Caledonia Mining Stock

Welcome to the Caledonia Mining Q2 Trading Update. We're joined by Mark Learmonth and the management team. Mark, over to you.

Thank you, Scott. Could we get into the presentation, please? Okay. Well, good morning, good afternoon to you. Should we just quickly go to the disclaimer page? Okay, and then on to the presenting team.

So I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's Chief Executive, and we're joined today by Ross Jerrard, the CFO, Victor Gapare, another Executive Director who's running the Bilboes project; Craig Harvey, VP Technical Services. He runs exploration and MRM and also in attendance, we've got Maurice Mason, who is Vice President, Corporate Development, and Investor Relations.

Should we move on? Okay. Just in terms of an overview, production was up 18% in the second quarter compared to the first quarter, which reflects improved access to higher-grade mining areas and benefits from various operating improvements. Revenue up 16% to $76 million and EBITDA up 16% to nearly $46 million, supported by stronger production and a robust gold price environment. Profit after tax up 27% compared to the comparable period in 2025, up to $30 million, and EPS was up 29% to $1.36 for the quarter. Operating cash flow was strong, $28.4 million. And cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter was $167.8 million. The growth pipeline is going well. We're making good progress at Bilboes as Victor will explain. We've got some very exciting exploration results coming out of Motapa where we expect to produce a main resource in the next 4 weeks or so, but also some quite exciting exploration results coming out of K-Pits at Blanket. And just for the record, we've declared our usual quarterly dividend of $0.14 a share for the quarter.

Should we move on to the next slide. Okay, I'm going to canter through these operating results quite quickly. I mean, really, there's one thing that comes out and that's grade.

So if we just move on. But before we get to that, let's talk about safety, an excellent safety performance for the quarter. We've had -- Well, now it must be over 400 consecutive days without any lost time injury. And that's a 5.5 million man hours worked without an LTI. So that's a very good performance. Clearly, that's sort of a lagging indicator. And the strong safety performance really reflects a couple of things. The first is the extent to which we're focusing on proactive and preemptive risk prevention. So things like we've undertaken risk propensity assessments on workers in high-risk areas. We're putting a strong focus on near miss reporting and things like that. So trying to preempt and predict where problems might be so that we can address them. And what underpins all of this is a renewed focus on training, culture and readiness. So a very pleasing safety performance and congratulations to the mining team for achieving that.

Should we move on? Right, production has recovered in the quarter. And that really comes down to improved access to higher-grade areas. And as I said previously, we've been hampered over the last few quarters by some fall of ground incidents in the course of 2025, which locked us out of high-grade areas. So we've been effectively running the mine at a very low grade.

In the first quarter, it was 2.5 grams a tonne. In the second quarter, it was about 2.88, and we're now targeting about 3.1 for the remainder of the year, and we're operating at that level. So higher access to higher-grade areas. We also, in June, moved the mine on to 7-day working week, primarily to address worker fatigue, but it also means that we've increased our blasting days by 18%. And that is flowing through into increased run-of-mine production. And from September onwards, we'll be processing a portion of that incremental production through the Lima plant, which we'll re-purpose.

And then into 2027, we'll be spending some money you'll hear shortly, to upgrade main metallurgical plant to process all of that existing run of mine material through the main plant. At the end of this month, end of August, we will have completed an upgrade to the elution plant, which will allow us to process about 40 tonnes of material that we've accumulated over the last 18 months or so at a grade of 600 or 700 grams a tonne. So that will give us an extra 1,200 ounces across the months of September, October, November, December. And Q2 was well ahead of Q1 on the back of the higher grade access.

So should we move on to the next page? It's traditional graphs, which we've seen before. I think the key things I'd draw out here are the top graph, the blue line, the stability that we've experienced now for many quarters, and that really is because of the stockpile that we developed and we've been running. Fair to say, during this quarter, quarter 2, the stockpile was run down to 0 and has now been -- now we started to rebuild that since we introduced the new shift system in June.

The bottom line in that top graph is the grade. And you can see how the grade fell, came down from Q2 2025, reached a low point in the first quarter and has now recovered. As I say, in the second quarter, running at 2.88 grams a tonne target for the remainder of the year on average is about 3.16, and we're running at that level. And then the bottom graph just pulls it all together in terms of looking at the recovery and the ounces produced. It's fair to say that as the grade falls, your recovery falls, the tail grade. We can't do much better than tail grade of 0.2 grams a tonne. And so frankly, if the head grade is -- goes down and the tail grade stays at 0.2, that means that your recovery goes down. So it is good to see that recovery bounce back again.

Move on? So that's just an overview of the operations. It all comes down to grade. So with that, I will hand over to Ross, who's got quite a lot to cover.

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Just running through the financial results summary up on the table. You can see the impact of both gold sold and gold ounces produced. So we were down for both the 3 months and the 6 months in terms of ounces, but we did benefit from a higher average realized gold price of $4,259 an ounce. That was a 34% increase quarter-on-quarter. So we did produce some healthy revenues. And as we go through our cost profile, that's one of the impacts in terms of higher royalties driven by those higher revenues. I will take a bit of time to go through our cost updates in terms of where we ended up. But the key message is really our on-mine costs were largely in line with where we budgeted, and we're managing to.

So in absolute terms, whilst those costs are shown to be up, there are some one-off or abnormal items that I'll talk you through in terms of why those transactions occurred. But broadly, we're very happy with our mine costs and teams are managing their cost base very well. Those top line ounces really impacted on our unit metrics in terms of an ounce sold basis. So you'll see our all-in sustaining and our on-mine cost per ounce sold were largely up, but there were some quite significant increases on an ounce profile metric. But in absolute terms, we're broadly in line.

Going into our financials. We are very happy with our EBITDA. That was up some 28.5% for the 6-month period. And as you can see, some healthy numbers going through in terms of free cash flow and ultimate profit and earnings per share. Probably to highlight and remind everybody, our free cash flow number, the comparative period included our solar sale proceeds. So that's probably not indicative of a normal operating cycle, but we're very happy in terms of where we ultimately ended up with some $23.8 million worth of profit at the end of the 3-month period and close to $40 million for the 6 months or almost 35% up against the comparative period.

If we can move on to the next slide and talk a little bit about the profit and loss. You'll see our top line revenue, as indicated, that was really driven by that higher average gold price, albeit that some of our sales ounces were a little bit down, but we are very happy in terms of our ultimate gross profit position, which was up some 17.4% for the 6 months or 16% for the quarter. Royalties were up, but that was driven by that higher top line performance. And also, we did have some shipments during the 6 months. I think there were 3 shipments over the $5,000 per ounce level, which attracted a higher royalty.

But in terms of our production costs, we are up some 15% year-to-date, and I'll talk to some of those specific items that went through and there were some timing differences. So as really highlighted by Mark, there was a drawdown on the stockpile. And obviously, the costs that are released in terms of those ounces as they are put through, it does have a working capital impact.

Below the line in terms of significant movements, probably the one to highlight is the administration expenses, and there were some quite significant one-off costs that are related to our advisory fees, particularly on the senior loan note transaction, but our broader financing facility. And as we go through Bilboes and our overall strategy, you'll see that we've made some significant progress in terms of our funding initiatives.

So it's money well spent in terms of those work streams. I will also highlight the fair value gain on our derivative financial instruments. So that is a financial accounting and some volatility that will go through the P&L, and it does result in some significant movements, but I would ask you really to use -- treat those as separate items when you're looking at the P&L because they're really driven by some quite complex accounting. And I've got a couple of slides that I'll talk to you a little bit later in the day.

But overall, we're very pleased with our profit for the period, up some 27% for the 3 months at $30 million and up 40% for our 6-month period just shy of $50 million. The tax expense was down, but that was really around the capital gains tax that was paid on the solar in the comparative period. So I guess our tax rate and effective tax rate is in line, and we're very happy with that.

If we turn to the next slide, please. In terms of cash flows, probably the items to note is really the rolling of our various loan notes. So you'll see some ins and outs. But actually, there's no movement in terms of our net position there. In terms of pointing out significant movements, you'll see the acquisition of capped calls options, the $14.4 million in the 6-month period was a one-off item that came through. And equally, you'll see the impressive $145 million of proceeds in the convertible loan notes that came through and bulking up our cash at the year-end position, which closed at just shy of $168 million closing cash, which really puts us in good stead as we move forward in terms of our strategic objectives.

So if we move to the next slide, you'll see our overall liquidity position, and we're very pleased with our cash on hand at $171 million. There is bullion on hand of $13 million, $13.5 million, which was really the ounces that are held on hand and ready for shipment. There was a slight delay on one shipment at the end of the 6-month period, which was driven by the demonstrations in Johannesburg. So there was a timing difference in terms of ounces that were held as we got them to the refiner, but those were delivered the day after and it was really driven by timing. So nothing untoward to highlight there.

But overall, very pleasing to have a total liquidity of over $200 million as we stand at the end of the June period, a very healthy position as we move forward with the company and the various initiatives.

The next slide just talks to our capital structure and debt, and we included that in terms of the summarizing basically our debt structure, what's held at our Caledonia Holdings Zimbabwe level in terms of our loan mix. And as I mentioned, those movements that you see were really the successful rolling over of loans in terms of what was expiring. We're not intending to increase or decrease. It's really status quo in terms of those loan notes, and what we wanted to do is allocate those against strategic projects.

And in terms of our borrowings. We're keeping the facility levels at the same level. We have paid down a large portion of that. So then we're sitting in a very healthy position in terms of our overall funding. And then in terms of the new convertible bond that sits on the balance sheet, increasing our total consolidated structure up to that $167 million that I've mentioned previously. So that just gives you a picture in terms of our overall debt.

Taking a bit more of a deep dive into those on-mine costs. If we move to the next slide, we just wanted to highlight in terms of on-mine costs of Blanket. And I think it's very important to pull out a few key, I guess, transactions or cost centers.

The first one is salaries and wages. These have stayed broadly in line. And you can see a 4% movement year-to-date in terms of base increases in terms of salaries and wages. So well managed, and we're very happy in terms of that overall cost center.

What has moved, however, is the Blanket Employee Trust distribution. So previously, we've had the facilitation loans, any distributions that are made from Blanket dividends have gone to offset or a portion of them have gone to offset those facilitation loans and those have now been paid off. And under IFRS, any distributions that are now made under that arrangement need to be classified as employee costs and sit within production costs. So you'll see a big significant $3.2 million charge going through in this last quarter, which has significantly moved our production costs. It hasn't changed any distributions or anything, and it's actually a reflection of a great operation in terms of distributing funds. But unfortunately, it sits within our mine costs and has quite a material impact and will continue to have a material impact in terms of the optics as we go forward. So that is a stand-alone item. We will be reporting it separately. So everybody will be able to see that and deal with that specific cost to a line item independently.

Another big movement for the period was the electricity costs where you'll see that's gone up 25%. This is, in fact, driven by increased wheeling charges, but our actual consumption has decreased. So again, something that's large outside of our control, where we've done well in terms of our consumption of electricity, but we've been hit with some increased charges there. So again, another one-off that has hit us in terms of those cost centers.

So largely, when you back up those areas, if you look at the performance in terms of where we've exited the 6-month period, it's really driven by lower grades. So those reduced ounces that have come through in terms of production is really -- hit us in terms of our unit metrics when you look at that on-mine cost metric and at the bottom right of the chart going up some 46% for the period.

As that flows through onto the next slide, in terms of our all-in sustaining costs, you'll see that the higher on-mine costs that I've just discussed, together with the higher royalty driven by that higher revenue that I mentioned at the start, has really flowed through in terms of our calculation of all-in sustaining costs, whilst our capital expenditure is being well managed and in line with expectation. Those costs of the BETS distribution, so higher royalties and some higher administrative expenses, largely driven by those adviser fees and transaction fees for our funding strategy have all fallen into that all-in sustaining bucket and driven that increase in terms of our overall costs.

So what does that mean? If we move to the next slide, we have had a look and done a whole 6 plus 6 exercise and look to the outlook for the end of the year and it has meant with those cost increases in the classifications as we look towards the end of the year, we've increased our on-mine cash costs per ounce sold, increasing that by $100 from our previous guidance range. So the updated guidance range is $1,600 to $1,800, so a 6% increase.

And our all-in sustaining cost per ounce sold has increased by some $400, up from $2,100 per ounce to $2,500 an ounce at the lower end and increasing to $2,700 an ounce at the top end of the guidance range. Those are due to the factors I've just discussed, but we've also introduced some new additional spend, which is indicated in the table below, and that's really around how we expect some of the CapEx to drop this year.

So we had previously announced in March that there was 133 kV power line project that have been approved by the Board, but we haven't done our costing and quotes, which have now come through subsequent to that announcement. And of the $14.2 million, $8.1 million is going to drop in 2026. So we've included that in the guidance together with an updated number for our AC/DC configuration, our Central Shaft Rock Winder project of $3.1 million.

And there's also some additional spend in terms of key projects that we do need to deliver. One of them is the housing project, which is fundamental to our core operating activities, which we've included a further $1.3 million. And there's some exciting projects that I'll leave Craig to discuss in terms of K-Pits and Lima and our underground development, which again, are key additional spends that we need to deploy in terms of meeting our objectives.

I just wanted to talk a little bit more about the CapEx profile. So if we move to the next slide, you'll see a breakdown in terms of what had previously been guided in terms of CapEx spend against with each particular project. So our previous guidance in terms of sustaining capital expenditure was $26.6 million introducing the 3 new initiatives, which you can see indicated by a reference B and E. It's the new power line, the AC/DC conversion and the K-Pits projects, which pushes that CapEx profile up to $48 million. But we've also got updates in terms of our growth capital expenditure. And again, going through our Bilboes development, and now having quotes coming through and a better understanding in terms of our -- I guess, our deposit requirements where previously, we had factored in that a large deployment of cash was needed upfront in terms of ordering those long lead items. We've got better financing terms.

A lot of that cash has reduced, and we've been able to actually go with deposits and defer some of that cash into the early part of next year. So that Bilboes $132 million spend has now been reduced for 2026 to $48 million with $80-odd million being pushed into the first half of next year. And we also have a new Blanket mine plant upgrade which is a new project of $3.5 million, which has been updated into the second half of this year.

So overall, our CapEx number has moved from $162 million down to $103 million, but a large portion of that is the Bilboes spend, which is really a reflection of timing. We'll highlight it's not to do with ability to finance or positioning in terms of the project, it won't delay the project, but that's just a wise or better use of deployment of funds and as you know, a very healthy update for us in terms of us moving forward.

So if we move to the next slide, please. As mentioned earlier, we do have a quite significant movements in our P&L in terms of the accounting for convertible notes, and we're not proposing to go into chapter and verse in terms of the accounting but it's just to highlight that we have some significant movement with these convertible notes.

It's driven by IFRS. We have independent valuations done and it's just to remind everybody that we have a split in terms of the accounting for the transaction where we have a host debt on one side of the senior note, which is really treated on the amortized cost basis, and we have an embedded derivative, which is a financial liability on the other side of the transaction, which moves with fair value accounting. And it does cause some quite considerable volatility through the P&L.

It's fully disclosed. We are across it in terms of where we sit, and I'm happy to take a deep dive as we account for it for anybody on the call, but I'm not proposing to go through each stage now. But just to flag that to your attention that you will see some quite significant movements. And we'll keep everybody briefed in terms of how that is accounted for.

And the last slide is really to remind everybody that we had the capped call option that was also associated with the [ con notes ].

If we just move to the last slide, please. The accounting for the capped call is another derivative financial asset, which is also fair value through the profit and loss and provide some volatility and [indiscernible]. So it does have an impact on the income statement as those fair values are recognized in the income statement each reporting period. And again, third-party valuations coming up with the numbers are fully disclosed and does provide some quite significant movements, as you can see in terms of original cost at $14.4 million and the various fair value movements as we sit and carry a net position of $4.4 million on the balance sheet at the end of the period. But again, happy to take a deep dive and explain that more fully for anybody who would like a bit more detail on that. And with that, that's -- I will hand across to Victor, who will talk us through the Bilboes update.

Thank you, Ross. Can we move to the next slide, please. Now thank you very much. Basically, the message which we want to leave with you today is that Bilboes continues to advance on schedule and remains central to Caledonia strategy to deliver sustainable long-term growth. What we have seen is that we've done quite some considerable work across various work streams, especially financing, engineering and development during this last quarter. We completed geotechnical investigations for the process plant site. That also includes the tailings storage facility. We've advanced process plant optimization studies. We're almost done with that. We're moving on that. We've substantially completed the tender processes and procurement for long lead items. Here, we're talking about the milling plants, really the processing plants, some items of the processing plant and the major earthworks on site. So this is going ahead.

We've continued to engage with prospective financing providers. Ross will be back in a slide or 2 to just tell you where we are with that. But basically, what we're seeing is that quite a lot of progress is being made on this project.

In terms of people moving on site, we expect the first -- the first contractor has to be on site around October, and we already have accommodation, but we're also starting additional work on accommodation facilities during October. Can we move to the next slide? As far as capital expenditure is concerned, Ross has already explained a few of the items. Year-to-date, we have spent $3.5 million against the budget of $8.3 million. This is really expenditure on the owner team. We have recruited the team, which will build this mine, our own team, which will be working with our EPC and contractor, DRA Africa. So that cost of that team, plus also the early work, which really at the beginning of the project is always the front engineering design work allows you to place orders for equipment. So that's where we've been spending money really. The forecast for 2026, as Ross has said, is $48 million compared to the $132 million which we had in the budget.

As Ross again explained, this is really a timing issue. We've now gone out to tender. We've received firm offers, firm tenders from the various tenderers with our payment terms and a lot of those require us to pay a deposit and then the balance of the cost will be paid as contractual milestones are reached. There's really no change in the project timetable, the cost or scope at this stage.

Can we move on? The economic analysis, we've highlighted the economical analysis of this project over time, and it still continues to -- it still is a very robust project for this company. And this will stand us in good stead in years to come.

Can we go to the next slide, please? As far as the funding strategy for the project is concerned, Ross, can you take this one?

Thank you, Victor. We're delighted in terms of providing an update on the funding strategy. You'll see the 4 pillars that we've previously highlighted in terms of our step process, providing the hedge program, doing the convertible and then have an interim funding facility while we position the project finance facility. So the first 2 steps, as highlighted on the chart, have been delivered. It was important that we put that gold price hedging in place, and that basically hedged our position over the construction period, but provided a floor that supported the cash flows as we went through our discussions with the various banking institutions.

You would have seen the delivery of the successful convertible note offering, again, oversubscribed and really delivered a great outcome in terms of treasury and positioning us well in terms of our funding initiatives. Those 2 pillars really meant that we've been able to advance with our banking syndications. The first being the interim funding facility. We've just come off the back of 2 weeks, our bank visits, both with the interim funders and also the project funding institutions, where we had very good due diligence, excuse me, site visits with those institutions across our assets.

In terms of our interim funding facility, we've got credit approval from our 2 co-leader ranges, and we're working with other syndicate banks in terms of getting that $150 million facility in place. We're well down the track. We're going through all the final DD positions, and we hope that will -- we're planning for that to be closed in late August, early September. So well positioned in terms of that work stream.

In parallel, we've been working with our project finance banks. And again, that process is well underway. We've been very excited in terms of the -- both the appetite and the reaction from those banks. And as I mentioned, we've just come off a good visit to Zimbabwe visiting both government, the assets and the various management teams in-country.

