Gold Fields H2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 22, 2024

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, everybody, and welcome to Goldfields 2023 Financial Results Presentation. For those of you that I haven't yet met, my name is Mike Fraser and I've been CEO of Goldfield since the 1st January 2024. I took over from Martin Preece, who was Interim CEO during the course of 2023 and I want to thank Martin again for his contribution over the past 12 months. We distributed our results book earlier today and if you haven't seen it, it is on our website at goldfields.com. On the first slide of this presentation is a photo of the Brescia Principal pit at Salares Norte and it indicates a significant amount of activity that has taken place over the past 2 years in mining the ore body and that's enabled us to have 520,000 ounces of contained gold in our stockpiles ahead of processing at our processing plant in construction.

Speaker 1

If we

Operator

go to the next slide, please take note of our forward looking statement, which you can peruse on our website. Just moving on to please take note of our forward looking statement, which you can peruse on our website. Just moving on to the next slide, which is our agenda. Our agenda for today, we're going to go through the 2023 overview. I'll talk about safety and sustainability in the business and operation.

Operator

We're going to go through the 2023 overview. I'll talk about safety and sustainability in the business, an operation overview and update on Salares Norte. Paul will take us through the financials and then we'll end with guidance for 2024. Just moving on to the next slide. I believe Goldfields offers a very strong value proposition.

Operator

We have a very clearly defined and well executed strategy consisting of our 3 pillars that have been clearly communicated previously. We have a geographically diverse portfolio in attractive mining jurisdictions. The addition of windfall last year was a significant improvement in the portfolio. And we have a track record of meeting cost and production guidance. In 2023, we again achieved cost guidance and were achieved 99.7% of our production guidance.

Operator

We are in an unfortunate position of having a quality pipeline of projects in Salares Norte, which is a world class deposit in the northern Atacama Desert the proposed Taco Ideopreme JV in Ghana, which will create one of the largest gold mines in Africa and the windfall project in Canada, which is again a high quality project in Quebec province, which is a very attractive mining jurisdiction. And more of this later in the presentation. What is important is having a disciplined capital allocation methodology and an approach. Our first priority in our capital important is having a disciplined capital allocation methodology and an approach. Our first priority in our capital allocation is investing in safe and reliable production at our assets.

Operator

We also have very much focused on ensuring a strong balance sheet to maintain an investment grade credit rating. We also have very much focused on ensuring a strong balance sheet to maintain an investment grade credit rating in the business. We have had strong financials, clearly also supported by strong tailwinds in the gold price, and we have sound debt levels that is at below 0.5 percent of net debt to EBITDA. Next to be funded in our capital allocation profile are shareholder returns in the form of a base dividend in line with our policy. And thereafter, we won all opportunities to compete and that is based on returns and positive returns to the business.

Operator

Our focus areas 2024, including materially improving our safety performance. I'll talk a little bit about this later, but 2023 was a very big disappointment. Ensuring that predictable delivery of our operating plan taking steps to mitigate the recent negative cost trajectory into future years and deliver on our clear portfolio initiatives, which will also have a strong contribution to reducing our cost trajectory. And lastly, a clear focus on capital discipline going forward. Lastly, on this slide, we pride ourselves in our ESG leadership.

Operator

This is a key part of our strategy. And in 2024, we will continue to progress on all of our 6 priority areas, in particularly our decarbonization commitments, which I'll talk to shortly. Moving on to our 2023 performance, starting with safety. Tragically, we had 2 fatalities last year, both at our Taqwa mine in Ghana. And tragically, on the 2nd January this year, we had a further fatality at South Deep.

Operator

Clearly, this is unacceptable and with the objective of developing a single safety system of work that's fit for purpose for Goldfields that will provide a high level of assurance of our ability to work safely. I mentioned cost and production performance earlier. And whilst we achieved our guidance in 20 20 3, what is critical is that we deliver on our guidance in 2024. We delivered an adjusted free cash flow of $367,000,000 after operating cash flow from operations of a touch over $1,000,000,000 Whilst we increased debt marginally, mainly to fund the Salares Norte project, our debt levels at 0.42 times net debt to EBITDA are stable and healthy. We continue to pay strong dividends and this year declared a final dividend of ZAR4.20 per share, bringing the total for the year to ZAR7.45, which is unchanged from the 2022 dividend and just over 40% of normalized earnings.

Operator

That generates a dividend yield of a touch over 3%. I'll touch a little bit more on Salares Norte later, but we are progressing commissioning with 1st gold expected by no later than April 2024. Earlier this week, the Board approved the go ahead to build a US195 $1,000,000 microgrid at St. Ives, comprising both solar and wind. This will be our most significant renewables investment to date.

