My name is Sintu, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Aya Gold and Silver Third Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star, then the number two. Thank you. Ms. Hanna, you begin, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Aya's Third Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. My name is Ruth Hanna, and I'm the IR Communication Manager, dialing in with almost all of the Aya team from Montreal this morning. On the call today, we have Benoit La Salle, President and CEO; Ugo Landry-Tolszczuk, Chief Financial Officer, Raphaël Beaudoin, Vice President, Operations, David Lalonde, Head of Exploration, and Mustapha El Ouafi, President and Managing Director of Morocco. We finish today's event with a Q&A session with the team. Please contact our IR team directly with any follow-up questions that are not addressed during the call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that today's event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements.
Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in our November fourteenth news release, as well as on SEDAR and on ayagoldsilver.com. With that, I would like to turn the conference over to Aya's President and CEO, Benoit La Salle. Benoit, please go ahead.
Thank you, Ruth. Good morning, everybody. Just one little item. I know that the call is one day later than when we published our financial statement, and the reason is we had a strategic board meeting in Montreal, where all the board members were in, and all the management team was in Montreal. Hence, yesterday was a very busy day for the board, and this is the reason why the call is one day later. I know some of you were wondering and called me about this. So let's review the performance of the quarter. Q3 2023, we have a slide up, slide number three. We had an excellent quarter. All of our KPIs were green. We're very pleased with the quarter.
We produced 519,000 ounces of Silver, which is, you know, +15% when we compare to the previous year. We generated CAD 11 million in revenue and a record operating cash flow of CAD 7.7 million for the quarter. Our cash cost was at CAD 1,073, and our AISC was even below CAD 11, just below CAD 11. So it was a very good quarter, for cost, and I know some of you called us about this and, and how we were able to do this. And then this is just the, the performance of the quarter and the, and the cost of operation in Morocco. The net profit for the quarter is one, CAD 1.2 million.
It's a 79% increase year-over-year, and we closed the quarter with CAD 71 million in cash and cash equivalents, hence, a very strong balance sheet. The continued performance is on track with what we expected. The Zgounder's expansion is 60% completed. The drilling was increased last quarter by 73% to 119,000 meters for the company as a whole, which is, you know, as we all know right now in our industry, it's exceptional. The Boumadine also was extended. The strike length was extended to 4.2 km. That was published in the quarter. We've announced high-grade open-pittable gold at Tijirit in one of our press releases.
We've also announced that we draw down CAD 35 million on our construction facility for the Zgounder expansion, and we've expanded our land position, and that's something we're very keen, is to increase our land position, that we increased it by 17% at Zgounder and 50% at Boumadine. When we took over three years ago, we had about over, a little bit over 60 sq km, and as we are right now in Aya, we have over 600 sq km of prospective ground. Just a couple of items on page four of the PowerPoint, the Silver production, the cash costs, the average grade. As you know, the grade is something that can be a little bit hard to manage at Zgounder because of the nature of the deposit.
So our guidance was 264. So far, we're at 254, so we're not far, and Q3 was at 261. Mill recovery is excellent at 86%, and mill availability is above 90%. So those KPIs, we're doing extremely well. And in the ton process, we know we processed 70,000 tons in Q3 and 215 so far. So when you see on slide four, the guidance to where we are after three quarters, you can see that we're really well-aligned to be on guidance or, you know, even better than guidance. A couple of slides just to see. You see that the production at 500,000 ounces has been pretty steady for the last five quarters.
You remember that Q4 is an anomaly, and not to be repeated because the grade was extremely high in Q4, and now that we have stockpile, we, you know, that would not happen again. But to see 500,000 is clearly been a trend for the past five quarters. The grade is also holding in well, as you can see at the bottom. So when we say 250, 254, that's also been steady for the past five quarters. The average recovery is really around 85%-86%. We touched 87% in the previous quarter, so it's very, very steady. And the ore processed at 70,000 tons.
What's interesting is our capacity, nameplate capacity, is 700 tons a day, and we're really running now at a little bit above 800 tons a day or around 800 tons a day. So we are exceeding our nameplate capacity. The cash flow for the quarter, you see this on page six. Very strong cash flow this quarter at CAD 7.7 million. And then, you know, obviously, we're extremely pleased with that result. The gross margin is higher as well because the cost was lower. The cash costs and the AISC was lower, so of course, we have a good gross margin. Cost of sales, the same. The cash costs, well, you know, at CAD 1,073.
