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 or if dialing in via phone, use press star nine. I'll now hand over to Perseus Mining Managing Director and CEO, Jeff Quartermain. Thank you, Jeff.

Thanks very much, Nathan, and welcome to Perseus Binding's webinar to discuss our March 25 quarter report. I'm joined on the call today by two of my colleagues. Our CFO, Leanne DeBrayne, needs no introduction. She's been an integral part of our leadership team for quite some time and has frequently participated in these webinars. We're also joined today by Jacob Riccadoni. Now, Jacob joined Perseus earlier this year in the role of Chief Development Officer with specific responsibility for exploration, tech services and development. And Jacob will be available to respond to any detailed questions that you may have on either our organic growth projects or similar matters later in the webinar. So welcome, Leanne and Jacob. Now, the agenda for today's webinar is the same as usual. I'll start by providing an overview of what Perseus has achieved operationally during the quarter. and then we'll hold a Q&A session to dive into any specific matters that have not been addressed either during the presentation or indeed in the market releases that we have made to the market either on the quarterly or the release we put out last Monday that spoke to the decision to move forward with Indian Saga development. For those of you who are participating in this webinar via your computer, you should be able to track the presentation visually on your screen till we get to that point. Now, in summary, it seems that every quarter we report months the same thing, namely that our team at Perseus has once again delivered very strong gold production results, competitive all-insight costs, and with the help of the rising gold prices, expanded cash margins and increased free cash flow and cash balances. Now, in terms of the Australian gold sector, at least, and possibly globally, our performance in closing cash balance, which I might say stands at US$801 million, or for our Australian listeners, It's better than most in the Gold sector based on the reports that we've seen from our peers so far this month. Now, this does beg the question of why our consistently strong operating performance doesn't translate very accurately into relative share price performance. This is an issue that's challenged us for some time, and several theories have been put forward about why we traded a discount to our peers, and these include the African discount, so to speak, and the quality of Percy's Asset portfolio, particularly the remaining lives of our assets. Now, I won't dwell on these observations too much as, in my opinion, both of them are fairly fundamentally flawed, but rather than complain about the misunderstanding What we have done this quarter is taken some very decisive action to address both the issue of asset quality and African risk. The two major growth initiatives, both fully funded from existing cash reserves, I might say, have been materially advanced during the quarter, or since our last webinar, and they include the CMA underground development at our existing Yayori gold mine in Cote d'Ivoire, and of course the commencement of the development of the Niansaga project in Tanzania. Now both of these initiatives will be a subject of more focused discussion in the presentation that follows as both of these projects will materially upgrade our existing production base that has, I repeat, already been generating outstanding operating results consistently for the last five or six years. Now hopefully the quality of these two new additions will gain some recognition And of course, if they don't, the new operations will certainly help us to continue the long stream of outstanding results generated by the company. So in summary, things are rolling along very nicely at Perseus. And let's go to the presentation so that I can demonstrate what I'm talking about. So if we look at the operating and financial results in summary that we've published today, so for the quarter production 121,605 ounces down slightly from the prior quarter, which was in fact an outstanding quarter. The all-inside cost across the group is $1,209 an ounce, up slightly for two reasons. One is that the production is down slightly, but also because of the increase in royalty payments due to the higher gold prices that we've been receiving. The gold prices averaged $2,462 an ounce, giving us a margin of US $1,253 an ounce. Now, on terms of the margin, I did read in the papers earlier this week, a very prominent United Kingdom investor complaining that the gold sector hadn't taken the opportunity to generate margins. Well, I would point out that our cash margin is in excess of 100%. And that's generated something like $152 million of cash notional cash flow for the quarter, resulting in a cash and bullion balance at the end of the quarter of 801 million US dollars. Now, I point out that that 801 million US dollars does include 34,208 ounces of gold that were valued at the spot price on the 31st of March, which is $3,115, so down from where it is today, in fact. But But nevertheless, that's how that number has been arrived. I should say also, it does not include any debt. We don't have any debt, even though we do have an undrawn line of credit of 300 million US dollars. Now, if you look at that in context with what we've done in the past, as I said, the December quarter was up slightly, but For the last four quarters, there's been a fairly remarkable consistency in our performance. And during that time, we've seen the gold price rise and we've seen the cost kept reasonably steady. All three operations are running reasonably well, although I have to say not without their challenges, as I'll mention in just a moment. But certainly in this rising Gold price environment, it is giving us the opportunity to significantly expand our margins and cash, et cetera, et cetera. Now, looking forward, we're now one month pretty much through the three months of the quarter. Happy to say that we're operating bang on targets at the moment and we'll continue to deliver. There are certainly good results into the future if indeed nothing untoward happens in the next couple of months. Now, in terms of what we are predicting, this chart that you can see shows the guidance that we have given to the market. Now, we're obviously very well positioned relative to the forecast for the half year and the full financial year. I think, if anything, what we're going to be doing is, provided that nothing untoward happens between now and the end of June, we will end up in the upper quartile of the production range that we've given. the market and and at this stage we're quite some way below the bottom end of the of the cost range so you know that's a that's a pleasing outcome um and that that of course has occurred notwithstanding the higher royalties etc that i mentioned before um now if you look at where the where the productions come from i'll just quickly run through the three operations so yayori was the standout again as it has been for some time 57 of our our total production so it's the main The costs this quarter were down a bit on where they have been and we have been the beneficiary this quarter of the fact that we did have accelerated stripping in the last couple of quarters. Now, you'll recall I mentioned on this presentation, you know, for the last couple of quarters that we were We did get behind in our stripping and we had accelerated stripping in the last couple of quarters to get back on track. We are back on track and we're now accessing high-grade material. And so that's been what has caused this pretty good cost performance in the last quarter. The issue that is challenging us at the moment, if anything, at Yayori is the fact that we've moved from, or we've just opened up the Yayori open pit. We've been mining in the CMA open pit up until now. So the geology in the Yayori pit is quite complicated and our grade control procedures and You know, need to be modified to adjust to the new all body. And at this stage of the game, we haven't quite got it right. We've got a positive reconciliation and tons of negative reconciliation on grade, but overall positive on ounces. But that's something that we're working on pretty furiously at the moment to get that right, because that is important. for us going forward because ore from that Yayoi open pit is going to be blended with ore from the CMA underground and I'll talk about this in just a moment but we signed off on that operation earlier this quarter. Now as far as Etiquette is concerned it was a little bit disappointing relative to the prior quarter, about 34-35% of our gold comes from Etican, right across the board, the metrics were slightly under where we had hoped they would be. But nevertheless, the costs were still fairly good. I mean, US$1,177 per ounce at Etican is right in the bottom end of the global cost curve. And I think full credit to the team that we've been able to keep a lid on our costs at Etican over the last few years. um reconciliation there is is is very good or is within market ranges etc etc so we're not too concerned there the we have started mining in the end kasua pit which is a new pit that was discovered a few years ago by our team now this ramp up and this is partly what's attributed to the performance this quarter a ramp up has been a bit slower than we were hoping for as a result of some land access issues in the area. These are gradually being addressed and not before time, I might add, given that the AG and Fetish Pits are getting towards the end of their life. So we will be mining from Nkasuo in the next quarter, full steam ahead. And hopefully by then we'll have things sorted out. Now, one of the points I might just make on EDICAM while we're talking about it, which I think is important in the context of geopolitics, is that our mining licences in Ghana have been renewed. They've been signed off by the Minister and will be presented to Parliament, I believe, as part of a batch in May this year to get a parliamentary ratification. So, you know, some of the issues that have been reported in Ghana recently, I can say that most certainly don't apply to Perseus. As far as our standing in the country, we are in good standing. And we have the opportunity to extend the mine life at Eticanamite. So we've been doing quite a lot of work on strategic options and we'll publish this data later on in the year, but certainly we believe that there is an extended life at Etican looking forward. Sosingi has been a little bit disappointing this period as well and there are once again fairly solid reasons for that. All of the metrics have been reasonably okay other than grade and the grade is down as a result of not accessing the higher grade material at Pimbiosa in the way that we're wanting to do. Part of that, a large part of that relates to Our contractors' performance, equipment availability and productivity. We have addressed those issues by bringing in some additional equipment ourselves and hiring it back to them. And we will overcome this issue as we move forward. But certainly the performance this quarter was not where we would like it to be. Once again, similar sort of thing. We're getting good reconciliations across the site. And I think that the life of Sasingi, it can be extended quite materially through these strategic options that we've been evaluating. And we will, as I say, communicate those when all of that work has been completed. So the production is in reasonably good shape. And I'm now going to hand to Leanne, to address some of the financial metrics, please, Leanne.