Operator

It will provide almost 75% of the mine's electricity requirements and have the impact of reducing the electricity bill by nearly half. Just moving on to our global overview. This is a snapshot of our business performance in 2023. We'll go into the individual performance in detail a little later, but worth pointing out for now is the strong contribution of our Australian operations, which account for over 45% of our production ounces. All of our operations contributed to our adjusted free cash flow performance for the year, thanks in part prior to the higher gold price, but also due to the great performance of our teams and our operations.

Operator

I think one of the positives to call out is, in particular, South Deep's contribution, and they contributed over $200,000,000 of free cash flow to the organization. If you talk to the teams, this was almost kind of comprehensible a few years back. And considering where South Deep has come from, I think this is a great achievement. Just moving on. Turning to ESG, which, as you know, is our 2nd pillar of the goldfield strategy.

Operator

And I think this is a great example of the ESG commitment from the organization. And this is the 50 Megawatt Kanesa solar plant at South Deep. This has got over 100,000 solar panels and produces around 22% of the site's electricity needs. In late 2021, the business set itself ambitious 2,030 targets for its 6 key ESG priorities: 3 related to people and stakeholders and 3 environmental. On the safety side, tragically, we still have fatal and serious injuries in the business and I'll talk about that in a short while.

Operator

However, we did have no serious environmental incidents and we haven't had for a number of years, and it's a track record that we should be proud of. We are making steady progress in increasing woman representation in the business. We've achieved over 25% woman representation against our target of 30% by 2,030. And another program that we are proud of is the focus on value creation for our communities. In the past year, we generated around $3,800,000,000 of contribution to our broader stakeholder group and almost over $1,000,000,000 in our direct communities in the form of procurement, employment and investment.

Operator

On the environmental front, I'll talk about our decarbonization program shortly, but that again is a key part of an ambition to deliver 30% net reduction by 2,030. On tailings, this is a critical issue for us and the industry, and we are making very good progress in making our tailings facilities safer. We have a very strong technical team in house that is actively involved in industry standard setting and industry benchmarking. During the year, we undertook a full self assessment of our priority tailings at Taco and Serra Corona, in line with the global industry standard on tailings management and 2 of our upstream dams at Taquah transitioning to downstream facilities. On water stewardship, we are well on track to meeting the 2 targets we have set for 2,030, namely recycling 80% of our water use and limiting fresh water usage at our operations.

Operator

Moving on to safety. As I've said, we have a lot of work to do our industry overall and that is no different to Goldfields to improve the company's health and safety performance. After reporting 2 fatalities last year and one to date, we know that we need to do more. We have a range of safety processes in place across our business, covering both leadership, specific safety risk routines. We engage extensively with our people to support the design of work, safe design of work.

Operator

We encourage our people to speak up when they feel they are not operating in line with standards. And if we cannot mine safely, we will not mine. Despite this work, we realize this is not enough and we need to do more. So what we are doing, as I said earlier, is engaging an independent review. We are bringing together our teams to understand what we need to do differently and ensure that we understand the design of work to ensure that we can deliver safe, predictable work in our organization.

Operator

If we go to the occupational disease frequency rate, there was a slight rise in the year and this was largely due to noise induced hearing loss cases at South Deep and in Australia. You're also all aware of the findings of the Respectful Workplace report carried out by Elizabeth Broderick and Company during August last year. We are very much committed to delivering on the 'twenty two recommendations arising from that report, and we will provide further detail in our annual report in March. Moving to decarbonization. Our commitment and action to decarbonize the business has been one of the company's success stories.

Operator

And to date, we have had 5 of the non operations having a renewable source of energy. With South Deep and Gruyere coming on full stream for the period, it ensured that we had 17% of our total electricity mix from renewables. And this contributed to a decline of 5 percent against our Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions, which we believe is a good progress in the 12 months. Last year, we also released and announced a target for our Scope 3 emissions reduction of 10% by 2,030. This may not feel like a huge amount, but Scope 3 emissions make up 40% of our total emissions.

Operator

And this will require a lot of engagement with our suppliers and contractors to achieve this reduction. We are very much committed to this decarbonization journey. And as I mentioned earlier, the board has approved one of our most ambitious projects to date, which is the St. Ives microgrid, combining solar and wind with current gas supplies from the grid. This is USD 195,000,000 commitment.

Operator

This year, we spend a significant chunk of that and that you will see coming through in our capital plan for 2024. This will allow St. Ives to have 73% of its energy electricity needs provided through renewables and results in an expected 50% of the energy costs. South Deep is also undertaking wind farm studies to further reduce their electricity requirements and dependence on Eskom. Lastly, I just want to outline the journey to 2,030.

Operator

As you know, our target is a 30% net decline on Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Since the gold production outlook is a little less certain, we are focusing on emissions intensity, which are the numbers circled on the graph. Here, you can see we're making good progress and shows that we are on track to deliver our 2,030 plan with the planned and approved projects. The South Deep wind turbine project is captured in the scoping and trials. And what we have also not captured in here is the impact on the windfall project, which will be 100% renewables via hydropower.