So that's running parallel. We previously indicated in terms of timelines that we felt that it was little bit further out. So over the next 12 months, we thought that we could deliver that. But off the back of the work streams and how it's advancing, we're certainly planning for that to be closed by the end of the year or early into next year. So over the next 9 months maximum, but we're delighted with the progress, and we're well positioned in terms of the various discussions that we have at play.

If we move to the next slide, we just wanted to give you a quick update in terms of that total funding requirement. So this is an update to a previous slide that we've done in previous updates. On the right, you'll see the use of funds. And I guess the deployment that we're looking for with the capital cost, but including interest and working capital, looking for the better part of $600 million of funding using that $3,500 per ounce pricing that we've done in terms of our hedging facility. You can see the breakdown of our cash on hand that we now have at the 30th of June of $172 million. Our forecast cash flows from Blanket being $115 million. And therefore, we're looking for best part of $300 million -- just over $300 million in terms of senior debt to other facilities to meet that funding requirement.

If we look at the middle chart, and we've done that slicing at a price deck of $4,000 per ounce. And you can see in terms of where that sits and moving that up slightly, it certainly reduces our senior debt facility down closer to the order of $263-odd million. So both charts, we believe, totally achievable. I think we're well on track in terms of our funding work streams, and we're excited about the coming months in terms of making sure that those are closed out and we can really focus on delivering the project. And with that, I will hand it across to Craig Harvey.

Good afternoon, all. I'll take you through some of the exploration highlights that we've been encountering at Caledonia. So I think throughout the finance and through some of the CEO's remarks, you've heard the term K-Pits. So what is the K-Pits? The K-Pits is an area situated inside the Blanket mining lease area. During this period under review or based on the last 6, 6 months, we did over 2,000 meters of surface trenching. We did 7,000 meters of reverse circulation drilling -- shallow holes, only down to about a depth of about 40 meters purely to have a look at oxide -- to have a look at oxide mineralization potential.

So what you can see there on the selected drill highlights on the right, we've got oxide grades ranging between 1.5 and 2.5 grams per tonne over drilling length, those are drill lengths between 15 and, call it, 25 meters, but these are within 40 meters of surface. Below that, pleased to see that the mineralization continues. And very pleased to see what the sulfide grades actually look like as well.

So I mean we're talking grades of 6 grams a tonne over downhole widths of between 7 and 16 meters, all within 40 meters of surface. So what we're currently doing is quite clearly, we have completed our drilling exercise we are drawing up a resource statement.

We are doing metallurgical testing in terms of column testing, various sizes, various heights. We are currently constructing a small heap leach trial test bed to actually test it under conditions similar to what the column tests are so that we can gauge that it's actually working. Results to date are encouraging. I, obviously, can't say anything here. One of the things that I just want to touch on is kind of those bottom 3 points, why this discovery matters? Well I think for anybody that knows Blanket mine, there was a whole lot of investment in Central Shaft. We can currently hoist and mine a lot more than what we can mill.

Hence, there are some tweaks coming up to the plant in the near future. But still, this is an external heap leach source. Anything that we do here clearly does not need the actual Blanket main plant. So that's just for the oxide material.

Where the zone is situated, it's situated about 200 meters to the east of the closest known ore body that we're mining in the underground section of Blanket. We are currently in the process of laying out some surface drill holes to drill below this area now. We're also looking at drilling from 9 level at our sheet shaft, which is about 200 meters below surface to look for this area. Now quite clearly, 200 meters vertical at quite a fat -- surface expression of ore body and sulfide grades like that, it just opens up a another whole opportunity.

And I think I've said it on this call before. So one of the things that the people that know Blanket should notice is that when you arrive at Blanket, you only see head gear, you don't see open pits. Now at Bilboes, you see open pits. You don't see head gear. So this zone represents only a small portion of ground that we have rights to in terms of the mining license and in terms of our claim areas.

And in the coming years, this is going to be the model that we're going to follow and it's going to be the first of many. I'm pretty sure of that.

So if you could move on to the next slide. It's just going to be a recap of Blanket underground. I just highlighted 2 things in red at the bottom there, the 249 and the 248 drill holes, reminding that it's approximately 280 meters below 34 level which is our deepest mining level at the moment. That represents 4 main mining levels. So we are currently in the process. We're busy dotting Is and crossing the Ts on a Blanket mine mineral resource update, which will include surface. So you'll see the K-Pits numbers there.

If we can go on to the next slide. And just to highlight that those holes right at the bottom, 280 meters below our current deepest mining still have orebody widths of 15 to 30 meters at grades of 2.5 to 2.5, But if you take selected core zones, sort of the minable zones. We're talking 8 meters wide stope at anywhere between 3 and 5 grams per tonne. That is very much what we are currently mining in and around 34 levels.

So the takeaway here is that going deeper at Blanket, we aren't seeing the ore bodies getting thinner, disappearing, grades dropping or anything like it. In actual fact, we are finding Blanket a new zone, which we haven't known before, way up on the top at the K-Pits. There's a potential new zone. So the old lady termed Blanket is very, very far from sort of rolling over and playing dead. There is a lot yet to come.

If you can go on to the next section, which we'll just deal with Motapa quickly, again, dotting Is and crossing the Ts, the mineral resource estimate is done. We should be publishing the results of that in the next couple of weeks. It's only based -- it's only based on the drilling results that we did in 2024 and 2025. The 2026 exploration program is ongoing, proceeding very well. That's focusing more on the Central and Southern shear zone.

At the same time, we are continuing trenching. It's proving to be a great exploration tool for us. We have identified some new areas that will come out in a exploration drilling or exploration results through a release later in the year. But all these results are just underpinning Caledonia's view that Motapa is going to feed into the Bilboes project in some form or fashion and we are continuing doing the work. So in a nutshell, it's looking good. With that, we will hand back to our CEO, Mark, to close up.

Thank you, Craig. Look, we covered a lot of ground. We're taking 45 minutes. So just to draw it all together, the immediate focus by which I mean between now and the end of the year is to get -- build on the success we've had at Blanket in this quarter and get Blanket running sweetly, increased production and improve the cash generation. Clearly, the big focus is Bilboes and continue to deliver that project targeting first production towards the end of 2028 and the first full year in 2029. And then as you've heard from Craig, we've got some very exciting further development and exploration opportunities, both at Blanket and at Motapa. So we've taken 45 minutes. If we could pause there and open it for questions, please.

[Operator Instructions]

We've got a first question is from Nic Dinham. Nic, please go ahead. Nic, if you're ready, you just unmute yourself.

I'm having some speaker issues here. Can you hear me now?

Yes, I can hear loud and clear, Nic.

Okay. Great. All right. I'm very interested in a couple of questions here around the potential capacity expansion that arises on the mine as a result of the [indiscernible] ups. So the first question would be does 18% more blast of the underground mine results in 18% more potential production regardless of what happens to the [ mill ].

You should do. Yes. I mean it's not currently running at 18% uplift in run-of-mine production because we're still opening up new areas. But in the fullness of time, yes, we would expect, as you've said, to that maths to work.

Okay. So it sounds like about 1 million tonnes a year?

A bit less. Just a little bit less, about 990, yes.

Okay. So now coming on to the plant itself. There's been a discussion about a ball mill and a tonnes per hour figure given. There was also a discussion of potential increasing the crushing. Now you're talking about elution circuits and you're talking about 200 tonnes per day, but what is that when it comes to the annual production capabilities of the plant when all of this is bedded down?

Well, that's exactly right. So we've -- the 200 tonnes a day that we're going to be putting through Lima is a short-term stop-gap measure, okay, just to start harvesting some of the increased run-of-mine production as soon as possible. So don't get distracted on that. And then that will -- what happens to the Lima plants after we've upgraded the main number 4 -- the main Number 4 Shaft plant is another story. The elution upgrade is something we plan to do anyway. So that's a 3 tonne elution vessel which will come on stream at the end of this month. And that not just allows us to reprocess these grits, these activated carbon, which currently we're accumulating, and we can't process.

So the new expenditure will be the front end of the crushers. So we'll be upgrading the crushers to -- well, that will give us about 2,700 about -- it will give us -- we'll increase it to about 990,000 tonnes a year. So we'll be spending some money on those crushers.

Then the back end, the CIL, we need to put another CIL tank in. This one will be about twice the size of the existing tanks and that's so that we can keep the residence time at about 40 hours. Otherwise, we end up losing recovery. So it's -- so the ball mill, we put in a new ball mill that was commissioned in June.

So we're just basically bookending it, upgrading the crushing of the front end and upgrading the CIL at the back end. That will cost about $3.5 million. The actual phasing of that, how that gets phased, that's something we need to work on between now and the end of the year. So at this stage, I can't tell you between right now -- at what point, all of that work will be implemented so that the number -- the main met plant will be running at that sort of target rate of 990,000 tonnes a year. I can't answer that yet.

We'll do that by the end of the year. We're -- also when we've been through the full sort of procurement and budgeting exercise. So what I can't -- at this stage, I can't tell you how that will convert into extra ounces in 2027 because at this stage, I don't know the exact timing of the implementation of the crusher and the CIL upgrades.

I'd like to -- the next question to ask a little bit about the capital program, you've upgraded to $48 billion plus some growth CapEx in Blanket again. Yet to date, I can only find about $13 million have been spent in H1. So this looks like quite a daunting task to spend the balance of the money, but you're obviously confident you can do it.

Yes. The spending isn't constrained by lack of funding. The spending is usually constrained by delivery of materials. I mean, case in point would be the AC/DC conversion -- the elution plant that we're working at the moment. We found that deliveries of steel have been slower than we expected, and that's a fairly consistent theme across all of our capital projects. It's not a failure on our part in terms of our capacity, it's just the supply chain that gets a bit stretched. But yes, we're comfortable we can get that.

Okay. And just a little bit about the new power line that you're proposing. So we heard about that previously. You've changed the scheduling of that slightly?

Again that's because of extraneous events. Things move slower than we'd like, especially when we're not all together in control of the project. So the 132 kV line that we're putting into Eagle Vulture requires extensive engagement with ZETDC, which can't take longer than you'd like, but that should be in by about June next year.

Okay. So the other question that was linked to that was that there were some question marks about how the pricing of power that would come through that line. And obviously, you now expect this enhanced capacity in the plant and at the mine to be able -- be able to create enough power from that or source enough power from that transmission line.

Correct. That's correct because we're currently -- Blanket is using more power than it's been allocated, and we can only get away with that for the time being for as long as the neighboring mine at Vubachikwe, which is on care and maintenance. If Vubachikwe came off care and maintenance, I've got to say, I see no immediate prospect for that, we would struggle with amount of power we can get to the existing 33 kV line. With the 132 KV, that disappears completely. That constraint disappears completely.

Have you settled your pricing now? Apparently, there's been a little bit of dispute between the various parties that entered into power supply agreements with you previously?

Yes, there's a bit of this -- I mean Victor is close to this than I am, but there is this thing called the intensive energy user group in Zimbabwe and there's also ZETDC. There's seems to be a bit of a dispute between the two of them. We have incurred a higher wheeling charge which has affected our charge, as Ross outlined. That's part of the play between ZESA -- and between ZETDC and IEUG. The power that we'd expect to come through the 132 kV line, we'd expect that to be somewhat cheaper than we're currently paying.

And let's be clear, if we continue to face supply difficulties in country, we can do what I believe some of the other very big users do, I think the platinum producers, which you just import power directly ourselves. So the power tariff going forward with the 132 kV has not been finalized, but there's no reason to suggest it will not be cheaper than it is at the moment.

Okay. Excellent. I have lots of questions, but I'll ask one more, I think, to close it off. You have interim funding lined up for 2 to 3 months' time. It almost sounds like from the rate of spending that you of having to spend over the next period in Bilboes will actually be a lot less than you originally thought. Does this mean you can be a little more relaxed about the interim funding plan?

No, we're still continuing, especially you work at Stanbic Bank. Stanbic is one of the -- one of the core components of that interim funding structure, and there's no way we're going to free wheel on getting that funding together. We will go flat out as quickly as we got funding in place even if it means that we get it earlier than we need it. I mean, Ross, do you want to -- Ross is the CFO. I mean, Ross, do you want to -- are you going to go an extended holiday and not raise the money?

No, no. Full steam ahead. We want it all in place, and then we can talk about timing of drawdowns and the like.

[Operator Instructions]

We have our next question from Yuen Low.

Congratulations on another good result. Can I ask whether you can give any color on things like covenant fees and, like, the interest rates, tenures and so on for the various -- for interim funding and for the project finance. I know it's probably too early.

At this stage, it's too early. What I can say -- all I can say is the 2 key criteria here of speed, the quality -- the project of this size and quality, if we don't -- any delay in implementing it will cost money in terms of NPV per share. That's the first thing.

And the second thing, just to be clear is that all of these debt funding structures compared to the cost of those compared to our cost of equity. I don't even begin to -- our cost of equity is so eye-wateringly expensive. The cost of the various debt facilities is -- I'm not saying we're price-insensitive, but it's not a major cause for concern. So I think you've got to sort of splitting a hair that just doesn't need splitting. But at this stage, it's too early to say.

That's fine. I'm just asking for modeling purposes. All right. And for Craig, I know you've said it's also too early to give us any methodological results. But I was just curious as to the nature of the refractoriness, if any, at the K-Pits and the [ sulfides ] and potentially the transition zone. And also why are you wearing a jacket, a heavy jacket?

Just on the last one, because he's in Johannesburg, and it's bleaching about it being cold. That's why he's wearing a jacket.

That's true. But yes, look, I mean, what I can remind you is that just remember that the Blanket ore bodies that we mine are all free all free milling. So I can't go beyond that. We have a bottle roll testing on our drill hole assays and they are in the press release that we put out there and bottle roll assay. So that is direct cyanidation for 24 hours to a fire assay value. We're getting 80% to 85%. So I would be expecting on a heap leach to recover 90% to 95% of that.

So, what's your question about the refractory nature of the sulfide, the underlying sulfide?

Yes, I was asking about that. I was wondering whether it's sulfide, no single refractory, whether it's, I think, carbon, that sort of thing.

Craig, I mean are you -- at this stage, you're able to give any indication as to whether we have any basis to believe that the underlying sulfide could be tricky to treat?

Look, at this stage, there is nothing that gives an indication. The way that it's -- that's in any way different to the sulfide ores that we mine at Blanket at the moment. There's nothing that's saying that it is refractory. But I don't have any information that I can give you to say that it's not.

Clearly, it's something we would be evaluating.

[Operator Instructions]

Mark, as we've got no further questions at the moment, please hand back to yourself for any closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thank you all for your for your time. I think this quarter just finished has been a transitional quarter from a very disappointing first quarter. I think we've set ourselves up for a very exciting sort of closing half to the year and a very good start to next year as well. So thank you all for your time and your attendance.

Thanks very much. That concludes the Caledonia Mining Q2 Trading Update. Thank you very much for your time today.

Welcome to the Caledonia Mining Q1 2026 Results Presentation. I would like to now hand over to Mark Learmonth, who is the CEO, to begin the results presentation. Mark, over to you.

Thank you, and welcome to this results presentation for the first quarter of 2026. Can we just move through to the presenting team. I actually can't see the slides there. Yes, just move through to the presenting team. So as you heard, I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's CEO. I'm joined by Ross Jerrard, the CFO; Victor Gapare, Executive Director. We're not all together. Not certain if Craig Harvey will be able to join us. We're having some connectivity issues to Johannesburg, which where he is. So Craig may or may not join us. And then there's Maurice Mason, Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. So that's the team. Should we move on?

Okay. Just by summary. As we've previously announced, gold production in the first quarter was somewhat challenged. There's about 14,700 ounces of production from Blanket Mine. And that was entirely due to, as you'll see in a moment, the lower grades mine during the quarter. Notwithstanding the lower production, financial performance was still robust, supported by the higher gold price environment. So revenue was up 18% to just over $66 million. Profit was also higher. Profit after tax was up nearly 70% to nearly $19 million, and also a very strong cash generation, in particular, free cash flow more or less tripled from $4 million to $12 million in the quarter.

As you might expect with lower ounces produced and particularly the effect of the lower grade, that affected the cost per ounce. So cost per ounce, the all-in sustaining cost increased to $2,700. Having said that, it's worth noting that our cost per tonne was very much in line with our expectations. So if we can get the grade back and, as I'll show you, I think we can, these unit costs, cost per ounce should normalize. It's fair to say that, again, as you'll see in a moment, it's fair to say that after the end of the quarter, April and so far into May, production at Blanket has very much improved, and Blanket is now running as expected. So that's Blanket.

Bilboes, Bilboes gold project is proceeding very well. As you know, we published a feasibility study in late November last year. In January this year, we had a very successful convertible bond raise in New York, raised $150 million. And we're now continuing to implement the rest of the funding strategy and we're also making good progress with DRA in terms of finalizing the designs and actually moving this project forward. But Victor will talk to us about that later on.

As you know, we've had some very encouraging deep level exploration results at Blanket mine. Hopefully, Craig will be able to join us and give a bit more detail on that. But that continues to support the long-term sustainability of Blanket Mine and recognizes the confidence that we have in the resource. As usual, Blanket -- Caledonia, sorry, declared the usual dividend of $0.14 for the quarter. That will be paid shortly. And as another sort of housekeeping point, July Ndlovu, who's a very experienced mining executive, joined the Board in November 2025. At the AGM last week, he was appointed as Chairman.

Okay. So let's move on to just consider the operating results. Let's start with safety. Not much to say in terms of safety. It was a very, very good quarter with improving ratios. That really reflects our continued focus on proactive risk prevention in particular. I'm very pleased to see there's been a substantial increase in the incidence of near miss reporting, -- which is one of the key ways that we use to raise safety awareness and to act proactively to address safety issues before they become a problem. So safety is very good. But clearly, it continues to be an area of significant focus. It's never finished.

Should we move on to the next slide? This is the usual 2 graphs. The top one shows grade and tonnes. The bottom line shows recovery ounces. You'll see from the top graph, the tonnes have been stable at approximately 200,000 tonnes milled per quarter. But you can see the grade, the grade fell progressively from the second quarter of last year through into quarter 3 and quarter 4 and then further into quarter 1. And that reflects an issue that we've disclosed previously, which is the effect of 2 falls of ground, which together meant that we were excluded from relatively high tonne to high-grade areas, which we relied upon to maintain the mix of our production.

So you can see the damage that the grade did is reflected in the falling production profile in the second graph, where production fell quarter 2 last year into quarter 3, quarter 4 and again into quarter 1. But again, just the reduction in recovery. But also reflects the falling grade because the tail grade that we deposit on to the tailings facility is pretty much the lowest we're going to get is that 0.2 grams a tonne. And so if the head grade, the feed grade is lower, that means that recovery tends to go down.

But having said that, if we move on to the next page, if we move on to the next page, you can see in a bit more granularity the progression of grade in December and into the quarter. You can see that grade has recovered. December 2025, it was 2.55 grams a tonne, increasing to 2.6 in January, 2.7 in February and 3 in March. Currently, it's running at about 2.9 grams a tonne, which is actually pretty much what we expected it to be in the second quarter. So as I've already outlined to you, Blanket has now returned to the production level that we had anticipated.

So those -- we have already started with 3 remediation initiatives. The first is that we have appointed a contractor, started work to accelerate access to higher-grade areas. They will continue to work for the remainder of the year, and that gets us back into a position where we should be ahead in terms of development, which gives us much more operating flexibility and resilience in the future. So our contract has started.

