Ariana Resources plc (AAU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ariana Resources plc investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and if you'd give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to Chairman Michael de Villiers. Michael, good morning, sir.

Good morning and thank you for hosting us. Good morning, all, and thank you for attending. We've had a lot to talk about since our last Investor Meet company presentation and our presentation at Mines and Money last year. In particular, our proposed merger with Rockover and the proposed Dokwe project. I'm going to hand over to Kerim who's going to give us an overall update. And then we're going to go into the various questions that have been submitted, quite a few in fact, which is very encouraging to see. Over to you, Kerim.

Thanks, Michael, and welcome again to everyone attending the meeting this morning and good morning to you all. So it's a very exciting time for the company. The recent news flow that we put out over the last few weeks in particular, has led to our ability to update the market with respect to the activities that our team had been undertaking diligently in Zimbabwe for many months now. And that's culminated in the proposed merger with Rockover Holdings. So I'm about to take you through a revised presentation of the company that builds on the presentation that we previously gave during Mines and Money. For those that were there at the Mines and Money presentation, you'll certainly see a number of similarities with that particular situation. So just a recap really. This is the proposed merger company, the general look and feel of the company as proposed going forward. We will have multiple advanced projects in Turkey, obviously continuing production at Kiziltepe and now with Tavsan coming on stream. Our announcement of yesterday demonstrated the very first production of gold from the Tavsan operation going through the Kiziltepe CIL plant. Those operations continuing for many years to come and an announcement that we put out in late March of this year, related to the revised resource and reserve update. And that's demonstrated up to a further 10 years of production from the combined Zenith mining operations in Turkey. Then with the addition of the Dokwe project, which currently is at about 1.3 million ounce, it's a feasibility stage gold asset in the Southern Zimbabwe. And a large part of this presentation will be focused very much on that asset. Just to recap some other elements of the company, we are a dividend paying company, have been since 2021, as part of the special dividend that was paid out in 3 successive installments from that time. It is our intention, going forward, to continue to pay dividends, but our ability to do that will be balanced against the operational requirements of the business. And in particular is highly dependent on sustained production out of the Tavsan heap-leach operation, which is due to come on stream later this year. And once we've done that, then we'll be able to determine the full sort of performance characteristics of the business, and our ability to pay for the dividends thereafter. We've been highly active in exploration over the last couple of years. We've been able to announce a number of exploration updates relating to all of our projects in Turkey, Kiziltepe, Tavsan, and Salinbas. And also some satellite areas around the Kiziltepe operations. And we've drilled over 71,000 meters of diamond core across those projects. And of course put out some really exceptional results across multiple areas. I've mentioned already our revised resource and reserve update. And of course with the addition, the planned addition of the Dokwe project that takes us up to 3.5 million ounces of gold in resources, which is a highly -- very powerful position for a junior mining company to be in. And now most importantly, as a company, we've demonstrated a track record in discovery and project development. And we've done this over many years in Turkey. The Zimbabwean team have demonstrated a successful track record in their own right, notably in the discovery of the Dokwe and other projects under cover. And most importantly, of course, this is being done at minimal cost to shareholders. We have a strong financial position with no debt. So specifically at the joint venture partnership level in Turkey, having paid off about $50 million of bank debt in Turkey since 2014 when it was first taken out. Across other jurisdictions, we've got multiple projects and interests and I'll touch on a few of those as we go through the presentation. But it's also important that I just draw attention to some of the key partnerships we have with Newmont as a 4% shareholder in the business, and supporting our activities in Southeastern Europe through Western Tethyan Resources. And our partners in Turkey, Proccea Construction, and Ozaltin Holdings. This slide, some of you may remember this from the Mines and Money presentation. This really documents the history of the company in part, from our beginnings at IPO in 2005. These circles demonstrate the growth in the market capitalization, showing the dark color here over that period of time. The diversification of our interest through time, notably starting obviously in Turkey, diversifying some of our interest into Australia and elsewhere from around late 2014. And then more recently with our interest -- growing interest in Zimbabwe, the future. And this particular period of time in 2020 to 2024, we paid our share of the bank debt, about $25 million. And in dollar terms, again, paid a dividend of about $15 million to shareholders through that period. We consequently saw a marked change in market capitalization as we brought our Kiziltepe operation on stream. And we completed the Ozaltin and Proccea transaction through that period. And we fully expect with the Zimbabwe transaction, to continue to grow the company moving forward. So these are our project interests going forward as the proposed merged company. Our Zenith mining operations, Kiziltepe and Tavsan located in Western Turkey. And our other advanced asset, Pontide [ Metallogenic ], the Salinbas project in Northeastern Turkey. And over in Zimbabwe, we have the Dokwe project, which is located about 110 kilometers to the West Northwest of Bulawayo. You know, most of us having met us a number of times over the