Caledonia Mining - Q4 2023

Transcript

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to our 2023 Results Call for Shareholders. On the call from Caledonia, you have Mark Learmonth, our CEO, Chester Goodburn, our CFO, and then myself, Camilla Horsfall. I'm the Vice President of Group Communications. We're going to run through the presentation as always, and we will leave time for questions at the end. What we do ask, though, is if you do have a question, if you could just raise your hand and we will unmute you. We find that's a better format than the written Q&A. Okay, I'm now just going to pass you over to Mark and Chester, who can run through the presentation.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Thank you. Thank you very much, Camilla. I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's CEO, and I was going to give a few opening observations and comments before I hand over to Chester. So, to say, 2023 was a challenging year. Most of the difficulty was encountered in the first half of the year with a difficult situation at Blanket Mine and also the Bilboes Oxide problem. Both of those are resolved, and Q3 was a good quarter. Q4 started off reasonably well. We were sort of sideswiped towards the end of the quarter by a couple of unexpected things. But pretty much the bad news relating to 2023 was dealt with in the first half. Having said that, let's just run through this. So annual gold production at Blanket was just over 75,000 ounces, which was in line with guidance.

Gross profit for the year was $41.5 million compared to nearly $62 million in the previous year. That decrease was largely due to higher production costs, in particular at the Bilboes Oxide mine in the early part of the year. It should also be noted that 2023 performance, particularly the Q4 performance, was adversely affected by higher work in progress. That was gold in a bar that hadn't been sold at the end of the year, just over 3,000 ounces. That represents about $6 million of revenue and about $3 million of gross profit. That was sold in the first week of January. That was just purely a timing issue. In terms of operating costs, we had expected higher labor and power costs, but they were somewhat higher than we'd even expected.

We are looking at measures to reduce our electricity consumption and to improve our labor efficiency. And certainly on the labor side, that's gone reasonably well since December 2023. On the electricity side, the issue is purely one of higher-than-expected usage. It's got nothing to do with pricing. In fact, actually, our average unit pricing for electricity has come down. On the good side, the drilling program at Blanket has yielded very positive results. We put out two news releases, one in July, I think, and then the other one in January. And buried deep in the financial statements, you'll find a reference to the fact that on the back of that drilling, the life of mine at Blanket has been extended from 2034 out to 2041. And that statement will be followed up in due course with a revised resource and reserve table.

We've maintained our quarterly dividend payable in April this year, which reflects the good start to 2024 and our confidence that the remainder of 2024 will be strong. We've received some preliminary feedback from the various consultants who are working on the Bilboes feasibility study. Management and the board are evaluating those results so that we can make a capital allocation decision. We're pressing now very hard to get that work to a state of finality where it's capable of being published. As previously announced, Dana Roets, the Chief Operating Officer, stepped down with effect from the end of February, and we're now very close to announcing the appointment of his replacement. In just 10 times of summary, I've already mentioned production. That was something you can see here for the quarter, just under 21,000 ounces compared to just over 21,000 ounces in Q4 2022.

We benefited from a higher gold price, which fed through into higher revenues. Gross profits for the quarter are within touching distance of what they were in Q4 2022. But as you can see for the full year, $41.5 million compared to $61.8 million. And unfortunately, there's a lot of damage below the gross profit line, which meant that the attributable profit to shareholders was a loss in the quarter and the year. Chester will give you more information on that. So that's just some sort of headline numbers. Could we move on? So just to give you a longer-term view of what's been happening at Blanket, these graphs go back to 2012. And the top graph that shows grade and tons, you can see that the tons have increased pretty much steadily from 2012 to 2023.

But you will notice in the first two quarters of 2023, tons mined and milled did show a fairly sharp contraction, for reasons we've previously discussed. But pleasing to see that that recovered quite well in Q3 and Q4 of 2023. Grade has, in general, declined. But one of the things that I think we're optimistic about as we do more exploration is that the grade will stabilize and may somewhat slightly improve. Should we move on? Okay, it's probably best if I hand over now to Chester to run through the more detailed analysis of the financial results. Chester?

