Half Year 2022 Resolute Mining Ltd Earnings Call 2 Perth Aug 25, 2022 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of Resolute Mining Ltd earnings conference call or presentation Thursday, August 25, 2022 at 8:00:00am GMT TEXT version of Transcript ================================================================================ Corporate Participants ================================================================================ * Douglas Warden Resolute Mining Limited - CFO * Terence Neil Holohan Resolute Mining Limited - MD & CEO ================================================================================ Presentation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good morning, and welcome to Resolute Mining's Half Year 2022 Results Call. Today, we are joined by Resolute's CEO, Terry Holohan; and CFO, Doug Warden. (Operator Instructions) I'm now going to hand over to Terry Holohan to begin the presentation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terence Neil Holohan, Resolute Mining Limited - MD & CEO [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Adam, and good morning, everybody. We've got a slide show up there. If for some reason you can't see it, it is on our website. I'm going to go very quickly through the highlights, then I'll hand over to Doug to go through financials. And then I'll do a close with talking about our exploration. That's quite a bit of excitement in front of us at the moment, and then go over to questions and answers. If you look at the highlights, as I've previously mentioned, we're continuing with our downward trend on safety statistics, reducing incidence, accidents, et cetera. This is really following a campaign over the last 18 months of behavioral-based safety, focusing on the issues there on site. As you remember, we went through that shut of 60,000 man hours in February without an incident there. So we were very, very pleased with the progress and the learnings that we've taken from that. A lot of work has gone into that, and I think we're starting to see the benefits, and I do expect that trend to continue going forward. If you look at the gold port, all of our assets are really starting to sweat a little bit now. We've poured 171,000 ounces. That's a 5% increase on 2021. And as I mentioned, we shut our sulfide plant in this period, this first half of the year, came back on. It was after 35 days of offline and clean out. We found a bit of gold there, but that plant has been performing excellently ever since. And if you look at the roaster, that was always a major item of concern on these calls over the last couple of years. That roaster at the moment is still operating at around about equivalent to somewhere between 3 million to 3.2 million tonnes per annum of ore given that the mine was designed around about 2 million to 2.4 million tonnes. Last year, we managed to get 2.1 million tonnes through the plant. It's operating at the moment around about 2.4 million tonnes on average. So we're expecting to see improvements again over this next 6 months in terms of ounces coming out of the system. If you look at our all-in costs, $1,463, that seems like a very high number. It is a 15% increase. We're facing some pressures from costs there, which Doug will talk about a little bit more in a moment. But what I'd like to point out to you again, we shut one of our plants down for a while. And in terms of our budget process, we are $60 below what we expected to be. And this is because the front end has always been loaded on costs. We've done a lot of cleanouts on costs, working capital, et cetera. We've done a lot of stripping to not only prepare our open pits for this year with the rainy season that we're in at the moment, but also for next year. And we've done a lot of great control, whereas previously, I mentioned on the quarterly calls, we are a couple of weeks ahead on great control on our open pits. Now we're a couple of months ahead. And we'll maintain it at that position going forward. So that is almost like a once-off cost there. So despite our noncash adjustments, which has been quite a few, I think we're in a good place in terms of our dollars per ounce where we are now, and we're expecting those to start decreasing. And apart from all the, say, extra costs we put in place from the point on where the roaster starts again in early April, the management team at Syama have really started to focus on cost-cutting exercises, productivity increases, et cetera. And we're also expecting to see them come through over the next 6 months and then hold them there going forward. So I'm very happy with the way that's going. In terms of the open pit with all the stripping, we knew we're going to get some lower grades coming through in the first half of the year. And as we speak now, we're halfway through our next quarter. We're starting to see the grades coming up slightly. In fact, we're exactly where we predicted we were going to be in our budget process. In terms of revenue, $317 million, we sold a little bit. We had a bit of material left over from over the New Year; an average realized price of $1,824. EBIT, $78.5 million. There is a net loss after tax of $24 million, that Doug will go into a bit more detail shortly with you. And we did again reduce our debt on the balance sheet. I will talk a little bit later about the Syama North. That is a really exciting project coming very, very quickly at us. Our exploration guys are working over the weekend. We want to get a release out on that early next week, so we can start talking about it as a mineral resource, not only to the media, but we're also hoping to present that later next week at the Africa Down Under Conference. So based on what I'm saying, we also had the ECOWAS sanctions lifted. That didn't really affect us that much in terms of costs, et cetera. However, it will give us a little bit more flexibility in inventory