Good afternoon. My name is Jason, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the B2Gold 4th Quarter and Full Year 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
Then the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the call over to Clive Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer and Director. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. You may begin your conference.
Thanks, Jason. Well, thanks for joining us, everyone. Welcome to our conference call to discuss our Q4 and Year End Financial Results for 2020. We had an annual session after we put out our production numbers If you have detailed modeling questions, when we open it for Q and A, I would ask you to not do that in this forum. We're happy to discuss this trip ratio in Masbate in 2030 or whatever in a separate call with you.
We continue to be transparent and help you get your models right. But not we don't want to have those kind of detailed questions in this call. You can follow-up with Ian and he'll put you in touch with the right person to answer those detailed modeling questions. In terms of overview, obviously, we had a remarkable year in 2020 by any measure in terms of operating and financial results as you're going to hear from Mike. And I do think it's we've talked about it before, but I think we're very proud of what we've been able to accomplish, particularly at the time of COVID.
We did a lot of things as well this year, and I think the handling of COVID with our employees, all of our stakeholders business. I'd like to think it was very successful and all these countries having different challenges in all these projects during COVID. But I'd like to think it's a testament to our culture and our trust relationship we have with all of our stakeholders. So the governments in these countries that we're in and our employees and the local people in the countries who ran in the company all have one thing in common, which was we wanted to keep mining, keep employment up, pay our taxes and do all the other great things we do during COVID, if we could do it safely. So it's been a great result.
And I just want to shout out to all of our tremendous executive team, management teams at the mines and all of our employees really rallying together as always as part of the B2Gold family to do an excellent job during this very challenging time. So you'll hear about the results of the year, and it leaves us in a tremendous position to continue to optimize production at our existing mines, continuing to be in a very strong financial position going forward and also, of course, continued our dividend payment and the dividend, strong dividend and also our ability to utilize cash flow operations to further grow the company. In terms of looking a little bit forward now, there's a lot of things going to happen this year that are well laid out in the news release. But we have Gramalote feasibility study results we did in April. And if this as we're hoping a positive study, then we will be following that development plan very shortly thereafter.
AGA had an Investor Day yesterday apparently, and they We're very optimistic as we are about the project, and I think it's an important part from turning what they've said for their future in Colombia, wanting very much to be a good strong partner. And we have worked very well together, Things are going very well on-site in terms of relocation, some of the other requirements we have to try and get boots on the ground in September if we have a positive feasibility study and a positive development decision. So the partnership at this time and for some time has been Very much on the same page. Additionally, coming up this year, it's detailed remissions with Keyaka. We're Cautiously optimistic at this point, I guess, about Keyaka.
We'll see by the middle of the year, we'll have the results of an updated feasibility study. But the reasons we're encouraged are not just Goldfish, It's really some of the things have happened. We haven't we did some more drilling and have a better resource model for it is one. But the other things are the potential for potential significant changes in terms of power, fuel and power costs, etcetera, looking at liquid natural gas, Hybrid Power combined solar and dual fuel haul trucks, etcetera. So it's That gives us reasons to hope our internal amount suggests that the economics of Kaka could be quite attractive.
So we'll know a lot more about that by June. So those are the 2 key development projects. The other thing I think we're going to talk a little bit about and we can answer your questions, question and answer period, but just in touch on exploration. Obviously, a very important part of our history and our success, both in terms of brownfields and greenfields over a long period of time. We do have a budget of $66,000,000 for exploration this year, and we've had some questions about that.
But I would just say that if we look back historically, we should probably run the numbers one day. But if you look at the money spent on exploration and the resulting ounces We've always had a track record of being very successful in utilizing this large exploration budget to have to pay back tremendously in terms of the ounces generated from it. So this year, a lot of it's there's a lot of it Brownfields. There's up to $25,000,000 of the exploration budget, could be out of Q3 for Greenfields. There's a number of things we're excited about.
And I just want to point out that This is America on for us. I mean, we did it for the long term and exploration over time has been a very important part of our ability to grow the company and continue to extend our mine life. So we will continue to be driven by geology, not geography as we have been around the world in Vima and So some of the things we're now getting to look at, we've been pursuing for a while. Uzbekistan, we actually started pursuing that in 2007. And then the PIVA days as a great opportunity for world class deposits.
So we have a joint venture there. We're very excited about the targets we're seeing there. In addition, of course, we have Finland, which we're about to be drilling on a very exciting zone there, which has significant potential obviously. And then there's a number of other things we're working on, of course, the Anaconda area for potential major additions to our reserves or another potential discovery. And we detailed that in the news release as well, and then the cardinal zone, which could add potentially in the near term some additional throughput for the Fekola Mill.
So there's other oil participation opportunities we're working on that as part of the potential $25,000,000 budget would be for other opportunities elsewhere in the world, which will be up to detail more as we go on through the year. So I just wanted to point out to talk a little bit about that and the importance of ongoing importance of exploration in our world. So with that, I think I would just pass it over to Mike Sineman, Our CFO is going to walk you through the financial numbers and then as I said, we can open it up to questions after that.
