Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mike Fraser, and welcome to our Q1 2024 operational update, which we have also combined with our annual ESG webcast. We'll be spending approximately 25 minutes each on the operational update, and then 25 minutes on the ESG webcast, leaving another 20 minutes for Q&A after this. Today, I'm joined in the room by our interim CFO, Alex Dall, our EVP, External Affairs, Jongisa Magagula, our VP, Environmental Performance, Andrew Parsons, and our VP, Investor Relations, Thomas Mengel. I'd like to start first with the key developments of the first quarter of 2024. Importantly, it is with profound sadness that we reported 2 fatalities at our operations in the year-to-date. On the 2nd of January 2024, an engineering supervisor was fatally injured in a trackless mining equipment incident at South Deep. A second fatal incident occurred just 2 weeks ago at our St Ives mine in Australia, when a colleague employed by a contractor was fatally injured in a mobile equipment-related incident at a construction site on the mine. We extend our sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of our 2 colleagues that lost their lives at our operations this year. And at this stage, I would ask that we observe a moment of silence as we remember them and their loved ones. Thank you. Clearly, this is very distressing for us, and I'll be discussing our response to these incidents and our safety performance and other trends in the slides that follow. Similarly, our ESG performance, including the approval of the renewable power plant at St Ives, will be discussed in our annual ESG review. In terms of our operational performance, it has been a challenging quarter. Attributable gold production, excluding Asanko, which we disposed of in January this…

Good. Thank you so much, Mike, and we do apologize for, we understand that there was some sound issues at the beginning of the call, which have been resolved, so apologies for that. There are a couple of questions from the webcast, and we also have participants joining via chorus call, so we will be taking questions from both, and I will start with the webcast questions. The first one is from Prince Mopai from All Weather Capital. He says that it appears that the current run rate is 22% below for production and 21% below for costs. What is the likelihood that this current guidance will be revised downwards as the quarters progress? And then I've got 2 questions from Martin Creamer, who says, what is the latest for the wind energy generation at South Deep, and when do we expect that South Deep will be at the 63% renewables that has been highlighted? And then the next question, also from Martin Creamer, is when do we expect the South Deep backfill problems to be resolved? As Mike said, we do have colleagues joining us, so Mike, shall I let you kick off, and maybe Andrew and the rest of the team can add, particularly on the South Deep question.

I'll start, Prince. Look, I think the one thing I would say is that if you look at Gold Fields historically, we tend to have a back-ended production profile across the business. I think if you look at the specific causes of the underperformance, I've spoken about the challenges at Cerro Corona and the slow start at Cerro Corona. We spoke about the impacts at Gruyere, and we spoke about St Ives, the planned slower start, and we also spoke about South Deep. If we just think about those as being probably the most important contributors to the recovery for the remainder of the year, I certainly have a high degree of confidence with Gruyere and St Ives and their ability to recover, and certainly the indications are that they are moving in the right direction. Salares, as you can appreciate, it's a project that's very early in its ramp-up. That's why we kind of decided to take some of the risk out of the plan and ensure that we delivered a safe and reliable ramp-up and ensure that we set ourselves up for a successful 2025. And on South Deep, again, what was really important is that we don't go backwards, and so the guidance that we've provided was probably closer to 2023 rather than the probably more ambitious growth objective that we had in 2024. So coming back to the heart of your question, we certainly know what's required to deliver on the numbers. And based on what we've gone out on our revised guidance on Salares and South Deep, we feel quite confident that we will deliver these numbers. And certainly, we had a very clear intention of ensuring that we don't have another disappointing quarter in quarter 2. But again, having said that, it's important to note that whilst you may see an incremental improvement, the real improvement is going to come in the second half. Just then moving on to the South Deep Wind Project, I'll make one comment and maybe ask Andrew to talk about the achievement of the program. So the South Deep Wind Project is in scoping and in feasibility at the moment. One of the key pieces of work has been around the environmental impact and particularly the impact on the BAT community that exists in the nearby area. We believe at an economic level it is viable, but we just need to close out the full feasibility. But maybe, Andrew, if you want to add any comments to that.

