Caledonia Mining Aktie

Welcome to the Caledonia Mining Q1 2026 Results Presentation. I would like to now hand over to Mark Learmonth, who is the CEO, to begin the results presentation. Mark, over to you.

Thank you, and welcome to this results presentation for the first quarter of 2026. Can we just move through to the presenting team. I actually can't see the slides there. Yes, just move through to the presenting team. So as you heard, I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's CEO. I'm joined by Ross Jerrard, the CFO; Victor Gapare, Executive Director. We're not all together. Not certain if Craig Harvey will be able to join us. We're having some connectivity issues to Johannesburg, which where he is. So Craig may or may not join us. And then there's Maurice Mason, Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. So that's the team. Should we move on?

Okay. Just by summary. As we've previously announced, gold production in the first quarter was somewhat challenged. There's about 14,700 ounces of production from Blanket Mine. And that was entirely due to, as you'll see in a moment, the lower grades mine during the quarter. Notwithstanding the lower production, financial performance was still robust, supported by the higher gold price environment. So revenue was up 18% to just over $66 million. Profit was also higher. Profit after tax was up nearly 70% to nearly $19 million, and also a very strong cash generation, in particular, free cash flow more or less tripled from $4 million to $12 million in the quarter.

As you might expect with lower ounces produced and particularly the effect of the lower grade, that affected the cost per ounce. So cost per ounce, the all-in sustaining cost increased to $2,700. Having said that, it's worth noting that our cost per tonne was very much in line with our expectations. So if we can get the grade back and, as I'll show you, I think we can, these unit costs, cost per ounce should normalize. It's fair to say that, again, as you'll see in a moment, it's fair to say that after the end of the quarter, April and so far into May, production at Blanket has very much improved, and Blanket is now running as expected. So that's Blanket.

Bilboes, Bilboes gold project is proceeding very well. As you know, we published a feasibility study in late November last year. In January this year, we had a very successful convertible bond raise in New York, raised $150 million. And we're now continuing to implement the rest of the funding strategy and we're also making good progress with DRA in terms of finalizing the designs and actually moving this project forward. But Victor will talk to us about that later on.

As you know, we've had some very encouraging deep level exploration results at Blanket mine. Hopefully, Craig will be able to join us and give a bit more detail on that. But that continues to support the long-term sustainability of Blanket Mine and recognizes the confidence that we have in the resource. As usual, Blanket -- Caledonia, sorry, declared the usual dividend of $0.14 for the quarter. That will be paid shortly. And as another sort of housekeeping point, July Ndlovu, who's a very experienced mining executive, joined the Board in November 2025. At the AGM last week, he was appointed as Chairman.

Okay. So let's move on to just consider the operating results. Let's start with safety. Not much to say in terms of safety. It was a very, very good quarter with improving ratios. That really reflects our continued focus on proactive risk prevention in particular. I'm very pleased to see there's been a substantial increase in the incidence of near miss reporting, -- which is one of the key ways that we use to raise safety awareness and to act proactively to address safety issues before they become a problem. So safety is very good. But clearly, it continues to be an area of significant focus. It's never finished.

Should we move on to the next slide? This is the usual 2 graphs. The top one shows grade and tonnes. The bottom line shows recovery ounces. You'll see from the top graph, the tonnes have been stable at approximately 200,000 tonnes milled per quarter. But you can see the grade, the grade fell progressively from the second quarter of last year through into quarter 3 and quarter 4 and then further into quarter 1. And that reflects an issue that we've disclosed previously, which is the effect of 2 falls of ground, which together meant that we were excluded from relatively high tonne to high-grade areas, which we relied upon to maintain the mix of our production.

So you can see the damage that the grade did is reflected in the falling production profile in the second graph, where production fell quarter 2 last year into quarter 3, quarter 4 and again into quarter 1. But again, just the reduction in recovery. But also reflects the falling grade because the tail grade that we deposit on to the tailings facility is pretty much the lowest we're going to get is that 0.2 grams a tonne. And so if the head grade, the feed grade is lower, that means that recovery tends to go down.

But having said that, if we move on to the next page, if we move on to the next page, you can see in a bit more granularity the progression of grade in December and into the quarter. You can see that grade has recovered. December 2025, it was 2.55 grams a tonne, increasing to 2.6 in January, 2.7 in February and 3 in March. Currently, it's running at about 2.9 grams a tonne, which is actually pretty much what we expected it to be in the second quarter. So as I've already outlined to you, Blanket has now returned to the production level that we had anticipated.

So those -- we have already started with 3 remediation initiatives. The first is that we have appointed a contractor, started work to accelerate access to higher-grade areas. They will continue to work for the remainder of the year, and that gets us back into a position where we should be ahead in terms of development, which gives us much more operating flexibility and resilience in the future. So our contract has started.

The second thing that's happening is that we are implementing a revised shift system, which will move the operations of mine from 6 days a week to 7 days a week. So that new shift structure is primarily intended to reduce work fatigue, which we understood was a significant problem. But it will also result in increased run-of-mine production on an annualized basis, an extra 100,000 tonnes a year which, in due course, will flow through into increased ounces produced.

In the short term, the incremental production will be stockpiled. But once we've got a reasonable stockpile thereafter, additional production will be processed. And also in June, July, we expect to commission an additional ball mill, [ BM 3, ] which will increase our overall milling capacity by about 200 tonnes a day.

So those are the 3 initiatives that are taking place to increase and address the issues that we faced at Blanket, as you can see, well, as you can't see, but you will see it in the second quarter, there has been a turnaround in the performance of Blanket Mine, which is an area of considerable focus for us. So that's a few brief words on operations. Can I ask Ross, please, to take us through the financial results?

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. As always, delighted to talk you through the results. As Mark has already discussed, it was really a concept of the higher gold price offsetting a lower production period. You'll see at the top of the table that the outcome in terms of gold sold versus gold produced, there is a portion of -- higher portion of ounces that sit within bullion on the hand, which does affect that in terms of timing, but largely that average gold price that you see on the table, the $4,816 an ounce, is really offset by those lower ounces in terms of gold produced and sold.

But pleasing for the period was the absolute costs. So you'll see, the online cost in terms of dollar quantum and our all-in sustaining dollars spent the quantum of $23 million or just under $24 million for online costs and $38 million all-in sustaining costs. Those were largely on track with our budget and expenditures, up 3% on mine costs and 9% all-in sustaining costs. So we are pleased with the spend rates there, but our unit costs were negatively impacted by the lower denominator in terms of ounces.

So overall, activity was really good, and we are pleased with the delivery by the teams. But obviously, the ounce profile hit our unit costs. As we exited the quarter, our EBITDA was up 50% at just shy of $34 million. And with cash flow coming in really strongly after capital expenditure, which is, again, in line, there are some timing differences in terms of capital expenditure profile. But we're really pleased with our free cash flow of $12 million, which is up some 153% on the comparative quarter. So a very pleasing result financially, albeit our ounces were down. And overall, our earnings per share were 78% up on the comparative quarter.

So if we do a little bit more of a dive into our profit and loss, so if I could turn to the next slide, please. You'll see the outcome of our revenue and that higher gold price that we achieved, resulting in revenue of $66 million for the period. Our royalty is obviously based on that top line. So they equally increased to $5.6 million for the period. Production costs were in line with the expectation and largely on track together with depreciation. So you see our gross profit is sitting at a shade over $32 million, which was a really pleasing result and almost 20% up.

The key movements for the quarter are really driven around our financial instruments. And we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive on the accounting treatments of that. So that net fair value gain on the financial instruments represented in one line item, but there are a few different elements to that, which I'll discuss in due course.

And further down on the chart, our net finance cost is up some 200%, but that is due to the convertible senior loan notes and the treatment of those financial instruments. But all other line items were largely in line and we exited the period with a profit for the period of just shy of $19 million, which we're really pleased about.

If we could turn the slides please, and we'll just talk a little bit more about the cash flows. Our net cash from operating activities were up some 41% for the period. We did deploy against capital expenditure as planned. There are some timing differences there, but there's nothing to report or -- there are no outliers that need to be highlighted. And then there's the combination of the various investing in financing, which really was around our cap call options, our convertible and really the deployment of our financing program. So we had some maturity of our fixed term deposits, which we deployed against our put option instruments and there were timing of various payments there. And the raising of the $150 million convertible and some of those funds were used to acquire a cap call option. And you'll see the deployment of $14 million going out of our cash flow.

Further down, you'll see the proceeds from the convertible notes coming in at $145 million. And overall, really at the bottom of the page, we exited the period in a fantastic position of $161 million worth of closing cash and cash equivalents, which shows that the whole financing strategy is really coming together. And you'll see that if we turn to the next slide, which talks to our liquidity. So together with our cash on hand of $170 million, and those drawn down bank facilities of $8.8 million, that gives us the $161 million that I've just discussed. But together with bullion on hand, which represents about 3,600 ounces, and some gold sales receivables really pulls together a very robust financial liquidity position in treasury that enables us to move forward with our various capital allocation decisions, deployment of funds and most exciting of orders, obviously, our continued development or moving forward with our development of the Bilboes project.

If we move to the next slide, without doing a deep dive into the financial treatment of financial instruments. This is the first period that we will have disclosed the treatment of the convertible notes and the various accounting that goes with it. And the fact that we don't do a full set of financial statements that you would otherwise see, and that will come through in due course of the half year, we just thought it was important to articulate the various accounting around the convertible and also the cap call options.

So in terms of best illustrating that we raised $150 million, which you can see on the left-hand side of the slide, which is the compound financial instrument of the senior loan notes, under the accounting standards, we have to split that into 2 elements. There's the host debt and there's a derivative liability. And those 2 are accounted for and treated separately. One is under an amortized cost accounting treatment and the derivative liability, there's fair value through profit and loss. So that has slightly different accounting connotations.

And then equally, the second answer, some of the deployment of that $150 million went towards the cap call option, and that has a separate accounting treatment and also a fair value through the profit and loss. So there's 2 arms and elements in terms of the accounting and the valuation of that. And you'll see below the chart in terms of the various line items that are represented in the primary statements that are attached to this quarterly announcement. But you'll see that there's a -- we hold a derivative asset, a noncurrent asset of $14 million. That asset really comprises both our cap call options and the treatment of that, but also our hedging program. So it's a combination of a number of derivative financial instruments.

And then our liabilities, there's obviously the host debt that sits there, but also there's a derivative financial statement, liability. So the $97 million and the $38 million composed at $135 million compound financial instrument for the bond. And equally, on the financial statements, in terms of our income statement, you'll see a net $4 million or $3.9 million, and that's a combination of a number of these fair value adjustments that go through in terms of both our put options, the movements on the financial liabilities and the financial assets.

So I know that's complicated. And hopefully, this gives a little bit more color in terms of the accounting for it. The full financials and I guess a lot of the movement and the color will come through at the half year with the June results.

So I might pause there. It was a really good quarter financially, notwithstanding the lower ounces, but we're well placed in terms of our strategy, both with I guess, internal cash generation and our overall funding position, which I'll talk to a bit more detail as we go through Bilboes. But with that, I'll hand it across and we'll talk through the Bilboes project. And maybe, Victor, if you can talk to Bilboes?

Thank you, Ross. Can we move to the next slide? Okay. This particular slide and the next one really is information we have already published on the project. I won't go over it today because it's already been published, and it's already in our previous presentations. What I will do is actually to give an update on where we are today. We appointed -- as Mark has said already, we appointed DRA as our EPCM contractor for this particular project. At the moment, we have DRA and ourselves, we've frozen the project scope, which allows DRA to complete the detailed designs for the projects commonly known as the front-end engineering designs.

We expect to conclude these designs maybe by the end of the third quarter into the fourth quarter of this year, which will allow us to place orders for the long lead items towards the end of the year, really in the fourth quarter of this year. The construction for this project will take place over 2027 and 2028. And our expectation is that we should have the first go to towards the end of 2028. So basically, that's where we are. We are busy with DRA. We are working with the various contractors.

Okay, thank you, Victor. Victor, I don't know if we lost you. Could we -- could I ask -- I think Craig has joined us. Craig, have you joined us? I hope so.

I actually have managed to join this.

Okay. Good. If you could just take us through the -- oh, no, hold on. Before we got on -- sorry, sorry, I beg your pardon. Before we get on to Craig, I think, Ross, are you going to just say a few words about the funding strategy for Bilboes?

Thanks, Mark. If we could turn to the next slide, it was really in one...

Yes, the next one. The next slide.

[ Billy, ] next slide.

Thanks, Mark and Victor. Just to provide a quick update in terms of the funding strategy for Bilboes. And as previously disclosed and discussed on previous calls, we have a full funding pillar strategy. The first two pillars are being completed. So we previously disclosed to you the hedging program that's in place. And also the $150 million convertible note raise. So those are all completed and funds are received in treasury and ready for deployment.

Importantly, steps 3 and 4 are in progress and well on track. Step 3 is the interim funding facility, and that is where we're working with the consortium of Zimbabwe and South African banks to pull together a $150 million facility. We're working with our co-lead arrangers, Stanbic and CBZ in Zimbabwe. And the data room is fully functional. We're working through all the various due diligence and we're expecting to have that facility in place by mid 2026 or July 2026 latest. And that facility is really going to be secured around the Blanket Mine cash flows.

The wider project finance facility is also well in progress, and we're working with a number of financial institutions on that. We do acknowledge that the time line after each financial closure is a little bit longer term. So we expect that to be completed over the next year or so. But across those various work streams, we're well progressed and we're quite excited in terms of status and positioning for our Bilboes funding.

And if we turn to the next slide, we'll see an update in terms of the construct that I've previously spoken to. This is best read in terms of looking at the chart from right to left. So you'll see in terms of the $590 million and the makeup of that $590 million in terms of our capital cost and including working capital and capitalized interest coming up to that quantum of spend that we expect to be able to -- the need to deploy for Bilboes.

But then looking at the 2 columns on the left-hand side, at our $3,500 gold price per ounce and the compilation of how we expect to fill that funding requirement. We now have cash on hand, as I previously articulated of $161 million. At the top end, we have our forecast net cash flow that will come out of our operations of $125 million. And between the senior debt and other facilities in terms of what we're targeting, the gap is now $304 million.

If we move that pricing deck closer to $5,000 per ounce, which is represented in the middle column, you'll see that, that senior debt and other facility requirement basically halves and goes on to $154 million. So we're quite excited about where we sit in terms of our financing strategy, in terms of how that's all coming together. And actually, we think that we're well placed in terms of our ability to start deploying funds and moving this Bilboes project on time and to schedule. So that, I hope, gives you a good overview in terms of where we sit with our funding position. And I might turn it across to Craig Harvey now to talk about exploration.

Thanks, Ross. I'll take you through our activities of what we've been doing at Blanket in the past couple of months. So this opening slide is from our [indiscernible] that we published on the 7th of April. So for those of you that haven't seen it, it basically represents from 34 level down a depth of approximately 250 meters below 34 level. So that kind of gives you an indication of the scale that we're looking at there. And this is only really in what we call the BTR and the Blanket ore bodies area.

But some of the key takeaways, as I said, is we are intersecting the continuation of the ore bodies, about 250 meters below our workings currently. And what those colored blocks represent? If you can make it out, it's the various different ore bodies. It's quite difficult to read because they stack behind one another. But that is the limit of the inferred mineral resources as we currently have, which was dated 31 December. So anybody looking at it can see at the bottom there, we've got some nice warm colors, which is greater than 2, 3, 5 grams per tonne that is sitting below our inferred resource base that we have in the public domain at the moment. So encouraging takeaways. We're drilling. And the ore bodies continue at depth.

If we can move on to the next slide, this thing gives a tabulation of some of those results that you have seen. And one of the key takeaways there. So you'll see that the top 4 there is annotated as Blanket 7 and the ore body name. So it was March -- sorry, it was June 2025 when we published our previous drilling update for Blanket. We indicated that we had intersected a new ore body. This ore body is now being turned Blanket 7. And as we draw more, define more, this area is going to grow. And the key takeaway here is, I mean, Blanket 7, we're looking at in the drills 40 meters wide. So I mean any mining company that can find a 40-meter wide ore body running at between 3 and 4 grams per tonne is going to be extremely happy about it.

Inside that 40 meters, we have the option of being active selective in what we do, so we can narrow it down. And just by looking at the drilling assays, we can mine those anywhere between 5 and 6 meters wide, at anywhere between kind of 12 to 50 grams per tonne. Now it's not going to be all over but that's the kind of results that we actually get out of Blanket. So it's very, very key. The drilling program is going along very well. We drilled just over 10,300 meters between the June 2025 and the April 7 press releases that we've done. And so clearly, we have a need to update our mineral resource estimate. So that will be done during 2026 and reported and declared before the end of 2026. But I think the upshot is at depth, there's no change. If anything, it's getting slightly better. I mean, 40 meters wide, 4 grams a tonne. I think it's happy days.

If you can move on to the next slide, and we'll talk a little bit about Motapa,the surface exploration project that's located directly adjacent to Bilboes, that we've just been speaking about. So I'm pleased to say that finally, the labs in Zimbabwe have been very, very busy. So finally, we have gotten all of our repeat assays back and all of the assets from the lab that we need. So we have now closed out our 2025 drilling program, exploration program.

By doing that, we are targeting early Q3 2026. They made a mineral resource estimate for the Motapa North sulfide mineralization. That is going to represent the kind of $5 million of work that we've done during 2023 and 2024. That's what we've expended to date. Going forward into 2026, we will kind of be doing a rinse and repeat on the Motapa South. It's also got historic open pit oxides that have been mined and clearly below those splits, there's the sulfides. We have done some reconnaissance drilling there. So we will now formalize and we are busy drilling there at the moment to do very much what we've done at Motapa North.

In addition, there's Mpudzi oxides that we are still looking at. And then very interestingly, during 2025, some surface trenching to the east of Motapa South has exposed mineralized horizons in the trenches. So it's looking like we've got another near well at surface oxide potential target that we want to have a look at.

So I think Motapa, yes, it's business as usual. It's going along very well. We will close out 2026 with a maiden mineral resource estimate. With that, I'll hand it back to Mark to take us further.

Thank you, Craig. So just to finish off. I mean, there's a lot of words on this slide, but basically, we've got 2 immediate focuses. The first is to return Blanket Mine to good health. Based on what we've seen in April and May to date, we appear to be making good progress on that.

But just building on what Craig has been telling us we are convinced that Blanket has a good long life ahead of it. And so one of the things we're doing now is looking at ways to improve Blanket's resilience so that it can actually live that longer life and continue to generate cash or so. So Blanket is a pressing and immediate focus.

And clearly, the other one is to get Bilboes into production as quickly as possible. And in this gold price environment for the asset of that quality, every month lost is money not made. And so we are very, very incentivized to get Bilboes done as quickly as possible with a view to continuing work on the top, which will then underpin our long-term growth potential. So those are the 3 main issues: Blanket, Bilboes and Motapa.

So with that, a little bit longer than we expected. I'll open for questions. I would just apologize again for some of the connectivity issues that we've had on this call, I'm sorry about that. So open for questions.

Mark and team, thank you very much for the presentation today.[Operator Instructions] So we'll just wait a moment before we go to questions just for people to have a time to raise their hands. So just give us one moment.

Okay. So we've got our first question from Nic Dinham. Unfortunately, Nic, we're not hearing you at the moment.

I'd just like to ask people if you'd like to ask a question, please do raise your hand. Nic, we will wait to see whether maybe it's your microphone settings, which is in the bottom left-hand side of your speaker of your screen. No, unfortunately, we can't hear you at all, Nic.

If we get any other further questions from people, please do raise your hands. Well, Mark, at the moment, we don't have any further questions. Unfortunately, we're not able to hear Nic at the moment. That's there. Do you want to give a few more minutes or a few more seconds, should we say, to see if anyone asked the first question.

Normally, people are pretty quick off out of the blocks, if they've got a question.

