Ariana Resources plc (AAU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ariana Resources plc investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] Company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review questions submitted today and will publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. As usual, we'd like to submit the following poll. And I'm sure the company will be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to Chairman, Michael de Villiers. Good afternoon.

Good day. Welcome, all. Thank you for attending this second Investor Meet company presentation in the last 6 weeks, I think. It's principally around discussing the mineral resource update, which we've just sent out and also the calling of a general meeting to approve the issue of shares for the merger of Rockover to obtain the Dokwe project. We've received quite a number of questions, which we'll be going through in detail. And Kerim is also going to give us a bit of an update on some of the aspects of the presentation that cover the MRE and Dokwe. Over to you, Kerim.

Thank you, Michael, and welcome to all. Good afternoon. So we have -- I should just start by saying that we have completed answers to all the pre-submitted questions. So they will be made available online after the presentation, and we will endeavor to answer those questions that come in during the course of the session. So please send through your questions as we continue our discussion. And what I'll be doing now is rather than going through the presentation, as I have done in prior IMC events, I'll be dealing with certain aspects of the presentation that reinforce some of the questions that came in and help us to deliver the answers to some of those questions. And just leading off, just to recap where we stand on the mineral resource estimate for the Dokwe project, which was announced about a week ago, and the general setting of the opportunity in Zimbabwe. So the mineral resource estimate was concluded following extension work that was undertaken through the due diligence drilling campaign from late last year all the way through to the end of February of this year and then subsequent assay analysis and geological logging and other assessment of the core. That was coupled with a lot of work using portable XRF over the historic ore. There being about 42,000 meters of high-quality diamond drill core available at base camp on the project. And a large portion of that, perhaps half of that total number of meters were analyzed with PXRF. What that did was, it helped us to build an entirely new geological model for the Dokwe North deposit. And it's also enabled us to upgrade the Dokwe Central resource from JORC 2004 compliance to JORC 2012 compliance. So that was a key component of the mineral resource estimate and this update. In the case of Dokwe North, the geological understanding has improved immensely as a result of that work, coupled with the logging of the DD core and the assay analysis of that core. And in the case of Dokwe North, what we've seen there is an improvement, primarily in the inferred part of the resource, but we've also improved some confidence in what we can state of the measured and indicated components. And in comparison to the previously optimized and indeed designed pit at Dokwe North, we find that there is likely to be an improvement in the reserve position as well. So just to recap, the reserves, as stated in the 2022 pre-feasibility study for Dokwe was 0.8 million ounces of gold. Our latest assessment, as indicated in that announcement shows that there's actually potential to take that up to perhaps 1 million ounces or so. But there's further work for us to do on that, and there's further work on the optimizations that we're running in the background. And there will be a further update to the market in that regard. In the case of Dokwe Central, Dokwe Central, we've improved, again, our geological understanding there, helped by the XRF analysis, but also helped by some new geological insight into the distribution of mineralization within what seems to be a pipe like and higher-grade ore body than Dokwe North. So perhaps I'll just start there. So hopefully, you can see that slide. So this is just a little cross-section through the Dokwe Central ore body, showing its pipeline nature and the previous optimized pit, shown in pink here, in relation to the Dokwe Central ore body. And again, just to recap, Dokwe Central and Dokwe North are located about 2 kilometers apart, Dokwe North up here, Dokwe Central down here and base camp, almost equidistant between the two. Both deposits sitting within a broad shear zone that sits underneath 40 to 25 meters of Kalahari and Karoo age cover. In the case of Dokwe North, about 40 meters of cover. In the case of Dokwe Central, about 25 meters of cover. The style of mineralization is sort of classically orogenic gold only. There's no deleterious elements associated with the metallurgies straightforward as detailed in this slide here. In the case of Dokwe North, the ore body certainly lends itself to open pit mining, being very much an open pit shaped ore body. So the mining methodology is going to be fairly straightforward. Processing, as I said, fairly straightforward with a gravity CIL-based approach considered in the pre-feasibility study. But we'll be looking to undertake further work on that aspect -- the metallurgical aspects going into the feasibility study itself. Now before I go into much more detail on the project and if there are any questions on that, I can start addressing those in due course. But I think it's useful to just sort of recap why it is that we're so interested in Zimbabwe as a jurisdiction. Now it's very interesting to see that if you look back at the production history of Zimbabwe in comparison to Western Australia, at Independence in 1980, Zimbabwe is actually producing more gold