Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Central Asia Metals Plc's Annual General Meeting and Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded meeting on Investor Meet Company platform, attendees will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged in connection with the Investor Presentation. It can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question that is submitted today. However, the company will review all questions with subsequent responses published on the Investor Meet Company platform where it's appropriate to do so. I'd now like to hand you over to the Chairman of Central Asia Metals, Mr. Nick Clarke. Good morning.
Good morning. My name is Nick Clarke, and I would like to welcome you to this Annual General Meeting of Central Asia Metals Plc, our 15th AGM since our listing on AIM in 2010. I would also like to welcome those watching online via the Investor Meet Company platform. With us today are my colleagues on the board, Gavin Ferrar, our Chief Executive Officer; Louise Wrathall, our Chief Financial Officer; Mike Armitage, Roger Davie, Gillian Davidson, Mike Prentice, and David Swan, our non-executive directors, are here with me in this venue. Nigel Robinson, our other non-executive director, is unable to join us today. Before we proceed, I would like to set out the running order for today's proceedings in line with the notice of meeting sent to shareholders in April. First will be the formal Annual General Meeting, at which we will handle the formalities required in connection with this.
The voting at this will be by a poll to ensure all votes lodged in advance are taken into account, and the results of the AGM will be announced to the market later today. Once this formal AGM has concluded, we will then move on to the presentation from management. Now, turning to the formal business of the AGM, the necessary quorum being present, I now declare the Annual General Meeting open. The business of the meeting is set out in the notice of meeting contained in the circular to shareholders dated 15th of April 2025 and distributed with the annual report and accounts. With your approval, I would like to take the notice of meeting as read. Is that agreed? Thank you. The notice is taken as read.
I should now be happy to answer any questions in connection with the business of the Annual General Meeting, as I intend to call a poll on all the resolutions. I should be grateful if all the questions in connection with the business of the Annual General Meeting be asked at this stage. There will be an opportunity to ask general questions during the Investor Presentation after the formal meeting is concluded. As there are no questions in connection with the business of the AGM, I shall now turn to the formal business of the AGM, being the resolutions set out in the notice of meeting. In accordance with the company's Articles of Association, and to enable all proxies lodged in advance to be taken into account, I now demand a poll be taken on all the resolutions set out in the notice of meeting. There are 19 resolutions.
Resolutions 1 to 16 are being taken as ordinary resolutions, which require a simple majority of the votes cast to be passed, and resolutions 17 to 19 are being taken as special resolutions, which require approval of at least 75% to be passed. Before we proceed with the voting, I will give a brief summary of each of the resolutions being proposed. Resolution 1 is an ordinary resolution to receive and adopt the directors' report and accounts for the period ended 31st of December 2024, distributed previously to shareholders and available on the company's website. Resolution 2 is an ordinary resolution to approve the board's recommendation that a final dividend for the year ended 31st of December 2024 of GBP 0.09 per share be declared payable.
Resolutions 3 and 4 cover matters for approval for the first time in line with the provisions of the Quoted Companies Alliance Corporate Governance Code, applicable to CAML from 1st of January 2025. Resolution 3 is to approve the directors' remuneration policy, and Resolution 4 is to approve the remuneration committee report. These advisory resolutions are being proposed as ordinary resolutions. Again, in line with the provisions of the QCA Code, at this meeting, all directors are being proposed for reappointment to the board of directors. Resolutions 5 to 13 are ordinary resolutions to reappoint Gavin Ferrar, Louise Wrathall, Mike Armitage, Gillian Davidson, Roger Davie, Mike Prentice, Nigel Robinson, and David Swan, as well as myself as directors. Resolutions 14 and 15 are ordinary resolutions to reappoint the auditors and to authorize the directors to fix their remuneration in accordance with normal practice.
Resolution 16 is an ordinary resolution to allot shares and grant rights to subscribe for or convert any security into shares. This is a renewal of the current standing authority, as is usual in publicly quoted companies. Resolutions 17 and 18 are special resolutions to authorize the directors to exercise all powers of the company to allot equity securities for cash, otherwise than pro rata, to existing shareholders up to levels set out in the notice. These levels are as recommended in the most recent guidelines published by the Pre-Emption Group that represent the interests of shareholders in relation to such authorities. Resolution 19 is a special resolution to authorize the company to purchase its own shares and to apply limits to this authority. Again, this is a renewal of a standing authority in place in the company. All these resolutions are being proposed at this meeting.
