Everybody, thank you very much for joining us for this results presentation for the six months ending the 31st of December. Before we start, just a few house rules. We will take questions at the end of the presentation. There is a chat box where you can post your questions, and then it'll be relayed to me. Joining me today is Riaan Davel, our Chief Financial Officer, as well as Jaco Schoeman, our Chief Operating Officer. I will do some of the initial slides, and then I will hand over to Riaan to take you through the financial performance. Then I will finish up with just a few thoughts on some of the moving parts as well as the looking forward as a part of the presentation. The three of us will be happy to take any questions that you might have. We're gonna go straight into the presentation. Give it a chance to just move on. You'll see there's our disclaimer. Please just familiarize yourself with the content of the disclaimer. Moving straight into the highlights for the six months. You'll see that again, we paid quite a lot of income tax, ZAR 92 million, as well as employee tax, ZAR 121 million. We contributed just over ZAR 200 million again into the fiscus, and still hoping that it will be spent wisely. Our revenue for the six months was good. It was up 6%. Gold price was higher, we placed ourselves in a position to take advantage of that. Operating profit, slightly down though, on the back of an increase of about 10% in costs. There's some more color on that in Riaan's slides. Production was slightly down as well. I deal in my letter to shareholders with some of the dynamics that impacted on production. In essence, the plants were performing well. Plant efficiencies were good. But volume throughput was a big challenge for us, as a consequence of a number of events. I'll spend a bit of time on that as well to illustrate to you that those are indicative of events and not emerging trends. There are a few things that require our attention. You'll see that there was an increase in Headline Earnings of 8%. As a consequence of that, we're in a position to again declare an interim dividend of ZAR 0.20 per share. This makes it the 16th consecutive year that DRDGOLD paid a dividend. We saw a very nice increase in the average rand gold price, just over ZAR 960,000 a kilo. Even for mathematical illiterates like me, it's actually quite easy to calculate revenue. You just add, it's ZAR 1 million per, or just under ZAR 1 million per kilo. That's where it's trending now. You multiply that by your tons and that takes you to the revenue number. Hovering around ZAR 2.6 billion-ZAR 2.7 billion at current throughput rates. You'll see that our women in mining number has also increased. 24% of total staff is women in mining. These are in core positions. Increasingly diverse makeup is also yielding the right sort of dividend in terms of operating resilience and work ethic. Socioeconomic expense up quite a bit. You would have seen that environmental spend is down ever so slightly, but that was taken up by an increase in our socioeconomic development spend. You will probably start seeing a tapering down of environmental spend. A lot of that's gone into the past, into cladding, into vegetation, and so forth. Many of those initiatives are now nearing sort of the latter part of those projects. Many of which are 10- years in the making. Talk about the crown tailings, for example, where vegetation is nearing the latter portion and also the Brakpan tailings dam and the cladding of the Brakpan tailings dam. Looking at production, as I said earlier, just over 2.7 tons, and that gave a nice boost to our headline earnings. Moving on to the next slide and talking to some of the operating trends. We'll just give the slide an opportunity to move. The next one. There you can see illustrated what I was saying earlier in terms of volume throughput, in terms of yield and the consequent production, gold production at Ergo. Volume throughput was a challenge for us during the quarter, and you'll see in the letter to shareholders that I give some more color on that. Some of the higher volume sites are now nearing depletion, and as a consequence, a lot of the work that's happening there is the lifting of the floor of that particular site. You don't really know what the floor is going to look like until you get there. A lot of that is done mechanically. You'll see a tapering down of tons, but then typically, you'll also see an increase in grade because gold settles down at the bottom of the tailing step. Yields are up, but volume down. It wasn't only just that. There was also a few issues with electricity supply. We had a few trip outs, Eskom trip outs at the Brakpan, rather at Ergo, at our plant. Now because we're in the mining industry, we don't get cut off completely, in terms of direct Eskom supply lines, but there is a load curtailment arrangement. What we are finding, though, is that Eskom is also finding it increasingly hard to keep the lights on. We had a number of trip outs, especially towards the latter portion. Grid's under pressure. I think there's also quite a lot of tampering happening with supply infrastructure, criminal vandalism and theft of copper cable and so forth. We're really looking forward to seeing some sort of decisive campaign being launched, hopefully in the not-too-distant future to curb the scourge of this criminal activity. Rain also played a role, especially now in the latter part. These depleted sites, they're not particularly accessible. They get muddy, they get wet. Rain then also plays a role in, in distorting the flow or disrupting the flow of material. Of course, the supplier that gets the first prize for non-performance, in the six months is the Johannesburg City Council. It's Joburg City Power, where power delivery into one of our key pumping sites has just been a complete mess. And as a consequence, we've decided to just come off that grid and connect that station, that particular site directly into an Eskom substation. That's just not working, in terms of maintenance, in terms of turnaround, et cetera. Things are better there, but this particular pump station is responsible for about a third of the volume throughput into Ergo, and that impacted particularly during the course of December, quite a bit on Ergo's volume throughput. Typically what we do in anticipation of the depletion of sites, and I'm gonna talk about the entity, the supplier that gets the second prize for non-performance for the period. Typically as we near the end of a site's life, we would start gearing up the next site. We had 3 sites ready to go. All of these sites, I refer to them in our letter. All of these sites require a Water Use Licence. That process started three years ago. We got a belated surprise in one of the sites was that just before the licenses were supposed to be issued and cleared of a change in technical standards for an emergency spillage there or an emergency paddock. A paddock at these reclamation sites, obviously all of the slimes get washed into a sump and then pumped to the plant. If there's an interruption in pumping capacity, for example, if there's no electricity and the pumps aren't running, there's still some slime moving towards this collection point. In order to make sure that the slime doesn't spill into the environment, you have a rather modest in size containment paddock. The slime gets captured or the spillage gets captured into this paddock, and then afterwards it gets cleaned up and reintroduced into the system. The Department of Water and Sanitation has now decided after many, many years that these paddocks are also now required to be lined. As I say, this is unfortunately a standard that was communicated very late in the process, and that's added about a month or two to the