I would remind you that in our new plant, in the feasibility study, the cash cost is planned to be at CAD 750, and the AISC at CAD 950. So we are, you know, we are aligned to go towards this with the new plant. But currently at CAD 1,073, I mean, that's an extremely good cash cost for the current two operations. A quick picture of the construction, but I would also recommend that you go on our website and you see the video that we do every month. It's very well done. I have to say to Ruth, it's very well done. The team in Morocco that do this with the drones are doing a great job. So please take a look.
There'll be another one ready in a couple of weeks for the end of November, and it will be available in early December. The expansion, and Raphaël is with us, so some of you have questions on the expansion. As we indicated, it's coming very well, on budget and on time. We still have five months of construction, so obviously, you know, we're following this closely. But you see the percentage of completion for the processing plant, for the underground development, for tailings, water management, electrical infrastructure, and on-site infrastructure. By watching the video, you'll be able to see this. Now it's gonna change considerably in the coming months, as steel is now being erected.
And now you will have started to see the tanks go up, and you'll see a lot more in the coming weeks, and in the coming months. On the underground development, 'cause I know you remember that, when you were asking us what was the risk of this project, the number one risk was always the underground development, the mining rate, and all of that. And Raphaël will be able to tell you that we're doing extremely well with the underground development, the horizontal and vertical, and we are 76% done on the lateral development and 65 on the vertical development. As well, on for the construction, you will see that the tailings storage facilities are, you know, extremely advanced.
The power line is being built, the Merrill- Crowe is on site, and the Silver room is, you know, being built. The electrical substation, you see, is also being built. And so it's, we're, as we say, we're on time and we're on budget. And again, you know that, but in our industry, only 2% of the projects get done on time and on budget. A quick picture or two pictures, one of the tailings storage facility is very impressive, and it was a big civil work done by the local Moroccan company, and it's extremely well done. And then you see the leach tanks coming up, and it's, of course, more advanced as we speak.
But it's coming very, very quickly. It's being done very quickly, and it's again with local construction companies. On the exploration front, we're extremely lucky. David is with us in Montreal today, so you can ask all of your questions. But as I indicated, we have a massive drill program ongoing at Zgounder, at the mine. It's 29,000 meters of drilling. We're 9,000 done. We are a little bit slower than we wanted, but because priority was given to the development for the mining, the speed of the mining and hence. So on the drilling, we know that this is if there's one point we're a little bit later, is the drilling at the main Zgounder deposit.
But that's fine because we have years of mine life, so we know that. But David is working very hard to catch up in the coming few months. At Boumadine, we have a 76,000 meters budget, extremely large budget. We are 52,000 meters done at quarter end, and that is moving and is going extremely well. On Zgounder Regional as well, we have 14,000 meters in the budget, we've done 8,600 meters. And when we started that a year and a half ago, it was like, you know, grassroots exploration. We've discovered many targets. We are drilling, we're seeing new zones, so it's quite interesting. The Zgounder exploration is moving, but, you know, we have to recall that we started, it was, you know, greenfield a year and a half ago.
Tijirit, these are the permits we acquired six months ago. We're starting to work on them. Tijirit, we've completed 25,000 meters of drilling, and we're completing the feasibility on this smaller project that we own in Mauritania. So this is the main zone on page 11. You're very familiar with this slide. That's where we're drilling all the way down to the granite. It's a very well mineralized sponge of a 1.4 km long going down all the way to the granite, sometimes down to 600 meters. This is the source of the ore for the coming years. That's what we're gonna drill all the way down, and that's where we're gonna be spend, you know, drilling 29,000 meters. So this is ongoing.
We have many drills working, and this is, at the moment, a top priority, and we have a couple of months of work yet to be to complete the drilling on this structure. What's very interesting is the team, the geological team, have identified... Because that's what we've been looking for. We've been looking for a similar Zgounder look-alike structure. We looked to the west, we found some, you know, there was some smells of Silver, but we have not discovered a structure. But then we realized that going to the east, we had continuity in the open pit and at depth, and then the team realized that there could be a continuation of the main zone, in a dip, and that's what we're showing on the next slide.
