Okay, so my name's Jeff Quartermaine. I'm the CEO of Perseus Mining Limited. Perseus is an Australian listed gold mining company. We're also listed in Toronto on the TSX. All of our activities are focused in Africa on the African continent, where we operate three mines, one in Côte d'Ivoire and one in Ghana. And we've got two development projects that will be brought on line progressively over time. So it's a rather unusual company in that sense that we have full exposure to Africa, but we're performing extremely well in terms of generating cash flow and earnings. And we represent a very attractive investment alternative to people who are looking for value. Jeff, welcome to London. You've been on the road for a bit. You were in Zurich last week. Oh, you were this week, I should say. How was it? Well, I thought it was very interesting, actually. There's a group of investors in that part of the world who are not the sort of people we see every day of the week. We had very, very good meetings and found it very productive. Do you think obviously everyone's talking about gold at $2,400 US? That's a little bit exciting. Was the conversation pretty much around price? There was a bit of that. There was a bit of that. I think certainly that's inspiring a lot of people to to look for gold investments. They weren't. You know, earlier in the year it was pretty hard work to get people interested. Yeah, but there's no doubt that the gold price has sparked a lot of attention. And as always happens in these circumstances, you know, people are expecting this to continue forever. Right. Okay. Now talk to me about the projects. Okay. We're in Ghana, we're in Côte d'Ivoire, Sudan, and obviously recent news is OreCorp. And is that closed now? Sorry? With the recent acquisition. Well, we do actually, as of this morning, I think we're about 81% accepted. Okay. Okay. Pretty close. Pretty, pretty, pretty close. And why did you make the move now? Well, it wasn't a case of making a move now. It was closing the deal now. Yeah, we actually have been in discussion with OreCorp for many years, in fact, and we've done due diligence a couple of times over the year, but we could never quite get to the finishing line for one reason or another. Must have been distressing to see them talk to someone else. Well, it was a little disturbing. I mean, without talking out of school, I mean, we had made a number of non-binding indicative offers to them, all of them conditional on completing aspects of due diligence. For one reason or another, they weren't too keen on us doing some of those studies. And so we walked away from the whole transaction. But what did happen was after the alternative offer emerged, shareholders were not that impressed by it and came to us and said, I think, you know, you should consider bidding. So we said, well, there's an interesting idea. Why don't we think about that? I thought I was intrigued by the way that you went about it because you were building up a position and were able to do it relatively quickly, which I guess caused issues for the other side. So it's strategically, technically that that worked in your favor. But I think the thing that really works in favor is the amount of cash you've got in the bank. Well, that was helpful, although not necessarily for OreCorp shareholders. I think a lot of the OreCorp shareholders would have much preferred that we issue Perseus paper. Right. But having all the cash on balance sheet, I mean, my job's to look after my existing shareholders and future shareholders. Yeah. And so we made a cash offer rather than issuing paper and diluting. But look, I think at the end of the day, Perseus is the better steward of that asset of the two people who are offering to buy it. We come to Tanzania with a significant cash balance. We come to Tanzania with a history of operating in African countries and with a team of people who know how to develop and operate projects. Now, you know, it's one of those rare occasions, I think, that where our objectives align perfectly with the objectives of the government. The government is very keen to see the Nyanzaga project brought into production in the very near future. Perseus is equally very keen that the Nyanzaga project is brought into production very soon. I mean, and just talk about the deal a little bit longer, if you may. You've done a cash transaction, but if I look at your previous two acquisitions, where shares were involved, they've done rather well, haven't they? They've done exceptionally well. I mean, certainly the Amara shareholders, for instance, have done extremely well. And so have the OreCorp shareholders. Yes, indeed. And you know, so it's an interesting sort of a situation. But when we had the amount of cash on the balance sheet that we had by issuing more shares and diluting existing shareholders wasn't really the right approach, we felt. Right. And the right approach for you seems to be making margin because you're sub $1,000 AISC. You were already making margin before this recent surge in gold price. How do you do that? Well, how do we do what? I mean. It's Africa. If I look at the North American market, they kind of look at, oh, Africa's complicated. It's hard to do business there. It's expensive to do business there. What's the reality of that? Well, the reality is you can run a business well or poorly, no matter where you're