Caledonia Mining Corporation - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Caledonia Mining Q1 Results Presentation. I'd like to hand over to Mark Learmonth, CEO. Mark, please go ahead.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Thank you. If we could, go to the disclaimer page, please, on the forwarding statement. Okay, so the standard disclaimer, forwarding statement, which I assume everybody will take note of. If we could just go to the presentation team next, please. Okay, I'd just like to introduce the team. So myself, Mark Learmonth, I'm Caledonia's CEO. I'm joined, I'm in Jersey. I'm in Jersey today. I'm joined by Ross Jerrard, who is our CFO. He's sitting next to me. In Harare, we have Victor Gapare, who's an executive director of the company. Also joined by James Mufara, our chief operating officer, who's in Johannesburg. He's with Craig Harvey, who is our vice president, technical services, who will say a few words about our exploration program and our near-term learning opportunities. We're also joined by Rusiano Tsoka from Blanket Mine.

He is the group's Safety, Health, and Environmental Manager, and he'll be saying a few words about our new initiatives on safety. Also, attendees, we have Maurice Mason, Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, and Camilla on Group Comms. It is quite a large team, and we are going to cover quite a lot of ground. Some of the slides I am going to speak to quite quickly to leave space for colleagues. If we could just move on to the next slide, please. I am not going to go into this—I am not going to start throwing numbers around because Ross will do that. It was not. Spent quarter: strong financial performance, record gross profit. We strengthened the balance sheet, more particularly, at the end of the quarter, in early April, with the successful sale of the solar plant. Ross will tell you more about that.

Clearly helped by the higher gold price. We realized just under $2,900 an ounce, which helped everything. Also a good operational performance. Production was strong. We produced and sold 19,000 ounces of gold compared to 17 and a half in the comparable quarter. One thing I would just like to touch on is that final bullet point. I just wanna draw your attention to some of the steps we've taken to strengthen the board and the management team. Recently we've had two new non-executive directors joining: Stefan Bass, who is a mining engineer and metallurgist, he was previously at ArcelorMittal, and Lesley Goldwasser, who's joined us from the States, where she'll give us help and support, particularly in terms of corporate finance and capital allocation. One NED retired at the most recent AGM last week. That's Johan Holtzhausen.

He retired as a non-executive director, and he was also the chairman of the audit committee. I just wanna make the point: these changes at the board level, they're part of a structured and orderly rotation to make sure that we regularly change one or two NEDs rather than have a sort of a cliff effect where we have to change a lot all of a sudden. There's nothing untoward there. Finally, Ross joined as CFO a couple of months back, and he'll say a few words just before he starts to run through the financials. We're very, very pleased to have him. Could we move on to the next page? Right, this is just a summary. All these numbers will be spoken to exhaustively by colleagues.

Ross will go into more detail on the finance, and James will go into more detail on operations. Given the fact we've got a lot to cover, I really would not spend any more time on this page. With that, I'll hand over to Ross to take us through the financial results. Before he does that, if we could just pause on this page to allow Ross to introduce himself and to say a few words about why he joined Caledonia and what your particular attraction was. Ross, over to you.

Ross Jerrard (CFO)

Thanks, Mark. Good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to talk you through these financial results. First time for me as the CFO. There's a little bit about me. Ross Gerrard. I've joined Caledonia after spending just short of the last decade with a company called Centamin PLC, which was a FTSE 250 dual-listed company. It was taken over by AngloGold Ashanti late last year for $2.5 billion. During my time at Centamin, we achieved many milestones over that time, some good and some not so good. Importantly, in the second half of my time at Centamin, it was basically navigating the reset of a tier one mine, and that's the Sukari Gold mine in Egypt, resetting that mine for the next decade and beyond.

As part of that reset, it was looking at production profiles and life of mines, but importantly, lowering that all-in sustaining cost base and setting that mine up to provide or be the growth engine for a multi-asset portfolio. It was through consistent delivery we were able to demonstrate this reset and basically reinforce or make the investment case for a mine in Egypt that was really a little bit of an unknown mining jurisdiction, that being Egypt. The result, exiting, was really that we put both the company and the country on the map that could no longer be ignored from a mining jurisdiction or destination. Bringing that back to why I joined Caledonia, I see a number of parallels to that, in terms of having a wonderful operating mine in Blanket.

You know, it's been producing for a considerable amount of time and, importantly, has a long and exciting future ahead of it. It's running well, and with further optimizations and cost reductions, we have every opportunity to turn this into a real cash or a serious cash generator that will underwrite or provide a good platform for future growth and development opportunities. Many of those opportunities are already in the portfolio, which makes it even more exciting. We operate in Zimbabwe, which is a mature mining jurisdiction. As I said, Blanket's been producing since 1907, and we have a highly skilled workforce who know how to operate in the country. Personally, I'm very biased, I'll be honest. You know, I've been born in Bulawayo, so it's great, and I'm really excited about spending more time back in country.