entire process. It's a relatively small fry in terms of inconvenience and cost, but it's really something that we would love to have known about maybe eight months or nine months ago. Be that as it may, it's now been done, submitted, the redesigns are in place, and now somebody just needs to sign that permit and send it to us, and then we can start. Hopefully it won't be later than March. At another site, we had an appeal against the issue of a Water Use Licence by. It's an appeal that we believe was inspired by an external entity. The community was assisted in lodging this appeal. As it turned out, the appeal had very little to do with the conditions of the Water Use Licence and to do more with sort of an expectation of financial participation in the project itself. We are now fighting the appeal, but under the water usage dispensation, the lodging of an appeal immediately suspends the issuance of a license unless the minister sets it aside or he lifts the suspension. We approached the minister in October of last year and in January that suspension was lifted. That site is also now being commissioned, and it will go into production anytime now, anytime soon. The replacement sites are in the making. They're ready to go. Obviously next time, maybe we'll start four years in advance to apply for the Water Use Licence when these sites are nearing the end of depletion. These are the sort of, you know, this is par for the course. These are the sort of things that one needs to anticipate. Conducting business here doesn't detract from the attractiveness of the resource. We just need to get going, and we're just about ready to get going. That volume trend will hopefully change when we have this conversation in August. That volume trend will hopefully look different for Ergo. The yield trend's gonna look different as well, obviously, because we'll be back into high volume, so there'll be slightly lower yields. But at the moment, indications are that we're still trending along guidance. We're pretty much along the guidance lines that we gave. You could see where the production then came in from Ergo, just under two tons of gold. Moving on to Far West Gold operations, obviously quite a lot smaller. At Far West Gold, the story is one of consistent tonnage delivery, but a drop in yield. The combination of two things. One, it is mining a slightly lower grade section of the number five dam. Also in terms of its load shedding, can be managing or balancing load shedding. Far West Gold actually switches off its mills during load shedding in order to save that 10% or 20% or whatever, in load curtailment. It's either that or there's no underground pumping of water, rather. We can't afford that. It's important that we have a consistent supply of water. The underwater pump, the underground pumps keep running at the 10 shaft right next to the Klerksdorp plant, but the mills get shut off for that period of time. You're seeing a slightly lower recovery at plant called efficiency factor as a consequence. Having said that, the numbers are still good. Far West Gold still produced a lot of gold and made us a lot of money, and some of that will find its way to our shareholders. Good. Looking on a group basis, you'll see the impact of the volume throughput and then the various issues that I just described to you. The yield was good. For us, anything above 0.2 is really good. Production in the circumstances, I think testimony to the level of resiliency that's been built into this business over time. It needs to be enhanced, especially on the electricity side. It's a new chapter in enhanced embedded resilience, which we'll talk to a little bit later. All in all, considering, we're not dissatisfied with the performance of the business. Everybody worked very hard, but that's pretty much what we expect and managed delivering to these results. I'll hand you over to Riaan now. I think we've reached the financial part of this. Yes, the financial review. Once he's done, on to Jaco. Thank you. Thank you very much, Niël. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As always, my privilege to take you through the financial review. As you would know, we analyze this current period, so the six months ending 31 December 2022 with the comparative six months, 31 December 2021 in our analysis. As Niël indicates, obviously there's a lot more detail than we could cover necessarily in a presentation in our results booklet that we prepare with great care. So we'd encourage you to have a look. Obviously our IAS 34 financial statements are also in that booklet. I wanna add on to what Niël has said around the challenging circumstances. From my point of view, I believe these are excellent results, taking into account some of the challenges. Again, I wanna give credit to and say well done to the operational teams that see us through and ultimately enable us to produce these excellent results in our 24- hours a day, 365- day a year operation. Obviously with the context that Niël always brilliantly provides around the tons and the yield and the gold from a financial point of view, explaining that in that context. For Ergo, if you look at period to period, that is six months, 31 December 2021 or first half of the full financial 2022 years to this six months, there was a 9% increase in revenue. Obviously aided by 11% increase in gold price to ZAR 961,000 per kilogram. In that period, gold sold was down only 2%, which I believe, with the challenges and the tons down and many things outside of our control, I believe is an excellent revenue result for Ergo. Looking at the cash operating costs, obviously tons down, 14% period on period, for 31 December 2021 compared to 31 December 2022. And that cash operating cost increase totaled 8%. Obviously, taking into account that the tons were lower and double-digit increases that we expected in our budgets, coming through in our actual results. Overall, not a bad cash operating cost position for Ergo. For those of you on calculators, for those of you with calculators nearby, obviously the operating profit then takes into account movement in gold in process as well, which for Ergo was a negative ZAR 30 million for the six months. Still leaving Ergo with a very solid operating profit contribution of more than ZAR 330 million, and very much in line with some of the previous periods. A very good result. Our flagship operation, obviously our more challenging complex operation, many sites, many cleanup sites, and some of the detail that Niël alluded to on the results. For Far West, from financial results point of view, revenue, marginal increase, basically stable period on period, as gold sold was down by 10%. With the 11% increase in gold price to just over ZAR 961,000 per kilogram. Here you can see more clearly the impact of cash operating costs increasing as we expected. Similar to Ergo in all our core components making up our business, for example, cyanide, steel related products, transportation, obviously electricity, making up that basket of costs. There you can see an increase of 18% period on period in the cash operating costs for Far West. Still, if you look at what a contribution it makes, completely different operation obviously than Ergo. With the two together, a beautiful combination. As you know, Far West single site at the moment, close by. They had a ZAR 8.2 million positive movement. In combination, left Far West with an operating profit contribution of just under ZAR 460 million for the six months ended December 31, 2022. If we look at the group financial trends, operating margin is something we track closely. Here it's always fighting cost increases versus gold price increases. At the moment, a very healthy, just under 30% still, obviously lower than the 33% that we saw for the