You have joined the meeting as an attendee and will be muted throughout the meeting. Call for September 2021 quarterly report. All attendees are in a listen only mode. If you would like to ask a question, please enter into the Q and A panel within Zoom. I will now hand over to Perseus Mining Managing Director and Chief Executive, Jeff Quartermaine.
Thank you, Jeff.
Thanks very much, Nathan, and welcome to Perseus Mining's September quarter webinar. This morning, I'm joined on this call by several members of my senior management team, including Leander Bruin, Finance Paul Thompson, Business Great. Jess Vallek, Sustainability and Doug Jones Exploration. But what we'd like to do today is to provide us with no view of the September 21 quarter as documented in the report that we released to the market earlier today and then follow that up with a Q and A session to address any issues that aren't So clearly, you're either from the report, my presentation or one of the many market releases that we have published earlier in the week. Now turning to the chase, Perseus has this quarter once again achieved another record operating performance.
This time producing 112,700 and 6 ounces of gold, 10% more than the June quarter or 28% more than the March quarter. Our weighted average all in site cost decreased by $81 an ounce or 8% compared to last quarter to $966 an ounce. And that includes production costs of dollars US88.57 per ounce. Now by selling our gold at an average price of US16.55 dollars US16.55 dollars per ounce during the quarter, We generated a cash margin of roughly US699 dollars that's about US930 dollars For every ounce, our gold produced and that resulted in our net cash position, increasing by over US40 $1,000,000 on quarter on quarter. Our cash in 1,000,000,000 on hand at the end of the quarter amounted to US196 million dollars or approximately AUD 265,000,000 Simply put, this quarter, Perseus has done once again what we said we would do.
We are on course to achieve our stated aim of producing around 500,000 ounces of gold or more a year at a cash margin of $400 an ounce from fiscal 2022 onwards. And as announced recently, through exploration success, we've also made strong progress towards being able to sustain this production level right out to the end of the decade. During the quarter, 2 of our 3 mines, namely Iberia and Shingi and Cote d'Ivoire performed exceptionally well. Our 3rd mine, Edikan in Ghana, not so much, but given that we now have multiple mines in The impact of Edikan being a bit off target this quarter has not detracted from the overall performance of the group. We have after all established a new production record by increasing Overall production by 10%.
And what we have done, I think, is very clearly demonstrates the benefit of Perseus becoming the multi mine, multi jurisdiction company that we set out to become several years ago. As I said in the past, The strong continuing strong performance by Perseus is a result of a lot of hard work and resilience In challenging circumstances by what is a very talented team of people that we have spread across our 3 operating sites, Several exploration sites in West Africa, offices in Accra and Abishan and of course our corporate office here in Perth. I think thanks goes to all of us who contributed this quarter, including the very supportive families of our staff who are required to spend the Extended periods of time away from home. Now what is pleasing, what's also pleasing is that everything that has been achieved this Quarter has occurred in a sustainable manner as we reported in our very comprehensive fiscal 2021 sustainability report that was released earlier this week. But the report in the webinar that was held on Monday to discuss that report, I think, Sure, to underline that Perseus is a well managed company staffed by professional subject experts who went up to the task of implementing the ambition We're generating benefits for all of our stakeholders in fair and equal proportions.
So in summary, as the company purchase continues to go from strength to strength, thoroughly justifying the rerating in the share price by the market in recent weeks. Now for those of you who haven't yet had an To read the quarterly, let me talk a little bit in a little bit more depth about some of the key elements of our performance Before opening up to any questions that you may have, and as I said earlier, I am accompanied today by members of my senior team who are available To respond in detail to your questions as appropriate. So firstly, let's discuss Yaiori, which as you know is our newest gold mining operation. We produced 64,588 ounces of gold at Gayore during the quarter at a production cost of US5.72 dollars per ounce, giving rise to an oil and site cost of US671 dollars per ounce for the quarter. Now under the circumstances, this was quite a remarkable Performance by the team at Yaori.
