Welcome to the TRX Gold Corporation first quarter 2023 financial results presentation. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the meeting is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If you wish to ask a question, please click on the Q&A icon on the left-hand side of the screen. You will see the option to raise your hand to join the queue and ask your question verbally or write a question to submit your question in writing. When you are introduced, your line will automatically be unmuted. Analysts who have dialed in to the conference call may press star then one on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Stephen Mullowney, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome everybody to the Q1 2023 results call. On your screens, you'll see an updated picture of our Buckreef main zone pit. The ore from this pit is what has provided us with the Q1 financial results and the good progress that we've made at site. It is also very providing us with an exploration program that is funding the drilling program that is ongoing by Andrew, who's currently at site and the team at Buckreef in the immense blue sky potential that we've discovered over the last year at Buckreef. Q1 2023 is really a turning point in the company's history. It's the first quarter where we can start to see the real profitability potential of Buckreef.
The company has now been stabilized and has a great growth platform going forward. We're very excited to get into what we've done, what the results were, and where we're going. First, a cautionary note. You'll find this in our corporate presentation. We will be from a legal perspective, we have to say this, we will be talking about forward-looking information and such forth. Please have a read as a cautionary note. Thank you. On the call today with myself, we have Andrew Cheatle, our COO. Andrew.
Hi.
actually just arrived 10 minutes ago at site, I believe, Andrew?
That's a pretty accurate address, yep. 10 minutes ago.
Yeah, they've served you a, delicious, filet of tilapia.
That is correct. I think the analysts that have been here will appreciate that indeed.
Yes. Also on the call as well is Michael Leonard, our CFO.
Good morning, everyone.
also our VP Investor Relations, Christina Lalli.
Good morning, everyone.
Excellent. Thank you, guys. We'll get into some of the things that we got into in the past and as I mentioned to a lot of people as I give presentations now, this story is getting a lot easier to tell. And it's also getting a lot easier to portray the growth potential that is in front of us from a production perspective, from a resource expansion perspective, or from a value perspective. TRX, we're led by a team of experienced leaders. I think we're a little bit different in regard that, you know, some people would say we're not promotional enough, but I do believe we are, we stand behind what we're going to do, and we say what we're gonna do as well. I think that is, you know, underlying the philosophy of the management team.
We've experienced rapid growth, from a production perspective and from just a site perspective and everything that we're doing. There's now well over 400 people on the Buckreef Gold site, across all facets, including our employees and contractors. They're doing mining, geology, metallurgy, processing, right across the board. Well, that's exploration. Since I've joined, just over two years ago now, we always knew that the Buckreef main zone, and we've said this before, had great potential. We've extended that by 500 meters, the mineralization. The more you dig underneath the surface at Buckreef and just the mining package that is available here, there's a lot more potential. It's not only the Buckreef main zone.
We keep on talking about the Anfield Eastern porphyry, but there's other things around as well, and Andrew will get into that in a few minutes as we get through the presentation. The foundation for future growth. This is really setting the stage. There's already a great resource here that can grow significantly. There's 2 million ounces of gold in the measured and indicated category. The great thing is it comes to surface. I mean, you see the pit in my background here. It comes to surface. We're mining it, we're processing it very cheaply. The key, it's wide too. It's 20 meters wide of mineralization, which helps us out with our cash costs. Recoveries are great at 90%, and we've been experiencing that for a while now. Straightforward metallurgy and grind, crush, CIL. Fully permitted SML.
Processing plant is working great, as I mentioned. It is achieving a throughput capacity and above throughput capacity at times. It's also getting those great recovery rates. We have a minimal environmental footprint from an ESG perspective. We're on the electrical grid in Tanzania. We recycle all water. It's currently the rainy season, there's no shortage of water at this point in time. You know, it's just a really good property from that perspective, and we have exponential exploration potential, which Andrew will get to in a second. With regards to Q1 2023 highlights, we completed the 1,000 tonne per day plant. It's up and running. We declared commercial production on that.
That's led to good gold production of over 5,500 ounces, which led to great quarterly gross sales, gross profit, net income, operating cash flow, and Adjusted EBITDA, real company statistics that are all really good and growing. That positive operating cash flow has funded the business, including the exploration program. We've done over 4,600 meters of drilling in Q1 on the Buckreef Main zone, as well as Anfield East Porphyry, and those results are pending. Importantly, we've done it all safely. We've had zero lost time injuries, no confirmed COVID cases, and we've achieved 1 million operating hours with no LTIs or long-term incidents. Injuries, sorry. It's all been done really safely, really quickly, and we're really proud of that.
Andrew, you just wanna mention something on the safety record that we have at site? It's something that we're all really proud of.
Yeah, that's right, Stephen. The team here lives and breathes safety every day in terms of from toolbox meetings through to job analyses, through to a culture where people can stop somebody and say, "Hey, let's just stop the work here. That doesn't look safe." We've got a new safety leader at site who's come across from North Mara Barrick, and just a remarkable achievement for those that have been in mining for a long time. To achieve 1 million hours LTI-free, it's quite something and doesn't happen every day. Of course, we need to do it again. We need to get to 2 million now.
