Hello, welcome to the Centamin Q1 2023 Results Conference Call. My name is Alex, I'll be coordinating the call today. If you'd like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, you can press star one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand over to your host, Martin Horgan, CEO, to begin. Please go ahead. Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everybody. As mentioned, Martin Horgan here, joined by my colleagues, as usual, Ross Jerrard, CFO, and Alex Barter on corporate comms. Thanks, everybody, for taking the time to dial in this morning, just obviously to listen about the Q1 results for Centamin. I think a really good set of results. Very, very happy with where things are. Our team did a fantastic job delivering in line with plan. Delighted with that. You know, in terms of the operations at Sukari themselves, open pit continues to perform very nicely, seeing good productivity and a sort of performance by both the, our own fleet and also Capital continue to push on with their accelerated waste stripping program. We are seeing the benefits of that now in terms of that increased operational flexibility as well. I think the open pit's moving along very, very nicely. Underground, another really good performance by the underground team. delighted to see both tons for ore and development, but also development meters coming through and seeing that pushing on in line with the plan to date that 1 million tons plus minus of underground ore this year as well. Processing, a couple of bits of planned maintenance in the period, a couple of partial relines, and we also took the opportunity to do some work around the mill motor. It's just something that has been sort of hanging around for a little while, and delighted to get that work done and put behind us, and that's now good for the next 10, 15 years plus in terms of that work as well. I think overall, a really strong operational performance by the team. We did have that one LTI in the period, which was unfortunate, bringing to an end our sort of our streak of nearly just under 10 million hours without an LTI. If there's any sort of solace in that, it was a very benign incident and wasn't the result of a high potential injury or accident. It was something relatively minor in the end. Unfortunately, the gentleman that suffered the knee injury will make a full recovery and fine. That was probably the one minor blip in the first quarter. Otherwise, you know, really solid performance from the Sukari operational team. Projects-wise, paste plant being commissioned as we speak. The team are on site doing that, and we should expect to see first slurry and paste being produced into early part of May. TSF embankment raising work continues on that basis. A grid connection tender documents are out. We expect qualifying bids by the end of this month. In terms of solar expansion, that work is being assessed right now as well. I think project-wise, the team continued to push on during the Q1, and delighted to see that work progressing nicely. Outside of Sukari, staying in Egypt for now, getting ready to start drill testing the priority targets across the Nugrus Block, which is the block ground adjacent to the Sukari mine. We've used the Ramadan and Eid period to finalize preparations, and we're anticipating during May that we'll be able to get a drill rig out onto those targets and start a program to start drill testing some of those priority areas for us as well. Just getting on with that now. Pivoting across to West Africa and Doropo, I think a good solid performance there. Starting to come together now in terms of the numbers. We're anticipating sort of finalizing that off over the coming weeks and obviously looking to get that out to market in terms of an update for the Doropo project as well. We've also taken advantage of the current dry season. We've actually got quite a bit of the DFS drilling work actually completed already. By the time we finish the PFS, we should have some really good momentum to being able to push straight into the DFS and push that forward from there as well. In terms of that performance in Q1 means that the outlook for 2023 doesn't change. No change to guidance of that 450,000 to 480,000 ounces for the year, slightly weighted towards the back half of the year. Retaining our cost guidance, both cash cost and AISC, about $1,250 to $1,400. In terms of CapEx, again, no change for the annual outlook. We're a little bit slow in terms of CapEx in the 1st quarter. That was just due to timings of when invoices dropped and things went out the door. Otherwise, we see no change to the CapEx for the full year. Really great start to the year. Great operational performance in line with plan, and sets us up very nicely with that momentum into Q2. Looking forward to a number of catalysts that we can talk to you about for the balance of this year, Doropo coming through in the next few weeks, that life of mine plan update, and then, of course, the potential exciting sort of EDX results as we go forward from there as well. With that, I think maybe we'll pause there as the overview and very happily open it up to the floor for any questions anyone might have. Alex, I'll pass back to you and we can go to questions, please. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you can press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, you may press star two. If you have joined us via the webcast, you can type your question into the Q&A box. Our first question for today comes from Jason Fairclough from Bank of America. Jason, your line is now open. Please go ahead. Morning, Martin. Thanks for the update. look, just to focus a little bit on exploration, so you're setting up for the drilling at Nugrus. If we were to think about, you know, finding some satellite ore bodies, some higher grade, you know, targets, how quickly could that ore end up in the Sukari mill? Morning, Jason. Yeah, look, I think, let's. Well, firstly, one of the things we did with the team during this first quarter was that the GOs were asking, you know, what constitutes success? We wanted to understand what sort of targets we're looking at. We did some work where we assumed there was, you know, an amount of CapEx to set up a satellite feed, satellite deposit away from Sukari. Pre-stripping, infrastructure, small workshops, little gen sets, just, you know, to have that look. We assumed, we put a, picked a number of $30 million. Could be 20, could be 40 or 50, I mean. As a starting point, we said about that sort of number. We've clearly got our operating costs that we're aware of at Sukari, we can factor those up because it's probably a smaller operation. Then we looked at some sort of transportation costs. Really when we looked at that, we started to screen that if we've got a, an assumed IRR requirements or for these projects, you know, what sort of what, you know, what constitutes success? And actually, you know, something as little as sort of, you know, 300,000 ounces plus at sort of 1.3, 1.4 g, you know, that would work very nicely in terms of being quite value accretive to Sukari because of that infrastructure. That's on a sort of 20, 30-km basis from the mill. With that sort of, you know, with that sort of thought process, it says to GOs, clearly, we're looking for bigger than that. If you're finding things that are in around that really is kinda like the lower bench limit we're looking for. You know, what we believe could be constituted or what we believe would be successful is actually quite a low barrier from a geological sort of perspective as well. I think that gives us some great encouragement. In terms of, you know, let's say it was half a million ounces of material. You know that's not such a, on the assumption it's reasonable grade, that's not a huge area in terms of being able to sort of drill off and infill something. So, you know, you might take a. Of course, we don't have the seasonality in Egypt that you have in West Africa around rainy season and so on. On the assumption, you could probably drill that off in, you know, relatively quick order, you know, in a 12, 18 months period. You know, you could have that as a reserves within a couple of years. Then in terms of the fact we've got the infrastructure at Sukari, you know, pushing out, you know, an access road, establishment of a small, you know, satellite operation, just purely mining operation, on a modular basis. You know, within a three-year window, you know, you could probably have that all into as part of the mine plan, you know, on that. If it was a bigger geological target that was, you know, larger volumes, larger extents, you know, longer strike, deeper sort of targets, it might take longer to sort of drill that off and bring that in. I think fundamentally, I think that, you know, that sort of, you know, two to three years for something of reasonable, you know, moderate scale, you could have that in the mine plan. Okay. Thanks a lot, Martin. Appreciate that. Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Major of UBS. Daniel, your line is now open. Please go ahead. Sure. Sure. Well, morning, Dan. Obviously, you know, we're out for tender now, and we're expecting those sort of qualified or sort of bids to be submitted at the end of the month. Clearly, we have engaged with a number of these groups, you know, as we were talking to them about their appetite to tender. Of course, they have sent us pitch books around sort of, you know, indicative timelines and costs and so on that they can do that. You know, I'll preface this by saying that, you know, we're still yet to see those tenders. Of course, we've had nice, shiny pitch books and offers of, you know, commercial interest in this as well, and they're clearly gonna put their best foot forward. But, you know, we, you know, they're fairly consistent in terms of a range. I think in terms of speed of execution, there's kind of two things, really. There are certain groups that have the requisite, if you like, capital equipment in their business, transformers, switchgear, and so on, and they can move incredibly quickly. You know, we're talking a 20, 24 km, 25 km sort of spur connection. It's not a, you know, it's not a huge sort of distance. It's along an existing easement, you know, the water, the pipeline, water pipeline's there. You know, that's always a, that can always be an issue. We've got the access and easement. It's a relatively short spur, and they've got equipment on hand. They've sort of indicated, you know, sort of eight months to, you know, from literally ink on the contract to being connected. Other groups have then said that, you know, you, if they've got to go and buy the equipment, you've then gotta go and source that switchgear and those transformers, and then you've got to get yourself in a queue somewhere, wherever they're manufactured, Germany, Turkey, Europe, China, get yourself on the list. Then, you're probably at the sort of mercy of supply chain for that. You know, Once that equipment's on site, it's a similar timeline, but it's do they have that equipment? I think at the aggressive end, I, there is, you know, that sort of six to eight months, you know, let's say eight months would be sort of, you know, from ink to connection. If we go with a group that then has to go and source that equipment, maybe it's more like 12 months plus, you know, maybe 12 to 15 months if we've got to go and get in the queue for that as well. That's kind of the sort of, you know, the battery limits. Clearly, speed of execution will be a clear sort of differentiating factor when we're looking at these tenders for us. In terms of costs, we, you know, Egypt