KEFI Gold and Copper Plc (KEFI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the KEFI Gold and Copper plc Post-AGM Investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position, given the attendance we have on today's call, however, the company can review your questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. Just to say that Harry and the management team are presenting live from Ethiopia, and we have experienced a few connection issues this morning. If Harry does disconnect, I will jump back in and allow him some time to reconnect. With that said, Harry, if I may hand over to you, and good morning to everybody.

Good morning. Can you hear me clearly, Mark?

I can say, yes.

Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you for joining. Let me just say that we're sitting in Ethiopia, where we have a number of shareholders present, and we have a whole full agenda for these few days and other stakeholders, including our banks may join this session and listen in, physically walking into the room shortly. So if you hear a bit of background noise just bear with us, but we're sort of rattling up various stakeholder meetings and formalities and so on in the country, as we speak. The first slide I'd like to turn to is Slide #3, Annual Meeting. We just closed the Annual Meeting of KEFI. There were a number of resolutions, which were passed 90% to 94% votes and we bid farewell to retiring non-Executive Director, Mark Tyler, who's been very supportive all the way through our dealings with banks. And he, in fact, was the Head of Mining Finance for one of the largest African banks and has been quite a strong guide and mentor as we work through with our -- to banks to where we've got to now, which is in, I think, the final stages. Corporate reorganizations. We've been dealing with in Ethiopia. We've had a registered branch in the Ethiopia for the holding company, but that needs to be incorporated for some of the financing closings that we will undertake here. And that's proceeding. And as I've mentioned, we have other meetings taking place over these couple of days last week. We had site visits and meetings with local government agencies and community this week, it's with banks and other financiers. Next slide, please, Mark. Now it's hard to describe when we've been at it for so long and shareholders have had to be so patient for so long. It's hard to describe the difference in atmosphere of Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia with that of distant countries. But it's the same atmosphere as it is today in Western Australia, only here, people feel like they're missing out and they're scrambling to get on board. And if you look at that table, you'll see there what's happened to the exports of those few metals just in the last short period. And that's quite a remarkable change. Some of it is price effect because prices are now at very high levels. Some of it is a volume effect. And here in Ethiopia, we obviously are involved with gold and about to start the Tulu Kapi project. But we also have been pegging in the other metals as shown on the screen. It's premature to talk about them. It's early days, but we've been pegging quite deliberately whilst the rest of the world was sort of looking the other way. And it's being deliberately done because we think that this boom that's occurring and it's highlighted by those statistics in Western Australia will occur in Ethiopia. In fact, before Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, it's more visible because of the promotion in Ethiopia, it will be more real in the next few years because there's a backlog of development projects sitting around, waiting for development. That is not the case in Saudi Arabia. As we all know, it takes a long time to go from a discovery to a development to an operation and that will happen faster in Ethiopia because there's a backlog of projects to start up, [indiscernible] being one of them. And the fact that we, as a company, have sort of cleared the path on some of the regulatory issues, is allowing other people to be able to jump in around us or behind us or whatever. So it is quite an unusual atmosphere. Here, we have -- we have more shareholders in the room. They're all linked to the company, but more shareholders in the room to turn up to an English meeting. And we have a dozen bankers upstairs, who are working sidiously to get the show on the road. We're with the Mines Minister this morning, at 8 in the morning, meeting with the Finance Minister and the Central Bank Head. This is sort of how to put it an intense sort of all hands on deck atmosphere, which is quite staggeringly different to the atmosphere on the junior mining market on stock markets. It's quite remarkable, but I'm sure the stock markets will react and turn for the better eventually. Next slide, please, Mark. Now I'm sure those of you who follow the company in the past, have seen this map before. But all we've done is to intersperse amongst the dots of where we are active to intersperse some of the names of some of the companies that have come into the scene. And here we are today, with the Minister of Mines this morning, and he was quick to point out that there are now yellow machines driving around and doing work at a [indiscernible] on the border as if to say why are you already driving around yellow machines and so on. He's -- he wants to get on with it. The reality is that he knows as we know that we have a community to move before we can put earthmoving gear onto place. But be that as it may, the fact is that it's happening and in the north of the country, in Tigray, which was actually a conflict zone only a few years ago, which is now a very quiet zone, another project as container loads of gear turning up. So it's starting to happen in Ethiopia. And in Saudi, I was there for a couple of weeks up until about a week ago, and I made the point of me being in lots of lots of the financial community in Saudi for the very first time. It hasn't been a priority up until that moment because I've only just opened the file on mining. Up until recent months, there was a no-go zone for the institutions, the family officers of Saudi other than inside Saudi through our partnership with the Al-Rashid family. And they're all, if you like, not so much under instruction, but official guidance is to move into mining, not just to replace the reliance on hydrocarbons, but there's a whole Western push happening. It's quite palpable. And it's emanating from the White House and from the EU and from other leadership centers