Central Asia Metals plc (CAML) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Central Asia Metals plc Annual General Meeting and Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question submitted today. However, the company will review all questions with subsequent responses published on the Investor Meet Company platform where it's appropriate to do so. I'd now like to hand you over to the Chairman of Central Asia Metals, Mr. Nick Clarke, good morning.

Good morning. My name is Nick Clarke, and I would like to welcome you to this Annual General Meeting of Central Asia Metals plc, our 15th AGM since our listing on AIM in 2010. I would also like to welcome those watching online via the Investor Meet Company platform. With us today are my colleagues on the Board, Gavin Ferrar, our Chief Executive Officer; Louise Wrathall, our Chief Financial Officer; Mike Armitage, Roger Davey, Gillian Davidson, Mike Prentis, and David Swan, our Nonexecutive Directors, are here with me in this venue. Nigel Robinson, our other Non-Executive Director, is unable to join us today. Before we proceed, I would like to set out the running order for today's proceedings in line with the Notice of Meeting sent to shareholders in April. First will be the formal Annual General Meeting in which we will handle the formalities required in connection with this. The voting of this will be by a poll to ensure all votes lodged in advance are taken into account and the results of the AGM will be announced to the market later today. Once this formal AGM has concluded, we will then move on to the presentation from management. Now turning to the formal business of the AGM, the necessary quorum being present, I now declare the Annual General Meeting open. The business of the meeting is set out in the notice of meeting contained in the circular to shareholders dated 15th of April 2025 and distributed with the annual report and accounts. With your approval, I would like to take the Notice of Meeting as read. Is that agreed? Thank you. The notice is taken as read. I should now be happy to answer any questions in connection with the business of the Annual General Meeting as I intend to call a poll on all the resolutions. I should be grateful if all the questions in connection with the business of the Annual General Meeting be asked at this stage. There will be an opportunity to ask general questions during the investor presentation after the formal meeting is concluded. As there are no questions in connection with the business of the AGM, I shall now turn to the formal business of the AGM being the resolutions set out in the Notice of Meeting. In accordance with the company's Articles of Association and to enable all proxies lodged in advance to be taken into account, I now demand a poll be taken on all the resolutions set out in the Notice of Meeting. There are 19 resolutions. Resolutions 1 to 16 are being taken as ordinary resolutions, which require a simple majority of the votes cast to be passed. And Resolutions 17 to 19 are being taken as special resolutions, which require approval of at least 75% of the votes to be passed. Before we proceed with the voting, I will give a brief summary of each of the resolutions being proposed. Resolution 1 is an ordinary resolution to receive and adopt the directors' report and accounts for the period ended 31st of December 2024, distributed previously to shareholders and available on the company's website. Resolution 2 is an ordinary resolution to approve the Board's recommendation that a final dividend for the year ended 31st of December 2024 of 9p per share be declared payable. Resolutions 3 and 4 cover matters for approval for the first time in line with the provisions of The Quoted Companies Alliance Corporate Governance Code applicable to CAML from 1st of January 2025. Resolution 3 is to approve the directors' remuneration policy and Resolution 4 is to approve the Remuneration Committee report. These advisory resolutions are being proposed as ordinary resolutions. Again, in line with the provisions of the QCA code at this meeting, all directors are being proposed for reappointment to the Board of Directors. Resolutions 5 to 13 are ordinary resolutions to reappoint Gavin Ferrar, Louise Wrathall, Mike Armitage, Gillian Davidson, Roger Davey, Mike Prentis, Nigel Robinson and David Swan, as well as myself, as directors. Resolutions 14 and 15 are ordinary resolutions to reappoint the auditors and to authorize the directors to fix their remuneration in accordance with normal practice. Resolution 16 is an ordinary resolution to allot shares and grant rights to subscribe for or convert any security into shares. This is a renewal of the current standing authority as is usual in publicly quoted companies. Resolutions 17 and 18 are special resolutions to authorize the directors to exercise all powers of the company to allot equity securities for cash otherwise than pro rata to existing shareholders up to levels set out in the notice. These levels are as recommended in the most recent guidelines published by the Pre-Emption Group that represents the interest of shareholders in relation to such authorities. Resolution 19 is a special resolution to authorize the company to purchase its own shares and to apply limits to this authority. Again, this is a renewal of a standing authority in place in the company. All these resolutions are being proposed at this meeting. Now moving on to the vote, I declare the poll open. Will those shareholders, proxy holders and corporate representatives wishing to vote, please complete a poll card now and pass them to the Company Secretary. If any shareholder, proxy holder or corporate representative wishes to vote and does not already have a poll card to do so, please raise your hand and the company secretary will pass you a poll card for completion. [Voting]

