Thank you very much, Nathan. Thank you to all of our listeners for joining us today to run through our March 2023 quarter report. I'm joined on the call by our Chief Financial Officer, Lee-Anne de Bruin , who's available to take any questions later in the course of this webinar. Today, we're taking a slightly different tack to what we've done in the past. For those of you who are watching this or listening to this with a screen, I'm gonna run through a brief presentation that summarizes the report. This was also released to the market this morning, for those of you who don't have access to a screen, you can follow the conversation on the written version.
Look, once again, in summary, it's been a very, very good quarter again for Perseus. This is becoming somewhat repetitive, which we like. We've had a very strong period of time and the company in a general statement, is in extremely good shape, not only just individually, but relative to our peers in the industry. Just running through the presentation, we have, of course, our normal cautionary statements which you'd be familiar with. Just focusing in on the operating and financial results first up. Gold production for the quarter was 130,275 ounces, which was very, very close to the previous quarter of 130,900 ounces.
The 50% of the production came from our Yaouré mine, about 41% came from Edikan, and the remaining 9% came from Sissingué. I hasten to point out that 100% of that production came from our West African mines. In other words, we're not at all leveraged to Sudan at this stage of the game in terms of our production. Pleasingly, the all-in site costs were down about 1% on where we were at the end of the December quarter. At $971 per ounce, we were below where we ended in December. Individually, Edikan and Yaouré did exceptionally well. Yaouré was $803 per ounce, Edikan was $1,067. Sissingué was slightly higher. It was around $1,458 an ounce, but that was expected given that...
In fact, actually, the Sissingué costs were substantially below what we were expecting, but that was a function of the work that was being done to open up the satellite deposits adjacent to the mine. As everybody knows, the gold market's been particularly strong in recent times. Our average selling price was $1,821 per ounce, which compared favorably to the $1,748 that we sold during the December quarter. This led to a cash margin of $850 per ounce. At Perseus, our focus is very much on this statistic. We are in the business of generating or maximizing our cash production. The fact that we're generating $850 per ounce for every ounce produced is an extremely pleasing thing for us.
I'm also very happy to say that the good performance in the March quarter has continued on into this current quarter. We have every expectation that come 30 June, we'll be announcing that our production for, and guidance for the June half year and the full financial year will be, we're well and truly within the guidance range that we have given to the market. For the half year, it was 230-260 thousand ounces at $1,000-$1,200 an ounce. You can see from the production this quarter that, you know, we're halfway through the top end of the production range and below the bottom end of the cost range. That's extremely pleasing. All three of the operations are running very, very well.
You know, I think the opportunity for continuing to achieve guidance is very much there. The thing about the strong operating performance, of course, is that that translates into very strong and improving financial metrics. I've already referred to the gold price, which has gone up 73% or $73 an ounce or 4% in the current period, and the margin that's up 11% to $850. What was extremely pleasing for us, as I said, we focus on generating cash flow. $111 million was generated nationally from the operations during the quarter, which represents about a 10% increase relative to the December quarter.
This has meant that at the end of March, we had $471 million of cash, net cash and bullion on the balance sheet. That was up $66 million or 16%, relative to the end of last year. That, that for us is an extremely important point, given that we do have ambitions in the, you know, to continue to grow our company, and I'll speak of that in a moment. Speaking of those ambitions, what we also did during the quarter, that was announced was to upsize our corporate debt facility. We, we have a facility now, undrawn facility, I should say, with capacity of up to $300 million, and that's an increase from $150 million that was in place previously.
Between the cash and bullion on the balance sheet and the undrawn line of credit, you can see that the company is in a very robust position financially and well and truly on track to be able to fund future growth and at the same time continue to return capital to our shareholders via the dividend policy that was established some time ago. Speaking of organic growth, this is something that, you know, we feel that organic growth is going to generate the best returns for our shareholders, and so we work fairly hard at trying to deliver growth through these means.