comparative period and even for the second half of our financial year. For most businesses, that is still very healthy. As you know, we do not hedge any of our gold sales. We just try and optimize the daily gold position. The cost side of it is something that we must always keep track of and try and manage that is under our control as best as we can. all-in sustaining cost margin, obviously built from the operating margin, but then it adds the all-in sustaining CapEx. Here for me, which is encouraging to see, and I do not see that as a negative trend, there's also an increase in all sustaining CapEx. For the comparative period, we spent ZAR 145 million, for the current period, ZAR 236 million. Obviously, that impacts on the all-in sustaining cost margin, but still a very healthy 17% if we look at our all-in sustaining costs as a margin. Free cash flow, similar impact if you compare the ZAR 215.4 million in the current period to the ZAR 406.9 million for December 31, 2021. Impacted in the current period by more capital spend. Roughly just under ZAR 205 million more in the current period in both sustaining and growth CapEx. Most of the growth CapEx has gone to our very exciting solar project that's continuing apace at Ergo. The overall result, our headline earnings per share, solid performance, I believe at ZAR 0.623 per share. 7% increase in comparison to the ZAR 0.58 per share in the comparative period. Moving on to the income statement or statement of profit or loss, as it's called now, for the six months ended December 31, 2022. Mr. Fourie has already explained revenue. Yes, it just looks at gold sold, which is down 5%. Gold price up 11% period on period, leaving us with a revenue increase of 6%. Cost of sales, the number there, up by 8%. Niël mentioned cash operating costs is a big component of that, up by 10% period on period, with some other adjustments in that line, leaving us with gross operating profits stable period on period, just under ZAR 670 million. Administration expense and other costs, obviously something we track closely and something that we don't want to get out of hand. We managed to achieve that in this period. Finance income, yes, slightly higher because of high interest rates that we earn on our cash balances. Finance expense, the majority of that relates to the unwinding of our rehabilitation obligation period on period. You'll see in the cash flow statement, the cash portion of that is very small. Then income tax tracking profits, as Niël alluded to. That's not the tax that current tax that we paid as provisional payment. That's a combination of current and deferred tax that obviously tracks the performance for the period, leaving us with a very solid ZAR 535 million profit for the period. Moving on to the balance sheet or statement of financial position, as it's called. Luckily it balances, we can call it a balance sheet. Just quickly going through those lines, very easy, very encouraging property, plant, and equipment increase. That's what we wanna do. I would say that's good spend. It's sustaining CapEx, it's growth CapEx in that line, but we're continuing to invest in our business to make sure it's sustainable into the future. A very positive trend if you can spend money on property, plant and equipment. Non-current investments and other assets. Majority of that in our rehabilitation funds. Period on period, an increase of growth of 10%, which is encouraging. Also, as part of that, our investment in Rand Refinery reflected at fair value. Cash and cash equivalents. I'll explain quite some detail on the cash flow statement on the next slide. Other current assets, and also on the current liability side, working capital stable overall period-on-period. Equity, simplistically, it's the growth in profit less dividends with some other small changes. Again, in our booklet, the statement of change in equity setting out that detail. Provision for environmental rehabilitation, decreased year-on-year. Obviously, remember at 30 June, at our financial year-end, every year we do a re-estimation, based on our estimates that change, based on life of mine, and other rehabilitation estimates. Again, wanna emphasize that we're in the privileged position with that present value of that liability that we carry on our balance sheet, that we do have more environmental funds invested in our non-current investments line. Deferred tax liability goes up, obviously, as we spend more CapEx. As you know, the CapEx regime in the mining industry that we can claim CapEx against profit immediately. One way to look at it, as deferred tax goes up, it shows that there's a probability that there'll be tax paid into the future, which mean that the operation will stay profitable, which is normally not a bad indication. Total equity and liabilities just over ZAR 7.2 billion. Our current ratio slightly increased at a very, very healthy 5.4 at the end of December 2022. On the statement of cash flows, as I always say, one statement no investor can ignore and should ever ignore. you the most about any company, stripped of any fair value changes, estimations, just talk about cash flow. Looking at cash flow for the six months from operations, a key indicator if the business is still viable, and very much so between FWGR and Ergo generated just more than ZAR 600 million from those operations. Finance income, as I've mentioned, higher based on interest rates higher and still a healthy cash balance that we carry. Dividends mostly from Rand Refinery. There you can see the finance expenses paid, just over ZAR 2 million, much smaller than the amount in the income statement, as that relates, as I mentioned, to the unwinding of the discount on our rehabilitation obligations. Income tax paid that Niël mentioned as well, the ZAR 92 million, specifically our first provisional tax payment The number that I already mentioned under free cash flow and some of it under all-in sustaining costs is the acquisition of capital mining equipment, which is more than ZAR 200 million more than the comparative period, up by 112%. To me, indication of a healthy business. We have cash available. We will invest it in our business, as we've indicated to the market, both in sustaining and growth CapEx. The dividends line, that obviously is the final dividend that we had declared and paid based on our 30 June 2022 results, paid in September 2022. Overall then we showed a net decrease for the period as a result of the investment in CapEx, increased investment, but still just under ZAR 2.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents. A very, very healthy cash balance. Obviously, looking at the solvency in our balance sheet and the liquidity available, as Niël alluded to it, we are able to declare an interim dividend of ZAR 0.12 per share. Just a comment from my side on the share price before I hand back to Niël. Some positive trends over the last couple of months, which is very, very pleasing to see from levels below ZAR 10 per share to its current levels. It's good to see that trend in the share price. Niël, at this point, I will hand back to you, as you indicated, to talk us through the ESG factors and also any of the looking forward. Thanks, Niël. Thanks, Riaan. Yeah, I think everything is back on again, so I can go. Just in terms of our sustainable development, and maybe just on this term that we've now adopted, ESG, maybe just again reiterate that I believe ESG is something that you do on your way to sustainable development. Having had a 12-year commitment to sustainable development, our storyline is not too hard to bring into the ESG narrative. Just looking at some of these drivers, in terms of dust emissions, in terms of potable water, environmental spend, and on tailings deposition, the vegetation of tailings