It's now my pleasure to introduce Christina Lalli, Vice President, Investor Relations with TRX Gold. Christina, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Nadine. Welcome, everyone, to the TRX Gold Corporation third 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 the Q&A icon on the left-hand side of the screen. You will see the options: 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 into the conference call may press then one on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. I would like to turn the meeting over to Stephen Mullowney, CEO of TRX Gold.
Thank you, Christina, for the introduction. My name is Stephen Mullowney. I'm the CEO of TRX Gold, as mentioned by Christina, we're pleased to give you the Q3 2023 financial results, as well as an update on operations at the Buckreef Gold Project. Q3 was, I believe, our third quarter with the 1,000 tons per day plant, started in Q1, halfway through, we've been learning a lot throughout our operations throughout the year. One of the biggest things in Q3 to come forward is the fact that we processed sulfide ore, which was 6,500 tons of hard, fresh rock, went through the plant at a good recovery rate, which opens up the much broader deposit to mining, that will be now incorporated into our mine plans.
We've also upgraded the plant from our learnings from that. Recently, a cone crusher was installed, as well as the conveyors and other parts of the crushing system got upgraded in order to accommodate that harder rock. That's been a very, very exciting and extremely important value creation piece that occurred in that, in Q3, and we'll get into that in much more broader detail in the presentation. I'm gonna flip the slides here. To the next slide. Obviously, I got to say the cautionary note and forward-looking statements. You can find this note on our website, and we'll just leave it at that and move forward. Today's speakers will be myself, Andrew, our COO, who's next to me across from the table, Mike, who is also across from the table, Christina, who is sitting next to me.
For new people to TRX, I know there's a lot of shareholders on this call as well as analysts, but for new people, what is TRX? We are a team of experienced leaders who've been executing on the Buckreef Gold Project very rapidly. We've gone from 0 ounces production to an annual run of 25,000 ounces and growing very quickly. It's a high-margin operation that has positive cash flow, and as we'll get into further in the presentation, the exploration upside is still here. It is an underexplored property. There is still a lot of opportunity to increase mineral resources and minable ounces here at Buckreef. Again, as a very high level around the Buckreef Gold Property, the last resource statement had 2+ million ounces in measured and indicated.
The resources come to surface, that's where you see us mining the oxides. Deposit is wide at 20 meters of width, with consistent mineralization over 2 kilometers. We say easy metallurgy because it's grind fresh CIL, that is both in the oxides and has been proven out in the sulfides through the bulk sample. There's a metallurgical study being done for the broader deposit, particularly deeper parts of the deposit, being with SGS in South Africa. We're fully permitted to 2032, that Special Mining License is renewable for the life of the mine of the deposit. The processing plant and mine have consistently been meeting the production guidance that we've provided. We have a minimal environmental footprint. We recycle all water.
We have good tailings management connected to the national power grid, which is predominantly hydropower, particularly with the Julius Nyerere facility to come online. We have exploration potential and a lot of blue-sky potential in this property over time. With regards to the Q3 2023 highlights, the 1,000 ton per day plant continues to run very efficiently. As a lot of the audience knows, there's 3 main ball mills there, 15 tons per hour ball mills. That equals 1,000 tons per day, which gives us flexibility in our operations. We've poured over 15,000 ounces and sold over 16,000 ounces gold, respectively, in the 9-month end of May 2023. We've recorded positive operating cash flow that will continue to fund growth at both the operation and exploration levels.
I believe, Mike, to Q3 2023, it's almost $50 million of investment?
That's right, just under 50, Stephen. Correct.
Yeah. We have strong profit margins of 42% and 49% respectively. You know, in Q3, it was down a little bit, given that the ounces weren't as high, given the wet season, so we expect that to pick up, particularly with gold prices being higher now as well. We continue to reinvest the cash flow, as we mentioned. There is a new ball mill that will be upcoming to basically double the production rate, 75%–100% of the production processing capacity. That mill is now shipped. Saw the pictures of it on a truck last week, Andrew, leaving China?
On the way to the port.
On the way to the port. That is, that's the longest lead item, and it's well underway, and we're getting on top of other long lead items here now. We've successfully processed the sulfide bulk sample, which I mentioned at the beginning of this call, is a game changer, really, from a planning and operational perspective. We continue to achieve positive near-surface drill results at Anfield East and Mwafweli. We are now evaluating where best to go next in order to bring in mineable ounces and to increase the overall resources of the property. In any exploration program, you have what I'll call fits of starts and stops to reevaluate. We're in that reevaluation phase now before we ramp it up again.