In terms of the studies that were conducted in this area during the quarter, they primarily focused on the Yaouré mine in Côte d'Ivoire, where we have been working on extending the reserve base inventory and the life of the mine at Yaouré through implementing an underground operation off the side of the CMA pit. That work has gone very well during the quarter, we do expect that during this current half year, we'll be releasing information around the updated resource and reserve. Not only that, but also putting out an updated life of mine plan for the Yaouré operation.
Simultaneously, we've also been drilling below the Yaouré open pit, trying to convert the inferred resource below that pit into measured and indicated, which can then be of course incorporated into life of mine plans once optimization has been done. A good deal of work has been done around the Yaouré operation and the results of that good work is going to be published in the current half year. In terms of exploration, our exploration team has been hard at it as usual, focusing on all three countries where we're present. There's a lot of work going on in Sudan around the GSS deposit, which is part of the Meyas Sand project.
I will, I'll talk about this in a little more detail in a moment, but certainly what we're doing there is quite a lot of work in terms of infill, resource infill drilling and sterilization drilling, but also doing the sorts of work that's needed to really understand the geological controls that are operating with that ore body, and refining the resource model that will then drive the mine plan. I mean, I think the geologists amongst us will know that, you know, the Nubian Shield structures are quite complicated and we need to understand them fully before we embark on anything more definitive. We're also doing some work in a regional sense, but not as much as perhaps we would do it later on once the mine gets up and running.
Certainly there is some work going on in that regional sense as well. I've already spoken about, Côte d'Ivoire. There is work, you know, going on, quite a lot of drilling work going on on the site, particularly looking to infill the gap in the drill pattern, further down dip on the, on the CMA structure, and that will then, the results of that will feed into the, into the, resource work that we're doing. Pleasingly, the results that we're getting from that drilling down to the 500 meters or so we're getting the sorts of widths and grades that we had seen previously, so it's consistent with our expectations.
As I said, also too, we've been working at the Yaouré pit and looking to upgrade the resource. Over in Ghana, we've been focusing our efforts on the three exploration licenses that were recently picked up. These three licenses lie adjacent to the existing plant, and certainly, we believe have terrific potential to provide us with further reserves to feed into the mill. Certainly, the Nkrasua project or deposit rather, which was discovered on the Agyakusu prospecting license, is already into our mine plan, but we believe that there are other targets that are certainly worth following up in coming quarters, and we've been working on all three of those license areas to establish just that.
From a development project development perspective, we are working very busily up at the Meyas Sand project, which is up in Northern Sudan. The Front-End Engineering and Design exercise is well advanced. Working with our engineering partners like Lycopodium, we believe that we will have a revised cost estimate available to us later this quarter, which will be, we believe will be fairly much in line with our expectations. As I mentioned, the resource drill out and sterilization drilling is well and truly in hand.
We have been working on pressure testing and modeling of the aquifer that's located about 80 km from the proposed mine site, and that work has given us a good deal of confidence that the life of mine water supply is there and available. As we've said in previous calls, the licenses associated with that water is tied into the mining license, so we have a guarantee of water for the life of the project, which is very, very important when you're operating in that part of the world. One of the other things we've been doing during the quarter is looking to find a suitable contractor to supply our hybrid renewable power supply to the mine site. We're getting very good responses from the market there, and that most likely will be part of the development plan going forward.
On the site itself, we've also been working on the development, site preparation work, so building a few of the roads that are going to be necessary, putting up the temporary camp, you know, assessing the route of the pipeline, excuse me, to the bore field, et cetera, et cetera. Importantly, we've also been fairly well tied up in procurement of certain construction and site capability assets that will be needed as the project goes forward. In doing that, we've been thoroughly testing the efficacy of the logistics systems that we have put in place, and very pleased to say that they're working very well. Where we sit at the moment, we would normally be seeking to take a final investment decision on the project later this year.
Certainly all the work that's been done during the March quarter, you know, is pushing us towards that target. It would be very remiss of me not to speak further on Sudan. This, those of you with a screen can see a photograph of the Meyas Sand Mine project, and you can see that there's an awful lot of sand there and an awful lot of nothing very much else. The relevance of that is that this project, the Meyas Sand Project, is located right in the north of Sudan. It's about 75 kilometers south of the border with Egypt and well over 1,000 kilometers north of Khartoum.
