DRDGOLD - Earnings Call - H1 2025

Transcript

Niël Pretorius (CEO)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us. With me on the panel today is Riaan Davel, our CFO, and Jaco Schoeman, our COO. We're going to take you through the presentation, and then we'll have a short video, and afterwards we'll be happy to take your questions. We are doing this webinar from an overcast and rainy Johannesburg, and having grown up in a farming community and having prayed for rain as often as I did, I find myself intuitively happy when it rains. But now that we have a 60 MW solar farm, I'm also looking out for a bit of sunshine. So with half sun, half rain, it's become my latest preference. But be that as it may, let's get into the presentation.

I'm going to go straight into the third slide, where we give a summary of the highlights for the half-year ending, excuse me, December 24, assuming that you've had a look at the disclaimer. The highlights, obviously, for us, is the fact that this is the 18th year that DRDGOLD is paying a dividend, and it's very much part of our value proposition. I think dividends for us is no longer just a policy, but it's become a value, forming part of our value proposition composites of maintaining healthy cash flows or focusing on cash flows whilst taking full exposure to the gold price and offering shareholders also the opportunity to trade the stock that's deeply geared to movements in the gold price.

It's very specific, it's very deliberate, and we do believe that those who are shareholders in the company that are long DRDG, that this is typically what they would require. I think paying a dividend also and focusing on paying a dividend requires financial discipline, and that financial discipline flows through also in the way that we manage our costs. So getting into the essence of the presentation itself, as you could see, that the financial performance of the business has been good, and that's on the back, obviously, of steady performance. We'll elaborate a little bit on the performance, operating performance for the last six months and compare that to some of the previous periods. But in order to take advantage of a very healthy gold price, you need to be able to produce, and our operations manage to do just that.

The result being a 20% or 28% increase in revenue to just over ZAR 3.8 billion, a very healthy increase in operating profit to ZAR 1.5 billion, 74% increase, and headline earnings increasing by 65% to just under ZAR 1 billion. And that, plus the fact that we didn't have to dip into our credit facility, means that the company is still in a healthy cash position, just north of ZAR 600 million at the end of the period, and that's enabled the board to declare a dividend that represents a 50% increase on the previous interim dividend, up from ZAR 0.20 per share. This time around, it's ZAR 0.30 per share. Operating performance, the Ergo profile, and I think that's the main change that we've seen. The operating profile at Ergo has obviously changed from between two years ago to now.

We were, I think, really getting to a point where we no longer wanted to tell the market why we didn't achieve volume through booking, why we were still waiting for licenses and so forth and so forth. The decision was taken to extend the Ergo life of mine after its first phase, after it depleted its initial life of mine, so to speak, the one on which the initial acquisition and capitalization of Ergo was based in 2007, 2008. And we've now managed finally to get all of those licenses and all of the sites that are necessary to deliver into its current operating requirements to fund the capital reinvestment program that we'll go into more detail a little bit later. All of those are now up and running, and Ergo is actually running at a slightly throttled volume throughput rather at this point in time.

Part of the program going forward involves having to extend its tailings deposition capacity. The tailings dam that we've been using now since the inception of Ergo is in a mature phase. It's not going to be able to maintain the deposition rates that we require for very much longer, so we deliberately throttled back our throughput rate to 1.65 million tons per month. It is up, though, quite significantly from the previous period, as you'll see later on, but the entire profile of Ergo has now changed to the higher volume sites and slightly lower head grades. And that's the offset that's required for an operation going into the phase that it's in now of lower head grades but higher throughput, and in that way, bringing down your rand per ton profile.

So a different throughput profile, mostly lower grade, slightly reduced yield, but offset by the reduction in cost per ton. Cash operating cost was consistent on a per kilo basis, was consistent with the inflation rate or not higher than the inflation rate. But that, of course, also was assisted by a change in the cost profile, which I'll elaborate on a little bit more deeper into the presentation. And moving on to the sustainability aspect, you could see that we've seen a 16% decrease in electricity from external sources. That basically means Eskom. So we used 16% less power from Eskom, notwithstanding the fact that total power usage increased in order to accommodate for the higher tons. And that is because of the commissioning of the Ergo solar plant. That's up and running now.

It's been successfully commissioned, and we'll also deal in greater detail on how that is contributing to the future plans for Ergo. As I said earlier, Ergo was actually through its initial life of mine and part of the capital reinvestment that's required in order for us to extend that life of mine to cover a larger proportion of its existing resource was to build this solar farm, and that's now been done successfully. Solar farm is an important part and an expansion of its tailings storage facilities, another important part. You also see that in terms of environmental management, we're still seeing an ongoing vegetation of tailings dams. With the rains being a little bit late last year, we saw a slight increase in the total number of dust exceedances on the monitoring points that we manage or that we monitor.

That has obviously now been superseded by very, very healthy rain. So at least that part of the business is where it should be at this stage. We saw a slight increase in potable water consumption, but as you'll see later on in the ESG slide, the trend in terms of potable water usage has been a very healthy trend over the last few years. In terms of Far West Gold operations, that's been very, very steady. Its tonnage throughput's been steady. Its recoveries have improved, and that also contributed towards the increase in total production to 2.5 tons for the half-year period.

Moving on to the next slide, which is the purpose and vision slide, and this is where we want to talk a little bit about what it is that we want to achieve over the next few years to set up the business optimally to take full advantage of our resource endowment. We've coined a phrase called Vision 28. It's not particularly original, but it says everything that it needs to say, and that is where we want to be in financial year 2028. The whole idea is to by then have established capital infrastructure that can sustain a throughput rate of three million tons per month, up from just over two million tons currently, and to take gold production up from just north of five tons per year to six tons per year, so just over 200,000 ounces per year.

