Mountain Province Diamonds Inc

TSX:MPVD

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Wednesday, November 10, 2021.I would like to turn the conference over to Jonathan Comerford. Please go ahead.

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Good day to everyone who has dialed in to listen to our Q3 results call. My name is Jonathan Comerford, and I am the Chairman of the company and have been acting as interim CEO since Stuart Brown's departure last month. I would like to take this opportunity to again thank Stuart for his contribution to the company over what was a challenging time.You all hopefully have seen yesterday's announcement of a new appointment. I am delighted that Mark Wall will be starting from next Monday as President and CEO, delighted not just because it brings an end to my short role as interim CEO, but also because I think Mark will do an excellent job. Mark brings an enormous amount of operational and joint venture experience, and I'm looking forward to working with him as the company enters a very exciting chapter in its history.I would also like to welcome Dan Johnson to the Board. Dan is hugely experienced in Arctic diamond mining and will add enormous value and support to Mark and the entire Board.As ever, before I start, I would like to draw your attention to the legal language covering forward-looking information and reporting information.I would like to start by identifying some of the key highlights from the quarter. I will then pass over to our CFO, Perry Ing, to discuss the financial performance; and then our VP of Diamond Marketing, Reid Mackie, to discuss the diamond market, and then I will close with some comments on what our focus will be for the coming months. The team will then be available for any questions that you may have.A year is a very long time in the diamond industry. 2020 was a tumultuous year. COVID hit the sector hard. Mountain Province's operations at its very basic levels can be kind of simplified as follows: It has a 49% interest in a mine in the Northwest territories in Canada. Our share of production from this mine is cleaned and sorted in India, and then it is sold at approximately 10 sales a year in Antwerp. At one point or another, over the last 18 months, COVID impacted each of these operations. Initially, Antwerp was shut down for sales, then India sorting centers had their challenges. And finally, in February of this year, the mine, which did so well to stay operational throughout 2020 when many of our peers could not, was forced to shut down for over a month.Health and safety is of paramount importance to us, and I would like to thank all of our partners and staff along that chain for the measures and protocols that they put in place to minimize the risk that COVID has on our staff and our operations.I would also like to thank our major shareholder, Dermot Desmond, whose support allowed the company to get through these very challenging times.Now on to a more positive news. Whilst COVID still represents a significant risk and we cannot let our guard down, Gahcho Kué is the jewel in the crown of the Argyle operations in terms of vaccinations with close to 100% of the staff fully vaccinated. It also has very stringent protocols and measures to minimize the risks. Being so isolated in the Northwest territories has actually its advantages.Mountain Province has also hit a number of other milestones in the period with over -- period ending Q3 with over USD 1 billion in sales. It's something we are equally proud of with over 1,100 days without a lost time injury. In terms of mining, that is exceptional, and the team at GK deserves a lot of credit for that.As traumatic as 2020 was, the recovery of the diamond sector has been equally dramatic. I have been involved with Mountain Province for over 20 years. And over that entire time, there has been talk about supply and demand imbalance in the rough sector, and the diamond price is breaking out. It has been talked about for so long. I was nearly beginning to doubt myself. This year, the stars seemed to align, and it appears that the long-waited inflection point finally occurred.Like many things, this breakout was driven by both supply and demand. On