Thanks, Nathan. Good morning and welcome to the June 2025 Quarterly Conference Call for West African Resources. Thanks for joining us today. Joining me today on the call is Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director, Lyndon Hopkins, Company Secretary and CFO, Padraig O'Donoghue, and Todd Guiltey, our GM of Finance. The past quarter has been transformational for the company, with our second gold mine, Kiaka, coming online, pouring first gold ahead of schedule and under budget. This achievement is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our build team at Kiaka, supported by our teams at Sanbrado and in head office. They have all performed superbly to get this result, and I'm very grateful for this effort, and I'm sure our shareholders and stakeholders will agree. We now have two long-life, unhedged gold production centers in operation in Burkina Faso.
These quality operations underpin our goal of flying to 500,000 ounces per annum gold production by 2030. We poured first gold at Kiaka on June 26th and will now oversee the ramp-up to full production in the September quarter once grid power has been connected, which will allow us to increase our production capacity. Kiaka's production guidance for 2025 remains at between 100,000 and 150,000 ounces of gold. At Sanbrado, we produced 45,611 ounces of gold in the quarter at a site-sustaining cost of $1,426 per ounce. This brought Sanbrado's half-year production to 95,644 ounces of gold at a site-sustaining cost of $1,311 per ounce. Sanbrado remains on track to achieve 2025 annual guidance of between 190,000- 210,000 ounces of gold at a site-sustaining cost of less than $1,350 an ounce. Gold sales for the quarter totaled 49,840 ounces, at an average price of $3,282 per ounce.
West African remains unhedged. Sales, in turn, helped us deliver quarterly cash flow from operations of AUD 86 million after paying AUD 42 million in income tax payments. Our cash balance at the end of the quarter was a healthy AUD 279 million, plus we held an additional AUD 49 million in gold bullion, equating to 9,713 ounces of unsold gold at Sanbrado. Health and safety remains a priority for the company, and there were no significant health or safety incidents during the second quarter. Our total recordable injury frequency rate, or TRIFA, at the end of the quarter was 1.49. The injury frequency rate for the gold industry in Western Australia was 4.3 for the most recent available reporting period. That result just demonstrates how well we track in terms of managing and implementing a strong adherence to our health and safety initiatives.
Our plan to transition from contractor to owner mining at Sanbrado's open pit is also tracking to plan. Contractor African Mining Services demobilized from site at the completion of its contract in April 2025, and we will commence open pit mining in early Q4 using our own fleet of Caterpillar mining equipment and Sandvik drills. Open pit mill feed is being sourced from ore stockpiles during the interim period. In Q2, the open pit at Sanbrado delivered 409,000 tonnes of ore at 0.9 grams per tonne for 11,795 mined ounces of gold, while from the M1 South underground, we mined 153,000 tonnes of ore at 6 grams per tonne for 29,320 mined ounces of gold. Underground development of just over 1,000 meters was completed during the quarter, including 161 meters of advancement of the decline. The vertical depth of development increased 23 meters- 645 meters below surface.
The Sanbrado process plant continued its reliable performance with 45,611 ounces of gold produced. The closing ROM stockpiles of 98,592 ounces of contained gold at the end of Q2 were 8% lower than the previous quarter. To support our operations during the quarter, we finalized resource conversion drilling at M1 South. This has returned some strong results, including 44 meters at 25.8 grams per tonne gold and 44.5 meters at 17.1 grams per tonne gold. These results will be incorporated into West African Resources' updated resource reserve and ten-year production plan due for release later this quarter. During the quarter, we welcomed Jade Webb to our board as a Non-Executive Director. Jade is an experienced and accomplished mining engineer who currently leads the mining technology development function at South32, focused on identifying opportunities for innovation in mining extraction and strategically applying value-adding technologies.
She has worked primarily in Australia and Tanzania and has extensive technical experience across a variety of African countries, ore bodies, mining methods, and operating structures. Jade fills the board position vacated by Nigel Spicer, who retired at our AGM, and we are looking forward to working with Jade. I'd now like to hand over to our CFO, Padraig, to discuss our financial performance for the quarter in more detail. Thanks, Padraig.
Thank you, Richard. West African Resources has benefited tremendously from being unhedged and generated, as Richard said, $254 million of gold sales revenue in the quarter from an average realized gold sales price of $3,282 per ounce. Also, as Richard mentioned, we generated $86 million of operating cash flow in Q2 and had a healthy cash balance of AUD 279 million at the end of the quarter. Our capital investing activities in Q4 used $126 million cash, which included $90 million for development of Kiaka, and we have approximately $40 million cash remaining as the final cost up for completion of Kiaka. Financing activities used $12 million cash in Q4, mostly comprised of $10 million of interest paid on borrowings. Overall, site-sustaining costs per ounce were up in the quarter due to one-off higher demobilization of AMS from site, as Richard mentioned.
There was a shutdown for mill reliance, which also affected costs in the quarter. The higher royalty rates and higher gold price also increased the sustaining costs per ounce in the quarter and will continue to affect us for the rest of the year. I'd now like to hand back to Richard for his closing comments.