That is the target, and that is where most of our efforts and a lot of capital is going into at this point in time. I spoke about where Ergo is in this interim phase, having moved out of its core sites into the existing combination of sites, and it is now running at a throttled throughput rate of 1.650 million tons per month, the idea being for it to go back to 1.8 million tons as and when its tailings storage capacity has been expanded. It's been extended. We talk a little bit about the Withok Tailings Facility and the work that's being done in that regard later on in the presentation. At Far West Gold, it's really just the phase two that we've been talking about ever since we acquired the Far West Gold Recovery Operations from Sibanye-Stillwater.

We started off with a first phase, a plant that has a throughput capacity of 600 million tons per, rather 600,000 tons per month, to take that up to 1.2 million tons. We've been mining it at 500,000 tons per month, once again, because of the rate at which we could responsibly deposit onto its existing tailings facility. Part of this expansion, part of phase two, obviously, is also the construction of the Regional Tailings Storage Facility, which we started with in June of last year. It will give you some insight into where we are in that regard as well. But ideally, where we want to position ourselves is to, in 2028, financial 2028, be in a position to maintain these throughput rates, achieve this output based on what we're seeing in terms of available ore body, in terms of available mineral resource.

By then, capital would have been spent, so there will be a sharp reduction in CapEx. Because of the nature and the construct of reclamation activities, we believe that the trend that we're seeing in terms of ramp per ton will continue, and then we'll have the benefit of that additional ton of gold, the revenue associated with that. So we do believe that this would constitute a significant step change for the company as and when this materializes. Moving on to the next slide. As I said, a big part of positioning Ergo for its second phase, for this next phase, was the construction of the solar farm, and we've stayed up to date with regards to communications in this regard.

The main thing is that late last year, the second phase of the solar farm extended to a 60-MW solar farm that was put into effect, that was commissioned, the BESS system or the battery energy storage system, that was also commissioned, capacity of 160 MW. It was approved. It's now running, and we've systematically brought it into the operations. I think it's important to understand that what this plant's doing and what we embarked upon is really activity at five different levels. Firstly, Ergo generates power through the solar farm. Secondly, it stores power through the BESS facility. Thirdly, it draws power, and there's no meter between the solar farm and the plant where power is being used and also the regional tailings facility where power's being used. It draws power from the solar farm and also from the BESS facility.

It also evacuates power into the grid, and in one part, some of the power that goes into the grid is offset against other Eskom accounts that are held by Ergo itself. So there's an offset component, and now it's also wheeling power into the grid for the benefit of Far West Gold Recoveries or for the future benefit of Far West Gold Recoveries. So as and when Far West Gold Recoveries' accounts been transferred into the name of Far West Gold Recoveries, there will be the benefit of wheeling as well. So all of these things, all of these different activities at these five levels, this is the composite of what we've involved ourselves in in terms of this particular facility. It's a wonderfully complex facility.

It self-balances basically in terms of where power is being drawn from and in line with what its particular power requirements are at that particular point in time. We've had a change in thinking also after Eskom's performance improved during the course of last year and when we saw less power interruptions due to load shedding, and of course, we didn't have to shed. We weren't load shed, but we had to reduce consumption of power by 10%, so that was a power curtailment arrangement that we've also had with, or we've always had with Eskom, but we were going to draw less power in the eventuality that there would be a requirement for reduced usage or even power cuts due to load shedding.

That hasn't happened, and as a consequence, we can actually draw the batteries down to a much lower level, knowing that we'll be able to recharge them during off-peak, during the early hours of the morning, late nights and early hours of the morning. So that's changed the usage profile a little bit, and it's to the advantage. It's to our cost benefit, being able to use more stored power at nighttime. At the moment, we're still talking about approximately 15 rand per ton cost saving. It's an estimate based on the calculations that we did on power usage going forward. We are seeing these sorts of numbers, but in view of the fact that this is not a facility that is being used exactly the same way every single day, every single minute of the day, there is no household that actually does it.

There's no factory that does it that runs 100% at a particular sort of draw for the entire period of time, considering also that we're talking about these five different levels of consumption. So to give an exact number of the amount that we're saving at this point in time, it's not quite that easy. We can say that we've saved 16% on, or that we use less, 16% less than last year for the total business. But it'll be interesting to see exactly what this benefit is in terms of that range, that ZAR 9-ZAR 15 range, as and when everything that needs to happen in order to see the full benefit is, in fact, being put into place.

The one thing that we haven't quite seen is that not all of the power units that's been evacuated into the grid is reflected on the Eskom accounts that we receive. So there's definitely a bit of an account reconciliation that needs to take place there. On the 1st of April, or thereabouts, maybe the 1st, maybe the 2nd, there'll be a webinar, and then we hope to be able to ex post facto give a better summary of the exact savings that we've had. But you'll see, as and when Riaan takes you through some of the cost profiles, that the financial benefits are most certainly there. We know how much we've generated. We know how much we've used. We know how much we've put into the grid. It'll be interesting to see exactly where the numbers end up as and when these accounts have been reconciled.

