Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gold Fields Limited First Quarter Results 2015. All participants are now in a listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after today's presentation. [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.

Thank you very much, Dylan, and good afternoon or good morning wherever you might be, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Gold Fields’ results for Q1 2015. With me on the call today I have Paul Schmidt, our Chief Financial Officer, and Avishkar Nagaser, our Head of Investor Relations. Before we open the floor to questions let me give you a few brief highlights of the quarter under review. Regrettably we had one fatal accident at South Deep in March when Mr. Kennedy Katongo lost his life in an engineering-related accident. Our deepest condolences got out to his family, friends and colleagues. In line with our plan for 2015 Gold Fields had a weaker first quarter with the traditional Christmas break in South Africa, compounded by mine scheduling at other operations. This saw attributable gold production decrease by 10% quarter-on-quarter to 501,000 ounces. The one thing I would share with you, however, is this was within 1% of our plan. So essentially for quarter one, we delivered the plan that was premised in the guidance that we gave you for the year of 2.2 million ounces. So the weaker results for quarter one, we’re not something that surprised us and were scheduled and planned. Costs were well contained in the quarter with net operating costs decreasing by 10% quarter-on-quarter to $366 million. Of course, unit costs were impacted by the planned lower production with all-in costs increasing by 12% to $1,143 per ounce and all-in costs similarly higher at $1,164 per ounce. Interestingly this is lower than what our costs were around about four years ago, so I think it shows how much we have been able to absorb in terms of cost pressures over the last number of years and still keep our costs…

Thank you, Nick. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Adrian Hammond of Standard Bank. Please go ahead.

I have three questions please. Firstly, grades pretty much declined almost everywhere across your group. Just to get a sense of the impact of the mine scheduling you’ve discussed can you give us an indication of whether these grades have recovered yet? That’s the first question. Secondly, on South Deep, do you see any major stop and fix scenarios in the next couple of quarters? What are those stop and fix scenarios going to be addressing exactly? And then thirdly, what do you think might transpire out of the Mining Charter review in the courts at the moment in South Africa? Thanks.

I think in terms of the Mining Charter -- I will answer the last question first -- the Minister has put out his speech on 31st March where he gave his assessment on how he thought the mining industry had done in terms of all of the elements of the Mining Charter. That is available for you to peruse. He has obviously not talked about ownership given the agreement with the industry to seek clarity in the courts in South Africa. But certainly from our perspective all I can do is reiterate what I said in our annual report, which we issued on 31st March, that we have complied with our obligations in terms of the Mining Charter, from ownership down to all of the other issues including housing, et cetera. It remains to be seen how long the process is going to take in terms of the declaratory order, because obviously there is a dialogue going on between the Minister and his advisors as well as the industry and its own advisors about the nature and content of the papers to be filed. So the timeframe on that is unclear at this stage. In fact, the Minister has already indicated that the date of end April was not achievable. Clearly we have passed the end of April already. So it is going to take some time, and I can’t give you a definitive timeframe on that. In terms of South Deep it is hard to see what the impact might be of any further stop and fixes as we fix the culture on the operation. But clearly the mine is very focused on ensuring that the second half of the year is appreciably better than the first half, and of course that the current quarter we’re in is going…

Our next question comes from Kane Slutzkin of UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi guys. Just a quick one from me, can you maybe just confirm what the CapEx profile is looking like at Tarkwa and Granny Smith for the rest of the year? Tarkwa had that once-off, but how does it trend back to the normal level for the rest of the year? I’m just trying to see how you get to the 660 for the full year. I’m a bit light on that number, so if you could just comment on that.

You can actually derive it by looking at the profiles of the different operations. But we haven’t given that capital guidance by mine. But it’s factored in the all-in costs. Also if you look at the breakdown in the book, in the book we give you a breakdown of the operations in terms of operating costs, capital etc. for the quarter. So if you work back from what the likely operating costs are and use that as a basis to annualize and work back taking off the all-in cost estimate you can work back to what the capital figures are per mine. So we don’t provide that guidance. We manage these operations on an all-in cost basis. That’s why we focus on giving you that information. I think Avishkar can probably call you afterwards and try and guide you through how you can use the book to derive the numbers you need.

