Please use the Raise Hand function within Zoom. For those phoning in, dial star nine. Alternatively, you can enter into the Q&A panel within Zoom. I'll now hand over to Perseus Mining's CEO and Managing Director, Jeff Quartermaine. Thank you, Jeff.
Thanks, Nathan, and welcome everybody to Perseus Mining's webinar to discuss our company's results for the financial year ending 30th of June. As Nathan said, I'm Jeff Quartermaine, the CEO, and I'm joined on this call by our CFO, Lee-Anne de Bruin, who will be presenting to you today. Before I pass to Lee-Anne, let me just provide some context to the report and other statements that have been published today, and to which Lee-Anne will speak in just a moment. Now, as you're aware, in late July, Perseus published its June 2023 quarter results that documented our operating performance for the financial year.
In summary, these results included production of 535,281 ounces at an all-in site cost of less than $1,000 an ounce, and average gold price of over $1,800, resulting in a cash margin of $844 an ounce, positioning the company extremely well for future growth. Now, these results are very impressive, displaying consistent gold production, stable operating costs, and several years of strong gold price. All of which have been achieved in a challenging economic and geopolitical environment. Now, what the graph and to some degree, our quarterly report don't convey, is the full financial implications of this very strong operating performance.
Nor does it comprehensively record the details of the very high standards of ESG behavior that we, as a responsible corporation, have exhibited throughout the year in delivering these results. The FY 2023 annual report that has been published today addresses all of these matters in a significant level of detail. Now, since July, our team's been very busy compiling all of the relevant data and obtaining external validation of all this by PricewaterhouseCoopers, as well as assembling it all into a logical and very readable manner into our first fully integrated annual report that combines our fiscal 2023 financial report, our fiscal 2023 sustainability report, and of course, our operating results. Now, an optional, but certainly a very impressive document that describes an outstanding set of results across the board, if I may say so myself.
Now, what I'd like to do is to pass to my colleague, Lee-Anne, to, you know, whose team, along with members of our sustainability team, were instrumental in pulling this, these reports together, and she'll to both the financial and sustainability results. Now, following Lee-Anne's presentation, I'll round things out by giving you some insights into what, we believe the future holds for our company, Perseus Mining, and then we'll open the floor to, to questions that may arise from the presentation. So over to you, Lee-Anne.
Thank you, Jeff. It gives me great pleasure to be able to present the Perseus financial results for the financial year ending June 2023. These financial results have been underpinned by the exceptional performance of our operational and support teams in our multiple jurisdictions. One of our core values being teamwork, and alone, which says, "Alone we achieve little, but working together we achieve a lot." And it's with this team behind us, that we can present strong performance across the key financial metrics. Revenue was up at AUD 1.4 billion, 27% up from the previous financial year. Our profit before tax, up 103% at AUD 568.8 million Australian dollars. And profit after tax, 476.7, up 70%.
Importantly for us, operating cash flow was up 24% at AUD 648.3 million. This brought Net Tangible Assets up to AUD 1.7 billion, increasing 41%, largely due to the increased cash and cash equivalents balances. The strong financial performance has also put Perseus in a position to declare a final dividend for FY 2023 of AUD 0.0248 per share. Looking at the growth and earnings in a little more detail, as mentioned, revenue up at AUD 1.4 billion, with EBITDA up 46% at AUD 821 million. And this was achieved through higher average gold prices achieved of $1,803 per ounce, compared to $1,683 in FY 2022, and an 11.7% increase in gold sales, leveraging our increased production.
EBITDA was up proportionately higher than the 27% increase in revenue, and this is largely attributable to overall focus in containing costs despite ongoing inflationary pressures. And then, of course, the increased production at Edikan and the sustained strong performance from our Yaouré operation. We're just having a small technical issue created by me.
Gross profit from operations was up 72% at AUD 603 million, with its depreciation and amortization relatively stable, in line with FY 2022 at AUD 217 million Australian dollars. Profit after tax, as I mentioned, was up 70% at AUD 177 million Australian dollars, and this included a AUD 90 million increase in the tax expense, which was due to improved operational performance from Edikan, which resulted in a greater income tax contribution in Ghana this year, and the profitability of the Ivorian operations, and hence paying withholding taxes on the payment of intercompany dividends from Côte d'Ivoire to Australia. The growth in our earnings per share, basic earnings per share, of AUD 0.3127 per share, up AUD 0.67.
