Perseus Mining Ltd

ASX:PRU

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Nathan Ryan]

Good morning, and welcome to the Perseus Mining investor conference call for its March 2021 quarterly report. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to Perseus Mining Chief Executive and Managing Director, Jeff Quartermaine. Over to you, Jeff.

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Thanks very much. Thanks, Nathan. And welcome to this webinar to discuss Perseus' March 2021 quarterly report that was released to the market earlier today.Now at the risk of sounding like a broken record each quarter, Perseus has recorded yet another strong quarterly performance, increasing our production by 29% and providing the clearest indicator yet that the company is well and truly on its way to achieving its targeted production rate of 500,000 ounces of gold per year at a cash margin of USD 400 per ounce or more. We completed the commissioning of our third mine, Yaouré. And by the end of March, the mine was cash positive, and we're able to declare commercial production from 31 March. This is the last major milestone in the development of this very important project.In fact, each -- during the quarter, each of our 3 mines, including Edikan in Ghana as well as Sissingué and Yaouré in Côte d'Ivoire have all performed very much in line with our expectations. As a group, we produced 88,458 ounces of gold and sold 87,215 ounces, about 31% more than in the prior quarter. Pleasingly, our all-in site costs were less than USD 1,000 per ounce. And with the help of a reasonably buoyant gold price, we're able to generate a material amount of cash, putting us into a strong position to fund the future.Our organic growth strategy is starting to show signs of delivering results. As reported earlier this month, some of our work at Bagoé and at Yaouré is looking quite interesting. And in time to come, we expect to publish further positive news flow about real organic growth from those sites. We've made excellent progress in terms of managing our sustainability, a materiality analysis and a gap analysis to see exactly where we need to apply further effort to align ourselves to global standards. It was recently completed by our newly appointed Head of Sustainability, and all of this will be documented in our very comprehensive 2020 Sustainability Report that will be published very shortly and that is something to look out for.So anyway, in summary, Perseus is in a very good place, and this is the result of a lot of hard work and support of our very dedicated and professional team of employees and their families over a number of years. And I would sincerely thank them all for their efforts. For those of you who haven't yet had the opportunity to read our March quarterly, let me briefly talk in a bit more depth about a couple of key elements of our performance before opening up to any questions that you may have.So firstly, as I said, our major achievement this quarter was indeed the successful commissioning of the Yaouré mine and associated infrastructure, culminating in commercial production at the end of the quarter. Now as you'll recall, last quarter, we [ ported ] our first gold at Yaouré in December and then shortly after, experienced some equipment failure at the site. This required us to implement a few contingency plans to commission the rest of the plant until we could replace the failed equipment. Now after managing to procure and install a replacement transformer for our SAG mill late in February, things moved very, very rapidly, and we were able to satisfy all of our completion tests and demonstrate that the mine was indeed cash positive by the end of March instead of declaration of commercial production.We produced 22,095 ounces of gold at Yaouré during the quarter including nearly 10,000 ounces in the month of March. And going forward into the June quarter, we expect to start introducing higher-grade fresh material from the CMA pit, ensuring that we comfortably achieve our production and cost guidance at Yaouré for the June half year. And just reminding you that, that guidance is 48,000 to 52,000 ounces at an all-in site cost of USD 1,100 to USD 1,300 per ounce. And we believe that we can quite easily or quite readily achieve that.Now we plan to release an updated life of mine plan for Yaouré towards the end of the June quarter. This plan will be based on a mineral resource that includes a modest increase in resources compared to the original DFS, but it's unlikely to include additional resources resulting from recent drilling or other studies that we've undertaken. When these additional resources have been estimated, they'll materially increase the life of the mine. But this further update will be produced later in the year after we publish this life of mine plan that's due out at the end of the quarter.The June 2021 life of mine update will, however, reflect actual costs, and this I expect will show an improvement in project economics relative to the DFS. So Yaouré is up and running, and may I take the opportunity to sincerely thank and congratulate everybody who contributed to what really has been quite a remarkable achievement given the challenges seen as a result of the COVID pandemic last year. There have been many outstanding contributors, and I'm not only referring to our excellent development team and our contractors who built the mine. A lot of work went into the discovery, engineering, financing, licensing and administration of the property.And of course, last but not least, I'd also like to acknowledge the tremendous support and cooperation that we've received from our host communities and their traditional leaders as well as representatives of the government of Côte d'Ivoire, including former Ministers Brou and Kouassi. As a result of the endeavors of all of these people, we're now able to look forward to generating material benefits from Yaouré for all of our shareholders for many years to come.Now not to be outdone, the Edikan and Sissingué mines have also performed very strongly during the quarter. Combined, the 2 mines produced 66,364 ounces of gold at a production cost of USD 852 an ounce and a weighted all-in site cost of $999 per ounce. So production was up a little on the last quarter, which is neither here nor there. But the 7% and 4% decrease, respectively, in production and all-in site costs were much more material in terms of generating incremental cash flow.This was an extremely good performance when you consider that Sissingué lost nearly 10% of available production time during the quarter