Earnings Labs

Gold Fields Limited (GFI)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 13, 2014

$43.17

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gold Fields' Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results. [Operator Instructions] Please also note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Nick Holland. Please go ahead, sir.

Nicholas John Holland

Analyst

Thank you very much, Kevin, and good morning or good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you may be today. Thank you for joining us to discuss the Gold Fields' results for the fourth quarter and also for the full year ended December 2013. With me today are Paul Schmidt, our Chief Financial Officer; and of course, Willie Jacobsz, our Head of Investor Relations. As you may recall, in mid-2012, Gold Fields embarked on a fundamental shift in its strategy, moving away from purely ounces of production to a primary focus on margins and cash flows. And to this end, and to sustain our business in the long term, we started a process to engineer a sustainable and structural shift in the group's cost and production base, and this process continued through the December 2013 quarter, and the results that we published today reflect much of the progress that we've made over the past 18 months. However, let me start with a few of the key quarterly numbers and some of the salient features. Gold production, up 21% on the previous quarter at 598,000 ounces, and this includes the first contribution from the newly acquired Yilgarn South assets in Australia, which contributed 114,000 ounces during the quarter. Normalized earnings, $14 million compared to $12 million in the September quarter, and it compares to the period last year $127 million, of course, with a much higher gold price. Encouraging is the fact that net cash generated by our business, our core business that is, before financing and any other acquisition costs, was up from $3 million in the September quarter to $38 million in the December quarter. This is despite the fact that at $1,265 an ounce, the average gold price in December was 4% lower than the September quarter. And this…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Patrick Mann of Deutsche Bank.

Patrick Mann - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst

So just 2 follow-up questions. On the depreciation, it was obviously up 24% from the previous quarter, and that was attributed to the acquisition of the Yilgarn South assets, quite a detailed question. Where do you see that going next quarter, given that we've had the large impairment at the end of this quarter? Are you expecting it to remain so high or should it take a step change down again? And then one more question, just no impairment at South Deep in this round of impairments. Is it possible that it could be impaired, have you done an impairment test, and can you just go over the color on that?

Nicholas John Holland

Analyst

I'll talk to both. I'll talk to South Deep first. South Deep has got quite a lot of headroom in terms of the impairment couch[ph]. So I don't see any impairment of South Deep in the foreseeable future. Of all our assets, I think it’s one of the ones with the biggest headroom. In terms of the depreciation, yes, we're seeing impairment [indiscernible] in Australia and Ghana. We must probably expect in the region of about a 10% decrease in depreciation somewhat for this first quarter.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from James Bender of Scotiabank.

James Bender - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division

Analyst

I know, Nick, you mentioned that you will no longer be providing total cash cost as guidance. But just to help us out, for coming '14, would it be possible for you to give us a ballpark of what the 2014 total cash cost will be?

Nicholas John Holland

Analyst

No, we're not reporting it. As we've said back in August, we want to move off cash costs. We don't believe it's an appropriate measure, and we are driving our sales towards all-in costs. As I understand, the other members of the industry to the council have agreed to. So we won't be providing that in the future. We gave significant advanced warning on that, and we believe the best indication of cost is the all-in cost and all-in sustaining cost, so that's what we're going to be reporting.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Brian Nunes of Gramercy.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

Just a few questions, if I may. Your forward-looking guidance of all-in costs are $1,150 per ounce for 2014. Is that still taken at a 15%, planning at 15% free cash flow margins, we -- I can assume you're planning on a $1,350 gold price?

Nicholas John Holland

Analyst

Well, what we're doing is we're striving to get every asset to make a 15% cash flow margin. Now obviously, some of them make it and some of them don't make it. Clearly, South Deep we'd like to try and get it as close as we can to breakeven. Mines like Damang were losing money, so just to get them positive I think will be a good start. Darlot also is losing mines [ph], so to get that positive would be a good start. So on a blended basis, we don't get every asset to 15%, but we get Australia pretty close to that, we believe, at that price, and also Tarkwa cuts[ph]. That's really the targets, on a blended basis, we don't quite achieve it, but we're moving towards that. So I think that should indicate to you why the numbers don't quite that calculate.

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

Yes, we're using the $1,300 gold price. But I think the one thing you must remember, in our all-in and all-in sustaining cost, we have share base payments. At Gold Fields, we issue shares and that's not a cash expense. So if you back that up, our actual cash number is a little bit lower than that and it comes closer to the 15% at $1,300 gold price.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

Understood, yes, okay. And then if I see the exchange rates, using the planning exchange rate of 950 rand to the dollar, given that, I would expect a lot of your so to say, South Deep and even in Ghana a lot -- no, let me just take South Deep, a lot of the operating costs in terms of labor rand-based, if you see a weaker rand, would that benefit you?

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

Obviously, in terms of the weaker rand, we benefit in terms of the revenue line. For South Deep, on the operating cost line, there's probably 95% of the costs are South African source. The only exposure that they have is to some of the capital fleet that comes in from Europe. But yes, a weaker rand would definitely be advantageous to South Deep. In the short term and in the long term, we would have advantages.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

Okay. And then could you give a little bit more color on what you did with the Damang assets? And you've gone through this review on how you plan to utilize going forward, it seems that you're going to continue for a bit. Maybe if you can just give a bit of color of what you're actually mining the pits and -- I'm just not clear on that, if you could.