Then our earnings per ounce, a key focus for Perseus, AUD 887 per ounce. It's evident from this graph on the right, that Perseus is proud of its achievement to have consistently generated growth in earnings over the last four financial years. Moving on to growth and cash flow. The operating cash flow was up 24% at AUD 648 million, including, as I previously mentioned, a AUD 100 million increase in our income taxes paid. This generated operating cash flow per share of AUD 0.4744, up nearly 13%, and an operating cash flow per ounce of AUD 1,206, up 11%.
The operational and financial performance over the last twelve months has allowed Perseus to further strengthen its balance sheet, positioning it well for future growth opportunities that may arise. The cash and bullion increased by AUD 302 million. That is 70%. After repaying down the last $50 million on our historic debt facility during the period. We also took the opportunity to refinance our previous $150 million debt facility, and upsized to $300 million during the second half of FY 2023. And this has positioned Perseus with approximately $800 million or AUD 1.2 billion in existing reserve and undrawn debt capacity to focus on the future. The Net Tangible Assets of Perseus were up at AUD 1.7 billion at the end of the twelve months.
That then brings me to the dividend declaration. In August 2021, Perseus announced its dividend policy, which aims to reward shareholders while maintaining a balanced capital structure and, of course, capacity to fund corporate growth. The Perseus board has today declared an FY 2023 final dividend of AUD 0.0248 per share, totaling about AUD 34 million. This, including the HY 2023 interim dividend, equates to a 2% annual yield, or AUD 0.0354 per share. A total of about AUD 48 million in FY 2023 dividends. This will bring the total returns to Perseus has paid to our shareholders to nearly AUD 100 million since declaring our maiden distribution in August 2021, two years ago.
As Jeff mentioned earlier on, you'll see that this year we've combined our financial report, sustainability report, and annual report into one integrated annual report. The integrated report illustrates that combined with the strong financial performance, Perseus has been able to increase investment in our host communities, with a focus on delivering a lasting and positive impact for the broader stakeholder communities in which we operate. In addition, we have always remained dedicated to the health and safety of all our employees and contractors, with a particular focus on creating a strong safety culture. Focusing some of the key highlights in our sustainability report are, we have contributed approximately $537 million in economic contributions to our host countries of Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and Sudan.
Local national employment is at 95%, and local procurement makes up 79% of our procurement activities in our countries in which we operate, something that which, of which we are extremely proud. In FY 2023, we were also proud that we've had zero significant environmental or community events recorded. We maintained a stable group rolling 12-month TRIFR at a rate of 1.3, which was below that of our peers. In addition, we continued to obtain external, independent, limited assurance over select health and safety data, community contributions data, and conflict-free gold conformance. And this year, we took the step to extend our third-party insurance to cover greenhouse gas and energy data. So that brings my summary presentation of our financial and sustainability performance to an end, and I'll hand back to our CEO, Jeff Quartermaine.
Thanks very much, Lee-Anne, and for that excellent presentation. So in conclusion, as I said at the start of the call, Perseus has had a very good year on all fronts, and what Lee-Anne has just described is clear evidence of that. Now, looking forward, we expect to continue to perform, at least in the manner that we have for the last few years, but we are possibly, possible rather, continuously improve so that we can deliver a similar set of results to those that have been spoken about today. Now, in specific terms, from an operating perspective, at least over the next six months, we expect to continue very strong performance.
You can see from the slide that is on the screen there, that Yaouré will continue to be the dominant producer of gold, producing for the next six months, between 125,000 and 140,000 ounces of gold at well under $1,000 an ounce. Sissingué is in the declining years of the mine, and it's doing 27.5-32.5 thousand ounces. It's got much higher costs due to the fact that we're expensing all development costs of a satellite mine at Bagoe. Edikan is performing very, very strongly as well, and continuing to deliver around 100,000 ounces to our total.
So around 242.5-272.5 thousand ounces. I think that the all-in site costs around $1,000 an ounce is you know fairly healthy. Now, if we're able to achieve these targets, and I'm very confident that we will, using the performance of the first two months of the current half year as a guide, and we'll continue to generate very substantial levels of cash that can be applied to continuing to deliver benefits to all of our stakeholders in fair and equitable proportions, as our corporate mission requires.
Now, given that, many of our listeners here today on this call come from the very important stakeholder group comprised of existing and prospective shareholders, I'll talk about what this group, in particular, can expect us to do with the considerable amounts of cash that are building within the company. Now, firstly, capital management. Now, as we have announced today, we have continued to pay dividends in line with our policy, which is that we pay a base yield of 1%, and depending on the discretion of the board, with a view to the future and our cash generating, we also pay a bonus. So this year, on top of the basic 1% yield, we've increased the dividend to represent a 2% yield.