Thanks, Clive. So I'll talk about the quarter fairly briefly and then just comment on the year to date, the overall results, We had revenues of $480,000,000 so that was based on the sale of 257,000 ounces at an average price of $18.68 per ounce. So good gold prices that we saw in Q4. Actually, the highest Q that we saw given what went on with gold during the year was Q3 for gold prices. And that $18.68 for Q4 is a little bit higher than we're seeing now in Q1 as we move into the New Year.
We pretty much sold what we produced In the period, so no significant timing changes there. On the production side, good production quarter, right on budget basically. So the total production, including our share of Caliber to attributable ounces was 270,000 ounces, so pretty much right on budget. And the total from our 3 operating mines was 256,000 ounces, again, pretty much right on budget. So Really nothing to comment on the individual site production other than they basically had budget for cola, 159,000 ounces Ms.
Batty, 58,000 ounces and Ojikoto, 40,000 ounces. So when you take a look at The budget production and look at how it flowed into cash costs. And this is kind of How we guided, I think, in Q3. So on the cash costs on a total from all ops, including Caliber, cash costs were 4.73 dollars per ounce produced, and that's about $50 higher than budget. And those higher than budget cash costs really mainly come from Fekola, where we because of some mining sequence changes during the year and also some higher costs there, especially on the HFO side And on the labor side related to like dealing with COVID, sort of personnel costs there.
Total costs per ounce of Fekola were $3.97 an ounce, which is 90 just over $90 higher than budget. Masbate was $5.85 which is actually $47 under budget. And Masbate continued to benefit, I think, from lower fuel prices at site and lower haulage and stripping costs. Just to remind you as well that the reason Fekola's fuel costs were actually over budget on the HFO side, they're about 11% over budget, was because the fuel costs in West Africa. They don't flow just for the general market.
The government sets the fuel price there. It includes bunch of cost to take it cross border from the ports right into the country and some taxes. So the government sets the price, and we haven't seen them follow the underlying market price in doing so during the year. Finally, Ojikoto, dollars 5.20 an ounce, That was just slightly over budget, dollars 14 an ounce, mainly just due to mining sequence changes because overall, Otjikoto did also see lower fuel costs, And they also benefited from a weaker Namibian dollar during the year. And then moving to all in sustaining costs for the quarter, total including our share caliber, dollars 9.26 an ounce, which is $190 per ounce higher than budget and again, it's pretty much as we guided.
We thought it's going to happen in at the end of Q3. So that's a combination of the higher cash cost of about $50 an ounce and then also higher than budgeted sustaining capital And most of that was timing, and a lot of it was fleet cost. So in the period, we had about $19,000,000 overall higher sustaining CapEx than we'd originally budgeted. A lot of that just rolled in from earlier quarters. And most of it relates to a significant portion of it related to fleet fleet costs, either fleet purchases or our maintenance that had been deferred or delayed from earlier quarters in the year.
And then just going to comment now on the year's results. So Firstly, on the revenue side, just under $1,800,000,000 in sales, annual record for B2Gold, sales of just over 1,000,000 ounces at average price for the year of $17.77 per ounce. So excellent, excellent year in the sales side. On the production side, total including our share caliber, 1,041,000 ounces produced from our 3 mines, 995,000 ounces. And so if you look at that consolidated production number, the 1041,000 ounces 1,041,000 ounces.
That's right at the upper end of our guidance range of $1,000,000 to 1,055,000 for the year. And you've got to look at that context as well. We dealt with COVID through the year at all sites. We dealt with it very effectively based on the production results you're seeing. And also Caliber, for a period of time, had shut down their operations as they doubled COVID-nineteen or Agua, but we never changed our guidance.
And in the end, We still came in at the upper end of that consolidated production range. The individual components of that from our site Fekola, 623 1,000 ounces. That's above the high end of its guidance range of $590,000 to $620,000 Miss Batty was 205,000 ounces, right in the middle of its range of 200 to 210. I know Jacobo was 168,000 ounces, right in the range of 165 to 175. To comment as well, Ms.
Batty, not only did they deal with COVID and some of the transportation challenges that We experienced earlier in the year when COVID first hit the Philippines, but they also had an earthquake and a super typhoon, and they still hit their range right in the middle. So very impressive performance at all sites. I'll comment now on cash costs and all in sustaining cost for the year. So on a consolidated basis for the next year, Caliber, dollars 4.23 an ounce. Now overall, that's $11 an ounce under budget.
So we did see some higher input costs at Fekola, but then that was offset by cost savings in both Masbate and Otjikoto. So individually, Apicola was $3.20 per ounce produced, which is just that was pretty much at the upper end of its guidance range $2.85 to $3.25 per ounce. Ms. Batty, dollars 6.29 per ounce, well below budget by dollars an ounce. And like you say, they benefited from significantly lower fuel costs and also, haulage and stripping costs were lower than we anticipated.
