AngloGold Ashanti plc (AU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning all. This is Chris Eger, CEO of Resolute Mining. Thanks for joining the call this morning. Extremely excited to have this conversation. So look, I think Resolute now is approaching a very pivotal part in its time line as we are looking to buy assets. It's the first time since we bought the Mako mines in 2019. So extremely excited about what we're doing here. Look, you will have seen in the press release and possibly on the presentation, which is looking at our website, that the deal structure is such that we are looking to buy Doropo and ABC from AngloGold Ashanti. The announcement -- sorry, the deal was signed yesterday evening, and we're actually looking to close the transaction today. There were just a few, I guess, CPs in order to close the transaction, namely wire funds and then one internal cleanup on intercompany activities. So effectively, this is a signed and close transaction from May 1, so we're very excited about that. I'm using the presentation that you can see on our website, and I'm on Page 3, which provides an overview of the deal metrics. So as you can see, it's a $150 million deal with stage payments. So we're paying $25 million today, $50 million in 18 months and then $75 million after 30 months. In addition, we are transferring or selling our Guinea operations to AngloGold Ashanti because they have strategic value with their Siguiri asset. We would have liked to have kept the other exploration deposits in Guinea because they really were focused on Mansala. But in Guinea, you can only sell the holding company, and therefore, you have to exit all of the exploration properties at this stage. But I'll talk about Guinea and our thoughts around future M&A at a later stage. So in addition to Doropo, which was really our key focus, we're also picking up the ABC project. And after we spent some time on ABC, we believe that actually provides real value. And the consideration that we ascribed to ABC, which you can see on Page 3, is a 2% NSR to -- which will go back to AngloGold Ashanti over the life of the project, and then a onetime $10 million payments once the project reaches $1 million -- sorry, 1 million ounces of gold reserves and a feasibility study. So we also think that's a very compelling deal for us. I think what's really exciting is that from a cash perspective, knowing that cash is king in today's markets, the way we've structured the consideration payments over time with our cash flow generation, our existing cash, we feel very confident that we can develop Doropo with our existing liquidity and some sort of financing or project finance facility, which again, I'll talk about a bit further on to the presentation. So moving to Page 4, and this is the page that I think really explains why we're so excited about this transaction is that we believe with Doropo, we will be, in the next few years, over 500,000 ounce producer, but more importantly, very well diversified. We all appreciate that there's been challenges in Mali. And as I explained in our conference call last week for our Q1 results, things in Mali are very stable. We're happy with the progress we're making with the government, but we firmly believe that in order to add value for our shareholders, it makes sense to be diversified. We have strong skill sets in what I call the francophone West African countries. And Doropo is a project that we've been following for some time. We've liked it a lot, and we think we are the perfect acquirer of this project. When you look at the graphs in the top right, it really explains kind of our production profile in the next few years. We have a dip in '26 and '27 as a result of moving into stockpile production and processing at the Mako operation. But what you can see in '20 and '29, that's going to quickly reverse, and we will be over 500,000 ounces, I believe, in those years. And then more importantly, beyond that, with the existing exploration profiles and projects that we have in our business today, namely in Ivory Coast, we think we can grow the business accretively to levels probably closer to 750,000. But look, that's not our key to hit an arbitrary growth profile. What's important is that we are doing accretive transactions for our shareholders and continue to add value to our business in order to derisk it and diversification. The other key aspect of Doropo is that it's very much a low-cost producing asset, and we think that's going to increase our margins helpfully across the business and generate more cash. And like I said, what made this very interesting was the fact that we were able to work with AngloGold Ashanti in a stage consideration payments in order to manage our cash flows. Notwithstanding this is going to add another 5 million ounces to our R&R, and so we'll be sitting at 60 million ounces in R&R. And again, I think that's going to be very exciting for future potential growth. Moving to Page 5, a couple of pages here on just where we operate and how we look to the future. So maybe just to pause on Guinea here. Like I said, as part of the transaction, we had to effectively sell our Guinea assets to AngloGold Ashanti, and we ascribed roughly $25 million for those businesses. And that's because with regards to Guinea, in order to consummate the transaction, you need the government's approval, and we described that we could do that hopefully in the next year. But if we don't get the government's approval within 18 months, we'll keep the exploration properties in Guinea and effectively pay $25 million to AngloGold Ashanti. That is not what they want. We've been obviously in constant communication with them over the past several months, and they would very much like to keep Mansala for their books as it provides strategic value to their Siguiri mines. But look, when you look at the map, we will continue to explore. We will use and continue to use our money to look for exploration deposits in Guinea and elsewhere in West Africa. So I guess the point is that we're not done. We think that Doropo ABC provides an extremely accretive transaction to our shareholder, and we want to continue to do that. And if not, we'll look to give cash back to our