In terms of what that means in the overall context, as Lee-Anne said, about $100 million have been returned to our shareholder group in the last year or so, couple of years, which is a fairly healthy position. Now, in terms of other capital management initiatives, we're considering that along the way, in fact, in reaching the position that we did on this occasion, we have very thoroughly evaluated our capital approach to capital management, and we're very comfortable with what we've done on this occasion with the dividend declaration, given the growth aspirations that the company has going forward. Now, speaking of funding growth, we believe that that's a very important part of our mandate, given that it will lead to capital gains for shareholders if we do our job properly.
Now, the fund, the capital, the growth will come from two sources, one from organic growth and other from potentially inorganic growth. Speaking of the organic growth, first of all, as part of our quarterly report, we flagged that we'll be coming out with an updated Life of Mine Plan for the Yaouré mine in September. And that updated Life of Mine Plan will include the development of our first-ever underground mining operation based on the CMA pit. We've been working on that exercise for some time and are very, very encouraged by the contribution that that will make to the company going forward, both in terms of incremental ounce production and, but also to adding to the considerably to the life of that operation.
It is interesting to note that since we took a decision to develop the Yaouré mine, looking at the reserve that existed at that particular time, compared to what it is, we've actually increased the reserve base by 82% as a result of very successful near-mine exploration activities. Now, that sort of activity, that organic growth activity, will also come from our Edikan mine, where we're busily exploring it at the moment. If we are able to convince ourselves that we can mine from underground consistently well, then the Esuajah South underground operation is also an opportunity for us to continue to develop and add to the fortunes of that particular mining operation.
In an inorganic sense, there's a lot of discussion around what we will do in that space. We have, over the last five or six years, been reasonably successful in our M&A activities, which included Amara, that yielded the Yaouré mine, Exore, which delivered extensions to the Sissingué operation, and of course, the acquisition of Orca, which has given us a very, very large Meyas Sand project up in Sudan. So I don't think there's much doubt that the company has the capacity to execute successful M&A when the opportunity arises and when we identify opportunities that will significantly add value to our business. We are looking at lots of opportunities.
I made an observation to my team the other day that our cash balance seems to be burning a hole in the pockets of outside observers, far more than it is burning a hole in our pocket. We will make investments when we are convinced that we can create significant value for our shareholders and not before, but that is certainly a part of the plan going forward. Now, finally, it would be very, very remiss of me not to acknowledge the enormous contribution made to the success of Perseus over the last 12 months, and indeed over the last 10 years, by all of the men and women from multiple countries, ethnic and religious backgrounds, that make up the Perseus team. Now, irrespective of where they sit in our organization, these people have done an outstanding job this year.
In every sense of the word, our entire team has walked the talk by living our corporate values that include, as Lee-Anne said, teamwork, but also integrity, commitment, and finally, achievement. I think that the reports that we have delivered today are clear proof of this, and I'd encourage you all to take the time to read the reports very carefully and learn what an outstanding company that Perseus has become. So thanks very much for your attention today. This brings our presentations to a close. Lee-Anne and I are now available to take any questions that you may have. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Jeff. Just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the Raise Hand function within Zoom. For those phoning in, dial star nine. Alternatively, you can enter it into the Q&A panel within Zoom. Your first question comes from Reg Spencer at Canaccord. Go ahead, Reg.
Thanks, Nathan. Morning, Jeff and Lee-Anne. Congratulations on a cracking full-year results. It's great to see it all finally come together from a financial sense. I've only got one question for now. I was just looking through your balance sheet, noting carrying value of Meyas Sand. Is there any risk that that may impair, given that immediate development plans have been deferred for now? I mean, is there any risk of that in next year's result?
I mean, no, because obviously, you know, we... That's something that we're required to look quite in detail as part of the audit. And so, you know, we went through a really robust process, and it's, you know, we believe, you know, until, you know, there's certain things that trigger an impairment, and none of those have actually occurred. So unless something significantly changes between now and the end of next year, you know, there wouldn't be an impairment.
Okay, understood. That's, that's all for me. Thanks very much, guys.
Thanks, Reg.
There are no further questions at this time, Jeff, so I'll now hand back to you for closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thanks very much, and thanks to all of the people who have joined us on the call today. I mean, I'd be repeating myself to say what, what very good results these are. It's quite obvious they are, and to say that we're extremely pleased to have have been able to deliver them. It has been a bit of a journey, but, you know, the product is there to be seen. Anyway, thank you very much, and look forward to continuing to deliver these sorts of results in many, many years to come, and to take our place as, you know, one of the more profitable, gold companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and indeed, throughout the world. Thank you very much.