We did that, during the construction, which is always, you know, it's always risky business, but construction.
Yeah
... is always more risky than normal operations.
That's right. Again, it was just wonderful as I did my own work, to see people doing proper job observations, especially with working at heights, which is where a lot of accidents occur. People were properly tied off on five-point safety systems, for example. Thanks for highlighting that, Stephen. The team here is very, very proud of this achievement.
Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. Now I'm gonna hand the presentation over to our CFO, Michael Leonard, who will go through the Q1 2023 financial results. Mike?
Well, thanks, Stephen, and good morning, again, everyone. On the financial side for the quarter, Q1 was another milestone quarter for the company. You know, Stephen touched on it, but during the quarter, we declared commercial production on the 1,000+ tonne per day plant at the end of October after achieving nameplate throughput levels. Despite only one full month of operating at that full nameplate capacity, excuse me, of 1,000 tonnes per day, the company did achieve record results, record production, record sales, gross profit, net income, operating cash flow, Adjusted EBITDA, all of which Stephen touched on.
During the quarter, we sold over 5,700 ounces at an average realized price of almost $1,690 an ounce. That drove quarterly revenues of almost $10 million. This was all achieved at low cash costs, as Steven touched on, of $732 an ounce. That was below guidance, a really, really efficient and effective quarter in that regard. Gross margins were again quite significant. We're operating at low cost. Consequently, the gross profit margins were quite high at 55%, driving some of those net income record numbers that we spoke of. On the balance sheet, it continued to be very, very strong. We've got a cash balance of almost $9 million at quarter end and growing.
Our working capital was almost $5 million after adjusting for liabilities that we'll settle with equity. Again, Adjusted EBITDA was record as well at over $4.5 million, which is really a good proxy for cash flow. All of this really demonstrates the strong liquidity that the company does have to fund the organic growth around value accretive activities like exploration that again, Stephen touched on earlier. Importantly, you know, as we continue to grow and see, you know, a full quarter of operating results at 1,000 tonnes per day, we're endeavoring to improve on all these metrics over the course of the year now that the plant's running at full capacity. Next slide, please, Stephen.
In terms of the fiscal 2023 outlook, during the quarter, you would've seen in our MD&A that we reconfirmed our full year production guidance of between 20,000 and 25,000 ounces. We do continue to expect the second half of the year's production to be higher than the first half. Again, we did declare commercial production on the plant at the end of October, early November, so certainly expect H2 to be higher than H1 in that regard, but reconfirm that full year guidance that we're tracking to very closely. We do continue to expect cash costs to be between $750 and $850 an ounce.
As mentioned, we did come in just below that number at $732 an ounce for the quarter, but reconfirm that full year guidance accordingly. In terms of future growth, we do continue to advance a project that we touched on at year-end, which is aimed at increasing plant throughput of between 75% and 100% through the addition of a new ball mill. We're expecting to finalize plans to purchase that new ball mill really in the coming days, this week, I believe, and hope to commence construction on an expanded facility in Q3, Q4 this year.
Importantly, that guidance, the guidance figures that we spoke of, the 20,000-25,000 ounces, does not consider the impact of the potential benefit of this upcoming expansion. Stay tuned, and we'll update the market accordingly when that project comes online. In terms of the sulfide portion of the deposit, we are continuing with ongoing network to assess whether the process plant and flow sheet can efficiently process the sulfide portion of the deposit. Importantly, potentially be expanded to accommodate a much larger production levels. You know, Stephen will touch on that, but that's really how we're referring to this deposit now.
It's not so much an oxide/sulfide deposit, but what we're looking at is a much, much, much larger mine. You know, we are looking at that very, very closely, and as we work through the oxide layer into the transitional and sulfide material, looking at using our current plant and flow sheet to hopefully accommodate that portion of the rock. In the interim, we've commenced some geotech work and studies to analyze a deeper pit design. We are continuing to mine. You saw the picture on the opening slide. You can see an aerial view of the starter pit in December to your right.
As we continue to go deeper, are looking at geotechnically how to go about doing that. With that, I think I'll pause there and hand it over to Andrew, who will take us through the exploration results. Andrew.
Yeah. Just before we hand it over to Andrew, Mike, a couple of other items of note on the larger project development. We've done an exploration program or an infill drill program as well to solidify some of those reserves and convert some of the resources to reserves, as well as the geotech work, we're really looking at. Just to give the audience a sense of what we're doing there is in any open pit mining assets, you have pit slopes. The steeper you can put your pit slopes, the lower your strip ratio. We need to confirm what our strip or our pit slope design is going to be, and that incorporates what our mine plan looks like as well. Andrew, anything else to add with the work that we're doing around this?
It's quite extensive, everything that's going on.