deposition. I think these numbers is a continuation of the previous conversation and pretty much an update. I must say that, what we are likely to see going forward is a further decline in the use of externally potable water. In terms of an arrangement to draw a little bit more AMD from the TCTA, Verification plot. These are pretty much ongoing, and as I said earlier, continuation of an earlier conversation. We are starting to taper down on vegetation. The bulk of this has been done. Ground tailings, those of you that drive past there occasionally, you would have seen the transformation over the last decade. There's very little dust coming off those tailings. We're now in the latter part, the last two, three years of the final vegetation. Those parts of the dam that are hit by wind, they've been cleared for many, many years. I think quality of life hopefully in that area has, as a consequence, also reduced. The line that you would want to maybe look at going forward is total carbon emissions, especially now that our solar plants, construction is up and running and ongoing. We really hope to have that at first phase, at least 20 MW, to have that installed soon. Jaco could maybe talk a little bit about that towards the end of the presentation, if you wish. It'll be nice to see how that number comes down on total carbon emissions. There we go. Moving on to the next slide on our broad-based livelihood. This too is a story that's been many, many years in the making. See that we've bumped it up a little bit. A lot of that in terms of training. A very exciting program also with the University of Pretoria in designing a number of programs which we can launch and roll out using our BBL platform or network, our social network, as a platform and then for leverage to have a slightly more, actually significantly more integrated and an inclusive process aimed at enhancing quality of life. Taking a different view of your future, maybe lifting the horizon just ever so slightly and sharing this idea that living in an informal settlement is not where it has to end. There is in fact a life beyond that, and the opportunities are there. Knowledge in a match, which is integral to our approach in this regard, is also now finding finally its way into the Social and Labour programs. In the past, we had to do this parallel with social labor programs or plans. DMR really wanted sort of the big things, you know, big launches, buildings, infrastructure and so forth. Whereas our focus was on alleviating abject poverty, taking that first step out of abject poverty. Because we thought that that was where we were gonna get the best dividend for our investment. Bringing about a measure of social stability in areas where we operate. You simply cannot operate in a, in an ocean of anarchy. We believe that these are good investments. We're also finally seeing some of our candidates for many years who attended extra classes that we offered, math, science, accountancy, going through university on bursaries, are now joining the company as employees. Full circle. It's a delight to witness. Moving on to the next slide. On the regenerating communities. These things are now starting to start looking like businesses. There's a little microeconomy that's starting to emerge of exchange of product. Revenue is being generated. I can tell you that the amount of food that's being produced right there on land that in the past was just not being used sustainably, that was just used as a rubbish dump. The value of land, that it's not a place where you litter, it's a place where you grow, where you generate life. I think that is increasingly also starting to take effect, that mindset. As I said earlier, this would be the platform off which we could leverage some of the other initiatives going forward. There's nothing quaint about this. This is not a sort of like a token little exercise and nice pictures. People are genuinely improving the quality of their lives and the dignity of being able to provide for your family that comes with it. It's a delight to see. Moving forward, I firmly believe that the informal economy is what will bring ultimately poverty alleviation and social development. We established that. A big part of what we're doing in terms of this program, it's now being launched. Sibanye is also nibbling at this. They have a very dynamic individual that drives this program, Phumzile, and she loves this. She's also looking at some of these programs. Imagine if that gear kicks in, that massive gear, how this thing will accelerate. Lovely to watch. Moving on to the next slide. Riaan can spend a bit of time on this, on how we're increasingly aligning our reporting and our governance standards to this over in the World Gold Council. Our sustainable development goals, you'll see that there's more and more being said. Actually on the website, there's a very brief summary on that. How we're also developing our tailings management protocols to still be consistent with the local standards, but at the same time, also increasingly reflecting the ICMM standards and the GISTM standards that have been driven really hard by the industry internationally. We believe that it's a conversation that we want to be part of. We believe that it's a very good initiative to bring about these standards, establish these standards and to enhance safety and with that, the reputation of the mining industry, especially since we are going into a massive boom period now with the demand for the materials required for the transition to clean energy. That being the case, it's important that these conversations are. That they're sensible, that they are applied, and that we establish a regime of appropriate standards and protocols considering the sort of risk that's posed. We definitely wanna be part of that conversation. Our chairman, in fact, attended the Tailings Summit that was hosted by the Church of England earlier this month or earlier this year rather, late in January. We have a seat at the table, and we are participating in that conversation to remain on top of developments, but at the same time also hopefully influence the conversation. In terms of looking ahead, I see Nick has posted a question in that regard. I wanna be careful not to make forward-looking statements here. We don't have to adjust our guidance at this stage. Grant, you can jump in and maybe also make a contribution in answering that question. Yeah, what we saw in the previous half were a number of incidents and events that we are in the process of addressing and the impact of which has now diminished. The trending in terms of guidance at this stage is not such that we want to adjust our guidance downward, but that we want to, at the very least, maintain guidance, sort of mid-range guidance, in terms of both production and not change anything in terms of cost. We'll talk a little bit about cost and some of the cost pressures that we've also had in the last year, and then how that's been factored in and how we're experiencing that now as well. The guidance for cost stay is basically where it is and consistent with what we've reported. We are adjusting capital investment down about ZAR 500 million, I believe. That's really because of the rate at which we can spend. It's not that we've changed the capital investment regime or any of the targets, but you can only invest at the rate at which you are actually rolling out these projects. Money will be spent, it'll just be in the next financial year. At Ergo, we're very excited about the completion of phase I of the solar power plant and in anticipation of one of the other questions that was asked by Freddy Vanika in terms of load shedding. At Ergo and at FWGR, all of those stations that are connected to Eskom power, there is no load shedding. We