shareholders as well, whatever makes the most sense. But in our minds, this transaction was an absolute slam dunk, and we're very excited about it. Moving to Page 6, just a bit more specifics on Ivory Coast with the 3 projects that we have today. So we have been in Ivory Coast for some time. And last year, we went into with the La Debo project, which is a smaller project in the southwest of Ivory Coast with 400,000 ounces at a grade of 1.3 grams per tonne. And then as you know, Doropo is all the way in the Northeast next to the Burkina Faso border. And then we also have the ABC project, which is -- which I'll spend a bit of time explaining how we think about ABC moving forward. But look, Ivory Coast is arguably one of the better jurisdictions in West Africa. And as you can see with these 3 projects, we are really making a stance to have a meaningful position in Côte d'Ivoire. I was in Côte d'Ivoire earlier this week to meet with the mine minister in order to obviously explain what we're doing. And they're very excited to continue to work with us in order to develop Doropo as well as other projects within the country. So I'm very pleased with the government relations to date, and I think that we can build upon that for future activities. So moving to Pages 7 and 8, just to talk about Doropo a bit. Doropo is a project that's been around for some time. Effectively, the licenses were granted back in 2013, and Centamin acquired the business in 2014, and they commenced drilling and moved to the traditional sets of development culminating in a DFS last year in order to apply for the exploitation permit. Why we've really liked Doropo is frankly off the back of what Centamin has been doing. Centamin obviously has a reputation, a very strong management team. And they developed this project to build it themselves. And obviously, that was changed last year when AngloGold Ashanti bought Centamin. So compared to some other projects that have been put into the market over time, the DFS and the work done to date has been of excellent quality because Centamin really had the intention to develop this project. So it made our lives, I would say, frankly, easy from a due diligence perspective because when we looked at the DFS, we feel extremely comfortable with more than 90% of the document and how Centamin approached the development of the project. And as you can see in the bottom left of the page that today, we're sitting at about 1.9 million ounces at a grade of just over 1.53. And then on the right side of the page, you can see a picture of the various pits that will be mined over the at least 10-year mine life. And there's 8 pits, so there's a bit of probably some work to be done on making sure that we're able to manage 8 pits. But look, our experience in Syama is such that we've got good capabilities in how we -- how to mine multiple pits at the same time. There is still quite a bit of community activity that we need to sort out and, obviously, working with the government in order to manage the community issues is key, but we think we have a good handle on this aspect. So moving to Page 8. Here are some of the key metrics from the DFS that was published by Centamin, like I said, last year in August. It's at least a 10-year mine life, if not more. And look, in the last slide, I will talk about what we think we can do next in order to optimize the DFS. It will, over the life of mine, process 38 million tonnes. The construction CapEx is around $370 million. That's what was in DFS. But look, we will be looking to revise that number, and it will likely go up by a bit. But again, I'll provide more context at a later date once we've done our work. It's very much a free milling operation, which leads to conventional closed SAG ball mill crushing, CIL flow sheet, which makes it quite traditional and up to 5.4 million tonnes per annum of processing capacity with very comfortable recovery rates at 89%. And like I said, you can see the statistics that over time, the gold production is about 167 ounces. The power in the DFS was envisioned to basically tap into the grid from day 1. We think that, that's probably overly optimistic and that we'll need to put in some diesel backups from day 1 and also have diesel backups throughout the life of mine because the grid is unstable. And effectively, every single operating asset today in Ivory Coast has some form of diesel backup, which has been, unfortunately, what's been required because of the instability in the grid system. So that's an area of optimization that we will be focusing on. Most importantly, the NPV of the project, again, last year, you can see on the bottom left, was $426 million, and that was at 100% attributable basis, $1,900 gold price, 8% discount rate. We think that as we look to optimize the DFS for today's gold price environment, we can do a lot better. In fact, that's what we believe in why this is such an accretive transaction. So we think that this will be an NPV that will be substantially higher. And at some point, we will update our models and update the DFS and provide some more specifics on it, but it will be for sure, substantially higher than that number. Moving to Page 9. Look, just a page on how we think about ABC. So ABC came into the mix a bit later after Doropo. And the reason that we did that is because the way that the transaction was structured from a simultaneous signing close is that we have purchased the holding U.K. company, which then in turn holds the exploration assets for both ABC and Doropo. And in Ivory Coast, an indirect transaction does not require government approval. So it was a very straightforward transaction. And therefore, we obviously picked up ABC. You can see that the ABC, what it stands for is the Archean and Birimian contact zone. There's a lot of exploration happening in that part of Ivory Coast, specifically the Awale-Newmont business, which is just to the north. And look, there's been a good bit of work. There's 60,000 meters drilled, which has led to date to about over 2 million ounces at just 0.9 grams per tonne, which is a bit low. But what makes me excited about this project is that there hasn't been much done to the very north license, the final license. And look, spending