It is. I can confirm, Stephen, that the samples are packed and ready to be shipped. We're just doing a little bit of local administrative work to get those out of country. Way too much detail, but however, Terrain is shipping their geotechnical gear from Canada tomorrow. That brings everybody right up to speed on that. I would also comment that just on a visual observation, the footwall and the hanging wall or the waste rock for the pit, the core looks very good. We're getting very good recoveries. We're expecting to have positive results, but of course, Terrain and SGS do have to do their work, but it visually looks very good.
Yeah. on it, I was gonna mention, are we allowed to say who's getting the network? I think you just mentioned who's getting the network.
I didn't mention the name, no.
We'll do that shortly.
We'll put out a separate press release with that. Yeah.
Yeah. Excellent. When we confirm that up, the samples are getting ready to ship. Excellent.
Um, it-
Andrew-
It's a global name obviously. Yeah.
Yeah. It's a global name. Yes. A global lab.
That's correct. Yes.
with, without further ado, look, everybody's always interested in upside and blue sky potential. It always puts a smile on my face as well because we haven't had any bad news or anything negative come out of what we're finding. It's always still positive. Why don't you take the group and our investors and analysts through what you're seeing?
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Stephen. Greetings everybody from Buckreef. I am actually in Tanzania at the moment, and looking forward to getting out and going through a lot of this with the team over the next few days. Now, Stephen, we look forward to your arrival at the end of the month. Just to refresh those that have looked at this before, the image on the right is a composite from our drone footages. The SML is outlined in red, and each of the black squares is 2 km by 2 km, and the entire property is 16, just over 16 sq km.
The main zone is very evident by the number of drill holes with all those sort of reds and yellows that you see, drill holes projected to surface. I'll touch on that a little bit in a moment. The white is the ongoing work from our geologists that have continued to put their boots on the ground. Again, you'll see more and more little white dots appearing. These are the historical ASM pits that we've looked at, and I'll specifically focus in on a couple of those. Let's get back to the main zone. The results that came out in the last quarter from the south, I think the south had previously thought been thought of as being at its limit.
When you get results, for example, over 35 m at 1.3 g a ton, including 10, at say 3 g per ton internally in that and other intersections that are in that press release, you realize that we're still on the trend. Stephen, if you could just put your cursor where the south extension is. Just a little bit further up. We're good. You'll see if you the red lines that I've got, there's another nearly 1.2 km to another series of artisanal workings, which I've been onto, and they're very strong. They are historical. They're not being worked at the moment. What we've realized is to the south, we're still wide open. We know that we're still wide open to the north.
Stephen, I think you mentioned earlier that we've extended now by about 500 meters in total. Not the resources, but the understanding of the shear zone and the deposit continues that. We will obviously do infill drilling, following up on the white space exploration work. That in itself is over a 30% increase. It's a classic saying, but this deposit, the main zone still remains open, on strike to the south, to the north and at depth. On the depth side of things, if you do go back to the press release on the south, you'll see that some of the results are from underneath the pit, the south pit. They're very strong results indeed. That's the main zone. It's still open, still all to play for on that.
Let's just focus in now on the Eastern Porphyry and the Anfield Zone. I'm gonna get into a little bit more detail than I have before. Those with a keen eye will see that there's actually 3 parallel trends of white, artisanal workings. The 30 g per ton samples that we'd had before are from the western part, we've drilled those. We are waiting assays. As we've continued to understand the controls on gold mineralization, so we've continued to understand the growing importance of the Eastern Porphyry, that will give us as the shareholders like to say, some sizzle. We have redrawn the, an RC or a chip hole that came back at 30 g a ton over 3 m. We've been able to identify the shear zone in some wide-space drilling.
There is very much a trend here that's got an awful lot of work ahead of it. We're off to a really good start. Finally, to the audience, just in terms of targets. Stephen, if you could just sort of go down by Tembo, please. Those sort of two just up a little bit there. Yeah, these two trends. Again, I've been on the ground there. These are strong workings, and over the course of the year we'll continue to put a few holes into those. You'll, again, you'll see all of this sort of looking and aligning in that sort of classic northeast-southwest trend for us.
What we're going to be doing is updating the mineral resource over the next few months, internally to start off with. We'll continue to sort of expand on this. We have to move the drill rig now to some grade control drilling. The road is about to be relocated around the edge of the property. That opens up now the main zone, so we've got to get the grade control drilling in that. Then some sterilization drilling. We do have to obviously test the ground where we're going to put some tailings dams and waste dumps. Then throughout, again, the year, we'll continue to look at Buckreef West, Eastern Porphyry and Anfield. It's all self-funded.
I don't know, Stephen, I think if I had 3 times as much money, I think we could spend it wisely and spend it well.
Yeah, I'm not too sure people would like the share count at that point.
Exactly
... you know, we'll do.
We're doing it. We're growing it.
Yeah
... step-by-step and it's happening and we are continuing to put out good results.
Andrew Cheatle, one of the things, just to give the audience a sense that, like you and even myself and others on the phone really understand geology. When you say there's three trends in the Anfield Eastern Porphyry Zone, you wanna give just the investors and others just a simple explanation of how deposits are formed with hanging walls and foot walls and main zones?
Yeah.
