Okay, we'll kick it off now. Good morning, everybody. On behalf of Burgundy Diamond Mines and Bell Potter Securities, welcome to the Burgundy Diamond Mines Q1 2025 Conference call. My name is Stuart Howe, Resources Analyst at Bell Potter, and I will host today's call. From Burgundy, we have CEO and Managing Director Kim Truter and Chief Financial Officer Brad Baylis. The format for today's call is that management will take us through a presentation. This will be followed by a Q&A session, which I will chair, so please enter your questions in the Zoom platform. After the presentation, I'll read out your name, affiliation, and the question. Today's call is being recorded, and before we get started, I want to draw your attention to the important notice and disclaimer on slides two and three of today's presentation. Kim, Brad, over to you.
Thank you, Stuart. Good morning, afternoon, evening, everyone, wherever you are. Thank you for joining us, and thanks, Brad, for being with me. We'll do our usual, where Brad and I talk to different slides, and then obviously at the end, we'll take as many questions as you've got. We have kept it quite simple this time around, and I guess before we launch into it, it's probably fair to say that this last quarter has been quite a tough quarter for us, and we'll walk you through some of the reasons why the quarter has been quite tough for us operationally and, as a result, probably financially. We'll just go straight through into the operational update, and then we'll follow up that with a financial update. You can see on the screen the key operating metrics, which we always normally take you through.
Obviously, we're highlighting this last quarter. You can see generally every single production metric has been down for the quarter, with the exception of the grade. I'll explain why that's the case shortly. This is really all to do with the transition from the Sable Open Pit to Point Lake, which, to be frank, hasn't gone quite as well as we would have liked. The main issue with that transition is that as we shifted the big mining gear across from Sable to Point Lake and we got down into the bottom of the pit as we were trying to get into the kimberlite ore itself, we really struggled with the remnants of the lake that had been pumped out, and the ore itself was very, very wet and muddy.
Just generally, the mining conditions were very, very tough as we had to work through very, very muddy conditions, and the big equipment did not like that whatsoever, as you can imagine. We struggled with equipment getting stuck and that kind of thing. The real breakthrough happened towards the end of the quarter where we managed to bring in some smaller contractor equipment on a sort of wet-hire basis, and that small equipment was the breakthrough. It helped us move some of that muddy material. Once we could get good running conditions for the big gear, we started hitting our straps again. The good news is that we took a lot of pain in the first quarter, but we have turned the corner and we have set Q2 up quite nicely. You should see a big recovery in production and carats into Q2.
You can see the metrics on the screen. If you do a sort of a quarter-by-quarter comparison, you can see obviously the difference in waste between this quarter and the prior quarter a year ago. Did not move as much waste in Q1 compared to Q4 last year. Some of it is because of those muddy conditions, but the thing that really suffered was the ore delivery. We did try to compensate by bringing more Misery underground ore into the mix, and that is why the grade jumped up, because the Misery pipe is much richer, much higher grade than Point Lake. You can see that is why the grade spiked to 1.4 carats per tonne as we were favoring Misery production during the quarter to try and compensate for Point Lake. Misery itself did not fire on all cylinders.
We did struggle a bit with the ore body freezing up, especially in the end of the last quarter. The ore in Misery was not flowing quite as nicely as we would like either. We had a bit of a double whammy there. As I said, just to reassure you, we have worked through both of those issues. Misery is now firing on all cylinders, and Point Lake is also firing on all cylinders, so the carats will be flowing into Q2. That is just a bit of an overview of how the operation fared in Q1. You can see as Brad takes you through these metrics, some of that played straight into these metrics. Over to you, Brad.
Yeah, thanks, Kim. Yeah, like Kim said, challenging quarter operationally, which really has carried itself over into the selling and financial results. Yeah, down on carats sold quarter- to- quarter, and the revenue per carat down quite a bit. The big driver for the revenue per carat being down is we had probably between 300,000-400,000 very low-value, low-quality carats that we carried over from 2024 that sold in the first quarter. That really brought down our revenue per carat. Obviously, our total revenue is down just for the fact that because we sold the lower quality carats, but we also had just overall less carats to sell, brought down our revenue, $73 million versus $118 million a year ago. We are seeing that.
