Good morning everyone. Welcome to Kumba's Interim Results for 2023. It's really good to see you here in the room, as well as on the line. Today with me, I have Mpumi, our CEO, Mpumi Zikalala, and our CFO, Bothwell Mazarura. We are also very pleased to welcome our board of directors and our exco management. I'd just like to remind participants joining us on the webcast and Chorus Call that they'll be in listen-only mode until we open the line for questions after the presentation. Before we continue, please note the disclaimer, particularly in reference to our forward-looking statements. I'll now hand you over to Mpumi. Thank you. Thanks, Penny. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here with you again. It feels just like yesterday, and thank you to all of you for joining us, and also just a big thank you to those who are joining us virtually. I will begin with an overview of our performance for the first six months of the year, including our ESG and operational performance, before handing you over to Bothwell, who will take you through our financial performance. I'll then spend some time on our refresh strategy and share our outlook for the rest of the year before wrapping up and opening it up for questions. Turning to our H1 performance. The past six months has been about building safe and stable operations while navigating ongoing logistics challenges and market volatility as we continue to deliver value to all our stakeholders. I'm pleased to say that the actions that we've taken to restore consistent production performance have been successful. This is the key driver of a relatively robust financial performance in spite of lower commodity prices. While logistics have been the key constraint to our performance, there continues to be constructive collaboration to find pathways to achieve improvements that all of us know we need in the future. As we look forward, we are committed to continued action to make this business as safe, efficient, and effective as possible. In doing that, I believe that we can stay ahead of inflationary pressures that we continue to face. Just taking a look at some of our KPIs. For us at Kumba, safety remains paramount. I was deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague, Nico Molwahai, in February, earlier this year. Nico was employed by our service or drilling service partner. We responded immediately and have further strengthened our safety controls. While we still have much to do, I'm encouraged that our total recordable injury frequency rate of 1.2 is below the three-year average of 1.35. In the H1, production was up 6% to 18.8 million tons, driven by a strong recovery from Kolomela and ongoing improvements at Sishen. Despite a lower pricing environment, we delivered a solid set of financial results. Our EBITDA of ZAR 19.8 billion and attributable free cash flow of ZAR 7.9 billion reflects the positive impacts of operational improvements, cost discipline, as well as a weaker currency. This enabled us to create enduring value of ZAR 28.5 billion for all our stakeholders. Our board is pleased to declare an interim dividend of ZAR 9.7 billion, of which our empowerment partners will receive a total dividend of ZAR 2.4 billion for the period. Moving on to safety and our operations. As a responsible miner, taking care of the safety and health of our employees, as well as our communities and the environment, is critical to our sustainability. We remain focused on eliminating fatalities and improving our safety-critical controls. We have increased our visible felt leadership engagements and also simplified our broader awareness programs to connect better with our teams. Following the increase in cable theft incident, Kumba is also participating in industry-wide initiatives to reduce crime across the country and including our own operations and the remainder of our value chain. Through B4SA, we are supportive of the joint initiative on crime and corruption, as well as the partnerships and initiatives at a community level, to help keep our communities safe as well. On the health front, after many years of continuous improvement, we confirmed one occupational disease case due to a musculoskeletal disorder, which took place in 2022. We continue with exposure reduction programs focused on reducing overall workplace health risks. Turning to water management. As a net water positive mine, we've supplied close to 6.8 billion L to our local communities and reduced our fresh water usage by 3.2 billion L. In the H2, we are increasing our dewatering capability in line with mine plan requirements. The capacity of the regional water infrastructure managed by Bloem Water is constrained, unfortunately unable to accommodate the additional water and provide it to communities. As a result, our fresh water consumption will increase in the H2 of the year. We are collaborating with Bloem Water, provincial and local government, as well as other mining companies within the Northern Cape, to improve the Vaal Gamagara Water Scheme infrastructure and its ability to receive the higher volumes of water. Ultimately, we want to ensure the beneficial use of this valuable resource for all our stakeholders, especially considering that the Northern Cape region is a water-scarce region. Turning on to our sustainability performance. In terms of environmental performance, I'm pleased to say that we've extended our track record of over eight years with no environmental or no major environmental incidents. We are making progress on our decarbonization pathway. The phase I is our 68 MW solar PV plant at Sishen. Earlier this year, we were granted environmental authorization, and major earthworks began earlier this month. Given our increasing haulage distances and the use of Eskom power at our plants, our scope one and two emissions are likely to increase before reducing, when our solar PV is fully commissioned. This project is therefore key to our ability to reduce our carbon emissions, which for the H1 totaled 0.51 million tons of CO2 emissions. We have also launched six additional LNG ships, which service the South Africa to Asia route, bringing the total to eight out of the 10 that we told you about earlier this year. Clearly, we are looking forward to the last two. These LNG ships are expected to result in a 35% reduction in carbon emissions. We remain absolutely excited about this work. On our social performance, Kumba's health and wellness strategy adopts a whole of society approach. Following extensive consultations during the H1 of the year, we achieved a significant milestone by signing an MOU with the Northern Cape Department of Health. This means that we will align all our efforts with the district health system model, which represents the department's priorities, and work to strengthen healthcare clinics and outreach teams. This agreement reflects our shared commitment to improving health outcomes and increasing access to healthcare services in our region of the Northern Cape. Secondly, our educational goal encompasses more than 80% of selected schools in our communities. Our aim is to have these schools within 20% of either the top-performing schools in the country or the most improved of all state schools nationally by 2030. In the phase I of this program, we have seen an average mathematics pass rate improve from 74% in 2021 to 81% in 2022. We are seeing the results of this. The phase II launched earlier this year. It added 20 schools and 20 early childhood development centers. We are also investing in libraries to enhance educational resources and supporting matriculants through bursary schemes and many other training and development opportunities. Lastly, corporate governance