Um-
Sure, I can do that.
That lines up to the three trends.
It does. It looks like we do have a series of, you can sort of see where the Eastern Porphyry, the red line that goes through the Eastern Porphyry, if we were to say that was the main zone. You can see that we've got a hanging wall zone to the west and some foot wall zones off to the east. Again, quite classic to sort of see these splays and multiple zones, coming in on a shear zone hosted deposit.
Yeah, this is exactly similar to what the main zone is because the main zone has one line here, but in reality you have a 20 m main zone, and then you'll have on one side what is our hanging wall like three to five meters, and on the other side you have...
Yeah
another 3 m to 5 m mineralization.
Yeah, that's right. We're finding a number of zones, hanging wall and foot wall. Sometimes they're not as continuous as the main zone, but they're there. Again, that's very evident in the northeast extension. Again, if people want to get into the details, if you look on the western side of the main zone, you'll see there's a couple of sections with some very, very strong results in the foot wall.
Yeah, exactly. This is normal for this type of deposit.
Totally normal, I certainly would invite anybody in the audience if they wanted to go into a deeper geology lesson and discuss regional shear zones, et cetera, et cetera, with me. We'll have a good session, but not for today.
You're starting to lose me now.
Yes. What I would say, Stephen, and again for our audience, is that this kind of mineralization is well understood. It's very similar to Canada, very similar to the Youanmi in Australia. Geologists do understand this kind of gold mineralization very well.
Turning our attention to the next slide, Andrew, on the main zone. Let's discuss the extension because we had 200 m to the, no 300 m to the northeast extension last year. We have another 200 meters to the south, which is.
Mm-hmm
... overall 30% more of a strike length drilled out for a mineralization perspective. Give the audience a sense of what that means.
Yeah, I mean, what. Well, first of all, you can sort of see it if you put the cursor again on the very last hole there, Stephen. You know, we can sort of see that we've got some good grades, some good widths in there. We've got some good grades under the pits as well. Like, for example, under the pits, 34 m at 1.3 g a ton, including 10 at 3. These are very mineable widths. Whilst we're using the old historical south pit at the moment as a water storage, I mean, we'll drain that eventually. What it means to us all is that we will continue to find and add ounces to resources and reserves in these areas.
One thing that I did notice when I was on site last time is, and it's the first time that we did this, is the road over to Anfield is on this slide, which is right here. We've always-
Mm-hmm
... you know, stated Anfield of being about 500 m from the main zone, but I walked it, and it didn't take me any time, so it's certainly.
Yeah.
closer to 500 meters.
That's right, Stephen. I mean, when we talked about 500 meters, we're referring to the sort of the main trend on Anfield and the artisanal workings.
Yeah.
You're quite correct. This hanging wall zone here is about 200 m away from the main zone. You can see the drill pad just right at the very end of that.
Yeah. Right here, yeah.
That is the location of the samples that came out from some artisanal workings at 28 g a ton, 36 g a ton. They were grab samples, nonetheless, they're very exciting grab samples, from fresh rock. I think that's an important point for our audience is fresh rock, and it looked exactly like our main zone.
Excellent. Thank you, Andrew. That's a great update.
Great. thank you, everybody.
Now with regards from, you know, an ESG perspective, what I would like to take away from this slide here is the land compensation process. The land compensation process, in order to buy the land from the landowners, was a long process, a very detail-oriented process as well. That has now predominantly been completed. I don't think there's very many left to be compensated. We went through the final process over the last couple weeks and made final payments.
Mm-hmm.
That program costs around $2.6 million. It was funded over a couple year process as the land evaluators went in, evaluated the land and made the appropriate payments to those landowners. Now the 16 sq km of the most of that property is now owned by the Buckreef Gold Company. Andrew, you wanna just mention a few other points around that process? It was a long, arduous process and quite a successful one, actually.
It has been very successful. Again, we're very proud to say that the government of Tanzania now references Buckreef and the work that TRX has been doing with Buckreef as the example for others to follow. It's been a very meticulous, very patient process. But at the same time, we've had a lot of buy-in, and as evidenced, Stephen, when you're sort of just driving into site tonight, the amount of new buildings that have gone up around the property and new roofs that have gone on and the locals whose land we've compensated, because it's mainly farmland, agricultural land, are very grateful. I'm just very pleased to see that kind of response in the community.
Yeah. It's not only that, Andrew, I think, The mine is starting to have a secondary impact on the economy in the local region.
Yes
... you know, when you stand outside gates and there's taxis at shift changes, a lot of our employees and the contractor employees are from the local area. We're now starting to see the spinoff effects of the mine generating in-income and growing.
Yeah. Absolutely. The secondary industries or businesses, as you, as you rightly say, a lot of motorbikes at knock off time from work. I think I'll just highlight one other thing. We continue to focus on education, Stephen, and, you know, we know we're going to be here for a long time. Part of the things we have to do is a little bit of CSR work as part of the law in the land, and we've worked with our communities and with our local governments on education. You can see here a group of students in a new science laboratory. Typically the type of science laboratory we would have all been used to as in our own school days.
