Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Perseus September 2018 quarterly conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much and welcome to this conference call to talk about our September 2018 quarterly report that we released to the market earlier today. For those of you who have had an opportunity to read the report, you would have gleaned that the results that Perseus has achieved in this quarter are once again very strong and clearly indicate that the company is well on track to becoming a successful multi-mine, multi-jurisdictional gold operator, developer and explorer. Now, I also note that this is the seventh consecutive quarter of sound quarterly performance, repeatedly delivering what we've said we're going to deliver. So the consistency that we as a company have been keenly pursuing is evident and hopefully the results that this brings will soon be recognized by the market.
Without any further ado, actually I should have introduced my colleague here, Andrew Grove, our newly appointed Investor Relations Manager. Andrew's on the call with me and he'll be available to answer very difficult questions later in the call. But anyway, before we get to that, let's turn to the quarterly report and talk about what we have actually delivered during the quarter in some more detail. Looking firstly at the Perseus Group as a whole, across both of our operations this quarter we produced a combined total of 72,477 ounces of gold, including 54,595 ounces from Edikan and 17,892 ounces from Sissingué. Now that's slightly down on our best ever quarter recorded in the June quarter, but it still ranks as the second best performance delivered by our company to date. And that reflects the steady growth of Perseus now.
A significant factor in the pullback in production relative to last quarter's record was the weather that we've experienced in West Africa in recent months. This year has been an abnormally damp wet season. Now being a mature operation with plenty of hard rock available to sheet roads, etc., Edikan wasn't unduly affected. In fact, it was slightly ahead of our internal targets. However, at Sissingué, where we're still mining soft oxide ore, we received near enough to 1,000 mm of rain during the quarter. And while we cope well enough to exceed targets in July and August, by September things were very waterlogged and this impacted on both our mining and processing schedules, resulting in a subpar performance in September.
The good news is that the rain at Sissingué has abated more or less, and we're now regaining access to areas of the pit that contain high grade material, which means that we no longer have to supplement run of mine ore with low grade stockpile material in order to maintain mill feed. In fact, month to date, Sissingué is back in producing and it's about 15% above our budget. So that in fact is very good news. And I should say that this situation we've encountered this quarter is unlikely to repeat again, given that we'll be very shortly moving into transitional and fresh material. And we'll have material available to sheet our roads and ROM pad going forward. So the impact of rain won't be felt in the same way in the future as it was this quarter.
Now, in terms of costs, the quarterly production cost at Edikan was $944 an ounce and the all-in site cost was $1,045 an ounce. Both of these are about 4% better than the prior quarter. The production cost of Sissingué was $582 an ounce, and then the all-in site cost $658. Now that was higher than last quarter as one might expect given the relative drop in ounces when combined. This resulted in a weighted average all-in site cost for the group of around $950 an ounce, which is still a little higher than the group's reported all-in site cost last quarter, but still low enough to generate a very healthy cash margin from both of the operations.
Now, looking forward, we're well on track to achieve our production cost guidance for the December half year that we provided last quarter, $130,000-150,000 ounces at an all-in site cost of $950-$1,150 an ounce. Now, in fact, assuming that everything stays on track, and I certainly expect it to do that, we should be at the very top end of the production range and at the bottom or below the bottom end of the cost range by the end of December. That said, we can't be certain when the wet season is completely ended. And I should also note that at Sissingué we are starting to transition into fresh materials. So we'll be watching with interest to see how the plant behaves on the different ore types.
At this stage, recoveries and throughput rates have not been affected by the transitional material, but we'll need to watch this fairly carefully in the coming quarter. That aside, things are in very good shape at both operations. Returning to the quarter, we sold 98,361 ounces of gold during the quarter, an average price of $1,225 an ounce, generating fairly material amounts of cash at both of our mines. In fact, on this average gold sale price and our average all-in site cost of $950 an ounce, we generated an average cash margin of $275 per ounce. And when multiplied by the number of ounces of gold sold, we generated notional free cash from the operations of around $27 million.
Now, to avoid questions later on, I do note that the amount of gold sold exceeded production this quarter, and this reflected the fact that we sold gold that was held in inventory at the end of June. What has occurred is that we've changed our accounting policy as of June. So we've been an early adopter of a change in accounting policy on revenue recognition. We now recognize sales when the gold leaves our metal account rather than when it leaves the gold room as was previously the case. But that said, the cash inflow from sales is real. But it does appear a little strange without explanation. I should note there are some notes on some of the tables there that might help understanding this a little better than I've explained it. If not, then certainly a call to our CFO would clarify the matter fairly promptly.