I would agree. Maybe I'll hand back to you for closing remarks. Mark.

Yes. Okay. Okay, look, thank you all for your participation. As I say, the first quarter was a disappointment in terms of production. The gold price saved us. But as you've heard, I'm personally very optimistic about the trajectory, both for Blanket and for Bilboes. So let's put the first quarter behind us and move on. So thank you all for your attendance today. Thank you.

Welcome to the Caledonia Mining Quarterly and Full Year Results 2025 presentation for analysts and investors. I would now like to hand you over to Mark Learmonth, who is the CEO Mark, over to you.

Good afternoon, and welcome to this management conference call. If we could move to the first slide of the presentation, please. Just go to the disclaimer. So that's the standard disclaimer. If we could move on to the next slide, please.

Presenting Team is me Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's Chief Executive; we're also joined by Ross Jerrard, who will run us through the financial performance for the year; Victor Gapare will talk to us about what's happening at Bilboes; and Craig Harvey will give us an update on the various exploration initiatives. If we could move on to the next slide, please.

So just in terms of the summary of the results, it was very strong financial performance underpinned by a higher gold price and some consistent operating delivery. Revenue up by 46% to $267 million, gross profit up by 78% to $137 million, EBITDA up by 100% from just less than $60 million to just over $125 million and profit after tax up by 200% from $23 million to $67 million. So there's some quite big numbers there. Ross will unpack those numbers in more detail in a moment. Should we move on to the next slide, please.

Before we go much further, can we just briefly discuss Caledonia's value creation proposition. So from one angle, what we see here is looking at this from the perspective of our distributions in country to government by way of taxes and royalties and also to our local shareholders.

Over the course of the last 9 years, we've distributed just over $0.5 billion. So we're making a very, very substantial contribution. And you can see quite how that increased in 2025. as a result of higher taxes due to higher profitability, higher rates due to the higher gold price, but also an increase in local dividend payments to our minority shareholders as a result of the strong financial performance and the unwinding of certain local ownership initiatives, that's very pleasing to see. But moving on to the next slide.

As well as paying $0.5 billion out to local stakeholders. We've also delivered a very significant return to our shareholders. So the top line shows Caledonia's share price over 10 years with dividend with dividends, and we've given a return of just over 1,000%.

Over the same period, GDXJ has increased by 464% and gold up 300% by as well as making significant contributions locally, and we're also delivering a very, very healthy return for our shareholders. Can we move on to the next slide.

Right. Let's just quickly focus on the operating results. Clearly, we had a very unfortunate fatality in September as a result of a secondary blasting incident. As a result of that, we initiated a comprehensive review of our safety practices and our safety procedures, our operating controls and our training programs across the entire business with the objective of improving our risk management and making sure that we operate as safely as possible to do in a very hostile underground environment.

That includes instilling operational discipline, a proactive forward-looking approach to identifying hazards and avoiding such hazards and embedding a 0 harm culture across the organization. should move on to the next slide.

But what we see here is the usual graph. The top graph shows our tonnes built and grade, the bottom graph, the bars show the [ ANSES ], the line shows the recovery. What's notable really on the top graph is that the tonnes milled has been stable. We're pretty much operating the plants, the metallurgical planes, the crushing and milling and the [ CIL ] plant pretty much operating that at maximum capacity of about 820,000-odd tonnes a year. And that's been very stable, largely because we've been able to make use of the stockpile to draw down from the stockpile on those rare occasions when the mine hasn't been delivering the tonnes. But also what's clear from the lower line is the extent to which the grade is lower in quarter 4 and quarter 3 than it has been historically.

Part of that is due to the fact that temporarily, we're mining lower grade areas as we're developing into hybrid areas, that will -- we expect to reverse into the second quarter of 2026. In the first January, February, we're still mining relatively low-grade areas that has improved in March. And also to some extent, as we've been drawing down from the stockpile, the stockpile itself is relatively low grade.

The bottom chart really clearly shows the ounces, but it shows the drop in recovery and that is largely due to the lower feed grade, the tail grade that we deposit on to the tailings facility pretty much it's 0.2 grams a tonne. We're not going to get much better than that. So inevitably, that means that the difference being that the recovery goes down. Can we move on to the next slide?

Craig will talk in a lot more detail about exploration towards the end of the presentation. Our exploration activities at Blanket are really targeted with replacing what we're depleting. So we're effectively standing still. Nevertheless, we've actually done rather better than that. So over the course of the year -- over the course of the quarter as quarter 4, you can see that we added quite substantially more tonnes than we depleted.

And as James -- as Craig will explain later on that will give, in due course, result in a revised reserve and resource statement for Blanket.

Right. I'll let us Ross, if he could run us through the financial results. Ross, could you do that?

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we dive into the financial results, I just wanted to draw your attention to the format of the reporting. And as previously advised, Caledonia is now classified as a foreign private issuer under Canadian rules. So the standard filing requirements in Canada that you've historically seen has changed. We will be filing our full financial statements under the SEC rules. So included in our 20-F, which is scheduled to be filed in April. You'll see the full financial statements and controls at the station, and that's all going to be done in April.

So I'm delighted to talk you through the financial results today. And you can see on the summary slide in front of you, we've had a fantastic year. The performance was really driven by the benefit of the higher gold price environment, but they're also delivering the ounces. Blanket Mine produced 76,000 ounces of gold in 2025. and solved 77,000 ounces. The Bilboes oxide operation produced and sold 1,683 ounces of gold. So together, they total that 79,000 ounces on the top right hand of the chart.

Importantly, to highlight, our online costs were up some 19%. And the unit costs were marginally above those cost guidance ranges that we had guided the market. This was really a reflection of the restriction of access to some of the higher grade areas, but also some inflationary pressures and our continued investment in development to ensure long-term operational reliability and safety, but also that grade profile. So with grade coming through slightly lower than we had originally anticipated. That did have a flow-on impact on our unit costs, just slightly above what we had guided.

The overall result though, it was a very pleasing financial results with EBITDA up 109% at $125.3 million, which was a significant improvement. And after our capital expenditure, which was largely on track to guidance, when you take into account some commitments that will roll over year-end, we delivered on our CapEx profile. And all resulting in a healthy free cash flow of $62 million, which was up some 483% on the prior year. And after our distributions resulted in an earnings per share, which was at $2.83, which again was up over 200% for the year. So very pleasing set of financial results.

Just lining into a little bit more on production costs. So if we can turn to the next slide, please. You can see on the bottom right-hand pie chart the makeup of our production cost categories, which is largely driven by labor, consumables and power indicated with the blue, orange and green slices and then a little bit 10% across Admin. You'll see in the figures, our overall Production Costs went up 25% across the group, 19% was an increase in Blanket. And really, those were driven by those three buckets of Labor, Consumables and Power.

Our Labor costs were up this year, again, during due to higher overtime payments that were made during the year with production bonuses together with some wage inflation. But really, the delivery of the ounces needed to -- was a result of more volume being moved and hoisted to compensate for that lower grade, and as a result, we had to pay that over time and the various bonuses that came through the system.

Our consumer bills were up some 14% for the year. This was driven by some of the inflationary impacts on consumables, reagents and the like. But there is a ZiG premium in terms of local procurement. So there's been a big push this year in terms of deploying our local ZiG component back into the market. With that, there is a slight difference with the ZiG versus U.S. dollar differential in terms of the local market. And I would highlight that it's been a very pleasing year in terms of foreign currency the differential between the ZiG and the U.S. is very close now. We're not seeing the high differentials that we've seen in the past. But it has been that as we've taken a strategic decision to deploy into the local procurement market using ZiG. We have incurred an additional premium in terms of that ZiG to U.S. dollar differential. And we'll talk a little bit more about the overall ForEx loss when we talk through the cash flows, but that has been a driver in terms of our consumables.

Our power costs, there have been grid and genset power overruns, which has been really driven by supporting that additional output. We obviously mining in deeper areas within the mine, driving higher power usage and requirements and obviously incurring more power.

And we do have initiatives in place that we will address these three buckets. As part of our ongoing cost initiatives to ensure that we can at least will reduce or at least maintain our cost profiles in those significant buckets.

Moving on to the next slide, please. You'll see the results as we work our way through the profit and loss top line revenue, up by $267 million, driven by those ounces and higher gold price that I've spoken to. Our royalty this year was up at $13.5 million. That is driven by the higher revenue number. And I would draw your attention to the change in the royalty rates. So as we deliver ounces at over $5,000 an ounce. They do attract an additional 5% royalty charge. Our production costs, as already indicated, are up some 25% and depreciation charges were largely unchanged. So we're very pleased with our gross profit that was generated, up some 78% for the year, driven by those improved margins and thanks to the gold price.

You'll see the net foreign exchange losses was down from $9.7 million down to $3.3 million this year. And again, that was a very pleasing result in terms of the exchange differential that we had historically seen, and we're very pleased with the ability to access the willing buyer, willing center market. The $8.5 million is the profit on our solar plant. I won't talk to that. We've gone through that in previous results presentations, but it was pleasing in terms of being able to sell that asset, generate proceeds that we could then deploy across the group.

I would draw your attention to the administration costs that $20.48 million. that is higher than historical run rate and general trending that we see going forward. This year, we have incurred some quite significant one-off fees, predominantly around our advisory fees related to the convertible, some additional employee costs that have gone through the system and some other transaction costs that we don't see ongoing, and we think that run rate will come off by some 10%, 12% more closer to 17 million type number on a per annum basis.

We've incurred a fair value loss on our derivative financial instruments. So those are the hedging instruments that we put in place to protect our side our mine and the gold price at the $3,500 gold price. So those hedging instruments are really put through the P&L. We don't do any hedge accounting or anything that is nuanced that extend. So everything goes through the profit and loss. And we were delighted with the ultimate profit before tax of $106 million, up 162%.

The tax expense was higher off this great result. But also included the capital gain tax on the solar plant sale, which pushed up those tax expense a bit more than a normal run rate. But delighted with our P&L result with our overall profit for the period of $67.5 million. If we can move on to the next slide, please, and let's quickly touch on some of those aspects from a cash flow perspective.

So our cash flow from operations was up $105 million, up 90%. I've spoken to interest and tax payments, which included that solar sale. Our CapEx was on track in terms of what we had guided the market in terms of expenditures and the proceeds from the sale and the gross proceeds from the solar sale were able to be deployed into our treasury options where we deployed those into various fixed-term deposits during the year. And we're able to allocate central treasury and start our treasury function as we look to Bilboes and beyond.

Ultimately, our net cash used in investing activities was able to then be deployed across some dividends paid. So the $19.9 million was a result of dividends paid both our [ CMC ] shareholders of $10.8 million, but also to [indiscernible] so our various partners at the blanket mine level in terms of deployment. So they've got $5.5 million and $3.6 million, respectively.

Ultimately, very pleasing close to the period with a net increase in cash and cash equivalents of $32 million for the year, which is a great result.

And if we move to the next slide, you'll see our overall liquidity and what it means. And so that we exited the year with cash on hand of $35.7 million. And if you add in our bullion on hand at year-end plus on gold sales receivables and our fixed-term deposits, we -- before utilization of facilities, we had almost $60 million available to us. and a total liquidity of just under $55 million. So a very pleasing result in a very solid position in terms of our performance for the year.

On top of that, in early 2026, we were able to successfully complete $150 million convertible note offering, whereafter in putting a cap call structure, we received a net $130 million. So post year-end, we're in a very healthy cash position. as we look to further development of blanket, but importantly, as we start our deployment and our spend on our Bilboes project, which I'll talk to in a couple of minutes.

So moving on. I'd mentioned that CapEx was largely on track, and you'll see our various expenditures that were aligned with guidance. So nothing that stood out in terms of where we spent the money, but ongoing sustaining capital expenditure was really about underground mine development, where we spent 22% of the CapEx budget. And that was really development and looking at new mining areas and underground developments, targeting additional reserves and resources, 31% of the spend was sitting in the engineering department, and that covered the whole [indiscernible] of electrical, mechanical and central shaft upgrading and engineering. And then there was 27% that went across the other mining departments in terms, mines, milling and the [ MRM ] department. Our only nonsustaining CapEx project was the tailings storage facility, and that accounted for 20% of the CapEx spend.

So turning to the next slide, you'll see the slice of where those various spends occurred in terms of sustaining and nonsustaining split, but we were pleased that we were able to deliver those CapEx projects and continue to invest in the mine for the future with some solid cash flow generation. If we move to the next slide, please.

Closing off on CapEx. You will see in the announcement that there's been some additional CapEx approvals by the Board. So our total group capital expenditure for this financial year, 2026 is projected to be $178.9 million. The two key projects that were approved last week by the Board was $14.2 million construction of a $34 million power line connecting to the 132 kV backbone and a $2.2 million allocation against the central winder for the central shaft converting it from AC to DC.

Both projects are great projects with quick payback periods and really underwriting some solid reliability in terms of power usage at the mine, and also some imperative upgrades in terms of the underground mine. So we're looking to the future, investing in the future and making sure that some of these critical projects are delivered.

Over and above that sustaining CapEx, we have $136 million allocated primarily against Bilboes. We're $132 million is anticipated to be spent against both the feed phase, but also some early deployment of expenditures against the Bilboes project and then just shy of $4 million, which is a further exploration at [ Motapa ] project. If we can move to the next slide, please.

We're delighted that the results of 2025 has delivered a solid performance. And we're continually looking at that balance of our capital allocation in terms of both growth projects and shareholder returns. And as you can see in the CapEx that we've both delivered and plan to deliver, we're looking at growth for the future and investing in that future for the long term, but equally conscious about shareholder returns. So we're delighted to have another dividend, a quarterly dividend of $0.14 per share dividends have been paid since 2012. So we continue with that continued payment of dividends and balancing both growth and shareholder returns, and I wish draw your attention to the key dates in terms of that dividend payment. So if we can switch to the next slide, please.

I'll now take the opportunity to hand it across to Victor to talk a little bit more about Bilboes.

Thank you, Ross. Can we move to the next slide. With regards to Bilboes, we've previously announced that the Board approved this project implementation in November last year. Basically, all the parameters, which are in there, we have announced them before an IRR of 32.5%, it a gold price of $2,548, Obviously, this -- the returns are materially higher. It prevailing spot gold prices. Can we move on to the next slide.

Basically, what we've shown here, really, the economics, it are three different prices, the consensus forecast of USD 2,548 per ounce, the 3-year trailing average price of USD 2,350 price. And the price at -- which was on much 2026, which was USD 5,177 per ounce. Obviously, there's been some volatility in the price of gold. So those figures in the way -- you can put any press you want it, you can come up with different margins.

But clearly, you can see -- you will see that the economic change is quite significantly if we apply the current economics, that's all we're showing. So effectively, what we have done is we've started implementing the project following approval is as said, we've raised some money. And we've appointed an [ EPCM ] contractor and that work has started and we are hoping for -- the plan is to have the first gold for towards the end of 2028. And our fist full production will be 2029 which would be just about 200,000 ounces per. That's peak production. Can we move to the next slide.

Ross will cover the funding aspect what we have done and what we're planning to do, Ross, over to you.

Thank you, Victor. So our funding strategy for Bilboes has covered four funding pillars, and we're delighted with our progress in terms of how we're tracking against that strategy.

The first phase was underwriting our blanket production and securing a series of put options at a price of $3,500 per ounce that covered a 3-year period. From January 26 to December 28, effectively the construction period. The key elements of that, the hedging strategy was really to provide a floor to the cash flows that we generated. It wasn't giving up any upside in terms of gold price above $3,500, but it did enable us to basically Mark the best part of $200 million from our own operations that we could deploy against the Bilboes' project.

At prices closer to $5,000 an ounce, that $200 million escalates to closer to $300 million. So it's a cornerstone strategy in terms of using our current asset on the portfolio to underwrite the strategy. It also helped us in terms of our pricing discussions with the various banks and financial institutions in terms of how we'd sort of take on our various debt facilities.

The second step, as you've seen and previously mentioned is the raising of some funds from a convertible note offering. It was $150 million raise. It was upsized from $100 million due to some amazing demand out of the U.S., and we're delighted that the result that we were able to receive those funds in short order. And we were able to also allocate some of those funds against the cap call structure which effectively increased the conversion price to $56 a share, up from the $40 a share. So those two steps, steps 1 and 2 have been completed, and has enabled us to be able to move forward in short order in terms of the remaining funding facilities.

The first one is an interim funding facility. So we currently in negotiations with a consortium of both Zimbabwean and South African banks to raise $150 million facility you would have seen the announcement in terms of appointing standard Stanbic and CBZ, this coleader arranges for that facility, and we're targeting the middle of this year to get that facility in place. And the cornerstone of that is against, again, the Blanket line cash flows.

And in parallel with that, the fourth arm is really the project finance facility longer burn rate in terms of getting that facility in place. But that formal process has commenced, and we're expecting that to be delivered in the next 12 months with the various diligence procedures. So we're very pleased around where we're positioned with it. What we've done to date in terms of underwriting, that financing strategy, and we're on track in terms of the discussions with the various banks and financial institutions.

If we turn to the next slide, we'll just illustrate, I guess, our thought process and overview in terms of our sources of uses and actually how we believe that this funding requirement will be bet. I'll refer you to the right-hand side of the slide in the first instance in terms of the use of funds. So you'll see our capital cost is basically $485 million. But when you add in our capitalized interest and some working capital, the ask is closer to $600 million in terms of a package.

On the left-hand side, you'll see the column at $3,500 an ounce, and you can see, together with our cash and our net proceeds from the convertible bond and our forecast future cash flows the ask from a senior debt and other facilities is just over $300 million in terms of delivery of those funds.

If we move that pricing deck up to $5,000 an ounce, you'll see that senior debt and other facilities reduces down to closer to $170 million. And we're well on track in terms of getting that funding in place between both the interim and the wider project finance facilities. So we're really pleased in terms of the status of the financing work stream. Then importantly, we've got some big spend that is coming up. So we need to deploy the best part of $130 million in the third and fourth quarters of this year as we start the more significant spend on the Bilboes project. And we're excited about that, well on track with that. And I think it's all coming together very nicely.

So with that, I'll hand it across to Craig. Harvey.

Thank you, Ross. I'll just give you I will give you an overview of the exploration activities that have been taking place at Motapa and Blanket in the past year. So if you could go on to the next slide, please.

So 2024 and 2025, Caledonia has put quite a lot of money into Motapa. I mean we have drilled surface drills totaling just under 30,000 meters. It's a very strategic asset, as we can see on the map on the screen, it's located direct to the south of the Bilboes project, which we have just heard about. That kind of scale from the Motapa north to Bilboes is between 200 to 400 meters away. So I think we can all draw our own conclusions as to the synergies between Bilboes and Motapa.

Bearing in mind it's basically hosted in the same share zone. Mineralogy metallurgy is expected to be quite similar. So going forward for 2026, we have had a further allocation of $3.8 million exploration, we will continue looking at Mpudzi and we're going to focus on Motapa South for the year. Clearly, there is potential for a sulfide resource below the historic open pits. But at the same time, there's a strong potential for oxides to the east. We have put in two drillers to have a look. Results were encouraging.

So things to look out for at Motapa, during Q2 2026, the company will be publishing a maiden resource estimate or probably be publishing or made in resource estimate. We are just waiting for some of the final QA QC checks of the data and geological interpretations to be complete. But in all likelihood, during Q2 of 2026, we'll see what the drilling activities have actually given us. If you can move on to the next slide, please.

So during 2025, there's been the continued deep hole or long exploration program at Blanket. So just to give you an overview of the areas that we are drilling. So on the northern side of the property, which is to the left of the image, there where you can see Lima, it's the Lima and Eroika ore bodies and to the south on the right of the image, that's the main sale of the mine. It's the Blanket and the Blanket quarter ore bodies. So I'll zoom into a bit more detail on each of these areas. If you could move on to the next slide, please.