Thanks, Jeff, and hello, everybody. Good to be on the call. You'll see from the slide in front of you that our cash flow and our overall balance has grown significantly since the last time we reported, which was $704 million. It's now sitting at $801 million, including bullion. We have zero debt, but we still have our undrawn credit line of US dollars, $300 million. We continue to make contributions to our host countries, contributing this quarter $22 million in tax. The capital expenditure for the period of $17 million points out that does include $11.4 million relating to the Nianzaga pre-FID expenditure. And we also in the period contributed $10 million into the share buyback, which I'll talk a little bit to a little bit later. If we move on to the reconciliation of our all-in site costs to our all-in sustaining costs, reminding the listeners that Perseus has for many years reported an all-in site cost number, which is a pure cash number and doesn't necessarily agree with the IFRS all-in sustaining costs. And so we've put the slide in just to explain those differences so everybody is aware. You'll see that we have got a reconsideration because we use produced versus sold numbers. In the period, we had inventory movements because EDUCAN was building up stockpiles and then the corporate admin costs, which is included in the all and sustaining costs, is not included in the all and five cost number. Moving on to the hedging position and strategy, we have always continued to focus on downside price protection to ensure the certainty of our cash flows, particularly now that we have committed to the Nianzaga project over the next two years. However, giving consideration to the robust gold environment in which we are operating, we have our revised strategy from using spot deferreds and forward contracts to a zero-cost collar approach. And this provides us downside protection, but does allow us for upside participation. And what we've set out here, which I won't go into too much detail, just sets out, you can see what our hedge book looks like going forward over the next four years, well, three and a bit years, should I say, and how the introduction of this new strategy is giving us that upside participation. The next is the share buyback. This is our position as at the 9th of April when we entered the blackout period. And so we've executed at that period 32.78% of the buyback, which was about $32.74 million. With the release of the Nianzaga FID and the quarterly this morning, we will likely commence participation in the share buyback again tomorrow. And that's all for me from the financial side, Jeff.