Operator

And that agreement was signed with the First Nations in January of this year. Beyond renewables, there's still a lot of work to be done across the industry. We're committed to continuing studies for diesel replacement and this will be extended beyond just a battery electric vehicles, but including conveyors and other forms of ore transportation. We did indicate with the announcement of our Scope 3 targets last year that we would come back to the market in 2025 with a full review of our commitments for the remainder of the decade. And that will be certainly an activity we'll communicate back to the market.

Operator

Just turning to group and regional results for 2023. This is just a photo of the Taqua open pit, which is the largest mine in our portfolio, moving the most tonnes of dirt. Going to our group results. Whilst production was marginally down, down 4% year on year, it was delivered 99.7% of our guidance for 2023. Production for 2024 is guided to be 4% higher against 2023 numbers and this is after taking into account the fact that we had 60,000 ounces from Asanko in 2023 and 0 in 2024.

Operator

This year, we'll see growth coming into the portfolio from Salares as it starts its ramp up and South Deep as it ramps up from its 322,000 ounces in 2023. The all increase of 14% highlights some of the challenging operating environments, and managing a key the costs are going to be a key focus for us in 2024. Additionally, you will see in the capital line, there is a significant increase in capital over the 2 year frame as we reinvest in the business. And again, coming back to capital discipline, this will be a key area for focus to ensure that we are delivering strong returns from the money we redeploy back into the business. The operating operations delivered a generated adjusted free cash of just over $1,000,000,000 which, after deducting net capital expenditure, including Solaris and Windfall, environmental payments, lease payments and other expenses led to group free cash flow of USD367 1,000,000 Moving to Australia.

Operator

That the costs here are given in Australian dollars to show a year on year like for like comparison. This remains a cornerstone of our base, generating around 1,000,000,000 ounces of production, which is around 45% of our portfolio. And this region is guiding for another 1,000,000 ounces of production in 2024. In 2023, costs both in all in costs and all in sustain were higher in Australian dollar terms. Mining inflation remains very heightened in Western Australia and in particular labor costs, which are impacting the business.

Operator

There was a 5% weakening of the Australian dollar against the U. S. Dollar, which provided some relief in U. S. Dollar terms.

Operator

We are developing the Insovincible orebody and St. Ives into a long life Tier 1 orebody. As part of this transition, we are investing in a sizable renewable energy solution, as I spoke about earlier, and considering the most efficient ore handling solutions to reduce costs and reduce our energy requirements. Gruye had a tough 2023 as the resource capacity of the mine to handle its increase in planned volumes was insufficient. We've had a very strong collaborative intervention with the main contractor, the contractor principal as well as our partner in Gold Road, and we've also introduced a bigger fleet enhancer skill set on-site.

Operator

There's an active intervention ensuring that we ramp back up to our targeted production profile. For 2024 across the region are guided to be 24% higher, of which 11% relates to the St. Ives microgrid, 3% to the underground open pit development at St. Ives and 2% to the additional stripping at Gruyere. Taking these projects costs out, costs are overall guided to be 9% higher, which continues to reflect the tight labor market conditions in Western Australia.

Operator

As I said earlier, production for 2024 is set to remain above 1,000,000 ounces. Moving to South Africa and our South Deep operation. These costs are noted in rands per kilogram. South Deep had certainly some challenges in Q1 of 2023 with some ground conditions impacting production in the Q1. The remainder of the year was really a catch up for South Deep.

Operator

The second impact was competition for key skills, which provided a headwind for the mine during the year and in particular, the loss of drill rig operators and artisans to new underground mining projects that were willing to pay a lot more for these scarce skills. However, the team managed to rehabilitate the ground conditions successfully and get back on track during the second half of last year. Pleasingly, availability and staffing of development drills is back to where it should be. That had an impact of management production decreasing by 2% to 322,000 ounces, in line with the revised guidance. All in costs and all in sustaining costs were lower in U.

Operator

S. Dollar terms, but rose in rand terms during due to mining inflation and slightly higher volumes on a unit basis. Again, the difference explained by weaker rand against the dollar being 13% during the year. During 2023, South Deep successfully managed to extend the wage agreement by a further 2 years until 2026, which provides a good stable operating horizon for the business. Additionally, the initial development towards the south of Rengsch mine began in 2023.

Operator

Studies of the wind power to add to the 50 Megawatt Canusa solar power plant also progressed during 'twenty three and will be expected to be concluded this year. In 2024, we are focusing on a safe, reliable production delivery year as we look to ramp up towards the 380,000 targeted mine capacity level and we expect this to be reached towards the end of 2026. It's really important for us to understand that what is most important for South Deep is to continue to build on the successes that we've delivered in the last few years and continue to ramp up incrementally so that we don't move backwards. And as you can appreciate and look at the cash flow generation of the mine, this has been done really successfully, and we need to just continue to build on that momentum. We are seeing some scheduled increases in costs in 2024 as a result of higher sustaining capital levels due to ongoing investment in renewables and the development towards south of Wrench.

