Good day, welcome to the Bushveld Minerals first quarter 2023 operational update conference call. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Fortune Mojapelo, CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much. It's a good afternoon to everybody. Thank you very much for joining us. Welcome to our quarterly operational update call. With me today presenting is, well, Group CFO Tanya Chikanza, as well as our Group Investor Relations Head, Ms. Chika Edeh. To start with the numbers for the group before we dive into the individual assets. Production for the quarter was at 943 metric tons of vanadium, down from Q1 of 2022, given the planned downtime at both Vametco and Vanchem, with a group weighted average production cash cost of $25.90 per kgV. This was supported in part by a weakened South African rand to the U.S. dollar foreign exchange rate. Sales for the quarter were up 20% on those of last year at 1,028 mtV as we continued to draw down from inventory at Vanchem, and also using the period to carry out maintenance at the plant. We anticipate a solid and steady year of production across both assets and as such, maintain our projected 2023 guidance numbers. Through our continued focus on the safety improvement program across the group, we're pleased to report a total recordable injury frequency rate of 3.67, which is a 51% improvement from the same time last year. To give a bit more color on the separate assets now, I will begin with Vametco. Production at Vametco for the quarter was 682 mtV, down on the same period last year, impacted by high rainfalls and a one-week shutdown in order to replace the secondary crusher. We are now planning our annual 30-day scheduled maintenance for Q3. Previously this was scheduled for the second quarter. The move to Q3 is supported by increased confidence in the kiln's current performance levels. The cost at Vametco of $22.80 per kgV were marginally higher in Q1 given the lower production volumes. The construction of the 3.5 MW PV solar and 1 MW, 4 MWh VRFB mini-grid project at Vametco has now commenced and is due for completion in mid-2023. The VRFB supplied by CellCube has been delivered to the mine already, and in conjunction with the mini-grid, will supply approximately 10% of Vametco's energy needs. In our quarterly statement, we have also provided an update on the minerals reserves and resources at Vametco. The updates are based on the Competent Persons Reports prepared by The MSA Group. The ore reserves at 31 December 2022 for Vametco stood at 264,600 tons of vanadium pentoxide in magnetite at a grade of about 1.99% V2O5, and this is up from 262,000 tons owing to the revised pit design, which included additional tonnage. The combined inferred and indicated mineral resource comprises three Seams, the Lower, Intermediate, and Upper Seams and is reported at 181.5 million tons at an average grade of 1.98% V2O5, with an average magnetite content of 35% for 699,000 tons of contained vanadium. Now moving on to Vanchem. This quarter saw increased production levels of 261 mtV, up from 224 mtV in Q1 of 2022. This is owing to the optimization in Kiln 3 and the introduction of the power procurement solution with the local municipality, which has ensured a more sustained, consistent power supply to the plant. This has enabled operational stability, as shown by the production figures month-on-month. Vanchem produced 121 mtV in January and February combined, and yet in March alone, it produced 141 mtV. We expect this level of operational stability to continue going forward. Production cash cost for Q1 2023 at Vanchem was $34.10 per kg V. This was lower relative to Q1 2022 owing to a weaker South African rand relative to the U.S. dollar, as well as higher production volumes during this period. We do see this cost flattening over the course of the year to meet our guidance figures. The annual 25-day maintenance period at Vanchem is also planned for Q3. A new third-party supply agreement has been agreed now with Vanchem for lower silica ore in comparison to that of the Upper Seam, which has previously been processed at Vanchem. This will allow for significantly higher recoveries, resulting in more stable production rates at no additional cost. I'm pleased to state that we have now completed construction of the 55% owned Belco electrolyte manufacturing plant and have now commenced the hot commissioning of this plant. Ultimately, when it's running at full capacity, this plant will be targeting an annual capacity of 8 million L of vanadium electrolyte. We are in discussions with potential offtake partners and will announce final agreements in due course. Finally, I'd like to just take the opportunity to look briefly at the vanadium market as a whole over the quarter. Across all markets, fair vanadium prices specifically, the London Metal Bulletin reports $39.40 per kgV. CRU, Ryan's Notes and Asian Metal averaged about $42.50 per kgV and $37.80 per kgV respectively. These are solid prices. Demand for Bushveld's full range of products is strong globally, and we continue to prioritize sales into high value markets of the aerospace industry and specialty alloys in order to maximize income. Although the numbers this quarter show slightly lower production volumes at both Vametco and Vanchem in real terms, we have taken the opportunity to strengthen our portfolio, carrying out key maintenance, which has already shown its worth in the numbers for March and April thus far. As such, we maintain our guidance for the year at between 4,200 and 4,500 mtV. I look forward to updating you over the coming weeks with the progress made across the other work streams and the publishing of the 2022 financial statements. Thank you very much for your time, and I'd like to pause now to take questions. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. Please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. The first question comes from Marina Calero from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good afternoon. Thanks for the call. I was wondering if you could give us an update on the negotiation notes about the convertible loan that is expiring in November? Thank you, Marina, for the question. As you correctly noted, the convertible loan note with Orion was part of a funding package that we raised from Orion Mine Finance back in 2020. Principal being $35 million with a three-year term, as you correctly stated, maturing in November 2023. We have been in discussions with Orion and other potential specialist funders regarding refinancing options of the CLN. I think anybody looking at our balance sheet, looking at our numbers and the reports that we've presented to the market already, would be justified in wanting to understand how exactly the group intends to resolve the convertible loan note. We have said in the past that the answer really lies in either a refinance or a restructuring or a combination of the two. I'm pleased to say that discussions with Orion in respect of the potential restructuring of the CLN are underway, and we'll provide the market in due course with updates. I also just want to acknowledge that obviously, as we're preparing our financial results as well, this is a matter that will be quite important to investors, as well as our auditors. As a management team, we retain a level of confidence that we'll be able to resolve this in short order. Thank you. Very helpful. One more question, if I may. Can you tell us how much production you lost at Vanchem because of load shedding or power curtailment? I know you mentioned that the new solution with the municipality is working well, but curious to know what the number was. Marina, I will have Chika assist me just in terms of the specific number, but we have provided in previous notes that we calculated that total loss of production was in the order of about 300 mtV as a result of the load shedding that we experienced last year. Clearly, having a solution to load shedding in the form of a curtailment contract is something that was quite important. What we have now agreed with the municipality is definitely seen a step change in terms of, you know, the stability of power supply. I should say that it's not 100% the complete solution. You know, pleased to say that we have not seen instances where during load shedding hours that Vanchem has had to go without power because of load shedding. That's why the numbers that you see in this quarter, you know, do reflect that as we have had the opportunity to actually optimize our Kiln 3 properly. And that shows in the kind of production numbers that we've just talked about. When you look at it on a month-on-month basis, particularly with March producing 141 mtV, that's a testament to the opportunity to optimize our plant, and we expect to see that improvement continue into the rest of the year. Thanks, Fortune. Yes, Chika. Thanks, Fortune. Marina, hi, this is Chika. Just to clarify, in 2022, Vanchem had lost approximately 200 mtV due to load shedding. As Fortune mentioned, with the curtailment solution that we have in place, we have seen an improvement in the stability around the operational performance of the plant given the curtailment solution. We haven't given the figure of Yeah, indeed. No, thank you. I think she had completed the point. Thank you for that clarification. Yeah, the number for 2022 was about 200 mtV in lost production, that could be demonstrated to have been due to load shedding. Correct. I understand you don't have the Q1, number, the Q1 number for this year. I can get back to you offline, Marina, on that. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move to our next question from Nick Chalmers from ARC. Please go ahead. Hi, Fortune. I hope you're well. I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on the new supply agreement for lower silica ore for Vanchem. Can you confirm, is that supplemental to Upper Seam or is it replacing it? If the latter, how long does the term last for? What's the sort of cost comparison between buying that material and then shipping material in from Vanchem, from Vametco rather? Thanks, Nick, for that question. The first point I'd make about the third-party ore supply. You'll recall that we've always talked about the fact that we saw supply of ore into Vanchem coming from three sources. One being internal with the Vametco Upper Seam as well as the Kiln Spillage stockpile, which is essentially at Highveld and was derived from the Mapochs mine. We've also mentioned that we were always going to be looking at bringing in some third-party supply. The Bushveld Complex is got plenty of good quality vanadium resources that will need a processing home. Having the processing facilities that we have, we're the natural home for those resources. Indeed, we have looked at multiple deposits around the Bushveld Complex. I'm pleased that we could reach an agreement with VTM for supply. We like their particular ore body because it is quite consistent with Mapochs in terms of mineralogy. It is materially lower in silica levels compared to what we've seen in the Upper Seam project. Based on the work that we have seen in Vanchem running, for example, just on the KSS alone, during the months of March, that manifested in substantial improvements in our recoveries, which was responsible for the kind of improved performance that we saw. During the month of April, we still ran a combination of the Kiln Spillage stockpile and the Upper Seam, albeit with a different ratio to try and reduce as much as possible the average silica levels that we are feeding into our kilns. Again, there we saw material improvements to our production with the number that I mentioned earlier on. The question you specifically asked is, do we see this new source supplementing or replacing the Upper Seam altogether? Our view is that is to replace the Upper Seam altogether. We anticipate that going forward, particularly from about June onwards, that we will be blending the Kiln Spillage stockpile together with this third-party source. We've signed a contract that will run for more than two years and will certainly allow us to, you know, see marked improvement. We continue to look at securing greater tonnages, but we have every confidence that the VTM deposit will be able to support Vanchem for much longer periods of time and we'll continue to develop that relationship. We will be discontinuing Upper Seam, and we will be running with the Kiln Spillage stockpile and this third-party material. We have tested it. We are comfortable that the recoveries characteristics that it demonstrates will play themselves out, you know, in the coming months as we introduce it. Thanks. In terms of the cost of purchasing that material and is that comparable with, you know, your own costs of mining and trucking the Mapochs Upper Seam? well, the good news is that actually the VTM ore body that we are mining relative to, for example, the Upper Seam project, is it will deliver the ore, which is better quality. It will deliver ore, also at a better price level compared to the cost that we were incurring with the Upper Seam project. We get a double benefit of better priced ore with better quality and with better operational metrics in terms of recoveries, which means we extract more vanadium units out of every ton of material that we're processing. Great. Thanks for that, Fortune. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. Now my next question comes from Sergey Raevskiy from SP Angel. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, Fortune. Hi, Chika. Thank you for the update. The question is regarding Vanchem electricity curtailment solution that you've introduced last year. Could you just explain what it is? Also another question, again, apologies if you've covered that before, but on the power supply through April, did you have any load shedding recorded, or did you have any effect on the production at Vanchem or Vametco during this month? Thank you. So when we talk about the curtailment power solution, what we mean is the following: whenever there is load shedding, and there are certain periods of time that, you know, certain sections of the population will not have access to power, with high energy users, and with industrial players particularly, if you've got a curtailment contract, and that can be with Eskom directly, which is the best scenario, or it can still be with the municipality, what it means is that in times of load shedding, the utility will typically ask you to reduce your consumption levels by X percent. You know, so far that's been up to about 20% at the peak of load shedding. As an operator, you will appreciate that if you don't have to shut off power completely and you have to reduce consumption, you can work with that within a continuous operation, and you can optimize still. If you have to shut off completely, then it's very disruptive. That's why at Vanchem we've had to run with standby generators, which also is quite expensive. Shifting to a curtailment solution with the municipality, albeit, has meant that we don't experience load shedding, which means we don't get cut off completely. We will have moments where we're asked to