Now, moving on to the vote, I declare the poll open. Will those shareholders, proxy holders, and corporate representatives wishing to vote, please complete a poll card now and pass them to the company secretary. If any shareholder, proxy holder, or corporate representative wishes to vote and does not already have a poll card to do so, please raise your hand, and the company secretary will pass you a poll card for completion. I plan to close the poll shortly. If there are any other poll cards to be submitted, please pass those to the company secretary now. Thank you. There being no further poll cards to be submitted, the poll is now closed. Our company secretary and registrars will be counting the votes cast at this meeting.
The result of the poll will be available later today and will be announced to the London Stock Exchange as soon as it is practical. That concludes the business of the AGM. I now declare the Annual General Meeting closed. I will now hand over to Gavin Ferrar, our CEO, to give a presentation on the company. Thank you.
Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everybody, and those attending online. Our investor presentation is called Investing in the Future, and that is sort of the thrust of what Central Asia Metals is trying to do for you all as shareholders. A quick disclaimer, which I won't run through, but hopefully you'll get the time to read that at some point. A quick overview of the operations that we have at SASA. We've got SASA and Kounrad, which are really the key drivers of the business. These are the assets that are generating cash flow and underpinning all the activities that I'll talk about today. These are long-life assets with Kounrad, with a license out to 2034, and SASA with a mineral reserve that supports mining out to 2039. We have some longer-term opportunities in the portfolio as well in the form of CAML X and Aberdeen Minerals.
These are exploration assets, and I'll give you a little bit more detail on the activities there as well. We don't own these entirely. CAML X is an 80% subsidiary of ours, and Aberdeen Minerals is really an associated company where we've invested some money to acquire a share ownership of 28.4% with an option to increase that ownership at a future date. If we look at the overview of the business, as Nick said, we're looking to adopt the annual accounts today. Those annual accounts were reported upon in March this year. Very solid set of financial results with revenue of just shy of $215 million, EBITDA of $101.8 million at a margin of 47%, which is a really respectable margin for a mining company. Importantly, we generated free cash flow of $65.7 million.
It's that cash flow that underpins all of the activities in terms of investing in the business, but also shareholder returns, and we're very pleased that we were able to pay an GBP 0.18 dividend for the full year of 2024. All these operations that we spoke about, Kounrad is a copper operation. We produced about 13,500 tons of copper there at very good margins. It's a very low-cost asset, and we'll talk about the costs in a minute. SASA, we produced lead and zinc. We produced about 27,000 tons of lead, 18,500 tons of zinc, again at a respectable margin of 35% on that front. This was all done in a safe manner. We unfortunately had two what we call lost time injuries last year. These were fortunately not grave injuries, but did result in people missing days of work, so we classify them as lost time.
We take all of these injuries really seriously and work towards a zero-harm workplace. All of the learning that we take from those is implemented in future processes and protocols to make an even safer workplace for our staff. What are we producing? I said we produce copper, lead, and zinc. We have, and why do we do this? These are metals that support a sustainable future. Copper is essential for all of the electrical infrastructure around us and is going to be critical moving forward into the clean energy transition as well. Zinc is primarily used to coat steel via galvanizing, and any steel structures now, in order to extend their life and enhance their life, are subject to greater levels of galvanizing, so zinc demand, we believe, remains robust. Lead is mainly used in lead-acid batteries.
A lot of people think that EVs are going to make lead redundant, but a lot of internal combustion engine cars are still being produced for the whole life of what SASA is going to support, and EVs will also be using lead-acid batteries in future as well. Also important for energy storage, for renewables, so lead, whilst it's not as sexy as the other two minerals, certainly is a solid metal tree. Why should we invest in CAML X? Why should you invest in CAML? As I said, those EBITDA margins, 47% of the business, that's a high-margin business, and we're also committed to growth. That dividend of GBP 0.18 takes our total shareholder returns since we IPOed to 259%, which is a great result for a small mining company, and we've got a 13-year track record of paying those dividends.
If you look at that in terms of dollar metrics, we've raised $214 million from the markets since the IPO, and we've paid back via dividends alone $380 million to our shareholders. We also have an ambition to grow, and we're building a pipeline of projects to support that growth ambition. Kounrad is a slightly unique operation, and we've been operating there for 13 years. We irrigate these dumps, which you can see in that satellite image, with dilute sulfuric acid. That raffinate, as we call it, percolates through the dumps, collects the copper into the solution. We then pipe and pump that solution to an SXEW plant, and what that does is effectively plates copper from that solution into what we call cathodes. Those cathodes are ready directly to be distributed to the market, and we sell that at the mine gate.
