Perseus Mining Ltd

ASX:PRU

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

[Audio Gap] [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to Perseus' Managing Director and CEO, Jeff Quartermaine, for the presentation.

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Thank you very much, and welcome to this conference call to discuss Perseus' June 2020 quarterly report that was released to the market earlier today. Three months ago, when reporting to you about our March quarter, I began the teleconference by speaking about the COVID pandemic, which at that time was the topic of the day. And I specifically talked about what Perseus have done to combat the situation. I concluded that discussion by noting that notwithstanding that many in the West Australia, in particular, seem to believe that the COVID-19 crisis is behind us, the fact is that our future remains uncertain, which makes it difficult to predict anything much with accuracy. Now at the time, a number of people thought I was being a little pessimistic with that statement. But interestingly, what I said then still stands true today. And I guess given that there's what -- what's happened on the East Coast of Australia in the last couple of weeks, not to mention in North America and the U.K. in the periods before that, there probably aren't too many who would disagree too strenuously with what I said today. But notwithstanding my reservations about the future that I expressed at that time, we at Perseus have got on with the job, and we worked very hard to ensure that our employees remained safe and healthy, and that our business continued to create as much wealth as we possibly could. And I'm pleased to say that, to a very large extent, we've been successful in achieving that, certainly helped by a very strong gold price, I must admit. And in a moment, I'll talk on exactly what has been achieved. Before I do that, there are a couple of points I would like to make. Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge the terrific contribution that our staff, both our employees and managers have made over the last 3 months. A lot of hardship has been endured and a lot of sacrifices made. And I would like to say publicly that, that's very much appreciated and acknowledged. And I guess the other thing that I would say is that we are indeed traveling in uncertain times. In West Africa, like everywhere else, the situation changes by the day. And being overconfident or blasé is fraught with danger. Now while we've done very well this quarter at Perseus, we're not out of the woods, so to speak. And over the next 3 months -- the next 3 months in particular, again, will be fairly critical for us given that we are very close to bringing Yaouré, our third mine online, and both Edikan and Sissingué are back performing very well after a modest start to 2020. So turning to the quarterly report itself, and for those of you who haven't had an opportunity to read the document we shared, let me just summarize it for you before discussing a few issues in some detail. So firstly, our 2 mines, Edikan and Sissingué, both performed strongly this quarter. In the case of Edikan, we managed to bounce back very well from a disappointing March, and Sissingué's continued to go from strength to strength. So Edikan's production at 41,281 ounces is up about 9% and Sissingué at 23,395 is actually up 17%. Combined, the mines produced 64,676 ounces of gold at a production cost of USD 805 per ounce at a weighted average all-in site cost of $935 per ounce. Edikan's costs were once again down 16%, so that -- down to $1,049, that's the all-in site cost. So that was a pretty decent kind of effort there. Our average cash margin on each ounce of produced gold produced was USD 609, which exceeded our stated strategic target of $400 an ounce by about 50%. And generated notional cash flow of approximately USD 40 million for the period, which was up about 66% on the prior quarter. As I said, production was up quarter-on-quarter, about 12%, and costs were down 14% -- all-in site costs were down 14% quarter-on-quarter. So both of that is evidence of the strong improvement I referred to earlier on. On a half year basis, this translated to group production of 122,659 ounces at an all-in site cost of a touch over $1,000 an ounce, $1,005 to be precise. And on a full year -- full financial year basis, we produced 257,639 ounces, which was down a touch on the preceding year. The all-in site cost at $972 an ounce was pretty much in line with the previous years. And we'll talk more about the full year results in August when we put out our full financial report at that time. Now looking to the future, as I said earlier, it is a little uncertain right now. But notwithstanding that uncertainty, we have provided production and cost guidance to the market for the next 6 months. Along with the caveat and a strong caveat that continued strong performance can't be guaranteed. Although we will be doing our absolute level best to achieve what we've set out to do. And with that in mind, our guidance for the next 6 months is as follows. So at Edikan, we're predicting 77,500 to 82,500 ounces at an all-in site cost of $1,150 to $1,250; Sissingué, we're forecasting 48,000 to 56,500 ounces at all-in site costs of between $600 and $700 an ounce. And what that equates to is -- as a group is about 125,500 to 139,000 at between $940 and $1,025. So more -- it is up slightly on what we've achieved this last 6 months. There is -- they are relatively conservative numbers, I do acknowledge that. But that has been cast with the view in mind that things are still a little bit -- a bit challenging. Now coming back to the quarter, the current quarter, the implementation of our strategy for value creation by in-house development of mineral resources using the -- our in-house team has continued as planned. And the development of Yaouré is now about 67% complete, and it's running pretty much on time