I believe it's an exciting jurisdiction to operate in, particularly when you look elsewhere around the world and particularly throughout Africa. I think we're very fortunate to be able to operate in a country that we do. It's very much changing this concept of perception versus reality in terms of operations there. I'm very excited about both Caledonia and the Zimbabwe opportunity. When you look at it, it's both the quality of the assets, the quality of the team that's already there, and the opportunities that we have to maximize this growth. It's really quite appealing and compelling. That's me. Importantly, let's take a dive and have a closer look at the quarter. If we can turn to the next slide, please. Our gold revenue for the quarter was up at $56 million.

That was up 46% on the comparative quarter. This was really driven by good gold production, both in terms of Blanket and Bilboes Oxide. It is 19,000 ounces, which is up 9% on the comparative quarter, with the added benefit of an average realized gold price of just a shade under $2,900 per ounce, which is up 42%. This increase obviously meant that there was a higher royalty that was paid for the period, which you will see is up a similar 47%. Now, James Mufara, our CEO, will take us through some of those operational highlights a little bit later in this presentation. Basically, it was driven by higher tons being mined and milled, which had the resultant impact on production costs. It was a great volume equation in terms of the deliveries for the quarter.

That's where you see that those production costs have upped some 19% at $22.6 million for the, against the comparative quarter. That increase was primarily due to higher labor, power, and consumables costs. We'll go into a bit more detail later in the presentation, in terms of that right on. Very importantly, as you can see at the bottom right of the chart, we delivered a gross profit of $26.9 million, which was up 95% and, importantly, is a quarterly record. Let's just take a pause and talk a little bit more about that gross profit and trends in a bit more detail. If we can turn to the next slide.

Yeah, you can see on the slide in terms of mapping our profile of profit over the previous periods, both 2023, 2024, and into 2025, you can see consistent and significant increase in the gross profits through that period. What's really important is that we've increased considerably over the post those challenges in 2023, where you can see the difference in the orange line and the blue line, which is Blanket standalone. Those were really the challenges in terms of what we termed as the Bilboes Oxide phase. We no longer have that negative impact on gross profits from Bilboes coming through. Basically, Bilboes is able to pay its way and no longer have a negative impact. That's a really important story in terms of how that's come together.

I talked about resets in my intro, and I think this is one clear example in terms of being able to reset the strategy and relook at the group and the benefits and seeing that those benefits are actually being realized, both in terms of trajectory of that gross profit line, but being able to mitigate some of these challenges. I want to move back and talk a little bit more about those production costs. If we can, turn to the next slide, please. You can see in terms of our guidance ranges in Blanket Mine costs of $1,050-$1,150 per ounce, our costs are slightly higher than that guidance range. Those main increases are shown on the left chart, predominantly in that dark blue color of labor, consumables, and admin costs.

Some of those labor and consumable costs are really a result of those additional challenges and the overtime work to achieve the targets during the period and the production bonuses paid that were needed to achieve the quarter. We do, however, have several initiatives in place that will address these costs. I believe that overall, the annual guidance has fallen well within range and will be achieved over the year. We do not have concerns with that as these initiatives come into place. James, again, will talk about some of the initiatives that we are rolling out. On the right of the chart, you will see the all-in sustaining costs. These have been impacted by admin and capital expenditure, which are higher when you are looking back at the comparative quarter.

A lot of those admin costs, again, are one-off costs, as well as having a higher CapEx profile that was scheduled for the year. Over the year, we expect these to be normalized and come back to within the ranges, ranges that were guided. Excuse me. Some of those one-off costs, when we total the amount, there is almost $2.2 million, or bringing it back into ounce terms, $110 an ounce, which is short of that when backed out. If you back those out against those guidance ranges, we are well within the range or actually at the bottom end of that range. We will talk about those costs in a minute. If we move to the next slide, please.

Going into a bit more detail below the gross profit lines, the first one is those net foreign exchange losses. I'm glad to say that we did not have a big impact of exchange losses this period when compared to the previous quarter of $4.9 million. While this is a pleasing result, we really are actively trying to manage and mitigate our impacts of any devaluations in the business. It is an ongoing workstream. Importantly, that exchange loss is both realized and unrealized, in terms of what is incurred for the quarter. While we are well placed, it is very much a watching brief in terms of impact to the business. You will see mention in terms of the increase in working capital.

We are deploying a lot of our cash into working capital, prepayments, stores, inventories, and the like, and trying to best minimize any impacts of currency. It has been beneficial, but it is a watching brief in terms of how we go forward. Corporate was a big line item, as you will see, at $6.9 million. That was due to a number of one-off settlements that were done in terms of the reshuffle of our HR strategy and headcount that came through and a number of areas in the admin section that came through. One in particular on admin that I must highlight is that the company had previously entered into a series of gold hedges or rather put options that set the floor in terms of gold prices that were to be received.