It's our ambition that we would hire from the local communities and students that are doing very well in science, technology, engineering, and math. It's got a bit of a longer-term impact as well.
Yeah. Thank you. What I'm gonna leave the audience with is there's a lot of rapid progress at Buckreef. We've made great progress. Like as I mentioned earlier, the company has now been stabilized. It's cash flow positive. It's growing. We're funding the growth of that business. We have a growth profile, as Mike mentioned. A new ball mill should be ordered shortly. We have a larger project to develop over time, and we're doing a lot of activities around that, including evaluating ball mills. I believe Andrew is going to be on a trip in the next couple of weeks doing that. We're going through the metallurgical study, the geotech study, a lot of activity around that. Then it's underpinned by a great resource, already a great resource that has a lot of growth potential.
All in all, this is a straightforward growth story that we've positioned the company for this growth, and we're very excited for what we're seeing. I'm very proud of everybody at site, Gaston, our general manager, Isaac, our geology manager, the work that Andrew's doing, the work that Mike's doing on finance, work that Christina's doing in investor relations. All in all, I'm quite pleased with the growth of the company and where we're positioned and where we're positioned for growth. That's what I would like to leave our investors and our analysts with. We'll open it up for questions.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please click on the Q&A icon on the left-hand side of the screen. You'll see an option to raise your hand to join the question queue and ask your question verbally, or write a question to submit your question in writing. When you're introduced, your line will automatically be unmuted. Analysts who have dialed in to the conference call may press star then one on your telephone keypad to join the queue. The first question is from Jake Sekelsky, pardon me, with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.
Hey guys. Congrats on the quarter and thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks, Jake.
I mean, obviously growth is a focus right now, and you were just talking about looking at adding an initial ball mill, and it sounds like, you know, you might be pretty close to picking one up. Are you able to provide any color on, you know, the hopeful timeline there? You know, if we assume you guys purchase one this quarter, do you think we might see some contributions from it in, you know, fiscal Q4? Any color on that timeline would be helpful.
Yeah. We've identified it. We know the size of it, and we'll announce that when we actually put the deposit on it. It's coming from China again. It will take about, you know, 60 to 90 days to come to Tanzania, and in the meantime, we'll be putting together the program to build some extra tanks. As well as figuring out the longer-term tailing strategy, and we're well advanced on all of those fronts. I would expect there is the possibility that you will see some production from it in Q4 of this year, but I would think that this is more of a 2024 story at this point in time. Andrew, anything to add to that?
I think that's a fair comment, Stephen. We would love to squeak it in into Q4, but the 2024 timeline is a good comment at the moment.
Yeah. Jake, just the philosophy around that is we just wanna make sure we get it right. There's a lot of activity going on at site, and we gotta make sure... They've been really busy, so I don't wanna strain the human capital aspects of the business either.
Yeah.
we're cash flow positive at these levels as well.
Yeah. Stephen, just one final comment that comes to mind, and that centers around the power. We've been very fortunate in that the local town, Katoro, of about 40,000 to 50,000 people has come off our power line and gone on to the.
Yes
... to a major cross-country power line. That's freed up about 10 MW of power that we now have access to. That side of it has gone very, very well.
Which means it can grow a lot bigger without new power lines. Yes.
That's correct. Substations-
Yeah
... and so on.
That actually brings up another good point. I mean.
Right
... from a permitting standpoint, is there anything that you guys need to bring that ball mill online or are you all set there?
No, we're all set.
Set, yep. Yeah, we've been green-lighted by the government on that.
Yeah. Yeah, to give you a sense of one of the things is I would've liked to have it sped up a little bit further, but in Tanzania you have to go through the local procurement process, which means it's really a planning process. It's a little bit, you know, what I'll call laborious on the paper side. We've gotten that approval through the Mining Commission to go ahead and purchase this ball mill. I think we got that approval about a week and a half ago or so.
Last Friday. Yeah.
Yeah.
Got it. Okay. That's, that's very helpful. Then just, you know, looking out longer term at Buckreef, are you able to provide any updates on how the sulfide development study's going?
Yeah. To give you a sense of how we're blocking and tackling that, is we need to get the met work done just to confirm the metallurgy and what we're thinking and the processing flow sheet.
Mm-hmm.
The first processing flow sheet that we mentioned was a flotation followed by a regrind. Then we mentioned when we released the drill hole results from that met study, the current flow sheet that we're using, which is grind, crush, CIL, which in the preliminary study had almost identical recovery rates. What we're learning in current operations and what that preliminary study mentioned to us is it's about grind size. If you get 75 microns passing 80% in a CIL tank, you're gonna get about 90% recoveries, depending on the grade profile, if you do the average grade of the deposit. We need to confirm that. That's one aspect.
The next aspect is there needs to be a redesign of the pit from the 2018 pit. We need to get the geotech work in. That pit design had, you know, 52 degree slopes. We're hopeful, but we gotta confirm this, that we'll be able to be more aggressive on the slopes given the hard rock of the deposit.