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Thank you, Mark. Yeah, it's good to see the revenue going up in the quarter, the comparable quarter. And that's due to increased ounces sold as well as the higher realized gold price that's received. It's in that number, but 3,000 ounces of gold in work in progress that was sold early in January. And that's mostly just a quarter feature. AISC is pretty much been flat at 5%. The tax regime in Zimbabwe for several years has been fairly unchanged and inconsistent. Production costs, that's gone up for the quarter versus the comparable quarter, predominantly due to the higher electricity usage from when we added the Central Shaft in 2023 and really started hoisting some tonnages real fast. Now, as we go forward with our life of mine plan, we aim to move our production to centralize our production to below 750 meters. We're currently mining above and below.

That centralization below 750 would allow us to shut some shafts down, likely we might start here for No. 4 Shaft and No. 6 Winze. That should reduce our kilowatt-hours going forward. Now, the sequencing of that and exactly how many kilowatt-hours we will save, that decision is still under process, and we've been making up our or evaluating our various options on that. Other than that, overtime, it's been high in October and November. Our initiatives have paid dividends in December and months going forward, so you won't see an increase in the overtime. That's been solved. We've incurred some unforeseen maintenance costs late in December of approximately $1.1 million. We don't expect to incur that going forward. The depreciation number has gone up, and that's where you can see the shortened useful life of some of the shafts that we estimate.

And going forward, with this significant increase in the life of mine to 2041, we will probably see that depreciation number now coming down. But it does include that shortened life of the shafts going forward. Under the gross profit line, we've seen a lot of one-off higher price, so we don't expect to incur going forward. That would be related to well, let's say $1.7 million of that would relate to the settlement payable to the former COO. We had $1.5 million non-cash impairments on those receivables and the oxide mining activities that we had. And for the year, we expended quarter one $3.1 million on acquisition fees of Bilboes. And that's still quite a few million ounces of gold. Other than that, significant items would be $2.5 million of foreign exchange losses that are in that other costs.

So all in all, we shouldn't see the overtime costs repeating. We don't expect the unforeseen maintenance. That's why it's unforeseen, and we should not see that going forward. Our production is looking good for Q3 and Q4, and that's carried through to Q1. And we won't see these once-off costs that I've just mentioned. So I'm looking forward to sharing these results with you in Q1. All in all, you can also see the Blanket Mine numbers remaining robust and a very tough year for us. And Blanket Mine, which is the underlying business cash generator, that has remained strong. Our tax expense at Blanket Mine has approximately an effective tax rate of approximately 37%-42%. And why we have such a high effective tax rate for the group is because there's a lot of non-deductible expenditures within the group, like the Bilboes oxide losses.

These Bilboes oxide losses, they were $2.3 million for the quarter. We expect that to come down to approximately $200,000 per month. You shouldn't see that additional cost of $13.1 million going forward. When we look at the detailed operating cost breakdown, our wages and salaries have gone down quarter-on-quarter. That's due to a reduced production bonus. Consumable has very much stayed in check. That's throughout the higher inflation environment that we've seen globally. Our procurement department has really done well to keep our price in check with a modest increase in consumables. Electricity, we've seen the solar plant producing some of the high usage that we experience on our utility use. The solar plant has very much been producing a lot better than what we expected initially. We're looking at some solutions to reduce our electricity bills going forward.

Bilboes' oxide, that's been placed on care and maintenance from 1 October 2023. As I said, that reduced to approximately $200,000 per month. Admin expenses, that's gone up during the 12 months. That's also due to a few once-off costs. We mentioned the $3.1 million we spent on our advisors to obtain Bilboes. Our salaries and wages costs also include that $1.7 million on the settlement payable to the COO. Additional wages and salaries that we've incurred was mostly on our MRM fees. That's to do some of our feasibility studies and also evaluate our ore body. We've seen that paying some dividends by the increase of life of mine. Taking out the $3.1 million, the $1.7 million of the settlement, you will see that our general admin costs have very much stayed in line with inflation from 2022.

On the chart here, you can see the effect of Bilboes in yellow. We've got some power increases. We can explain that. We don't foresee that those oxide costs can increase again. Our labor might be reduced going forward with the overtime initiatives that are paid off. Looking at the AISC and sustaining costs, sustaining CAPEX shoots up. That's mostly due to a different allocation. Now that we've hit steady state, most of our CAPEX moves from a non-sustaining place to a sustaining capital classification. That's pushed up our AISC and sustaining costs. In all, our CAPEX pretty much remains the same in total. It's just how we allocate it. Taxation, I've mentioned.