Thanks, Padraig. I appreciate your commentary. As we now wrap up the call, I'd once again like to thank all of our teams, including those on site at Kiaka and Sanbrado, for continuing to do such a great job. We're looking forward to ramping up production at Kiaka over this quarter, and we'll keep the market informed on that progress. We also look forward to releasing our resource reserve and ten-year production plan update in the coming weeks. Thanks again for joining us today and for your continued interest in West African Resources. I'll now hand back to Nathan.
Thanks, Richard. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the raise hand function. Your first question comes from Paul Howard at Canaccord. Please go ahead, Paul.
Yeah, thanks, Nathan. Good morning, guys. Thanks for that and congrats on another good quarterly there. I've got a couple of questions around Kiaka. Firstly, Padraig, I just didn't catch it there. What did you say was the outstanding capital spend there?
On a cash basis, it's about $40 million.
$40 million, great. Thank you. Richard, you said guidance for Kiaka for the financial year at the start there. Can you reiterate that? I just noticed it's not actually in the quarterly, so I was wondering had you withdrawn it or was it just an omission?
No, no. We've maintained that, you know, between 100,000 and 150,000 ounces of gold produced for Kiaka for the half of, you know, since we've started operations. Obviously, that is kind of contingent on how soon we can get grid power connected, which we're working on at the moment with the government. We've also sourced additional backup power, which will help us increase production. Currently, Kiaka's operating, you know, pretty stably at about 20,000 tonnes a day, roughly, on average. We look to increase that, you know, once we get more power on.
Excellent. I think I read there were six extra diesel generators. That sort of doubled the diesel generation coming to site?
In the original plan, we were looking to have, I think it was about 10 MWs of backup power. Then we increased it to 15, and now we're kind of doubling that now. We've got a plan in place, given that we've only run on budgets during the construction, to have full HFO and diesel backup in case the grid's not available. We are expecting the grid to be available when it comes on. We're just finalizing details with the government. We've completed all of the infrastructure required to turn the grid on. This is really just getting final approvals from the government to turn the power on.
Great. Okay, thanks so much for that. Appreciate it.
Just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the raise hand function. Okay, your next question comes from Mike Millikan at Euroz Hartleys. Please go ahead, Mike.
Thanks for that, guys. Just a quick question from me, just in regards to Sanbrado. Just the owner-operator, obviously the mining fleet, how's it all going in regards to sourcing and getting everything up and timing for that? Could you just provide a bit more on that? Thanks.
Sure. Look, it's going well, but I'll pass that question on to Lyndon Hopkins, who's also on the call.
Thanks, Rich. Yeah, hi, Mike. Look, it is coming together. We've got the Caterpillar equipment coming in for delivery this quarter and assembly. Also, the rigs from Sandvik. We've started delivery of those. The first two arrive in a couple of weeks' time. We're looking pretty good there. We also have some broken stocks in the pit that we left that we can make a start on as well. At this stage, it's looking okay. Oh, brilliant. Sounds good. Obviously, Twega, an updated study, I suppose, for the underground, something that's coming due as well pretty soon. Also, the 10-year outlook. Timing for 10-year outlook still on track, probably the next few weeks or, you know, that's a kind of rough time.
Yeah, we released the scope of study on the underground, I think, in Q1 this year. Incorporating that into the 10-year plan at the moment, that's being worked on. It's been finalized right now, given that we're aiming to have that out for Diggers and Dealers, which, you know, we're pushing everyone pretty hard here at the moment. We've got a lot on with a pretty small team. Hopefully, we'll have that for my speech next week. We're kind of pushing at the moment. It'll be good. I think it'll be appreciated by all of our supporters and shareholders.
Sounds good. Yeah, and just going back to Kiaka power, obviously, you've done everything you can on your end for infrastructure, just the time with the government. Do they give you a rough timing when they kind of expect the charge to line and stuff like that, or is it just kind of, you know, getting closer and you're just working with the government officials on that?
Yeah, look, it's imminent. I mean, we expect to have it done during Q3. We are expecting to have, you know, full power for all of Q4. That should see us, you know, being able to increase the throughput, you know, significantly. Still, you know, we get grid on. We're confident of hitting our sort of production guidance. That was always a very tricky and ambitious sort of target, given it's a big build. If you look at most companies ramping up, it takes them, you know, well more than one quarter to ramp up a project the size of Kiaka, given that it's, you know, it's 18 MWs of installed SAG mill capacity and another 9 MWs of ball capacity. It's a big project. We look forward to taking some of the analysts, including yourself, Mike, on our site tour in a few weeks.
Yeah, I can't wait. Thanks very much. That's all I've got. Thanks, guys.
No worries.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Richard for closing remarks.
Thanks very much for everyone dialing in and listening to the call this morning. We look forward to updating investors during the next quarter. Getting the full grid power on at Kiaka is our current focus and ramping up to full production. Thanks again for joining us today. We look forward to updating investors over the quarter. Thank you.