did have the occasional trip out, especially towards the end of the period, but there it's a curtailment arrangement. What you do there is then just switch off parts of your circuit. In the past, typically, water pumping was preferred because that's something that you could grab reservoirs, you could manage your water balance. With all the rain that we've had, it hasn't really been the number one go-to. We've gotta keep our tailings dams safe. We've gotta keep pumping water off those tailings dams to manage the water balance and protect freeboard in order to make sure that they remain safe. Increasingly you would've seen mills, for example, getting switched off in order to save power. It also depends at what stage you're at, whether it's a 10% reduction or a 20% reduction. This doesn't happen often, but it did happen once. We were asked to not curtail, and that was during Stage 6. That was because Eskom was having a hard time just balancing power delivery and they needed a consistent draw from the mines, so there was a request to not reduce. It's dynamic. What I must say is that as much as we criticize Eskom, and that's sort of become the pet target for criticism. The engagement that we're having with the staff that actually manage the curtailment, which is done centrally, that's actually been pretty good. These people work really hard. Their technicians work really hard to restore power when there's been interruptions. The maintenance has been lagging. That's been caught up now, many instances in terms of the grid. It's not an easy job. Oftentimes they have to work in areas where they get attacked. Cable theft has now become cable robbery. People are getting shot at, in order to sort of pave the way for cable theft. I want to give credit where it's due, and Eskom and its technicians working really hard to manage this aspect. I won't express a view on the board and on some of the policies and some of the past practices. It's a tough job. The Director has, André de Ruyter has a tough job, which I think he's done pretty well. Sort of just finding a way through this legacy that he. This hospital path that he was built. There's some very, very good people still working at Eskom who work really hard to keep the lights on for South Africans. Having said that, we're very pleased that we're now moving towards the solar power project. Not only will it alleviate the risk of interruptions in supply, it's cleaner power, and it will also bring certainty in terms of the cost profile going forward. Cleaner power in the sense that you don't have these spikes and dips, that has an impact on our instrumentation. Ultimately, I do believe, and you'll see that I referred to that in my letter to shareholders. Ultimately, when the political stranglehold on progress in this regard, when eventually it's no longer around, and I think it's only a matter of time. When it won't be around anymore. We're gonna be able to participate in the private sector delivering back into or supplying back into the grid. That's the size of infrastructure that we're putting up here. And in order to restore the electricity supply balance in the country and be part of, once again, growing the economy. I think there are just a few individuals that are still holding fast to this whole idea, this notion of the government monopoly on the supply power needs to be retained at all costs. The giving them the benefit of the doubt or the, or the kindest words or sentiment that I have in that regard is that maybe it's ideological. The state has to be involved in everything. The cynic in me says that there's a lot of money to be made, if you are conveniently placed or strategically placed in terms of coal supply, diesel supply contracts, with external parties, et cetera, et cetera. That's the cynic in me, so wouldn't pay too much attention to that. Eventually we're gonna work through that and the private sector and what's left of the utility will collaborate. We will get electricity back to where it's needed. I personally believe it's gonna be a little bit more region-wise. Personally also believe that we probably are looking at certain dark spots developing in South Africa, where it's just become unsustainable to continue go back and put back a cable that was stolen the night before and continue supplying communities that simply just don't pay or municipalities that just don't pay. Eventually maybe the best that somebody living in those areas can hope for is a panel and two globes and not much else. Maybe a small screen. I just for the life of me cannot see how this could be sustainable. Repeatedly, you have infrastructure that gets installed only to be stolen the next day. It's either dark spots or somebody deciding, "Oh, you know, maybe we should do something about the criminal element that are systematically destroying public infrastructure." Same applies to Transnet. Be that as it may, hopefully by the end of next year, we will have 60 MW of solar power capacity, a pretty significant battery storage capacity. Hopefully by then, the regime would have become lighter, more sensible, more accessible, and they could be supplied back into the grid. Also the wheeling offset arrangement where we could get the benefit of our contribution being drawn somewhere else, both DRD and also Sibanye-Stillwater, some of their units. In terms of volume throughput, I did mention that we had the issues in terms of delays. With Rooikraal, Valley Silts and 4L3, hopefully being commissioned in the near future, then that trend will reverse in the meantime. What we're seeing coming out of the plant is it's not disappointing at all. To the next question. If there's gonna be an adjustment to guidance, it's not downward at this stage, what we're experiencing at this stage. In terms of Far West Gold Recoveries, they're moving on to the second dam. Driefontein 5 is nearing depletion. Driefontein 3 is next up there. That should also be before the end of this financial year that some material from that site will come through and you would have seen a slight increase in unit cost. It can move from one site to a second site and still well shy of those 15 active sites or sites where there is activity. That typically would have initially at least until stabilized and everything is now off one site would have an impact on the per ton unit costs. Having two distinct teams working two distinct sites. Maybe just in terms of what we're looking at towards costs. I'm not really going to go into the sort of details that will place me at risk of making forward-looking statements, but maybe just reflect a little bit on some of the cost pressures that we've had and some of the trends that we have witnessed in the past. The increase in actual cost, the number that we spent, the ZAR 1.8 billion plus that we spent in the six months of this period, that number is consistent with what we budgeted for. We factored in some of the very steep inflationary impacts on some of the key consumables and other products that we use. There's a lot of material that's being moved. There's a lot of activity that involve trucks and back actors and front end loaders and so forth and so forth. There's a massive fleet moving stuff around. These contractors witnessed an 84% move in the price of diesel. Obviously that had to be factored in as well. There was sacrifice on both parts and you do then reflect on what's really necessary and certain things just no longer happen. The fact is that there were these inflationary pressures that we witnessed last year. It appears to have moderated now. It was steep and it's I wouldn't quite say that it's stabilized. We're certainly not seeing similar trends now. Hopefully it's sort of plateaued to an extent. The one that we are a little bit concerned about is