and under budget. Our stretch target of pouring first gold in December 2020 continues to be within our capacity, notwithstanding the challenges that there are out there. In addition, during the quarter, we announced an offer to acquire Exore Resources Limited, a small exploration company that owns a large tract of highly prospective ground near to our Sissingué mine in Northern Côte d'Ivoire. The aim of this acquisition is to source additional mill feed for our Sissingué mine and to extend the life of that outstanding operation. I'll come back to this in a little bit more detail later in the presentation. Finally, throughout the quarter, Perseus has managed to maintain its balance sheet strength through strong cash flows and prudent financial management. With a cash margin of $609 an ounce that I mentioned earlier, we generated notional cash flow from operations, I said about $40 million for the quarter, and that was up about 60 -- 67% on the previous quarter. Now taking this into account and allowing for the fact that during the quarter, we invested about USD 29 million in the development of Yaouré, we funded exploration, we paid tax, we paid corporate overheads, et cetera, our cash and bullion balance at the end of June totaled USD 164 million, giving us a net positive cash balance of about $14 million after taking debt into account. To date, at Yaouré, we've spent about $156 million or 59% of the total budget of $265 million. And that means that there's $109 million remaining to be spent there. Now given that we've got $164 million of cash on hand, the cost to complete the development is fully covered before accounting for future cash flow from operations, which is quite considerable as we speak. So based on $40 million for the last quarter, we potentially could generate a further $80-odd million if the gold prices stay where they are, which means that we'll finish the end of this year, the end of the Yaouré build with a very strong financial position. And that's obviously very positive for the future. So that's the June 2020 quarter in a nutshell. But let's talk in more detail about a couple of key issues before inviting questions from those on the call today. Let me say that the quarterly report does contain an enormous amount of detail at all aspects of our business, and it's reasonably self-explanatory if you wish to look through the details. So in a departure from previous practice, I won't go through all of this on this -- all the detail on this call. I will, however, extend the offer to each listener and for that matter, for people who aren't on the call, after reading the report, if there is something in there that you don't understand and would like explained further or if you'd like a bit more background without seeking information that's not in the public domain, don't hesitate to contact us either by e-mail or by telephone. Our contact details are set out on the front page of the release and the back page as well. And I'd be more than happy to communicate with you on those matters. Now I'll turn now to a couple of subjects that I think our shareholders will be particularly interested in based on the numerous discussions I have held with people over the last couple of months. These particular topics are as follows: firstly, our gold price hedge position; secondly, the ongoing turnaround of Edikan; thirdly, the progress that we've made at the Yaouré mine development and where that's heading; and then finally, the acquisition of Exore and other exploration results. If I do miss out on speaking of something of interest to you, then perhaps you can pose a question during the Q&A session. But first of all, let's consider hedging. Now this is a matter that we're frequently asked about by investors. And as you might imagine, the questioning becomes more intense as the gold price rises as it's recently done. I mean looking at it overnight, it was [ 18 18 ] or something like that. And certainly, the gold price looks fairly promising for the foreseeable future. Now Perseus has a very well-defined hedging policy, and we've acted in accordance with this policy for a long time. And I might say that it stood the company in good stead over a long period, most particularly when gold prices were weaker than they are today. During the June quarter, we continue to actively manage our hedge position in line with that policy. We delivered into forward sales contracts covering about 39,280 ounces at a weighted average hedge price of $1,353 an ounce. And we sold a further 38,747 ounces at spot prices averaging USD 1,738 an ounce. So this gave us total sales of about 78,000 ounces during the quarter at a weighted average price of $1,544. At the end of the quarter, our total hedge position involved the forward sale of 323,000 ounces of gold in total at a weighted average price of $1,442 an ounce. Now that is 5,700 ounces more than what was reported at the end of last quarter. But also, what I should point out is that the price of the whole hedge book has been averaged up by $49 an ounce during the quarter. So we've been managing it fairly carefully, bumping up the average as the gold price has been running -- coming through.Now these sales, they provide us with downside protection for -- of approximately 22% of our forecast gold production over the next 3 years. So in other words, we've got -- while we do have some price protection in place, we do have exposure to the gold price for 78% of our production.So the next issue I wanted to highlight, I guess, is the ongoing turnaround of Edikan. Now people who have been following the Perseus story over time will know that a couple of years ago, we turned Edikan around from being a struggling operation into one that was generating consistent levels of gold and reasonable amounts of free cash flow each quarter. You'll also know that last quarter, our run of strong results was interrupted by a hiccup, that saw the gold recovery rate fall quite sharply, temporarily