the supply side, Argyle shutting down certainly helped. It took out the biggest diamond mine in terms of carats in the world. This disproportionately helped Mountain Province as our production was quite similar to Argyle. It is worth noting that with Argyle gone, the GK mine is now the third biggest diamond mine in the world in terms of carats produced and, by far, the newest. We celebrated just our fifth year in production this year.Just turning to the general diamond market. In total, diamond production has fallen from 176 million carats in 2006 and 144 million carats in 2019 to just 116 million carats this year, a drop of approximately 35% over the last 15 years. Diamond production in the medium to long term is only heading in one direction.In terms of demand, I believe the strength of the recovery in diamond demand has taken a lot of commentators by surprise. The figures that are -- have been absolutely exceptional. According to Mastercard, jewelry sales in September in the U.S. were up 57% compared to the same period in 2019, which is pre-COVID. It is not just the U.S. either. China's Chow Tai Fook, the largest jewelry chain in the world, saw retail sales in the quarter ending September 2021 up 56% year-on-year. Instead of jumping on a plane to celebrate a birthday or an anniversary, many are instead buying their loved ones jewelry. We've also seen a substantial rise in self-purchasing.There are strong reasons also to believe that these are not temporary factors and will continue in the medium to long term. The demand outstripping supply, the gap has been filled to date by the big sellers selling down their inventory. De Beers and Alrosa combined sold 65 million carats in the first 9 months of 2021 and produced just 48 million carats. That means they reduced their inventories by over 17 million carats. According to Paul Zimnisky, the 2 major players now have less -- have little excess inventory left to sell. This bodes very well for diamond prices going forward as this inventory is no longer there to plug the gap.Like-for-like, we are seeing prices for our goods up over 40% from pre-COVID levels. And we have seen this strength continue in recent sales that we just closed. This price growth is now feeding through to our results. We have adjusted EBITDA in this quarter of $41 million. This is the second highest EBITDA figure we have announced since our inception and compares to just $15.3 million in the corresponding period last year. Year-to-date EBITDA is close to $100 million compared to just $14 million in the 9 months ending 2020.Moving on to the production results. If you look at Page -- Slide 5, you'll see our high-level production starts for the quarter. Compared to the same quarter last year, we've improved on total tonnage mined, ore tonnes mined and ore tonnes treated. However, due to mine sequencing, that part -- the part of the ore body we had access to this quarter, grade was slightly lower than Q3 2020 to 1.88 carats per tonne. This resulted in quarterly mine production of 1.56 million carats.We were quite pleased to see the strong mining performance in the quarter, the best we've seen since '19 -- or 2019. We have had a number of record days in recent weeks in terms of mining that are very encouraging. These good mining rates have allowed the mine to generate a sizable stockpile ahead of the plant, which bodes well for carat production for the remainder of the year and provides a good buffer should any disruptions to mining occur.The process plant continues to run well at approximately 9,000 tonnes per day during the quarter, resulting in 832,000 tonnes treated. As I mentioned previously, recovered grade came in sequentially lower than the previous quarter of 1.88 carats per tonne.Moving ahead to Slide 6. You can see our quarterly start on a sequential basis over the prior 6 quarters. You can see that GK has emerged from the difficulty seen during the challenging periods during the COVID pandemic. High rates of vaccination at site, along with improved labor ability, had allowed the mine to improve overall mining performance quarter-on-quarter.I will now pass over the presentation to Perry who will cover the financial performance. Perry?