Okay, thanks, Leanne. Yeah, the chair buyback's been pretty interesting, I have to say, and I think it has actually materially benefited our shareholders the way we've implemented it over the last few months, being able to support the market when there were unusual things going on and providing some real support at times when it was needed. I'd like to now talk about the organic growth piece. As I said, this is a pretty important piece of our business and something we've given a lot of attention to in the last couple of quarters. The CMA underground development was the first off the first cab off the rank and that was we announced the the FID decision the financial final investment decision in late January. This is a an underground operation off the side of the existing CMA pit. Things are moving along very nicely on in preparation for cutting the first portals in July of this year. We've appointed burn cutters, our contractor. They've mobilised on the site and preparations are well and truly underway. And we have gone ahead with the decision based on an in-principle approval by the Minister for Mines, Petroleum and Energy in Cote d'Ivoire. And we believe that His ministerial decree will be issued in the next week or so, as all of the prerequisites for the issuing of the document have now been completed. So we're in very good shape as far as the project is concerned. Now, if we look at the schedule, as I said, Burncut are busily on the site working in getting things organised. Equipment has been done. been shipped and has been arriving on the site and we're getting ready to get into the portal firings on the 1st of July so we're well and truly on track for that. Quite a deal of work has been done to locate the various portals and the like and some of those areas have been exposed some of them will come in the future but we're getting very much on the front foot as far as being able to move into that exercise on the schedule that we've set out. We've got a couple of photographs on the screen just showing a few of the site works that have been underway. We've had to obviously expand our accommodation and office capacity to be able to fit another large contractor in here. workforce in we've also had to upgrade a few of the services water power etc etc to make sure that the the underground operation will be fully serviced when when we get going so all of those things are moving forward very strongly and we're in a very good place i believe we've been recruiting quite heavily over time bringing in some very high caliber people in in the underground mining space which as people know is new to the perseus business Now, the other very important project that we've initiated since the last webinar has been the Neon Saga Gold project in Tanzania. We took an affirmative final investment decision earlier this week and we announced to the market the position. So we're moving ahead with that project. Our budget for the exercise going forward is around $523 million, including contingencies, pre-production costs, et cetera, et cetera. So it's pretty much in line with what we were expecting it would be as we were sort of doing the work over the last 12 months. The important thing to note on this is that The funding of this project is coming via non-interest bearing loans from Perseus to the operating company and relying on our existing cash balance of US$801 million. So we need no external financing to go forward with the project. All the money is in place. And that gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of moving forward. One thing I would say is that we've had some very, very constructive engagement with the government of Tanzania over the last 12 months, clarifying terms on the existing framework agreement and the shareholders agreement. And I would say say, well done indeed, call out Leanne and her team who have been leading the charge on that, done a terrific job in being able to establish really strong relationships with the government and convert that into meaningful documentation that'll govern the project going forward. And just some slides to show you what we're talking about. So Tanzania is on the eastern side of the African continent and the project, Leanne Zaga project, sits on the southern shores of Lake Victoria. It's in an area where there's been quite a lot of mining in the past, particularly Barrick have been active in there, North Mara, Anglo-Oceania, Data, etc. So these are names, Bullion, Hulu, these are names that are well-known, Golden Prides, another one, Volkswagen. These are names that are very well-known to the industry. So there is a long history of mining in the country, and the Nianzaga project will be the first new project for about 17-odd years in Tanzania. So it's Very exciting for everybody. The site is reasonably compact. You know, we've got allocations made for waste dumps and tailings dams, etc. It is relatively adjacent to Lake Victoria. So, you know, environmental management is a very, very important piece of what we're doing going forward. Now, the way we're developing this project is different to the previous owners who were envisaging a small open pit at the top. and using the proceeds from that pit to fund a drive down on higher grade material at depth and having an underground operation. What we're doing is we're going to do a single large open pit initially and then we'll see where we go to from there. So this open pit will be developed in a couple of stages. You can see on the slide the white and the blue lines being the various stages that we'll embark on and that orange line is the outline of the the pit that we've approved. Now, this is what we're calling the first phase of this particular project. The difference between the orange line and the pink line are inferred resources. And what we'll be doing, the inferred resources into these areas here, what we'll be doing over time is drilling those out, converting them into indicated or measured and putting them into the mine plan. And ultimately we expect to end up with a pit It's something aligned to that pink line, which will have a very much expanded ore mineral resource and ore reserve reporting. What we've done with the processing facility, it's a larger processing facility than was previously envisaged. This is a 5 million tonne nameplate plant designed by our contractors, Lycopodium. who we've worked with in the past on several of all of our operations. And of course, lycopodium is very well known in Africa, having built just about every decent plant in the last 15, 20 years, I would think. This plant is fairly standard. There's nothing fancy in the process flow sheet. So you've got sag mill, ball mill, thickener, CIL, et cetera, et cetera, and then electrowinning. So nothing terribly fancy around this, and we believe, if anything, the plant will operate above nameplate, as tends to be the case with these loco plants. The metrics that are related to the project, I guess the important metric is that We believe that the reserve that we're working to at this particular point in time is about 2.3 million ounces, which is reasonably close to the previously announced