We reported no environmental or community-related incidents during the nine months ended May 31st, and continue to have a very strong social license in Tanzania. With that, I'm now going to hand it over to Mike, our CFO, who will go through our Q3 financial highlights.
Thank you, Stephen, good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. TRX continued to report strong financial results during the quarter, and this was off the back of, again, lofty gold prices, as well as production from the 1,000 ton per day plant that Stephen touched on, that continues to produce very, very efficiently and very, very effectively. During the quarter, we produced and sold approximately 4,800 ounces at a realized price of almost $1,960 an ounce. That's up from Q2, where gold prices were trending around $1,850 an ounce. We did benefit from an uptick this quarter, and we continue to see gold prices maintaining. In fact, this morning it was somewhere around $1,975.
We continue to benefit from top line revenues on gold price and production. We recorded revenues of over $9 million for the quarter. On a year-to-date basis, as you can see, almost $30 million of revenue. That generated operating cash flow of over $3 million for the quarter, or almost $15 million year to date, as Stephen touched on. Again, we've substantially reinvested that operating cash flow right back into the business. Stephen touched on one example with the new ball mill that we've recently purchased, we've also expanded our tailing storage facility, for example, quite significantly, which will accommodate much larger production.
We relocated a road which will allow us life of mine access to a main zone and unlock high-grade blocks. We've also purchased other pieces of capital equipment, for example, new gen sets, new generators this quarter, which-
Yeah.
Yeah, those will replace units that we had previously rented that, you know, were quite costly on a rental basis and impact our cash costs. By purchasing pieces of capital equipment like that, you end up benefiting longer term, and the payback on those pieces of equipment is very, very, very short. Very value accretive. The key takeaway, I would say, again, this is our philosophy and our model, you know, we're using organically generated cash flow to help grow the business by reinvesting right back into Buckreef. On the cash cost side, just the previous slide, Stephen, one or two more comments.
Yeah.
Yeah, one or two more comments for the benefit of the audience. Cash costs for the quarter were just over $1,000 an ounce. Again, the mine sequence during the quarter had us undertake a stripping campaign, which we touched on in Q1 and Q2. That stripping campaign, you know, involves sort of going wider and deeper in the pit, as well as undertaking blasting activities, which unlock high-grade ore blocks, which we really expect to see benefit Q4's production and certainly production into early next year. Stephen touched on this, but Q3 is the traditional rainy season in Tanzania, which was extraordinarily wet this year compared to prior years.
It had a bit of an impact on pit grade, quarter on quarter. Again, on a cash cost basis, we still expect to fall within that $750-$850 full year guidance range that we put in at the start of the fiscal year, albeit towards the higher end of that. Importantly, being a low-cost operation, gross profit margins continue to be very high. You can see on a year-to-date basis, gross profit's almost 50%, and was 42% for the quarter.
What that shows is that the plant and the ore that we're bringing out of the ground, you know, again, is really efficient and effective and importantly, from a financial perspective, profitable. On a year-to-date basis, we produced over 16,000 ounces. Stephen touched on that. Again, revenues of almost $30 million. Year-on-year, quite a significant achievement as we continue to grow this business. Again, importantly, operating cash flow of around $15 million that we put right back into the ground. Again, we've used cash flow from operations to make value, accretive investments back into the business. You touched on a big one, Stephen, with the new ball mill that we expect to be on the ground in the coming weeks.
The balance sheet continues to be strong. We had a cash balance of over $7 million on our books at quarter end, as well as lots of other pieces of liquidity that we can access. Working capital was positive at over $3 million, EBITDA over $3 million as well. Again, all demonstrating strong liquidity, which helps fund organic growth. We do expect Q4 to be our strongest production quarter of the year, and we'll touch on guidance here shortly, but we're certainly on track to meeting our full year numbers, as Stephen touched on, of between 20,000 and 25,000 ounces. I think I'll leave it there for now on the financial highlights. Back to you, Stephen.