years and for those again that were able to join us for Mines and Money, there was the opportunity to meet Nick Graham and Andrew du Toit. Nick Graham and Andrew du Toit are planning to join the Ariana Board as part of this merger proposal. Both are based in Zimbabwe and come to us with many years of successful exploration history. And in particular, Nick as Founder of Rockover and primarily the brains behind the discovery of the Dokwe project, is obviously a key man. This slide speaks to our gold and silver production out of Turkey commencing in 2017 and our proportionate share of gold and silver contributing to U.S. dollar denominated revenue. This has increased over time generally. And in 2022, we recorded our record production with the addition of some high-grade material coming out to the satellite Kepez deposit near Kiziltepe. In 2023, as we continued mining some of the older pits at Kiziltepe, the grades were falling off, and we saw a constant reduction in output as expected. And we met our guidance again through that period. But this year of plan guidance going forward has recently announced, is just slightly over that at about 20,000 ounces for the year from the combined Kiziltepe and Tavsan operation, bearing in mind that high grade ore is being trucked to the Kiziltepe site for processing through the CIL. But the graph on the right-hand side, shows the growth history of the resources contained by the company from 2007, when we announced our very first JORC Resource update and progressing through time. This is shown in gold equivalent terms to 2021, and we've set this ambitious target of 2025 and, of course, Dokwe fits entirely within that. And it's our expectation that we can continue growing out the resource base at Dokwe among other projects within the portfolio. And a large part of the success, of course, of the resource growth that we've seen across the company has been the extensive drilling that's been underway since 2020-2021. So moving on to Dokwe. And the Dokwe asset, as I mentioned, is located in Southern Zimbabwe in a very accessible part of the country. It contains 1.3 million ounces in largely measured and indicated resources to the extent that over 95% of the total resources are in those categories. So in essence, it's a highly de-risked deposit. Pre-feasibility study was completed in 2022. We're in the process of revising aspects of that and there'll be further announcements concerning the PFS going forward. But the PFS outlined an opportunity to be producing at a rate of around 65,000 ounces over a 13-year mine life of grades ranging from 1.6 to 1.1 grams per tonne of gold. And bearing in mind that relates to the Dokwe North part of the ore body in particular. I'll come on to the significance of Dokwe North versus Dokwe Central in a moment. Dokwe represents a bulk tonnage mining opportunity, with a low strip ratio, bearing in mind that the Kiziltepe average strip ratio is closer to 15 to 1. So in that sense, this is a low strip ratio ore body, amenable to bulk mining. And the process route is well understood. The metallurgy is relatively straightforward. And we've got a lot of optionality in that with heap-leach or CIL processing routes potentially viable. And then at the downstream, there is the opportunity to go to a flotation and then enhance leach thereafter for the more [indiscernible] part of the ore body at depth. We believe there's a strong potential at Dokwe to increase output. There's a lot of optionality, as I said already, in the processing, but there is, we believe in the mining side of things, particularly if we bring Dokwe Central into play as well. And there is an opportunity to potentially get the production up to about 100,000 ounces per annum and compress the mine life as we do that. So on the right hand side is a top down view of the Dokwe North deposit, I'm showing the grade distribution, the red and purple colors being the very high grade zones within the deposit, and the yellows and sort of teal colors, some of the lower grade. So you can see that it's an overall low grade ore body, but it's pocked with these very high grade zones, which makes for some intriguing optionality in the development of the asset. It was a virgin discovery, as I briefly mentioned, really through a pioneering technique developed by Nick Graham and team. They had already achieved success in another situation in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, the discovery of the Maligreen deposit. This is the second example of discovery undercover in Zimbabwe. The geometry of the resource lends itself entirely to open pit mining, although there is opportunity of course at depth, particularly at Dokwe Central we believe for underground operations to continue thereafter. Geotechnical conditions have been well understood and modeled. There's been a lot of deep diamond drilling associated with the geotechnical work into Dokwe North, and we've benefited from that. And I've already run through aspects of the metallurgy. So it is an exceptionally good deposit with a lot of upside potential. I'll continue to talk about that following this video, which is a snapshot of the overall Dokwe area. So we can see Dokwe North and Dokwe Central. We're just zooming into the base camp area now. It's a very well-appointed base camp with over 41,000 meters of well-maintained diamond drill core onsite. This is the Dokwe ore body. In this case, sitting beneath about 40 meters of Kalahari and Karoo cover. And then you go straight into the Archean basement, which is mineralized extensively. So those are the grade shells that we're seeing there and the drill pattern. That video is certainly worth watching again, but we won't do that in the interest of time. So to speak of the 2 areas in a little bit more detail, Dokwe North is a very large low grade deposit containing few quartz veins punctuated by these very high grade zones, which do include visible gold. And the photograph in that slide shows an example of one of these exceptionally high-grade zones. And Dokwe Central has a somewhat different characteristic, somewhat different structural setting. It's a higher-grade orebody, pipe like in its nature with abundant quartz veins containing these very long high grade zones. Over here on the top right-hand side of the slide are some of the results of the historic drilling split between Dokwe North and Dokwe