Hey, . This is Chris Eger, CEO of Resolute Mining. Thanks for joining the call this morning. Extremely excited to have this conversation. I think Resolute now is approaching a very pivotal part in its timeline as we are looking to buy assets for the first time since we bought the Mako mines in 2019. Extremely excited about what we're doing here. You will have seen in the press release and possibly in the presentation, which is located on our website, that the deal structure is such that we are looking to buy Doropo and ABC from AngloGold Ashanti. The announcement, sorry, the deal was signed yesterday evening, and we're actually looking to close the transaction today. There were just a few, I guess, EPs in order to close the transaction, namely wire of funds and then one internal cleanup on intercompany activities.
Effectively, this is a sign-and-close transaction from May 1st, so we're very excited about that. I'm using the presentation that you can see on our website, and I'm on page three, which provides an overview of the deal metrics. As you can see, it's a $150 million deal with staged payments. We're paying $25 million today, $50 million in 18 months, and then $75 million after 30 months. In addition, we are transferring or selling our Guinea operations to AngloGold Ashanti because they have strategic value with their Siguiri asset. We would have liked to have kept the other exploration deposits in Guinea because they're really more focused on Mansala. In Guinea, you can only sell—excuse me—the holding company, and therefore you have to exit all of the exploration properties at this stage.
I'll talk about Guinea and our thoughts around future M&A at a later stage. In addition to Doropo, which was really our key focus, we're also picking up the ABC project. After we spent some time on ABC, we believe that actually the private prize is real value. The consideration that we ascribe to ABC, which you can see on page three, is a 2% NSR, which will go back to AngloGold Ashanti over the life of the project, and then a one-time $10 million payment once the project reaches 1 million ounces of gold reserves and a few utility studies. We also think that's a very compelling deal for us.
I think what's really exciting is that from a cash perspective, knowing that cash is king in today's markets, the way we've structured the consideration payments over time with our cash flow generation, our existing cash, we feel very confident that we can develop Doropo with our existing liquidity and some sort of financing or project finance facility, which, again, I'll talk about a bit further on to the presentation. Moving to page four, and this is the page that I think really explains why we're so excited about this transaction, is that we believe with Doropo, we will be in the next few years over a 500,000-ounce producer, but more importantly, very well diversified. We all appreciate that there's been challenges in Mali, and as I explained in our conference call last week for our Q1 results, things in Mali are very stable.
We're happy with the progress we're making with the government. We firmly believe that in order to add value for our shareholders, it makes sense to be diversified. We have strong skill sets in what I call the Francophone West African countries, and Doropo is a project that we've been following for some time. We've liked it a lot, and we think we are the perfect acquirer of this project. When you look at the graphs in the top right, it really explains kind of our production profile of the next few years. We have a dip in 2026 and 2027 as a result of moving into stockpile production and processing at our Mako operation. What you can see in 2028 and 2029, that's going to quickly reverse, and we will be over 500,000 ounces, I believe, in those years.
More importantly, beyond that, with the existing exploration profiles and projects that we have in our business today, mainly in Ivory Coast , we think we can grow the business accretively to levels probably closer to 750,000. Look, that's not our key to hit an arbitrary growth profile. What's important is that we are doing accretive transactions for our shareholders and continuing to add value to our business in order to de-risk it and diversification. The other key aspect of Doropo is that it's very much a low-cost producing asset, and we think that's going to increase our margins helpfully across the business and generate more cash. Like I said, what made this very interesting was the fact that we were able to work with AngloGold Ashanti and a staged consideration payment in order to manage our cash flows.
Now, with standings, it's going to add another 5 million ounces to our R&R, and so we'll be sitting at 6 million ounces in R&R. I think that's going to be very exciting for future potential growth. Moving to page five, a couple of pages here on just where we operate and how we look to the future. Maybe just to pause on Guinea here. Like I said, as part of the transaction, we had to effectively sell our Guinea assets to AngloGold Ashanti and ascribe roughly $25 million for those businesses. That's because, with regards to Guinea, in order to consummate the transaction, you need the government's approval, and we ascribe that we could do that hopefully in the next year.
If we do not get the government's approval within 18 months, we will keep the exploration properties in Guinea and effectively pay $25 million to AngloGold Ashanti. That is not what they want. We have been obviously in constant communication with them over the past several months, and they would very much like to keep Msala for their books as it provides strategic value to the Siguiri mines. Look, when you look at the map, we will continue to explore. We will use and continue to use our money to look for exploration deposits in Guinea and elsewhere in West Africa. I guess the point is that we are not done. We think that Doropo, ABC provided extremely accretive transaction to our shareholder, and we want to continue to do that. If not, we will look to give cash back to our shareholders as well.