But when we put a higher effective tax rate, that's just due to some of our losses being reinvested in things and with our taxable income improving going forward with losses like the Bilboes oxide project not being reincurred going forward. We should see that number improving. A slight increase was made to the effective tax rate, 25.75%, from 1 January 2024. Our balance sheet and our non-current assets have increased. That's due to the acquisition of Bilboes and our solar plant that's just came online. If we look at our non-current liabilities, that has increased due to our overdraft facilities that have increased. Primarily due to higher working capital needs at Blanket with Blanket going to 75,000-80,000 ounces to do so. That's very much due to fund some swings around about on our working capital.

And we've also issued some bonds locally in Zimbabwe to improve the local financial markets and be more than relevant. Cash, currently, we're sitting with a negative net cash balance of $11 million. Got a negative $13.8 million in country in Zimbabwe. And our cash balance is deposit cash balance remains outside of Zimbabwe. Now, going forward, it should be all our production, which you can see in our YTD earnings as well for Q1. With our higher gold prices, we should see that negative number improving as 2024 progresses.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Thank you. Thank you, Chester. I just want to just leave you with this slide, which focuses on Blanket's quarterly performance in 2022 and 2023. I just want to make it very clear that the difficulties that we'd faced in the first two quarters of 2023, quarters one and quarter two, where you can see production dipped from about 21,000 ounces in the second half of 2022 to 16,000 and 17,000 ounces in quarter one and quarter two, respectively, which then flowed through into a fairly sharp fall in gross profit from anything like $20 million a quarter down to $12 million and $17 million. I just want to just make it very clear that in terms of the underlying profitability and cash generation, Blanket has improved in Q3.

Q4, $17 million of gross profit, that's pretty much accounted for by the 3,000 ounces of gold work in progress that was realized in January. So the core of the business is Blanket. It had a bit of a difficult time in the first half of 2023, but we're now increasingly comfortable that it's now through that. Should we move on? Next slide. Okay. So look, in terms of outlook, we've taken steps to address the higher-than-expected costs experienced in the second half of 2023, although it's fair to say that finding a full resolution to the elevated electricity usage may take us a little bit longer. Our expectation is to maintain production at Blanket Mine in the range of 74,000-78,000 ounces.

That's somewhat lower than we've indicated previously because we've taken a decision to scale back production in areas which are relatively low-grade and relatively low-volume and quite remote from the main infrastructure. So all three of those together means that those areas, which might only be moving 75-100 tons a day, are relatively high cost. We're very comfortable operating some areas of the mine which are low-grade because they're very high-volume and therefore very efficient. So we're trying to focus the mine on producing cash-generative ounces and not just chasing ounces at any cost. We're in the short strokes of preparing a revised resource statement which reflects the encouraging drilling results we've reported in 2023 and early 2024.

The board and management are now beginning to consider some of the initial feedback on the work that's been done on the feasibility study with a view to identifying the most appropriate implementation strategy. Currently, we're doing some low-level exploration at Blanket, and we hope that that will start to improve. I guess I'd say that the start to 2024 at Blanket has been very encouraging. That creates a very solid foundation for us to become as we've said we want to become, which is a Zimbabwe-focused multi-asset gold producer. I think that's the end of the formal part of the presentation. Maybe I can hand this over for opening it up to questions. As Camilla said, if you raise your hand, we'll unmute you. We'll find it easier to deal with verbal questions rather than written questions.

Although having said that, while people get their minds working, I do receive a very detailed email with some questions. The first question related to the reasons for Dana's leaving the company. We entered into a termination agreement with Dana, which is subject to an NDA. But I think it's fair to say that Dana made an enormous contribution to the business over the last 10 years, in particular completing the Central Shaft. Central Shaft is now complete. The tailings facility is complete. And we have yet to start work on the new business of the Bilboes project. And therefore, in the context of that and some other matters, it was an appropriate time for both sides to part company. The recruitment process, his replacement, is very well advanced.

I mean, by very well advanced, I expect to be able to provide some updates within the next week or so. We've had no difficulty attracting talent. We've been very favorably surprised, actually, by the strength and depth of the pool of candidates who've been very excited about pursuing the opportunity that's reflected by Caledonia. There's a lot of detailed questions about the solar plant at Blanket. First of all, let me just clarify. The proposed sale of the solar plant is not a sale and lease back. It is an outright sale. Actually, one of the issues that is currently somewhat holding up negotiations is the counterparty is trying to transfer risk back to us. We're very clear that this is an outright sale with a long-term take-or-pay contract. It's not a sale and lease back.