in the West for the West to trigger a bit of a scramble to put it's foot on particularly critical metals to secure a supply chain for the transformation that's occurring in the world's electrification or stall of electrification. And that's now coming in earnest, both in the capital allocation of the region and in the opening up of licensing and prospecting and development in the region. And these things don't happen overnight, but it is happening now. And I think the capacity of the company to align itself with regional investors has taken a step or two up which brings me to our second board change today, Addis Alemeyahou has joined our Board today. And whilst if you like, we're not quite finished with the banking work, it's sort of done and dusted in principle sense and it's the rest of it is should be procedural. And the alignment with community with the public messaging with the regional investors, with the government is now a numeral owner for the company. Banking, certainly, we have to finish it off and we will. But now we're spreading our wings into regional stakeholders, regional alliances and that's where you see Addis on our Board. Thank you, Mark. Next slide. I think many of you know most of this, but just to skip over it, the Tulu Kapi to be followed by 2 development assets in Saudi is the position we have, the result of 15 years of being on the ground. And I actually don't know any other company that has that position today in the Arabian-Nubian Shield, having 3 advanced assets, one shovel-ready, the 2 coming on behind. I think today, it's unique. Funding flexibility, the arrangements we make to prepare our in-country holding companies and in-country operating companies to admit alliances, has proven already. We have equity investors in both countries already spending money and the project financing is against these subsidiaries. And in both countries, both Saudi and Ethiopia, there is a move for public listings, stock exchange, expansions, IPOs. And again, ironically, whilst the Saudi market is an open market. It's not a closed market like Ethiopia. The Saudi market is actually, I think, not going to move as quickly as the Ethiopian market for the mining sector. I'm sorry, just to kind of question for me, you would let those people in if they want to -- and it's because I've said it before, and we're now starting to see it on the mining side, when Ethiopia unifies and gets cracking on a particular strategic priority, it really does get cracking. And the creation of Ethiopian Airlines into Africa's leading airline is a case in point. The flower industry is a case in point, Africa's largest hydro scheme is a case in point. And now I think you'll see that sort of energy directed at the mining sector. And I think the way we're shaping up and the closeness of our collaboration with the financial regulatory authorities is such that we'll see us to be able to take advantage of the Saudi stock -- sorry, Ethiopian Stock Exchange, perhaps involvement allowing locals to participate more directly in the projects, I think we'll see that before we see it in Saudi because it's more happening here. Next slide, please, Mark. Basically, I think those of you who follow the company know, we're a $50 million market cap under [ $1 ] per share, the sort of basic statistics about underlying value indicates it should be about 10x that or more as these assets derisk and come on stream. And there's a sort of a very modest allocation of value to the Saudi assets, they're not NPV basis or anything like that until they've got a complete bankable study as we do in Ethiopia. Next slide, please, Mark. The current priorities, and I'll just walk through them to give you a bit of a feel for what's happening on the ground. There were 3 critical conditions that we highlighted publicly at the beginning of '22, when Ethiopia lifted the state of emergency because of internal conflict having subsided in early '22, we had a big syndicate meeting, and we laid out 3 critical conditions for the Tulu Kapi project to go into development. One was security. Two is foreign exchange exemption from controls and three was what's called country membership for -- one of our 2 banks. One, has these membership protections and the other one asked for the same thing. As we speak, the foreign exchange control came through, exemption came through in October, and the bank that already has the country membership went through its formal approvals and issued Board ratification confirmations within a few months. The government has been stepping up security over these months in preparation for mobilization. Some of us, including myself, were out there last week, and I can report that the only words I hear from the community were jobs, jobs and jobs. I just really -- every time I spoke to anybody, they just wanted this to start, so we could generate employment. And one of the reasons that the banks are in town this week is the formalities -- the completion of formalities on the country membership. And that's in train. And there are lots of meetings with lawyers and ministers and so on to sort that out. So whilst in [ Hawiah ], I put it, day-to-day terms, it's sort of a grinding process. But in the overall scheme of things, I think you'd say, from the point of view of multilateral banking, a country that's starting a mining sector, it's going more or less according to how we set out. The equity ranking note. That's got 2 or 3 different shakes to it. And the one thing that has happened there is that we're looking at involving more locals in that and for a longer-term note that we had in mind previously, which is a good thing, which is one of the reasons we're incorporating the local holding company so that those notes or bonds can be issued from that company. But that's shaping up quite well. The share capital is being spent. So the Ethiopian government, as a partner, is already spending. That was number one. The lead banker was number two. The co-banker is moving along now in tandem as security and country membership is sorted. And now the local investors, including subsidiaries of multinationals and locals are engaging on the note to settle that down. So it's what you call a conventional waterfall of commitments as the government shows its commitment. Number one, lead bank shows its commitment. Number two, co-banker shows its commitment and it flows. It's just a normal sequence in any conventional project financing. The early works were on the ground. As I said, inspection number one, for independent bankers advisers was last week, and there