Yeah.
What that would mean is a lower strip ratio and a deeper pit, over time. Also, the infill drill program, that has been done will extend the length of that pit. As Andrew mentioned, there is, drill results now under the south pit, which means in the first 2018 pit, that was a very shallow 40 m pit, that will now go a lot deeper.
Oh, yeah.
than what was envisioned. It is angling up to be a much larger overall project than originally in that 2018 PFS. Also, we're working with Nseko on longer term tailings. That is the bottleneck at this point in time is longer term tailings, but that's well advanced on.
Mm-hmm
on where that would be located, how it will be designed, and ultimately it will be built. More than likely from the waste from the mining activities. You'll just take your waste from one pit and build a berm over another side, put your tailings behind it. Which is unique for a mining project 'cause in most of these mining projects, your tailings facility is built up front from overburden stripping. We're just gonna use our waste to build that tailings facility over time as being designed into a longer-term plan. There's a lot of activity happening and at the same time, Andrew and team are evaluating ball mills now, and we're getting out in front of that for a longer-term solution to that as well. Anything else to add to that, Andrew, Mike?
Mike.
No, I think that was well said, Stephen. Nothing further to add. Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think, Jake, What I would take away from that is if you think about a feasibility study, you need your cost inputs. We're operating, we know those. You need your building cost inputs. We built stuff, so we kinda got a good sense of that. Then you need your pit design. We're doing the geotech work for that and the resource modeling. It's whatever plan comes out, it may not have a feasibility study level stamp on it, but it has all the feasibility level inputs.
Stephen, two quick points from me and hello, Jake. Can't wait to get you over here at some point. We look forward to that. Two points. We do have a test plant, so
Yes
we will also be able to do some bulk sampling. We're even able to sort of isolate the 360 ton per day, the initial circuit, for even more extensive sulfide testing, when that moment comes. The starter pit in just one area is just meters away from intersecting sulfides, and then we might be able to scoop just a few of those and to do some initial bulk samples to supplement the variability study that comes from the drill holes. Those that are looking even longer term, in my mind, there's no doubt that this project will go underground as well.
Fair enough.
Super.
That's all very helpful.
Yeah, a lot of work going on in that project. Yeah.
The next question is from Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. This is Marcus Jean calling in for Heiko. Thanks for taking our questions.
Thank you.
There's a sentence in the release that sort of caught our attention where you stated that through ongoing drilling it becomes more evident that Buckreef has the potential for a much larger footprint and project, which implies that things seem to be improving sequentially. We were wondering if you could just provide a bit of color on maybe some of the exploration results in that area that, you know, particularly surprised you relative to maybe what you anticipated.
I think, I'll let Andrew, you know, follow up on my answer to this question. As we, as I've stated previously, you know, we were always comfortable with the Buckreef zone, main zone prior to joining this company. What we're seeing now is there's still a lot of work to do, but as Andrew lined it up, you're seeing a trend from the Eastern Porphyry north right down to south through Anfield and right on down through. There's 2.5 million ounces of resources in the Buckreef main zone, and this other trend has not been drilled out nearly as extensively. There's that potential, and then there's potential around the rest of the property, particularly around what Andrew was referring to in down south in around Tembo, there's some strong showings there.
Tembo itself is very good. It's, there's still artisanals working in that area with the, what do they call the mine superintendent, the government official, Andrew, there?
Oh, the resident engineer.
Yeah, the resident engineer. Look, there's a lot of gold here, and it's starting to come to the surface quite literally.
Yeah.
Andrew, anything to add?
Stephen, if I could ask you just to go back to the exploration slide.
Yeah. This one.
Thank you for the question. If I, the line broke up a little bit, but I think the question was, has anything surprised us? Is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's correct.
... my answer, Andrew, was, you know, we like the main zone, and now we are looking at.
Yeah
Probably another main zone.
I think, yeah, that's a very good comment, Stephen. I think what has really surprised me is just how much gold potential there is here. You know, if you were to just even take Eastern Porphyry and Anfield, and put that anywhere else on the planet, that would make a really great junior mining company exploration play. You know, when we sort of, for example, started to delve into the database at the Eastern Porphyry, which hasn't really been worked, for over 10 years.
We unpackaged that, had a look at it, and when you start to see some of the historical drilling that was in there, 30 g a ton over 3 m, and the fact that these zones are starting to sort of line up, the surprise factor is like, wow, it actually is really sort of happening in terms of true exploration potential. As you said, Stephen, the stuff by Tembo, and then some of you might have spotted over to the east, halfway between the main zone area and the Bingwa on the, on the far right or the far east, we've identified yet another trend through having our boots on the ground. It's been.
I think that. Yeah, I would.
Very exciting from that point of view.
Yeah. Yeah. I would add too, Andrew, like the metal results from an assay perspective were very good. As you guys are aware, particularly analyst community, usually these deposits are built up through drill hole analysis results, assay results over time. Usually you get some of them are good, some of them are great, and some of them are average, and it builds up a deposit over time. Whereas Buckreef never had that sort of evolution. As Andrew mentioned, you go back in and dig into the results of the Eastern Porphyry, you know, his eyes popped at some of them. You get those in the main zone as well, and as we start to get really into this, it wasn't built up the same way as other exploration plays were.