So on the Blanket side, where we've got essentially a whole bunch of or what is that come together South Blanket Quartz reef and the Blanket ore bodies. And the Blanket ore body is on blanket 1 through to blanket 6. So of course, we also have blanket 7 now.

But what is important to note here, so I've got a great legend on the side of the map there. And really, what you want to be looking for is the little purple stripes that you see coming off from those drill hole traces. So anything that is purple there is 5 years, 5-gram a tonne plus. Now in the next month or 2, again, we're just finalizing some QA, QC checking from the lab, but we will be putting out a press release regarding the drilling results that we've done at Blanket and that will give us what will give people insight into the wins that we encounter in these grades. Very, very exciting. So 34 level is the base of the Blanket mine currently. We are putting a decline as you can see there from 34 to 36 level. It's on 36 level at the moment. We are starting with the 36 level in infrastructure development.

And what is key to note. So 34 level, 1,110 meters below surface. The deepest hole there that we have represented with us little blue -- there's little purple stripes is 277 meters below 34 level. Now 277 meters below 34 level equates to a depth of approximately 1,350 meters which equates to a 42% level. So the kind of main levels are set up 34% to 38%, 120-meter lifts apart. So we are quite clearly looking at all things being equal. There's another two main lifts at Blanket that we are going to have a look at.

Very, very encouraging. We carry on doing the work. Just to give a bit of reference, if you had to move to the south to the right of the image, we will be putting in another [ Handel drill drawcovy ] to create another fan of drillers in due course adjacent to these holes. This is kind of at the limit of our inferred resources. So clearly, with this drilling coming in, we will be looking at upgrading inferred to indicated as Mark, the CEO has indicated, with a view to upgrading mineral resources and mineral reserves in due course.

So if we can move on to the next slide, which then focuses on the northern portion of Blanket mine. So on the very left, the very northern portion, a little bit of colorful goods that you see there, stopes is the Lima ore body. And in the middle is the Eroika ore body. Now Eroika has been a mainstay. And why you only see a couple of drillers there is the majority of this area was drilled during 2023 and 2024. You can already see some of the development that's accessing these areas. The majority of this area is now indicated resource. But you can also see that there's a long hole that's also maybe 60 meters below 34 level. So currently, on a 36 level type horizon.

Clearly, as we advance 34 level, we'll have a hanging-wall Cub put in place, and we will continue drilling on the Eroika ore body from 34 level down to 42 level. On the left-hand side with Lima, again, you can see some of those little purple stripes, which represents 5-gram a tonne plus, one hole on purpose. We pushed down to around the 34 level back to test the debt to see that we're not wasting our money. We did pick up the Lima ore body. But Lima itself is not one single ore body. It's made up of six ore bodies. So there's a lot of scope to continue doing this.

The lowest level of mining on Lima is at 750 meters below surface. You can just work out for yourself. If we take it down, another 250 to 300 meters. We're talking 22 level to 34 level of mineral resources that may be exploited. Again, low 22 level. It's inferred resources on Lima. With the drilling coming in, we will be looking at including that and seeing if we can upgrade some of the inferred resources into indicated resource or better.

So in a nutshell, Blanket keeps on going. The grade is still looking good. The grades, the wet, we obviously model what we are expecting to find with our drilling and it continues to return similar, if not better, results at debt. So thank you for that. With that, I'll hand back to Mark to give some closing comments.

Good. Thank you, Craig. We're kind of running out of time. So I just want to draw your attention to an event that we hosted at the -- on the fringes of the Cape Town Mining in [ Darbar ] in February. As along with five or six other foreign owners in Zimbabwe mining companies, hosted a briefing event where we invited representatives from the Zimbabwe government, or Ministry of Mines, Ministry of Finance and the reserve bank to -- the objective was to try and dispel some of the pervasive continued misunderstandings about what it's like to operate in Zimbabwe.

It was very well attended. And the way the representatives of the Zimbabwe authorities engaged in a very transparent, constructive way with the audience, hopefully, as a first step. The first of many to trying to overturn some of these misunderstandings about Zimbabwe. So that was very good. Can we move on to the next slide.

So just to finish and move on to questions. So clearly, our strategic focus after the fatality last year is to continued commitment to the safety lot of our people. objective to maintain reliable and operations at Blanket, which, let's face it, is going to be an important generator of capital for the construction of Bilboes. But as you've heard from Craig has very significant long-term extension plans and is right. Leverage the strong gold price to invest in blankets projects to create operating resilience and to mitigate further input cost pressures.

Moving along with Bilboes as quickly as we can in terms of the financing and development plan and to continue to explore at Motapa, which in due course, we think will be a very exciting project. So all of those together really mean that we're continuing to execute our strategy to become a multi-asset Zimbabwe focused gold producer. So I think that's the end of the presentation. Can we I open it up to questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is going to be from Howard Flinker.

What is the maturity of the convertible bond? I have another question, too.

It is -- I think it's -- is it 7 years, Ross? It's outside the it's a slightly longer-dated maturity than most convertibles, and that was specifically so that it matures outside the timing of the scheduled repayment of the project finance. Gross is it 7 or was it slightly longer?

7 years.

Yes. Next question, Howy.

Yes. I thought the solar plant was in New Jersey Island.

That would be a big mistake because it's often not very sunny here.

No, I thought that the ownership was there and it was tax free. What's the capital gains rate on that?

Ross, can you help?

Had ended up being $2 million. So -- and there was a combination and some of it was on a total capital gain and there was a profit element that it was $2 million.

And what is the tax rate on the loss on the derivative, was that a regular tax rate or something different?

No. So yes, all the derivatives are held outside that will help here in corporate. So it's 0% for the derivatives because they're sitting in Jersey. I think for practical purposes, it would be a very difficult strike impossible to structure derivative holdings through Zimbabwe.

I think having to go through the various [ RB ] approval process would just fly in the face of being able to -- when you decide to do these things, you do them very quickly and to have to pause for RB approval and just make it impossible.

So the effective tax rate on the derivative pretax and post-tax is the same, right? 0 taxes?

That's right.

Yes. Finally, I'm going to say this is pretty thorough financial accounting, nice job.

We've got our next question from Joseph Parish. Joseph, would you like to go ahead?

Yes. Great presentation and anticipated some of my questions, so this will simplify things a bit. The only thing I really had left to ask has to do with power cost. The solar panel, of course, was continued to keep those contained with the recent conflict in the Middle East, right, there's some temporary increases in fuel and energy prices, depending on how long this goes on and maybe just with the higher operating cash flow you're enjoying on the mine would further investment in solar plant facilities at [ Lancet ] become a higher priority as you're looking at this? Or a lease something that's being...

No, it wouldn't. So let's just deal with our exposure to fuel. We've got -- Blanket uses about 2 million liters of fuel a year. Approximately half of that is diesel generators. The other half is used on diesel equipment in the business. Last year's diesel price, that regiments about 3% of our OpEx. So we're not particularly exposed to diesel in our operating costs. And in terms of supply, we've got just over 6 months of supply, either on the property or on consignment stock. So we're not particularly exposed there.

The problem with solar is that when the sun doesn't shine, you don't get solar. And the particular issue we face right now is that the way electricity gets through the grid to Blanket means that the last sort of 30-odd kilometers goes through a pretty poorly maintained 33 kV line, which typically has bigger reliability problems when it's rainy. And so you've got the combined effect of rain, which means that you've got a higher chance of power interruptions from the grid. And also, it means that the solar plants start working very well. So the two issues kind of compound each other.

So the -- what we're doing is we're putting in a 132 kV line to which we expect will reduce the average incidence of power outages from, say, 30 hours a month to an average of, say, 3 hours a month and that will reduce our reliance on diesel. And to the extent.

And once you connected to the 132 kV line, that gives you much more flexibility to access power both in Zim and in the region where there is no shortage of power. So frankly, solar kind of compounds the problem doesn't solve the problem. So the simple answer to your question was no. I'm afraid.

We're going to take our next question from Mike Kozak.

Great, so two questions for me. First one, sustaining capital for this year. It looks like you increased $27 million to $43 million, and you did a good job of explaining where that money is going. But I didn't flag any change to the 2026 all-in sustaining cost guidance that you guys set a couple of months ago, I think between 2,100 and 2,300 one. Are you going to stick with that range or...

There's clearly has clearly fallen between the gap in that we got the Board approval a couple of days ago for the extra CapEx and clearly, I guess that should flow through into a sustaining costs. Is that correct, Ross?

That's right. And we're just looking at timing, Mike, in terms of when some of that will actually drop. So while the projects have been approved, it's going to see when they're scheduled to be paid.

Okay. Got it. And then my second one, if I back out from your earlier quarterly results from last year, I should say, it looks like Q4, you recorded a derivative loss of around $4.8 million, I think. Is all of that related to the put options you guys bought in December? Or is there something else going on there?

Yes, it's hold to do with the puts.

Let's be clear, the point of the puts at gold even with this current volatility, the gold price is much higher than the pulp price. The point of the put is, I think Ross outlined just to reinforce the point is, it creates a floor price for the purpose of the Zim banks in terms of putting together the interim funding facility. So it is still strategically important to us.

For sure. I just -- for my own numbers, I want to note what to adjust out for and what to expect in future quarters. I just wanted some clarity on that. I appreciate it guys.

We've got our next question from Nic Dinham.

Everybody. Usually, I'd like to spread around the questions. The first is for Craig. I think Craig, it does look encouraging what you're doing. But coming back to Blanket mine, is the recon between what you're actually getting out of the mine at the moment adhering to what you would have expected from your ore reserve models?

Yes. Yes, they are. So was affected by a couple of force moves that we had to make. We could not access the areas as quickly as we would have liked. So we were forced into maintaining production out of kind of some lower grade, some medium-grade areas. As we all know, in mining trouble was it your high-grade years and people see it. So yes, it's maintaining what we are expecting.

Okay. Excellent. I think the next question is for Ross -- or sets of questions. Ross, it's a usual one. Have you repaid your facilitation loans to your noncontrolling interests? And the second question with that, I'll have a few more. But the second question is with that is how many dividends did you distribute from blanket eventually you get some numbers here. It wasn't quite clear the [indiscernible].

Maybe I do that other way around. So there was $60 million of dividends that were declared in 2025 from Blanket. Not all of that equated to actually cash move. There was an opening balance and the timing of the payments post period, but it was $60 million. And there's a $5 million rollover with $44 million paid during this year. So high level, $60 million, but there were some timing differences in terms of the cash flows. Bets rebated facilitation loans in the Q4 2022.

That's the employee trust.

That's employee trust, sorry. And Leaf has got about $0.5 million left on it to.

Leaf is the government beneficial shareholder.

Yes. Okay. So it's all over for the Poland be securing their share of the dividends from now on?

Correct.

That's right.

In your sort of one of the questions about the loss on the derivatives that you're reporting. And obviously, this is a moving piece because you're marking it to a price at the end of the period. Do you have a sense of what that number would be if you were to take today's price, what sort of loss would you be recording?

I haven't looked at it today. And I mean that range in the actual valuations range quite considerably as we do the pricing because it's a delivery of a put option each month for the next 3 years. So it's not a primary fastener under the 3.5%, they all written off on day 1. There is a value that goes out. But I don't have the price for you today, especially after today's call.

I thought you might have an idea of sensitivity. And the last question is, you've started to accumulate some cash and near cash equivalents and you've got some deposits being made here. What do you think you need in terms of keeping blanket solvent and keeping the rest of the business lubricated with cash. How much -- what do you think is a minimum residual cash that you should have on found at any one time or cash equivalents on any one time.

Well, self [indiscernible] CFO perspective, I'd rather have a little bit more in the back pocket than normal, but anywhere between $30 million to $50 million, I think it will be a healthy position, particularly on the projects that are coming through the system. And we've got a large and now I will be deployed. But I think having that sort of quantum on balance sheet, this gives us some protection in terms of where we're going.

So Ross, do you mean giving cash? Or do you mean liquidity?

Liquidity in terms of facilities. Yes.

Okay. And then just on the operational side, there was a discussion of -- previously about a buildup of 4 stocks. Now you run them down again because to meet the requirements at the end of this last period. is your strategy still to rebuild those stockpiles?

Yes. So one of the things that we'll be introducing in the middle of the year is a new shift system at blanket to introduce -- do two things. First of all, we will introduce 7-day working at the mine as a standard. And that's pretty common now across the mining industry in Zimbabwe. And the mine drilling and blasting only currently takes place 6 days a week. So that should result in an extra day of drilling and blasting. If we can get the stuff trained and hoisted. In the order cost events that should give rise to an extra 100,000 tonnes a year.

In the short term, we'll be using that to accumulate a stockpile to see us through the hiatus relating to the AC/DC conversion. So currently, the Central Shaft works AC, the such Central Shaft Winder works as, we'll be converting that to DC for safety reasons and also for cost reasons, but that will result in a central shaft, not being able to hoist for a period of 2 to 3 weeks. And so we do need to make sure that we've got a healthy stockpile at the end of the year to see us through that.

So very much there is the intention over the course of this year to build stockpiles. And then once we're confident that the shift system is working and we've got adequate stockpiles, then clearly, we'll be looking at what we need to do to address and use the extra production increase our milling capacity. That's a work in progress.

So at this stage, I can't tell you what the costs of increasing that milling capacity would be and what the effect on OpEx would be. Let's just focus on getting the Shift system in getting the shift system in, delivering the ounces, getting and delivering the extra tonnes, building the stockpile to see us through the AC/DC conversion. And then for next year, there will be the hopeful of the story about how we're going to convert that into increased ounces. It's premature to say that at this stage.

Okay. Excellent. And then a final question for Victor here. at the end of this year -- this time next year, sorry in 2 months time, you will have spent circa $130 million on Bilboes. What will you have in place by the end of the period? What does your project going to look like on the ground?

Okay. So thank you, Nic. What we are really doing is placing order long lead items is what we're basically doing most of this year, towards the end of this year. That's really what we'll be doing. I will probably have some contractors moving in at the end of the year. But really, most of the money we are spending is it's -- that's on the long lead items.

So that means nothing very little physically to see.

Yes, very little to see. The only thing you'll see there are contractors moving in and starting to do some work.

So this will be in the form of prepayment on really?

Prepayments and deposits, yes. Yes.

Our next question is from Tate [indiscernible].

All right. So I just have three questions. The first one, can you explain more about the consortium facility as in which banks in South Africa, you are quoting? And what is their level of interest in supporting the company given the 15% nonresident tax, which resumed this year. Could you explain that? That's my first question.

The 15% nonresident tax, I mean, Ross, are you able to answer that?

No. Well, not specifically for the banks, but we've got two South African banks, and then there's Zimbabwe in banks that are participating. So half a dozen banks that we're talking to for the interim facility. And yes, this -- we've been pleased with the, I guess, the appetite to participate in such a facility with those banks. So no, we haven't had any negative colorations or discussions from that perspective.

And then our PF facility is the African banks in terms of in that we're talking to in a similar positive feedback.

Okay. And my second question is PGM companies have reported substantial amounts of their zig pushing of the export proceeds are being trapped at AZ. I think these complaints from [ Zimplats ] and [ Valtera ] and I wanted to find out if Caledonia is facing such a problem with their ZiG portion of the export proceeds being trapped at [indiscernible].

No. Absolutely no.

All right. Then my final question is, has your outlook changed in terms of the gold prices which you're expecting for the year, given the geopolitical tensions happening in the Middle East right now?

So are you -- is that -- do you mean do we going to adjust -- you're asking for to adjust our production level? Is that the question?

Yes, considering that the commodity market has become volatile owing to those geopolitical tensions.

No, the mine plan is pretty much set. I mean we can't just arbitrarily increase and reduce production. The objective is to mine to optimize operating efficiency and keep the mills full. .

What you could do if you may, you could adjust your cutoff grade. So if you thought the gold price was going to be much higher, you might reduce the cutoff grade, so you can perhaps mine more material that's less -- would be less attractive in the local price environment. But no, the -- within the current generations aren't giving us any thoughts about changing our overall approach to the mine plan and our mining schedule.

And the next question is from Tinashe Duma.

Next presentation in 4 minutes great performance. My question is how much of this year's performance is genuinely operation. I'm taking about the year and the period under review, how much of this performance is genuinely operational? And how much is simply gold price leverage. I think in that its production is banks broadly flat and while gold prices as by circa 4%. And from that, I could like you that your earnings were slightly price led rather than execution led. So what competence can you give that the business can protect margins and certain cash generation if the gold price normalizes.

Okay. So one of the things that should -- we didn't make clear enough. As you be quite right, in 2025, a lot of the good performance was driven by the higher gold price. One of the things that we are doing, and we have seen quite significant increases in costs of Blanket. If you look back over a 5-year period in 2020, Blanket's online cost was $784 an ounce. Last year, it was $1,280 people need to understand that blanket now is a very different mine from what it was in 2020. We're hosting significantly more material from much, much, much deeper.

In 2020, we are hosting most of all of our material from 750 meters below surface. Now we're hosting most of our material from 1,200 meters below surface. So inevitably, that means that you're going to be using more electricity, even before you start taking account of the incremental need to use electricity for improved ventilation.

And in terms of employees, if you look at the pointy end of the business, so that's the people involved in the mining, the underground trimming, the hosting, the people involved in the milling, we're actually handling more material, more tonnes per person now than we were 5 years ago. But the other -- our costs have gone up, and that's -- if you look at our consumable costs, we're pretty much using less in the way of inputs like grinding media, cyanide drill steel, we're using fewer kilos of that per tonne mill, but every year, year-on-year, we've seen our costs such as the costs of steel balls, which we use in the steel in the ball mills, they've gone up on average 10% per annum over each of the last 5 years.

So the cost profile has gone up. What we're doing now is we're focused on trying to reduce dollar costs, in particular the first three initiatives are targeted at electricity. So the 132 kV line, the AC/DC conversion, they will -- they are expected to give rise to significant cost reductions over the course of the coming 3 years.

In addition to that, we're trying to use electricity more intelligently. So we're trying to reduce our overall power consumption by just being clever more clever about how we use electricity.

The shift system that I referred to earlier on, has got two aims. The first is to reduce worker fatigue by reducing the overtime and reduced over time will clearly then reduce the sort of our labor costs because over time is clearly at a premium rate.

But the other thing, a lot of those cost reductions, I expect may well be given away in terms of further increases in costs that we know we're going to experience over the next 3 years or so, particularly in terms of providing better quality housing for the workers.

And so the only way I can see that we can get sustainably reduced costs of blanket is to increase production. And so as I mentioned, we are -- we would expect as a result of the shift system but introducing 7-day week working weeks or a 6-day working weeks is to harvest more tonnes, which should give rise to more ounces, which should mean that our costs are spread over more ounces and therefore, get the cost down.

So that's not going to help quickly. But over the next 3 years, I would be hopeful that as a result of the combination of those packages, we can begin to get the cost down. But don't forint, I think the Blanket is going to go back to being a low-cost producer at $784 an ounce. It's not the only way for a deep level, relatively low-grade mine like Blanket to be sustainable. And we -- Blanket's 120 years old this year. and we want to keep it right as you heard from Craig, there's plenty of potential to extend blanket mine life by going deeper. And the only way we can do that is continuing to invest to improve resilience and lock in economies. So that's a long answer to a fairly short question, which I hope addresses -- which I hope answers your question.

Yes. Thank you that has been answered. [indiscernible] for equity is, by the way. Thank you. That is enough for me.

Okay. But let's be clear, the way the phrase is escaping forwards for pretty much any mine in Zimbabwe, which is facing rising cost pressures. The only way to counter that is to escape forward through growth. And that's what we're looking for over the course of the next 3 years.

Okay. Thanks very much. That concludes the questions that we have at the moment. So Mark, I'd like to give the floor back to yourself for any closing remarks.

Okay. Well, clearly, it was a good year financially, as we've identified, largely driven by the gold price. We are focused very much on Blanket, turning that to account that will be a game changer, not just for Caledonia but also for Zimbabwe. But we're not neglecting Blankets.

