Central Asia Metals plc (9C3.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Central Asia Metals plc Full Year Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions]. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, 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 the management team, Gavin, Louise, good afternoon to you both.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Thank you. Welcome to the presentation of Central Asia Metals Half 1 2025 results. These are the results through to 30th of June 2025. So if we pop on to that slide, just by way of introduction, for those of you who are new followers of the business, just an outline of our operations. We have 2 operating assets, the Sasa lead zinc mine in North Macedonia. This is an underground mine that commenced production back in the 1960s and is still in production today. We've got a life of mine out to 2039 there. And the Kounrad copper project in Kazakhstan, which is a copper extraction facility utilizing what we call SX-EW technology to treat copper that is harvested off of old so [indiscernible] Dumps. That is licensed out to 2034. In addition, we have some longer-term opportunities in the portfolio, an investment in a company called Aberdeen Minerals, where we hold 28.4% of those shares of a private company, and they are exploring for copper and associated metals in Scotland on the Arthrath project. And CAML X, which is an exploration venture we established in Kazakhstan to pursue earlier-stage exploration opportunities targeting decent scale copper projects in that region. So that's the business right now. And what we here to discuss our results to the end of June, as I said, where we achieved copper production of 6,218 tonnes, which was in line with our forecast and leaves us on track to achieve our final year guidance of 13,000 to 14,000 tonnes a year. And then zinc production of 8,692 tonnes, lead 12,613 tonnes at the Sasa mine in North Macedonia now. We revised our guidance on that asset in July this year, where we noticed that the production was faced with a few challenges, which we'll talk about a little bit later, but currently on track to achieve that revised guidance there. All of this production was conducted in an extremely safe manner, and we're very pleased that we had no lost time injuries during the period. That operational performance drove the financial highlights set out on that slide, which include revenue of $99.5 million for the half, $39.9 million of EBITDA for an EBITDA margin of 40%. And importantly, this morning, we announced a dividend of 4.5p, supplemented by a $10 million share buyback program. That keeps cash returns to shareholders more or less consistent to what we paid in the first half of 2024 and in fact, the second half of 2024 as well. This is underpinned by a strong balance sheet and a good cash position, $47.7 million in the bank at the end of the period. And operationally, Kounrad remains at the lowest end of the cost curve. And the capital projects that we've spoken about over the last 2, 3 years really, which are mainly to do with changing the mining method as we get deeper into the mine, plus also treating our tailings and depositing our tailings differently, both underground and on surface. Those are largely complete now with the completion of our dry stack tailings plant in March, and we're now utilizing that dry stack tailings land form, which was built at the beginning of the year. So I'm going to hand over to Louise now to talk you through those finances in more detail, and we'll get back to the operations after that.

