Run through the results for the second quarter of 2022 for Caledonia Mining. I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia Mining's CEO, and I'm joined today by Dana Roets, Caledonia's Chief Operating Officer, and by Chester Goodburn, Caledonia's CFO. Also in attendance we have Camilla. Okay? So Camilla, please move through the disclaimer. Just by the way, a very brief summary. Production was excellent. Not that the gold price was a sort of a modest following wind. It wasn't particularly beneficial. The real improvement in revenue was driven by the higher production. Then the improvement in gross profit and profitability was a combination of higher production and excellent cost control. I think more information on that operationally from Dana and financially from Chester.
I think we'll just move on. Okay. I'll ask Dana if he could just give us some highlights for the production for the second quarter. Dana.
Good afternoon. We had an exceptional quarter and for that matter, record quarter. We are building up to 80,000 ounces to be in steady state next year. The high production was due to increased tonnage mined and improved grades and recoveries. Central Shaft is currently only wasting waste while we finishing the infrastructure around the shaft. We basically equipped the one ore pass and then we're building second ore pass. We should start wasting reef by the end of the third quarter, going forward, which will put us in good stead. The shaft plus the infrastructure around the shaft will be fully operational. Currently we're only wasting ore at Four Shaft. But it helped a lot that we could divert all the waste to Central Shaft.
At the end of the quarter, we had 12,700 tons of ore on a stockpile estimated to contain about 1,500 ounces of recoverable gold, which is not in the quarterly production.
This meeting is being recorded.
The shield of the mill broke. Unfortunately, we couldn't repair it, and it had to be sent in to be recast. It's made of cast iron. That should be operational by the end of August again. It did limit our milling, which obviously then went through to August. The stockpile of ore just kept on growing. Good news is that we are busy hot commissioning the new regrind mill, Ball Mill 10. By the end of August, we will be fully operational with the Ball Mill 7 repaired and the new regrind mill fully operational. That will give us the capacity that we need for total milling at Blanket. Then we will start eating into the stockpiles.
Good. Thank you, Dana. Should we just move on? Okay, I'll ask Chester to run through the financial slides. Chester, over to you.
Thank you, Mark. Hello, everybody. Those on the back of those production numbers, we can see that coming through on our gross profit. That's up quarter-on-quarter by 29%. For half- year it's up 44%. As Mark said, our production cost is in check. Our on-mine cost is down by 2.9% quarter-on-quarter and down 10% on a half-year basis. Administrative expenses, that's up quarter-on-quarter, mostly due to advisory services fees incurred on the Bilboes transaction. We'll come onto that in a moment. Net foreign exchange gains amounted to $5.1 million for the half- year. Within that number is a $9.7 million gain that's unrealized.
That reduces our deferred tax expense and in effect reduces our effective tax rate. Further, I guess, that cuts from our adjusted earnings per share. There you can see in our quarterly number that's down by 10%. On a half-year basis, our adjusted earnings per share is up by 4%. You can turn the slide. Production costs, wages and salaries up quarter-on-quarter. That's to remunerate our staff for their increases in production. Our consumables are up quarter-on-quarter due to inflation pressures experienced on explosives, drill steels and cyanide. Inflation is not unique to Caledonia. You can see it with global economy. Electricity is up. This is down by $500,000 quarter-on-quarter.
That's due to capital initiatives that we implemented by installing the auto tap changers in our four shaft incomer, reducing our utility bill and also reducing our use of diesel gensets. Overall, production costs remains in check. You might have to turn the slide. Administrative costs. Advisory services fees are up due to the conclusion of the Bilboes agreement, paying lawyers and various advisors. We'll see some more coming through in 2023. Investor relations is up, and travel is also up, as we see an uptick in travel of our staff members post COVID-19 lockdowns. Next one. Cost per ounce remains in check. All-in sustaining costs for the quarter end is up by 3% due to larger administrative costs, as explained, and for the half-year it's down by 2%.
The breakdown of tax indicates a lower deferred tax charge as a result of unrealized foreign exchange gains that reduces our deferred tax liability, and in turn reduces our taxation charge and also effective tax rate. Zimbabwean legislation has remained fairly stable over the years, and so has the effective or the enacted tax rates in Zimbabwe. Increase in production has also bolstered our net cash from operating activities. That's increased quarter-on-quarter by 31%. On a half-year basis, that's increased by 83%. Our cash generated, we've invested back into Blanket and invested it back into the security of supply of electricity via our solar plants, and we've also repaid some loans. Further to that, we've returned about $4 and a $500, 000 over the half-year through our shareholders. Next one.