than Western Australia was. The main change over that period of time in the last 40 years, is simply the amount of investment that's gone into Western Australia as opposed to Zimbabwe. And one element of this that we can really sort of emphasize this point is, based on some of the latest geological thinking in regard to how these granite greenstone terrains formed, in the very distant past. So this is going back almost 2.7 billion years. There is the Zimgarn hypothesis. And the Zimgarn hypothesis has both the Zimbabwe Craton, shown in the north there in that map and the Yilgarn Craton. At that particular point in time, it looks like that they were adjacent to one another. They were conjoined, with an associated convergent margin down the Western Flank. And that's very interesting in that particular time period because that's a very time period in which most of the orogenic gold mineralization of Archean age was imprinted into these Cratons into both Zimbabwe and into Western Australia. And the styles of mineralization are essentially identical between the two. The distribution of greenstone to granite is virtually identical, about 30% greenstone to 70% granite in both cases. But the Yilgarn Craton, so that, that occurs in Modern Western Australia, is about, well, just over double the size in terms of total area to Zimbabwe. Yet we see fewer million ounce-plus gold deposits in the Zimbabwe Craton in comparison to the Yilgarn Craton. And that really is very much down to the level of exploration in our opinion. So coming on to this next slide, this really does emphasize the significance of exploration over time. So this is a map of the Yilgarn Craton in 1979. So just before Zimbabwe Independence and showing the producing mines and then sort of large known deposits at that particular point in time. So it's just a smattering. There were many more producing mines in Zimbabwe in the same period. But over the course of the last 40 years or so, you've seen massive investment into Western Australia. And in fact, in 1996 alone, there was about AUD 500 million of investment into Western Australia, particularly on gold, but also on some nickel as well. And then more recently, in 2021, that increased to about $1 billion, again, mostly on gold. Whereas in that time period, there was virtually no exploration in Zimbabwe. So that really represents the opportunity gap and we very much see that. And geologically, as I said, the style of mineralization is almost identical between the 2 areas. So much so that you do see these large camp-type clusters of gold mineralization developed on fairly regular spacing throughout the granite greenstone terrains in both the environments. And in the Dokwe case, we've got a strong sense that we're sitting on potentially another camp. And there are other examples of that going through the Bulawayo-Bubi greenstone belt in Southern Zimbabwe and indeed elsewhere through the terrain. But the fact that we've -- that there's a discovery of both Dokwe North and Dokwe Central within such close proximity to one another. And the deposits as a whole are approaching 2 million ounces in total resource. And they both sit within this broad, broadly East-West shear-zone, does suggest there is potential to find more. And there are certainly indications of that when we look at the geochemistry that's been undertaken historically by the Rockover team. There are a number of locations in the immediate vicinity and further a field around Dokwe that strongly indicate the potential for further discoveries to be made. So that's the real sort of opportunity that draws us into Zimbabwe and that the Dokwe opportunity in particular. And then just to recap on Dokwe, the prefeasibility study that was completed in 2022, we went through the process of updating that, primarily to account for a higher gold price scenario. So running that at USD 2,000 per ounce as opposed to $1,650 as per the prior PFS. The consultants Minxcon in Johannesburg also looked at the effects of CPI changes over that period of time and the rand-U.S. dollar exchange rate and concluded that there wasn't a huge, huge change across CPI and exchange rate to make a significant impact on the capital operating costs. So the outcome of that update was an NPV10 of USD 160 million and an IRR of just over 40%. So it's a very robust looking project. And bearing in mind that, that was completed on the prior resource estimate. And indeed, that's the way that the reserves were defined in the 2022 PFS. Now that we've completed an update to the resource and we've been able to include Dokwe Central, that changes things again. And as I mentioned, we're going to go through a process of new pit optimization once we've got the results of that out, and we'll be able to determine what the potential shape of this project looks like going forward. It will almost certainly be a longer life project with the potential to improve the annual output as well. So previously, annual output was envisaged at about 60,000 ounces per annum, but there is opportunity to increase that quite substantially in our opinion. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done between now and the commencement of the formal feasibility, which we intend to do once the merger concludes. But really, we want to provide a little bit more direction on what the reserve position might look like based on the latest pit optimizations. So we hope to get that news out to the market in the not-too-distant future. So I'm happy to have a look at some questions now. Michael, I don't know whether you've...

That's just come in, which relates to the background to Tavsan funds -- Tavsan financing, the funding of Tavsan and the history of our dividend payments and future dividends. And as the dividend question has come up quite a number of times, I thought in the last presentation we made our position clear, but let's restate that.