I think the comments at the end of that Q&A session made very clear, we are focused on using this high gold price to invest in Blanket both to try and tickle up the gold production, but also to lock in resilience and efficiencies.

So that's going to be a 3-year exercise. It's not going to be a quick turnaround. But hopefully, clearly, we'll keep stakeholders informed to level. So thank you very much for your attendance, and we'll be putting out our Q1 results in about 6 weeks' time in the middle of May, okay? So thank you all very much.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the presentation on Bilboes Feasibility Study. Today, we are joined by Mark Learmonth, he is going to introduce the webinar and start his presentation. Mark, over to you.

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this webinar to set out the results of the feasibility study in respect to the Bilboes Gold Project.

Could we move on to the next page? That's the forward-looking statement and disclaimer. Just to introduce the presenting team, I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's Chief Executive Officer; joined by Ross Jerrard, who is the Chief Financial Officer; James Mufara, the Chief Operating Officer; Victor Gapare, an Executive Director of Caledonia; Simba Chimedza, who is the Group Technical Manager and who has been closely involved in the preparation of the feasibility study; Maurice Mason, Vice President of Corporate Development; and Admire Makuvaro, who is in charge of projects and capital projects.

All right. Before we get into the project -- before we get into this presentation, I just want to make a couple of points. We published the feasibility study and a related press release on Tuesday, the 25th of November. On Thursday, the 27th of November, the Zimbabwe Minister of Finance presented his budget for 2026 to the Zimbabwe Parliament. And this budget, which is expected to be enacted before the end of the year, includes 2 proposed fiscal measures relevant to our sector and to the Bilboes project in particular.

The first proposal relates to an increase in the royalty payable to the Zimbabwe government and the second proposal relates to the treatment of capital expenditure for tax purposes.

So turning to the first, the royalty rate currently payable by Zimbabwe gold producers to the Zimbabwe government is 5%. It's now proposed to increase the royalty rate to 10% if the gold price exceeds $2,500 an ounce. And our current understanding is that the higher rate of royalty, 10%, will apply to the full price of gold and not just to that portion of the gold price that exceeds $2,500 an ounce.

The second proposal relates to the tax treatment of capital expenditure. The current tax regime in Zimbabwe permits 100% of capital expenditure to be deducted from taxable profits in the year that CapEx is incurred. In the budget, it's proposed that capital expenditure deductions for tax purposes will now be spread across the life of the project. Now whilst this has no adverse effect on the overall tax payable over the life of the project, it does alter quite substantially the timing of tax payments and therefore, the NPV of the project. These measures are still proposals and are not yet passed into law.

We're evaluating the potential effect of these proposals on the Bilboes project and also on Blanket mine. And depending on the final form of the legislation, we may need to update the feasibility study to reflect revised economic outcomes. So accordingly, this presentation can only focus on the technical parameters of the project, which remain unchanged. We can't discuss at this stage the economic outcomes or any changes to those economic outcomes that we published on 25th of November, and we'll update the market in due course when we finished our evaluations.

So with that, can I -- can we start the presentation? Can we move on to the next page? And I believe we hand over -- I dealt with this page. Can we hand over to Victor to lead us into the project. Victor, over to you.

Thank you, Mark. The Bilboes project is located in the Matabeleland North province of Zimbabwe. It's approximately 80 kilometers north of Bulawayo, which is Zimbabwe's second largest city. It covers an area of just over 2,700 hectares of mineral claims or mineral rights. The project was previously owned by Anglo American Corporation Zimbabwe during the period 1986 to 2002.

As a background, Caledonia bought Bilboes -- 100% of Bilboes from the previous owners in January 2023 for $65 million. This was settled by the issuance of 5.1 million new Caledonia shares and a 1% net smelter royalty to one of the vendors, resulting effectively the new -- the previous owners of Bilboes holding just about 28.5% of diluted shares in issue.

Can we move on? In terms of reserves, the Bilboes projects holds 1.75 million ounces of gold at a grade of 2.26 grams per tonne. It also has 0.5 million -- just over 0.5 million of measured and indicated resources. This is excluding the reserves, which I've just talked about. Those -- that 0.5 million ounces at a grade of 1.37 grams per tonne and an inferred resource of just under 1 million ounces at a grade of 1.62 grams per tonne.

The ore from Bilboes is refractory, so it requires specialized processing. After extensive evaluation, we settled for the BIOX technology to treat the ores. This is supported by Metso, which owns the technology and there are quite a number of other BIOX operations throughout the world.

I also bring to your attention the fact that the Bilboes project next to the Bilboes project is the Motapa property, which used to be owned by Anglo American again prior to them exiting the gold mining space in Zimbabwe. It covers about 2,100 hectares, and we have ongoing exploration at that property, which when it's considered with the Bilboes project, will probably make it quite a big project.

Can we move on? In terms of development plan over the last year or so, we've looked at different ways of commercializing this project. We looked at multiphase development, which means starting at a smaller scale and then scaling up to full production. After evaluating all those, we settled for a single phase development as it gives the most economic approach.

Prior to Thursday's announcement of the changes in the tax regime, we had planned to do the detailed designs in the first half of 2026, which would allow us to procure long-lead-time equipment and preliminary works in the second half of 2026. The capital expenditure would have been 2027 to 2028, lasting about 2 years with first production targeted in late 2028 with a 5-month ramp-up to full production. Obviously, what we -- like Mark said, we are still evaluating the impact of the changes. And we've got -- at the moment, we can't say anything in terms of whether this timetable will change.

From a mine scheduling point of view, what we prioritized was the the shallow high-grade ore. This optimizes early cash flows and also enhances the debt capacity of the project.

Can we move on to the next. From a production profile point of view, our first full year of production would reach a peak production of 200,000 ounces of gold in a full year. This is a significant uplift from what we are currently producing at Blanket. Blanket produces somewhere between 75,000 and 79,500 ounces. per year. The life of mine of this project is 10.8 years with total production of 1.55 million ounces over that time period.

In terms of ore throughput, the average production for year 1 to 6 in terms of the ore we'll be processing will be 240,000 tonnes per month when we mine McCays and Isabella. From year 6 to year 10.8, we will be mining ore from Bubi, which has got different characteristics from the Isabella and McCays ore and we'll be producing at a lower rate of 180,000 tonnes per month. The ramp-up, which we have built into the project is designed for smooth transition to full capacity. And what we have looked also is at optimizing cost and high recovery and achieving high recovery rates.

Okay. Can we move on? From a production point of view, like I've said, we reached full capacity at 200 -- just over 200,000 ounces. But when we average over life of mine will be about 150,000 ounces per year. And you can also see the grid, which is the line on top, that it's fairly constant in terms of what we will be treating. Thank you.

Can you move on? From a CapEx point of view, the amount of capital we need, when we start with Isabella and McCays, we're looking at a total of $492 million during that phase. When we move to Bubi to process the Bubi ore, we will need to put additional capital of $91 million, which would give $583 million as the total CapEx for this project.

Move on -- for this section, the funding strategy, I hand over to our CFO, Ross Jerrard. Ross, take it on.

Thank you, Victor, and good afternoon, everyone. As Victor said, there's a spend of circa $600 million. So I'll just quickly talk you through our funding strategy. And it's reasonable to assume that the majority of the financing is expected to be traditional nonrecourse senior debt. We have been able to align the Blanket production and, I guess, the equity contributions that will be able to be generated internally from Blanket over the development phase. And we'll be looking to Blanket to provide that internal equity contribution.

What we have done is we've put in place a series of hedges, hedging 3,000 ounces of gold per month for the next 3 years at a strike price of $3,500 per ounce. These are Put Options, so really an insurance policy that protects the downside and enables Caledonia to retain full upside gold price exposure. But what that means is it underpins the cash generation of approximately $200 million from that cumulative production of 233,000 ounces over that 3-year period and really provides that foundation of cash flows and our internal equity contribution from the Blanket mine.

In conjunction with that contribution from Blanket, we are looking at various interim liquidity arrangements and other instruments for that matter, so the traditional instruments of royalty, streaming agreements, convertible debt. With those instruments and overall strategy, the ultimate aim is to minimize equity dilution. So in any of those decision points that we're looking at in the construct of this funding, equity dilution is front of mind for us.

And importantly, from a spend profile perspective, whilst we're looking to accelerate the procurement and the project development and with our initial time lines before the 26th of November, we are really looking at Q3 of next year to have some quite significant spend beginning to drop the whole funding strategy is all about providing early liquidity and being able to make sure that we've got a robust financial arrangements and packages in place to support that procurement spend and lead times and early works.

So with that in mind, we have been working with Cutfield Freeman, a specialist mining finance advisory firm, who have helped us in terms of the construct of what could reasonably be modeled in terms of our internal generation as well as those various financial instruments that I've spoken to and coming up with an overall funding strategy.

And I must highlight, we've just returned from a trip to Harare and Johannesburg last week, where we met 7 local banks in Zimbabwe and 2 South African and regional banks, and we were delighted with the response that we received from those banks, and we returned very excited about the whole funding strategy and the construct in terms of how we're going to pull this all together for Bilboes. So a very exciting platform in terms of how we go forward.

So with that, I'll hand it across to Simba, who will talk us through some of the geology.

Thank you, Ross, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll take you through the technical aspects of the project, starting with geology.

So geology of Zimbabwe is divided into 3 main areas, of which the Archean occupies most of the Zimbabwe Craton. This one holds the remnants of volcano-sedimentary also known as Greenstone Belts Belts. These Greenstone Belts, they cover approximately 60% of land surface of Zimbabwe, and they are renowned for their rich variety of mineralization, predominantly gold.

If we can move to the next slide. In terms of regional scale, the project is located within the Bubi Greenstone Belt in the southern west part of Zimbabwe. The gold is defined by hydrothermal vein systems, which are concentrated along structural breaks. The gold is finally dispensed within sulphides and the sulphides are predominantly pyrite and arsenopyrite. And as Victor alluded earlier on, the ore is refractory.

The depth of oxidation is very shallow from a depth of 6 meters to 50 meters below surface. That's where you get your sulphide occurrences.

If we can move to the next slide. We conducted extensive drilling on the properties with a total of 93,400 meters from some 664 holes over a strike length of 7,400 meters. This was an average depth close to 300 meters. The drilling comprised of core drilling and recirculation drilling, and this was conducted over 3 phases from 1998 to 2018.

The first phase of drilling of 17,650 was conducted by Anglo American Corporation in Zimbabwe during the period of 1994 to 1999.

If we can move on to the next. This is a demonstration of the drilling that occurred at McCays mine with a total of 20,000 -- just under 21,000 meters from some 177 holes over a strike length of 1,400 meters to a depth of 345 meters. This was done over 3 phases.

We can move to the next. Isabella North pit, 29,000 meters from 166 holes over a strike length of 1,300 meters to a depth of 320 meters.

The next one. Isabella South pit, 22,000 meters from 156 holes over a strike length of 1,700 meters to a depth below 300 meters.

And the next one, in Bubi, which is the last pit, 22,800 meters from 165 holes over 3,000 meters of strike length to a depth of 215 meters.

Right. In terms of mining, I will take you through some few slides, which will show you the pit dimensions from a design perspective. This is the work that was done by our consultants. So the first slide you are looking at is McCays pit, which essentially shows you the pit positions relative to the waste dumps and the stockpile positions as well.

So the McCays pit length is approximately 1,900 meters and has got a width of 345 meters, and it goes to a depth of 140 meters from surface. So this is the mining depth.

Then the next one. Isabella North pit has got a length of 1,000 meters, a width of 360 meters and a depth of 240 meters. This is the best of the four pit.

The next one. Isabella South pit, which will be mined concurrently with Isabella North pit, has got a pit length of 1,300 meters, a width of 330 meters and a depth of 155 meters.

The next one. And then Bubi pit, which will be mined as Phase 2 in the last 4 years of production has got a pit length of 2,300 meters, a width of 325 meters and a depth of 210 meters.

Right. In terms of the process flow, essentially, it involves a combination circuit, a BIOX circuit, a carbon in leach circuit, a neutralization circuit and the tailings storage facility.

The key technology, as I said earlier on is BIOX technology. And given the fact that the ore is refractory in nature, it requires specialized mining process for gold recovery. After extensive metallurgical test track, we tested 3 or so processes, we settled for the BIOX as the most viable option for the treatment of the refractory ores.

The benefits of BIOX, I can just quickly go through some of them. It's improved rates of gold recovery, reduced capital cost. We've also leveraged on a long track record of commercial operation and continuous process improvement. The technology is very robust and is suited for remote locations. Again, it's very simple. It requires very low skills and it's environmentally friendly.

And the process has been commercially available for more than 30 years now and has been operated in 14 plants in 9 countries, as you can see on the screen there. And total production over the years has been more than 36 million ounces of gold. So essentially, the technology is proven. It offers high gold recovery at lower operational risk.

The technology is also used by some big gold mining companies such as China Gold, Nordgold, Pan African Resources, which has been operating in South Africa for a while now and Endeavour, which has got the latest generation plant in Senegal. We actually had an opportunity to visit the plant sometime in May this year.

If we can move on to the next slide. In terms of benchmarking, this slide will show you that the Bilboes plants for both phases, which is Phase 1 and 2, it shows where they place relative to other BIOX plants in terms of size. You can see they are well placed within the range of other BIOX plants.

We can move on to the next one. This is a schematic process flow diagram. I'll just go through the various circuits that you can see there. The first one is on your right -- top left corner, it's your combination circuit, which involves crushing and milling. This is the first stage, which reduces the plant feed size to facilitate the liberation of the mineral particles for subsequent downstream concentration.

Just below that, we've got the flotation circuit, which concentrates the sulphides and goes into small concentrate mass of about 5% of original mass for Phase 1 and 10% for Phase 2. This is in readiness for the material to be transferred into the biological oxidation circuit, which is the BIOX circuit below, which essentially destroys the sulphides in the concentrate, utilizing our bacteria to expose the gold for leaching.

And then on your bottom right, that's the carbon in leach circuit. So acidic solution from the BIOX plant is then removed for recycling and the solids are neutralized for leaching in that circuit. So essentially, gold is loaded on to activated carbon and then recovered for smelting. And then the tailings from this process, they are taken to a tailings storage facility.

Next slide. This is just a flow description. I've gone through that, so we can skip this one.

In terms of infrastructure, I will hand over to Admire so that he can take us through the infrastructure.

Thank you, Simba, and good afternoon. Under infrastructure, I will cover the major facilities. Under mining and infrastructure will establish open pit mines at Isabella North and South, McCays and Bubi at a later stage. We'll establish gold processing plant, Tailings Storage Facility and Rock Waste dumps for mining and pits, and we will establish internal roads, network and public access roads, which links to the main roads that cover the area.

On power supply, we will construct a new 132 kV overhead line that will span from Shangani to the mine site. We will also construct a new 50, 132 kV, 11 kV substation that will be established close to the facility.

On water supply, water will be actually accessed through pit dewatering and from boreholes and also augmented from smaller dams that are close to the mine facility.

Let's move on. This is a layout which will show the 3 mines, which is Bubi right at the top, we have both Isabella North and South and the McCays. That's the presentation on the infrastructure layout. Thank you. Back to Simba.

Thank you, Admire. So in terms of operating costs from a mining perspective, we can move to the next slide.

Yes. So mining operating costs, they are generally flat around $20 to $30 per tonne of ore throughout the life of mine, except in 2034, you can see it peaks at $37 per tonne of ore. This is about [ something in phase], this is when Phase 1 ends and we will be going to Phase 2, which then requires us to increase the waste stripping, which then drives the cost to $37 per tonne of ore.

If we can move on to the next. From a BIOX perspective, the operating costs are a function of the size of the plant, which is dependent on the ore characteristics. As you can see, Phase 1 is in line with -- within range of the other BIOX plants, whilst Phase 2 is slightly higher than Phase 1. It's $113 per tonne of ore. This is really due to the use of more reagents due to the sulphur grade at Bubi, which is much higher, and this requires extra reactors. And there's also the need of a limestone plant for neutralization due to the acidity of the ore.

There's also increased power consumption for Phase 2 at Bubi due to the higher sulphur grade. But otherwise, the BIOX cost for Bilboes are expected to stay within industry norms.

We can move on to the next one. From a process point of view, our major cost drivers are reagents, labor and power. As you can see in the bottom table there, the unit cost for Phase 1, $22 per tonne of ore, for Phase 2 increases to $38 per tonne of ore. This is, like I said earlier on, increased reagent use, which drives that cost, which is linked to ore characteristics. There is also greater power consumption due to the other ore at Bubi compared to Isabella and McCays for Phase 1. So essentially, that's what's driving that cost.

If we can move on to the next slide, environmental and social. So the project is fully permitted with an environmental impact assessment certificate that was granted by the Environmental Management Agency.

In environmental and social impact assessment that was conducted in 2020, this essentially guides the social and community commitments such as CRS (sic) [ CSR ]programs, fair labor and recruitment policy, local procurement policy and stakeholder engagement plans. The mine closure is aligned with international best practice and complies with local statutory requirements.

So I'll hand over this to Mark now.

Yes. So this -- the numbers on this page are clearly based on the situation that prevailed on the 25th of November and don't reflect the proposed changes on the 27th. But if this project was to go ahead, it would reestablish Zimbabwe as a major gold investment destination. It's a big project and it's a world-class project. So if successful, it will put Zimbabwe back on the map again. And it would make a big difference to Zimbabwe in terms of foreign exchange earnings, about $3,600 gold, it would be about $5.5 billion in ForEx earnings. And it would deliver very substantial tax receipts to the Zimbabwean government, something like $1.3 billion of income tax withholding tax and royalty payments. over the life of the mine.

So this project under the right circumstances is good for Caledonia shareholders and also would be extremely good for the -- for Zimbabwe. Clearly, these numbers may change depending on the outcome of the current proposals. I think we should move on.

So key takeaways, big project, high grade, very -- under the right circumstances, a very robust project. And what we set out to the market on the 25th of November also had a very robust funding structure. And as Ross outlined to you, we've already made -- started to make some very good progress in terms of putting that funding structure together. Time lines, I think we did set out some time lines in the RNS. Clearly, they now need to be revised based on ongoing assessments of the current situation.

So I think with that, we're finished, and we'll open it to questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from [ Mike Kozak ].

All right. So yes, look, I appreciate you guys hosting this. I had 2 questions. First one, just related to the feasibility study. I think -- I believe the base case whittle shell you guys used were run at a little over $2,000 an ounce gold price, but the location of all the long-term site infrastructure like waste rock dumps, processing plant, tailings was based on $3,000 an ounce pit shells, I think if I read that right. So my first question is how much additional ore is captured in that gold price delta? And which of the 4 mining areas like McCays, Isabella North South and Bubi would potentially see the greatest mine life extensions?

I think, I'll hand it over to Simba. But I think the reason we position the infrastructure based on higher gold prices to make sure that we don't inadvertently put infrastructure on top of material that could, in due course, be mineable. But I'll hand over to Simba, probably best if you deal with that.

Thank you, Mark. Yes. So yes, so like Mark said, the reason why we've done that is to essentially ensure that we don't place any infrastructure within our potential mining areas.

In terms of potential for extensions, I would have to say both Isabella, McCays and Bubi have got significant upside potential in terms of additional mineral resources. For instance, at Isabella, McCays, we've got several other pits that have not yet actually been tested, but we've got confirmation that they are mineralized because we've mined oxides from there. It does the same situation with Bubi as well.

But I think it's also fair to note that we've got Motapa immediately next door. And I think it's quite likely that we will -- we would also get material coming from Motapa, which would be fed into the [ met ] plant probably after Isabella, McCays and then preference to Bubi, so that we don't incur that extra CapEx for dealing with the different ore characteristics at Bubi. So I think it's not just online -- it's not just exploration upside on the existing Bilboes property, it's also at Motapa as well.