The second thing that's happening is that we are implementing a revised shift system, which will move the operations of mine from 6 days a week to 7 days a week. So that new shift structure is primarily intended to reduce work fatigue, which we understood was a significant problem. But it will also result in increased run-of-mine production on an annualized basis, an extra 100,000 tonnes a year which, in due course, will flow through into increased ounces produced.

In the short term, the incremental production will be stockpiled. But once we've got a reasonable stockpile thereafter, additional production will be processed. And also in June, July, we expect to commission an additional ball mill, [ BM 3, ] which will increase our overall milling capacity by about 200 tonnes a day.

So those are the 3 initiatives that are taking place to increase and address the issues that we faced at Blanket, as you can see, well, as you can't see, but you will see it in the second quarter, there has been a turnaround in the performance of Blanket Mine, which is an area of considerable focus for us. So that's a few brief words on operations. Can I ask Ross, please, to take us through the financial results?

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. As always, delighted to talk you through the results. As Mark has already discussed, it was really a concept of the higher gold price offsetting a lower production period. You'll see at the top of the table that the outcome in terms of gold sold versus gold produced, there is a portion of -- higher portion of ounces that sit within bullion on the hand, which does affect that in terms of timing, but largely that average gold price that you see on the table, the $4,816 an ounce, is really offset by those lower ounces in terms of gold produced and sold.

But pleasing for the period was the absolute costs. So you'll see, the online cost in terms of dollar quantum and our all-in sustaining dollars spent the quantum of $23 million or just under $24 million for online costs and $38 million all-in sustaining costs. Those were largely on track with our budget and expenditures, up 3% on mine costs and 9% all-in sustaining costs. So we are pleased with the spend rates there, but our unit costs were negatively impacted by the lower denominator in terms of ounces.

So overall, activity was really good, and we are pleased with the delivery by the teams. But obviously, the ounce profile hit our unit costs. As we exited the quarter, our EBITDA was up 50% at just shy of $34 million. And with cash flow coming in really strongly after capital expenditure, which is, again, in line, there are some timing differences in terms of capital expenditure profile. But we're really pleased with our free cash flow of $12 million, which is up some 153% on the comparative quarter. So a very pleasing result financially, albeit our ounces were down. And overall, our earnings per share were 78% up on the comparative quarter.

So if we do a little bit more of a dive into our profit and loss, so if I could turn to the next slide, please. You'll see the outcome of our revenue and that higher gold price that we achieved, resulting in revenue of $66 million for the period. Our royalty is obviously based on that top line. So they equally increased to $5.6 million for the period. Production costs were in line with the expectation and largely on track together with depreciation. So you see our gross profit is sitting at a shade over $32 million, which was a really pleasing result and almost 20% up.

The key movements for the quarter are really driven around our financial instruments. And we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive on the accounting treatments of that. So that net fair value gain on the financial instruments represented in one line item, but there are a few different elements to that, which I'll discuss in due course.

And further down on the chart, our net finance cost is up some 200%, but that is due to the convertible senior loan notes and the treatment of those financial instruments. But all other line items were largely in line and we exited the period with a profit for the period of just shy of $19 million, which we're really pleased about.

If we could turn the slides please, and we'll just talk a little bit more about the cash flows. Our net cash from operating activities were up some 41% for the period. We did deploy against capital expenditure as planned. There are some timing differences there, but there's nothing to report or -- there are no outliers that need to be highlighted. And then there's the combination of the various investing in financing, which really was around our cap call options, our convertible and really the deployment of our financing program. So we had some maturity of our fixed term deposits, which we deployed against our put option instruments and there were timing of various payments there. And the raising of the $150 million convertible and some of those funds were used to acquire a cap call option. And you'll see the deployment of $14 million going out of our cash flow.

Further down, you'll see the proceeds from the convertible notes coming in at $145 million. And overall, really at the bottom of the page, we exited the period in a fantastic position of $161 million worth of closing cash and cash equivalents, which shows that the whole financing strategy is really coming together. And you'll see that if we turn to the next slide, which talks to our liquidity. So together with our cash on hand of $170 million, and those drawn down bank facilities of $8.8 million, that gives us the $161 million that I've just discussed. But together with bullion on hand, which represents about 3,600 ounces, and some gold sales receivables really pulls together a very robust financial liquidity position in treasury that enables us to move forward with our various capital allocation decisions, deployment of funds and most exciting of orders, obviously, our continued development or moving forward with our development of the Bilboes project.

If we move to the next slide, without doing a deep dive into the financial treatment of financial instruments. This is the first period that we will have disclosed the treatment of the convertible notes and the various accounting that goes with it. And the fact that we don't do a full set of financial statements that you would otherwise see, and that will come through in due course of the half year, we just thought it was important to articulate the various accounting around the convertible and also the cap call options.

So in terms of best illustrating that we raised $150 million, which you can see on the left-hand side of the slide, which is the compound financial instrument of the senior loan notes, under the accounting standards, we have to split that into 2 elements. There's the host debt and there's a derivative liability. And those 2 are accounted for and treated separately. One is under an amortized cost accounting treatment and the derivative liability, there's fair value through profit and loss. So that has slightly different accounting connotations.

And then equally, the second answer, some of the deployment of that $150 million went towards the cap call option, and that has a separate accounting treatment and also a fair value through the profit and loss. So there's 2 arms and elements in terms of the accounting and the valuation of that. And you'll see below the chart in terms of the various line items that are represented in the primary statements that are attached to this quarterly announcement. But you'll see that there's a -- we hold a derivative asset, a noncurrent asset of $14 million. That asset really comprises both our cap call options and the treatment of that, but also our hedging program. So it's a combination of a number of derivative financial instruments.

And then our liabilities, there's obviously the host debt that sits there, but also there's a derivative financial statement, liability. So the $97 million and the $38 million composed at $135 million compound financial instrument for the bond. And equally, on the financial statements, in terms of our income statement, you'll see a net $4 million or $3.9 million, and that's a combination of a number of these fair value adjustments that go through in terms of both our put options, the movements on the financial liabilities and the financial assets.

So I know that's complicated. And hopefully, this gives a little bit more color in terms of the accounting for it. The full financials and I guess a lot of the movement and the color will come through at the half year with the June results.

So I might pause there. It was a really good quarter financially, notwithstanding the lower ounces, but we're well placed in terms of our strategy, both with I guess, internal cash generation and our overall funding position, which I'll talk to a bit more detail as we go through Bilboes. But with that, I'll hand it across and we'll talk through the Bilboes project. And maybe, Victor, if you can talk to Bilboes?

Thank you, Ross. Can we move to the next slide? Okay. This particular slide and the next one really is information we have already published on the project. I won't go over it today because it's already been published, and it's already in our previous presentations. What I will do is actually to give an update on where we are today. We appointed -- as Mark has said already, we appointed DRA as our EPCM contractor for this particular project. At the moment, we have DRA and ourselves, we've frozen the project scope, which allows DRA to complete the detailed designs for the projects commonly known as the front-end engineering designs.

We expect to conclude these designs maybe by the end of the third quarter into the fourth quarter of this year, which will allow us to place orders for the long lead items towards the end of the year, really in the fourth quarter of this year. The construction for this project will take place over 2027 and 2028. And our expectation is that we should have the first go to towards the end of 2028. So basically, that's where we are. We are busy with DRA. We are working with the various contractors.

Okay, thank you, Victor. Victor, I don't know if we lost you. Could we -- could I ask -- I think Craig has joined us. Craig, have you joined us? I hope so.

I actually have managed to join this.

Okay. Good. If you could just take us through the -- oh, no, hold on. Before we got on -- sorry, sorry, I beg your pardon. Before we get on to Craig, I think, Ross, are you going to just say a few words about the funding strategy for Bilboes?

Thanks, Mark. If we could turn to the next slide, it was really in one...

Yes, the next one. The next slide.

[ Billy, ] next slide.

Thanks, Mark and Victor. Just to provide a quick update in terms of the funding strategy for Bilboes. And as previously disclosed and discussed on previous calls, we have a full funding pillar strategy. The first two pillars are being completed. So we previously disclosed to you the hedging program that's in place. And also the $150 million convertible note raise. So those are all completed and funds are received in treasury and ready for deployment.

Importantly, steps 3 and 4 are in progress and well on track. Step 3 is the interim funding facility, and that is where we're working with the consortium of Zimbabwe and South African banks to pull together a $150 million facility. We're working with our co-lead arrangers, Stanbic and CBZ in Zimbabwe. And the data room is fully functional. We're working through all the various due diligence and we're expecting to have that facility in place by mid 2026 or July 2026 latest. And that facility is really going to be secured around the Blanket Mine cash flows.

The wider project finance facility is also well in progress, and we're working with a number of financial institutions on that. We do acknowledge that the time line after each financial closure is a little bit longer term. So we expect that to be completed over the next year or so. But across those various work streams, we're well progressed and we're quite excited in terms of status and positioning for our Bilboes funding.

And if we turn to the next slide, we'll see an update in terms of the construct that I've previously spoken to. This is best read in terms of looking at the chart from right to left. So you'll see in terms of the $590 million and the makeup of that $590 million in terms of our capital cost and including working capital and capitalized interest coming up to that quantum of spend that we expect to be able to -- the need to deploy for Bilboes.

But then looking at the 2 columns on the left-hand side, at our $3,500 gold price per ounce and the compilation of how we expect to fill that funding requirement. We now have cash on hand, as I previously articulated of $161 million. At the top end, we have our forecast net cash flow that will come out of our operations of $125 million. And between the senior debt and other facilities in terms of what we're targeting, the gap is now $304 million.

If we move that pricing deck closer to $5,000 per ounce, which is represented in the middle column, you'll see that, that senior debt and other facility requirement basically halves and goes on to $154 million. So we're quite excited about where we sit in terms of our financing strategy, in terms of how that's all coming together. And actually, we think that we're well placed in terms of our ability to start deploying funds and moving this Bilboes project on time and to schedule. So that, I hope, gives you a good overview in terms of where we sit with our funding position. And I might turn it across to Craig Harvey now to talk about exploration.

Thanks, Ross. I'll take you through our activities of what we've been doing at Blanket in the past couple of months. So this opening slide is from our [indiscernible] that we published on the 7th of April. So for those of you that haven't seen it, it basically represents from 34 level down a depth of approximately 250 meters below 34 level. So that kind of gives you an indication of the scale that we're looking at there. And this is only really in what we call the BTR and the Blanket ore bodies area.

But some of the key takeaways, as I said, is we are intersecting the continuation of the ore bodies, about 250 meters below our workings currently. And what those colored blocks represent? If you can make it out, it's the various different ore bodies. It's quite difficult to read because they stack behind one another. But that is the limit of the inferred mineral resources as we currently have, which was dated 31 December. So anybody looking at it can see at the bottom there, we've got some nice warm colors, which is greater than 2, 3, 5 grams per tonne that is sitting below our inferred resource base that we have in the public domain at the moment. So encouraging takeaways. We're drilling. And the ore bodies continue at depth.

If we can move on to the next slide, this thing gives a tabulation of some of those results that you have seen. And one of the key takeaways there. So you'll see that the top 4 there is annotated as Blanket 7 and the ore body name. So it was March -- sorry, it was June 2025 when we published our previous drilling update for Blanket. We indicated that we had intersected a new ore body. This ore body is now being turned Blanket 7. And as we draw more, define more, this area is going to grow. And the key takeaway here is, I mean, Blanket 7, we're looking at in the drills 40 meters wide. So I mean any mining company that can find a 40-meter wide ore body running at between 3 and 4 grams per tonne is going to be extremely happy about it.

Inside that 40 meters, we have the option of being active selective in what we do, so we can narrow it down. And just by looking at the drilling assays, we can mine those anywhere between 5 and 6 meters wide, at anywhere between kind of 12 to 50 grams per tonne. Now it's not going to be all over but that's the kind of results that we actually get out of Blanket. So it's very, very key. The drilling program is going along very well. We drilled just over 10,300 meters between the June 2025 and the April 7 press releases that we've done. And so clearly, we have a need to update our mineral resource estimate. So that will be done during 2026 and reported and declared before the end of 2026. But I think the upshot is at depth, there's no change. If anything, it's getting slightly better. I mean, 40 meters wide, 4 grams a tonne. I think it's happy days.

If you can move on to the next slide, and we'll talk a little bit about Motapa,the surface exploration project that's located directly adjacent to Bilboes, that we've just been speaking about. So I'm pleased to say that finally, the labs in Zimbabwe have been very, very busy. So finally, we have gotten all of our repeat assays back and all of the assets from the lab that we need. So we have now closed out our 2025 drilling program, exploration program.

By doing that, we are targeting early Q3 2026. They made a mineral resource estimate for the Motapa North sulfide mineralization. That is going to represent the kind of $5 million of work that we've done during 2023 and 2024. That's what we've expended to date. Going forward into 2026, we will kind of be doing a rinse and repeat on the Motapa South. It's also got historic open pit oxides that have been mined and clearly below those splits, there's the sulfides. We have done some reconnaissance drilling there. So we will now formalize and we are busy drilling there at the moment to do very much what we've done at Motapa North.

In addition, there's Mpudzi oxides that we are still looking at. And then very interestingly, during 2025, some surface trenching to the east of Motapa South has exposed mineralized horizons in the trenches. So it's looking like we've got another near well at surface oxide potential target that we want to have a look at.

So I think Motapa, yes, it's business as usual. It's going along very well. We will close out 2026 with a maiden mineral resource estimate. With that, I'll hand it back to Mark to take us further.

Thank you, Craig. So just to finish off. I mean, there's a lot of words on this slide, but basically, we've got 2 immediate focuses. The first is to return Blanket Mine to good health. Based on what we've seen in April and May to date, we appear to be making good progress on that.

But just building on what Craig has been telling us we are convinced that Blanket has a good long life ahead of it. And so one of the things we're doing now is looking at ways to improve Blanket's resilience so that it can actually live that longer life and continue to generate cash or so. So Blanket is a pressing and immediate focus.

And clearly, the other one is to get Bilboes into production as quickly as possible. And in this gold price environment for the asset of that quality, every month lost is money not made. And so we are very, very incentivized to get Bilboes done as quickly as possible with a view to continuing work on the top, which will then underpin our long-term growth potential. So those are the 3 main issues: Blanket, Bilboes and Motapa.

So with that, a little bit longer than we expected. I'll open for questions. I would just apologize again for some of the connectivity issues that we've had on this call, I'm sorry about that. So open for questions.

Mark and team, thank you very much for the presentation today.[Operator Instructions] So we'll just wait a moment before we go to questions just for people to have a time to raise their hands. So just give us one moment.

Okay. So we've got our first question from Nic Dinham. Unfortunately, Nic, we're not hearing you at the moment.

I'd just like to ask people if you'd like to ask a question, please do raise your hand. Nic, we will wait to see whether maybe it's your microphone settings, which is in the bottom left-hand side of your speaker of your screen. No, unfortunately, we can't hear you at all, Nic.

If we get any other further questions from people, please do raise your hands. Well, Mark, at the moment, we don't have any further questions. Unfortunately, we're not able to hear Nic at the moment. That's there. Do you want to give a few more minutes or a few more seconds, should we say, to see if anyone asked the first question.

Normally, people are pretty quick off out of the blocks, if they've got a question.

I would agree. Maybe I'll hand back to you for closing remarks. Mark.

Yes. Okay. Okay, look, thank you all for your participation. As I say, the first quarter was a disappointment in terms of production. The gold price saved us. But as you've heard, I'm personally very optimistic about the trajectory, both for Blanket and for Bilboes. So let's put the first quarter behind us and move on. So thank you all for your attendance today. Thank you.

Welcome to the Caledonia Mining Quarterly and Full Year Results 2025 presentation for analysts and investors. I would now like to hand you over to Mark Learmonth, who is the CEO Mark, over to you.

Good afternoon, and welcome to this management conference call. If we could move to the first slide of the presentation, please. Just go to the disclaimer. So that's the standard disclaimer. If we could move on to the next slide, please.

Presenting Team is me Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's Chief Executive; we're also joined by Ross Jerrard, who will run us through the financial performance for the year; Victor Gapare will talk to us about what's happening at Bilboes; and Craig Harvey will give us an update on the various exploration initiatives. If we could move on to the next slide, please.

So just in terms of the summary of the results, it was very strong financial performance underpinned by a higher gold price and some consistent operating delivery. Revenue up by 46% to $267 million, gross profit up by 78% to $137 million, EBITDA up by 100% from just less than $60 million to just over $125 million and profit after tax up by 200% from $23 million to $67 million. So there's some quite big numbers there. Ross will unpack those numbers in more detail in a moment. Should we move on to the next slide, please.

Before we go much further, can we just briefly discuss Caledonia's value creation proposition. So from one angle, what we see here is looking at this from the perspective of our distributions in country to government by way of taxes and royalties and also to our local shareholders.

Over the course of the last 9 years, we've distributed just over $0.5 billion. So we're making a very, very substantial contribution. And you can see quite how that increased in 2025. as a result of higher taxes due to higher profitability, higher rates due to the higher gold price, but also an increase in local dividend payments to our minority shareholders as a result of the strong financial performance and the unwinding of certain local ownership initiatives, that's very pleasing to see. But moving on to the next slide.

As well as paying $0.5 billion out to local stakeholders. We've also delivered a very significant return to our shareholders. So the top line shows Caledonia's share price over 10 years with dividend with dividends, and we've given a return of just over 1,000%.

Over the same period, GDXJ has increased by 464% and gold up 300% by as well as making significant contributions locally, and we're also delivering a very, very healthy return for our shareholders. Can we move on to the next slide.

Right. Let's just quickly focus on the operating results. Clearly, we had a very unfortunate fatality in September as a result of a secondary blasting incident. As a result of that, we initiated a comprehensive review of our safety practices and our safety procedures, our operating controls and our training programs across the entire business with the objective of improving our risk management and making sure that we operate as safely as possible to do in a very hostile underground environment.

That includes instilling operational discipline, a proactive forward-looking approach to identifying hazards and avoiding such hazards and embedding a 0 harm culture across the organization. should move on to the next slide.

But what we see here is the usual graph. The top graph shows our tonnes built and grade, the bottom graph, the bars show the [ ANSES ], the line shows the recovery. What's notable really on the top graph is that the tonnes milled has been stable. We're pretty much operating the plants, the metallurgical planes, the crushing and milling and the [ CIL ] plant pretty much operating that at maximum capacity of about 820,000-odd tonnes a year. And that's been very stable, largely because we've been able to make use of the stockpile to draw down from the stockpile on those rare occasions when the mine hasn't been delivering the tonnes. But also what's clear from the lower line is the extent to which the grade is lower in quarter 4 and quarter 3 than it has been historically.

Part of that is due to the fact that temporarily, we're mining lower grade areas as we're developing into hybrid areas, that will -- we expect to reverse into the second quarter of 2026. In the first January, February, we're still mining relatively low-grade areas that has improved in March. And also to some extent, as we've been drawing down from the stockpile, the stockpile itself is relatively low grade.

The bottom chart really clearly shows the ounces, but it shows the drop in recovery and that is largely due to the lower feed grade, the tail grade that we deposit on to the tailings facility pretty much it's 0.2 grams a tonne. We're not going to get much better than that. So inevitably, that means that the difference being that the recovery goes down. Can we move on to the next slide?

Craig will talk in a lot more detail about exploration towards the end of the presentation. Our exploration activities at Blanket are really targeted with replacing what we're depleting. So we're effectively standing still. Nevertheless, we've actually done rather better than that. So over the course of the year -- over the course of the quarter as quarter 4, you can see that we added quite substantially more tonnes than we depleted.