And in Ojibkoto, dollars 4.53 an ounce, that's $46 an ounce under budget. Like I said, they benefited from lower input costs and A weaker Namibian dollar. Now when you translate that all into consolidated all in costs, $7.88 per ounce sold, including our share of caliber and against the budget of $7.94 so just under budget. And it was at the low end of the company's guidance range of $7.80 to $8.20 per ounce. The cola came in at $5.99 just under $600,000 So that was just slightly above its guidance range of $5.55 to $5.95 as a result of those slightly higher input costs.
And also to remember, when we do the budgets, we're basing it on a certain gold price. The royalties that flow into this all in sustaining cost of telco based on a much lower gold price than we actually saw in the year. Amistadhi, dollars 9.85 an ounce, so pretty much on budget and at the low and within its guidance range of $9.65 to $1.05 per ounce. In Ojikoto, dollars 9.20 an ounce sold, which is well below the low end of its guidance range of $10.10 to $10.50 per ounce. So excellent year operations wise from all sites.
And like I say, I think pretty much Where we came out is how we guided in Q3 and when we cut production release early in January. A couple of comments on some of the significant stuff going on at sites. So At Fekola, the expansion of the Fekola Mill and the fleet completed by Q3 2020 came online in the quarter and operating very effectively. And I'm sure Bill is going to comment a little bit about how we see Fekola operating as we go forward. It did come in slightly over budget in the end by about $14,000,000 That was mainly due to COVID related delays and higher labor costs.
But overall, it ran smoothly. The solar plant, the new solar plant at Fekola, it was originally forecast and budgeted to be completed in 2020, but we actually suspended that for a while to give us more room in the camp to complete our labor rotations for the regular operations. So It did recommence later in 2020 and is now scheduled to come online in installments through 2021. The first part of it turned on in this Q1 of 2021 and then should be fully complete by the Q3. We did have a fire At the site, which destroyed some of the solar panels, so we're just in the process of replacing those.
So that pushed out the completion date slightly to about the Q3 of 2021. At Otjikoto, Wolfshag Underground, development of that is underway. Portal development started basically near the end of Q3. We are about $11,000,000 under budget for the full year 2020. Those costs will just be pushed 2020 1, and we're still on target to have the underground development completed and bringing into the production schedule in early 2022 as originally forecast.
We were also under on the Namib, there's a power line connection at Otjikoto where we're going to connect our solar plant to the national grid. Again, because COVID delays, we've pushed that into this year, so that will get done this year. We're about $6,000,000 under budget as a result of that. At Masbate. Masbate's basically machine just ran smoothly.
There's no significant delays or CapEx variances at Masbate as we went through the year. In fact, what we did was we even accelerated a little bit of the CapEx there from 2021, some of the fleet that we were going to buy early 2021. We actually completed in late 2020. Gramalote, we're about $7,000,000 under our share of the budget for the year, mainly due to COVID delays, but we still got our exploration program completed, and we're still on track to have the feasibility study completed in early April. So although we're under budget on the cost side, it didn't delay the activities that we're pursuing there.
And then as Clive mentioned, we are still we're revisiting Keyaka. We looked at that through the course of 2020, and we're still on track to have an updated study for that by the end of the Q2 of 2021. Couple of comments maybe on fuel, key component of our costs. We have still maintained our hedging program where We had shut the 50% of the next year's fuel needs and 25% of the subsequent year's fuel needs, and we did catch up with that through the course of 2020, and divestiture position we were in by the end of the year, and that is benefiting us now in terms of mark to markets as we go through the Q1 As we've seen fuel costs rise. One of the things that came up, I think, when we did our production release as well for 2021 was There are some slightly higher customs and duties costs in Mali as we come out of our exoneration phase.
We had a 3 year exoneration post startup in the mine activities there. And we've now reached that phase at Fekola, so we have to face some more customs and duties on imports. And there was a question about what impact per ounce that was for Cola. So we quantified that in the MD and A. It's approximately $15 an ounce for those of you that want to plug that into your models.
A few comments now on the income statement side. We talked about revenues and costs. On the G and A side, we're about $10,000,000 under where we were last year. A lot of that is to do with there's just a lot less travel and less consulting costs in the current year, again, as COVID certainly restricted a lot of what we would normally do. Ms.
Batty impairment reversal. There's a significant item in the P and L there, dollars 174,000,000 that we reported earlier in the year, but just to remind you that's in there for the full year. And that's the reversal of any remaining impairment that we've historically taken at Masbate. We've got we're equity counting our share caliber results. So we had a pickup during the year of approximately 22,000,000 related to that.