Operator

In Ghana, attributable production was 8% lower at 633,000 ounces and this was largely due to the planned decrease in production at Demang. Mining has now ceased at Demang and we continue to mine stockpiles for the next 2 years. Tarko's production was 4% high at 551,000 ounces and the mine remains a cornerstone asset for Goldfields. What is also important is to understand the trajectory of costs and production in the region for 2024 and 2025. As demand will only be processing stockpiles going forwards, its all in sustaining costs are expected to increase materially as we expense a portion of costs that were previously capitalized as the stockpiles were being built.

Operator

This will distort the regional costs over the next 2 years. However, the mine and region will still generate a significant amount of cash at spot gold prices, given that there is a lot of accounting costs captured in those unit costs at Domain. In the region, we also announced the sale of our 45% stake in Asanko at the end of last year and that was announced by our partners as having fully completed during this week. And we're also looking at Demang and trying to understand what the ideal future status for Demang. It's really important that we act on this responsibly.

Operator

It is a mine that is just over 20 kilometers away from our Taiko mine. And so managing the community effectively and responsibly as we manage that asset is really important for us in line with our values and our strategy. Lastly, the engagements with the government on the Taco, Idioprem JV are continuing. And whilst the tone of these discussions have become more collaborative and we engage very regularly, we are fully cognizant that this is an election year in Ghana and that undoubtedly will have some potential impacts on the timing of these engagements. On Peru, gold equivalent production at Cerro Corona was 8% lower at 239,000 ounces, with costs up 15% as a result of that lower production.

Operator

This was impacted by 2 things: unseasonably heavy rain in H2 2023 significantly impacted production at the mine, but it is also a mine that's coming towards the back end of its life, and we will see some variability in mine production. Studies are underway to optimize the asset as the mine's current production profile is scheduled to decline after 2025 when it will start processing stockpiles. We are also still awaiting the EIA approval for input tailings, which will enable that process to continue. I will now want to move to Salares Norte and this is an issue which is undoubtedly top of mind for many of our stakeholders and investors. And whilst the focus is very much on getting this mine into production, we continue to invest in exploration.

Operator

And this is a photo of our geologists that work in nearby tenements looking for further opportunities to extend the life of Cerro Corona of Salares Norte into the future. The Salares Norte project is now 99.4% complete on a construction basis. The key circuit, circuit A and circuit B, have progressed significantly. And as I've shown earlier, mining has continued throughout the project and we have around 520,000 ounces of gold equivalent on the stockpile ready for processing. And the photo that I showed on the cover showed how far we have mined in the Bresha Principeal pit.

Operator

In December, we unfortunately announced a further delay in the first gold and subsequent ramp up. We fully acknowledge that, that was a bit of a surprise to the market and unfortunate. But I think it was done with the right intention of ensuring that we deliver a safe and reliable ramp up of this business, which continues to remain a world class deposit and one that will generate significant value for our shareholders in time to come. Since then, we've been progressing and the construction and we've seen a significant step up in labor availability from our contractors. And as of last week, we actually had our site completely full with contractors and our own employees.

Operator

We are progressing well on addressing the outstanding pre commissioning and commissioning activities. We made very good progress on Circuit A. And on the 15th February, we produced the 1st filtered dry stack tailings in the business. And that will be and there will be a photo later which will show what that looks like. We are also still targeting 1st gold for by April 2024.

Operator

We've made very good progress on our production and we feel confident that the completion of commissioning is on track. We did commission an independent review into the project schedule for First Gold. This was completed by Hatch, undertaken independently, and they verified and confirmed our schedule. We also have Hatch working on the second phase of the review, which is the full ramp up. Initially, we worked on a 12 month ramp up to full production and that we expect in the next 2 weeks.

Operator

There's nothing at this stage that leads us to believe that, that would not be achievable. On capital, our guidance for the next 3 years is firstly 250,000 ounces for 2024, 580,000 ounces for 2025 and 600,000 ounces from 2026. What is important to note is that for 2025, we will see a slight backdating or balance of production coming in the second half of the year as we are due and scheduled to take a small shut in the Q1 of 2024 to do the final calibration of the plant. Our cost guidance for this year because of the lower production is in the region of USD17.90 to USD18.50 per ounce and that's because of the production profile as well as the increased capital for the project. However, thereafter, the cost will return to the previously advised levels of less than $800 per ounce for 2025 to 2029 and that will provide a significant dilution to the overall cost for the group.