It came together as a resource potential, but when you start to look at it, there's some really good zones in both of these deposits.
Yeah. That sort of speaks to the continuity, and again, those on the call understand that continuity is critically important to build a mineral resource and a mine.
Yeah, you have to have continuity because what you can't do is go through one great zone and it better pay for getting to the next zone. That doesn't happen here. It's 20 meters wide and continuous in the main zone, and we're seeing similar trends on the Anfield Eastern Porphyry zones.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, awesome. Yeah, no, that was a.
Which is kind of a highlight probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, perfect. Thank you. Just, trend lining the quarter, we're at essentially $5 million of gross profit, $4.4 million EBITDA. Could you maybe walk us through, as much as you're comfortable with in this setting, of what you think Buckreef can do in the next several years and what you model out as realistic goals from a cash flow and EBITDA perspective?
Mike, you wanna take a stab at that? I think it's a little early for some of that sort of stuff. We've indicated what we're doing on the larger project perspective, which is where you're really going with that. Mike, you wanna just take a quick stab?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, we obviously haven't guided out that far yet, guys, a little bit, you know, premature, I think, to start speculating on cash flow. Again, I mean, I think in the near term, you know, you've heard about what we're doing with our mill that we're looking to purchase, doubling throughput. Certainly depending on the grade profile, hopefully coming close to doubling production in the near term. What we're modeling out is, you know, how much strip and dirt we need to move to continue to get at the deeper part of the deposit, producing at a 50,000 plus ounce production profile over the next couple years.
Once we have our arms around that, we'll certainly guide the market accordingly. I think in the near term, again, you've heard when we expect the mill to come online and roughly what we expect the production levels to look like. You could probably extrapolate, like I said, the very, very near term, what, you know, what our current cash flow levels look like on a quarterly basis, for the next four to six quarters. We'll guide the market early next year on longer term guidance thereafter.
Yeah, I think, the best way, Mike, to really answer this question, I'll ask Andrew, if you could just give a broad range of the size of ball mills you would envision for a larger project.
Well, certainly the short-term one that we're looking to get on site in Q3, it'll be 1,000 tons a day, right? That's the doubling of tonnage. As you alluded to, Mike Niehuser, you know, we've, we're not gonna quite double gold production because of grade profiles, but we will get as close as we can. Beyond that, we're going to be looking at about 6,000 tons a day into the sulfide project. A mine that will be well in excess of 100,000 ounces a year is what we're looking at. That's the kind of mill I'm gonna be looking at the first week of February.
Yeah, you might have given a little bit too much information there, Andrew. Thank you.
That was in quite a range. Let me give that as a range. $4,000-$8,000.
Yeah.
All right? The tons a day.
Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Thanks for the answers, guys.
I would like to just... It's a good question. maybe back to Stephen and Mike on this. you know, we built the first 1,000 tons a day for what? $6 million, Mike?
Six and a half.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Six and a half, right? Are we able to shed any light on the cost of the expansion, the first part of that?
Yeah. We haven't certainly quite guided to that yet, but I would certainly use the, you know, the first 1,000 ton a day sort of cost profile as a good analog for what we expect the next 1,000 to look like.
Yeah. It's the same manufacturer, same-
It's gonna be a little cheaper than that, Mike. We could say it's gonna be cheaper than six and a half, so don't expect it to get that high.
Thanks, Marcus.
Yeah. No, thanks, guys.
The next question is from Mike Niehuser with Roth Capital Partners. Mike Niehuser, you're live in the call.
Great. Hey, I'll keep this quick as we're running short on time. On Page 9, Andrew, you show a map of the mining concession. When I was out to the project one year ago, I got the feeling that the south zone kinda petered out at surface, and it went deeper in the north. I guess what I'm seeing here, to everybody's surprise, is that it actually seems to be more horizontal than dipping to the north. When you look at those artisanal, you know, workings to the south, it's just, it just sticks out, you know, in a big way. Really, could this be a much more horizontal than a dipping mineralized body?
Yeah. What you're referring to, Mike, greetings. The higher grade shoots do dip, if you like, or they plunge at approximately, say, 20, 30 degrees. It does look like they are flattening to the north. The south has been a very pleasant surprise to me. As you rightly say, you know, if you look at the historical data and the culture that had built up around that particular part of the deposit, I wasn't anticipating as strong a results as the ones we got, so very pleasantly surprised with the tenure of those. There will be definitely gold mineralization, I think, continuing all the way down the trend, but there will be high-grade shoots within that.
Well, it just seems to be very consistent. I mean, you used that word earlier in the call.
Mm-hmm.
North to south, it just seems to be, you know, it seems it wouldn't be a surprise to have your expectations met to the south, I guess is what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Um-
Yeah. There's this precious little drilling there. We do see in the main zone that we have so far very clearly, those. You know, there's continuous mineralization, if you like, there's an overlay of just three higher grade shoots that's very evident in the data.
