Hello and welcome to the Bushveld Minerals Quarter Two update call. My name is Judy and I'll be the coordinator for today's event. Please note that the conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad at any time. If you require technical assistance, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Tanya Chikanza, Chief Financial Officer, to begin today's conference. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. First of all, my apologies for keeping you waiting for this long. We've been having some technical challenges associated with load shedding, which is actually the reflection of some of the things that we're going to talk about today. Welcome to our June quarterly and half year 2022 update call. Thank you for dialing in. Due to those challenges, Fortune is unable to speak to you just as yet, but we'll keep continuing to try and I'll take you through these results leading up to June end. I am pleased to report on the company's behalf the overall solid first half of 2022. Group production was 1,641 mtV, 4% up relative to the first half of 2021. The numbers reflect the work we have put in to achieve sustained, consistent operational performance and stability, particularly at Vametco. It has been a challenging quarter for Vanchem, marking the transition between the kilns, as Kiln 1 came to the end of its useful life and Kiln 3 commissioning was delayed and is currently experiencing a slower than anticipated ramp-up. This coupled with unstable power supply due to the national electricity load shedding that has been experienced in South Africa. The ramp-up is progressing well and the group remains on course to meet the annualized steady-state production run rate of 5,000-5,400 mtV per annum by the end of 2022. Now let's talk operational numbers for the June quarter and for the half year of first half of 2022. As mentioned in today's announcement, Q2 saw a group production of 668 mtV for the quarter to 31% down from the previous quarter at 972 mtV. However, the H1 2022 figure of 1,641 mtV was up 4% on the previous year, owing to the company's focus on stable operational performance at Vanchem. To go further into the individual operations, I will begin with Vanchem. The June quarter saw a 26-day plant maintenance shutdown at Vanchem, which brought Q2 production down 20% from 593 in Q2 2021 mtV to 477. It is important to note that in 2021, the maintenance, similar maintenance was conducted in Q1 2021. The half year figures, however, are stronger than that of last year, owing to that stable operational performance. With this steady performance in mind and following the successful maintenance in the plant, with volumes now back at Q1 levels of production of 760 mtV, we anticipate meeting the upper end of our 2022 production guidance of between 2,450 and 2,550 mtV and achieving steady-state production run rate of 2,800 mtV per annum by the end of the year. As a result of the weaker rand-to-dollar exchange rate, the production cash costs, what we call C1 for this quarter, at $24.4/kgV was 5% lower relative to that of the previous quarter, and these numbers are in dollars. Increased production volumes had further bearing on the 9% decrease in cash costs for the half year, with H1 2022 at $23.5 per kgV, compared to that of $25.9 per kgV last year. We therefore feel that Bushveld is on track to meet production cash cost guidance of between $22.7 per kgV and $23.5 per kgV for the year at Vametco. If I can move on now to Vanchem. This quarter saw a lower production volume of 191 mtV. It was 35% lower than that of Q2 last year, which produced 293. This is owing to the electricity load shedding and the slower than anticipated commissioning and ramp-up of Kiln 3, which I've mentioned before. In addition to the reasons just mentioned, in H1 2022, Kiln 1 was coming to the end of its useful life, which impacted recoveries during the period. With H1 2022 production at 415 mtV, which was 20% lower than that of 586 in H1 2021. This decrease in production volumes therefore meant that the H1 2022 production cash costs, C1, of $43.2 kgV was 46% higher relative to last year. In H1 2021, the cash costs were $29.5 per kgV. Q2 production cash costs were $48.5 per kgV, 73% higher than Q2 2021, which recorded $28.1 per kgV. Due to lower production volumes in Q1 2022, impacted by lower recoveries as a result of Kiln 1's refractory reaching the end of its useful life, a slower than expected production ramp up post the commissioning of Kiln 3 and expected increased electricity load shedding challenges in the short term. Production guidance of between 1,750 and 1,850 and the production cash cost guidance of $27.7-$28.4 is under review. We will provide an update as part of the H1 2022 interim announcement. Despite the initial delay in ramp up, Kiln 3 is now making good progress. It's ramping up well, and we are assured that Vanchem is on track to achieve a steady state production of 2,600 mtV per annum per year by the end of the year. That's a run rate, the 2,600. Our planned maintenance at Vametco and the commissioning of Kiln 3 form of the group's strategy to invest in maintenance and infrastructure. To this end, and following the positive performance at Vametco, we expect to achieve the planned production guidance of 4,200-4,400 mtV, but we expect this to be towards the lower end of that particular range. From a sales perspective, flooding in KwaZulu-Natal in April created logistical challenges for Bushveld, with shipping initially delayed by between 14 and 21 days. This resulted in diversion of exports through alternative South African ports, including that of Cape Town, in order to meet our client obligations. These delays have now been resolved, but we will continue to monitor international shipping availability. Group sales for H1 2022 were 1,644 mtV, and these are up 2.2% compared to last year. I would like to spend the next few