Now, obviously not all of the cash that we generate from the operations goes directly to the bank balance. We have to service debt, pay corporate costs, and we also choose to explore. We also have movements in debtors and creditors. But after these things are accounted for, at the end of September, our cash and bullion balance stood at AUD 93.8 million. That's $67.8 million. And that's about AUD 4 million more than it was at the balance at the end of June. Now, the key point to note though is that while the cash balance hasn't gone up that much, the outstanding bank debt has decreased by $10.6 million. So where we were sitting with about $63 million of debt at the end of June, we're now down to $52.4 million.
And that gives us a net cash and bullion position at the end of the quarter of AUD 21.3 million or $15.4 million. That's an increase of AUD 16.5 million, or about $12 million during the quarter. So steadily but surely we are building our net cash position. I should also note that this situation has come about through voluntary prepayment of debt. And also we paid down our creditors by, that's our trade creditors by about AUD 20 million during the quarter. So what we're doing is we're generating material amounts of cash from the operations and we're taking the opportunity to improve our balance sheet ahead of entering into future financing arrangements to fund our third project, Yaouré. But I'll speak of that more in a moment. Let's look at the individual operations in a little bit more detail.
Sissingué, our newest operation, as I said, in September we produced 17,882 ounces. That was down from June. The milled head grade averaged 1.73 grams per ton. In June it was 2.1. And that reflects not having access to the higher grade material. The mill throughput rate averaged 180 tons per hour. It was 200 tons per hour in June. And once again that's a function of wet weather. Similarly, runtime was 84% compared to 92% in the previous period. As I said, we did get 1,000 mm of rain and on a year-to-date basis that represented about 50% more than average. The fact that we performed as well as we did is a real credit to our operating team at Sissingué who slogged their way through the wet and have come out of this on the other side very well.
So if you guys are listening, very well done on your effort. And as I said before, there are certain measures in place that will eliminate a repeat of the effects of wet weather. I mean certainly we'll have hard material available, but we're also making some changes to the mine plans to make sure ramps are available and things of that nature. So this is a bit of a one-off, but it's one of the things that comes with mining in a tropical climate. Now perhaps the most pleasing KPI of all this quarter was the gold recovery which continued to average around 96% or about 5% above forecast. I mean, I should stress we are processing oxide ore. So it's a bit early to be projecting these figures through the life of the mine. But it is a very good start.
I do note that these recoveries have been maintained once we have started to process some transitional ore. That's very pleasing. I think the key to the high recovery appears to be the very high gravity gold recoveries that we're achieving. In our feasibility studies we assumed that we'd get about 25% of the gold from gravity, but it does appear that we are regularly achieving over 40%. So that's a major contributor to this strong performance. In terms of grade and tonne reconciliations, the study of reconciliation of tonnes and grade between the resource model, reserve model and the mill, you know, appears to be well on track and in fact there's a slight positive reconciliation on contained metals. That's good.
Once again, while it's still relatively early in the life of the mine to be drawing definitive conclusions, the results of the reconciliation study are very encouraging and suggest that the ore body is performing slightly above expectations in terms of the operating costs at Sissingué. As I mentioned, the production cost came in at $582 and the all-in site cost $658. The increase in unit cost is a direct function of the decrease in the number of ounces produced. In fact, if you actually do the mathematics, the costs are up by about 27% whereas the production was down by 31%. And that reflects a small reduction in the cost base. And that came particularly from mining where mining volumes were down. And also with the oxide ore, the power draw and fuel consumption was down. So these are very good results under the circumstances.
But you know, without wishing to take anything away from the results, we do note that in coming quarters we will be starting to mine fresh, we will be starting to drill and blast and so there will be a natural increase in the unit costs as we go forward, but nevertheless that won't be dramatic and Sissingué will continue to be a very low cost mine and a good generator of cash. Now, I guess the biggest single issue associated with Sissingué is the mine life, which still stands at about five years. We think that the prospects for extending the existing mine life are very, very good as our exploration team has been following up a number of the near-mine exploration targets that we previously identified.