Operator

The final project capital is $1,180,000,000 to $1,200,000,000 which is an increase on the previous guidance given the higher contract costs and the additional spend due to the additional time on-site. Just moving on to the next, it will show a few photos from Salares Norte. And maybe just as I start this, the one thing that Goldfields has been acknowledged for many, many years and I think this is a demonstration is that, South Deep mines at 3,200 meters below the surface in sometimes very challenging conditions And Solaris Norte is mining at 4,600 meters above sea level. And I think it's a testament to the technical capability in our organization that can deliver on these projects. What we can show in the project is on the right is this is the dry stack tailings, which are being produced.

Operator

You'll see on the bottom left, this is the tailings storage facility, which will be all dry filtered tailings. And then on the top right, just showing some of the plant from an aerial view. With that, I'll hand over to Paul to take us through the financials.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Mike. Good day, everybody. Mike has alluded to a lot of the numbers, but just some of them that I want to talk to. Normalized earnings, dollars 900,000,000 up 5% year on year. Adjusted free cash flow, dollars 367,000 I'll talk to it on the next slide, we have done a reconciliation.

Speaker 1

All in costs, dollars 1.5 $12 per ounce within our original guidance of $14.80 $1.5 $20 per ounce. The final dividend, I just want to talk to our final dividend of $4.20 and our total dividend of $7.45 for the year. If we compare it to last year, as Mike said, it's similar. However, last year included ZAR185 that related to the Yamana break fee. So if we compare apples for apples, we have increased by 33% from SEK 5.60 to SEK 7.45.

Speaker 1

Net debt has increased quite a bit from last year to CAD1024. The main reason being, we have invested CAD3.16 $316,000,000 into Windfall being part of the acquisition price, capital that we've spent. If we exclude that, net debt would have been similar at around $710,000,000 year on year. What we're really, really proud of in terms of our loans and ESG, we did 2 green loans this year, a US1.2 billion dollars loan and a US500 million dollars loan and the 3 measurables we had was gender, water and decarbonization. Can we move to the next slide, please?

Speaker 1

This provides a breakdown of the cash flow and Mike spoke to it, but I want to emphasize the DKK204 1,000,000 made by South Deep. 5 years ago, when the market was putting pressure on Nick and I, why don't you sell South Deep? We had said, we believe in South Deep. And if it gets up to where we want it to be, it can provide an annuity of circa $200,000,000 free cash flow a year. Well, now we're starting to see it, dollars 204,000,000 So just over ZAR1 1,000,000,000 free cash flow from the mines.

Speaker 1

We obviously then invested into Solaris. We invested this is the capital contribution, the normal capital for windfall. We then obviously had our interest bills and then non mine costs and working capital, giving the DKK367 million free cash flow that we had for the year. If we move to the next slide, the only point I want to highlight here is that in May, our 2024 bond matures of CAD 500,000,000 and we will be paying it out of bank facilities that we have. I'll now hand back to Mike.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you, Paul. I just wanted to close on a brief outlook on the strategy and a bit of a focus for us in 2024. 2024 is going to be another significant CapEx year for Goldfields. Total CapEx for the year is expected to be between $1,130,000,000 $1,190,000,000 and this includes sustaining capital of $860,000,000 to $890,000,000 What is important to note in that number is that we actually have around $132,000,000 for St. Ives microgrid, which is one could argue is a one off number.

Operator

In addition, we have $116,000,000 for Solaris Norte, plus another $32,000,000 for working capital build at Solaris Norte. So that $280,000,000 is quite an unusual spend in the year and that would certainly take us back to a more normalized level of capital going forward. For 2024, group attributable gold equivalent production is expected to be between 2,300,000 ounces and 2,430,000 ounces. As we said earlier, this is slightly higher than the 2023 actual and reflects the contribution from Solaris and from South Deep and offset a little bit against Damang and Cerro Corona, who are planned reductions. All in sustaining cost is guided to be between $1400 $14.40 per ounce, with all in costs expected to be between $15.90 $16.30 per ounce.

Operator

Again, if you take out the St. Ives microgrid, this has quite a big impact on bringing that back to more normalized levels. Our priorities for 2024, really, 1st and foremost, is ensuring the physical and wellness of our people, employees and contractors, continuing to drive the out the particularly the priority findings from the Respectful Workplace report and undertaking the full review of our safety system of work across Goldfields. Secondly, predictable delivery of our plan. We're fully conscious that we need to be able to deliver what we commit to deliver on.

Operator

And we will focus very hard to delivering on the plan that we're presenting and the guidance that we presented. Importantly, that we start addressing the rise, the trend of increasing costs and related to that is ensuring that we remain disciplined on the deployment of capital and ensuring the capital we do deploy is returning is providing good returns for the organization. Thirdly is to continue to make the progress against our 2,030 ESG targets and particularly relating to our decarbonization journey, which we believe will be a differentiator in terms of our strategy. Additionally, to continue to improve the quality of our portfolio and the projects in the portfolio, particularly Salares Norte, which is a significant improvement for our portfolio, delivering on the Taco Idioprem JV and continue to progress the windfall project. And with that, I'd like to thank you for listening and hand over to Q and As.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mike. I have two questions on the webcast. We also will be handing over to the conference call to take questions, if you don't mind. The first question is from Yamin Gossain from Laurium Capital. And he says, good day.