These hedges or put options were basically an insurance policy that would set the floor and we would not be disadvantaged by any upside in the gold prices. I'm glad to say that with the gold price where it is and where it's expected to go, those prices are above the hedge limits, which means that we've fully expensed the hedges, and they've been written off in the income statement to the amount of $1.3 million that sits within that category. It's a good position to have whilst we actually never want to use a hedge. It's like an insurance policy, and you don't want to ever dive in and use that. That has had a consequential effect on the income statement.

If we can move to the next slide, we'll have a little, look at the, cash flows, for the period. There were increased, cash flows from operations. We're up at $18.7 million for the period, driven by what we've discussed already in terms of the presentation of both, gold price production and costs, with an increase in working capital. You can see the increase, in terms of, trade and other receivables, that I've mentioned. That was an active, decision in terms of what we paid. Net, cash from operating activity is more than double at $13.3 million compared to $4.9 million in the in the comparative quarter. Even after the higher taxes, this provides a solid foundation for some internal funding for capital investments and and debt reduction. You can see that we did have a higher level of taxes, as I mentioned.

This was due to the good performance, but also some timing of payments that were outstanding at the end of the fourth quarter that came and were paid in the early quarter of 2025. Those higher investing spend or activities are again in line with guidance. The net cash position improved. You'll see at the bottom of the slide, negative $4.6 million at the end of the quarter. That is compared to a negative $14.2 million for the comparative period, which is a great result for the three months. Moving to the next slide and talking about what that means for cash flow, we've been really pleased with our results and the ability to capitalize on both gold price or for good production base and with a focus on costs we expect this to continue.

This slide shows our cash held across the various jurisdictions and how this has evolved over the quarters. The second graph below is really the exciting one, which shows the consistent increase in cash each quarter, which is really, really pleasing. That consistent delivery of both ounces and benefited by the gold price, we expect that to continue, further on into 2025 and for the full year ahead. However, what you do not see on this graph is where we sit with our current cash position. Following the completion of the solar plant sale in April 2025, our pro forma net cash position improved to $18.6 million, which really provides us some flexibility for growth and the growth initiatives. We expect this cash balance to build.

and we put that cash sitting in Jersey in deposit accounts, and we tuck that away, and we expect that we'll build on that good performance as we go forward. Overall, a really pleasing quarter. It gets our 2025 off to a very good start. With that, I'll hand across to James Mufara, our COO, who will talk us through some of the operational performance.

James Mufara (COO)

Thank you very much, Ross. I mean, for that introduction. Good day to you all. As already stated by Ross and Mark at the beginning, Blanket achieved, you know, record quarter one production of ounces. If you can just go to the next slide, please, you will see that is depicted. First, I just want to start to talk about the graph at the bottom, which shows the ounces.

This record production of ounces was a result of, you know, intentional decisions that we took as management, of, of Caledonia. For the key decisions that we took, I want to bring them to your attention. The first one is, improved focus on health and safety, which, I'll allow at the end of my presentation, Rusiano Tsoka to talk to and, detail a little of those, some of those, initiatives. The second decision that we took was to decouple the mine from the plant. We had three initiatives to make this happen. The first was to have a focused, management team that just produces from underground and a focused management team that also does, production in the plant. These are two businesses that, are not necessarily the same. The second thing that we do to decouple the production was, to create a stockpile.

I mean, in the fourth quarter of last year, we realized the need that there was need to have a stockpile so that we can have a smooth production in the quarter. What you don't want is the day that the mine does not produce, we are not in a position to produce in the plant. We made a deliberate decision towards the end of the year, end of November, beginning of December, to build a stockpile so that we'll be in a position to consistently produce, even if we should have glitches, on the mine. This actually enabled us to decouple the mine from the plant. The third decision that we took also was to improve employee engagement. We did this through quite a number of initiatives. You know, one of them, including management by walkabout, which means engaging the employees. What is the feedback from the employees?

What is the feedback from management? The fourth action that we took to get to this record production, which was not in any case an incident, which did not surprise us, it was delivered action, was to start reducing short interval controls so that we will be in a position to control what's happening within the mine, within shorter periods of time. You will see that this resulted in the record production that we now see. Going to the top graph, which is the first graph that you see, you will see that although we have had, you know, quite a sustained increase with regards to our tonnage over time, one of the orange graph, which is the gray graph, has almost stagnated over time.

