Burgundy Diamond Mines Limited (BDM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
March 31, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Stuart Howe
analystGood morning, everybody. On behalf of Burgundy Diamond Mines and Bell Potter Securities, welcome to Burgundy Diamond Mines Full Year Results Conference Call. My name is Stuart Howe, Resources Analyst at Bell Potter, and I will host today's call. From Burgundy, we have Chief Financial Officer, Brad Baylis; and Vice President of Technical, Pooya Mohseni. The format for today's call is that management will take us through a presentation. This will be followed by a Q&A session, which I will chair. So please enter your questions on the Zoom platform. After the presentation, I will read out your name, affiliation and questions. Today's call is being recorded. And before we get started, I want to draw your attention to the important notice and disclaimer on Slides 2 and 3 of today's presentation. Gentlemen, over to you.
Brad Baylis
executiveThanks, Stuart. Thanks all for joining. I see lots of familiar names, so great to see. Kim is away on leave right now. So Pooya Mohseni, our VP Technical will be standing in for Kim. So hopefully, we can keep it as lively as Kim usually does. But yes, please feel free to ask any questions as we normally do. So with that, we'll go on to the first slide. And I'll let Pooya kick off here.
Pooya Mohseni
executiveThanks, Brad. Good afternoon, good morning, everyone. This is Pooya. As Brad mentioned, I'm the Vice President of Technical with Burgundy, being with the company for about 5 months now, and joined the company in November of last year and here to fill in for our CEO, as he is away today. In terms of 2024 full results, the ore process was pretty consistent with 2023. The head grade was lower by about 8% and the overall carat productions were about 10% lower than what we had in 2023. The ore and waste mine were consistent with the mine plan, and that's mainly a highlight of mining out the bottom of the Sable pit and transitioning on opening the Point Lake pit. So with that, I'm going to pass it on to Brad to speak to the financial results.
Brad Baylis
executiveThanks, Pooya. Yes. So for the full year 2024, overall, obviously, you've probably all heard that the diamond market was a very tough market in '24, especially into the second half of the year. But despite the challenging conditions, we actually sold more carats in 2024 than we did in the previous year. And that was largely due to some acceleration that we did within the sales pipeline. So as you recall from previous calls, we've had a priority to look at ways of trying to speed up getting our carats on the ground to market as quickly as we can. And so we've been working on a number of initiatives there. And so we are starting to see the fruits of that labor. Our revenue per carat was down about 9% year-over-year, but despite some very difficult market conditions, we think we actually fared fairly well. We saw prices down anywhere from 15% to 25% depending on the type of goods across the market. And so we feel like we punched a little bit above our weight. On the revenue side, again, revenue was only down 6% despite the very difficult market. So again, we feel like we did fairly well all considering. And obviously, the 6% decrease in revenue impacts our EBITDA and our EBITDA took a hit as a result of that. But really, the biggest impact to our EBITDA for the year and our earnings for the year is due to an asset impairment and that's largely due to the lower commodity prices, but then also the timing of our reserve additions. The big challenge, Pooya can probably get into this a little later, but the big challenge in the resource that we're dealing with in Canada is the resource is quite narrow and is vertical. And so it's very difficult to get enough drill holes down vertically to be able to continue to book reserves, at least reserves at depth, which is really the biggest factor for us having to take the impairment. Next slide, please. Again, this is a slide you've seen before. The big change from when we presented it in Q4 is the impairment that we booked in at the end of the year. So we took the impairment to PP&E and you'll see the change from $264 million down to $136 million. And then yes, our net cash position, obviously, not exactly where we want it to be and really impacted by the lower revenue, especially in the second half of the year and the transition to Point Lake. So effectively, last year, we had 3 pits running, but only 2 pits operating, 2 pits generating revenue. So yes, it definitely was a drain on cash, especially during the fourth quarter. Next slide. And then just some further breakdown of our movement from cash. So at the end of December 2023, we started at $94 million and ended 2024 at $25 million. So yes, like I say, the big chunk in CapEx there with just over $60 million of that related to the Point Lake stripping and we'll see that as we move into '25. Our capital program in '25 is 25% lower and will likely even get it lower as we continue to optimize this year. We did pay down our convertible notes. So that was a onetime repayment. And at the time, we felt that, that was the right thing to do and strengthen our balance sheet. So that's a onetime item that won't be reoccurring. And then throughout the year, we did also pay out $34 million between taxes and royalties, and a big chunk of that was related to corporate federal taxes. So during 2024, we did set up an environmental trust that will provide a tax shield for those tax payments going forward, where we contribute our environmental payments and foreclosure and those allow us to use that as a tax deduction. So that's really the kind of the big story from a cash perspective. Next slide. I'll pass it back to Pooya, and he'll take us through some of the growth opportunities.