Thanks, Gavin. If we just look at the market conditions that framed the results that we've announced this morning first. So firstly, in terms of commodity markets, we experienced a lot of volatility in the first half, mainly around the March, April time with the Trump trade wars. Taking all that into account and comparing commodity prices for the first half of H1 2025 versus H1 2024, we've got a 3% increase in the copper price that we received, a 1% increase in the zinc price that we received and a 7% decrease in the lead price that we received. In terms of treatment charges, that's the cost to us for the smelters to process our zinc and lead from Macedonia. It's a good time right now to be a miner rather than a smelter. So treatment charges are lower than they have been historically. For the first half of the year, we've seen treatment charges around about $3 million lower than they were in the first half of last year. And then just looking at foreign exchange, some good news for us and some bad news for us in Kazakhstan. The Kazakhstan tenge that weakened by about 10% period-on-period, and that helps our operating costs when we report those in U.S. dollars. On the flip side to that, in North Macedonia, the denar, which is pegged to the euro was stronger than the U.S. dollar, and that has the opposite effect. So that effectively increases our U.S. dollar-denominated costs. Turning to the income statement. As Gavin mentioned, we reported revenue of $99.5 million for the first half. That was pretty much similar to the first half of last year, just 2% lower, and that's reflecting lower sales volumes of all 3 of the metals that we produce, and that's compensated by those lower treatment charges that I mentioned on the previous slide. Our cost of sales was up 14%. That's around about $7.3 million and there is a few factors for that. One is this weakening of the U.S. dollar versus the Macedonian denar that I mentioned. There was also a doubling of the concession fees, which is a revenue royalty that we pay in North Macedonia for the metal we produce. And we paid $2.3 million for that this year, and that's up from $1.2 million last year. We also had higher wages at both operations. We also paid more for silver. As you may recall, we stream our silver, and we record silver in the revenue and also the same amount of silver in cost of sales to purchase that silver for the stream. So the 2 net each other out, but nevertheless, that does contribute over $2 million to that increase in cost of sales that you can see. We also had some increased depreciation because now we're operating the dry stack tailings plant that was completed in the first half of the year as well. Group admin costs, they rose 24%, which sounds like a large number. That was about $2.8 million, and that was pretty much exclusively related to our business development activities. The $2.3 million additional BD costs that's mentioned on the slide, that's pretty much all related to the New World Resources attempted acquisition, which we pulled out of in July. We spent $1.1 million on exploration at Sasa and at CAML X, and that was up from $0.3 million in the first half of last year. And we also disposed of an asset called Copper Bay, which we wrote down some years ago as well. So taking all that into account, we've reported group EBITDA of $39.9 million at a margin of 40%. If we look at the cost now for the 2 operations, we had a great first half at Kounrad, where we reported our absolute C1 costs having decreased by $0.6 million, and that's mainly reflecting the Kazakh tenge devaluation. There was also some lower cost for reagents that was in terms of usage and costs as well. The C1 costs, they rose by $0.01 a pound. That was solely related to the fact that we produced a little bit less copper in the first half of this year than we did last year. We have also given our employees an 8.5% pay rise, but that has been largely mitigated by the weaker tenge as well. So all in all, we are reporting a 72% EBITDA margin for Kounrad, and that's the same as we reported for the first half in 2024. Looking at Sasa, our run of mine cost at Sasa increased from around $60 a tonne in the first half of last year to $65 a tonne in the first half of this year. That's around about an 8% increase. And that's due to the salaries that we've talked about. It's due to the weaker dollar versus the Macedonian denar. There was also higher costs for running these new tailings plants as well. So we've got a full year now of operating the paste backfill plant -- sorry, a full 6 months, I should say, and a portion of that period for operating the dry stack plant and the dry stack land form as well. Our electricity costs were also about $0.9 million higher this half than they were in the first half of last year as well. If we look at our C1 cost base, though, that's increased by only 3% from $31 million to $32 million, and that's positively affected by those lower treatment charges that we talked about initially. We reported a 26% EBITDA margin for Sasa for H1 2025. In the first half of this year, we spent $7.4 million on CapEx, $6.3 million of that was sustaining CapEx and $1.1 million was on capital projects at Sasa, which are now pretty much concluded. We commissioned the dry stack tailings plant, and we completed construction of the initial portion of the land form, and we are now placing our tailing or filter cake as it's called on to that landfill, and that's all going very well. We are expecting to spend $11 million to $14 million of CapEx in the second half of this year. We only just started this raise boring program at the end of the first half. That will continue in the second half. We are planning to extend the dry stack tailings landform as well. We have additional underground equipment to purchase and more development to do underground as well. So we are reiterating the guidance that we originally put in place for CapEx, which is $18 million to $21 million. We now take a look at the balance sheet. I'll just point out a few key points here. PPE looks like it's increased quite considerably, notwithstanding depreciation, and that's all related to the weaker U.S. dollar versus the Macedonian denar. So that's all currency related. We're reporting our group cash balance of $48 million. That's the $47.7 million plus the $0.3 million of restricted cash. On top of that, there's $1.8 million cash in transit, which we have mentioned in our Q2 production update, which through the audit process has been reclassified as this cash in transit. Effectively, we've received that already in the second half of this year. And also, post the period end, we sold the shares that we bought in New World Resources for $18.7 million, and we also received a break fee of $1.6 million as well. So our cash position has been bolstered by those aspects, too. In terms of any debt, we only have bank overdraft. That's the only debt we had at the end of June, we had $6.6 million drawn, and that has been substantially reduced post the period, and we're now down to around $1 million. And then final slide for me to look at our cash flow and our free cash flow. So from our operations in the first half of this year, we generated $34 million. We paid $20.6 million of dividends out. That was the final 2024 dividend. We paid taxes, that's income tax and withholding tax of over $16 million in the first half, and that's $8 million higher than it was in the first half of last year. We paid $7.4 million in CapEx that we've just talked about. We purchased those New World Resources shares in the first half for $16.7 million and we drew an additional $5.9 million of our overdraft during the 6 months as well. So all that takes us to the $47.7 million, excluding that $0.3 million of restricted cash. Our adjusted free cash flow for the period is then $16.2 million, and we do reiterate that post the period end, we received the $18.7 million from the sale of those New World Resources shares, the $1.6 million break fee and the $1.8 million cash in transit to bolster our cash position as well as our existing operations and sales. And so on that note, I'll hand back to Gavin to run through the operations.