If we look at our balance sheet, it shows a large investment in our total assets, largely the result of the increase in our total assets. Current liabilities remain fairly stable and, as at 30 June, mostly consists of what we owe the taxman and trade creditors. As you can see, our balance sheet has got a very low gear ratio. Cash at quarter- end amounted to $10.9 million. $8.9 million of that was in Zimbabwe. Post quarter end we dividend out $4 million to The U.K. and to Jersey, and we've converted a letter of credit to pay our South African for goods purchased at the Blanket Mine of $2.25 million.
That was exchanged to South African rands and is now situated in South Africa. Sylvania continues to remit sufficient cash from Zimbabwe, and there are no accumulated unusable or unrecoverable RCGs. Mark Learmonth, it's then over to you to bore us.
Yeah. These slides or the following slides repeat the slides that we presented several weeks ago when we briefed shareholders on the Bilboes transaction. I'll go through them quite quickly just as a refresher. Basically, Bilboes, it's a large scale, low cost, long life gold project located somewhere north of Bulawayo. Blanket Mine is somewhere south of Bulawayo. There's no scope for significant sort of synergies. They're not close enough to run on a combined basis. We've signed a sale and purchase agreement to purchase this asset for a consideration of just over 5 million shares and a 1% net smelter royalty, which equates to about 28.5% of our fully diluted equity.
Bilboes has a large resource base. It's got reserves of just under 2 million ounces at 2.3 g a ton. Measured and indicated resource of over 2.5 million, and an additional inferred resource of over half a million. It's fair to say as well that there is also significant exploration potential remaining on the property. The existing owners have a feasibility study which we publish, which caters for a very large open pit operation producing about 168,000 ounces, average of 168,000 ounces of gold a year. I think it peaks at just under 200,000 ounces a year. It's given the fact it's a.
It's large and it's got a good grade. It's got a very attractive internal rate of return of 33% at an all-in sustaining cost of $826 an ounce. Now, the CapEx to build that project in a single leap in the feasibility study is about $250 million. Now, that will probably have gone up actually in the current environment. I want to be very clear that our approach to commercializing this property will take into account the cost of raising the funding for the property. Funding will come from three sources. First, debt to the extent that's available on attractive terms.
Second, from internal cash flows, that's from Bilboes, that's from Blanket and also from the tribute arrangement, which I'm gonna talk about in a minute. Third, from equity. To be absolutely clear, we're not throwing ourselves into the tender mercy of the markets to raise equity at knock down prices. Frankly, if the equity price isn't conducive, we'll simply fall back onto a smaller scale first phase project where we will fund from internal cash plus debt, and then fund the second phase from the cash flows coming from the first phase. That's exactly the approach that we took on the Central Shaft project, which as you'll recall, we built completely using our own internal resources.
It's somewhat unusual, I guess, for a non-Zimbabwean transaction is this tribute arrangement. Even before we complete the deal, and completion won't be until later this year at the earliest, even before completion, we will commence, we'll invest money in Caledonia, we'll manage and restart a relatively small oxide operation, which should be capable of starting producing within a few months and then will become cash neutral. We'd recover our initial cost of restarting the operation within about six months. Then thereafter, we'd expect it to generate a modest cash flow of between $1 million and $2 million a month for a period of about 30 months. That cumulatively is quite a nice accretion to our cash generation. Should we move on?
The current shareholders in Bilboes is a company called Toziyana, which is a vehicle controlled by Mr. Gapare, Victor Gapare, who's a prominent Zimbabwean mining entrepreneur, and was previously a president of the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe. I sat with him on the executive committee of the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe for several years. Prior to that, he was an executive at Anglo American Corporation in Zimbabwe. He's got half of the assets. Baker Steel Resources Trust, those of you in The U.K. will not need any explanation as to who they are. They're a London-listed investment trust managed by Baker Steel Capital. They've got 24%, and the balance is held by a Chinese investor group called Infinite Treasure. Sorry, excuse me.
Now, all you see on this page is extracted from the feasibility study. The estimated monthly production, you can see it's sort of about 168,000 ounces a year, but peaks in sort of 2029 at nearly 200,000 ounces. On the right-hand side, you see the amalgamation of Blanket production plus Bilboes production. Frankly, that's not particularly useful, because, you know, under Canadian regulations, we can only show production from measured and indicated. We can't amalgamate that production with expected production from inferred.