There've been a myriad of tests to make sure that we can responsibly evacuate into the grid, called the RETEC test work. That seems to have come to an end now, so hopefully all of that will now become a little bit more clear as we go along. Second part of Ergo in terms of setting it up for the future is the recommissioning of the Withok Tailings Dam. It is a licensed site, but a whole host of regulatory requirements need to be met in order to restore the site and to once again use it as an active deposition site. It's designed for 310 million tons, and the initial work has started in terms of public participation. That first meeting went well. We've also done some of the initial scoping for the water usage license. It's going to be required.

So again, there'll be engagements with the Department of Water Affairs and Sanitation. In fact, there've been engagements with them, as well as the environmental approvals that's required for the recommissioning of this. So that work's happening, and we hope to have the design submitted by July 2025. That's a very important part of making sure that Ergo can continue and that at some point into the future, as and when this facility is up and running, we can go back to 1.8 million tons per month. Moving on to Far West Gold, the work that's happening there. On the left-hand side, you can see a picture of the construction work that's been happening on the regional tailings facility, the RTSF. Here at the bottom of the picture, I hope you can see my cursor over there. Those are the two or four return water dams.

I can tell you that those return water dams are larger than many of the reclamation sites that Crown used to process, probably not much smaller than the old Top Star site, to give you a sense of scale. The dam is 800 hectares in size. At the bottom corner here, that's part of the initial starter wall. It's going to be 26 meters high. It's going to be 100 meters wide. It dips down from north to south, so the starter wall at the top there is going to be a little bit lower, about one and a half meters high, and we hope to have this in place for commissioning for early occupation during the latter half of 2026. As of now, we've moved just over 2 million cubes of material. That is to both level out the area. These are old maize fields to level them out.

As it is, they're relatively flat, but they need to be leveled to prepare it for the liner and also with the construction of the initial starter wall. So there's a starter wall, and then there's also a whole set of drains, and the initial downstream construction will take place over these surface drains on the outside of the starter wall. It's a wonderful facility. Work on this facility is progressing quite nicely. Obviously, it's got to be linked up, so it's a very large footprint. It's got to be linked up with a whole network of pipelines, and there you can see some of the pipeline construction that's already been installed. And then to the right there, you can see a picture of some of the civil work. There's really more of the excavations that's happened. It's actually progressed quite significantly beyond that point.

Some of the foundations having been done, CIL plant, the elution circuit, the oxygen plant, etc., etc. That's all happening right next to the existing DP2 plant. There should be some video material in this regard on the website as well. You can kind of have a look at that. But that is going to be taking the Driefontein 2 plant to a monthly throughput of 1.2 million tons. The idea being, as I said earlier, for all of this, we're going to early commissioning by late 2026. Civil work there, the engineering work there, is working to plan, is working to schedule, and it's very encouraging the progress that's being made in that regard as well. So moving on to the next slide. I'll just reactivate the remote, and then I can move on to the next slide. There we go. So operating performance for the six months.

These are very encouraging, but you'll also see how the basic construct, the basic composition of what we're doing is changing, especially at Ergo. The first block on the left-hand corner, there you can see that volume throughput, notwithstanding the fact that we're throttling, is up quite a bit from the two previous half-year periods. That really is not indicative of really the capacity of Ergo at this point in time, but really just the extent to which we were hamstrung by the delays that we experienced during the first half of 2024 and the second half of 2024 when we were waiting for those licenses to come through that we started applying for in 2018. Now they're all through. They've all been done, but there is an interesting consequence to the fact that we've had to rely so much on cleanup material and reclamation material.

While the yield is entirely expected, I believe that it would have been marginally better if we still had some of the legacy material to trickle into the feed. So we are where we want it to be, considering our circumstances of the two previous years. We have increased our volume throughput because we do have access to the new sites. They are lower-grade sites there, and there you could see that in the yield itself. Obviously, the cost per ton is significantly lower because of the fact that this is mostly through monitors, through the hydro mining. But the fact is the profile is definitely a changing profile that the lower yields are being offset by lower unit costs to more or less maintain margin. And there you can see the production as well.

So more tons, lower head grades, giving us exactly the same output as we saw in the first half of 2024. And that's really the major difference between surface reclamation and primary mining. So in primary mining, your typical cycle is once towards the maturity of a mine where your cut-off grade goes up and your volumes go down. In our environment, it's the exact opposite. As your grades come down, you have to increase your tonnage throughput in order to manage your unit costs and maintain the economies of scale, basically, change. Now, once Withok's up and running and once we've restored tailings capacity and we can go back to 1.8 million tons, the footprint of Ergo would look considerably different by then as well. We've been systematically reducing the number of active sites. It's gone down from 15 to about 10.

It'll go down even further as we get closer to 2028. And then the cost per ton, which is on the next slide, if I'm not mistaken, let's go for it. There we go. Sorry, no, this is Far West Gold's operating blend. But maybe just to conclude those remarks on Ergo, cost per ton would then come back further because you would have seen full benefit of the solar farm, a lot less in terms of mechanical hauling and lifting, far more in terms of hydro mining, and we'll see a relatively flat margin. In fact, there was a presentation of the latter part of last year where we showed how this stacks up, how the high volumes with low cost per ton how that balances out, how that evens out, not dissimilar to what you're seeing here. Just go back to the previous slide.

Just wait for the system to respond. There we go. Where you see this sort of number, where although that is different, that is different comparatively speaking, the yield and the volume, you see that the production remains relatively flat. That's where the offsetting, because all of these things contribute in a different way, where you get to more or less a flat profile, so moving into Far West Gold, its operating trends, it's obviously a different story altogether. There's one active site, plus one active reclamation site and one cleanup site. The Number 5 Dam has been mined out. Number 3 Dam is now running at full revs, and you can see the volume throughput there is pretty flat. It stays at just north of 3 million tons for the six months. The yield has improved at the Number 3 Dam.

