OceanaGold Corporation (OGC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation]

Good morning, everyone. I'm excited to welcome you to OceanaGold's 2024 Investor Day. I'm Rebecca Harris, Director of Investor Relations. We are very pleased to have you join us here today, both those of you in the room and those of you joining us virtually via the webcast. Today's presentation is being recorded, and a replay and transcript will be available on our website as well as the presentation. I'd like to acknowledge the indigenous peoples in all jurisdictions that host our operations and offices. We aim to demonstrate our respect for indigenous peoples through our actions and commitments to responsible business practices. As we begin, please note that today's presentation includes forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties set forth on this slide. I encourage you to read these at your convenience. This presentation also contains references to non-IFRS measures, including EBITDA, free cash flow and all-in sustaining costs, which may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. So please refer to our annual and quarterly MD&As for more information. You will hear us refer to Wharekirauponga, our project in New Zealand by its full name today or by WKP for short. Additionally, a subsidiary which holds the Didipio Mine is now listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange under the name OceanaGold Philippines. You may hear us refer to it by its ticker today, OGP. Finally, all amounts today are discussed in U.S. dollars, and we ask if those in the room could please put their phones on silent. We have a great morning plan for you today, and we will showcase some of our accomplished leaders of the executive team. In a minute, I will turn it over to Gerard Bond, our President and Chief Executive Officer, to give you an overview of the business and the strategy going forward. That will be followed by messages from both our Chief Sustainability Officer and our Chief People and Technology Officer. Next, we will bring our 2 Chief Operating Officers up to walk you through the strategic position of each of our 4 operating mines. We have a short break planned for the middle of the event, which will give those in the room an opportunity to use the restroom or grab a coffee. And then we will kick off the second half of the event with some discussions around our project studies and pipeline as well as exploration. The last item on the agenda is a chat with our CFO; and then finally, some discussion about growth in M&A. At the end of the presentation, we have an opportunity for Q&A. Questions can be asked from both those in the room as well as those of you who are joining us online. If you are here in person, we ask that you hold your questions until the end or submit them online at any time during the presentation. And we'll have an opportunity to get to them during that session. With that, I'm very excited to welcome Gerard to the stage.

Thank you, Rebecca. And welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. This is OceanaGold's First Investor Day for a number of years, and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to provide you with a broad overview of where we've come from, where we are today, but most importantly, where the company is heading. I'm also looking forward to you meeting and hearing from the executive team, who lead this company with me. I'm just going to begin, as everyone will do today with a brief self introduction. I'm the President and CEO of the company. I have been since April 2022. Prior to that, I was at Newcrest Mining for 10 years as Finance Director and CFO. Prior to that, prior to Newcrest, I was at BHP for around 15 years. Where I held a number of corporate roles in M&A, treasury, HR. I also spent time in the aluminium and nickel business and briefly led the nickel business. And in that 15-year period, I had global roles, I experienced a number of cycles and saw a lot of change. I love the resources industry. I especially love the gold mining industry and it's a great joy as well as honor and privilege to be leading OceanaGold at this time. OceanaGold today is in an excellent position. 2024 is a pivotal year, it's a year where we are projecting to generate substantial free cash flow, advancing the growth potential that we have and position ourselves to improve returns to shareholders. As was mentioned in the opening video, and it accompanies all of our press releases, these words at the top are what we say in May. OceanaGold is a growing intermediate gold and copper producer, committed to safely and responsibly maximizing the generation of free cash flow from our operations and delivering strong returns for our shareholders. Each of those words matter and reflects what the Board and management of this company focused on. We're a global company with 4 operating assets in 3 countries. We have resources of 8.3 million ounces and reserves of 4.9 million ounces. For decades, the company has explored, developed, acquired and operated gold and copper mines. And it's done so safely and responsibly with an excellent safety record, a record of operating to the highest environmental standards and being very well engaged with and supported by our host communities. The head office is in Vancouver as the parent company is Canadian, and we're listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Haile is our largest producer, and it's our primary source of production growth in the coming 3 years due to the ramp-up of Horseshoe underground and expanded access to good grades of ore from the lead better open pit. It's prime to generate substantial free cash flow from the second half of 2024 onwards. Haile has further upside in the form of exploration potential underground and that would have the impact of extending the mine life and increasing production in much the same way that the recent declaration of Palomino reserves as reflected in the technical report in March show. Didipio produces both gold and copper at a very low all-in sustaining cost. And as a result, is highly profitable and highly cash generative. It's a tremendous asset with lots of upside, both operationally and from an exploration perspective. OceanaGold is a great brand in the Philippines. We're really well placed to consider select opportunities to grow there. It's geologically exciting, and we have the brand success case and presence to apply to other opportunities in the Philippines should they present. Macraes is the foundation asset of the company. And it's the second largest producer. And what it represents is tremendous upside and leverage to higher gold prices. It also has the potential to extend its operating life well beyond its reserve life. Waihi is our smallest producer, but close to the high-grade WKP deposit, which has the potential to be a much larger deposit and a district scale play, which could provide high-grade ore feed to Waihi for decades. And this is in a district that has to date produced 8 million ounces of gold. As mentioned previously, our preferred areas of growth are in our current time zones with a particular focus on those jurisdictions that we presently operate in: North America, New Zealand and the Philippines as well as Australia. It's worth making the point that OceanaGold has existed for decades. With its foundation asset Macraes commencing operation in December 1990. Didipio was acquired in 2006, and it was built by the company with the commercial production in the open pit delivered in 2013, and the underground mine was constructed in 2015. 2015 was a transformational year for the company, in which Waihi was acquired from Newmont and Haile was also acquired having the effect of doubling the asset base of the company. The company went through a challenging period in 2019 through to 2021. This was due to the renewal of the Didipio's underlying permit being delayed. Haile was underperforming and its expansion permits were also delayed, and there were a number of leadership changes. I joined as President and CEO in April 2022, and the last 2 years have been very busy indeed. Today, in 2024, we are on the cusp of a major inflection point in free cash flow generation. This inflection is driven by near-term production growth of an organic nature achieved by the ramp to full run rates of the Haile underground mine and major stripping campaigns providing good access to good grade ore at both Macraes and Haile. This growth in production comes at the time of good metal prices. Our balance sheet has been strengthened by the repayment of debt, which positions OceanaGold well to drive shareholder returns by being able to invest in an attractive growth options and increase direct shareholder returns. So a quick recap on how we got to this great position over the last 2 years. We obtained the permits for Haile expansion and got going with first underground stope ore delivered to the mill in October 2023. Haile underground running at full speed together with improved access to the lead better open pit is what powers the near-term production growth of OceanaGold. We safely ramped up production at the Didipio. And Didipio outperformed its production guidance in 2023. Macraes achieved industry-leading low open pit mining costs, record milling rates and incredible rates of recovery from processing what is low-grade refractory ore to deliver above guidance production outcomes last year. From an exploration perspective, we've had tremendous success. We've had great progress at WKP, where we now have a measured and indicated resource of around 16 grams per tonne. This is an exciting exploration project, and we continue to drill to increase the result size. We also have released some really exciting drill results at Haile and Didipio, which highlight the longer-term potential of both those assets. In the past 2 years, we've safely delivered on group production guidance. We've generated over $100 million of free cash flow, and we've reduced the leverage ratio through the repayment of debt. We also just completed the listing of OceanaGold Philippines, which, together with the imminent receipt of proceeds from the sale of Blackwater has us expecting to be in a net cash position around the end of June, this June. From a leadership and governance perspective, we've refreshed the executive team with new talent, fresh perspectives and with the right leadership style. We've also attracted some seriously capable talent at senior management levels across our business in areas that really matter: mining, asset management, procurement, projects, environment, social performance, finance and people. And we've bolstered the site leadership teams with a combination of new hires and a number of well-earned promotions. In the same period, we've had board renewal with 2 very experienced technical directors joining the board. And finally, our actions have improved our [ nerve ], and we returned to paying dividends in 2023. Today, OceanaGold is one of the strongest near-term growth profiles of any multi-asset company in our industry. This is driven by the near-term progressive lift in all grade being fed to existing mills. And as such, it's low risk. The balance sheet is in a great position, and we expect it to strengthen further with the proceeds of asset sales and higher production from 2024 second half onwards at a time of good gold and copper prices. And we have a capable and aligned leadership team, who are energized by the potential of this business and who are collectively honored to lead tremendous people throughout the business. I've worked in global mining for 26 years, and I can honestly say that the culture and dedication of the people at OceanaGold is second to none, and it's going to get even better. This is an especially good time to be in the gold and copper business. Demand for physical gold remains robust out of China and India, and recent times has been characterized by the return of substantial central bank buying. Elevated levels of inflation have also assisted the demand for having a gold exposure. And on the supply side, as we know gold is hard to find. So prices have consequently risen. These dynamics are not expected to unwind soon. So each week, we are now seeing banks up there long-term gold forecast. The looming supply deficit in copper as a result of surging needs for electrification is well documented. So it's great to have the meaningful contribution of copper production from Didipio to our revenue line. With the exception of Megan Saussey, who's taken a well-earned vacation and Craig Feebrey, unfortunately, is ill today, you're going to meet the rest of the executive team today. Most of them will be up on the stage at one point or another. And for those of you in the room today, please take the opportunity in the break to meet the rest of the team. When the leadership team comes to the stage, they will each provide a snapshot of their career history. And together with their presentation, I'm confident that you will soon feel what I know, which is that OceanaGold has a very strong management team. It's deeply experienced, the team comes from a number of different international mining companies, each brings something different to the leadership or technical table and all of them are committed to the success of OceanaGold. OceanaGold has a talented and dedicated workforce and a fabulous culture. The culture was good when I got here, and it's improved further since. Employees really care about their sites, and the success of the business. And perhaps that's because most of our workforce live close to the operation. In my first year, I reviewed the purpose, vision and values of the company to ensure they reflected what our people felt and what inspired them. The company's purpose is clear and has not changed. We really do mine gold for a better future for our stakeholders. There was the opportunity to update the vision and values. And in doing this, I engage with people at all levels across the business. Taking their feedback into account to produce the vision and values that we have today. The net result is that the purpose, vision and values of this company today are very meaningful to our people and help guide them in their day-to-day work in a common way. Our strategy on a page was developed in my first 7 months of joining the company and was endorsed by the Board in December 2022. It has a very clear objective to increase and sustain higher value of OceanaGold chairs. We have 5 pillars and inside of each pillar are specific tactics and measures to determine how we're going in respect of each. This is a multi-year strategy as achieving success in each of these pillars takes time and hard work. And today, I'm really excited to be able to take you through at pillar in a bit more detail. Each pillar is important, but this first pillar is essential to being able to deliver on the other pillars. Investors will only trust management, if they can see that their assets are being safely and responsibly run and that management has the knowledge and skill to identify and deliver on what's possible from those assets. I'm pleased to say that OceanaGold has delivered on consolidated production guidance for the last 3 years and remains on track to do so for 2024. That's a real differentiator in our industry. We have a number of signature programs, which we've introduced, and we will stick with to deliver on this pillar. We have 2 key safety programs. We have a focus on asset management, we have a continuous improvement program, and we have a focus on procurement, all of which are directed to safely and responsibly maximize the amount of gold we produce at the lowest possible cost. OceanaGold is a truly unique growth profile. Unlocking the Haile underground and optimizing both the Haile and Macraes pits drives a 30% increase in production of gold over the next 3 years. This production growth rate is higher than the peer average, and it comes from organic low-risk growth. There are no costly or risky plant expense, just getting more high-grade ore to the mill. The projected increase in higher production and the fact that it is largely grade-driven is what helps drive down Haile projected all-in sustaining cost over the next 3 years. The second strategic pillar is to have a carrying inclusive and winning culture. The goal that we have is in the ground, and it can only be brought to surface and processed and sold through the efforts of people which is why our culture is so important. I'm delighted with the dedication and talent of our people. This exists -- we have great people at all operations and all sites, and they really care and want the business succeed. I think we have a great culture already, but we're looking to strengthen it even further. It underpins our ability to deliver today and also enables our ability to unlock the potential of this business in the future. Growing our reserve and resource base in a cost-effective way is key to creating value, and we can do this in a number of ways. Firstly, exploration. It's essential to creating value in our industry. We have great exploration potential at or near all of our existing operations. We have, in recent years, increased our resources at an average of $36 an ounce. So you can expect that we'll continue to invest in exploration. Secondly, technology and thinking differently. That can unlock tremendous value both in existing operations and when looking at how best to do pros check such as WKP. The fresh thinking that we brought into the company, together with the experience that we have of our long-standing employees has created a number of opportunities to unlock value across our business. And then there's the option to add other assets to our portfolio. This could be by buying an exploration play and early-stage entry, buying a development asset or an existing producer. We believe we are uniquely placed in our industry having no existential imperative to do inorganic growth because we have this strong existing organic growth pipeline. However, I believe we have an obligation to our shareholders to be alert to opportunities to create value this way. And we're equally mindful that value can be reserved by not doing bad M&A. Our discipline focused on value recreation and the strong existing organic growth pipeline means that we can take our time, be selective and only act when we see a clear pathway to value for OceanaGold's shareholders. We want OceanaGold to have a strong balance sheet, so it's able to fund itself and all of its growth opportunities. We never want to be forced into punitive lending arrangements or value-destroying royalty arrangements, which both erode shareholder returns. Today, we have a very straightforward capital structure, comprising only committed bank facilities, equipment leases and common shares. We have no onerous or constraining royalty streaming arrangements. At 31 March, we had low levels of net debt and a very low leverage ratio. And we expect to be in the net cash position around the end of this quarter. Being net cash is not a goal in and of itself, but it's a fantastic place to be, especially when we have all these growth options. We want this business to be able to fund itself. Together with the strong free cash flow outlook as projected by the analyst community using their prices or using spot prices, there is a tremendous near-term opportunity for us to increase returns to shareholders. The allocation of this projected free cash flow will take the falling forms. Firstly, we will continue to invest in growth options that have the potential for attractive returns. That can take the form of more spending in exploration when good exploration results encourage further expenditures. We also have a number of organic growth options to be funded, which we have yet to commit to, Palomino underground, the Didipio Mine development uplift in mining rates and WKP. We want to maintain a strong balance sheet so as to be able to take advantage of other opportunities and be resilient in the event of metal price volatility. We can look to increase dividends. And finally, we can look to buy back our shares, and this is particularly compelling when our shares are trading well below the NAV. Given the near-term free cash flow generation potential we have, my aspiration for OceanaGold is that we do all of this, fund attractive growth options, keep the balance sheet strong, increase dividends and buy back our shares. Being able to do all of this provides the best possible basis of a holistic increase in shareholder returns. To achieve our objective of increasing and sustaining the high value of OceanaGold shares, we must and will treat shareholder equity with the highest respect. Our recent performance in improving production per share and operating cash flow per share has been good. Free cash flow per share was lower in 2023, primarily as a result of investing in the Horseshoe Underground. With good metal prices and growing production, we expect these per share metrics to improve significantly in the back half of 2024 and over coming years. And we are considering establishing a share buyback plan to create the option to buy back our shares. We would like the ability to protect our shareholders from dilution by buying back on market any shares required to be issued pursuant to employees share schemes and or when the share price is at particularly low levels, and we have work underway right now to help create this option. When we consistently deliver on our production commitments safely and responsibly, when we generate strong free cash flow and keep the balance sheet strong, when we deploy capital well to generate higher returns, we expect the share price will follow. We also expect we will sustain and gain even further trust from the investment community in the capabilities and discipline of this team, both Board and management. It's a fact that the company had and lost its premium rating around 4 to 5 years ago. And it's for the Board, myself and the management team you will meet today to earn back that premium rating. We want to be trusted to manage the existing assets well to deploy capital well and to be the best team to deliver value. Going forward, we have an exciting outlook to be delivered by this team. We have near-term organic growth. We hope that WKP is confirmed as a fast-track project in New Zealand in early 2025, and that we will commence construction in around 2027 and get first production from it in the early 2030s. Along the way, we expect further drilling to continue to increase the resource size of WKP. We expect to complete the Didipio optimization study this year. We released a technical report in early 2025 and progressively delivered that target uplift by 2026. We're also looking to finalize the Palomino study and looking to have first ore from Palomino underground in 2028. We'll continue to explore to create further growth optionality and life extension at all of our assets. And we'll continue to optimize the operational performance of all of our existing assets through our value maximization programs to get production up, costs down and to maximize the free cash flow generation of the business. Matching this great suite of organic growth prospects is a clean capital structure. We are nearing being in the net cashareholders position. We are primed to generate substantial free cash flow at current prices and we will deliver improved returns to shareholders. As I said at the beginning, OceanaGold is a uniquely placed multi-asset intermediate copper and gold producer. We have strong organic near-term growth that will translate into strong near-term free cash flow generation. We have an excellent leadership team, great people and a great culture, all set to deliver on the full value potential of this business. Our approach to allocating capital has, at its core, a focus on increasing shareholder returns and treating shareholder equity with respect. And we will deliver on this safely and responsibly. Safely by our workforce, responsibly caring for the environment and by being well engaged with and supported by our host communities. I will close by emphasizing that the company has a long track record and reputation for being a safe and responsible miner. This is wedded to the company's purpose, its values and its culture, in part, I believe, because most of our workforce live close to the operation and are part of the local community. The Board reinforces the importance of sustainable operations through the short-term incentive plan, that management and employees all participated. Last year, 25% of the company's performance measure in the short-term incentive plan was sustainability related. For 2024, it's over 30%. Operating sustainably is important. So this is one way of encouraging and rewarding them. We're very fortunate to have a very experienced executive as our Chief Sustainability Officer, who joined OceanaGold in December 2022. Megan has more than 2 decades of experience in upstream oil and gas, energy and property development across Australia, North America and the Middle East. She's not with us today in person, but she has recorded a short video to share her views about sustainability and our path forward at OceanaGold. [Presentation]