Yeah. Thank you, Mike. On the, on the next slide, I'm going to hand it over to Andrew to go through the preliminary bulk sample that was done on the sulfides, and I'll supplement your comments, Andrew, around this. As I said, this is a game changer. What we found in that bulk sample is what we anticipated to find, which is the Buckreef ore is really about grind size at the end of the day. The finer you grind it, the higher the recovery rate of the gold that you'll get. When we grind it to 75 passing 80, which we did in this bulk sample, we got what we expected, which was around 89% recovery rates. This lined up very well to what was achieved in the SGS preliminary MET study.
When you really go through that study, we presented a number that was over 90%. That was with a slightly different flow sheet of a flotation, followed by a regrind and CIL. If you just do a straight grinding and CIL, it came out to what we anticipated it to come out to. If we grind it finer, we get higher recovery rates. It's a trade-off between how much energy you use and the CapEx you put in to get that finer grind to get the higher grinding size. That would be trade-off studies that will be done in the future. Andrew, go ahead.
Well, Stephen, you said it also very well. Perhaps I could just talk a little bit about that. Yeah, we did take advantage of operational sequencing in the wet season to take that 6,500 tons sulfide sample. We're obviously delighted with the results. As you say, we've got the recoveries here at 88.7%, which is very much in line with the test work that SGS have done in prior year. What's also very important to have that work is what we learned. What we learned is that we do have to particularly crush finer, and hence we've purchased the cone crusher, which is on site, commissioned, and is available for when we do a fresh ore again.
The whole goal of that, as you said, is to get the better grind and throughput. What I like to see is, you can sort of see it from the oxide ore going up those conveyor belts there, but when it's fresh rock, we want to see popcorn size rock going up into the ball mills. The hard work of grinding it down is then a lot easier for the ball mills if they're getting a finer feed. We've learned that, we do the upgrades to 2,000 tons a day, where again, focus on making sure we get, as I like to call it, popcorn going into the ball mills. I think that's it, really.
Yeah. What does this really mean at the end of the day? What this really means is sulfide ore will go through the existing plants.
That's correct.
Be recovered at a good rate. That means that, you know, there's no need to come up with a new circuit at this point in time for the sulfide ore. Which means we can continue to expand Buckreef the way it's being expanded, which is expanding existing plants and equipment over time or maybe faster, but it doesn't mean a whole new processing facility for sulfide ore.
Yeah.
Thus the related CapEx is a much more complicated system.
Yeah. This all ties in very nicely with, I think we have to touch on it.
Yeah.
That ties in with the more detailed metallurgical studies we're doing now.
Yeah
SGS in South Africa.
On that point, what are we doing? Obviously, there's a 2018 PFS that the company did prior to the management team round table coming in. We've talked about this at year end. A lot of work has gone into the infill drill program. That's been completed. We're doing the MET study, as we've mentioned a couple of times. That's across the deposit to make sure what we found in the bulk sample and in the preliminary study, that there's no changes in the ore across the deposit, both along strike and at depth. That's what that MET study will do. The geotech study is ongoing. That determines the pit slopes. At Buckreef, we have hard rock there, so we're optimistic that we'll get some good pit slopes in our planning. Currently, our pit slopes, Andrew, are around 45 degrees.
40 degrees.
Yeah, about 40 degrees, and that's in the soft rock.
Yeah.
... once we get to the harder rock, we expect that to be higher. There's long-term TSF planning ongoing. Obviously, it's easier to take it out of the ground than to store it. It's gotta be stored somewhere afterwards, after it goes through the processing plant. That is continuing ongoing, identifying lands to purchase for that. Also, taking a really good look, a re-look at dry stack tailings. That will be done over the next couple of months. We're updating the mineral resource model to make sure that we have all our ducks in a row as we put in place an updated mine plan. That will all wrap into what a life of mine plan looks like today.
Obviously, we anticipate that to improve over time as more and more drilling is done around Buckreef, given the blue sky potential around the Anfield, the Eastern Porphyry and other parts of the deposit, as well as what's at depth, and along strike in the main zone. It's our anticipation that this will be a deposit, given the width and the grade of the deposit, that will go underground over time.
That's correct.
There will be eventually the trade-off between, do you do more stripping to go wider, to get deeper, or do you just do your underground development? There will be a point in time in any mine plan where that trade-off will cross, and you will go underground. That is something that will be looked at as we, you know, do the mine modeling of the broader deposit over time. Anything to add to that, Andrew? Did I forget anything?