That first layer, that top layer has been mined out. It's now going into the deeper regions of the dam. So the head grades are improving. And this plant's also performing really, really well. And there you see it also in the production numbers, up from 660 in the comparative period to 720 kilos for the period. So both of these operations actually responded really well, always to the commissioning of the Number 3 Dam. And Ergo also now to the commissioning of its four new sites since 2024. Moving on to the next slide. Give the system a moment to respond. And this is the financial performance part of the presentation, and I'll hand over to Riaan to take you through those numbers. Thank you, Riaan.

Riaan Davel (CFO)

Thank you very much, Niël. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on this virtual platform.

This time around, again, it's my privilege to take you through the financial performance of DRDGOLD for the six months ended 31 December 2024. As you know, most of our analysis happens to the comparative six-month period ended 31 December 2023, and I always refer to our booklet that we take great care to prepare, so I encourage you to go and read. Obviously, we can't cover everything in this highlights presentation. As I always do at the start of my section, is just recognize the people behind the numbers. As I said, it's my privilege to talk you through, and I love doing that. I really want to recognize all the employees, contractors at DRDGOLD, either working in operations, busy with our vast project CapEx, growth CapEx that we're incurring, or in support.

I believe all equally important for us to tirelessly pursue our purpose of reversing the environmental legacy of mining, rolling that back, improving quality of life, and as you know, that requires large volumes of material to be moved over a very long period of time, and I know our teams work relentlessly, literally 24 hours a day, to achieve that, and I recognize the team at DRDGOLD for this performance, and Niël mentioned that I looked outside. It is still raining, but at the start of the financial performance slide, may I say that what I will present, I believe, is rather sunny and very proud to present it, so on the Ergo financial results side, Niël always provides perfect background for me just to take everyone through what that means then financially for Ergo, Far West Gold Recoveries, and the group.

And may I again say that, sure, these are really good trends to talk to. You'll see it on this slide and also in the following slides. And it's a positive, positive trend that I can talk to. So for Ergo, again, looking at the comparative period 2023, so the first six months of the 2023 financial year, and the first column compared to the third column for the current six-month period that ended 31 December 2023, we see a revenue increase of 24%, obviously aided by a raise or an increase in the gold price to just under ZAR 1.5 million, ZAR 1.48 million a kilogram, with gold sold down period on period by 2%.

But as Niël alluded to, in this same period, the volume for Ergo was up 22%, with the yield then on the sites that we're now tackling, obviously slightly lower grade, but higher volume, but really good revenue picture. On the cash operating cost side, even better. And yeah, it is so encouraging to see that what we anticipated and what Niël specifically talked about at our August results is coming true. So as you can see, costs, period on period, only up by 5%. And clearly, that is one reason for that is the decrease in machine hire costs. And then electricity costs only up by 3%, which I believe is a good result, also considering the volume up by 22% and double-digit increases in Eskom rates.

And then the combination of revenue and cash operating costs, and again, just look at the leverage that it creates, operating profit for Ergo up 92% to ZAR 828.7 million. So really good performance by Ergo and compliments to the operating team. Moving on to Far West, very stable performance. Gold sold for Far West for the period up by 10%, and you saw some good yield increases, tons stable. And that resulted in revenue with the gold price increase of 26%, revenue increased 39% to over ZAR 1 billion for the six months. Cash operating costs also stable, just up by 8% period on period. Obviously, inflation increases and then higher than inflation increases in areas like security and labor costs.

Again, those two in combination with some small gold-in-process adjustments gets us to operating profit up 57% on the comparative period to ZAR 750 million for the six months ended 31 December 2024. Again, great solid performance by the Far West team, which we're very proud of, then putting that all together for the group, as I've mentioned, really wonderful trends that really talk for themselves. You can see the operating margin, and again, I've mentioned it to a couple of people in the last little while. Although we're close to the business, we sometimes underestimate that impact, so if you can keep your costs under control, which is what we've done in this six-month period, and you have a solid performance plus gold price increase, so the operating margin grows, and that margin obviously flows through to the bottom line, so operating margin percentage increase, very positive.

All-in sustaining cost margin, obviously on the back of the operating margin. But you would see in the booklet, obviously less sustaining CapEx, and that's not necessary for us anymore with our focus on growth CapEx. So that increases the all-in sustaining cost margin. And really encouraging for us is free cash flow. So obviously, we have a huge CapEx program. You would see our cash CapEx for the period just under ZAR 1 billion. But because of the good operating performance and high gold price, we still generated free cash flow for the six months, which is a wonderful performance. And all of that, as I mentioned, high gold price, good operating performance, cost under control, all of that flows to Headline Earnings per Share, up 65% period on period to ZAR 1.126 per share. Then moving on to the income statement or statement of profit and loss.

To summarize, revenue for the period up 28%, and with costs under control, up 13% period on period. There's a depreciation increase, more sites. Obviously, the solar coming through there as well, leaving us with gross profit from operating activities up 72% to just over ZAR 1.3 billion. Administration expenses and other costs stable. Finance income slightly higher with our additional cash that we generated. There's also a Rand Refinery dividend included in that ZAR 132.8 million. And finance expense, mostly, as you know, in the income statement, the unwinding of our rehab liabilities, and only a very small portion of cash finance costs, and mostly around securing our facilities. Income tax, ZAR 337.1 million, mostly deferred tax. The operations don't pay current tax at the moment because of the large CapEx investment that we make and the capital deductions that we are allowed.