Thank you, Megan. I'd now like to introduce Michelle to the stage to talk in more detail about our second strategic pillar, which is having a carrying inclusive and winning culture. Michelle?

Hello, everyone. I'm Michelle Du Plessis, Executive Vice President and Chief People and Culture Officer at OceanaGold since March 2023. During my career, I've had the privilege of working across different industries and different jurisdictions and in multidisciplinary operational and executive roles. Prior to joining OceanaGold, I spent 15 years with BHP, largely in human resources roles with health and safety, community, shared services and other portfolios. My last few years at BHP, were spent leading a major transformation program focused on digital process and organization transformation, including for technology. In current my role at OceanaGold, I'm responsible for people and technology. I'm passionate about what's possible, when we fully engage the hearts and minds of our total workforce to unlock their full potential to deliver highest value outcomes for the enterprise. Shared goals and intentional collaboration across our organization position us well to build and sustain a culture of care, inclusion and winning. Here at OceanaGold, we truly care about our people, and we are further advancing our leadership talent and capability agendas to deliver on our performance and growth objectives. We strongly believe that highly capable leaders will empower and enable their teams to perform at their best. As such, we are focused on our leadership development programs. We have a series of programs focused on core capabilities and skills required at each level of leadership. Starting with our supervisors and frontline leaders. Half of our supervisors have already been through the training with measurement of skills uplift underway and the remaining supervisor are scheduled for training this year. You will also hear from our other executives today about their strong leaders and teams, who are helping to propel the company's growth. We are also taking action across a number of levers to enhance our ability to attract, develop and retain the right talent, particularly technical and operational talent. Work underway includes the implementation of proactive talent sourcing and a redesign of our candidate and employee experience, including a refresh of induction performance talent and development processes. We can convince ourselves that we are doing the right things, but the best indicator is what our people say and feel and to measure that we conduct an annual culture survey of our entire workforce. We are pleased to report a significant increase in our annual culture survey participation from 20% to 74% participation in the last year and an uplift in our overall engagement and leadership effectiveness across our organization to 75% against a global benchmark of 73%. Our people report feeling supported by their leaders and teams with some opportunities to further improve internal communication and amplify our focus on well-being. We are also encouraged by improvements in our key attraction and retention measures despite a continuing hyper-competitive global talent market. Our talent turnover is trending down, and our vacancy rates and time to full close to benchmark. We believe we have a talent advantage, powered by passionate leaders, a committed and capable workforce as well as agile ways of working. And we are committed to developing and retaining our people to deliver the best possible organization results. Building a winning values-based company, where everyone feels respected included and valued, begins with our leaders and is fundamental to our long-term success. We have positive momentum on culture and inclusion and I'm excited about continuing to develop our leadership capability, which ultimately determines the felt experience of our employees and therefore, the performance of our organization. A sense of belonging and a culture of care has been and will continue to be a differentiator for us. I'd now like to turn over to David.

Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone. I'm David Londono, Chief Operating Officers of Americas for OceanaGold. I joined OceanaGold in July of 2021 and has spent almost 3 years with the company, all which have been on [indiscernible]. I'm a mine engineer by training with global experience multi commodities. Most of my operating experience has been in turnaround situations, including 2 large open pit operations during the last 10 years. Before I joined OceanaGold I was the General Manager at the Detour Lake Gold mine. During this turnaround after having done a similar turnaround with Barrick Gold at Lumwana mine in Zambia. Both operations have become Tier 1 assets with Detour Lake becoming the largest gold mine in Canada. In my current role as Chief Operating Officer, and responsible for the Haile gold mine in South Carolina. Haile is Oceanagold's largest producing asset with 2024 gold production guidance of 195,000 to 225,000 ounces, which is approximately 40% of the mid point of our total gold production guidance for the year. Haile is the largest gold mine east of the Mississippi, and it's located within an hour drive from both Charlotte in North Carolina and Colombia in South Carolina. Currently, the reserve life for Haile is 11 years, but with plenty of upside to extended traditional exploration which we're very busy executing right now. After only operating as an open pit for the last several years, Haile became both an open pit and underground operation in 2023. Haile is the company's key growth driver over the next few years with production growing up to over 300,000 ounces per annum by 2023 -- 2026 sorry. The asset is now entering its core harvest years driven by the significantly higher grade ore coming from led places combined with the ore coming from Horseshoe Underground. We have been able to attract a great team to Haile. A lot of experienced people have joined at ASIC alone and stable future at the mine. [ Moral ] has improved significantly since the opening of the underground operation. We're all very proud of the transformation that has got at Haile over the last 3 years, and we are now transitioning to a period of sustained free cash flow generation. Now for those that have been to site recently, this won't be new for you. But for those of you that haven't, our main open pit or source is currently Ledbetter Phase II in addition to actively mining Ledbetter Phase II we are also prescriptive Phase III to uncover higher grade sources for the next few years. Ledbetter will contribute between 60% and 70% of the gold production at site this year with the remaining coming from the Horseshoe undergroud and open pit stockpiles Together, Ledbetter Phase II and III will provide higher grade ore for the next 4 years. In reference to Snake pit Phase 3 has a mine life of 3 years and is scheduled to be mined between 2027 through 2029. Snake pit also hosts the underground surplus infrastructure, which currently supports Horseshoe underground mine, including both the access and ventilation portals. I'm proud of what the Haile team has accomplished with the Horseshoe underground as we were able to build it and start production within 12 months after receiving the operating permit. Only about 20% of the ore pit this year comes from Horseshoe. But what is more important, it contributes over 30% of ounces. To date, we have completed over 1 [ mine ] of development in the underground operation, which is in line with the mine plan. We have concentrated on development versus production in the first half of the year to open more phases, have flexibility and set the stage for production rates [ for the year ]. The development is approaching the 900 level and stopes are actively being mined on the 950 and 975 levels. And as I mentioned before, we achieved this ore in September of 2023. And since then, we have safely mined 6 stopes, and we will mine an additional pit stopes this year in line with 2024 mine plan. To date, greater conciliation from the underground ore has been better than expected. And the grade control, drilling is also complementing grades that are estimated in the model. Our latest technical report aligns growth to 315,000 ounces 2026. But we're also confident that there is still significant upside to our operations beyond this. We're focused on cost improvements to maximize margins of each additional ounce produced and the continued exploration is supporting the additional ounces to our underground mine plans. In February, we announced an initial reserve of 380,000 ounces at Palomino. Palomino is an adjacent ore body to Horseshoe and will provide a second underground ore source with first ore planned to be delivered early 2028. Palomino will share surface access with the Horseshoe underground portal and will be access to an 800 meter decline that will be driven from the 925 level in Horseshoe. The addition of Palomino to the mine plan will provide additional ore sourcing flexibility going forward and represents the next stage of growth at for Haile. Another opportunity that we have at Haile is Horseshoe extension and although there is not enough [ trail in] for our resource yet. Our goal is to publish a resource next year with ongoing drilling from Horseshoe. Horse extension is located between the current Horseshoe operation and Palomino and will be easily accessed through the same decline. We started drilling at Horseshoe and Horseshoe extension from underground last year once we established underground drill base. And within the middle of 18,000 meter campaign to both define and extend the resource. Both targets are still open at depth and our results so far have been very, very promising. We expect to deliver our production cost guidance and capital guidance in 2024. We're currently executing several value capital initiatives side, including asset management, continuous improvement, and we're also ramping our dispensing with the main goal to improve performance, reduce costs and improve free cash flow. One of our key deliverables this year is to complete the ramp-up at the Horseshoe underground. We have had some learnings through the first 8 months of underground operations, which is common during any mine ramp up but we remain confident in the plan outlined in the recent 43-101 technical reports. Now in terms of study work, we are advancing Palomino to a feasibility study. And at the same time, we're also working on an internal trade of analysis on Ledbetter Phase 4. Ledbetter Phase 4 is in the mine plan today as an open pit with a high stripping ratio. We believe that we could improve the economics by mining it from underground instead. With the development of the Horseshoe underground, we have demonstrated our ability to successfully mine the Haile deposit from underground. By applying this same thinking for Ledbetter Phase 4, we have the opportunity to remove excess stripping from the mine plan which would result in better economic returns and be done using lower greenhouse gas emissions. I'm really excited about the future of Haile with Horseshoe underground approaching steady state and our mine plan now reaching the core of the high-grade benches in Ledbetter II. We are at the inflection point of delivering significant free cash flow over the coming years. The very near future of Haile looks fantastic. And I'm all optimistic about the future what the future holds for us. Now the remainder of our assets in our portfolio. I'd like to welcome Peter to the stage.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, David. My name is Peter Sharpe, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer for the Asia Pacific region at OceanaGold. I joined OceanaGold in 2022 in October 2022 from Newcrest Mining, where I just over 6 years in senior leadership roles. One of those roles was the General Manager of the [ Cadia ] operations, and other was General Manager of the Lihir operations. And my last year at Newcrest was the integration for the Pretium acquisition in Canada, which had the Brucejack operation up in British Columbia. Prior to joining Newcrest, I spent just under 20 years with BHP Billiton in a number of senior leadership roles. For my [ sins, ] I've been working with Jared for just over 10 years now, and I'm extremely excited about the opportunity that we have here at OceanaGold and I'm particularly excited about the opportunity that we have in the Asia Pacific region, where we have 2 operations in New Zealand, Macraes and Waihi as well as our operation in Didipio in the Philippines. Didipio mine is located on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, approximately 7 hours drive north of the capital of Manila. Didipio is expected to produce between 120,000 and 135,000 ounces of gold in 2024. And as it is our only asset with a copper byproduct, we're also expecting to produce between 12,000 and 14,000 tonnes of copper. Didipio was built by OceanaGold in 2013 and operated as an open cut until it fully transitioned to underground in 2018. Current reserve life at Didipio is out to 2035. But as you'll see shortly, we believe there is plenty of mine life extension potential. Didipio rates under a state agreement known as an FTAA or a Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement with the government in the Philippines. This essentially allows a foreign operator to operate in country with proceeds shared between the operator and the government. When we renewed that agreement in 2021, there were several additional requirements from the government, and I'm happy to share that with the recent IPO of OceanaGold Philippines on the Philippine Stock Exchange. OceanaGold has complied with all of the additional requirements of the renewed FTAA. In addition to the compliance with the FTAA the AGP listing also gives us additional social license as 20% of the shares in the Didipio operation are now publicly listed. Our current Didipio operation mine is a combination of both rehandled ore from surface stockpile material, which was stockpiled during the open pit phase and the underground ore, which is then blended to feed into the processing plant at an annual rate of 4 million tonnes per annum. This blending capability is an important part of why Didipio mine has been such a stable producer year after year. Our underground operation has a current mining rate of 1.75 million tonne per annum via conventional long-hole open stoping with paste backfill and has a reserve grade at 1.38 gram per tonne of gold and 0.41% copper. At the start of 2024, there was approximately 18 million tonnes of surface stockpile material remaining with a reserve grade of 0.32 grams per tonne of gold. Earlier this year, we put out findings of our initial underground optimization work, which we did to assess the uplift opportunity that we have for increasing mining rates from the underground. The goal of that work was to be able to decrease the ratio of lower-grade ore blended from surface stockpile and increase the ratio of the higher-grade ore mined from the underground Initial findings suggest, yes, we can increase the tonnes from underground and can do so through some pretty low capital requirement projects. Not only will this provide more ounces for the same number of tonnes milled in the coming years, you will also have the benefit down the road as a lifespan of the surface stockpile material it's extended. Our priority this year is to deliver on production and cost guidance at Didipio and to do that safely. Right now, we are completing a pre-feasibility study to work out the exact technical and capital parameters of the underground optimization. We are also focused on asset management and continuous improvement across the site to ensure we are safely maximizing free cash flow generation from that production. The uplift to the mining rates will be further supported by successful conversion and resource additions at depth of our current operations, and we are spending $4 million this year on those drill programs. Finally, with the completion of the IPO of OceanaGold Philippines, we have a new public company and new shareholders. So in doing everything we just spoke about, not only do we safely increase the free cash flow to OceanaGold, but we also support increased returns to the AGP shareholders. For those of you that have been fortunate enough to visit Didipio, you'll agree with me that the greatest asset that we have in that operation is the actual people that work there. Our highly skilled local team in the Philippines deserves the credit for our social license to operate. And so I'd like to introduce you to a key member of our Philippines team with a short video. [Presentation]