taking our production levels down and putting our cost -- our unit costs up. Now I'm very pleased to say that we have turned that situation around over the last 3 months, and the improving trend is continuing very strongly into the current quarter.So in summary, during the June quarter, we produced 41,281 ounces, as I said earlier on. We're up from the 38,000 ounces in the previous quarter. And the production cost was $906 an ounce and the all-in site cost was $1,049, well down on the previous quarter. Gold sales totaled 51,168 ounces, and that was done at an average price of about $1,528 an ounce, giving a margin of $479 per ounce, which is about $200 an ounce more than last quarter and generating cash flow at Edikan of about USD 20 million for the quarter.Now at 90%, the mill run time was marginally better than the March quarter, and at 1.06 grams a tonne, the weighted average head grade was about the same. It was marginally lower, actually, just a touch under where we were previous quarter. The big improvement was -- during the quarter was made in the area of gold recovery rate, which we averaged 76%. And that was substantially higher than the previous quarter's recovery rate of 61%. Now this improvement was a result largely of a lower concentration of ore from the Bokitsi pit in the mill feed. Now experience in the March quarter indicated that a high percentage of Bokitsi ore in the mill feed detracted from the recovery process. The throughput rate that we achieved this quarter at 819 tonne per hour compared to 923 tonne per hour reflected 2 things. It reflected the replacement of the softer Bokitsi ore in the mill feed with harder ore from Fetish, so that slowed the throughput rate down. But what it also reflected was that -- and this is where the COVID situation comes into play, we've had to nurse our crusher a bit during the quarter because we have been unable to bring in expertise from South Africa to carry out some repairs on the crusher. And rather than risk failure, we've had to just nurse that a little slowly. But anyway, the decrease in the throughput rate was more than compensated for by the increase in the recovery rates, which resulted from the blend change. So throughput rates were down by 11%, but recovery was up by 25%. Reducing the amount of Bokitsi ore did also slightly reduce the head grade of the ore process. However, it should be noticed that this doesn't represent a loss of gold. It's simply is a deferral of the gold and as the Bokitsi ore is going to be now processed over a longer period of time than was originally planned. And the way that we do it, it doesn't impact the recoveries as it did in the March quarter. So the fact that we're doing it over a longer period of time doesn't really make any difference at all to us.I mentioned that production costs at $906 an ounce were down by 17% quarter-on-quarter, and that was driven by mining, unit mining costs were down. They were $3.08 per tonne compared to $3.24, due largely to lower drill and blast costs as well as some savings on fuel prices due to the global decrease in oil prices. And processing costs at $8.43 a tonne were down from $8.75 per tonne largely is the result of reduced power costs, that was a response by the Ghanaian government to the COVID crisis and also due to the fact that, during the quarter, the stability of the national electricity grid improved, which meant that we had to generate less power on the site using our standby diesel generators.Our G&A cost at $1.63 a month during the quarter was slightly down on $1.79 in March. But I should say those march costs were fairly dramatically inflated as a result of government back-charges for mineral rights going back quite a number of years. The June quarter G&A costs do, however, include costs associated with measures that we've taken to combat COVID-19, and that includes additional transport costs, meals, accommodation, incentive payments, et cetera, et cetera. So actually, I should have said that earlier -- I mean, all across the company, the cost of dealing with COVID on an operating level is about $20 an ounce. And so when I talk about the all-in site cost, it's worth bearing in mind that, that is included in there. As I said, the all-in site cost at Edikan is down about 16%. So that's fairly healthy, particularly when we're selling our gold at $1,528 an ounce. So look, as a result of the turnaround at Edikan, we saw production up, costs down. And I'm very pleased to say that after the first 18 days or so of July, we're still tracking very, very well at Edikan, and the positive trends that we saw during the last quarter have continued. And things are moving fairly well, provided, of course, if nothing comes out of left field from the COVID crisis or anything else for that matter. But generally speaking, it's been a good change there, and we're pleased with the way that, that mine is performing.Now turning to development of our third mine, Yaouré, so this quarter, we've continued to make very strong progress in all fronts, and we're on track, as I said earlier, to achieve that stretch target of first gold in December this year, notwithstanding the challenges showed up by COVID. I should mention that the actual contracted date is July -- is January next year, but we think we can do a little better than that. Now for those of you who have seen the progress or want to see the progress of the mine with your own eyes, I would suggest that you have a look at the video footage that we -- was taken at the end of June by our drone and was put on our website, so www.perseusmining.com. This literally gives a bird's eye view of what's happening on the ground. There's also some photos in appendix A of the quarterly report, and they also tell a story. But clearly, in summary, we are making excellent progress there. And we've done it with a very good safety record. We passed 3 million hours of work on the project without a single LTI. That was achieved