Pooya Mohseni
executiveThanks, Brad. For some of the shareholders that actually believe in the investment thesis of Burgundy, mainly starting with Ekati and thinking that it's a start of a multiyear, multi-decade journey to produce high-quality diamond and sell it. This is the start of sharing some great results and being able to, for the first time, publicly share what we've seen in terms of the future. What you see on the screen is our Misery Underground mine and as you can see, we mine this deposit in open pit. And then for the last 4 years from the top of the pipe, which is the bottom of the pit, all the way to almost the top of the 1975 level, we mined about 3 million carats per year. Now the technical work in the last few months has been really focused about on drilling from 1975 level to about 100 meters down to understand the grade and the size of the pipe. So this is really the first time that we speak to these results. What you see here in these holes, these holes that actually do have color in them, they've all been drilled. They've been logged and the micro diamond results been received from SRC from Saskatchewan. So we've got the grade back. We've got the logging. And the very interesting thing is the lithology has transitioned from RVK to a different type of CK. Very important part there, though, is the size of the pipe on the east side, where we've been able to drill remains consistent with what we've got. So what that means as you go to lower levels, the amount of tonnes that we will get for ore, it shows it stays consistent. At the same time, the grades that we've been seeing from the micro diamond and modeling that we've done confirms that the grade stays consistent with what we had above us. So this is an excellent news because every year, we mine about 1.75 of the level. So this alone on this side gives us a firm indication that we minimum have about 2, 2.5 years of mining out of Misery. And why this is important? Misery has, if not the highest, one of the highest grade in the world in terms of carats per tonne. It carries about 3 carats per tonne and a very, very important deposit for us. It also allows us to defer or the need to inject capital while you're producing carats. So Misery kind of produces about 60% of our carats moving forward for the next 2, 3 years. Now the focus is really on, I'll go to the next slide, is on the east side, and we just started the drilling is to now understand the extent of the pipe on the east side. What you see in red and green is the size of the pipe before we started the overall drilling program. What you see in pink color is actually the current status of the model. As you can see, it's larger and deeper than what we thought. And now with the drilling that we got ahead of us for the next 2 months, we're going to confirm and understand the size and the extent of the ore body on the right-hand side. There's been an extensive microdiamond sampling also being done, especially from the 1915 level. So if I go back to this slide, we almost completed the 2,000 level mining in Q1. 1975 is the main source of underground production. 1950 is set up, and it's going between 1975 and 1950, they'll be producing majority of the underground ore coming from MUG this year. Another key point here is the intent here is actually have enough drilling ahead of us, so we could plan in terms of ventilation, geotechnical assessment, water management and having the right size fleet for the underground to bring the material to surface. At the same time, we're setting ourselves up with understanding how deep this ore body goes and the extent of it. But so far, I wanted to emphasize how excited I am about the results that we received. And this is really the start of rethinking Ekati and being able to put Burgundy stamp on it moving forward. What you see on the screen is a snapshot of Point Lake pit operation. This is from late last week. As you can see also, Point Lake has had significant progress in terms of removing overburden and the bottom of the pit lake that we had. To the top of the screen, you can see the waste dump and the overburden dump that's been established. To the right-hand side of it, you could see we've got the truck line up and where the operation -- actually all the infrastructure for open pit operation has been set up. And we've been able to get through majority of that overburden and the difficult mining that we've had. So Q4 and even to this date, Q1 has been about really removing the overburden and being able to daylight kimberlite pipes. What you see in the bottom, actually, the darker color is the top of the pipe. And this is almost getting ready going from 400 bench to 390 bench. And from about 380 bench below, we're expecting to see a steady ore release of ore from Point Lake, which will be about 60%, 70% of the ore feed for the foreseeable future. And the grade that we're expecting there is somewhere between 0.7 to 0.9 depends on where we are in the pipe. There is a bulk sample scheduled for May of this year. And at the same time, that's the time that we're actually going to expect to see the steady ore release of ore for being ready to feed the plant. Going