is one of the key cornerstones of good business practice. To demonstrate how integral sustainability is to our business, our board established the Safety, Health, and Sustainable Development Committee, focusing on driving ESG, which represents 20% of the executive scorecards. Another area of focus is inclusivity and diversity. It is well demonstrated that a more inclusive and diverse workforce ensures greater overall business performance. I'm pleased to report an increase from the 24% in 2022 to the current 31% in our female representation at senior management levels. We are making progress in driving this key space. Ensuring thriving communities includes facilitating value creation for all our stakeholders, which brings me to the next slide. I will touch on a few highlights, which you see on the slide. Starting firstly with our contribution to government of ZAR 3.3 billion in income taxes and royalties. For our shareholders, including the Community Development Trust and our employees, through Simeka, our employee share option scheme, we returned ZAR 9.7 billion in valuable dividends. A highlight is also that we concluded our three-year wage agreement. This further supports operational stability and business sustainability more holistically. Equally important, we spent ZAR 7.9 billion with BEE suppliers, and of this, our local host communities in the Northern Cape benefited from ZAR 2.8 billion of procurement spend. Thereby making a significant contribution to the economic transformation of the Northern Cape region, where 81% of our employees and contractors are from. They come from our local Northern Cape communities. I'll move on to the next slide, where I'll take you through our operational performance. Starting with our mining performance, we have seen a pleasing performance in the H1. We have built up healthy feedstock buffers at both mines. This was underpinned by the optimization of our mine plans and the focus on HME improvement, which will continue going forward. As a result of improved feedstock and operational stability, total production has increased by 6%. Next, along the value chain, we saw ore rail to the port decrease by 3%. I will discuss the challenging logistics performance later. Given this, 92% of our finished feedstock or finished stockpiles is unfortunately sitting at the mines. Only 8% of our stockpiles or material or final product stockpiles are sitting at the site, Saldanha Port. This is clearly not ideal. This affects our ability to load onto ships efficiently. Negatively impacts our sales. You'll have seen that we have revised our sales guidance down by 1 million tons for the full year to between 36 million-38 million tons. Having a stable value chain and healthy stock buffers is absolutely critical to our ability to deliver to plan and create value for all our stakeholders. Turning on more specifically to Sishen and Kolomela's performance. This year, our focus has been on stabilizing and improving capability at both our operations. Kolomela's mining performance has recovered well following the implementation of the rain readiness plans and a focus on rebuilding key mining buffers, which is what we told you we were going to focus on earlier on in the year. We are stabilizing the operation through effective planning routines, which help the system in terms of managing variability. This, in addition to improving HME reliability, has resulted in a more stable operation and has seen production increase by 22%. Sishen's performance continues to be stable, and we are starting to see capability step-ups, especially in the mining fleet, which is absolutely great. Our holistic HME improvement plan has fundamental pillars focusing on addressing both the reliability and the utilization of our fleet. We have made good traction on both fronts and have seen a progressive improvement in each quarter. In particular, we have seen this in the utilization of the fleet, with focus areas being around whole cycle optimization, shift change efficiencies, and also refueling optimization that we've seen across the board. We are also seeing the benefit of improved ore stock availability and quality. This provides more flexibility and ensures that we can produce volumes more efficiently. This has seen Kumba's product quality improving to 63.3%, relative to the 63.1% that we had from a quality perspective in the Q1. We'll continue to focus on stability and driving cost efficiencies in the H2 of the year. While all of this is key to value delivery, we clearly need rail to improve quite significantly. Turning to logistics and the work that's being done to offset the rail challenges that we have seen so far. In the Q1, we saw a successful collaboration with Transnet on the tamping maintenance as well as the loco spraying program, which yielded results. The Q2 was impacted by train derailments and numerous other breakdowns. While these are due to maintenance required, we also saw an emerging trend of cable theft. This is new to the iron ore line and a serious concern to both ourselves, other users of the line, as well as Transnet. Our security teams are working with Transnet and the rest of the Ore Users Forum on additional security to combat cable theft and secure our line. The interventions have led to the recovery of certain stolen copper cable and an arrest of a number of suspects. The establishment of the National Logistics Crisis Committee is therefore encouraging. It brings together government, Transnet, and business. This follows from the good work that we saw from a NECOM perspective on the energy front. In the near term, the NLCC is working on the critical operational challenges of the logistics system, as well as security solutions to combat the growing cable theft that we are seeing. In the medium to longer term, structural solutions are absolutely required. These will rely on government's real reform policies. We do believe that our logistics challenges can be solved through greater collaboration. For us, more fundamentally, significantly more public and private sector partnerships. Importantly, we are committed to working with government, Transnet, and other industry peers to ensure the success and the sustainability of the logistics network. This is absolutely critical. It forms part of our value chain. This is something that clearly we focus on significantly more as a business. Moving on to the iron ore market. After a strong start to the year following China's economic reopening, the pace of recovery slowed down amid the property sector downturn. Strong exports this year have more than offset the reduction in domestic demand, as China's steel production rose by 1.2% in the first six months of the year. Amid higher steel production, with supply chain stocks at near five-year lows, the iron ore market remains tight. Supply from traditional basins has also remained stable, with little expansion since 2018. Given these combined factors, the market has been supported at current levels. Lump premium have been under pressure this year due to thin steel mill margins, recent sintering cuts announced in Tangshan, should fuel a recovery in the short term. Over the medium to long term, an increase in the proportion of direct charge products in blast furnaces and rising steel industry consolidation in China will support mill margins, leading to higher lump and Fe premium. Our focus on premium products, therefore, continues to benefit us and also benefits the carbon emission reduction properties of our high-quality iron ore products, promises to make Kumba's product an important feedstock in a decarbonized future. I will now hand over to Bothwell, who will take you through our numbers. Thank you, Mpumi, and