in early July. And this is a record that we take a lot of pride in. And it's a credit to the team who have been working under testing conditions at Yaouré.Off-site engineering is now 100% complete and procurement, including deliveries to the site, is about 96% complete. So pretty much everything that we need to build the project is either on site or is on the water, in transit to Côte d’Ivoire, so we're in pretty good shape as far as that's concerned. I won't go through all the details of the on-site progress, chapter and verse. You can read all that in the quarterly report. But suffice to say, things are going extremely well.And just to put that in perspective, so the ball mill and the SAG mill will be lifted into place this week, I believe, on Thursday, Friday this week. CIL tanks are undergoing hydraulic testing. The crusher components will be put in later, the first week of August. The TSF works are just about complete and I think plastic lining of the TSF is about 15% complete. Our permanent camp's pretty much done. People have already moved into the accommodation blocks. There's just a couple of ancillary buildings to be finalized and a bit of landscaping and then the camp will be done as well. Our mining contractor, EPSA, their team has arrived on site. Their equipment has been progressively arriving for the last couple of months. And they'll be starting to construct their facilities very, very soon.And in terms of the financial side of the project, as of the end of the June -- at the end of June, we've capitalized $166 million of expenditure and paid about USD 156 million to suppliers of goods and services. So that represents about 59%, 60% of the $265 million that's been budgeted for the build. In total, we -- our commitment's at million, so that's about 77% of the budget. And that means that the cost are pretty much locked in as we speak, and the risk of overrun is pretty small at this stage of the game.As I said earlier, if there are no further delays, our stretch target of first gold at the end of the year, December 2020 is achievable. And we're certainly doing all that we and our contractors can possibly do to deliver on that milestone. Now it would be remiss of me to report on the Yaouré and not mention the fact that we did experience our first cases of COVID on-site following the end of the quarter. We acted very promptly on this, and we believe that we've contained the spread of the virus. But we can't underestimate the risk that the virus presents to us over the next 6 to 8 weeks, in particular. After that period, the size of the workforce reduces quite considerably. And we'll be in a position to lock the site down just as we've successfully done at Edikan and Sissingué, where we have actually had no cases at all of COVID. So that hopefully means that commissioning will be able to be completed successfully and we'll be able to hit that stretch target that we've set ourselves. If we can do this, it will be a remarkable effort by our team and those of our contractors. But it's way too early to be claiming victory at this stage. And we'll certainly be on edge until the first gold -- the first bar of gold is poured later in the year. And then, of course, a whole new set of challenges arise, but we won't be getting ahead of ourselves on that. I mean the cost of COVID on the construction is about -- it's about $1.1 million has been added to the overall cost of the project. Now that's a fairly small amount and well within the contingency that was included in the original budget, so there's no prospect of a cost overrun off the back of that. But the -- dealing with the COVID situation certainly does cost money in terms of the things I mentioned earlier on transport, quarantining, et cetera, et cetera. But we kind of take the view that people's safety and health is paramount, and that's a fairly small price to pay at the end of the day.Now turning to exploration and the like. So our exploration team has been very active this quarter at each of Edikan, Sissingué and Yaouré, and they're starting to get some very interesting results that are tabulated fully in the quarterly report. Had some very interesting hits at Yaouré at a place to called Sayikro. Now the intercepts themselves are not spectacularly high. But what is interesting is that they appear to be on the tail end of the CMA structure, which is the main gold bearing structure that we'll be mining at Yaouré. And these hits are located several hundred meters from the current edge of the CMA pit. So if it turns out to be the case, and we are able to add a couple of hundred meters under the strike length of the CMA deposit, then that will be a major win for Yaouré and for our shareholders.Similarly, we completed the 3D and 2D seismic surveys at Yaouré during the quarter. Vast amount of data was acquired through this process. And this is currently being analyzed, and the results should start coming through in the December quarter. And it will be radically interesting to see that, particularly in view of our plans to develop an underground mine there at Yaouré.At Edikan, we've secured options over 3 contiguous properties located 8 kilometers from the Edikan processing plant. Now this is a very prospective land holding, and we can't wait to start drilling out there. Unfortunately, we've been impeded in that regard by, I guess, differences of opinion between ourselves and local farmers, who we understand are receiving benefits from some illegal miners in the area. We do expect that the law of the land will prevail fairly shortly and access will be possible. Now in the meantime, we have been drilling out a deposit to the south of the existing Edikan pits that's on our existing mining lease, and we've been getting some very, very interesting assays coming from that. Some of the results have been quite spectacular. Next task is going to be to see if they hang together. But certainly, this is of interest and could provide additional