reduce our consumption by X percent up to about 20%. So far, since that solution has been implemented, no, we haven't had an experience of load shedding. There has been instances of power dips, but that is unrelated to, and that is not specifically a load-shedding issue, and they haven't been material for us. That's another reason why when we think about the curtailment solution we have, we're appreciative of the relationship and the contract we have with the municipality, but we still are of the view that the best solution will always be to be on a curtailment solution with the utility directly. Okay. Thank you. On the, just, the power supply through the month of April, how was it? It's been consistent. In the month of April, we are on track with to produce at the levels that we planned for and expected. We certainly hope that that does continue. Of course, winter is coming up and everybody in South Africa will be a little apprehensive about what remains for the grid as a whole. You know, if you think about the kind of extent of load shedding we saw in Q4 of last year, if we see any of that happening in winter this year, you know, Vametco managed through that period, in fact producing above what was guidance. We would think that, with Vanchem, we should still be able to, you know, meet our production targets. You know, again, I think one does need to caution that, you know, there's no total grid collapse. We definitely don't and not of the view. You can say, you can never say never, and we certainly are hopeful that the efforts of the government to stabilize the national grid, et cetera, are gonna bear fruit and that we are not going to see some of the worst-case scenarios that some people have predicted. That's it. Thank you very much. Thank you. As there are no further questions in the queue, I would like to hand the call back over to Fortune for any additional or closing remarks. Over to you, sir. Thank you very much. My concluding remarks are at several levels. The first one being just to take listeners back about 18 or so months ago when we experienced operational stability issues at Vametco. At the time, we indicated that we were rebasing production, and we were gonna focus on making sure that we get Vametco at a stable production level. I'm pleased to say that through 2022, I was studying a lot of parts of 2021 and through 2022, we have seen a great deal of operational stability at Vametco, and I think it's a lot of credit to the hard work of the team there. We are taking the same kind of focused approach to Vanchem. You know, two major risk factors to Vanchem were power and to the ore supply issue. Power, because it stopped us from being able to commission Kiln 3 properly, and then ore, because it impacted on the recoveries that we achieved. With a determined solution in place, and with consistent power in place, and with the contract that we've signed with VTM, for supply of ore, you know, we have the platform to ensure that we get Vanchem to its potential. That potential is still to get Vanchem operating at 2,500+ mtV per annum. With this in place, we're comfortable that we can certainly work, you know, hard and drive towards that, towards that target. I'm encouraged by what we've seen to date. Again, Tim has been working very hard, under challenging circumstances. I'm hopeful that when we talk again in the next quarter, update, that we'll be able to demonstrate the results of this, of this focused work on getting Vanchem to stable operations. With stable operations, of course, comes more predictable, costs, and the costs themselves also come down because you've got less stoppages and you get more throughput, which means you've got more fixed cost dilution. It becomes a virtual, cycle, which we certainly hope to be reporting on going forward. Finally, I am also very pleased to see the progress with the mini-grid. We've always said that, you know, the mini-grid is a commercial pilot which will support Vametco's power requirements, at the same time demonstrating the commercial viability of PV solar and storage, using VRFBs. I'm quite excited to be able to bring people to come see this solution in place when we complete it and we commission it. It's coming at a very appropriate time. For the first time, last year, we saw VRFBs increase their contribution to the vanadium demand to become the second largest source of vanadium demand. Certainly, we look at the projects that are being announced the world over. We expect to see that trend and that growth continuing, which we expect is going to further support the vanadium market, and, you know, with positive upsides in terms of the vanadium price, notwithstanding the kind of volatility that we've seen in the short term. All in all, I think there's reason to be optimistic looking forward, and I look forward to be providing an update to you in the next quarter. Well, certainly before that, we will be presenting the annual results of the company. I look forward to engaging with you on that as well. Thank you all for your time and for your patience.