Hello, everyone, and welcome to SSR Mining's Second Quarter 2022 Conference Call. This call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Alex Hunchak from SSR Mining. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining SSR Mining's Second Quarter 2022 Conference Call, during which we'll provide an update on our business and a review of our financial performance. Our second quarter 2022 consolidated financial statements have been presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. These financial statements have been filed on EDGAR, SEDAR, the ASX, and are also available on our website. To accompany our call, there is an online webcast, and you will find the information to access the webcast in our news release relating to this call. Please note that all figures discussed during the call are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise indicated. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, so please read the disclosures in the relevant documents. Joining us on the call today are Rod Antal, President and CEO, Alison White, CFO, and Stu Beckman, COO.
Now, I will turn the call over to Rod for his opening remarks.
Thanks, Alex, and, hello to you all, and thanks for joining us. I'd like to start by providing a brief summary of our positive first half results. The first half of 2022 demonstrated the continued resilience of our business in the face of supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures as our consolidated production and cost metrics track well against our year-to-date targets. Our four operating assets produced 333,000 oz of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,177 per ounce, with solid margins and attributable net income of $126 million. Our financial strength drove us to continue our peer-leading capital return program. During the quarter, we announced a buyback program that enables us to repurchase up to 10.6 million shares.
This, together with our 40% dividend increase earlier this year, resulted in year-to-date returns of nearly $100 million to shareholders or equivalent to a 2.8% yield and growing. Despite the positive performance in the first half of the year and numerous strategic milestones, we are continuing to face increased cost pressures across the portfolio, especially in fuel, electricity, reagents, and labor costs. While we have been successful in bucking the cost inflation trend over the past 18 months, we are seeing costs now outpace our mitigation efforts. As a result, we are reaffirming our production guidance, albeit at the bottom end of the guidance range, and we are revising our cost guidance higher for the year to reflect the macroeconomic pressures and the temporary suspension of Çöpler, which we'll discuss during the presentation. Let's move on to slide four.
On this next slide, I wanna highlight our core values in relation to our ESG initiatives. ESG is and has long been a core value and focus for the company as it underpins the success of our business. We released our fourth annual sustainability report in April, which highlighted a number of achievements during 2021 and some of the new initiatives for the company. During 2021, amongst other things, we progressed our efforts to establish a science-based action plan to support our commitment on net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In 2022, we'll continue to roll out our integrated safety management system with full implementation expected this year.
Furthermore, we'll complete third-party closure reviews across all our operating assets to ensure a positive post-mining future for our stakeholders, and are also developing a water stewardship strategy as we seek to continually reduce our environmental footprint going forward. On to the next slide, which is number five. As we continue through 2022, it is worth highlighting our impressive track record of execution. While the suspension at Çöpler has impacted our full year projections, we're advancing opportunities to ensure the business exceeds the low end of production guidance. Looking towards the future, the key message is that we have established a baseline production platform where we see clear opportunity to deliver 700,000+ oz of gold production annually through 2030.
The solid foundation, coupled with the abundant growth targets being progressed across the portfolio, means that this is just the baseline for the company to continue to build from. Moving on to slide six. On top of our track record of operational delivery, we've also established a proven history of discipline and accretive M&A, as well as project development. This includes the acquisition of Taiga Gold, which closed in the second quarter and expands our exploration platform in Saskatchewan. We also closed the sale of Pitarrilla in July, and our non-core asset sale has now generated $245 million in proceeds over the last four quarters, more than two times the Street consensus value ascribed to those assets.
Given our track record of strong operations and project execution, as well as a robust balance sheet, we continue to thoughtfully evaluate strategic opportunities across the sector and will remain disciplined with respect to any future transactions. On to slide number seven. Over the last 18 months, we have ensured our strong free cash flow generation is reflected in our capital returns program. To that effect, we returned $191 million to shareholders in 2021, an effective 5% capital return yield. Early this year, we increased our base dividend by 40%, which by itself is yielding 1.8% annually. Subsequently to the second quarter, we announced a share buyback that permits the repurchase of 10.6 million shares, and over the year-to-date period, we've already returned nearly $70 million through that program.
