Earnings Labs

Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited (HMY)

Q2 2010 Earnings Call· Mon, Feb 8, 2010

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Transcript

Graham Briggs

Management

(Starts Abruptly) We're going to look at the operations, operations overview, and with the different operations, a little bit of detail on that, not too much. Hannes will take us through financials. And talking about exploration, exploration in PNG, and hopefully we’ll see the good results that we’ve had from PNG drilling. The quarter safety, we’re always trying to deal with safety first in every meeting that we have, unfortunately five fatals this last quarter. We’re looking forward to a quarter when we don't have any fatals, spending a lot of work and a lot of effort on safety in general, and we’ve got some great figures when you look at the trends. However, we need to get fatal-free. A very pleasing 45% increase in cash operating profits, operating profits at 800 million Rand, and that’s a nice figure – a nice rounded figure to have. But 11% increase in the Rand gold price of course helped us. And the Rand gold price, roughly what it is today, it’s closed to 264,000 Rand a kilogram. Underground operations in South African operations, free cash flow after the CapEx, in production terms, 11.5 tons of gold, very similar to last quarter. We spent quite a bit of efforts of what we call ‘fixing the mix’, and really, I’ll talk about some of the closures of shafts a little later. Slight drop in capital expenditure, that was to be expected. I’ll remind you that we said we were going to spend about 3.1 billion Rand of capital this year. We’re going to have a little slightly more than that, because the Pamodzi Free State has intervened. In our planning during the flow swells [ph], so it will probably be up at about 3.4 billion Rand, 3.3 billion Rand for the year – financial…

Hannes Meyer

Management

Thank you, Graham. Looking at our results for the quarter, revenue side, revenue, we've had a reduction in the gold sold, and this reflects the – this is experienced in the Hidden Valley ounces, a 6% reduction in gold sold. But we had a 10.6% increase in the Rand per kilogram price received. In addition, we had about 280 kilograms that came out of the plant side decreasing the inventory in the plant. Cash operating costs, pretty much in line, well managed the cost side, 94 million Rand reduction on that, mainly reflecting on the electricity prices, lower electricity costs due to the – some (inaudible) are now being applicable. Inventory movement, we can see that’s the de-stocking in the plant side that’s 290 kilograms coming out of the plant, all of that resulting in cash operating profit of 800 million Rand, quite a pleasing number for this quarter. Pretty much the same as the revenue – what the revenue increased, but amortization, depreciation in line with the previous quarter. In payments, that’s dealing with the Branch 3 closure, Evander 2 and 5 shafts closures, and that’s not being written off out of our books. Corporate, administration, and other expenses up by – that's about 28 million Rand, 10 million Rand of that is in Australia where we paid political risk insurance along the Papua New Guinea assets. And there was additional 11 million Rand, 12 million Rand in this quarter in corporate and social investment expenditures. Exploration is pretty much in line with the previous quarter. Other expenditures, it’s less currency movements, so that’s mainly the Forex movement in Australia on our Australian assets, so less and less movement in this quarter. Bottom line, hit line earnings number $0.49 per share is a pretty pleasing number for this quarter…

Graham Briggs

Management

Thanks, Hannes, thanks a lot. On exploration, this is a map of PNG. For those of you who don't know PNG, some world famous deposits (inaudible) primary operation Porgera, a part of Barrick, a very good belt here to find deposits in and is the further belt out there. Panguna is what we all know as Bougainville Coppers, has been closed on for some time. This is a JV of Harmony, and there're two other areas, which we own 100%. You can see the size of those areas. We’re really going to focus on the Wafi-Golpu deposits, which is right there. And this is a plan of it. Please note the scale, all these deposits fairly close together. Last year we were talking about Nambonga, about a million ounces of gold there. This is the Wafi deposits, 6.2 million ounces. There is Golpu, and this is the Golpu West. What we will do now, instead of drilling down into Golpu, we've actually stepped off from drilling from the side, so some very good intersections we’ve had in Golpu West. And these are the – in tabular form, the results of those three holes. You can see quite large intersections and at very good values. That 155 is included in that 331, but excellent values, both in gold and copper. And I’ve done some equivalent grades there. And please note the prices that we’ve used at the bottom for the equivalent ounces. But when you’re talking 600 meters at 2.5 grams a ton, that’s quite spectacular results. These are the bore holes that we’ve been talking about. And you can see on this, Golpu is in here. We now modeled a bit more on Golpu here, busy drilling this hole at the moment, and we’ll draw some further holes here. Infrastructure…