Whatever makes the most sense, but in our minds, this transaction was an absolute slam dunk, and we're very excited about it. Moving to page six, just a bit more specifics on Ivory Coast with the three projects that we have today. We have been in Ivory Coast for some time, and last year we went into the Les Diables project, which is a smaller project in the southwest of Ivory Coast with 400,000 ounces at a grade of 1.2 grams per ton. As you know, Doropo is all the way in the northeast next to the Burkina Faso border. We also have the ABC project, which I'll spend a bit of time explaining how we think about ABC moving forward. Look, Ivory Coast is arguably one of the better jurisdictions in West Africa.
As you can see with these three projects, we're really making a stance to have a meaningful position in Côte d'Ivoire. I was in Côte d'Ivoire earlier this week to meet with the line minister in order to obviously explain what we're doing. They're very excited to continue to work with us in order to develop Doropo as well as other projects within the country. I'm very pleased with the government relations to date, and I think that we can build upon that for future activities. Moving to pages seven and eight, just to talk about Doropo a bit. Doropo is a project that's been around for some time.
Effectively, the licenses were granted back in 2013, and Centamin acquired the business in 2014, and they commenced drilling and moved to the traditional steps of development, culminating in a DFS last year in order to apply for the exploitation permit. Why we really like Doropo is, frankly, off the back of what Centamin has been doing. Centamin also has a reputation of a very strong management team, and they developed this project to build it themselves. Obviously, that was changed last year when AngloGold Ashanti bought Centamin . Compared to some other projects that have been put into the market over time, the DFS and the work done to date has been of excellent quality because Centamin really had the intention to develop this project.
It made our lives, I would say, frankly, easy from a due diligence perspective because when we looked at the DFS, we feel extremely comfortable with more than 90% of the document and how Centamin approached development of the project. As you can see in the bottom left of the page, let's say we're sitting at about 1.9 million ounces at a grade of just over 1.53. On the right side of the page, you can see a picture of the various pits that will be mined over the at least 10-year mine life. There are eight pits, so there is a bit of probably some work to be done on making sure that we're able to manage the eight pits. Look, our experience in Syama is such that we've got good capabilities in how to mine multiple pits at the same time.
There is still quite a bit of community activity that we need to sort out, and obviously, working with the government in order to manage the community issues is key, but we think we have a good handle on this aspect. Moving to page eight, here are some of the key metrics from the DFS that was published by Centamin, like I said, last year in August. It is at least a 10-year mine life, if not more. Look, in the last slide, I will talk about what we think we can do next in order to optimize the DFS. It will, over a lifetime, process 38 million tons. The construction capex is around $370 million. That is what was in the DFS. Look, we will be looking to revise that number, and it will likely go up by a bit.
Again, I'll provide more context at a later date once we've done our work. It's very much a 3 million operation, which leads to conventional closed SAG ball mill crushing, CIL flow sheet, which makes it quite traditional, and up to 5.4 million tons per annum of processing capacity with very comfortable recovery rates at 89%. Like I said, you can see the statistics that over time, the gold production is about 157,000 ounces. The power in the DFS was envisioned to basically tap into the grid from day one. We think that that's probably overly optimistic and that we'll need to put in some diesel backups from day one and also have diesel backups throughout the life of mine because the grid is unstable.
Effectively, every single operating asset today in has some form of diesel backup, which has been, unfortunately, what's been required because of the instability in the grid system. That is an area of optimization that we will be focusing on. Most importantly, the NPV of the project, again, last year, you can see on the bottom left, was $426 million, and that was at a 100% attributable basis, $1,900 gold price, 8% discount rate. We think that as we look to optimize the DFS for today's gold price environment, we can do a lot better. In fact, that is what we believe and why this is such an accretive transaction.
We think that this will be an NPV that will be substantially higher, and at some point, we will update our models and update the DFS and provide some more specifics on it, but it will be for sure substantially higher than that number. Moving to page nine, look, just a page on how we think about ABC. ABC came into the mix a bit later after Doropo, and the reason that we did that is because the way that the transaction was structured from a simultaneous signing clause is that we have purchased the [holding AGA] company, which then in turn holds the exploration assets for both ABC and Doropo. In Ivory Coast , an indirect transaction does not require government approval, so it was a very straightforward transaction, and therefore, we obviously picked up ABC.