Combined with the two quarterly dividend payments year- to- date, our capital returns are already $100 million or a 2.8% yield. Overall, a combination of our strong operating results, accretive and strategic M&A initiatives, and peer-leading capital return programs has driven significant outperformance for our shareholders, a trend we expect to continue with a multitude of catalysts over the coming six to 12 months. On to the next slide to discuss the quarter. Just a few of the key points to consider relevant for the quarter. First half production of 333,000 oz of gold at all-in sustaining costs of $1,177 per oz was in line with our internal budgets and guidance. However, on June 21st, we had an incident at Çöpler Heap Leach, resulting in a suspension of operations pending the completion of improvement initiatives.
We have now completed these initiatives, and it's pending verification and inspection work by the regulators. After inspection and verification, we'll move towards the required approvals to restart the operations, which is anticipated during the third quarter of 2022. We'll remain closely aligned with the regulators, and we'll provide further updates as required. With that, I'm gonna turn the call over to Alison, who's gonna discuss the financial performance and updated 2022 outlook on slide number nine.
Thanks, Rod. Good evening and afternoon, everyone. This quarter, we produced over 159,000 gold equivalent ounces and over 333,000 gold equivalent ounces in the first half of the year, in line with our expectations for a back-half weighted production profile. As mentioned earlier, we revised our guidance for all-in sustaining costs to $1,230-$1,290 per gold equivalent ounce and are targeting the lower end of our existing production guidance range. We are aggressively pursuing continuous improvement and cost management initiatives aiming to mitigate inflationary pressures where possible, while also diligently working to ensure higher costs do not remain a permanent feature of the business moving forward. Gold equivalent sales of 167,000 oz in the quarter drove revenue of $320 million.
Attributable net income for the quarter was $58 million, or $0.27 per diluted share, and adjusted attributable net income was $67 million or $0.30 per diluted share. Second quarter operating cash flow was $33 million, and first half operating cash flow was $95 million. First half free cash flow of $19 million was impacted by the timing of tax and royalty payments, capital expenditures, and working capital outlays as previously guided. Looking to the back half of the year, we expect a strong Q4 to influence free cash flow distribution with 80%-90% of the forecasted second half free cash flow expected during Q4. On the right side of slide nine, I'd like to provide some commentary on our reported $0.30 in diluted earnings per share that is calculated based on the company's definition of adjusted attributable net income per share.
Attributable net income of $0.27 per share was adjusted for foreign currency fluctuations during the quarter as the Argentine peso and Turkish lira devalued against the U.S. dollar, along with minor adjustments for tax impacts and adjustments for the mark-to-market of our marketable security portfolio. Let's move on to slide 10 as we discuss the outlook for the remainder of the year. As you've now seen and heard from Rod, we have increased our 2022 cost guidance as a result of the Çöpler temporary suspension and the persistent and pervasive inflationary pressures across the business that I had also talked about in the first quarter call. While our production guidance remains unchanged, we expect to finish the year at the lower end of this range, again reflecting the temporary suspension at Çöpler.
Our all-in sustaining cost guidance range is now $1,230-$1,290 per oz, and the largest drivers of our increased cost guidance include lower silver prices for the conversion of gold equivalent ounces as well as lower production volumes and higher diesel, electricity, and reagent prices at all of our locations. We continue to focus on business improvement and cost savings initiatives that help limit the duration and impact some of these cost pressures. While some items, like higher wages, will remain with the business in coming years, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our operating track record while incorporating cost improvements. Moving now to the second quarter results in more detail. On slide 11, we'll talk about SSR's financial position.
At the end of the quarter, the company maintained a cash and cash equivalent balance of nearly $940 million, while net cash is nearly $640 million. With that strong cash position in mind, I would like to reiterate our priorities with respect to capital allocation within the business. First and foremost, we will continue to reinvest in growth, including our exceptionally high return Ardich and C2 projects, which will account for approximately $300 million in total growth capital through 2025. Next, we are committed to maintaining a robust balance sheet to weather volatility in the commodity price environment and ensure all of our capital commitments, debt servicing requirements, and base dividend payments are fully funded, even in the event of a potential downturn in gold price.