reserve, from which we'll extract about 2 million ounces of gold. The production will average around 200,000 ounces over the 11-year life. I mean, it peaks out at about 246 at one particular point. But very importantly, the all in site costs, it runs at around $1,200 an ounce. And that cost has been very carefully benchmarked, not only against other operations in Tanzania, but also what we've actually done elsewhere on the continent. From an investment point of view, we have used a $1,700 pit shell for the design of the mine, but used a $2,100 per ounce long-term gold price in calculating our metrics. And as you can see from the slide, The undiscounted cash flows, both pre-tax and post-tax at 2100 are pretty interesting, but at 2700, they're even more interesting. And certainly we believe that this will be a project that will generate very, very substantial benefits for all of our stakeholders as we go forward. The production forecasts, as you can see from the slides, as I said, averaging around the 200,000 ounce mark over the life of the project as it's currently known, but it does peak out at various times quite a bit higher than that. So it's a pretty steady production profile and one that will add materially to our overall group profile going forward. So looking forward, we're very confident in our ability to deliver the project as planned. I mean, Percy, as you're aware, has successfully delivered developed and is now operating three gold mines on the African continent and doing that fairly successfully. Now, very importantly, many of the contractors and the employees who were engaged on the Ayori bill, for instance, and delivered that one ahead of schedule and under budget during the COVID crisis, they'll also be working on the Nsaga. So we've managed to bring most of the team back together and we think that that'll deliver some significant benefits. Now, the other good thing about this project is it has very significant in-country capacity in terms of skilled and unskilled labour and also industrial capacity. Not only that, we've got very strong support from our host communities and very importantly, the host government. So all of the ingredients that are needed there are there for the project to go ahead and perform very strongly in its current configuration. Now, I've mentioned a couple of times term phase one, We do believe that there will be a second phase to this project. We're already embarked on a second phase of resource definition drilling, which we believe will add materially to the mineral resource and the reserve. And that will be announced in due course when all of the data comes in. It's not only resource definition drilling, I might add, but we're also doing metallurgical and geotechnical drilling to further inform the design of the pits and the like. And I think there are some real opportunities potentially coming from this work to perhaps improve the cost structure going forward. Now, in terms of the schedule, we've done quite a lot of work already in terms of awarding various packages and getting underway in some early works, et cetera, et cetera, and building relocation housing. So that's going along fairly strongly, and we'll be moving into full-scale development works very, very soon. In fact, we're doing it right now. And we'll be looking to be producing first gold in the first quarter of 2027. In fact, I think I'd be very surprised if it's not a tad earlier than that, given that everybody is incentivized to deliver that outcome. But we'll stick with the Q12227 for the time being. And just a couple of photographs to show you what has been happening on the site. And you can see visually that there has been a good deal of preliminary bulk earthworks underway, both in terms of preparing for the main camp and the process plant. We've got the The site pretty well demarked with, you know, fence line, et cetera, et cetera. And things are moving along pretty nicely on that front. The relocation housing has been an important piece of what we're doing. We've got, we're building approximately 250 60 odd houses, I think it is, for people who will be impacted by our operations. And so far, we're about 23.5% of the way through that program. We have delivered or we've completed 29 houses and I think 26 of the 29 are currently occupied by very happy residents, I might say. So that program is moving along very nicely and is being very well received by our host communities. The community consultation piece, as I said, is extremely important here. We do want to make sure that the people are kept well informed along the way and they know exactly what we're doing. We also want to make sure that people have the opportunity to gain employment on the mine site and to benefit from commercial activities in the region. So our community teams do spend a lot of time out and about talking to the local communities. And I think that, you know, based on our prior experience, that will help. be beneficial as we go forward. Also, part of that, as I said, is educating people and bringing them through into the workforce. And we've already started that process of making sure that we recruit locally to the greatest extent possible and that people are taking up the learning curve as best we can get them because they will be making a significant contribution as we go forward. I've mentioned the second phase of resource definition drilling, which is underway. I mean, it's a fairly healthy program that we've got in mind and we do have some serious expectations about what that will yield. But I think, you know, the guys have got a pretty good eye on what the ore body looks like and the work that's being done is high quality. And as I said, the aim is to deliver an upgraded reserve before too much longer. So that's pretty much it as far as our growth is concerned. I haven't mentioned, of course, the other initiatives that we have. I mean, we have the sand project in the Sudan that we're looking at various options there to try and see how we can best add value to our shareholders. Through that exercise, we've also got a few unlisted investments around the place. And I think actually the value of those listed investments is something like $111 million. So if you're looking at the liquidity of the company, you can add $111 million to the $801 million of cash in bullion. And that says that Perseus is in fairly good shape to fund its way going forward. Now, I've mentioned a couple of times, particularly in relation to Onion Saga, the importance of the sustainability piece, the ESG pieces. And right across the company, that is something that is very important to us. So, you know, safety is a primary focus and the safety statistics that we are generating month in, month out. I think are very, very credible in any company, let alone on the African continent. In fact, they're as good as you'll see globally, where we've got a TRIFA of 0.74, which is well down on a lot of our other peers. The community contribution, Leanne mentioned that earlier on, we continue to put quite a strong economic contribution into all of the countries where we operate, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Tanzania, Sudan. This