Thanks, Joanne. We are certainly very lucky to have her in our organization and the Filipino workforce, probably the happiest workforce I've ever experienced. Now to Macraes. Our Macraes operation is located on the South Island of New Zealand and is expected to produce between 120,000 and 135,000 ounces of gold this year. Macreas benefits from having both open pit operations where the ore mine is generally less than 1 gram per tonne as well as high-grade ore mine from the underground. The current mine life of the asset is 2027 as per the recent NI 43-101. But in a minute, I'll take you through why we think there is significant mine life upside at this operation. Macraes is the Foundation Mine for OceanaGold and has produced over 5 million ounces in total over its 34-year operating history. While the mine is generally considered a lower-grade operation, the team at Macraes continued to generate good margins and free cash flow year after year. Part of that ability should be credited to the industry-leading low open pit mining costs which is approximately $1.50 a tonne as well as their expertise in refractory ore processing. At any given time, during Macraes 34-year history, the mine has really had more than more than a 5-year mine life in front of it and the ability to continually find and add ounces to the resource and reserve is a testament to the persistence and technical skill of the team there. A great example of that technical persistence of the Macraes team is the mill throughput improvement, which we saw last year and which continues this year. If you recall in Q1 last year, the team faced a challenge with 1 of 2 ball mills at the site having to be taken down for extended periods due to a crack in the feed end of the mill. What might have been a challenge was instead taken head on by the processing and maintenance teams at Macraes with the outcome being not only getting ball mill up and running ahead of schedule, but also unlocking additional throughput capacity in the plant. Today, we are pushing more tonnes through the mill per day than has ever been done before and are doing so in a way that's shown to be sustainable going forward. Between Q4 last year and Q1 this year, we have processed 3.3 million tonnes of ore which is a 6.6 million ton annual run rate, which is remarkable given the site has never produced or never milled more than 6 million tonnes in a calendar year in its 34-year history. One of our primary areas of focus in 2024 for Macraes is mine life extension. We currently have over 1.3 million ounces of measured and indicated resources with only 600,000 ounces of that in reserve. It is those M&I ounces, which sit outside of current reserves as well as the existing inferred resources, which are our key focus areas for conversion to reserve going forward. And with the current gold price sitting well above our existing $1,500 per ounce reserve price, we see a number of opportunities to unlock additional units of production and extend mine life at Macraes well into the of 2030s. The near-term goal of Macraes is no different to any other of our sites. That is to operate safely and responsibly and to deliver on 2024 production and cost guidance. We have a lot of work to do this year and next to unlock potential open pit extensions, including at the Innes Mills and Golden Bar pits if the higher gold price remains. Some of that work includes additional drilling, detailed engineering and mine planning as well as consent preparation. And I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far and look forward to providing more updates to the market as work progresses. The Waihi operation is located on the North Island of New Zealand, approximately 2 hours from Auckland. It is OceanaGold's smallest asset today producing between 55,000 to 75,000 ounces of gold as guidance. But arguably has the brightest and most exciting longer-term growth project in our business with The Wharekirauponga project or WKP for short. Mining has been at the heart of the town of Waihi for over 100 years, which helps in providing great support from the local community and also speaks to the richness of the deposit. Current records indicate that there have been over 8 million ounces of gold produced from the Waihi mining operations since it started in the late 1800s. Waihi has been an incredible success story for OceanaGold since we acquired the asset from Newmont in 2015. The purchase price for Waihi was $101 million. And since then, we have generated over $244 million in cumulative cash flow with analyst consensus NAV, which includes WKP sitting at approximately $760 million. The combination of cumulative cash flow generation and remaining value represents over a 10xd return on our investment over that 9-year period. The town of Waihi is centered around the historic Martha open pit, but we are currently mining below that in the Martha Underground. There are additional complexities that comes from operating an underground mine that has been in operation since the 1800s, specifically the sum of the material comes from remnant mining area or area that's been previously mined. The benefit to the remnant mining and why we still mine it, despite the surprises and challenges that it sometimes presents is that the grade of these stopes can be much higher than other areas of the mine. Gold price in this day and age is significantly higher than it was when the deposit was originally mined, which means a material left behind and even in the stope backfill runs at quite high grades. We do try and balance out the mine plan with both the high-grade remnant mining as well as the fresh mining areas in our sequencing to provide a level of consistency to the production profile. The real longer-term opportunity in the Waihi region is our WKP project, which is just 10 kilometers away from our existing processing facility. You'll hear Rebecca talk more specifically about the geology of that deposit and from Bhuvanesh to talk about our plans to advance this study later. But I do want to highlight that in terms of global deposits with over 1 million ounces of measured and indicated gold resources, WKP hosts a phenomenal resource grade gram per tonne. In addition, the drilling to date is only partly defined 1 vein zone at WKP, the East Graben, clearly indicating that this is a highly prospective district, and I'm very excited to the long-term future we have with this phenomenal deposit. Our near-term goal right now is to deliver production guidance coming from Martha underground Well I am confident that we are making progress with our optimization work around the remnant mining challenges. However, this is not easy mining. And the Waihi team earns every tonne that they mine from the underground. We remain focused on delivering sustainable free cash flow from the existing operation going forward, all while continuing to advance the study and permitting to get the world-class WKP operation online. As I mentioned earlier, we've been operating in New Zealand for over 30 years. And in our time, we have developed deep local relationships and a strong understanding of the social and political landscape. We have an extremely talented local team who understands the complexities and opportunities of New Zealand. And last month, one of those extremely talented people, Alison Paul, our SVP for Legal and Public Affairs and myself had the opportunity to present to the New Zealand Parliament, Environmental Select Committee as part of our application to be included in the government's proposed fast-track one-stop shop permitting process. So with that introduction, let's hear from Alison Paul about the work she and her team are doing to support our New Zealand operations. [Presentation]

Thank you, Peter and Alison for that video. That brings us to the halfway mark of today. So we're going to take a 15-minute break. For those of you who are online, the webcast will be paused during the break, but we'll resume in approximately 15 minutes when we get back. Thank you. [Break]

Good morning, everyone. My name is Bhuvanesh Malhotra. I'm the Chief Technical and Projects Officer at OceanaGold. And the recent addition to the executive leadership team having joined the business in January earlier this year. Before joining OceanaGold, I have worked for Vedanta Resources for nearly 7 years in the lead and zinc division, followed by nearly 2 decades at Rio Tinto in various operational and technical roles. I was a technical director for Copper and Simandou. In my last role at Rio Tinto, where the role [ spend ] a global portfolio of assets in North and South America, Australia, Africa and Mongolia. I was privileged to work in multiple commodities in various open pit and underground roles in base metals and hard rock mining that has provided me with rich experience to lead the projects and technical team at OceanaGold. In my current role at OceanaGold, I have a few key mandates. The mandate of building the technical capability in the organization is the first and foremost of them. This involves having people with the right technical skills and experience in the role and having purposeful technical standards that underpin the mine plans at our current assets. The other aspect of technical capability is more future focused and building competitive advantage. This involves identifying technologies and automation opportunities that can provide step change in performance and/or unriddle some of the technical complexity that we face, not only in our current assets but for future sustaining and growth options that we evaluate. The mandate of providing technical governance involves building the major hazard's assurance program that involves tailings, underground safety, process safety and functional safety aspects at our operations. And lastly, the whole substantially part of my role is to lead and advance the major studies and projects. Our team of in-house technical expertise at Oceana Gold is exceptionally strong, both in depth and breadth for a company of our size, and we are well positioned to deliver on all our work programs and potential M&A opportunities. I'm privileged and excited to lead this team at OceanaGold into the next phase of the growth cycle. You have heard today through our other disclosures about some of the projects that are in our pipeline, the Palomino underground feasibility study at Haile commenced earlier this year, and let me provide you with some of the study updates. The surface resource drilling at Palomino is now complete. The geotechnical work is ongoing and focusing on numerical modeling and benchmarking against the host show data. We are optimizing the location and the type of opening required for ventilation purposes. The detailed metallurgical test work program is currently underway. And the mine designs are focusing on optimizing the PFS results and potential for additional reserves at higher [ gold ] prices. At Macraes, Peter touched on the potential mine life extensions that could be unlocked at higher gold prices. And so a lot of engineering and the trade-off work is taking place to evaluate what this might look like in a mine plan. At a DPO earlier this year, we announced the preliminary findings of the underground optimization work to increase the underground mining rates. The initial results are very encouraging, and the team is now building the technical work required to bring this opportunity to fruition. Peter's team is leading this organic growth study, and my team will provide the necessary technical assurance and guidance as required. The project I really want to spend some time on here is our world-class development project, Wharekirauponga, where the study work we are undertaking has the potential to add, not years, but decades to the current operations in the Waihi district. Our current measured and indicated resource at Wharekirauponga is just over 1 million ounces at 15.9 grams per tonne of gold. And now that we have crossed the 1 million ounces threshold, we are evaluating the project economics so that when we get the required consents, we are positioned to begin the development of the new mine. We are hoping to be accepted as a project under the fast track approval bill, which provides greater certainty to the timeline for development. We believe this is a world-class deposit. The Eastern Graben or the EG vein in the middle of the ore body is the largest and the most continuous mineralized structure. It is -- it carries highest grade. And in certain places, it's greater than 20 meters in thickness. With successful exploration program, we now have many more mineralized veins in hanging and footwall zones. These veins together with the dipping EG vein provides a kilometer long mineralized corridor. With some clever mine optimization work, we believe that the AVOCA or the modified AVOCA mining methods will enable superior recovery of this deposit. We are very well versed with both these mining methods, which are currently in use in Martha underground at our Waihi operations. Our vision for Wharekirauponga is that it will be an entirely an underground mine. The proposed access to the underground deposit is via 6.5-kilometer tunnel from the Willows road farm, the land that we own with the aim of minimizing the disturbance on the conservation land. The surface infrastructure would be located at the Willows Road site to support the mining operations. The mine has been designed with multiple access systems to allow production from both upper and lower mining areas, at the same time, thereby effectively decreasing the production ramp-up times. The ongoing prefeasibility study is considering other aspects of the project, involving evaluation of optimal location for the underground infrastructure items, geotechnical investigation for ventilation shafts, waste tack and optimal tunnel location, investigation of modified tailings that provides the best value case for the life of mine and preserves future options when the resource grows beyond million ounces. And of course, what the capital cost to build such a mine would be and the optimal schedule that underpins our assumption. The team and I are working on the NI 43-101 prefeasibility study and we look forward to sharing the results with the market towards the end of the year. With that, I'm going to close my section of the presentation, and I'll now invite Rebecca to talk about the exploration section. Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Bhuvanesh. And while I am not the Chief Exploration Officer nor Craig Feebrey, I do happen to be a geologist having spent time working for Goldcorp predominantly in Red Lake before joining the buy side and ultimately, OceanaGold. That background qualifies me to step up and present the exploration session while Craig is off sick. OceanaGold has created value through successful brownfield exploration over several decades across a variety of deposit types including bonanza epithermal gold, orogenic gold, alkali copper gold porphyries and sediment hosted gold in a diversity of geologic settings. Our exploration performance across the group has been strong over the past 5 years, replacing approximately two million ounces of reserves and four million ounces of measured and indicated resource before adjustments. To sustain our operations, we continue to spend an average of $30 million a year on exploration and also continue to target generate across our sites. We also actively review greenfield opportunities in other major gold belts to provide future exposure should the right opportunities arise. Since Haile's acquisition in late 2015, we had remarkable success in defining several underground opportunities that we are now bringing to fruition. This combined success has us well on the way to soon defining over one million ounces of gold from underground. Results from the drilling and conversion of Lower Horseshoe late last year continue to impress us with high grades over exceptional lengths. And this year, we have just commenced the initial drilling of deeper zones at Horseshoe to further test its potential. At the same time, we will follow up on intercepts from last year that suggest there is opportunity to continue to grow the reserve at Palomino further to the Southwest. Horseshoe extension is another important near-term target on the same trend as both Horseshoe and Palomino. Drilling is well on the way to establish this as a third new underground resource with the benefit of proximity to existing infrastructure. To maintain the momentum from the success we've had underground, we're developing and drilling a pipeline of targets within the mine permit, leveraging our unique understanding of the controls of this style of gold mineralization in the ballot. The Didipio mine is within a highly prospective alkalic province and is exceptional in terms of its grade, averaging about 1.9 grams per tonne of gold equivalent, including high-grade feeds such as the court spread chat, which has been averaging about 6 grams per tonne gold equivalent, making these exceptional free cash flow generators. As many are aware, porphyry deposits commonly occur in clusters and those in the Philippines are no different, with roughly half having related porphyry deposits within a few kilometers. The 7,000 hectares surrounding Didipio and held by OceanaGold is therefore a key target area for us. Many porphyries also exhibit mineralization, extending over vertical depths of one to two kilometers. With shallow levels of Didipio exposed in outcrop at the time of discovery and drilling continuing to discover economic grades below this one kilometer mark. We believe there remains compelling opportunity for extensions and new targets not yet identified. Stemming from the more recent work on Didipio, we continue to better understand the controls on mineralization, which is leading to discovery and extensions at depth. It has also provided additional input into target generation in the greater FTAA area, which is leading to a pipeline of new targets, we believe puts us in a strong position to make further discoveries in the future. Macraes is characterized by orogenic gold mineralization associated with the low-angle high Macraes shear zone that strikes for 30 kilometers through our mine tenements. 11 such ore bodies producing 5 million ounces have been discovered along with shear zone to date. Importantly, the economic success of this deposit has been in part due to the 100-meter thick remarkably consistent mineralized share package that accompanies the hanging wall load and provides a low-grade buffer to the solicified high-grade mineralization. In addition to the currently defined ore in the mine plan, we have, as mentioned earlier today, defined to find a significant pipeline of resources that have been marginal at gold prices up until recently. With advances in technology, we've also taken the opportunity to leverage the Macraes data-rich environment through artificial intelligence, to support our current generation and exploration drilling. At Waihi, we are in a volcanic and much younger environment than Macraes. It has seen the development of Bonanza's style, low sulphidation epithermal gold deposits. In the world-class Waihi District, we're capitalizing on a tremendous opportunity to make further discoveries where we hold over 10,000 hectares of well-endowed and highly prospective ground supported by our existing Waihi operating facilities. The style of mineralization at Waihi leads itself to effective target generation and drill testing. And Waihi is a world-class example of what we are targeting, having produced its original 5 million ounces at a head grade of 10 grams per tonne gold. WKP has been the other success story and is shaping up to be a similar high-grade, high-margin asset with over 1.3 million ounces of resource defined to date, including 1 million of that in the indicated category at close to 16 grams per tonne. At WKP, we have been focused on defining indicated resources on just one of the three large fissure veins, the EG vein. We haven't yet had the opportunity to sufficiently test the upside of the EG vein or to explore the T-Stream and the Western veins, where similar thick high grade has been historically intersected shallow in the system. Under the fast track permitting process, we anticipate we will be able to significantly increase drilling in the area, test these very high-grade targets and demonstrate the size of the WKP system. We believe all four of our sites have exciting exploration opportunities waiting to be unlocked. And with continued investment this year and into the future, we hope to be able to continue to build on our existing resource base while continuing to make new discoveries. So that's an overview of exploration at each of the sites, and I'd like to turn it over to Marius.