Third, we remain committed to capital returns as evidenced by the recent share repurchases totaling nearly $70 million during the year, an impressive total given the announcement of the 2022 buyback program, which just over a month ago. This renewed buyback program further strengthens our capital returns, coupled with a 40% dividend increase announced earlier this year. Between the year-to-date buyback activities and an annualized dividend of $60 million or $0.28 per share. This results in a minimum capital return of approximately 3.7% for the year. Most importantly, we continue to be disciplined in our approach while ensuring our returns appropriately reflect our company's strong free cash flow generation. With that, I'll turn it over to Stu for an operational update.
Thank you, Alison. As always, I'll start with EHS&S. We saw an improvement in our injury rate in the quarter, but it remains above where we want it to be and as always, an area of considerable effort and focus. We were disappointed by the incident which caused the suspension at Çöpler and are working to review and reinforce our underlying systems and practices across the business. I'll talk a little more on Çöpler later. Safety and the care for our teams, communities, and the environment are core values, and we believe are also foundational to business performance. Moving on to slide 13, we'll talk about Çöpler. As I noted on the Q1 call, we completed our first scheduled major autoclave shutdown with rebricking of the face courses of autoclave number two in early Q2.
This is impressive performance from the autoclaves given we started them back in 2018. The planned maintenance shutdown took about three weeks to complete, which along with lower mine grades, resulted in a slightly softer and higher cost quarter. We delivered production of over 51,000 oz at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,253 an oz. We also continued to ramp up the flotation plant in the quarter. Overall performance is good, though we are still presenting more carbonate to the autoclaves than we had hoped, meaning we are using more acid and lime. We are working to improve this carbonate split, including a collaboration with one of the Turkish universities.
Obviously, the restart of operations is an overhang for the business, but I'm pleased to report that all of the improvement initiatives required by the Turkish Ministry of Environment have been completed, and we are awaiting verification and approval by the relevant authorities. Today, we had a visit from a local directorate to inspect the finalized work. Improved process control of the pump feeding the heap leach and improvements to the berms and runoff containment was completed under the oversight of regulatory officials. The team has learned a lot from the incident, and we remain in close contact with the regulators and are aiming to restart the operations at Çöpler within the quarter.
On a more positive note, during the temporary suspension, we have been able to bring forward much of the three-week maintenance of autoclave one that was previously planned for the fourth quarter, enabling a stronger close to the year once the Çöpler returns to full operations. With respect to our growth initiatives, we progress at the Çakmaktepe extension, or Ardich, remains on track to deliver first production in 2023. We're also progressing the C2 project through PFS in 2022 and expect to release these results of the small optimized project to the market in 2023. We are excited by the potential of both of these high return, low capital cost projects. Moving on to slide 14, and we can talk about Marigold. Marigold delivered quarter-over-quarter improvement, though production timing continues to be impacted by the stacking of finer material from the North pits.
Production of almost 46,000 oz at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,458 an oz was largely in line with expectations for back half weighted production profile. Towards the end of the second quarter, we began stacking higher grade material, and we expect a significantly stronger production in half two, especially in the fourth quarter. We stacked 71,000 oz in Q2, and of that, 30,000 oz just in June as a result of the higher grades. Permitting continued to advance at Valmy, and we expect to receive the EA for the expanded Valmy pit in 2024. We advanced work for the Marigold District Master Plan and expect to release this report to the market in 2023. Move to slide 15.
Seabee had another fantastic quarter, producing over 38,000 oz at an all-in sustaining cost of $628 an oz. Following the record first quarter, the mine produced a record first half production of nearly 91,000 oz at $611 an oz. We are advancing exploration of the extension to the very high-grade zone that drove the first half outperformance. The good news is that we think that we have more, but we don't expect that we'll be able to mine this area until 2023. However, we have accelerated development to access another high-grade area of the Santoy reserves. Accordingly, we've increased 2022 production guidance to 150,000-160,000 oz. A phenomenal outcome for the asset and the team.