is not, you know, this takes several forms. I mean, clearly employment is one and taxation is another and, of course, procuring from the local vendors is very important but fairly significant amounts of money are going into those into the into the economies of those host countries and we think that is important local employment is terribly important in terms of being able to give people opportunities and you know we do our best in terms of in terms of diversity in all in all the forms that it takes people like to focus on gender diversity more than some of the other forms and in that respect we We have got about 15% female employees in the workforce. But I would hasten to mention that people should read that number in the context of the cultures that we're operating in. This is not Australia. These are African countries where they have a different approach to life. And so, you know, quite understandably, the proportion of female employees is down on what you might find in a Western environment. We had no significant community events during the period. And I think that reflects the work that we put into working with our host communities. And similarly, on an environmental front, we're in pretty good shape there as well with no significant environmental issues causing concern. So, look, right across the board, things are travelling quite well, as I said at the start of the call. We have had a good quarter on all fronts and, you know, we've been continuing to produce gold, all inside costs, cash flow, et cetera, et cetera. And as I said, look, pleasingly, this work's been conducted in a safe manner. We are a little ahead of our safety, targeted safety standards, and we do compare fairly well with Australia. with our peer group. So that's extremely, extremely gratifying and important to us. Now, looking forward, our production and cost guidance for the six months to June 25 is unchanged, as I said earlier, and we are predicting very solid performances relative to that half year and full year guidance that we've given. And looking further into the future, we are currently embarked on our annual planning cycle and before long we expect to be able to publish an updated long-term production and cost forecast for the entire Perseus Group based on these revised plans and I've no doubt that What this will do is provide further clear evidence that our strategy of producing between 500 and 600,000 ounces of gold per year at a cash margin of no less, but usually a lot more than $500 an ounce will continue for some time into the future. And that's irrespective of any other M&A activity we'll do into the future. Now, I have been promising that group forecast for some time and we are in the process of putting it together. What we're trying to do is to ensure that we maximise value from our existing asset base before we go public. And we don't want to go prematurely. We want to be able to show our investing public what we're going to do and then be able to deliver on that plan. And that will be coming out fairly shortly. What we are also trying to do as part of that exercise is to smooth out our production profile going forward. And, you know, we're doing a fairly good job on that, I might say, given that when we took a decision to postpone the development of the Maya sand project in 2023, it did cause a little bit of a hiccup as far as our production profiles concerned, but that's been largely addressed through Indian Saga and the CMA Underground and the like, but there is more work to be done before we can go public. And so as soon as we can, as I say, we'll release that information. Also, you know, looking forward, the concept of us continuing to look to grow our diversified asset portfolio will remain very important for us. And we believe that, you know, we are able to, by being involved in multiple operations in multiple countries, we are able to remove a lot of the volatility that comes with operating on the African continent. Importantly, this means that as an investor, you can be confident that your investment in Perseus remains in very solid and good hands. And this is an important point, I think, in terms of addressing this issue of an African discount on the share price. We do operate well on the African continent, and we have been doing it for quite a long time. Now, it's not a guarantee that that's going to continue into the future, but it's a pretty good indicator, I think, that this issue of African discount is somewhat overdone. We will, however, you know, continue to remain very receptive to new ideas. And if the right value creation opportunities come along, then Perseus is in a great position to execute to continue on our growth journey. I'd say these opportunities are fairly few and far between at the moment, but, you know, particularly given where the gold price is. But we do live in hope and we do have the capacity to execute at a moment's notice should the right opportunity come by. So as a company, our focus on generating material benefits for all of our stakeholders remains very prominent for us. And I'm talking about host governments, communities, employees, providers of goods and services, and of course, our investors. And we will remain very, very focused and vigilant on that and continue to deliver our stated mission of the company. And that's something that We are very proud to have achieved today. Now, in conclusion, I do once again want to acknowledge the fantastic contribution made by all of the men and women that make up the Perseus board management and operating teams in what is now five countries in which we operate, including Australia, where we're headquartered. There is absolutely no doubt that As a team, our people are strongly supported by their families, and I can't emphasise the importance of the family support enough. We continue to do an outstanding job, and I want to sincerely thank you all. Many of you are listening into this call today, but I want to thank you all for that on behalf of all of our shareholders and for all of the efforts that you've been making. delivering and helping us to continue delivering on our promises. So thanks very much for your attention today. This brings my presentation to a close. And now Leanne, Jacob and I are happy to address any questions that you may have. Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff. Just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the raise hand function within Zoom. Your first question comes from Levi Spry at UBS. Please go ahead, Levi.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks, Nathan. Thanks, Jeff and team. Thanks for the call. Another nice quarter. A couple of quick questions, starting with Nines Argus. So... Can you just comment on, I guess, the aims of the optimisation? So obviously in markets we're always pretty impatient, but some of the assumptions are probably a little bit more conservative than what I've had previously. So can you just talk to that second phase, what the goals are with that reserve update? Is it about life extension and adding value that way, or can you squeeze a bit more grade up front early?