[Operator Instructions] We will wait a moment to see if we have any further questions. We have a question from Tshepo Masele of The Resource Fund. Please go ahead.

Nick, I’m just actually trying to get my mind around the share value destruction that’s happening at South Deep. I mean this mine when it was proposed to shareholders… ….for $4 billion this thing was going to be 1.2 million ounces a year. We are down to 200,000 ounces per year. I man, can you take us through what have been the issues? Has the mining method been wrong? What is it? Did we over capitalize on this project? What exactly went wrong here?

Okay, first of all I don’t know where your 1.2 million ounces comes from, but it is certainly not…

It comes from Ian Cockerill. Go and look at Ian Cockerill’s previous presentation when you guys were buying South Deep.

Look, he’s not here anymore and I wouldn’t want to talk on his behalf. But the guidance I’ve given during my tenure as CEO is up to 750,000 ounces a year. So those are the numbers that I’ve been previously giving. I think the question here is, it’s all about the mechanized mining skills and the mechanized mining culture, and the ability for us to actually ramp up this mine. And we did get to a stage where we were up at 300,000 ounces a year, back in 2013. But what we realized is that the way that we were mining was not sustainable, and in particular the way that we were supporting the faces we were opening up was also not sustainable. And what I want to achieve is for us to get to whatever production level we can get to and achieve that sustainably. So, I wasn’t comfortable that the way we were mining the ore body was going to be sustainable over time. And that’s the reason we pulled back and said, hang on a minute, what is the key issue here? One of the key issues is just the lack of mechanized mining skills we’ve had on the operation. And so that’s been a big focus for us now, to get the right skills in, put the basics back in place and make sure that this great ore body can be delivered into a good operating mine. But that’s going to take longer I’m afraid.

Well, it has cost a lot of money, Nick. That’s my issue. Please appreciate that and be sensitive to that front. It has cost a lot of money.

I’m extremely sensitive to how much money it’s cost. I think about it every day. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Nunes of Gramercy. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon gentlemen. Thanks for the call. I just wanted to get an update [indiscernible] some of the management earlier in April just wanted to get an update on the hiring of the skills for the mechanized mining at South Deep. And I think there was skills shortage that you identified and you were looking to other industries to acquire those skills. And I wanted to get an update on how you’re progressing on that.

So, the team at South Deep has identified that we probably need somewhere between 170 to 200 people in the mechanized section both as operators and as maintenance artisans, including supervisory skills. So, we’re in the process of looking around. We are not really going to find those skills within the gold industry, so we are looking at other sectors within mining to get those skills. And there has not a large pool of mechanized mining skills available in South Africa, and that’s been one of the things that we’ve been struggling with for a number of years. But we are probably almost about halfway through recruiting or identifying and in the process of recruiting about half of what we need. But the process is slow. I think it’s probably going to take the rest of the year to get the right team in place for us to be able to have the right skills vertically across the mine for us to sustainably get this mine working in the right direction.

Okay. So that’s the next question. How does that -- if this is going to take the whole year, was that factored into your budget of your targeted ounces and mining?

Yes.

Okay.

What we did is we’ve used by and large the same sort of productivity levels we’ve been achieving in the previous year to determine this year’s budget. But as I said earlier on the call, one of the things that we’re doing to change the culture and get a better operating culture on the mine, we’ve had to stop and fix as we go. And so that’s the only risk in terms of achieving the ounces for the year. It may require us to take longer to get the right disciplines in place. But it is not about the people, because we were planning to achieve the same sort of productivity levels as we were getting last year.

[Operator Instructions] We will wait a moment to see if we have any further questions. Nick, it would appear we have no further questions. Do you have any closing comments?

I would just like to thank everyone for calling in. and just apologies for my gruff voice, as I try and recover from a cold. So it hasn’t been quite as eloquent as I would have liked in my previous deliveries. But thanks for all the questions, folks, and we look forward to catching up again soon and chatting more about Gold Fields’ prospects. Thanks from all of us from our side.

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