[Perry Y. Ing, VP of Finance, CFO & Corporate Secretary]

Thanks, Jonathan, and good morning, everyone. As Jonathan mentioned, I'll cover the financial highlights for the third quarter, which has continued the trend of strong results that we saw in the second quarter. As per normal, all financial figures I quote will be in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted.Turning over to the next slide. First, in terms of top line revenue, it was one of our strongest quarters in the company's history with reported revenue of $94 million, which is the third highest revenue recorded in a quarter. The 2 other quarters where we had higher revenue were both 3-sale quarters, whereas we only completed 2 diamond sales in this quarter. The next highest sale -- the next highest quarter where we reported 2 sales was the fourth quarter of last year where we reported $80 million in total sales. So over $14 million more than that on a comparative basis.So our quarter's results comprised of 1.03 million carats sold at USD 72 a carat, which is nearly double that compared to 956,000 carats sold at USD 37 per carat in the prior year. Note that in the prior year third quarter results, those excluded the sale of fancies and special diamonds.Overall, in terms of net income, this translated into net income of $8.8 million or $0.04 a share, which is inclusive of a $9.9 million foreign exchange loss, which is primarily unrealized and related to the fluctuations in the Canadian dollar, which happened to weaken relative to the U.S. dollar at the end of the third quarter, so basically, on the translation of our U.S. dollar-denominated debt.Another metric to measure our performance is -- as Jonathan mentioned, is through our EBITDA generated, which was over $41 million for the quarter and nearly $100 million to date. This is reflected in our EBITDA margin. If we turn to the next -- sorry, yes, the prior slide, yes, reflected in our EBITDA margin of 44%. And on the following slide, you see our earnings from mine operations were $30 million for the quarter.Staying with this slide, I'll cover a couple of other metrics, which are included -- which include our production costs. Our cost per tonne treated was $101 per tonne for the quarter and $110 per tonne on a year-to-date basis. Significant operating improvements have been realized in the quarter despite continued pressure from COVID-19 in the community in the Northwest territories.Our costs are slightly higher both on a per tonne and per carat basis compared to our 2020 figures, which can be attributed to the benefits of Canadian government support programs relating to COVID-19, which were received in 2020 but not in the current year. The impact of the COVID-related shutdown of the mine in the first quarter of 2021 and slightly higher diesel costs also contributed to slightly higher costs.We believe that given the strong performance of the mine and process plant since early summer, we are currently on track to come in below our low end of cash cost guidance, including capitalized stripping for 2021, which was set at $125 to $135 per tonne treated and $58 to $63 per carat recovered.On the CapEx front, we spent $1.3 million for the quarter and $9.7 million year-to-date compared to our guidance amount of $21 million for the full year. At this point, we do expect to come in below that $20 million -- $21 million figure, although I can't give you specific numbers because there's some timing variances in December that we'll have to true-up for.Turning to the balance sheet. You see that we ended the quarter with a healthy cash balance of $42.5 million. We are pleased to report that we have fully repaid and retired the term loan facility provided by Dunebridge, which helped us weather the missed June diamond sale. In the end, we grew just over $30 million from the term loan and repaid it in full between the end of June and September. Additionally, we made a further $5 million repayment on our revolving credit facility to reduce our current outstanding balance to USD 20 million.Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, we'll continue to work with De Beers to focus on operational efficiencies to mitigate cost pressures we see in the Canadian mining industry. The stronger Canadian dollar, higher diesel prices and tight labor market are all challenges facing the industry. Fortunately, we are seeing top line diamond price growth well ahead of these inflationary pressures.So with that, I'll turn the presentation over to Reid Mackie to give you more color on that and our sales and marketing in particular.

[Reid Mackie, Vice President of Diamond Marketing]

Thanks, Perry. Overall, the Q3 diamond market was buoyant with rough supplies low and demand high in anticipation of the strong holiday retail season. While last year's COVID challenges made rough diamond sales undeniably difficult, Mountain Province managed to maintain a marketing strategy based on the confidence that diamonds have historically done well after crises, and we've certainly seen that in our sales this year.In terms of rough diamond supply and demand fundamentals, we've seen reduced supply from the major diamond producers reflect here in Zimnisky's inventory analysis, which has balanced inventories through the diamond pipeline and created a healthier midstream. Further, as discussed by Jonathan, the closure of Argyle has permanently removed considerable carats from the market, which has created some shortages in smaller sizes, rounds and more commercial-quality diamonds, categories which are closely aligned to Mountain Province's production profile.Encouragingly, in recent sales, we've noted rising demand for these commercial qualities, which is translating into considerable price growth, 45% year-to-date and 47% up on pre-COVID prices, indexed on a like-for-like basis. Further downstream on the demand side, holiday retail sales in the U.S. are forecasted to be particularly strong. And in China, despite recent uncertainties, jewelry demand there remains steady with major local and international retailers continuing to report solid results. This has brought renewed confidence to the rough buyers regarding the sustainability of these recent price gains for the short and medium term.Lastly, on to product at GK. The size frequency distribution of the ore bodies being mined at depths appear to be trending towards a coarse profile, which has delivered positive in terms of overall average run of mine price. We're looking forward to our planned mining areas continuing to grow [ with this ] higher production profile in the medium to long future.And with that, I'll pass it back to you, Jonathan.