And we do have a significant investment in Calva shares. We took Calva shares as part of the deal. So they've currently got a market volume somewhere around 140,000,000 On the tax side, I know that quite a few of the analysts, you definitely had questions on taxes. So the total income tax charge For quarter, on an accrual basis for the year was $310,000,000 And we're taxable at all sites now. We don't have accelerated write offs of any costs At any sites anymore, we're just paying taxes as we go.
And to remind you that, that also that tax charge also includes the priority dividend of Fekola. And it was quite the whole tax situation, Molly, and how it's recorded and booked and paid. Well, it is a little complicated. So we've tried to lay it out In a bit more detail, it's on the news release on Page 7, just explaining the cash taxes and how we pay them. And we've also put some guidance in the MD and A for you on taxes on Page 8 And then on Fekola dividends, how that all works on Page 13.
So hopefully, that will help clarify for any of you That still are a little confused by that, and we're also happy to answer any questions. A separate call, if you want to follow-up. So Just to remind you on the tax side, dollars 310,000,000 charge for the year. That includes about $140,000,000 that hasn't been paid yet. It will be paid in 2021.
And the main component is that $140,000,000 or $75,000,000 of remaining Fekola income tax liabilities $50,000,000 for payment of the 2020 Fekola priority dividend. So again, we laid that out in the MD and A, so hopefully it's clear for you now. For the total year, well, for the quarter actually, net income was $174,000,000 or $0.16 per share attributable to our shareholders. And adjusted net income was $146,000,000 or $0.14 per share adjusted. Year to date, net income was $672,000,000 or $0.60 per share.
And year to date adjusted after we take out significant non cash items, the main ones being the miss value impairment reversal and deferred tax adjustments. Year to date, the adjusted EPS was $0.49 per share. Now just a couple of comments on the cash flow statement. So First one is on operating cash flow, dollars 197,000,000 for the quarter or $0.19 cash flow per share. And for the year, dollars 950,000,000 that's a record For B2, big number.
And to remind you guys that, that's after we prepaid $50,000,000 of our moly in taxes, and we ended up at 9.50 for the year, which is approximately $0.90 per $0.91 per share. The only other couple of comments in the cash flow statement, I kind of alluded to some of the CapEx. So in total, Our CapEx, we were about $40,000,000 less than budget for the full year, which is a bit it's we're slightly further under budget than we thought at the end Q3. The main components of that on Reach are we had less deferred stripping in both Fekola and Ojikoto in total of 28,000,000 Wolfshag underground, as I mentioned, dollars 11,000,000 under and Wolfshag PowerLine, dollars 7,000,000 under. And that was offset by some of the overruns from the expansion, as I discussed and some lower exploration costs.
We were approximately $7,000,000 under on exploration And a lot of that was refilled that we didn't get to this year because of some of the restrictions that we faced, but we're hoping to get to it next year, as Clive alluded to in his opening remarks. So for the year, we ended the year $480,000,000 cash and we have the full amount of our 600,000,000 revolving credit facility available and at our disposal. And that is I think that's the summary of the highlights of the financial highlights that I wanted to touch on. Thank you.
Thanks, Mike. Something just something that I neglected
to mention in my opening remarks was just on strategy. I think it's pretty clear from the news release and from the recent calls we've had, but our strategy remains really the same, which is obviously to maintain our financial positions we set in the ability to repay the dividend and advance our growth projects. But between the growth projects, the potential we have at Gramalote, Tiaga, the Anaconda area, etcetera, and all the exploration funding we're doing for Brownfields and Greenfields. We're pretty confident in our ability to grow shareholder value in this company over the year without having to aggressively pursue M and A. So obviously, we'll look at M and A and we all had a big haircut from the highs that we were at, So other companies have as well.
But for us to do M and A at this point with everything we've got going on that we think potentially can add a lot of shareholder value, It would have to be something extremely compelling, even though the unrealistic expectations of certain companies have had to come down because of there are certain opportunities because of the gold price. We'll see. We're always looking, but at the end of the day, we're quite ambivalent to this point about M and A, which is Good place to be given what we have on our plate. If something comes along that makes sense and we can add value for shareholders, of course, you know, as my background, we'll definitely have a hard look at it. So I think with that, we'll move to open up to questions.
Your first question comes line of Tyler Langton from JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Just on Yes. On Cardinal, I guess, in terms of I know you mentioned to be sending Some material to get processed at the mill in Q2. Maggie, do you have a sense, is it after you come out with the resource, sort of when you know What Cardinal could contribute this year to production at Fekola?
Bill?
Yes, sure, sure. Good question and maybe we should have talked about it a little bit. Just to remind everybody why we're discussing Cardinal at all at this phase because there is a chance really to Quite a significant resource there, but it was basically discovered when we were doing condemnation drilling. So there is Very close to surface exposure of the ore body or of the vein. And I think everyone's aware that the expansion, which we completed in September of 2020, has gone off probably even better than we had hoped.