That's something that we're gonna attend to and see if this is there, and if it is, that would be a major discovery because it's very close, obviously, you can see, to the current mine and the current operations. As well, on the right-hand side, on the same slide, there's the pinkish oval. That's also a new concept of an additional or a same geological setting, but further south from the Zgounder mine, and the team will also look into this, as they believe that there could be a similar structure as what we have at Zgounder.
So Zgounder, Zgounder Regional, keep being our number one priority because it's right at the mine site, and anything we find will allow us to, you know, to just feed the current plant and to increase the mine life, and even at one point, if we wanted to, to increase the throughput at the mine. Our next project called Boumadine, you're very familiar with that one. So that is a discovery that we've made, that was made, like, 400 years ago, but that we, after doing the geophysics, we understood better the structures and the mineralization, and we started drilling this last year. We did about 18,000 meters, and then we had an original budget in 2023 of 36,000, which was then increased to 76,000 meters.
The reason is because the structure that we've discovered, originally, we saw it in geophysics on 6-kilometer, but now we have it drilled on 4.2-km, with very good result. There'll be more results coming soon as we keep drilling and we keep, you know, working on our interpretation. So we had a during the quarter, we had one press release on Boumadine. It gave us some very good results. There'll be another one in this quarter as well. And, it's a project that we believe will become the number one project of our company going forward. But of course, we're at the beginning of exploration and at the beginning of understanding the geology.
We did some work in metallurgy because it's a project that was known to many as, you know, metallurgically complex, which is fine. So we, Raphaël and his team, they've done the work. They've looked at different methods, and we put a press release out to just to show that there is a solution. So we did put a press release out showing 89% recovery for Silver, 85% for Gold, 85% for Lead and 72% for Zinc. And, enhanced to show that, yes, there is a solution. Of course, it come with CapEx, and it will come with OpEx, and all of that. But for us, it was an important, important press release because it told us that the project is doable, it's economic.
It's now a matter of us understanding how big it is, what's the tonnage, what's the ultimate grade, and how do we attack this? So Boumadine is a project that is continuing at top speed, and it will continue like that for years to come. On the ESG front, extremely important. We're pleased to say that on our health and safety, we're doing quite well on our LTIs. We've reduced this considerably. We also have a lot of hours in training, 2,000 hours this quarter. We're approaching 8,000 hours for the year, and it's something that we're doing, we're very proud of. Please follow us on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
We do put out pictures and often you know the programs that we have and that we do, it is something that you know that is extremely important. And you know that it's also part of our EBRD loan that we have, whereby we need to you know to have a certain programs that are in place. And that's what we have, as I would say, the second item on this slide is the EBRD milestones advancing on the TCFD, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure. We're about 80% done, and on the environmental and social action plan, we're 75%-79% done, and that is very, very important. So on top, we have our CSR program. The medical program is in place.
We have health program, water access program, and also, of course, the creation of businesses and assistance with the local saffron producer. That's something that we do and that we're very proud of. We also participated in the relief effort after the earthquake. You know that we were not affected because of our location. The earthquake was not far from the mine, but the main effect went north and not south, and we are south of the fault, so we were not affected. We of course felt it, but we had no damage. But we did participate in the effort for rebuilding of villages and everything that's needed during an earthquake. So we were part of that, and we're continuing to be part of this.
So just to conclude, and after our third quarter, you know, our Silver production and cost guidance, we're on track. That's coming along extremely well. The 2,700 ton per day expansion also on track and coming along. We're not done, but it's coming along. We've received the ball mill. We finished a new water storage basin. You can see them on our website and in the videos. And the civil work is really, has been done, and it's quite impressive. The TSF, we just saw a picture, that's on track. The drilling, both at Zgounder and at Boumadine is continuing.
Tijirit is completed, and the field work at Tirzzit is starting, and we're following, you know, our ESG milestone, and that is continuing. So this completes the presentation on our Q3 results. You have the team in Montreal, so I would welcome question. And please just tell us who you're addressing the question to, and you have the complete team here to answer any of your questions. So I turn it over to you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. Our first question comes from Justin Chan, from SCP Resource Finance. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. First of all, congratulations on a great quarter. I guess my first one, just to kick it off, probably everyone's wondering this. You're way above your guidance rate, well, at least you're above the top end for production and way below at cash cost. So with that said, what do you expect for Q4? Are there any mitigating factors why you maintain guidance or just being conservative, knowing that you're well above it? I guess, what are your expectations for that?