Central. And you can see, appreciate from this that there are some exceptional zones of gold mineralization within both deposits. But the Dokwe Central, as an example, 49 meters at 4.42 grams per tonne of gold, 57 meters at 2.72 grams per tonne of gold. I mean these are absolutely incredible numbers. Now we've been working on a due diligence drilling campaign, which concluded in February of this year. We've started to receive some of the results, the assay results of that due diligence drilling. And we can very much confirm the presence of gold to the same sort of tenure and a length zones of mineralization within the deposit. Notably this intercept that we announced the other day, 45 meters at 2.75 grams per tonne from Dokwe North. Now of course there's a lot of exploration upside within the Dokwe region. This map on the left-hand side shows the claim boundaries outlined in blue, and the geochemically anomalous areas for gold at Dokwe North, Dokwe Central. And this very large geochemical anomaly known as [indiscernible]. Now interestingly, while Dokwe North and Dokwe Central have been drill tested, [indiscernible] has not been tested to any degree. There is some surface geochemistry obviously and there's a few holes into the periphery. But as a whole, this area has not received a huge amount of exploration to date. So that's an exciting area for future exploration upside. But let alone the exploration upside on the main deposits of Dokwe North and Dokwe Central of which we believe there's plenty to come. So placing those claim boundaries into a broader context in the map on the right hand side, you can see the position of Dokwe and the position of blue area, the sort of grey shaded area on a background of geophysics. And around the Dokwe claims are a series of EPO applications that have been put in place by Rockover. And of course we're waiting to hear on the approval of those EPO applications for more regional exploration that would provide further potential upside downstream. But there's already plenty of exploration upside as demonstrated at Dokwe North and Dokwe Central in any case. And I'll skip through the following slides fairly quickly. This is just a recap on our Kiziltepe operations in Turkey, maintaining very successful, very steady production since 2017, consistently beating guidance over the years. We have now benefited from the introduction of some high grade Tavsan ore that has been trucked down to Kiziltepe for trial processing. And we've had the benefit of the initial results of that, which were announced yesterday. And that Tavsan ore is going to contribute significantly to the overall output of the Kiziltepe CIL through 2024 as we continue to build out the Tavsan mine site, and as we expect the Tavsan mine to commence heap-leach operations later in the year. The graph that we show here demonstrates the historical production shown in blue of the Kiziltepe operation, the expectation of Tavsan contributing from this year onwards in orange, and then going forward for potentially 8 years thereafter. And then downstream the potential addition of the Salinbas operation thereafter. But of course Salinbas is still at an exploration and development stage, so the timing on that is less well constrained. Just to speak very quickly on our incubator strategy we commenced a number of years ago. We have been involved in developing Western Tethyan Resources operating in Southeast Europe from a Kosovo base. We have partnered with Newmont to in part fund the exploration in Kosovo. And they have been exceptional strategic partners for both ourselves as shareholders in Ariana and for Western Tethyan, supporting the exploration work being undertaken across that region very successfully. And Venus Minerals, likewise we've been highly involved in the development of Venus over the last few years. We have been moving Venus towards a potential IPO in London, but we pulled that back because of broader strategic objectives in relation to our proposed merger with Rockover Holdings. And of course I haven't had the opportunity to mention the Salinbas project too much, but our partnership again with Ozaltin and Proccea in relation to that project with $8 million having been injected into further exploration and development by Ozaltin Holdings. But it's important to just note that the Dokwe project essentially emerged out of this originator and incubator strategy that was run through our Asgard fund in Australia. So to quickly cap this off with a summary, before we open up the floor to questions, Ariana has a highly experienced management team, a strong track record of bringing Greenfields projects in frontier jurisdictions into production. That is matched by the incoming Rockover team. They've got a very similar background having been successful over very many decades in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa generally. Very similar mentality to ourselves to the extent that their discovery cost per ounce is essentially the same as Ariana. So that certainly speaks to something there. We've now secured a very exciting growth asset through our proposed merger with Rockover Holdings, which is at a very compelling valuation at a significant discount to the MPV, on the associated project. We are pursuing a potential dual listing on ASX later in the year, and the idea here in part is to improve stock liquidity, and of course attract a new investor base into the company. We're absolutely focused on shareholder returns demonstrated through our track record of de-risking projects through our partnerships and this is largely without recourse to funding routes through our shareholders. And we're developing all projects through to production as we have done in Turkey, already giving alternative beneficial outcomes for our shareholders. This follows a whole series of slides in the appendices that give more background and information across all the projects. Our Incubator fund over here in detail our partnerships. A peer group analysis of others Zimbabwean explorers and developers, some of which are well-known names like Zimplats Holding and Caledonia Mining. And then a snapshot of the peer group that was utilized to create a sort of baseline for the valuation of the Rockover Dokwe asset. And then some background information on both Turkey and on Zimbabwe for those that are interested. So thank you very much for listening.