Having said that, at the moment, the solar farm is producing slightly better than we'd expected. There is scope in due course maybe to consider increasing the size of the solar farm. The issue we face is that we're the only logical offtaker for the product from the solar farm. If we expand the size of the solar farm so that it produces more power than Blanket can use at any one time, either that power gets wasted or we have to find some way of storing it, which means batteries, which are very expensive. There's no real alternative in terms of finding someone who can buy the surplus that we produce from time to time. That puts a limit on the growth prospects for the solar project.

But it is something that we will be considering in the context of trying to reduce our overall electricity cost. As you know, we have hedged. Given the fact that we're in the late stages now of a capital expenditure program, which really focuses on the finishing off the final stages on the tailings facility and the finishing off the horizontal development relating to Central Shaft, for as long as we have those relatively high levels of capital expenditure, we will hedge. We will hedge from time to time. But if we didn't have those high levels of capital expenditure, we wouldn't see the need to hedge in hedging. Let me be clear. It's buying out of the money put options. So it's basically paying an insurance premium. We don't engage in forward sales or hedging structures that give rise to potential margin calls.

So those are the questions that I received by email, which I hope I've addressed. If anybody else hasn't, can we move back now to any further questions if people have them?

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Mark, we've got a question. Yeah. It's in the chat. That's someone.

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

There's one from Howard Flinker. Howard, we've unmuted.

Speaker 3

Hello, everybody.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Hello, Howard.

Speaker 3

The two questions are, what do you plan to spend on CapEx this year?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

$30 million. Sorry, Chester. I'll leave it to you. Chester? Sorry, I'll leave it to you.

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Just over $30 million.

Speaker 3

How much?

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Just over $30 million.

Speaker 3

30?

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Okay. Second, because your sound was so low, I couldn't understand the explanation of taxes. Is it essentially that your deferred tax is in U.S. dollars and you couldn't depreciate it with the Zimbabwean dollar?

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

No. I wouldn't say that enough. From 1 January 2022, we've been doing the tax calculation in our income tax scale on a combination of Zim dollars and US dollars. Previously, it was just based in Zim dollars and constantly see a devaluation. Now, going forward.

Speaker 3

Could you get the computer a little closer to you? Your sound is very weak.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Sorry, Howard. Let me step in.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

So we report in US dollars, okay? But the underlying tax calculations are done in a combination of US dollars and local currency. And that makes it absolutely impossible for someone like you or me who just looks at a dollar set of accounts to actually reconcile those dollar profits back to the stated tax charge. Having said that, the tax regime in Zimbabwe is by no means unfavorable. The headline tax rate is 25%. We get 100% capital allowances for capital expenditure in the year that you spend them. And so what that means is that if Blanket makes a profit of, I don't know, call it $40 million, from that profit, you deduct the, in this year, $30 million of capital expenditure. And then the resulting number, $10 million, is on what that's the amount that you pay income tax on. The difference comes through as deferred tax.

Now, clearly, that's not a cash tax. That will unwind in due course. Now, the problem from a group perspective is that while we can, if we try hard enough, make sense of the income tax at the Blanket level, all of the losses that we incurred at Bilboes—about $7 million of losses at Bilboes—we can't offset those against the profits at Blanket because they're two separate entities. But the tax losses at Bilboes are available for use in due course.

Speaker 3

Hang on. That part I understood. But Blanket seemed to have a large tax rate in the fourth quarter by itself.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. And that's because, well, Blanket didn't make very much money in the first quarter. And that's because of this difficulty of some of the taxes are calculated in local currency. Some of the taxes are calculated in US dollars. It is audited. It is audited, and it is correct. But it does make it very hard to see through and understand it. And the big differences are things that are realised tax losses or tax gains in US dollars in local currency reverse.

Speaker 3

There's something to add there. Connected to the currencies.

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Can you hear me?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. Go on. Try again, Chester.

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Yeah. Something else to add is there's $1.7 million of additional deferred tax in the tax expense. And that's due to the effective tax rate moving from 24.72%-25.75%. That increases your deferred tax liability. So there's a not quite.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. That didn't affect Q1. That's a year-end.