Allan Cooke

Management

(inaudible).

Graham Briggs

Management

Yes, you probably do, you’ve got one.

Allan Cooke

Management

Hi, Graham. Good morning to you all, Allan Cooke, J.P. Morgan. Just on Hidden Valley, will the current quota be when Hidden Valley comes into the account? And what are your expectations in terms of the red part maybe for next quarter or two as you are still waiting for the hydroelectric power there to come in, just some guidance on ounces and costs, if you can, and whether or not we should be putting that in our models for this quarter? And then also in terms of – you said you’re looking at struggling assets, Bering Straits, and maybe a few others, which of those and what’s likely to happen? And what do you see happening there at the current Rand gold pricing? And the shafts that have been closed, some of them in this quarter, there will be some costs associated with that or what should be factoring in terms of costs of closure for the shafts that you’ve not yet provided for?

Graham Briggs

Management

I’ll give Hannes some time to think about the costs while I talk about a few of those things. Firstly, Hidden Valley, it will come into commercial production during this quarter, I don’t know, either the first month or maybe the first two months will be a capitalized store. And then in the June quarter should be a normal full production quarter for Hidden Valley, so that’s the 200 and probably 65 or 270,000 ounces divided by four. Cash costs will still be a little higher than the average we’re planning for Hidden Valley, so life of mine cash costs is planned at about $350 an ounce. It will be a bit higher for several reasons, one is loss over in the first initial phase, so there will be lots of credits to cash costs. The power is an interesting one because obviously we're cutting diesel in for the gensets that was due to come in June, but maybe a little bit late, the hydroelectric power scheme. So cash costs would probably be fairly high for the first quarter and into the foreseeable future. And then, it'll drop in months to come – in quarters to come. When it comes to our operations, Virginia has been really under scrutiny. Bering Straits shafts have got potential. They need to make sure they meet the production targets as well as potential. The one operation there that’s really struggling from an all-body point of view is Harmony 2. Phoenix will produce 30,000 tons, 3 grams a ton-type of operation. So it’s got intensive management and we’ll have to see what happens in the next six months. It's not our time to close in the next quarter. But maybe in the next six months’ time, we’ll see how it goes. That’s the annual operation that’s really under threat. Hannes, have you been able to–

Hannes Meyer

Management

I think in terms of cost, as I shared with these operations that we’re closing, Brand 3, we’ve been able to redeploy most of those people to the Phakisa – mainly to Phakisa. In this quarter, we’ve had 2 million Rand worth of restructuring costs. Prices at Evander’s still ongoing, so I expect the cost of Evander for this quarter not to change that much, and there'll probably be some additional restructuring costs that we’ll have to see. And we’d also have to look at how many people we redeploy from Evander to some of our other shafts, to Doornkop and to Phakisa as well. So I can’t give you an exact number at this stage, but probably looking for the same number next quarter, and then plus probably some additional restructuring costs.

Graham Briggs

Management

Did we answer all the questions, Allan. You've had quite a few. Steve?

Steve Shepherd

Management

Steve Shepherd, J.P. Morgan. Just on Evander, Graham, I can’t help being mindful that you’re running two shafts to produce from the eighth shaft here, including number 7 shaft. I can imagine the overhead’s are very high there. Is that sustainable? And secondly, does Evander actually fit in your portfolio anymore? It must be an awful lot of management effort for a very small amount of production.