Thank you, Kerim. That was a very good update. We've got a couple of questions coming in via the Q&A platform as well as quite a number submitted in advance which we had time to look at. I suggest that what we do is perhaps discuss the history of Dokwe and Rockover Holdings in the context of your experiences in Zimbabwe and my experience in Zimbabwe. And the fact that we actually met up with them last year at one-to-one in Dawa and the discussions started then. So I think perhaps our shareholders then to appreciate for how long we've actually been in discussions with them and how much due diligence we've managed to do with most of our Directors visiting site and all of our geological team. And ahead of us actually negotiating this transaction we spent a lot of time and effort getting to know the project and the environment?

Yes, definitely. So on the due diligence side of things and the sort of post early negotiations with Rockover, a lot of work's been underway for well over a year now in relation to both Dokwe as the asset and Rockover more generally. Just maybe briefly what's taking a further step back. I started my career in Zimbabwe in the late 90s and I've maintained my network in Zimbabwe over many years. Andrew I first met at the Shamva mine. Andrew had been working with SRK Consulting at the time. I was based at Shamva. So these are connections that go back a long way. But in any case, more recently, they made the discovery of Dokwe. They've advanced that through PFS and it was really at that stage that we had the opportunity to properly engage with the Rockover team in relation to the Dokwe asset. We conducted a first site visit in July of last year and we've been working through the process of due diligence to the extent that we undertook 4 diamond drill holes from late last year into the asset. We also secured 2.1% of Rockover in the process of doing so and then we've continued the work onsite. And so as Michael's mentioned, a large part of our technical team has been on and off site over very many months. So and we're comfortable with the geological opportunity, the exploration upside. We're also comfortable with the country and Zimbabwe is a very workable country in Southern Africa. Sure, it's had some difficulties over the last couple of decades, but to a large degree, from around 2018 onwards, so after the Mugabe period, the country has seen some improvement. And you can see this just if you look at the graph of Zimbabwe and GDP over the last couple of years, it's really lifted. And speaking of GDP, mining is such a significant component of the Zimbabwean economy, accounting for about 12%. The country has a huge amount of expertise associated with the mining industry. People are very well educated, and there are other advantages. Being English speaking, English law background. So it ticks a number of boxes and of course the geological opportunity within the country has been known by many people for very, very many years. So we're very pleased to be taking on a project with Dokwe merits.

Yes, I'd agree with you. I spent a fair amount of my working life in Southern Africa, outside of South Africa, notably the surrounding countries and had experiences in Zimbabwe, and it was a good experience. So that is a background we've been in the process of negotiating and valuing our respective camps. And that discussion I think it's worth mentioning that we did bring in a professional valuer, whose industry standard work was used on the table as part of our discussions. The result is that we're actually buying ounces through this merger process at approximately, the same cost as our historical discovery cost per ounce, which is probably the best guidance as to that it is a good deal for both parties and particularly our shareholders?

Yes, and that's really a critical point that we're effectively bringing on ounces at the same discovery cost as our own historic discovery cost. But without the 20 years of exploration history that it took, to identify those 1.3 million ounces. So you're completely cutting out 20 years of exploration risk effectively. So it's a huge advantage to shareholders, but 2 entities as I said that have got very similar ways of thinking, particularly when it comes to innovative, the use of innovative techniques in rural exploration. And demonstrably so because they have been able to maintain such low discovery costs historically. And you're bringing that intelligence together on a new platform, on the back of an asset that is clearly a mid-tier company asset. And that's really where we want to be. We're developing Ariana as a mid-tier company, and all the steps that we've taken over the last several years have been to achieve that outcome.