We've had a meteorological tower in place measuring the wind availability at a number of different heights above ground level. That's been going since early 2023, so we've now got a year's set of data and that work is more or less done. We'll be getting the report quite soon. As Mike said, the environmental impact assessment studies are currently underway. Those have got another 3 months or so to run. So we should have all the data that we need during the third quarter and we'll be in a position at that point with all of the wind availability data and the environmental impact assessment having been completed to then be in a position to make a decision.

And then just on the backfill issue, Martin, I think if you go back and you look at the graphs that we showed on the amount of rehandling that we're doing, I almost kind of look at this as a bit of an opportunity for South Deep. Because if we can really get a handle on this rework, it really sets us up for getting ahead of what's possible at South Deep. Because the amount of rehandling now is just causing a lot of congestion in that system. There are specific pieces of work going on, looking at different binders on the paste, looking at opportunities to put some plugs in on some of the pillars underground, looking at ways of maybe rehandling or increasing the density of paste underground. And we're working with a number of experts to help us with that. So it's hard for me to give you a clear answer as to when that'll be solved, but we have forecasted lower this year because we expect this to take some time. And if we can fix it, I think the opportunity is there for South Deep to really get to where it needs to be as an asset. But there's a huge amount of work going on between the operations team, our technical team, as well as external experts in this area. So we'll provide an update in the second quarter.

At this stage, there are no further questions on the webcast, so I will pause and see if we have any questions coming in from the Chorus call.

We do have a few questions. The first question we have is from Rene Hochreiter of NOAH Capital. René Hochreiter: I'm Rene Hochreiter from NOAH Capital. I've got a couple of questions on South Deep and also one on St Ives. What exactly is crushed ground? How can you drill through crushed ground? And how long is it going to be before you're going to be through this crushed ground? On the backfill rehandling, I know what you just answered to Martin Creamer, but what exactly is that? You mentioned a 2,000 metre number in your slide on backfill rehandling. What is that? How long before you're back to normal on the backfill? And then also on St Ives, what is the change in bulk stokes? What are you changing? Are you stepping over to another slope or are you simplifying, changing the sloping method or what? I'm a mining engineer, so you could answer a little bit more technically if you don't mind.

Yes. Sure, Rene. And maybe just starting with South Deep, I think on the first one, in terms of crushed ground, what's been happening at South Deep over the last 5 years is a change in the orientation of the pillars and the stopes. And what we are now -- and what these stopes are intended to do as you mine through them and you go through the destress cuts is that these stopes actually are intended to crush as you advance. What we are finding is that as we backfill, there's a huge amount of leakage of backfill material. So it means that as these -- you can't actually get to the stopes in time. And it also means that the availability of future stopes is a problem. And so the amount that you see there, the 2,000 meters, is actually the amount of backfill that needs to be cleaned up before we can actually get to the advanced development. So it's causing quite a significant challenge across the different working areas and the different open areas that we have. And the biggest challenge that we've got, it's not so much the crushed ground, but it's actually avoiding the leakage of backfill, because that's creating a backlog in the ability to get to these stopes. I don't know if you want to add anything. I think we're good. And then just on St Ives, one of the things that we -- with the Invincible underground deposit, we are trying to increase the handling -- the ore handling underground. So increasing the bulk handling of material. And so we actually have changed, again, the stope and the underground design at Invincible in order to manage the bulk handling and recovery of material. But I think the biggest issue there has really been, there was a planned resequencing of the mine development that probably didn't really come through. And we're only going to see some of that value later in the year. René Hochreiter: Okay. So St Ives looks like you through the worst of it and South Deep. How long do you think you'll be there before you're back to normal?

I think the issue there is really solving for the backfill. And I think, Rene, you'd appreciate this. If you go to operations in Australia, you're mining at 1,000 metres at most. So getting paste from the surface to the bottom, you can actually have it coming down at a much higher density. The problem that we've got at South Deep is you kind of producing paste on surface and sending it 3,200 metres down below ground. And so your viscosity has to be higher. And when you've got leakages, because you've got some of this fractured ground, you get a lot of paste flowing, which kind of impacts you. So we've got to solve for -- as I said earlier, we've got to find a way of either plugging the pillars or else increasing the density underground. And that's why the guidance that we've provided is one that actually realizes it's going to probably take us a couple of months to get through this.