cyanide. We are probably one of the largest users of cyanide, consumers of cyanide in South Africa, if not the largest. There we've seen, in our view, an artificial adjustment to the price of cyanide. Which, which we think is just wrong, if not illegal. That is what we believe, in anticipation of a transaction, for the sale of the cyanide plant by our main cyanide supplier to sort of soften us for the impact of what we believe is going to be the anticipated pricing policy by the new owner, to introduce a larger measure of import parity pricing into the pricing of the product. As I said, it's wrong. We're taking issue with this and hopefully we believe that there is a measure of unfairness or unfair pricing as legally defined in the competition legislation. Workmen's is helping us with that. That's the one anomaly that we saw in the last, or that we're still seeing in terms of these ongoing and somewhat, you know, on the face of it, irrational movements in price. Other than that, it's really just the dynamics that everybody else is experiencing. The logistics internationally have not recovered since COVID. It's better, but it hasn't recovered. Where in the past something took one month, it's now two or three months. Your planning has got to be a little bit better. You wanna lock in prices sooner rather than later, especially where you're taking foreign currency exposure in terms of suppliers and instrumentation and equipment. We've seen, for example, switchboards, we've seen pumps, et cetera, et cetera, where the stuff's just not there. It's just not available. You've got to anticipate. We've locked in the 40 odd thousand solar panels that we need. Hopefully, those will be delivered on time. Then in terms of some of the other projects too. We saw some delays, but at least in terms of the reclamation sites, what we need to be up and running once that precious license arrives, is in place. Yes, I spoke to the late phase cleanup and the impact there. Yes. I think I've covered what I wanted to cover in terms of looking ahead. We could jump right into some of the questions that have been posed. I just wanna ask my co-analysts if we left anything out that we should maybe have covered. Riaan, Jaco, was there anything that you thought we ought to have covered that we didn't? I'm feeling that there may be a question on the class action. We could talk to that and also on the conversations that we've been having with Sibanye-Stillwater on the PGM surface project. So we could do some of that. I don't see any one of you suggesting that anything was left out. Shall we go to the questions? Let's begin. Thanks. Okay. Riaan, I don't know if you wanna add to Nic Durham 's first question. Thank you for your question. Yeah. It's certainly not an ambiguous question. Yes. Very much to the point. Yeah. Maybe add to what I said earlier. Niël, just to confirm what you've said. We're within that range. We're obviously hoping not to end up at the bottom. We're aiming to end up at the top, but I think it's right to say it's in the middle. Obviously always volume dependent and sites coming online on time as we anticipate. I don't think we can say more on that. Nick's right. If we take the first six months into account and we end up at the bottom at 160,000 ounces, essentially that would constitute and in our terms also not a great second half of the year. Hopefully we don't end there and we, as Niël said, we're putting everything in place to get more sites online. always for our business, tonnage dependent at the end of the day. I have nothing more to add from that perspective. Thank you. In order to end up at the bottom of the guidance, of course, it would have to be significantly worse than. The half year would have to be significantly worse than the half year that we're reporting on. Okay. Certainly at this stage, there's no reason to adjust guidance to provide for that eventuality. We don't know what's going to happen remaining four months, what's certainly happened until now, nothing untoward. Jaco, I'm going to just talk briefly to Nick's next question on the Withok amendment. You can come in with some more of the specifics, I mean, this is a very direct question. When will you change your life of mine and your reserve? I think because of some of the delays and the fact that a pretty hard position or absolute position has been taken in terms of environmental containment, it forces us into looking at contingencies. If these licenses, and I'm referring to both this one here, the Withok license and also the RTSF. If these licenses in the process to get these licenses can't be the end game. We've gotta create a measure of flexibility and let's call it the contingency plan. We will use the word contingency within that context the whole time in order not to confuse you. To make sure that the market understands that what we're working with here is a backup plan. The adjustment of life of mine and reserves will take effect once it becomes apparent that the contingency will have to be implemented. Now, contingency in terms of Ergo means depositing onto another dump, which at this stage forms part of our resource base. Once it becomes a deposition site, albeit for an interim period of time, obviously it can no longer be a resource in there. Your reserve and resource will have to be adjusted to accommodate for that. At the same time, you're familiar with the site, you will probably include some other resources or convert some other resources further west, further towards the Central Rand in the direction of Grant. These are typically the triggers for any change to that. What you will see in our communications in the near term, towards the end of the financial year is, and I'm talking about applications that we're required to do nowadays in terms of technical standards, et cetera, et cetera, or technical reports, is we will introduce and explain what that contingency plan looks like and the implications of having to implement that contingency plan. Jaco, you could maybe just expand on by when do we have to start construction at Betanie. And this is very important for informing whether or not we go contingency or whether we stick to what's currently in the line. If you wanna elaborate on that. Yeah, Niël. We will, if all stays equal, we will probably need additional deposition facilities within about three years, three to four years time now. Okay. Construction would have to start about a year before that then? I know. Correct. Correct. The two years to get the licenses in place to bear through that. I mean, this, because it's critical, what we have decided to do is that certain of these things, although it might not be the sort of thing that pulls up late hours every day, would become dedicated portfolios. An individual at a particular level in the organization that drives this the whole time, make sure that we don't get pulled into this cycle of email and response and no-show on the part of the administrator. Remember, they're dealing with an entire industry, requests and letters and applications and so forth. We're dealing with one. We need to push in. We need to make sure that we are seen. I hope that gives you some sort of a sense, but nothing is changing now, and there will be a change if we have to go the contingency way. Rudy van. Yeah. Rudy, firstly, during the previous quarter, we had 437 hours of load shedding and power interruption at one of our main pump and transfer stations. The way that we address that is by putting in a dedicated line directly from Eskom in. Now it falls in within the curtailment agreement, and that gets us away from load shedding. Secondly, load curtailment is part of the Ergo bigger operation as well. The third leg of that is obviously this, the solar and battery project that