This is receiving attention through ounces that we are generating in better grade areas so that we can improve, you know, our grade with time. In the quarter, more importantly, in the quarter that just passed now, we actually saw an improvement of grade from 2.78 grams per ton in January up to, you know, when we ended the quarter in March, which ended on 3.3 grams per ton. This strategy is actually gaining traction. We are happy with the strategy that we have to improve the grade. If you may kindly just get to the next graph. The graph depicts how the actual production, you know, occurred in the quarter, throughout the quarter, which from January, is compared to the budget that we have for the quarter.

If you look at this graph, it will show you the orange line is the actual production that we actually produce from the plant, as of gold. The purple line represents the budget ounces over the same period within the quarter. This is a very nice graph, the dream graph, where you see that consistently throughout the quarter, the orange line remained above the purple line, which is, you know, showing both a flawless and a consistent delivery by the team. If you look at the, I mean, this graph also shows us that we have a little bit of a glitch, which I've already alluded to with the grade, which was 3.09 grams per ton against a plan of 3.21. I've already alluded to the fact that we started off on our breakthrough with a grade of 2.78.

However, we ended the quarter on a good grade, well above the plan of 3.3 grams per ton, showing that the initiatives that we've put in the quarter had paid off. The stockpile assisted us to leverage the consistency also with regards to the mill throughput, showing that the decisions that we've taken, deliberate decisions that we've taken in the fourth quarter, began to pay off in this particular quarter. If you can just turn to the next graph, the graphs show the different graphs, which is the three graphs that you will see there, they show the measurements of the key performance areas of the mine and the different sections in the mine.

I mean, of importance is to see that all the areas, which is on the left-hand side, you know, the table on the left-hand side shows that all the key performance areas were actually exceeded. I mean, this is broken down, and these are the key inputs into what we produce on the mine. This resulted actually in the surface stockpile, which we had already built in the fourth quarter, which was 7,000 tons, doubling to about 15,000 tons already on surface. The middle top, the top graph, shows that there is, there's achievement in the four mining areas. There are four mining areas, the one being shallow section, one being shallow which is the extreme left, and the section four on the extreme right being the deepest portion of the mine. All the sections actually achieved so consistent of production.

If you, what is also most encouraging is, the quarter graph, which is the reserve generation graph. This shows that although we exceeded production, you know, there was also a decrease in the reserves that was generated. This sets up the mine for better consistent production in the future. Overall, this picture shows, you know, discipline and focus in the execution of the plan, and that we expect to achieve our targets even going into the future. One of the key areas that Ross spoke about is the area with regards to cost, which is what I'm going to talk to before I head over to Rusiano. If I look at the next slide, if you may kindly get to the next slide again, and the next one. The focus on the cost has not been lost while we are pursuing higher production.

The following actions, which are some of the actions that we have already taken so that we can reduce our cost on the mine and thereby actually impacting our only sustaining cost, we recruited, we sourced and recruited a business improvement manager to join the team as from the third quarter. This is the office that will look at key initiatives with regards to cost, document them, and more importantly, being able to see that these initiatives are brought to fruition so that we can reduce this cost within the mine. Central shaft was, you know, fully handed over a few years back. One of the things that we need to do is to get this central shaft to be optimized and produce better. Central shaft accounts for 60% of our production.

We need to ensure that whatever we do in this area, we're in a position to operate optimally with regards to cost. The second, and within the top three costs that we do have, electricity is the second most expensive item that we do use on the mine. We have onboarded a company called Vision to identify and measure the usage of energy within the different parts of the mine, which means to say now we are in a position, we currently have good visibility of all the energy as it is being used at each energy center. We've got more than 100 measuring units on the mine that we can actually measure the units. We have real-time ability now to see where the energy is being used.

This is going to be useful for us going forward, when we try to optimize the areas because we know where all the large areas, where all the energy is actually being utilized. Labor is also a major cost. In fact, it's our biggest cost. We have decided to attack this, the cost script within the labor so that we can utilize our labor better going forward. We have started, we've put a time and attendance, you know, system called Firefly on Blanket. The whole mine has got that system now, it's been fully commissioned on the mine. This time and attendance system is going to give us visibility with regards to where our workforce is.

We'll be in a position to determine the underground hours at work, I mean, hours that the people going, and we will be in a position to determine where the overtime and all the hours that we may need to work on actually comes from. This is, we are very happy with regards to the introduction of this time and attendance system. The other area that we need to look at, which is the third most, highest area, which is the area of consumables that we need to look at, is we need to do better planning with regards to resources.

We have actually introduced a better planning system now where we are in a position to look at where each area of our mine, where are we using what so that we can be in a position to see how can we put systems in place so that we can have better resource utilization and, you know, better resource control. I will hand over now to Rusiano Tsoka to talk to some of the safety initiatives, that we have put, on the mine. Before I, you know, give him time to speak, I just want to introduce Rusiano Tsoka. Rusiano was hired in the third quarter of last year, 2024. You see it, you see it, the safety and health strategy for the company. Rusiano has worked for Anglo, Gold Fields, Rio Tinto.