The next question we have is from Leroy Mnguni of HSBC.

My question is around your decarbonization targets for 2030 and specifically what CapEx would be required over the next, call it 6 years, to achieve these targets. St Ives, microgrid, you've guided the South Deep Wind project. We've got a good idea of what that could potentially cost. Are there any other projects in the pipeline that you require to meet these targets that we should be aware of?

Leroy, maybe I can ask Alex to give an update just on the CapEx estimates.

Yes, Leroy. So I think you're right on St Ives and the South Deep Wind we've guided. The other projects are still in early stage, so we obviously have the option of doing PPAs, looking at other financing solutions. So there's no CapEx we can specifically guide on them yet. Once we've completed feasibility studies, we'll have more guidance on that.

But I think, Leroy, it's important to stress we are thinking very carefully about how we fund these, the returns on these and the commercial aspects of it. We are committed to that target, but we are very mindful when we think about our capital allocation that these projects and these investments need to also compete for capital and we need to think about how we approach that and structure it. So we are thinking about that.

The next question we have is from Ed Stoddard of Freelance -- as a freelance journalist.

Actually with Daily Maverick. I was just -- I'm looking as always -- I was just wondering if you have an update on Operation Chinchilla?

Yes. And I think we try to cover it in the presentation briefly, but we have been working with the authorities on the capture and the relocation of the Chinchillas since, and we started the process at the end of January. We have gone through the sequencing of the attempted capture of the Chinchillas and to date we have not captured any Chinchillas. What we did conclude, though, is the end of the first program in terms of rockery #3. And that was the rockery that was closest to our waste dump tip. No Chinchillas have been identified and we now are proceeding with the deconstruction of that rockery. If we observe any Chinchillas, then we'll have to go through another capture program there during that deconstruction of the rockery. And what we will also do now is post the removal of that rockery is take a hiatus until the main parts of the winter months are completed. So we'll probably recommence in August in line with our plan and our approved plan with the EIA. But to date, no Chinchillas have been captured and we continue to deploy and follow the approved program that was approved by the EIA.

Can you explain what you mean by that rockery? Does that mean that you're starting to remove a rockery for mining purposes for the next pit?

Just to again put it in perspective, there's 9 rockeries that we formally need to go through on a systemic way to identify and capture Chinchillas. If we haven't after 3 rounds of attempted capture, we actually then are permitted to remove the rockeries and then we move on to the next rockery and the next capture program.

And I guess when you remove a rockery, I take it you must blast it, I take it.

Just repeat that, Ed.

How do you remove a rockery? I said do you blast it?

No, no. These are removed manually.

Removed manually. So just for Layman's terms, how do you remove a rockery manually? Do you do it with a pick and a shovel?

No, you'd move it with an ITB, a little loader.

Oh, okay.

These are kind of relatively small structures. They're not size that needs to be blasted in any way.

Okay. But you weren't able to capture and then how many -- what's the presumed population around there now? Is it still around 3 dozen?

Yes. That's right. I think that was the last count and we haven't identified any others. I mean, it's quite conceivable that they've moved on. That's a very plausible scenario. I don't know if you want to add anything, Andrew. Sorry, on this.

Well, the only thing I'd add, just on the removal of the rocky areas. So just as Mike said, it's done. It's a laborious manual process and a sensor is inserted into all the little cracks and crevices between the rocks before the rocks are removed. So it's a very thorough process to determine that there are no Chinchilla present before the rocks, which is the habitat for the Chinchilla is removed.

I see. So you have a sensor that can actually detect life, I take it.

It's a heat sensor.

It's a heat sensor, okay. So there's a possibility that they've left the area because they seem to suddenly be sort of...

Yes. They could have gone to other rockeries and we'll only know that as we go rockery by rockery.

Okay. So for now, none have been captured since late January and now the kind of capture project is going to be on hold down until August. Is that correct?