located. Now, we choose to run our business very well, which means that you need to drive it very hard every day of the week and make sure that you keep your costs down, that it produces as much gold as you can possibly do. You look after all of the stakeholders. I mean, a very key part of our business, and I think this is part of the reason why we've been successful, is that we live and die on our mission. Our mission is to generate benefits for all of our stakeholders in fair and equitable proportions. What that means is that everybody who has an interest in either our projects or our activities gets something out of it. I guess in the old days people would have said, well, you go in and you maximize benefits for shareholders. We've come to realize that unless everybody gets a benefit from it, then life becomes very difficult. Quite often shareholders don't get anything at all. So the trick to it, though, is to find what is the fair and equitable distribution of those benefits. You know we've had some very interesting discussions with governments and various stakeholders over time along the lines that, okay, so you would like a bigger share of the pie, would you? That's right. We would. Okay, so who are you going to take it from? Are you going to take it from the employees? Would you want us to pay less to the community or the government when perhaps you want to take it from the shareholders? Well, the shareholders won't put their money into the project if that's the case. So what we need to do is to sit down, have a mature conversation and say, how can we best share the benefits of what we do? And that is a conversation we have from time to time. And I think that all of our stakeholders are reasonably happy at this particular point in time. Right. Okay. And you talked about incentivizing stakeholders, and so forth. But talk to me about culture because I think culture is really important. You've touched on some of those points there, but the culture is important. So new shareholders coming in understand what you're about. And you seem to be about driving things hard. Your phrase, you've got to drive things hard. How do you drive things hard and make sure that everyone's on site? Well, it's interesting, isn't it? We have a clearly defined set of values inside our company. And we've explained and discussed with all of our employees that everyone's bought into that proposition. It's quite simple, really. I mean, the four values are teamwork, integrity, commitment, and achievement. Teamwork. Individually we can achieve a lot, but working together we can achieve even more. Integrity is pretty self-evident. Commitment, you know, we give it a good shot and achievement. We we do what we say we're going to do, folks, every time. With those sorts of thoughts in mind, I think we've got a really good group of people. I mean, one of the things that I think we can be quite proud of is the team of people we've put together. And they are very aligned in their thinking. And that, you know, through the strength of that unity, I think we are able to do a lot of good things. Right. Your last point there, in terms of you do what you say, and again, quarter after quarter you hit targets, you do what you say, and that's good. So I want to talk about the 535,000 ounces a year last year. I think that was the number. Give or take. A bit more, you can tell me. 536,000 ounces. You're building up a kind of portfolio here. I'm going to assume you know what you're doing because you're delivering answers quarter after quarter after quarter. I don't need to have a conversation about digging you out about production and operations and so forth. I'm interested in this growth component to what you're doing. This recent acquisition, bringing into the family, I presume with the same, same ethos, the same drivers, is what's the end game here for you? Because it's all Africa, so you know Africa. But is there a number that you're going after? Are you going to be just a cash cow? Are you looking to be picked up by one of the majors? Well, what's the end game? Oh, no. Well, I mean, what we're seeking to do is to offer two investors an opportunity to invest and get regular returns, basically, to be consistent, to provide an opportunity where people can invest and know full well that the company's going to continue to deliver more or less what we're doing into the future. So, you know, we don't want to be a flash in the pan where we, you know, produce 1 million ounces this year and half of that next year. We've sort of deliberately set ourselves so that we can produce around this 500,000 ounces for the foreseeable future. And we do that in a couple of ways. I mean, one is we work at an organic growth proposition. So what we've been doing for the last five years is to ensure that whatever we deplete, we replace. Interestingly enough, if you look at the reserve inventory for the three core mines, the reserve inventory at the end of 2023 was identical to the reserve inventory in 2018. We've been able to replace each year. And even though we've been increasing our production, we've been putting more back each year. So we've been able to maintain that. But eventually, you know, all good things come to an end. Eventually you will deplete your reserve inventory. And we need to bring new projects in to replace those as they tail off. Now, a couple of our