That's why, frankly, once you get beyond 2026, under Canadian regulations, Blanket begins to look quite anemic, even though for practical purposes, we expect to continue producing at 80,000 ounces for the next 10 or 12 years. Let's move on. This is the production cost. C1 cost is the light blue. All-in sustaining cost is the dark blue. The all-in sustaining cost moves around, largely driven by the amount of stripping that needs to take place. But it's a very competitive cost profile. Next slide. This just shows how the shareholder base changes. Post the transaction, the existing shareholders will...
Existing Caledonia shareholders will hold 71.5% of Caledonia and the Bilboes vendors will hold as shown in the middle cutaway. You'll end up with Toziyana holding 13.5%, and Baker Steel will hold 4.5%, and Infinite Treasure will hold about 10.6%. There are several Conditions Precedent to the transaction. Two really very important. One of them is that we will insist that we get the right to export the gold produced from Bilboes directly. We will not sell to Fidelity, which is the government-owned refiner. We'll sell under our own auspices to an offshore, non-Zimbabwean precious metals refiner, an LBMA-accredited, so probably Rand Refinery.
Rand Refinery will pay us directly, and we will hold 100% of the sale proceeds in US dollars with no requirement to convert the US dollars into a local currency. Now that condition precedent cuts straight through one of the biggest concerns that investors and certainly lenders have about operating a gold mine in Zimbabwe, which is the current requirement to sell gold to Fidelity. Then a second sort of very important commercial condition precedent is getting more clarification on the electricity supply to the project. Although having said that, the changes in the electricity supply sort of landscape in Zimbabwe are moving very quickly at the moment, and actually, I've got to say, in a very positive direction.
It would appear that the government is now moving to liberalize access to independent power producers for larger users such as Caledonia, Blanket, and Bilboes. That means that we can get direct access to power produced in the region, which is mainly hydropower from either Mozambique or Zambia. Then the Zimbabwean authorities will wheel that power through the grid to the project. Whereas Blanket in particular suffers because it's at the end of a somewhat badly maintained line, Bilboes is much more fortunately located in that it's got close access to a much better maintained, lower utilized lines. That actually augurs quite well for Bilboes project.
Several just sort of more technical CPs which I won't trouble you with at this stage. Should we move on? This just gives some context for the asset, the Bilboes asset. What you see here is some of the other African development gold development projects. You can see, looking at recovered grade, Bilboes is far ahead of the rest. Its recovered grade is just below 2 g a ton. Actually, I think it's worth noting that the average grade for most open pit or gold operations is now less than 1 g a ton. A 2 g a ton recovered grade is outstandingly good. Should we move on? This shows the size.
Yes, there are one or two assets that are bigger, but Bilboes is certainly up there in terms of size, with 2 million ounces of minable gold with further exploration potential. Finally, we paid a good price for it. We paid, I think, about $27 per M&I ounce, which is very competitive. We're very pleased with that. All of those three things together, the size, the grade, and the fact that we bought it for a competitive price, bodes well for the future. The tribute arrangement, I think I've already mentioned. Bilboes already has an on-site oxide operation, which has been running for several years. Because of their sale process, the Bilboes sale process took several years longer than they'd expected it to.
Several years longer than they had expected. It means that they have now exhausted their readily accessible oxide material, and now they need capital to do a pre-strip for it to get down to uncover the material that's down to a depth of about 40 meters. We've entered into a tribute. We will fund the restart of that oxide project, and we will be responsible for the implementation of the project and for all things relating to the finances of the project, and we'll collect the cash. The initial capital cost and sort of startup costs are estimated at about $5 million cumulatively. That's the cumulative max after about sort of 10 weeks-12 weeks. Then thereafter, it becomes cash generative quite quickly, so within about six months.
It should continue for about 30 months, the whole project. Let's move on. This just shows you the dividend. We stopped increasing the dividend earlier on this year, recognizing that it's quite likely that we would engage in transactions which would mean that we have a future funding requirement. That's not to say the dividend will never go up again in future. We have every intention of continuing to increase the dividend. It just seems that while we have a currently unquantified sort of funding need, it is prudent to for the time being keep the dividend at $0.14 per share per quarter.