In all, a fairly low-risk sort of marketing strategy there. Quite a technical metallurgical operation, but with 13 years of operation, we have now optimized that operation, and we have successfully in that period accessed a new area we call the Western Dumps back in 2017, and those are now reporting the majority of our production of about 55% of the copper. As I said before, we produced just under 13,500 tons of copper, and you can see from that histogram the copper production over the last few years has been fairly stable. What is interesting from this chart on the right-hand side is that the actual recovery, which is the solid line, is actually outperforming our initially sort of analyzed and theoretical forecast leach curves that we built for these leach blocks that we exploited at Kounrad.
All that means is now, when we say we've got a minimum of 85,000 tons remaining, that is on the initial plan, so there's a good chance that we might outperform there and also hence that potential life beyond that 2034 date that I mentioned earlier. I also mentioned that Kounrad is a very low-cost operation. Now, you'll have seen that there's no mining, no crushing, no grinding. We're just leaching those dumps, so that contributes to very eliminates a lot of costs that traditional mines will have. Also, Kazakhstan is a low-cost environment. We have very low electricity costs, and getting stuff in and out of Kazakhstan is also quite efficient and cheap. That margin of Kounrad's operational EBITDA margin is 73%, probably one of the highest you'll find in the copper-producing world. Our largest inputs are really payroll and reagents.
Inflation has affected both, but we also had a slightly lower tonnage of production when you compare 2023 to 2024, which contributed to a slight increase in costs there from $0.74 to $0.80, but $0.80 remains really at the lower end of the cost curve for copper producers. You can compare that to the current price of copper of around $4.30 per pound, and you can see why that margin is so attractive. If we move on to the SASA, SASA is much more traditional. This is an underground mine. We drill and blast, we muck out, we haul and hoist material to the surface where it goes into a processing plant where it's ground fine into a 74-micron product, which is then we extract the lead and zinc into what we call concentrates.
Those concentrates are transported to smelters all within the EU, so again, low-risk distribution to the market. Tailings is stored underground in a dry-stack tailings facility and also in a traditional wet tailings facility. I will talk about why we have three different tailings strategies as well. What we have done there is invested a lot of money in SASA over the last few years to modernize the mining methods. The consequence of that is we have actually extended the mine life to 2039. When we bought SASA back in 2017, the life of mine was up to 2034. We have now added five years to that, and given its geological nature, we expect small increases to that mine life moving forward. Just to remind you, we have produced 18,500 tons of zinc in that concentrate I mentioned and 26,600 tons of lead.
The production guidance for this year remains more or less in that range. We did fractionally miss guidance last year, which was disappointing, but that production was really affected by transition projects, which I'll talk about in a minute. Those transition projects meant we had to build and learn how to operate two new plants, plus also implement two new mining methods underground. As you can see from that table on the right-hand side, in 2023, we produced 805,000 tons. In 2024, 762,000 tons, which is slightly lower than we wanted to, but in the context of the challenges we faced there, not too bad. The real challenge now is to get back up to that 800,000-ton level that we've achieved in the past. Costs have been affected a little bit by inflation, salary increases, some of the reagents that we purchased as well.
Electricity prices have crept up a little bit, but are still at manageable levels. Effectively, the unit cost rise that we saw in 2023 to 2024 was really a function of that lower production. We have managed to also get some tailwinds for what we call our realization costs. Those are the charges that the smelters levy in terms of converting that concentrate into metal. That was a little bit of a tailwind, but in general, in dollar terms, costs are more or less flat. If we look at it in what we call C1, sort of zinc equivalent costs, it has gone up $ 0.10 , but that is mainly a function of the different prices of lead and zinc as we go forward. The other thing to note from this table is that we had the first full year of operation of our paste backfill plant.
That is one of the new plants that we've constructed, so that has added around $2.1 million to the cost base at SASA as well. What do these transition projects I mentioned entail? As I said, there are three elements. One is the paste backfill plant. We've had a full year of operation in 2024, and we've put around one third of our tailings back underground during 2024, which is a really good result, and it's exactly what we wanted that plant to do. The dry-stack tailings plant, we've constructed a plant, and there is what we call an associated landform where we need to deposit the material. We've completed the initial phase of that landform and also completed the dry-stack tailings plant in the first quarter of this year.
