and we've been achieving guidance or exceeding it ever since um the first half of 2020. um the oil inside costs reasonably stable given that we are operating in an inflationary environment there has been a slight increase in recent times um but of course keeping the cost flat you know, a rising gold price environment means that you're increasing your margin. And that is what is driving the very strong cash flow and putting us into a very strong cash position on the balance sheet, $587 million at the end of the period with no debt. And that is after paying in full for the acquisition of Niantaga. As I said, we did deliver on our guidance for the half year. The guidance was $226,000. to 254, and we came in at 248 for the half-year period. And similarly, on the cost side of things, 1180 to 1340, we were a little bit under the bottom end of the range there, which was quite a credible result. The mines at Yayoi and Etikan were performed very strongly relative to the guidance. Shingi was slightly under, having had a fairly dismal first quarter of the financial year that we never fully recovered from. But you can see from this the benefit of having a diversified portfolio where you might have one project that may not be going as well as the others, but the other two can compensate. And as a group, we continue to achieve the targets that we have set ourselves. And on a full year basis, we've also done fairly well. So the guidance was 491,517,000 And we've come in at around $510,000. So well and truly in the guidance range, similarly on the cost side of things in the guidance range and doing, as I said, doing what we said we were going to do, very important for us. As I mentioned, we already had a reasonably strong year, although it has to be said that during the June half year, we were struggling with our waste stripping to get rid of the backlog of waste stripping. We were aiming to have that completed by the end of June, but unfortunately that didn't occur and will continue into the September quarter, but should be done by the end of the quarter. What the impact of that is, is that it does push up the costs slightly as a result of higher mining costs during the period. And of course, when the grade is affected as well, that brings down gold production slightly, which also has an impact on the operating costs. But as you can see, the national cash margin, $937 an ounce, gave rise to a fairly healthy cash flow from the operation. And very pleasingly, we're getting pretty reasonable reconciliation on our between buck model and the mill. So, you know, we're getting what we're expecting to achieve. And Etican, similarly, actually, Etican's been an excellent performer for us for some time now. And in fact, I think this actually, you know, does warrant mention because for many years, quite a number of people were rather critical of Etiquette's performance, but it's producing, you know, close enough to 200,000 ounces a year. It's 195,000 for the year at $1,000 an ounce. And there are not too many mines producing at that scale, at that level of all insight cost. So, you know, that's quite an achievement and that's been achieved with a, a 100% Ghanaian workforce and management team, I might say, and those guys are very justly proud of their performance, and well done to them. So, Etican's running very nicely. As I said, Sasingi got away to a poor start in the September quarter last year as a result of exceedingly wet weather and various other challenges, but it has bounced back, but not sufficient to fully recover from the poor start to the year. But it is going very well at the present time, and we're pushing down into on the Finbiase deposit. We've actually expanded that resource somewhat over the last 12 months, and that's giving us further material to process. The exploitation permit for Bagway deposit, which is another satellite, was also granted during the period, so that'll come into the mine plan in due course. Now, looking to the future, the next six months, guidance, we're suggesting that The production will be in the range of 220 to 260,000 ounces at an all in site cost of 1230 to 1330. And that will mean that for the calendar year 24, we're forecasting 468 to 508,000 at 1182 to 1,223. Now that's a reasonably steady performance for us once again, coming forward. I think after one month of the six-month period, we're certainly on track to well and truly deliver that outcome. So things are moving along fairly well for us. And as I say, once again, we're expecting a reasonably strong half year coming up to December. Now on the financial side, I'll pass this now to Leanne to take you through that.