Speaker 3

No Q. Probably Q4. I didn't realize it was that large. I thought it was only 1.5%. I thought probably not $1.7 million. But I didn't understand.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. But it attaches to a very large amount of capital expenditure.

Speaker 3

Okay. Of course. Thanks.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Okay. Thank you, Howard.

Speaker 3

You're welcome.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Further questions?

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

Yep. There's one here from Ian Joscelyne. Ian, you're unmuted. It should be.

Speaker 4

Hello?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Hello. I can just hear you. Very faint.

Speaker 4

Okay. I'll just try and turn the volume up.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

That's fine. That's fine. That's fine.

Speaker 4

Okay. Yeah. I just got a couple of questions. One that occurred to me as you were talking, I think you said that the amount to which you add cost to capital to the balance sheet will reduce because Blanket is now becoming I think the Central Shaft is now becoming an ongoing operation. It means that costs are effectively, I think, incurred as they're spent. If that's correct, presumably, at some point, depreciation will come down because what you would have added to your balance sheet and then depreciated no longer gets added to your balance sheet that's incurred in the period. So one should expect depreciation to come down on Blanket. Is that reasonable?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. That's what Chester was saying. So because we depreciate the fixed assets on a per-ounce basis.

And so as we are going to add more ounces to the life of mine plan, that means that the depreciation charge per ounce will come down, balanced, on the other hand, by us looking to reduce the useful lives of certain other bits of infrastructure like say the Jethro Shaft or other stuff. But given the size of Central Shaft, I would expect that the benefit arising from the longer life of Central Shaft will outweigh the bad effect of shortening the lives of other assets.

Speaker 4

Yeah. Talking of the different shafts and how you're basically looking to rebalance production to the more profitable areas, I wonder, would it be I would find it helpful as a shareholder to understand what your original plans were. And obviously, something didn't quite go according to plan, which resulted in the higher cost that you incurred in quarter one and quarter two. So would it help to understand the process by which that happened and?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Ian, maybe someone didn't do the math right.

Speaker 4

Okay. Okay. So it was just a planning issue, was it?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Well, yes. And you've said just a planning issue. It's quite a big planning issue, isn't it? But we can clearly see that with the benefit of hindsight, our electricity consumption has increased dramatically when we commissioned and started using the Central Shaft in earnest. And whilst we're in this period of having the Central Shaft only services the mine below 750 meters, okay? And the other infrastructure largely services stuff above 750 meters. So for as long as we're continuing to operate from the old mine above 750 meters and the new mine below 750 meters, we will inevitably continue to use a large amount of infrastructure.

When in a couple of years, we've gravitated towards mining exclusively below 750 meters, then unless we find something very attractive above 750 to justify continued operations above that level so unless that happens, then we will be in a position to completely stop the old infrastructure. And then we're in a situation where we'll be relying exclusively on the Central Shaft.

Speaker 4

Okay. So what you're saying was that that wasn't properly in hindsight, that wasn't properly accounted for, the fact that effectively you were doubling operations. I was also interested to see, I mean, I think you correctly said that the bad news was mainly quarters one and quarters two. But the market didn't react very well to the pre-results RNS where you said that profits would be down. So I'm just wondering whether that was down to the market not really catching up with the bad news in the first two quarters or whether they.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. I think if you extrapolate from the earnings at the end of September were I think about sort of $0.17 by the end of September. And then in September itself, earnings were about $0.35. And so as we went into Q4 with the expectation that Q4 would be about the same as Q3, it was not unreasonable to expect the outturn for the year would be about $0.50, which was certainly in line with one of the analysts. Perhaps the other analyst was a little bit adrift. And that assumption held true pretty much until we got into December. And then I think we may have been slow to anticipate the effect of some elevated costs which we incurred in December on the effect for Q4.

I think the other thing that made it sort of amplified that was because quarters 1 and quarters 2 had been so poor, it meant that the effect of earnings variations at the back end of the quarter had a disproportionately large effect.

Speaker 4

Yeah. I can see. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

But look, I mean, it's certainly something we will pay much closer attention to. But having said that, if we'd have started off the year as we'd expected to start off the year, a variation in quarter four of $0.10 or $0.15 wouldn't have been the upset that it actually turned out to be.