projects, one of our projects is a relatively long life project. That's Yaouré. The Edikan mine has a lesser time ahead of it, and Sissingué have been shorter. So what we've been intent on doing is bringing new projects to the table that are producing as those projects tail off. And the first of those projects we acquired was what we call the Meyas Sand Project in Sudan. Had it not been for, you know, the fact that hostilities broke out in the country in April of last year, we would be up to our elbows in developing that project right now. Now, the fact is that we're, we're not doing that. As you quite rightly point out, we've we've recently, you know, embarked on this takeover of OreCorp and Nyanzaga. And the aim is that we will get into the development of that very shortly and be producing out of that in 2027. Well, yeah, the benefits of a portfolio approach in terms of de-risking for sure. Does that, with regards to obviously Tanzania, are there lessons learned from the other African place, or is each country different? Are we wrong to assume Africa is just, you know, one entity? You're totally wrong to assume it's one entity. I mean, that is absolutely the case. I mean, you know, 51, 52, 53, 54 countries, depending on your definition. But quite aside from that, there's also some very marked cultural differences, marked religious differences, differences in history, like colonial history, etc., etc. So everywhere is very different, and every place has different requirements. Now, how we manage that is that, once again, coming back to our core values, our core values are inviolable. We will not breach those under any circumstances. However, with that caveat, we are willing to bend our model to accommodate the local circumstances and, and ensure that people get, you know, get something from it. And I can give you an example of what I mean by that. So we were recently approached by the government in Ghana who said, "We want to buy gold from you and pay you in cedis for it." Now, you know, when they initially said that, they were like, "Well, gee, they're not sure about that." But as we thought it through very carefully, because we don't normally do that, normally we would, you know, have our gold refined and sell it into the international market. When we thought about it, we said, "Well, actually, provided the Ghanaian government pays us the official rate in terms of gold price, and provided they convert it at the official exchange rate, well, that is good for us because we need local currency to pay local bills." They want gold to boost their foreign reserves. So we took on this approach, which was not our norm, but both sides benefited from it. So that's an example of the fact that, you know, we will bend the model to suit the circumstances, provided that we're not breaching our core values. Right. In terms of these kind of economic benefits of another African play, are there things that you're bringing over from the other operations, not just in terms of personnel and knowledge, but are there other ways of ensuring that you can keep that sub-$1,000 AISC number working? Yeah. No, well, for sure. You know, like, I mean, for instance, if we come across a technology that works in one part of the business, and we're very happy to share that with the other guys and get them to. Are there similar sorts of ore bodies at which it seems like it's not gold? No. Well, I mean, not exactly identical. But for instance, all of our mines at the present time are open pit, although we are about to do the first of our underground mining operations in the not too distant future as well. So at the moment, given the fact that they are all open pits, there's a lot of commonality between them. But they're not the same mineralogy sort of thing. Right. And how do you think the market is going to view this enlarged portfolio Africa play of yours? Because, as you mentioned at the beginning, you're in ASX. You've been on TSX for a bit, but perhaps this is sort of TSX reborn in a way, 2.0, I think some people refer to it. And what's your message to the North American market? One, not just in the case of doing business in Africa, but in terms of the way that your business delivers on the economic side of things, cultural side of things, and this kind of acquisitive nature that you have. Well, I mean, I'm not sure I need to give too many messages to the North American market because actually 40% of our stock is owned by American investors. In fact, US investors make up the largest proportion of investors that we have. So we were very well known to a lot of investors in North America, or a number of investors. But I guess what we haven't really done in the North American market is pursue the smaller investor, the retail investor, the family office kind of investor. And maybe that's an area where we, we do need to start to communicate more effectively to those groups of people. Because quite clearly there is a large amount of money available out there. And then there's a large group of people who are wanting to have perhaps the security of an investment in gold. And I think that Perseus can offer that because, and can offer it with something that some of our peers can't offer. What we can offer is not a guarantee, 100% guarantee, but a very high probability that we will be in business where many others won't because of the fact that we've