What you can see in that photograph in the middle is the filter cake that we're now producing and we will be emplacing on the surface. The important thing about dry-stack is it doesn't increase the footprint of the mine, and we're actually emplacing this dry-stack filter cake on old historical tailings, which is a huge environmental and social advantage that we've created for ourselves there as well. The third element is what we call the central decline. That's really just a tunnel that goes down into the depths of the mine, bypassing the old tunnels, which are a lot more convoluted, and this makes the whole operation much more efficient. Trucks get up and down more quickly. We can drive bigger trucks up and down that decline, plus also we're getting people back and forth to their working places far more efficiently and quickly.
In terms of sustainability, it's something that Central Asia Metals has always taken seriously. So far, we've invested around $5.5 million into our local communities. That is via two foundations that we've established, and we set aside 0.5% of our revenue to finance those foundations. They support things like science, technology, education, culture, healthcare, and sport, anything that the local communities are interested in, and that provides them with a longer-term sort of benefit from having the mine on their doorstep. Other highlights from 2024, we did publish our fifth annual sustainability report, which again, I think we're leaders as a small mining company in doing that. We've reduced our scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 44%. We have a target of reducing it by 50% by 2030.
have implemented a new set of what we call golden rules for safety at both sites, and importantly, we achieved what is called, we have achieved conformance with the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, which is a voluntary initiative and puts us in line with the best industry practices for managing all of our tailings going forward. Getting on to the other key part of our investment strategy, this is around growth. What are we looking for? I think ideally, we want to populate that gap between the sort of set of assets we have right now. We have those two operating assets. We have the two longer-term opportunities. What are we looking for? We are looking for larger, either in-production or near-term production acquisitions that will enhance the scale of the business, increase our production, and diversify the production base. Where are we looking?
Primarily the European time zone from a management perspective. It's a lot easier. Kazakhstan, we've got a lot of experience there, so that is the only sort of Central Asian region that we are looking for opportunities within. The focus is really on the base metals that we're with. I think we like to stick to our niche and we know what we know, but more importantly for the shareholders here, the key thing is it's got to be accretive to earnings over time and have no impact on our sustainability strategy. We can afford these things because we've got significant borrowing capacity, but we also don't want to stretch that balance sheet too far, so affordability is another key metric that we look at when we assess any opportunities. I hinted at the two long-term growth assets earlier, Aberdeen Minerals.
We're searching for copper and nickel up in Scotland, the Arthrath project. We've got some very encouraging drilling results in 2024. That has guided us to drill in 2025. I think that program has just started a couple of weeks ago, actually, and we're looking really forward to getting those results out there. That will allow us to make a decision about whether or not to exercise the warrant we've got, which will increase our ownership up to just under 40% of that company. CAML X is at a lot earlier stage. No discoveries made yet, but we do have four licenses, and we've got field programs underway now, mainly surface exploration programs, geophysics, geochemistry, and geological mapping, with the hopes that we'll be setting up some drill targets over the next two years or so.
Just to give you an idea of how active we've been here in this business development sort of effort that we make, we reviewed 37 opportunities in 2024, signed 13 confidentiality agreements, and undertook six site visits. Now, when we're doing site visits, that means we're generally hiring third-party consultants to help us assess these things, and we actually moved to a couple of, I think it was three offices, three or four offices last year. Unfortunately, couldn't consummate a deal. We just want to reassure you that we are remaining disciplined in that approach. What's the outlook for the next year and in the future? For 2025, production guidance is unchanged from the previous years. We are transitioning to those paste backfill mining techniques. Underground, as I mentioned, we've got two new techniques, longhole stoping, cut and fill.
That enhances the life of the ore body, makes it a lot safer, and also sort of makes for much more efficient extraction of that ore body. The ramp-up of our dry-stack tailings plant, we've just started emplacing tailings onto the dry-stack landform, and that's going to become a key to our sort of longevity of that mine in the future. In terms of capital allocation, our priorities remain to the shareholders, looking at investing in business development as long as these things are accretive, hence the discipline that we apply there, advancing those long-term exploration projects, and continuing that dividend payment. A GBP 9 dividend is payable on the 20th of May, and the dividend policy remains at 30%-50% of free cash flow. We have a flexible balance sheet, but we remain in a very strong financial position.