due to disruptions caused by the actions of a small group of youth from one of the nearby villages. And at Edikan, our mining contractors' equipment availability was subpar for periods of the quarter due to COVID-related maintenance challenges. I should say that both these issues have largely been resolved. But to achieve what we did in the face of those challenges was a very good effort indeed.One point relating to Edikan that I would like to particularly draw your attention to is the gold recovery rates we've achieved this quarter. Now regular readers of our quarterly reports would know that for several quarters last year, we struggled to optimize feed blend at Edikan and to get the best balance of head grade/throughput rates recovery. And on occasions, we recorded disappointing recovery rates. I'm very pleased to say that with the end of the Bokitsi fresh ore and the opening up of new ore sources in the Fetish and AG pits, we've seen a steady climb in recovery rates. And in fact, in March, they averaged around 88.5%, which is a lot higher than the 74% that we saw in December.We do expect these elevated recovery rates to be the norm from here, and that's certainly the case so far in this month. We'll still need to balance head grade and throughput rates as some of the ores are harder than others, but that's a much more manageable -- that's much more manageable than the metallurgical challenges we faced in the past. So that's a significant point of improvement at Edikan.Now with respect to Sissingué, notwithstanding the lost production time, everything else there has gone exceptionally well this quarter, and we've consistently exceeded our internal targets on most, if not all, of the key parameters: so run time, throughput rates, grade recovery, et cetera. The only thing that remotely resembles a cloud on the horizon at this mine, ironically, has nothing to do with Sissingué's operating performance per se. This quarter, we've once again been frustrated by our inability to have the mining lease needed for the mining of the Fimbiasso deposit approved by the Ivorian Cabinet of Ministers.Now since late last year, there's been a series of matters that have taken precedence in the cabinet over approving mining leases, including a presidential election, reconciliation of opposition forces post-election, preparation for the legislative election that was held in March, the death of the second Prime Minister in 8 months and most recently, a cabinet reshuffle. Now I do believe that we'll be meeting with the new minister this week in Abidjan and the Fimbiasso license will be at the top of the agenda for discussion.The issue here is that if the license is delayed further, it will impact our mining schedule in the back end of this year and we'll need to process lower-grade ore stockpiles until we get full access to the higher grade ore at Fimbiasso. Now this will have no influence whatsoever on the remainder of this financial year or on our ability to achieve market guidance for this year, but it could become an issue later in the year if not resolved. And so quite clearly, it's a matter of real importance for us.Now looking to the future. Our production and costs guidance to the market for the 6- and 12-month periods ending 30 June is -- well, the 6 months, it's 175,000 to 190,000 ounces at USD 950 to USD 1,150. And for the full financial year, it's about 313,000 to 327,000 at USD 970 to USD 1,070. Now I think we've still got 2.5 months of the reporting period to go and plenty can go wrong in this time. But given our performance to date, including both the March quarter and the June quarter to date, we're very confident of not only achieving both production and cost guidance, but hopefully doing very well relative to those targets.Now in terms of our financial performance during the quarter, our average cash margin on each ounce of gold produced from Edikan and Sissingué was USD 629 per ounce, down a little from USD 651 in the prior quarter due to a decrease in the weighted average sales price from $1,687 to $1,628. Now notwithstanding this, our cash margin was more than 50% greater than our strategic target of $400 an ounce, which generated us -- which enabled us to generate something like USD 42 million of notional cash flow from Edikan and Sissingué alone.Now as we haven't declared commercial production at Yaouré until the end of the quarter, in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, we have capitalized all revenues and costs from Yaouré up to that date. So we don't count cash flow from Yaouré in our totals. But from 1 April onwards, Yaouré's costs and cash flows will be published together with the other mines. Now as I said earlier, Yaouré was actually strongly cash positive in March. So we do expect to see our notional cash flow from operations take a big lift in quarters to come if things go as we expect at all of the mines.And finally, throughout the March quarter, Perseus has managed to maintain its balance sheet strength through those strong cash flows and also prudent financial management. As I said, the notional cash flow from the operations was $42 million this quarter, allowed us to pay outstanding bills from the development of Yaouré, fund exploration at all 3 operating sites, pay income tax in Ghana, pay corporate overheads and still hold cash and bullion at the end of March of USD 136 million, up from USD 118 million in the previous period. That gave us net cash of USD 6 million after you take into account our outstanding debt of USD 130 million. Now when you consider that since late 2016, we've invested close enough to USD 400 million in bringing in, firstly, Sissingué and then Yaouré online and we've still managed to end up in a cash positive position without major equity raises along the way, we have done quite well and, I guess, position Perseus to really reap the benefits of this hard work as we go forward.Now speaking of the future, our plans for future growth of the business is a topic that I'm regularly asked about these days with Yaouré online and running. Our focus has firmly moved into implementing various strategies to maintaining our targeted production level of 500,000 ounces per annum consistently into the future by either organic or inorganic means. In the short term, Perseus' main focus is simply to replace mining depletion through organic growth while setting up for longer-term organic growth.Now to achieve this, the emphasis over the next 6 to 12 months will be placed on the incremental addition of mineral resources and ore reserves from near-mine deposits that are currently the