Thanks, Louise. So starting with Kounrad. We've had another consistent and reliable performance from this asset in Kazakhstan. We produced just over 6,200 tonnes of copper cathode from our facilities there, and we're on track, as I said earlier, to achieve that 13,000 to 14,000 tonne guidance for the year. Our solar plant that we put in place almost 2 years ago now is operating really well, saving us a decent amount of money on our electricity now, where it's producing just under 17% of our requirements. And actually, in May, we achieved a record where we got to 22% of our electricity requirements there. And you can see from the histogram that really consistent performance from Kounrad over the last few years. The challenge is to keep that consistency going. And we're doing that by sort of expanding a little bit of CapEx as Louise said, if we go to the next slide, Richard. That relocation of Dump 15, that's now completed, and that will allow us to access another area of the Dumps through 2026 and 2027. And we're also replacing anodes and cathodes. And from an operational perspective, what that means is it just keeps the plant ticking over at its required rate. So as bits of the plant wear out and these are 2 key components to the electrowinning circuit, we need to replace anodes and cathodes and to make sure that the copper production remains consistent all the way through. What we're stating here on the remaining recoverable copper is quite interesting because that 79,000 tonnes is based on the initial feasibility study, which was carried out at the 2008, 2009, 2010. So -- what we've actually seen in reality is an outperformance of that initial estimate. And you can see from that curve that we put on the bottom left-hand side of your slide, the actual recovery in the dots versus the -- sorry, the actual recovery on the solid line versus the forecast recovery, which is the dots. You can see that our performance on the western Dumps. We're actually getting more copper out than we initially expected. What this means is that by the end of 2034, we'll probably have surpassed that 79,000 tonnes and/or be able to extend the life of the facility beyond that 2034. But there's quite a lot of work to be done before we start making too much noise about that. And the guys on site are starting that work in the next couple of months, and we hope to report over the next 12, 18 months some success on that front. Probably hit the next slide then, Richard, in terms of sustainability, we think that it's a core part of our business is the relationship with the community and also being a good custodian of these assets. So as I said earlier, 0 lost time injuries for the half, but Kounrad, simply stunning performance there, no LTI since May 2018. In spite of that, we still take health and safety very seriously, and we've completed a full safety and occupational health assessment on site. We've got a biodiversity management plan that's just been completed and are reviewing our water management on site as well. In addition to that, we continue to support the local communities through cultural, medical, educational and other youth initiatives where we have looked after people from the local surroundings. And we've also paid a tax in Kazakhstan, $320 million of tax paid since we started that operation back in 2012. Moving on to Sasa. If we look at the right-hand side of the slide, there's a table there we've got all mined is up 8% half-on-half. Now those of you with us at the last presentation we gave, we were expressing some disappointment of achieving a much lower tonnage rate out of Sasa than we'd hoped for and partly due to the disruptions then caused by the transition to the new mining methods, plus also the construction of 2 plants and a central decline into the lower levels of the mine. With all of those programs now completed, we can see that the rates of mining have gone up closer to that 800,000 tonne a year run rate that we've been looking to achieve. So that's a positive. Unfortunately, what we've experienced though is lower grades, both zinc and lead. There's 2 reasons for that. One is we're still having a few teething problems with the new mining methods. As the guys become more familiar with these methods, we expect dilution, which means taking a little bit more waste than we'd like into the plant. That will reduce as the guys familiarize themselves and get more expert with these mining methods. But more importantly, we've encountered variable geology at depth. Now we knew that we're going to be confronted with a much narrow ore body, but what we didn't account for was the sort of changes in the ore body, both in geometry orientation and also grade at depth. So we need to sort of confront those challenges head on, and we'll be doing that over the next half or so. I'm going to talk about that a little bit on the next slide, which is where we're talking about the strategic review. What that means is a full operational review of the Sasa mine. Now as a management team were out on site in the first quarter, and we realized the guys there were struggling, although they were coming up with some good ideas. So we tasked