Earnings Labs

DRDGOLD Limited (DRD)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 12, 2013

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Transcript

Craig Barnes

Management

Okay, good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our December results. Just upfront, I’d like to apologize for Niël. Unfortunately, he couldn’t attend today’s results presentation. He unfortunately has a family bereavement that he needs to attend to, so our thoughts are with him and his family. I am sure he would have loved to presented these results which are really good sear results as you probably seen already. Okay, that’s our disclaimer. Just to get straight into the highlights for the quarter. I think a lot of people have been waiting to hear what we were going to do about interim dividend. Is that sound working properly? Is it okay? And I think no surprise, the Board decided to declare an interim dividend of 14 cents per share. You’ll recall in our dividend for the full-year 2012, it was 10 cents. So this interim dividend is obviously a very big improvement on last year’s dividend. And it came about obviously as a result of the very good results that we’ve presented over the last two quarters. We’ve said before to the market that we would be targeting roundabout a 4% dividend yield. I think if you do the numbers and you assume that we’re going to pay a similar dividend in the second half of the year, we’re pretty close to that number. And I’ll probably find that we’re amongst the largest dividend payers in terms of the yield in the gold industry in South Africa. Our production was up 9% for the quarter which was an exceptional result for us. Just over 39,000 ounces and I think it’s pretty much in line with the guidance that we’ve been putting into the market. That was largely driven by an 8% increase in our throughout into the Ergo plant. Those…

Charles Methley Symons

Management

Yes.

Craig Barnes

Management

That picture. In terms of volumes, as I discussed on the previous slide, you can see that our volume really drove our increase in production. Our volumes sitting at just over 6 million tonnes per quarter now, over the last quarter. And that’s really as a result of the stabilization now at Crown-Ergo pipeline. You’ll recall that in the fourth quarter of 2012, we saw a bit of a dip in our tonnages and that was really when we were decommissioning the Crown plant and switching out all those volumes to our Ergo plant. We’re now happy that that circuit now appears to have stabilized and we are comfortable with those tonnages coming out of Ergo. The same with the grades, really for the some of the reasons we now see our grades stabilizing in around 0.20 grams per tonne. Similarly in the fourth quarter of 2012 we had a slight dip for the same reasons, the decommissioning of the Crown plant and the transfer of those volumes effectively to the Ergo plant, but it now seems to be stabilizing within our guidance of around 0.2 grams a tonne. And obviously that resulted – both the volume and the grades resulted in a 15% increase in production year-on-year or compared to the second quarter of 2012. With regards to our project, our large project that we currently are busy with, the flotation/fine-grind project at Ergo, which is really about trying to improve the efficiencies within the plant and approve the recoveries out of the Ergo plant. All four mills have been delivered and are now being installed at the Ergo plant. We are scheduled to begin commissioning as the schedule down the bottom shows. Commissioning of the plant, middle of February and our production is still on track to –…

Craig Barnes

Management

Hi Allan. Allan Cooke – JP Morgan: Could you just help us out so the balance sheet, the Village shares that you’re carrying on your balance sheet is that – how many and at what price you carried them at and then still waiting for the remainder of those shares to come through, what are those numbers again please?

Craig Barnes

Management

Yes, I think it was just over 85 million shares, (inaudible) is that right, 85.7 million shares in Village if I recall. Allan Cooke – JP Morgan: Is that on the balance sheet now?

Craig Barnes

Management

That’s carried on the balance sheet. Although if you recall 20 million of those shares, we held in escrow until the final conditions precedent of the transaction took place and that would be basically the Section 11 approvals and consent from the minister. So once that has been completed and we get ministerial consent or those conditions are waived that’s another option then those 20 million shares will be released. Allan Cooke – JP Morgan: Okay. But it’s great that you guys have paid an interim dividend, but in line with your strategy, you’re cleaning up Zimbabwe and looking to extract value there from the underground potential, it looks like you want to exit finally ERPM and any underground operations there but you slicks first through your Village holding to underground, deep level hard rock marginal underground mining in South Africa. What are the hurdles to you on bundling these shares to your shareholders? Is there any reason why you need to hold on to them or could they be distributed to the DRDGOLD shareholders? Please.