Thank you, Rebecca. Hello, everyone. My name is Marius van Niekerk. I'm the Chief Financial Officer, and I've been with the company for just over one year. Just some background on me. I've been working in mining for over 20 years, and that's taken me from South Africa to London in the U.K., Mozambique, Singapore and Canada. I've been in Canada for just over six years, four into the Toronto area and the last two years, I've lived in Vancouver. The majority of my mining career was spent with BHP and Newcrest in a number of functional and operational roles. I first worked together with Jared in 2005 at BHP's aluminum business when we were both based in London. Before joining OceanaGold, I was VP Finance at the Newcrest America business before the Newmont acquisition. I started as CFO at OceanaGold, just after the company announced its decision to move its headquarters from Melbourne to Vancouver. So naturally, one of my first priorities was to build a finance function in Canada. I'm pleased to say that transition is now complete and I'm very excited about the high-quality finance team that we've put in place. I will kick off by saying that we're currently in a very strong financial position. We generated more than $1 billion in revenue in 2023, which was an annual record. And that was on the back of an average realized gold price of $1,955 per ounce. We've been able to convert a lot of these strong prices to the bottom line and despite the considerable investment in developing underground mines as well as major open pit stripping campaigns, we have been generating free cash flow. Our net debt has been coming down steadily. And at the end of Q1, we were at $82 million of net debt. While our leverage ratio was at very low 0.21x. The balance sheet is clean and we have no punitive royalties or streams on any of our assets. We've recently listed 20% of OceanaGold Philippines on the Philippine Stock Exchange at a price that implied a 100% valuation of $530 million. Net of costs and withholding taxes, we expect to have monetized around $90 million of our holding, and that will be applied against debt repayment for OGC. In addition, we're expecting to complete the divestment of the Blackwater project in the next few weeks, resulting in proceeds of $30 million. So together with the cash generated in the second quarter, we are expecting to be in a net cash position around the end of June. It is imperative that we remain laser-focused on cost to protect or enhance our margins. We have a number of programs in place across the operations, which includes asset management, continuous improvement and procurement. As an example of our asset management initiatives. At Haile, we've been focusing on drill and truck availability and utilization. So far, we've seen promising results and improvements in reliability. The ultimate result of this is more tonnes to the mill and lower unplanned maintenance costs. By operating our business with a continuous improvement mindset, we are focused on unlocking the full potential of our assets. These improvement initiatives look at volume, revenue, costs, working capital and capital expenditure opportunities. The third way to capture excess value is to procure well. That means buying better every day, buying globally and contracting smarter. In 2023, we delivered $10 million in annual recurring savings, leveraging the bulk purchasing power of our 4 assets, while being more strategic in our engagement with suppliers. This was mainly in the explosives, ground support and tire space, while we also extended our focus to the copper concentrate shipment arrangements that we have at Didipio to be more value accretive. Fuel is one of our largest costs in our business. And this year, we introduced diesel hedges to hedge 80% of the anticipated volume consumed at our open pit operations at Haile and Macraes. With an acting like an owner mindset, we have the ability to capture more of the cash generated from our operations and delivered that to the bottom line. Our projected 30% production growth and the decreasing AIC over the next 3 years means that we are positioned to generate strong free cash flow. This is the case at consensus gold price projections but also provides us with significant upside in a higher gold price environment. Over the last few years, we've reinvested cash in the business, ramped up production after the restart at Didipio. Both Haile underground mine invested in capital stripping programs at our open pit operations. And now we're entering a cash flow inflection point and are able to reap the benefits from those years of investment. This sets us apart from many of our peers and naturally leads to the next question. So what are you going to do with all the cash? Our disciplined capital management framework means that we can deploy capital in a way that allows us to grow, be financially strong and importantly return capital to shareholders. Our priorities are to continue to invest in growth where capital discipline is paramount with a focus on ensuring we get an appropriate return on capital employed. We've demonstrated that investing in exploration is important to us and we've been rewarded for the money that we've put in the ground in recent years. We look for at least high single-digit returns for ongoing sustaining capital projects and mid-teen returns for greenfield projects with brownfield projects ranging in between the 2. We do not apply a strict internal rate of return capital requirements to capital spent that improve safety, ensures compliance with regulation and protects the environment. These are just do it expenditures. Repaying debt allows us to be financially strong and has been one of the best uses of capital over the last few years. Once repaid, we will still have access $250 million of committed facilities should we need the flexibility. We recommenced dividend payments in 2023, with the current policy to pay $0.01 per share semi-annually and that's returned $14 million per annum to our shareholders. Our goal is to, at a minimum, maintain the current dividend. We have a potential to increase it if that's the best option when compared to all the other options we have in the framework. Lastly, we're evaluating options that would allow us to return further capital to shareholders and protect shareholders from dilution, which may include a share buyback. We want to have this as a tool in our toolbox to draw on when we undervalued and when we have the financial means. We've spoken today about a number of projects within our pipeline and those will all eventually need capital to advance over the next decade. All of these projects naturally have to go through a gated process and meet our internal hurdles. Both the underground optimization and uplift at Didipio as well as the Palomino Underground at Haile are in the study phase right now and will require capital in the next few years. Neither of these projects are overly capital intensive and both will unlock ounces from our existing mines. Mine life extension at Macraes is something we're evaluating. It would be safe to assume some capital associated with additional stripping and pushbacks at the current pits, should we continue beyond the current reserve life. From a longer-term perspective, we've got one of the best undeveloped gold deposit at WKP in New Zealand. We are still working on determining the capital requirements, but it will be of larger scale than any of our other projects, although spread over a number of years. Once we publish the PFS later this year, we will be able to give the market more details around this project. In line with our priorities, we're forecasting to spend in excess of $30 million on exploration and that will prioritize the targets in our pipeline. In closing, we truly believe that the cash generated from our operations in the next few years will be enough to do it all; that is invest in organic growth and exploration, strengthen the balance sheet and increase returns to our shareholders. Having said that, we will consider external opportunities that may present themselves. And so with that, I will turn it over to Brian to share some of the thinking in this space. Thank you.