And we've Done some throughput trials and show that while our budget is at 7,750,000 tons per annum, we have the ability to at a minimum run at 8,000,000 tons per annum in 2021 based on the ore composition that we're seeing. So we have this extra capacity. And so as opposed to running low grade material, campaigning low grade material through the mill in 2021 on top of that 7,750,000 tons per annum. We looked at alternative sources and of course the closest source is the Cardinal resource. The Cardinal resource, they're going to continue to drill on it and the resource which is coming out isn't really focused on near surface exposure.
So what we've done is we've taken what the inferred resource that the geologists have created, and we've now put a great control pattern across that and created our own kind of mini resource for kind of near term open pit success in 2021. As part of that, we've approached the government and asked for the ability to bulk sample it. And that obviously does a couple of things ore, obviously, it increases the grade the ounce profile from the mill. And so the question you asked was how much. We think with kind of like low grade.
If we were just putting low grade through that additional 250,000 tons, we're probably like at 10,000 ounces. But With the Cardinal Resource near surface exposure, we think that we're going to be somewhere in that 20, 25,000 ounce range minimum. It will be add on it will be able to add on to that. And remember, that's just adding 250,000 tons. Certainly, we think that that's the bottom case now because there is more we're going to run at 8,000,000 Plus, it looks like.
And so now the question is just what do you do with the rest of that? So we've got additional capacity there, which could come from Cardinal. Additionally, we've got the Menencoto area or the Anaconda area, which is also got some saprolite surface exposure. So we're looking at some high grade pockets there and potentially in 2021 bulk processing, some of that as well. So you could see some additional ounces from there as well in 2021.
And so All of these things we're kind of working through, but the short answer to your question on Cardinal is it looks like 20,000, 25,000 ounces, but with significant upside on top of that.
And sorry, just to clarify, and that would largely come, I'm guessing, in the second half of the year?
Well, that's the funny thing, right? So we don't necessarily think it's going to come in the second of the Year. We are pushing very hard actually. Randy Reichardt, our VP of Operations is at Fekola right now kind of laying out mine plans and what Does that look like? I mean, certainly, when we did our optimization on the mining side, we optimized on basically hauling from the Fekola pit.
So we've got the issue of do how do we truck this stuff? It's only 500 meters, but how do we truck it to the mill? And so we're in the process of trying to set up maybe a small contract miner service for 2021 until we get our head around it. So ideally, we would actually see it in Q2.
Got it. Okay. And then just Obviously, we've seen a lot of inflation in sort of oil, diesel, steel, freight. And I guess when you come out with The studies for Gramalote and Kianca a little bit later. Should we assume that they'll kind of reflect this current level of cost?
Just kind of wanted to, I guess, get a better understanding around that.
When you say reflect this current level of cost, what do you I don't understand what you're asking.
Just kind of like current I Sam, current prices for oil, diesel, steel, will these studies kind of have Kind of be based on more are these current prices that we're seeing now or would they be a little bit in the past, just trying to get a sense for that?
No, I mean, I think you're aware, we updated the so AngloGold did a PFS in 2017, which we updated into a PEA and that's because of the inferred versus indicated question in 2020, right? So we certainly updated at least at a very high level in 2020. And as part of the feasibility, I mean, these will have full feasibility costs in it. So we've gone out for quotes for sure.
Got you. Okay. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Tyler.
Your next question comes from the line of Ovais Habib from Scotiabank. Your line is open.
Thanks, operator. Hi, Clive and B2 team. Congrats on a good quarter, and thanks for taking my questions.
Pleasure. My
first question was on Cardlo, which
I think Bill kind of gave a good overview of. I mean, I'm guessing the near term The reason why it's brought into the near term where it was previously expected to come in around the Q4 time period was based on the fact that now You're just doing that great control drilling and that's given you confidence to bring it into production earlier. Is that how we should be thinking about this?
It really you could say yes, but the real answer, if I'm being completely honest, is we have this extra capacity where we know that we're shoving low grade in right now, right? So we're just doing whatever we can to bring higher grade material into the mill. And so yes, it could be Q4. Originally, we've talked about potentially swapping Anaconda Bulk Sample and Cardinal Bulk Sample. Because the grade control drilling is being done and everything, we feel pretty good about bringing it in even sooner.
And I know conservatively, I should say that's going to happen in the second half of the year, but when I'm being honest with you, we are out there grade controlling it right now.
Perfect. And just in terms of metallurgy and just having that kind of information in your hand, all that has been done previously already?
Yes. Well, I'll let John answer that. But the short answer is yes. We feel very confident about what we've got there. And then just remember, this also we think there's a much larger resource there and maybe Tom can comment on that, which will eventually come out.
But certainly doing this bulk sample, which is one of the key things for doing this bulk sample, will give us a real good handle on how this materially interacts with what we've already got there and how it works its way through the mill. John, do you want to comment at all on the metallurgy for Cardinal?
Yes, sure, Bill. The metallurgy is very similar to Fekola. We've done testing on representative samples and it responds very similarly to the Fekola ore. So we're confident that we'll get similar recoveries as Fekola on Cardinal.