I think the other thing we'd like to do, Stephen, is, and we'll see this on the exploration slide, is to get a couple of satellite pits up and running.
Yeah.
It builds optionality for the mine plan.
For instance, in Q3, we had that optionality because we had crushed stockpile, we had stockpiles, we had a main pit. Now we're gonna supplement that. As everybody knows, my mindset is to have redundancies.
Yes
in any operation to reduce risk. That's essentially what you're doing in opening up other areas. You may not mine there right away, but if something happens over here in the main pit, for instance, you can pivot over to the satellite pits. It's the same concept of having three ball mills operating. If one goes down, and you've already got to replace the liners in one, the whole operation doesn't shut down when you're a single mine company. We're very positive on putting in place those redundancies over time. Okay, on the exploration side, Andrew, tell everybody what they have here and where you're going.
I think those that have been with us on previous presentations will remember the map on the right here. For those that are new, just very quickly, each of the black squares is 2 by 2 kilometers. You're looking at the Special Mining License in the red boundary, at the existing main zone, where all the colored dots are, and you can see where the plant is. Highlighted in the dashed lines are our exploration areas. We continue to be very excited, I think, as right within the geology team that's now the site is getting very, very familiar with the geological models and controls on gold mineralization. Just very in summary, we've did 239 meters in Q3.
We've done over 11,000 meters so far in this fiscal year. In terms of results for the quarter that came out, we did get some drilling on the Eastern Porphyry and on the Anfield. These are both way a few hundreds of meters to the east of the main zone. As you'd expect, I put the best results up here for you to see. It was very, very encouraging, but look at this, 14 meters at 3.5 grams a ton, including 3 meters at 10 in the Eastern Porphyry. We've also had another intersection there in the same hole, at 25 meters at 1.6. We know that that zone can contain some very, very significant intersections. A lot more drilling to do.
Another intersection, again, shown good width, and good grade for an open pit, at 1.22. From the Anfield, you might recall, we had some grab samples previously from an artisanal mine shaft, we drilled that, coming back at 2.94 meters at 13.7 grams a ton. For me, as a geologist explorationist, that's very significant for a first drill hole to go into that target. Again, simply some good widths and grades. The second hole from there, 6.1 meters, grading 1.41 grams a ton. I do draw your attention also to the fact that these intersections are shallow, and obviously, that's very encouraging for getting some initial open pits going. Back to you, Stephen.
Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. With regards to the year-end sort of guidance, as we've mentioned, we're a low-cost, low-risk approach to growth in the gold space. The 1,000 ton per day plant has been operating at nameplate capacity since the end of October. We're gonna reiterate our production forecast of 20,000–25,000 ounces. I think we're almost up to 20,000 ounces now, right?
Yeah, we did 16,000 as of Q3, again, we've obviously been producing since then, well on track, yes.
Yeah. We're almost there anyway.
Again, you know, as I mentioned, we expect Q4 to be the highest production quarter.
Yeah.
Well on track towards meeting that goal, yeah.
Yeah, the cash cost guidance, we reiterate that as well. We're advancing the third mill expansion in less than 18 months. That will put 2,000 tons per day, which is roughly around 750,000 tons per annum, Andrew. That's not a small operation that we're doing.
No.
Up to two decent size. That will obviously increase the production levels at Buckreef. We don't expect it to double instantaneously because you got a grade profile as well to deal with in putting it through the mill.
I think also, Stephen, just we're not expecting to substantially increase our fixed costs.
Yes.
We're going to see some benefits on our cash costs as a result.
Yeah, we're going to see. Yeah, exactly. All in all, things are going as expected, and any time we run into extra rain, for instance, and things of that nature, we're able to pivot and do value-creating opportunity, activity.
You mentioned the rain, just again, for our audience, the wet season this year was about 3 times as wet as the prior years.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
It was a lot of rain there. Truth is, it builds a lot of bench strength.
Yeah
amongst the team.
Yeah.
Resilience. Yeah.