We experienced 715 millimeters of rain on the Yaori site during the quarter and as might be expected, this periodically Interrupted mining activities have prevented us from mining exactly where we wanted to mine. We also experienced some unexpected mechanical failures in the plant, not Surprising at this stage of its life during the quarter and these needed some urgent repairs. And this also had attracted slightly from production During the quarter, now notwithstanding these challenges, we still managed to increase gold production by 73% quarter on quarter and decreased our all inside costs by 35% And we set ourselves up for a very strong finish to the half year period. In that regard, I can confirm we're well on track Yes, Yuri, to deliver on our half year guidance of 130,000 to 140,000 ounces at an all in site cost of $6.75 to $7.75 an ounce. So That's very pleasing.
It's worth noting that the average selling price for AUR this quarter was $16.90 an ounce, which meant that our cash margin At the site was US10.19 dollars per ounce or Aussie dollars 13.77 Dollars per ounce for our Australian business. Given the amount of gold that we produced, this meant that our national cash flow for the quarter from Yara was US65.8 million dollars or about $41,600,000 more than in the June quarter. So that's a fairly solid result in anybody's language or currency The other thing about the Aori that's worth noting is that the reconciliation between our block model and Orpett to the mill remains positive. In the 9 months since we started mining, we've got a positive reconciliation on contained gold of about 5%, which is very encouraging. In early August, we released an updated life of mine plan for AOI as we promised.
And while this included modest increases in the mineral resource It included encouraging information on lower operating costs than previously announced and also Increased gold production in the early years of the mine. We do expect to update that life of mine plan again around the same time next year. And as indicated in our market release on exploration published last Thursday, the results of infill drilling at the CMA underground prospect will be used to upgrade the Currently inferred mineral resource estimate to indicated status, enabling a pre feasibility study for an underground mining operation to We completed by late June next year. This work will also include an initial reserve estimate that will be reflected in the next version of our life of mine plan. So, Yaori, it's everything that we hoped it would be and then some we've been running on 100% high grade Fresh ore from the CMA pit for some time and weather permitting this quarter, we'll get a clear run at some fairly high grade material coming from the pit.
So Watch this space as I say. At our other Ivorian mine, Singe, we produced 16,067 of gold during the quarter at an all in site cost of US9.31 dollars per ounce. Given that we sold the Sissingue gold at a weighted average price 16.24, we had a cash margin of US693 dollars an ounce and generated national cash flow of about $11,000,000 for the quarter. Once again, at the end of the quarter, Sissingue is well on track to deliver on the market guidance for the half year, which is set at 25,000 to 35,000 ounces At an all in site cost of $9.50 to $10.70 Now at Sissingue, just as we did at Yaiori, we It's very, very wet season this year with something like 788 millimeters of rain falling on the site. This impacted production to an extent, particularly in terms of periodically preventing access to pits for mining, which meant that for extended periods, we needed to feed the plant before taken from the run of mine stockpiles.
The weather also impacted the rate of feeding material to the mill and that also reduced production a little bit. Notwithstanding this, the results achieved this quarter at Sissingue were very much in line with our expectations as we transition from A very high grade zone of ore that we'd mined for the last few quarters to a lower grade zone this quarter. I should also note That heavy weather I mentioned towards the end of the quarter, we played absolute havoc with our month end surveys and the like, particularly since the bottom of the pit was submerged with water. And so the mineral resource to mill reconciliation for the last 3 months looks a little out of line Relative to prior quarters, it will be 9 quarters And that we've done. So we do expect that things on this front will improve as the mine drives out and mining activities are restored.
So we're not overly concerned by that at this Particular point of time. Of course, given that our investment in Sissingue was fully repaid quite a long time ago, the operation continues to make a Very positive cash contribution to purchases cost even though the results this quarter were down a little on the previous quarter. We do expect this production level to be sustained for the next couple of quarters, while we're preparing to receive ore from the satellite deposits at Bimbiaseo and Bagway. Now in this regard, we have prepared a standalone DFS for the Antoinette, Juliet and Verney deposits, which are located on the Bagway license that we acquired last year. This DFS, together with an environmental and social impact assessment, will soon be lodged with the Minerals Commission Along with an application for an exploration permit for this area.