Got it. Thanks, John. And my next question is for Tom. In regards to the exploration budget, specifically for Greensfield exploration. Is there one specific project or region that you're particularly excited about?
Or How should we be looking at where you guys are going to be focusing on with this exploration budget?
Yes. I'll just first of all, I'll just make a comment. And Clive has said this and I'll say this, I'll repeat it. It's a pretty big budget, but it's a culmination of many, many years of project generation and talking to juniors and talking to governments and going out and looking at things. And slowly, we've accumulated these early stage projects.
If I had to say there was one area that was more excited and the other, it's kind of a difficult question, but I'm very encouraged by what we're doing in Uzbekistan right now. That's been a project dear to my heart and dear to our hearts because we've worked on it for so many years to generate this. If we look at what we're doing in Finland, we're drilling next to a new discovery by Rupert, and we're excited what we see on our own property. On the other ones, right now, I'd just rather keep those to myself for now because we're still generating things that are that we plan on drilling later this year.
Okay. Thanks, Tom. That's it for me, guys.
Thanks, Elyse.
Your next question comes from the line of Josh Wolfson from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Thanks. First a question on the tax side of things. Thank you for the additional disclosure. I noticed the commentary and the call information that the priority dividend would be paid as a tax. In the cash flow statement this quarter, there was still a distribution to non controlling interests, I guess of $9,000,000 What would that be related to?
And is that expected going forward?
Well, the priority interest that we have, We do have interest in Namibia, right? We have a 10% holder and like on or in I know in Chikoto, so there are some payments made to them.
Okay. Is it safe to assume that the I guess, the full 20%, whatever you want to call Free carry and the equity interest for Fekola, that will be captured in the taxes line, not the distribution to non controlling interest line?
No, no, it's split. So the first 10% of Fekola, the priority dividend will always be reflected in operating activities. It's recorded as a tax charge and paid within operating cash flows. And then the second 10% It is just an ordinary dividend and it will be reflected as a payment.
Okay. Thanks for clarifying. And then on Gramalote, I guess, two questions. So with some of the commentary from Anglo earlier this week, Is it safe to assume that the ownership is unlikely to change at this point? And then a follow-up on this sort of open ground claim that's under review by the ministry there.
What does that mean for the outlook of the asset and timelines?
Yes, I'll answer the first part of that. Everything the A. J. Has said to us and they reiterated again yesterday in their investor call is that they Their kilo Gramalote is a project. We also think it's very important for them.
The Cayman Dada project and other things that are they want to do in Colombia. They're a bit behind Gramalote in timing. So they see it as very important to be involved in a successful joint venture with us operator to show the government of Colombia what the first potentially first significant open the gold mine in the country looks like and how well we're going to do it Great part of the country to be in, at EOKEA. So I think I would be at this point in time, I would be quite surprised if there was any ownership change. As you know, We've talked about it before, based on our agreement, if AGA decides after we submit a development plan that they don't want to fund, then we have the opportunity to purchase their figures and interest on their market terms based on the feasibility study economics.
They also have the option to go down to 30% within the agreement as well. But also, of course, we would have the opportunity to bring another partner in if we so desire. And I think there'd be a long list of companies with the economics that we're hoping to see that would like to partner up with V2Gold in Colombia having our team build the mine. So I'd be surprised at this point in time things can change, but AG is very committed for Colombia and from what they're saying, They want to be part of this project subject to feasibility and their development decision. 2nd part of the question, who wants to handle that?
If you want, I can do it. I assume you're talking to the you're talking about the Zante claim?
Yes.
Okay. Yes. So I don't know if you know the background of it, but basically the way it works in Colombia is when they did their cadastral layout, Originally, it was all done in paper copy, and then they switched over to an electronic copy. And during that, some of the claims didn't lineup when they put them in the computer. Zante kind of jumped in there and said that they would lay claim to a small portion of that.
The government has rejected that outright, Right. They said that that's not the case and there's really not an open area. And even if there was an open area, that small area, you could never develop it anyway. So they don't think that it's a real thing. Zante has filed a suit against the government of Colombia saying that they don't agree with that.
The government themselves say it's without merit, Right. We've asked to join that case as Gramalote, as an interested party, obviously. And once again, I think our internal view is that there's no scenario to this case at all. And we've just got to play itself out.
In the absence of this being resolved, Is there a way that this that you can sort of just continue with construction and advancement or does this have to be solved first?
Well, I'll answer it from a non legal perspective and then they can correct me. But my understanding is the government wants this project to go forward expeditiously, right? They're pushing us even harder than we're trying to go. So I don't see any way where the government tries to stop us from developing this project. Legally what that means, I guess that's a question for Roger, Randall or Randall.
Great. Thank you very much.
Hey, Josh, just to follow-up on
your first question. So I was just trying to remember the timing of the call. So we did make a very the very first ever dividend, ordinary dividend payment to the Malian government. We actually made it just before the end of the year. So part of that 9,000,000 referring to, there's about half of that is the very first government share under those ordinary dividends.