We're debt-free, and at the end of 2024, we had $67.6 million in the bank, so the company is in robust form and looking for good opportunities in the future. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much indeed. That concludes the formal part of the presentation. May we take questions from the room, and then we'll move to those online? Yes, if I may just hand you—
Yes, Monica Redm, shareholder. I've been coming to the meetings something like 10 years. I purchased it way north of GBP 250 , so I'm down nearly 50%. The dividend does not cover it by any stretch of the imagination. I'm prepared to accept 50% of the dividend as a return of capital, in effect, but we're not going anywhere. I would appreciate a bit more activity in the search for new developments.
You've got to get some money in without taking on debt. As a matter of curiosity, where does the product you sell at the gate in Kazakhstan actually go? Are you selling to Russia, China?
I'll answer the last question first. The product, we sell it to a trader, so the title passes at the mine gate, but the product goes to Turkey, to a wire manufacturer in Turkey. The only effect that we've had through the conflict, the Ukraine conflict, is we've had to redirect—not us, but our trading partner, Trafigura—has had to redirect the route that it goes to Turkey. It no longer goes via Russia, which it did in the past. It goes via the Caspian Sea, across Azerbaijan, Georgia, and into Turkey that way.
We have sold a small parcel to China in the past, but actually, it is a lot cheaper just to send it via road through—
I think being in Georgia and Armenia, I do not recommend the roads. Your lorry drivers must be marvelous or it goes on trains and needs a lot of tunnels.
Yeah.
In terms of—sorry, just to answer your other question, as I said, we are very active on the business development front. There were 37 opportunities reviewed last year. We are disappointed that we were not able to convert there, but we do consider that growth aspect of the business absolutely key to our strategic objectives.
Have you found any developments possibly in somewhere like Uzbekistan, or is the government not very favorable?
Look, I think we know Kazakhstan really well, so we are going to stick with that region. We have got a good team there.
We understand the geology. We've got a team that spans all the way from early-stage geological exploration through to construction and operations. That is where we've got a real advantage, and that is where we'll continue to focus.
There's been a lot of chemical research on the sulfides problem. Are you involved in this at all?
We are not involved in it directly, but we do monitor these new technologies because they would be potentially very advantageous to us. A lot of them are focusing on a copper mineral called chalcopyrite, which is the most common sulfide mineral that's been exploited in mining so far. Unfortunately, we're not blessed with a huge amount of chalcopyrite in the dumps, but if we do come across a technology that will work and we have in the past tested these things and will continue to do so, then we'd be happy to exploit it.
Have you looked at some of these strategic minerals that are coming up and up and up, especially with space technology and matters related?
I’d say copper is a pretty strategic mineral, so we continue to look for those, but if you’re talking about some of the rare earths and titaniums and various other things, look, we thought it would be irresponsible if we didn’t investigate those markets, but in doing so, we discovered the limits of our technical knowledge. I think what we’re really good at is underground mining, open-pit mining, heap leach, and processing these things via SXEW, metallurgical processes, SXEW, and drop rotation of base metals. That’s what we can—that’s where our skill set is. If we went into those other things, we’d be hiring teams with different skill sets to what we have.
I have to decide when I'm going to sell the shares.
Thank you. Are there any other questions in the room? If not, Louise, I'll hand over to you for any online.
Sure. Yeah. Okay. We have still got some questions on the platform. The first one from Simon. He's saying that in our 2024 results presentation, management said we were going to rely on our cash balance, ongoing cash flow from our existing assets, and debt. Could the board confirm that indeed no new shares will be issued for the purpose of acquiring new assets?
Look, yeah, I think a lot depends on what the shape of a transaction would be. Clearly, we've got some decent borrowing capacity with an EBITDA of $100 million. I think the board is more or less comfortable at around maximum two times net debt EBITDA.
That suggests that we could raise $200 million in debt. If the acquisition was larger, we may tap the markets, but I think it also depends on whether or not this thing is an RTO or not. It gets complicated quite quickly, but with the larger transactions, we would always require a shareholder vote. As part of that process, we've offered the ability of our shareholders to finance the deal or part-finance the deal as well. One of the good things about debt is that leverage does help create that accretion to shareholders, and we're always concerned with dilution. All the analysis goes through every line of the P&L effectively to make sure that we're accretive on all of those lines. Even if we are going to issue equity, there will be definite accretion available to all of the existing shareholders.
Next question is from Peter. He is saying, "With copper demand closely tied to electrification trends, how does CAML view the copper price outlook for 2025 and 2026, and how could this influence your operational priorities?"