time now with our new team in Côte d'Ivoire, they are very excited about still exploring this area and developing another mine at some stage. So this is an area that we may develop. Our priority is Doropo, but it provides good optionality and flexibility to our business, which is kind of a key theme that we're trying to move on as we go through the next steps of Resolute. So moving to Page 10. I think this is quite an important page to spend a bit of time on because we have effectively picked up a project that was in the verge of moving towards construction, but then was put on hold as a result of the Centamin AngloGold Ashanti transaction, which has created some complications, but very much some fantastic opportunities. So the exploitation permit was lodged last August. It then received the ESIA clearance in the fall. It has gone through all the public consultation periods and is really now at the final steps for government approval. Like I said, we met with the government last -- these past couple of days, Monday, Tuesday, and I think they're working towards granting the exploitation license in the coming months. But we say coming months because I would like some flexibility to continue to work with the government because, look, there is no great secret that Cote d'Ivoire and many other mining jurisdictions in West Africa are looking to implement new mining codes. My previous colleagues and other mining companies to date have stayed on the existing mining code. There's a chance that we stay on the existing mining code. There's also a real chance that we may move to the new mining code. The way that I think about it, though, what's very important is to have full alignment with the government and build on a long-term relationship. So we're very much open to moving to the new mining code, so to come to that. But we think it's not necessary because we'll be obviously investing well over $400 million of capital in this project over time. And therefore, I think that we need to work with them and how we can develop the business in the most efficient manner. So that's a key part of kind of next steps. In addition, my team is looking today to optimize the DFS with an intention of releasing a new DFS by the end of the year. We'll need to do that in order to secure financing for the transaction. And we see quite a bit of upside from regards to revisiting the pit shell designs with regards to a higher gold price. The DFS was done at a pit shell gold price of $1,400. And as we all know today, we're sitting north of $3,200 and, therefore, there's real opportunity to change the mine life structure and very much extend the mine life beyond what was in DFS. We do think, like I said, we need to be a bit more strategic and provide a few more backups with regards to power. We want to revisit the resettlement action plan because there's quite a lot of community involvement with regards to moving people. But overall, my view is that we were very comfortable with the DFS based off the high-quality work that Centamin had done over time. But that's obviously a key work stream, and then we're going to augment the team. We're taking on board roughly 80-odd people in Cote d'Ivoire, which will stay on our books for the future. Like I said, Centamin has built a good team, and we're very happy to continue to work with the people in Côte d'Ivoire in developing Doropo in a very efficient and timely manner. And then look, finally, on how we will move ahead from a funding perspective, we, as Resolute are very proud with the cash flow generation that we're making today from both Mako and Syama. And as you saw from our quarterly results last week, we generated over $34 million of cash in Q1. We think that we're on track for the rest of the year to maintain that cash production, if not more, especially in today's gold price environment. So we're generating strong cash flows. We have access to liquidity. And we also have potential additional cash coming from the Ravenswood transaction. And then based off the very attractive, what I call, perspectives of Doropo and also the work in the past that was done by Centamin with a number of banks, who are our banks, this project is not new to the banking community. And so we can leverage historical work to pick up future activities and try and get the business financed in the most accretive manner to our shareholders. But we think it comfortably can sustain between $200 million and $250 million of banking facilities. But again, we'll explore all options and think what we -- and sorry, pursue what we think will be the most accretive for our shareholders at this juncture. So look, to wrap it up on Page 11 and, in conclusion, I'd just say I'm extremely excited with this transformative acquisition. It's been what we've been wanting to do to diversify into a proper meaningful, exciting jurisdiction. It's an asset that's chunky with 200,000 ounces. So it really makes a meaningful mark in how we look at the business. We have the skill set internally to develop. Quite a few of our folks have built projects like this, and so I'm very happy with the team we have in place today, but we do need to augment to it. It's going to also provide future growth opportunities, and that's the key. We're not done yet. We will continue to look to see how we can diversify our business and bring in projects that we can develop and operate at very attractive margins, which again will create that value to our shareholders. And there's obviously a benefit to economies of scale by being an over 500,000 ounce producer and moving the stock to a place that will be interesting for many other investors. So in conclusion, I think this provides a very solid foundation for future work and creation of value. And I couldn't be more happy with what the team has done to date, the support of our Board and getting us to this position as this is a project that, like I said, we believe is going to change Resolute moving from a defensive position into a really offensive position, and we're very excited about that. So with this, I'll turn it over to the operator for questions. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] And first, we have a question from Richard Hatch from Berenberg.