I plan to close the poll shortly. If there are any other poll cards to be submitted, please pass those to company secretary now. Thank you. There being no further poll cards to be submitted, the poll is now closed. Our company secretary and registrars will be counting the votes cast at this meeting. The result of the poll will be available later today and will be announced to the London Stock Exchange as soon as is practical. That concludes the business of the AGM. I now declare the Annual General Meeting closed. I will now hand over to Gavin Ferrar, our CEO, to give a presentation on the company. Thank you.

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everybody, and those attending online. Our investor presentation is called Investing in our Future, and that is sort of the thrust of what CAML is trying to do for you all as shareholders. A quick disclaimer, which I won't run through, but hopefully, you'll get the time to read that at some point. But just a quick overview of the operations that we have. We've got Sasa and Kounrad, which are really the key drivers of the business. These are the assets that are generating cash flow and underpinning all the activities that I'll talk about today. These are long-life assets, with Kounrad with a license out to 2034 and Sasa with a mineral reserve that supports mining out to 2039. We have some longer-term opportunities in the portfolio as well in the form of CAML X and Aberdeen Minerals. These are exploration assets, and I'll give you a little bit more detail on the activities there as well. We don't own these entirely. CAML X is an 80% subsidiary of ours. And Aberdeen Minerals is really an associated company where we've invested some money to acquire a share ownership of 28.4% with an option to increase that ownership at a future date. If we look at the overview of the business, as Nick said, we're looking to adopt the annual accounts today. Those annual accounts were reported upon in March this year. A very solid set of financial results with revenue of just shy of $215 million, EBITDA of $101.8 million at a margin of 47%, which is a really respectable margin for a mining company. Importantly, we generated free cash flow of $65.7 million. It's that cash flow that underpins all of the activities in terms of investing in the business, but also shareholder returns, and we're very pleased that we were able to pay an 18p dividend for the full year of 2024. All these operations that we spoke about, Kounrad is a copper operation. We produced about 13,500 tonnes of copper there at very good margins, a very low-cost asset, and we'll talk about the costs in a minute. Sasa, we produce lead and zinc. We produced about 27,000 tonnes of lead, 18,500 tonnes of zinc, again, at a respectable margin of 35% on that front. This was all done in a safe manner. We unfortunately had 2, what we call, lost time injuries last year. These were fortunately not grave injuries, but did result in people missing days of work. So we classify them as lost time. We take all of these injuries really seriously and work towards a zero harm workplace. So all of the learning that we take from those is implemented in future processes and protocols to make an even safer workplace for our staff. So what are we producing? I said we produce copper, lead and zinc, so we've got -- and why do we do this? These are metals that support a sustainable future. Copper is essential for all of the electrical infrastructure around us and it's going to be critical moving forward into the clean energy transition as well. Zinc is primarily used to coat steel via galvanizing. And any steel structures now, in order to extend their life and enhance their life, is subject to greater levels of galvanizing. So zinc demand, we believe, remains robust. Lead is mainly using lead acid batteries. A lot of people think that EVs are going to make lead redundant, but a lot of internal combustion engine cars are still being produced for the whole life of what Sasa is going to support. And EVs will also be using lead acid batteries in the future as well, also important for energy storage for renewables. So lead, whilst it's not as sexy as the other 2 minerals, certainly is a solid metal. So why should we invest in CAML? Why should you invest in CAML? As I said, that EBITDA margin, 47% for the business, that's a high-margin business, and we're also committed to growth. That dividend of 18p takes our total shareholder return since we IPO-ed to 259%, which is a great result for a small mining company. And we've got a 13-year track record of paying those dividends. So if you look at that in terms of dollar metrics, we've raised $214 million from the market since the IPO, and we've paid back via dividends alone $380 million to our shareholders. We also have an ambition to grow, and we're building a pipeline of projects to support that growth ambition. Kounrad is a slightly unique operation, and we've been operating there for 13 years. We irrigate these dumps, which you can see in that satellite image with dilute sulfuric acid. That raffinate, as we call it, percolates through the dumps, collects the copper into the solution. We then pipe and pump that solution to an SX-EW plant. And what that does is effectively plate copper from that solution into what we call cathodes. Those cathodes are ready directly to be distributed to the market, and we sell that at the mine gate. So in all, a fairly low-risk sort of marketing strategy there, quite a technical metallurgical operation, but with 13 years of operation. We've now optimized that operation, and we've successfully, in that period, accessed a new area called the Western Dumps back