will be monthly inspections or thereabouts going forward as we see the whole process unfold on the ground. Saudi Arabian projects, there's been well over 100,000 meters of drilling over the last couple of years, a huge drilling program, and those projects are being pulled into shape for a stage development approach. The next sort of chapter of management has been introduced. There's been a few changes there as we now move into more development planning mode. Development financing will be a lot easier over there because the Saudi Industrial Development Fund was instructed by the government to allocate as a priority to the mining sector, I think, approximately 3 years ago. And up until now, they've deployed the capital into the mining sector of exactly 0, which tells you how many mining projects are available to back in Saudi Arabia. Ours will be amongst the first, if not the first taken back because nobody else is ready. Expanding the project pipeline, I don't want to dwell on that today because it's sort of cart before the horse. We really need to get the show on the road with Tulu Kapi first. But I do assure you that there's an expanding pipeline of opportunities and including in the critical metal space, not that we're going to set ourselves up as a company that's going to start up all these projects ourselves, but it's our job to set up mineral resources in our countries that we're experts in now and to bring in strategic alliances around each project that allows each project to get the right sort of support and leadership in backing it needs, including in the lithium space and other similar high-priority metals for the whole shift in the world's electricity generation movement. Next slide, please, Mark. I'm sure those of you who follow us have seen this several times, and we're still a company at the bottom left of those valuation slides. And all I can say is that when -- in my view, when we demonstrate a few of the closings happening over the next few months with different financing components and then the final sign-off for launch -- for the full launch, just the natural scheme of things will be that the market capital adjusts itself as the projects are seen to derisk. Next slide, please, Mark. Now I won't go through the whole deck because really, it would be good to allocate time for questions, and most of you are aware. But what I will do is highlight 1 or 2 things that I think are worth highlighting because it's quite at the heart of how we plan things. Next slide, please, Mark. On the far right-hand side, you've got a banker's deck of numbers at $1,550 gold. And it shows how much money is left over for the shareholders if gold was $1,550 flat for the next 10 years. And it shows a very humble return to shareholders at the bottom of that, having serviced all the secured debt and unsecured debt. That's how it's been designed. It's designed for this secured debt to be covered at $1,200 or $1,300. And the whole of that package to be covered and as you move away from the right-hand column and you go back towards the left, 2 things happen. One is, you go away from just focusing on the open pit, which is the right-hand side, only the open pit, which the bank is focused only on the open pit as the bankable project today. And on the left-hand side, we introduced what does it look like when you start to recognize the contribution of a couple of things. One is, we will bring on the underground, and we've just cut a little contribution from the underground there based on very preliminary numbers, but it exists. It's an ore body. It's not going to be ignored. It will be processed and an owner should know what it might look like, and that's what those numbers do. Secondly, we will be refinancing. In fact, the bank is a standing outside having coffee, I can say this loudly. We will be refinancing. We're not going to be paying these expensive start-up financing loans for as soon as we're in production, we will be planning to refinance with much lower cost of debt. And when you put those 2 factors into the thing, the numbers start standing up pretty impressively, and depending upon one's opinion about the gold price, you can pick which column you want to look at. But there will be underground mining. There will be refinancing once we're up and running and settled down in production, and the numbers are incredibly impressive. Next slide, please, Mark. Expected milestones ahead. This list is actually -- behind each topic is an action plan and a [indiscernible] chart with lots of interconnected dots and streams of activity, which is what we're already talking about and planning and pushing and shoving about lawyers, banks, community, security, all those things. And we're just chugging through it in -- with intense pushing and shoving. I know it sounds like paperwork or administration, but I can assure you when you've got hundreds of people, well, thousands of people to move in an area that was -- had a breakdown of law and order a few years ago, you take no shortcuts on security, you protect the community. It takes a lot of hard work for our team to preserve our record of never having been -- never having suffered a fatality or an injury as individuals in the organization, and we protect ourselves in the community with the highest of standards. And the same sort of discipline carries across all the activities. And you can take those shortcuts and we are taking the shortcuts, and I think that's why the banks and others are here because they know they can rely on us. So the energy is palpable. The progress is grinding through it, and it all finishes up so that we can trigger this thing around October. Next slide, please, Mark. I won't dwell on resource reserve. You've all seen this before. Next slide, please, Mark. Next slide, please, Mark. We've been engaging with our principal contractors for the construction like a podium. And there's a whole bunch of ideas on projects to speed up the project or derisk the project and free spend on the project and all those things, the normal competition for improvement, and we'll just work our way through those things over the next few months as we lead up to project launch. Next slide, please, Mark. That's a standard slide, which just reiterates that how does a small company started 20 years ago to go prospecting in the Arabian-Nubian Shield, how does it garner the support of major banks and Al-Rashids and governments. It's because everything we do, we get independent sign-off on. It's not just backing people, but it's independent certification of everything.