them with coming up with initiatives to improve their productivity in terms of mining, processing and so on. And we've also provided them some help by getting an external consultant in as well to review all aspects of the ore body, it's mining, processing right down to things like laboratory processes, how they treat the samples, how we get people to and from the faces, et cetera. So as I said, while we expect that ore body to narrow, what we need to do is now understand the geology a little bit better, so we're going to have to do a little bit more drilling, and that means putting platforms in place to get the drills in place to inform us a little bit more so that we confronted with fewer surprises as we go underground. We're also going to tighten up on some grade control. And once these recommendations that are made by the external consultants are put together with our own recommendations, we'll be spending the rest of this year and probably into the first quarter next year, implementing many of those initiatives where we should start seeing operational performances improving through that period. Again, from a sustainability perspective, Sasa has performed very well, 0 lost time injuries during the period. And 60% of our tailings has now gone either underground or onto that dry stack tailings facility, which gets us closer to our 70% target, which we hope to achieve by the end of next year. We've also tested an emergency alarm system around the tailings facility, which makes it even safer than it was last year when we achieved the conformance with GISTM. And we've continued with educational support both on site and in the surrounding community. Another thing we've initiated this year is a kick starter program for local businesses to ensure that the local community is sustained long beyond the life of the mine itself. As I mentioned earlier, we have 2 earlier stage activities underway, exploration in Scotland on the Arthrath project through Aberdeen Minerals. Now Phase 2b is the drilling campaign that's currently underway. That was to follow up on some very encouraging visual results that we achieved in Phase 2a that effectively proved that there was mineralization at depth. Phase 2b is to try and test the extent of that mineralization. And basis the results of this drilling program, we'll make a decision on whether or not to follow our money and invest another GBP 2 million into Aberdeen Minerals. And 2 of the core members of our team visiting that asset in the next few weeks to start making those determinations. And in Kazakhstan, we've got 4 licenses under exploration there, mostly surface mapping, sampling for geochemical analysis plus also geophysical surveys going on there. And those will continue until the end of the summer season, which is drawing to a close pretty soon. And then based on those results, we'll be making decisions on whether or not to drill some of the targets in 2026. And we also got some more advanced projects on the slate there, which we're looking to progress and more news on those probably the next time we speak in March. Getting on to capital allocation, which I heard from a lot of you in the room with us today. We're very pleased to announce that 4.5p dividend. And in conjunction with that share buyback program of up to $10 million. What that means for our shareholders is our total cash returns remain consistent with the prior period and also even the last 6 months at around $21 million. It also takes our cash returns to shareholders since IPO to $400 million, which for a company of our size is an amazing achievement. Over time, we're going to revert to our policy of paying between 30% to 50% of free cash flow as dividends. And we committed to capital returns to shareholders whilst we're managing our cash for future growth opportunities. So we believe that the share buyback program provides us with that flexibility. It is an accretive way of returning capital to shareholders. It's a good use of our capital in the absence of any significant growth opportunities there. So to summarize, in terms of outlook, we are on track to achieve guidance at both Kounrad and Sasa. Although at Sasa, we are continued -- we have continued challenges that we need to face up to. And sustaining CapEx at both operations will be the sort of norm going forward because we've now completed the capital programs, the major capital programs at Sasa. As I mentioned just a couple of seconds ago, half 1 dividend of 4.5p plus that $10 million share buyback, which is already in action this morning and we remain committed to securing material growth opportunity as well. That's all going to be done off the back of a flexible balance sheet, as Louise said, just under $48 million of cash at the date of the accounts plus some cash collected after that from the New World Resources transaction, which unfortunately failed. But our well-established operations do allow us to compete in terms of getting debt and that debt will help us finance any acquisitions on a non-dilutive basis. So that's the business. That's where we sit today. Thank you for your attendance. We look forward to answering all your questions.