in 2017, and those are now reporting the majority of our production of about 65% of the copper. As I said before, we produced just under 13,500 tonnes of copper. And you can see from that histogram, the copper production over the last few years has been fairly stable. What is interesting from this chart on the right-hand side is that the actual recoveries, which is the solid line, is actually outperforming our initially sort of analyzed and theoretical forecast leach curves that we built for these leach blocks that we exploit at Kounrad. All that means is now when we say we've got a minimum of 85,000 tonnes remaining, that is on the initial plan. So there's a good chance that we might outperform there and also hence, that potential life beyond that 2034 date that I mentioned earlier. I also mentioned that Kounrad is a very low-cost operation. Now you'll have seen that there's no mining, no crushing, no grinding. We're just leaching those dumps. So that contributes to a very -- eliminates a lot of costs that traditional mines will have. But also Kazakhstan is a low-cost environment. We have very low electricity costs and getting stuff in and out of Kazakhstan is also quite efficient and cheap. So that margin of -- Kounrad's operational EBITDA margin of 73% is probably one of the highest you'll find in the copper-producing world. Our largest inputs are really payroll and reagents. Inflation has affected both. But we also had a slightly lower tonnage of production when you compare 2023 to 2024, which contributed to a slight increase in costs there from $0.74 to $0.80. But $0.80 remains really at the lower end of the cost curve for copper producers. Compare that to the current price of copper of around $4.30 per pound, you can see why that margin is so attractive. If we move on to the Sasa, Sasa is much more traditional. This is an underground mine. We drill and blast, we muck out, we haul and hoist material to the surface where it goes into a processing plant, where it's ground fine into a 74-micron product, which is then we extract the lead and zinc into what we call concentrates. Those concentrates are transported to smelters all within the EU. So again, low-risk distribution to the market. And tailings is stored underground in a dry stack tailings facility and also in a traditional wet tailings facility. And I'll talk about why we've got 3 different tailings strategies as well. What we've done there is investing a lot of money in Sasa over the last few years to modernize the mining methods. As a consequence of that, we've actually extended the mine life to 2039. When we bought Sasa back in 2017, the life of mine was out to 2034. We now added 5 years to that. And given its geological nature, we expect small increases to that mine life moving forward. Just to remind you, we produced 18,500 tonnes of zinc in that concentrate I mentioned and 26,600 tonnes of lead. The production guidance for this year remains more or less in that range. We did fractionally miss guidance last year, which was disappointing. But that production was really affected by transition projects, which I'll talk about in a minute. So those transition projects meant we had to build and learn how to operate 2 new plants, plus also implement 2 new mining methods underground. As you can see from that table on the right-hand side, in 2023, we produced 805,000 tonnes; 2024, 762,000 tonnes, which is slightly lower than we wanted to. But in the context of the challenges we face there, not too bad. The real challenge now is to get back up to that 800,000-tonne level that we've achieved in the past. Costs have been affected a little bit by inflation, salary increases, some of the reagents that we purchased as well. Electricity prices have crept up a little bit, but it's still at manageable levels. But effectively, the unit cost rise that we saw '23 to '24 is really a function of that lower production. We have managed to also get some tailwinds from what we call our realization costs, those are the charges that the smelters levy in terms of converting that concentrate into metal. So that was a little bit of a tailwind. But in general, in dollar terms, costs are more or less flat. If we look at it in what we call C1 sort of zinc equivalent costs, it has gone up $0.10, but that is mainly a function of the different prices of lead and zinc as we go forward. The other thing to note from this table is that we had the first full year of operation of our paste backfill plant. That is one of the new plants that we've constructed. So that has added around $2.1 million to the cost base at Sasa as well. So what do these transition projects I mentioned entail? As I said, there's 3 elements. One is the paste backfill plant. We've had a full year of operation in 2024. And we've put around 1/3 of our tailings back underground during 2024, which is a really good result, and it's exactly what we wanted that plant to do. The dry stack tailings plant, we've constructed a plant and there's what we call an associated landform where we need to deposit the material. So we've completed the initial phase of that landform and also completed the dry stack tailings plant in the first quarter of this year. And what you can see in that diagram -- in that photograph in the middle is the filter cake that we're now producing and we will be in placing on the surface. An important thing about dry stack is it doesn't increase the footprint of the mine. And we're actually in placing this dry stack filter cake on old historical tailings, which is a huge environmental and social advantage that we've created for ourselves there as well. The third element is what we call the central