and stores, et cetera, on the books. But we're starting to see a little bit more of an ease of operation given that all the countries, all 7 countries around Mali have now reopened. So I think the bottom line of what I'm saying is I'm still very, very comfortable with our 345,000 ounces. We are slightly ahead of that curve at the moment on our budget. And the cost $1,425, as I say, was slightly under our original predicted number. So we're still saying we can meet those comfortably. Okay. With that, I'll pass over to Doug, who's going to give you a bit more color on the cost side and the finance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Douglas Warden, Resolute Mining Limited - CFO [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Terry. And turning first to the profit and loss, I'd like to draw your attention to Slide 8 of the presentation that was released this morning and hopefully up on your screens. So as Terry said, we reported a net loss after tax of $24.1 million at a statutory level. But after adjusting for abnormal noncash items of just under $28 million, the underlying net profit after tax was $3.6 million. The majority of these abnormal amounts relate to foreign exchange revaluations on loan accounts of $23 million and a noncash write-off of a legacy tax asset accounting for the remainder. I'll just take a few moments to walk you through the other key elements of the profit and loss. As Terry said, revenue up 22% due to an additional 22,000 ounces sold, plus just over $100 increase in the gold price half-on-half. So the cost of sales half-on-half was up 46%. And I think it's important to understand the key elements of this to sort of work through that. So the first point I'd make is that about half of this cost of sales increase relates to the inventory cost associated with additional tonnes sold, which were largely from Golden Circuit and the drawdown of bullion. Approximately 10% of the increase relates to inflationary pressures that we're seeing in relation to diesel and consumable costs largely. And that's about 10%, as I said, of the cost increase that we see in cost of sales. And the third major component is another noncash item. And that's a change in the accounting treatment half-on-half of how we treat lower grade ore at Mako. Previously, we capitalized low-grade ore cost to inventory to be treated at the end of the mine life. Now those costs associated with that material charge to cost of sales on a more regular basis. Moving down the P&L, I'll go to sort of the notable items without going line by line. So the income tax of $16.1 million looks like a large number when you compare it to the underlying profit. So it's important to understand, a bit more color on that one. So only $3.9 million of that income tax expense was actually cash tax during the half, and that related to withholding tax that we pay on the dividend to both ourselves and the Senegalese government in relation to Mako. Of the remaining $12 million in tax expense, about $2 million of it relates to income tax in Mali, which is the higher of 1% of revenue or 25% of taxable income. But it's important to understand that, that amount was offset against our VAT receivable. So you might recall that the Malian government stopped VAT refunds for miners in the country some years ago, but we are allowed to offset certain taxes, including that 1% minimum tax against those VAT refunds. A further $8.5 million relates to a provision of amounts for amounts that we are disputing with one of the tax authorities and just under $3 million relates to legacy tax claims. So turning to Slide 9 and the cash flow waterfall. Operating cash flow for the half was $60 million. The CapEx for the half was $35 million, which included just under $14 million for tailing storage facilities at both Mako, but the majority of that number was for Syama. About $4.5 million associated with the cost of the roaster shut. That wasn't the total cost of the shut because we did spend about $5.5 million in 2021 in relation to the purchase of long lead items. Another $12 million of that capital being the other major component related to waste stripping at both Syama Oxide and Mako operations. The asset sale proceeds of $48 million comprised of the Bibiani second tranche of $30 million. And the sale of our Orca and Turaco shares was the remaining component of that amount. Debt repayments of $55 million included the $25 million half yearly installment on the term loan and a $30 million voluntary repayment on the RCF. The interest is fairly self-explanatory. The government dividend and withholding tax relates to that dividend that we pay to ourselves and the Senegalese government and withholding tax on that component as well. Turning to Slide 10, the net debt and the hedge book, which we covered at the quarterly. But just a reminder, the net debt for the half finished at $182.8 million and included cash and bullion of $81.8 million. The hedge book at 30 June had 230,000 ounces in forward contracts at an average price of $1,875. And then finally, just an update on the final tranche from the sale of the Bibiani asset, which was due earlier this week. There has been a delay with that and we've reached an agreement with Asante on deferred payment terms, which are laid out there in the presentation on Slide 10, but essentially, it's $10 million in each of September and October, and a final payment of $12.7 million plus interest payable in November. And with that, that sums up my section on finance. I'll hand back to Terry to wrap up, and then we'll take questions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terence Neil Holohan, Resolute Mining Limited - MD & CEO [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good. Thanks, Doug. I think I just want to talk a little bit about exploration. As I mentioned, the Syama North, we're still drilling there. We've done the first