You can see that the ABC, what it stands for, is the ABC Project. There's a lot of exploration happening in that part of Ivory Coast , specifically the Newmont business, which is just to the north. Look, there's been a good bit of amount of work, just 60,000 m drilled, which has led today to about over 2 million ounces at just 0.9 grams per ton, which is a bit low. What makes me excited about this project is that there hasn't been much done to the very north license, the Fana license. Look, spending time now with our new team in Côte d’Ivoire, they are very excited about still exploring this area and developing another mine at some stage. This is an area that we may develop.
Our priority is Doropo, but it provides good optionality and flexibility to our business, which is kind of a key theme that we're trying to move on as we go through the next steps of Resolute. Moving to page 10, I think this is quite an important page to spend a bit of time on because we have effectively picked up a project that was on the verge of moving towards construction, but then was put on hold as a result of the Centamin AngloGold Ashanti transaction, which has created some complications, but very much some fantastic opportunities. The exploitation permit was lodged last August. It then received the ESIA clearance in the fall. It has gone through all the public consultation periods and is really now at the final steps for government approval.
Like I said, we met with the government last, these past couple of days, Monday, Tuesday, and I think they're working towards granting the exploitation license in the coming months. We say coming months because I would like some flexibility to continue to work with the government because, look, there is no great secret that Côte d'Ivoire and many other mining jurisdictions in West Africa are looking to implement new mining codes. My previous colleagues and other mining companies to date have stayed on the existing mining code. There's a chance that we stay on the existing mining code. There's also a real chance that we may move to the new mining code. The way that I think about it, though, what's very important is to have full alignment with the government and build on a long-term relationship.
We're very much open to moving to the new mining code should it come to that. We think it's not necessary because we'll be obviously investing well over $400 million of capital in this project over time. Therefore, I think that we need to work with them in how we can develop the business in the most efficient manner. That's a key part of kind of next steps. In addition, my team is looking today to optimize the DFS with an intention of releasing a new DFS by the end of the year. We'll need to do that in order to secure financing for the transaction. We see quite a bit of upside from regards to revisiting the pit shell designs with regards to a higher gold price. The DFS was done at a pit shell gold price of $1,400.
As we all know, today, we're sitting north of 3,200, and therefore, there's a real opportunity to change the mine life structure and very much extend the mine life beyond what's in DFS. We do think, like I said, we need to be a bit more strategic and provide a few more backups with regards to power. We want to revisit the resettlement action plan because there's quite a lot of community involvement with regards to moving people. Overall, my view is that we were very comfortable with the DFS based off the high-quality work that Centamin had done over time. That's obviously a key workstream, and then we're going to augment the team. We're taking on board roughly 80-odd people in Côte d’Ivoire, which will stay on our books for the future.
Like I said, Centamin has built a good team, and we're very happy to continue to work with the people in Côte d'Ivoire in developing Doropo in a very efficient and timely manner. Finally, on how we will move ahead from a funding perspective, we as Resolute are very proud with the cash flow generation that we're making today from both Mako and Syama. As you saw from our quarterly results last week, we generated over $34 million of cash in Q1. We think that we're on track for the rest of the year to maintain that cash production, if not more, especially in today's gold price environment. We are generating strong cash flows. We have access to liquidity, and we also have potential additional cash coming from the Ravenswood transaction.
Based off the very attractive, what I call, perspectives of Doropo and also the work in the past that was done by Centamin with a number of banks who are our banks, this project is not new to the banking community. We can leverage historical work to pick up future activities and try and get the business financed in the most accretive manner to our shareholders. We think it comfortably can sustain between $200 million and $250 million of banking facilities. Again, we will explore all options and pursue what we think will be the most accretive for our shareholders at this juncture. To wrap it up on page 11 and in conclusion, I'll just say I'm extremely excited with this transformative acquisition.
It's been what we've been wanting to do to diversify into a proper, meaningful, exciting jurisdiction. It's an asset that's chunky with 200,000 ounces, so it really makes a meaningful mark in how we look at the business. We have the skill sets internally to develop. Quite a few of our folks have built projects like this, and so I'm very happy with the team we have in place today, but we do need to augment to it. It's going to also provide future growth opportunities, and that's the key. We're not done yet. We will continue to look to see how we can diversify our business and bring in projects that we can develop and operate at very attractive margins, which again, will create that value to our shareholders.