The whole rationale for entering into transactions such as Bilboes and also Maligreen is so that in due course we can substantially increase the dividend per share. As a shareholder myself, I've got a good idea as to what I believe I could expect today from Blanket Mine. It's important to me that once we've, you know, acquired Bilboes, we've brought Bilboes into production, we've also done Maligreen, I want to be confident that I can expect a substantially increased dividend higher than what I would get if we just stayed at with Blanket. That's the whole approach to this exercise. Let's move on. That's the end of the formal part of the presentation.
Can I suggest that Camilla opens the lines, and we'll deal with questions. If any of you are shy and you don't want to speak, you can type a question. But I've got to say, I find those quite hard to deal with because without context, sometimes it can mean that you perhaps may not get the answer to the question if there's not sufficient context. I've got to say I'd prefer if people actually gave us a question. Camilla?
There aren't any questions at the moment.
No questions? Okay. Well,
Oh, there is one. Yeah.
Oh.
Will Dunn.
I thought we'd got an early afternoon off.
Hi. Sorry. It's Will. Can you just run through your CapEx has gone up a little bit? Is that the end of the CapEx going up or?
No. CapEx. We figured in previous quarters that CapEx was going to go up. That's a combination of the slightly increased cost. I mean, I'll give you my thoughts, and if Dana, you wanna chip in and add more or Chester, chip in and add more. It's a combination of more expensive development work related to central shaft. We're spending quite a lot of money remediating the electricity supply. We had to replace some generators that blew up because they've been overused. We're spending more money on auto tap changers, which is.
Which actually we did some auto tap changers at the end of last year, and that paid for itself remarkably quickly because it reduced our diesel consumption. We're now replicating that exercise at the electrical equipment around central shaft. Dana, Chester, do you wanna add any more to the CapEx discussion?
I mean, Mark, if I could just add that, during COVID, just to give everybody background, we had half a crew finishing the shaft, equipping it, for six months. We also had delays with the electricity. We finished equipping the shaft, but the development going on was delayed because of that. What it meant was that more expensive. Mark spoke about more expensive. We were coming down with declines that maintain the profile, the production profile, not running out of areas to mine. It meant that we had to push those declines down a bit further, and that is done with trackless equipment. That development cost is, well, it was extra, and it was higher.
At the same time, the electricity cost was because, you know, as Mark said, we had to run the generators more because we had more dirty power and more load shedding at Blanket. That was all extra. We had to push up the tons. For this year, we had to push it up by 30% and that is why we had to install an extra ball mill because the grade dropped slightly with the latest information available.
Well, I mean.
A combination of that.
Although having said that, it has been better than we expected, but never mind.
Yeah.
Um-
You know, because of that, we increased our milling capacity, which also put us in good stead for the future. A couple of things that saw our CapEx go up a bit this year.
Can I say quickly?
Yeah.
On the electricity, can I just explain something? The auto tap changers that we put in place late last year protected the electrical equipment around number four shaft and the metallurgical plant. Okay? The reduction in diesel consumption has flowed through into operating costs, and that's why one of the reasons why the on-mine cost per ounce fell by 3% or so. The electrical equipment around central shaft is not currently protected by auto tap changers, and so that's where we are continuing to have to run the diesel generators, and that's why that contributed to the higher capital cost because the diesel usage at central shaft is capitalized. I just thought I'd better make that point. Sorry, Chester, you had something.
Yes. To add to the Blanket expenditure, we also spent a large amount on solar. Our solar reached mechanical completion by the end of June. A large portion of that was bought from QT.
Certainly we do. It's fair to say that we will have some catch-up capital expenditure. I mean, well, you were at the mine recently, and you can see with your own eyes there is a need to upgrade some of those office facilities and what have you. You know, that is by no means sort of structural stuff. We are getting through the worst of the CapEx burden, and I do expect over time it will fall away.
Yeah, that would make sense. Just on the milling, what's your capacity gonna be when everything's fixed and back up and running?
Have we lost Dana?
No, Dana's just checking in.
I think we just lost Dana. Here he is.
Yeah.
Dana, did you get that question about milling capacity?
Yeah, we will be able to do about.
You're back, Dana.
Yeah. Our milling capacity will go up to 2,400 tons a day. Currently, we're doing about 2,000 tons a day, once everything is up and running.
Okay. Does that help? Will, does that answer your question?