through the upper benches, very similar to this is the commodity #7 for me, very similar to the other open pit mine that have started in the past, the upper benches of the pit always the ore that you expect to see them when you transition through waste and overburden, the model tends to overestimate them. And this is what we call over smoothing impact in resource modeling. We've gone through that, and we did see lower amount of ore than we expected on the upper benches, but that was expected, and that's the risk that we were thinking through. And that's one of the key reasons we wanted to get through the upper benches, do the bulk sample and be ready to speak for the rest of the year. So all in all, I think for both open pit and underground, we are well set up for the rest of the year. And Point Lake, the very strong emphasis that we put into improving performance has actually shown great results. We have seen about 10% improvement on our payloads. We've seen about an hour gain on productivity in our shift hours. And there is a series of productivity improvements that we put in place that we're expecting to see continue and it allows us to actually reduce the unit cost for the open pit. One of the key elements that we are working for Burgundy on is to have a robust operation that despite the cycles of the diamond price can have a healthy margin that pays for the operating costs, sustaining capital and also at the end, leaves some capital for the growth. So we are on the right path on that and very pleased with the point that we are in to date. The progress to get to this point is being more difficult than we were expecting, dealing with the [ bit ] overburdened and the bottom of the lake removals, but majority of the challenging materials are now behind us. And I would say, for the last 3, 4 weeks, we've actually seen the open pit operation hitting their targets, exceeding their targets on a daily basis. With that, I'm going to pass it back to Brad to speak about the overall 2024 review.
Brad Baylis
executiveYes. So I think some of these items we've covered already, but I'll just highlight a few. Yes, Pooya just talked about the transition from Sable to Point Lake. We are still mining a little bit of material from Sable as we retreat out of there. So that's good news, and we're happy to have the ore going through the plant, especially as we continue to get to full production in Point Lake. We did pay back our convertible notes. We've negotiated the environmental or set up an environmental bond. So this is one of the -- a big key item for us given the amount of tax that we've paid historically, and this does provide us with a lot of relief on this going forward. And we're hoping we can actually use the trust to carry back to our 2023 cash tax year and potentially get some of those dollars back. Pooya talked a little bit about life of mine extension. We'll talk about it a little bit later as well. But we're still doing some drilling at Misery and we have to do the bulk sample at Point Lake. And so that's really what's holding us back from doing the life of mine. The release of the life of mine, we will be in a position to release that by the end of Q2. And that will include the Misery extension at depth and the update on Point Lake. Yes, and then the other thing, obviously, we're working that the diamond market is extremely challenging and looking at any ways of reining in costs where we can. And so as part of the transition from Sable to Point Lake, we will be reducing or have been reducing the workforce quite significantly and also a lot of the transformation work that Pooya referenced earlier is also allowing us to deliver more with a smaller fleet. So those 2 things will help us reduce the footprint of our workforce and drive our cash cost per carat downward. Next slide. Yes. So moving on to 2025. If you look back to 2024, global rough diamond supply dipped below 105 million carats for the first time since 1995, and that's continued into '25 with a couple of major producers, De Beers and Alrosa, both announcing De Beers especially significant reductions in production for 2025. I think De Beers is down 8 million to 10 million carats is what they're forecasting. And Alrosa, I think, is down 3 million or 4 million carats. So I think that the supply side is starting to shape up nicely. We have seen at least the last 2 auctions, both February and March, we have seen like-for-like price improvement anywhere from 8% to 10%. And it's been pretty consistent across all sizes, which is quite encouraging. Obviously, it's early days, and we want to be cautious with this, but we do hope that we can continue with a trend of steady price improvement. We don't want it to yoyo up and down like maybe it has in the past. So we are hoping for kind of a steady improvement and hoping to continue with the performance from the first quarter. On the financial side, yes, significant focus around gaining financial flexibility. So we did enter into an offtake agreement for our fuel in the first quarter of the year, and this has effectively allowed us to smooth out the cash for a fuel purchase as we use the fuel versus having to prepurchase it all upfront. So a significant help from a cash perspective, and we'll look to continue to do that type of arrangement on an annual basis versus buying fuel months before you actually need it. We are looking at also refinancing our 2 loan either with the existing lenders or externally. So that work is ongoing, and we'll continue to do that work throughout the year. Pooya do you want to cover off operations?