Okay. So we've got ourselves to a point where we now are looking at a corporate strategy of developing the next big asset. We've taken what normally is a very long development cycle in the mining history in modern times of 15 to 16 years, to bring a mind from discovery to production. And we're truncating it somewhat. We can't say exactly how much, but I'd like your views on how much you think we've taken away from that 15 to 16 year cycle and in the case of our own experience even longer?

Yes, I mean just looking at the development of the Kiziltepe asset, you know, the post PFS stage to first production. Kiziltepe itself, we went through various delays associated with permitting in the country, but we worked our way through it with our partners. That process really took us about 5 years. So what we're saying is that post PFS, or post feasibility study, you can get an operation running within a relatively short period of time. What takes the time is the discovery part of the process, and the discovery part of the process can take decades. In most cases, it's not unusual for a gold project to move into production after 20 or even 25 years. I think the average is somewhere around 16 globally. In the case of Turkey, it's more like plus 20, usually around 25 years. That's the reality that we have to deal with as a business. But most of that time is associated with the post discovery, and then proving up stages of the mineral resource. So it's all the drilling that goes on moving the project towards feasibility can take decades. And what we're doing is cutting all of that out. So we can just focus on the feasibility stage onwards, which is a matter of years.

Okay. So we've got a PFS that was done by Rockover, I think, 2 years ago or 3 years ago. And we've got some work being done on that now. That tells into a few questions that we've got. 1 is when might, it come out. 2, to what is the capital cost likely to be? 3, how long is it going to take us to take this to production? Which is where I think we're aiming to go and we quite frank about that?

Yes, definitely. So quite right. The PFS was completed in 2022. We're now going through a process of updating the PFS in terms of capital and operating costs, scaling that upwards with CPI. We're also looking at a revised base case gold scenario. The base case for the prior PFS was $1,650 an ounce. Clearly that's no longer particularly valid. So we're going with a $2,000 base case and then scaling up and down around that. We're also looking at the NPV10 situation specifically. The prior PFS focused on an NPV8, but we're adding further discount to that. But again, we'll provide a scaling around that discount rate. There will be further updates that we will need to do to the PFS longer term. But this is just an interim update to essentially bring it in line with more modern parameters. Albeit that it's only a couple of years out of date itself. There is another step that we have to take and that is the work that's being undertaken after the conclusion of our due diligence diamond drilling program. And as I said, we've been receiving the assays of that program, some of which we've been able to announce, there'll be more to come. But that assay data is being integrated into a revised geological model. Along with all of our improved understanding of Dokwe following months of work, particularly with Field Portable XRF across all the historic core. So we've got a much more refined geological model for Dokwe than existed at the time of the PFS. And on the back of the refined geological model, we will have a new resource update. So our plan is to put that resource update out to the market, and then again revise the PFS with the new resource. So there'll be a few stages to go through over the next couple of months. But we're very much on track to achieve all of those as we complete the merger process.

So there are a number of iterations of the PFS that we will see in the next couple of months?

Yes, very much so.

Okay. Well that significantly impacts on what this asset will look like post that?

Exactly, yes.

Well, now…

The other thing that's just worth mentioning, and just to recap a little bit on something I mentioned in the presentation, is one of the attractions of Dokwe is that there is this large, generally low-grade orebody that sits there. But it's punctuated with these very high-grade zones. Then you've got Dokwe Central, which is less well understood and it's a job 2004 compliant resource, but it is generally at much higher grade. Between those 2 locations, there's a huge amount of potential operational optionality in terms of how, the deposit is staged in its development. And we've got to look at that as well, particularly in the context of a post-PFS. So this is really feasibility stage work. To look at the various processing, so whether it's CIL, heap-leach, flotation, or some combination of those 3 things, and indeed gravity for the very high-grade zones. But we'll look at the optionality across those different scenarios, with respect to the schedule of mine development across both Dokwe North and Dokwe Central. There are a few examples in the world of such optionality. And this is largely down to the nature of the mineralization, being a relatively simple, typical Archaean gold system with no deleterious elements associated with it. It is essentially a gold deposit only. In addition to that, the metallurgy is very straightforward. So there are a huge number of plus points to how we potentially develop Dokwe going forward.