subject of exploration and/or feasibility studies. And as I said earlier, a little over a week ago, we published drilling results from a couple of the exploration programs that we've been conducting recently. One of these was at Govisou on the Yaouré tenements, and the other was on the Bagoé tenements located close to Sissingué.And if you haven't seen these results, I would urge you to take a close look at the release because as people will recall, the results were very encouraging and will, I expect, be the first of many such results that will come from our work in coming months and indeed years. We have some really excellent targets to pursue at all 3 of our mines. And with the completion of our recent mine development program, this is the first time at Perseus in a very long time that we've actually had the means to properly fund exploration.Now off the back of the Bagoé results that we published the other day relating to drilling at Antoinette, Véronique and Juliette, we are preparing a definitive feasibility study for the development of these deposits. This will be completed by the end of June '21 quarter. This is a little bit later than what I had previously flagged, but this was the result of a slow turnaround of results from overworked [ assay ] labs in Côte d'Ivoire. Now we do expect that there will be a significant addition of mineral resources and ore reserves, and we estimate that the result of this will be quite an extension to the forecast life of the Sissingué operation. So that's very pleasing indeed given the efficiency of that particular operation.Now speaking of feasibility work, it would be remiss of me not to mention our evaluation of developing an underground mine on the Esuajah South deposit at Edikan. Now following careful consideration of the economics of the proposed development and notwithstanding the fact that further technical work has increased confidence in a number of key technical parameters, including estimated tonnes and grade and the size of the mineable resource actually by about 63,000 ounces, we have concluded that the overall project risk/return ratio as it currently stands doesn't meet our investment criteria. So as a result of that, we've decided to defer the planned start of the implementation of the Esuajah South underground development for the time being.Now I should also say that we have not given up on this project. Further technical reviews will be undertaken to investigate potential for additions to the ore reserve at depth. And also, additional optimization of designs and mining methods will be undertaken. While we're doing this, we will engage with the government in Ghana, have various discussions there and also complete licensing. And one thing we will also do is we will meet all outstanding commitments to our host community in relation to the project so that should circumstances change sufficiently, we will be able to switch this project on without any drama.In the meantime, though, beyond the June quarter, we do have several large targets that have been identified for potential conversion to mineral resources and possibly ore reserves close to infrastructure at the mines. As I said, the preferred targets for organic growth at Yaouré include the CMA underground and other targets established from the initial interpretation of the 3D seismic survey that was completed on the site last year. That looks exceptionally interesting there, I have to say.At Edikan, subject to gaining access for drilling, a drill program is planned at the Breman deposit on the Agyakusu permit where significant mineralization has been identified on the surface in artisanal mine workings. Now as far as that access is concerned, we have made very good progress in recent times, and we're hopeful that final agreement will be reached, allowing access fairly shortly. At Sissingué, there is certainly further potential to add mineral resources and ore reserves from the Bagoé area. In fact, we have a drill rig heading back there, I think it's this week or early next week, to recommence drilling in that area.I should also say that potential inorganic growth business opportunities involving either mergers or acquisitions are also regularly assessed by our in-house technical and commercial teams. Given the challenges of implementing value-accretive M&A and applying strict financial discipline in assessing opportunities, we're not pinning our hopes on this activity for delivering growth in the immediate future, preferring to focus near-mine and early exploration growth strategies. But I can say, we are actively looking.I think the strategic acquisitions of Amara that yield the Yaouré project and more recently, Exore Resources that yielded Bagoé, have shown that we have the capacity to successfully identify value and transact when the right M&A situation presents. The point of this is that having now got Yaouré up and running, we are actively involved in shaping the future of this company and doing it in a way that we believe will create -- will be significantly value accretive for our shareholders. Our news flow over the next few quarters will reveal that progress, and I do expect that there will be a steady stream of positive news to share with you as we push forward.So in conclusion, as I said at the start of the call, the March quarter has been yet another very solid quarter for Perseus as we promised it would be. The June 2021 quarter has started very well. Edikan, Sissingué and Yaouré is building up, hitting all the key parameters and trending -- certainly trending in the right direction. Financially, we're getting stronger by the day due to the solid production results, containment of costs and strong gold prices. Exploration-wise, we've got a clear plan and we have a budget, and we're getting on with the task of organically growing our business and creating value for shareholders. And as I said, in terms of inorganic growth or M&A, we are in the game. And while we're making no promises in relation to this, we are putting ourselves in a position to transact and capture shareholder value if the stars happen to align.And finally, we are now in a position where we can seriously discuss internally the returning capital to shareholders by way of a dividend or share buyback. And it should only be a matter of time before the quality of Perseus' performance -- recent performances and earnings capacity is recognized by the market and our patient shareholders will be fully rewarded for their support of this company.So thanks very much for listening, and I'm now happy to take any questions that you may have.