Well, I think we're looking at expanding the reserve full stop at this particular time. Now, whether, you know, we do expect that the grade will be a beneficiary, but whether it, you know, is reflected immediately, I'm not 100% sure. But, you know, one of the optimisations or one of the areas where we may see some improved performance through there is in the actual throughput rates of the plants. Every plant that we've built in the past with, the help of Locopodium seems to outperform the nameplate. Now, the nameplate of this one is 5 million tonnes per annum, but it wouldn't surprise me if we're not putting more material through than that actual name would suggest. But certainly, that's an issue where we believe we've got some benefit. We believe that we can expand the size of the open pittable resource quite significantly. and that'll be you know as i published within well before we start actually producing but the other area that is of interest to us and i can't say very much about this at this point other than to say that the guys brought back some dual results at depth the other day and you know there's not a lot of them but what we saw of them certainly give us optimism that even though we're building a very large open pit, you know, for 500 metre deep pit, there is still very significant potential for an underground operation off the bottom of that. You know, as we go forward and as we get further down in the pit, we will be drawing further down there to confirm that, but that's a possible extension that's not even remotely factored into any numbers at this particular point. So, look, we believe that this Nsaga project can and will develop into a world-class operation and have very little doubt about that.

Yeah, good. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Geoff. And then just moving to Sisingui, a bit of a tougher quarter there. Can you just talk to the future of that operation and any potential for maybe recycling that asset as you've got growth elsewhere in the portfolio?