mill feed for Edikan.Now at Sissingué, we were ready to walk away from a deposit known as Tiana. But in the last drill program, we've got some truly spectacular results there. Now look, as I've said in the past, getting great drill intersections in the Sissingué area is not that big a challenge, but getting enough of them to form a mineable resource is something else. And it will be interesting to see what we can ultimately make at Tiana. I mean that said, it's always better to receive assay results such as the 32 meters at 208 grams or 14 meters at 476 or 2 meters at 3,298, then end up with a blank scoresheet when the assays are returned. But we're not getting massively excited. Let's see what happens here, and it may be something or it may not. But as I say, better to get hits like that than not.The real interest around Sissingué, though, I guess, in the last couple of months has been our offer to acquire Exore Resources, which is an ASX-listed exploration company. Our offer was announced on the 3rd of June, and the transaction is currently going through the process of completion by way of a scheme of arrangement. So formal documents -- formal scheme documents were lodged with ASIC, including a technical experts' report last week. And in a couple of weeks after they've reviewed those documents, we expect that dates will be set for a meeting of Exore's shareholders and court hearings to hear the result of that shareholders' meeting. We're fairly hopeful that the matter will be favorably concluded towards the end of the current quarter.Now there's a good deal of information in the market about Exore and the proposed transaction and the rationale for the offer that we've made. I won't cover these in detail now but they are available on our website for anyone who wishes to take a look. The key points to note though are that -- look, the acquisition of Exore will result in Perseus gaining ownership of approximately 2,000 square kilometers of very highly prospective land in Northern Côte d’Ivoire close to our operating mine at Sissingué, so very, very close to the Sissingué mine. In December '18, Exore acquired an 80% joint venture interest in a couple of exploration permits that make up the Bagoé and Liberty projects. They cover about 816 square kilometers, the 2 of them. They got those from a company called Apollo Consolidated Limited. Now Exore subsequently acquired the outstanding 20% of that, interest in that joint venture subsequent to the announcement of the scheme. Exore also announced a JORC compliant mineral resource at Bagoé. Now details of this have been provided in Exore's recent market announcements. And I'm somewhat limited from describing this resource in too much detail without potentially breaching JORC or ASX reporting requirements. So I'll just simply refer you to Exore's recent media releases to see the extent of that discovery.But suffice to say that Sissingué currently has a mine life of 3 years from 1 July this year. And with the acquisition of Exore's land package, including that defined mineral resource at Bagoé, Perseus will be able to either develop the Bagoé project into a new mine, potentially using the Sissingué infrastructure or alternatively delineate further mineral resources at Bagoé that can be economically mined and trucked to the Sissingué plant for processing. This potentially adds materially to Sissingué's forecast mine life. And given how well the Sissingué mine and team is operating, this will be a very good thing for all of Perseus' shareholders.So in conclusion, as I said at the outset of the presentation, we live in uncertain times. The COVID-19 pandemic is creating some challenges for us all. But so far, we've met these head on, and so far, we're ahead of the game. What happens from here remains to be seen. But we are very confident that by staying vigilant and being proactive as we've been, we will successfully see this through. And so far, so good.Operations. Whilst the June quarter has been very solid as we predicted it would be, we expect the September quarter to be even better as evident from the market guidance that we published today in this report. The September quarter certainly started strongly at both operations. And as I said, as of the 18th, it's about 1/6 of the way through the quarter. We are producing towards the top end of the guidance range. Now whether this can be maintained for the rest of the quarter and the one after that remains to be seen with everything that's happening. But one thing you can be absolutely certain of is that we at Perseus will be giving it a very big shake and doing our absolute best to deliver those outcomes.In terms of development, Yaouré is well and truly on the right path forward, with excellent progress being made on the ground and off-site. And we look forward to be able to continue to showcase its progress to investors by posting our video footage to the website. They say a picture's worth a thousand words, and I think that's absolutely true when you look at those videos. And we're very much looking forward to the end of the year and delivering on that stretch target in December when we produce first gold.Exploration-wise, as I said, we're accelerating our efforts to not only extend the life of our existing operations but hopefully also to discover our next mine. And we've certainly worked up some interesting targets, and I would like to think that we'll have some positive news on that front before too much longer.Financially, we're getting stronger by the day as a result of good production performance, reducing costs and strong gold prices. By the end of the year, we'll have 3 operating mines and a strong balance sheet. And where that leads to remains to be seen. But it is fair to say that Perseus' shareholders will be the beneficiaries of what we are slowly but surely creating here at Perseus.So thank you very much. That's the June quarter. I'm now happy to take any questions that you may have.