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Thank you, Reid. In summary, overall, we have seen a very strong third quarter, which allows us to enter the final months of 2020 and the start of 2022 on a much stronger footing. Optimization of the life-of-mine plan, combined with increased diamond prices, are allowing us to have a much improved financial outlook and a good level of cash heading into the end of the year. As we enter 2022, we believe that we're in a very good place in terms of the market, with the new CEO who the Board are very excited about working with.With Mark leading the team, the focus over the next few months will be on 4 main items. One, we are continuing to work with our partner De Beers to maximize the efficiencies of the mine and continually improve in the life-of-mine plan. We've made good progress here, but a lot more work needs to be done with De Beers.Two, we are going to put much more of a focus on Investor Relations as we feel we have a good story to tell now and a good ESG story to tell, too. And as a source of much concern to us that despite the improved performance of the company and the strong diamond market, that this has not been reflected at all in the share price of the company. Our shareholders have had a horrible time with the stock, and we are very conscious about that, and we're trying to do something about that.Kennady and the 2 main items in which we're going to be focusing on, I'm going to take most attention to the next 2 items. And number three is Kennady. The GK joint venture covers just 5,000 hectares over 4 mining leases. There are a couple of additional targets to drill at GK, and there is the potential by including probable resources to extend the mine by a year or 2 beyond 2030, but probably a little beyond that without going underground.In contrast, the Kennady North project, which is 100% owned by Mountain Province, incorporates 22 federal license and 97 claims, covering over 1,000 -- sorry, 106,000 hectares surrounding the GK mine on all sides. That is 20x the size of the land fortune owned by GK. It has 5 known kimberlites with 3 having resources.Financial constraints in the last few years have meant that we haven't been able to do the work at Kennady that we would have liked to have done. Our current improved financial position means that we are now in a position to put more of a focus on Kennady. Kennady is the future of this company, and we are conducting aggressive exploration to add resources to the project. We have identified 2 new geophysical targets immediately adjacent and identical to the Faraday kimberlites that we plan to test in winter 2022 with up to 2,000 meters of drilling. This past summer, we collected over 600 till samples with half of those collected on new claims staked in 2022. We haven't done a till sample program like this in over 20 years on the project. We have the best team in place for exploration at Kennady, and we expect positive results to come very soon.Four, on the bonds. Finally, a lot of our attention over the coming months will be on the -- sorry, the USD 300 million bonds that expire in December 2022. I can't say much on this call, but the issue is very much in focus. Our bonds are very tightly held by very friendly parties. All are very supportive of the company and the sector and want to stay involved. The improvement in the diamond prices are certainly helping. We would hope to be in a position to give an update on this in the coming months. I'm sorry, I can't say more at this juncture. We are very conscious about giving some clarity to the market as soon as possible on this issue as we are very aware that the uncertainty that it is creating, in particular, creating an overhang on the equity side.That is it for me. So operator, I would like if you could now open the lines for any questions that anyone may have.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Daniel McConvey from Rossport.

[Daniel McConvey, Founder & Portfolio Manager]

Two questions. One, just the last comment there about mining deeper into pit now, and I'm not sure if I heard the comments right that you're getting into a richer part of the ore body. Is that what was said?

[Matthew Macphail]

Reid, do you want to take that? I think Reid had mentioned -- this is Matt Macphail, VP, Tech Services. The SFD is coarsening slightly. So the mix of product has become coarser. Richness, the grade is the grade, but the skewed to the larger-size classes is becoming a little bit more apparent.Reid, do you have any more color on that?

[Reid Mackie, Vice President of Diamond Marketing]

No. That's correct, Matt. So we're seeing a coarsening of that size frequency distribution, which obviously feeds into a larger average carat size, which is a considerable factor when averaging up to your dollar per carat for the production as a run of mine.

[Daniel McConvey, Founder & Portfolio Manager]

Okay. And that's going to -- you're getting into that now. And how long will you be -- is this something that's going to last several quarters in the plan?

[Reid Mackie, Vice President of Diamond Marketing]

I can't speak to that from where we will be mining. But from what we've seen, and we'll be mining in similar areas to what we mine today, we have seen this coarsening size frequency distribution. So I would expect we'll see that into the next year.