Please stay with us, ladies and gentlemen, as Harry Reconnect.

Cut and thrust of tendering. You don't buy licenses in Saudi, but you tender for them and you compete based on the quality of your proposed program. And because of the information we have on the whole scene there, we've assembled a pretty good package, but we're out there always trying to improve it and broaden it. But we're very well positioned, I think. We have basically 4 project areas apart from the 2, we have now in feasibility study. They won't all survive and there'll be others added. That's just the name of the game as you assemble your portfolio. But there's nobody as advanced as us, literally. It's just us. Mark. Jibal Qutman, we've only really tested about 1/4 of the strike there, low-grade deposits. But she'll stand up, and we've only tested a quarter of it. It will increase in scale quite a lot. We're not there yet, but we'll get there, at least one side. Next slide, please. We are a bigger beast. Ivanhoe, with its Typhoon geophysics blanketed all the areas around us, looking for the mother load at great depth. We're focused on shallower areas where you can develop and make money out of it in the short term, but it's a hard area, and it's on the back of our work. At the moment, the drilling we've done is effectively converted, most of it into indicated or measured so that we can convert into reserve as we finish the studies and then move into development. Next slide, please, Mark. That just shows you the areas we followed at depth, the darker blue at the surface, the open pitable areas. This is now -- this project is now the equivalent of about 2.5 million ounces of gold, this one. KEFI's interest in it is 1/4 of that. And if it doubles, it will start to compete with the scale of our interest in Tulu Kapi. But I suspect Tulu Kapi will also expand its resource over time as well. But we're now starting to see a healthy competition between which projects can contribute the most fit KEFI shareholders in the longer term. Next slide, please, Mark. These milestones coming up on Saudi. There will be quite a lot of announcements as the drilling results gets pulled into shape and interpretation and preliminary conclusion on the studies or be quite a string of things that we'll have to announce over the course of the year from month-to-month and so on. Next slide, please, Mark. It's still the case that Saudi, remarkable as it sounds, a company, albeit in production with resources very similar to how we and Jibal Qutman, much smaller -- a bit higher grade, but much smaller and in production is capped at $1.6 billion, which tends to suggest that like if you just draw a line between that number and our assets in Saudi suggest that our interest in Saudi are worth over $1 billion. Now I'm not suggesting that's the case. But it's just an indicator of how hot the appetite is in Saudi for when we have got these assets in a good shape for development and production, how relatively easy will be to get backing in the country as it starved of opportunity to develop its mining sector. Next slide, please, Mark. Okay. So I took 33 minutes instead of my planned 30 minutes. And I'd like to turn to questions now, please, Mark, if you wouldn't mind reading them.