[Operator]

Thank you, Jeff. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Richard, when do you expect the Edikan crusher maintenance to occur and what impact will that have on second half production and costs?

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Well, to answer your question about impact on production, I think you can see where the production is in the guidance we've given. But when will the actual -- the maintenance occurs on a -- pretty much on a continuous basis. In terms of bringing in the outside expertise that we need, we're hopeful that we can get that done very early in August. We are having a bit of challenge achieving that at the moment. I must admit the trades people are a little bit reluctant to go into quarantine for 2 weeks as they would be required to do entering Ghana. And we are having discussions around that. But certainly, as soon as we practically can, we'll get them on board. We also have quite a lot of spare parts on order, and that will be delivered progressively as this quarter goes on. So the risk around all that will disappear as the quarter goes forward. And on the -- as we go forward, we'll nurse it -- continue to nurse it. And I'm pretty sure that we'll -- we won't see any major impact on our production going forward.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Kate. Kate wants to know, as we've seen recoveries at Edikan still a bit softer compared to prior quarters, was this driven by Bokitsi ore? Forgive my pronunciation. And is this mid-80s target still something we're going to return to?

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Yes, I think that is the target that we're hoping to get to. And we do see it occasionally on the day, but not on average at this particular point in time. So the trend is certainly encouraging and is positive. Yes, Bokitsi ore is a factor. One of the other factors that comes into play is that what we do is we put as much material much -- as we mine it, we put it in through the mill, but we make up any -- the additional capacity with ore coming from the run-of-mine stockpile. And that run-of-mine stockpile contains a mixture of fresh, transitional and oxide ore. And it has -- it also plays havoc at times with the blend. So it's very much something that -- it's a 24/7 situation. We need to keep a very close eye on that blend going in and to make sure that we don't overdose on anything that's going to impact. But certainly, the trends that we're seeing are good and very encouraging. And as I say, we do get some very good days. But we're not getting very good days every day just yet. But hopefully, that will be what happens in the fullness of time.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Patrick. He wants to know, are you able to clarify how much of the production shortfall was from Edikan or from Sissingué.