publishes its tariffs for electricity. These groups are, that are connecting us to the grid, you know, we then go and engage with the Egyptian power generating authorities. We would be an industrial off-taker, clearly. At this stage, it's probably around about the $0.10-$0.11 per kWh is where it's sitting at in terms of the industrial tariff within Egypt at this time. You know, currently we're north of $0.20. June. $0.22 on the diesel gen sets. It would be, you know, quite a significant saving in terms of versus diesel, but only half the cost effectively of that. Okay, thanks. That'll be like a roughly 50% reduction in your power costs on, is about 75% of your volume is diesel gen set now in terms of power? That's right, yep. Is that about right? Spot on. Right, yep. I think you said it- Okay. spot on. The solar obviously continues to plug away during daylight hours. Sure. Which is great. Obviously the ability on the balance, the other 75%, you could assume that about half of that would be, you know, yeah, half the cost. Interesting, we got an email from site this morning, longer, sunnier days as we head into summer now and that solar plant's performing really, really nicely. I think we've been sort of targeting 60,000 to 70,000 liters of diesel displacement a day, that's now, was it Ross two- Hundred. 100,000 liters a day, currently, of the longer, sunnier days that we're saving from the solar plant as well. That's going absolutely gangbusters for us. It's going really well. Great. Thanks. Yes, second question, seeing quite sharp devaluation of the Egyptian pound, is that having any impact on your business or on the inflation expectations, and had, yeah, any bearing on the guidance for this year and thinking into next year? I'll pass over to my colleague, Mr. Ross Jerrard. Ross. Hi, Dan. Yeah, certainly watching that very closely. It has moved, you know, this time last year it was 18 to one. It moved sharply to over 30 now. Particularly from January through to now it's gone, you know, moved to 20% type movement. For our perspective in US dollars it's really, you know, whilst we show that 30% is EGP, a large component of that is that fuel pricing that ultimately, you know, is priced in US dollars. There's probably about 10% or 12% that's impacted on EGP pure exposure. Watching brief, we are not seeing it go through. We're not adjusting any numbers at the moment. We've built in some of those movements in our pricing for the year. At the moment we're not changing any of our ranges, but we are watching it closely. It seems to have steadied at just over that 30 for the moment, yeah. I think the main component, Ross, is obviously local labor. Actually, you know, we gave two wage increases to the Egyptian nationals last year, and it's about 6% of our cost base, you know, is the labor cost. From an EGP perspective, we gave two increases to the workforce, but when you then back that off against the exchange rate devaluation is that in the US $ term, we're flat basically. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We, you know, when we think about ourselves as a $ functional business, Dan, the inflation we've seen has been offset by the devaluation and is a relatively small part of our cost base. Yeah, it not impacting on us and no change to the guided levels at this stage. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. Thank you. Our next question comes from, Yuen Low from Liberum. Your line is now open. Hi. Good morning, Martin. Can you hear me? loud and clear. Wonderful. Well, first of all, congratulations on the Q1 production result. Those are better than expected. In particular the plant's throughput. Could you speak more about this, I mean, about how well it's performed given the maintenance activities? Also, what can we expect in terms of the throughput going forward? Can we expect higher than the typical 12 to 12.5 million ton per annum run rate as a result? Thank you. Yeah, look, I think, I think the, you know, under, well, not new GM, he's been in place 18 months now, but under the sort of the management team there, I think sort of preventative maintenance and support has been a key focus. You know, the plant's been in operation for us for 12 years now. It was secondhand when it was bought. I think the key thing to operational stability there is being on top of that. I think, you know, all credit to the team down there, is that there's been a real focus on that. That's seen obviously, as you say, with the slightly ahead of expectation or process. Look, I think that, you know, that 12.5 million tons is steady state for the plant. We think it's that sort of level. You know, the plant has been operated at sort of, you know, north of 13 million tons annualized run rates in the past. We don't think that on a sustainable long-term basis that you can push that plant that hard consistently and not have problems. We think that the sort of the, you know, when we think about maintenance, when we think about sort of, operability for the long term, we think this sort of 12 to 12.5 million ton range is sustainable over the long term and allows us to maintain the plant properly as well. I think, you know, good effort by the team, a real focus on operability and maintenance. That's seen as, you know, sitting at there, and we believe that that is now sustainable over the balance of the operational life. You know, there are opportunities. You know, you could push it harder for short periods, but it would end up sort of, you know, biting you in terms of what you've then gotta go and do in terms of fixing that up to bring it back in line. We think this is the sustainable, sensible level for long-term optimization. Okay. That's great. Thank you very much, Martin. Thanks. Thank you, Yuan. Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Hatch of Berenberg. Richard, your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Yeah, morning guys, congrats on a good first quarter. Just two questions. First one, just on the cash and cash equivalents number, it's gone down $2 million, sort of quarter-on-quarter. I suspect there's probably something in there like tax or EMRA or something else that's working its way through. Just in the context of generating $8 million of free cash flow, like what is the driver of that, Ross? Is there something else? Is it development CapEx or anything else that's nudging that cash number down Q-to-Q? No, not really. There's the royalty that goes through in the first quarter. That's obviously paid biannually. We've had a few additional costs flowing through in Q1, just in terms of pure cash, in terms of RCF close out, all the corporate positions and things. From a pure cash, it's really timing against what was accrued versus what was paid. A lot of it has dropped in terms of timing and just matching, I guess, cash flows against when those invoices actually drop. Nothing in particular, but I think in aggregate across the board, you know, that's the net result. There's no one particular point that we would raise to or highlight at this stage. Okay. All right. Thank you. The second one's just on the on the production. Like I know it's weighted second half 45, 55. Could you give us any kind of granularity just a bit easier just to kinda think about like how we should think about that? Is it, is it a, you know, is it. How much of a weight is it in that second half? What are the grades? Where are you getting that better grade from? You know, what. How should we think about grade progression in the open pit underground? Yeah. Look, I think, you know, when we think about the open pit for this year, that sort of 0.9-1 gram range is where we're gonna, you know, planning to sit for the year within that range, without being too sort of specifically banging on it. It sits in that range. Clearly with, you know, the first quarter coming in at round about that 0.9 level, 0.87, you can see that there'll be a, you know, we expect a bit of a pickup over the balance of the year that we're down on an average basis, bring us back to that sort of 0.9-1 gram range as well. I think there's a bit of pickup on the grade as we go through through the end of the open pit. And in the underground, it's that sort of, you know, 4.5 g I think is, you know, 4 to 4.5 grams is where we would expect to sit for the underground. Again, if we've had a Q1 sitting at four, you can expect there'll be a little bit of pickup in the grade second half of the, or the next three quarters to bring that average up towards that sort of 4.5 sort of level as well. I think, you know, that's where we are sort of planning to be actually. And yeah. You, you can assume that sort of on the assumption that volumes stay consistent, because we're mining efficiently and processing efficiently, is that there will naturally have to be a little bit of an uptake in grade over the balance of the year to bring that sort of annualized average to those levels. Not, you know, we're not talking, you know, massive swings here. It's kind of, you know, it's more about sort of, you know, incremental sort of increases. Okay. reconciliation versus what you're expecting or what you were expecting in Q1, is your grade rec in line? Yeah. Yeah. No, the mine call factor, I think we're about, I think about 102% off the top of my head. It's around about there. It's, it's within tolerance. you know, it, it was a, it was a mild, a mild beat above the mine call factor. that's fine. Happy with that. you know, if it, if it was, you know, 90% or 110%, then obviously we'd have something wrong. no, we're seeing it sort of in and around that 100, with a, with a slight, a slight upside to the mine call factor, on that basis. no, that's... I think, you know, the whole reconciliation piece between resource to reserve to mine to processed, I think, you know, we're, you know, that was something that was a key focus three years ago 'cause it was 20%, 30% out in certain cases, in certain periods. It was all over the shop. What we're now seeing now is that sort of consistency where we've got the, we've got the constituent parts working well, and they're all joined up. We're getting that sort of confidence that we're across that. There's always gonna be slight variances up and down. It's, it's a nugget to your body in the underground, as we know. There's always gonna be slight variances. Generally, seeing that mine call factor sitting in and around the, you know, slightly under, slightly over the 100%, which is where we want it to be, which is good. Good stuff. All right. Keep it up. Brilliant. Thanks a lot. Cheers. Thanks, mate. Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions from the telephone lines. I'll hand back to Alex for questions via the webcast. I'm pleased to confirm that we actually don't have any questions on the webcast. There we go. That's all to say. Stunned everyone into silence. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Alex. Well look, if there's nothing further from the floor, I'd just like to reiterate my thanks to everybody for taking the time to dial in this morning. As I say, it was, you know, happy with the performance across the group in the first quarter. Tracking along nicely in line with plan, and some good momentum into Q2, and a good few catalysts coming over the balance this year, which we'll be delighted to convey at the right time. Wish you all the very best today. As ever, if there's any sort of follow-up questions or further thoughts, you can reach out to us, Alex, myself and Ross, through the usual channels, and happy to pick that up with you offline from there. Thanks, everybody, and have a good day. Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.