minutes touching on the announcement made by President Ramaphosa addressing the electricity crisis in South Africa and its impact on our operations. While it was refreshing to see South Africa's government send a strong message on how it plans to overcome the country's energy crisis, it is unfortunate that in the short term, Vanchem's ability to operate smoothly will be affected by the ongoing electricity load shedding, like many other industrial plants in the country. We are hopeful that with increased maintenance efforts at the country's power station and the end of the winter season, we will see reduced incidences of load shedding. Both Vametco and Vanchem are adversely impacted by load shedding. For Vametco, this means curtailment of power usage. However, this does not affect Vametco's operational performance and production. For Vanchem, however, it is on the municipal power grid, and this means a complete loss of power and reliance on standby diesel generators. Despite the electricity disruption, Vanchem's ramp up has stabilized in recent weeks, while Vametco has also returned to Q1 production levels since the maintenance shutdown. As a result, we remain confident that Bushveld Minerals will achieve a production run rate of 5,000-5,400 mtV per annum by the end of this financial year. We look forward to reporting our progress to the market in the coming months. Thank you for your time, and I will now stop now to take questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you so much. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We ask today that you keep all your questions short where possible. You'll then be advised when you can ask your question. Again, it is star one on your telephone keypad to ask a question on today's call. The first question is coming from the line of Paul Clapham. Your line is unmuted, and you may go ahead. Hi. Thanks, Tanya, for running through the Q2 results with us. That was really helpful. The only question I had really was around the disparity between some of the prices that are being currently realized in the market, particularly between the U.S. prices, which I think you quoted as from CRU as $54. I think Fastmarkets are reporting the same, compared to London metal prices and Asian markets, which are closer to $35. That's cool. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Good. There is a disparity actually between the U.S. market and the other markets. We have seen that, you know, that disconnect prevail for a good part of the year now. Although I think the divergence is beginning to close somewhat. It is correct that there is that element. I think for us, it's fair to say that, when you think about our sales, 45% of our sales are in the U.S. We, you know, that sort of contributes towards our blended realized price in the long term. Okay. In terms of demand from the U.S., I mean, how is that market looking for you at the moment? It's a good market. Yeah. Sorry, carry on. Yeah. I was just wondering, you know, because I guess presumably it makes more sense to sell more products to the U.S. as opposed to other markets where you can achieve a higher price. A good chunk of our products are sold into the US. We have firm contracts, in particular that are in the U.S., so we do that. You know, the balancing act I guess is that, you know, we are selling into the U.S. and we do maintain a bit of flexibility to be able to sell to the other markets because prices can change. You know, what we are really seeing is quite peculiar. But it's also fair to say that in looking at which markets we are going to sort of sell to, we also think about the logistical challenges that are currently eventuating at the moment that we are seeing. Yeah, a good chunk of our product, as I say, in this first half alone, 45% of our sales were in the U.S. with the rest of the world and Asia really coming in at about 18%. We are taking advantage of that. Okay, that was really helpful. Thanks, Tanya. Thank you so much for your question. As another reminder, it is star one on your telephone keypad to ask a question on today's call. There are no further questions in the queue at this moment, so this is a final reminder. Star one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. The next question is coming from the line of William Hurley. Your line is unmuted, and you may go ahead. Hi there. Yeah, thanks for your update. As a private investor, I just would like to know how long do you think it'll be before you start returning dividends to the shareholders? Thank you for that question. I think the best way for me to answer that is, you know, we hope to get to a point one day where we can do that. I think, you know, at the moment, we have a capital allocation program which looks at, you know, what we have, what is available, and how we should spend it, and then we get to get all those different requirements to compete against one another. In a world where there, you know, there is that profitability and there's cash flows, you know, dividends would be competing, and return shareholders would be competing against spend, capital spend in any other item that may be requiring that cash flow. You know, in the longer term, we certainly hope that that will come to pass. Okay. Yeah, thank you for that. Like, are we looking at within 3-5 years or post 5 years? I wish I could be that definitive. I think it's, you know, dependent on a number of things. When we look at dividends, we are thinking about, as I said, we think about cash flows and cash generation. We have spent the last few years building the business. You know, you will recall that, thanks to your contributions, we have Vametco, and now we have just finished refurbishing, you know, the biggest kiln in Vanchem, and all that takes up capital. The reason we've done that is to get to a point where we can produce our assets, there's a benefit in a higher volume of