[Daniel McConvey, Founder & Portfolio Manager]

Okay. Jonathan, just with Kennady...

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Daniel, is that okay?

[Daniel McConvey, Founder & Portfolio Manager]

Yes.

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Sure. Kennady?

[Daniel McConvey, Founder & Portfolio Manager]

Kennady. You have -- there's a lot of exploration. Well, a lot of things outside of Kennady you're hoping to get into reserves over the course of the next year or 2, as I understand it, as you do with the mine plan. But Kennady, it raised my ears when you said that's the future. I realize it is. What -- how do you approach De Beers in terms of having them buy into the plan? Would the plan be to drill this all out over the next year or 2 and then -- and convince your partner that this is the way to go? Or how would you think about that process?

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Well, I think where we are, I suppose, a couple of kind of figures to bear in mind that I kind of mentioned. And first of, we have 20x more land for exploration purposes than GK. GK is based on the current life-of-mine plan. I think we can probably extend that a little bit probable, too, and might get lucky in some other stuff. But the reality is that the future is Kennady. We have both -- both partners have spent over $1 billion building a processing plant and surrounding infrastructure at GK. We've invested heavily in the region. Neither of those will want to walk away from the investment in 2030 when there's so much potential to extend the mine life at Kennady.So what the plan will be, obviously, the plant has a life-of-mine plan out to 2030 at 3.6 million tonnes per annum. So it's a full capacity. We would obviously have liked for some of the higher-grade zones in Kennady to be incorporated in that mine plan earlier. But what we are doing at the moment is looking actually at how we can extend the resource beyond the 10 million-or-so tonnes that we have already proven at Kennady. And through greenfield exploration, we're looking at trying to identify. There's a lot of unexplained kimberlite trails that we need to kind of get to the bottom of. And we want to drill these 2 new targets. And I don't think -- I think that, basically, if we hit stuff there, I think we have some excellent pipes already at Kennady and discovered some additional pipes. And I think it will make some very interesting discussions with De Beers or a third party after that.I hope that answered your question.

[Daniel McConvey, Founder & Portfolio Manager]

Yes.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed.

[Matthew Macphail]

Operator, we have a few webcast questions that I'd like to read out that came in online, and then we can answer them.So I have a question here from Kieron Hodgson at Panmure Gordon. The question is, with the diamond market set to remain balanced with limited incremental sources of goods available, will the company seek to maximize returns per carat as previously indicated?Jonathan?

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Look, as I pointed out, there is an imbalance going forward. That gap has been built by Alrosa and De Beers effectively selling down nearly 19 million of inventory this quarter -- or this year-to-date. What we want to do is -- and maybe Reid can talk more about this. Do we want to maximize the value of the carats we get out of the ground? And we're looking at various initiatives on how we can actually do that. I think we've got a very good product.And I think the Canadian diamonds have an awful lot of advantages over what I'd say many of our peers in terms of sustainability and in terms of the jurisdiction in which they come from. And I think that's certainly an area in which we're hoping to do that.But yes, so I think the supply and demand, as I pointed out, with the third biggest diamond mime in the world the moment, certainly, there are opportunities for us. And we're really trying to get -- if we can get an extra couple of dollars of carats, that's really what we want to have to try to do. Reid, do you want to add to that?

[Reid Mackie, Vice President of Diamond Marketing]

Yes. Certainly. Yes, I think you hit the nail on the head. The supply-demand imbalance has kind of created a nice platform from which to -- in terms of price to launch kind of value-added activities from. And origin seems to be a trend -- or it's been more than a trend. It's been ongoing for several years now where the major retailers are starting to start to market based on origin. And obviously, with our product coming from Canada, we kind of hit a couple of points in terms of origin, especially on social responsibility and the environment. So more people want to know where the diamonds are from. And I think there are plenty of opportunities that we can build on here with this fundamental price increases that we've seen over the past year.

[Matthew Macphail]

And then the second part of that question from Kieron -- or it's a separate question, was when considering 2024, do you envision a plan being communicated within the next 12 months?I -- as a technical representative, I can comment on that, if you don't mind, Jonathan.