The good news, I guess, from a selling perspective is we did see we definitely saw, especially in the February and the March sales, we did see some good like-for-like price improvements, anywhere from between 8-10% across the board. That was very good to see. Obviously, now as we move into April and into the second quarter, we do have some uncertainty given the tariffs. I'm still trying to get our hands around what does that all mean and what's going to be the impact. Hopefully, it kind of sorts itself out here in the short term. Yeah, and then obviously that with lower revenue translates into weaker financial results. For the quarter, just over $6 million adjusted EBITDA, so down quite a bit from a year ago.
If we take a look quickly at our balance sheet, some of the big changes, PP&E is up quite a bit, and that is just due to the capitalization of the Point Lake pre-strip and a little bit of equipment, but mainly the Point Lake pre-strip. Diamond inventories down again. That is largely due to the fact that we just have not been recovering the carats that we normally do. That is kind of dragging our inventory down. Our kind of normal level would be between 70 and 90 million. We are definitely below where our normal inventory would be. As Kim mentioned, as our production starts to stabilize and starts to improve, we should start to build up that diamond inventory again. Hopefully, by late Q2 or late Q3, we get back to where we need to be.
On the cash side, we had the one-time cash benefit associated with the fuel offtake arrangement with Quarry Bank. This was a great deal for us, and we'll look to kind of replicate this in the future. It allows us to essentially, instead of pre-buying all of our fuel, purchase fuel as we use it. One of the big challenges with operating in the Arctic is the fact that you can only bring in materials one time a year. We have a huge amount of cash going out the door in Q1, Q2 that we do not actually use those supplies for quite some time. To be able to spread that expenditure over the year is very helpful for us. Yeah, obviously, everything kind of translates down into the net debt. Not where we want it to be.
When we take our net debt, including diamond inventories, yeah, it's a million dollars. Yeah, as we start to rebuild our inventory, and then hopefully that should translate into a better cash position, we should start to see that kind of reverse its trend as we move through the year. On the cash side, just a quick snapshot of where the cash went for the quarter. We ended the year at $ 25 million, and we ended the quarter just under $ 39 million. The big drivers for cash, we brought in $ 37 million associated with the fuel offtake arrangement. We spent quite a bit on the Point Lake pre-stripping. Like Kim alluded to, it took longer than what we were anticipating. A fairly large chunk of capital, 35 million, just associated with the Point Lake pre-strip.
The rest, the other $8 million of capital, is just our regular sustaining capital. Yeah, so those are kind of the main changes in cash for the quarter.
Thanks, Brad. Let's move on to some of the more positive topics, which is what's happening over at Misery and Point Lake. If I start with Misery, I think I just want to highlight a few really important points here. Misery grade is around about Three carats per tonne, which in diamond parlance is very high grade. The Misery production is basically the cornerstone of our production, and it provides around about 60% of our production comes from Misery in terms of carats. It is such an important little operation. We really focus some of the diamond drilling during Q1 to keep going deeper in Misery, which is aimed at obviously expanding the life of that Misery mine and their resource base. I think we've told you previously that we're trying to extend the Misery mine all the way out to 2030. That's our target.
Because of that, we shifted a lot of our focus during the quarter from the southwest extension, which is the extension of Misery up at the higher levels. We focused a bit more on what we call the Misery main pipe, which extends at depth. Even though we still did a bit of drilling in the southwest extension, we started doing some more drilling in the main pipe as well. We have also been doing some chip sampling of the draw points at what we call the 1950 level, which is one of our working levels. You use micro diamond analysis to enhance your knowledge of the pipe. So far, all of the work is showing that Misery extends at depth. It also seems to be showing that the pipe is not narrowing.