Yes, of course, Harry. [Operator Instructions] Harry, you did receive a number of questions pre-submitted, and you have very kindly kind of put those into areas, hopefully, to give the broadest context. The first question is really around Ethiopia. When will the independent security adviser for the banks inspect the site?

Well, the first inspection was last week. Yes, why don't you? Eddy, the COO, Eddy Solbrandt is with me. He is literally in a session with the bank probably on that topic. So why don't you pick that up?

So we had a first preliminary visit to site last week by the independent adviser for the banks. And we've now planned a final visit by the banks and their technical advisers on -- in the first week of September, no later than the 7. That visit will be comprehensive, but it'll look at social, security and environment. Now in order to get to that visit, the biggest ticket that is outstanding, is a joint report headed by the bank's independent security advisers on the logistics between port and site. Now the good thing is we've done most of the work on that already. So we'll be handing it over to the advisers in the course of this or next week, and they'll be working with our logistics partners to finalize that report before the end of August, actually well before the end of August. We've made that a high priority.

Yes, of course. Next question, when do you think both banks will have approved rather than just one?

I can talk to that as well, if you want Harry. Having just come out of this, the session that I've just come out over the last several hours is working to coordinate the banks and tick AGM effort towards financing and a whole range of moving parts that needed to be coordinated and to settle down some in great, great detail. And we've come up with a preliminary date that the banks have committed to, of September -- the first week of September after that visit. The banks are now fine-tuning those dates because there's some internal shuffling of agendas to happen. But they've committed before the Ethiopian New Year, which was on the 11th of September.

Yes. I'll just add, it is being completely open straight up as we always are. But these are enormous banks, $15 billion banks. We have a multitude of issues to work their way through. So please don't hound us on the 8th of September, say, why didn't the bank approved it yesterday. We don't control them. We facilitate for them. And what we're being is very open to you that these people are here, they're serious, no one's mucking around. We went at the site last week, they're planning the next visit, so on and so forth will the minister and I were punching each other around in front of everybody this morning, Eddy and now everyone is pushing and shoving. But don't despair if a giant banking organization slips a week. You just shouldn't do that because we're not their masters, if I can put it that way. And this is a huge effort. But we'll just tell you the straight-up answer as presented to us, and we'll pass it on to you candidly and transparently. Thank you, Mark.

Let's turn to the next question. When will the main local equity investor approve?