Correct. So we take a hiatus during the winter months.

The next question we have is from Tanya Jakusconek of Scotiabank.

Just wanted to circle back on Salares Norte with the mill startup and the 10,000 ounces produced in April. Maybe someone can share with me how the progress has gone. Is recovery on track? I'm probably lower grades put through, but can you talk a little bit about how the recovery is tracking versus what you were expecting? And then just a reminder, with a bit of this delay, are we looking at commercial production now in Q4 of this year? And remind me of your definition of commercial production, if it's 60% of capacity over 30 days at the mill. So that's my first question on Salares Norte.

So just on the recoveries, as you quite rightly suggest, one of the things that we are looking at very carefully is the grade feed through the mill. Because as we ramp up, the last thing you want to do is to put the super high grade stuff through. But the general grades are very good even in the stockpile. So that is something that we look at quite carefully, but recoveries are tracking as per expectations in the ramp up. So there's nothing untoward on the recoveries. And we're expecting to deliver against the design of the recovery, so that's not an issue. Just on commercial production, I'm just trying to remember the actual definition. We can come back to you on that. I know we've looked at it, and I think we had planned commercial production for, I think, August, September. It'll probably move.

It'll probably move to Q4, but the exact metrics of recovery and throughput over a time period, but I'll get back to you on that.

Yes. We can just come back to you on that, Tanya. But it's probably -- I think it was initially in August, but I think it might be weeks. It's not going to be months, so I don't suspect.

Okay. So sometime in September, October is where we go from there.

It could still happen in Q3, but I think we can come back to you on that.

Okay. And then I wanted to come back on your production profile for this year. When we look at some of the mines that you've mentioned that are going to be doing second half weighting, it seems that you've mentioned that Q2 is going to be slightly better than your Q1 and then a stronger second half. And when we look at our numbers, we have a 45% in the first half, 55% in the second half with a stronger Q4. Is that something reasonable as we look through the year?

I don't know.

Tanya, I think it's probably going to be more weighted towards the latter and even more than that, and probably closer to a 40-60 split between the 2. Particularly, as Mike said, for example, St Ives is expected to have a very big Q4. So I think a 40-60 split is probably the right way.

Okay. So slightly better Q2 and then obviously a very strong Q4.

Yes.

Okay. And then my last question is on the Ghana joint venture. So you're continuing to work with the government on this, and we've got elections in Ghana. And so my question to you is, at what point should we be thinking that we put this on pause as we go through campaigns and other, and should we be thinking that 2025 is probably the time that something could get done? Maybe some insights into how this is going.

Yes. And this is certainly something that I have -- it's a significant part of my time trying to herd the cats, as I call it. I think the starting point of this is that there's definitely value uplift for all parties involved. So for us, for AGA and for the government of Ghana. It is quite a politicized issue that we're dealing with at the moment. And the whole issue of, if you follow Ghanaian media, the issue around resource ownership is quite topical as the background to the election process. What is really important is that we make sensible commercial decisions around the way forward. And I think we are quite close. There's a couple of points that are sticky points. And that's why we're not yet ready to call failure on this. But as you quite rightly acknowledge, as we get closer to the election nearing, it may make it quite difficult. And the last thing that we want to do is to make a poor decision on the backdrop of that political manoeuvring. So I think by the time we get to the end of Q2, we'll have a very, very clear view on it. And if we get a clear view before then, we'll certainly announce it if we feel like there is going to be a delay into '25. Even if we do get an agreement in say the next weeks or month or so, there is still an implementation period. So you're really only going to start seeing the benefits of this flowing 6 to 9 months away. So I think that just put that in perspective as well. So in some respects, the delay allows us to get ahead of some of the work that's required.

Okay. And when you mentioned some of the sticky, there is -- you're almost there and you've got some sticky points that you're working on. Would it be safe to assume that sticky points are over this percentage of what the government is looking to participate in? Would that be an ownership would be one of them?

Yes, probably. I want to get into that. But I think, again, I'll just go back. If you follow the kind of media that's going on in Ghana, you can probably get to that conclusion.

Okay. And it isn't anything about royalties or taxation?