good morning to everyone. Mpumi has provided an overview of the market and our operational performance over the past six months. Our financial results reflect this operating environment. Volatile markets and constrained rail logistics again impacted our top line. Iron ore markets, however, continue to reward quality. We continue to focus on cost discipline to remain competitive and to generate cash flows that allow us to maintain a strong, flexible balance sheet. We are also disciplined in the way we allocate capital, ensuring that there's an appropriate balance between the liquidity on our balance sheet, investing to sustain our business, and delivering excess returns to our shareholders. Now, let's take a closer look at our financial performance for the H1. As Mpumi alluded to, iron ore prices continue to be supported at current levels, although below the level we saw last year. As a result, our average realized FOB price declined to $106 per ton. Operational gains, a continued focus on costs, and a weakening rand, have allowed us to contain C1 unit costs at $39 per ton. I'll unpack costs later in the presentation. Our EBITDA margin continues to be strong at 52%. Our all-in break-even price, which includes all costs, stay-in-business capital, net of quality premiums, was $65 per ton for the period. Our headline earnings for the six months were ZAR 30.04 per share. On the back of the solid operational and financial performance, and the flexibility that our balance sheet provides us, the board has declared an interim dividend of ZAR 22.60 per share. Now let me turn to the benefits that we get from our premium products. The quality of our ore body is a primary differentiator for us. It positions us well in the market, where the focus on decarbonization and green steel plays an increasingly important role. 46% of our total sales went to markets outside of China. This is aligned to our medium to long-term target of between 45% and 55% for this market. This allows us to continue maximizing the premiums we earn from a diverse customer base. You heard earlier, the lump premium has come under pressure during the period. This, combined with mills in China utilizing more low-quality, low-cost material to support their margins, impacted our lump and Fe premium. For the H1 of the year, the iron ore FOB index price averaged $102 per wet metric ton on the back of lackluster global steel demand. We achieved a combined lump and Fe premium of $8 per ton. The marketing premium of $1 per ton that we earned during the period, more than offset by negative timing effects of $5 per ton, resulting in a combined negative impact of $4 per ton. In a declining price environment, we see a negative timing impact because we price, on average, two months after shipping to our customers. The opposite is true when prices rise, which results in this difference reversing over time. Despite the negative timing effect, we realized an FOB price of $106 per ton, which is still ahead of our peers. On the next slide, I'll take a closer look at our EBITDA performance. The improvement in our C1 unit costs limited the impact of lower sales volumes on our profitability. The biggest impacts on our EBITDA came from a lower average FOB price, which was partially offset by the weaker rand dollar exchange rate. All in all, despite challenging logistics and a lower iron ore price environment, which impacted our top line, we achieved an EBITDA of just under ZAR 20 billion at a solid margin of 52%. Next, I'll take a closer look at our costs. Cost inflation across both our sites averaged between 6% and 7% for the H1. Now, when I presented the 2022 full year results, I did express concern over Kolomela's unit costs, which had been impacted by the operational challenges that we experienced last year. I'm glad to say that the operational improvements that Mpumi spoke about, coupled with a renewed focus on efficiency and cost optimization, have had a positive effect on Kolomela's unit cost position. The impact of cost inflation, higher maintenance costs, as well as mining costs driven by increased waste movement, continued to put pressure on costs. However, these cost pressures were more than offset by better dilution of costs through higher plant production and the savings that we achieved through efficiency and optimization measures. As a result, Kolomela's unit costs improved by 9% to average ZAR 447 per ton for the half. Sishen's unit costs, on the other hand, increased by 13% as guided. This was driven by cost inflation of 7%, higher maintenance costs, as well as increasing waste volumes, partially offset by the savings that we achieved. Sishen's plant production was restricted by rail availability, resulting in a slightly negative impact on our unit costs. Looking ahead, in the H2 of the year, Kolomela's production is expected to moderate in line with rail availability. This will reduce the cost dilutive effect that we saw in the H1. As a result, w e're maintaining Kolomela's unit cost guidance at between $510 and $540 per ton. Sishen's unit cost guidance is also unchanged at between ZAR 540 and ZAR 570 per ton. We expect production to remain stable in the H2, subject to logistics performance. Our C1 unit cost decreased to $39 per ton, and this includes the benefit of a weaker rand/US dollar exchange rate. We've reduced our full year guidance to $43 per ton. The right-hand side of the slide that's in front of you zooms into our cost optimization program. This delivered savings of ZAR 900 million for the H1. This reflects the good work our teams are doing on the ground, especially around operational efficiency and continued optimization of our mine plan. We are already within reach of our full year savings target of ZAR 1 billion. Optimizing our costs to remain competitive, especially given our logistics reality, remains a key imperative for our business. It is key to unlocking the full potential of our business, which is an integral pillar of our refreshed strategy, which Mpumi will talk to later. We continue to see significant cost optimization potential, and this comes from the following areas: further optimizing our mine plan to focus on value over volume, extracting further efficiencies in key value chain activities, optimizing the way we source our goods and services, how we manage outsourced services, and how efficient we are in the consumption of our consumables. We will outline the value we seek to extract from these areas as we look ahead into the new year, and we will have further engagements later this year, where we will delve deeper into this. Now, if I turn to our capital expenditure. Our CapEx program reflects our continued commitment to strong capital discipline as we continue to invest in our business. Capital expenditure for the half year increased from ZAR 3.6 billion- ZAR 4.4 billion. This largely relates to expansion CapEx of ZAR 1.6 billion on our major projects. These include the ZAR 1 billion we spent for infrastructure construction, equipment, and waste movement at our Kapstevel South project. This project is now 74% complete. We spent a further ZAR 381 million on our UHDMS project as we progressed the detailed engineering design work. As we've said before, we'll provide an update on this later in the year. SIB spend was to support operational stability as well as environmental sustainability. Deferred stripping CapEx was lower, mainly driven by average strip ratios that were lower than life of mine averages at some sections of both mines. Given the uncertainty faced because of the logistics challenge, and as we continue to optimize our capital spend, we have rephased capital at Kapstevel South and optimized our HME