It's actually extending in sort of, let's call it a straight line as it goes down. The grades are looking pretty good as well. Our confidence in Misery is extremely high. Obviously, that'll play into the Burgundy Diamond Mines Plan that we'll be releasing in a few months' time. There are some of the other kind of reminders there just about some of the characteristics of Misery. Extremely low capital intensity. We really don't have a lot of capital that we need to spend. We just basically extend the decline down and keep following the pipe as we go. Fantastic contributor, Misery pipe. Point Lake, there's quite a nice photograph for you all. You can actually see quite clearly how we're now sitting right on top of the kimberlite pipe. You can see clear as day on that photograph.
Those dark areas where you're seeing some of the excavators and the diggers located, that's Kimberlite. You can see the dark material. For those of you that might have seen our previous photograph we showed you all, you can see how much deeper that pit is moving. It's a real hive of activity. Very significant progress over the quarter, getting rid of that mud and what we call the till, which is the rock that sits over the top of the Kimberlite pipe. Managed to crack that nut during the quarter. The other thing we'll be doing in a few weeks' time is we're going to be taking a big bulk sample. Basically a dedicated sample from that Point Lake main pipe. We'll be feeding that through the process plant for about a week to 10 days.
What that'll do is it'll give us a very, very good handle on not only the grade of the Point Lake pipe, but more importantly, the value of the carats. At the moment, we have a relatively small sample. The bulk sample will give us a hell of a lot more confidence about the value of the carats. The other benefit of doing that is if the value of those carats comes back higher than we've currently got in our model, then there's potential for that pipe or the actual pit size to be made a little bit bigger with very little change in strip ratio. That could add about 50% to the mine life of Point Lake. That bulk sample is a very important piece of work. As I say, we'll be mining it and processing it in May.
We will have the numbers in terms of the quality and the value per carat. We will have those in June, and we will probably be able to share it with you in the Q2 update. The other thing we have spoken about previously is as we shifted all the people and the equipment across to Point Lake, there has been a big focus on making sure we capture the productivity gains by having the workforce all co-located with Misery. We have definitely been achieving that. We have gained over an hour a day of effective shift time because we do not have to travel so far, and the workforce is located right close to the pipe. We have also improved our payload quite significantly. A lot of our operating metrics have improved. As a consequence, our cost per tonne has gone down.
All of those are very good things, and they are things that you would have been expecting us to do as we have shifted across. I mean, just some of those reminders there about the size of the resource and how we are using the Misery camp just a couple of days away. That is a bit of an overview of the Point Lake mine. If we shift our focus to talk about the rest of the year and how 2025 will shape up, I will just start at the top there. Brad has mentioned some of this already, but we kind of cover three topics here. If we look at the market, as Brad mentioned, we saw some quite nice green shoots emerging in February and March sales, as Brad mentioned.
We were seeing price per carat for some of our sectors of diamonds up 8-10% from prior sales. We got off to a whopping start. Unfortunately, the US tariffs have brought uncertainty back into the diamond sector. I think the diamond sector, like many other industries, is still trying to wrap their heads around exactly what the tariffs will do. It has created a bit of uncertainty. Any uncertainty is never good when you're obviously selling diamonds. We will have to see how that plays out during Q2. Just as a reminder, of course, the US still is one of the biggest single markets for diamond jewellery, well over 40%, in fact, approaching 50%. The US market is very, very important to us.
Just a reminder, though, that we still firmly believe in the long-term thesis that strong diamond prices will be maintained. We sometimes refer you all to the report that comes out monthly by Paul Zimnisky. I see he's maintained his positive outlook for diamond prices over the next five years in his latest report, which is good to see. On the operations, I've already mentioned some of those efficiencies that we were realizing as we've co-located the workforce next to Misery. I've spoken about that bulk sample. The other thing is, and this is very important, I mentioned how Misery is the cornerstone of our production. We've started lifting the production rate out of Misery. In fact, in the last week, we've achieved two of the highest tonnages we've ever achieved out of Misery, well over 4,000 tonnes per day.