Pooya Mohseni
executiveYes. Thanks, Brad. The key highlight for us, and that's been really my focus joining the organization, both on the technical and operations side is bringing our breakeven for the organization to a point that we have a robust outlook regardless of the diamond price and the market conditions. One of the key elements is to bring that breakeven down to $70 to $75 per carat. That includes our sustaining capital and also leaving enough fund for the future underground expansions. So with that, we've kicked off a productivity improvement in our open pit operation. Two elements there. By nature, moving out of Sable mine to Point Lake, that alone gives us some productivity gain given that the Point Lake and MUG are within 2 kilometers of each other and gives us some gain in terms of the operating hours. At the same time, we've had a very meaningful focus on productivity improvement on the open pit. We've seen almost an hour gain in terms of removing the delays out of the operations. We've seen about 10% improvement in our payloads. And slowly, we've seen a direction that we can reduce our cost per tonne of mining by about 30% this year. So those are the great indication. And I think I would say in terms of achieving those results, we are halfway through what we set out to do for this year. On the underground side, although the tonnes are not as high as open pit, majority of the carats this year, about 60% of the carats this year do come from underground. And our focus has been really on twofold. One, extending life that we talked about. And the other one is actually how do we get our underground production from I think on average, we did about 2,900 tonnes per day last year. And this year, we're targeting to get to 3,150. And both open pit and underground usually do have a more challenging conditions in Q1 of each year, but the rest of the year, I think we're anticipating to have a really good productive open pit and underground. One other thing that we're planning to do, we will replicate the productivity improvements that we've applied to open pit operations to our underground. And after that, it will be applied to our long hauling and processing. So we're working through one bottleneck at a time and quite pleased with the results that we've seen. Along the same line, actually, besides putting programs in place, we actually rebuilt some of the teams and team members and hired quite competent folks from some of the major mining organizations that really helping us with the productivity improvements. I did mention that the bulk sample for Point Lake is expected to achieve about 100,000 tonnes of bulk sample from Point Lake by May, and that's where we actually see a steady ore release that will keep the plant full starting halfway through Q2. I've provided the path to extend the mine life at Misery Deep underground. One of the key things that I would like to get ahead is the ore body knowledge. And right now, we are almost 100 meters below where our operation is. And with extensive programs that we've got for the rest of the year, we would like to increase that to about 150 meters. So that always gives us 2 or 3 years of mining ahead of us. The first Burgundy mine plan, I'm planning to release it by end of Q2. And again, we did say the last time that we released it end of Q1, really the major reason for not releasing it now is actually we've received good results so far, but the drilling has been very difficult to drill through kimberlites, and we've had to reposition our drills multiple times. Especially Misery underground is very high grade, but drilling through it historically has been extremely difficult. So we've changed our approach and adjust a different type of methodology to gain the strength on the micro diamond samples. At the same time, we're now focusing our drilling to better understand the boundaries of the pipe as opposed to try to drill through the pipe. So you'll see the result of that being released by end of Q2. After that, it's about really bringing more life to Ekati beyond Misery underground and Point Lake. And one of the immediate deposits that we are working on is Fox Underground, which does have a lower grade in terms of the head grade, and you can see it's on our reserve table, but it does carry quite valuable carats and the value per carats are quite high. One of the significant achievements that we've made progress with it is significantly reducing the upfront capital to go to the next underground deposit. And the blueprint of that is already in our hand, and we want to apply the same methodology that we've applied to Misery to that deposit. So all in all, I think we are on the right track. And yes, I'll pass it on to Brad for the next slide, and we can go to Q&A.