With regards to ESG, it's something that as a public company in the mining space, we need to talk to and be participatory in. Our philosophy on ESG is that it's mindful, it benefits and is integrated with the business. If you hire more local people, you don't have to have them on site. It helps the money in the community, it reduces social risk, and it also increases your productivity and governance procedures by hiring a lot of local people. You know, our mindset is the biggest beneficiary of a mining operation is always the local community, because if the workers come from the local community, they're the biggest beneficiaries of the spend at the mining site. That helps reduce cost to corporate, the social risk of the project.
Then you want to reinvest in that community if your employees are from that community, in schools and in medical facilities, because that's where your employees are going, where their children are going. That's really the philosophy that we have with regards to ESG, and we'll continue to do so.
Stephen, if I could just have one quick comment again for new shareholders, and I think for those that might have heard the story before, it's worth hearing it again, is we also take a very clear approach to local procurement. For example, the CIL tanks were procured 3 or 4 hours away. The steelworks coming from the shipbuilding industry, and the ones that substantially reducing-
Cost, yeah.
Cost. Substantially reducing risk in terms of supply chain and giving us a lot of credit with the local government people. Shareholders, communities, governments, and everybody's just winning all around. We're not bringing tanks from, say, Asia or Turkey or South Africa. Everyone's benefiting.
With regards to milestones that are upcoming, we've continued to deliver on the milestones that we put into the market. The third mill expansion, we'll have that online hopefully early next year. We'll have planning and execution on a much larger mine than we currently have in the next 12-18 months, and as that continues to progress, mat studies, geotech studies, resource modeling, mine plan updates, all of that is continuing, as well as continuation and drilling. More of the same, but just continuing to execute at the Buckreef Gold Project. On that front, this is a stock chart over the last year or so. As you can see, we've been in a range from a trading perspective.
We've had peaks and valleys, and relative to the market, I would say we've held up really well relative to a lot of single asset producers, as well as the pre-production comp set that we look at. From a trading perspective, we've held up decently well against that comp set. On that front, I invite anybody for any questions.
Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. 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 options 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. Our first question is from Jake Sekelsky with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
Hey, good morning, Jake.
Hi, Jake.
Good morning.
First, on the rainy season, you guys touched on it a bit, with it being a bit more severe this year, than in the past. I'm just curious, was the duration the same, the typical March to May timeframe, or did it extend into June or even July a bit?
I can ask.
Yeah, you can answer that one, Andrew.
Yeah, Jake, it started a little bit earlier and went on a little bit later as well, and was quite consistent. That said, as the team obviously knuckled down and got on with the job. It was obviously something a bit tougher for us, but we got through it and learned to be prepared better for next year.
Andrew, I think, you know, It didn't trickle too far into June, though, from memory.
Yeah.
I think, it largely.
Yeah
subsided towards the back end of May. I think where we're going with that, Jake, in terms of modeling Q4, don't expect it to have a significant impact.
Oh, yeah. We're only about the second week of June.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so on that point, did it. In Tanzania, it either rains or it doesn't. There's really no in between. It's quite dry at site at this point in time.
As you can see, by the guys on the bottom right there, the lineup.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's quite. Yeah. That would've been a couple weeks ago.
That's right.
Yeah. I'm gonna take one question from the Q&A, from the queue. Yeah, right now, the question is: What do you foresee as being the biggest threat to overall cost? The IRR gross net margins are great. With anticipated rising costs in gold price, the multiple expansion could look stunning. Controlling costs is a premium. Yes, having a control on cost is always number one. The operation has grown quite rapidly, there's a lot more controls going in place, even as we speak, around cost-
Absolutely
- and following those costs. That is one area where we're managing costs. We continue to procure local, which is reducing cost, and it also reduces supply chain risk. We're also, what I would say is, on our next expansion, it isn't proceeding as quickly as the other two expansions. Part of that is to control the cost, to make sure that, you know, the operations are currently cash flow positive, so we can control the cost of that build a lot better than than if we were to rush it. Obviously, we've got to double mining rates as well in that equation. Fuel prices have stabilized, so, you know, fuel's always a large component of cost in any mining operation. We're good there. I don't see any overly bearing inflation pressures, Mike?
No, Andrew, you touched on this earlier, I mean, the plant is scalable as well.
Yeah
You don't expect to see a lot of, additional fixed, you know, fixed costs.
No
as we grow and expand our plant. You know, don't expect headcount to expand dramatically. Again, a big benefit from this sulfide bulk sample is that we expand this facility, as you've touched on a few times, and again, expect costs to come down as a result.