No, but there is clearly there's some alignment that's required in time as well.

And we hope that it does get done because it would be beneficial to both companies and for the government as well.

Absolutely. I'm sure it's going to happen. It's just a timing.

The next question we have is a follow up from Leroy Mnguni of HSBC.

Just one more question for me. And it's a follow up from Rene's question on South Deep. Issues like the lagging distress cuts, challenges with the back full. These are issues that were a major challenge for South Deep a couple of years ago. And then we went through a few years where they seem to be resolved and now they're emerging again. Is there anything that has changed compared to, say, 2 to 3 years ago that has resulted in these becoming a challenge again?

Leroy, I think at this stage, what I can say is that if you go back to -- again, if you look at those graphs, and that was quite why we kind of pulled out some of those leading indicators. If you look at what has been done on drilled meters, there's definitely continued improvement. And if you think about what was reported last year and the year before in terms of challenges on stoke drill meters, it seems like we really are moving ahead quite rapidly on getting that under control. It's actually just the rework that's the problem here. So I think in terms of the mining method, it's clearly playing off in that change to the mining method that kind of initiated in 2018. I think we we're getting ahead of ourselves there. But it's quite clear that -- and as the -- again, as I said, as we as we get this the sequencing right, it's quite clear that we really need to solve this paste issue and the backfill issue. And if we can do that, then I think we're fine. I don't think a systemic problem that's going to take us back to 2017 or 2016.

We have another follow up question from Ed Stoddard of Daily Maverick.

Just checking on operation Chinchilla again. I'm just wondering, how big a team is there now? Can you give an update on that?

Sorry. What was that question? How many?

How big a team is there?

Do you know how many it is?

I will get back to you. There's a large number, but I don't have the number at my fingertips. Sorry about that.

I recall a number of 10 but we can get the exact number and get back to you.

So about 1 vet for 3.5 Chinchillas, that you think are there.

They're on rotation though.

They're on rotation. And just to be clear so you're not -- so the Rockey that you're removing you have permission to do that and you're just the rock is like the next one that you plan to remove you've not found any evidence of Chinchillas there. And so I also just take it I guess the Chinchillas aren't coming to the baited traps is that correct? Just for clarification.

I think there's a lot of hypothesis they might have just moved on.

Right. But you do have baited traps out there is that correct?

No, no we have we have camera traps and then physical traps that if the chinchilla are identified then traps are put out for them.

Okay. So you haven't identified any since you relaunched in late January, is that correct? And so yes, you haven't needed to put out the physical traps, is that correct?

Yes. And this is only -- and we've been focusing on rockery 3 because that's the priority and then we'll move on to the next one so we're doing these sequentially.

Okay so the focus has been on Rockery 3, is that correct?

Correct.

Okay. And then you'll move on sequentially so Rockery number 3 is the is the Rockery that's now going to be removed by a loader.

And that was because it was closest to the waste dump area for Brecha Principal where we're currently mining so that's why it was prioritized.

And then but in terms of the other rockeries, I mean has there been chinchillas observed there in the past couple of months at all?

As Mike said because we're doing it sequentially, we will now move on to I think it's Rockery number 7 to do the observation and the camera traps.

But that'll only be in August?

Yes, post the winter season.

Okay. So the focus since late January, I just want to make sure that all my facts right here has been on Rockery number 3 and that's now cleared for removal. And then when you relaunch in the spring, the focus will be on Rockery number 7.

We'll give you the sequential program and in terms of the sequencing of the spin we'll send it to you.

We have no further questions from the conference call.

And I do not see any questions on the webcast either and we are just on time so Mike I don't know if you want to.

Look I think just firstly to say thanks everyone for joining in. We did -- as I said earlier up front, we combined the Q1 report along with our annual ESG update. Fully conscious that the quarter one was probably not as smooth as we would have anticipated. We know that we're going to have a hard run for the remainder of the year, but I think we are very clear of where the challenges and opportunities are. And we at this stage don't believe there's anything material afoot that lead us to believe there's anything should change our position. But thanks everyone for dialing in and for your continued support. Thank you.

Thanks.