Now, we're very confident that The concept of satellite mining has been accepted by the Ivorian government that we can prepare an optimized life of mine plan for the combined Sissingue, Bimbiase, Bagway operation rather than looking at standalone operations. Optimizing this plan does involve a little more work than we're expecting, including some additional drilling. So it's taking Some time to finalize, but we do expect that this will extend the life of the operation at Sissingue well beyond its current fiscal 2024, Even if no more ore is discovered on the licenses, which at this stage seems unlikely, we expect that the wait will be well worthwhile. So we'll get that out as soon as Practically, Ken. Now turning to Edikan, September quarter gold production by Edikan was 32,161 ounces And rolling fab cost of $15.74 an ounce, and that was below our expectations both in terms of production and cost.
Now the disappointing performance was driven principally by the grade of the ore that was sent to the mill during the quarter. All other key operating parameters, Including mill run time, throughput rate, quantity of ore milled and recovery were all in line with forecast plus or minus a couple of percent. The order was processed during the quarter came from the AG pit, raw and deep leach stockpiles with a small amount of material mined from the remnants of the Stage 2 Fetish Now this ore was blended in varying proportions depending on availability and fed to the mill. And during the quarter, the head grade The mill fleet averaged 0.72 grams a tonne, which was well below the average grade of prior quarters and certainly below what we were expecting to see. This reduced head grade was the result of several factors, including poor equipment availability by our mining contractor, RockShore.
This generated a shortfall in the availability of fresh ore from the AEG pit, which was the designated major source of ore this quarter. Now the reason for that, There's a variety of reasons and a number of them can be strung back to COVID related supply issues, which I think almost every man in the world is experiencing. In this case, it was in the area of tires. This shortfall in the AG ore created the need for mill feed to be supplemented by low grade material taken from the run of mine stockpile. Now compounding this problem, the greater the fresh ore that was mined from AG didn't reconcile well with our block model And therefore, our forecast.
This was possibly a function of the fact that the MiK, multiple indicator kriging modeling technique that was used Being negatively influenced by the grade of ore already mined in the last cutback of the pit. Now we do believe this is a temporary situation that will self Correct. As we go further into the ore body with our mining. This optimism is very solidly based, I should say. It's based on the fact that Using the MOK model, the global estimate of gold contained in the total AG pit mineral resource reconciles within 4% to 5% of grade control.
As the global representation in our case, tonnages are fairly accurate. The grade appears to be slightly overestimated and that's how we get to the That 5% variance. So we do think that that situation will fix itself up as we go forward. There was a period of some poor mining practices As well, that didn't help matters and that just stopped pretty quickly. Now in each of these areas, the cause has been addressed And the remedial action is certainly expected to result in a significant improvement in reconciliations and therefore operating Performance in coming quarters.
We're already seeing evidence of this in the latter part of the September quarter and the December quarter to date. So that's very pleasing. And at this stage, we do remain on track to deliver our guidance for the half year, which is set at 70,000 to 80,000 ounces at Good morning, Cypress of $13.50 to $14.50 I've said this before and I'll repeat it again. Edikan has never been an easy mine, but We are resilient and we are quite practiced at analyzing problems and addressing them fairly quickly. That said, the challenges in Canada that you can over the years did drive us Seek diversity in our production portfolio and add additional mines located in different jurisdictions, which is what we did through the development of Singing in more recently, the Gayore mine.
And as I said earlier, the benefit is there to be seen. Even though Edikan did underperform this quarter, The outperformance of the rest of the portfolio compensated and led to another quarterly record of production. Looking to the future, our goal of group production and cost guidance for the next for the 6 months 12 month Periods ending 31 December remains unchanged. We predicted 225,000 to 255,000 ounces At $9.25 to $10.25 an ounce and as noted when commenting on the individual mines, we are on track to achieve this provided we can produce in line with our Forecast between now and the end of the year, and I have every confidence that our team will do just that, just as they've consistently done in the past. Now turning to our financial position.
Throughout the September quarter, we've continued to improve our balance sheet strength through generating strong cash flows and prudent financial management. The national cash flow from operations of US78 million That was generated this quarter allowed us to fund exploration at all 3 operating sites, pay all manner of taxes, including income tax in Ghana, Pay dividends to government in Cote d'Ivoire, fund a range of social programs to host communities, pay corporate overheads and still hold cash and bullion at the end of the Quarter of US196 $1,000,000 giving us net cash position of US96 $1,000,000 after taking into account Our outstanding debt of $100,000,000 And as I said earlier on, this was and this net cash position was about $40,000,000 better and the position at the end of June. Clearly, we're benefiting continuing to benefit from the strong gold price, but we're also benefiting from strong production growth same time. And in that sense, the timing of our production growth has been very fortuitous. And on that basis, we should continue to see further growth in balance sheet strength.