The relevance of that, of course, is that on the weekend, military conflict broke out between the regular army and a fairly influential militia group, and that conflict has been escalating in recent days. The point is that we are located, all of our assets are located well north. Just to put it in context, that's further, the 1,000 kilometers is further than the distance from London to Berlin, or about 1.5 times the distance from Sydney to Melbourne for Australian listeners. We're a long way away from that action. We do have a very small presence in Khartoum in the sense that we maintain an office there to support the project.
That office is staffed by Sudanese citizens, and we're in constant touch with all of those people and they're all safe in their homes at the present time, although life is not ideal for them under the current situation. Certainly all of our people up at the Meyas Sand project site are safe, and there is no report of any damage whatsoever. We are maintaining a business as usual, if I can describe it as that approach to life at the moment. Quite clearly we are actively, very actively monitoring the situation in Khartoum, and we have a crisis management team under the leadership of Matthew Cavedon stood up and we're working very carefully to ensure that the safety of our staff and our contractors remains paramount.
Just to put the situation in perspective, up to the end of March, we'd invested about $25 million, excluding acquisition costs in work preparing for this investment decision that I flagged was due towards the end of this year. It isn't a massive investment in the overall scheme of things. It's certainly an investment that we believe was well worthwhile in order to be able to confirm the value of the project. If anyone wants to be sort of granular around it's about the same amount of money as the value of the investment in the Montage Gold Project in Côte d'Ivoire, which we also picked up at the same time that we acquired the Meyas Sand project. It's roughly in the same order of magnitude.
You know, it isn't, it isn't a massive part of our portfolio at the present time. We will be pushing on towards the prospect of an investment decision. Quite clearly the sorts of things that are going to come into play in making that decision are the technical and economic merits of the investment, security and geopolitics. Now, in terms of the technical and economic merits, we're pretty comfortable, very comfortable that the project actually is an outstanding opportunity. Security-wise, we're well-positioned. We have good security relationships. Quite clearly over the weekend, geopolitics raised its ugly head, and that has created a level of uncertainty that we'll address as we go forward.
Just finally, in terms of sustainability, ESG, I mean, we are very focused on generating material benefits in all forms for all of our stakeholders in varying proportions. You know, notwithstanding the very good operating and development activities that we've been involved with during the quarter, we've also put a fair amount of effort into aspects of sustainability to try and make sure that we do deliver for our hosts and our employees and all of our other stakeholders, the sorts of outcomes that they expect of us. In the safety space, we are working very hard there to improve safety right across the company.
We've implemented a program called Safely Home Every Day or a SHED program at each of the operations, which is involving skills training for supervisors and ongoing field supervision and coaching to make sure that everybody who comes to work at Perseus does go home safely every day. We are starting to see the benefits of that program coming through, where we've decreased our TRIFR and our lost time injury rates are steady. The safety side of things is paramount for us, and we are working very hard on that particular front. In terms of community, we're continuing to do what we've always done, and that's to support our host governments and host communities. Around 63% of our revenue finds its way into the economies of our host countries.
A lot of that comes through local employment, where about 96% of our workforce is local, as it were. Of course, through wages and investment in our various procurement, a lot of money does go into the host countries. We are looking at diversity. Of course, we have probably the most diverse workforce you could come across when you take into account, you know, race, culture, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, people tend to focus on gender diversity. It's only one measure, of course.
Operating in the countries where we do, you know, with those cultural settings, it's unlikely that you're going to see the sort of proportion of gender split that you would see in an Australian legal office or an Australian accounting firm or a London or a New York one, come to that. We are working very much in this area and clearly the statistics that we have in Australia in our corporate office are way different to what they are in Africa. We are bringing people through the business and doing our best to offer employment to all of those who are capable of delivering the outcomes we need. Our relationships with our communities are strong. We haven't had any significant events during the quarter.
We very pleasingly finally got the trust fund around the Yaouré mine established through the government. That's taken longer than we were particularly happy about. We have actually just recently committed to invest in a fairly significant community road program to service the villages that host our project at Yaouré. In Sudan, we've also been working with the traditional landowners there around the Meyas Sand exploration permit. It is quite interesting because, you know, what it's proven to us yet again is that working on the African continent is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The sorts of things that landowners and host communities require in West Africa is not necessarily the same as what they're seeking in Northeast Africa.