For the last 15 years, Rusiano Tsoka was working for Gold Fields as a group health and safety manager for the company. Harmony, just to put into context, is a $10.8 billion market cap company, which produces 1.5 million ounces of gold and is with a workforce of about 48,000 employees. Rusiano is a Zimbabwean, and he has more than 35 years of experience in health and safety management. If you may, I may just hand over to Rusianoto talk to the health and safety initiatives that he has put across. Thank you.

Rusiano Tsoka (Safety and Health Strategy)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, James, for the introduction. Thank you. I'm going to give you an update on one of our key pillars of our operational excellence, which is safety. Since we reviewed the safety strategy, can you go to the next slide, please?

Since the safety strategy was reviewed in May 2024, we have focused on several safety initiatives that are all listed in this slide. Today, I'm just going to highlight two of the most impactful, which is the visible felt leadership, VFL, and the structured management of our top 20 operational risks. Visible felt leadership has ensured that our leaders, our managers, and supervisors are consistently present where it matters most, which is the underground and in the plant and in the field, and they are personally engaging with the employees through two-way communication. This dialogue provides management with valuable insights and information that is not typically obtained during routine inspections and audits.

In this quarter, last quarter alone, we conducted 47 VFL engagements, which helped identify and address unsafe acts and conditions at the source, while also fostering trust from the employees, accountability on the managers, and providing the platform for a proactive safety culture. In managing the COPE 20 operational risks, we have identified and prioritized the mine's most critical safety and health risks, which include falls off ground, heat stress, fire safety, and tailings storage integrity. Using the industry best practices and international standards such as the ICMM guidelines, the ISO 45001 risk management principles, we have assigned clear ownership deadlines and measurable outcomes. I'm pleased to report that over 85% of the high priority actions have already been completed and closed out.

This proactive closeout has significantly strengthened our critical controls, reduced our overall risk exposure, and directly contributed to the improved safety performance we have seen in this last quarter. The impact of the combined initiatives, including these two which I've just highlighted, is clear. We have reduced incidents from five incidents in January this year to one in March. This has provided us in achieving 26 accident-free days in January and 30 accident-free days in March. Safety is non-negotiable, and we are committed not only to protecting lives but also to securing the long-term sustainability of our operation. Our vision is to build and embed a proactive safety culture across the operations where every employee feels responsible, empowered, and supported to prevent incidents before they occur. Our journey to zero harm still continues. Thank you. Next slide.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Okay.

Can I ask, we're going to talk about Bilboes now. Could you, can I just make a couple of introductory comments before I hand over to Victor? Could you go to the next slide, please? Okay. Just before we get into the detail of what's going on with this, I just want to say a few words about capital allocation. I've said this before, but just to reiterate, our management's objective in approaching the development route for Bilboes is to maximize the uplift in Caledonia's net present value per share, which is the closest approximation we can actually get to our share price. There's a couple of ways to do this.

The first, and Victor will talk about this in more detail, is the various work streams that are happening now to optimize the project economics, to make the project as robust as possible. The other side of the coin is that we need to minimize our equity dilution. The way we do that is we're looking at ways to reconfigure the development approach to minimize the upfront capital cost. That's the immediate amount of money we need to build a project. We're also looking at options to increase Caledonia's internal equity contribution. That's our internal cash flow. In a few moments, Craig will give you some background as to the initiatives that we're looking at there.

Finally, to minimize the equity dilution, we also need to look at debt funding, but prudently. We clearly do not want to saddle the company with a burdensome amount of debt. We have had very fruitful engagements through Cutfield Freeman, our debt advisors, with potential funders. Those engagements are currently paused until we finish off the work that Victor is going to outline now. I just want to be clear on capital allocation as the most important element in how we approach this project. Can I just hand over to Victor, who will define through what we are doing to achieve these objectives of optimizing the project? Victor, over to you.

Victor Gapare (Executive Director)

Thank you, Mark.

On the Bilboes project, basically over the last few months working with DRA, all the feasibility study, the work has actually revealed that there are some opportunities for further optimization given the size of the project in terms of the amount of ore we will be mining, the waste we will be mining, as well as the capital required for the project. As far as the mining side of things is concerned, the feasibility study, which we are looking at, looks at 240,000 tons per month. There are opportunities to relook at the pit and mine shed line, particularly as this relates to our McCay's and Isabella operations, which are really within a 5 km radius of each other. There are opportunities there to reduce the upfront capital cost and also the operating cost over life of mine.