And as James -- as Craig will explain later on that will give, in due course, result in a revised reserve and resource statement for Blanket.

Right. I'll let us Ross, if he could run us through the financial results. Ross, could you do that?

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we dive into the financial results, I just wanted to draw your attention to the format of the reporting. And as previously advised, Caledonia is now classified as a foreign private issuer under Canadian rules. So the standard filing requirements in Canada that you've historically seen has changed. We will be filing our full financial statements under the SEC rules. So included in our 20-F, which is scheduled to be filed in April. You'll see the full financial statements and controls at the station, and that's all going to be done in April.

So I'm delighted to talk you through the financial results today. And you can see on the summary slide in front of you, we've had a fantastic year. The performance was really driven by the benefit of the higher gold price environment, but they're also delivering the ounces. Blanket Mine produced 76,000 ounces of gold in 2025. and solved 77,000 ounces. The Bilboes oxide operation produced and sold 1,683 ounces of gold. So together, they total that 79,000 ounces on the top right hand of the chart.

Importantly, to highlight, our online costs were up some 19%. And the unit costs were marginally above those cost guidance ranges that we had guided the market. This was really a reflection of the restriction of access to some of the higher grade areas, but also some inflationary pressures and our continued investment in development to ensure long-term operational reliability and safety, but also that grade profile. So with grade coming through slightly lower than we had originally anticipated. That did have a flow-on impact on our unit costs, just slightly above what we had guided.

The overall result though, it was a very pleasing financial results with EBITDA up 109% at $125.3 million, which was a significant improvement. And after our capital expenditure, which was largely on track to guidance, when you take into account some commitments that will roll over year-end, we delivered on our CapEx profile. And all resulting in a healthy free cash flow of $62 million, which was up some 483% on the prior year. And after our distributions resulted in an earnings per share, which was at $2.83, which again was up over 200% for the year. So very pleasing set of financial results.

Just lining into a little bit more on production costs. So if we can turn to the next slide, please. You can see on the bottom right-hand pie chart the makeup of our production cost categories, which is largely driven by labor, consumables and power indicated with the blue, orange and green slices and then a little bit 10% across Admin. You'll see in the figures, our overall Production Costs went up 25% across the group, 19% was an increase in Blanket. And really, those were driven by those three buckets of Labor, Consumables and Power.

Our Labor costs were up this year, again, during due to higher overtime payments that were made during the year with production bonuses together with some wage inflation. But really, the delivery of the ounces needed to -- was a result of more volume being moved and hoisted to compensate for that lower grade, and as a result, we had to pay that over time and the various bonuses that came through the system.

Our consumer bills were up some 14% for the year. This was driven by some of the inflationary impacts on consumables, reagents and the like. But there is a ZiG premium in terms of local procurement. So there's been a big push this year in terms of deploying our local ZiG component back into the market. With that, there is a slight difference with the ZiG versus U.S. dollar differential in terms of the local market. And I would highlight that it's been a very pleasing year in terms of foreign currency the differential between the ZiG and the U.S. is very close now. We're not seeing the high differentials that we've seen in the past. But it has been that as we've taken a strategic decision to deploy into the local procurement market using ZiG. We have incurred an additional premium in terms of that ZiG to U.S. dollar differential. And we'll talk a little bit more about the overall ForEx loss when we talk through the cash flows, but that has been a driver in terms of our consumables.

Our power costs, there have been grid and genset power overruns, which has been really driven by supporting that additional output. We obviously mining in deeper areas within the mine, driving higher power usage and requirements and obviously incurring more power.

And we do have initiatives in place that we will address these three buckets. As part of our ongoing cost initiatives to ensure that we can at least will reduce or at least maintain our cost profiles in those significant buckets.

Moving on to the next slide, please. You'll see the results as we work our way through the profit and loss top line revenue, up by $267 million, driven by those ounces and higher gold price that I've spoken to. Our royalty this year was up at $13.5 million. That is driven by the higher revenue number. And I would draw your attention to the change in the royalty rates. So as we deliver ounces at over $5,000 an ounce. They do attract an additional 5% royalty charge. Our production costs, as already indicated, are up some 25% and depreciation charges were largely unchanged. So we're very pleased with our gross profit that was generated, up some 78% for the year, driven by those improved margins and thanks to the gold price.

You'll see the net foreign exchange losses was down from $9.7 million down to $3.3 million this year. And again, that was a very pleasing result in terms of the exchange differential that we had historically seen, and we're very pleased with the ability to access the willing buyer, willing center market. The $8.5 million is the profit on our solar plant. I won't talk to that. We've gone through that in previous results presentations, but it was pleasing in terms of being able to sell that asset, generate proceeds that we could then deploy across the group.

I would draw your attention to the administration costs that $20.48 million. that is higher than historical run rate and general trending that we see going forward. This year, we have incurred some quite significant one-off fees, predominantly around our advisory fees related to the convertible, some additional employee costs that have gone through the system and some other transaction costs that we don't see ongoing, and we think that run rate will come off by some 10%, 12% more closer to 17 million type number on a per annum basis.

We've incurred a fair value loss on our derivative financial instruments. So those are the hedging instruments that we put in place to protect our side our mine and the gold price at the $3,500 gold price. So those hedging instruments are really put through the P&L. We don't do any hedge accounting or anything that is nuanced that extend. So everything goes through the profit and loss. And we were delighted with the ultimate profit before tax of $106 million, up 162%.

The tax expense was higher off this great result. But also included the capital gain tax on the solar plant sale, which pushed up those tax expense a bit more than a normal run rate. But delighted with our P&L result with our overall profit for the period of $67.5 million. If we can move on to the next slide, please, and let's quickly touch on some of those aspects from a cash flow perspective.

So our cash flow from operations was up $105 million, up 90%. I've spoken to interest and tax payments, which included that solar sale. Our CapEx was on track in terms of what we had guided the market in terms of expenditures and the proceeds from the sale and the gross proceeds from the solar sale were able to be deployed into our treasury options where we deployed those into various fixed-term deposits during the year. And we're able to allocate central treasury and start our treasury function as we look to Bilboes and beyond.

Ultimately, our net cash used in investing activities was able to then be deployed across some dividends paid. So the $19.9 million was a result of dividends paid both our [ CMC ] shareholders of $10.8 million, but also to [indiscernible] so our various partners at the blanket mine level in terms of deployment. So they've got $5.5 million and $3.6 million, respectively.

Ultimately, very pleasing close to the period with a net increase in cash and cash equivalents of $32 million for the year, which is a great result.

And if we move to the next slide, you'll see our overall liquidity and what it means. And so that we exited the year with cash on hand of $35.7 million. And if you add in our bullion on hand at year-end plus on gold sales receivables and our fixed-term deposits, we -- before utilization of facilities, we had almost $60 million available to us. and a total liquidity of just under $55 million. So a very pleasing result in a very solid position in terms of our performance for the year.

On top of that, in early 2026, we were able to successfully complete $150 million convertible note offering, whereafter in putting a cap call structure, we received a net $130 million. So post year-end, we're in a very healthy cash position. as we look to further development of blanket, but importantly, as we start our deployment and our spend on our Bilboes project, which I'll talk to in a couple of minutes.

So moving on. I'd mentioned that CapEx was largely on track, and you'll see our various expenditures that were aligned with guidance. So nothing that stood out in terms of where we spent the money, but ongoing sustaining capital expenditure was really about underground mine development, where we spent 22% of the CapEx budget. And that was really development and looking at new mining areas and underground developments, targeting additional reserves and resources, 31% of the spend was sitting in the engineering department, and that covered the whole [indiscernible] of electrical, mechanical and central shaft upgrading and engineering. And then there was 27% that went across the other mining departments in terms, mines, milling and the [ MRM ] department. Our only nonsustaining CapEx project was the tailings storage facility, and that accounted for 20% of the CapEx spend.

So turning to the next slide, you'll see the slice of where those various spends occurred in terms of sustaining and nonsustaining split, but we were pleased that we were able to deliver those CapEx projects and continue to invest in the mine for the future with some solid cash flow generation. If we move to the next slide, please.

Closing off on CapEx. You will see in the announcement that there's been some additional CapEx approvals by the Board. So our total group capital expenditure for this financial year, 2026 is projected to be $178.9 million. The two key projects that were approved last week by the Board was $14.2 million construction of a $34 million power line connecting to the 132 kV backbone and a $2.2 million allocation against the central winder for the central shaft converting it from AC to DC.

Both projects are great projects with quick payback periods and really underwriting some solid reliability in terms of power usage at the mine, and also some imperative upgrades in terms of the underground mine. So we're looking to the future, investing in the future and making sure that some of these critical projects are delivered.

Over and above that sustaining CapEx, we have $136 million allocated primarily against Bilboes. We're $132 million is anticipated to be spent against both the feed phase, but also some early deployment of expenditures against the Bilboes project and then just shy of $4 million, which is a further exploration at [ Motapa ] project. If we can move to the next slide, please.

We're delighted that the results of 2025 has delivered a solid performance. And we're continually looking at that balance of our capital allocation in terms of both growth projects and shareholder returns. And as you can see in the CapEx that we've both delivered and plan to deliver, we're looking at growth for the future and investing in that future for the long term, but equally conscious about shareholder returns. So we're delighted to have another dividend, a quarterly dividend of $0.14 per share dividends have been paid since 2012. So we continue with that continued payment of dividends and balancing both growth and shareholder returns, and I wish draw your attention to the key dates in terms of that dividend payment. So if we can switch to the next slide, please.

I'll now take the opportunity to hand it across to Victor to talk a little bit more about Bilboes.

Thank you, Ross. Can we move to the next slide. With regards to Bilboes, we've previously announced that the Board approved this project implementation in November last year. Basically, all the parameters, which are in there, we have announced them before an IRR of 32.5%, it a gold price of $2,548, Obviously, this -- the returns are materially higher. It prevailing spot gold prices. Can we move on to the next slide.

Basically, what we've shown here, really, the economics, it are three different prices, the consensus forecast of USD 2,548 per ounce, the 3-year trailing average price of USD 2,350 price. And the price at -- which was on much 2026, which was USD 5,177 per ounce. Obviously, there's been some volatility in the price of gold. So those figures in the way -- you can put any press you want it, you can come up with different margins.

But clearly, you can see -- you will see that the economic change is quite significantly if we apply the current economics, that's all we're showing. So effectively, what we have done is we've started implementing the project following approval is as said, we've raised some money. And we've appointed an [ EPCM ] contractor and that work has started and we are hoping for -- the plan is to have the first gold for towards the end of 2028. And our fist full production will be 2029 which would be just about 200,000 ounces per. That's peak production. Can we move to the next slide.

Ross will cover the funding aspect what we have done and what we're planning to do, Ross, over to you.

Thank you, Victor. So our funding strategy for Bilboes has covered four funding pillars, and we're delighted with our progress in terms of how we're tracking against that strategy.

The first phase was underwriting our blanket production and securing a series of put options at a price of $3,500 per ounce that covered a 3-year period. From January 26 to December 28, effectively the construction period. The key elements of that, the hedging strategy was really to provide a floor to the cash flows that we generated. It wasn't giving up any upside in terms of gold price above $3,500, but it did enable us to basically Mark the best part of $200 million from our own operations that we could deploy against the Bilboes' project.

At prices closer to $5,000 an ounce, that $200 million escalates to closer to $300 million. So it's a cornerstone strategy in terms of using our current asset on the portfolio to underwrite the strategy. It also helped us in terms of our pricing discussions with the various banks and financial institutions in terms of how we'd sort of take on our various debt facilities.

The second step, as you've seen and previously mentioned is the raising of some funds from a convertible note offering. It was $150 million raise. It was upsized from $100 million due to some amazing demand out of the U.S., and we're delighted that the result that we were able to receive those funds in short order. And we were able to also allocate some of those funds against the cap call structure which effectively increased the conversion price to $56 a share, up from the $40 a share. So those two steps, steps 1 and 2 have been completed, and has enabled us to be able to move forward in short order in terms of the remaining funding facilities.

The first one is an interim funding facility. So we currently in negotiations with a consortium of both Zimbabwean and South African banks to raise $150 million facility you would have seen the announcement in terms of appointing standard Stanbic and CBZ, this coleader arranges for that facility, and we're targeting the middle of this year to get that facility in place. And the cornerstone of that is against, again, the Blanket line cash flows.

And in parallel with that, the fourth arm is really the project finance facility longer burn rate in terms of getting that facility in place. But that formal process has commenced, and we're expecting that to be delivered in the next 12 months with the various diligence procedures. So we're very pleased around where we're positioned with it. What we've done to date in terms of underwriting, that financing strategy, and we're on track in terms of the discussions with the various banks and financial institutions.

If we turn to the next slide, we'll just illustrate, I guess, our thought process and overview in terms of our sources of uses and actually how we believe that this funding requirement will be bet. I'll refer you to the right-hand side of the slide in the first instance in terms of the use of funds. So you'll see our capital cost is basically $485 million. But when you add in our capitalized interest and some working capital, the ask is closer to $600 million in terms of a package.

On the left-hand side, you'll see the column at $3,500 an ounce, and you can see, together with our cash and our net proceeds from the convertible bond and our forecast future cash flows the ask from a senior debt and other facilities is just over $300 million in terms of delivery of those funds.

If we move that pricing deck up to $5,000 an ounce, you'll see that senior debt and other facilities reduces down to closer to $170 million. And we're well on track in terms of getting that funding in place between both the interim and the wider project finance facilities. So we're really pleased in terms of the status of the financing work stream. Then importantly, we've got some big spend that is coming up. So we need to deploy the best part of $130 million in the third and fourth quarters of this year as we start the more significant spend on the Bilboes project. And we're excited about that, well on track with that. And I think it's all coming together very nicely.

So with that, I'll hand it across to Craig. Harvey.

Thank you, Ross. I'll just give you I will give you an overview of the exploration activities that have been taking place at Motapa and Blanket in the past year. So if you could go on to the next slide, please.

So 2024 and 2025, Caledonia has put quite a lot of money into Motapa. I mean we have drilled surface drills totaling just under 30,000 meters. It's a very strategic asset, as we can see on the map on the screen, it's located direct to the south of the Bilboes project, which we have just heard about. That kind of scale from the Motapa north to Bilboes is between 200 to 400 meters away. So I think we can all draw our own conclusions as to the synergies between Bilboes and Motapa.

Bearing in mind it's basically hosted in the same share zone. Mineralogy metallurgy is expected to be quite similar. So going forward for 2026, we have had a further allocation of $3.8 million exploration, we will continue looking at Mpudzi and we're going to focus on Motapa South for the year. Clearly, there is potential for a sulfide resource below the historic open pits. But at the same time, there's a strong potential for oxides to the east. We have put in two drillers to have a look. Results were encouraging.

So things to look out for at Motapa, during Q2 2026, the company will be publishing a maiden resource estimate or probably be publishing or made in resource estimate. We are just waiting for some of the final QA QC checks of the data and geological interpretations to be complete. But in all likelihood, during Q2 of 2026, we'll see what the drilling activities have actually given us. If you can move on to the next slide, please.

So during 2025, there's been the continued deep hole or long exploration program at Blanket. So just to give you an overview of the areas that we are drilling. So on the northern side of the property, which is to the left of the image, there where you can see Lima, it's the Lima and Eroika ore bodies and to the south on the right of the image, that's the main sale of the mine. It's the Blanket and the Blanket quarter ore bodies. So I'll zoom into a bit more detail on each of these areas. If you could move on to the next slide, please.

So on the Blanket side, where we've got essentially a whole bunch of or what is that come together South Blanket Quartz reef and the Blanket ore bodies. And the Blanket ore body is on blanket 1 through to blanket 6. So of course, we also have blanket 7 now.

But what is important to note here, so I've got a great legend on the side of the map there. And really, what you want to be looking for is the little purple stripes that you see coming off from those drill hole traces. So anything that is purple there is 5 years, 5-gram a tonne plus. Now in the next month or 2, again, we're just finalizing some QA, QC checking from the lab, but we will be putting out a press release regarding the drilling results that we've done at Blanket and that will give us what will give people insight into the wins that we encounter in these grades. Very, very exciting. So 34 level is the base of the Blanket mine currently. We are putting a decline as you can see there from 34 to 36 level. It's on 36 level at the moment. We are starting with the 36 level in infrastructure development.

And what is key to note. So 34 level, 1,110 meters below surface. The deepest hole there that we have represented with us little blue -- there's little purple stripes is 277 meters below 34 level. Now 277 meters below 34 level equates to a depth of approximately 1,350 meters which equates to a 42% level. So the kind of main levels are set up 34% to 38%, 120-meter lifts apart. So we are quite clearly looking at all things being equal. There's another two main lifts at Blanket that we are going to have a look at.

Very, very encouraging. We carry on doing the work. Just to give a bit of reference, if you had to move to the south to the right of the image, we will be putting in another [ Handel drill drawcovy ] to create another fan of drillers in due course adjacent to these holes. This is kind of at the limit of our inferred resources. So clearly, with this drilling coming in, we will be looking at upgrading inferred to indicated as Mark, the CEO has indicated, with a view to upgrading mineral resources and mineral reserves in due course.

So if we can move on to the next slide, which then focuses on the northern portion of Blanket mine. So on the very left, the very northern portion, a little bit of colorful goods that you see there, stopes is the Lima ore body. And in the middle is the Eroika ore body. Now Eroika has been a mainstay. And why you only see a couple of drillers there is the majority of this area was drilled during 2023 and 2024. You can already see some of the development that's accessing these areas. The majority of this area is now indicated resource. But you can also see that there's a long hole that's also maybe 60 meters below 34 level. So currently, on a 36 level type horizon.

Clearly, as we advance 34 level, we'll have a hanging-wall Cub put in place, and we will continue drilling on the Eroika ore body from 34 level down to 42 level. On the left-hand side with Lima, again, you can see some of those little purple stripes, which represents 5-gram a tonne plus, one hole on purpose. We pushed down to around the 34 level back to test the debt to see that we're not wasting our money. We did pick up the Lima ore body. But Lima itself is not one single ore body. It's made up of six ore bodies. So there's a lot of scope to continue doing this.

The lowest level of mining on Lima is at 750 meters below surface. You can just work out for yourself. If we take it down, another 250 to 300 meters. We're talking 22 level to 34 level of mineral resources that may be exploited. Again, low 22 level. It's inferred resources on Lima. With the drilling coming in, we will be looking at including that and seeing if we can upgrade some of the inferred resources into indicated resource or better.

So in a nutshell, Blanket keeps on going. The grade is still looking good. The grades, the wet, we obviously model what we are expecting to find with our drilling and it continues to return similar, if not better, results at debt. So thank you for that. With that, I'll hand back to Mark to give some closing comments.

Good. Thank you, Craig. We're kind of running out of time. So I just want to draw your attention to an event that we hosted at the -- on the fringes of the Cape Town Mining in [ Darbar ] in February. As along with five or six other foreign owners in Zimbabwe mining companies, hosted a briefing event where we invited representatives from the Zimbabwe government, or Ministry of Mines, Ministry of Finance and the reserve bank to -- the objective was to try and dispel some of the pervasive continued misunderstandings about what it's like to operate in Zimbabwe.

It was very well attended. And the way the representatives of the Zimbabwe authorities engaged in a very transparent, constructive way with the audience, hopefully, as a first step. The first of many to trying to overturn some of these misunderstandings about Zimbabwe. So that was very good. Can we move on to the next slide.