Yeah, exactly. You know, as Mike mentioned, there's a lot of been, what I'll call it, infill CapEx. Tailings has been expanded. We look at things like generators. They cost us a lot of money, so we bought them, and the IRR payback's quite good on that, so that reduces cost.
Loaders.
Loaders this morning, right? We currently rent a lot of loaders, so we're now purchasing those, and that's got a payback of three months or something like that.
Yeah.
Right? We're looking at that across the entire operation. That's the answer to that question.
Yeah. You mentioned fuels, just as an example, just to drill down a little bit here.
Yeah.
We have now got vendors basically, a fuel station at Buckreef. To access that controllers, the operators get cards, they have to be swiped. That all goes into our electronic system and through to the enterprise system like that you look at?
Yeah, the ERP, it's fully integrated.
It's all integrated. Anomalies can be observed. As you'd expect, it's all got cameras as well.
Yeah.
you know, these are examples of just controls that are going in.
Stephen, I think we gotta move ahead. I think Jake is probably still on the line. Jake, back to you, if you had any further questions.
One moment, please. I need to unmute his line again. One second. Jake, your line is open.
Great. Just one more quick one for me. On the sulfide, you know, you mentioned the resource estimate due out around the end of this year. How quickly do you expect to move forward with an updated economic study on the back of that resource update?
Yeah, we're right in the throes of that at the moment. Thanks for the question. We're anticipating to close out on that in the next quarter.
I always expect by the end of the year. Yeah.
Okay. you think, you know, we might see that economic study sometime in the first half of next year or before that?
No, we're going to be doing an economic analysis on that concurrently.
Got it. Okay, that's helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Jake. Back to you, operator.
There are no further questions in the queue.
All right. I'm gonna answer a couple of questions in the chat. One was an update on Jim Sinclair. You know, Jim is currently chairman of the company. I spoke to him yesterday, so he's well, still working part-time and is more in what I'll call semi-retirement type mode, given his age of 83, but he's doing extremely well. Another question is, and I keep on getting asked this one: Is the dividend paid in gold? Back in... You know, the company has changed significantly over time. Back in the day, when I believe a dividend paid in gold was mentioned, the company would have been much different than it is today.
The Buckreef property has a joint venture agreement with STAMICO in Tanzania. As part of that, the gold is sold to Argor-Heraeus in Switzerland to fund operations. That revenue then comes back into a bank account into Tanzania. I wouldn't expect to see a dividend paid in gold in the short to medium term, is the quick answer to that question. I think the next one... I think that's it for the questions, because they've all been answered. Yes, operator, any other questions?
Maybe one at the bottom there.
Yes, we.
Yeah. Yeah. Jake asked that question.
We actually do have two questions now from the meeting.
Okay.
I'm going to announce Stephen Riser, your line is open.
Oh, hi. Thanks very much, and I hope you all can hear me. Thanks very much for the update. Appreciate the strong operational performance coming out of TRX. I wanted to ask you indicated on one of the PowerPoint slides that you're expanding, looking or aiming to expand the scope of the PFS by 2– 4x.
Yeah.
I know you talked about 18,200 Stephen metric tons in that original study. By 2– 4x , what actually does that mean? Is that expanding the metric tons by 2– 4x , or is there another way to think about what that means tangibly?
I'm gonna go back to that slide, Steve, and answer that question and how we think about this. We're now about halfway to the annual ore billing tons.. We have 1.5 million tons. Once we do the next expansion, we're at around 750,000 tons. Our goal here, and ironically, almost at the average annual gold production amount in the next expansion. Our goal is, the way I always think about value from a mining operation is, the goal is to have 10+ years of mine production at over 100,000 ounces of annual production. You get into the metrics of having a valuable mining operation. That is how we think about 2–4x the PFS levels.
We want an increase in the gold production and hopefully an increase in the life of mine of the project.
Okay, thank you.
Maybe not 8, not 16 years, maybe less than that, but certainly a lot more in the ounces in the, in production, which expands over time with additional resources through the drill bit. Does that answer your question?
yes. Appreciate the clarification, Stephen.
Thanks, Steve.
Thanks, Stephen.