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Okay. Yes. Go on, yes.

[Matthew Macphail]

So the plan is the company we will be working on an NI 43-101 report to be published in -- before the end of the first quarter of 2022. And that will have a revised mine plan with new information available. And that's about all we can say about it right now.I will move on to...

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Are there any other questions?

[Matthew Macphail]

Yes, there's some questions from Scott Macdonald at Scotiabank. It's a multi-parter. First question would be, on an updated Gahcho Kué life-of-mine plan, when do you expect to be able to update the market on this?I think I just answered that, before the end of the first quarter 2022.Can you comment on the scope of the changes to the planned reserves under consideration, including the potential impact on the revised SFD for Tuzo and the recent exploration results on site?Not at this time. The work is being done right now. We don't want to speak to things that aren't being -- aren't complete yet. So the answers to those questions will be in that technical report.Any changes to your USD 48 per carat price assumption for Tuzo?Formally, at this time, there are no changes to that assumption, but I think we can all appreciate that the recent buoyancy in the diamond market may lead us to revisit that number when we start looking at our forecast in this technical report.So that's the 3 questions from Scott.

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Yes. Just to add to that. Look, I think it's fair to say that the categories that we've seen in Tuzo have been disproportionately going up kind of more than many of the other pipes. So I would be expecting to see an improvement in that based on the last couple of sales.But Reid, again, do you want to mention -- talk about that because I think it's a pretty big point?

[Reid Mackie, Vice President of Diamond Marketing]

Yes. The bifurcation, I think it was referred to, that's occurred since 2017 between smalls and large seems to be narrowing and coming back to more normal sustainable levels in terms of price relativities between smaller goods and larger goods. And we'd expect the recent price increases that have happened with smalls and more commercial-quality would feed in very positively to some of the bodies like Tuzo.

[Matthew Macphail]

Okay. Great. I have...

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Okay. Yes.

[Matthew Macphail]

If there's nothing further, I have another question on the webcast. It's from Victor Consoli at Avenue Capital Group. The question is, what has grade -- the grade has declined from 2.19 last year to 1.88 this quarter. Is this declining trend that will continue?I can take this one. It's -- no, it's a feature of mine sequencing. We mine different parts of the pit at different times of the year, and some kind of variate along the mean. And we don't expect this declining trend to continue.That -- those are all the questions I have from the webcast, operator.

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Operator, are there any other questions?

[Operator]

No more questions on the conference.

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Okay.

[Operator]

If there...

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Sorry, keep going. Sorry, if there's no more questions...

[Matthew Macphail]

We've got -- sorry, we just got one more come in right under the line here. I'll read the question. It's the question that, Jonathan, you can handle. The question, with regard to the bond refinancing, would you give us an idea of the size of the new bond offering being sought? From [ Steven Morrison ] of [ Morrison Capital Partners ].

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Sorry. Could you repeat that? The size of the new bond?

[Matthew Macphail]

Yes. With regard to the bond refinancing, would you give us an idea of the size of the new bond offering being sought?

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

Well, I'm not really sure what that means, but I think what the reality is that we have USD 300 million of bond repayment that needs to be repaid by December of next year. I think what we are doing at the moment is that -- like last year, we are obviously in a very challenging position. And I'm glad that I wasn't been asked the question about the bonds last year.But we are not -- we are in a different position than what kind of petro faced when they did a substantial kind of debt-for-equity swap. We do face challenges, but the improved financial situation and the diamond prices have certainly kind of helped, gives us a lot more options than we would have had last year. So there is -- we expect -- the bonds are trading at 90%, we'd expect to make them help. If that answers the question.

[Matthew Macphail]

Okay. That's the end of all of the webcast questions that I have. Operator?

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen...

[Jonathan Christopher James Comerford, Interim President, CEO & Non]

If there are no more questions, again, I would like to close by thanking all of our long-suffering shareholders and bondholders for their patience and support. It has been a very long and tough journey with more down than up. It just feels like we have now turned a corner, and I'm really quite excited about the future.So again, I'd like to thank you all, and wish you the best.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.