Okay. That's helpful. And then my second question, and I appreciate that you might not be able to fully answer this one given with the royalty and the CapEx deduction rate changes if they do, in fact, go through. But my question was, I mean, how are you guys thinking about it internally? Like realistically, does this push back the Bilboes development time line by like 3 months, 6 months a year. How does...

It depends. I mean if we get rapid resolution to this matter, it very little is going to happen in Zimbabwe, South Africa generally between now and the end of the year. So we've got a whole month. If we get this matter dealt squared away within a month, it doesn't change anything as far as I can see. If the outcome is something that doesn't work for us, well, we'll have to reconsider and that will take as long as it takes. So it will be impossible to give guidance on that, Mike, I'm afraid.

Our next question comes from Nic Dinham.

Just a couple of questions. Clearly, you're working with real numbers here as you should. But if we compare the first feasibility study that was done and compare it to the latest, we've had a capital escalation rate of something in the order of 13% per annum. So since you're going to be working with escalated money soon, are you happy to continue that in my model? Is 13% a realistic number for what capital is doing year-on-year?

Victor, Simba, do you want to handle that.

Yes. Thank you, Nic. At the end of the day, the capital intensity of projects between pre-COVID and post-COVID, the capital intensity of projects changed quite significantly. But we've seen a stabilization in that as far as we are concerned in the last 2 or so years. So we are confident about these figures, which we worked on with DRA, which is a very reputable engineering company. They've done several projects elsewhere. So this project has been benchmarked as far as costs are concerned.

Okay. So the escalation from just your last year's PEA to this year is fairly significant. I mean if you have a look at that, that's almost like 20% plus 25%. So there's a big jump in those numbers. Okay. So I take the point you won't know, but clearly, capital escalation is an issue that you have to address. From the...

We have addressed it. At the end of the day, when you look at it, we have addressed it. We've looked at it and what we have come up with is what is realistic from a CapEx point of view. As I said, we have benchmarked it. And also, if you look at PEA in terms of accurate level compared to actual feasibility study, the difference is coming to play as well because now you're doing more detailed designs and everything. So you will get some changes.

Okay. On the operating cost side, strange enough or not strangely, it's great to see that your escalation rate is much lower, something in the order of 3% or 4% per annum. Are we happy? Are you happy that those numbers keep escalating out in that way?

Absolutely happy. Otherwise, we wouldn't have put them in the feasibility study.

No, no, no. I don't -- Victor, I don't think you understand what I'm saying here. You have to escalate these numbers into nominal numbers terms as you go ahead, right? So you'll be dealing with real escalated numbers in a year or 2, not just real numbers that you're looking at the model right now. That's why I'm talking about this.

The next question, this may be for Ross. These numbers don't have VAT added to them. What are you going to do about that since it's difficult to get VAT back from the government? And I'm assuming you are paying for VAT in the equation here somewhere.

Yes. So there is that through the system. I'm not sure how much I can talk around the restructuring in terms of how best we're dealing with that in terms of our corporate side. But in terms of the refunds and being able to offset the VAT component, we're comfortable in terms of the numbers and the modeling that have come through.

So I would actually say, Nic, actually, the system for getting that VAT refunds has actually improved quite substantially over the course of recent months.

Okay. Awesome. So you won't have to wait for -- to offset it against other tax payable apparently as you have done?

We can offset it.

We can.

But this does move into a taxpaying situation very quickly.

Okay. And finally, I think this is more of a technical question. There's power. Obviously, you're talking about putting a line directly from Shangani. Yet we read that the system is still under stress. And just how easy is it to get power when you want it, how you want it out of a substation in Shanggani?

Okay. Well, I think the first point I'd make is there's no shortage of power generally in the sub-Saharan region provided you're paying in U.S. dollars, okay? So I'd make that point. I think Admire is probably the best person to address the detail of that question. Admire, could you help us?

Thank you. Thanks, Nick. There was a study that was done by ZETDC in looking at the capacity of abstracting power from the Shangani substation. And they found out that they do have adequate power that we can abstract from the substation in linkage to the grid that we have through [ Sherwood ] substation, which is more like the central distributor of power in Zimbabwe. So there is adequate power that gets to substation and there's adequate capacity.

Nic, it's fair to say that Bilboes location is actually much more conducive to a reliable power supply than certainly Blanket. So we're comfortable about that. As I said, there is power that you can import and we do -- we can and do import power to the intensive energy user group.

The next question comes from Howard Flinker.

What did you pay for your puts?

Pay for what?

The puts ongoing...

The Put Options.

Howard, okay.

Howard, it was a total package of $13.5 million for the total puts over the 3 years. So on an ounce basis across those 3 years, it averaged at $125 an ounce. But obviously, the third year was a lot more expensive. The earlier years were cheaper. But it's basically $125 per ounce.

And then -- we got -- and we had deferred terms. So we paid some cash for 2025 and then some of it was deferred for 6 months and another lot were deferred for 12 months. But all in was $13 million.

Second question, is your CapEx at Bilboes going to be $583 million or roughly $350 million? I misunderstood.

CapEx of Bilboes, well, the peak CapEx is what -- sorry, Ross, go ahead, you've got close to numbers.

I think Victor, on your CapEx slide, maybe explain the phased approach in terms of both sides of it. So...

Yes. Our total CapEx is $583 million, but it's over many years. The first phase, which is where we need to get to 200,000 ounces for us to treat Isabella, McCays ore, we will need $492 million in that phase.

So $492 million upfront, at first?

Yes, correct.

Okay. And my final question is something that every company is going to be asked. How much -- how much gold do you have in your heat dumps? Many companies are going to be extracting that now. Do you have any idea how much you have in your waste?

Well, the Blanket or the waste to Blanket?

Yes.

Virtually, the deposition rate of Blanket is something like 0.2 grams a tonne. It's not -- we wouldn't be able to reprocess that. We did do although some of the older sections of the old tailings dump. I'm not sure what the outcome of that was. I'm sure if the outcome had been that it was commercially extractable, would have told you about it. So I guess the answer is that we've looked. And certainly, the new deposition at Blanket is absolutely not capable of being reprocessed. And it looks like the old stuff isn't commercially viable either.

So for you, very smaller next to none?

Yes.

The next question comes from Ian Joslin.

Okay. Right. Yes, I think the questions asked have been very pertinent, so I don't really want to repeat them. But I thought it might be worth just mentioning what's going on in a couple of other investments I have that do touch on what you're doing and partly because I'd just like to use them for benchmarking purposes.

So the first one is the more straightforward, which is you're probably aware that Tharisa are also doing a very large project in [ Great Dyke ]. They presented their final results this morning. And I asked the question about the sovereign -- the changes in the rules, tax and royalties in Zimbabwe. And they applied that they're hoping to come up with a bespoke agreement before they finish.

I'm sure you're aware of all the various things that they're doing, but they clearly think that they won't be -- they think they won't be subject to the rules as stated at the moment. So I don't know whether it's worth if you're already reaching out talking to other mining companies that are being caught by this, but it might be worth...

On Tharisa -- I have Tharisa's PGM play and the changes in royalty clearly affect gold.

8% is gold of theirs is what they expect.

Yes, but it's a relatively small proportion of -- it affects them marginally. It's not as though our entire product is gold. Clearly, the impact of the tax deductions of relating to capital expenditure, that does need a conversation.

Yes. I just thought that they clearly have -- they are concerned about it. They were very concerned about it. I could tell from their body language. So I would just suggest if you have a chat with them and see whether there's anything at all that you can glean.

The second point I want to make is with metals exploration. I see that you've used them as a reference point for BIOX. They [indiscernible]. They're also setting up a plant in India and Nicaragua. And I appreciate they're going to process oxides and their planned output will be 140 versus 200 for you. And they did buy their kit secondhand. But their total spend, the total budget is $122 million. So I'm trying to understand where the gap is between that and obviously, your planned peak of $583 million. It can't all be BIOX surely.

Yes. Thanks, Ian. One of the major costs in this project in terms of CapEx is actually our Tailings Facility because the terrain on which we're building the tailings storage facility is very flat. So that comes with the additional costs. We have looked at alternative sites, and it's something which we've always put on the table that we're going. So the additional costs in this project, that's where the additional cost is at the end of the day.

And as Victor says, we do continue to look at other deposition sites, particularly on the Motapa property, which could be more cheaper because you can lean it up against the hill. That would be ongoing work.

Okay. That's interesting to know. Who knew that TSS were that expensive.

No, absolutely. I mean they're horrendously expensive given the fact that you need double lining. I think the other issue that we face as well is that there's no play available in reasonably close proximity. So it gets even more expensive to source the double lining material.

Okay. One final side, and it probably isn't relevant, but the Rambutan plant is coming to an end next year. They hope to replace it with new deposits, but they'd be oxide. So there's the odd BIOX plant knocking around at the end of next year and going into 2027. So should you wish to reconfigure it, you might want to think about that.

Yes. But as you'd appreciate, we can't -- I mean, that's right. In real term, in real life, we could do that. But for the purposes of a feasibility study, you can't make an assumption about buying cheaper stuff secondhand, which may or may not be available. So I hear what you say entirely, but you'll also understand why for the purposes of the feasibility study, you've got to work on the basis you're buying something as a new.

Understood. No, it's just...

We are aware of that.

Ian, just to add to what Mark said or what you were asking about engagements, we are a member of the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe and there's active consultation within gold mining companies to actually try to engage government on this matter. So yes, we are in liaison with other companies.

Yes, I'm sure that you would -- yes, it would be the most sensible thing with unity of strength and all that. I think the rest of the other questions have been asked already. So that's it.

And we've got a follow-up question from Nic Dinham.

Okay. This should be a fairly easy one. I try to get through that budget speech, and there was a something about accelerated wear and tear allowances for projects or factories that work 24/7 type of -- that increase the number of hours they work, continuous operations. It seemed to me that you would fit in there. Did you see any benefit in there for you? Or is it...

There are so many moving parts and so many areas of inconsistency and uncertainty that needs to be addressed. So we can't get into that level of detail on this discussion.

There are no further hands up. So I'll hand over to Mark.

Okay. Well, look, thank you for attending on this call. This isn't the presentation that we'd hope to make, but we thought we should do it in any event. Let's see where this takes us, and we'll be sure to update you as we move forward. So thank you very much for your attendance.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Q3 2025 results presentation for Caledonia Mining. Today, we're joined by Mark Learmonth, who's the CEO, and he's going to introduce the webinar and start his presentation. Mark, over to you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Julie. Should we open the slide deck? [Indiscernible].

Move on to the forward-looking statement and disclaimer page.

Next page, there you go. And then the presenting team. So yes, I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's Chief Executive; joined by Ross Jerrard, the CFO, who will run us through the financial numbers. James Mufara, the Chief Operating Officer, will talk to us about operations. Victor will say a few words about Bilboes and Craig will -- Craig Harvey will talk to us about the -- some of our exploration initiatives.

Can we just move to the next page? Okay. The first thing I'll point out is that, as you probably noticed, we no longer publish the standard sort of management discussion and analysis and the detailed financial statements. So quarters 1 and quarter 3 will produce what we've done this morning, which is like a truncated version, but I think that's more than adequate for conveying the substance of what we're doing.

But as we get into the presentation, first, we must recognize that we had a fatality during the quarter, and we extend our condolences to the family and the colleagues of the man who tragically lost his life. James will talk to us more about what we've done in the aftermath of that to comprehensively review our safety procedures and safety practices, and what we're doing to strengthen our risk management and workforce protection. So James will go into that in some more detail.

It was a solid performance operationally. Production at Blanket was just over 19,000 ounces, and we sold just over 20,000 ounces. And that was clearly -- we've clearly been helped by the rising gold price. So the gold price is up 40% quarter-on-quarter, comparable quarter to this quarter to just over $3,400 an ounce, which drove a strong improvement in revenue and also profitability. So revenue up 52% to $71 million and EBITDA up 162% to $33 million. Ross will clearly provide more information on the financials.

With respect to Bilboes, as we say in the RNS, we expect to give an update as to where we are and where we're going with that imminently. So Victor is on hand to say something. But frankly, until we've imminently said something, there's not a great deal we can say at this stage. And then Craig will run us through the exploration programs at Blanket and Motapa, which we're advancing and which is showing very, very encouraging results. And then finally, I'll just remind you all that in addition to these results, we've this morning declared another quarterly dividend of $0.14 a share.

So with that, can I hand over to James to run us through the operating results? James, over to you.

Thank you very much, Mark. Good day to you all. It is very sad that -- I mean, in this quarter, we actually have to report a loss of life incident that occurred at our Blanket mine. In this very quarter, one of the things that why it's -- this tragic is we have seen quite a serious improvement in terms of our health and safety parameters, and that's in terms of lost time injuries, in terms of environmental conditions underground, ventilation conditions underground, we have seen an all-round improvement and accident-free days, we've seen quite a serious improvement.

However, we still suffered this loss of life in which the gang leader who was conducting -- in the process of conducting secondary blasting actually had a premature detonation and he lost his life. Secondary blasting operation is an operation where we break some of the bigger rocks that could have been generated during the time of primary blasting, so that you can send them through into our ore buses and be in a position to take them out to surface.

Immediately after this accident, we embarked on an investigation, thorough investigation and extensive investigation to determine the root causes of this accident. We had also reported -- we reported also this to the government who also actually conducted a thorough, extensive investigation on their own to determine this root cause and possible areas where we can see improvements. The investigation is complete now and action plans that we found out are currently being implemented to avoid any possible recurrence of these significant unwanted events. So one of the key issues that we still need to deal with is the issue of our employees and higher risk appetite that we see within the operations.

If you can just go to the next slide, please. And the next one. In terms of the slides that are now showing, I mean, you will see that and this depicts a consistent delivery that we are now witnessing at Blanket mine from the third quarter of 2024 to now, you can see that the delivery has almost reached a steady state. I mean almost delivering at the same level. This is the recipe to good production and actually consistency, that's what a plant wants, the plant wants consistent delivery, and this is what we're beginning to see.

This has been brought about mainly by 3 issues, but there is obviously a lot more other issues behind this. And the first one is the introduction of the short interval control system that we see on the mining and the metallurgical side, where production is managed on the short interval control basis.

The second reason is that we have seen is that there's been a consistent tonnage throughput, because now the plant we can feed from the stockpile, and we are in a position to see consistent throughputs due to feeding from the stockpile. The third reason for this consistent performance that we see with the tonnage and steady-state performance is because with the improvement in development that we embarked on starting the end of last year and even carrying on with this year, we are seeing an improvement with regards to flexibility as we are opening up better and more areas for production underground.

However, on the center of graph, you will see that there is an unfavorable drop in the orange line, which is the grade line. The reason for the drop in the grade line is linked to the loss of life accident that we had on the 22nd of September, where we stopped our high-grade areas for up to 20 days while investigations were actually going on. You will see that this year also a negative impact in terms of our recovery, which is on the graph below on the line -- on the graph below where the graph shows that the recovery also took a negative dip, because of the grade that actually went down. The good news, however, is that the recovery for the year-to-date is still on plan, and we still expect to finish the year high with regards to our recovery.

If you may just turn to the next graph, the next -- the table shows how our mining metrices were above plan for the quarter, which is actually showing a healthy production throughput throughout the whole quarter in terms of our tonnes broken, trimmed, hoisted. And most importantly, in terms of our development to generate new areas where we will mine from. You will see that we were green in these areas, and it's very important to be healthy in all these areas. This is consistent production all around. Achieving development will also help us to make sure that our flexibility going forward is going to be better, and this will actually positively impact in terms of employee productivity.

The only color which is not green is the grade color, which we have already explained that some of the higher grade areas, we had to stop them after the loss of life accident that we unfortunately suffered on the 22nd. And because of that, we actually see that the grade was at 3.4 grams per tonne.

However, if you can just carry on to the next table, we see that, at Blanket, we are on course to meet the increased guidance. On this presentation, you will see that the tonnes milled are still about 7% ahead of our desired run rate for the year-to-date. Also important, however, also is the issue with regards to the tail grade, which remains at 0.2 grams per tonne, I mean, which is our plan consistently very, very low, which is showing that our recovery within the plant has remained consistently very, very high. The ounces for the year to date is still, even in the end of the quarter, still 3,000 ounces ahead, clearly showing that Blanket is on course to meeting the increased production guidance as given out to the market.

If we can just go to the next graph, which shows that we are still securing the future. This production has not just been to meet today's need, but it's also securing the needs of tomorrow. You can see that in terms of our reserve generation, which was positive for the quarter. We have met today's production, but without destroying our ability to meet production targets within the future. So although our set out goal at the beginning was simply not to deplete reserves, we because of better production, better development actually added reserve ounces as well in the quarter due to better production. This is a healthy state to be in.

If you can just go to the last one, which talks about our focus on productivity. You will see that Blanket being a mine that has been in operation from 1904, some of the areas are further and further from the shaft barrel and deeper as well. There is a need for us to improve productivity and introduce technology within our mining space.

We have seen that ourselves is mining. I mean we are price takers and the only area in which we can actually improve our competitiveness is if we can improve productivity. We have thus embarked on implementing technology in the mine, so that we can better position ourselves to be more productive going forward.

In this example, I've just given 3 of the areas that we have chosen to embark on, which is engineering areas, and one of them being introducing men carriages or men riding. This is but the improved impact in terms of phase time, so that people are on the phase in good time and also so that people have got energy when they arrive on the phase. So we have started to implement this within our working areas as a way of increasing productivity, and dealing with increased cost that invariably come with an aging operation.

And most importantly is the technology that we are improving. We are doing a lot of the work in-house, as a result, it's costing us less to actually implement this technology. We intend to continue to increase and implement this technology to both increase productivity, and also increase the health and safety of our employees.

I'll hand over to Ross for the financial section. Thank you.

Thank you, James. So Ross, do you want to run us through the finance, please?

Thank you, Mark, and thank you, James. My pleasure. Good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to run through the financial results. And as what James described, it's been a challenging quarter, but certainly well delivered.

So if we can turn to the next slide, a quick overview of our financial results and a summary. You'll see gold sold is up 9% to 20,000 ounces against gold produced of just over 19,000 ounces, solid quarter there. I will highlight that those gold produced ounces are the Blanket ounces. There were some 437 ounces that was generated from Bilboes, that we don't account on this table just in order to calculate our on mine costs, et cetera. So a very solid set of numbers in terms of ounces produced and sold.

Just dropping down below that first line, you'll see the on-mine costs, which were up 27% quarter-on-quarter. That's driven by our sort of traditional elements of electricity, labor, and consumables. That increase was incurred this quarter, as James has indicated, there were additional volumes that were having to be processed and moved to compensate for some of those lower grades. And importantly, the teams had to be shifted around because of the unfortunate incidents. So when we're comparing against those areas that were planned to be or scheduled to be worked, there were a number of moving parts that obviously resulted in additional costs. But also additional volumes having to be moved, offset by that lower grade, which obviously came at a cost, and that has driven our on-mine costs.

Dropping down to our all-in sustaining costs for the quarter, you will see that they have equally moved up some 40%, and that's predominantly due to those on-mine costs that I've just mentioned, but also the higher gold prices impacted our royalties, and that's dropped down into the impact of our all-in sustaining.

Overall, a really good result driven by that gold price that Mark had mentioned at $3,434 an ounce, which was a really pleasing result, and has really benefited the operations and the results that we will talk to.

So moving to the next slide, and we'll talk a little bit about the profit and loss. Happy to report another sort of quarterly revenue number of $71 million, which is back on those good ounces produced and all-time gold prices. You'll see that royalty number has similarly increased in line with those revenues. And those production costs were up, as I mentioned, in terms of additional volumes moved at a lower grade.

Depreciation has largely been in line for the quarter. And I'm very pleased to report on those net foreign exchange losses where we've continued to benefit from access to the willing buyer, willing seller market, and being able to deploy our [ ZIG ] component. And if you look in the 9 months column, you'll see that we're just under $3 million compared to $10 million number for the same time last year. So we're really pleased with that result in terms of delivery in the income statement.