There is obviously a benefit to economies of scale by being an over 500,000 ounce producer and moving the stock to a place that will be interesting for many other investors. In conclusion, I think this provides a very solid foundation for future work and creation of value. I could not be more happy with what the team has done today, the support of our board, and giving us a disposition as this is a project that, like I said, we believe is going to change Resolute, moving from a defensive position into a really offensive position. We are very excited about that. With this, I will turn it over to the operator for questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad.
That is star one for your question today. Up first, we have a question from Richard Hatch from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks, operator. Morning, Chris and team. Yeah, congrats on a really nice-looking deal. Yeah, shame you had to announce it in the down days for the gold price, but I think a really nice deal, so congrats. Look, I've got a few questions. The first one's just on this pit shell. Obviously, $1,450 seems like a very conservative gold price in today's world. You've pointed to a $1,950 gold price for the shell. Can you just, are you able to give us any kind of steer as to what that could potentially do to volumes versus the historical DFS? I appreciate it wasn't your DFS, but have you got a rough steer? That's the first one.
We do.
I really would not like to say it because we have not done the work properly, but let's say it will add meaningful life to the project, at least several years, give or take. We have to do the work because, look, we are also still evaluating what pitch hell gold price should we be using. We used ourselves $1,950 last year, and that is when the gold price was around $2,400-$2,500. Obviously, we are in a different environment. We are doing that work as we speak. The consultants that Centamin used to do this work, and the name escapes me, are based in Perth. They are excellent. Our Head of Geology and Exploration, Bruce Mowat, is there, and he is already picking up the phone to work with them to do that. That is something that we will look to do very, very shortly.
Okay. All right. We will watch out for that then.
Okay. You kind of talked a bit about the CapEx. The last printed number on this, this was $373 million in 2024, July. Obviously, you've seen a bit of inflation since that point. Have you got a rough steer as to what kind of inflation you feel it could potentially go to?
Look, again, we're doing the work on the call. I threw out the number $400 million. It could be north of that. As we all know, when people look to optimize DFS, especially in a rising inflationary environment, the number will go up. I think it's going to be at least $400 million, maybe a little bit more. We're very happy to spend that money because we think that some key considerations will be to put up backups on the power side of the equation.
There are a few areas that we want to revisit on the collective development of the project and how the layouts were presented under the Centamin umbrella. It is not a meaningful huge increase beyond that. I'm talking maybe 10% type situation, plus or minus. That is very preliminary. I just caution everybody to use the $373 million knowing that we're doing work to optimize it, but the number will go up.
Yeah. Okay. The next point or question is around the optimization. You talked a bit about, can you perhaps just lay out a few areas where you particularly see the opportunities to kind of squeeze a bit more NPV out of the project than was previously sort of given to the market by Centamin?
I think, by the way, the most important one is to revisit the pits and to add more gold into the life of mines. We're very happy with the R&R that was put into place. There is some exploration upside, but frankly, probably we need to get into there and see if there's other areas that we can grow the deposit. It's really, I think, revisiting the mine models with the new gold price, which is going to create the most value. That's on the positive. There may be some small areas to tweak out on the CapEx, but like I said, Centamin did a very good job in building a project that they could say that they did within budget and on time. We are confident that the numbers make sense, but we're not looking to overpromise on delivery.
That's why I think really we're happy with the number. It's just, well, can we do with the gold price and, if anything, add a bit more cost to have proper safety and security over the life of the mine?
Yeah. Okay. All right. Cool. And then just sort of finally, just on the resettlement, I mean, when Centamin provided the updated DFS, it cut the resettlement number down from 2,000 m-3,000 m with the previous number, and then it went down to 500 m. Can you just, is there any way just to sort of talk about how you're thinking about, I mean, you made a point in your release about reviewing the resettlement action plan. So can we just talk a little bit more about that?
Yeah.
Look, I think the key assumption that was used in the DFS was that Centamin is doing the 250-m blast radius for the movement of the houses. We think that's too conservative, and we think it should be 500 m. By changing effectively the barrier from 250 m to 500 m, you increase the footprint of resettlement, and you change also the timing for resettlement. Look, we have quite a bit of knowledge and experience with resettlement with the work we're doing in Senegal. I think that this is probably an area that was maybe a bit fast-tracked for the DFS. It's a delicate one. We want to take the extra sort of work to reopen the resettlement plan and, more importantly, get going on it so that we can do it without any sort of challenges.
The very northern part of Côte d’Ivoire does not have any mines. Just to be clear, it's probably not one of the more economic; it's probably one of the poorer economic areas of the country. The government is very, very excited about what we're doing because it also creates some economic stability and inspiration, but we'll need to work with the communities to explain that and then to obviously have them be employed by the mine and work with us. Going back to the original point, it's really by changing the boundary from 250 m to 500 m, which has created the need to revisit how we look at relocation.