I'll touch on the exploration work that continued in the quarter in a few moments, but would highlight the progress of the Seabee District Master Plan that we also expect to release in the first half of 2023, which John can start to present himself soon. There were some really exciting targets for future development that we're accelerating and intend to include in this and the subsequent master plan documents. We've been drilling at Porky West target, which is showing promising potential open pit option for Seabee. If successful, this could provide a foundation to reframe the development pathway to Seabee. Please move to slide 16. Puna bounced back from a soft first quarter with production of nearly 2 million oz of silver at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,523.23 an oz.
Production is expected to increase in the back half of the year with better grades, while costs continue to be impacted by high inflation in Argentina. Lastly, before we turn it over for questions, I wanna jump to slide 17 and highlight some of the exploration initiatives that we progressed during the quarter. We progressed exploration programs across the business in the second quarter and are preparing to release the results of some of these efforts in the second half of this year. At Ardich, resource development and expansion drilling continues as we eye additional growth to the ore body that could further complement the production profile outlined in the CDMP 2021 earlier this year. Also in Turkey, we have restarted drilling at the Copper Hill project, which is our pure copper prospect in the Black Sea region.
In Saskatchewan, the team progressed definition drilling at the Shane target, which is just off the haul road between the mine and the processing plant. As I noted, we are also very excited about Porky West and main target to the northwest of the Seabee plant, where recent drilling and reinterpretation of existing resource modeling indicates the potential for an open pit target, which could operate simultaneously with the underground operation in the future. Such an additional tonnage allows us to reimagine the operation, such as the process plant expansion or upgrade and the potential for an all-season road to the operation. In Nevada, exploration progressed both near mine and more regionally. Drilling is currently underway at Trenton Canyon and Buffalo Valley, and near pit drilling at New Millennium is showing encouraging results.
We've now increased the rig count for exploration to six, illustrating the significant number of targets and the excitement for the asset. Some portion of the New Millennium drilling should be included in our annual resource update later this year. Lastly, at Puna, we started drilling for the first time since 2018. The exploration team has identified a number of in-pit and near mine targets that, if successful, could provide mine life extension opportunities. We plan to release exploration updates for Çöpler, which of course includes Ardich, Copper Hill, Seabee, Marigold, and Puna by the end of the year. We'll look to incorporate as much as possible of the extensions, the exploration success into the new technical reports at Çöpler, Seabee, and Marigold in 2023. Thank you very much. Back to you, Rod.
Great. Thanks, Stu. Thanks, Alison. Certainly, as an industry, we're facing significant external challenges in 2022, for which we remain vigilant and proactive to mitigate the impacts. We remain on track to deliver our full-year production guidance and have a number of potentially positive catalysts ahead from the asset base. We look forward to the restart of operations at Çöpler, and we'll keep the market updated with any further developments regarding the required approvals. Finally, I do wanna welcome John Ebbett to the executive team and Stuart's continued contribution to the business while we go through this planned transition of the senior leadership. With that, Ariel, I'm gonna hand it over to you for Q&A.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Our first question comes from Cosmos Chiu of CIBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Rod, Alison, Stu, and team for the presentation. Maybe my first questions are around Çöpler. To confirm or to clarify, Stu or Rod, it sounds like, you know, the inspector has now been on site. Has he or she? Are you now just awaiting the receipt of the regulatory approvals?
Today, we finished the work over the weekend, and today we had the local inspector come out. There's a series of approvals that has to happen, and we'll also receive visits from the Ankara inspectorate as well. There's a bit of a process that we'll go through.
Gotcha. You know, after you've received all your approvals, could you maybe, you know, outline or kinda give us a bit more detail in terms of how long it would take to get, you know, the autoclave and everything else sort of restarted again?
All up it'll take us about four days to restart the autoclave from a cold start.
Great. In terms of the plant maintenance, you know, a bit of a silver lining, I guess, that you were able to push forward some of the scheduled maintenance from the second half into the shutdown period. To confirm, I guess, you know, previously you had scheduled about three weeks in terms of a planned shutdown in the second half. Those three weeks will no longer be necessary, and that will help you in terms of making up for lost time when we talk about second half production. Is that correct?