Speaker 2

Please kindly explain why Solaris Norte production falls off so sharply from $580,000,000 in 2025 to an average of $4.85 between 2025 and 2029 in terms of the averages?

Operator

Hi, Yamin, and thank you very much for that question. What we always knew is that Salares Norte is a very high quality asset with certain high grade areas. And what we are doing in optimizing the mine is accessing the high grade parts of the ore body first and processing that first because that was the optimized way of extracting value for this project. And it was always anticipated that we would see a production decline over the years. And that's why when we've come out in the guidance today, we've also spoken about what that profile looks like till 2029 and then for the remainder of the project.

Operator

This was always anticipated in terms of our understanding of the current ore body. But as I mentioned and alluded to earlier, we continue to do nearby exploration opportunities to extend the life of that asset and find additional sources of ore to fill that mill beyond what our known resource looks like. But this remains a world class asset and will continue to be so for a number of years going forward.

Speaker 2

Okay, good. The second question is also around Solaris, Mike. It says, given the Solaris delays, please can you clarify when the Chinchilla relocation becomes an issue? In other words, when do you expect to start mining the impacted area?

Operator

Thank you for the question, Catherine. And look, I think the first and foremost, the Chinchilla relocation is a really important demonstration of our values. To date, we've identified 36 Chinchillas through the extensive monitoring that's been undertaken in the potentially impacted rockeries. We actually start commencing the relocation of the Chinchillas at the end of February. We will continue this until around May, which we will then pause during the winter months and continue that once the summer starts.

Operator

This is around an 18 month program and we are investing a significant amount and bringing in a number of independent experts to support us to ensure that we do this safely and with the right degree of care. To answer your question in particular, we only really start getting to Agua Amaga in around quarter 2 of 2029. So it's actually quite a long way away. But we want to get ahead of it and actually do this to ensure that there's no impact at all through the mining of Brescia principal and also because there's one of the rockeries is quite close to one of the waste dumps, we want to make sure that we actually do this now rather than wait. So there's no risk really in terms of future mining.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mike. The next one is from Andrea Filis from Risk Insights, and it's not a question. She says Risk Insights has been generating ESG ratings for Goldfield since 2016. It's encouraging to note the consistent positive ratings and the observed improvements across all the areas. This demonstrates the company's commitment to enhancing its environmental, social and governance practices over time, which is commendable and aligns well with sustainable business practices.

Speaker 2

So at least that's a bit of positivity.

Speaker 3

And

Speaker 2

then on the next one is from Emmanuel Mungeri from Bloomberg Intelligence. It's mostly for Paul. He says going through a period of sticky cost pressures and higher CapEx, should the gold price weakness starts to eat more into your cash margins? Are there any other levers you can pull that could keep costs, specifically AISC, within range or lower? And what do you consider as a targetable debt level or range?

Speaker 1

I'll answer the debt first. We've always said anything below 1x net debt to EBITDA, we'd be comfortable with. Obviously, we're below 0.5, which makes us incredibly comfortable. In terms of the pressures on the costs, a lot obviously depends on the oil price. We got some positive tailwinds last year, but we've seen oil starting to tick up this year.

Speaker 1

Obviously, during this year, Mike has alluded, we'll look at our capital spend and make sure that we spend the capital on the right places and at the right amount. And that should theoretically help us on our all in sustaining costs.

Speaker 2

Good. And a follow-up question for Mike from Emmanuel. Are there any pain points in the business that you've identified that you'd like to tackle immediately in the business, if any?

Operator

So thank you, Emmanuel. And I wouldn't say they're pain points, but I think they're really opportunities for us to improve. I think we've spoken about safety. I think really bringing that 1st and foremost into our mindset and responding to that is really, really key. Delivering on Salares Norte, I think, will be really value added.

Operator

And I know it's been disappointing that there's been delays, but I don't want to stop reiterating. This is a world class project and one that many people would love to have in their portfolios. And it's going to be a very strong cash generator for us. And then obviously, we've spoken about the leadership changes. And I think that could create nervousness, but I would say that everybody who's here is leaving, including Paul, who's been well foreshadowed that he's leaving at some point, has been super helpful for me in terms of my onboarding and very professional as we move forward.

Operator

So that's certainly not a pain point. But the one thing I would like to do is to see our organization working a lot closer together. And the way that our business had been set up in the past is very much on a regionalized basis. And I'd like to leverage off the great capabilities that sit in different parts of our business. So I see it more as an opportunity than a pain point.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mike. The next one is from Sandy Lev from Umtomba Wealth. He says, what's next after Solaris and the Yamana setback?