we're currently running. So phase I of the solar project, which is a 20 MW part of the project, will be completed during quarter two of this calendar year, operating quarter three of this calendar year. The full project will obviously run over, and that will include 60 MW of solar power and 160 MW of battery power. The batteries are essentially used as UPS for the plant, cleaning up your power and making sure that you do not have nuisance trips. A two minute nuisance trip can put us out for four hours. It cleans up the power. It also assists in arbitraging or load shifting. It will also assist in reducing the cost during peak periods. Obviously, we'll run the plant off solar and also charge the batteries with solar during the day. Niël, I think that's a broad enough statement in terms of how we handle power. Thanks. Maybe, Riaan, I'm in a position to say, you know, are we allowed to say exactly how much CapEx we spent on the solar project, in the six months? We can, Niël. It's in the results. It's in our segment results. You would see a number for Ergo just over ZAR 150 million for the six months under non-sustaining CapEx, and the majority of that was spent on the solar. Maybe just to complete that picture then, as Niël has mentioned, we previously said ZAR 1.4 billion. We're just revising that down, but it's very much cut off, as Niël explained. The solar project is running flat out. Of that number, we've just spent under ZAR 400 million, roughly ZAR 500 million spent, expected for us. I can probably at least half of that even more towards the solar project for the remaining of the financial year. As I always mention, it's sort of an arbitrary cutoff many times. It's a necessary one, but I mean, all these things continue apace over year-end and over the next two years essentially with the solar project. Maybe, Niël, just to comment around costs. Obviously, load shedding or where there's trip outs, obviously that hurts us from a volume point of view. And obviously there's a big standing cost fixed cost component that you need to cover. It's always around volume, lost tonnages, lost production and such, which is then part of if you look at a unit cost, obviously that will go up if we produce less gold. And that's where it hurts us most. As I mentioned, we have a 24- hour a day operation. Every minute lost, is an opportunity cost, essentially for us, and that eats our bottom line. Thank you. Thanks for that. I wanna move on to next question on the S-K 1300 document. Before you answer that, Riaan, maybe what just on the use of the word endemic issues we face. I'm hoping that the endemic issues that you refer to are sort of the broader economic issues that we face as a country as a whole. I'm hoping that we provided sufficient information on what those dynamics were that impacted volume throughput to have established, firmly established the message that these were events and not part of trends going forward. If we had been issued the Water Use Licences for Rooikraal and for 4L3 in October, there was actually no reason why they shouldn't have been issued at the time other than just administrative delay, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. More likely the volume throughput would've been a lot closer to what we are targeting, at least in terms of trends. That trend line would have been quite a bit flatter. Looking at the business and the setup of the business, and we came through one of the biggest crisis to hit the global economy, COVID and the lockdown in COVID, with flying colors because of what I believe to have been systematic investment over time in risk and the sort of things that can impact the crucial aspects that have influenced our business. Electricity interruption. Jaco will remind you that we have a better part of 15 MW of standby diesel generation capacity just to make sure that our system stays in motion inevitably in breakdown. If you have a shutdown, you don't have to full on choking and then two weeks to clear your thickeners and your pipe network. It stays in motion, it's just that there's no throughput at that stage. That's the fact that we've had access to water other than through the normal suppliers. The fact that a very significant investment had gone into plant efficiency, especially the information, how we deal with information to ensure consistent plant performance, shrinking the range and understanding the overlap between different dynamics and extraction efficiency, metallurgical efficiency. All of those things were done with risk in mind. Nobody anticipated COVID, obviously, your business ultimately becomes almost. It's almost an embedded resilience that follows the sort of investment that had been made over time, targeted at specifically your biggest vulnerabilities or those things that can impact the business most. Nothing's changed. We're still continuing with that process. We're investing in Eskom. We're investing in electricity infrastructure rather. We maintaining infrastructure and building on infrastructure that gives us certainty of water supply. We're making sure that we stay on top of trends in terms of criminal behaviors that things don't get too far before we start reining back. Make sure that our people are not safe just at work, but also on their way to work. Et cetera, et cetera. So, so, um, uh, this particular instance, I believe it's very unfortunate, uh, that, um, especially in terms of load shedding towards the end of the year, what we have in place was inadequate to, to keep the city deep part of the business going. But that's been fixed. It's now linked into Eskom. It's unfortunate that we couldn't, uh, commission these sites when we wanted to, but, but that's a process that we just need to manage more proactively, uh, and assuming maybe a different standard and anticipating that standard from the regulators to ensure that we get these things in place. So, um, the, the endemic, uh, issues are, are certainly not internal. There may be external endemic issues, and we will continue to invest to, uh, to make sure that we are increasingly resilient also in terms of those. In terms of survivability, I think we are still exceptionally well positioned. Riaan, do you want to maybe give some of the more detail? Yes, Niël. Maybe just to build on from that, if I can summarize your question. You may be asking what we're seeing now, and if you take the last 6 months as a 6-month period, obviously in a very long life, as we've set out in our S-K 1300 around Ergo's life. I don't believe, as Niël said, there's anything that we still wanna do differently. It's a specific period around challenges, many sites, many cleanup sites, but essentially the long-term plan, I believe, for Ergo hasn't changed. It's in line with our strategy for now, is to say we wanna mine for as long as possible all the resource we own, because that ultimately creates what enables us to achieve environmental cleanup. That's your question to Niël around the Withok extension and even if we look at Far West as well, their position capacity. That's all in our plans still. And yes, we've experienced challenges and regulatory challenges, I don't think that will stop. At this point in time, that is the future for Ergo as we've communicated to the market. It is a simpler single site or maybe a couple of sites model that operates at only a slimes model at a lower cost per ton. Ultimately, that is still where it is, obviously on an annual basis we'll re-estimate, look at all the challenges and see if any of that has changed. At the moment, that is still the model we are pursuing. Obviously, what this has indicated to us that timing is becoming more important, and it's going to be a challenge. The couple of examples that Niël used around Water Use Licences not in time. We