Well, I already did. Well, next week, if you talk about the government they're already spending their money. If you're talking about the private sector, they already did. They're refreshing it. They're coming to our sessions these days. They're basically waiting for everything to get going. So they already have, both the government and the private sector lead have already happened. And they're just waiting for security to be signed off and the banks to do the various exercises that Eddy was just touching on. So that's done.

The next question is, when will the equity risk note investors approve?

Well, it's a normal -- how would I put it? There's a normal cascade here. Anyone involved in any financial market will say, when is Fred gone, when is [indiscernible]? And you'll say, right. Fred's on last week, you'll say, okay, I'll go next week. They look for the leader. It's -- I'm not criticizing, but people will look for the lead investor to go first. It's just human nature and particularly with a complex topic like this. So I think they're the last [indiscernible] of the rank because they're the higher risk capital, and they want to see that the banks are signed off and the lead equity is signed off. And then I say, right, we're on. And that's -- we're jocking them. The terms are being ironed out. We've got fallback positions. We've got Middle East capital wanting to deploy if the locals don't want to take it all up. So we've got ourselves covered. But literally, in any financial transaction, the leader has to go first, just like KEFI had to lead with its money to get the project at this stage. And that's why KEFI ends up owning 80-odd percent of the project. We're now -- has to put up a relatively small, if any, amount of capital going forward and largely that is for add-on projects in the future. So the sequencing is quite normal. You, as investors, those of you who are studying the company have the opportunity to form a view as to coming in and out of the company around different moments in time. We, as a management, just keep our noses to what he said to the grindstone. And we're just bashing away at it every day. We don't go in and out of it. We're there every day. But I can assure you that what's happening on the finance side is just normal sequencing, waiting for the lead bank [indiscernible], now the second bank. Waiting for the lead equity, okay. Now to lead the second equity, and it's just normal human behavior.

That's great. Next question relates to the recent site visit, one of the investors saw a photo relating to that and asked what's the boot of the community and what are the key issues you're facing?

[indiscernible] Is -- I sort of want to see it to believe it because I've been sort of hearing about it for so long and they are excited. They're excited to see me because I am told, well, if Harry's turned up, it must be happening. We're excited to see the leaders of government. I just want to see it happening. The anxiety for it to happen is palpable. And I feel really -- personally, I feel really bad for the community that they've had to wait so long. It's not what they're doing that the project was stalled. And they sort of think that politicians and business people owe them better than that, so I can put it that way. But by the same token, as I said to them, without wanting to sound critical, I just want to show you that we're open people. We talk to everybody completely openly. And the community said, well, why, why, why and jobs, jobs, jobs. And I said, well, when I first came here, I never worried about security and the community was telling me that you would protect the project no matter what. Then we didn't have to worry about security or anything like that. Well, that wasn't true, was it? Not blaming the community for that, but now we're going build some braces because the community can't protect the project. And you can't deploy. I explain this all this to them. You cannot deploy hundreds of millions of dollars, 1,000 people, unless it's absolutely built some braces and we treat it as red zone security now even though it just flashes red periodically or occasionally. And I think that's understood and accepted. That's the reality. But the prevailing thing is just get on with it, tough feeling. No?

Great. Just a few more questions on Ethiopia before we turn to Saudi. What's the move to the government? And what are the key issues there?

Why haven't you started? What do you need, so you can start. No time for any excuse from anybody who's not performing, replace them and get on with it. That's the mood. The mood is all go, go, go and what do you need? And you would have been taken aback to see the government support for just that simple visit the other day. We had a major military helicopter to put it out disposal for our trip with a dozen people. We had protection and you couldn't ask for more support from the government really.

I think a real sense of urgency is now there. It is to make this happen.

Yes. I think that's -- and pressure, right? This morning, there was a bit of justling between the banks and the Minister, too. Everyone is justling each other to get it going. And I don't think anyone in government is doing anything other than that. Those days, a couple of years ago of -- how would I put, threats and so on. Today, it's just all positive pressure to get this thing going.

It turns nicely to kind of the next question, which I think you just touched on, but what's the security situation like it to look [indiscernible] what's the key, I guess, to your success there?