Taking it all to the bottom line, profit for the period, as Niël mentioned as well, ZAR 970.1 million, up 65% period on period. Then on statement of financial position, previously called the balance sheet. Again, wonderful trends, as you can see there. If you look at the property, plant and equipment line, so from December 2023, up more than ZAR 3 billion. So essentially, as you know, what we've done there is taken the cash, the ZAR 1.5 billion cash in that line, and financed our solar farm and battery infrastructure of our own cash on our own balance sheet. And then other increases around the projects, the CapEx growth projects that Niël alluded to. Non-current investments and other assets, rehab funds that we continue to invest in a very responsible way, and also mostly our investment in Rand Refinery.

Cash and cash equivalents, which we'll elaborate on the next slide. Current assets, current liabilities, quite stable across the three periods. Then, as I've mentioned, it's great to see total assets and equity growing over time. Deferred tax liability that I alluded to in the income statement is something that we'll see growing as we utilize our capital deductions. That in effect says that at some point in the future, we'll create revenue without a relating capital tax deduction. That's what that deferred tax liability tries to illustrate. Then overall, a very, very healthy current ratio still of 2.3 at the end of December 2024. Then live ending off.

As I always say with my favorite primary financial statement, the statement of cash flows is something that we've focused on very heavily and will continue to focus to make sure that we generate cash while we grow our business. And as Niël said as well, that we can make sure we want to reward shareholders, even though we are prioritizing any cash that we generate towards our ZAR 10 billion capital program over the next couple of years. But take a look at cash generated from operations more than doubled in the comparative period to over ZAR 1.2 billion. The dividend received that I alluded to is from Rand Refinery. Then finance expenses, very small. It's literally the facility fees that we have to have our ZAR 2 billion, up to ZAR 2 billion facility with Nedbank in place, which we haven't utilized up until now.

And then income tax, nothing for the operations, as I've mentioned. And then there's the number, the cash capital expenditure or acquisition of property, plant and equipment of ZAR 947 million for the period. Going down to the financing activity side, the ZAR 172 million is the dividend, the ZAR 0.20 dividend, final dividend that we paid in September. And we're very proud to follow that up with the ZAR 0.30 interim dividend that Niël alluded to. So overall, as I've mentioned, we did not tap into any cash resources, so that has grown to ZAR 661 million at the end of December 2024. So really, really healthy cash position and cash generated for the period. Then the handover slide, where I'm going to hand back to Niël and he can elaborate. My reflection is just for this distinct period.

So let's say from the beginning, end of August, beginning September, quite a healthy increase to where we stand now. Let me hand back to Niël then to continue the presentation.

Niël Pretorius (CEO)

There we go. Thank you very much, Riaan. So yes, we are encouraged by what's happening with the share price. I said earlier, a big part of our value proposition is the share price that's deeper to the gold price, but we also want to make sure that we are in the right range. And at some point, the underlying value of the company finds its way into that range. And we'll continue to work hard to see at some point in anticipation of what we believe could be potentially very attractive towards 2028, that that range moves to a different level, a more attractive level. So moving on to the later stages of the presentation. So we're going into the sustainable development part. It is a very important part of the business. We do give you some of the headline numbers here. We continue our environmental spend.

This is something that we've just been keeping at these levels right from the outset. We're firm believers in concurrent rehabilitation, so that as and when the cash flows are over, that the rehabilitation is also towards its end, that you don't have that massive liability that matures right at the end after you've sort of run out of cash flows. So this is something that I think distinguishes our company. Also being right here in the middle of the largest sub-Saharan city in Africa, it's important that we keep these standards high because if we do it wrong, then the societies around us, their quality of life is affected. So it's a very, very close correlation between the standards of environmental governance and the quality of life across communities who live in proximity to our operations. This will continue.

28 hectares of vegetation that happened this six months; it's up from 15. Potable water consumption, and this is the number that I was referring to earlier. You can see, comparatively speaking, the 31st of December 2022, 1,388 million liters. 1,388, so it's 1.3 billion liters of potable water usage in the six months up to December 2022. It's more than halved now for this current financial year. That trend is one that wants to continue as we further expand our closed water circuit and drawing from alternative sources. Very little potable water is also used as process water. This is by and large for visitation and also for use in ablution and other personal use at our plant. Dust emission exceedances are reflected on that and also the red range, but that's not been restored.

Here you could also see the trend, very healthy trend in terms of external electricity consumption, down from 173,000 MW to 141,000 MW. That trend will continue as we see the impact of the solar from becoming more and more embedded and for a longer period of time, obviously now going into the second half of this financial year. Closely correlated to that, also the carbon emissions slide. In terms of environmental performance, I do believe that we are living the values that we profess to have. Moving on to the next one, the social performance here, once again, very deeply embedded as part of our commitment to sustainable development. As you can see, all of these initiatives are associated with self-empowerment. This is the provision of knowledge, the provision of materials, training of people to set them up in a way that they can self-empower.

And we're definitely now moving also into more sophisticated levels of social capital, of that one step up from the initial subsistence farming or the subsistence growing of crops to life skills, business development skills, and hopefully ultimately also to find its way into broader society generally, in terms of the environment and optics of those societies, and creating something not dissimilar to what we have. So we have a circular model.