Congrats on a really nice looking deal. Yes, shame, you had to announce it in the down days for the gold price, but I think a really nice deal. So congrats. Look, I've got a few questions. Look, the first one is just on this pit shell. So obviously, $1,450 seems like a very conservative gold price in today's world. So you've pointed to a $1,950 gold price for the shell. Like can you just -- are you able to give us any kind of steer as to what that could potentially do to volumes versus the historical DFS? I appreciate it wasn't your DFS, but have you got a rough steer? That's the first one.

We do. I really would not like to say it because we haven't done the work properly, but let's say it will add meaningful life to the project, at least several years, give or take. But we have to do the work because, look, we're also still evaluating what pit shell gold price should we be using. We used ourselves $1,950 last year, and that's when the gold price was around $2,400, $2,500. Obviously, we're in a different environment. So we're doing that work as we speak. And look, the consultants that Centamin used to do this work and the name escapes me, are based in Perth. They're excellent. Our Head of Geology Exploration, Bruce Mowat is there, and he's already picking up the phone to work with them to do that. So that's something that we'll look to do very, very shortly.

Okay. All right. We'll watch out for that then. Okay. And then you kind of talked a bit about the CapEx. So the last printed number on this was $373 million in 2024, July. Obviously, we've seen a bit of inflation since that point. Have you got a rough steer as to what kind of inflation you feel it could potentially go to?

Look, again, we're doing the work. On the call, I threw out the number of $400 million, it could be north of that. As we all know, when people look to optimize DFS, especially in a raising inflationary environment, the number will go up. So I think it's going to be at least $400 million, maybe a little bit more. But we're very happy to spend that money because we think that some key considerations will be to put up backups on the power side of the equation. And there's a few areas that we want to revisit on the, call it, the development of the project and how the layouts were presented under the sentiment umbrella. But it's not a meaningful huge increase beyond that. I'm talking maybe 10% type situation, plus or minus. But again, that's very preliminary. So I just caution everybody to use the $373 million knowing that we're doing work to optimize it, but the number will go up.

Yes. Okay. And then sorry, you talked about -- and that's the next point is or question is around the optimization. So can you -- you talked a bit about -- can you just perhaps just lay out a few areas where you particularly see the opportunities to kind of like squeeze a bit more NPV out of the project than was previously sort of given to the market by Centamin?

I think it's -- by the way, the most important one is to revisit the pits and to add more gold into the life of mine. We're very happy with the R&R that was put into place. There is some exploration upside. But frankly, it's probably -- we need to get into there and see if there's other areas that we can grow the deposit. But it's really, I think, revisiting the mine models with the new gold price, which is going to create the most value. That's on the positive. There may be some small areas to tweak out on the CapEx. But look, like I said, Centamin did a very good job in building a project that they could say that they did within budget and on time. So we are confident that the numbers make sense, but we're not looking to overpromise and deliver here. That's why I think really we're happy with the number. It's just what can we do with the gold price and, if anything, add a bit more cost to have proper safety and security over the life of the mine.

Yes. Okay. All right. Cool. And then just sort of finally, just on the resettlement, I mean, when Centamin provided the updated DFS, it cut the resettlement number down from 2,000 to 3,000 with the previous number and then it went down to 500. Like can you just -- is there any way just to sort of talk about how you're thinking about -- I mean, you made your point in your release about reviewing the resettlement action plan. So can we just talk a little bit more about that?