The way we've achieved that is we've introduced, at the moment, two larger underground haul trucks. These are 45-tonne haul trucks, whereas prior to that, we used to run 30-tonne haul trucks. We've now got two more trucks and 50% more capacity in those trucks. We've got a third one that's coming online at the end of May. We will then have three of those bigger trucks. That has immediately lifted our underground production capacity. We've also got another production drill rig that's already come up the winter road. It's sitting on site. We're just retrofitting that drill, changing the voltage of the drill to match our site voltage. That will give us more production drilling capacity so we can drill up into the old open pit and increase our throughput from the draw points.
The final point there is that we're heading towards our first mine plan release that's been in development for quite a while now. That'll come out at the end of Q2. We'll be quite excited to share that with all of you. Of course, we'll follow that up with a longer-term mine plan later on in the year. Finally, obviously, big focus on making sure we've got financial flexibility in 2025. We've shared with you previously the establishment of that environmental trust fund, which gives us tax rebate or tax offsetting capability. We've landed the fuel offtake agreement that Brad was talking about. We're still focusing on refinancing our 2L loan and making sure that we've got enough liquidity. Lots happening in that front. I'll just move to some of those liquidity things we've been talking about.
The way we've configured the slide, you can see the things we've already achieved, we've ticked. Obviously, huge focus on making sure that all of our leaders are very focused on cash management and working capital management. I can reassure you all that we've got a very focused leadership team on both of those tracks. We've managed to cement now doubling the royalty valuations. That plays into being able to export diamonds out of Canada twice the number of times, moving from 10 times to 20 times, which in theory means that we could hold 20 sales a year if we wanted to. The real point is it gives us lots of flexibility to sell more often and then shorten that diamond pipeline that Brad spoke about. There's the Macquarie fuel deal.
You might recall we actually communicated that we had landed a $45 million fuel deal. That reduced slightly because with some hedging that we put in place to make sure we had a hedging arrangement. That is why the number came down slightly to $39 million. Just those last two points, we are still in the process of making sure we've got non-dilutive funding alternatives up our sleeve to ensure liquidity. We've spoken about things like pre-sales and various opportunities to make sure that our liquidity remains strong. As we progress through the year, we're still focused on establishing a refinancing arrangement so we can replace the existing 2L loan in a non-dilutive way. Just a reminder that that 2L loan matures in June 2026. That is why we're very focused on making sure we've got a refinancing option to replace that 2L loan.
That's it in a nutshell, everyone. I'll stop there, Stuart, and then maybe hand back to you for Q&A.
Great. Thanks, Kim and Brad. I'll kick off the questions just around CY25 guidance. There's obviously been a delay in issuing that. I'm just wondering what the key moving factors are. I guess it's mostly to do with the bulk sample at Point Lake. Perhaps just elaborate a little bit on what you're looking to see before you can put out some guidance.
Yeah, that's correct, Stuart. I mean, obviously, as we were moving through Q1 and we were aware of some of those difficulties, we didn't want to put out guidance when we weren't 100% sure how Q1 was going to play out. Now that we've moved through some of those issues in Point Lake and we've got Misery firing, our confidence has returned.
Secondly, that bulk sample, as you mentioned, is another piece of the puzzle. By the middle of June, we should have all the pieces of the puzzle, and then we'll provide guidance. I noticed that some of the feed this quarter has been, or the last quarter has been from the Fox stockpile. What have you learned from bleeding that into the blend? Yeah, thanks for asking that, Stuart. We took the opportunity while we were struggling to keep the plant full to feed some of the Fox low-grade stockpile directly into the plant. I just want to qualify. There are actually two parts to that low-grade stockpile. There is a very low-grade portion and then a low-grade portion. Anyway, we fed the low-grade portion directly into the plant and actually recovered some quite nice stones.
They looked very much like the Fox stones that had been recovered previously by BHP. Those Fox stones are very high-value stones. They are about four times the value of any other of our other pipes. We did successfully recover those stones. It confirmed that the colors and the sizes and the quality looked pretty good. Yeah, so far looking quite nice, Stuart. As the year plays out, we'll more than likely progress the processing solution that allows us to upgrade that low-grade in the field before we send it to the plant. We'll progress that as we go through the year. We'll probably provide more information on that low-grade processing arrangement when we do the mine plan update.