Yeah, look, the plan as it stands at the moment, I mean, I think on the reserve, it's something like about a three year life from now. But we believe that by reassessing some of those pits, we can actually extend the life well beyond that. Now, what that involves, of course, is using a higher cutoff, you know, a higher gold price on the pit shell. And of course, what that means is that your operating cost goes up. So you need to be able to trade-off production against margin basically and it does depend on your view on the Gold price. Where we're going with the project now though is that we're about to start opening up the Bagway deposits. We've been mining at Fimbiaso and Sasingi over the last couple of years hauling ore from Fimbiaso back to Sasingi. We're now about to open up Bagway and we'll be hauling back from there later this year and we'll be mining down there in, I think there's 3 pits down there at the present time. that we have delineated. So, you know, it's got a reasonable future. And, in fact, the production levels that are budgeted for next year are quite materially above where we are this year because the grade from Baguio is quite attractive. Now, what actually happened was that when we started mining at Fimbiasa, we discovered that, in fact, there was actually quite a lot more ore there than we had originally envisaged. Now, what we decided to do was to mine out those deposits before we went to Bagway. So we deferred opening Bagway by about a year, basically, while we mined out Fimbiaso. Now, you know, while it's all there, it is at a lower grade than Baguio. So that's partly what contributed to the dip in production this year and the like, as well as some operating challenges, of course, that I mentioned earlier. But look, you know, Sasingi's got a pretty decent life ahead of it, pretty decent remaining resource. When we started this project, It had a four and a half year mine life. Well, I think based on what we're talking about now, you know, nine years from start to finish is certainly not out of the order of possibility. And so, you know, we'll look at that in the context of our portfolio. If we bring in other assets that are producing a lot more in demand management time, then we may consider, you know, that this project might be better off in somebody's hands. But we haven't reached that decision point at this particular stage. But it has to be an option that we consider.