Our corporate line items have increased, and that's due to a higher equity share-based payment valuation that was driven by the share price. But also a number of one-off expenses that you'll see in that year-to-date number in terms of some of the corporate team reshuffle. And then lower down below the line, that tax expense is higher, and that's due to the good operational performance and the benefit of the gold price. But you must remember the gold -- the solar sale that's been included in that number. And importantly, from a cash flow perspective, includes the capital gain on that solar plant sale.

So if we quickly move on to the next slide and talk about cash flows. The net cash inflow from operating activities was a very solid number at just a shade under $14 million for the quarter, impacted by some large negative working capital movements of around $8 million. Those are timing in terms of some investments in terms of consumables and then the traditional working capital movements in terms of ounces, gold sales receivables and the like.

Tax payments, as I've mentioned, included that $2 million in terms of cash outflows. And -- but then lower down in terms of capital expenditure, we're largely on track for the year. We're not readjusting our forecast spend, and we've continued to invest and deploy money into our fixed term deposits. So you'll see we've got $18.5 million now sitting on fixed deposits, and they all sit offshore here in Jersey. So a really pleasing result year-to-date.

You'll then see the $14.7 million worth of dividends that have been made year-to-date, split in terms of $6.6 million for our NCIs and $8.1 million for Caledonia shareholders and comprising of 3 quarterly dividends that have been paid in the 9 months. And as Mark mentioned, we've declared our customary quarterly dividend of $0.14 per share earlier today. Importantly, we closed the period with $7.3 million of cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter.

And if we want to move to the next slide, we'll see where those funds are held, and also importantly, from a liquidity position, where we sit. So in terms of having cash on hand of $15.6 million. We've got those fixed term deposits that I mentioned of $18.5 million. And then we've got some bullion on hand and gold sales receivables at the end of the quarter. But overall, including our bank facilities, we have a total liquidity of just over $44 million, which places us in a very healthy position and have the ability to deploy funds against some meaningful projects, which is very exciting.

I know James has spoken about around cost initiatives, but I just wanted to turn to the next slide, and I guess, take a minute to look at our cost profile, which has been an ongoing team exercise. And I just wanted to highlight or take a minute to really look at our cost base against others. And we've been benchmarking our cost profile against our similar African peers. Admittedly, they're in South Africa versus us in Zim. But looking at mines that we compare to in terms of operating under conventional mining methods, and also those mines operating underground mines and at depth, we're not out of line and actually quite -- compare quite favorably against similar mines.

You can see those metrics in terms of depth, tonnes milled per annum and also the human element, I guess, the number of people that operate those mines. And our mines, as James had indicated, really, it's around where we're operating now. Blanket is a very different mine from 5 years ago, where 60% of its ore was really extracted from a depth of approximately 750 meters or 760 meters. And now we've got a big component of our ore coming up from a depth of over a kilometer.

And so in terms of tonnes and tonne meters hoisted and all the metrics that we're looking at, this all comes at a cost. So those key components of both productivity, but also our electricity costs and our tonnes of meters and additional loads that we're having to put on that electricity or the power requirement when operating at depth has a significant impact on our cost base when producing an ounce profile of around that 80,000 ounces per annum.

And there are a number of initiatives that we've got on the go, as James has indicated, and we'll be hopeful that we'll be able to bring those to account and have a meaningful impact on our cost base going forward, but it's unlikely that we will return to historical levels in terms of the cost profile when operating in a very much closer to the surface and lower volumes being used. So on that basis, you would have seen in the announcement this morning that we have updated our cost guidance for 2025.

So if you move to the next slide, please. Whilst the gold production and the previously guided gold ranges in terms of ounces and capital expenditure were maintained, we have looked at our cost base and looked at the volume movements and what it's meant for how we exit the year in preparing our outlook for next year. And we've increased our guidance ranges, both on-mine costs by increasing it to just over 10% to a range of $1,150 ounce to $1,250 per ounce. And equally, on our all-in sustaining costs, we've increased it for -- at 9.5% to a range of $1,850 to $1,950. And we believe that that is very reasonable and considered outlook in terms of as we exit this year and conclude on the final quarter.

So we're really excited. It is mining, and there has been some challenges, and I think the team has dealt with that very well. But as we sit today and as we look for our outlook for 2025, we're really excited in terms of being able to deliver a really solid 2025.

So with that, I'll hand it back to Mark, and I think it's going to Craig to talk a bit about exploration.

Yes. Thank you, Ross. So Craig, can you just talk us through the exploration at Motapa and at Blanket please?

Thanks, Mark. Well, I can do that for you.

So I'll just -- if we can go on to the next slide. So just very quickly, what we're doing at Motapa, the budget for the year is about -- just over 27,000 meters of drilling. At the end of Q3, we had done just under 20,000 meters. It's about 71%, 72% complete. We expecting to complete the drilling campaign during Q4. I did mention, I think, in the last quarterly that there were some issues with the laboratories in Zimbabwe. That seems to have been sorted. We have caught up quite a number of assays. So I am expecting to have a maiden resource declaration for Motapa, specifically Motapa North during H1 of 2026.

If we could go on to the next slide then. So this is -- this is just -- when I talk Motapa North, I mean, obviously, it's those nice pretty colored zones that you see on that map there. But that blue line that represents the Bilboes, which is our current project that everybody knows about and the Motapa area. So from Motapa to the Bilboes boundary is literally 200 meters, and it's another 250 meters to the Isabella South pit. So quite clearly, what we're doing at Motapa and Motapa North should in all aspects have an impact on the Bilboes project going further.

So currently, with all the drilling that we've done, we drilled and we've defined some mineralized zones over a strike length of approximately 2,500 meters. It remains open to the Northeast, still have some gaps between the historic old pits that we've got to do. Motapa North, its main thrust is oxide, sorry, not oxide, sulfide mineral resources below the current pits down to a depth of about 200 meters. So all of this, once the drilling campaign is complete during this year, we'll take 1 month or 2 months to get the assays in, and we'll have a maiden resource declaration for Motapa North early next year.

If we go on to the next slide, some of the other drilling that we're doing. So this is about 500 meters south of Motapa North. It's the area to call Mpudzi. We're finishing up our drilling campaign here. So we've sort of drilled about 1,000 meters on strike. It remains open probably for at least another 1,000 meters to the Northeast. It's an area that hasn't been open-pitted in the past. So this program is slightly different where we are focusing on the potential for oxides, clearly, drilling some deeper holes to get an understanding of what the sulfide mineralization looks like. But this program will carry on in 2026, and we'll report drilling results as and when they will come in.

If we could go on to the next slide, and I'll take us through Blanket quickly. So Blanket, we've got the underground, as we all know, and we've also got the surface. So with the underground exploration drilling, it's all of the long-haul drilling that we're doing, typically holes 250 meters to 450 meters deep.

If we can go on to the next slide, I can then show you where the areas are that we're drilling. So to the south or to the right of the slide that you see, so we've got ARS, which is AR South, we've got the Blanket Quartz Reef, which is BQR, and then all of the Blanket orebodies, and we've got 7 of them. So you can see there 34 levels, you can see the little blue traces that are running there. So we currently drilling below 34 level. And a lot of our intersections are now on kind of the 36 level mark. On the Blanket orebody side, half yearly drilling results. So probably at the end of this year, we will publish a set of drilling results for Blanket.

On the northern side, on the left-hand side, you can see some long-haul traces there. So that is Lima, where we are now filling in the drilling below 22 and 34 level. We've drilled the one next to it, Eroica, extensively. And we've got 30 and 34 level that can quite easily develop north towards Lima and pick up that orebody and then carry on mining like that as well.

If you could go to the next slide. So in the past quarter and the previous quarter, Blanket started a surface exploration program. So if all the geologists out there, if there are any on the call, a very simplified geological map showing kind of the host rocks that we're looking at. All the blue vertical lines are the trenches that we have done. So that was a start of the exploration activities. That's over a strike length of 600 meters, the trenches are approximately 200 meters long. And out of this, we have identified an area that's approximately, yes, it's approximately 50,000 square meters surface exploration area that has got nominal gold values.

If you look carefully, you can see some colored bars that are next to the trench lines. I can't put values on this yet. We haven't released anything to the market, but it gives you an indication of mineralization in those trenches. So during Q3, we have instituted a Reverse Circulation Drilling program, spaced 25 by 25 meters apart, drilling to a depth of about 45 meters. And the intention of this is quite clearly, if we have sources of ore that are probably amenable to heap leaching, Blanket mine will have access to, hopefully, an additional source of low-cost surface ounces that also do not require to take up capacity in our current plant environment and capacity that we have.

And so my last closing remark on Blanket exploration on surface is if you look at an aerial map of, for instance, Bilboes, that's covered with historical open pits. If you look at an aerial map of Blanket, there are no open pits. And it's just really a function of the age of the mine when Blanket first started, it went underground very, very quickly. But quite clearly, along our lease area, this should be the first of a couple that we would see like this. This program is expected to finish up late December, so kind of early Q1 of 2026, we should have a full exploration report on this as well.

With that, I'd like to hand back to Mark. All done.

Thank you, Craig. At the outset, I had indicated that Victor would talk about Bilboes. But the fact of the matter is that, as I also said, we're about to provide a very detailed update on Bilboes imminently. And so at this stage, there's nothing really Victor can say other than just repeat the word imminently. So apologies for getting that slightly wrong.

So in terms of outlook, we remain on track to achieve the increased production guidance for 2025. So we're about, sort of notwithstanding a few headwinds in Q3, we're about 3,000 ounces ahead of where we expected to be at the beginning of the year, which is good. Craig has given you a good sense of the very encouraging drilling taking place at Blanket, both at depth and at the surface.

Motapa, we're looking to convert the drilling into a maiden resource early next -- first half of next year, which should validate the acquisition of that asset some time ago. As I said, Bilboes' feasibility study, news on that is imminent. And we continue to look closely at cost management to see to what extent we can try and get those costs down somewhat, but acknowledging that Blanket is now a fundamentally different mine to what it was 5 years ago, and we're not going to go back to the days of enjoying the days of producing gold at $850 an ounce.

So with that, we can open it up to questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Nic Dinham.

I have several questions, tidy up some details here. On the mining side, there's a lot more broken ore registering than actually hoisted. Could we have an explanation for that? And also from you, James, I think what are your immediately available ore reserves at the moment? I think you've got a sort of South African standard when you talk about that?

James, do you want to deal with those questions?

Yes. So obviously, in this particular quarter, we broke more, but we had -- I mean, if you look at the year, for instance, we are within the normal standard of plus or minus 2%, the difference between what we broke and what we hoisted. But in this particular quarter, we had -- we broke slightly more, and this is simply because of our hoisting constraints, the stoppages that we had with the loss of life in some of the areas, and we let, but you will see that that will correct out this quarter.

Then in terms of the immediately available sort of phase length, we are still very -- I mean we're still quite low. We're looking at maybe at the moment 2 months to 3 months. We need to move that up with a little bit more development that we need to do that with the flexibility. We are happy that we are already over 5% above for the year. And we are seeing -- we are actually mining -- we're actually putting back into our reserves. So we should see a big correction within the next year. And I think within the next 3 years to 4 years, we should be in a position to be maybe 3 months to 6 months or better, so that we can have better flexibility.

And here's a question which I always run off you, Ross. What are you expecting from dividends from Blanket this year? And will that bring that horizon for the end of the facilitation loans any closer than quarter 1, which you spoke about last time. Obviously, things have materially improved.

Hello, Nic. Yes, absolutely. So those loans basically will be paid off by the end of the year or January at the latest. So certainly earlier than originally talked about in terms of end of -- sort of Q1 next year. And then, yes, in terms of planning for the remainder of the year, we're originally targeting -- well if I deal with in cash, we were targeting a $50 million sort of cash balance to have been distributed and be sitting in Jersey by the end of the year. I think that's more likely to be between $40 million and $42 million, that type of level in terms of distributions that come through the chain.

So we've had $45 million that have been distributed up from Blanket, both during the quarter and post in terms of dividends, and we continue to look to build our offshore bank account up closer to that $40 million mark.

Sorry, Ross, if you can just explain again what is the quantum of dividends that Blanket will distribute over this year, given where things are at the moment? What will the total look like? Is that the number you mentioned?

Yes. So those are the numbers that we've already done sort of $45 million. And depending on performance and the like, we're probably going to get between sort of $15 million to $20 million additional distributions that happen within this remainder of the year. That's obviously impacted by timings in terms of when those dividends actually get declared and the distributions get distributed up the chain. So we've done $45 million, it will probably be $60 million to $70 million in terms of actual distributions that come up from Blanket.

Our next question comes from [ Joseph Tarsh ].

My question is mainly for Mark. So you've talked in the past about how your goal is to avoid further common shareholder dilution as you fund the growth of the business. And with the favorable gold prices in 2025, Blanket, you're really starting to harvest some of the fruit of Blanket and the previous investments there. So my question is, how much do you intend to retain cash to fund the future development projects and potentially other acquisitions in Zimbabwe, as opposed to increase the dividend? And effectively, if a common shares needed to be issued, again, raise your cost of capital and doing so, as I think in hindsight, has been the case following the dividend increases with Blanket?

Okay. I'm not sure I heard all of that correctly. The upshot is that we -- there were several questions embedded in that. We're not looking at any further acquisitions in Zimbabwe. I think our plate is full. That's the first thing to say. Secondly, we do have a very substantial capital investment program in the Bilboes project, and that will become clearer imminently. And in that context, it would not be appropriate to increase the dividend.

Having said that, our planning going forward is to maintain the dividend. Now clearly, we're not going to promise to maintain the dividend. But we don't see the dividend increasing, and we will do our level best to avoid reducing the dividend. I think that's all -- I think those are the answers to the questions you raised. Is there anything I've not answered? It's quite a complex question. Is there anything I've not answered?

I think that gets to the meat of it. Maybe just as a follow-up, if you were to have a general idea of when dividend increases would occur again, would it be after the current projects with Bilboes and Motapa are substantially completed?

Well, it would be after Bilboes is completed. And let's be very clear. We're doing Bilboes not for fun. We're doing Bilboes to increase cash generation and thereby increase our ability to pay dividends. That's entirely what we're about. I mean we've been paying dividends now for about 12 years or so. And if you look at the returns that we've generated for shareholders over the course of the last 10 years or so, I think it's a 1,000% return compared to gold going up threefold and the GDXJ going up fourfold. So we substantially outperformed both gold and the GDXJ. And a major contribution to that has actually been the effect of those continuous dividend payments over the last 10 years to 12 years. So paying a dividend is deeply embedded in our DNA.

And I would hope that our past actions in terms of maintaining and then increasing the dividend should give shareholders a high degree of comfort that we're going into Bilboes and other projects with a view to increasing the dividend. It's very important.

Our next question comes from Tate Sullivan.

I think [indiscernible], sorry for background noise. Is any of the work that you have done on Motapa going to factor into the feasibility study for Bilboes?

No, it's far too, that would -- it's far too early. It will take a maiden resource at Motapa early next year is just a staging post. To complete that work at Motapa will take -- Craig, what, 3 years, 3 years or 4 years?

Yes, I'd say a timeline of 3 years or 3 years to 5 years.

Yes. So that -- if we were to -- if we're hoping to fold Motapa into Bilboes at the get-go, that would introduce a delay of many years into the project, which I'm not sure on this as we stand. So look, it is all -- if you think about the Bilboes project, the first 6 years will be mining in the Isabella-McCays area. And then the latter 4 years will be mining Bubi, which is more remote.

In the intervening period, that gives us plenty of time to finish the geological work at Motapa and then in due course to fold Matapa into Bilboes as the Isabella-McCays material runs out. But at this stage, there'll be no benefit to shareholders in deferring the project.

And then for Blanket, you mentioned in the press release a plan of scheduled engineering work on winders and shafts. I'm sure that -- and then storing and then accumulating the ore for uninterrupted milling. Is this all planning for 2026 engineering work?

Your line is very poor. Could you kind of repeat the question because I couldn't pick up all of it.

Yes. You mentioned some scheduled engineering work on winders and shafts for Blanket. Is that all planning for 2026?

James, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's that sort of a relatively quiet period over the December, January '26, '27. James, is that correct?

Yes, it is correct, Mark. Yes. So '26, '27, we're going to have the AC-DC conversion, yes.

Yes. And let's be clear, the whole point is to have a stockpile so that we can see our way through that hiatus without interrupting production.

There are no other raised hands. So follow-up, which is from Nic Dinham.

Yes. So I missed a question for Craig here. When, Craig, do you think you'll be in a position to do a reserve upgrade at Bilboes -- at Blanket? And when would that result in a technical report summary?

So we are currently busy with one. So during Q1, late Q1, we will have a new technical report out. We'll have a revised capital, and we'll have revised resources. And obviously, with the life of mine, we'll have a revised reserve estimate as well.

We've got another question from [ Yuvan Lowe ].

Congratulations on the strong financial results. I've got a couple of questions. Perhaps first for James. So in relation to the development that has been done, could you just talk specifically to Eroica and BQR?

James?

Yes. So I mean we obviously now, at the moment, I mean, in terms of the development, nothing has really changed in terms of Eroica and BQR, I mean we are developing reserves in that area. We still have got crews also that are busy mining in that area. I wouldn't say off the top of my head, it could be around, Craig, maybe 15% of our production is coming from there. These are still high-grade areas. We're still seeing good values in Eroica and the BQR area. But we also -- that we also had the loss of life was also in BQR, for instance.

But we are confident that with the development that we're doing at the moment, we should be in a position to open good reserves in the next 2 years, 3 years, like we say, and we are accelerating development there.

On a related note, but this time directed to Craig. So the discoveries at Sheet or in the position of Sheet are very interesting. I know you're focusing on the oxide for heap leach right now. But have you done any deeper holes? Does there appear to be an extension at depth to Sheet? Is it disseminated sulfides or is it [ quartz ]?

Yes. So that surface exploration that I showed there sits, as I say, it's 250 meters to the east of Sheet. When we extrapolated underground because, obviously, we've got the whole claim of our underground workings, it appears as though this area hasn't been mined. So there is a potential for a previously unknown or unmined orebody to be sitting in the footfall of Sheet 250 meters to the east. So we're going to tackle the surface. And in the meantime, we have -- we are in the process of procuring slightly stronger, better electrohydraulic rigs that we can drill from 9 level on from Sheet drives that we have there to actually have a look if this does carry on down.

Sorry, Yuvan, does that finish you? You done?

Yes. Thank you very much.

I can see we've got a typed question, which I think falls -- I mean, Ross, can you pick it up at the bottom? It seems to really fall into your bailiwick. Can you see them?

Sorry Mark. I didn't seen enough, reading through.

Yes. I mean, the first question is what's effectively the downside gold price scenario, which -- below which we couldn't sustain the dividend? So I think that's the first question. Are you able to answer that?

Yes. So on that one, that would be sort of $1,850 would be the low price that -- or downside scenario in the short term and that we've modeled on that side.

Okay. And the second one refers to lease liabilities. I don't quite understand what the question is about lease liability. Cash used for payments of lease liabilities has been increasing year-on-year. What's the long-term capital allocation strategy for managing these increased lease debt? I don't quite know what lease liabilities were referring to?

Yes, not sure either in terms of the leases.

We're conspicuously ungeared. I mean we do have some loan notes, which initially were issued by the solar company. And then when we sold the solar company, we Caledonia deliberately took those loan notes over, because we're interested in helping to further develop the emergence of a debt capital market in Zimbabwe. And so we're keen as a company to continue to build those relationships with high-quality Zimbabwean institutions. So we have those liabilities. Then the other liabilities are really the nature of very short-term overdraft facilities. And as you can see, we've pretty much repaid to the latter half of those to go during this quarter. So I'm not quite sure what the lease liabilities are.

It's probably related to some of the property leases and the new buildings and some of the signing of those leases. But again, not material in the total scheme of the proceeding here.