The other thing that has come out through the number of questions we've seen is how much is it going to cost, i.e. what's the CapEx, and who we'd be partnering with and how we'll be funded. Now using the same model that we developed, Kiziltepe, Tavsan, Salinbas, Zenith model, we've had some discussions and there is some interest. But in order of magnitude, I don't think we can say what the capital cost of the plant is going to be just yet, because that's going to come out of the PFS. But it will obviously be bigger than Kiziltepe and it may be a model of 3?

Absolutely. It will be bigger than Kiziltepe. And Kiziltepe, in its original form, had a CapEx of about USD 33 million. But as the project developed and as the asset grew, and we had to modify plans during that process. We included an additional mill and other infrastructure at Kiziltepe. So all up, the CapEx requirements of a small operation like Kiziltepe, producing about 20,000 to 25,000 plus ounces per annum, was around USD 50 million. We believe that a potential processing route similar to the one that we've implemented at Kiziltepe, could be applied to the development of the first stage of Dokwe. So again, it comes down to, how we sequence its development and what infrastructure we need to put in place. So yes, we could do it relatively cheaply like Kiziltepe. But in order to properly scale it over time with the development of both Dokwe North and Dokwe Central bearing in mind that a lot of the ore is relatively low grade and is more amenable to heap-leaching, we'd need more infrastructure, more capital costs. So the number will be north of USD 50 million and USD 75 million is probably a good place to be thinking of pitching a number. But yes, there's very much more work to do on that front.

Well, that sort of capital comes from bank financing and when you've got a well-funded, well-structured project funding becomes part of that process. Initially, we're going to have to pay for the work that we do on it now out of our own resources. And in time, we will look at talking to our joint venture partners of the past and maybe of the future, and see for them to put some of the money in as well?

Yes, exactly. And we've had really good initial discussions with both Proccea and Ozaltin in relation to our emerging interest in Zimbabwe. To the extent that we had the opportunity last year to introduce both Nick and Andrew to our Turkish partners, following a site visit to Turkey that we conducted. So on the Proccea side in particular, I'm regularly speaking to the team over there and they're very much interested in certainly assisting, how we develop an asset like Dokwe through the feasibility stage. So that's just at the initial level. That could turn into something else, another level of interest. But I would certainly be very keen to involve the Proccea team on the feasibility stage development of Dokwe. Because we've done it with them before. We've got a relationship that goes back 14 years and we've done wonderful things together as a partnership in Turkey. And there's absolutely no reason to look for others, when we've got such a robust partnership with Proccea.

Yes, I agree. I think a lot of the questions have also been focused around are we intending to stay on AIM, because we've talked about an ASX listing. And dovetailed into that is funding and if you are going to list on ASX, there will be some funding involved, i.e., placing of shares to administer that process. But I think we should also talk about the timetable of what's likely to happen, with regard to this given that due diligence stacks up we will put a resolution to our shareholders, which will be an ordinary resolution to authorize the issue of the consideration shares, and in that process authorize the transaction. And that's scheduled for during June. Thus I think it's our corporate focus to remain on AIM. There's no change in our plan on that. We're a British company. And this is all likely to wind up during the latter half of June?

Yes, very much so. The ASX plan is at the separate work-stream. It's running partly in parallel with what we're doing on the merger front. But it's our intention that post-merger will be taking that enlarged company, because we'll be looking at a market cap that's probably approaching AUSD 100 million. I mean at that sort of level we very much get ourselves onto institutional radars over here in Australia. So the idea, is then to bring that enlarged company onto the ASX. We would undertake a compliance listing essentially, but we'd be looking to certainly attract institutional investment at that stage, to be able to carry the Dokwe feasibility forward at the pace that we intend. Because we strongly believe that it's an asset that we can advance through feasibility very quickly, because so much good quality work has already been done. I mean it's something that hadn't actually stressed in the presentation, but it's apparent from the video. Dokwe North has been patterned drilled, to sufficient detail to enable the project to move into feasibility, without drilling a single additional hole if we wanted. Of course that's not what we want. We want to be able to drill more holes, so we can continue to grow the resource. But bearing in mind that there is already an established reserve there. We're not talking about resources anymore. There's about 0.8 million ounces of reserves proven and probable. Now we believe through some additional aggregation resource drilling we could probably take that to about 1 million ounces in reserves. And that's really where we want to end up for the purpose of the feasibility study. And that has to be fast tracked. And so we would very much like to attract the sort of institutional support from the ASX and indeed over in London, to be able to achieve that.

Okay. I think it's just worth mentioning that we remain an AIM company through this entire process. There's no plan to not be on AIM?