Yes. So we've been very clear on the situation with dividends. The prior dividends that we paid through the 2021 and 2022 period, related to the partial divestment of our interests in Turkey. We dropped from 50% of our projects in the case of Kiziltepe and Tavsan to 23.5%. And in the case of the Salinbas project, we dropped from 100% to 23.5%, bringing Ozaltin Holdings in, in the case specifically of the Salinbas project with $8 million cash, but we were able to cash out as part of that divestment process about USD 37 million, which GBP 7.74 million were paid over the course of like an 18-month period or so between 2021 and 2022 to shareholders. With the intention of setting that up is really an important part of our capital discipline to ensure that we are -- ensuring that we can extract maximum value out of the development of our project and to be able to provide a return, a direct return to our shareholders in such events. Now in the case of ongoing dividends, we've indicated that we intend to continue to pay dividends once we see the profitable output from the Tavsan project. So the Tavsan mine is obviously in construction. We're intending to bring that into production in the latter part of this year. And once that's gone into production, and we've been able to ensure that the production is occurring as we expected to. We will take a view on whether a dividend is appropriate to pay or not going forward. But it is very much dependent on the production profile in Turkey and the ability for Zenit, the operating company, to pay a dividend to the partners, so Ariana, Proccea, and Ozaltin. So the ball is very much in Zenit's court on that matter. And it is all about how those projects develop in the future.

Thank you, yes. And the funding that was raised by Zenit is to complete Tavsan construction?

Yes, that's right.

That's being applied to. And there is a substantial amount of working capital that's required to get a heap-leach into operation because it takes quite a long lead time from completing the pads, stacking the ore on the pads, irrigating them with solution before you actually get gold out.

That's right. And in the case of Tavsan, we're blessed in a way because we have been able to fast track some production from Tavsan even before the heap-leach got going. So we commenced the mining of high-grade parts of the Tavsan main ore body earlier this year. That material -- some of that material is being trucked down to Kiziltepe for initial trial processing. And the results of that have been very successful. So we're looking forward to seeing more of the higher grade component of the Tavsan ore, come down to Kiziltepe for ultimately, the benefit that we see from the CIL processing, Kiziltepe and the higher gold and indeed silver recoveries that we see there. It more than pays for the cost of the trucking.

Right. We've got another question relating to -- this person mentions that lots of social media discussions as to whether an ordinary or special resolution is required for the issue of shares. We're not approving the merger. We're approving the big issue of shares to achieve the merger. And it should be noted that our Nomad and our other advisers went through all the AIM Rules and none of the AIM Rules thresholds were breached. So there is no any more requirement to hold meeting. And if we had had to, that would have been an ordinary resolution anyway. The takeover panel, there's no Rule 9 issue. There's no take of a panel issue, nothing more required than that. And in terms of the Companies Act, issuing shares for shares is covered by Section 551, which requires an ordinary resolution. And that is there is to it, and this has been confirmed by all of our advisers, most particularly our corporate lawyers. So I think we've answered that question. And there's been a lot of questions around that, but you've also answered that in quite a lot of detail in the drafted questions.

Yes. And actually, that was a question in the prior IMC event, and we provided the answer at that time as well.

And when you had one-to-one, the people that came to see you, asked that question and you confirmed it there as well.

Yes.

So the second guessing of what should be done, well, the lawyers have confirmed that the correct path is being followed by the company, and that's in the Company's Act, who want to go and read it. I think we've answered that one then.

Yes.

The question is, funding for Dokwe, would you be in a position to pay a dividend?