For some reason, I had it in my mind, it was early January, but we actually did it just before year end.
Okay. Thanks for clarifying. That's great. Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Don DeMarco from National Bank Financial. Your line is open.
Hi, Clive and Steve. Thanks for taking my call. First question is for Bill. So Bill, at the cola, you mentioned before you testing higher throughput rates in December. I was wondering if you could give us an update on how that's going.
I heard you say earlier, it looks like maybe you can do 8,000,000 tons per year, but What are you finding based on your testing you've done so far? Can it go higher? Where are you at?
Yes. So now John is going to Kicked my butt for saying it, but yes, we think that we can go higher, right? So we were we're at We're currently running even above 8,000,000 tons per annum. But with that being said, we need to caution everybody, right? So it was designed for 7.75.
We've already put out 8. We're running above that right now, but we don't have any experience, right? So I think everybody is telling me to just hold off And we're happy to say 8 without putting the upper number on there, but it has the potential to go higher, but that takes into things like maintenance and How do you layer your critical spares and your downtime and all these things that we really have to look at and that we don't have our head around yet. So I'm a bit low to give an upper bound.
Okay. Fair enough. So the guidance for 2020 calls for 7.75 1,000,000 tons per year run rate. And so when you mentioned Cardinal to add on additional 250,000 tons, To get 25,000 ounces, I just ran some math here. It looks like you'd be grading about 3.3 grams per ton, which would be well above guidance grade of 2.3.
So is that right? You're sort of thinking to get that 25,000 you'd be topping 3 grams per tonne from Cardinal?
I would say yes, but maybe Randy can correct me.
Okay. And So it sounds as though if you're going to get to 250,000 tons is probably going to be hitting capacity, but or is there any other opportunity to
Yes. So from Anaconda, there absolutely is a potential, but remember That's in a separate license area, so that has its own set of issues. What we're doing there is we're doing an internal study right now to see what that looks like. Once again, Randy Reichardt is managing that study with the intent not only to take a bulk sample from Anaconda because we don't see this as like a short term issue. We believe there once again, there's a pretty significant resource at Anaconda, but they need time to drill it.
And so really in 2021 2022, which other people have noticed that we have a bit of a dip in 2022 as well. We have the potential to adds and ounces from Anaconda. And so the plan is to take is to permit a bulk sample because remember, a lot of that is saprolite. So then you get into the issue on not only is it 8,000,000 tons or is it higher than that, then is it can you add saprolite on top of that? What's the percentage?
So we want to take a big bulk sample again from Anaconda, then that we think that will happen in the second half of the year as a test, and then that will really tell us what's going to happen in 2022. So the answer is yes. Additional ounces potential from Anaconda, which I talked about previously. And in 2020
So you've got the assets coming out in April. We look forward to that. But in terms of a go forward decision, Are you going to wait until say after the Kiaqa FS in June or are you going to take your time? And how will say for example, Tom mentioned Is there anything else in your pipeline that could potentially delay a go forward decision on Gramalote?
No, I would say not at all. I mean, Gramalote is first in the queue for sure, ahead Head of Keyaka and very much hope if we get the results in the study we're looking for and go into the drill plan will be that's our top priority. I think it's really important to realize that the good news is that the local people, the local government in Anteokia, local community and the federal government, everyone wants this mine to go ahead as So you don't one, it's in our pipeline because for a reason, because it's ready to go and We're looking forward to something to the feasibility study getting going right away on it. But also, it's very important with your social license of expectation here. So there's a lot of expectation out there, many years from Gramalote where the people and the government say, okay, come on, when are you going to start construction?
So we wouldn't be driven only by that criteria, but you've got a willing government, a willing population, really good joint venture, a lot of good work's been done, And we've got our construction team chomping a bit to get on the ground. So and more and as importantly as all of that or more importantly than all of that, it's what we expect it to be. This is a significant addition of over 200,000 assets a year to B2Gold, and it could be funded over the next 2.5 years. Our share of capital, which is estimated to be around $450,000,000 and some of that would be a fleet, so it might be less than that. You could paper fleet over 5 years.
So we could clearly, from our current projections, fund our share of capital over about 2.5 year period from cash from cash operation. So, no, it's ahead for sure. Keyaka, and once again, Keyaka, you've got a governor of Burkina Faso that's very keen like all today to see almost all governments in the world for the need for investment and gold mining is becoming improving itself during COVID and it's being an excellent investor in this country. So I think in the case of Burkina Faso as well, we're working closely with the government. We have guys down there next week meeting with them to talk about That's what our construction team and build 2 mines at the same time.
That's one of our keys to our success in this remarkable team being focused. But We talked a bit about it before, Bill and those guys are looking at it. So let's say we get positive studies on both of them. Well, we could bring a partner in for the Kiaco, we could Then, no one has talked about sequencing. So could you have the Earthworks crew, for example, which would start in Gramalote, hopefully, as So can you sequence them in?