We do have a few encouraging sniffs at deposits called Zanikan, Bimbasso and Papara, which we'll be following up very vigorously once the land dries out sufficiently well for us to move rigs around. I should also say that in the next week or so we'll be publishing an update to the Sissingué life of mine plan affecting some additional resources and reserves that have been delineated adjacent to the pit. Now the final reports are being prepared as we speak and we'll publish next week. But I understand we've been able to increase the ore reserve by about 7% relative to the Reserve that was published at the end of June. So that's a good outcome and it's a good example of the incremental growth that I expect will characterize the Sissingué going forward.
I think it's unlikely that we're going to have a quantum leap in the reserves, but instead I think what we will see is a number of small incremental steps, all of which will lead to a progressive increase in the life of the mine at Sissingué. Now turning to Edikan. During the quarter we produced 54,595 ounces, down a little from the previous high in June, but still continuing the trend of very strong performance that we've achieved at that mine. In the previous six quarters, the production was down by about 6% relative to June quarter, but was about the same relative to March. So I think June was probably, you know, an exceptionally good period for us and we're, you know, banging on in a fairly steady state. The gold production for the quarter was influenced by several factors. Runtime at the plant was 92%.
It was down slightly from the previous quarter, and throughput rates rating 897 tonne an hour, and they were slightly down as well. Although not that those differences were particularly material. Grade reconciliation remains satisfactory. The reconciliation of gold contained in the resource block model and grade control is close to 100% across all pits combined, and the reconciliation between grade control and mill is within industry standards, so there's no dramas there. We're currently mining, as I've said in the past, from four different pits, and due to the variability in ore hardness, head grade metallurgical recovery, we need to be really careful with the blending of ore that we feed to the mill. As a result, while the head grade was down a little previous to the last quarter, so it's at 1.16 grams relative to 1.21.
The head grade that we processed was not as high as possible when we have left some fairly high grade material on the ROM pad and that'll be fed through progressively in coming periods. And the reason why we've done it in that way is that some of the material, while it does have high grades associated with it, the gold is very fine grained and it does affect recoveries. Now, to improve the recovery, we would need to grind much finer and that involves significant capital, which on our assessment doesn't warrant the expenditure. But anyway, it is a challenge to get things right on this front and the team at Edikan are doing a terrific job in trying to hit their targets. And not only hit them, but do better wherever it's possible.
In fact, during the September quarter the Edikan team exceeded internal budgets in three months in a row. Now this may not seem like a major achievement to some, but at Edikan this has not always been the case, and it does reflect a very, very positive attitude by our team at the mine and a very strong desire to continue to deliver on plan, so it's been a very good performance there. With respect to our all-in site costs, these have incrementally improved during the quarter. Looking on a cost per ounce basis, our cash production costs for the quarter were down by $26 an ounce to $944 an ounce, and after taking royalties and sustaining capital into account, the all-in site cost was $1,045, and that was also down about 4% on the June cost and down about 6% on March.
So there's very clearly a steady decrease in our costs being achieved at Edikan, which is very much part of the plan. The average price of gold sold was $1,228. So we had a margin of $183 an ounce. So that translates to notional cash flow from the operation of about $13.8 million, which is fairly similar to the contribution that Sissingué actually made. Now during the quarter we did announce a revision to the life of mine plan at Edikan which was aimed at smoothing production and lowering cash costs more than any decrease in revenue that came about from the production smoothing. We started implementing the plan straight away by reducing mining movements, and while that has had a slight impact on grade, it hasn't been material.
The important thing is that the costs are coming down and we certainly expect that this trend is going to continue into the future. We have undertaken a retender of mining services at Edikan and we'll be awarding a new contract next week following our board meeting on Tuesday, and I expect that this new contract will continue to deliver savings in terms of unit mining costs, and of course that will feed through to the all-in site cost, so Edikan is tracking fairly well at the moment. Fact is that Edikan is a challenging mine. There's precious little room for error, but we are making reasonable cash flow from the mine and we're always looking to improve this business, and on that front I should say that we've also had some exploration success in the Edikan area in recent times and this is documented.
The results that we've achieved to date are documented in the quarterly report and we will be coming out with a more complete statement around this later in this quarter after we've drilled another couple of holes. Certainly the indications are that we have hit a fairly sizable structure which if things prove out the way we would hope, then potentially there are an additional ore bodies to be mined which the implications of that is that the current six-year mine life at Edikan could well be extended into the future. But I do stress the point that it is early days, you've only got four or five holes into this structure and so we are still working to properly understand geometry and things of that nature and we're not getting carried away.