We're working with the traditional owners, and I think that we'll have a satisfactory arrangement in place for everybody fairly shortly. Environmentally, of course, we take, you know, we do have relatively short lives. Gold mines are much shorter in life, of course, than some of the base metals and the like that other mining companies deal with. In terms of the environmental impacts around greenhouse gas emissions and et cetera, et cetera, it's not exactly the same conversation. Nevertheless, we do look for opportunities to reduce our emissions. We have been successful in that respect during the period. Similarly in terms of the environment, we're looking after tailing dams and the like.
We're working fairly well on that front and have had no issues at all during the quarter. In summary, I think right across the board, Perseus has had a very, very strong quarter and is in very good shape to continue to deliver on the promises that we've made to our shareholders. Also to continue to be able to grow the business as we move into the latter part of this year and the end of the current decade. For investors, the share price has been performing very well. For prospective investors, we rate very, very well relative to a lot of the peers that are out there. Our costs in particular, are world-class.
I think on a, on a global measure, we're in the bottom 10 cost per producers in the gold industry and managing the headwinds that others are certainly experiencing. All in all, it's been a very good quarter for us, and we expect that this strong performance will continue into the future. I'll stop at this point, and Lee-Anne and I are very happy to take any questions that you may have.
Thank you, Jeff. If you would like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the raise hand function within Zoom. For those phoning in, double star nine. Alternatively, you can enter it into the Q and A panel within Zoom. Your first question comes from Matt Green at Credit Suisse. Go ahead, Matt.
Hi, Jeff. Can you hear me?
Yes, I can. Thank you.
Great. Good morning, Jeff and Lee-Anne. Look, firstly, I just want to say congratulations on the quarter and, you know, to you and the broader Perseus team on a strong performance in recent times. It's been very impressive. Look, my first question is just on the hedge book and I guess your realized price, $1,820 on a group level. This compares to spot around $1,890. I just wanna get a bit of an understanding. I see your deferred sales have reduced quite a bit. I mean, has that been the key driver here to perhaps a slightly lower realized price? Just wondering if you can give me a sense of what's, you know, deferred sales, what was in the hedge? What was that spot?
Just trying to get a bit of a sense of that. Thanks.
Okay. Well, Lee-Anne can fill in in the detail around this. Let me just say as a general concept, what we have set ourselves as a target is producing in excess of $400 an ounce for every ounce that we produce across the company. We've managed to do that quite successfully. The gold price has helped us a lot to do that. When you find a situation like Sissingué, where you've got high costs due to construction, et cetera, et cetera, using a hedge book is extremely valuable in order to be able to guarantee that margin.
In fact, if we look at Sissingué this quarter, I did mention that the costs were up at $1,458, we also managed to achieve a margin of $419 an ounce, achieving that objective that we set ourselves. In general terms, our hedge book represents about 24% of our production over the next three years, the weighted average price of that hedge book is $1,968 per ounce. Which if you compare any historical gold price, that's an extremely healthy position to be in. What it means is that when Perseus talks about its future cash flows, you know that those cash flows are underpinned by these existing sales.
You may say, "Well, what happens if the gold price goes to, you know, two and a half thousand dollars an ounce?" Well, what I would say to you is that 76% of our production will be sold at that higher spot price, and the balance will be sold at $1,968. It'll average itself down slightly from the spot price. What it will also do in a situation where the gold price falls, and let's be honest, that's quite possible for being old enough to have seen it happen a few times over my career. You know, we will be able to sell at least 24% of our production at darn near $2,000 an ounce.
I think that's a very healthy and responsible position for, you know, professional managers to take, because quite clearly, price risk is the biggest risk that a gold company faces.
Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate the rationale, but I guess I'm just trying to get a sense of the March quarter. It seems like the deferred and hedged sales was a bit higher than that 24%, and at sort of a level. Look, I'm sort of getting something around the $1,600 mark, relative to where your hedge price, which is, you know, as you say, north of $1,900 an ounce. I guess I'm just trying to reconcile how on a group level the realized price was $1,820.