On the metallurgical side, as you know, we are going to use the bioprocessing method. The way we have looked at it now is that phase one of the project will focus on Isabella and McCay, and then phase two, which will come around year six, will focus on processing ore from our Bubi, from our Bubi mine. What we have done to optimize the capital there, we're looking at actually stripping out whatever upfront capital we're going to put in on the bios plant, strip out the CapEx related to Bubi so that upfront we only deal with CapEx related to Isabella and McCay. Obviously, this has implications in terms of, maybe the future capital, but at least the upfront capital which we have to put up now will have gone down, a bit. We are also exploring the option of exporting concentrates.

In the last few months, we have established that the Zimbabwe government can actually allow us to export concentrates, which means we won't have to put up the Biox plant upfront. We can put it maybe after two or three years. That saves upfront capital cost. It is one of the optimization options which we're looking at. As far as the infrastructure is concerned, this has really focused on the power requirements of the project. The biggest cost there is actually the power line, the direct supply power line, which will be about 70 km. We are in negotiations with the power authorities to actually put up the CapEx required for that line, but we can recoup that in the form of credits on our monthly electricity bill.

That will change the economics of the project. We're also looking at other things like the conveyors, which will result in us reducing again the upfront capital cost and also the office over time. There's also the issue of the contractor pricing. We think we can get better pricing from contractors when we look at the earth moving, the sevels and the infrastructure. That's an area we're looking at. We think there are savings to be had there. We are looking at the tailings storage facility, the TSF. It is the single largest cost in this project. We are really looking at the waste itself in terms of what the impact will be on the lining for us to comply from an environmental point of view.

That's work which maybe requires us to spend a little bit of money on it and a little bit of time on it to actually come up with the right lining requirements for the TSF and actually reduce the cost. There's the issue of the relocation. In the last presentation, we did say there was an opportunity to relook at the location of the TSF. We do own the motel property next door, as you know. The terrain there is a little bit more suitable for the tailings storage facility. We are looking at that, but that's more long-term. If we do that, that will come in at construction stage.

The other important aspect we are looking at, given that we are optimizing the feasibility study, we are re-looking at the smaller options which we have looked at before, but really at a conceptual level, at a scoping study level to see whether the economics of those can be looked at as can be options for us to look at. As far as timing of the publication, or rather for us to come back to the market and say, "This is what we have," the preliminary results should be out before the end of the year. We should be able to discuss the cap. We should have the same idea of the capital costs and other than the issues relating to the TSF site, which might take a little bit longer, or which will take a bit of longer, actually.

After we finish all this, we expect to engage with the Zimbabwe authorities first on the issue of concentrates and other matters related to the project in general. Mark has already said, once we finish this process, when we've got the same CapEx cost, we will engage with our prospective debt funders and move this project forward. The smaller scale options, as I have said, we are re-looking at the later scoping study level, but they should tell us whether there's merit to assess them. These will also be available at the same time as the feasibility study itself. Mark, that's all I can say about the project.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Can we now then ask Craig, our Vice President of Technical Services, to quickly outline what we're doing in terms of exploration, but also to talk about some of the developing opportunities that we're working on? Craig, over to you.

Craig Harvey (VP of Technical Services)

Thanks. Thanks, Mark. I'll just quickly take you guys through exploration and the near-term opportunities for Caledonia. If we can move on to the next slide, please. One of our key focus areas for this year is Motapa. At the end of last year, we put out a press release detailing the initial work that we had done. For this year, exploration at Motapa, we've got a budget of just under $3 million. The three trends that are there, north, central, i.e., Mpudzi, and south.

On the Motapa north, we are focusing this year to drill out a minimum of 250,000 ounces into a mineral, into a mineral resource. It's about 19,500 m of drilling that we've got planned. It's about 170 drill holes. Important to note is that we're only targeting down to about 150 m. That doesn't mean that, you know, that everything stops there. It's kind of the first phase. I'm pretty sure that we'll be drilling there next year to grow that sulfide resource. In our central area, as we've said before, the Mpudzi block, it's an abandoned iron formation. At our crops and surface, lots of, you know, lots of surface scratchings and things like that. We've fenced the area significantly. The goal for this year is to define an oxide mineral resource of greater than about 30,000 ounces.

I just want to caveat that, that it comes with everything relating to, is it amenable to a heap leach? What are the characteristics of the ore? Where is the oxide sulfide boundary and things like that? We have about 6,000 m of drilling planned to have a look at that. Quite clearly, Bilboes being from Mpudzi, it is probably about 400-500 m away from the Bilboes heap leach pads. Quite clearly, if we do the work, you know, we have a source of ore for the Bilboes heap leach pads. With all of the work that we are doing, you know, we are continually trenching across the shear, the shear zones that we find.