That's great, Gavin. Louise, thank you very much indeed for updating investors. Ladies and gentlemen, just what the company review your questions submitted already, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with the copy of the slide and the [indiscernible] available via your Investor Meet Company dashboard. Richard, as you can see, you've had a number of questions from investors throughout today's presentation. So firstly, thank you to everybody for your engagement this afternoon. If I may, Richard, just hand back to you to navigate us through that Q&A, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Thank you. First question submitted prior to the presentation. It's from the standpoint of benefiting shareholders, what is the reason behind pursuing diversification by acquisition instead of juicing the current assets for the still decade-long run and returning capital aggressively to shareholders?

It's a good question, but I think what you've got to consider with the mining industry is the length of time it takes to move a project from discovery through to production. And the CAML X things I was talking about earlier, the gestation period there is probably at least 8 years, maybe longer, similar at Arthrath, to be honest with you, even though we're sort of taking less discovery risk on that one. So that's why we looked at something like New World Resources, which was a feasibility study level project. And in terms of optimizing that feasibility study and then raising the CapEx and then building the project, that probably would have taken 3 years itself, which if you start thinking about the 10-year life of the assets, as you mentioned, you're starting to eat quite a long way into the life of those assets. So we do need to do something. The earlier we do it, the better for our shareholders, it will be accretive, and we make sure that everything we look at is accretive and that accretion is considered in the light of the capital return programs that we've got in place. So what we're going to do is spend dollars to make money for our shareholders. And in the absence of doing that, then we'll be returning it by the dividend and the share buyback.

So now the live questions. Question from John H on growth. Have you considered quality Kazakh explorers such as East Star Resources?

Thanks, John. Look, we don't like to mention names to protect the innocent here. So we do focus on Kazakhstan as one of the jurisdictions given our operating experience there and knowledge of the geology. So anything interesting there, we would probably cast run the rule over at some point. And we think currently with our CAML X team, we've got a great team that is originating some really good ideas and some very good opportunities. So we're backing that team for now.

Question here from Keith M. Gavin, how many shares do you hold? And do you intend to sell them back to the company in the share buyback?

So Keith, I own a modest amount of shares. I think it's just under 10,000 shares, which I purchased myself a couple of years ago. We're also, as a management team, incentivized quite heavily by a long-term LTIP program effectively, which is geared 75% of the value of those are on total shareholder return. So we're very focused on the capital returns and also other returns to shareholders. I have no intention, I don't think I could, frankly, sell my shares into the buyback. In fact, if I had some spare cash, I'll be buying shares right now.

Another question from Keith. He's really asking why we did a buyback rather than a special dividend on the basis of the special dividend distributes cash equity to all shareholders, but the buyback only goes to those who sell the shares and with the amount that we've devoted to the buyback being almost equal to the dividend cut, why not pay a special dividend? If you're trying to use a buyback to reduce shares in issue, then you could do that via consolidation and achieve the same thing.

There's a lot of that there, Keith. So what I'll say is that partly the share buyback was in response to a lot of requests or considerations from our shareholders to consider a share buyback. And the Board has considered it carefully and decided that in terms of deploying our capital in an accretive manner for shareholders, that is probably the best way to go right now. And special dividends seem to offer shareholders a small sugar rush and that's it really. You never really know whether you're going to get one next time or not. But the share buyback has a longer-lasting effect by, as you say, reducing that share count and the value per dividend per share then therefore, goes up in future as well.

Question from George. To what extent do you feel confident in delivering against full year production and cost guidance? And what factors could move you above or below the current ranges?

George, we're very confident in the Kounrad asset in terms of getting into that guidance. We modestly reduced the guidance at Sasa. And as I said earlier, we are still faced with some of the challenges there. So we are striving to get in that guidance range at Sasa. But there's a little more risk around that, I'd be honest for me to say. What was the second part of the question? Richard, sorry...

Talking about what...

Cost guidance, sorry, we actually don't -- we don't give cost guidance as a company. So I think factors that could move us below the ranges really would be additional production challenges and suffer would be the main risk there.

How do you determine the correct price to buy back your shares? For example, if you're an investment trust and your net asset value will be mark-to-market every day and buying back at a discount enhances value to other holders. But with real assets, how do you determine if your shares are undervalued or not?

Well, I think the very fact that we've put a share buyback in place signals that we think the shares are undervalued. And we do have some flexibility around price and volume there. But ultimately, there are market abuse regulations in place. But even though we are doing this buyback outside of that safe harbor mechanism, we are going to try and adhere to them. So we are limited on flexibility around price in particular. But the volumes can be determined by, we can move outside of that if we do see additional value for ourselves there. But effectively, we wouldn't have put the share buyback in place at all if we didn't think it was going to be an accretive method of capital return to our shareholders.

On the Sasa Foundation, given that Sasa is currently loss-making, is it not appropriate to reduce the 0.5% of revenue you donate to the Sasa Foundation, which you [indiscernible] final results was doubled.

Yes, that's an excellent question, Jeffrey. I don't want to give too much away, but rest assured that was a strongly debated item at the last Board meeting that we had.