Yeah, just on the catch up, that's all. No, that's fine. It's good to know.
Okay.
That's excess. You're gonna have excess capacity anyway then, so your catch up will flow then.
That vast stockpile which continues to grow should hopefully start shrinking.
Yeah. Just on a solar, do you expect any more payments or is it up to them to fix it?
There's quite a lot of activity relating to solar at the moment, between us and the EPC contractor and ZETDC. If you don't mind, I'd rather not unpack that at this stage. You've been there, you've seen the plant. It's there. It's ready to get plugged in. We're working as hard as we can to try and get that sort of final commissioning fixed so that we can start using the electricity from that solar project in the plant. It comes down to the commissioning.
Okay. Cool. That's it from me. Thanks.
Thank you, Will.
We've got another question here from someone there.
Oh, sorry. There's a question. Oh, sorry, yes. Is this a verbal question? Okay, go on.
Yeah.
Okay. Thanks, Mark. My first question relates to the, you know, growth through acquisitions that the company is currently going through. Maybe if you can share with us, after Bilboes and probably the Maligreen, is the company looking at acquiring more assets?
Mm-hmm.
Is it still in Zimbabwe or in other areas?
There are other assets that we would like to add to the portfolio. They are by no means as pressing as Bilboes is ready to go, okay? Maligreen's a little bit further down the track. Any other asset that we would look at would come behind Maligreen in that it would have, it's much more exploration focused. The answer is yes, and it would be in Zimbabwe.
Oh, okay. Thanks so much, Mark. I think that's all from me.
Okay. I can see two written questions here.
There's also Howard Flinker wants to ask a question.
Yeah, yeah. Yep. Okay. Let's just deal with these two written. Can you briefly speak to any current or future exploration projects to understand some? Yes. We do recognize. At Blanket in particular, we do believe there is great exploration potential at depth. That's following the existing ore bodies deeper. In the shallower areas of the mine, and by shallow, I mean above 750 meters, in those areas between the existing ore bodies that we've now known about and have been depleting.
We believe there is mineralization to the immediate north and south of the current mine area. Further, we want to explore something called the banded ironstone formation, which lies about 800 meters to the east of the current mining area. There is plenty of exploration potential. The impediment to us making substantive progress on that, the extension of the exploration of depth, we need to improve our access that we need to excavate some exploration covers, and that's in process now, and should allow that exploration to start towards the end of this year.
The further exploration that we need to invest in HR, i.e., human resources and technology to improve our exploration capacity. Dana, do you wanna add anything to what I've said?
No, Mark. Maybe just on the, you know, first of all, we are looking at adding people just to help us with, especially looking at the opportunities, especially from surface and the bush, how we're going to tackle it. You know, then the other exploration people that we need to sample. As you add more drill rigs, you add more people to operate it, so but we wanna make sure that we start drilling in the right places and do not waste money. That's why with putting the models together, we need extra skills to do that.
It's fair to say that exploration for the past seven years or so, we've been focused pretty much exclusively on digging this 4,000-foot deep hole, filling it full of steel, and then doing horizontal development. We've now got the flexibility and the capacity to begin to take exploration much more seriously, and we are taking it more seriously, and it's becoming a much higher priority in our daily lives, it's fair to say. Sorry. There's a question from somebody in Austria. Resupplies from South Africa, how many months' supplies on hand in case of South Africa lockdowns at the border? How would [audio distortion]larger supplies. You mean supplies of beer? We don't have supplies of beer at the mine.
Sorry, Chester, you wanting to answer that one?
Yes. Our inventory levels are now at quarter two end of about $3.2 million. That's down by about $1.2 million on the price, including our inventories at Blanket. To answer the question on you know how much inventories we've got on hand, we've gotta look at our inventory and break it down. Critical items is five to seven weeks, and then we've got spares. Spares that remain there for quite a long time just in the event that something breaks down. Critical you know if you look at any close downs in South Africa or so, we can supply for about seven weeks without any supplies at Blanket.
Look, it's fair to say that what happened over the past few years is that that mantra, you know, just in time became just in case. I think it was the case that in certain sort of line items, the mine was carrying too much stock, which meant that our working capital was going up. We have done a bit of an exercise to try to redress that balance. Having said that, you know, we don't run the mine at such a sort of on a bare bones basis, such that if there is any interruption in difficulty at the border, the mine runs out of stuff. It's a balancing act. Honestly, I think it had gone too far in terms of overstocking.
