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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited Q2 FY '13 International Analyst Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please also note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Graham Briggs. Please go ahead, sir.
GB
Graham Paul Briggs
Analyst
Thank you very much, and good morning, or good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, depending where you are, of course. I am certainly hoping that you've got the documentation, probably downloaded or are viewing it on the website, and I'll be taking you through the presentation. I'd like to go straight to Slide #3 just to talk a little bit about the agenda. We'll be talking about our business; our strategy; Golpu, a little bit about Golpu; talking about social investments; and environmental things. The unhedged, low debts tab is for Frank, who is sitting with me. We'll talk dividends, and then a conclusion. In addition to myself, we have Mashego Mashego here. We've got Marian, Henrika and Jaco Boshoff. So quite a nice team should there be any questions. Going to Slide #5, our strategy. It's still the same slide that you've seen before, no changes on it. The intent is to achieve the strategy, and we're making good progress on achieving it. We do talk about an exciting investment proposition, where we are and the various sort of parts of the company. Of course, dominating that is our assets here in South Africa, being some of the large gold mining company or large mining assets. Golpu, big world-class exploration project and getting into feasibility. A little bit about environmental, social, unhedged, of course, dividends and very focused, of course, on South Africa and therefore, very exposed to the South African rand. Slide #8 gives you a graph of the recovered grades of the last 4 quarters. So improvement quarter-on-quarter for 3 consecutive quarters there. We'll talk a little bit more about grade later on when we talk about Kusasalethu as well. Slide #10. Despite the low point of Kusasalethu in this last quarter, you can see our gold production…
FA
Frank Abbott
Analyst
Thank you, Graham. On Slide 31, we see we've got our headline earnings and it shows the upward trend over the last number of years. With regards to Slide #32, we've got the EBITDA in rand and then next to it, EBITDA in U.S. dollars. If we look at the EBITDA in dollars, you see we started at $120 million in the March quarter, went up to about 130 -- $145 million and up to $165 million in December quarter. And this is despite the Kusasalethu labor disruptions. Higher gold price, better grades and lower cost resulted in this positive EBITDA for December quarter. We page over to Page 34 or Slide 34. We've got our cash flow summary quarter-on-quarter in U.S. dollars. So our cash flow from operations were $179 million. Exploration expenditure, $18 million. 50% of that was at Golpu, $9 million, and greenfields were --in Papua New Guinea, another $8 million. Income and mining taxes, those were our first provisional payments. Proceeds from sale, released [ph] plant sales, which we sold to Wits Gold. Capital expenditure of $123 million, and that included capital at Wafi of $40 million and at Hidden Valley of $70 million. You can see the dividend we paid the previous quarter of $26 million. And at end of December, we had surplus cash after debt of $16 million. Our cash balance is $295 million. Our debt was $279 million at the end of December. If we page over to Slide 36, this is our income statement quarter-on-quarter in U.S. dollars. Our revenue is $532 million. That went up by 3% and this was mostly due to the gold price. Our cash operating costs were lower, and this is because of lower electricity tariffs. The previous quarter included winter tariffs. Inventory movements, $185 million, and this is on the gold -- lockup or gold inventory. If we look at the amortization and depreciation, $58 million. Exploration expenditure, $18 million, of which we explained in the previous slide. Golpu was $9 million and greenfields was $8 million. Taxation of $25 million. Profit from discontinued operations at Evander, 25 [ph]. And profit from -- net profit was $84 million. Headline earnings per share was $0.18 versus $0.15 the previous quarter. Thank you, Graham.
GB
Graham Paul Briggs
Analyst
Thanks, Frank. I've got the good news to talk about now on dividends. On Slide 38, you can see our margin here that we talk, the cash costs with maintenance capital as well as growth capital. The December quarter should have been much better had we produced from Kusasalethu but still a nice margin there. And that's on Slide 38. Slide 39, you can see it in dollars per ounce. Again the same picture of $607 from a cash cost point of view and $261 from a total cost point of view. So nice margin, prepared to share it with investors. And on Slide 40, we show a bit of a graph on what we've been paying in dividends: in '09, ZAR 0.50; '10, ZAR 0.50; '11, we paid ZAR 0.60; and then last year, we paid an interim of ZAR 0.40 and a final of ZAR 0.50, taking it to ZAR 0.90. And now we've just declared a ZAR 0.50 dividend. A comparison there with earnings and dividends in South African cents. In conclusion, a good quarter for us. 28% increase in headline earnings takes us to ZAR 1.58 a share. I think consensus is probably closer to ZAR 1.00, so we're beating consensus. Doornkop buildup continues, 1 tonne of gold for the quarter. A 6% increase in underground grades, and this is the third consecutive quarter of increase. Gold production decreased 9%. That was solely due to Kusasalethu. And if you look at the South African operations, excluding Kusasalethu, of course, there was increase in gold production. Operating profit, 16% higher at ZAR 1.6 billion or $188 million. Operating costs improved and we've talked about the housing. We committed to that and declaring the ZAR 0.50 dividend. Slide 43. Harmony remains undervalued despite being one of the world's largest gold miners, building low-cost, higher-grade mines. Our trend of grades is somewhat different to a lot of other companies. World-class exploration projects. We support meaningful corporate social investments. We're doing a lot of work on the environment. That ZAR 125 million reduction in the environment liability has come at a cost-neutral position for us because we've benefited from selling scrap. We're unhedged, low debt, gold prices good and, of course, we're very exposed to the rand exchange rates. We're paying dividends and we believe we've got a strong management team focused on delivering on the strategy. I'd like to open myself and, of course, my team for any questions.
OP
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, it would appear we have no questions. Do you have any closing comments?
GB
Graham Paul Briggs
Analyst
Yes. Thank you very much, everybody, for dialing in. We have got an appendix to the presentation, which covers some more detail on grade, on exploration in Papua New Guinea, also looking at Evander and Hidden Valley in some detail. And obviously, the guidance, which is the last slide on Slide 56, which we have guided. That guidance, fully intact at 1.2 million ounces, which was modified for the Kusasalethu event. We did modify that at the beginning of the January. Thank you very much for listening in. And as I said, we're very pleased with the quarter and hopefully that we are delivering on the strategy. And if we see you soon, whether it be here in South Africa or in your hometown, we hope to see you and discuss these results further. Thank you very much.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you very much, sir. On behalf of the Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.