Thank you, Marius. I'm Brian Martin, Senior Vice President, Business Development and Investor Relations with OceanaGold. I've been with the company for about two years now, having recently spent time in similar roles at both SSR Mining and Liberty Gold. Prior to joining the corporate side, I actually worked in equity research, like many of you here today, and covered both industrial and mining stocks. I actually used to cover OceanaGold from 2012 through 2016 during a pretty successful time for the business. I'm here to talk to you today about how we evaluate external growth opportunities. Although we don't comment on any specifics around M&A targets, I'm hoping I can give you all a sense that we are looking for and how we approach M&A. One thing that's very clear, which we have touched on throughout today's presentation is that we have a very robust growth and free cash flow profile within the existing business. This has a lot of potential upside for us to unlock value for our shareholders. So there's no urgency to seek M&A. That being said, there are only 3 ways to increase and sustain units of production in the mining business. That is to drill them, to buy them or to unlock them with that technology. And we aimed to be there at all of them. We have a technical services team led by Bhuvanesh, who in conjunction with my team, it is our job to look for opportunities to create value for our shareholders through M&A. In terms of what type of assets we're looking for, our preference is for something that generates in production or very near production that generates free cash flow today. We also do believe we have room in the portfolio for a project. Although our preference is for something in the resource stage or earlier, where we can unlock value through exploration and development prior to committing to any significant capital investment. In terms of ideal jurisdictions, we're primarily focused within our existing footprint and time zones or elsewhere in North America and Australia. We're also looking for assets that compare favorably with our existing portfolio with the goal to increase the overall quality of the portfolio. Any external opportunity has to be stacked up against our internal growth opportunities as well and is benchmarked on an IRR basis against a range of gold prices. We remain focused on per share metrics and look for value-accretive value ending enhancing transactions. I'm hoping that provides you a brief sense of that how we approach external growth opportunities. I'd like to stress, though, there is no immediate need for us to rush out and do M&A. Our portfolio is robust. We have a strong near-term growth profile and plenty of free cash flow generation on the horizon and a great list of organic growth projects to unlock. This allows us to be patient and wait for the right opportunity to present itself. With that, I'll hand it off to Gerard.

Thanks, Brian. As I said at the beginning of today, OceanaGold is a uniquely placed multi-asset intermediate gold and copper producer. We have strong organic near-term growth that will translate into strong near-term free cash flow generation. We have an excellent leadership team and a great group of people and a great culture to deliver on the full value potential of this business. Our approach to allocating capital has, at its core, a focus on increasing shareholder returns and treating share capital with respect. And we will deliver this in a safe and responsible way, safely by our workforce, caring for the environment and being well engaged with and supported by our house communities. So that brings us to the end of today's presentation. I'd now like to invite all of today's speakers to the stage to join me for the Q&A session. And in doing so, I'll also -- as she makes a way to the stage to introduce Liang Tang. Liang is our General Counsel and Company Secretary, and has been with OceanaGold for around 15 years. And if you could just bear with us as we just get the chairs and the podium are off the stage, and we will start Q&A very shortly.

Okay. I think we're ready to get started with our Q&A. So we have our whole executive team and speakers from today sitting up on the stage. We are taking questions from both online. So if you are listening on the webcast and have a question, please feel free to submit in the question box as well as in the room. So if anyone in the room has a question, just put your hand up and Louise will bring you the microphone. We have one in the back from Cosmos to start.

Thanks, Gerard and team for a very good presentation today. Maybe my first question is on copper, kind of weird. Copper is hot. I would say you're one of the few mid-tier producers out there that has benefited from copper production. As you talked about external opportunities, is that something that you might consider?

Yes. Thanks, Cos. If I look to what we said in the presentation, one of the things I said was that we opened to opportunities in the Philippines. And as Rebecca shared in the Philippines, we have a great land package inside of which we expect that there could be other copper gold opportunities. That's the way porphyries present, right, in clusters. So if you find one, you can reasonably assume there could be another one there, which is why we're excited about drilling Napartan, which from a geochemical perspective, looks like it could be an analog for Didipio. So what we do. We go hunting for gold mines globally in the areas in our time zones and our jurisdictions. And if it happens to have copper, fantastic. Two metals for the whole effort of one. That's how we will approach it. We have a good revenue representation of copper in the business. That gives us a good earnings diversity. Again as you said, exposure to something that is pretty hot as we prosecute the uplift in milling rates -- sorry, mining rates from underground at Didipio together with the exploration success, there could be more copper inside of our existing portfolio. But there is no strategic pivot to going for pure copper plays in our business.

And then switching gears a little bit and one other question here. I think Marius talked about diesel hedging. And I think a number of presenters today talked about new technologies. So maybe bigger picture, have you considered a transition to battery-powered equipment for any of your assets?

I'll hand that to Bhuvanesh in one minute, but to give you time to think about his answer. We actually recently electrified an excavator at Macraes. So that's one of our large open pit operations. So we now have a hydroelectricity powered, excavator doing a lot of tonnes movement ex-pit from the open pit at Macraes. And as we look at all of our opportunities, whether it be lead better Underground and WKP, we are trying to keep abreast of all those technologies to make sure if it's there and economically feasible, we will use it, because it's got benefits both from an emissions but also health perspective, underground.

I think Gerard answered the question probably pretty much as well. So all our studies that we're evaluating. This is one of the pillars in terms of having an economic analysis of what it will generate both either from the economic perspective or it has to give us a significant health and safety perspective as well. And one of them might basically be the diesel particulate matters that basically gets generated from the diesel equipment as well. So we are evaluating specifically currently for all our projects as well. And based on where we land in terms of our future asset replacements as well, that thing will continue to basically come as well. There are some challenges that probably we need to be, some things can be quite fancy. Sometimes these things as well in the market. So we have to be very careful about as to where its application is and where they are well suited to, we will definitely look at deploying them.

We have a question at the front here from Ovais.

Again, great presentation everyone. Just my first question is for David just on Haile. Obviously, in terms of the ramp-up that we're seeing at Haile, any sort of potential risk that you see in terms of the growth over the next two years. In terms of operating cost, turnover, anything you could point out towards that you're keeping an eye on? And secondly, in terms of that underground development. I mean would you like to see more drilling, more underground development, more equipment? Anything, any color on that front?

Yes. Thank you, Ovais. In terms of turnaround, we actually turn around that a couple of years ago, we were at 27%, now it's less than 10%. So with the stability of bringing that underground mine, we have people come in and experienced people coming and working for us. So I don't see a risk on that one. In terms of do we need more equipment at this stage, we don't need more equipment. Once the analysis is done on Palomino, then we may need some extra equipment to start that operation. Yes, I would like to see more drilling and we've seen some great intercepts on horseshoe depth. And with the horseshoe extension is yes, we will look to see more drilling out there because it's been successful.

And just my next question is to Peter in terms of Didipio. You've shown us that there's a longer-term potential to optimize the underground. Is there any near-term potential in terms of what you see in current operations that you can optimize on cost or production or anything like that, that you can talk about?

Yes. Thanks, Ovais. So you saw it up on the screen. I think it was Bhuvanesh or Marius' slides that showed the Didipio underground optimization over 5 years. That 5 years predominantly to show how long it will take to develop all the way down to where we think the bottom of orebody is. But as far as the ramp-up goes, we see the ramp-up will be within 1 to 2 years. So that is quite near term as far as we're concerned.

Just my last question. In terms of M&A, you talked about copper and great question, Cos. In terms of just looking at Didipio and surrounding communities as well. I mean, obviously, things have improved drastically in terms of what you saw 2019 to where we are at right now. Is there a social license now for OceanaGold to look outside Didipio, look at the other projects? Any comments there?

Short answer is I think there is Ovais. I think we have a great brand in the Philippines. I had the good fortune of presenting at the Philippines Mining Club launch recently and was -- it really hit me home then just how well regarded the company is as a result of its track record of performing to the highest standards in country. And the company or the Didipio mine regularly wins awards and recognition from that. We have great support at every level of government, national, provincial, local. The dynamic and vibe could not be more different to what was the context of what occurred back in 2019 or so. And the government as a whole at a federal level is very pro-mining and very much looking to encourage foreign investment in the country. So the combination of those 2 things together with our branding country makes the Philippines a really attractive place for us to expand outside the gate. So just a reminder, we have a very large FTAA area. We drilling Napartan, which is to the northwest of where we currently operate. We have some nearer prospects. And outside that FTAA absolutely. That's -- we've got other land holdings and tenements we can and will look to advance in due course. And we're very comfortable operating in country. And it's -- as I said in the presentation, it's geologically really interesting. So to have that brand in that kind of domain, yes, you can expect that we will look outside our existing game.

We have a question in the back row.

Mike Parkin from National. A couple of questions. Following up on the M&A. Given you're transitioning into a state of strong free cash flow, you could be the acting finance year of somebody with an asset kind of stuck in limbo because they can't finance it. Would you be entered -- entertaining joint ventures where you come in with the financial means that fund the development of a project?

Short answer is yes. It provided the pay equation stacks up. So I think Brian said, we will look at all opportunities. That's what half year's role exists to do and provided we see a value pathway for OceanaGold shareholders. And if the combination of that entity or that opportunities need and our ability pairs up, absolutely. We'll look at all things always.

And following up on that, do you have any significant tax pools in any jurisdiction that you're not able to make use of now with your existing operating base?

Do you want to take that, Marius?

Mike, at this stage, no, we can actually access all our tax positions across the group, and we're actually utilizing that as we speak.

We didn't get into in a lot of details, but I know in the past, you've talked about the regional potential around Didipio some recent drilling. Certainly showed it as quite interesting. Can you just give us a bit of an update on what the follow-up program is looking like on that success recently? And where does it kind of float in a pecking order of potential opportunity to exploit versus full steam ahead with the underground expansion? Obviously, [ near ounces ] are probably priority, but just some thoughts on what's going on regionally.

Sure. Look, from an exploration budget perspective, I think we have about $7 million allocated to Didipio this year. $2 million of that is for Napartan. And that doesn't sound like a lot of drilling there at Didipio, the main ore body, but we're drilling from underground. So we get a lot of value that $5 million. I don't see that continuing to look at Napartan and other prospects near mine is at the cost of or is competing with the optimization program that Peter spoke about. We are actually parallel processing both the Napartan drilling, it's a campaign. So we've had the rigs on getting the results back that will help us direct with our next drill. And that will be a couple of years, Mike, before we are able to kind of validate the thesis of it being an analog for Didipio.

Great. Just one last one maybe for Peter. The hydropowered shovel at Macraes, are we seeing a cost savings initiative of that as well as obviously, the green environmental footprint improvement? And like can you quantify it, whatever dollars per ounce, dollars per tonne?

Yes. So the simple answer is yes, we are. As far as carbon reduction, it's in the order of around 4,000 tonnes per year reduction, which is fantastic from a unit cost perspective. So our total mining costs on average just around USD 1.50 a tonne, open pit mining. The actual shovel expenditure, it's moving around 1.2 million to 1.3 million tonnes on its own. So it actually operates at a lower unit cost than the average of the fleet. So we are seeing not only a significant improvement from a productivity perspective because it's a face shovel configuration, not a backhoe. So it mines a higher face. It does need to be set up differently than backhoe. But when it's set up in those big cutbacks, it's really productive is what we're finding. And the fact is they've never operated a face shovel before in Macraes. It's always have been backhoe, but the operators have just taken it really well. And again, the productivities we're seeing are much higher than we expected.