spend. This has resulted in a revision in our full year guidance, down to between ZAR 9 billion and ZAR 10 billion. I will now take a closer look at our capital allocation. We continue to deliver sustainable returns, supported by a balanced and disciplined capital allocation. Our dividend policy remains unchanged. Base dividends are targeted at between 50% and 75% of our headline earnings. For the period under review, we generated cash of ZAR 13 billion after paying for sustaining capital. We paid a final 2022 base dividend of ZAR 6.3 billion before allocating capital to our discretionary options. These included expansion capital of ZAR 1.6 billion and additional shareholder returns of ZAR 600 million. We ended the period with ZAR 13.8 billion in the bank. In addition to these cash resources, our liquidity position is bolstered by committed debt facilities. These total ZAR 16 billion. On the back of our strong closing liquidity position, after considering the capital requirements that we need through the cycle, we will be paying an interim dividend of ZAR 9.7 billion. This includes ZAR 2.4 billion paid to our minority shareholders. This equates to an interim dividend of ZAR 22.60 per share to Kumba shareholders. It is at the top end of our range of 50%-75%, so the payout is 75%. This gives us a dividend yield just for the six months of 5%. You can annualize that for the rest of the year. We are committed to consistent delivery of shareholder value through the cycle. Over the past four and a half years, our attributable free cash flow totaled ZAR 87 billion, and we distributed just under ZAR 90 billion in dividends to shareholders. This includes dividend paid to our staff and communities and reflects an average dividend payout ratio of 87%. As I look forward, we will remain focused on enhancing our margin to maintain our competitive position. We will maintain capital discipline, and we'll continue to focus on delivering sustainable returns to all our stakeholders. Thank you. I will hand back to Mpumi. Thank you, Bothwell. We announced earlier this year that we were embarking on the next phase of value delivery. Our Tswelelopele strategy has successfully created value over the last five years, and we are currently refreshing our strategy. Our refresh strategy seeks to address four interconnected trends: the decarbonization of the steel industry, technology, the future of work, and society's changing expectations of big business. By responding to these trends, we are also alert of the new business opportunities. As we take action so that we can thrive in this changing environment, we are primarily focused on unlocking the full potential of our core, which relies on leadership and culture. These in turn drive operational excellence and also cost competitiveness. Concurrent to this, we are positioning ourselves for a sustainable future. I spoke earlier of the progress we are making on our own decarbonization journey. Key to this is the role that we play in the steel industry's decarbonization journey. At the same time, operating in the challenging socioeconomic circumstances of the Northern Cape, it becomes an increasing imperative for us to proactively initiate programs that are directly aligned to the UN SDGs. By recognizing the unique socioeconomic challenges faced in the region, we acknowledge the urgency to foster sustainable development in areas such as poverty eradication, access to higher quality education, healthcare improvement, and infrastructure development. Through a focused commitment to the SDGs, we can drive for a positive change, empower local communities, and contribute to the long-term well-being and prosperity of the Northern Cape region. Our continued dedication to these goals will pave the way for inclusive growth, sustainable solutions, and a brighter future for our region, which we call home. As we'll see on the next slide, the prospects of the steel industry offer significant opportunities for further value delivery. The fundamentals for iron ore, which is a key ingredient in the steelmaking process, remain strong. On the left, you can see that as GDP per capital growth, steel per capital also grows. Compared to developed countries such as the U.S., Japan, and Singapore. China is still quite far behind. This means that there is plenty of room for steel to grow in China, given the size of its population. The steel industry will increasingly pivot towards carbon-light steelmaking, resulting in an exponential growth in DRI production around the world. These plants will create further demand for high-quality iron ore products. Lastly, we have an important role to play in the future of steel. Our approach is as follows: to provide high-quality products in line with our customers' requirements. We are also participating in the green steel transition and collaborating with our customers to develop decarbonization technologies as well as new green business. Currently, 30% of our customers, based on sales volumes, are covered by partnership agreements. All in all, there is significant upside to iron ore demand in the medium to long term from a GDP, population, and green steel demand perspective. This drives home the fact that our focus on product quality and the future growth opportunities in the green steel market allows us to maximize premium value. Now turning to our guidance, and Bothwell has covered certain elements of this. As reported on the 20th of July, we have maintained our production guidance. The improved stability of our operations is encouraging, and this has been evident at Sishen for some time. Kolomela is also improving, although overall, our production guidance is clearly subject to rail performance. To reflect the rail constraints experienced so far this year, we have revised our 2023 guidance on waste to between 195 million-225 million tons, and sales to between 36 million-38 million tons, as I mentioned earlier. We have maintained our production and unit cost guidance at both mines and reduced our C1 cost guidance to $43 per ton to reflect the weaker rand exchange rate. Given the uncertainty faced as a result of the logistics challenges, we have deferred some of our capital expenditure and lowered our full year guidance by ZAR 2 billion to between ZAR 9 billion- ZAR 10 billion. Bothwell spoke a little bit about this earlier as well. As we navigated the logistics challenges amid a volatile iron ore market, Sorry, we adjusted our plans and focused on operational execution and business sustainability. Before we go to Q&A, let me conclude with our value proposition. I would like to bring the presentation to the close with a slide that most of you are now familiar with, which is the summary of our investment case at Kumba. Kumba's value case is underpinned by high quality assets that produce premium quality products with a very well-proven track record for delivering attractive returns and doing so on a sustainable basis, and this is in all senses of this word. This gives us a really firm foundation for the future. However, I think it's also important to say that the clear lesson from the last few years is that we are living through a period of extraordinary volatility, uncertainty, and multiple challenges. I believe that in times like these, we have to run faster and do more to stay ahead. Therefore, to pick up on one of the three key themes that I mentioned at the onset of the presentation, we need to take decisive action to get ahead of the challenges that we face and continue to meet the needs of all our stakeholders. Our performance over the last six months has shown good progress in stabilizing operations, while we have also pushed for efficiency and kept capital discipline. We