got low operating costs and we've got multiple mines in multiple jurisdictions. We've got a good spread of risk, even volatility. Right. You've explained why you did the transaction, recent transaction in, in cash. But going forward, you're building up, especially right now, the margins just grew by $300 or more this side of Christmas. So what's the plan with the cash allocation? What's the best use of that cash? What's the best return on that cash? It's a very good question, actually. It's something that, you know, is exercising our mind. I might add, it's a subject that has been probably the most prominent subject of conversation with the 80 or so investors I've met with over the course of this year. What are you going to do with the cash? How are you going to deploy it, etc., etc.? I mean, we clearly have a need to, as we were talking about, replenish the portfolio and ensure that our production, etc., and cash flow can continue into the future. But beyond that, we also want to be returning that to, to our shareholders as well as the other stakeholders. How? Well, that's the question. Now, what we have done is several years ago, we implemented a dividend policy where we guaranteed shareholders basically that they would get a 1% yield come what may. But each year, when we've identified the fact that we've had surplus cash, we've paid a bonus as well. So the first year we paid 1.5%. So half of that was a 1.5% was a bonus. Last year was 2%, 1% base, 1% bonus. Come come 30 June this year, we'll be looking at the situation and saying, okay, we've got this amount of cash on the balance sheet. This is what we expect to generate in the next six months. This is what our immediate needs are. These are our longer term needs in terms of keeping the business going. Debt free, right? Sorry? Debt free. Well, we are debt free at the moment. That's right. We have no debt. But that's not to say that that's the right way necessarily. I was going to ask you about the balance. Yeah, yeah. You know, like I think a little bit of leverage is appropriate. I mean, given that, you know, gold's a fairly cyclical kind of thing, you know, you need to be fairly circumspect about how much debt you take on and how much. We do hedge, and that's a small amount of our production. We hedge about 25% of our projected production over a three-year period. But what we do with the hedging is we're very, very disciplined in the way we manage that. We, we, in a market like this, we sell into the lowest price hedges on the book and replace them with the highest, you know, at the higher price. So what we've done over a period of time is average up the value of the book. Now, I think at the end of December, the weighted average price in that book was like $2,080 an ounce. I don't know what it is exactly today, but it would be a lot higher than that. What would make you change that 25% or lower and stuff? Because I think a lot of retail, you talk about expanding it into the retailers, they don't quite understand it in high price gold. Why wouldn't you take all the margin? What's the benefit to you? Well, it's like this. You know, the investor can come and go. When gold price turns down, the investor goes and sells his shares and walks away. Yeah, we as a company still have a responsibility to all those stakeholders that I mentioned earlier on, and their benefits take the form of cash. Now, if the gold price was to collapse, we wouldn't be able to generate that cash. But by hedging in the way we do, we can guarantee that we will generate a significant margin, come what may, virtually. Or, you know, like if the gold price went to zero, then clearly you wouldn't. But, you know, under most normal trading or recent historical trading patterns, we can still stay alive. And, you know, given that, I think the market seems to have adopted a willingness to accept higher costs. I think there might be a few people who are a bit surprised when the gold price collapses. Now, we will still be in business, perhaps when some other people are struggling. And that's the benefit of the hedge book. And that's what investors should take note of. Because yes, we will enjoy the high price while they last. We're going to sell 75% of our production at record gold prices. But on the off chance that the price falls, we'll be around and other people won't be. And, you know, to sit here and say the gold price will never fall, well, I can tell you, you see the color of my hair? That's what I've got there. You're only 30 years old. I'm only 30. That's right. You know, that's the product of having lived through cycles. Talk to me about the margin, because all businesses should be focused on margin, right? That's the reality. But when I look at mining and I look across the board when we're doing our analysis, it's kind of shocking, not just value destruction in terms of projects blowing up, but in terms of even the ones which are producing ounces, are selling those ounces, they are perhaps less than efficient as a polite way of putting it, right? So margin is really, really important. At the moment, we're sort of seeing costs have gone up the last two years, but they seem to have plateaued a bit. Gold's going on a run for almost two years, two years later than most people thought it would do. So the margins are going to increase. How do you, and I know you've described to me an environment