We're looking at that. So I wouldn't rule anything out. I don't want to I know some people will freak out and go, oh my god, look at all this capital that B2Gold is going to spend over the next 3 years. Well, let's not make too many assumptions We have many alternatives. Gramalote, if you want to go forward with it based on this positive study, we expect with our partner.
There's a whole bunch of alternatives if it's as good as we think it could be. And why wouldn't we want to Continue to grow the company for our shareholders by considering that rather than to invest with someone else, we're doing it ourselves. But we've had a pretty remarkable track record over the last 13 years of growing through acquisition and exploration, etcetera. But here, these are 2 assets we own Very little value in our share price for them, which is understandable at this point in time. But I think we're never going to be reckless, but we'll continue to aggressively grow the company.
And it's It's hard to argue against the track record of success we've had at doing that. We're not going to wake up stupid next week and then make a silly decision about the development of this company, in my view. So we'll continue to be very disciplined about how we do it. But it's great to have these assets. Some people looking to go, oh my God, look at the capital expenditure Well, that's way ahead of the game right now.
And at the end of the day, we're not saying just trust us, but we'll come up with a plan for the assets that we think will please our shareholders and not take up on too much risk.
Okay, great. That's very helpful. So that's all for me and congratulations on a strong 2020. Okay.
Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.
Your next question comes from the line of Carey MacRury from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, guys. Maybe just another question on Cardinal. You've talked about sort of the impact on potential impact on 2021. Just thinking beyond 2021, is the goal of Cardinal to sort of sustain that 500,000 ounces of Fekola longer or could you increase production over the next
Ears. Well, that really gets into what The ultimate resource looks like, which I think I don't think there's an initial resource coming out, but the ultimate resource I think is still a ways away from being developed. And so I would probably turn that over to Tom.
Hello? Yes. Can you guys hear me?
Yes.
Yes, the resource that the guys are doing the grade control on right now is all when it's when we complete the resource, which would be in a couple of weeks here, It's going to be inferred. We're probably going to leave the bulk of that resource at inferred. So our exploration drilling for this year is We've got some tight drilling in where the ore chutes are to try to follow those down plunge. We've got some drilling set aside for deeper exploration, and we've got a little bit of a more sort of grade control style drilling within the exploration budget. So for this year alone, we've got close to 12,000 meters of diamond and about 6,000 meters of RC drilling planned for Cardinal.
We still see it as an exploration bet, but there's a lot of from my perspective, it's still early on, the cargo was just found last year basically, and now we're starting to mine it. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that we're very early on it. So the ultimate size is still yet to be determined, but it's part of our active exploration program. I don't know if that answers your question.
That's helpful. So beyond the bulk sample, there's no sort of imminent plan to Keep it into the mine plan in the near term. Is there going to be like a bulk sample and a bit of a break? Or is it you can kind of just keep mining it as you go as you get in with the funding of the exploration?
No, I didn't say that. The inferred model that we're going to have is going to be incorporated into the planning by the mining department. We don't plan to turn that into Paul indicated. They're already doing great control drilling on that and we'll continue to follow that and we'll continue to drill it deeper.
Okay, great. Thank you. But we're hoping it's in the mine plan going forward, right? We hope it continues on. Bill?
Yes, for sure. I mean, once again, I hate saying that because as Clive just or Clive, as Tom just pointed out, we're talking about an inferred resource that quite frankly we haven't even seen the latest update on. So absolutely, I mean it's 500 meters from the edge of the existing pit. So it is in an ideal location and we will take that as soon as it becomes available.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Anita Soni from CIBC World Markets. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Most have been asked and answered, but the only one I have remaining is about the Cardinal. Just to be clear, the $20,000 to $25,000 is that within your guidance incorporated already and in terms of the production? Or And secondly, in terms of costs, would that higher grade material have a beneficial impact on the cost or is that more just tied to the strip ratio?
Yes. So the first part is no, it's not including it in our existing guidance. Any guidance we put out, even our 5 year guidance that I think we did at Investor Day last year does not include any of our inferred or upside sources. And so what we put out was 7,750,000 tons per annum throughput at Fekola with no upside from Cardinal. And as far as cost, I think once again, because we don't even know What the contractor rates or anything like that, I'm a bit loath to say about that.
But you're talking about just a small amount a small percentage versus the 500,000 ounces we're already producing.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
There are no further questions. I turn the call back to Claude for closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thanks, everyone. Good questions. And as I mentioned
at the outset, if you have further detailed modeling questions, We're here to share and be transparent and help with the models, so don't hesitate to reach out if there's other questions you would like to ask. And We're very excited about the year coming up and or this year, and we look forward to reporting back to you as we exploration results and other developments like feasibility studies over the next period of time. We'll have a lot of news for you. Thanks, everybody.
That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.