Speaker 4

Do you think you could just take me through? I appreciate Bilboes has been put on the care and maintenance, but it would just be helpful to understand what led you to the decision that you thought that you could obviously make the effectively turn a stripping cost of the oxides before you got to the sulfides. You thought you could make that at least pay its way and how that turned out not to be the case.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. Well, again, we discussed that sort of at length in quarter one and quarter two. But the management team at Bilboes had been mining oxides for 10 years. They were confident that they could continue to do it. All they needed or all they thought they needed was extra capital expenditure which they couldn't fund themselves to do a certain amount of pushing back and stripping. But having incurred that cost to do the pushing back and the stripping, it then transpired that what they expected to find in terms of oxide resources was either disappointing or just not there. And that was the problem. And having so we really began to understand that in April, May, and then by the end of June, we made the decision to return the business to care and maintenance. But the contractor had a three-month notice period.

We had that runoff for an extra month, which was not comfortable. I would say that certain element of oxide still remains. Those oxides will be extracted in due course as part of the bigger sulfide project. The other thing I want to make absolutely clear is the Bilboes project has got 2.3 million ounces of sulfide material. The oxides was only ever a few tens of thousands of ounces. It's not material. With the benefit of hindsight, with the benefit of hindsight, we would not have embarked on that whole oxide exercise. We would have put the mine on care and maintenance immediately and kept it on care and maintenance. With the benefit of hindsight, that's what we would have done.

Speaker 4

I'm sure you've discussed this already, but what you're saying presumably is that the amount of oxides that you thought were there were not there, and that was the problem. But then presumably, the sulfides are that further in. If the level of confidence of knowledge of the oxides wasn't there, the question is, and presumably you've got the answer, is that why is the level of why is the level of confidence for the sulfides that are further down still there when you were let down by the level of confidence of the reserves higher up?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Because the sulfides have been directly drilled. Not all of the oxides have been directly drilled.

Speaker 4

Okay. Okay. Okay. I understood.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

You're very welcome to visit and look at the core samples.

Speaker 4

Yeah. Yeah. No. I'm sure you've asked yourself that question, but it just occurred to me that okay. So the main drilling has been on the sulfides. And sort of I appreciate you saying you're going to come back to the market. And again, you probably outlined this, but I missed those meetings. Sort of what timescale roughly are we talking about bringing Bilboes into some sort of production? Are we talking two or three years?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Well, the critical thing is going to be the funding. Within that, the critical thing is going to be the debt funding. Debt funders move relatively slowly. Let's say we can get the funding in place by this time next year, which I think would be very optimistic, and then probably two years to build.

Speaker 4

Okay. Okay. And you're still looking at debt funding, not an equity raise?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Well, that's exactly one of the things that we're focusing on. We believe the project has a capacity to carry a high proportion of debt. And that's the first thing we'll do when we've decided what's the best way forward will be to firm up our understanding on that by having direct engagement with the lenders. I mean, we've already had preliminary conversations with most likely lenders. And they're not going to be Western banks that people know. They're going to be African development banks who've indicated a high degree of interest in this specific project. And they know this project because the previous management team at Bilboes had already engaged with them. So that would be the first approach. And when it comes to funding the differential, we will consider any form of funding with a view to optimizing Caledonia NPV per share.

In terms of non-debt funding, that would obviously include public equity markets, private equity markets, but also potentially joint venture partners.

Speaker 4

Okay. Okay. Yep. That's been very helpful. Thank you.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Any further questions? Can I look? Can you see?

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

We've got a few written questions. So just hold on. Compared to the cost of power from ZESA and the solar plant, which is more expensive? Secondly, has the power reliability improved?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Okay. We get power from three sources, okay? We used to get power from ZESA. That's now been replaced by getting power we import power directly into Zimbabwe through a mechanism called the Intensive Energy Users Group. We've been doing that since I think about April, if memory serves me right. And that's actually been an initiative fostered by the Zimbabwe government. And that means that the power that we import is actually somewhat cheaper than the power we will get from ZESA. Chester may have those numbers down. Chester, what's the power differential between buying from ZESA and buying from the IEUG? Do you have that yet?

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Yeah. It's about $0.035 per kWh.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Okay. So it's $0.035 different. Yeah?