Nicholas John Holland

Analyst

Yes, sure. So if you can recall, Damang was made up of 3 principal ore sources. It was the Huni, the saddle and then Juno are the 3 sources. And our original plan was to try and come up with a big bang consolidated approach to that ore body and see how we could tackle 6 million to 7 million ounces in the ore body. We've realized that at a $1,300 gold price, that strategy isn't going to work because of the strip ratios in particular, and that the best strategy for us is to actually mine this ore body incrementally as we go. So what we're doing now is we're mining the Juno area. That's probably the focus of about 40% to 50% of our mining, and then we'll be mining judiciously into the Saddle area into a very different style of mineralization but it has high grade, that's shallower bands of mineralized zones. And we need a different approach to that and also getting into Huni. And that is going to give us, we believe, a much more sustainable cost base, and we'll learn more about the ore body as we get into it. And ultimately, to bring forward some of the resources not in reserve, we have a reserve of 1 million ounces and a resource of about 6, we would need to do a pushback of the original Damang pit at some point in time. But we believe that's at least 5 years off, and we've got enough ahead of us to economically mine at around $1,300 gold, 1 million ounces over the next 5 years. So that's going to be our approach. And then also to look at satellite pits along the trend and give ourselves more flexibility and options as we get into the pits. So as we learn more about the saddle area, as we learn more about Huni, we may adjust our plans going forward. But for now, we want to make sure that we generate cash, that we maintain a profile that gives us a reasonable contribution of gold so that we can cover all of our costs and that we can make a return sufficient to at least provide more exploration dollars and give some money into the central coffers. So this will be very much, I think, in the interim phase. But in the worst-case scenario, [indiscernible] we have 5 years, but we'll continue to look for ways to optimize the ore body and see how we can bring forward more ounces. So this is now a strategy really of saying how do we digest this elephant in smaller bite-sized chunks as opposed to trying to develop it all in one big bang, which I think at these prices is going to be too risky.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

Right. And 2 more questions, if I may. The 720 million due -- I think that's due February 2015, at GFI joint venture holdings.

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

December.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

No, no, that's not that, sorry. What is you've got -- its a revolver that's coming due, what is your drawn [ph]? 720 million achieved by joint venture holdings is drawn, it's a loan drawn. Which asset is that serving? Is that serving the South Deep asset?

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

No, I think you've got it on the 50 [ph] talking about the $720 million, that's a Darlot facility; it's got nothing to do with South Deep. It's one of my offshore borrowings, and it expires in November 2015, and we have the option to invoke a 1-year extension to it as well, which obviously we must probably will take up. So in reality that could only be due and payable at the end of 2016.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

Okay, so that's the $720 million maturity that Nick referenced earlier?

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

Yes, that's correct, yes.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

Okay. And that's held with a bank or is that[indiscernible]

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

That's a syndicated backlog. We have 16 banks in our syndicate. In that income, there's 2 $720 million facilities that we had an issue, had a $720 million revolver and a $720 million term. We subsequently changed the $720 million term to a $100 million term and a $620 million revolver.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

Got it, got it. Okay. So that actually is not due February '15, it's November '15?

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

November '15. We'll enforce the 1-year extension, yes.

Brian Nunes

Analyst

Got it. And then just the last question, if I may. You in South Deep, you had a couple of -- you're going to -- part of the -- I'm a debt guy so I'm not a geologist, sorry about this, but the part of the issues with ramping up South Deep was the availability of the underground fleet and putting in new workshops, and there were a number of workshops coming online during this year. Is that still on track and to be met and do you see that debottling?

Nicholas John Holland

Analyst

Yes. We got an early workshop on 93 level that we expect to commission this time next year, at the latest. In fact, we finished blasting it out and we'll be spending the rest of this year just doing the support and the encrypting of the workshop. So we're well underway to make sure that's being commission. But we're not waiting just for that. We're also debottlenecking all of the existing workshops to make sure that we can actually improve the space that we have for maintenance of our fleet, so that's all on schedule, and we're seeing improvements on that.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from James Bender of Scotiabank.

James Bender - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division

Analyst

I just have a follow-up question on the previous question on the foreign exchange. I just want to confirm that you said that 95% of the operating cost there are in rand? And then my follow-up question is whether -- do you have any hedges in place?

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

No, we had some currency hedges at the end, which is part of the end of 2013. We have none at the moment on the rand, dollar or on the Aussie dollar, U.S. dollar.

James Bender - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division

Analyst

And the 95% was correct? I heard that right?

Paul A. Schmidt

Analyst

Actually, we said that 95% of my operating cost is rand denominated, not influenced by dollars at all.

Operator

Operator

Nick, we have no further questions. Do you have any closing comments?

Nicholas John Holland

Analyst

Well, I just like to say thank you, everyone, for dialing in. And for those of you that we may see around the world in the next couple of months to go, I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to hear more of your questions. But thanks for your time everybody, and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. On behalf of Gold Fields, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.