Yes. Well, it's important to consider these are different things. So the Dokwe project, we will be funded for very specific reasons. And initially, it will be to ensure that we can carry that project through the feasibility stage. The project itself, as I've explained, is already substantially derisked, because it has gone through the PFS stage. And it's one of the things that makes this such a compelling opportunity for the company. The feasibility stage work will involve a variety of individual work programs, one of which could include further drilling. Although as discussed in the prior IMC and in some of the presentation forums that the Dokwe project has already been very well drilled. As I mentioned today, there's about 42,000 meters of drilling into Dokwe North in particular. And we could carry Dokwe through to feasibility based on the historical drilling. If we just wanted to develop a project that had maybe 1 million-ounce sort of production potential. But as I've indicated, we see that there is substantial upside in the immediate vicinity of Dokwe, both the Dokwe North and Dokwe Central and also in the broader claims area. So it would make sense to do some further drilling, so exploratory drilling as well as additional drilling to firm up those parts of the resource that may be sitting in inferred or indicated and to bring them up to the measured category before going too far down the track of a full feasibility study. So we don't want to sort of break things into parts, into components and then fund those components in the most appropriate ways over the appropriate time lines. In the case of the dividends that are coming from Turkey, from the Turkish operations, those dividends and that dividend flow, that the gatekeeper there is Zenit, the operating company. It will be Zenit that decides whether to pay dividend to its parent companies, to the partnership, Ariana, Proccea and Ozaltin. We don't have a direct influence into what dividends are paid and when they're paid, other than determining whether it's appropriate to continue funding Turkish projects or whether some capital can be returned to the partnership. But that will be a decision that will be made at the appropriate time. If dividend flow comes from the Turkish operations to the parent, of course, we'll take a view on what the most appropriate use of that capital is. And as I've indicated, we feel that it's very important part of our capital discipline going forward that we are in a position to be able to maintain some form of dividend payment in the future. But that time is not now. And it's difficult for us to say when that will be, but it is very much linked to the production that we see from the Turkish operations.

Yes. And then the longer term from the Zimbabwe operations.

Well, absolutely. And that's -- one of the reasons why the Zimbabwean opportunity is so compelling is that there is a production profile here that suggests that we could go to about 100,000 ounces per annum of production. And then you can do the calculation on what the dividend flow from that might be. But there's a whole process ahead of us through all the sort of technical studies, hurdles that we have to go through, permitting, financing and so on. But all of that will come out in time.

Yes. There's another question. Reference to 3 years of production is that to start building production plant. And if so, how long for production activities to give a potential date of gold output?

Yes. So the time line of 3 years that we've mentioned is really the time that it will take to go through the feasibility hurdle and permitting and the associated works. That based on our experience in Turkey and assuming that we would be facing similar sorts of time lines in Zimbabwe. That sort of time line is possible. That component, and those hurdles could be dealt with within that sort of time frame. The actual building of the mine, that's a separate matter. Building in our experience will take between a year to 18 months, possibly more depending on the nature of the complications that are accounted for at the time. In the case of Kiziltepe, we commenced construction, albeit that Kiziltepe is a simpler mine, in many respects it's a smaller deposit. We commenced construction in towards the last quarter of 2015. And it was only the first quarter of 2017 that we were able to pull first gold. So -- but of course, we are challenged by all sorts of things in Turkey relating to permitting matters even at that late stage. Weather was challenging. So we had one of the coldest snowiest winters ever seen. Just at the time we were trying to complete the tailings dam. So those are the sorts of challenges that we just have to deal with. And we can't sort of put concrete time lines in place on those matters. But in terms of what we can achieve from the technical studies and the permitting and so on, that could be done in about a 3-year period.

I would agree with all of those in my experience of building several projects in several different places, it takes that time to do just the feasibility and construction. Yes. It also takes 18 months to 2 years depending on the circumstances and what's in your way and what's not in your way. I do recollect us getting stuck in the snow and rain, up [indiscernible] I think we should turn to some of the pre-submitted questions that relates to how we're setting up the -- how we're setting up the merger and that we're having 2 new directors joining us, both have tremendous CVs and experience that just complement the Board and give us that much more of resource to develop this project.

Yes. And it's important to note that the 2 directors coming on board, Nick Graham and Andrew du Toit. They're both Zimbabwean residents. Nick's been there for 50-plus years. He has one of the most illustrious CVs of any gold exploration geologist in that region. He's been involved in the discovery of a number of major deposits in Zimbabwe and indeed further afield. He was behind the first discovery of a major gold deposit under cover, the Maligreen discovery, that deposit was completed by ReUnion Mining when Nick was there. And it was really with that approach and that technique and that indeed adaptations of that geochemical technique that the discovery of Dokwe was made by the Rockover team. Andrew. Andrew, born and bred Zimbabwean, deeply committed to the country, has lived almost his entire life in the country. Worked originally with the Zimbabwe Geological Survey, but later ReUnion Mining, hence the connection with Nick. At the Sanyati copper mine, it was a heap-leach type operation. And then later with Zimplats for many years and a number of other companies, including consultancy with SRK Consulting through the sort of late '90s, early 2000s. Well, that's right. So when I worked in Zimbabwe in the late '90s into the year 2000, I was based at Shamva Mine. And while I was at Shamva Mine, Andrew was a consultant to SRK and we have many opportunities to sit and discuss all things geological in Shamva.