As we dig up some more info, Motapa south has revealed that there is a 600-m on-strike anomaly, where the trenches have returned anomalous values over a 20-25 m width. In this year, we are going to be doing some infill trenching there. I hope to get a few more funds towards the back end of the year to go and do a bit of drilling if the results are actually quite positive. That is Motapa in a nutshell. If we can move on to the next slide and talk a bit about Blanket. Blanket, the underground exploration. Just briefly, towards the beginning of 2024, we released drilling results from Blanket, currently working on an update which should come out in the next two to three weeks on our long-haul drilling. Long-haul drilling remains very, very positive, very positive.

The grades are better than what we think, widths, in some areas, very much better than what we think. Currently, we have drilled almost about 95% of what we want to drill down to 34 level, to get it all into an indicated resource or better. We are targeting extensions of the main ore bodies below 34 level as we do need to look at that to determine if we do end up going deeper. First of all, is the mineralization there? One of the things that has also stuck out at Blanket is that kind of pre, or sorry, post-1970, maybe post-1980, there has not been a lot of work done on surface, you know, right?

To put it into context, just to our south on our southern boundaries, the Wumba Chequa Goldmine, that's now gone into receivership and things like that. That's on banded iron formation as well. It's probably separated, cross strike or, yeah, cross strike 300-400 meters away from the Blanket share zone. Now, this banded iron formation runs all the way through the Blanket lease area. It's about 10 km in strike length. Pre-1970, there's some historic data that we are working through. And quite clearly, there are showings of good grades. There are showings of poor grades. We have now embarked on a strategy of what can we get from surface, typically oxide-type material, that we can bring into the Caledonia stable, some low-cost, dollar-per-ounce gold. It's not all just limited to surface. The bottom one there is smiler.

We'll put out some info in due course. Again, historically, it's been mined down to about a depth of 150 m. It's one and a half kilometers north of Lima, which is the northernmost shelf at Blanket. It's got very good grades, it's got good widths, very amenable to mining, so your typical type of mining widths. Again, we'll start to have a look at that and we'll bring that into the stable at Blanket. If we move on to the next slide, something I'm quite excited about is what we call these near-term opportunities. Both at Motapa and at Bubi, as Victor said, you know, Bubi is part of the Bilboes project. Both of these old mines or old areas have what we call spent heap leach pads.

Now, what we mean by that is that they were last irrigated in the year 2000 or last irrigated in the year 2020. The big thing about these heap leach pads is they were run-of-mine leach pads. What I mean by that is that the owners would mine and they would drill and blast, and they would take the blasted rock and load it directly onto a pad. It did not go through a crushing circuit at all. If we just have a look there, Motapa's spent heap leach pad had a historical recovery from the records that we have of 53%. Bubi had just under a 61% historical recovery. To put it into context, Bilboes installed a crushing circuit into their run-of-mine flow of ore. The Bilboes recovery is just north of 82%, I think it is.

In a nutshell, very, very quickly, we've already started this work, a crushing and screening operation with a load onto a pad and leach. We could probably add somewhere in the region of 30,000-40,000 ounces of recoverable gold over the next two- to three-year period at even lower cost than a normal open-pit mine would operate at. We are clearly pushing quite hard, and it's exciting. Okay. Thanks. That's all I've got to add on the exploration side.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Thank you. Thank you, Chris. We've spent quite a long time with us, for 50 minutes or so. Can we quickly go to the outlook and get to the quickest? Our objectives are really a strategic focus and disciplined growth. These objectives are to maintain Blanket's production as it is at the moment.

We've got off to an excellent start this year. We'll continue to progress our cost production initiatives. Hopefully by the end of the year, we'll see some progress on that. As you've heard, we are expanding the exploration activities at Blanket with a view to extending Blanket's life of mine and also to explore new opportunities on the lease area. Maurice Mason explained to evaluate beneficial development options through Bilboes with a view to optimizing economics and reducing the upfront capital costs. As Craig also outlined, we're very excited about the potential at Motapa. We've done a lot of ground there. Sorry about that. I hope you found it useful. Can we open this up to questions?

Operator (participant)

Thanks very much for that, Mark.

Now, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the raise your hand button, which is down at the bottom of your screen. If you're on the telephone, please press star nine. Just hold for two seconds for people to come through on the question side of things. For our first question, which is from Harry Flinker. Harry, please go ahead. You just unmute yourself. You can ask your question.

I have no questions.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

No questions.

Okay.

That's my quarter. My quarter time.

Thank you for your help. Very good. We'll do a few several questions.

Operator (participant)

That's great. Our next question is from Nick Dineham. Nick, please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, everybody. Thanks. It was a really impressive presentation. Thank you. A couple of questions.

James, you've unpacked a lot more data than we've seen traditionally about the mine itself, and you've given us some comfort that you're balancing out the reserves against the production. What about the longer-term aspects of mine development, you know, the developments on the declines and the other work that you're doing? Is that where it should be at the moment? That's the first question.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Thanks, James. Thank you.