Brad Baylis
executiveYes. So just an update. So this is a slide we showed at year-end. Yes, so we've completed a few of the items that we've been working on. So we worked with the government in Northwest Territories and been able to partner with them to increase the number of royalty valuations from 10 to 20. We may not use all 20, but this does give us the opportunity to value the goods more often. In order for us to be able to export goods, they need to be valued. And so the more often we can value them, the shorter we can make our diamond pipeline. So we are already taking advantage of that, and we've seen definitely some improvements in the pipeline. Like I said, we did come to an agreement with Macquarie on a fuel offtake agreement. So they essentially bought fuel from us for $39 million, and then we'll pay for the fuel as we consume it. So this is a nice piece of work. And like I said, we'd like to continue to do this in the future. We're working on a few other opportunities. So we do have some partners, customers, clients that have presented some opportunities of kind of prepurchasing some diamonds. So there is some opportunities there. We haven't really pulled the trigger on that yet. We kind of want to see where the market goes before we do anything there. And like I said, we are looking at options to refinance or replace the 2L loan. And just as a reminder, it matures next June. So we've kind of started that work a number of months ago, and we'll continue until we find a solution that works for us. And yes, like I mentioned, it's cautious optimism at this point, but we've seen definitely some green shoots from a rough diamond standpoint. And I think the Christmas season was pretty good in the U.S., which obviously helps. There has been some slow improvement in China, but at least there has been some improvement. So that's encouraging. Historically, China was the #2 market globally for diamond sales and then India continues to be a big growth area for diamonds and has now taken over the #2 spot. But yes, we really need all 3 markets kind of going in the right direction to kind of stabilize and get the market where it needs to be. So with that, I think that's the end of the presentation, and I'll pass it back to Stuart.
Stuart Howe
analystAll right. Thanks gentlemen. I'll start with some questions from the platform and it relates to unit costs. And Pooya sort of mentioned a target to get, I guess, an all-in sustaining cost down to $70 to $75 a tonne sorry, a carat. I was just wondering if you could speak to what the unit costs were in 2024. And I guess also, yet to provide guidance for 2025. Can you talk a little bit about that and what direction we should see costs going?
Pooya Mohseni
executiveThanks, Stuart. Good question. I first want to break down the cost structure for open pit. So where we put majority of our focus on has been reducing our cost per tonne of mining in the open pit by about 30%. So in Canadian dollars, it was about CAD 13, and we're targeting CAD 10 per tonne. It's actually based on where we operate, still we think we have some opportunities to improve. But in terms of our overall cost per carat for the year, I think we ended up the year around $92 last year, and we actually do have a tangible way to get to a much lower cost. We have provided the guidance on the capital. As Brad mentioned in one of the slides, it's actually 25% lower than last year. And in terms of production, I think the key driver for that is actually completing the Point Lake bulk sample and finding out where we can maximize actually production from the underground. So please stay tuned. The intent is actually exceed and improve upon what we achieved last year, and we are well on our way to do that.