You know, I'm certain that Leanne can explain that to you in fairly simple terms, but perhaps it might be better done offline, if you don't mind.
Yeah, no problem.
The entire board, the entire listening group.
No problem. Well, look, let's go on to Sissingué then. You mentioned you're opening up the satellite mines. I think I recall as sort of March, late March, you were looking to get into the new pit there. How is that tracking? Are you in there feeding the mill?
We are. Yes, we are, is the short answer. We actually opened the pits in January. When I was over there in January, we were mining in Fimbiasso . The thing that impacted our production actually from Sissingué this quarter was the slow mobilization of our haulage contractor. They are finally getting their act together and we have been hauling back to the mill for some time now. Albeit not as sufficiently as we would like it to have. You know, I mean, the situation is in terms of the haulage contractors, that we do maintain, you know, very high standards of safety on our sites.
We're using a local contractor or local contractors, and their, you know, their sense of standard is not the same as ours necessarily. That has an impact on the availability of equipment because we won't let them on the roads carrying our material unless the machines are in good shape. We're gradually working our way through all that and the haulage operation is going much better now than it was in the early stages. As to mining, we are mining and stockpiling that high grade material. What it means is that in the interim period, until we can get it through into the mill, we are processing lower grade material from the stockpiles at around Sissingué. That just simply is a deferral because those low grade stockpiles would have been processed later on.
You know, we're just pushing it back slightly in terms of the schedule, but it's nothing to be too concerned about. The operations are working very well.
Okay, that's great. Look, just last one. Jeff, just, I guess the facility you've upsized, and I appreciate this may be quite, you know, too soon to answer, but just given the issues happening in Sudan, and I guess how you're looking at funding this project. You know, you've got a number of South African banks on that facility. You know, I've recalled in the past that they sometimes looked at export credit, which, you know, often comes with political risk insurance. That could give the market some comfort on a project level. Generally has, you know, it can be quite competitive in terms of interest rates.
How are you thinking in terms of the funding mix of this project, just given, some of the dynamics that are going on in Sudan?
Look, let me just firstly say that the facility that we have in place is ring-fenced around, you know, Sudan is not part of that. It's purely tied to the West African operations. It isn't specifically earmarked to fund to fund Sudan. I mean, we've got $470 million on the balance sheet right now, without any future cash flows. We can more than comfortably fund Sudan from the balance sheet if we are of a mind to do that. In terms of political risk and the like, that is something that we would like to do. We would like to be able to get the support of MIGA, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, part of the World Bank, to insure some intercompany debt into the country.
If that happens, then that would certainly open up a way for us to, you know, to perhaps utilize some of that facility. That's not part of the planning right now. We do have enough, you know, cash and future cash flow to fund, directly, and of course, still have enough money left to consider other activities. I mean, if we do develop Sudan, that won't be the end of the road. There are other opportunities out there that would certainly fit very well into our diversified portfolio. Lee-Anne, do you wanna add anything onto that?
No, I think you basically covered it, Jeff. you know, in terms of the debt facility, you know, there was strong support from all of our existing banks and, you know, I suppose from a, from a mix of how we're gonna fund the project, we can fund the project, you know, if we wanted to go forward with Sudan from existing balance sheet. The debt facility just gives us more horsepower in terms of, you know, looking at other opportunities within the gold space.
Okay. I guess, is there appetite from these banks or development agencies to, you know, put debt on a project level, as opposed to sort of securing it against the rest of your asset base?
Well, we don't explore that because we'd prefer to do it at a corporate level. We used to do project financing when we were a single asset company. I think that the banks certainly prefer to do project lending rather than corporate lending because they, you know, successfully tie junior companies up in knots with all manner of, you know, conditions around the lending and also hedging come to that. Our preference is to work at a corporate level where we have the, you know, we can guarantee repayment of the debt across the entire portfolio, but have the discretion as to how we deploy the capital.
Yeah, that's great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Reg Spencer at Canaccord. Go ahead, Reg.