All right. I think you've drawn a similarity between that and Dokwe.

Yes. Well, I mean, that's a very intriguing possibility and we need to do a bit more work to determine where the similarity ends. So the Shamva deposit is actually -- and I was very privileged to have been able to work there, because it is the largest gold deposit in Zimbabwe by quite some margin. Not by historical production. There are a couple of other deposits that are larger by historical production. But in terms of historical production plus remaining resources/reserves, Shamva is the largest. And it's over 5 million ounces. So it's a very substantial mineral deposit. And it's been active as a mine since the late 19th century. And there was only a brief period in which production ceased, and that was in an early period in the 1960s. But otherwise, it's been producing pretty much throughout over 100 years of -- almost 120 years of production, which is just extraordinary. But the deposit at Shamva is similar to Dokwe in that the mineralization is associated with the sort of ubiquitous prioritization. So it's very difficult to determine what is ore, I'll let all know, what's high grade ore and what's low grade ore. It's almost an impossibility both at Shamva and at Dokwe. So that presents some challenges, but also perhaps underscores what the opportunity might be. The other similarity is that at Shamva, all the mineralization was developed in a volcaniclastic sequence. And we see a very similar, although not the same volcaniclastic sequence in the Dokwe area. And there's an association of the mineralization with quartz-feldspar porphyries. And these quartz-feldspar porphyries were intruded late into the evolution of the Greenstone belts. But they're almost certainly associated in some way to the mineralizing systems. And there is that very clear spatial association between these QFPs at Shamva and Dokwe. And we're still trying to get to grips with what the QFP Dokwe represents and how precisely it influences mineralization, but it seems to both structurally and potentially in terms of the alteration that you see in the immediate vicinity of the porphyry. So yes, a lot more work to do on that, but the results are intriguing so far.

They're very intriguing. I think we need to turn back to looking at some of the questions that were submitted by pre the meeting but in writing. And one of them is around the share register of Rockover, the number of shareholders and the demographic. And all I'll say is that the average age of the Rockover shareholder is 4 years younger than me. So that's an important note. I don't know why people had to ask that question, but they have. The other thing is around lockup and orderly marketing. And I'll give an example of ordinary marketing that we've recently had, where a large shareholder had to sell some shares. They approach the company. The company connected that shareholder and the -- our brokers. That was managed between the company, the other company who is the shareholder and the share traded and no one even noticed and it was a significant amount. And that is what orderly marketing is, is where there's a relationship between your broker who works for the company, the person wanting to sell shares and then manage it. And that is what the bulk of the share register will be handled under for the largest group of shareholders. The larger -- the 5 largest shareholders who are under lockup are not allowed to sell their shares unless they've got mission from the company, and that is what our lockup is. And that is managed by the company and that group of shareholders. And that I think you noted speaks for 80% of the shares in number of shares.

Yes, the top 7 shareholders of Rockover. It's about 80% of the total shares.

So a bit puzzled that people want to know more about that when we've put all of that into the RNS and into the circular, but that's, I think, all we can answer on that.

Were there any other points that you felt were worth addressing, Michael?

I think you've noted all the pre-submitted questions. We've discussed that. I think we need to look at the outlook for Ariana and getting a project like this under our control, developing it, owning 100% of it gives us that opportunity to take an enterprise value from what we currently have to multiples of it. And you've already got that in some of the replies you've typed up, but maybe we could just discuss that.