Now for the record, we do hedge the price of a small percentage of our gold production. This is something that people regularly ask us about. At this time, we're hedged to the extent of roughly 20% of our projected production over the next 3 years at a weighted average price of 16.20 dollars per ounce. Now this average price is about $31 an ounce more than it was the end of the June quarter as a result of us actively managing our hedge book, which has enabled us to average up the price Booked to a level that's now well above our weighted average all in the site cost even when things go slightly right. So did it every time This quarter.
As I previously noted, our weighted average cash margin for the quarter was US699 dollars an ounce. So even with hedging And even with some minor issues there at Edikan, we were still able to exceed our target of $400 announced by well over 50 So that was a fairly healthy position. Now before moving on from financial matters, I would also like to just briefly mention the Very good financial results for the financial year ending 3rd June that were announced earlier in the September quarter. As listeners would be aware, FY 'twenty one yielded strong results with net profit after tax up 48% to AUD140 1,000,000 Operating cash flow up 42 percent to Aussie $302,000,000 and net tangible assets up 10% to 965,000,000 Australian dollars. The strengthening of our balance sheet has allowed us to view the future with confidence and for the first time And return capital to our shareholders.
If shareholders approve a resolution to this effect at our AGM in November, This is a significant milestone for Perseus and I think very tangible evidence that the company is coming of age and delivering tangible returns to its shareholders. And that's another promise that Perseus has delivered on. Now speaking of the future, our plans for continued growth of our business is now a regular topic of conversation with investors. In this regard, we've been very transparent in advising those that ask that our primary focus at the moment It's on the design growth through organic means. In other words, through exploration success and applying engineering skills to convert Discoveries into mineral deposits that could be economically mined.
Last week, as I mentioned earlier, we made 2 separate market releases substance to the ambition that I just stated, and I'd like to strongly encourage listeners to take a close look Those rapid releases that published on consecutive days on 13th 14th October respectively, they contain Far more detail, and I can summarize in a few short moments on this webinar. That said, let me give you a bit of a flavor for what the market release did cover that. Firstly, we embarked on a successful exploration at Inkasuya, which is a deposit formerly known as Bremen. It's a target that's on the Agikusu license a few kilometers from the Edikan Mill in Ghana. And here it appears that we've discovered a fairly large granite hosted body mineralization.
The intercepts that have been returned to date are fairly lengthy and consistent. The ore body appears to be about 600 meters in strike length with widths of 200 meters. To date, we've been drilling on an 80 by 80 meter grid. The focus is now on closing up the current holes facing the 40 by 40 and ultimately 20 by 20 in local areas to support a maiden mineral resource estimate we prepared in the March quarter next year. Net testing and geotechnical drilling is also underway.
So the ore reserve potential can be evaluated early in the September 2022 quarter. Now this discovery hasn't been closed off yet to the south and it's actually looking quite decent and our Head of Exploration. But James It's on hand to take questions on this work at the end of my summary. The second drill program that we reported last week It was at the Auri mine where we've been in field drilling as well as stepping out on the CMA underground target. And we also drilled on a CMA analog structure at CMA East.
Due to the imminent cutback of the CMA South open pit And the likely loss of suitable sites for drill pads, we were forced to have the first stage of done the drilling focused on the southern end of the structure where Crates are generally lower than at the northern end, but drilling today, it's been it's comprised 34 RC in hole RC, call it, diamond holes, Infillings being on our 50x50 coverage and we've guided 25x25 to convert that Inferred resource indicated. The results to date from the infill drilling have been quite encouraging actually, Even though we have been focusing on that lower grade end of the positives I mentioned, our inter steps are generally consistent with those that have been previously encountered, Both in thickness and grade. The style of mineralization is also consistent with previous intersections, which means that this is looking very, very interesting indeed as Underground mine. Step out drilling to investigate the next 300 meters down depth from the current underground resources also started and 27 pre collars were drilled there. The diamond tiles to complete these holes Down to their target, that has also recently kicked off.