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

I'm not sure which production shortfall we're talking about here.

[Operator]

Well, then he wants to know as well, at Sissingué, how should we think about recent grade reconciliation shortfall. Is that the question that...

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Okay. Well, you shouldn't worry about that too much at all, I would say. I mean, what we've seen at Sissingué over the life of the mine is that it depends on where you are in the orebody, up and down. In the very early stages, we had negative reconciliation. Later on, we had very strong positive. The last couple of months have been down a bit. And what we'll do is we'll tweak the resource model and we'll get close to correlation for a mine planning purpose. It doesn't make any difference to the size of the pit. The optimization is in, and that won't change. And I might say we're getting some pretty fantastic grades coming through at the present time. I mean we are in the higher grade zone of the orebody at the present time, and it's performing extremely well and very much as we expected it to do. So I wouldn't be panicking in the slightest around that reconciliation. We included that in the report for completeness' sake. But we'll take a close look at it this quarter. And if we need to make adjustments, we will. But just going to the first part of the question, I'm not sure what production shortfall the listener was asking about. I mean, certainly, in the March quarter, we were down, and that was largely attributable to Edikan rather than Sissingué. But certainly, with the current quarter. I think there's been a pretty solid bounce back, as I said earlier on.

[Operator]

And the next question comes from Adam. On Yaouré, he wants to know what are the key potential bottlenecks to a delay in first production.

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Well, look, as I said earlier on, pretty much everything we need is on site. So I don't think we're going to see any delays in terms of procurement and the like. The workforce is there. It's working extremely well. All the specialists that we need to bring in from time to time are coming in. The international borders were opened, I think, as of the beginning of July or 8th of July, something like that. So we are actually moving our staff in and out of the country now and we brought in specialists from Outotec, the mine -- the mill people the other day. So they're on-site at the present time for the installation of the mills. I think going forward, if we look to -- as I said earlier on, for the next 6 or 8 weeks, when we still need a lot of labor on site, we are at risk of COVID infection. We think we're managing that pretty well at the moment. We did have some infections the other day. And that was a -- I think, a bit of a salutary reminder to us about the risk that's there and the -- what happened there won't be repeated. So then that is a risk, that's for sure. And of course, at the end of the year, towards the end of the year, like, say, the December quarter, we will be into commissioning. And we'll need to bring, once again, the commissioning specialists in to do that work. Now if the borders were to close or something of that nature, then that would cause some risk to us. But I guess, no one can predict the future, as I said. But certainly, the trend in Côte d’Ivoire is to opening up the economy rather than closing it down. Last week, they announced that the strict travel cordon that was keeping people in Abidjan has been released, so people can move throughout the country quite freely. And as I said, international borders are open to international flights. So rather than heading towards closedown, they do seem to be heading towards opening up. I mean, I guess that brings some risk around the spread of COVID. But as I said, we're managing that reasonably well at the present time.So look, all in all, we're on pretty much on track there. And we -- everybody's pretty determined to deliver on time. And if we miss the December date, it will be a matter of weeks before we get the -- we have the data, and I've got every confident -- I'm certain we'll be well within our contracted date, which is, I guess mid-January.

[Operator]

Thank you. There are no further questions at this stage. I will now hand back to Jeff for closing remarks.

[Jeffrey Allan Quartermaine, MD, CEO & Director]

Okay. Well, look, thanks very much for that. As I said at the outset, it's been a pretty good quarter for us. We've turned things around fairly strongly, and we're looking forward to the next quarter with a good deal of optimism based on the strong start to the quarter. We look forward very much to bringing another set of positive results to our investors and interested parties in 3 months' time. So thank you very much.