Yeah. We've done all the mechanical work on the autoclave, and we'll be able to push it out into next year to do the face courses on the brakes.
Now on that, Stu, I guess, as you said, you're rebricking, you know, the one autoclave next year. How long is that gonna take in 2023? Are we talking about one week, a week and a half, or is it gonna take the full three weeks?
It'll be the critical path, so it'll be about two to three weeks.
Okay.
We don't do the whole autoclave, just part of it.
Okay. You're gonna open it up and see if everything's sort of okay, and then go from there, I guess.
There are certain regions that get more wear than others, and those are the ones that we've been redoing the face course of. It was the same in the other autoclave.
Great. Then, maybe switching gears a little bit on Çöpler here. You know, good to see that I think you've brought up the guidance for the year as you talked about production guidance. You know, the increase, is that based on the fact that you've outperformed in Q1 and Q2, or is there some element to it whereby, you know, you're also depending on some kinda outperformance in the second half as well to hit those, the updated guidance, production guidance for Çöpler?
We've pulled forward a little bit of high grade, but it's within the reserve. It's just part of a mine rescheduling. I wouldn't say it's high risk, Cosmos. It's just part of our normal planning process.
Of course. One last question just to wrap things up. You know, as you mentioned, you've had to up your cost guidance for the year a bit. I know you've kinda talked about that in your prepared remarks, but could you maybe talk about, you know, what had been factored in in terms of inflation in the previous guidance? What, you know, is now that you're factoring in? I only ask, you know, given that as we talked about the composition for guidance is now a bit different. Çöpler guidance has come down in terms of production. Seabee, you know, production has increased. So far, Seabee, Santoy, you know, the cost is a bit lower. I would imagine that helped in terms of offsetting some of the inflationary pressure, but indeed, inflation still caused your guidance to go up.
Did you put in, you know, quite a bit of conservatism into your cost guidance? Maybe just some comments on that.
Cosmos, I'll take that one. You know,
Hi, Alison.
Hi. Good to hear from you today. We did not put an additional factor, you know, into the inflation. We've seen a steady run rate through the course of the year where inflation has certainly outpaced what we had initially budgeted. We've set our remainder of the year and our cost guidance based on what we've already seen come through this year. To elaborate a little bit further as well, the number of ounces that are increasing at CV are driving down some of the costs there. Overall, we're certainly seeing a track record of inflation increasing the cost base across the organization.
Great. Thanks again to Alison, Stu, and Rod, of course. Those are all the questions I have.
Thanks, Cosmos.
Our next question comes from Michael Siperco of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much for taking my questions. If I can try to push a little bit more on Çöpler. Is there a schedule and planned visits in place? Should we be thinking, you know, days, weeks, or is it possible that the operation could be offline through the end of September, just depending on the government's schedule?
Yeah. Look, Michael, I think we outlined it well in all the written documents as well as our opening remarks. Stu just elaborated a bit more in terms of, you know, just more physical activities on site here in the sort of last 72 hours. At this stage, you know, we've built into our planning, you know, a startup in quarter three. Based on what we know today, that's our best estimate.
Okay. Copy. Maybe following up as well on the previous question about costs and maybe cost beyond 2022. Can you elaborate on how you're seeing trends across your business? Are you seeing costs starting to stabilize? Are you seeing some stabilize, others continuing to trend higher? Any kind of visibility into what you're seeing?
Yeah. Hey, Michael. We are definitely starting to see a little bit of, I would say, the peak on fuel. We're definitely just past the peak on fuel. As we look to the future, we are definitely seeing that there will be some sticky costs that we're experiencing now that will continue into next year. With the rapid pace that we've seen the rate of inflation change over the past few months, we aren't necessarily positive of what that exact rate is gonna be going forward, but we do expect that we will have some going into early next year.
Okay, great. In terms of mitigation, and future mitigation, are you considering changes to your plans with respect to stockpiling, hedging, supply chains? I imagine you're looking at these things on an ongoing basis, but have you come to any conclusions about changing strategies going forward?