will have to understand what the impact on timing is. Ultimately, I don't believe anything that we've seen has changed the longer-term plan, and that's what we've indicated in our report as well, that we don't believe there's any material changes to the reserves as we've communicated to the market for our 30 June 2022 results. Thanks, Niël. Hopefully that clarifies or just say that from my point of view, our intention and plan hasn't changed. Thanks, Phil. All right, I see that there isn't anything on the PGM surface project, so I'm not going to volunteer other than to say it's decision time now. Work's been done, and now it's are we gonna get a key or are we not gonna get a key? If you want me to elaborate on that, I'm happy to. Let me deal with the class actions first. The key is the key to the plant. That's what I mean by key. In terms of the class action, I think maybe just by way of background. Class action consists of two phases. There's an application for the class to be certified, and then also for, in this instance, there was an application for a declarator that a particular remedy be extended. Now once that is done, and if it's clear that there's no settlement, then the second phase would be to issue a summons against those parties who, in this instance, didn't make an offer or rather didn't, maybe I should be technically more correct, parties who did not participate in the settlement that was reached. So by striking the appeal from the roll, what the judges of the Supreme Court of Appeal basically said was that, "The issues that you brought before us are not issues that are appealable." It's, it's a procedural aspect. Although, particularly in terms of the second aspect, it was vague and fraught with difficulty, et cetera, et cetera. The judges believe that the court before which the action is to be brought, that court also needs to hear that part of the dispute. When the summons is issued, there will not only be a plea on the facts of the matter, and it's a term and the claim for damages based on negligence. It won't be just the allegation of negligence and the consequent damages. There will also be a plea on those facts. There will also be these, let's call them legal issues or technical issues involving the clause itself and then also the extension of the remedy. That's in all likelihood going to be determined by way of a special trial. The long and the short is by not resolving this, and obviously the courts have very good reasons and they motivate those reasons as to why they decide to determine issues and why not. By not making a determination, there is still no embedded legal remedy in line with that which the plaintiffs are asking. That being the case, in fact, there'd be two difficulties here. On the one hand, in terms of the allegation of negligence, the mining industry's position had they gone to court would have been that there was a standard and that decades of record keeping will demonstrate. Ventilation records that are filed with the DMR will demonstrate that there was consistent delivery to that standard. It's only if the standard was wrong and by not anticipating and foreseeing that the standard is wrong, you're acting, committing an act of negligence. That negligence gets there. Going above that, the fact that the remedy has not been embedded and adequately articulated, that basically means that you can't. That there isn't a legal basis on which you could determine whether or not there were to be liability. In the absence of that, if you then do hand over money to the plaintiffs, and it's more than what would be, I think in the circumstances be termed convenient or towards managing a particular risk, or towards costs. You know, then you are donating. You're making a donation. Whilst this whole thing, I think we all agree that the one cannot be insensitive to people that have worked on mines and that have suffered both in terms of the length of their career and also in terms of quality of life. You simply cannot be indifferent to that. You have to have a measure of sympathy. At this stage, the legal mechanism that is in existence in South Africa is imperfect. It's inadequate, at least from the point of view of the defendant, to determine whether or not I should be writing a check. Is there an established, adequately defined set of legal principles in terms of which I can quantify, first determine liability and then quantify that liability? Simply doesn't exist. That's maybe one of the realities, is that maybe this dispute should never have gone to court. Maybe this was one better suited for parliament. What is failing these plaintiffs is not just the inadequacy or lack of particularity in terms of the legal remedy, but also the system that had been put in place. To address their potential loss and damage at some point in time, and where the standards were, maybe government ought to be a party to this and how that's been regulated. Interestingly, there hasn't been any significant other than legislation that discriminates on the basis of race. There hasn't been any significant changes in the regime that applied prior to 1994. Mr. Zwelakhe likes saying that we're perpetuating legacies of apartheid and so on and so forth. There's been 30- years to change that legacy and create another system, and it hasn't happened. Maybe Parliament also should be part of this conversation. Be that as it may, at this stage, not enough to show that there's legal liability, and not enough to quantify. That being the case, there's not a basis on which we can formulate an offer in settlement other than some of the conversations that we've had, based on proportionality and apportionment, et cetera, et cetera. We feel strongly that we won't make a contribution towards any sort of contingent fee arrangement simply because we believe that this matter should have gone to Parliament and not to the courts. Some of the other companies didn't have the luxury of batting through the innings and saying sort of true to legal principle and what we believe is an important part of our obligation to our shareholders, namely to preserve the capital and not gift it away, only because of social pressure and being associated with some of the things that are being said. Be that as it may, some of the other companies had to raise funding. There were contingent liabilities that they had to raise, which was going to make it very, very difficult for them to advance their businesses. Being a smaller company with a much lower, I believe, threshold of exposure. Our last deep level mine, which was not in a subsidiary, closed in 2001. It was a small mine at the time. I think it would have been irresponsible for us to grab a checkbook and just make this go away for the sake of making it go away. No, I don't anticipate at this stage, based on the evidence that we have, that there's a large liability and the legal remedy and also the question of legal liability have simply not been adequately articulated for us to take a firm view on that, or at least a view firm enough to make a to be more clear on what we're saying in the letter to shareholders. Judith, maybe you could just cast your eye over that because it does contain some of the considerations. All right. I do not see any other questions. I think a lot of people have also had to drop off because of the duration. I want to thank everyone. Before I do, Riaan, anything else that you wanna add? No. Thank you, Niël. Thanks very much. Jaco, from your side? Nothing from my side. Thanks, Niël. I want to thank everybody for dialing in and, if you do have any further questions, please, you have our contact details, so don't hesitate to ask. Yep, looking forward to our presentation in August. Hopefully we don't disappoint. Thank you for your time. Goodbye.