Great. Question from Mark Millican online. It was a question I was going to ask as well.
It relates to, I guess, capital and Point Lake pre-stripping. I noticed that in the quarter, you mentioned that the development of benches and ramps is ongoing there. Obviously, $36 million spent in the first quarter on capital for Point Lake. Can you give us any guidance on how that moves into this quarter?
I do not think, I mean, obviously, the pre-strip activity will reduce. In Q2, we will not be moving as much waste. Obviously, some of that waste movement was a bit front-end loaded in Point Lake. We will see an improvement there. We will start getting some of the benefits of those productivity and cost reduction things that I spoke about. Obviously, as our volume starts picking up, our denominator gets bigger. Our dollar per carat will be going down.
In general terms, our dollar per carat cost in Q2 will be a hell of a lot better than Q1. We're trying to, even with Point Lake, we are trying to make sure that as we drive the cost down in Point Lake, we try to make sure that even if the bulk sample comes back with a lower grade, we can still make Point Lake work. We're pretty confident that under any scenario, Point Lake would still be profitable, Stuart. That's our plan then, of course. With Misery being the cornerstone, as long as Point Lake is not detracting, as long as it's making money, we would keep doing it.
I guess to try and pin you a bit more on that, the Q2 CapEx there, it will be lower than in Q1?
Yeah, more than likely.
Most of it's that capitalized waste movement. Yes.
Yep. Great. What's your understanding of those at the Point Lake grade at the moment? Another question from Mike. Can you tell us about anticipated value, any fancy yellows or high-quality larger stones anticipated there?
Yeah, still a bit early to answer that question, definitely, Mike. The grade looks okay. The grade looks like it's consistent with the model. I think it's a bit too early to talk about the value per carat because we haven't really been able to isolate the Point Lake stones separately. That's the benefit of that bulk sample.
Just as a reminder, the bulk sample, not only are you doing it as a totally independent activity in the process plant, but we'll also be sorting those in India the way we normally sort them as a totally separate sorting arrangement. We can value them properly once they've been sorted. I do not think we can fully answer the value, the price per carat question until June.
Perhaps let's move on to Misery. You noticed going deeper versus the southwest extension and the deeper opportunity to take you out to 2030. Is the southwest extension still an option to move the life of the project beyond this?
I think the, I mean, some of the drilling we did in the southwest extension was a little bit disappointing.
We were hoping that the value, that the grade was going to be similar to the Misery main pipe. That was not the case. I think it is probably fair to say we have de-emphasized the southwest extension a little bit, and we have prioritized Misery Deep. Now, that does not mean that the south extension will not play a role. It was always going to play a role later on in Misery's life. We never, ever intended Misery Southwest extension to compete with the Misery Deep. We were hoping it would top up some of the production in the later years. I think it is probably fair to say that the southwest extension has been a little bit deprioritized. We have shifted some of our focus to Misery Deep, but we have also been focusing more closely on Fox and making sure that we start having a really close look at Fox.
Just watch the space because we've got some, we'll be talking about Fox when we do the Q2 update. I guess just looking at the quarters going forward, is it fair to say that Q2, the one we're in at the moment, will be another sort of transition quarter, hopefully a bit stronger than the one we've just been through, and then things will normalise in the third and fourth quarter? Yeah, look, I mean, I think Q2 is shaping up. When you look at the run rate, especially as we head towards the end of May and June, Q2 will be a much stronger quarter, certainly much stronger than Q1. Probably won't be at full capacity because we're building up that inventory, as Brad said, during the quarter, but we'll set ourselves up for success in Q3 for sure.
Great. There is a question from anonymous attendee.
You get this all the time, so I'll ask it now as well. Any feedback and trends from end users around, I guess, customers' preferences between natural and lab-grown diamonds?