will need to push harder. My top priorities, therefore, include continuing to ensure that our operations are safe, stable, and cost efficient to improve our margin or our position on the margin curve. Secondly, to work with Transnet and government to effectively address the logistics capacity constraint challenges and develop a sustainable solution. As I said earlier, I fully support the establishment of the NLCC because it will help with this. Thirdly, is to progress our decarbonization program, which is absolutely key. Ultimately, this is all underpinned by our refreshed strategy, and we will take you through this in more detail at our Investor Day in September. I have to say that we are looking forward to hosting you at Sishen. Of course, in order to achieve all of this, we rely on a team effort, and I wish to thank all of our Kumba employees and contractors for their dedication and hard work, our board for their leadership and counsel, as well as all our valued partners and stakeholders for their continued support. I remain excited about what it is that we can achieve together, but certainly, as I said earlier, it's not easy, so we have to keep pushing harder. On that note, I will now hand over back to Penny, who will manage our question and answer session. Thanks, Penny. Thank you, Mpumi. If we could now please start with questions in the room. I see that there is a few of you here. I think there's probably a lot more on the line, but we would like to thank you for coming through. If we could start with, I'm not sure if you have any questions. Brian? Thanks very much. It's Brian Morgan, RMB Morgan Stanley. I just, I'd just be interested to hear, we've obviously had announcements out of China in the last from the Politburo in the last couple of days be interested to hear from Syd and Timo, your views and what do you expect in the next sort of six-12 months? Thanks very much. Thanks for the question. Brian, I'm quite positive. We've seen iron ore prices hold up very nicely in about a $115 neighborhood where we are today. That's despite the fact that the economic recovery, you know, initially after COVID reopening, it was quite strong, but then it disappointed. It's despite the fact that the property market in China is not particularly strong. New starts are probably down about 30% year- on- year. That's not good for the overall market. Despite all of that, we've seen the iron ore price hold up. Why is that? I think it's because steel demand in China has been okay, but then that's been supplemented by steel exports. Now, imagine what might happen against that background if we do indeed see strong stimulus being announced by the Politburo. I think it's gonna provide very, very nice support for iron ore prices. Some people tend to think that the bottom is gonna fall out of the iron ore market if the stimulus does not happen. I have a different view. I think if the stimulus happens as expected, it's gonna provide nice support to the iron ore price. Our view on the H2 is actually quite positive, and I would certainly expect that we're gonna see iron ore prices well above $100 per ton well into 2024. Overall, good. Quickly on the lump premium, because I'm sure you're gonna have a question on that too. There, perhaps not quite so positive. It's been under a little bit of pressure. Why is that? You know, despite everything I'm saying about the iron ore market, the steel mills are not making very strong margins, and against that background, typically, there's not a tendency to be using high-value products, and lump is one of those. That's put a bit of pressure on the lump premium. Secondly, what we've been seeing is that the lump fine ratio from BHP and also Rio has been going up because of their new mine, South Flank and Gudai- Darri for Rio. There's a bit more lump in the market when the demand is not as strong as it used to be. That might be a shorter-term effect. I mean, we are now seeing Tangshan restrictions that Mpumi spoke about, that could provide a bit of a boost for the lump premium. Longer term, we're very bullish on lump, given that we see that continuing trend to be using more direct charge material. Perhaps in the H2 of the year, we're not quite going to see that just yet. A little bit more pressure on the lump premium for the H2, I would expect. Just to follow up, there's quite a lot of pellet feed and pellet capacity coming into the market. Do you expect that to earn prices in the medium term? Yeah, maybe in the medium term, that trend that Mpumi also highlighted of more direct charge ore being used in China year after year, that trend should continue. I mean, we've seen the percentage of direct charge ore pretty much go up by one percentage point every single year, and still, China is far off from where Japan, Korea and Europe are at the moment. That trend should continue quite a while longer. Yeah, maybe a little bit of pressure, but overall, the trend is positive. Good morning, Katlego Mothotsane from Investec Bank. My first question is on Transnet, Mpumi, if you can comment on the progress of the engineering study that was meant to give you a bit of a baseline in terms of the maintenance on the rail line. Also, if you can comment on the security issues, 'cause for the longest of time, the iron ore line was kind of protected, and what has catalyzed the change as far as security issues are concerned? My second question is for Bothwell. If you can give us a bit of color on the non-critical CapEx that has been deferred. Thank you. Thanks, Katlego. I hope you can see us. I'm not sure if we should stand up. Okay. Just on the Transnet piece itself, I think I said more holistically that clearly, Transnet is still challenged more broadly, and that's the reason why we have to continue working with them. On the independent technical assessment, the physical work has not yet started, but we have aligned with Transnet. We've closed off on the tender process. We went out on tender, got tenders back, and the adjudication for that took place between Transnet and our teams. The criticality of that is that we didn't want Transnet to see this as something that sits outside of their space. We wanted it to be done within the Transnet space. For me, even though it's taken long, what's been encouraging is that the adjudication team was made up of our teams from an iron ore user side and Transnet leadership in charge of our line as well, so the managing executives of the various parts of the line, including both rail and the port. In NS, the work is going to start now, but the ongoing work around us, looking at the various challenges on the technical side, have clearly continued. On the security front, you are absolutely correct. Even though others had seen this emerging trend, and it's not just linked to Transnet, but it's linked to the broader country as a whole, we had never seen these incidents taking place on our line, and I guess the remoteness of our 869 km line has always been helpful. We started to see these incidents. They were all concentrated within, so call it a circa 50 km radius. What immediately happened, and this was done within a short space of time, is that our security teams worked with Transnet to strengthen the security of that space. It wasn't just around people walking on the ground, but it was through the usage of drones, similar to what we see on other channels, and a helicopter. Clearly, what that yielded is that we started to see some arrests taking place. We are mindful of the fact that even though that short-term intervention has taken place, there is a broader piece of work that we are working on in the more medium term, that's around partnering with SAPS, particularly the