Yes. I mean the intention is to be dual listed.

Yes. And the bulk of our share register is on AIM on a British register so there's no change in that. One of the things that came up quite frequently was the discussion around dividend, and special dividend. Historically we paid a special dividend, because we had special circumstances. We did the transaction. What we're doing now is building a bigger company, with a long-term profit margin built in and that should allow us to pay dividends in the future. But there is no plan to pay a special dividend during this process. That's not what we'd be doing with the cash. We'll be using the cash to develop Dokwe and our other assets as we have done through the years.

Yes. That's correct. As I mentioned during the presentation, there is a mechanism by which future dividends could be paid, by virtue of our Zenith mining operations in Turkey. Yes. On the back of the profits from Zenith mining operations, once we've completed the capital expenditure requirements of the Tavsan mine build, we do expect a dividend flow from Zenith back to the respective partners, Ariana, Proccea and Ozaltin. And then on the back of that, obviously Zenith has its own other operational needs, but on the back of that we can take a view on how sustainable that is going forward. And then what our operational needs are as a business particularly as we've developed Dokwe. And then, any excess capital of course, that we would consider a future dividend policy thereafter.

Right, Kerim. I think we've in broad approach covered what came in, in the last 2 days. What we have now is quite a number of questions that have come in via the platform. And I think we should roll through them and go through those that we can answer that are different to what we've been discussing?

Yes. So we had I think over 50 questions pre-submitted which we've taken the time to answer almost all of those. And so they're ready sitting on the platform. So as soon as the presentation and Q&A's come to an end that can be released. But we've had a number of other questions coming through as we've been talking, Michael. Just quickly flicking through them. A few that are very easy to answer, a few that we might need to take a little bit more time on. One of the easy ones, which I think it does have some relevance, a question from [ Lavro R ], what are the roads and infrastructure like around Dokwe? So Dokwe is located, as I said in Southern Zimbabwe, not far from the second largest city in the country, Bulawayo. But Bulawayo is essentially a mining hub, has been in many ways for well over 100 years. There's a lot of infrastructure associated with the town of Bulawayo. You've got the International Airport for starters. You've got very good roads, you know, linking to other parts of the country. One of the roads that goes out towards the Botswana border, is an asphalt road for a large part of its way, maybe 2/3 of the way. And it's a good quality road. Then goes into a graded track out to site. And that's a good quality graded track. So access to site is very straightforward. There's no issue there.

Kerim, I'd agree with that. I went out to site in January this year, flew into the International Airport. In the past, I've travelled in and out of Zimbabwe both on pleasure and on business in the last 30 years. Very accessible, no issues there. A question that's come from [ Nick Fee ], how concerned are you that gold mines become a target in a similar way that farms were in the past in Zimbabwe? Well, I'm not concerned about that, because there are so many international operators in Zimbabwe that have not been targeted in any way that I know of. So I'm not sure that's answer to your question.

That's correct. And there are different things. I mean, without going into the politics of it. Mines have been developed by international companies very successfully for many, many decades in Zimbabwe. And you've got the likes of Zimplats, as I mentioned, Anglo-American, both operators, first world mines on the Great Dyke in Zimbabwe producing PGMs. You've got other major producers at the recent Arcadia lithium project near Harare, Chinese-owned in part, Australian-owned, more minority shareholding there. You've had over many decades exploration and mining companies working on gold assets across the country, from a British company perspective. One of the largest gold mining companies operating in the country for a very, very long time, but no longer. It was long, what became the Lonmin Group. But their reasons for divesting out of Zimbabwe in the early 2000s were quite different. They had other structural issues to sort out as a company. But those old Lonmin assets, many of them still operating very successfully in the country. So they're all scales of operations further to the south of Bulawayo as a Caledonia blanket operation. That's been operational very successfully for very many years. Has been a consistent dividend payer to its shareholders. So no, I don't have those sorts of concerns associated with mineral development operations in the country.

Okay. I think we should perhaps talk a little bit about our other portfolio assets in the few minutes we've got left. Briefly, what's going on in Kosovo and what can we expect from there?