Thanks for your questions, Mike. Other questions in the room? We have one at the back.

Wayne Lam, RBC. Just wanted a couple of follow-up questions on Didipio. I was wondering that optimized PFS, I thought that was going to be internally produced originally, but is that going to be publicly released early next year? And then just on that bar, that 5-year time line and then 1 to 2 years to ramp up, should we be thinking of kind of like a 2027 ramp up to 4.3%? And then for the $100 million to $130 million spend, is that a mix of growth in sustaining? Or is it front loaded?

Okay, Wayne, thank you. I'll try to remember all those questions. So as far as the ramp-up goes, so I'll answer the 5-year question first and just give it some clarity. That 5 years that we're talking about $100 million to $130 million, that includes all the development costs down to where we see the bottom of the ore body is, which at this stage, again, we're still open at depth so we actually haven't found the bottom of the ore body. But the estimate is we're approximately double the depth to where we are with the current reserve. We're double the depth down to the next phase, Phase 3 and Phase 4. And that -- half of that expenditure is all around development costs and exploration, the other half of that expenditure is with things like [ pace ] plant upgrade, processing plant upgrade equipment, et cetera. So that's the way that estimate is being developed. As far as the ramp-up goes, yes, around that 2026, 2027 is what you can probably look at to get to that higher rate. From an internal PFS, we do have an internal PFS that we will finalize by the end of this calendar year. That PFS will include inferred resources because by the end of this year, our drilling program, we won't have all of those resources in M&I and reserves. So when we put out the 43-101, which will be in March next year, it will be on a lower reserve basis than what the internal PFS will be based on. So -- and that just means we just need more years of drilling to obviously convert more. But the internal one probably gives us what we think is a better idea of what's possible. But the external one will be what we know right here and now. So hopefully that answered all of your questions.

No, that's great. And then maybe just thinking to the next few years, you guys had referenced quite a bit of free cash flow, especially as Haile is getting to kind of its peak years. But just wondering, as you kind of look out further between the capital spend needed for the Didipio optimization and the Palomino underground and then potentially at WKP. As you consider kind of the dividend or share buyback, like do you kind of have to consider the potential outflows from those capital projects internally before evaluating kind of the ramp-up in shareholder returns?

Yes, we do. I would make a point that all of those expenditures that were put up on Marius' slide as to potential growth projects occur over a number of years. And so subject to prices, of course, there is a scenario, you could look at it to say that we should be able to do all 4 things that we spoke about: fund the projects, keep the balance sheet strong, sustain or increase the dividend and/or do a share buyback. So that's the holy grail of being able to do all 4. Again, prices will ultimately determine it. What we know we're going to be increasing the rate of production -- or sorry, the production volume by 30% over the next 3 years. So if prices stay at around these levels, particularly spot or even to lower consensus base assessments, it is possible to do all 4.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just last one, just thinking to the emissions reduction initiatives that you guys have or the targets you guys have laid out to 2030, is the bulk of that going to be driven just by virtue of the transition underground at Haile and maybe Macraes dropping off a little bit versus like what are the bulk of the, I guess, initiatives in addition to the electrification of the fleet and what kind of capital would that entail?

Yes. The 2 primary sources of emissions pertain to diesel usage in open pits. And then secondly, our electricity to power the mills. So from an open pit perspective, again, the Macraes shovel is a great example of tapping into hydropower to displace diesel from an open pit. So more of those, if possible, it would be great. And then -- and as we go to your point, like a Ledbetter, if you go underground, rather than making it better for an open pit that has a tremendous switch in emission and that will be factored into our evaluation of the choice, whether we do open pit or underground, and that's part of the study. From an electricity supply perspective, we don't generate our own electricity. Obviously, we can -- and have it done at Haile, use solar lighting and the like where possible. But at scale, it's all about making sure that as customer that we demand for push and encourage the suppliers to alter the mix. And across a number of our sources, well, outside of New Zealand, I mean both the Philippines and in the U.S.A., that's what we are pushing for to get a contract that has more renewable power into the grid that we buy from.

I have a question coming from online. How did the IPO process go? And was there a strong interest in the Philippines?

Well, Brian, do you want to take this actually?

Sure. Thanks, Gerard. Yes, I mean, overall, I think we were happy to get the IPO away. We had good support from both local and international shareholders. The stock has traded pretty well actually post listing. I think we're up above issue price. So overall, I would say we're happy with how the process went and happy to see the new public company and have us comply with the last remaining term of the FDAA. So overall, a good mix of shareholders to answer the question.

Thanks, Brian. Any other questions room? We have one down there.

Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks for the presentation today. It was efficient and very helpful. I'm going to start with a question that's, I think, a little bit more kind of about this management team and maybe a question for kind of the whole group. When I listen to the bios given by everyone who came up to the stage, there's a lot of big company experience here. I think I counted 4 executives that are ex BHP, one that's ex Rio Tinto. So OceanaGold is a smaller entity than the ones that you've worked out before. As you come together as a management team and work together, how do you operate Oceana differently than where you've operated before? And how do you ensure that you have a nimbleness that is required for a company this size as opposed to the company's where you've worked previously?

Thanks for the question. I actually got asked that same question when I was interviewed for this role. And so I can give you the same answer I gave then. Sometimes you leave some of the larger companies to get away from the very things that your question implicitly is fearful of and that is bureaucracy and a suppression of agility, and Michelle will talk about that because she mentioned that in her presentation. But inside of BHP, it's -- I worked in the nickel business. And I joined the year after the peak price and got to experience life in the tranches of the nickel industry. Nickel is the gold industry without the profitability. And that was a serum period of redundancies, mine closures, asset sales and the like. And we scratched and clawed for every dollar, up the street was the iron ore business making piles of cash. And so I feel like I came out of the cage fight in school inside of BHP. But there are some things to celebrate out of working for a large company. BHP has been around for 160 years, and the DNA of thinking, the systematic thinking, the way to approach projects is something to be applauded. And so I like to think and again, giving the team, they'll each share their own. I like to think you can take the best of breed that you can to take the best out of those large companies learn what not to do as you look to grow your own business. And then literally do be so laser-focused on value creation because inside of a company that we're all in now, every one of our assets and every dollar matters. We are so much closer to the shareholder base. What we do is so close to the outcome that is measurable. It's actually -- I think it makes it really interesting. But that's me. We have a number of [ escapees ] from the bigger ships. I'll let them talk for themselves.

I'll go next if that's okay. I'll just build on the value share. I think one of the key things for us as a leadership team is not to overload the business with all the change that you might think about. So shot selection is key, as Gerard would say. But the one thing, just pointing to value, if you look at the first pillar in our strategy, there are 3 elements in asset management, continuous improvement and then procurement. These are the type of thinking, the type of initiatives and the way to drive value in the organization. That mindset is something that we can actually bring with us and insert into the business and sustain or actually improve our cost line. So that's my ambition.

I think, Farooq, for me, what I've learned looking for a large mining house was more structure and systems and standards that comes with it as well. And that's what I'm bringing to the organization -- to my new organization here as well. What I like about the new organization is the speed and agility with which I can move as well. And that really is a differentiator between what Oceana can do basically with those standards and those structured thinking that we'll bring basically as well. So trying to pick the best of both the worlds.

In my case, being with Barrick before and AngloGold Ashanti, I can talk about the same thing, the speed that we can work, the humility of the team and then the opportunities that present here for ourselves and how we can gather those opportunities without committing the same sins that the big companies have committed, and they can get away with that. We cannot.

Yes. nearly 20 years with BHP and I definitely love my time, but it was ready -- I was ready to move. The BHP today is not the BHP that I probably worked for, and that's not casting [ dispersion ] on them, but it's -- this company is a different piece. I said jokingly, for my sins, I've worked with Gerard for 10 years. I mean the reality is I believe that people work for people. You can have different badges on your shirt. It's about the people you work with and probably I'm an old-school operator. And what I love about this business is the people that we have working for us at the operations and the people we have with the management team. They're real people, people that you actually care about, and that to me makes the biggest difference.

Thanks. I think our advantage really lies in having a really connected and cohesive leadership team. And we collaborate in a way that drives enterprise outcomes without boundaries, without bureaucracy. So there's a level of leadership intimacy that you can achieve more easily in our organization or size organization like this and definitely an agility and Marius spoke about choicefulness or select -- being selective about what our players are and where we put the enterprise energy. I think that's really the summary of our advantage.

And I'll just add that as some of the veteran at OceanaGold, been with the company for 15 years. Started when the company only had one asset, being Macraes. I think over the years, what I've seen is new executives coming on board, bring them with the discipline and the experience and the governance to the company as the company grew. So I first hand really saw that, and I think that's going to make OceanaGold a better place.

Thank you all. That was a great answer, and I think give us a lot of insight into the culture of this company. So thank you for that. Maybe a couple of other questions, not so broad in focus, I guess. Just thinking of the growth you have for the next 3 years, would it be fair to say that, that growth has basically been paid for, like that's all within your mine plan, that's all within additional development capital that's already been spent. And so the development capital that you laid out, Marius, I think you had it in one of your slides, is really for growth beyond 2026?

If I understand the question, Farooq, yes. I mean, there is still -- you'll see say in say Haile, for example, next year, there'll be -- if it's well advanced there on development, we will continue to go down. So you'll still see development expenditures of Haile in the capital. But the bulk of it has been spent. So the -- all the at-surface works, the decline, the events and the like, that's all been paid for. Stripping, it's a bit of pay as you go. But certainly, towards the end of this year, we've got really good access to open pit material at both Macraes and Haile going forward. And -- but some of those other things, which is you're right in your question, the things that Marius put up, we're yet to pay for. So that's why it's in future dollars. But yes, a lot of that expenditure over the next -- sorry, a lot of the production that we have over the next 3 years to 2026 inclusive is about -- has largely been funded, but there will still be a cost to get it out, of course, in some capital.

Okay. Well, that's helpful. Marius, maybe a question for you on Macraes and the discussion about the potential to extend mine life and that there's some kind of lower margin ounces there that could extend mine life at the current gold price. I think historically, Macraes used to hedge gold production to lock in gold prices when it had marginal ounces. Would you consider that going forward given the gold price environment we're in, you'd probably make money at -- with those margin allowances at the current gold price. So would you think about hedging Macraes production to ensure the cash flows of those future ounces potentially?

I think I'll start off by saying that we are price takers in the environment, and I don't think our shareholders buy us for actually hedging production. I think they want exposure on our full portfolio -- production portfolio to the gold price. So there's -- I can probably make a statement that there's no position that we'll be taking on hedging production. What we've had -- what we've got from a portfolio perspective with 4 operating assets is resilient. So we can actually adapt to these cycles. And if you then just bring it back, so that's the top line, the revenue line. But if you then bring it back to the cost line, that's why we actually -- and apologies for going back to the values, that's why we have those value plays in place to actually protect our margin and erase any margin compression.