Good morning, Jeff and Lee-Anne. Thanks, Nathan. First question relates to Sudan. Look, I fully appreciate that it's probably way too early to make a call on this, but I'll ask the question regardless. Should we expect some kind of impact to the timelines to FID, completion of studies, drilling work, given what's going on at the minute, Jeff? You're monitoring that situation daily, and I presume when things stabilize, you'll advise the market accordingly.
Yeah, no, that's very much the case. I mean, as I said, we're operating on a business as usual basis at the moment, which means that all of those fronts that I mentioned talking about the project, we're continuing to work on those. Now, you know, what we are uncertain of right now is the geopolitics into the future. That'll determine, you know, our appetite for making a significant investment later on in the year. No, the work that we're doing it won't be interrupted because look, you know, I mean, countries come and go. I mean, that's the benefit of having a diversified portfolio. You know, at any given time, one country might be going through challenges, but the others are going exceptionally well, as is the case here.
You know, Côte d'Ivoire's going exceptionally well right now. 10 years ago, Côte d'Ivoire had a civil war, I dare say that, you know, the trajectory that Sudan has been on very recently will continue once this current dispute is resolved in some way or another. You know, we're pushing ahead with our work, and we'll make sensible decisions along the way and risk-weighted decisions. Clearly, if we believe the risk to our investment is unacceptable, we won't be putting further money in there. You know, at the present time, we're not in a position to make that call.
Understand, Jeff. Look, I don't wanna dwell on it too much because, as you said, the investment to date is de minimis. My next question just relates to cost. I seem to ask you guys this question every quarter, but what are you seeing with respect to inflationary pressures? You know, some things getting better or worse and directionally over the next two to three years, how would you see unit cost trending?
Look, I mean, we're not, you know, isolated from the world. Clearly, we buy our, you know, our consumables on the global market. We buy fuel in the global market, et cetera, although we do have some concessions in that area. Yes, we certainly see some cost pressure out there. However, we also manage those pressures very well, and I think we also work very hard within our business to try and, you know, implement efficiency improvements that can offset some of those cost pressures that are coming through. I mean, just as a very general statement, and this is, you know.
Like, I mean, people have said to me in recent times, "Oh, well, you know, you're better off in West Africa than in Australia." You know, which is an interesting statement given what people have said to us in the past. I would point out that in Africa, the African countries, we do pay higher royalties than in Australia, and our costs are also inflated by the fact that we spend money on security. Clearly, events in Sudan this week have justified that expenditure. We also employ a lot of people on the site, probably far more than would be employed on a equivalent size property in Australia.
Which means that by our location, there are incremental costs that aren't experienced elsewhere, which means that we as a business have to be more efficient in the way we run our business in order to be able to offset those and compete with our international peers. Now, as it happens, at the present time, our costs are below those of our international peers, which means that we must be doing something right in terms of running our business. We do have a few incremental costs that come along, associated with our geographic location.
Understood. Thanks, Jeff. Last question relates to Yaouré, with your pending resource update and updated life of mine planning. I wonder if you're able to comment at this point in time, how much we might or incremental resource growth and mine life extension that we might get from extensional drilling success versus the possibility of any changes to cut-offs given changes in the gold price? Are you expecting not to make too many revisions to how you think?
Look, they're all good questions, Reg. They're being addressed by people who really know what they're talking about, which is our technical project team. I don't think it's appropriate for me to go into the details at this stage of the game, but you can rest assured that when we have made our determinations around those things, you'll be fully informed. I mean, I think that there is a, you know, pretty fair opportunity to bring out quite a lot of high-grade material from that underground operation. What we would like to do, given that the underground, the volumes coming from the underground operation are obviously lower than what would happen on an open pit mining operation such as we have at the moment.
What we do need to do is to have material available to us from the open pit to blend with that high-grade material. That is where, you know, that we may see a shift in cutoff grades in the Yaouré pit, for instance, which is where we're drilling at the present time, doing that infill drilling below the pit, et cetera, et cetera. Look, all of those things are quite possible, but later this year, we will come out with the up-updated resource reserve and an updated life of mine plan for the entire Yaouré complex.