public order policing space of the Northern Cape, and also the partnerships with DTIC. More broadly, looking at the third work stream that B4SA is working on with government, which is now on the broader crime and corruption space. Because the key thing is that when people get arrested, they have to stay in jail. They shouldn't be able to come out with a minor fine. There is also another space that we are working on more broadly within the joint initiative or from a task force perspective with Transnet. What do we think happened? We think that the remoteness of our line was actually quite helpful for a very long time, but we've certainly had spillovers, which essentially are things that have been taking place in other areas. As per the norm, we are working with Transnet to combat that. Just on the CapEx question, thanks for that. I know when we defer capital, a lot of people start questioning whether we are doing what we need to do to sustain the operations. I just need to be very clear. Our focus in terms of where we invest, is still focused on making sure that we've got reliable equipment, making sure that, you know, we protect the integrity of our plant and infrastructure, and then making sure that we protect our safety and environmental imperatives, so we do not compromise on that. Clearly, our key expansion projects are also quite critical to us, so we do not compromise on that. The reduction in CapEx guidance that you've seen for the full year is largely driven by how we are phasing the capital. The first part is at Kapstevel South. Again, given the logistics performance that we are seeing at Kolomela, it's not necessary for us to expose the ore at the rate that we had originally planned. What we've done, is we've slowed down the stripping CapEx there. We've been able to rephase that, and that has given us a significant saving in this year. We are still on track to get to first ore in the H1 of next year, it doesn't compromise the project. On the other hand, again, driven by our logistics reality, we are also able to rephase our HME spend in terms of the replacement cycle. That has also informed some of the deferrals that we have done. There are a few other SIB projects, which we term non-critical, that we've been able to defer as well. Thank you very much, both Bothwell and Mpumi. Are there any other questions in the room? Tim? Thank you. It's Tim Clark from SBG Securities. Just in terms of the sort of refreshed strategy, I suppose the thing that surprised me was less focused than I expected on extending lives and sort of creating a much longer horizon for production from Kumba. Perhaps that's just work that's going on in the background. I wonder if you could just give us a little bit more color, without going into specifics on projects, just where the work is going to extend some of the 17 and 12-year lives, and even that 17 is dependent on UHDMS and the investment decision around that. Even that 17 looks like it's got a little bit of variability in it. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Tim. I may not have spoken about it, but that certainly remains an area of focus for us. If you look at the refresh strategy, maybe let me zoom in to the criticality of the first pillar as we look at the life extension opportunities that you are referring to. The fundamental element around the first pillar is that clearly we are currently running at Seka, just north of 80% of our contractual capacity from a Transnet perspective. When we talk about unlocking the full potential of the ore, it's around us doing that within that low performance area. Clearly, an improvement from a Transnet perspective can only then get us to deliver more value from a business perspective. We believe that we have to focus on the second pillar, but it doesn't mean to say that we compromise on the life extension elements that you are talking about. What we've previously spoken about around the full potential that we see from a Northern Cape perspective, the other resources that we believe lie around Kolomela, especially the Kolomela area, the Heuningkranz, the Ploegfontein, et cetera, those are still there, and we will continue essentially exploring that and the remainder of the Northern Cape. We are mindful of the fact that we need to unlock the full potential of our ore, taking into consideration what we are seeing from a logistics front perspective. It's not that we are not focusing on it, but we do fundamentally believe that we've got to continue focusing on ensuring that we drive for the improved competitiveness of our business, even with the challenges that we essentially sit with right now. The other work continues. We may not have covered it, but it certainly continues, yeah. I guess from a market point of view, we always live with the fear that the economics of some of these things have deteriorated. Although we know the names of them, we know about them or where they are, that those economic concerns are becoming more pervasive. Yeah. No, I think it's a good comment. Glenn's sitting in front of you, but I'm not gonna ask him to comment. The fundamental belief is that the aspect of understanding what is in place from a resource perspective is clearly something that we need to get right. The critical question becomes more around the ability to mine the resource in an economic manner, and that work will always continue in terms of us essentially evaluating the optionality that we have in the business. We may not have mentioned the names, but please believe you me, it's something that we certainly think about. Thanks, Mpumi. Any other questions in the room? We'll then go, René. Hi, Mpumi. It's René Hochreiter from NOAH Capital. Just following on Tim's question. Your 17-year life, is that dependent on the iron ore price? For example, if you have $120 or $150 a ton, would that 17 years be extended with your other projects that you have? Is it irrelevant what the price is, you have 17 years life, and that is it? I'll answer that question in by just taking a step back. The first thing is to establish what's on the ground from a resource perspective, and that work continues, and the exploration work from a greenfields perspective essentially continues, albeit taking into context where we find ourselves as a business. The next thing is about the aspect on saying, how best could we mine that in an economic manner? There we clearly consider how we run our business, the fundamental cost drivers that we have in the business, and also the opportunities that we have from a technology perspective. If you think about it, the fundamentals around the UHDMS and the life extension opportunity that it brings, are fundamentally premised on technology and the ability to mine, even call it the low-grade stockpiles that we couldn't mine before. Clearly, as we then look at the fundamental economics, we also consider the pricing environment as well. We take a broader piece, of I guess, we consider far much more broader aspects as we look at life and look at what it is that we can actually bring forward into our business plans. Behind all of that, there'd typically be other opportunities that we'll continue working on that can extend life, and that work continues as always in the business planning cycle. We call that a fundamental space that we call our RDP or the Resource Development Plan opportunities, where we now look at other things that can be considered, your plug fountains, your entrances around the greenfield space, but also other technologies that can be considered, like concentrators. As we do that work, that work clearly, if it proves to be economic, would come back and bolster the life of mine aspect. That work continues in the background on an ongoing basis. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay, we'll then now go to the line. If you could have a look at, any questions on Chorus Call. We've got Ian Rossouw. Please go ahead. We currently have a question from Shilan Modi, from HSBC. Please go ahead. Thank you. Afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my call. Congrats on a decent set of results in a difficult period. Maybe a question on the more controversial side. If Transnet's rail performance does not improve, at what stage would you look at restructuring Kumba? Yeah. No, thanks. Thanks, Shilan. I don't think it's a controversial question. Mm-hmm. It's something that we ask ourselves as well, hey. I think fundamentally, the first thing that I need to say is that in everything that we do, we always rebalance back from a mine plan perspective to something that looks at the full value chain, including Transnet. If you look at what we are doing right now around the reduction in the Kolomela waste, it's driven by that. That's part of the ongoing cycle of work that we look at, particularly around how we've structured ourselves as a business, because it doesn't make sense, for example, to strip significantly more waste and end up with stripped reserves that don't make sense from a business perspective. That is something that we consider on an ongoing perspective, Shilan. The work that we continuously do, not just around the cost reduction opportunities, and Bothwell showed you the cost improvements that we've been able to see right now, which is the circa ZAR 900 million, against the target that we started with of ZAR 1 billion. Clearly, we'll outperform that for the remainder of the year, because we do understand that we still are running with the Transnet challenges. That's something that we consider on an ongoing basis, because we ultimately align our business to the fundamentals of rail. Clearly, if things continue getting worse from a Transnet perspective, and as we do our ongoing work around the mine plan, and this is fundamentally premised on balancing the value chain. Ensuring that we remain competitive, that's something that will continue to be put under pressure. That's ongoing work that we essentially look at. We do, I guess, ongoing restructuring. Sometimes you don't see it. It's the fundamental basis of what essentially yields the cost improvements that you see. Thanks. I think I was being a bit more specific, like a large-scale restructuring, changing the design capacity of the mine. You know, if you shrink the mine, you obviously get a life of mine extension, you know, stuff like that. That's kind of what I was trying to get at. Just another question. Given the high levels of stockpiles that you have at the mines, are you able to tweak what you sell just based on the pricing you receive in the market? Where I'm going with this is, if lump premium come down quite substantially, like they have, are you able to hold back on lump and then just put more fines into the market, or is that too difficult to do? Timo is going to comment. I think as Timo gets the mic, what I will comment on is the fact that clearly sitting with the low levels of stock at the port is a challenge. What I'm pleased with is the fact that from an operations perspective, our teams have mastered the ability to blend at the mines to make sure that we can continue doing more direct ship loading. If it went for that, clearly we'd be in a far much more worse of space, but ultimately, we seek to deliver to customers. Timo, on the flexibility element? Yeah, can we tweak? Yes, we can, and we do. I mean, if you just look at the qualities that we've delivered so far this year, they've actually been up in Q2 versus Q1 because of that continued focus on quality. How do you get the best value through the railway line, you know, given the constraints that we face there? So yes, we do that, and frankly, expect us to further focus on quality. 63.3% so far, average this year, should be improving in the H2 of the year, with Kolomela focusing on a better quality again. That's the first comment. The second comment, you know, can you tweak and flex between lump and fines? To an extent, you can, but it is limited because, you know, the mines produce in a 67/ 33 ratio, so you can't be stockpiling too much lump, while prioritizing fines. You know, at some point you're gonna run out of bed space. Would you want to do that longer term? Probably not, because the lump premium may be under a little bit of pressure, but you're still earning a very nice lump premium, right? It's, it's not nothing at all. Before you would give up on that, you know, it's quite a lot would need to happen. A little bit of flex is always possible, but what we do on an ongoing basis is optimize the way we plan between Kolomela and Sishen to load what is needed on the next vessel that's arriving in Saldanha. As Mpumi said, we've actually become quite good at that, not relying on blending in the port, but being able to actually flex the ratio of trains from the two mines to make sure that we have exactly what's needed on the next vessel. Perfect. Thank you for that Timo. Thanks, Timo. If there are no more questions on Chorus Call, we'll turn to the webcast questions. The first question is from Thobela at Nedbank. The first question is about the stocks. How much stocks do you have at port? Which I can answer, 7.9 million tons. It's on our presentation. Sorry, not at port, but sorry, I wish it was the other way around. 8, 8%. Yeah, 8% at port of 7.9 million tons. You can work that out, 600,000 tons, a total of 7.9 million tons. The second question from Thobela is: What exactly is being reviewed on the UHDMS project? Her third question is: How much further can you push cost optimization, given that you're almost at your full year 2023 targets? Thanks. Thanks, Thobela. Penny, I smiled when you got the numbers around. I think it's wishful thinking. Okay. What are we reviewing on the UHDMS? Thobela, the UHDMS, or the ultra-high dense medium separation project, clearly is fantastic from a technology perspective. What we saw is that when we started executing, we clearly saw more complexity from an execution perspective. Fundamentally, this is essentially deconstructing existing sections of the plant, firstly, which brings in I guess, complexity, because we call it a brownfields project. You remove what's there, and then you build within the same space, and everything has got to align as you build, and you do it in modules. When we started with that piece of work, we realized that our engineering design was not as advanced as it needed to be at, so we suspended the construction, and first and foremost, just detailed from an engineering perspective. That is the right thing to do, because if you don't have that right, you run the risk from a safety of people perspective as you do the work. Secondly, you run the risk of significantly increasing both the duration, timeline and certainly cost. We paused to detail the engineering design, and the bulk of that has been done. Clearly, what we are doing right now is looking at the implications of that. Fundamentally, the technology is still sound. It's being tested not just at a less lab scale level. It's been tested in operations, albeit at a smaller scale. We are looking at coming back, as we said, before the end of the year, with an indication of what essentially that will then fundamentally look like, covering all the various aspects of looking at a capital project. From a cost optimization perspective, the answer is yes. I guess it links up to the question that Sheila asked before. As we look at ourselves from a competitiveness