decline. That's really just a tunnel that goes down into the depths of the mine, bypassing the old tunnels, which are a lot more convoluted. And this makes the whole operation much more efficient. Trucks get up and down more quickly, we can drive bigger trucks up and down that decline, plus also we're getting people back and forth to their working places far more efficiently and quickly. In terms of sustainability, it's something that Central Asia Metals has always taken seriously. So far, we've invested around $5.5 million into our local communities. That is via 2 foundations that we've established, and we set aside 0.5% of our revenue to finance those foundations. And they support things like science, technology, education, culture, health care and sport, anything that the local communities are interested in, and that provide them with a longer-term sort of benefit from having the mine on their doorstep. Other highlights from 2024. We did publish our fifth annual sustainability report, which again, I think we're leaders, as a small mining company, in doing that. We've reduced our Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 44%. We have a target of reducing it by 50% by 2030. We've implemented a new set of what we call golden rules for safety at both sites. And importantly, we achieved what is called -- we achieved conformance with the global industry standard on tailings management, which is a voluntary initiative and puts us in line with best industry practices for managing all of our tailings going forward. So getting on to the other key part of our investment strategy, and this is around growth. So what are we looking for? I think ideally, we want to populate that gap between the sort of set of assets we've got right now. We've got those 2 operating assets. We've got the 2 longer-term opportunities. And so what are we looking for? We're looking for larger, either in production or near-term production, acquisitions that will enhance the scale of the business, increase our production and diversify the production base. Where we're looking, primarily the European time zone. From a management perspective, that's a lot easier. Kazakhstan, we've got a lot of experience there, so that is the only sort of Central Asian region that we are looking for opportunities within. And the focus is really on the base metals that we're with. I think we like to stick to it and we know what we know. But more importantly, for the shareholders here, the key thing is it's got to be accretive to earnings over time and have no impact on our sustainability strategy. We can afford these things because we've got significant borrowing capacity, but we also don't want to stretch that balance sheet too far. So affordability is another key metric that we look at when we assess any opportunities. I hinted at the 2 long-term growth assets earlier. Aberdeen Minerals, we're searching for copper and nickel up in Scotland, the Arthrath project. We've got some very encouraging drilling results in 2024. That has guided us to drill in 2025. I think that program has just started a couple of weeks ago actually. And we're looking really forward to getting those results out there. And that will allow us to make a decision about whether or not to exercise the warrant we've got. We will increase our ownership to just under 40% of that company. CAML X is a lot earlier stage. No discoveries made yet, but we do have 4 licenses, and we've got field programs underway now, mainly surface exploration programs, geophysics, geochemistry and geological mapping, with the hopes that we'll be setting up some drill targets over the next 2 years or so. Just to give you an idea of how active we've been here in this business development sort of effort that we make, we reviewed 37 opportunities in 2024, signed 13 confidentiality agreements and undertook 6 site visits. Now when we're doing site visits, that's when we're generally hiring third-party consultants to help us assess these things. And we actually moved to a couple of -- I think it was 3 offers, 3 or 4 offers, last year. Unfortunately, we couldn't consummate a deal. We just want to reassure you that we are remaining disciplined in that approach. So what's the outlook for the next year and in the future? So 2025, production guidance is unchanged from the previous years. We are transitioning to those paste fill mining techniques. Underground, as mentioned, we've got 2 new techniques, long-haul stoping cut and fill that enhances the life of the ore body, makes it a lot safer and also sort of makes for much more efficient extraction of that ore body. The ramp-up of our dry stack tailings plant, we've just started in placing tailings onto the dry stack landform, and that's going to become key to sort of longevity of that mine in the future. And in terms of capital allocation, our priorities remain to the shareholders. So looking at investing in business development as long as these things are accretive, so hence, the discipline that we apply there, advancing those long-term exploration projects and continue with that dividend payment. So 9p dividend is payable on the 20th of May, and the dividend policy remains at 30% to 50% of free cash flow. We have a flexible balance sheet, but we remain in a very strong financial position. We're debt-free. And at the end of 2024, we had $67.6 million in the bank. So the company is in a robust form and looking for good opportunities in the future. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much indeed. That concludes the formal part of the presentation. May we take questions from the room, and then we'll move to those online. Yes, sir, if I may just hand you.