But it is quite clear that there is additional mineralization on the tenements and with some good fortune we should be able to incrementally improve our business through the drill bit. Now, as I mentioned our third project, Yaouré earlier in the context of saying that our strong cash generation augured well for financing the project. Other things have gone very well with Yaouré also during the quarter pushing us towards a development decision. Firstly, I guess we continue to work on our front end engineering and design study for the mine. This was finalized just after the end of the quarter and the results were published. The bottom line is that we have confirmed a capital cost for Yaouré of $264 million, which is within about 0.5% of our DFS estimate. So we've locked in the cost. There are no cost blowouts and that's an important thing.
It's not surprising really. The estimate has been prepared by Lycopodium, which is a thoroughly reputable engineering company with a long track record of achievement in West Africa, including, I should mention, the engineering, procurement and construction of our Sissingué mine. The estimate is accurate to plus or minus 10%. It also includes an 8% contingency, which is appropriate given the level of uncertainty on some of the cost items included in that budget. Our application for an exploitation permit, which is needed for us to be permitted to move forward, has bounced around inside the Minerals Commission in Côte d'Ivoire. During the quarter there's been various changes in the Ministry and these needed bedding down.
Now I am actually heading to West Africa next week and I'll be accompanying the new Minister for Mines, Monsieur Jean-Claude Kouassi, up to Sissingué to dedicate the Community Trust fund that we established up there to fund community development initiatives, so it means that I will be spending some time with the Minister and I expect be able to talk to him about the importance of getting this exploitation permit issued, and so hopefully we'll see some movement on that front fairly promptly. It is important because we also want to be moving forward with negotiating the mining convention incorporating a guarantee of fiscal stability throughout the project life, and that process starts with the granting of the exploitation permit, so we want to get onto that as soon as possible. As soon as the license is issued, we'll start some minor early site works.
Securing the site and the benefit of this, it will facilitate a ramp up to full scale construction fairly quickly once the development decision has taken place. The other thing I should mention is that during the quarter we completed a drilling program at Yaouré aimed at confirming the existence or otherwise of mineral resources where we had identified mineralization. During the recent sterilization drilling for the proposed plant site, we also included in that program drilling that was aimed at upgrading inferred mineral resources located around the fringes of the pits. Now all of the assays were received during the quarter and we're currently processing this data and we'll publish an updated mineral resource reserve statement in early November.
I'm not able to quantify the exact increase in ore reserves just at this moment, but I do believe, having spoken to our guys yesterday, that the increase is reasonably material and it will result in an increase of the mine life at Yaouré immediately. So by the time we get to start construction, we will certainly push the mine life out from eight and a half years as forecast by the DFS to something longer. So that's a positive development on that front. As I also mentioned, one of perhaps the most important initiative that we've undertaken as far as Yaouré is concerned, this quarter is to work in conjunction with our corporate advisor Gresham to move the funding along. We prepared a very detailed information memorandum seeking offers of funding from a range of pre-qualified banks.
Last week we received 10 or more proposals from the banks involved in the process. And we're going through these as we speak. And we intend to invite a short list of banks next week. We'll make that invitation to make us firm proposals. And when I say firm, I'm talking about credit committee approved offers of funding by mid November. It's very clear from the responses that we've received that there is a very large appetite out there from credible banks to finance companies such as Perseus that have multiple cash flow streams and high quality projects to fund. Deciding on exactly who and how we structure the debt piece is going to require some work. But I'm very confident that a satisfactory solution will be in hand for us in time to take a proposal to our board later this year to move the development forward.
Now, as I've said many times before, the funding plan that we intend to apply involves the use of debt combined with existing cash reserves, as I said earlier, $94 million at the end of September, as well as future cash flows. And as I also said, our operating margin this quarter is approximately $20 million. And we believe that not only is this plan appropriate as it's non-dilutive for our existing shareholders, but more important, it's eminently deliverable. Now, subject to getting the green light from our board to move forward with the Yaouré development. As I said, we're going to start some early works in the March quarter and then we'll move into full-scale construction sometime in the September 2019 quarter. And if we can do that, then we'll be producing our first gold from Yaouré in 2020.