James Mufara (COO)

Thanks, Nick. Yes. The development on the decline at the moment, as you can see, we have made a decision. When we took over, we realized that we had some shallow reserves that we could mine. I mean, myself and Craig, we went in and we realized closer to the surface, you don't need ventilation, you don't need a lot of energy. Get this to slow because it's going to be costly, both all the.

We actually are getting our production better, closer to surface. Obviously, in the medium to longer term, we will have to restart those declines and go deeper.

Thank you. The next question is really a little bit about Blanket dividends and its part it can play in the future for the next two or three years. Your mine is obviously making a lot of money. What were the dividends that came out of Blanket in 2024? This is a difficult one for you, but if we look ahead for the year, how much money do you think you can extract from Blanket to fund your business? What is the likely close-out horizon on the facilitation loans under the current gold price scenario?

What's the most important or influential crisis in. Let's just start with the facilitation loans.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

The first thing is Blanket, just Blanket's dividend distribution without all the Blanket shareholder interest to effectively take as much cash as anybody as you can out of Blanket. We want that, and the other shareholders want that too, okay? The balance has to be you do not over-distribute, which we have already done. At this rate, I would expect the facilitation loans to get repaid in about 12 months' time at this rate of distribution to cash generation. I will leave it to Ross to talk about how much cash he thinks he might be able to get out of Blanket over the course of the year.

Ross Jerrard (CFO)

Thanks, Mark. Hi, Nick. Yeah, quite easily, you know, we would be able to end up at the end of the year with a cash balance of between $50 million and $60 million, depending on various features that we look at.

so it's quite an exciting trajectory in terms of cash flows coming through. We are looking at various initiatives as part of that cost program in terms of various initiatives in terms of longer-term saving and bringing costs down. There might be some additional capital that's deployed into those projects, so short-term spend to gain a longer-term horizon. We'll use our cash on that, but quite feasibly, you know, we look at closing balance of about anywhere between $50 million and $60 million.

Thank you.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Anything else, Nick?

Yeah, I just wanted to, you still own a couple of small exploration projects, which would just not be the right time to shake yourself loose from them, given how big your commitment is in Bilboes.

Which, which one, which one's in particular?

what's the other one? It's your Motapa Green. Motapa Green is not the wrong Motapa Green.

It's being incubated at the moment. No, we wouldn't sell that. What's a company about anything else that we've got?

Okay. Finally, I think you touched on that. Is the tempting things that you could do with now the money, the strategic, the position the company is in now is materially different from what it was a year ago and possibly even when your budgets were set. There are potential opportunities, and I think you previously have spoken about investment in electricity. Is there anything else out there that attracts you, like more investment in exploration around?

I think we've got plenty to update right now. We've got some exciting potential investment opportunities. We've got more than much. Okay.

Operator (participant)

Thanks very much, Nick. Just a few last few questions. Please do, press star one. Okay.

If just remind everybody, if you'd like to ask a question, please do raise your hand or press star nine on the telephones on there. We've got a next question, which is from Katya. So why Nora? Please go ahead, unmute yourself, and obviously ask your question. Thank you.

Hi, can you hear me?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yep, we can hear you.

All right. Thank you. You had previously set aside $41 million in CapEx for 2025 to modernize operations and mining efficiency and invest in exploration efforts. I think of this amount, you had said $3.4 million set aside for Blanket, $6.9 million for Bilboes and Motapa. How much of that has been spent to date?

That's a slow. So roughly

Ross Jerrard (CFO)

$10 million across both.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. We've done approximately $10 million. The only impediment of spending that money is just the speed of doing it.

Ross Jerrard (CFO)

You know, it comes down to sometimes procuring things can have quite a long lead time, sometimes getting service providers to actually get that. The only impediment is not the availability of cash. It is just physically spending that much money that quickly. Does that help?

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thanks. Do you have any further questions or does that answer your question? I think it was for Boston.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Okay. We are good to have further questions.

Sorry. Sorry. Yes. Yes. I just have one more follow-up. Since there has been an increase in your cash generation and potential throughout the quarter, and indications that you want to build up your cash balance sheet at the end of the year to between $50 million and $60 million, in terms of sourcing for your CapEx for the rest of the year, is it safe to assume that most of that will be coming from this?

Could you explain on that?.

All of our CapEx is funded from internal cash. The $50 million-$60 million that Ross referred to is after CapEx. The mine will generate $100 million, of which $40 million will get spent in CapEx, and the balance is what is left over. We fund the CapEx from cash flows.

Right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thanks very much. We have no further questions at the moment. Maybe I could turn back to you, Mark, for any closing remarks.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Thank you all for your attendance. It was a good quarter, but hopefully as this gold price continues and with a robust start to production of the year, hopefully we will see improvements in quarter two and thereafter. We will update you next quarter.

Thank you very much for attending.