Yep. Got it. Okay. Thank you. And just last one, sorry, juggling a few calls here, but did you mention any of the upcoming catalysts for reviewing your investment in, in a bank and in PDI? Yeah.

No, I didn't, actually. But, well, you know, I think it's well known that we've entered into a confidentiality agreement and a standstill agreement with Predictive. We can't make an investment decision until we've had full access to data and evaluated what the opportunity is worth. I would say, though, that, you know, if you look at Predictive and Bandcan and compare it to, say, Nianzaga, you know, it's multiples. more costly than what the Neonsaga project has ever been. So, you know, in the current environment, it looks pretty darn difficult, but you never know. You know, the data may tell us a different story, but we don't have any plans for it at the present time. We're very comfortable to sit where we are and see what the future holds. Got it. Thank you.

Appreciate your time. Thanks, Geoff. No problem.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Richard Knights at Baron Joey. Please go ahead, Richard.

Hey, Richard, you're on mute.

Apologies. There we go. Hi, Geoff, Leanne, how are you? um just just one on grade reconciliation or the the grade and tonnage reconciliation at cma open pit i'm just wondering how to think about that over the next 12 months i mean obviously it's been positive uh by an order of magnitude you know over the last 12 months um cma open pit is time where the challenges is in the aori pit which is the new one ah right yep okay

So, yeah, go ahead. No, so the geology is really quite complicated. There are a number of structures there coming in at different angles and things like that, and just the grade control techniques that we've used weren't giving us as accurate a result as we're used to seeing. So Jacob and his team have been working furiously on this to rectify the processes, and I think Jacob can make a comment if need be on it, but you know we are making good progress and we expect to see improvements coming forward so it is an important point because you know there is definite mineralization a lot of mineralization there and we want to make sure that that mineralization gets captured and put in the mill not lower grade material so what percentage of the feed over the next 12 months will come from that yay or a open pit roughly oh look at the top of my head i don't have that number but as we go forward um i did have those numbers actually when we will be using the yaori open pit in combination with the cma underground and i think i think something like 70 to 80 percent of the ore will come from the yaori pit but 50 of the grade will come from the cma underground so it's something like that i mean those numbers are in the public domain and i just can't recall them exactly but So, you know, getting Yayoi right is really important for us. And that's why, you know, we've put such a concentrated effort into addressing that reconciliation issue, because it's not something that, you know, we're comfortable with. It's something that we have to fix in short order.

No worries. Thanks. And just one more follow up on Nyan Zaga. I mean, you've talked about the phase two potential there. Is that something we're going to hear about in 2025 or is that a sort of longer term story?

Well, look, I think it will take us all of 2025 to do the drilling, I would say. and then some. So it won't be in this coming year, I don't expect, but next year it will be coming through. So look, it's just part of the ongoing process of what we do. We could have deferred development and drilled the whole thing out before we started, but we thought that taking what we've got for the time being made a lot of sense. It allowed us to get into production earlier to address the longer term production profile of the company. and that we'll backfill with additional reserves as and when they're delineated, assuming that they are, of course.

No worries. Makes sense. Thanks. Thanks, guys.

No problem.

So I'll now hand back to Geoff Quartermain for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, look, thanks very much. I know we've taken a lot of time and today's another busy day for many people. So apologies for that. But look, we are very comfortable with the way we're tracking. I think we're generating some fairly significant benefits here for our stakeholders, returning money to shareholders, both in the form of dividends and the share buyback. And we expect that that'll continue into the future. So look forward to keeping you informed as we go forward. There's lots on the horizon. We've had a very busy three months but i think it's been a very productive three months and long may that continue so thank you very much and look forward to talking to you again