At that particular time, we'll be able to explain to you in great detail exactly how we've arrived at the, you know, the, the mining tonnages and processing tonnages, et cetera, et cetera, and the grades that are gonna be going through the mill. You'll be able to see that Yaouré is actually a very, very high quality mining operation and will be for quite a number of years to come.
Guess I just have to learn to be a little bit more patient, Jeff.
I believe that is the answer, Reg.
Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Radclyffe at Global Mining Research. Please go ahead, David. Take yourself off mute, David.
Hi. Sorry, guys. look, I thought I'd lower my hand 'cause I think my question had been answered, largely before on Yaouré. I was just trying to get, a bit like Reg, push a little bit to get a bit more of an understanding there about how you currently think about the interplay between open pit and underground. You know, what is a prohibitive strip and how the gold prices change that. I think that was largely just answered.
Yeah. Okay. No, I think, I think I probably have, to the extent I really feel comfortable speaking prior to seeing the full results. You know, look, if you look at our mine plan, at the original mine plan for Yaouré, which I guess puts some context on it, the original mine plan had us mining in the CMA open pit for I think it was about 4.5-5 years or so, at a fairly high grade, and then moving to the lower grade Yaouré pit. You know, what we had was a dip on the production profile. Now, by going into the underground mining and getting that higher grade and then being able to blend that with the lower grade material, we can keep the production levels fairly constant for quite a number of years now.
You know, the challenge for us, of course, is to keep the mill fed. that means that, you know, we either need to discover additional open pitable resources, which we have done in Satellites, but also potentially look at the cutoff grade of the Yaouré deposit. you know, I was actually looking at our feasibility work that we did prior to acquiring this property a couple of months ago. Just to put it in context, I think we used the gold price of $1,100 an ounce when we did the original work on it. I do think there is some room to perhaps adjust the cutoff grade. Perhaps, you know, in the current context, that's probably a bit conservative.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you. Another question has been written in the Q and A panel, and it's regarding M&A. With such a large cash position, are you looking at M&A? If so, are you looking outside of West Africa again?
Okay. Well, that's a pretty fair question. It's one that's come to us on a number of occasions as we've gone around the market in recent times. The answer is that we have a fairly substantial balance sheet available to us to continue to fund growth. We have prior to this weekend, we were aiming to deploy a significant amount of that cash on the balance sheet into the development of the Sudanese project. As I said, we, you know, we're holding judgment on that for the moment. We'll see what happens. Even if we were to do that, we would still have sufficient funds available to fund another project. Now, we can either discover that project or acquire it, basically. Now, discovery takes a very long time to bring the projects through.
From our perspective, being able, if we're able to identify a pre-development asset that fits with our general, strategic, plan, can be acquired at a reasonable price and to generate the economic returns we want, then, we would most certainly look at those opportunities, and we are looking at a range of those opportunities. I have to say that, and, you know, in terms of the question about West Africa, no. I think Perseus has shifted its orientation to pan-African, and I think the concept of having a diversified asset portfolio, you know, has been. You know, the value of that diversity is, is very evident for all to see. We're not gonna restrict ourselves to West Africa.
We are, however, restricting ourselves to the African continent. Our decision around acquisitions is going to be based simply on a risk-return basis. If the prize is worthwhile having and there involves some slightly elevated risk, then we're prepared to make that judgment call and to invest along those lines. You know, that's a fairly long-winded response to the question. Yes, we are considering M&A. It is not in West Africa specifically. If we have opportunities in West Africa, we most certainly would be interested in investing there because we know the area fairly well and have operated there before, so have some competitive advantage in it. Look, it's one of those things that comes and goes. You know, getting all of the stars to align is not easy.
We have done it in the past, you know, with the acquisition of Amara and more recently, Orca. We are capable of executing M&A. I think that our primary growth focus will come from the organic side, supplemented by a judicious M&A as the opportunities present.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Jeff for closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thanks, Nathan. I think it's been said. Don't need to continue any further. We are in very good shape, and we expect to continue in this vein going forward. Look forward to bringing you further news at the end of the current quarter. Thank you.