That's right. Actually, maybe a good place to start on that discussion is in relation to the comparable transactions and the valuation approach taken to the assessment of the Dokwe project. So this slide features towards the back end of our presentation, and it deals with a number of examples of relatively recent transactions completed on similar scale gold projects in Western Australia, in Africa and elsewhere. And the most relevant one, in fact, being the Caledonia Bilboes transaction. Bilboes is a large multimillion ounce gold deposit in the Bubi part of the Bulawayo belt. So not only Zimbabwean project, but actually in almost identical geography. So from that, a series of metrics can be defined in relation to what a resource ounce is worth based on the scale of those individual transactions, and then you can work out an average transaction value and the average value comes in at this level here with the dashed red line across those particular examples. There is this one outlier, De Grey in Western Australia, but there are some specific and broader reasons for that, that we don't need to go into now. But that was a lower end valuation as an outlier. But interestingly, the Dokwe evaluation comes in beneath that. And of course, the Dokwe valuation now that we've completed the latest mineral resource estimate, and we've effectively added another 0.5 million ounces on top following the studies that we've completed. Effectively, that drops that valuation somewhat in any case. So this sort of summarizes what Dokwe is worth today, but what is Dokwe worth to the company. And that's really what we do going forward. And I think that's what you were driving at, Michael, in terms of next steps. And another thing, just popped into my mind. And if you indulge me, I've only got a couple of passions in life. And one is obviously in geology and the other is aviation. And aviation, in particular, associated with the development of the Spitfire. Now just to very briefly recap the history of the development of the Spitfire. I was put together by legendary aircraft designer, RJ Mitchell in the 1930s, developing from the seaplane, the Schneider Trophy-winning seaplanes. He then went on to develop the Type 2, 4 which was a bit of a dud in the early '30s. We then came through -- designed the Type 300, which became the basic plan form for the Spitfire. But really, what was a brilliant design in the overall architecture of the Spitfire as we know it, with elliptical wings and so on, which was an incredible design of its own right. But the thing that made the Spitfire, Spitfire was the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. And that's really what we've been doing with Ariana. We spent 20 years developing, it's a beautiful plan form. That's the exploration company that we've developed. Now we're adding the engine. The engine is the Dokwe project, and it's the engine that will make Ariana fly.

I completely agree with you, Kerim, and you know that my passion is the Mosquito, which is also driven by the Merlin engine. So let's take ourselves off the aviation page now that we've got that concept ahead of us and make it care to our shareholders that this is exactly why we are in this business because we can see the bigger picture. Our Board has got all that experience. The new Board will have even more experience, and we are in a very good position with our development history to take into production a much larger gold mine with a much longer life of mine. And this is the gold environment -- gold price environment to do it in.

Absolutely. I mean, it's right place, right time. And in the case of Zimbabwe, it's obviously, it suffered over the past 20 years, very sadly. And there's been huge underinvestment in the mining sector just generally, but particularly in the gold sector, but that also very much represents the opportunity. As I've sort of gone through very briefly at the beginning of the presentation, that there is very much a case for future discoveries to be made in the country. And there's clearly some emphasis being placed on the sector by the Zimbabwean government, particularly as it relates to the development of their latest currency, the Zimbabwe Gold or ZiG, which is gold backed and it's also backed by a pool of other global currencies. But it's essentially a gold-backed currency. And the Zimbabwean government is very keen to promote the development of the Zimbabwean gold sector to help support that and it's completely understandable. So yes, very much the right place, the right time, we feel.

Yes. And we've both worked in that part of the world for quite a number of years. So we have a good feel for it. So we're comfortable working there. And we have motivated to get a nice production with Dokwe, several years now, and we're doing it again.

Exactly. Yes. And sort of building on all that experience and coming back to that Spitfire analogy, it's about building on a plan form that has been successful, knowing what works and also knowing what doesn't work so well and being able to sort of leverage off that experience. And yes, we've done it once in the case of the Kiziltepe development. We're in the process of doing it again in the case of Tavsan. And there's absolutely no reason why we can't do it a third time, albeit in a different jurisdiction.

Yes. Okay. Let's turn ourselves back to what -- we had as presubmitted questions. I think, there's this perception that there will be an overhang of merger shares. Well, I think I've illustrated one that the process will be managed, but two that, a lot of chunk of those shares will be locked up for quite a considerable amount of time. And the largest shareholders joining the Board and is going to be involved in building the mine. Why would you want to be sending the shares? I don't think that's logical. So I'm just somewhat disregard that as being an overhang. I don't see it as that at all.

Yes. Perhaps it's just worth saying that all of the pre-submitted questions that they have been answered to varying degrees of detail in written form. So that will be made available in any case immediately after the presentation. But I think we've probably covered most major aspects of these questions. There was this one question. I think this is just worth drawing attention to in the presentation, and that relates to Zimbabwe government royalties and other costs, so taxes. Now there is a slide in our presentation that deals with some basic facts on Zimbabwe. There is a section on taxation deals with the corporation tax and also with the mining royalty rate. Now both corporation tax and the mining royalty rate were included in the calculations for the prefeasibility study, which we announced. And in fact, the original prefeasibility study in 2022. So those -- the NPV and the other economic output of the PFS is a post-tax, post-royalty output.

Okay. So it's not different to any other operating environment when it comes to taxes and royalties?

No, it's actually very similar to Kalkine.

Well, I don't know anywhere, where you can mine without paying taxes and royalties. That's how it is. All right. There's the question around shares and ASX listing that idea of taking it to ASX is to get us on to another stock exchange. And there would be a number of shares that would be part of that admission process.