So just to finish and move on to questions. So clearly, our strategic focus after the fatality last year is to continued commitment to the safety lot of our people. objective to maintain reliable and operations at Blanket, which, let's face it, is going to be an important generator of capital for the construction of Bilboes. But as you've heard from Craig has very significant long-term extension plans and is right. Leverage the strong gold price to invest in blankets projects to create operating resilience and to mitigate further input cost pressures.

Moving along with Bilboes as quickly as we can in terms of the financing and development plan and to continue to explore at Motapa, which in due course, we think will be a very exciting project. So all of those together really mean that we're continuing to execute our strategy to become a multi-asset Zimbabwe focused gold producer. So I think that's the end of the presentation. Can we I open it up to questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is going to be from Howard Flinker.

What is the maturity of the convertible bond? I have another question, too.

It is -- I think it's -- is it 7 years, Ross? It's outside the it's a slightly longer-dated maturity than most convertibles, and that was specifically so that it matures outside the timing of the scheduled repayment of the project finance. Gross is it 7 or was it slightly longer?

7 years.

Yes. Next question, Howy.

Yes. I thought the solar plant was in New Jersey Island.

That would be a big mistake because it's often not very sunny here.

No, I thought that the ownership was there and it was tax free. What's the capital gains rate on that?

Ross, can you help?

Had ended up being $2 million. So -- and there was a combination and some of it was on a total capital gain and there was a profit element that it was $2 million.

And what is the tax rate on the loss on the derivative, was that a regular tax rate or something different?

No. So yes, all the derivatives are held outside that will help here in corporate. So it's 0% for the derivatives because they're sitting in Jersey. I think for practical purposes, it would be a very difficult strike impossible to structure derivative holdings through Zimbabwe.

I think having to go through the various [ RB ] approval process would just fly in the face of being able to -- when you decide to do these things, you do them very quickly and to have to pause for RB approval and just make it impossible.

So the effective tax rate on the derivative pretax and post-tax is the same, right? 0 taxes?

That's right.

Yes. Finally, I'm going to say this is pretty thorough financial accounting, nice job.

We've got our next question from Joseph Parish. Joseph, would you like to go ahead?

Yes. Great presentation and anticipated some of my questions, so this will simplify things a bit. The only thing I really had left to ask has to do with power cost. The solar panel, of course, was continued to keep those contained with the recent conflict in the Middle East, right, there's some temporary increases in fuel and energy prices, depending on how long this goes on and maybe just with the higher operating cash flow you're enjoying on the mine would further investment in solar plant facilities at [ Lancet ] become a higher priority as you're looking at this? Or a lease something that's being...

No, it wouldn't. So let's just deal with our exposure to fuel. We've got -- Blanket uses about 2 million liters of fuel a year. Approximately half of that is diesel generators. The other half is used on diesel equipment in the business. Last year's diesel price, that regiments about 3% of our OpEx. So we're not particularly exposed to diesel in our operating costs. And in terms of supply, we've got just over 6 months of supply, either on the property or on consignment stock. So we're not particularly exposed there.

The problem with solar is that when the sun doesn't shine, you don't get solar. And the particular issue we face right now is that the way electricity gets through the grid to Blanket means that the last sort of 30-odd kilometers goes through a pretty poorly maintained 33 kV line, which typically has bigger reliability problems when it's rainy. And so you've got the combined effect of rain, which means that you've got a higher chance of power interruptions from the grid. And also, it means that the solar plants start working very well. So the two issues kind of compound each other.

So the -- what we're doing is we're putting in a 132 kV line to which we expect will reduce the average incidence of power outages from, say, 30 hours a month to an average of, say, 3 hours a month and that will reduce our reliance on diesel. And to the extent.

And once you connected to the 132 kV line, that gives you much more flexibility to access power both in Zim and in the region where there is no shortage of power. So frankly, solar kind of compounds the problem doesn't solve the problem. So the simple answer to your question was no. I'm afraid.

We're going to take our next question from Mike Kozak.

Great, so two questions for me. First one, sustaining capital for this year. It looks like you increased $27 million to $43 million, and you did a good job of explaining where that money is going. But I didn't flag any change to the 2026 all-in sustaining cost guidance that you guys set a couple of months ago, I think between 2,100 and 2,300 one. Are you going to stick with that range or...

There's clearly has clearly fallen between the gap in that we got the Board approval a couple of days ago for the extra CapEx and clearly, I guess that should flow through into a sustaining costs. Is that correct, Ross?

That's right. And we're just looking at timing, Mike, in terms of when some of that will actually drop. So while the projects have been approved, it's going to see when they're scheduled to be paid.

Okay. Got it. And then my second one, if I back out from your earlier quarterly results from last year, I should say, it looks like Q4, you recorded a derivative loss of around $4.8 million, I think. Is all of that related to the put options you guys bought in December? Or is there something else going on there?

Yes, it's hold to do with the puts.

Let's be clear, the point of the puts at gold even with this current volatility, the gold price is much higher than the pulp price. The point of the put is, I think Ross outlined just to reinforce the point is, it creates a floor price for the purpose of the Zim banks in terms of putting together the interim funding facility. So it is still strategically important to us.

For sure. I just -- for my own numbers, I want to note what to adjust out for and what to expect in future quarters. I just wanted some clarity on that. I appreciate it guys.

We've got our next question from Nic Dinham.

Everybody. Usually, I'd like to spread around the questions. The first is for Craig. I think Craig, it does look encouraging what you're doing. But coming back to Blanket mine, is the recon between what you're actually getting out of the mine at the moment adhering to what you would have expected from your ore reserve models?

Yes. Yes, they are. So was affected by a couple of force moves that we had to make. We could not access the areas as quickly as we would have liked. So we were forced into maintaining production out of kind of some lower grade, some medium-grade areas. As we all know, in mining trouble was it your high-grade years and people see it. So yes, it's maintaining what we are expecting.

Okay. Excellent. I think the next question is for Ross -- or sets of questions. Ross, it's a usual one. Have you repaid your facilitation loans to your noncontrolling interests? And the second question with that, I'll have a few more. But the second question is with that is how many dividends did you distribute from blanket eventually you get some numbers here. It wasn't quite clear the [indiscernible].

Maybe I do that other way around. So there was $60 million of dividends that were declared in 2025 from Blanket. Not all of that equated to actually cash move. There was an opening balance and the timing of the payments post period, but it was $60 million. And there's a $5 million rollover with $44 million paid during this year. So high level, $60 million, but there were some timing differences in terms of the cash flows. Bets rebated facilitation loans in the Q4 2022.

That's the employee trust.

That's employee trust, sorry. And Leaf has got about $0.5 million left on it to.

Leaf is the government beneficial shareholder.

Yes. Okay. So it's all over for the Poland be securing their share of the dividends from now on?

Correct.

That's right.

In your sort of one of the questions about the loss on the derivatives that you're reporting. And obviously, this is a moving piece because you're marking it to a price at the end of the period. Do you have a sense of what that number would be if you were to take today's price, what sort of loss would you be recording?

I haven't looked at it today. And I mean that range in the actual valuations range quite considerably as we do the pricing because it's a delivery of a put option each month for the next 3 years. So it's not a primary fastener under the 3.5%, they all written off on day 1. There is a value that goes out. But I don't have the price for you today, especially after today's call.

I thought you might have an idea of sensitivity. And the last question is, you've started to accumulate some cash and near cash equivalents and you've got some deposits being made here. What do you think you need in terms of keeping blanket solvent and keeping the rest of the business lubricated with cash. How much -- what do you think is a minimum residual cash that you should have on found at any one time or cash equivalents on any one time.

Well, self [indiscernible] CFO perspective, I'd rather have a little bit more in the back pocket than normal, but anywhere between $30 million to $50 million, I think it will be a healthy position, particularly on the projects that are coming through the system. And we've got a large and now I will be deployed. But I think having that sort of quantum on balance sheet, this gives us some protection in terms of where we're going.

So Ross, do you mean giving cash? Or do you mean liquidity?

Liquidity in terms of facilities. Yes.

Okay. And then just on the operational side, there was a discussion of -- previously about a buildup of 4 stocks. Now you run them down again because to meet the requirements at the end of this last period. is your strategy still to rebuild those stockpiles?

Yes. So one of the things that we'll be introducing in the middle of the year is a new shift system at blanket to introduce -- do two things. First of all, we will introduce 7-day working at the mine as a standard. And that's pretty common now across the mining industry in Zimbabwe. And the mine drilling and blasting only currently takes place 6 days a week. So that should result in an extra day of drilling and blasting. If we can get the stuff trained and hoisted. In the order cost events that should give rise to an extra 100,000 tonnes a year.

In the short term, we'll be using that to accumulate a stockpile to see us through the hiatus relating to the AC/DC conversion. So currently, the Central Shaft works AC, the such Central Shaft Winder works as, we'll be converting that to DC for safety reasons and also for cost reasons, but that will result in a central shaft, not being able to hoist for a period of 2 to 3 weeks. And so we do need to make sure that we've got a healthy stockpile at the end of the year to see us through that.

So very much there is the intention over the course of this year to build stockpiles. And then once we're confident that the shift system is working and we've got adequate stockpiles, then clearly, we'll be looking at what we need to do to address and use the extra production increase our milling capacity. That's a work in progress.

So at this stage, I can't tell you what the costs of increasing that milling capacity would be and what the effect on OpEx would be. Let's just focus on getting the Shift system in getting the shift system in, delivering the ounces, getting and delivering the extra tonnes, building the stockpile to see us through the AC/DC conversion. And then for next year, there will be the hopeful of the story about how we're going to convert that into increased ounces. It's premature to say that at this stage.

Okay. Excellent. And then a final question for Victor here. at the end of this year -- this time next year, sorry in 2 months time, you will have spent circa $130 million on Bilboes. What will you have in place by the end of the period? What does your project going to look like on the ground?

Okay. So thank you, Nic. What we are really doing is placing order long lead items is what we're basically doing most of this year, towards the end of this year. That's really what we'll be doing. I will probably have some contractors moving in at the end of the year. But really, most of the money we are spending is it's -- that's on the long lead items.

So that means nothing very little physically to see.

Yes, very little to see. The only thing you'll see there are contractors moving in and starting to do some work.

So this will be in the form of prepayment on really?

Prepayments and deposits, yes. Yes.

Our next question is from Tate [indiscernible].

All right. So I just have three questions. The first one, can you explain more about the consortium facility as in which banks in South Africa, you are quoting? And what is their level of interest in supporting the company given the 15% nonresident tax, which resumed this year. Could you explain that? That's my first question.

The 15% nonresident tax, I mean, Ross, are you able to answer that?

No. Well, not specifically for the banks, but we've got two South African banks, and then there's Zimbabwe in banks that are participating. So half a dozen banks that we're talking to for the interim facility. And yes, this -- we've been pleased with the, I guess, the appetite to participate in such a facility with those banks. So no, we haven't had any negative colorations or discussions from that perspective.

And then our PF facility is the African banks in terms of in that we're talking to in a similar positive feedback.

Okay. And my second question is PGM companies have reported substantial amounts of their zig pushing of the export proceeds are being trapped at AZ. I think these complaints from [ Zimplats ] and [ Valtera ] and I wanted to find out if Caledonia is facing such a problem with their ZiG portion of the export proceeds being trapped at [indiscernible].

No. Absolutely no.

All right. Then my final question is, has your outlook changed in terms of the gold prices which you're expecting for the year, given the geopolitical tensions happening in the Middle East right now?

So are you -- is that -- do you mean do we going to adjust -- you're asking for to adjust our production level? Is that the question?

Yes, considering that the commodity market has become volatile owing to those geopolitical tensions.

No, the mine plan is pretty much set. I mean we can't just arbitrarily increase and reduce production. The objective is to mine to optimize operating efficiency and keep the mills full. .

What you could do if you may, you could adjust your cutoff grade. So if you thought the gold price was going to be much higher, you might reduce the cutoff grade, so you can perhaps mine more material that's less -- would be less attractive in the local price environment. But no, the -- within the current generations aren't giving us any thoughts about changing our overall approach to the mine plan and our mining schedule.

And the next question is from Tinashe Duma.

Next presentation in 4 minutes great performance. My question is how much of this year's performance is genuinely operation. I'm taking about the year and the period under review, how much of this performance is genuinely operational? And how much is simply gold price leverage. I think in that its production is banks broadly flat and while gold prices as by circa 4%. And from that, I could like you that your earnings were slightly price led rather than execution led. So what competence can you give that the business can protect margins and certain cash generation if the gold price normalizes.

Okay. So one of the things that should -- we didn't make clear enough. As you be quite right, in 2025, a lot of the good performance was driven by the higher gold price. One of the things that we are doing, and we have seen quite significant increases in costs of Blanket. If you look back over a 5-year period in 2020, Blanket's online cost was $784 an ounce. Last year, it was $1,280 people need to understand that blanket now is a very different mine from what it was in 2020. We're hosting significantly more material from much, much, much deeper.

In 2020, we are hosting most of all of our material from 750 meters below surface. Now we're hosting most of our material from 1,200 meters below surface. So inevitably, that means that you're going to be using more electricity, even before you start taking account of the incremental need to use electricity for improved ventilation.

And in terms of employees, if you look at the pointy end of the business, so that's the people involved in the mining, the underground trimming, the hosting, the people involved in the milling, we're actually handling more material, more tonnes per person now than we were 5 years ago. But the other -- our costs have gone up, and that's -- if you look at our consumable costs, we're pretty much using less in the way of inputs like grinding media, cyanide drill steel, we're using fewer kilos of that per tonne mill, but every year, year-on-year, we've seen our costs such as the costs of steel balls, which we use in the steel in the ball mills, they've gone up on average 10% per annum over each of the last 5 years.

So the cost profile has gone up. What we're doing now is we're focused on trying to reduce dollar costs, in particular the first three initiatives are targeted at electricity. So the 132 kV line, the AC/DC conversion, they will -- they are expected to give rise to significant cost reductions over the course of the coming 3 years.

In addition to that, we're trying to use electricity more intelligently. So we're trying to reduce our overall power consumption by just being clever more clever about how we use electricity.

The shift system that I referred to earlier on, has got two aims. The first is to reduce worker fatigue by reducing the overtime and reduced over time will clearly then reduce the sort of our labor costs because over time is clearly at a premium rate.

But the other thing, a lot of those cost reductions, I expect may well be given away in terms of further increases in costs that we know we're going to experience over the next 3 years or so, particularly in terms of providing better quality housing for the workers.

And so the only way I can see that we can get sustainably reduced costs of blanket is to increase production. And so as I mentioned, we are -- we would expect as a result of the shift system but introducing 7-day week working weeks or a 6-day working weeks is to harvest more tonnes, which should give rise to more ounces, which should mean that our costs are spread over more ounces and therefore, get the cost down.

So that's not going to help quickly. But over the next 3 years, I would be hopeful that as a result of the combination of those packages, we can begin to get the cost down. But don't forint, I think the Blanket is going to go back to being a low-cost producer at $784 an ounce. It's not the only way for a deep level, relatively low-grade mine like Blanket to be sustainable. And we -- Blanket's 120 years old this year. and we want to keep it right as you heard from Craig, there's plenty of potential to extend blanket mine life by going deeper. And the only way we can do that is continuing to invest to improve resilience and lock in economies. So that's a long answer to a fairly short question, which I hope addresses -- which I hope answers your question.

Yes. Thank you that has been answered. [indiscernible] for equity is, by the way. Thank you. That is enough for me.

Okay. But let's be clear, the way the phrase is escaping forwards for pretty much any mine in Zimbabwe, which is facing rising cost pressures. The only way to counter that is to escape forward through growth. And that's what we're looking for over the course of the next 3 years.

Okay. Thanks very much. That concludes the questions that we have at the moment. So Mark, I'd like to give the floor back to yourself for any closing remarks.

Okay. Well, clearly, it was a good year financially, as we've identified, largely driven by the gold price. We are focused very much on Blanket, turning that to account that will be a game changer, not just for Caledonia but also for Zimbabwe. But we're not neglecting Blankets.

I think the comments at the end of that Q&A session made very clear, we are focused on using this high gold price to invest in Blanket both to try and tickle up the gold production, but also to lock in resilience and efficiencies.

So that's going to be a 3-year exercise. It's not going to be a quick turnaround. But hopefully, clearly, we'll keep stakeholders informed to level. So thank you very much for your attendance, and we'll be putting out our Q1 results in about 6 weeks' time in the middle of May, okay? So thank you all very much.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the presentation on Bilboes Feasibility Study. Today, we are joined by Mark Learmonth, he is going to introduce the webinar and start his presentation. Mark, over to you.

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this webinar to set out the results of the feasibility study in respect to the Bilboes Gold Project.

Could we move on to the next page? That's the forward-looking statement and disclaimer. Just to introduce the presenting team, I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's Chief Executive Officer; joined by Ross Jerrard, who is the Chief Financial Officer; James Mufara, the Chief Operating Officer; Victor Gapare, an Executive Director of Caledonia; Simba Chimedza, who is the Group Technical Manager and who has been closely involved in the preparation of the feasibility study; Maurice Mason, Vice President of Corporate Development; and Admire Makuvaro, who is in charge of projects and capital projects.

All right. Before we get into the project -- before we get into this presentation, I just want to make a couple of points. We published the feasibility study and a related press release on Tuesday, the 25th of November. On Thursday, the 27th of November, the Zimbabwe Minister of Finance presented his budget for 2026 to the Zimbabwe Parliament. And this budget, which is expected to be enacted before the end of the year, includes 2 proposed fiscal measures relevant to our sector and to the Bilboes project in particular.

The first proposal relates to an increase in the royalty payable to the Zimbabwe government and the second proposal relates to the treatment of capital expenditure for tax purposes.

So turning to the first, the royalty rate currently payable by Zimbabwe gold producers to the Zimbabwe government is 5%. It's now proposed to increase the royalty rate to 10% if the gold price exceeds $2,500 an ounce. And our current understanding is that the higher rate of royalty, 10%, will apply to the full price of gold and not just to that portion of the gold price that exceeds $2,500 an ounce.

The second proposal relates to the tax treatment of capital expenditure. The current tax regime in Zimbabwe permits 100% of capital expenditure to be deducted from taxable profits in the year that CapEx is incurred. In the budget, it's proposed that capital expenditure deductions for tax purposes will now be spread across the life of the project. Now whilst this has no adverse effect on the overall tax payable over the life of the project, it does alter quite substantially the timing of tax payments and therefore, the NPV of the project. These measures are still proposals and are not yet passed into law.

We're evaluating the potential effect of these proposals on the Bilboes project and also on Blanket mine. And depending on the final form of the legislation, we may need to update the feasibility study to reflect revised economic outcomes. So accordingly, this presentation can only focus on the technical parameters of the project, which remain unchanged. We can't discuss at this stage the economic outcomes or any changes to those economic outcomes that we published on 25th of November, and we'll update the market in due course when we finished our evaluations.

So with that, can I -- can we start the presentation? Can we move on to the next page? And I believe we hand over -- I dealt with this page. Can we hand over to Victor to lead us into the project. Victor, over to you.

Thank you, Mark. The Bilboes project is located in the Matabeleland North province of Zimbabwe. It's approximately 80 kilometers north of Bulawayo, which is Zimbabwe's second largest city. It covers an area of just over 2,700 hectares of mineral claims or mineral rights. The project was previously owned by Anglo American Corporation Zimbabwe during the period 1986 to 2002.