The second program is being guided actually by the results of is early 2020 three-dimensional seismic survey that clearly identified the CMA structure extending to depth beyond the current drill coverage. Drilling is being undertaken on an initial 100 by 200 meter pattern to better define the position of the structure And the intensity of the mineralization. And if the results are encouraging as we expect, then we'll infill to 100 by 100 and allow the preparation of an initial inferred mineral resource estimate. The results from the CMA underground infill and extension drilling received today demonstrate that there is real potential here for us to Materially grow our gold inventory, and that's a fairly crazy thing. Drilling to test the near surface Extension, so they CMA look alike structure in Hanging Water, the main structure, we call this CMA East See my East prospect.
That continued during the quarter as well with 17 Nazi holes drilled. So pretty reasonable results been also achieved here as well. I think it'd be fair to say that at this stage, we don't fully understand the structural geology and further work is certainly warranted Yes. But certainly, what we've seen to date is very, very encouraging. As mentioned earlier, the results From the infill drilling at CMA underground will be used to upgrade the current inferred mineral resource estimate to indicated status and we'll do So I think the previous ability on the underground mining operation that we completed by June, June next year, allowing a reserve estimate to be done.
Now, so I should say at this point too, I guess, very much that While we have focused very heavily on our organic growth side of the business, the potential for inorganic growth opportunities involving mergers and acquisitions He's also there and our team headed up by Paul regularly assesses our opportunities And there's certainly things there of interest to us. As I've said before, given the challenges of implementing value accretive M and A, Applying very strict financial discipline as we do in assessing opportunities and also reaching a landing of counterparties on social issues, We're not pinning our hopes on this activity for delivering growth in the immediate future, preferring, as I said, to focus on near mine and early Exploration growth strategies. What I do stress is that we are looking we are actively looking for the right opportunities. And if we are able to execute a transaction that on A risk weighted basis is value accretive for shareholders, then you will be the first to know. So In conclusion, as I said at the start of the call, the September quarter has been another very good quarter for Perseus in many respects.
Across the board, our production is growing, our costs are decreasing, we're managing our business successfully in the face of a global pandemic and financially, we're getting stronger by today. We are subject to shareholder approval, planning to make a maiden return of capital to our Shareholders this December having declared a maiden capital return of $0.015 per share or a year of 1% when we published our fiscal 2021 financial results in August. Our share price has performed reasonably strongly in recent times, And it does appear as if the quality of Perseus' performance and earnings capacity is being recognized by the market. Finally, we are looking forward very much to bringing you further news of our achievements in 3 months from now in Shalar, as they say, in Northern Cote d'Ivoire. But I can assure you that the team is working very hard to deliver this and we're very optimistic that that will be the case.
Now my colleagues today are very happy to take any questions that you may have. Thank you.
Thank you, Jeff. Your first two questions come from Reg Stentor at Canaccord. Firstly, we congratulated you and the team. First question is, what had more material impact at Edikan or access issued or the grade reconciliation?
I think it would be access. To be frank, the reconciliation was problematic, but not being able to mine as much material from the AG pit was something that was I did let us down a little.
And second question is regarding the Brennan exploration. He said subject to permitting and completion of the resource estimate, how quickly could this prospect find its way into the mine plan for Edikan? And are there any early indications of
what you think the it could apply? I think I'll put that question to Paul Thompson, our Head of Growth, who is responsible for doing those studies. Paul, would you like to respond to that?
Thanks, Jeff. You'll see in the release that we put out last week that we've made an estimate, It's an exploration target rather than just exploration results. And what we've said is that we expect around 300,000 to 500,000 ounces from that deposit. And what we are already working on at the moment is The initial metallurgical test work, geotechnical work to convert that to a reserve by around this time next year or a bit earlier than this time next year. So that's our target.
And it would be then go straight into the life of mine plan for Edikan.
Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. I'll just repeat. If you'd like to ask a question, please enter into the Q and A panel in And, Jack, it looks like there's no further questions at this time. So I'll hand back to you for closing remarks.
Okay. Well, look, thanks very much. I guess, hopefully, the reason there's no questions is because people are basically placing their buy orders on the stock. But If not, anyway, thank you very much for attending today. As I said, it was a fairly strong quarter, and We expect there's very much more to come.
So thank you very much, and we'll speak to you again in 3 months of what before then. Thank you. Goodbye.