Craig Barnes

Management

Look I think the major considerations for our Board, firstly the 20 million shares in escrow, well they could argue we could distribute the remainder or the balance of those shares already because there are no restrictions on those. I think the intention was because the share price in Village dropped, we were hoping that would recover and we could extract more value from that, but that is a topic of discussion in our Board and I think over the next couple of quarters, we’ll decide – and those are the options, we could potentially unbundled them to our shareholders or we could disposal them outright. Just we didn’t want to dispose of those shares when they’ve dropped in value, it doesn’t makes sense. We obviously wanted to get the value that we initially the shares were issued but I think over the next couple of quarters, we’d probably have more clarity on it, from our Board. Allan Cooke – JP Morgan: Okay, thanks Craig. Adrian Hammond – BNP Cadiz: Hi Craig, Adrian Hammond, BNP Cadiz. Craig, just with regards to ERPM, what sort of value do you place on these assets?

Craig Barnes

Management

Look, obviously I am not going to discuss value because we’re entering into a time now where we’re going to be negotiating potential values. But I mean there is various valuation models you can run on a 21 million ounce resource, I mean you guys as analysts would be quite familiar with placing a value on specific ounces. Obviously if you’re going to build a mine at ERPM, there is significant capital that would need to be spend, so that needs to be factored into any calculation of value. But I mean we believe there is a lot of value to be extracted for this asset. It just – for us the reasoning behind as we’ve been talking about previously disposing of that asset is it doesn’t fit in with our strategy. So one of our last remaining underground assets, we need to extract value for our shareholders, because of it is an asset we own and those are the ones that we really need to focus on extracting short-term value for our shareholders. Sorry, I can't be very clear on the value. Adrian Hammond – BNP Cadiz: That’s great.

Craig Barnes

Management

But they do have significant value I believe. Adrian Hammond – BNP Cadiz: And just looking forward was ultra-fine grinding coming on stream next year with a potential uplift to your production, what is the impact on your cash costs from the ultra-fine grinding plant?

Craig Barnes

Management

Well we’ve said previously I think the guidance we put out was roundabout R7.56 per tonne, is that correct, that’s still the number that we’re looking at. So there will be an impact on the costs, and you can calculate that number. Adrian Hammond – BNP Cadiz: Thanks and one last question just on you rehab of Crown tailings dam. You’ve indicated you’ll get the top slopes complete this year but the sides slopes in 2019, why so long for that?

Craig Barnes

Management

Okay, that’s a very technical question so maybe Henry can give a little bit more clarity on that one. Henry Gouws [ph]: (inaudible). Adrian Hammond – BNP Cadiz: Thanks.

Craig Barnes

Management

Okay. Any more questions? Chris Nicholson [ph] – RMB Morgan Stanley: Hi Craig, sorry Chris Nicholson.

Craig Barnes

Management

There we go. Chris Nicholson – RMB Morgan Stanley: At RMB Morgan Stanley. Just wanted to ask you around the tonnages and the throughput, how close is that to full capacity of the pipeline and what the plant can take, and kind of the read through for that going forward in terms of those volumes?

Craig Barnes

Management

I would say I mean the Ergo plant, the current capacity it is 1.8 million tonnes per month. The balance of 200,000 odd tonnes is coming from the Knights plant. And within our guidance between 2 and 2.1 tonnes per month is what we believe is capacity there currently. Obviously the Ergo plant when it was previously owned by Anglo had a capacity of 2.4 million tonnes per month, but I mean we haven't as a Board made any decisions in terms of increasing that capacity as yet, obviously our focus was on improving efficiencies at the plant first which makes sense, before you increase the capacity you need to make sure you have the most efficient plant. So there is potential down the line to increase capacity. I just don’t think that’s going to be our focus as yet. I think we need to make sure that we Crown – I mean sorry, that the Ergo flotation milling circuit delivers into what we expecting it to deliver, the efficiencies that we are expecting. I know that Niël feels very strongly about with some moderating capital going forward for at least another year or so, so not spending a lot of capital on big projects. And I think down the line we’re not going to be in a rush, we’ll make a decision on that down the line. Chris Nicholson – RMB Morgan Stanley: Thanks.