As a background, Caledonia bought Bilboes -- 100% of Bilboes from the previous owners in January 2023 for $65 million. This was settled by the issuance of 5.1 million new Caledonia shares and a 1% net smelter royalty to one of the vendors, resulting effectively the new -- the previous owners of Bilboes holding just about 28.5% of diluted shares in issue.

Can we move on? In terms of reserves, the Bilboes projects holds 1.75 million ounces of gold at a grade of 2.26 grams per tonne. It also has 0.5 million -- just over 0.5 million of measured and indicated resources. This is excluding the reserves, which I've just talked about. Those -- that 0.5 million ounces at a grade of 1.37 grams per tonne and an inferred resource of just under 1 million ounces at a grade of 1.62 grams per tonne.

The ore from Bilboes is refractory, so it requires specialized processing. After extensive evaluation, we settled for the BIOX technology to treat the ores. This is supported by Metso, which owns the technology and there are quite a number of other BIOX operations throughout the world.

I also bring to your attention the fact that the Bilboes project next to the Bilboes project is the Motapa property, which used to be owned by Anglo American again prior to them exiting the gold mining space in Zimbabwe. It covers about 2,100 hectares, and we have ongoing exploration at that property, which when it's considered with the Bilboes project, will probably make it quite a big project.

Can we move on? In terms of development plan over the last year or so, we've looked at different ways of commercializing this project. We looked at multiphase development, which means starting at a smaller scale and then scaling up to full production. After evaluating all those, we settled for a single phase development as it gives the most economic approach.

Prior to Thursday's announcement of the changes in the tax regime, we had planned to do the detailed designs in the first half of 2026, which would allow us to procure long-lead-time equipment and preliminary works in the second half of 2026. The capital expenditure would have been 2027 to 2028, lasting about 2 years with first production targeted in late 2028 with a 5-month ramp-up to full production. Obviously, what we -- like Mark said, we are still evaluating the impact of the changes. And we've got -- at the moment, we can't say anything in terms of whether this timetable will change.

From a mine scheduling point of view, what we prioritized was the the shallow high-grade ore. This optimizes early cash flows and also enhances the debt capacity of the project.

Can we move on to the next. From a production profile point of view, our first full year of production would reach a peak production of 200,000 ounces of gold in a full year. This is a significant uplift from what we are currently producing at Blanket. Blanket produces somewhere between 75,000 and 79,500 ounces. per year. The life of mine of this project is 10.8 years with total production of 1.55 million ounces over that time period.

In terms of ore throughput, the average production for year 1 to 6 in terms of the ore we'll be processing will be 240,000 tonnes per month when we mine McCays and Isabella. From year 6 to year 10.8, we will be mining ore from Bubi, which has got different characteristics from the Isabella and McCays ore and we'll be producing at a lower rate of 180,000 tonnes per month. The ramp-up, which we have built into the project is designed for smooth transition to full capacity. And what we have looked also is at optimizing cost and high recovery and achieving high recovery rates.

Okay. Can we move on? From a production point of view, like I've said, we reached full capacity at 200 -- just over 200,000 ounces. But when we average over life of mine will be about 150,000 ounces per year. And you can also see the grid, which is the line on top, that it's fairly constant in terms of what we will be treating. Thank you.

Can you move on? From a CapEx point of view, the amount of capital we need, when we start with Isabella and McCays, we're looking at a total of $492 million during that phase. When we move to Bubi to process the Bubi ore, we will need to put additional capital of $91 million, which would give $583 million as the total CapEx for this project.

Move on -- for this section, the funding strategy, I hand over to our CFO, Ross Jerrard. Ross, take it on.

Thank you, Victor, and good afternoon, everyone. As Victor said, there's a spend of circa $600 million. So I'll just quickly talk you through our funding strategy. And it's reasonable to assume that the majority of the financing is expected to be traditional nonrecourse senior debt. We have been able to align the Blanket production and, I guess, the equity contributions that will be able to be generated internally from Blanket over the development phase. And we'll be looking to Blanket to provide that internal equity contribution.

What we have done is we've put in place a series of hedges, hedging 3,000 ounces of gold per month for the next 3 years at a strike price of $3,500 per ounce. These are Put Options, so really an insurance policy that protects the downside and enables Caledonia to retain full upside gold price exposure. But what that means is it underpins the cash generation of approximately $200 million from that cumulative production of 233,000 ounces over that 3-year period and really provides that foundation of cash flows and our internal equity contribution from the Blanket mine.

In conjunction with that contribution from Blanket, we are looking at various interim liquidity arrangements and other instruments for that matter, so the traditional instruments of royalty, streaming agreements, convertible debt. With those instruments and overall strategy, the ultimate aim is to minimize equity dilution. So in any of those decision points that we're looking at in the construct of this funding, equity dilution is front of mind for us.

And importantly, from a spend profile perspective, whilst we're looking to accelerate the procurement and the project development and with our initial time lines before the 26th of November, we are really looking at Q3 of next year to have some quite significant spend beginning to drop the whole funding strategy is all about providing early liquidity and being able to make sure that we've got a robust financial arrangements and packages in place to support that procurement spend and lead times and early works.

So with that in mind, we have been working with Cutfield Freeman, a specialist mining finance advisory firm, who have helped us in terms of the construct of what could reasonably be modeled in terms of our internal generation as well as those various financial instruments that I've spoken to and coming up with an overall funding strategy.

And I must highlight, we've just returned from a trip to Harare and Johannesburg last week, where we met 7 local banks in Zimbabwe and 2 South African and regional banks, and we were delighted with the response that we received from those banks, and we returned very excited about the whole funding strategy and the construct in terms of how we're going to pull this all together for Bilboes. So a very exciting platform in terms of how we go forward.

So with that, I'll hand it across to Simba, who will talk us through some of the geology.

Thank you, Ross, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll take you through the technical aspects of the project, starting with geology.

So geology of Zimbabwe is divided into 3 main areas, of which the Archean occupies most of the Zimbabwe Craton. This one holds the remnants of volcano-sedimentary also known as Greenstone Belts Belts. These Greenstone Belts, they cover approximately 60% of land surface of Zimbabwe, and they are renowned for their rich variety of mineralization, predominantly gold.

If we can move to the next slide. In terms of regional scale, the project is located within the Bubi Greenstone Belt in the southern west part of Zimbabwe. The gold is defined by hydrothermal vein systems, which are concentrated along structural breaks. The gold is finally dispensed within sulphides and the sulphides are predominantly pyrite and arsenopyrite. And as Victor alluded earlier on, the ore is refractory.

The depth of oxidation is very shallow from a depth of 6 meters to 50 meters below surface. That's where you get your sulphide occurrences.

If we can move to the next slide. We conducted extensive drilling on the properties with a total of 93,400 meters from some 664 holes over a strike length of 7,400 meters. This was an average depth close to 300 meters. The drilling comprised of core drilling and recirculation drilling, and this was conducted over 3 phases from 1998 to 2018.

The first phase of drilling of 17,650 was conducted by Anglo American Corporation in Zimbabwe during the period of 1994 to 1999.

If we can move on to the next. This is a demonstration of the drilling that occurred at McCays mine with a total of 20,000 -- just under 21,000 meters from some 177 holes over a strike length of 1,400 meters to a depth of 345 meters. This was done over 3 phases.

We can move to the next. Isabella North pit, 29,000 meters from 166 holes over a strike length of 1,300 meters to a depth of 320 meters.

The next one. Isabella South pit, 22,000 meters from 156 holes over a strike length of 1,700 meters to a depth below 300 meters.

And the next one, in Bubi, which is the last pit, 22,800 meters from 165 holes over 3,000 meters of strike length to a depth of 215 meters.

Right. In terms of mining, I will take you through some few slides, which will show you the pit dimensions from a design perspective. This is the work that was done by our consultants. So the first slide you are looking at is McCays pit, which essentially shows you the pit positions relative to the waste dumps and the stockpile positions as well.

So the McCays pit length is approximately 1,900 meters and has got a width of 345 meters, and it goes to a depth of 140 meters from surface. So this is the mining depth.

Then the next one. Isabella North pit has got a length of 1,000 meters, a width of 360 meters and a depth of 240 meters. This is the best of the four pit.

The next one. Isabella South pit, which will be mined concurrently with Isabella North pit, has got a pit length of 1,300 meters, a width of 330 meters and a depth of 155 meters.

The next one. And then Bubi pit, which will be mined as Phase 2 in the last 4 years of production has got a pit length of 2,300 meters, a width of 325 meters and a depth of 210 meters.

Right. In terms of the process flow, essentially, it involves a combination circuit, a BIOX circuit, a carbon in leach circuit, a neutralization circuit and the tailings storage facility.

The key technology, as I said earlier on is BIOX technology. And given the fact that the ore is refractory in nature, it requires specialized mining process for gold recovery. After extensive metallurgical test track, we tested 3 or so processes, we settled for the BIOX as the most viable option for the treatment of the refractory ores.

The benefits of BIOX, I can just quickly go through some of them. It's improved rates of gold recovery, reduced capital cost. We've also leveraged on a long track record of commercial operation and continuous process improvement. The technology is very robust and is suited for remote locations. Again, it's very simple. It requires very low skills and it's environmentally friendly.

And the process has been commercially available for more than 30 years now and has been operated in 14 plants in 9 countries, as you can see on the screen there. And total production over the years has been more than 36 million ounces of gold. So essentially, the technology is proven. It offers high gold recovery at lower operational risk.

The technology is also used by some big gold mining companies such as China Gold, Nordgold, Pan African Resources, which has been operating in South Africa for a while now and Endeavour, which has got the latest generation plant in Senegal. We actually had an opportunity to visit the plant sometime in May this year.

If we can move on to the next slide. In terms of benchmarking, this slide will show you that the Bilboes plants for both phases, which is Phase 1 and 2, it shows where they place relative to other BIOX plants in terms of size. You can see they are well placed within the range of other BIOX plants.

We can move on to the next one. This is a schematic process flow diagram. I'll just go through the various circuits that you can see there. The first one is on your right -- top left corner, it's your combination circuit, which involves crushing and milling. This is the first stage, which reduces the plant feed size to facilitate the liberation of the mineral particles for subsequent downstream concentration.

Just below that, we've got the flotation circuit, which concentrates the sulphides and goes into small concentrate mass of about 5% of original mass for Phase 1 and 10% for Phase 2. This is in readiness for the material to be transferred into the biological oxidation circuit, which is the BIOX circuit below, which essentially destroys the sulphides in the concentrate, utilizing our bacteria to expose the gold for leaching.

And then on your bottom right, that's the carbon in leach circuit. So acidic solution from the BIOX plant is then removed for recycling and the solids are neutralized for leaching in that circuit. So essentially, gold is loaded on to activated carbon and then recovered for smelting. And then the tailings from this process, they are taken to a tailings storage facility.

Next slide. This is just a flow description. I've gone through that, so we can skip this one.

In terms of infrastructure, I will hand over to Admire so that he can take us through the infrastructure.

Thank you, Simba, and good afternoon. Under infrastructure, I will cover the major facilities. Under mining and infrastructure will establish open pit mines at Isabella North and South, McCays and Bubi at a later stage. We'll establish gold processing plant, Tailings Storage Facility and Rock Waste dumps for mining and pits, and we will establish internal roads, network and public access roads, which links to the main roads that cover the area.

On power supply, we will construct a new 132 kV overhead line that will span from Shangani to the mine site. We will also construct a new 50, 132 kV, 11 kV substation that will be established close to the facility.

On water supply, water will be actually accessed through pit dewatering and from boreholes and also augmented from smaller dams that are close to the mine facility.

Let's move on. This is a layout which will show the 3 mines, which is Bubi right at the top, we have both Isabella North and South and the McCays. That's the presentation on the infrastructure layout. Thank you. Back to Simba.

Thank you, Admire. So in terms of operating costs from a mining perspective, we can move to the next slide.

Yes. So mining operating costs, they are generally flat around $20 to $30 per tonne of ore throughout the life of mine, except in 2034, you can see it peaks at $37 per tonne of ore. This is about [ something in phase], this is when Phase 1 ends and we will be going to Phase 2, which then requires us to increase the waste stripping, which then drives the cost to $37 per tonne of ore.

If we can move on to the next. From a BIOX perspective, the operating costs are a function of the size of the plant, which is dependent on the ore characteristics. As you can see, Phase 1 is in line with -- within range of the other BIOX plants, whilst Phase 2 is slightly higher than Phase 1. It's $113 per tonne of ore. This is really due to the use of more reagents due to the sulphur grade at Bubi, which is much higher, and this requires extra reactors. And there's also the need of a limestone plant for neutralization due to the acidity of the ore.

There's also increased power consumption for Phase 2 at Bubi due to the higher sulphur grade. But otherwise, the BIOX cost for Bilboes are expected to stay within industry norms.

We can move on to the next one. From a process point of view, our major cost drivers are reagents, labor and power. As you can see in the bottom table there, the unit cost for Phase 1, $22 per tonne of ore, for Phase 2 increases to $38 per tonne of ore. This is, like I said earlier on, increased reagent use, which drives that cost, which is linked to ore characteristics. There is also greater power consumption due to the other ore at Bubi compared to Isabella and McCays for Phase 1. So essentially, that's what's driving that cost.

If we can move on to the next slide, environmental and social. So the project is fully permitted with an environmental impact assessment certificate that was granted by the Environmental Management Agency.

In environmental and social impact assessment that was conducted in 2020, this essentially guides the social and community commitments such as CRS (sic) [ CSR ]programs, fair labor and recruitment policy, local procurement policy and stakeholder engagement plans. The mine closure is aligned with international best practice and complies with local statutory requirements.

So I'll hand over this to Mark now.

Yes. So this -- the numbers on this page are clearly based on the situation that prevailed on the 25th of November and don't reflect the proposed changes on the 27th. But if this project was to go ahead, it would reestablish Zimbabwe as a major gold investment destination. It's a big project and it's a world-class project. So if successful, it will put Zimbabwe back on the map again. And it would make a big difference to Zimbabwe in terms of foreign exchange earnings, about $3,600 gold, it would be about $5.5 billion in ForEx earnings. And it would deliver very substantial tax receipts to the Zimbabwean government, something like $1.3 billion of income tax withholding tax and royalty payments. over the life of the mine.

So this project under the right circumstances is good for Caledonia shareholders and also would be extremely good for the -- for Zimbabwe. Clearly, these numbers may change depending on the outcome of the current proposals. I think we should move on.

So key takeaways, big project, high grade, very -- under the right circumstances, a very robust project. And what we set out to the market on the 25th of November also had a very robust funding structure. And as Ross outlined to you, we've already made -- started to make some very good progress in terms of putting that funding structure together. Time lines, I think we did set out some time lines in the RNS. Clearly, they now need to be revised based on ongoing assessments of the current situation.

So I think with that, we're finished, and we'll open it to questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from [ Mike Kozak ].

All right. So yes, look, I appreciate you guys hosting this. I had 2 questions. First one, just related to the feasibility study. I think -- I believe the base case whittle shell you guys used were run at a little over $2,000 an ounce gold price, but the location of all the long-term site infrastructure like waste rock dumps, processing plant, tailings was based on $3,000 an ounce pit shells, I think if I read that right. So my first question is how much additional ore is captured in that gold price delta? And which of the 4 mining areas like McCays, Isabella North South and Bubi would potentially see the greatest mine life extensions?

I think, I'll hand it over to Simba. But I think the reason we position the infrastructure based on higher gold prices to make sure that we don't inadvertently put infrastructure on top of material that could, in due course, be mineable. But I'll hand over to Simba, probably best if you deal with that.

Thank you, Mark. Yes. So yes, so like Mark said, the reason why we've done that is to essentially ensure that we don't place any infrastructure within our potential mining areas.

In terms of potential for extensions, I would have to say both Isabella, McCays and Bubi have got significant upside potential in terms of additional mineral resources. For instance, at Isabella, McCays, we've got several other pits that have not yet actually been tested, but we've got confirmation that they are mineralized because we've mined oxides from there. It does the same situation with Bubi as well.

But I think it's also fair to note that we've got Motapa immediately next door. And I think it's quite likely that we will -- we would also get material coming from Motapa, which would be fed into the [ met ] plant probably after Isabella, McCays and then preference to Bubi, so that we don't incur that extra CapEx for dealing with the different ore characteristics at Bubi. So I think it's not just online -- it's not just exploration upside on the existing Bilboes property, it's also at Motapa as well.

Okay. That's helpful. And then my second question, and I appreciate that you might not be able to fully answer this one given with the royalty and the CapEx deduction rate changes if they do, in fact, go through. But my question was, I mean, how are you guys thinking about it internally? Like realistically, does this push back the Bilboes development time line by like 3 months, 6 months a year. How does...

It depends. I mean if we get rapid resolution to this matter, it very little is going to happen in Zimbabwe, South Africa generally between now and the end of the year. So we've got a whole month. If we get this matter dealt squared away within a month, it doesn't change anything as far as I can see. If the outcome is something that doesn't work for us, well, we'll have to reconsider and that will take as long as it takes. So it will be impossible to give guidance on that, Mike, I'm afraid.

Our next question comes from Nic Dinham.

Just a couple of questions. Clearly, you're working with real numbers here as you should. But if we compare the first feasibility study that was done and compare it to the latest, we've had a capital escalation rate of something in the order of 13% per annum. So since you're going to be working with escalated money soon, are you happy to continue that in my model? Is 13% a realistic number for what capital is doing year-on-year?

Victor, Simba, do you want to handle that.

Yes. Thank you, Nic. At the end of the day, the capital intensity of projects between pre-COVID and post-COVID, the capital intensity of projects changed quite significantly. But we've seen a stabilization in that as far as we are concerned in the last 2 or so years. So we are confident about these figures, which we worked on with DRA, which is a very reputable engineering company. They've done several projects elsewhere. So this project has been benchmarked as far as costs are concerned.

Okay. So the escalation from just your last year's PEA to this year is fairly significant. I mean if you have a look at that, that's almost like 20% plus 25%. So there's a big jump in those numbers. Okay. So I take the point you won't know, but clearly, capital escalation is an issue that you have to address. From the...

We have addressed it. At the end of the day, when you look at it, we have addressed it. We've looked at it and what we have come up with is what is realistic from a CapEx point of view. As I said, we have benchmarked it. And also, if you look at PEA in terms of accurate level compared to actual feasibility study, the difference is coming to play as well because now you're doing more detailed designs and everything. So you will get some changes.

Okay. On the operating cost side, strange enough or not strangely, it's great to see that your escalation rate is much lower, something in the order of 3% or 4% per annum. Are we happy? Are you happy that those numbers keep escalating out in that way?

Absolutely happy. Otherwise, we wouldn't have put them in the feasibility study.

No, no, no. I don't -- Victor, I don't think you understand what I'm saying here. You have to escalate these numbers into nominal numbers terms as you go ahead, right? So you'll be dealing with real escalated numbers in a year or 2, not just real numbers that you're looking at the model right now. That's why I'm talking about this.

The next question, this may be for Ross. These numbers don't have VAT added to them. What are you going to do about that since it's difficult to get VAT back from the government? And I'm assuming you are paying for VAT in the equation here somewhere.

Yes. So there is that through the system. I'm not sure how much I can talk around the restructuring in terms of how best we're dealing with that in terms of our corporate side. But in terms of the refunds and being able to offset the VAT component, we're comfortable in terms of the numbers and the modeling that have come through.