[ Monica Rednam ], a shareholder. I've been coming to the meetings something like 10 years. I purchased way north of 250p. So I'm down nearly 50%. The dividend does not cover it by any stretch of the imagination. I'm prepared to accept 50% of the dividend as a return of capital in effect. But we're not going anywhere. I would appreciate a bit more activity in the search for new developments. You've got to get some money in without taking on debt. And as a matter of curiosity, where does the product you sell at the gate in Kazakhstan actually go? Are you selling to Russia, China?

I'll answer the last question first. So the product, we sell it to a trader. So title passes at the mine gate, but the product goes to Turkey to a wire manufacturer in Turkey. So the only effect that we've had through the conflict, the Ukraine conflict, is we've had to redirect -- well, not us, but our trading partner, Traxys, has had to redirect the route that goes to Turkey. So it no longer goes via Russia, which it did in the past. It goes via the Caspian Sea across Azerbaijan, Georgia and into Turkey that way. So we have sold a small parcel to China in the past, but actually, it's a lot cheaper just to send it via road.

I think being in Georgia and Armenia, I don't recommend the roads. Your lorry drivers must be nervous or going on trains and needs a lot of tunnels.

Yes. And in terms of -- sorry, just to answer your other question here, as I said, we're very active on the business development front with 37 opportunities reviewed last year. We are disappointed that we weren't able to convert there, but we do consider that growth aspect of the business absolutely key to our strategic objectives.

Have you found any developments possibly in somewhere like Uzbekistan? Or is the government not very favorable?

Look, I think we know Kazakhstan really well. So we're going to stick with that region. We've got a good team there. We understand the geology. We've got a team that spans all the way from early-stage geological exploration through to construction and operations. So that's where we've got a real advantage, and that's where we'll continue to focus.

There's been a lot of chemical research on the sulfides problem. Are you involved in this at all?

Well, we're not involved in it directly, but we do monitor these new technologies because they would be potentially very advantageous to us. A lot of them are focusing on a copper mineral called chalcopyrite, which is the most common sulfide mineral that's been exploited in mining so far. Unfortunately, we're not blessed with a huge amount of chalcopyrite in the dumps. But if we do come across a technology that will work, and we have, in the past, tested these things and we'll continue to do so, then we'd be happy to exploit it.

Have you looked at some of these strategic minerals that are coming up and up and up, especially with space technology and matters related.

Well, I'd say copper is a fairly strategic mineral. So we continue to look for those. But if you're talking about some of the rare earths and titaniums and various other things, look, we thought it would be irresponsible if we didn't investigate those markets. But in doing so, we discovered the limits of our technical knowledge. And I think what we're really good at is underground mining, open pit mining, heap leach and processing these things via SX-EW, metallurgical process of SX-EW and froth rotation of base metals. So that's what we can -- that's where our skill set is. If we went into those other things, it would mean hiring teams with a different skill set to what we have.

Well, I have to decide when I'm going to sell the shares.

Thank you. Are there any other questions in the room? If not, Louise, I'll hand over to you for any online.

Sure. Yes. Okay. We have got some questions on the platform. So the first one from Simon. He's saying that in our 2024 results presentation, management said we were going to rely on our cash balance, ongoing cash flow from our existing assets and debt. Could the Board confirm that indeed no new shares will be issued for the purpose of acquiring new assets?

Look, I think a lot depends on what the shape of a transaction would be. Clearly, we've got some decent borrowing capacity with an EBITDA of $100 million. I think the Board is more or less comfortable at around maximum 2x net debt to EBITDA. So that suggests that we could raise $200 million in debt. If the acquisition was larger, we may tap the markets. But I think it also depends on whether or not this thing is an RTO or not. So it gets complicated quite quickly. But what we would -- with the larger transactions, we would always require a shareholder vote. And as part of that process, we've offered the ability of our shareholders to finance the deal or part finance the deal as well. One of the good things about debt is that, that leverage does help create that accretion to shareholders. And we are always concerned with dilution, so all the analysis goes through every line of the P&L effectively to make sure that we're accretive on all of those lines. So even if we are going to issue equity, there will be definite accretion available to all of the existing shareholders.

Next question is from Peter. He's saying, with copper demand closely tied to electrification trends, how does CAML view the copper price outlook for 2025 and 2026? And how could this influence your operational priorities?