Brad Baylis
executiveJust to clarify, Pooya that number includes capital as well, right? So that's an all-encompassing number.
Pooya Mohseni
executiveThat's correct.
Stuart Howe
analystRight. So just to recap, about $92 a carat in 2024, should see an improvement this year and longer-term target of $70 to $75. Is that sort of fair enough?
Brad Baylis
executiveIncluding, that would be including CapEx. So yes that's...
Stuart Howe
analystIncluding CapEx, yes.
Brad Baylis
executiveAnd last year was a heavier year just because of the transition from Sable to Point Lake. We like I said, we had 3 pits operating, but only 2 generating revenue. So definitely a higher spend than what we would normally have going forward.
Stuart Howe
analystSo just to round out, there's questions from Campbell Morgan. Do you expect to generate free cash flow in 2025?
Brad Baylis
executiveWe do. Again, market dependent. But yes, with some modest price growth, we do expect to generate some free cash flow. And we needed, obviously, to fund our projects. We've kind of committed to the market that we're not going to come back to shareholders and ask for money. We're going to fund it with our own money or another nondilutive solution. But yes, and then on the guidance front, so sorry, Stuart, I kind of crossed over that earlier. On the guidance front, I think we'll either be in a position on our April Q1 call or just after that to provide the guidance. Like I said, Pooya had mentioned, we still have a few moving parts with the work ongoing at Misery and Point Lake in order to finalize that guidance.
Stuart Howe
analystRight. Just on mine extension opportunities, some questions from James [ Janga ]. The Misery underground, I think, Pooya you mentioned wanting to have a couple of years ahead of you at all times. Is that sort of the target?
Pooya Mohseni
executiveThat's right. So you got to remember with underground, we almost mine 1.75 level every year. And right now, we are mining at 1,975 level and the drilling actually confirmed the ore body, the size and the grades are good for another 100 meters. So that gives us a minimum 2, 2.5 years runway with the Misery Underground. And with further drilling, we plan to go and maybe increase that staying ahead of the operation by 150 meters as opposed to 100. So that way, it gives us more runway. But based on what we know and again, we need to confirm the drilling on the west side. The east side looks really good where we've been able to drill. On the west side, we will conclude the drilling within the next 2 months, and we should be able to see with high confidence how far we will push the Misery forward. So the opportunities after that will be, again, going deeper with Misery Deep underground. There's a Southwest extension of that Misery that is a really nice pipe right next to it. We put that work on hold given we wanted to focus on the Misery Underground. The Misery Underground carries high carats. That's why it's very important for us to continue putting all of our efforts on it, and we are there, we're mining. There's no capital associated with it. But the next 2 deposits that we'll be working on, one is the Southwest extension and the other one is Fox Underground, which does have a significant amount of indicated resources and reserves in it with high-value carats. And I think we're working on significantly reducing our upfront capital for it in a very meaningful way.
Stuart Howe
analystPerhaps a question for Brad on diamond markets. And you mentioned, I guess, on the way down, you've been able to outperform and now you've seen some price improvements so far in the quarter. So are those price improvements market-wide? Or are they specific to some of the initiatives that you've got like the Canadamark, I guess, marketing initiative? Or how can you talk a bit more about the diamond prices, please?
Brad Baylis
executiveYes. I think it's not just us that are seeing some price improvement. It is kind of market wide. Like I said, there's been some improvement and some green shoots that are showing themselves that's helping give the market a bit of confidence. And obviously, us having Canadian goods also helps us probably more than the market. We typically outperform the market, but all players, regardless of where they are, would be seeing some price growth. And some of the larger players have been fairly cautious from a sales perspective to start the year. For example, De Beers hasn't really been pushing, flooding the market with goods. They're kind of being tactical about it and bringing goods on the market slowly and sustainably. So I think a number of factors have helped to stabilize prices a little bit.