Yes. Look, I think the key assumption that was used in the DFS was that sentiment assumed a 250-meter blast radius for the movement of the houses. And we think that's too conservative, and we think it should be 500 meters. So by changing the -- effectively the barrier from 250 meters to 500, you increase the footprint of resettlement and you change also the timing for resettlement. Look, we have quite a bit of knowledge and experience with resettlements with the work we're doing in Senegal. And I think that this is probably an area that was maybe a bit fast tracked for the DFS. And look, it's a delicate one. So we want to take the extra sort of work to reopen the resettlement plan and more importantly, get going on it so that we can do it without any sort of challenges. The very northern part of Ivory Coast, Cote d'Ivoire is -- does not have any mines. right? Just to be clear, it's probably not one of the more economic -- it's probably one of the poor economic areas of the country. The government is very, very excited about what we're doing because it also creates some economic stability and inspiration, but we'll need to work with the communities to explain that and then to obviously have them be employed by the mine and work with us. So going back to the original point, it's really by changing the boundary from 250 meters to 500 meters, which has created the need to revisit how we look at relocation.

And up next, we take a question from Reg Spencer from Canaccord.

Chris, echoing the previous guy, congratulations. It does look like a pretty good deal. I've only got one question. You mentioned likely changes to the Ivorian mining code. My understanding is that typically, you would need to negotiate a convention, which, let's call it a stability agreement for lack of a better term. From what you understand, the proposed changes to the code in Cote d'Ivoire, would that include potential for tax holidays like some other projects have negotiated?

Possibly. So Reg, and good to talk to you. The way that it will work is we get our exploitation license granted. And then we have roughly 90 days to implement event -- implement, sorry, a mining convention. And then during that time, theoretically, we should be operating the mining convention that we implement is the existing mining code. The Cote d'Ivoire is in the process of looking at a new mining code. And until it's put into law, we still will operate under the existing code. But during that 90-day consultation period, we'll work with the government to obviously try and get as many tax holidays and favorable, call it, economic terms for us. But like I said, I'm very open to working with the government. If there are things that are extremely important to them that they want us to accept at this juncture, we would do so. When we looked at the value for this transaction, we conservatively assume the new mining code is what we would have to take on board, but we don't think we'll do that or have the full impact of it. It will probably be some sort of mix. And look, the reason I say that is because we are spending time with the government. We understand what they're trying to do. But also, we're spending a lot of money in developing a mine in the Northeast. So they want us to be there, but we also need to work with them to have some sort of compromise of which mining code we take on and which tax holidays we can get from them because we will be spending quite a lot of money and also bringing in financing, international financing into the mix at this point.

And Richard Knights from Barrenjoey has our next question now.

Yes. Look, it looks like a really, really accretive transaction. I mean if I look at the feasibility sort of sensitivity tables there and run $3,000 gold through, it's looking like something like a $1 billion project. I'm just wondering if there was much competitive tension at all in the process? Were there other parties looking at this? Or was it just a bilateral negotiation?

Thanks, Richard. So look, on the first point, you're absolutely right. We do think that there's a compelling MVP at a more realistic gold price. You said the number, not me. But we do think it's substantially higher than the number that's been published. But look, the world is complicated and dynamic. And look, as we all know, gold price may come back down. There's still a lot of political instability, and we still have financing risk and development risk. So we do think that whilst the NPV is very attractive, we have to risk adjust it appropriately, which we've done, and we still think there's plenty of headroom, and we've been very thoughtful around that process. Look, on the overall process with AngloGold, we've been in contact with them for some time. We know that they liked our Mansala project. They knew we like the Doropo project. And we -- look, based off our business, our cash flow of operations, our simplicity of the deal, whereby we don't need any regulatory approvals, don't need any government approvals with the exception of transfer of the Guinea asset, it made sense to do something quick and close for both of us to move on and continue to develop our asset base. So look, I'm not privy to all the other inbounds or activities that AngloGold may have had, but we were very pleased to work with them on a deal that was, I would say, done very, very efficiently in a timely manner in order to get on with life.

Yes. Okay. That makes sense. And just a follow-up, I suppose. I mean, you mentioned the wrap and your view that you probably need to take a slightly more conservative view with resettlement. I mean, is there any other sort of regional soft issues that we should know about in terms of operating up in that northeastern corner of Cote d'Ivoire? Or are you really comfortable with that sort of part of the world?

So look, yes, to be completely open, there has been historically in 2020 to 2022, some security challenges because it sits literally on the border of Burkina Faso. But look, spending time with the government and the amount of military [indiscernible] presence, we are very comfortable to operate in the Northeast. That obviously would have been a game changer and a deal breaker if we thought that the security would have been a challenge. But we can confidently say that we don't at this point, but anybody can Google and look at what's happened in the history and see that there has been some challenges. But the teams now operate very comfortably in and out. It's a long drive from Abidjan. It's a good 11-hour drive at this point because we haven't built a strip and the airport needs refurbishment. So look, there's supply chain and logistical challenges that we will uncover as we develop the mine, but these are all standards that we'll work through. I'm not concerned about it. But that's probably the only softer issue to highlight. But like I said, we've done the work. We're comfortable with it, and we'll be very vigilant and stay in front of it as we develop the project and operate for many years to come.