Operator

Thank you very much for that question. And I think the way I'd like to answer that question is, this sector, the gold sector is likely to undertake further consolidation one way or another. There's a wide range of different valuations on assets in the market and there's not full price discovery, on certain assets. I think we feel confident that we have a good process and system in place to identify options to grow and to replace reserves. And I talk about those separately because, I think the way that we think about growth is not just in the form of ounces or production ounces, but actually in growing the value of the company by growing cash flow per share.

Operator

And that means that we have to continue to focus on bringing quality ounces into our portfolio. We will always be looking at bolt on acquisitions. Windfall was a great opportunity. We can never close our minds to transformational M and A, but I would say that, that's a very we certainly aren't looking at that right now. And our focus this year is very much on delivering the things that are within our basket right now.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mike. And then the last question is from Chantal Baptiste from FairTree, perhaps to Paul. How much CapEx do you need to spend on windfall over the next

Speaker 1

3 years? We've got about CHF 45,000,000 correct me if I'm wrong, for the 2024 year. Obviously, when we go into 2025 and assume that we have got the EIA and we make our second payment of C300 $1,000,000, we still have to approve the capital project, which that will so I can't give you a number because we are waiting for that and we're working at the moment to come up with a revised number as it was previously disclosed by our partners with Windfall. So I can only give you for 24.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Paul. That's it from the webcast questions. We're going to go over to the conference call and I think there's 3 questions that are pending.

Speaker 4

Thank you. The first question is from Cameron Needham of Bank of America Securities.

Speaker 3

Two questions from me. Firstly, just on South Deep and ramping up to 380,000 ounces. I would think that this is going to take a lot of management time and internal resources, particularly given the timeline of the ramp up. In terms of really delivering value through incremental cash flows per ounce and then being able to deliver this consistently, Do you think this is the sort of best use of internal resources? And how do you think about this versus perhaps leaving it in its current position, whereas delivering solid cash flows, not pushing the asset too hard and then allocating those resources elsewhere?

Speaker 3

And then just a very quick second question on the microgrid. I think, Mike, you said that it will save about half your energy cost there. Apologies if I missed, but can you just quantify what your energy cost was there in 2023 for us, please?

Operator

Thanks, Cameron, for the question. Just on South Deep and maybe just to clarify. I think that team is largely self sufficient. It obviously does call on some of the resources from our technical teams. But in terms of their ramp up and the management of that asset, it's pretty much self sufficient.

Operator

So I wouldn't say that this is a huge drag on the organization. And really, we have got some great capability. And I think Martin, during his years as leader of that asset, has really brought in some quality people and set it up for success. This is an asset with a very, very long life ahead of it. And so you can make some of those investments that have the ability to reduce costs and set it up for long term success.

Operator

So as we think about the ramp up, and that's why we've been quite cautious in this ramp up, I would much rather us do this in a value accretive way than try and force the targeting of a production number, which then takes us backwards. So exactly to your point, we're going to go at the pace at which is right for that business and go at a pace at which continues to build on the gains that we've had in the past rather than going backwards. And if that means that we kind of a little bit softer on the numbers in the outer years and we hit the $380,000,000 a little bit later, but we continue to generate good cash flows, then we should be happy with that. On your second point about St. Ives, and we can get the number and get back to you, but I think the key number that we want to call out is currently they're paying around $0.18 per so around $0.20 and we take that down to around $0.09 So it's quite a big reduction, and that's where we get to the 50 over 50% reduction.

Speaker 1

Cameron, we can get back to you as to what is the actual electricity cost. It's a dollar number, but it's more than 50% lower when we go on to this solution.

Speaker 4

The next question is from Adrian Hammond of SVG. Please go ahead. Hi, Mike. Thanks for the presentation. I'd like to ask you around the investment case for Goldfields.

Speaker 4

Now this year was meant to be a year that Goldfields moves down the cost curve. But yes, we're finding it moving up quite quickly. And it's now no longer comparable to its peers. Stock is down almost 8% and it's no fault of your own, but you have a fresh pair of eyes on this company. Can you tell us if there's what there is to look forward to?

Speaker 4

Will Goldfields be able to return back into the first half of the cost and then by when?

Operator

Yes. Adrian, I think there's a couple of things in that. One is Solaris hurt the company, no doubt, because we were expecting to see a much bigger contribution from the ounces. We were not expecting to see negative impact. And I think those two things on their own has had quite a negative impact.

Operator

I think as we look forward going forward, as we see the ramp up from Solaris into 2025, we should be able to start seeing some of the benefits of bringing us back down. But the second area, which I think is a and I can't pull out specific numbers and give you specific commitments, but I think the area that we really are going to have to be very smart at is how we deploy capital. And it's quite legitimate to be saying that we're investing in long life extensions of our assets and creating future optionality and all of that capital comes at a much lower cost per ounce than having to go out and buy something. So I think we may just need to do a better job of kind of talking about how the ebbs and flows of capital is deployed in our business and how we use how we time the addition of internal reserves and creating capability for future life extension. So, maybe that's something that we just need to do a better job at to be perfectly honest, because if you look at them all in isolation, they make a great deal of sense for the business and great economic sense.