[Nathan Ryan]

Thank you, Jeff. [Operator Instructions] We've got the first one from [ Mike McLincoln ]. It says, "Hi, Jeff. Good to see another strong quarter of production. If you get the grant to the mining license for Fimbiasso in the June quarter, will that allow time for mining to start in the September quarter?" And it goes on further, "In regards to gold hedging, do you plan to maintain the 20-80 profile, i.e., 80% unhedged?" There's 2 questions there.

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Okay. So just correcting that point. It's not [ Fibinso ], it's Fimbiasso...

[Nathan Ryan]

Fimbiasso, sorry. It did say that, sorry. Sorry.

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Yes. No, look, I mean, if we -- we have a wet season upon us now. We started building the road to Fimbiasso last -- well, earlier this year, late last year. So we've done the first leg of it. We now have to wait for a couple of months to let the wet season do its thing, and then we'll finish that road. So we are very hopeful of being able to mine without interruption. But the Ivorian government is difficult to predict in terms of timing. They do have their own important priorities. But I can assure people that we'll be working extremely hard to bring that forward as early as we can and to avoid any disruption to production schedules, if that's at all possible.

[Nathan Ryan]

Yes. And the second one in regards to the gold hedging? The...

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Sorry, gold hedging, yes. No, look, we don't anticipate any material change to what we're doing at the present time. I mean as people know, our hedge policy does permit us to hedge up to 30%, so 30-70. We are sitting around the 20% at the moment and see no real reason to change that. But if circumstances were to dictate that it was a sensible thing to do, we might put a little bit more hedging on. But look, we actively manage that position. And I think that we have been able to demonstrate over a long period of time now that it is a way of managing downside risk, a significant downside risk for us, and make sure that we can continue to generate cash flow so that we can deal with the benefits that we promised to all of our stakeholders.

[Nathan Ryan]

The next question is from Adam Baker. He's asked, "Can you walk us through what part of the Esuajah South underground weren't attractive? Was it due to the higher expected costs or lower grades? And will you publish a new Edikan life of mine plan?

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Yes. Look, as I said, the work that we've done recently actually improved our confidence around the technical parameters. So the resource actually, when we first did the study, the real concern was the risk around the resource. But we've convinced ourselves through extra drilling that, in fact, that risk is not of the high order that we had previously estimated. Now I think the situation really comes down to commercial matters at the moment. We -- the cost of mining has gone up, and that certainly impacts on what we're doing. There has been an element of fiscal creep.And I guess when we look at the situation and we say, well, we understand what the maximum exposure is and the risks around it and we ask ourselves, is this the best use of capital in our company in terms of creating value, and when I say the best, I mean, the best return relative to the risk, and the question -- the answer to that at the present time is that no, we have other ways of deploying capital that will create more value for shareholders, and that's what has driven that decision.Now as to the second part of the question, will we be producing an updated life of mine plan? Yes, we will, and that will be published in due course. But it does -- and in fact, we've already looked at that very carefully, obviously, as part of this evaluation. And the point is, is that it doesn't really impact our production profile that much. And we -- and as I said earlier, we do have alternatives to -- that will likely be brought online as a replacement in short order in any event. So in the overall scheme of things, we don't believe that this decision that we've taken now is going to be a big negative as far as the company is concerned. And as I also said, we put ourselves -- we're putting ourselves into a position where maybe we can change that decision in the future if we can find better ways of doing what we're seeking to do.

[Nathan Ryan]

Thanks, Jeff. As there are no further questions at this time, I'll now hand it back to you for our closing remarks.

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Okay. Well, thanks, Nathan. Well, look, as I already said, I mean, we are well and truly on the path to achieving the objectives that we set ourselves some time ago. We are in exceptionally good shape, both from an operational point of view, from a financial point of view and from a growth point of view. And I think that this company is now moving into a very different place to what it has been in the past, and it certainly warrants the close attention of all investors, I would think, at this particular time. And we're looking forward to delivering further very positive results in coming periods. Thank you very much for your attendance.