Okay. Two further questions. First, what's the percentage tonnage being hoisted by #4 in Central Shaft?

So currently, the percentage -- I think for the whole of this year, the target is for about 62% to come up Central Shaft and the balance to come up #4 Shaft. And so I think the point that Ross was making is if you look at that in terms of tonne meters, in 2020, we hoisted 630,000 tonnes from a depth of 760 meters. So that's about 450 million tonne meters.

If you take -- if we're going to hoist -- this year, we're going to host about 830,000 tonnes. If 62% of that is coming from 100 meters, that effectively increases the tonne meters to about nearly 900 million. So we're using pretty much twice as much power to hoist, which is, I think, the point that Ross was trying to make.

And the second question is, was the pressure on production cost broad-based or unique too?

The pressure on production costs has been across the board. So we're continuing to see increased labor costs, and that's a combination of overtime, and I'm going to say bonus payments based on production exceeding targets. In terms of trying to manage overtime, one of the things we're doing is we've introduced a clocking time attendance system, which is allowing us now to get a better handle as to how and why overtime is being incurred.

And one of the things we want to do going forwards is to try to improve the roster and improve the way we use labor, so that the workers get to and from their places of work much more quickly. And therefore, they're less tired, and they also do less overtime. So I think that's the initiative on labor.

On consumables, we've looked over the last 5 years. I mean, on our consumables, about 1/3 is what we call variable consumables, which is cyanide, drill steels, explosives, and that sort of stuff. Over the course of the last 5 years, we've actually become more efficient across the board in terms of our usage of cyanide, explosives, drill steels, kilos per tonne milled. But in every case, we're finding that the unit cost is going up, particularly in the case of, say, rods, where the average increase per annum over the last 5 years has been about 12%, I think. So we are seeing costs generally going up.

And then the third one would be -- yes, it's not just labor, that's electricity and that's consumables. Within consumables, the conspicuous offender, I guess, at this stage would be the cost of running the TMMs both in terms of overtime and consumables. And that reflects the fact that some of these TMMs, the underground trackless equipment is getting old, and we need to seriously now consider whether it's economic keeping and repairing old and reliable stuff, or buying new stuff, which is more reliable and less prone to breaking down.

So I hope that -- and then on top of -- sorry, also on top of the final point to that question, within the quarter, we did incur some additional costs relating to repairing a ball mill, one of the big ball mills found. And whilst we could work around it in terms of maintaining tonnage throughput, it meant that we did incur some extra costs to fix that ball mill. But primarily, the increase in costs, I guess, is structural, not specific. I hope that answers the question.

Any further questions?

No further raise hands. So over to you for any closing remarks.

Let me just make sure there's no one. Okay. Look, thank you very much for joining us. It was a -- I characterize the quarter as being a solid quarter. It creates a good foundation. And as we say, the real news flow is going to be the imminent news flow relating to Bilboes.

So thank you all for joining us. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Q2 2025 results presentation for Caledonia Mining. Today, we are joined by Mark Learmonth, who is the CEO, and he is going to introduce the webinar and start the presentation. Mark, over to you.

Thank you, [ Scott ]. So yes, welcome to the Q2 2025 results presentation for Caledonia. Can I just move on to the forward-looking statements, the disclaimer, which I trust you will read and digest. Sorry, it's taking a bit of time.

Okay. Let's move forward to the presenting team. As Scott said, I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's CEO. I'm here in Jersey today. I'm joined by Ross Jerrard, our recently joined CFO. He's in Johannesburg and will run us through the financial results. We've got James Mufara, our Chief Operating Officer, who's joining us today from Blanket Mine. Victor Gapare in France will briefly update us on the Bilboes project. And Craig, Vice President, Technical Services, based in Johannesburg, will talk briefly about the ongoing exploration at Bilboes and Motapa. And Maurice, Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, will deal with any other tricky questions that may arise. So should we just move forward?

Okay. Well, look, it was a very strong financial quarter, underpinned by excellent production. So the financials are strong, revenue up 30% to $65 million and net profit attributable to shareholders up by 147% to just over $20 million and adjusted earnings per share was up by 155%.

Underpinning that was some very strong operating cash flows. Operating cash flows rose to $28 million, and we closed the quarter with $8 million of net cash. In addition to that, we had another $18 million of fixed term deposits. So if you regard fixed term deposits as cash, which because I do, that's about $26 million of cash.

From an operating perspective, Blanket Mine had an excellent production quarter, just over 21,000 ounces in the quarter, which is a record for any second quarter. And on the back of that, we've increased full year guidance to a range of 77,500 to 79,500 ounces. And all of this was really underpinned by a stronger gold price. We realized just under $3,200 an ounce.

As you'd be aware, in the quarter, we closed the sale of the solar plant, which realized $22.4 million. I'll be clear, we never intended to own that solar plant. We only had to own it to get it built, and it was always the intention to sell it. Part of the sale is that we've secured a long-term supply contract for Blanket. So we just released the capital for use elsewhere in our core business, which is developing and running the gold mines.

And as you'd be aware, we've got a very strong growth pipeline. We're continuing at a pace with the Bilboes feasibility study. We're looking at cost saving options and a phasing approach to try and minimize the upfront capital cost of the project. Victor can update you on that shortly. We've got a $2.8 million exploration program proceeding at Motapa, which is going well.

And it's also fair to say that the exploration of Blanket is also going very well. That exploration of Blanket has got 2 aspects to it. The first is just simply resource replacement. So just making sure that we replace the resources that we're depleting. But also probably with some excitement is new areas within the Blanket lease, which we've never had the money or the management depth to do. We're now turning our attention to that, and we're getting some quite good results out of that.

So just a bit more detail, just turning on to the next page. James will talk to us about safety and production, but it's pleasing to see an improvement in our safety performance. The total injury frequency rate for the quarter and for the half year has improved. Clearly, there's always further work to do, but it's good to see the general direction of travel is in the right way.

James will also talk about production, which I've mentioned. I've mentioned the average gold price. Revenue up from $50 million to $65 million for the quarter, up from $88 million to $121 million for the half year and gross profit of $33.8 million for the quarter, which excludes the $8.5 million profit on the sale of solar.

So adjusted earnings per share for the quarter were about $1.14 for the quarter. That includes about $0.44 from the profit on the sale of solar. So that equates to about $0.70 from operations, and that compares to approximately $0.40 that we made from operations in the first quarter. So even stripping out the benefit of solar, it's been a very good quarter.

Can we just move forward? And a lot of people, as we look forward, look at how far we've got to go in terms of climbing the hill to deliver the Bilboes project. It's also worth looking backwards to see how far we've come over the course of the last 10 years. And so what we see here is a 10-year graph from Bloomberg, which shows the gold price, the VanEck GDXJ index and our share price, including dividend reinvestments.

And it shows you that over that 10-year period, the gold price has gone from $100 to just over $300. The GDXJ has gone up from $100 to just over $400 and Caledonia mining has gone from $100 to over $1,000. So it's a great performance over the last 10 years.

But during that period, all we've done is take Blanket from about sort of 40,000 ounces to 80,000 ounces. The growth trajectory ahead of us is even more exciting. And I think what underpins our performance over the last 10 years is 2 things. First of all, minimizing dilution.

And that is, we say that in terms of funding Bilboes our objective is to minimize dilution. We really mean it. I mean, we delivered great returns over the last 10 years by keeping a very tight lid on equity dilution. There's no reason why we're going to depart from that now.

And the second is the importance of dividends. Now clearly, we don't give -- we don't have a dividend policy in terms of dividend payout, but we really understand the importance of dividends in terms of shareholder returns. And in certain markets, particularly Zimbabwe, which is a good source of equity for us and great support, the dividend is crucial there. So the dividend is again baked into our appreciation of how we run this business.

Just moving forward, I think it's also worth making a few comments about Zimbabwe. Look, we operate in Zimbabwe every day. And when you're so close to the coal face, it's sometimes quite difficult to step back and appreciate what's been going on there. And frankly, over the last 5 years or so, we really have seen some very encouraging signs in Zimbabwe.

Physical security, which has never really been an issue in Zimbabwe, remains, but it's become much more of a serious issue in other jurisdictions in Africa. It's just worth noting that whilst many other places have got worse, Zimbabwe hasn't got worse, and in some respects, getting better.

Foreign exchange, the foreign exchange environment in Zim has historically been super turbulent. What we've seen over the last 18 months or so is increased stability and further moves to liberalize the local market, the local foreign exchange market. Clearly, there's further work to do, but we are seeing increased liquidity for selling the local currency, the ZiG in the Willing Buyer Willing Seller market, which is good.

And we're also seeing more stability in the ZiG/dollar exchange rate, which is underpinned by continued financial rectitude on the behalf of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. So a long way that continue.

We wouldn't have achieved the results we have done without a high-quality local workforce. And one of the things that's happened behind the scenes over the course of the last year or so is that we've substantially changed our management team, relocating people or taking people on in Zimbabwe. And we wouldn't have achieved the record production that we did in the second quarter after a very creditable first quarter without high-quality local management.

And so it goes without saying that we -- the management team in Zimbabwe really has got experience, they've got quality. And about 50% of the current management -- senior management team at Blanket, that's sort of the top 25 senior managers. Of those top 25, about half of them have been with us for a year or less.

Clearly, there's an electricity problem in Zimbabwe. It produces less electricity than it needs. But the government, over the course of the last few years, has taken several initiatives to try and ameliorate that situation for people like -- the big users like Caledonia or Blanket. We're a member of what's called the Intensive Energy User Group, which means that we can import power from the South African power pool or the Southern African power pool where there is no shortage of power availability, so we can actually import that.

And it's also fair to point out that the Zimbabwean authorities have been very quick to fast track the permitting for independent power projects, be they solar or stand-alone coal-fired power stations. I think all of that's reflected in the -- in Zimbabwe's ranking in the Fraser Institute survey, which was published recently.

And that showed that Zimbabwe has come up from the absolute bottom of the table, and it now ranks 8th out of the 17 African countries, which are covered by the survey. So we are seeing encouraging signs in Zimbabwe, and we hope that those signs are -- that, that progress continues.

So with those introductory comments, I'll hand over now to Ross, who will run us through the financials. So Ross, over to you.

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. It's my absolute pleasure to talk you through the financial results for this quarter and reiterating what Mark said, it was another excellent quarter.

So if we can turn to the next slide, please. Just talking through some of the headline numbers that were referred to. Gold revenue was up at $65.3 million, which was up some 30% on the comparative quarter. This was driven by that good gold production, up 21,000 ounces in addition to the benefit of a really good realized gold price of $3,186 per ounce, which was up some 38% on the comparative quarter of 2024.

This, obviously, meant that there was a higher royalty during the period, that you'll see on the right-hand side of the table. And importantly, the delivery of those ounces, which was really driven by higher grades and plant recoveries, and James will talk to those a little bit later in the presentation, but that did drive our production costs, which were up some 18% for the quarter. We will do a bit of a deeper dive into those production costs in a moment, but the end result to the high level was that gross profit number of $33.8 million for the quarter, which was up 48% and another quarterly record, so a fantastic result.

If we turn to the next slide. Well, let's talk about that gross profit. I love the slide, and it's a very simple slide with a great trajectory. But the 2 key messages to take away is the change in Bilboes and the fact that it's no longer having a negative impact, so that's indicated by the orange line. And importantly, the trajectory of Blanket, where you see that significant increase in profit all heading on in the right direction. And I guess, we've got to keep that trajectory going. So really great delivery across the year and looking forward in terms of a gross profit profile.

But if we turn to the next slide, we'll do a bit more dive -- a deeper dive into those costs. And you'll remember from the first quarter results where we spoke around our guidance where we're sitting from a cost perspective slightly above our guidance range. And you can see on the left-hand side, we're now bringing that back within range, albeit still at the top end of the range. So costs are very much still part of our focus. And we've got a number of key initiatives that we've got in play that will address that. And overall, we believe that the full year guidance range is still on track and will be achieved.

But you'll see that the 3 key pillars of our cost base in terms of labor, consumables and power are indicated in those slides. I guess, from a labor perspective, the key changes are really around the payments of higher production bonuses. So a key component of that labor cost was almost $2 million cost that went through in terms of bonuses, overtime and holiday pay is really around delivering those tonnes, but also addressing certain breakdowns during the period that we had to address and well done to the team to get on top of that.

Consumables was really above budget by -- at around $3 million. And a large portion of that was around those ZiG purchases where we've spoken about mobilization of ZiG purchasing items like lime, mill balls, some construction materials. So there was about a $1 million that we spent in terms of accessing the Willing Buyer Willing Seller market there. But also some overruns in terms of spend in terms of our T&Ms and also some of the engineering and repairs and maintenance and electrical engineering works that sat within that consumables bucket.

This was partially offset by the power savings that you see in the lighter blue column there. And again, a credit to the team. This is a key initiative that we've articulated very clearly in terms of having a stated objective or a project in terms of addressing a certain area, and you can see the benefits of some of those power savings coming through. So well done again in terms of key delivery.

Moving to the right in terms of what it means for our all-in sustaining CapEx. The on-mine costs that we've just spoken about, they've flow through. So you'll see a 7.4% increase in terms of comparative quarter there. But the big bucket was that sustaining CapEx bucket. And again, that CapEx spend is on track for our full year guidance. Traditionally, our second and third quarter are bigger quarters in terms of spending from a CapEx profile perspective.

It's probably fair to say that the previous quarter in terms of comparing to this time last year was probably on the lower side just because of funding constraints. But I guess, the overarching message here is our CapEx profile is on track. We're spending it in the right buckets, and we believe that full year our guidance profile will be met.

So great performance in terms of our individual cost profiles. And if we move to the next slide, we'll look at some of those costs below the gross profit line. Net-net foreign exchange loss line item, that's obviously a big area of constant focus for us. We are managing to deploy our ZiG balances and a key position in that is being able to access that Willing Buyer Willing Seller market.

That run rate is lower than the comparative quarter. You'll see that, that's dropped, and that is a combination of both realized and unrealized losses. So it's about a 1/3, 2/3 split in terms of the full 6-month period. But we're pleasantly pleased with the results in terms of where we sit for the half year, but it is an area of constant focus in terms of deployment and managing our exchange risks.

The corporate line item that you see there, a lot of that includes some one-off costs in terms of restructuring that Mark had alluded to, that has come through in that first half, but also some additional equity share-based payments expenses that have come through, and that's just based on the metrics and the performance to date.

The big items are the sale of the solar and the profit coming through. And so you'll see $8.5 million as an individual line item coming through. And then equally down at the tax expense line, the good performance, the good revenues and activity that's occurred has obviously resulted in a higher tax expense. that we've also included the tax on the solar sale in that line item.

And whilst that number has increased, I think it's very important that paying our way and paying taxes is very important. So it's a pleasing result in terms of good performance and actually across both royalties, taxes paid and tariffs, we're certainly a major contributor in terms of Zimbabwean economy and paying our government share -- our fair share to government. So it's a pleasing result.

But overall, a great performance, ending with a profit for the period of $23.6 million. And you'll see the earnings per share there of $1.139 per share. And adjusting for the solar, as Mark had indicated, you'd back out approximately $0.44 from that. So comparing just shy of $0.45 for the comparative quarter against $0.70 for this quarter. It's a great step-up in terms of performance.

So if we can move to the next slide, we'll talk a little bit more about the cash flow. Our cash flow from operations is -- we've really done well. We've generated some strong cash. There has been the net increase in the working capital. There's been that deliberate increase in working capital, particularly around stores and prepayments where we've deployed and tried to use our ZiG balances and have local purchases.

There are some changes in that net line in terms of timing of shipments of payments and receipts. But overall, there's a deliberate position in terms of working capital to make sure that we can be robust with our operations.

But the key areas that I want to speak about are our capital expenditures. So you'll see from that operating activities or cash generation, we've been able to deploy our funds across investing in our capital expenditure, some $20 million -- almost $21 million for the 6 months in terms of capital expenditure.

We've received proceeds from our sale of our solar of $22 million. And equally, we've been able to deploy those funds into fixed term deposits and some derivatives. So it's been a very solid quarter and in fact, 6 months in terms of both generating cash and closing the period with some $8.2 million of cash with that further $18 million sitting in terms of deposits. So effectively a $26.2 million cash balance.

So if we move to the next slide, you'll see the breakdown of that $26.2 million on the right-hand side of the slide, both in terms of where that cash sits across the various jurisdictions, but importantly, the build across the comparative periods in terms of our trajectory in terms of treasury and cash. I would highlight that the balance, the $4 million sitting in Zimbabwe, that's abnormally high. It was really around timing and deployment of funds. So it was really timing of that. But overall, the $26 million.

And actually, if you exclude the overdraft facility, so on a gross basis, we're actually just shy of $40 million in terms of cash balances. And post the half year result, we've been able to continue to build that $26 million up to $30 million in terms of our pro forma net cash position on basically this last week's cash balance position.

The graph there shows that buildup of cash. So it's very important. And I think the key thing or key takeaway is that we try to build that cash balance to a $50 million plus number by the end of the year in terms of really having a solid treasury position.

We move to the next slide. The one thing that we would like to highlight, and you'll see in the published results is that we will be taking advantage of some applicable exemptions. So in terms of our quarterly reporting, we'll having -- be following a reduced disclosure regime or reporting disclosure. So for both the first quarter and third quarter going forward, we will have a much reduced financial, both MD&A and financial set of results coming out.

We are fully committed to our transparent and timely disclosure. So we'll give you all the material information and select financial results coming through, but you won't see the full sale -- set of MD&A financial and financials that you've historically seen. That is only for first and third quarter. For the full year, and obviously, half year, it will be part of the normal cadence and you'll get the full deep dive and narrative that's going forward.

So with that, a very solid quarter and half year. And I think we're well set to enter the second half of the year and deliver on continued good performance.

And with that, I'll hand over to James Mufara, our COO.

Thank you very much, Ross. Thank you very much, Mark, for the opening remarks as well. Good afternoon to you all. If we can move to the next slide.

As Mark and Ross have already alluded to, we have had a very good and solid half year, and this quarter was particularly very good. We brought to the market area that we had a very, very stringent look at our health and safety programs on the mine as part of our value of care. And we have always said we would want to improve in terms of our performance thereof.

Quarter 2 delivered a marked improvement from quarter 1 in terms of our health and safety criteria that we're looking at. The number of accident-free days actually increased in the quarter from 83 to 85 and the total injuries themselves actually reduced. The lost time injuries went down as well from 4 to 1. And the significance of the lost time is showing the severity of the accidents that we are having, they are of low energy accidents that we're actually having witnessing.

In the quarter, we also had quite a number of bowties that we actually completed so that we could look at all the significant unwanted events that we want to deal with and 52 of them were actually completed in the quarter.

As part of our culture journey to [ seize ] that employees work safer and better with time at Blanket Mine, we started to profile our employees for risk propensity, which is their propensity to take risks, and we started the supervisors, and we will look at this journey going forward so as to look at continuing to improve health and safety. But as we would appreciate, health and safety is like sweeping water up here. You need to be constantly at it. If you stop, it will come back to. So keep, obviously, our eyes open with regards to health and safety issues.

If you may go to the next slide, please. So in terms of the grade and the tonnes, which is our traditional reporting line, you would see that the orange line is the grade and the blue, the top line, the dark blue line represents the tonnage. We're pleased to report that we had a record production in terms of tonnes that we milled. We actually ended up on 204,915 tonnes for the quarter against a plan of 193,000, which is actually 6% -- 11,000 tonnes or 6% above what we set as a plan.

We also realized that in this quarter, we actually had a welcome improvement in the grade from the last quarter, ending up above plan at 3.31 grams per tonne, representing a 3% better than the plan. This was a welcome improvement and is a result of our continued focus on the increase in flexibility and our look at the development that we have been increasing over the years.