Hi, Justin. This is Raphaël. So yeah, it's been a great quarter and a good year to date. We always plan our biggest shutdown of the year in around November and December. We want to make sure that we start on a strong foot. So yeah, I can see your analysis. We are on track to beat guidance. However, we've been quite aggressive on headgrade all year, all year round, and we do have a major shutdown coming in. And we also plan to test the open pit ore, which hasn't been done so far.
Essentially, we wanted to have a strong three quarter in order to clean things up on the last quarter, to do our shutdown, to do some test work on the open pit. So I do expect us to be on the higher end of the guidance, but we're not changing our guidance since we have work to do in December, and we expect December to be a bit of a slower month to make sure to start the year on a strong foot.
Gotcha. Thanks, that's really helpful. And then, on development, I see that there was a shift from lateral development to vertical development during the quarter. Is that how you—I guess, should we expect that to be representative of the other quarters in the next, let's say, three quarters before the new plant comes online? Is it more vertical development from now on, or was that more just a feature of Q3?
... Okay, so, we are starting to slow down the lateral development, which is a good thing. Means that we are essentially getting towards the end of the lateral development that we had to do for the expansion of the ramp up. That being said, for the vertical development, we have three chimneys, three raises that are done out of four, which were the three main ones. We do have a secondary ventilation raise to start early next year. So typically, over the last two years, our lateral development rate has been around 400 meters per month.
We will bring this down to more of a, you know, sustainable capital development, more around like 200 or 300 meters a month instead of the 400. So we are slowly ramping down the development at the Zgounder, since we are getting ready for production.
Gotcha. Thanks. That's really helpful. And then, just the last one from me, and I'll free up the line. Maybe one more for David, but on, on your upcoming resources, you've got an update at Boumadine in Q1. I guess, also at Zgounder, could I ask what your, what your thoughts on timing for that updated resources? And then, the feasibility study at Tijirit, what's, what are your thoughts there on timing?
Okay, for Boumadine, we're on track. We're expecting a resource statement sometime in February, most likely. The drilling is on track. Benoit mentioned 50-something meters. We are now a little bit above 62,000, as we speak now. So everything's on track, the results are good, so there should be no bad surprise.
For Zgounder, well, we are late.
A bit late from the underground because of the development, but we're catching up. We're having five rigs right now underground, and we'll update you later. For Tijirit, maybe I let Raphaël or Ugo.
Yes, so Tijirit, we're compiling right now. We have to make a decision if we're gonna publish before the first quarter of next year, for the simple reason is it's regulatory. If we want to publish under our banner, we have to be a reporting issuer, which only happens if you've got three years of $40 million of revenue. And so we may, like we're publishing to the government at the end of December, and we may have to hold off for regulatory reasons here to the end of the first quarter to be a reporting issuer. But things are progressing well, and we're preparing that for the government right now.
Got you. Thanks. That's really helpful. Well, congratulations on a great quarter, and the site looks amazing. So congrats, Raph and Benoit and the whole team on that. Can't wait to be back, hopefully, hopefully soon. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Justin.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephen Soock from Stifel. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hey, Benoit and team, congrats on a really strong quarter. Great to see everything clicking there. Just two from me. The first one is on the development of the 2,000 ton per day expansion, but I guess more and more on the surface works. What kind of critical path items or front and center here as you're coming into the colder months? I know you mentioned steel work, but is there anything else that we should look for as kind of critical milestones for de-risking over the next two to three months?
Well, right now we're getting the crunch of construction, so every day outside, there are truckloads of steel that arrive. Most equipments already arrived on site. The underground development is going well, and I guess where the crunch is coming is we have all these different construction lots that are open. We have warehouse getting built, we have a workshop getting built, we have the plant, and it's a lot of logistics. It's a lot of logistics coming in, so essentially, it's weekly meetings and make sure that we can coordinate everything. So I'm not too sure how else to answer your question. The next four or five months are essentially the core of the erection of the plant, and we need to keep it up.
Okay, maybe just another way. I guess, what's on the critical path between now and turning the plant on and, you know, kind of wet commissioning?
I would say it's electrical work, pipe fitting, electrical work. Again, we did a very good job at making sure all of the equipment would be on site on time, which they are, essentially. And then it will be the speed at which we can do erection.