Stuart Howe
analystAnd in terms of the balance sheet, and obviously, you announced the Macquarie fuel funding and you did earlier in the year. There's a question here as to what the interest rate is implied by that facility?
Brad Baylis
executiveYes. So the Macquarie deal, just under 9% on the outstanding amount. And we've also got a fixed pricing on that agreement as well so that we're not exposed to crude pricing. So that's also been helpful.
Stuart Howe
analystQuestion for me. You announced the increase in the impairment. I take it that was based on a model and part was price driven and part was reserve driven. Could you perhaps talk a bit about what those 2 components and how those 2 components impacted the impairment?
Brad Baylis
executiveYes. I think it's hard to say for sure because it does get complicated when you start factoring the taxes and things like that. But I'd say it's probably likely close to 50-50 between the 2. So we haven't really well, we haven't added any reserves yet for the year. So Pooya is still working on that. So we've depleted our resource base. And then we obviously still have our cost structure that those reserves now need -- a smaller amount of reserves need to carry the cost of the operation. And so obviously, that's a factor. And then yes, we were fairly conservative on price growth over the 5-year window. And so obviously, price is also playing a big part of the impairment as well.
Stuart Howe
analystSales schedules for the year ahead, auctions per quarter. Did you -- I presume those 3 in the first quarter. Is that sort of what we should expect each quarter for the remainder of 2025?
Brad Baylis
executiveYes. With the additional royalty valuations, we do have more flexibility to hold auctions more frequently if we choose to. We did have 3 in the first quarter, and we'll likely do 3 in the second quarter. So 6 in the first half of the year. That's more than we would have done in the past. The one caution I'll say on the first quarter is with the transition from Sable to Point Lake, definitely our production will take a hit in the first quarter just as we're not fully producing out of Point Lake and Sable is not at full production. We're still scratching away in Sable, but it's nowhere near what we would normally get. And then first quarter is always a challenging quarter for Misery. Just with the underground tends to freeze up in the first quarter. So those 3 factors will impact our first quarter. And then like Pooya mentioned after the first quarter, we expect to be back to normal production for the remainder of the year.
Stuart Howe
analystGreat. And another one for Pooya. You mentioned in that area, drilling at underground at Misery, a change in methodology. But does will that impact how the ore goes through the mill? You mentioned sort of similar grades, but that change, how are you seeing that?
Pooya Mohseni
executiveThe processing side of it won't be that much of an impact. If not, we believe the work index could be lower than what we had in the RVK. So we're transitioning out of RVK to CK, there's a zone that actually has, it's been very difficult to drill through, and those are really the areas that the caving is high and the integrity of the rock is pretty low. So, I would say we can either meet or exceed the processing rates with the new ore coming from Misery.
Stuart Howe
analystThat's all the questions on the platform and that's all I have and we've just gone over the 45 minutes, so we might leave it there. But I think just to summarize, it looks like getting some good price or some encouraging price signals coming through. I guess there's still some uncertainty around the transition to the Point Lake open pit, but we should have that resolved in the current quarter. And also much of the capital that was spent in 2024 is now out of the way to start really mining in earnest at Point Lake and continuing underground mining at Misery. So you mentioned a bunch of productivity improvements coming through, obviously, the Point Lake being shallow to begin with and also its colocation with Misery around 2 kilometers away. So I think that's positive. But gents, really appreciate your time today. I don't think if I missed anything there, Brad, that you want to call out.
Brad Baylis
executiveNo, I think that was a good summary, Stuart. Thanks for that.
Stuart Howe
analystGreat and potentially some more news on balance sheet initiatives as well. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call.
Brad Baylis
executiveThanks, Stuart. Thanks, everyone, for joining.
Stuart Howe
analystThanks, Brad. Thanks, Pooya.
Pooya Mohseni
executiveHave a good one.
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