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Yeah. Great.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. Lower. We don't pay IEUG $0.035, okay? So there is a slight benefit by getting power through the IEUG, but it still has to come through the grid. And so what it means is while we no longer suffer straight-out power outages as you get in South Africa, we do continue to get disruptions in our power supply and also peaks and troughs in the voltages because the ZESA grid is in very poor condition. So to deal with that, the second source of power is standby diesel generators, which we've had for years. And then the third source of power, which we started using early in 2023, is the solar project, which provides about a quarter, perhaps a bit less than a quarter of our power during sunny times. Now, our overall power consumption has increased considerably, but our average unit cost is much lower.

Case in point, the use of solar means that in 2023, we used just less than 1.5 million liters of diesel. Whereas in 2022, before we had the solar project, we used nearly 4 million liters. If diesel's costing you $1.50-$1.60, that's an appreciable saving.

Chester Goodburn (CFO)

Marco, if you can hear me, maybe if I could add that there's no cost for us to the solar. It's our solar plant. We own it. And we save approximately on a blended rate basis, about $3.5 million per year.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Yeah. But over here, yeah. So what Chester's saying is the solar plant is owned by Caledonia. And so the benefit arising from the solar plant is not reflected in the all-in cost. It's reflected at the Caledonia level. So the mine buys solar power from the solar project at a rate which reflects its average unit consumption, cost of power. The thinking behind that is that we neither want to benefit nor disadvantage the minority shareholders in Blanket through the solar project. So if we sold power from the solar project to Blanket at cost, that would mean that the minority shareholders were benefiting from a project that they didn't fund. So again, it's quite a complex answer to quite a simple question, I'm afraid.

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

The next question is just with regards to Bilboes. How soon can we expect gold production beyond 80,000 ounces?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Well, as I've said, if it takes a year to put the funding in place, two years to build it, you can work from that. But I've got to say, those are highly indicative at this stage, that timing.

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

Next question. How do you plan to raise the funding for Bilboes? Do you have a timeline?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Well, as I said, the initial focus is getting a handle on the debt to the point of getting accredited term sheets. The balance will be equity. The equity will come from internal cash flows, public market equity, private equity, or joint venture partners.

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

The next question.

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

We will not be approaching the market for any what I call non-debt funding until we've got a better idea as to what the debt capacity is because, frankly, nothing's going to be as cheap as debt funding.

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

What was the key driver of the advisory fees in 2023?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Well, we had our advisors because we had to pay for Bilboes' advisors because they didn't have the money to pay for it themselves. Even if they had paid for it, it would just have come off their cash pile anyway. It was a very complex, long-running transaction. I think our involvement in the final stage was, I think, two years. It was a very long-running process, very, very complex. I'm afraid I don't enjoy paying advisory fees any more than anybody else.

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

I mean, the other question I think has pretty much been answered. It's maybe when do you expect the feasibility study to be completed? The other part, do you have any?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Well, we're working hard to get the various consultants to I mean, just to put more context on it, there's four main elements to the feasibility study. The first is the underlying geology. There's been very, very little change there other than removing a small element of oxide material. There's virtually no change there at all. There's been some change to the pit designs and the mining plan with a view to optimizing the capital spend, but again, very, very minor. There's been no change to the metallurgical processing. There have been quite substantial changes to the back end of the project, the tailing facility. In that area, we're using the experience that we gained at Blanket over the course of 2023 where we put in a new tailing facility, but we did it on a modular basis so that we could start using it quickly.

But we extended the capital expenditure over a longer period of time. And that was actually quite beneficial. Now, that work is effectively a brand new study. And that needs to be upgraded to a point at which it is capable of being published and can be a component of an overall feasibility study, which is to a relatively high level of confidence. And that's the time that that's exactly what's been the time that's been taken right now. How long they take, I don't know. Maybe it's 6 weeks. Maybe it's 2 months. I would hope it's not longer than that.

Camilla Horsfall (VP of Group Communications)

At the moment, that's it for questions. Does anybody else have a question?

Mark Learmonth (CEO)

Okay. If we've finished there, just with a challenging year, as I said, mainly in the first half. We did recover in Q3. Q4 wasn't so bad. And we got off to a strong starting quarter one. So I'm hopeful that we've now reestablished Blanket in its rightful position as a solid cash generator. And we're making good progress both on exploration at Blanket, which is considerably more optimistic than we'd expected. And we're making good progress with the feasibility study at Bilboes. So it has been frustrating. But hopefully, we're going to see better days ahead. So I think with that, we'll finish unless there's any last question. Okay. I think we're done, Camilla. Thank you for your attendance.