We firmly believe that by assisting communities to learn these materials, that they soon become a circular model, that the inflow of capital on a monthly basis through social grants and a little bit of money that's spent into these communities, that it stays in that community, that it gets spent four, five, six times over, that it doesn't land in that community and then find its way into Pep Stores or Checkers or one of those, but there's in fact a repeat spending within the community itself. And that's very much what we're trying to achieve with our social reinvestment programs. Good. And then moving on to the next slide. So this is the looking ahead slide. And none of the guidance that we issued earlier in the year has changed. So we still stay within range with regards to production.

The same applies to cash operating costs. You can see by extrapolating the numbers that we reported here, that we stay within range. Then in terms of Ergo, obviously, it's all systems go to make sure that we submit all of the materials that are necessary for the permission to start construction at the Brakpan Tailings Facility. And I did make the point earlier on with regards to wanting to submit the design by this July in order to be in a position to commence with construction next year. And then, of course, we also want to make sure that we take full advantage, not just in terms of consumption, but in terms of the financial treatment of, which is basically the reconciliation of the accounts, that this also happens during the course of the six months.

Note from my own personal experience, after I'd equipped my house with solar, it took a few months before that account was reconciled. So it does get reconciled ultimately. We know what we consume. We know what we generate. We know what we push into the grid. It's now a case of making sure that the accounts reflect that over time. Always got recovery. All systems also in auto focus, both on RTSF and getting DP2 to where it needs to be for latter part of 2026, while at the same time maintaining its encouraging throughput and output profiles. Then finally, just a very brief slide on delivering to our purpose. And that is something that I think you're familiar with of what it is that we want to do. So the only gold producer, but one that is increasingly finding itself within a circular model.

So not creating any new waste, but producing gold from mine waste, from material that's already been deposited. So waste neutral, increasingly relying on renewable power, a very strong social capital focus, and the restoration of land previously sterilized by mining activities. Ladies and gents, that's our presentation for today. We have a video which we'd like to show you just in terms of the; it's a bit of a taster before we do the webinar in April. And then after the video, we'll take your questions. We see that a few questions, the questions are starting to come through. Thank you very much for attending and listening to the presentation.

As DRD, we produce gold from waste.

DRDGOLD and its subsidiary Ergo is an environmental cleanup company. We effectively take the mining waste of the past and we're processing that through the Ergo facility and we're placing it on world-class large tailings facilities.

The next area of that is then obviously how do you utilize energy? We decided to venture down the route of installing a solar and battery system. Initially started off with a very small solar plant of only 20 MW. That then grew to 60 MW. The same story started with the batteries, eventually ended up at 187 MW. The reason we ended up at these size batteries is in order for us to shut down the plant in a controlled manner, we need at least two hours of battery capacity. Ergo at that stage had two feeds. It had one feed into the Brakpan Tailings Dam and one feed into the Ergo plant.

The demand of the Ergo plant is around 14 MW and at Brakpan Tailings, 7 MW. The power is exported along 22 kV overhead lines, which were built at 33 kV. From June of 2024 to date, we have produced 47 GWh. We did this in phases. We first executed the 20 MW and then a 40 MW.

During this period of construction, we peaked at around about 320 local employees from the local communities and the immediate surrounds. Middle 2024, from where it's now ramped down again to about 60-odd employees local and on a permanent basis. ZAR 83 million was spent on local small suppliers. The solar plant consists of 132,500 panels and feed through 188 inverters. Those inverters then feed through into 42 BESS or battery energy storage containers. Each of these containers has got 96 lithium-ion batteries in them.

Another advantage of the batteries is that we can arbitrage. This means that we charge the batteries during an off-peak period when electricity is at its cheapest, and then we discharge the batteries when electricity is at its peak.

This is the first project that has got BESS, PV, and the load behind the grid and is exporting into the grid. So our ramp-up time, if you can believe on the batteries, is one MW a second. I'm very proud to say that this project's avoided carbon tons is 186,840 tons CO2e.

From a strategic perspective, there were a few reasons why we started with the project. The first one is to make sure that we have continuous production at Ergo. Secondly, there's also the cost. If you break down our cost curve, our operating cost, electricity makes up the third largest single cost for our operations. Between 14% and 17% of our total operating cost comes from electricity. So if you can reduce your electricity cost, you've got a direct impact on your bottom line.

There's a very significant sort of reduction in operating cost by somewhere in the order of ZAR 14 or ZAR 15 a ton.

And the third reason that we did this is due to our carbon footprint. By implementing this program and this project, we've been able to reduce our existing footprint by approximately 52%. For every rand per ton that we can reduce our operating cost, we can then also, in future, be able to mine additional resources at a lower head grade because our input cost is so much lower. So it provides us flexibility, not only from immediate operating and increasing margin, but also in future being able to mine lower grades into the plant.

So there we go. Thank you very much. So that's a bit of a teaser of what's to come on the 1st of April, when we intend to also give you a very nice breakdown, ex post facto of the savings that we saw, the consumption numbers that we saw at the solar plant from inception itself. We're not doing it now. We're giving you numbers on a consolidated basis over six months. But the intention is to be in a position to take the data that we're collecting, that we have collected, that we have been collected, and that we will be collecting for the next month and a half, and to give you a detailed picture of all the variables and then where we've landed in terms of actual savings.

I'm going to go through the questions and answer the ones that I can and the ones that I cannot. I'll pass on to my colleagues. I think I'll start with the first one from Peter Cromberge, who wants details on the terms of the 2 billion rand Nedbank facility. Riaan, do you maybe want to take that question and just explain what the terms are of the Nedbank facility?