We've taken corrective action.
Well, just to add that a lot of those critical supplies we can get in-country. It just depends on what price we get it at. We can get it all across the globe. We're not reliant on one country to supply us.
How much? What's being locally supplied? I mean, as far as I know, Dana, are you able to say what's supplied locally and what we procure in South Africa?
Mark, if you look at it, basically, CapEx, we're very much dependent on South Africa and the rest of the world for that matter. Explosives, some of it we get locally and some of it's South Africa. The steel balls for the mill, for example, that's locally. If you look at more the day-to-day running stuff, it's more locally. Yeah.
That also changes over time. We compare prices on what we can get globally outside of Zimbabwe and what we can get in-country. We try and get the right quality and at the right price, while mining.
Yeah. Okay, Howard, can we open the line for you? You wanna-
Oh, thank you. Is the difference between reported earnings and adjusted earnings, the taxes related to depreciation?
Oh, that's a fantastic question. I'm so pleased that Chester can answer that question.
Cool.
I've gotta say this, Howard. This quarter was particularly. Some quarters it becomes very hard to explain. It's largely driven by the effect of foreign exchange gains and losses on the deferred tax calculation. I'm delighted that Chester can talk to you about that.
I'll-
You need to keep it below 10 minutes, eh?
That would be my best, Mark. EPS, that takes into account NCI and non-cash items. For adjusted EPS, we take out non-cash items such as that large underlying foreign exchange gain that we had of about $9.7 million. That reduced our adjusted earnings per share. We also take out deferred tax. It's a non-cash item. It's a lot smaller this quarter, so it had a smaller effect, as you see in our presentation there. The Q4 adjusted earnings is a lot lower than the comparable one, mostly due to that foreign exchange devaluation. That's it non-cash.
Okay.
Well, I mean, Howard.
Yeah, yeah.
Genuinely, some years ago, we started doing an adjusted earnings per share because there was often so much background noise in the IFRS results. I mean, things like massive foreign exchange gains. Sometimes we get big sort of funny income items coming from export incentive schemes. It was a genuine attempt to try and make it more sort of user-friendly for users. But unfortunately, it often then means that we create another problem for ourselves in that we end up with the effect of the foreign exchange gains then flowing through and then fiddling around with deferred tax. We're kind of chasing our tails.
You know, half of me would say, "Just leave it to IFRS and let people work it out for themselves." Often there are some huge numbers floating around the place, and sort of we feel we should try and interpret it for shareholders. Sometimes it feels like it's more trouble than it's worth, actually.
Second, is your solar plant not yet operational? I thought it would be operational around now.
It's not been commissioned. That's the problem. Chester, do you wanna explain exactly what's happening?
Yes. We need to connect to the national grid. For us to commit to connect to the national grid, we need to get cooperation from the ZETDC. We also need to-
Just explain who they are, Chester. Just explain who they are.
ZETDC is the utility of Zimbabwe. They need to approve any connection to any grid that is carrying above. Now, we also need to get our EPC contractor to do the necessary tests and finalize the commissioning work on the solar plant. The solar plant's been mechanically complete for several weeks, barring the energy management system.
Really what it comes down to is a failure to communicate between the EPC contractor and ZETDC. It's fair to say that ZETDC are now cooperating fully. Because as I said previously, there's quite a lot of sanction stuff happening in that particular area, and I'd rather not sort of dwell on that too much at this stage.
Oh. It's en route. It's in process.
It's en route. It's there. The only thing is there, I mean, and Will, who asked a question earlier, saw the thing a month or so ago. It's there, and it's frustrating that, you know, all it takes is a few bits of testing to actually get the thing commissioned and operational. I think what I would leave you with is the fact that we do have contractual protections in place to recompense us in the event of delays such as this. That's all I can say.
Okay. My final question before a comment is, could you, Mark, could you develop both Maligreen and Bilboes, I think it was, is the pronunciation, at the same time, both managerially and financially?
I'd say yes, but Dana would say no. No, I think financially, it might be a bit of a stretch financially, but I think more realistically, trying to do two projects at once in Zimbabwe, I think may be too much of a challenge. I mean, Dana, do you wanna give some more context on that?
Yeah, if you wanna build two projects at the same time, past experience with that, you know, it becomes a headache. Ideally, our model will be that, you know, you build one while you get the other one shovel ready, do the feasibility study and everything. Once the project starts paying for itself, then you start building a new one.