Yes, that's right. So we intend to do a compliance listing on the ASX. And of course, the -- that's its own process. We need to complete the merger first once we've completed the merger then we can get the other elements of that process underway. We've already had a number of discussions here in Australia in relation to the opportunity and the Dokwe project in particular, with various groups and brokers. So we're certainly making the opportunity known over here. And I think as a result of some of the news flow that we've had out, particularly the mineral resource estimate, it's starting to come up on people's radars now, which is great. The intention would be, obviously, as part of the compliance listing is you do a small fundraise at the same time. It certainly makes sense to do that as we bring in institutions on this side. So we will certainly make that decision post merger as to timing and quantum, but we envisage that in the latter part of this year.

Okay. There's a question relating to the ownership of Dokwe and the financing.

Is that the one that relates to whether we intend to keep the project or partner with the project? Is that the one that...

It is related to that, but yes. That's what's being...

So yes. So in the case of our Turkish projects, there was reason at that time for us to partner with -- and very luckily, so we partnered with the Proccea Construction and the with -- in the context of that partnership, we were able to bring Kiziltepe on stream. So that's a partnership that worked extremely well. We would not have been able to fund the development of Kiziltepe through the London market at that time from sort of...

I would agree with that.

Post global financial crisis was in that window of time 2009, it was in 2010 that we partnered with Proccea. So there wasn't at that point in time a pathway for us to raise $50 million for the development of Kiziltepe on our own. Our market cap at that time was only GBP 5 million. So that was just an unrealistic objective. So it made sense to partner with Proccea and that partnership has continued to be built upon over the last 14 years. And as I've said, we are in the process of repeating the success with the development of the Tavsan mine. But we've learned a lot from our experience in Turkey. And we've got a lot out of our partnership there. We've -- in our own right, we've continued to build on our experience base. And under current circumstances, I certainly see a pathway forward for the development of an asset like Dokwe and retaining 100% control of that asset. And we certainly want to do that for as long as possible. But then you certainly never say never if the right deal could be structured to fund or partner up the project in some other way. You'd certainly have to give it due consideration. But the intention would be to carry the project forward on a 100% basis for as long as possible.

Yes. No, I think that's exactly how we motivated to take it into production. I think it's worth talking through the logistics of having a general meeting, how the voting should be done. It's a poll, which means every share counts. If you have a certificated holding, you can vote online. I did that this morning and it took less than 5 minutes. And I got an immediate report stating that my vote has been captured and as noted, people may attend if they have a letter representation or their own shares, they attend the meeting and they can add their shares to the poll vote at that meeting. There's only 1 resolution that shouldn't take very long. And I hope that everyone has actually asked all their questions in advance so they have information to conduct the voting with information. I don't think there's more to be said about how we would want people to vote. Obviously, we motivated to have this happen. So we're all suggesting that it should be voted in favor. I don't think this quarter...

Very much so. I mean, as we've indicated the Dokwe opportunity, it presents itself as a post-PFS feasibility stage project. So it's a substantially derisked project in any case. But with some additional work on the feasibility side of things, further improvements in the mineral resource estimate, with all that scope for exploration upside that we've discussed, there's clearly a pathway ahead of us to continue to build on that opportunity very substantially. And we're highly motivated to ensure that this really does become the engine of the company's future growth, and it has all the characteristics of a project that is capable of doing that.

Further note on that is that at the time of us announcing this acquisition, who did the evaluation -- Paul Smith of WH, under the valuation of $15 an ounce is an acquisition cost. After you've put up the MRE, it now calculates that to be $11 an ounce, which puts it in the lowest cost category I've ever seen.

Well, yes. And the other thing about that is that it's very close to our historic discovery cost per ounce. In 20-plus years of our own exploration, we've been able to deliver gold ounces on our books and indeed into now the JV company books in Turkey, a rate of that sort of level, USD 11, USD 12 per ounce. What Dokwe does is that it essentially short circuits 20 years of discovery because that discovery has already happened in the prior 20 years under the management and direction of the Rockover team. So you cut out all that exploration risk and bank from day 1. You've got it at your historic discovery cost. You really can't get better than that.