Okay. Adrian is quoting the purpose of the buyback from this morning's RNS is to reduce the share capital of the company and to return capital to those shareholders wishing to participate. What is the real sense of the last 7 words? Having read the notice very carefully, they seem completely -- what are they doing in an official communication? So the last words is to return capital to those shareholders wishing to participate in the buyback.

Adrian, I think very simply, we're saying we're given the option to you and your fellow shareholders whether or not you want to venture shares into the buyback and that's a decision that's entirely up to you. So we're giving you the option to participate in the buyback plus you get the dividend. And I don't think there was anything controversial in myself.

I agree. Given the operational headwinds and the need for capital for potential future growth, is a GBP 10 million share buyback the most prudent use of company funds?

I think one thing I'd add to this kind of debate is we've had -- and it goes along with the special dividend discussion as well. We have, over the years, sought a lot of feedback from shareholders in terms of capital allocation, be it dividends, special dividends, share buybacks, growth, exploration. And if you ask 3 people, you'll get 4 different answers. And we've tried to build all of this into what we're doing now. We have -- in the dividends that we have been paying, these have been at a yield of around about 12%, which does seem very high to us. We've had lots of requests to look at buybacks. So this is something that we're having a look at. We're not experts on this actually. We haven't done a buyback before in this management team. So we're going to see how that works out as well. Specials, I'd argue that if we're paying over the dividend, we've been paying specials for a very long time, maybe not marketed as that way. So there's lots of factors come into play in terms of our capital allocation. One of the other factors when we look at growth as well is do we keep some sort of cash build up. So when we go to buy something else, we've got a little pot of cash. Equity investors have changed as well over a period. There used to be a pretty fundamental agreement that if we paid dividends back then we could go back to shareholders and ask them to support us in a transaction. Again, that's not necessarily the case because lots of investors have got less money than they used to. So we're trying to balance all of our capital allocation and trying to please a lot of people and each person you speak to will have a different priority. And for sure, buybacks will be a priority for a lot of people, special for some people, growth for some people. So there's definite people with different views. And ultimately, we've got to do what we think is right for the business.

A question here from [ Ben S ]. What is management strategy for achieving long-term growth beyond the existing assets, especially after the decision to terminate the acquisition of New World Resources and Arthrath project?

Well, Ben, I don't think the strategy has changed. I think we've been very transparent about our growth ambitions for quite a long time now. Over the last 5 years, we've been telling the market what we're looking for, where we're looking for it. And I think it's disappointing that the New World Resources transaction went away from us. But I think what we did there was demonstrate the capital discipline that's been expected of us over the years in not overpaying, but also not letting the asset go for something we would have paid for it. So yes, we're back looking for new assets. Louise and the team are out there trying to originate new ideas. [indiscernible] the globe for similar things to New World or even better. So we do need to grow this business, as I said earlier, given that we continue on depleting assets every day. So the strategy remains the same.

Question from Philip R. Sasa made a loss of GBP 2.1 million in the period. Do you expect the results of the strategic review to result in profitability?

Philip, I absolutely hope so. Look, in all seriousness, that is the biggest focus for management over the next 6 months is implementing the results of this review in order to return that to profitability.

Another question from Bill C. If all proceeds well with Aberdeen Minerals and CAML X, it seems substantial equity will be required. Do you think that might require an equity partner?

We have [indiscernible] for funding as new as the situation evolves.

Okay. Well, that's all the questions. I think that's all the questions.

That's great, Richard. And of course, any other questions that do come in, we can make available to you post today's meeting. Firstly, thank you again to everybody for your engagement this afternoon. Gavin, I know investor feedback will be particularly important to you and to the management team, and I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But perhaps I could just ask you for a couple of closing comments before I send investors feedback.

Thanks, Mark. Look, I'd just like to thank everybody for attending today for all the questions. Those of you that we weren't able to answer. As Mark said, we may publish the answers at some point. Some of them, unfortunately, we couldn't answer. But what I do want to say is we certainly appreciate your continued interest in the business, your continued support for the business. And we are an open bunch of people with -- there's an info e-mail address. If any questions arise that you want to answer, please send them in there, and we'll do our best to get back to them as quickly as possible. But thanks again for attending the results announcement. We look forward to seeing you again in 6 months' time.

Gavin, Louise, Richard, thank you once again for updating investors. I please ask investors not to close the session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a couple of moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Central Metals, I'd like to thank you Asia Metals. I'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. I wish you all.