Michael, I think we're about to undertake our normal planning cycle as a business. You know, we always look to improve our cost base, you know, either through you know supply chain opportunities. It could be continuous improvement, some operational effectiveness initiatives that we have. That's just normal course for us. We will build those into our planning cycle. As Alison sort of mentioned, some of these costs are sort of have definitely outpaced the work that we already anticipated for 2022. Yeah, we'll wrap all that up in this next few months. That will tell us you know where we net out.
Maybe last one, just back to Çöpler, and the Ardich startup next year. Should be improving costs. Can you expand a little bit about how you see costs at Çöpler trending, going forward with the addition of Ardich in 2023?
I think the best guide to what our expectations with Ardich was is the CDMP21 that we issued the technical report earlier in the year.
Okay. Okay, great. Thanks very much. Appreciate the responses.
Great. Good on you. Thanks, Michael.
Our next question comes from Ovais Habib of Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Hi, Warren. Scotiabank team. Just a couple of questions from me, maybe. Some of the questions I had regarding Çöpler restart, as well as cost inflation, I guess have been answered. Just, you know, maybe a follow-up on Ardich. Are there any permits, or anything pending, regarding any regulatory requirements, to advance Ardich to production in 2023?
Yes. The permits have always been the critical path for Ardich for us. From a technical perspective, it's relatively easy. So far, all of the permits have been and the progress towards those, 'cause, as with all mining projects, there's multiple permits required, have been moving in line or a little bit faster than our schedule. We're still on track for what we thought when we issued the technical report.
Perfect. Just then, moving on to the exploration front. I mean, you mentioned obviously there's a lot of drill programs in place, all across. Are you looking to come up with some, you know, exploration updates and then kind of resource updates and then kind of moving into, you know, these master plans that you're looking to come out with in early 2023? Maybe if you can give a little bit color on that.
Yeah. We'll issue exploration updates later this year for the projects and where we will, you know, typical exploration updates that will provide details of the holes and the intercepts that we've received with those. We will then build those depending on how quickly it arrives and what drill density, which deposit it's in, whether it's part of a, you know, an existing resource or a new resource. Some of those will be incorporated in our normal updates. We build as much as we can into when we do the next technical reports. You know, as has happened, for example, with Ardich over the years, you know, we're continuing to explore Ardich.
We'll get as many as the holes into this next iteration as we can, and we'll continue to drill that prospect going forward.
Okay, perfect. That's it for me. Again, thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks, Ovais.
Our next question comes from Lawson Winder of Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening, Rod, Alison, and Stu. Nice to hear from you both. Thanks for the update. Could maybe ask about Çöpler one more time? Just, I was curious, why not finish the maintenance at Çöpler now instead of pushing it into 2023? I'm referring to the relining of the second autoclave. Is that a function of your expectation that the restart could come kind of any moment, or is there something else?
It has to do with. We scheduled it for November and the bricks are just arriving, so we don't have enough bricks to do all the work. They are arriving over the next week, and if we're not up and running, we will, at that time, do some work. If not, we'll carry it across to next year.
Okay. Excellent. Just in light of the cost inflation, have you given any thought to potentially increasing the reserve gold price assumption for Marigold and perhaps other assets?
I will do that in normal course, when we come to do the technical reports and the resource and reserve calculations later in the year.
Okay. Do you guys normally do those?
As we normally would do.
Do you guys normally do that in November? Is that right?
Yeah, we do it at the end of the year. Look, we haven't anticipated anything to answer your question at this stage, Lawson. We'll review it. We normally do, you know, the normal sort of market review and consensus pricing anyway. It won't be driven arbitrarily by us just to raise the reserve price, I think if that's your question. It'll be just part of our normal course reserve reviews.
Okay. That's clear. Then, maybe just a bit of a broader question. You mentioned M&A, and definitely valuations are quite historically low. Maybe can you just update us on your thinking in terms of geography, target metal mix, and development stage?
Look, I mean, nothing's really changed, Lawson, in terms of, you know, where we are and the types of opportunities that we would consider appropriate for SSR. I think, you know, the previous discussions that we've been very open about with the market about the, you know, jurisdictional mix, the rationale, the strategic drivers haven't changed in the current environment. You know, we're obviously gonna be very cautious, like I've mentioned, in terms of anything that we look at or anything that, you know, comes in across the desk to ensure it sort of fits. We haven't changed any of the drivers.