perspective, we are considering the constrained logistics environment and considering the fact that we can't continue running the business at current costs. I think maybe, Shilan, that's what you are trying to essentially refer to. Yes, we believe that there's more that we can do in this space, and that's a space that we'll continue doing. Our minds continue reminding us that when we set them a target at the beginning of the year, they would already have built some of the improvements into the business plan. We do certainly believe that there's more that can be done, and clearly, we'll continue doing this work. Structurally, to Shilan's point, we can't forget about the environment that we find ourselves in. That's why I ended off the presentation by saying, we've got to push harder, and that's exactly what we will essentially keep doing. Thank you, Mpumi. Next question is from Bruce Williamson, from Integral Asset Management. He's asking, probably would be more for Timo in terms of the markets, again. His question is around what seems to be weaker than expected sales to the rest of Asia. He wanted to know what insights can you provide in terms of the important countries that we sell to and the outlook for the H2 of the year? Do we expect E.U. to at least not worsen from where it currently has performed? Lots of good questions. You would have seen our sales mix a little bit different from what we've seen over the past couple of years. The ratio between China and ex-China, 46% outside of China, 54% to China, where before we've seen sales outside of China exceed 50%. I do expect ex-China to pick up a little bit because that mix was dictated by demand, but also by supply. We spoke about the fact that earlier in the year, Kolomela produced a slightly lower quality product. That's a product that was not in demand outside of China, so we sent that to China, that skewed our ratio a little bit more towards China than otherwise would have been the case. That product is no longer part of our portfolio, so we should see that normalize. It's going to be driven much more by demand going forward, not so much by supply. I would expect us to move back towards a 50/50 ratio of China versus ex-China. Thanks, Timo. Just one last question from Bruce. It's essentially in terms of the costs of a full train of fines versus the cost of a full train of lumpy, or if there's a difference in the cost? No. No. We move volumes, and there's a cost per ton associated with, I guess, the ton, irrespective of what that ton is made up of. Thanks, Bruce. Thank you very much. I'll just check one more time to see if there are other questions on Chorus Call, since there is a Ian Rossouw mentioned here, but I'm not sure if he is on the line still. We do have a question from Ian Rossouw. Okay. Please go ahead, Ian. Please go ahead, sir. Thanks. Hi, team. I just wanted to follow up on the inventory situation. Bothwell you sort of previously talked about building an inventory ahead of the tie-in activities for the UHDMS. Could you maybe just sort of mention what are those levels? Obviously, I suspect the billiondollar, ZAR 1 billion sort of inventory figures have gone up because of cost inflation. If you take away cost inflation, what sort of a sensible inventory levels we should think about from a product and work in progress perspective, maybe over the next few years, just in relation to UHDMS and sort of what should normal levels be after that? Thank you. No, thanks, Ian. If you look at what our plans were at the beginning of the year, and when we gave guidance, there was a difference between our sales guidance and our production guidance. And we did expect to see a slight drawdown in terms of our inventory levels. That hasn't happened clearly because of the challenges we've had on the rail, so you've seen the inventory levels have stayed flat if you look at where we were at the beginning of the year. We have again moderated our sales guidance for the rest of the year, so that position is unlikely to change. You are right, Ian, in that, as we lead up to the UHDMS project and that tie-in, we do need to have elevated levels of stock, and that will allow us to continue selling product while the plant is being tied in from a UHDMS perspective. That is still. As we come back and talk about the timing of the UHDMS, that will become clear in terms of what stock levels we need to carry on holding. If I think about beyond UHDMS and what are the optimal levels of stock, we've always spoken about that. It should at least have about a 1.5 million tons out at the port, and the mines should have about between 3 million-4 million tons, is about the levels that we want. You're looking at about 4.5 million-5 million tons, is round about the optimal levels that we would like to run with. Thanks. And those levels are finished stock, presumably. What about work in progress inventories? I mean, that's obviously gone up quite a bit over the last couple of years. How should we think about that going forward? Yeah. The way we think about, sorry, my mic, is around the buffer that we build in the. I think your microphone is not working well. Yeah. Can you hear me now, Ian? Yes, that's better. Thank you. Our WIP stockpile, stockpiles are about the buffers that we need in the value chain. For example, last year, when we had the operational issues at Kolomela, we talked about having depleted those buffer stockpiles just ahead of the plant. We needed to rebuild those, and that's what we've been doing through the H1 of this year. As Timo alluded to, as we were building up those buffer stockpiles, that's why we also had the quality issues. We had to sell some lower quality product as we built up those buffer stockpiles. We've now done that at Kolomela, and we shouldn't have to sell a low-spec product going forward. That contributed to some of the build-up in terms of WIP stockpiles that you have seen. The other thing that is contributing to that as well, is that as, again, as we look up to the UHDMS project, we are now recognizing what we call C-grade stockpiles, which are slightly lower grade stockpiles, which we previously allocated to waste. With the UHDMS project, that means we can now process those, and we are now ascribing a value to those, and that also contributes to the increase in the WIP stockpiles that you are seeing. Again, all those stockpiles will be turned into product and will be turned into value, and that's something we constantly look at. Thanks. Sorry, then just obviously, there's an element of noncurrent and current within that. I see the current inventories went up quite meaningfully. Is that the implication that you still expect to treat? If a lot of that is C-grade within that increase, do you still expect to treat that within one year? Is that the typical timelines for the classification? Yes, exactly. What we classify as current will be treated within the next 12 months. What's noncurrent is beyond that. Typically, you will see, because the UHDMS is not yet up and running, a lot of that C-grade stockpiles is in the noncurrent area. It just happens because it's C-grade, it's of a lower value than the higher grade, which sits in the current, and that's why you've got more from a value perspective, that sits in the current. Okay. All right. That's great. Thank you very much. Thanks Bothwell and, thanks Ian. As there are no more questions, I'll now conclude. Thank you very much for joining us today. For us, it's always great to see you, and we look forward to joining you with a little bit of catch-up afterwards, once we have some refreshments. You know, with that, I'd like to just say thanks, go well, and, you know, we enjoy your continued interest in Kumba.