Okay. Something has just popped up that's very relevant, and that is, how do those of us with shares held in an ISA vote on the resolution? You contact the ISA administrator. I believe it has to be the same one you would speak to regarding trading, share dealing. And telephonically, I suggest, ask them to vote your shares. And if you wish to attend the meeting, they should give you a letter of representation and urge people with shares and ISA, subs, et cetera, to do that sooner rather than later because they take a number of days to process that naturally. And also they will want enough notice to be doing that because they aggregate all the votes and then pass them onto the share register a few days before the meeting. And you and I both have had some time on the telephone to one of our supporters to vote and finding it quite a process. So it's better done sooner than later.

Yes. Unfortunately, they don't seem to make it easy, but it's all possible. You just got to spend time on the phone doing it.

Other questions come in is, can you state the main reasons to consider an AIM ASX dual listing?

Yes. So actually, on that, the way that I'll answer that question, let me just go back to the presentation briefly. So in part, the answer to that question lies here on this slide. Right to the bottom of that slide, that's the level of exploration expenditure undertaken across the Eastern Goldfields province, which is essentially the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia. And it's varied over time, obviously, but it's reached a few peaks over the last few decades, an earlier peak in the mid-'90s at AUD 500 million. Again, that was largely on gold exploration and then about $1 billion more recently in 2021, again, largely on gold exploration. Now that's the sort of pool of finance that we're talking about in Australia. It's an astounding level of capital and capital commitment that's going into the resources sector. And of course, this is a snapshot of the investment that's being made internally within Australia, but Australian companies have also been very successful in Africa, across Africa and including Zimbabwe. So the likes of Delta Gold historically, and then more recently, on the PG side of things with implants. And on the lithium side of things with prospect resources. These are Australian companies that have done very well operating in Africa and Zimbabwe in particular. So that's one aspect of our desire to see the company listed on the ASX. We're able to tap into a very sophisticated pool of investors that are highly versed in the mineral resources sector, which is globally unique, in fact. Technology, so that a lot of the latest mining and processing technologies. And one of the reasons why Western Australia overtook -- completely overshot Zimbabwean gold production from 1980 onwards is because of the application of the very latest open pit mining methods, CIL processing. All of those things contributed to that incredible increase in production growth. And Australia remains a technological pioneer across the mineral resources sector globally. And a lot of that technological development is coming out of Perth. So these are things that we very much want to tap into for the future of our business because it sets up an amazing platform on which we can continue to grow the company.

I think you've also noted that a lot of the exploration technology is developed around exactly where you are now in Perth.

Yes, including one of the very latest, which we've been trialing in Zimbabwe, and that's portable PPB technology, which is the application of portable XRF but for low-level gold detection. And we'll have more to say on this in due course. We intend to put out an RNS in relation to some of the work that we've been doing in the background. But it's incredibly game-changing technology for the gold industry. What it enables us to do is to on-site obtain gold -- effectively, gold assays. I mean, they're not assays, that it's a different analysis method, and we wouldn't be able to use the data in the same way that we do for the purposes of mineral resource estimation, but it's very rapid. Within the space of several hours, you can get a reading which is accurate because we've assessed it against the assay results, an accurate reading, and that helps direct future exploration. And so it's become -- the whole process becomes a lot more iterative, it's much lower cost. And it will be complete game changer for the industry.

Yes. Well, I've had an introduction to it both on site in Zimbabwe and in Cape Town. And from my experience in the industry, there's a game changer that is very powerful too.

Yes. Very interesting. I heard from just is a bit of a takeaway, but I think it's going to be very relevant. But there are brokers over here that have already cottoned on to the use of this technology. And some are saying that if a company, a gold exploration company is not using this technology, they don't want to be invested in that company.

Okay. And that speaks volumes for the understanding in that sector in Australia.

Exactly.

Yes. Okay. I think we've probably covered everything we wanted to cover in this opportunity.

That's great, Michael, Kerim. Thank you very much indeed, and thank you for being so generous for giving your time this afternoon. I'll shortly redirect investors to give you feedback, which I'm sure is particularly important to you both. But before doing so, I don't know if you had any closing comments that you wish to make. And as I say, then I redirect investors to give you feedback, and then we'll shortly thereafter publish all the Q&A from today's session and those that were pre-submitted.

I think it's been a very good opportunity to update everyone, and I appreciate the questions and written and submitted during this forum, and thank you very much, and we'll be publishing the answers later. And we look forward to [indiscernible] in the General Meeting and in the AGM in a month's time. Thank you.

That's great. Michael and Kerim, thank you once again for your time. Can you please ask investors not to close this session as we're now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations. Does it take a few moments complete, but I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Ariana Resources Plc, I'd like to thank you attending today's presentation. I wish you all a very good afternoon.