Perfect. Thanks for that. Maybe just switching gears a little bit, I know it's early, but, for 2024, I know you mentioned some interesting drill targets here. How are you thinking about kind of, the split between allocating drilling, you know, Boumadine, Zgounder’s, Zgounder Regional, maybe earlier stage targets, for 2024? And then, you know, what sort of magnitude are you thinking of total drill program? Obviously, once the 2,000-ton-per-day expansion is up and running, you'll have significant cash flow to help kind of fund that and expand that. So, where is your head at, from that aspect?
Yeah, I think David has a long-
... of things he wants to do at Zgounder and at Boumadine as well. We're just going through the budgeting process now, so I'd be surprised if we slow down compared to this year. Further than that, we're in the budgeting process now, so we have to kind of see what we're gonna do. So we'll in Q1 be able to speak more to that, I think.
Okay, ten-four. Yeah, I guess we'll keep an ear out for that and look forward to another great year as the plant comes online and things take a step up here. Congrats again, guys. I'll open the line for anyone else.
Thanks, Steven.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to register for a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. The next question comes from Eleanor Magdzinski from SCP Resource Finance. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Can everyone hear me okay?
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, wonderful. Congratulations to all of you on a great quarter. I just had a question about the open pit mining that took place, I guess. So it sounds, or I assume the press release said you were able to get up to 409 tons per day in terms of a rate. Just curious on what kind of stockpile you guys have right now and, in terms of this coming or this quarter, kind of processing that, what you're planning to do for kind of testing things out, 'cause it sounds like none of it actually went through the plant last quarter.
Okay. So hi, Eleanor. Happy to comment on this. So the open pit rate target on the medium term, I should say, for next year or so, is about 500 ton per day, which we are reaching. I mean, we had two, three months ramp up. We're taking our time, and there are very high-grade rich pockets that we're getting at in the open pit. We haven't gotten them yet. And in 2023, at Goumba, we have essentially doubled our mining rate overall between the open pit and underground. And that gives us the luxury of choice, if you want, of what tons do we process, what tons do we not process?
And, by respecting the sequence of the open pit, we have a stockpile of around, as we speak today, close to 160,000 tons. And, the grade is lower, of course, because we process a higher grade to the mill, and we stockpile the lower grade for commissioning. So to answer your question, we have around 160,000 tons of ore that is being stockpiled right now, most of which comes underground, but about a third of it comes from the open pit.
Okay, great. In terms of that commissioning, so that'll just be later on, like once your everything's kind of up and running, you're gonna be putting that through the mill to begin with, and then, I guess, in a time period, are you gonna be separating any other higher grade bits out to put through the process plant with your underground ore, or is that kind of gonna just sit for a little bit, until the commissioning period?
So we'll do a bit of test with our existing plant, with the open pit ore, as I mentioned a bit earlier, in the coming months, to get a feel for it. It's a surface ore, tends to be a bit more oxidized. We need to learn how to process it. Nothing out of the ordinary. We do keep all the ores separated to make sure to keep this optionality of how we're gonna blend it. The open pit at Goumba has always been and remains a stepping stone in order to allow us to have optionality into ramping up our underground mine. So we keep the mining rate at around 500 tons per day.
We can, whenever we want and we choose, we can increase this rate, but there's no need for it right now. We'd rather focus on grade control and making sure that we mine this pit properly until commissioning. Through commissioning, we will process lower grade, not to waste any good ore, and once the plant reaches full capacity, we will slowly increase the grade. Does that answer, Eleanor?
Absolutely. That's perfect. Thank you so much, and again, congrats to everyone. Definitely a lot of hard work that went into getting the project to this point. So, yeah, good job to all of you and, and congrats again.
Thank you.
Thank you. There appear to be no further questions. I'll return the conference back to you, speakers.
Well, thank you. Thank you everyone for participating in our conference call. We will be back next year with the Q4 and full year results. However, I'm going to see most of you next week in London at the 121, and then at all the conferences that are in London next week, and following that in Zurich at the two conferences in Zurich. So thank you again for participating. Thank you for your comments. All the analysts, thank you for your notes that you send after every press release. We appreciate this greatly. So thank you for following Aya, and we will see you next week. Thank you.
Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.