And Farooq, if I can, just to extend that. I mean the balance sheet is strong, and we're going to be in a net cash position. So to Marius' point, we've had the financial wherewithal from a balance sheet perspective in addition to the operating cash flows from the other assets. And a personal view, you can go put yourself -- sorry, you can go do a hedge but if the gold price was to fall, if you follow the logic through, you should still pause the mining and cash out the hedge. So it's a synthetic, right? So -- and to Marius' point, I don't think shareholders want us to play the gold price and synthesize. Our business is to get our costs as low as we can, be resilient through the cycle. And give our shareholders the full exposure to the gold price, but never say no.

Okay. Okay. And last one from me, I promise. Timing of Ledbetter Phase 4 and the study to go underground rather than open pit. Part of that question is, so one is timing. But the other is, if you went underground at Ledbetter Phase 4, would that fit in kind of in between Horseshoe and -- Horseshoe extension and Palomino? Or how would we think about timing of the production from Ledbetter Phase 4 as well?

It's a complex question, actually as well, and that's the reason why we are running the optimization study for Haile overall. And what does that involve is as we are stripping the Ledbetter 3, what happens with those tonnes that we generate. So you take that into account, the Palomino production, when we start that ore as well and then the Horseshoe and the Horseshoe extension pieces as well. So we put all of them together, run through the integrated optimization process to say what tonnes you would mine at what point in time that probably delivers the best value case as well. So that's the work we are actually currently undertaking at the moment as well, and we would have some of that results probably by the end of this year.

Thanks, Farooq. We have another question just on the aisle here from in the room.

That was great. My first question is on WKP. It sounds like there's a great center of gravity there, high-grade, exciting exploration potential and PFS coming in Q4 '24. Sits under a conservation area, although you do have a great history in the area. So I guess, could you just walk us through what gives you confidence that you have community support for that project? And if there's any major hurdles that lie ahead in terms of permitting and community acceptance for that?

Yes. Look, it is Department of Conservation-managed land, right? It's very forested. It's actually a regrowth for us. It's not pristine for us. So I would just make that point. But we are approaching it in a very careful and sensitive way, and [indiscernible] Paul's video made that point that there's an extensive consultation with all stakeholders and particularly the [indiscernible] to make sure that as and when and if we do it, we do it in a way that is respectful and caring for the environment. I'll make the point it will be an underground mine. And so the [indiscernible] or the [ Coromandel Forest ], I think it's called, I'll get this precisely wrong, but it's about 40,000 square hectares of land and our surface expression for the vent raises that we have is a size equivalent of 2 [ tennis courts ], which after we remove the vent raises, we'll regrow like the rest of the forest. So it's got a very low surface expression. This will be powered most certainly by electric vehicles and the like and ventilation from hydro. So it will be a very green mine. Mining has been a feature of the Waihi township and for those of you that have been or when you eventually come, you'll see in the street scape, it is a gold mining town. And we have 360-odd employees and a few more contractors there. And we are well part of the local community. We have a strong local community support for our activity, we have strong support from the 2 councils that we operate in. And most recently, we've had strong, very vocal strong support from the New Zealand government. And the fast track process is all about enabling projects such as this, which if done in an environmentally responsible way. And none of that is -- none of the fast tracking is going to change our approach to doing this in an environmentally responsible way. And we will continue to engage and consult with the affected stakeholders. We expect that we'll have all levels of government supporting what we do. Now there will always be people who take a dim view of mining, not just in New Zealand, anywhere. And they have a voice. They can express it, but we'll operate to the laws of the land. And if the laws of the land allow us to do it, and we'll do it in accordance with our high environmental standards, I actually genuinely think that's for the betterment of the country, which is what the Resources Minister of the country, New Zealand, is also articulating.

Agree. Okay. And and looking forward to the results of that application. Next question, most of mine were answered. On -- I think about capital returns and dividend and buybacks, what's your preference there? Do you prefer a constant dividend or perhaps a dynamic formula that allows it to adjust itself based on prior cash flows, and you don't have to change the policy? Any additional detail around that would be helpful.

Yes. No, that's work that we're underway, that is underway, I should say, and we can obviously make those decisions closer to the time. Dynamic dividend policies sound great in principle, but they never seem to be able to hold. If I listen to our shareholders, most of them are saying there's no driver for us to increase our dividend per se. They see the growth optionality that exists in the business, and they encourage us to invest in that. They also see that the company trades at a discount to its NAV, or from a market perspective at a very low price to cash flow ratio. And so the overwhelming feedback I get when engaging with shareholders is that their preference would be more for share buybacks than an increase in the dividend per se.

Very helpful. Last one for me is -- it sort of came to me as Farooq was asking this question there about management. You're all coming from a big company. Long term, very theoretically, what do you view as the ideal size for a gold company?

By asset size or ounces or...

Yes, ounces or potentially asset sizes because I've heard views that on both and at 5 million, 6 million ounce mark, it's very difficult to grow meaningfully. And a junior producer, 150,000 ounces could double relatively quickly. So yes, I'll leave it fairly open.

Sure. I mean I have no personal bias to a size of ounces metric. The strategy of the company is really simple to -- the objective of the strategy is to increase and sustain a higher value for OGC.TSX. And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be big. I mean, plenty of people buy more ounces, add ounces to the balance sheet or the inventory of produced ounces, but make no more money. So we're not chasing the marginal ounce. We're more interested in the profit and free cash flow generated per ounce. So I'm not fixated on a per ounce size. From an asset size, we have 4 producing assets, all of different sizes and Haile will continue to grow -- sorry, Waihi is small today, but with WKP, it could -- like Peloton, could move its way closer to the front. 5 assets would be better than 4, but there's no religious zeal there either. We will do what creates the most likely outcome to generate a higher share price. But yes, I mean, earnings diversity is good. We have 4 assets, would it be good to have a fifth? Yes. But we're not chasing 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And it's, again, what the lens we will apply to any of these things is about what moves the share price higher.

Thank you. We have another question in the room right here.

I have a couple of questions. M&A is quite topical nowadays. And with M&A comes the sale of noncore assets. In 2015, you bought -- you acquired Waihi, which now, as you see, Gerard, could [ pillage ] its way to the top of your assets. Newmont, the same company that you bought Waihi from is selling a bunch of assets. Could you tell us if the -- like from your perspective, if you see any potential open assets like Waihi out of the noncore assets that they have, if you see anything like that. And there's a follow-up, like as a percent of your market cap, on buying, producing assets or exploration asset, how much are you willing to spend?

Well, given that we expected this question, David, I'm going to hand it over to Brian, who's got the prepared response.

Thank you, Gerard. Thanks, Dave, for the question. I mean the strategy is simple, really, it's about creating value for the shareholder. And we outlined the jurisdictions that we're going to look at and the type of assets that we're going to look at. You mentioned the Newmont noncore assets, we don't comment on any specific assets that we look at through the process. But really, it comes down to can we create value? And if we see an opportunity to create value through exploration or operating better or adding an asset that we believe we can create value from, then we will look to act. But there's no near-term need for us to do that. So the assets within that portfolio, I mean, from [indiscernible] disclosure standpoint, are older and more tired. Again, we will look, but there's no impetus to act, if we don't see the opportunity -- the right opportunity for us.

Okay. Then a different question. Didipio, the optimization study, I know it's ongoing, but you put out a CapEx number of up to $130 million. What sort of -- to justify that $100, $130 million, what sort of potential resource expansion beyond what you have now would make that work, would justify spending that $130 million? Or could what you have now justify spending $130 million, but that will just shorten your mine life?

Peter, to add?

Yes. I mean the concept level work that we looked at indicated that there was, again, approximately the same depth. So we've got about 380 meters of porphyry, which is in our current underground, that's Panel 1, Panel 2. Indications are we are still open at depth. We can double that. We still haven't found the bottom of the ore body. So indicatively, that's quite a reasonable number. We're estimating that even with the ramp-up to between 2 million tonnes to 2.5 million tonnes from the underground, up from the 1.75 million tonnes. We're not -- we don't reduce the life of mine. We actually still extend the life of mine. So there is an additional, I think -- I'm not sure we put it out publicly or not around the tonnage. So I'll just hold off on what that looks like, but it's very positive.

And just a supplement, too. That $130 million or $100 million, $130 million we articulate would be amongst the highest payback capital we could invest. I mean this is about going literally, inside of that $100 million is further mine development of depth into mineralization at good grade. The payback on that because you're displacing open pit stockpiles at 1/4 of the grade is in-year payback. It's probably the most attractive growth option we have in our portfolio.

Are there any other questions in the room? Okay. No more questions online, either -- or sorry, one more last question from the room.

Sorry. I don't want to keep everyone from the [ Golf Day ]. Sorry, I just had one follow-up question on Didipio. How do you kind of balance kind of the perhaps once or desires of the holders of the Philippine listing versus the needs of the business? So for example, if the study came out and said actually the CapEx for Didipio will be $200 million. For the longer-term operation of the business, that's still probably a rational spend versus the holders of the Philippine listing might say, well, we prefer you guys to generate more near-term cash flow for us. How do you kind of balance having that listing versus the needs of the longer-term business?

Yes, I'll take that one. So we don't think differently around OGC, which still owns 80% of the business and OGP, which is only the 20% but publicly listed. So we operate that mine to be as safe and responsible and as efficient as possible. So as Gerard said, when we think about that growth opportunity and that optimization, the work that we're seeing so far is that the spend over that 5-year period, that $100 million to $130 million. The additional gold we produce and the additional revenue we produce each year because of the grade uplift by just changing that ratio from surface stockpile to underground pays for itself in year. So everything we're doing when we look at that underground optimization, we're actually incrementally adding free cash flow year-on-year, even though we've got that $100 million to $130 million spend over that 5 years. And I mean that's an easy conversation to have then.

And I'd say having met a lot of the international investors, most people are looking for us. We've -- when we were talking about this investment opportunity to the current shareholders of our perspective at the time, we were talking about this. This is the upside potential. And so I think people have bought into the stock looking for us to execute on that upside potential.

Okay. Thank you. Gerard, do you want to close it off?

Sure. Look, again, I'd love to thank every one of you for turning up today for all your great questions. It's been a really great opportunity for you all to meet the team. And we've enjoyed talking about what we're all passionate about, which is OceanaGold. Thank you for your time.