So I would actually say, Nic, actually, the system for getting that VAT refunds has actually improved quite substantially over the course of recent months.

Okay. Awesome. So you won't have to wait for -- to offset it against other tax payable apparently as you have done?

We can offset it.

We can.

But this does move into a taxpaying situation very quickly.

Okay. And finally, I think this is more of a technical question. There's power. Obviously, you're talking about putting a line directly from Shangani. Yet we read that the system is still under stress. And just how easy is it to get power when you want it, how you want it out of a substation in Shanggani?

Okay. Well, I think the first point I'd make is there's no shortage of power generally in the sub-Saharan region provided you're paying in U.S. dollars, okay? So I'd make that point. I think Admire is probably the best person to address the detail of that question. Admire, could you help us?

Thank you. Thanks, Nick. There was a study that was done by ZETDC in looking at the capacity of abstracting power from the Shangani substation. And they found out that they do have adequate power that we can abstract from the substation in linkage to the grid that we have through [ Sherwood ] substation, which is more like the central distributor of power in Zimbabwe. So there is adequate power that gets to substation and there's adequate capacity.

Nic, it's fair to say that Bilboes location is actually much more conducive to a reliable power supply than certainly Blanket. So we're comfortable about that. As I said, there is power that you can import and we do -- we can and do import power to the intensive energy user group.

The next question comes from Howard Flinker.

What did you pay for your puts?

Pay for what?

The puts ongoing...

The Put Options.

Howard, okay.

Howard, it was a total package of $13.5 million for the total puts over the 3 years. So on an ounce basis across those 3 years, it averaged at $125 an ounce. But obviously, the third year was a lot more expensive. The earlier years were cheaper. But it's basically $125 per ounce.

And then -- we got -- and we had deferred terms. So we paid some cash for 2025 and then some of it was deferred for 6 months and another lot were deferred for 12 months. But all in was $13 million.

Second question, is your CapEx at Bilboes going to be $583 million or roughly $350 million? I misunderstood.

CapEx of Bilboes, well, the peak CapEx is what -- sorry, Ross, go ahead, you've got close to numbers.

I think Victor, on your CapEx slide, maybe explain the phased approach in terms of both sides of it. So...

Yes. Our total CapEx is $583 million, but it's over many years. The first phase, which is where we need to get to 200,000 ounces for us to treat Isabella, McCays ore, we will need $492 million in that phase.

So $492 million upfront, at first?

Yes, correct.

Okay. And my final question is something that every company is going to be asked. How much -- how much gold do you have in your heat dumps? Many companies are going to be extracting that now. Do you have any idea how much you have in your waste?

Well, the Blanket or the waste to Blanket?

Yes.

Virtually, the deposition rate of Blanket is something like 0.2 grams a tonne. It's not -- we wouldn't be able to reprocess that. We did do although some of the older sections of the old tailings dump. I'm not sure what the outcome of that was. I'm sure if the outcome had been that it was commercially extractable, would have told you about it. So I guess the answer is that we've looked. And certainly, the new deposition at Blanket is absolutely not capable of being reprocessed. And it looks like the old stuff isn't commercially viable either.

So for you, very smaller next to none?

Yes.

The next question comes from Ian Joslin.

Okay. Right. Yes, I think the questions asked have been very pertinent, so I don't really want to repeat them. But I thought it might be worth just mentioning what's going on in a couple of other investments I have that do touch on what you're doing and partly because I'd just like to use them for benchmarking purposes.

So the first one is the more straightforward, which is you're probably aware that Tharisa are also doing a very large project in [ Great Dyke ]. They presented their final results this morning. And I asked the question about the sovereign -- the changes in the rules, tax and royalties in Zimbabwe. And they applied that they're hoping to come up with a bespoke agreement before they finish.

I'm sure you're aware of all the various things that they're doing, but they clearly think that they won't be -- they think they won't be subject to the rules as stated at the moment. So I don't know whether it's worth if you're already reaching out talking to other mining companies that are being caught by this, but it might be worth...

On Tharisa -- I have Tharisa's PGM play and the changes in royalty clearly affect gold.

8% is gold of theirs is what they expect.

Yes, but it's a relatively small proportion of -- it affects them marginally. It's not as though our entire product is gold. Clearly, the impact of the tax deductions of relating to capital expenditure, that does need a conversation.

Yes. I just thought that they clearly have -- they are concerned about it. They were very concerned about it. I could tell from their body language. So I would just suggest if you have a chat with them and see whether there's anything at all that you can glean.

The second point I want to make is with metals exploration. I see that you've used them as a reference point for BIOX. They [indiscernible]. They're also setting up a plant in India and Nicaragua. And I appreciate they're going to process oxides and their planned output will be 140 versus 200 for you. And they did buy their kit secondhand. But their total spend, the total budget is $122 million. So I'm trying to understand where the gap is between that and obviously, your planned peak of $583 million. It can't all be BIOX surely.

Yes. Thanks, Ian. One of the major costs in this project in terms of CapEx is actually our Tailings Facility because the terrain on which we're building the tailings storage facility is very flat. So that comes with the additional costs. We have looked at alternative sites, and it's something which we've always put on the table that we're going. So the additional costs in this project, that's where the additional cost is at the end of the day.

And as Victor says, we do continue to look at other deposition sites, particularly on the Motapa property, which could be more cheaper because you can lean it up against the hill. That would be ongoing work.

Okay. That's interesting to know. Who knew that TSS were that expensive.

No, absolutely. I mean they're horrendously expensive given the fact that you need double lining. I think the other issue that we face as well is that there's no play available in reasonably close proximity. So it gets even more expensive to source the double lining material.

Okay. One final side, and it probably isn't relevant, but the Rambutan plant is coming to an end next year. They hope to replace it with new deposits, but they'd be oxide. So there's the odd BIOX plant knocking around at the end of next year and going into 2027. So should you wish to reconfigure it, you might want to think about that.

Yes. But as you'd appreciate, we can't -- I mean, that's right. In real term, in real life, we could do that. But for the purposes of a feasibility study, you can't make an assumption about buying cheaper stuff secondhand, which may or may not be available. So I hear what you say entirely, but you'll also understand why for the purposes of the feasibility study, you've got to work on the basis you're buying something as a new.

Understood. No, it's just...

We are aware of that.

Ian, just to add to what Mark said or what you were asking about engagements, we are a member of the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe and there's active consultation within gold mining companies to actually try to engage government on this matter. So yes, we are in liaison with other companies.

Yes, I'm sure that you would -- yes, it would be the most sensible thing with unity of strength and all that. I think the rest of the other questions have been asked already. So that's it.

And we've got a follow-up question from Nic Dinham.

Okay. This should be a fairly easy one. I try to get through that budget speech, and there was a something about accelerated wear and tear allowances for projects or factories that work 24/7 type of -- that increase the number of hours they work, continuous operations. It seemed to me that you would fit in there. Did you see any benefit in there for you? Or is it...

There are so many moving parts and so many areas of inconsistency and uncertainty that needs to be addressed. So we can't get into that level of detail on this discussion.

There are no further hands up. So I'll hand over to Mark.

Okay. Well, look, thank you for attending on this call. This isn't the presentation that we'd hope to make, but we thought we should do it in any event. Let's see where this takes us, and we'll be sure to update you as we move forward. So thank you very much for your attendance.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Q3 2025 results presentation for Caledonia Mining. Today, we're joined by Mark Learmonth, who's the CEO, and he's going to introduce the webinar and start his presentation. Mark, over to you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Julie. Should we open the slide deck? [Indiscernible].

Move on to the forward-looking statement and disclaimer page.

Next page, there you go. And then the presenting team. So yes, I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's Chief Executive; joined by Ross Jerrard, the CFO, who will run us through the financial numbers. James Mufara, the Chief Operating Officer, will talk to us about operations. Victor will say a few words about Bilboes and Craig will -- Craig Harvey will talk to us about the -- some of our exploration initiatives.

Can we just move to the next page? Okay. The first thing I'll point out is that, as you probably noticed, we no longer publish the standard sort of management discussion and analysis and the detailed financial statements. So quarters 1 and quarter 3 will produce what we've done this morning, which is like a truncated version, but I think that's more than adequate for conveying the substance of what we're doing.

But as we get into the presentation, first, we must recognize that we had a fatality during the quarter, and we extend our condolences to the family and the colleagues of the man who tragically lost his life. James will talk to us more about what we've done in the aftermath of that to comprehensively review our safety procedures and safety practices, and what we're doing to strengthen our risk management and workforce protection. So James will go into that in some more detail.

It was a solid performance operationally. Production at Blanket was just over 19,000 ounces, and we sold just over 20,000 ounces. And that was clearly -- we've clearly been helped by the rising gold price. So the gold price is up 40% quarter-on-quarter, comparable quarter to this quarter to just over $3,400 an ounce, which drove a strong improvement in revenue and also profitability. So revenue up 52% to $71 million and EBITDA up 162% to $33 million. Ross will clearly provide more information on the financials.

With respect to Bilboes, as we say in the RNS, we expect to give an update as to where we are and where we're going with that imminently. So Victor is on hand to say something. But frankly, until we've imminently said something, there's not a great deal we can say at this stage. And then Craig will run us through the exploration programs at Blanket and Motapa, which we're advancing and which is showing very, very encouraging results. And then finally, I'll just remind you all that in addition to these results, we've this morning declared another quarterly dividend of $0.14 a share.

So with that, can I hand over to James to run us through the operating results? James, over to you.

Thank you very much, Mark. Good day to you all. It is very sad that -- I mean, in this quarter, we actually have to report a loss of life incident that occurred at our Blanket mine. In this very quarter, one of the things that why it's -- this tragic is we have seen quite a serious improvement in terms of our health and safety parameters, and that's in terms of lost time injuries, in terms of environmental conditions underground, ventilation conditions underground, we have seen an all-round improvement and accident-free days, we've seen quite a serious improvement.

However, we still suffered this loss of life in which the gang leader who was conducting -- in the process of conducting secondary blasting actually had a premature detonation and he lost his life. Secondary blasting operation is an operation where we break some of the bigger rocks that could have been generated during the time of primary blasting, so that you can send them through into our ore buses and be in a position to take them out to surface.

Immediately after this accident, we embarked on an investigation, thorough investigation and extensive investigation to determine the root causes of this accident. We had also reported -- we reported also this to the government who also actually conducted a thorough, extensive investigation on their own to determine this root cause and possible areas where we can see improvements. The investigation is complete now and action plans that we found out are currently being implemented to avoid any possible recurrence of these significant unwanted events. So one of the key issues that we still need to deal with is the issue of our employees and higher risk appetite that we see within the operations.

If you can just go to the next slide, please. And the next one. In terms of the slides that are now showing, I mean, you will see that and this depicts a consistent delivery that we are now witnessing at Blanket mine from the third quarter of 2024 to now, you can see that the delivery has almost reached a steady state. I mean almost delivering at the same level. This is the recipe to good production and actually consistency, that's what a plant wants, the plant wants consistent delivery, and this is what we're beginning to see.

This has been brought about mainly by 3 issues, but there is obviously a lot more other issues behind this. And the first one is the introduction of the short interval control system that we see on the mining and the metallurgical side, where production is managed on the short interval control basis.

The second reason is that we have seen is that there's been a consistent tonnage throughput, because now the plant we can feed from the stockpile, and we are in a position to see consistent throughputs due to feeding from the stockpile. The third reason for this consistent performance that we see with the tonnage and steady-state performance is because with the improvement in development that we embarked on starting the end of last year and even carrying on with this year, we are seeing an improvement with regards to flexibility as we are opening up better and more areas for production underground.

However, on the center of graph, you will see that there is an unfavorable drop in the orange line, which is the grade line. The reason for the drop in the grade line is linked to the loss of life accident that we had on the 22nd of September, where we stopped our high-grade areas for up to 20 days while investigations were actually going on. You will see that this year also a negative impact in terms of our recovery, which is on the graph below on the line -- on the graph below where the graph shows that the recovery also took a negative dip, because of the grade that actually went down. The good news, however, is that the recovery for the year-to-date is still on plan, and we still expect to finish the year high with regards to our recovery.

If you may just turn to the next graph, the next -- the table shows how our mining metrices were above plan for the quarter, which is actually showing a healthy production throughput throughout the whole quarter in terms of our tonnes broken, trimmed, hoisted. And most importantly, in terms of our development to generate new areas where we will mine from. You will see that we were green in these areas, and it's very important to be healthy in all these areas. This is consistent production all around. Achieving development will also help us to make sure that our flexibility going forward is going to be better, and this will actually positively impact in terms of employee productivity.

The only color which is not green is the grade color, which we have already explained that some of the higher grade areas, we had to stop them after the loss of life accident that we unfortunately suffered on the 22nd. And because of that, we actually see that the grade was at 3.4 grams per tonne.

However, if you can just carry on to the next table, we see that, at Blanket, we are on course to meet the increased guidance. On this presentation, you will see that the tonnes milled are still about 7% ahead of our desired run rate for the year-to-date. Also important, however, also is the issue with regards to the tail grade, which remains at 0.2 grams per tonne, I mean, which is our plan consistently very, very low, which is showing that our recovery within the plant has remained consistently very, very high. The ounces for the year to date is still, even in the end of the quarter, still 3,000 ounces ahead, clearly showing that Blanket is on course to meeting the increased production guidance as given out to the market.

If we can just go to the next graph, which shows that we are still securing the future. This production has not just been to meet today's need, but it's also securing the needs of tomorrow. You can see that in terms of our reserve generation, which was positive for the quarter. We have met today's production, but without destroying our ability to meet production targets within the future. So although our set out goal at the beginning was simply not to deplete reserves, we because of better production, better development actually added reserve ounces as well in the quarter due to better production. This is a healthy state to be in.

If you can just go to the last one, which talks about our focus on productivity. You will see that Blanket being a mine that has been in operation from 1904, some of the areas are further and further from the shaft barrel and deeper as well. There is a need for us to improve productivity and introduce technology within our mining space.

We have seen that ourselves is mining. I mean we are price takers and the only area in which we can actually improve our competitiveness is if we can improve productivity. We have thus embarked on implementing technology in the mine, so that we can better position ourselves to be more productive going forward.

In this example, I've just given 3 of the areas that we have chosen to embark on, which is engineering areas, and one of them being introducing men carriages or men riding. This is but the improved impact in terms of phase time, so that people are on the phase in good time and also so that people have got energy when they arrive on the phase. So we have started to implement this within our working areas as a way of increasing productivity, and dealing with increased cost that invariably come with an aging operation.

And most importantly is the technology that we are improving. We are doing a lot of the work in-house, as a result, it's costing us less to actually implement this technology. We intend to continue to increase and implement this technology to both increase productivity, and also increase the health and safety of our employees.

I'll hand over to Ross for the financial section. Thank you.

Thank you, James. So Ross, do you want to run us through the finance, please?

Thank you, Mark, and thank you, James. My pleasure. Good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to run through the financial results. And as what James described, it's been a challenging quarter, but certainly well delivered.

So if we can turn to the next slide, a quick overview of our financial results and a summary. You'll see gold sold is up 9% to 20,000 ounces against gold produced of just over 19,000 ounces, solid quarter there. I will highlight that those gold produced ounces are the Blanket ounces. There were some 437 ounces that was generated from Bilboes, that we don't account on this table just in order to calculate our on mine costs, et cetera. So a very solid set of numbers in terms of ounces produced and sold.

Just dropping down below that first line, you'll see the on-mine costs, which were up 27% quarter-on-quarter. That's driven by our sort of traditional elements of electricity, labor, and consumables. That increase was incurred this quarter, as James has indicated, there were additional volumes that were having to be processed and moved to compensate for some of those lower grades. And importantly, the teams had to be shifted around because of the unfortunate incidents. So when we're comparing against those areas that were planned to be or scheduled to be worked, there were a number of moving parts that obviously resulted in additional costs. But also additional volumes having to be moved, offset by that lower grade, which obviously came at a cost, and that has driven our on-mine costs.

Dropping down to our all-in sustaining costs for the quarter, you will see that they have equally moved up some 40%, and that's predominantly due to those on-mine costs that I've just mentioned, but also the higher gold prices impacted our royalties, and that's dropped down into the impact of our all-in sustaining.

Overall, a really good result driven by that gold price that Mark had mentioned at $3,434 an ounce, which was a really pleasing result, and has really benefited the operations and the results that we will talk to.

So moving to the next slide, and we'll talk a little bit about the profit and loss. Happy to report another sort of quarterly revenue number of $71 million, which is back on those good ounces produced and all-time gold prices. You'll see that royalty number has similarly increased in line with those revenues. And those production costs were up, as I mentioned, in terms of additional volumes moved at a lower grade.

Depreciation has largely been in line for the quarter. And I'm very pleased to report on those net foreign exchange losses where we've continued to benefit from access to the willing buyer, willing seller market, and being able to deploy our [ ZIG ] component. And if you look in the 9 months column, you'll see that we're just under $3 million compared to $10 million number for the same time last year. So we're really pleased with that result in terms of delivery in the income statement.

Our corporate line items have increased, and that's due to a higher equity share-based payment valuation that was driven by the share price. But also a number of one-off expenses that you'll see in that year-to-date number in terms of some of the corporate team reshuffle. And then lower down below the line, that tax expense is higher, and that's due to the good operational performance and the benefit of the gold price. But you must remember the gold -- the solar sale that's been included in that number. And importantly, from a cash flow perspective, includes the capital gain on that solar plant sale.

So if we quickly move on to the next slide and talk about cash flows. The net cash inflow from operating activities was a very solid number at just a shade under $14 million for the quarter, impacted by some large negative working capital movements of around $8 million. Those are timing in terms of some investments in terms of consumables and then the traditional working capital movements in terms of ounces, gold sales receivables and the like.

Tax payments, as I've mentioned, included that $2 million in terms of cash outflows. And -- but then lower down in terms of capital expenditure, we're largely on track for the year. We're not readjusting our forecast spend, and we've continued to invest and deploy money into our fixed term deposits. So you'll see we've got $18.5 million now sitting on fixed deposits, and they all sit offshore here in Jersey. So a really pleasing result year-to-date.

You'll then see the $14.7 million worth of dividends that have been made year-to-date, split in terms of $6.6 million for our NCIs and $8.1 million for Caledonia shareholders and comprising of 3 quarterly dividends that have been paid in the 9 months. And as Mark mentioned, we've declared our customary quarterly dividend of $0.14 per share earlier today. Importantly, we closed the period with $7.3 million of cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter.

And if we want to move to the next slide, we'll see where those funds are held, and also importantly, from a liquidity position, where we sit. So in terms of having cash on hand of $15.6 million. We've got those fixed term deposits that I mentioned of $18.5 million. And then we've got some bullion on hand and gold sales receivables at the end of the quarter. But overall, including our bank facilities, we have a total liquidity of just over $44 million, which places us in a very healthy position and have the ability to deploy funds against some meaningful projects, which is very exciting.

I know James has spoken about around cost initiatives, but I just wanted to turn to the next slide, and I guess, take a minute to look at our cost profile, which has been an ongoing team exercise. And I just wanted to highlight or take a minute to really look at our cost base against others. And we've been benchmarking our cost profile against our similar African peers. Admittedly, they're in South Africa versus us in Zim. But looking at mines that we compare to in terms of operating under conventional mining methods, and also those mines operating underground mines and at depth, we're not out of line and actually quite -- compare quite favorably against similar mines.