Yes. So in Kosovo, we have obviously had a very robust partnership established with Newmont. Newmont have been funding a very significant exploration across Kosovo and into North Macedonia in particular. A very large scale stream sediment sampling program has been undertaken across both countries. It's still underway in North Macedonia. They've been applying the latest development of their BLEG technology. It's a particular low level gold detection methodology that was to a large extent pioneered by Normandy, Newmont. And we've had some real success out of that deployment. And in addition to that, based on the existing assets in Kosovo, the Hatita project has been drilled for the first time. That's a project near the Serbian border. We had identified a port free copper gold type system there. And the drilling has certainly proven that theory and we'll have further updates out on that in due course. There's further work underway also at some of the other projects held by Western Tethyan. And indeed an agreement that we've got with Arup Minerals in relation to the Kosovo gold asset in the country. That's a relatively small project, but high grade, and we believe that it's got the same sort of opportunity that Kiziltepe wants to present to us in Turkey. So we believe that it has strategic value to the development of Western Tethyan in Kosovo and we're very much interested in continuing to support that.

Right. In Cyprus, we're not proceeding with the Venus IPO at this time, but work is still carrying on there.

Oh, very much so. So the reason for winding back on the IPO strategy was really to avoid any complication as we move towards an ASX listing. We had to stop that wheel from moving. So we had a particular cutoff. That cutoff was the end of March. And the market in London has not been particularly good. Very few IPOs and people I'm sure fully aware that have occurred successfully in London over recent times, certainly through the last year to 18 months. But we're still very excited about the Cypress portfolio. We've demonstrated that these are not just copper systems. They are gold systems as well. So that very much ticks a box for corporately. We've got a really good team in Cyprus, and we've got everything going for the company in the country. We're also maintaining a watch on the Apliki asset and maintain dialogue with the owners of Apliki. If we want to move eventually the Venus portfolio into a production type setting. But we just had to hold off on the IPO strategy and something that we could potentially revisit in the future. But it didn't make any sense to do so at this particular point in time.

So Salinbas is ongoing work [ Zoltan ] have been putting in a significant amount of money and they have scheduled to put in $8 million and I think they've already spent over half of it?

Yes, they spent well over half of that $8 million. And for the avoidance of doubt, that was $8 million cash that was placed into the bank account of the project company, Pontide [indiscernible]. So it's under effectively, under broader Zenith operational control with the Proccea being managers of that. But it is its own project entity with a single asset Salinbas. And of course we've developed that exploration around Salinbas and we've made the discovery of [indiscernible] as a result of the successful drilling campaigns that were undertaken across the Salinbas project. And that's all come down to Ozaltin funding. So we're very much the beneficiaries of that Ozaltin deal in that case.

Last but not least, Kiziltepe and Tavsan. So Kiziltepe is running on a large supply of Tavsan, all high-grade ore. Tavsan on the other hand is completing its last project phases to go into production as yet. Do you want to outline what that picture looks like and what we can expect from there?

Yes. So that's quite right. I've been in the process of mining ore from Tavsan at the main pit. We've defined a number of high-grade zones within the main pit area. That's been selectively extracted. Some of it's been stockpiled on site at Tavsan itself. The very high-grade material, so typically over 2 grams per tonne, approaching 3 grams per tonne material. That's been trucked down to the Kiziltepe plant. There's a separate stockpile at Kiziltepe and we're processing that on the trial basis, and have done for the last couple of months. We've seen the response of the Tavsan ore through the Kiziltepe CIL and its performing very well. On the back of that, we've been able to update our forward schedule to accommodate more of the Tavsan ore. Bearing in mind that the Tavsan ore on average is coming in at about 2.5 grams per tonne of gold. So it's better grade in fact than what we're currently mining out of the Kiziltepe pits. It certainly makes sense to ensure that we've got a steady stream of high-grade Tavsan ore at Kiziltepe. And as a result of that, we were able to update our guidance figures for the year, which was the announcement of yesterday.

I think we're coming up on time. I think it's worth mentioning that the submitted questions will have written replies published. In addition to the questions and answers that were raised on Q&A platform here, we'll give some written answers to those as well. To those of you who are in London during mid-May, Kerim and team will be at one-to-one for at least 1 of the days. I'm not sure if it's both.

Both days, yes.

They're around and we may very well meet up and have a chat as well. But last but not least, thank everyone for attending and thank you for your questions. Thanks for the excellent update, Kerim.

Thank you to everyone for their time. And for all those questions that have come in during the course of the presentation, some of those I know we have answered in the dialogue between Michael and I in some form, but others that may be more specific questions will get around to providing written responses to many of those shortly after the presentation.

Perfect, Kerim. Michael, if I may just jump back in there. And thank you very much indeed for addressing all of those questions that came in for investors. And of course, we will give you back all of the questions that were submitted today just for you to review, and to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so. And we'll publish all those responses out on the platform. But if it's okay, guys, if I may, what I'll do now is I'll redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to you both. So could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure would be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Ariana Resources plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.