Riaan Davel (CFO)

Sure. Thanks, Niël. Thanks for the question, Peter. So yes, end of July last year, we established the terms of that facility. So simplistically, it's a ZAR 500 million overdraft that is available to us anytime. And then a secured ZAR 1 billion facility, a revolving credit facility over five years. And that's the, I think, the positive of that is that it matches our sort of medium-term capital program. So it's not only a two- or three-year facility, it's a five-year facility. And then that revolving credit facility has an accordion option, so a ZAR 500 million accordion option. So the ZAR 1 billion secured plus the 500 plus the ZAR 500 million overdraft then gives us the ZAR 2 billion overall facility with Nedbank. Thanks, Niël.

Niël Pretorius (CEO)

Thanks, Riaan. So then moving on to the other questions. There's a question from Nick. DRD calculates a tax rate based on forecasts of profitability. And I think this is your favorite subject, is deferred tax. So he wants to know whether the tax rate that we currently use, in view of the fact that the current H2 outlook must be a lot better than what we anticipated, whether the tax rate that we use now is still, does it still match the current financials, or should you use a different tax rate?

Riaan Davel (CFO)

So thanks for that, Nick. And as you rightly say, Niël, I love talking about the topic. And I know I always find the right audience to do it, but if there's a question, let's go for it. So Nick, you're quite right. So what happened last year is that we upped the deferred tax rate for Ergo. So last year for the FY 2024 results from 22% to 25%. So you're quite right. So that is an indication because of the gold tax rate formula of future profitability of the operation. What it does then, obviously, immediately based on deferred tax principles, it charges the income statement on that increased rate. So then, as you know, we go through annual revisions of our life of mine estimates, re-app, all of that. So on a half-year basis, on an interim basis, we just do checks.

So we don't do a formal review because, as you know, it is quite a lengthy process. So we haven't, again, updated any deferred tax rates looking forward. We believe that our estimates previously still stand. So it's 25% for Ergo and for our Far West Gold Recoveries at 29%. Yeah. So hopefully that answers the question and that roughly gives you that estimate of deferred tax that we calculate for the six months to 31 December 2024.

Niël Pretorius (CEO)

Thank you. Thanks, Riaan. There's also another question from Nick with regards to CapEx. So the CapEx guidance for 2025 financial year was ZAR 3.5 billion. And I think we were sort of bumping against ZAR 1 billion by the end of the six months. And Nick's asking whether the ZAR 3.5 billion is likely to be achieved. Firstly, you don't spend your CapEx in 12 equal amounts. You don't take your total CapEx all across divided by 12 because your capital spend is not linear. There's some big cost items that need to come through. Having said that, it's unlikely that we'll spend the full ZAR 3.5 billion, but the extent to which we'll fall short of that, I think at this stage is not entirely clear because there are still a few very large items that need to come through.

With regards to where the programs are tracking in order to achieve the outcomes that we set for ourselves, the delivering to the larger longer-term vision, we're encouraged by the trending of where these programs are. So yes, CapEx might fall a little bit short, but I do believe that we're trending favorably in terms of actual execution. Riaan, I don't know if you want to expand on this, if you want to give any additional detail.

Riaan Davel (CFO)

No, I think that's right, Nick. And you saw it previously. We generally have a trend where we seem to look behind or we seem behind by 31 December of each of our financial years. We do catch up in inverted commas. Some of that, as Niël said, it's all long-term projects. Sometimes it spans a couple of months. So we do expect to, again, in inverted commas, catch up some of the ZAR 3.5 billion. We probably won't get there fully, but that's not always necessarily an indication of the stage of completion of the project or where we want it to be. So we're not worried from that point of view. So technically, from a cutoff point of view, 30 June, we may fall short, but we're not worried. We do look at it as a two to three-year capital program that we are managing.

Niël Pretorius (CEO)

Thanks, Riaan. Nick asked a question about the capital costs of the solar farm and the BES, which I'm going to hand to Jaco. He also asked a question about the realized savings on a per ton basis at Ergo associated with the solar farm. We haven't prepared for purposes of this presentation. There's a bit of a disturbance. I hope anyone can still hear me. There's a bit of a background noise. Let me just switch the video. There we go. All right. So in terms of the savings, we did not prepare detailed numbers for the month or for the exact period, having commissioned the solar farm during the course of the six months under review. And we've done it specifically because we don't want to come up with another estimate.

I think the next time that we want to report on the actual numbers per ton, we want to be able to give you on an ex post facto basis. So these were the trends. This is how much we consume. This is how much we exported. This is what was recognized in terms of our accounting. So this is the exact number per ton for that period. It's not going to be exactly the same every day. It's not going to be exactly the same every month. But we'll be able to give you some insight into the trends that we've seen. What we can say is that we're not off target in terms of the ranges of our estimates. So it's definitely trending in accordance with the ranges that we've offered.

What we can also say just in terms of on a consolidated basis, just looking at the whole picture, is during the six months, we used 22% more electricity units. If you compare the actual usage of electricity for the six months to the end of December 2024 to the six months of 2023, 22% more electricity units were consumed for the output that we achieved. However, the amount of power that we imported from Eskom reduced by 16%. So already, you can see there was a fairly significant swing. And that's notwithstanding the fact that we only had the benefit of the solar plant or the sales for 60 MW from roughly the beginning of November. Before that, it was the first phase. It was 20 MW and then also incrementally and not 100% consistent every day.