There are no more questions at this time from meeting participants by voice. Oh, pardon me. We do have another question. It's from Christopher Taylor. Christopher Taylor, your line is open. Mr. Taylor, your line is open. Doesn't seem to have a connection. The floor is back over to you.
Please wait while you are joined to the conference. The conference is now being recorded.
Guys, those shares are folks, the market.
Yeah, and part of that is, you know, There are some liabilities in the equity for shares to management, which we have not received yet, and have done that in order to maintain capital balances in the company.
Yeah, good point, Stephen.
We do have another question, verbal question from a meeting participant. Craig Sutherland, your line is open.
Yeah. Hi, everybody. continued success. I like what I'm seeing. I came onto the call a little bit late, so I apologize if this question's already been answered, but, expansion of existing resource base, I know there's been, production with other drilling. Is there a time period on what that might look like? Can you comment on possible size of expansion of the resource?
Andrew?
Yeah. Thank you very much for that, Craig. We're in the process of updating the mineral resource, and as I alluded to earlier, that's do that in the next quarter, along with an updated economic model. As you're probably well aware, I can't comment on any numbers that...
What you'll see in that update, to give you some guidance on how mineral resources are now classified, is the. You have in-pit amounts. What is looked at is what's mineable ounces. What you can take out today and mine at a profit, in a pit or in an underground scenario. That is really what the focus is a real big focus on mineable ounces, and that is where the new standards came in that all companies now have to follow. The old standards were, where is all your gold, and will it be mined in the fullness of time? Is a way to put it. These are. What we're looking at is what is mineable?
Yeah, it's more global.
Yeah.
Nowadays, the reporting has to be more focused.
More focused on mineable ounces.
In pits.
In- pit.
Underground, yeah.
Yeah. What does a pit-constrained mineral resource look like? That's what we're working on.
That's what we're working on. Yeah. One question that we have here is, explain the initial plant CapEx over 3 years of $76.5 million. This is a good question. In this 2018 PFS, remember, the company had no production in 2018, so the engineering firm would have went about its work saying, "If you were to construct a plant, what would it cost?" In order to get the level of production, they would go and get quotes, those sort of things. In that 2018 PFS, to get to the average annual production of 51,000 ounces, it would have cost $76.5 million in 2018.
We've gone and developed this property differently, and the production profile on the property differently, by going and putting it into production and building the plants on our own, not utilizing, for instance, EPC contracts. To get to the level of production that we're anticipating, at 2,000 tons per day, the plant cost all in of that will have ended up being around, I think, $13 million, Mike?
Yeah, that's about right.
Significantly under that $76.5 million. Even if you doubled it to get the 1.5 million tons per annum, we'd be looking at $25 million, roughly, versus $76 million. And obviously, the $76 million, that's plant capital. You know, we're coming in a lot under that number. This is the beauty of testing the sulfides. As we mentioned before, we don't need to go out and build a complete plant right away if we don't want to or don't have the capital resources to do it. We can continue just incrementally increasing this plant size over time, or if the economics make a lot of sense, doing it a lot more quickly. The IRR payback and the EBITDA increase is there to make it accretive to all shareholders.
We have options now that we didn't have in the 2018 PFS. I hope that answers the question. Operator, any more questions?
There are no further questions at this time.
Okay. Now, there's only one clarification, so. Chairman selling the company. To go through the way companies are bought and sold in the mining industry as a public company. If the company were to be sold, shareholders would have to vote on it. It would go through a process in which it is marketed to a lot of companies under a strategic advisory type of mandate. It would, you would take the highest probable price and by a party that would have a full financing in place, and then the shareholders would have to vote on it. The chairman, in and of himself, cannot sell the company. I cannot sell the company. This would need to be approved first by the board of directors and then taken to the shareholders for approval on the vote.
The board would have a recommendation. The shareholders would then get to vote on that. Operator?
We have no further questions at this time.
Excellent. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining our Q3 2023 conference call. A lot of good things going on, a lot of moving parts, but, we're pretty positive on what's upcoming. We've reiterated our production guidance, our cash cost guidance, on where we're going in our planning of Buckreef. We continue to look forward to positive operating and exploration results going forward. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. Greatly appreciate it. You can call any one of us anytime with any questions. Asante sana.
Goodbye.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
This concludes the meeting. You may disconnect your line. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.
The conference is no longer being recorded.
Thank you, Operator.
Thanks, Elaine.