As I said just a minute ago, there's a real sense of urgency from the government. They've provided us and continue to provide us with an unparalleled amount of security. Now for obvious reasons, I'm not going to give you exact numbers of people that are out there, but it's more than 10x that we've never had before. And they're looking at not just the MLA, but perimeter security beyond that. So it's the best since -- and I've been here 6.5 years now, it's the best and the most comprehensive security from the government's perspective that I've seen in 6.5 years.

Right. Let's just turn to the final question on Ethiopia. Can you elaborate on the other exploration targets that you've been assembling around the area?

Well, the most obvious one is the proximal areas that we won our areas back. There were some Shenanigans a few years ago and threat against our proximal licenses, and we want them back, and we'll push hard to get them back, looking for settled up deposits around to Tulu Kapi. That's the main thing, Mark. But there are some others that I mentioned earlier, lithium, copper, nickel and gold and we're -- it's premature to go into details on any one thing, but we've been pegging busily and the head of the team that does that is sitting in the room, he was the father of Tulu Kapi, Dr. Kebede. He's now going to be the father of the next Tulu Kapi. He does his job very well, and he's in the room here, and that's his mission to open up opportunities for us elsewhere in the country. Thanks, Mark.

That's great. All right. Well, let's switch gears, let's turn to Saudi Arabia. When were the JQ and Hawiah feasibility studies yield some development scenarios you can explain more publicly?

I would say over the course of the rest of the year. They're a bit tricky. They've been a bit elusive on us. A combination of grade and metallurgical recovery has been the elusive thing. And having drilled the initial discovery zones out for reserve determination and mine planning, we can quite go to town on them now. But optimizing them is really why we've refreshed leadership that we brought an extremely proficient development expertise in terms of those types of projects to -- for the next stage, if I can put it that way. And that's what's the name of the game now. It's just optimizing the sequencing of development. So over the course of the year, I think, is reasonable.

Right. Given that you've done over 100,000 meters of drilling, there must have been an enormous amount of results and I guess, lessons learned. I wonder if you have any color around that.

It didn't change anything from the point of view of changing the nature of the beast. It confirmed the nature of the beast, both grade and shape, structure, metallurgy. Nothing emerged, which was a surprise. So I don't expect surprises just expect them to keep getting bigger and wait for us to optimize how we tackle them in a development sense. So we've got enough on the table now, enough meat to sort of bite in to, to get development scenarios mapped out properly. And the beast is pretty well understood now. It's just that the beast is in sort of double and triple that it's going to happen.

How are we looking in Saudi as regards to the cost of the works to date versus the results?

In a broad [indiscernible], you'd say excellent because we have about 3.3 million ounces of gold equivalent, putting aside that we think they'll more than double. And if you convert that into dollars per ounce in the ground that we've spent, it's a very low number. Off the top of my head, I can't think where it might be $15 or something. So in that respect, it's been an incredibly evaluating exercise. But of course, we need to convert it into development propositions and a finance development and so on. But I think I look at what's being spent on Tulu Kapi and compare it to NPVs and you see pretty impressive value add. The stock market doesn't reflect it, but the intrinsic worth of the asset reflection. And the same is going to happen in Saudi Arabia. I'd have to say that the -- again, this isn't in any way sour grapes or anything like that. But the business model of the stock market to fund exploration and development is a rather broken model now, you'd have to say. I mean it's -- we've done it, and we're there and we'll move forward. But we're one of the very small minority of companies are aimed that have survived in that sector since we formed. And the private equity approach or the private approach or the end user financing, the mining side approach clearly is going to -- is taking over in this sector. And it's because there's this huge lag between what happens on the stock market and what's happening on the ground. The only good news is that if you've survived the last [indiscernible] many years or if you're getting involved today, when the stock pop, it settles pop impressively. But the business model of funding exploration and development through the stock market is a rather broken model now. I suppose until the market turns and there's a bull market and everyone will forget about that, but that's what it is at the moment, to my [indiscernible].