Peter, thanks for the question. I think none of us are absolute authorities or experts on the copper market, but we believe that the long-term demand for copper is robust. The volatility in between over the next year, who knows? I think what our engineers globally have been able to do is actually bring new supply to the market to meet the demand. When the copper prices get really high, we do see a certain amount of thrifting and some substitution.
What we generally do is just take what we call street consensus, which is the median of what all of the copper analysts do, and we use that in our budgeting and planning going forward. In terms of Kounrad, as I said earlier, we've really optimized that asset, and I think generating more copper quickly actually comes with more risk than we'd like to bear. I think at the moment, we're just keeping that operation as stable as we can, and we're lucky that we're low-cost, so we're going to make profits regardless of what the copper price does.
The next question is from Simon, which I can probably help with.
Would the board, in order to keep the share count stable, consider having the company buy back the shares issued for employee compensation?" The simple answer to that is yes, we would, and we do. In fact, we recently changed our accounting policy such that we typically cash settle more than equity settle loads. When we come to looking at employee option exercises, we take things into account such as the prevailing share price versus the value that we see in the business and any dilution that would come in that regard, the cash position that we have, the fact that we've got no debt, and we take all that into account when we come to make our decision. Yes, quite frequently in the recent past, we have cash settled rather than equity settled. Our next question is, sorry, give me one second.
Our next question, sorry, is from Stoyan, who asks, "If we have any plans to manage the volatility or constant price increase of electricity price in North Macedonia and the regional market by investing in solar power plants in North Macedonia?"
Yeah, thanks for the question, Stoyan. I think the electricity price in North Macedonia is actually priced off an exchange in Hungary, and it is heavily tied to the European electricity prices. We have seen a little bit of volatility there, but the prices that we're receiving right now are, well, the prices that we're paying right now, at least, are acceptable. If we got a contract in at a slightly lower price than where we are, we might consider locking it in, but at the moment, again, it's probably better to, sorry.
The prices that are available on a fixed rate are actually not attractive relative to what the spot prices are. I think that is partly a function of the volatility of those prices. We will be watching it carefully, and if we can fix at a decent rate, we may. The other question is solar. We have started some investigations into solar. It is very difficult to build a solar array at the SASA mine itself because of the topography there. It would be a case of maybe acquiring land further afield, building a solar array there, selling into the grid, and then buying back from the grid at some point. It is quite a complex situation, but it is something we have looked into.
Our next question is regarding, "Can the board explain how share options are aligned to shareholders?" I think that's a question really related to the share price performance in the recent past and in terms of the quantum of the share options which have been issued.
Sure. The whole package is very well sort of explained in the annual accounts, and I encourage you to go and have a look at it. What we receive is related to our salaries. It's a function of our salaries and the prevailing share price. The notional there is, I think it's one and a half times for directors, executive directors that we get in terms of that. If the share price is down, yes, we may receive more options, but that effectively aligns us more greatly with the shareholders and encourages us even more to get them up.
There are performance conditions involved with these things, and part of that, and part of the performance condition is the share price itself. So 75% of the vesting conditions to these options relates directly to the share price and total shareholder returns. If the share price does not perform well enough, then the number of options through the vesting period is actually reduced.
The final question I have got here is, "Any plans for share buybacks and smaller dividends?"
Look, capital allocation is always a big topic at our board discussions, and Nick can chime in if he likes here, but it is always something that we do discuss. At the moment, the dividend is actually slightly outside of policy. I think in the last count, it was 63% in cash overall rather than the 50% that the policy allows.
We believe that is still the most efficient way of returning capital to our shareholders. We have always got an eye on the share price, and if we do in future see an opportunity and more value in buying back shares, then we may do that. At the moment, the priority is that business development and preserving cash for that in the light of what we are trying to do with the business. We will keep with the dividend policy rather than the share buybacks.
Okay. That is all the questions that we have to answer today. I will hand back to Nick for any closing comments for the AGM.
I want to thank the executive management of the company. We have had a very successful financial year last year, 2024. We have got a very exciting year ahead of us. We have got lots of capital programs that are finishing off at SASA.
I think for the shareholders, stick with us. It's going to be interesting. We're going to continue to try and add value through our existing operations, and hopefully, something new will come along that everybody will support us in our endeavors. With that, I'd like to finish the meeting. Thank you.
Thank you very much indeed to the board of Central Asia Metals, and for those online, we'll now redirect you for your feedback. Good morning.