Yeah, I think we'll tag team on this answer. Brad will have a view, and I'll have a view. I think what we've said before, and I'll just repeat what we've said before. If you're talking about high-end diamonds, very expensive diamonds, we are not in this, we're not even competing. If someone's going to be buying a $1 million yellow stone, which Misery regularly produces, they are not in the market to buy lab-grown diamonds. Where lab-grown does compete with natural stones is in the lower price point diamonds. We have been talking about a one-carat engagement ring. We do sometimes go head-to-head with lab-grown.
People are not spending big money on lab-grown, as you can imagine. Just a reminder that lab-grown has dropped significantly in value. You can now buy a five-carat lab-grown diamond for whatever you can buy it for, $5,000. People are doing that. Generally, if people are buying lab-grown, they are buying much bigger stones so they can show off a bigger stone on their finger. In the high end, we are not competing at all. Anyway, I will let Brad also chip in.
I think it depends on what customers are looking for. Like Kim said, I think there is still a bit of head-to-head going on in the bridal space. We are starting to see some more separation as time continues. The thing is, I think customers are starting to get educated.
If they want a manufactured product and they're fine with that, then they would buy lab-grown. If they want something that's rare, they'll go for the natural diamond, right? I think it's, unfortunately, for the last number of years, the natural business has not done a great job of kind of marketing itself. They've let the lab-grown sell a narrative that actually isn't true. Really, the lab-grown business was selling a narrative that it's a sustainable, it's a green alternative, which is complete rubbish. It's actually the opposite. As time goes on, I think that that narrative and the proper marketing will happen. That separation between lab and natural will continue to extend. Prices for lab will continue to drop. Prices for natural will continue to rise as they are. The rarity is worth something.
Yeah, it's just going to take some time, but I do see the trends are changing.
Do you think the recent drop in your realised sales price was, I guess, symptomatic of some of those lower quality stones that were pulled out of inventory, sold into those markets which are more competitive with lab-grown diamonds?
To be honest, Stuart, I think the lower quality diamonds, I mean, we're talking about quite small stones. I'm not sure that was because of lab-grown. That's just the market for those stones. When you look at the dollar per carat basis, they didn't perform badly. It's just that we had too many of them.
Yeah. Right. Obviously, I noted as well that you're seeing, I guess, on a normalised basis, some price recovery in the last couple of months of the quarter, which is positive. Yeah.
I mean, if any of you do look at that Paul Zimnisky report, one thing that's quite interesting is that in his report, he has a graphic which shows the index price of polished diamonds versus the index price of rough diamonds. For the first time, the index price of polished diamonds has actually crossed over the rough diamond index price. In other words, it would suggest that the retail side, the retail price of polished diamonds has started increasing. That's a really good sign because as that increases, it starts pulling through the rough diamond price, which is very good.
Great. Just pointing to cash flows, obviously, in the absence of the diesel agreement, things would have been very tough indeed.
I'm just, how confident are you around the balance sheet in the absence of further, I guess, support from other loans or other non-dilutive forms that you mentioned earlier? Do you have enough confidence in your balance sheet the way it is at the moment?
I think it can be stronger, to be honest. That's why we're very focused on making sure that it's strong enough. Just as a reminder, when we acquired Ekati, we deliberately loaded up the balance sheet with quite a lot of cash to make sure that we were always carrying $30 million-$40 million of cash on our balance sheet. That's still what our target needs to be. I think the fair answer is, Stuart, we will make sure that we've got enough liquidity to keep that sort of buffer.
This business does burn cash really quickly because of being in the Arctic Circle. It is important that we do have a buffer. I think there is a very high likelihood that it will have several financial solutions to ensure that we have that sort of cash buffer in place.
I guess historically, the June and September quarters are not high CapEx quarters or not high cash outflow quarters with the winter road purchase already being completed. Hopefully, you have got most of that Point Lake CapEx behind you. That is right.
The summer months are always your best months. As we now come out of winter, slowly working out of winter, just as a reminder, it is plus 15 down where we are, and it is minus 20 up in the Northwest Territories still. It is still pretty cold.
As we head into the summer months, that's typically our most productive months, and that's when we make the most money, typically.
Great. Another question from Mike around how the search is going for a new CEO. I guess that's typically done at a board level, but happy for you to provide some comments, Kim.