production because it lowers our costs. Given the demands that we see out there, you know, we expect them to increase our production and therefore profitability in the longer term. Now, sort of having done the second capital spend that we have done on our assets, and subject to pricing, we expect to generate cash flows more in the near term, not so much in the longer term. I think what we do try and do, however, is our top concern is the pricing, which is not in our gift to determine. Vanadium prices, as you know, is quite volatile. It will go up and down, and there's a rule that says that when it is up, we should be banking that cash, and that should compete as well against dividends and against capital spend. Then there's the element of the costs, which, you know, we're very much in a mode of cost containment. You know, just like the rest of the world is suffering from inflationary pressures, we are also, you know, suffering from those same pressures. It's just managing all those different things. I wish I could say with clarity and confidence that, you know, in three years' time we'll be issuing a dividend. What I can say is that the intention to do it, to have a dividend policy, that is realistic, is something that we do have as an organization and we'd want to see it happen, you know, at some point as soon as we can. Okay, thank you for that. Thank you for your question. The final question is coming from the line of Harpreet Sahota from Towergate. Your line is unmuted, and you may go ahead. Good afternoon. I've got a question in regards to the Eskom electricity load shedding, which of course caused serious issues at mine over the last quarter. Do you have any processes in place to mitigate these power supply issues in the future over the longer term? There is one which is obviously around, you know, the mini-grid, which is, you know, the project that we're building at Vametco is going to be a very good example of how we can mitigate. Because you're absolutely right that, you know, the electricity and the load shedding is something which is impacting our business. If I can just explain that at Vametco, like, and many other mining companies, because of the nature of the construct of where we sit on Eskom. Typically what happens is that Eskom will notify us that there's going to be load shedding. That allows us to plan which part of the business needs to stop, so that we can operate safely for the sake of everybody. That worked out quite well. I think the challenge we've had at Vanchem is that because it sits on the municipality grid, we do not have that choice and that ability to be able to switch on and off certain things. The second point is that having recognized this, actually, in the process of refurbishing Vanchem, we actually acquired, you know, generators. So that when the electricity actually does go off from the grid, we can actually power up our plants using the generators. You will know, I'm sure that generators however use diesel, so in a way it's an interesting dichotomy that we have. We do have an alternative supply. That supply is actually quite costly, as you know that diesel, you know, worldwide has really just, you know, increasing in cost. There is a backup in the form of diesel generators, but it's not a cheap backup. We have been exploring to see what are the alternative forms we can put at Vanchem, but I think this is work we are still looking at, but I think there's a bit of land constraints in terms of what the alternative supply, how we would place the alternative supply that would replace those diesel generators. Thank you very much. It's amazing. It's something we actively look at because it obviously is very, very disruptive to us and to many other people in the industry. Of course, well, the government's making immense political noise so asking for extra capacity. How will Bushveld react to that? Sorry, I didn't quite catch your question. Of course, the government's looking to generate extra capacity within South Africa, so how are you looking to react to that going forward? Yeah, I think that announcement sort of plays to the suite of Bushveld, the size of Bushveld Energy, you know, component is concerned, and that provides an element of quite a bit of sweet spot. That's something that we will look at. We are actively engaged, you know, with other energy networks to be able to respond to that. That's something we're looking at. I think it's an opportunity for us. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for your question. This is the final reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, press star one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions. I'll now hand it back over to you, host, to conclude today's conference. Thank you. Thank you all for joining on the call, and apologies again for the delay. You know, just as a recap, I think we've made significant progress when you look at our H1 2022 production compared to what we achieved in 2021. The reset that we did in 2021 is bearing fruit, as witnessed by what we're seeing at Vametco, where the performance there is consistent, and we've just gone through our second plant maintenance in just over 15 months. I think, you know, that is really, you know, for us, we are encouraged by that performance. As far as Vanchem is concerned, whilst we have experienced this ramp up, a slower than anticipated ramp up, and the commissioning was slower than ramp up. Despite the challenges we're experiencing at the moment, despite load shedding, we remain quite confident that by the time we get to the end of this year, we will achieve that run rate at Vanchem, which allows us to achieve the 5,000-5,400 run rate going into 2022. Thank you for listening and look forward to speaking again soon. Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us on today's call. You may now disconnect your handsets. Fortune, please stay connected.