You know, the market hasn't driven us to, you know, pick up speed or to slow down. Again, we do this as a matter of course, and are always sort of assessing different opportunities and permutations to ensure we don't miss something. At this stage, that's it.
Okay. Sure. Great. Thank you for your comment today.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Levi Spry of UBS Australia. Please go ahead.
G'day. Hi, guys. Thanks for the call. Maybe just an exploration question. I might have missed it, but is there an exploration update due? This Porky West caught my ear. How important is that? Can you take us through what you found there?
So Porky had been drilled previously. There has been, I guess, when we've been exploring around the area, a real focus on looking at sort of underground. Our senior geologists had a look at it and had a thesis that perhaps it would work as an open pit, and we've been exploring that. We've had some relatively wider but lower grade intercepts, relatively close to surface. It seems that it has reasonable extent. We're pretty excited about it. We will daylight the data that we've got when we do a release before the end of this year.
Okay. Thanks, Stu. That's on all of the exploration, is it? I didn't notice much in today's.
Yeah. We're gonna do them for each of the sites. Çöpler, which will include Ardich and some other drilling that we've done within Çöpler. Seabee, a number of the targets at Seabee. Marigold, which has the, you know, Buffalo Valley, Trenton Canyon and the work around the New Millennium. I don't think we'll get anything in from Puna, because we've literally just started poking holes in the ground there now.
Roger. Okay. Thank you. Thanks very much.
See you.
Our next question comes from Mike Parkin of National Bank. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. I may have missed this, but for Seabee, the talk about potentially back into high grades, higher than normal, is that kinda in the same area that you pulled that high grade pocket out of earlier this year that had the really, drove the really good Q1?
That high grade pocket. We stepped out and we've been drilling that because we were, you know, hoping to get back into it straight away. It looks like it pinches out directly below where we are now, but then opens up a couple of level, a level or so down, and we're pretty excited about what it looks like below that. However, this year. My expectation is that we'll get that in 2023. But we need to work out what we've actually got first. The other area that we're going to is another area that's in reserve, and we've jiggled the mine plan a bit to get us back there.
Is it kinda the same thing where just some infill work kinda highlights?
Oh.
a little sweet spot
Yeah. Well,
in the mine plan.
High grade zones. Yeah, but the one that we're going to that we've got planned in this is, sits within the reserve. That very high grade pocket exploring and extending. It's outside the resource reserve. We chase it, we're chasing it down.
Okay. Can you remind me, maybe this is better for that exploration update, but as you move south into, like, the Fisher property, I recall that the vein structure is kind of prevalent at surface discovery through a forest fire or something like that. Are you kind of allocating to the south versus up near the hanging wall area? Do you have a lot of rigs evenly distributed or do you still see kind of low hanging fruit more to the north and putting more of your focus there?
No. We've been drilling both areas. Obviously, the work that we've got. Exploration within the mine is about, you know, pulling things in that are closer. You know, the quantum of work we do, so most of the work close to convert to make sure that we can feed the plant. The medium-term targets get a bit more work and then we're, you know, still testing these other areas. We're still pretty excited about Fisher, and we think that there's a good probability we're gonna get something out of that. Immediately to the south, got Joker. With, you know, the thing that we find at Santoy is that it seems to develop grade and volume at depth. It gets better at depth.
We've decided not to advance Joker into sort of resource development until we get some deeper holes and test the hypothesis that it will probably develop at depth.
Okay. Just with respect to, like, the Turkey region, there's obviously a pretty going through Europe. Can you comment on any impact of regional forest fires or are you guys kinda far away from anything that's active right now?
Look, there's been no impact for us, Mike, or in or around the mine. That's the good news.
All right. Excellent. Looking forward to that exploration update, guys. Thanks so much.
Good day. Thank you.
This concludes the question- and- answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Antal.
Right. Well, thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining us and look forward to next quarter and continued updates around Çöpler One. Until then, goodbye.
This concludes our conference call. Please feel free to disconnect.