and a kind of your brand, as it were, how do you ensure efficient running of the company going forward? Everyone needs to be on the same page. It's just human nature. And when there's lots of money floating around, people get a little bit lazy, get a little bit casual. How do you ensure that you don't? Well, you know, that's what management's about, right? You know, I mean, I guess. Those are the ones I'm accusing. No, no. Well, I mean, I guess we're all captives of our experience. I mean, you know, if you look at my history, I was in the gold industry when gold was around $200 an ounce, $250 an ounce or something like that it was. And what I noticed at that stage of the game, I mean, everybody pulled their belt in big time to be able to accommodate that. What I noticed in the aftermath of that, when the gold price ran up, the people who let their belt off didn't do as well as the people who said, you know, we could maintain the same practices even though we're selling more and increase the margin. And that's something that remained with me forever. So our focus is on producing as much gold at the lowest possible cost every single day. And we don't look at the gold price particularly other than for some hedging purposes or whatever. But our focus is to keep the costs down, generate as much cash as we can. You know, we don't want to be sitting there going, oh, we're a 1 million ounce producer. To be frank, if we could make, you know, as much money from 500,000 ounces as others do from 1 million, we're pretty happy about that, actually. So it really is about making cash. It's about making cash per share. It's about making cash per ounce. And that's the focus of our attention. And it really does need everybody to realize that that's the important piece of the business. Right. Talk to me about ambition, willingness to build a portfolio or not, or time the portfolio, because M&A gets a lot of attention. It also does a lot for the perceived value of the company, etc. But the, the synergies sometimes that need to be achieved aren't achieved. The cost of the acquisitions sometimes are expensive. And there's lots of things that can go wrong in terms of an aggressive expansion plan. How do you time yours? I've looked at the last three acquisitions and they seem to be spaced. Give yourself some time to breathe, get it on board, and then think again. But in a market like this, it must be slightly irresistible when you're looking around. Well, it could be, but there's a time and a place for everything. And, you know, sometimes you just have to sit there and keep your hands, sit on your hands. You know, it's a funny thing because when you do have cash as we do, it seems to burn a hole in other people's pockets more so than it does in ours. What do you mean by that? Well, what it means is that they just want you to spend. They love, you know. Everyone wants you to go and do stuff because it's exciting. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. It only makes sense if you're going to be creating value through that expenditure, that investment rather. And I think in that regard, you know, we talk about industry and things like that. It is interesting to look at the gold business and look at it over a period of time. And the return on capital across the industry, it's pretty awful, actually. It's quite horrible. Yeah. And you ask yourself the question, why is that the case? I think a lot of M&A that's occurred over the years has been pretty damn dumb. And you wonder why people do that. You know, if they thought about it, they wouldn't. But they're being pulled and pushed. They're being pulled by investors who want growth. We're not going to invest in you unless you're a 1 million ounce producer or unless you've got this scale. So there's a definite pull factor. Now, I know the investors deny that, but that is the case. But I know that they do that because I've sat with them and talked about it. And then you get the push coming from the corporate where I want to be a million ounce producer because that makes me a big shot or whatever the case happens to be. So you've got this interesting dynamic going. You've got a lot of drive to do transactions. And sometimes they just don't make sense. Yeah, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. There seems to be that people are kind of focusing on the wrong thing. I want to be 1 million ounces, but not necessarily talking about margin. That's correct. You know, absolutely. You know, very rarely do you hear people focus on that. We just happen to be a bit different. We like cash. We like generating cash flow. We like generating earnings. Yeah, you know, maybe it's a function of the fact that my dad was a bank manager and he might have beaten that into me as a young child or something, rather than to be. Back in the days when your father could beat stuff into you. Of course, of course. It's a phrase I use a lot. Well, I think that's a really good understanding of, you know, what's going on up here and what drives you and therefore what drives the team. I look forward to seeing, you know, how the new product is integrated into the company. I look forward to continual quarter after quarter delivery on those ounces. And of course, for me, margin is king. Making money is what it's about. So appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. Thanks for that.