So the project at Yaouré is moving ahead at pace and we're all very, very excited about this project and what it means for Perseus. We have the team to execute the development as ably demonstrated by the very slick Sissingué development that we completed earlier this year. And as soon as we're confident in our ability to finance put financing in place, we will get underway with the project. So in conclusion, it's fair to say that Perseus has never been in better shape, either in an operational or commercial sense. We're pushing forward with our growth strategy and we're delivering strong performances from our existing businesses. Now, unlike some other companies in our sector, we've no need to get sidetracked into M& A activity which seems to be the flavor of the month with some of the industry commentators and investment bankers.
For us, it continues to be all about execution and continuing to do the things that we do and doing it to the best of our ability. We're very, very fortunate to have very high quality teams of people in place at each of our operations and in our corporate office. And I think it's fairly reasonable to say that we also enjoy the support of our host communities and have very effective working relationships with our host governments. And none of those things have happened by accident. They've all come about through fairly hard work over a long period of time. And each of these things contributes to our corporate well being. And give me the confidence to repeat that Perseus is in great shape and we're looking forward to an even better future. So thank you very much. Now prepare to take questions that you may have.
Now, I would ask, if you're asking questions, that you restrict yourself to one or two and don't kind of hog the floor and give everyone a chance. And you know who I'm talking to when I say that. So over to you, please. Happy to field any questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone and wait for your name to be announced. If you need to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please ensure you pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Reg Spencer from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Reg. You're suspiciously quiet.
Sorry, I had my mute button on. Good morning to both of you. Congratulations on a great quarter. Good to see such a good performance despite the wet weather at Sissingué. Look, just one question for me. It's just really on timelines at Yaouré. Obviously you've provided a bit of detail there, but I do note that your guidance towards initial production and commissioning is a little bit later than I had expected from that. Can we assume that it's a slightly longer build or are you being a little bit conservative on closing negotiations on Mining Convention and permitting? I'm just wondering if you can give me a bit of color on that, please.
No. Look, I think, Reg, to be perfectly honest, there's a natural level of conservatism in scheduling. But I think, to be honest, I may have misspoken earlier when I was telling you this and telling the market. 18 months, in fact, it was pointed for construction. It was pointed out to me that, in fact, the DFS predicted 22 months and we've come in pretty much around that. But look, there is obviously contingency built into those timetables and we're going to be doing everything that we can to come in earlier than that. I think one of the things that, as we've seen from Sissingué, that is relevant is we have to be mindful of weather windows. And if you don't get away on time and you get on the wrong side of the wet weather while you're doing earthworks, you can incur some pretty decent delays.
So naturally, we've built some contingency in. We're going to be doing everything we can to come in earlier than that target, though. And I dare say that our contractors will be incentivized to achieve that.
Okay, fantastic. Great. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Cathy Moises from Paterson. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jeff. Good quarter there. Just a quick question. On Edikan, the recovery has seemed a little bit lower. Was that an area you were mining which was not as free milling as other areas, or should we be assuming that those recoveries are going to continue?
No, look, it's a direct function of the fact that we're getting more carbonaceous material from the Fetish Pit, for instance, than we expected. Now as I said, the material does carry high grade, but it's very fine grained and so it does impact on the recovery when we put that material through. So what we do need to do is to limit in our blend the amount of material we put through down to about 10%. Sometimes we get a little bit exuberant and we put a bit more in because the grade is particularly attractive and that certainly impacts on recovery. But in terms of gold production, we're bang on target and that's pretty important. As I said when I was speaking earlier, it's not refractory, it's not preg-robbing.
What it is is it's very, very fine grained material that we could liberate the gold if we reground the material finer than the 75 microns that we currently do. Now in order to do that we would have to invest in capital and we can't see that we can justify that expense. But we have, during the course of this quarter, checked ourselves. And by that I mean we've not put carbonaceous material through or the high grade material through and we have achieved the 86%-87% recoveries that we're expecting to do. So we're very certain that the recovery movement is directly related to the quantity of that material that's included in the blend. So the challenge for us is to get the blend right and to make sure that we hit our production targets as we go forward.
Fantastic. Alright, thanks Jeff. That's great.
Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your phone and wait for your name to be announced. Next question comes from Michael Slifirski from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thanks Jeff. Two quickies. First from me, the exploitation permit. Is there anything else you need to submit to see that exercised or is it just that Minister change that's causing the delay? And what's the timeframe typically between exploitation permits and the mining convention? I think in the past you've suggested that the Sissingué model could be rolled across. So would you expect a pretty quick turnaround between granting of an exploitation permit and the mining convention being settled?
Yeah, just turn to the question on that. I mean, we do think that the license will be issued fairly quickly. I mean, we have had a number of discussions over the last month and certainly initially there was an interim minister appointed and then he was permanently replaced and we did meet him a day or so into his tenure and there is a determination to get this license issued because the government wants the project built as much as we do. Now the reason why it hasn't been issued this quarter is that we want to get the license issued with everything sorted out and what the government needs to do is to figure out exactly how to document the granting of this particular license and at the same time preserving tax concessions that are available to us.
And so we would prefer to get everything, all the paperwork done in a single shot rather than take a piece and then try and move it through later on because sometimes things get overlooked in the second phase and we don't want that to happen. So, you know, we are very confident that the matter is well in hand. There's no opposition from the government in terms of us developing the project, it's just a case of getting the paperwork done. Now, in terms of the Mining Convention, it is my expectation that the Sissingué model will be rolled over and that we should be able to bring that through fairly promptly.
But I guess, you know, bureaucracies being bureaucracies, they like to check things and double check things and it'll take a couple of months I expect but you know, the target is very much by the end of the year to put a package in front of our board and to seek approval to move ahead. And in order for us to do that we're going to need to have all the documentation, the licensing completed. We certainly need that in place before any banks are going to partner with their money. So, you know, it is important for us and you know, we're working pretty hard and I don't want to really make any specific, draw any lines in the sand or give you hard dates because, you know, it is a fluid process.
We are dealing with governments, but I can assure you that we're working fairly hard at getting this done fairly shortly.
Great, thank you. And the second question relates to the guidance for the half. I mean, demonstrably a really challenging quarter that you overcame at Sissingué but nonetheless still saying you'll be top end of the guidance. So trying to understand, was it simply the transition to transitional and hard rock that's made you conservative about it? So where was the conservatism in the guidance? Was it reliability of Edikan or was it specifically Sissingué because of the unknown transition?
It was a couple of things. We had always assumed that there would be some weather impact, but we weren't sure to what extent it would, so that was in there. The issue around the transitional ore is still something that's open and needs to be confirmed. I guess, you know, we're still fairly early on in the life of the mine, so once again, performance of the ore body was something that wasn't absolutely certain. We are still seeing the positive reconciliation, so it is performing well. So there were a number of question marks. You know, we have in the past been, you know, a bit aggressive with our forecast and we've come undone doing that. So we did feel that we needed to be a little more circumspect now as far as Edikan is concerned. We were also in the process of.
When we put out our guidance around finalizing the details of the revised Life of Mine plan and there was a little bit of uncertainty around that as well. So we have since locked that in and in fact we're, you know, we're delivering very nicely and we expect to actually deliver, continue to deliver on the cost savings and the grade is actually holding up better than we had expected with taking the approach that we're taking. So, look, there's a number of uncertainties and I guess in terms of our philosophy going forward, we want to be seen as a company that can be relied upon to deliver what we say we're going to do and we don't want to be, you know, making unreasonably bold statements and then find ourselves coming up short.
You know, naturally we'll be a little cautious around some of the things that we forecast. But look, I do expect that, you know, we will perform very strongly in this next quarter and certainly for the first 15 days of October that has, you know, borne out my expectations. Yes, we will be, and I do expect we'll end up looking fairly healthy on that guidance range and in retrospect people might say we were conservative, but I'd prefer to be like that than the other way around.
True. Jeff.
Michael, we've also benefited from identifying additional oxide ore at Sissingué. So that keeps the throughput up and the recovery's better than we'd expected. So we're getting a bit of a win on that side of things.
Right, thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand back to Mr. Quartermain for closing remarks.
Okay, well, thanks very much and thanks to your attendance on the call. As I said, the company is in better shape than it's ever been right now and we're very optimistic about the future. Having turned the Edikan mine into a nicely profitable mine and got Sissingué going. And with the Yaouré queued up, it's all looking fairly positive at this stage and we're looking forward to those results starting to be more adequately reflected in the share price going forward. Thank you very much and look forward to talking to you again in three months time.