In terms of the bottom graph, which actually represents the ounces and the recovery, you will see that we produced the record ounces that Mark alluded to, which is a record production for any second quarter. And that was underpinned by a record recovery of 94.41%. We've actually managed to get to this number by 3 key initiatives that we actually introduced in the quarter. The first one was the introduction of tank #9 to optimize the residence time so that we could actually recover better.

The second one was to look at reagent dosage and optimize that so that we could have efficient leaching and efficient adsorption. We also started to have enhanced process control through short interval controls with a new management team that we have actually put at the plant. Total all these initiatives resulted in a record quarter 2 production in terms of ounces as alluded by Mark earlier.

If you may turn to the next graph, please. So this graph shows how we actually achieved the ounces, but this was not a once-off all. This was not that we did right at the end of the quarter. It was we produced consistently throughout the quarter, feeding the plant with consistent grade and consistent tonnes and thereby producing the record production.

You can see that the top line, the orange line is the cumulative, they are adjusting what we actually did and the bottom line or the line which is deeper purple is actually the line for the budget. You can see that from the first month, which is the April month, we actually -- while we had a budget of 5,818 ounces, we already superseded that.

We continued at a steady rate throughout the whole quarter, ending up on 21,070 ounces. This supersedes the quarter 2 ounces for last year, which were sitting on 20,774 ounces and also better than the quarter -- the same quarter 2 ounces for 2023, which were sitting on 70,400 ounces. So this is really, really a record production and done the right way consistently throughout the quarter.

You may turn to the next graph, please. So this is a very nice graph, which actually points out to how well the team is doing all around. So it's -- while the team has actually achieved record production ounces, they have also done it in a very responsible way. You can see that in terms of reserve generation, we actually added reserves in terms of the reserves that we actually generated.

This is as a result of better development, which was done by the team. I'm in thanks to Elton and [ Newton ] for doing this massive development being -- over their development targets over the quarter. And this is the result actually us putting back some ounce, some reserves back into the iceberg.

If we may go to the next graph, please. Thank you. I will hand over to Victor.

Thank you, James. Thank you, Mark. Can we move to the next slide, please? What we would like to do today is to update you on where we are with the Bilboes feasibility study. The work on the Bilboes feasibility study is continuing at a very satisfactory pace. The work has confirmed that the project has robust economics with a high debt capacity.

The main areas which we have been evaluating include consideration of moving the tailings storage facility to the Motapa property, which is just next door to the Bilboes property. Really, the benefit of this will be lower construction costs because of the topography.

Whereas at Bilboes, it's rather a flat piece of land where we would need to put the tailings facility. At Motapa, we'll benefit from the topography. So it will reduce the earthworks, which we have to do there.

The other consideration, which we have been looking at is really looking at a phased approach to the project, starting at a smaller level, at a smaller scale level and then ramping up to full capacity. This really looks at the issues of financial prudence at the end of the day, just to make sure the amount of capital we are raising is not excessive.

We've also been exploring short-term revenue opportunities across our asset portfolio. This would actually help in terms of the financing of the project.

With regards to the funding, as usual, our aim is [Technical Difficulty] --

We seem to have lost Victor.

We seem to have just a minor issue at Victor's -- Mark, maybe if I could ask you just to continue while Victor is silent.

Yes. I don't know if Victor can hear me. Victor, I think we should put Victor on mute because he's lost his linkage. Yes. So as Victor was saying, in terms of funding, our aims -- we've said this before, but we mean it, is to maximize net present value per share, and that is balancing growth and minimizing equity dilution. And that's why I started off with that graph, which shows the extent to which we've outperformed the GDXJ. That's largely because we've not diluted shareholders, and that's in our DNA.

So Victor said that the reason we're looking for a smaller scale phased approach is to minimize the amount of debt we take on and hopefully to avoid completely any equity dilution, but with a prudent level of gearing. So in terms of the funding options we're looking at, the non-equity funding options, we're looking at non-recourse project finance. And there's a handful of African development finance funders who've expressed interest.

We're looking at a modest amount of mezzanine funding on the basis that it is substantially cheaper than our cost of equity and also asset-backed loans. So final funding decision will clearly follow the feasibility study and will depend on funder time lines. Some of these funders may not be quick, but we'll do the best we can. So I think that's probably the best update I can give on Bilboes.

Sorry, Victor, if you can -- we just lost you part way through. I don't know if you can hear me.

Yes. Now, I can hear you. Can you hear me now?

Yes, but we just finished. We just finished you section.

Yeah, I could hear you at the end.

Is that filthy French Wi-Fi connection you've got us on. Should we move on talk about Motapa --

Move on to the next --

Yes.

I'll hand over to Craig, who will take us through the Motapa exploration.

Thank you. Thank you, Victor. Thank you, everybody. Good afternoon. Just while we're on the slide, I just want to touch briefly on Blanket for people that are not aware.

On the 23rd of June, we published a Blanket deep drilling press release. So that's why there's not much about Blanket actually in here. We continue with our deep drilling program, we continue to get expected grades, in some cases, much better, carrying on with the works and the whole intention is to maintain our resource base at kind of the 3 million ounces, which delivers a mining reserve plan of about 10 years. So that's kind of what the drilling is focused on.

The CEO alluded to the fact that we're also looking at other opportunities. We haven't -- I haven't got results to share with anybody, but one thing that I want to leave in people's minds is that if you visit the Blanket property, the one thing that you won't see at Blanket is an open pit. If you go visit a number of other mining properties in Zimbabwe, well, guess what, they all started off with open pits and progressed underground.

So if we can go on to Motapa, if we go to the next slide. A reminder of what we are doing for the year. So we have a $2.8 million budget for the year. It's mainly comprised of about 21,000 meters of reverse circulation drilling and just over 1,000 meters of diamond drilling. And why that weight is like that, is that the previous year, it was about 50-50 of diamond drilling versus reverse circulation. We now have, we feel enough information on the geology to actually put the weight of the drilling into reverse circulation.

The targets are Motapa North and it's predominantly to define a sulfide resource below historical oxide pits. There's about 16,000 meters of drilling there in total.

A second target is Mpudzi. The intention there is to have a look at predominantly the oxides going into the upper sulfides. And why this is the case is simply at Mpudzi, there's no historical open pits on site. So we do believe that if all the work is done and it is amenable to heap leaching that the potential is there to define an oxide mineral resource that can come on to our books in the near future.

A little bit of further exploration at Motapa South. And to date, we have drilled about 50% of our budget. We're just under 10,000 meters. All of this drilling will be updated once we have sufficient assays coming in. So although we've drilled about 50% of our budget from the assays that we've submitted to the local labs, the Zimbabwe labs, accredited labs, we've only received about 40% of those assays back. And so, I mean, it's very frustrating for us. But in kind of a Zimbabwean context, it's actually very encouraging.

The reason for the slow turnaround is it's not just us that are submitting hundreds of samples, there's a number of other companies that are on the scene and quite clearly in this higher gold price environment have pulled the trigger on exploration, which I think bodes well for Zimbabwe. I think it's completely underexplored, maybe not well understood, but there's significant potential for the country.

If we can just go on to the next slide, it's just a brief overview of Motapa North. It's made up of those open pits that you see, the previous pits, the Boomgate, Jupiter and Shawl. The blue line boundary or the blue line that you see there is the Bilboes property to the north. It's about 200 meters away. All the red dots is all of the first pass drilling we did during 2024 and all of the yellow dots represent the drilling that we have done and completed to date. So there will be about 50% more of those dots.

The targeted aim here, and so as I said -- so as we receive the assays in and we have a bulk of results that we can release, we will put out an update. But the main goal is by year-end, we want to have defined a sulfide mineral resource that we can declare and we can move into quite probably a study phase.

If we go on to the next slide, which just shows Mpudzi area. So the picture is a bit blurry. The Google Earth is not very good on that imagery. But you can see there's no open pit mines or open pit holes. Once again, all of the red is what was the first pass drilling in 2024, a bit of wider space drilling. All of the yellow is what we've done to date.

And Mpudzi is slightly different to the other Motapa areas because it's focused mainly on a banded iron formation. It's got a bit of sharing. We're getting some good grades. We're getting some good widths, but we'll update the market on that as we go forward.

So with that, I'll hand back over to Mark for any closing comments.

Thank you, Craig. Should we just move to the last page. Okay. So in terms of outlook, the objective of Blanket is to achieve the target range of 75,500 to just under 80,000 ounces. Keep doing the investment to modernize and update the mine with an increasing focus on cost containment and eventually cost reduction. Continue with the investment at Blanket to do, as Craig outlined, depletion replacement, but also looking at Blanket a potential for near-term revenue opportunities.

We'll continue looking at -- continue to work on the feasibility study at Bilboes, looking at ways to -- well, the project is a great project, just looking at ways to make it better. And typically, in Zim, we've always had to battle against things -- bad things that have caught us sort of unexpectedly. I think in this situation, we're actually trying to make the best of good things. So build on good things that are happening for the benefit of investors.

And then clearly, as Craig outlined, continue exploring at Motapa, looking at oxides and sulfides. So there's a lot happening. And I've got to say these results give a very nice sort of launching pad for further activity.

So with that, we'll pause for any further questions.

[Operator Instructions] We're going to start with our first question, which is from Ian Joslin.

My question related to the fact that you're generating large amounts of cash, your performance last quarter is to be commended. I also like the idea of you're trying to improve on the joint Bilboes, Motapa project. You're trying to find ways of making it return greater return on a given capital. And I also like the idea of you being totally anti-dilution. I'm absolutely in favor of that.

So obviously, there's an old equation, the more equity you have to put into a project or the more cash you've got to put into project, the less you get shafted by various financial institutions. So if it comes to it, you're getting close to pulling the trigger on the project, what would your view be on suspending dividends in order to ensure that you had more cash to offer the project and therefore, had to borrow less. And therefore, had to -- or even raise equity less and therefore, not get what's the word, future profits expropriated by institutional organizations.

I'm going to say you've got a very jaundiced and jaded view about the investor community. We'll put that on one side.

40 years' experience.

Well, yes, okay. The dividend, as I outlined at the outset, the dividend is very, very important, particularly in Zimbabwe. And you're right. I mean, purely objectively, if we were short of money and had to raise money, the obvious thing to do would be to suspend or cut the dividend.

I've got to tell you, we're working towards an outcome where we cannot dilute by raising equity. Now that's still a work in progress. But the other imponderable would be the adverse effect on the share price if we did cut the dividend or impair the dividend.

Frankly, you don't know what that impairment would be until you've done it, by which time it's too late. So all I can say to you is that we worked for, I don't know, 10 years or so to build up a position as a trustworthy credible dividend payer. And everything you say is right, but for us to throw that away would be unfortunate.

So I can't give you a straight answer to that question. Minimizing equity dilution alongside maintaining the dividend and eventually growing the dividend, the 2 irreconcilables, but our job is to try and reconcile them. That's all I can say.

No. My main point wasn't that you should do it, but that you would be -- what's the word? You're clearly open to the idea, and I fully understand and I accept that there could be an adverse share price movement, although it wouldn't be rational because you'd be using the foregone dividend, hopefully, into a project that would yield greater returns.

The difficulty with this conversation is that people may walk away from this conversation feeling that I'm hinting that we're going to cut or curtail the dividend. I'm absolutely not saying that.

The other side of the coin is, we do -- we never give a dividend guarantee. If you want a guaranteed revenue stream, go and buy a Swiss bond. So I'm trying to sort of -- I'm trying to navigate between those 2 -- the [ siller and truthiness ] of those 2 outcomes. And I'm not sure I'm doing a great job of it. But the dividend is super important to us as a management tool. We know it's important to certain of our target markets, and that's all I can say.

We're going to go to our next question, which is from [ Mike Kozak ].

Congrats on the very good quarter and the solid cash flow build. It's nice to see. I had 2 questions on Bilboes. The first one, if you've already answered it, I apologize. But the first one was the feasibility study. Do you have an approximate timeline for when that is going to be completed and released?

Not really because the ongoing work about the smaller scale option is an indeterminate period of time. So I can't help you on that at this stage I'm afraid.

And my second question, which I was kind of curious to the extent you can comment, you did mention -- I know it's scaled down or kind of just slight change of scope. What kind of quantum for reduction in initial CapEx are we talking, right? I think the PEA was -- I think it was $310 million. Is that -- is the number now closer to $200 million? Is it a $250 million?

No, I think you've got to accept that the -- if you were to progress with a 240,000 tonne a month project, those capital costs will have gone up. Capital costs have gone up across the industry. So again, I can't really give you guidance on that. We've got a number, but I mean, to start dribbling out information piecemeal isn't going to help anybody because anything I give you is going to be inadequate and you're going to want more.

But one of the things that's clear, and you'll understand this is that the capital intensity of a smaller project is higher than for a bigger project, and that's something we've got to bear in mind, okay? But the other side of the coin is, do we lose -- what we lose on higher capital intensity do we gain in respect of reduced financial jeopardy from taking on a high amount of debt and reducing or obviating completely the need for equity dilution. There's a lot of balancing to take place here. That's the problem.

But I mean, fundamentally, what we talk -- just to be clear, we're not talking about how to make this project work, okay, from like -- no. We're talking about how to make this project the best it can be, which is a different thing.

And we're going to take our next question from Howey Flinker.

First, there's a typo. In the printed income statement, the 4 columns say 6 months ended. The 2 left-hand columns should be 3 months ended. And the 2 right hand, 6 months.

Yes, you said we needed to do that a few minutes ago, which we've got. So thank you on that. We'll correct.

I wanted to point that out. Second, what is the tax rate on the capital gain of the solar plant?

I wish you haven't asked that question. It is lower than we had expected.

But there is some tax?

There is some tax, but it's not what we'd expected it to be.

Okay. But not 0. I thought it might be -- I thought it might be 0. And finally, if you were to cut the dividend in the future, you can expect your stock to drop 20% or 25%. Do you have to ponder that?

Well, that's the point I was making. So, and you don't know what the hell this effect will be until you've done it. And by the time you've done, look, it's too late. I can think of some fairly salty sort of analogy, which I use internally with the management team, which I don't really use on this call. But it's one of those things you can't do without full and careful consideration. And frankly, even when you do it, you don't know where the outcome is going to take you.

You're in a great position of having future growth in Motapa or Bilboes and producing gold at $3,300 or $3,400 generates a lot of cash inflow. That's a great position to be in.

And that's the point I was trying to make it earlier. I mean what we're looking at now is how to make this project the best it can be, recognize the fact that the gold price is higher, therefore, our organic cash generation is there, but also with an eye to the potential for near-term revenue opportunities, which are as yet indistinct but are coming into focus, which would further enhance that.

And what we're trying to avoid is a situation where we rush ahead and frankly, over dilute it. And then in 3 years' time, we've said we've raised equity, which frankly, we didn't need to do because no one is going to thank us for that.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is coming from Nic Dinham.

Congrats, awesome. Just a couple of questions. You've been building stockpiles. I haven't yet got the detail of what the stockpiles look like now, and it obviously underpins your production expectations. What is your stockpile strategy going forward?

The stockpile is -- I'm slightly irritated you're raising it because it's with what, it's about 30,000 ounces -- sorry, 30,000 tonnes. So if we're producing -- we're processing about 2,000 tonnes a day, it's 2 weeks. And a 2-week stockpile is even on the skinny side.

So the fact that we're actually talking about having a stockpile of that size is a source of some embarrassment and it kind of highlights where we're coming from. So the idea would be to build a stockpile in the ordinary course of events of up to 6 months and then leave it.

But there's no intent -- the rates of blasting, trimming and hoisting, if this is where you're going to go, isn't sufficiently above what we're currently processing to justify further investment to increase production. It's just ordinary course of business to have a stockpile.

And the other -- you're obviously getting some surprises on the grade side. Maybe you can elaborate -- somebody you can elaborate a little bit on that.

I think I'll probably hand that one over to Craig before I make a fool of myself. Craig?

Yes. So kind of the deeper we go on some of the Blanket ore bodies, specifically around BQR and our old favorite Eroica, the grades that we are drilling out -- and kind of remember that in 2023, we did our first real big resource update. So we may have been a little bit conservative on those grades because it was the first time that Caledonia was actually doing it.

But we are finding that, what's the term, that on the ground, the in situ grades tend to be a little bit higher. And so we've got quite a big drive on dilution controls on -- mining guys have heard this before on quality mining and things like that. So all of these things add up together and give us a bit of a grain sweetener.

So when you do your reserve estimate, which is going to be post the end of the year, or we can maybe expect to see some grade improvements for the reserve as a whole. Is that where we're going with that, Craig?

I don't think it's untoward to maybe see a slight uptick. It will, of course, depend on if we have mined all the high grade, then you've got no high grade left to raise the reserve grade. But I think it's going to be maintained or with a slight uptick.

And last question or 2 here. It's back to Blanket. What dividends has Blanket produced in this period, in this first 6 months period?

Ross, I guess, are you able to answer that?

Yes. So there was a $9 million dividend declared, but that included both the Caledonia side and the Blanket side. So yes, there's a $10.7 million, so $7 million net to Caledonia that came through after the NCIs or minority distributions. Just short of $11 million or I think it was $10.6 million from a Blanket perspective.

From Blanket, $11 million came from Blanket.

Yes.

And then obviously, linked to that question is the one I asked in the previous quarter. When will your NCIs be -- do you now think your NCIs will be fully repaid, fully drawn down?

Hopefully, by the end of the year or very early in next year.

And then final question for Maurice. There's some discussion about alternative sources of energy. What are you thinking about? And how will this be -- will this be within -- do you think, within the Blanket side of things? Or do you think this will be Caledonia doing this?

Okay. Can I intercede that? Our thinking has moved on. We took on a very good local chap to help on capital projects with enormous experience in the Zimbabwean power sector. And initially, we were thinking about -- solar is not great. I mean the solar is fine, but it only works when the sun shines. And really, you need a backup facility, which is pretty much the grid. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing production. So solar, I'm afraid, is not the answer.

We were looking at other forms of captive power. But actually, the solution we've seem to have latched on to we're doing further work on that is to put in a connection to the 132 kV sort of backbone structure in Zimbabwe, which should substantially reduce the -- which should improve the quality of the power that we're getting and actually go a long way towards addressing some of the problems we're facing.

So at the moment, in terms of alternative sources of power, that's been overtaken by a proposal that we're working on now, which is to put in a sort of a -- I think it's about a 17-kilometer $10 million connection to the 132 kV backbone, which should materially address our problems.

Would that go in Caledonia? And would that go into Blanket accounts?

Because Blanket will benefit, yes. It's Blanket's.

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from [ Eun Lou ].

First of all, congratulations on a record-breaking quarter for breaking records. Question for James. James, or maybe for all of you, can you give us a steer as to how quarter 3 production is going to be? And in particular, our recoveries being maintained at around 94.5%.

I've got to say you are naughty, in that we've just upgraded our guidance to between whatever it is and whatever it is. So I mean, we've just told you what production is going to be for the rest of the year. So I don't know why you think we're going to give you a different answer from what we put in the press release 2 weeks ago. So having said that, James, what's your answer?

Yes. So production is going pretty good, I mean, for the third quarter. And yes, we've got a very good metallurgical team. I mean -- so yes, we are sticking to our guidance that we put out.

Let's see, just going on the list of my questions. Nic has already asked several of them. Are you able to speak more, this is to Craig, about the new discovery at Blanket? Is that -- the one at depth. Is that another quartz reef or is that disseminated reef?

It's another disseminated reef. It's part of the Blanket ore body. So we have what we call Blanket 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so now this one has been termed Blanket 7. So it's early days yet. It was a triangle of holes that picked up the zone that had good grades. So now obviously, we've got to grow it and see where does it go. We've got to start pinning it out.

Thanks very much. We have no further questions at the moment. So what I'd like to do is pass back to Mark for any final and closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thank you all for joining us today. It's been a good performance from the entire team, and I thank them for that. And we look forward to doing it all again in mid-November. So thank you very much.

Thanks very much. That now concludes the webinar.