We're also reporting a 3% increase in total electricity costs for that same period. So 22% more units used, 16% less from Eskom, and a 3% increase in total electricity costs. And that is not normalised for the Eskom increase that we saw year on year. That is actual numbers compared year on year. So from that, Nick, I think there's maybe some information with which we could use to do some sort of a calculation. We've done the calculation, but as I say, it's not the same, exactly the same every week. It's not exactly the same, but it's not exactly the same every day. It's not exactly the same every week. It's not exactly the same every month.

We want to be in a position where we could give you the contingencies with the accounts having been reconciled and also with the actual consumption patterns that we saw up until March to give an indication as to what the key dynamics are that drive this and how we see that coming through on the actual financial performance on the cost numbers as well. Jaco, the question with regards to the final capital cost of the solar farm and BES, I think that you've got a fairly good idea as to what that actual number is. If you want to take that question and maybe unpack that a little bit for Nick.

Jaco Schoeman (COO)

Sure. Thanks, Niël. Yeah. So we ended up on approximately ZAR 2.9 billion. Taking into consideration rate of exchange, that means we were approximately 2% above budget.

Niël Pretorius (CEO)

Thanks, Jaco. I think there's a further question. So the tax group dealt with. So Herbert Kharivhe is asking, how should we think about the grades at Ergo? Is this a step change or an anomaly? And do we revert to what we've seen in the past two years? Herbert, it's definitely a step change. The profile for Ergo changes. In fact, I would encourage you to see if you could find the presentation that I did last year on what the changes have been at Ergo in particular and what we are targeting for financial 2028. If it's not there, then I'll find it and I'll try to get it to you. But essentially, what you're looking at at Ergo is a higher volume profile, but a lower grade. So the grades that you saw last year, those were clean-up grades.

They managed to get us to a point where we had respectable numbers, but below what we wanted to produce because we weren't into the new sites because of waiting for licenses to be processed and issued, but now we are there, and the profile going forward would be pretty much along the line of what you're seeing now. The grades are going to be lower. The volumes are going to be higher, and the whole idea is to manage economies of scale, so lower cost per ton or a positive downward trend in terms of cost per ton to offset the slightly lower yields, the 0.04 roughly gram per ton lower yield that we're seeing coming out of the lower grades. So Martin Creamer is asking when's wheeling of electricity to Far West Gold likely to begin.

We know that's when the transfer of the account itself is going to take place. Jaco, I don't know if you've got a better, more detailed idea as to when you think that account would have been transferred and when Far West would actually also have the benefit of those units that have been put into the grid.

Jaco Schoeman (COO)

Thanks, Niël. So exactly when that happens, Martin, I'm not 100% sure. We're in the process. It's like Niël mentioned previously. It's a reconciliation of, firstly, of accounts and then secondly, also a transfer of the account from Sibanye to ourselves. The wheeling is happening. So we're metering all of that. And then it will be an offsetting of the account at a later stage as soon as that has happened. So we do anticipate that to happen during this quarter, however. You're just on mute, Niël.

Niël Pretorius (CEO)

You can hear me now. Seems to be okay. Good. All right. So then the last question that I have is on zama zamas and the impact that legal mines having. So the question is, are there any zama zamas operating on areas linked to DRD? And what are the implications? So firstly, in terms of the resource that we're mining, we're not in competition with zama zamas. So they do primary mining. So they go into virgin reef and they pack it up in some way or another. They put it through a mill and then they dissolve it in mercury. Our grades are just much too low. So we have in the region of a third of a gram of gold per ton. And the methodologies that they use are just not conducive to that.

There are certain areas where maybe over time there may have been some spillages or maybe some carbon spillages, etc., etc., but those are very, very localized and those don't really come in conflict with our operations. Having said that, they do operate in areas where we have infrastructure here and there. They do operate in little outcrops or some of these other areas that they may find attractive. So we do need to be aware of them. Also, the hole lengths that they're opening up, remember our footprint extends from Crown in the west to the Central Rand all the way to Springs in the east, and this is along the reef. This is along the old Central Rand reef, and these are the areas where they do operate, so we need to be mindful of them in terms of the safety of our staff and also our property.

So it's an ongoing topic. Same applies to Far West Gold operations, obviously. They do use shafts to gain access into underground workings. So we need to be mindful of that as well.

But as long as those who engage in this activity, as long as they are not removed out of the system for longer periods of time, and we do think that that is starting to happen where if you get arrested today for stealing gold out of an underground mine, and instead of simply just getting deported and finding your way back into this area, if that cycle is not broken, firstly, and if those who perpetrate these crimes are not taken out of the system for longer periods of time, three months, six months, nine months, twelve months, and incarcerated before deportation, and if more severe penalties or consequences do not flow from, again, sort of entering the country after having been deported, after having perhaps served a short sentence or a first offense, then it's going to be hard to really break this cycle. That's the one thing.

As I say, I think the signs are positive that government's taking this on. Secondly, if that network is not broken, if the head of the snake's not chopped off, then we're always going to have to deal with this issue, which is closely also associated, I believe, with the destruction of public property and cable theft and so forth and so forth. These syndicates need to be eliminated. Those in charge need to be locked up. Those who sort of feed the system also need to be dealt with in a different way. But in terms of direct impact, not operations directly competing with it, that is fortunately something that we are spared because of the nature of our operation. I think that is it. Those are all the questions. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for attending this presentation.

We hope that we've answered your questions to your satisfaction and that we also provided you with the details that you require to inform your investment decisions. We can assure you going forward, we'll remain focused, not to disappoint, and to optimize this ore body for the benefit of our shareholders and our stakeholders as a whole. Thank you very much for attending.