Graham Briggs

Management

Very good question, anymore questions, no. Steve, yes, I mean you’re right. That’s going to be a high cash cost operation because it only has really eight shafts that has two barrels, as you rightly pointed out, a seventh shaft. The guys have done a lot of restructuring at Evander, and includes services and everything around Evander. I guess we’re looking at it carefully and evaluating our options. And we do point that we will continue to optimize what we do, and see how we do things. I’d like to leave it at that at the moment, but we are obviously looking at our options.

Steve Shepherd

Management

I have one just last follow up on that, is there any potential to reprocess the massive tailings in Evander because you–?

Graham Briggs

Management

Yes. It’s what we call Project Libra. It’s probably the best, highest grade tailings that we have. Tailings recover around about 50% if everything’s going particularly good. And Evander’s tailings grades are, correct me if I’m wrong, over 0.34 I think is what the tailings grade. So you’ll be dealing with the dark 15.17 thereabouts. Phoenix, we recovered about 0.12. So that’s quite lots of potential. It would require a plant or an extensive modification to the existing plant.

Steve Shepherd

Management

So you still can't think of that plant running I guess?

Graham Briggs

Management

No, no.

Steve Shepherd

Management

No, you haven’t.

Graham Briggs

Management

No, the Doornkop plant is not running. It’s the only the Kinross plant that’s running. The Doornkop plant was – just had a milling section left, and in fact that was the demise of 2 and 5, will be cleaned up. Any other questions?

John Fryer

Management

Yes. Good morning, Graham. I’m John Fryer [ph], Alexander Profit [ph]. Just came for a comment relative to Doornkop, how the grades are working out relative to original studies and how it's developed. Thanks.

Graham Briggs

Management

Thanks, John. Yes, the grades, as you know, we went through quite an extensive evaluation of the Doornkop ore body because the shaft deepening happened on a – not a reserve, but the resource. And so we had some tough decisions, some 6 to 12 months ago, whether we should stop the project and drill or try and do it from underground. We continued underground. We did a lot of developments, done a lot of underground drilling. And also this means no stopping in that time. Now I know that the guys went on a visit recently to Doornkop and I don’t know how many tons are lit up the bag, but we seem to be recovering in the order of about 5.2 grams a ton from that deposit, which is in line with what we’re planning. And that’s from the South Reef. The Kimberley reef, which will produce gold from very low grade, I mean, we’re lucky if we get sort of 2 to 2.5 grams a ton from that. So it’s returning what we’re expecting and it’s looking very positive.

John Fryer

Management

Thank you.

Graham Briggs

Management

Yes, Christian [ph] (inaudible).

Christian

Management

Thanks, (inaudible). Just a quick question, John Monroe at the mining in Melbourne spoke about 3.5 million Rand CapEx for Rand uranium?

Graham Briggs

Management

Yes.

Christian

Management

Forty percent will probably be for your Yorktown. Can you give us a sense of what’s that portion could be fined as by deck and what would be required to be financed by Harmony over the next you said two-and-a-half years constructions starting H 232?

Graham Briggs

Management

Yes, no decisions finally have been taken on that. The title feasibility – definitive feasibility’s complete and that’s the right number. But no decision by the Rand Uranium Board, of which of course, we set as 40%, have been taken. They way that we’re looking at it from shareholder point of view right now is to look at financing it, project, and maybe a bit of equity with an off-take agreement. So it’s unclear as to what sort of announced – Harmony may or may not finance on that boat. And that decision will probably be undertaken over the next two or three months. Any other questions? Sorry, I have to see. Bob’s at the back. Did I get the Libra figure right, Bob, on the grade?

Bob Atkinson

Management

(inaudible), 0.33.

Graham Briggs

Management

0.33. Okay, good. Well thank you very much for attending, ladies and gentlemen. For any other questions, please feel free to tackle one of the executive members, or myself and Hannes, to answer any further questions. Thank you.