Okay. Okay. All right. Congrats. Thanks for your time.
Thank you, Richard. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Up next, we take a question from Reg Spencer from Canaccord. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks.
Good day. Chris, yeah, echoing the previous guy, congratulations. It does look like a pretty good deal. I've only got one question. You've mentioned likely changes to the Ivorian Mining Code. My understanding is that typically you would need to negotiate a convention, which, let's call it a stability agreement, for lack of a better term. From what you understand, the proposed changes to the code in Côte d'Ivoire, would that include potential for tax holidays, like some other projects have been negotiated?
Possibly. Reg, I'm going to talk to you. The way that it will work is we get our exploitation license granted, and then we have roughly 90 days to implement an event, implement, sorry, a mining convention. During that time, theoretically, we should be operating the mining convention that we implemented, the existing mining code.
Côte d’Ivoire is in the process of looking at a new mining code. Until it is put into law, we still will operate under the existing code. During that 90-day consultation period, we will work with the government to obviously try and get as many tax holidays and favorable, call it, economic terms for us. Like I said, I am very open to working with the government. If there are things that are extremely important to them that they want us to accept at this juncture, we would do so. When we looked at the value for this transaction, we conservatively assumed the new mining code is what we would have to take on board, but we do not think we will do that or have the full impact of it. It will probably be some sort of mix.
Look, the reason I say that is because we are spending time with the government. We understand what they're trying to do. We're also spending a lot of money developing a mine in the northeast, so they want us to be there. We also need to work with them to have some sort of compromise of which mining code we take on and which tax holidays we can get from them because we will be spending quite a lot of money and also bringing in international financing into the mix at this point.
Understood. Understood. That's very helpful. Chris, thanks very much. We're getting congratulations.
Thanks, Reg. Really appreciate it.
Thank you. Richard Knights from Barrenjoey has our next question now. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yeah.
Thanks for the call, Chris. Look, it looks like a really, really crazy transaction.
I mean, if I look at the feasibility sort of sensitivity tables there and run $3,000 gold through, it's looking like something like a billion-dollar project. I'm just wondering if there was much competitive tension at all in the process. Were there other parties looking at this, or was it just a bilateral negotiation?
Thanks for sharing. Good evening. Look, on the first point, you're absolutely right. We do think that there's a compelling NPV at a more realistic gold price. You said the number, not me, but I do think it's substantially higher than the number that's been published. Look, the world is complicated and dynamic. As we all know, gold price may come back down. There's still a lot of political instability, and we still have financing risk and development risk.
We do think that while the NPV is very attractive, we have to risk-adjust it appropriately, which we've done, and we still think there's plenty of headroom. We've been very thoughtful around that process. Look, on the overall process with AngloGold, we've been in contact with them for some time. We know that they liked our manpower project. They knew we liked the Doropo project. Look, based off our business, our cash flow of operations, our simplicity of the deal, whereby we don't need any regulatory approvals, we don't need any government approvals with the exception of transfer of the Guinea asset, it makes sense to do something quick and close for both of us to move on and continue to develop our asset base.
Look, I'm not privy to all the other inbounds or activities that AngloGold may have had, but we were very pleased to work with them on a deal that was, I would say, done very efficiently in a timely manner in order to get on with life.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. That makes sense. Just to follow up, I suppose, I mean, you mentioned the wrap and your view that you probably need to take a slightly more conservative view with resettlement. I mean, are there any other sort of regional soft issues that we should know about in terms of operating up in that northeastern corner of Côte d’Ivoire? Are you really comfortable with that sort of part of the world?
Yeah, to be completely open, there has been historically in 2020 to 2022, some security challenges because it sits literally on the border of Burkina Faso. Spending time with the government and the amount of military and gendarme presence, we are very comfortable to operate in the northeast. That obviously would have been a game changer and a deal breaker if we thought that the security would have been a challenge. We can confidently say that we do not at this point, but anybody can Google and look at what has happened in the history and see that there have been some challenges. The team now operates very comfortably in and out. It is a long drive from Abidjan to [Kusitlawen Drive], our drive at this point because we have not built a strip and the airport needs refurbishment.
Look, there are supply chain and logistical challenges that we will uncover as we develop the mine, but these are all standard that we'll work through. I'm not concerned about it. That is probably the only softer issue to highlight. Like I said, we've done the work, we're comfortable with it, and we'll be very vigilant and stay in front of it as we develop the project and operate for many years to come.