Did I hear you correctly that you're gonna be coming out with a updated resource in the next couple of months?
We're doing this work internally first, Mike. Then obviously these kind of, this kind of work does ultimately have to hit the market.
do we know-
I'm going to remain non-committal on that timeline at this point, as we only just started our work.
When you do come up with it, at some point sooner or later, you will be announcing that to the market. Maybe not in a couple of months, but maybe four to six months or so?
Let me keep it very, very broad, and Stephen's laughing I think a little bit. Let me just be very deliberately broad, Mike. I'd love to get it out as soon as I can, but I'm very confident we will get it in this fiscal year. We have to because we're now mining, and we have to update the reserves, and we have to update the mineral resources.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah.
Is there a point where you might be updating us on the metallurgical work, the summary of conclusions, even on a preliminary basis, later in the year? Do you have a-
Yeah.
-goal you can share for that?
Yeah. The overall work will take about six months, but I would agree with you. Once we have some key metallurgical results, we would feed those into the market, as we have done and demonstrated so by releasing the meters and grade of the samples that are going off to be analyzed.
I guess just lastly, about your million hours of lost time, you know, without a lost time accident is just stunning to me. Seems to be, you know, I know the mantra is growth, growth, but it's not coming at the cost of safety. I know you guys are careful, you know, at the top, you know, in the C-suite, but all the way down to with the guy with a hammer and a thumb. I just wanna compliment you. It is something that, you know, almost should lead, you know, all the metrics. Thank you for that. Glad to be included in the call. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Mike, and, come back anytime.
Yeah. Thank you.
The next question is from Robert Paulson with Paulson Strategy Group. Robert Paulson, you're live in the call. Mr. Paulson, your line is open.
Yeah. It's Robert also texted in his question. What I could do is read aloud the question and answer it if he's not online. Okay, that's what I'll do is his question is, congratulations on all the great things and you and TRX team are doing to make TRX a successful growth opportunity. Gold is at or close to long-term highs and stock price is at or close to all-time lows. What are the thoughts about TRX being a takeover target, and how committed are you to the long term? I'll answer the first part of that question. I've been here for just over two years. In that two years, there's been gyrations in markets.
Vis-à-vis other junior mining companies, I would say that we've outperformed those particular companies on a year to date. Well, sorry, a last year basis, we're about even. On a five-year basis, this stock is about even. It's outperformed the vast majority of junior miners. I think a lot of longtime shareholders go way back to 2012s and remember $3, $5, $7, $9 stock prices. The company has transitioned and had a lot of change since that period of time. You know, for myself, I look at our performance over the last two years since joining. With regards to being a takeover target. Look, if you become a takeover target, you've done your job successfully, hopefully, particularly if you're not in a distressed situation.
We are not in our distressed situation. I don't go out seeking takeover targets. We're committed to the long term. We think this project has a lot of potential. You know, right now, would we consider ourselves a takeover target? I think we still got some work to do to really display what the long-term potential of this project is. As we continue to execute, I'm hopeful that we'll get rewarded in the markets for that, and shareholders will be rewarded as well. I hope that answers your question, Robert.
Yeah. Stuart, I'm just going to add also, you know, the team that the audience is looking at, backed up by the team here at site and in country is really also kicking into gear and is also delivering on the results.
Eileen, next question.
The next question is a text question from Craig Sutherland. We have heard for a long time about dividends. What is the company's plan additionally with the M&A activity picking up? Have we had any discussion on this topic or doing a joint venture with a major?
Yeah. Dividends is a topic that has been discussed around this company in the past when it was set up more as a, as a royalty company. And shareholders have heard from myself about growth plans. I believe the company is still better served, growing its cash flow, its revenue, its EBITDA, and all the valuation metrics that are used by mining investors and analysts, including net present value. That is the current plan of the company. There is a lot of capital needs. We prefer to generate cash flow to fund those capital needs. That's certainly the mantra in the short to medium term. That will change over time as the company reaches its potential, particularly on a production profile basis.
With regards to doing a JV with a major, the company already has a 55%, 45% ownership split between TRX and the state mining company. It would be very difficult to bring in a major into that sort of joint venture discussions. It would mean dilution on our part and dilution on STAMICO's part. What I would say is, under the right situation, we might do that. Certainly it's not in the short term. I prefer to unlock the value of Buckreef first before having any of those discussions.
All right. This concludes the question and answer session. If you have any additional questions, please email Christina Lalli, Vice President of Investor Relations. I'd now like to hand the conference back over to Stephen Mullowney for a few closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you. Look, Q1 2023 was a great transition period. We got the plant up and running. You see the pit in the background to me. We're mining, we're processing, and the drill bits are turning. I believe, and our management team believes, and our employees and colleagues believe there's a great potential at the asset, and we continue to grow, and we're all having fun doing it. I'll leave the audience with that. I think this has been a very in-depth and insightful conference call. Thank you.
This concludes the meeting.