[Operator Instructions] And we now take a question from Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance.

Chris and team, again, congratulations. I think it looks like it's a very good addition and diversification for you. My first one is just a follow-up to Richard's question on the pit. Just maybe looking a bit into the geology of it, can you give us a sense, I mean, at a higher price, do you think the pits go deeper? Is that the main change? Or is there disseminated mineralization that comes in or waste to ore conversion? Just trying to get a sense of how you think about that.

Justin, thank you again. You've nailed it. It's just they go deeper the pits. We think there's more gold at depth, and the strip ratios today are about 4.9:1. So we think the strip ratios will either stay the same or slightly go up, but there's effectively more gold at depth. And so the pits are just going to widen up. But that's the key area of growth that we see in the deposits today.

Okay. Very clear. And then I guess maybe a couple of things. One, in terms of your own team, I guess, do you need to add kind of a mine development team to your roster? Or I mean, you've definitely had some and have some fairly sizable capital projects. So I'm just curious on the HR side of things.

Yes. Look, it's a very good question, Justin, because we do need to add people to the roster. As you highlighted today, we are doing fairly important work in Mali with the SSCP, where we're spending $100 million, and we've got other projects on the go, and we've got a very big project team focused on Senegal with the mine life extension activities, which we are near-100% confident will happen. So we do need to build and find a project director that will sit in country to build the team. And again, look, as part of what was happening last year with Centamin and AngloGold Ashanti, they were starting to bring on folks to develop. But then once the AGA deal was announced and clearly, it was not strategic for AGA, some of the key positions became vacant. So probably the main gap today is a project director that will take charge of building Doropo, but we've already started kicking off that process at this stage. And look, we've got very good community people. I'm pleased with the in-country team that is managing the government relations and the finance and HR and all the types of activities. We have very good geologists in country that are all staying with the project, but the actual build team is something that we need to get going on, and that's one of the key next steps.

Got you. And then just in terms of -- on the permits, so I guess, what has been done, what needs to be done? So this needs to convert to an exploitation license. Are the baseline studies in place? Does it need ESIA?

All of that's been done and been lodged. And so now we really are in the final consultation period with the government in granting the permits. And so look, it's really -- that's why we think it's the next month or 2. There is some slight complications in the sense that the licenses today sit under 2 different corporate entities. There's 3 licenses under 1 corporate entity and 2 under another corporate entity. And so the team in-country is looking to get an exploitation permit for all 5 licenses and then to merge effectively the licenses under 1 entity. And so that's what's creating a bit of complication. But like I said, it's a matter of time, and we're okay because there needs to be some work that we do with regards to optimizing the DFS. So whether we get the permit granted in 2 months or, frankly, sometime in Q3, I'm not too fast. Obviously, the sooner the better. But we have a bit of work that we have to do in optimizing DFS to properly go out to the market with regards to project financing.

Got you. And then just my last one, maybe just a sense of some of the operating considerations. So I'm quite confident. Like I think one of the challenges of the project before was just kind of it's on the end of the power line. So I'm pretty comfortable here you're putting in backup power. And I'm just wondering on the security side of things, is there kind of any operating ongoing stuff that you would or ongoing measures that you would expect to have like security? Or is it -- will it kind of touch on operating costs? Or is that mostly just the government at this point, how you think about it?

Yes. Look, it's more the latter. Look, obviously, we have to -- and we will be providing the right community investments and do what we do in the other parts of West Africa, whereby we are [ first ] local partners. But security and cost for security that will most likely be borne by the government. But look, if we have to beef up the security presence, we'll do so, but I don't think that's a major consideration. The real issue, as you highlighted, has been power and look, that other mines like Lafigué, who recently started up has learned the hard way that you have to put in backup power. So that's really where we see the additional cost at this stage. But we are very comfortable with security, but that's something that we're going to be monitoring and stay cautiously optimistic.

And at this time, we have no further questions in the queue. So I'd like to hand the call back over to you, Chris, for any additional or closing remarks.

No. Thank you very much. Just -- look, I said very appreciative everybody dialing in this morning. Like it's a very exciting time in the Resolute history, and we look forward to developing the project and staying in touch with you as we move forward. So again, thank you very much for listening this morning.

Thank you for joining today's call. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.