Okay. Great. Thanks, Chris.
Thank you, Richard. Appreciate it. Bye.
Thank you. As a quick reminder, that is Starawon for your question today. We now take a question from Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Chris and team. Again, congratulations. I think it looks like it's a very good addition and diversification for you.
My first one is just a follow-up to Richard's question on the pits. Just maybe looking a bit into the geology of it, can you give us a sense? I mean, at a higher price, do you think the pits go deeper? Is that the main change, or is there disseminated mineralization that comes in or waste to ore conversion? Just trying to get a sense of how you think about that.
Morning, Justin. Thank you again. You have nailed it. It is just they go deeper, the pits. We think there is more gold at depth, and the strip ratios today are about 4.9 to 1. We think the strip ratios will either stay the same or slightly go up, but there is effectively more gold at depth, and the pits are just going to be widened out.
That's the key area of growth that we see in the deposits today.
Okay. Very clear. Thanks. I guess maybe a couple of things. One, in terms of your own team, do you need to add kind of a mine development team to your roster? I mean, you've definitely had some and have some fairly sizable capital projects. I'm just curious on the HR side of things. What's the role of you looking to build?
Yeah. Look, it's a very good question, Justin, because we do need to add people to the roster. As you highlighted today, we are doing fairly important work in Mali with the SSCP. We're spending $100 million, and we've got other projects on the go, and we've got a very big project team focused on Senegal with the mine life extension activities, which we're near 100% confident will happen.
We do need to build and find a project director that will fit in country to build the team. Again, as part of what was happening last year with Centamin and AngloGold Ashanti, they were starting to bring on folks to develop, but then once the AGA deal was announced and Corvuz was not strategic for AGA, some of the key positions became vacant. Probably the main gap today is a project director that will take charge of building Doropo, but we've already started kicking off that process at this stage. We have very good community people. I'm pleased with the in-country team that is managing the government relations and the finance and HR and all those types of activities. We have very good geologists in country that are all staying with the project.
The actual build team is something that we need to get going on, and that's one of the key next steps.
Gotcha. In terms of the permits, I guess what has been done, what needs to be done? This needs to convert to an exploitation license. Are the baseline studies in place? Does it need an ESIA?
All of that's been done and been launched. Now we really are in the final consultation period with the government in granting the permits. Look, that's why we think it's the next month or two. There is some slight complication in the sense that the licenses today sit under two different corporate entities. There are three licenses under one corporate entity and two under another corporate entity.
The team in country is looking to get an exploitation permit for all five licenses and then to merge effectively the licenses under one entity. That is what is creating a bit of complication. Like I said, it is a matter of time, and we are okay because there needs to be some work that we do with regards to optimizing the DFS. Whether we get the permit granted in two months or, frankly, sometime in Q3, I am not too fussed. Obviously, the sooner, the better. We have a bit of work that we have to do in optimizing the DFS to properly go out to the markets with regards to project financing.
Gotcha. My last one, maybe just a sense of some of the operating considerations. I am quite comforted.
I think one of the challenges of the project before was just kind of it's on the end of the power line. I am pretty comforted to hear you're putting in backup power. I am just wondering on the security side of things, is there kind of any operating ongoing stuff that you would or ongoing measures that you would expect to have to security, or will it kind of touch on operating costs, or is that mostly just the government? At this point, how do you think about it?
Yeah. Look, it's more the latter. Look, obviously, we have to and we will be providing the right community investments and do what we do in the other parts of West Africa whereby we're, say, local partners. Security and cost of security, that will most likely be borne by the government.
Look, if we have to beef up the security presence, we'll do so, but I don't think that's a major consideration. The real issue, as you highlighted, has been power. Other mines like Lafigué , who recently started up, have learned the hard way that we had to put in backup power. That's really where we see the additional cost at this stage. We are very comfortable with security, but that's something that we're going to be monitoring and stay cautiously optimistic.
Okay. Great. All right. That's all I've got, but thank you very much, Chris and team, and congratulations.
Thank you again, Justin. Thank you for the support. Thank you.
Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions in the queue, so I'd like to hand the call back over to you, Chris, for any additional or closing remarks.
No.
Thank you very much. Just like I said, very appreciative of everybody dialing in this morning. It is a very exciting time in the Resolute history, and we look forward to developing the project and staying in touch with you as we move forward. Again, thank you very much for listening this morning.
Thank you for joining today's call, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.