Look, I'm not directly involved in that. As you know, Jeremy King has kindly offered to play the role of interim CEO. Jeremy actually came across to Calgary about 10 days ago already. He's already in Calgary, and he's planning to be in Calgary for many months ahead. Him and I are working very closely together as he comes up to speed. I have to admit that Jeremy is a real, real fast learner. He's got the benefit of being a director. He's got a lot of knowledge of Burgundy already.
As a reminder, Jeremy's been on the board of Burgundy for a long time. He's got a lot of background about Burgundy. The only thing he's just learning about, and he's learning really fast, is a little bit about how the Arctic operating environment works. I think what I'm trying to tell you is at the moment, we're in really good shape in terms of the handover between myself and Jeremy. As time marches on, the board will keep looking at whether Jeremy continues to play that role or whether we have someone else. We're in a very strong position there.
Kim, your hard manager replies, "Wish you all the best in your next steps as well." That's pretty much all. I know there's a couple of questions we might as well cover off on.
Yeah, I'll see the.
There's one from John around tariffs. Perhaps just talk about that one, Kim, if you can see that.
Oh, so there's two there. Okay. The tariff questions John asks, how do tariffs work if a diamond goes from Canada to India and then comes back out again? Look, as it currently stands, the tariff would be 10% basically on India because India would be the country exporting it back into the US. That is as it currently stands. What we're trying to work out is whether that 10% is going to hold true or not. Obviously, the big issue is the argument against that 10% tariff will be there's no alternative.
I mean, it's not like you can mine and produce diamonds in the US because there are no diamond mines in the US, and there's no manufacturing in the US, and there's really no way around it. It's not like some of the other industries. There is a strong case to be made that diamonds should be exempt. I think a lot of the retail stores that operate in the US will put a lot of pressure on the political regime that it's actually a stupid idea to have tariffs on diamonds. I'm still hopeful that'll win through as common sense prevails. Thanks a lot.
Perhaps just on that marketing, diamond industry marketing efforts. I know you've previously used the Canada Mark, I guess, trademark. Perhaps talk a little bit about that.
I think there's questions more about just generally, what is the industry doing? I think it speaks a little bit to Brad's point about what is the natural diamond industry doing to promote natural diamonds versus lab-grown diamonds. Now, some of you might recall that De Beers made a commitment to spend a lot more money on that topic. Al Cook from De Beers has spoken about that a lot. I see that the Natural Diamond Council has been putting a lot of media out into the US, in particular, talking about this. I think the push has already started to promote natural diamonds differently. I still think there's an opportunity to do a little bit of what the lab-grown industry did by using social media and influences and all that modern stuff, and half of which I don't really understand.
There's probably still a bigger opportunity there. I think as the natural diamond industry gets behind that effort of De Beers in particular, I think you'll see a lot more marketing happening, especially in markets like the US.
Right. I'll just add to that. As part of the De Beers campaign, they also had a campaign with a partner in China. Actually, for the first time in three years, China has actually seen some positive growth in diamond demand. If China as a market can wake up, that's a major boost for the diamond industry. We are starting to see some improvement there, and we just hope to see that continue. I think that the De Beers marketing is starting to have an effect. Hopefully, others will also join the party.
It is not all a De Beers show, but others will join. As an industry, we will kind of push forward, and hopefully, things will improve.
Yeah. The other economy that is really worth keeping a watch on is obviously the Indian market. India consumes a lot of diamonds as well. If India increases their diamond consumption, that is a good thing. Of course, the Indian economy is doing quite well. Yeah, I think the way this is going to play out, it is a combination of the Indian economy, China, and of course, the US. That is really the magic formula.
Great. We might leave it there on behalf of Bell Potter. Kim and Brad, thank you very much for your time today. Kim, I am hoping we see you again on one of these calls, but best wishes if we do not. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call.
Thanks, Mike Millican, for asking the questions as well. Appreciate that. Thank you, everyone. We'll catch you next time. Thanks, Stuart. And thanks, everyone. Thanks, Stuart. Thanks.