Howard, it's also fair to say that Maligreen may benefit from. Obviously, we'd need a feasibility study, but Maligreen may well benefit from further incubation to see if we can actually find a bigger resource base.
Dana, be careful about that phrase, "shovel ready." We learned an experience here about what shovel ready really means and what they're shoveling.
Okay. All right. Let me rephrase it. When you're ready to build it. Feasibility study and finances, you go ahead.
Finally, I'd like to add, Mark.
Mm-hmm.
That for $5 million + $55 million, in 6 months or so for Bilboes, you'll be generating cash, say $1.5 million, between $1 million and $2 million.
Yep.
per year, that's a 30% return per year as long as it lasts.
Yep.
That's during startup.
Yep.
That makes the deal even more attractive. That's pretty fancy.
Oh, absolutely.
Let's hope it lasts for four or five years.
Well, we only need it. Well, look, we don't have a feasibility study for the oxide, so we can't really talk about it in more detail. When we evaluated the project and when we, you know, when we agreed the deal, we had attributed no value to these oxides. It wasn't included in the data room. You're quite right. This is like a bit of a windfall.
No, I'll add something else that I just re-remembered. The attitude of Mnangagwa, if that's the correct pronunciation.
Yep.
towards independent power producers is a really
Absolutely.
Really useful description of commercial changes undergoing under Zimbabwe, which people still think.
I believe it's true.
Pretty risky. I would say there are some parts of Australia or Canada, and certainly Mexico, that are riskier. That's a very, very positive development.
No, it is. Frankly, it gets to the point where, you know, when a country like Zimbabwe is faced with the difficulties it faces. They've just gotta come up with the obvious solution, which is the government must step away and allow those companies like ours that have got the money and the will to do the necessary. It's really refreshing. We saw something similar.
Yeah.
We saw something similar happen actually relating to electricity as well, about 10 years ago when there was a similar sort of crisis. Government moved very quickly to fix the problem because, don't forget, I mean, I don't need to remind South Africans of this, that you know, people don't like it when there's people at home in the dark for 12 hours a day. Isn't that correct, Dana?
That phrase, government stepping away, is very rare. It's very rare that a politician relinquishes that kind of control, and it's surprisingly encouraging.
It is encouraging.
Yeah. Overall, really nice. Nice work, guys. One day people will figure out that 5% yield is attractive.
Good. Okay, any more questions?
Thanks.
Thank you, Howard.
You're welcome.
Hold on. Tony, are we looking for alternative logistical chains, access from Mozambique, for instance? I think we do. The solar panels did come in from Mozambique, didn't they?
That's correct, Mark.
Yeah.
Yeah. They came through the border by the Beira Border Post. We've also identified other supply lines from Walvis Bay coming into Namibia.
That's coming through Namibia. We do recognize the inherent risk of relying on South Africa as a sort of source of product and as a sort of shipping conduit. We do recognize that. We are beginning to develop alternatives. All right. Is there any more, no, one more question. Will you consider offering shares in lieu of dividends, we looked at that and it's called a DRIP, isn't it? A dividend reinvestment program, I think. That caused some tax issues for some shareholder bases. I think we just prefer to do cash, I think at this stage.
Dana, the mine is basically like the Gold Fields video. How many vehicles are underground? How many vehicles are underground on the three levels? These vehicles. When I think of these vehicles, I think of something like a Bentley Mulsanne underground. They cost about the same as a Bentley Mulsanne, don't they? The tires are twice as expensive. Dana, talk about the fleet, talk about the underground fleet.
Mark, we've got LHDs and dump trucks that we use. Of those, we've got about 12 LHDs and 11 dump trucks.
Okay. It goes on to say how long or how deep do you drill? What's the daily drilling for production? I think it's three meters, isn't it?
It depends. In our long hole stopes, we drill about 12-meter holes. Your sublevels are 15 meters apart, and you drill from level to level and obviously it's about 2 meters high, that's why it's not a full 15 meters you drill. If you look at our hand-held underhand stoping, they will drill 2-meter rounds.
Yeah. We have one blast a day, which is normally about now, isn't it? About tea time.
Yes.
Yes. Yeah.
Break.
Good. Are we done? Any more typed questions or anybody want to ask a question? Okay. I think we're done then. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for joining and obviously we'll update you with further news as appropriate. Thank you very much.