Operator

But again, we've got to be sensible and that's why I talk about earlier in our capital allocation model, when we do have free cash flow available that we've got to make sure we have robust models that decide on how we make the trade offs between the different uses of that cash. That includes exploration, investing in nearby mine extension, investing in infrastructure and trading that against other uses of cash, including capital management. But I think that's the conversation we're going to have to really look at ourselves at and come back and talk about in due course.

Speaker 4

The last question is from Leroyne Duigny of HSBC. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Mike, thanks for the opportunity. I've got 3 questions. The first one is for Mike. You mentioned earlier that one of your focuses for the business will be extending reserves or adding on to reserves where you can bolster the longer term sustainability of the business.

Speaker 5

I was just curious as to which you find to be more value accretive going out into the market and buying more reserves or increasing reserves through exploration? My second question for Paul, some of your peers in the market and I know you've done it in the past as well, sort of given us some guidance as to what they feel is a range or a reasonable range for FIB CapEx per ounce for the business that we can use for sort of medium term guidance? And I'm curious as to whether you've got a range in mind. And then just on Solaris for Mike, I guess. April is fast approaching, and I see on Slide 18, there are some items that are reflecting as to be started.

Speaker 5

Could you please share with us what are some of the key KPIs or milestones that you are looking out for that's critical to ensuring that you deliver on your April target?

Operator

Great. Thank you very much for those considered questions, Leroy. I think just starting on the reserve addition, I think just putting this in the strategic context. So Goldfields has got a really good look on its reserve profile for the next decade, where we can kind of assure ourselves we're going to have a very good production profile that sits within the range of what we produced over the last couple of years. So I'm not so concerned about the near term issue of reserves.

Operator

But importantly for us as a business and the sustainability of our business, we've got to look at reserves beyond that date. And there's a number of ways we can do that. And they're not always going to be it's not always going to be one answer each time we look at it. As I said earlier, I think the industry has got some mispriced assets. But if we're going to get into doing M and A, it's got to be smart and it's got to be things like windfall, which I believe has been And hopefully, we can find other projects like that, that makes sense for us.

Operator

When we talk about exploration, there's 2 ways of accessing or multiple ways of accessing. We can do proprietary greenfields, which offers an expensive and long dated. We can access greenfields through junior partnerships, which I like as a pathway because it really incentivizes people who are entrepreneurial to do the right thing and also through our own near mine reserve additions. And one would hope as we consider the trajectory of the work that we need to do on costs is that we can actually bring the line down and add some more from our own internal opportunity set and our own internal resource to reserve conversion. So, we do need to do a whole lot of work.

Operator

There are a lot of targets already that we continue to look at all the time. But I think for us to be successful, we need to have a huge pipeline of opportunities that we keep alive at low cost and respond when the opportunities arise. So, that's how we think about it, but not there's no one particular pathway that I say is going to be the silver bullet for us. Just talking to Solaris and then I'll hand back to Paul, if it's okay. So what we have instituted and between Paul, myself and a number of the leadership team, we actually have a weekly meeting with the project team where we actually review all of the project KPIs and project performance on the project.

Operator

We receive a daily report on project progress. We look at the number of people on-site. We look at the punch list items. We look at progress on the individual circuits. We are looking at schedule on a daily and weekly basis on progress.

Operator

So I'm quite comfortable there's a very good set of oversight on that business now. And I'm quite confident that there's nothing that we're not aware of in the project that could surprise us. We had Martin as well as Francois, our Chief Technical Officer, was on-site for a couple of weeks in the beginning of February and went on-site and validated it. I was at Solaris on-site, met with the project team, walked the process plant. And as I showed in the photograph earlier on, this is actually a mine that's going to be a world class facility.

Operator

And it's just disappointing that we've lost a bit of our the shine on the project because of some of the delays. But I know Paul, you might want to add and then No,

Speaker 1

of course, you said on the sustaining capital, Leroy, it's the same number I discussed last year, it's between $3.50 $400 an ounce. For us since we classify any decarb capital as sustaining. Lots of other people call it as non sustaining. So if we exclude decarb capital, we're around €350,000,000 to €400,000,000 And if you go back to when Mike gave the guidance and we did the buildup we excluded Solares and we excluded the it's really changed from what I guided last year on SIB Capital.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Maarten. Sorry, thanks, Mike and Paul. There are no more questions on the conference call either. So that's it for the questions.

Operator

Great. Thank you very much, everybody, and thanks for your time today, and thanks for listening to us.

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Earnings Conference Call
Gold Fields H2 2023
00:00 / 00:00