fence line of 100-meter spacing drills along the 3 kilometers strike of the previous open pits that were mined for oxides up to 4 years ago. And we've been finding gold in every hole and the model is holding together. If you look at Slide 14, we've got a continuous -- it's virtually on surface or where we've already stripped out from the previous oxide workings. So it's easily accessible material. It's angling at about 45 degrees, and it's varying in veins. But we are looking. We did the first resource on that in December, came out at 1.1 million ounces and at quite a high cutoff, 1.5 gram a tonne. It was 2.85 gram a tonne. And we will be announcing the second resource, hopefully, Monday or Tuesday next week. It's quite exciting what's coming out of there. We have stopped mining at one of our open pits up there, Beta, and we are getting ready to start putting tailings in Beta, but I would suggest that the fleet that we've got idle at the moment from Beta West, and we're not paying standing charges on that, is available should we want to move into this fairly quickly. The key thing is that, obviously, mineral resources are going to come out soon now, and then we'll probably need 6 to 8 weeks to put out an ore reserve and then we'll be putting it into our plan for next year. But the key there is that, as I mentioned, the roaster, and we're not even adding any oxygen to the roaster yet, it's just operating on pure air, because it's obviously the amount of oxygen and sulphur we can burn in there that actually controls that chemical reactor. We can run that, we believe, at somewhere right now 3 million to 3.2 million tonnes per annum equivalent. The mills, we've got them operated now to 2.4 million tonnes, and the sulfide circuit, the installed capacity is still a bit more there. So we think we can get that up a little bit higher. Crushing plants over 3 now after the shut. So we're going to be looking for material. The roaster is running flat out at the moment because it's still in clean-up mode, freeing some more of our Golden circuit. I suspect that will finish by the end of the year. And then we've got 2 months of stockpile. So we're going to have to start looking to find more material for that plan to take up. And we're hoping that this will play out, and we'll be able to start putting some of this material in. So this is a very exciting thing for us. I think all the debottlenecking that we're doing on the sulfide plant is low CapEx options. It's really just expanding that operation into its installed capacity, because it's not operating yet at its full installed capacity, especially on the main circuit. So I think it's exciting times. We're very excited about this, and we look forward to talking to you shortly at Africa Down Under, and talking about our new mineral resource there. And with that, I'll hand it over to questions. Adam? ================================================================================ Questions and Answers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Operator Instructions) We've had one question submitted so far from Yuen Low at you Liberum. He asked, could you clarify when the $30 million RCF repayment will be made? According to the financial statements, should the $30 million Bibiani payment not be received in August? Resolute will instead be required to make three $10 million repayment installments in June, September and December 2023? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terence Neil Holohan, Resolute Mining Limited - MD & CEO [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Adam, and hi, Yuen. I'll ask Doug to refer to you on that one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Douglas Warden, Resolute Mining Limited - CFO [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, Yuen. So yes, it's a good question. Essentially, the plan is that when the installments that we've negotiated with Asante come through in each of September, October and November, those amounts will effectively be paid down on the revolver. So the plan was, as you quite rightly point out, that when the $30 million was to be paid, that would go straight on the revolver. That will just be essentially replaced by the installment money that will come in over the next 3 months. So the fallback position there to revert to 3 lots of $10 million in the back half of 2023 should not be required. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you. There have been no more questions submitted. Terry, would you like to make any closing statements? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terence Neil Holohan, Resolute Mining Limited - MD & CEO [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think, just to reemphasize, we're not changing our guidance. We're maintaining our guidance. As I mentioned, we're slightly ahead on ounces, and we're expecting to come down pretty rapidly on costs now given all the extra costs we've spent in the first half of the year. And we're very excited about what's happening on the Syama North. And we're halfway through the third quarter, which is a rainy period. We've had some spectacular rainstorms in Syama and the oxides have kept going. We've had to evacuate the mine once on a drill because of the water coming in. SLCs always pass water through straight to underground, and we've got more than enough pumping capacity, but we use the opportunity to evacuate the mine for 24 hours just as a drill. Otherwise, the rainy season has yet has not affected us. So we're exactly on track. So I look forward to talking to you again in a couple of weeks' time and tell you all about Q3 with another quarter under our belt. Thank you very much. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [6] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A recording of the webinar will also be available on the Resolute Mining website shortly. Thank you. Have a good day.