Well, Peter, thanks for the question. I think none of us are absolute fundies or experts on the copper market. But we believe that the long-term demand for copper is robust. The volatility in between, over the next year, who knows? I think what our engineers globally have been able to do is actually bring new supply to the market to meet with demand. And there is -- when the copper prices get really high, we do see a certain amount of thrifting and some substitution. So what we generally do is just take what we call street consensus, which is the median of what all of the copper analysts do, and we use that in our budgeting and planning going forward. But in terms of Kounrad, as I said earlier, we've really optimized that asset. And I think generating more copper quickly actually comes with more risk than we'd like to bear. So I think at the moment, we're just keeping that operation as stable as we can. And we're lucky that we're low cost, so we're going to make profits regardless of what the copper price does.

And the next question is from Simon, which I can probably help with is, would the Board, in order to keep the share count stable, consider having the company buy back the shares issued for employee compensation? And the simple answer to that is yes, we would and we do. In fact, we recently changed our accounting policy such that we typically cash settle more than equity settle those. When we come to looking at employee option exercises, we take things into account such as the prevailing share price versus the value that we see in the business and any dilution that would come in that regard, the cash position that we have, the fact that we've got no debt, and we take all that into account when we come to make our decision. But yes, quite frequently, in the recent past, we have cash settled rather than equity settled. Our next question is -- give me one second. Our next question, sorry, is from [ Stoyan ] who asks if we have any plans to manage the volatility or constant price increase of electricity price in North Macedonia and the regional market by investing in solar power plants in North Macedonia.

Yes. Thanks for the question, [ Stoyan ]. I think, look, the electricity price in Northwestern is actually priced off an exchange in Hungary, and it is heavily tied to the European electricity prices. We have seen a little bit of volatility there, but the prices that we're receiving right now -- or the prices that we're paying right now, at least, are acceptable. If we got a contract in at a slightly lower price than where we are, we might consider locking it in. But at the moment, again, it's probably better to -- sorry, the prices that are available on a fixed rate are actually not attractive relative to what the spot prices are. I think that is partly a function of the volatility of those prices. So we'll be watching it carefully. And if we can fix at a decent rate, we may. And the other question is solar. We have started some investigations into solar. It's very difficult to build a solar array at the Sasa mine itself because of the topography there. So it would be a case of maybe acquiring land further afield, building a solar array there, selling into the grid and then buying back from the grid at some point. So it is quite a complex situation, but it is something we have looked into.

Our next question is regarding, can the Board explain how share options are aligned to shareholders? And that's really -- I think that's a question really related to the share price performance in the recent past and in terms of the quantum of the share options, which have been issued.

Sure. So the whole package is very well sort of explained in the annual accounts, and I encourage you to have a look at it. But what we receive is related to our salaries. It's a function of our salaries and the prevailing share price. And the notional there is, I think, it's 1.5x for directors, executive directors, that we get paid in terms of that. So if the share price is down, yes, we may receive more options, but that effectively aligns us more greatly with the shareholders and encourages us even more to get them up. There are performance conditions involved with these things and part of the performance condition is the share price itself. So 75% of the vesting conditions to these options relates directly to the share price and total shareholder returns. So if the share price doesn't perform well enough, then the number of options through the vesting period is actually reduced.

The final question I've got here is any plans for share buybacks and smaller dividends?

Look, the capital allocation is always a big topic at our Board discussions, and Nick can chime in if he likes here, but it's always something that we do discuss. At the moment, the dividend is actually slightly outside of policy. I think in the last count, it was 63% of free cash flow rather than the 50% that the policy allows. And we believe that is still the most efficient way of returning capital to our shareholders. We've always got an eye on the share price. And if we do, in the future, see an opportunity and more value in buying back shares, then we may do that. But at the moment, the priority is that business development and preserving cash for that. In the light of what we're trying to do with the business, we'll keep with the dividend policy rather than the share buybacks.

Okay. That's all the questions that we have to answer today. So I'll hand back to Nick for any closing comments for the AGM.

I want to thank the executive management of the company. We've had a very successful financial year last year, in 2024. We've got a very exciting year ahead of us. We've got lots of capital programs that are finishing off at Sasa. And I think for the shareholders, stick with us, it's going to be interesting. We're going to continue to try and add value through our existing operations. And hopefully, something new will come along that everybody will support us in our endeavors. But with that, I'd like to finish the meeting. Thank you.

Thank you very much indeed to the Board of Central Asia Metals. And for those online, we'll now redirect you for your feedback. Good morning to you.