You can see those metrics in terms of depth, tonnes milled per annum and also the human element, I guess, the number of people that operate those mines. And our mines, as James had indicated, really, it's around where we're operating now. Blanket is a very different mine from 5 years ago, where 60% of its ore was really extracted from a depth of approximately 750 meters or 760 meters. And now we've got a big component of our ore coming up from a depth of over a kilometer.

And so in terms of tonnes and tonne meters hoisted and all the metrics that we're looking at, this all comes at a cost. So those key components of both productivity, but also our electricity costs and our tonnes of meters and additional loads that we're having to put on that electricity or the power requirement when operating at depth has a significant impact on our cost base when producing an ounce profile of around that 80,000 ounces per annum.

And there are a number of initiatives that we've got on the go, as James has indicated, and we'll be hopeful that we'll be able to bring those to account and have a meaningful impact on our cost base going forward, but it's unlikely that we will return to historical levels in terms of the cost profile when operating in a very much closer to the surface and lower volumes being used. So on that basis, you would have seen in the announcement this morning that we have updated our cost guidance for 2025.

So if you move to the next slide, please. Whilst the gold production and the previously guided gold ranges in terms of ounces and capital expenditure were maintained, we have looked at our cost base and looked at the volume movements and what it's meant for how we exit the year in preparing our outlook for next year. And we've increased our guidance ranges, both on-mine costs by increasing it to just over 10% to a range of $1,150 ounce to $1,250 per ounce. And equally, on our all-in sustaining costs, we've increased it for -- at 9.5% to a range of $1,850 to $1,950. And we believe that that is very reasonable and considered outlook in terms of as we exit this year and conclude on the final quarter.

So we're really excited. It is mining, and there has been some challenges, and I think the team has dealt with that very well. But as we sit today and as we look for our outlook for 2025, we're really excited in terms of being able to deliver a really solid 2025.

So with that, I'll hand it back to Mark, and I think it's going to Craig to talk a bit about exploration.

Yes. Thank you, Ross. So Craig, can you just talk us through the exploration at Motapa and at Blanket please?

Thanks, Mark. Well, I can do that for you.

So I'll just -- if we can go on to the next slide. So just very quickly, what we're doing at Motapa, the budget for the year is about -- just over 27,000 meters of drilling. At the end of Q3, we had done just under 20,000 meters. It's about 71%, 72% complete. We expecting to complete the drilling campaign during Q4. I did mention, I think, in the last quarterly that there were some issues with the laboratories in Zimbabwe. That seems to have been sorted. We have caught up quite a number of assays. So I am expecting to have a maiden resource declaration for Motapa, specifically Motapa North during H1 of 2026.

If we could go on to the next slide then. So this is -- this is just -- when I talk Motapa North, I mean, obviously, it's those nice pretty colored zones that you see on that map there. But that blue line that represents the Bilboes, which is our current project that everybody knows about and the Motapa area. So from Motapa to the Bilboes boundary is literally 200 meters, and it's another 250 meters to the Isabella South pit. So quite clearly, what we're doing at Motapa and Motapa North should in all aspects have an impact on the Bilboes project going further.

So currently, with all the drilling that we've done, we drilled and we've defined some mineralized zones over a strike length of approximately 2,500 meters. It remains open to the Northeast, still have some gaps between the historic old pits that we've got to do. Motapa North, its main thrust is oxide, sorry, not oxide, sulfide mineral resources below the current pits down to a depth of about 200 meters. So all of this, once the drilling campaign is complete during this year, we'll take 1 month or 2 months to get the assays in, and we'll have a maiden resource declaration for Motapa North early next year.

If we go on to the next slide, some of the other drilling that we're doing. So this is about 500 meters south of Motapa North. It's the area to call Mpudzi. We're finishing up our drilling campaign here. So we've sort of drilled about 1,000 meters on strike. It remains open probably for at least another 1,000 meters to the Northeast. It's an area that hasn't been open-pitted in the past. So this program is slightly different where we are focusing on the potential for oxides, clearly, drilling some deeper holes to get an understanding of what the sulfide mineralization looks like. But this program will carry on in 2026, and we'll report drilling results as and when they will come in.

If we could go on to the next slide, and I'll take us through Blanket quickly. So Blanket, we've got the underground, as we all know, and we've also got the surface. So with the underground exploration drilling, it's all of the long-haul drilling that we're doing, typically holes 250 meters to 450 meters deep.

If we can go on to the next slide, I can then show you where the areas are that we're drilling. So to the south or to the right of the slide that you see, so we've got ARS, which is AR South, we've got the Blanket Quartz Reef, which is BQR, and then all of the Blanket orebodies, and we've got 7 of them. So you can see there 34 levels, you can see the little blue traces that are running there. So we currently drilling below 34 level. And a lot of our intersections are now on kind of the 36 level mark. On the Blanket orebody side, half yearly drilling results. So probably at the end of this year, we will publish a set of drilling results for Blanket.

On the northern side, on the left-hand side, you can see some long-haul traces there. So that is Lima, where we are now filling in the drilling below 22 and 34 level. We've drilled the one next to it, Eroica, extensively. And we've got 30 and 34 level that can quite easily develop north towards Lima and pick up that orebody and then carry on mining like that as well.

If you could go to the next slide. So in the past quarter and the previous quarter, Blanket started a surface exploration program. So if all the geologists out there, if there are any on the call, a very simplified geological map showing kind of the host rocks that we're looking at. All the blue vertical lines are the trenches that we have done. So that was a start of the exploration activities. That's over a strike length of 600 meters, the trenches are approximately 200 meters long. And out of this, we have identified an area that's approximately, yes, it's approximately 50,000 square meters surface exploration area that has got nominal gold values.

If you look carefully, you can see some colored bars that are next to the trench lines. I can't put values on this yet. We haven't released anything to the market, but it gives you an indication of mineralization in those trenches. So during Q3, we have instituted a Reverse Circulation Drilling program, spaced 25 by 25 meters apart, drilling to a depth of about 45 meters. And the intention of this is quite clearly, if we have sources of ore that are probably amenable to heap leaching, Blanket mine will have access to, hopefully, an additional source of low-cost surface ounces that also do not require to take up capacity in our current plant environment and capacity that we have.

And so my last closing remark on Blanket exploration on surface is if you look at an aerial map of, for instance, Bilboes, that's covered with historical open pits. If you look at an aerial map of Blanket, there are no open pits. And it's just really a function of the age of the mine when Blanket first started, it went underground very, very quickly. But quite clearly, along our lease area, this should be the first of a couple that we would see like this. This program is expected to finish up late December, so kind of early Q1 of 2026, we should have a full exploration report on this as well.

With that, I'd like to hand back to Mark. All done.

Thank you, Craig. At the outset, I had indicated that Victor would talk about Bilboes. But the fact of the matter is that, as I also said, we're about to provide a very detailed update on Bilboes imminently. And so at this stage, there's nothing really Victor can say other than just repeat the word imminently. So apologies for getting that slightly wrong.

So in terms of outlook, we remain on track to achieve the increased production guidance for 2025. So we're about, sort of notwithstanding a few headwinds in Q3, we're about 3,000 ounces ahead of where we expected to be at the beginning of the year, which is good. Craig has given you a good sense of the very encouraging drilling taking place at Blanket, both at depth and at the surface.

Motapa, we're looking to convert the drilling into a maiden resource early next -- first half of next year, which should validate the acquisition of that asset some time ago. As I said, Bilboes' feasibility study, news on that is imminent. And we continue to look closely at cost management to see to what extent we can try and get those costs down somewhat, but acknowledging that Blanket is now a fundamentally different mine to what it was 5 years ago, and we're not going to go back to the days of enjoying the days of producing gold at $850 an ounce.

So with that, we can open it up to questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Nic Dinham.

I have several questions, tidy up some details here. On the mining side, there's a lot more broken ore registering than actually hoisted. Could we have an explanation for that? And also from you, James, I think what are your immediately available ore reserves at the moment? I think you've got a sort of South African standard when you talk about that?

James, do you want to deal with those questions?

Yes. So obviously, in this particular quarter, we broke more, but we had -- I mean, if you look at the year, for instance, we are within the normal standard of plus or minus 2%, the difference between what we broke and what we hoisted. But in this particular quarter, we had -- we broke slightly more, and this is simply because of our hoisting constraints, the stoppages that we had with the loss of life in some of the areas, and we let, but you will see that that will correct out this quarter.

Then in terms of the immediately available sort of phase length, we are still very -- I mean we're still quite low. We're looking at maybe at the moment 2 months to 3 months. We need to move that up with a little bit more development that we need to do that with the flexibility. We are happy that we are already over 5% above for the year. And we are seeing -- we are actually mining -- we're actually putting back into our reserves. So we should see a big correction within the next year. And I think within the next 3 years to 4 years, we should be in a position to be maybe 3 months to 6 months or better, so that we can have better flexibility.

And here's a question which I always run off you, Ross. What are you expecting from dividends from Blanket this year? And will that bring that horizon for the end of the facilitation loans any closer than quarter 1, which you spoke about last time. Obviously, things have materially improved.

Hello, Nic. Yes, absolutely. So those loans basically will be paid off by the end of the year or January at the latest. So certainly earlier than originally talked about in terms of end of -- sort of Q1 next year. And then, yes, in terms of planning for the remainder of the year, we're originally targeting -- well if I deal with in cash, we were targeting a $50 million sort of cash balance to have been distributed and be sitting in Jersey by the end of the year. I think that's more likely to be between $40 million and $42 million, that type of level in terms of distributions that come through the chain.

So we've had $45 million that have been distributed up from Blanket, both during the quarter and post in terms of dividends, and we continue to look to build our offshore bank account up closer to that $40 million mark.

Sorry, Ross, if you can just explain again what is the quantum of dividends that Blanket will distribute over this year, given where things are at the moment? What will the total look like? Is that the number you mentioned?

Yes. So those are the numbers that we've already done sort of $45 million. And depending on performance and the like, we're probably going to get between sort of $15 million to $20 million additional distributions that happen within this remainder of the year. That's obviously impacted by timings in terms of when those dividends actually get declared and the distributions get distributed up the chain. So we've done $45 million, it will probably be $60 million to $70 million in terms of actual distributions that come up from Blanket.

Our next question comes from [ Joseph Tarsh ].

My question is mainly for Mark. So you've talked in the past about how your goal is to avoid further common shareholder dilution as you fund the growth of the business. And with the favorable gold prices in 2025, Blanket, you're really starting to harvest some of the fruit of Blanket and the previous investments there. So my question is, how much do you intend to retain cash to fund the future development projects and potentially other acquisitions in Zimbabwe, as opposed to increase the dividend? And effectively, if a common shares needed to be issued, again, raise your cost of capital and doing so, as I think in hindsight, has been the case following the dividend increases with Blanket?

Okay. I'm not sure I heard all of that correctly. The upshot is that we -- there were several questions embedded in that. We're not looking at any further acquisitions in Zimbabwe. I think our plate is full. That's the first thing to say. Secondly, we do have a very substantial capital investment program in the Bilboes project, and that will become clearer imminently. And in that context, it would not be appropriate to increase the dividend.

Having said that, our planning going forward is to maintain the dividend. Now clearly, we're not going to promise to maintain the dividend. But we don't see the dividend increasing, and we will do our level best to avoid reducing the dividend. I think that's all -- I think those are the answers to the questions you raised. Is there anything I've not answered? It's quite a complex question. Is there anything I've not answered?

I think that gets to the meat of it. Maybe just as a follow-up, if you were to have a general idea of when dividend increases would occur again, would it be after the current projects with Bilboes and Motapa are substantially completed?

Well, it would be after Bilboes is completed. And let's be very clear. We're doing Bilboes not for fun. We're doing Bilboes to increase cash generation and thereby increase our ability to pay dividends. That's entirely what we're about. I mean we've been paying dividends now for about 12 years or so. And if you look at the returns that we've generated for shareholders over the course of the last 10 years or so, I think it's a 1,000% return compared to gold going up threefold and the GDXJ going up fourfold. So we substantially outperformed both gold and the GDXJ. And a major contribution to that has actually been the effect of those continuous dividend payments over the last 10 years to 12 years. So paying a dividend is deeply embedded in our DNA.

And I would hope that our past actions in terms of maintaining and then increasing the dividend should give shareholders a high degree of comfort that we're going into Bilboes and other projects with a view to increasing the dividend. It's very important.

Our next question comes from Tate Sullivan.

I think [indiscernible], sorry for background noise. Is any of the work that you have done on Motapa going to factor into the feasibility study for Bilboes?

No, it's far too, that would -- it's far too early. It will take a maiden resource at Motapa early next year is just a staging post. To complete that work at Motapa will take -- Craig, what, 3 years, 3 years or 4 years?

Yes, I'd say a timeline of 3 years or 3 years to 5 years.

Yes. So that -- if we were to -- if we're hoping to fold Motapa into Bilboes at the get-go, that would introduce a delay of many years into the project, which I'm not sure on this as we stand. So look, it is all -- if you think about the Bilboes project, the first 6 years will be mining in the Isabella-McCays area. And then the latter 4 years will be mining Bubi, which is more remote.

In the intervening period, that gives us plenty of time to finish the geological work at Motapa and then in due course to fold Matapa into Bilboes as the Isabella-McCays material runs out. But at this stage, there'll be no benefit to shareholders in deferring the project.

And then for Blanket, you mentioned in the press release a plan of scheduled engineering work on winders and shafts. I'm sure that -- and then storing and then accumulating the ore for uninterrupted milling. Is this all planning for 2026 engineering work?

Your line is very poor. Could you kind of repeat the question because I couldn't pick up all of it.

Yes. You mentioned some scheduled engineering work on winders and shafts for Blanket. Is that all planning for 2026?

James, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's that sort of a relatively quiet period over the December, January '26, '27. James, is that correct?

Yes, it is correct, Mark. Yes. So '26, '27, we're going to have the AC-DC conversion, yes.

Yes. And let's be clear, the whole point is to have a stockpile so that we can see our way through that hiatus without interrupting production.

There are no other raised hands. So follow-up, which is from Nic Dinham.

Yes. So I missed a question for Craig here. When, Craig, do you think you'll be in a position to do a reserve upgrade at Bilboes -- at Blanket? And when would that result in a technical report summary?

So we are currently busy with one. So during Q1, late Q1, we will have a new technical report out. We'll have a revised capital, and we'll have revised resources. And obviously, with the life of mine, we'll have a revised reserve estimate as well.

We've got another question from [ Yuvan Lowe ].

Congratulations on the strong financial results. I've got a couple of questions. Perhaps first for James. So in relation to the development that has been done, could you just talk specifically to Eroica and BQR?

James?

Yes. So I mean we obviously now, at the moment, I mean, in terms of the development, nothing has really changed in terms of Eroica and BQR, I mean we are developing reserves in that area. We still have got crews also that are busy mining in that area. I wouldn't say off the top of my head, it could be around, Craig, maybe 15% of our production is coming from there. These are still high-grade areas. We're still seeing good values in Eroica and the BQR area. But we also -- that we also had the loss of life was also in BQR, for instance.

But we are confident that with the development that we're doing at the moment, we should be in a position to open good reserves in the next 2 years, 3 years, like we say, and we are accelerating development there.

On a related note, but this time directed to Craig. So the discoveries at Sheet or in the position of Sheet are very interesting. I know you're focusing on the oxide for heap leach right now. But have you done any deeper holes? Does there appear to be an extension at depth to Sheet? Is it disseminated sulfides or is it [ quartz ]?

Yes. So that surface exploration that I showed there sits, as I say, it's 250 meters to the east of Sheet. When we extrapolated underground because, obviously, we've got the whole claim of our underground workings, it appears as though this area hasn't been mined. So there is a potential for a previously unknown or unmined orebody to be sitting in the footfall of Sheet 250 meters to the east. So we're going to tackle the surface. And in the meantime, we have -- we are in the process of procuring slightly stronger, better electrohydraulic rigs that we can drill from 9 level on from Sheet drives that we have there to actually have a look if this does carry on down.

Sorry, Yuvan, does that finish you? You done?

Yes. Thank you very much.

I can see we've got a typed question, which I think falls -- I mean, Ross, can you pick it up at the bottom? It seems to really fall into your bailiwick. Can you see them?

Sorry Mark. I didn't seen enough, reading through.

Yes. I mean, the first question is what's effectively the downside gold price scenario, which -- below which we couldn't sustain the dividend? So I think that's the first question. Are you able to answer that?

Yes. So on that one, that would be sort of $1,850 would be the low price that -- or downside scenario in the short term and that we've modeled on that side.

Okay. And the second one refers to lease liabilities. I don't quite understand what the question is about lease liability. Cash used for payments of lease liabilities has been increasing year-on-year. What's the long-term capital allocation strategy for managing these increased lease debt? I don't quite know what lease liabilities were referring to?

Yes, not sure either in terms of the leases.

We're conspicuously ungeared. I mean we do have some loan notes, which initially were issued by the solar company. And then when we sold the solar company, we Caledonia deliberately took those loan notes over, because we're interested in helping to further develop the emergence of a debt capital market in Zimbabwe. And so we're keen as a company to continue to build those relationships with high-quality Zimbabwean institutions. So we have those liabilities. Then the other liabilities are really the nature of very short-term overdraft facilities. And as you can see, we've pretty much repaid to the latter half of those to go during this quarter. So I'm not quite sure what the lease liabilities are.

It's probably related to some of the property leases and the new buildings and some of the signing of those leases. But again, not material in the total scheme of the proceeding here.

Okay. Two further questions. First, what's the percentage tonnage being hoisted by #4 in Central Shaft?

So currently, the percentage -- I think for the whole of this year, the target is for about 62% to come up Central Shaft and the balance to come up #4 Shaft. And so I think the point that Ross was making is if you look at that in terms of tonne meters, in 2020, we hoisted 630,000 tonnes from a depth of 760 meters. So that's about 450 million tonne meters.

If you take -- if we're going to hoist -- this year, we're going to host about 830,000 tonnes. If 62% of that is coming from 100 meters, that effectively increases the tonne meters to about nearly 900 million. So we're using pretty much twice as much power to hoist, which is, I think, the point that Ross was trying to make.

And the second question is, was the pressure on production cost broad-based or unique too?

The pressure on production costs has been across the board. So we're continuing to see increased labor costs, and that's a combination of overtime, and I'm going to say bonus payments based on production exceeding targets. In terms of trying to manage overtime, one of the things we're doing is we've introduced a clocking time attendance system, which is allowing us now to get a better handle as to how and why overtime is being incurred.

And one of the things we want to do going forwards is to try to improve the roster and improve the way we use labor, so that the workers get to and from their places of work much more quickly. And therefore, they're less tired, and they also do less overtime. So I think that's the initiative on labor.

On consumables, we've looked over the last 5 years. I mean, on our consumables, about 1/3 is what we call variable consumables, which is cyanide, drill steels, explosives, and that sort of stuff. Over the course of the last 5 years, we've actually become more efficient across the board in terms of our usage of cyanide, explosives, drill steels, kilos per tonne milled. But in every case, we're finding that the unit cost is going up, particularly in the case of, say, rods, where the average increase per annum over the last 5 years has been about 12%, I think. So we are seeing costs generally going up.

And then the third one would be -- yes, it's not just labor, that's electricity and that's consumables. Within consumables, the conspicuous offender, I guess, at this stage would be the cost of running the TMMs both in terms of overtime and consumables. And that reflects the fact that some of these TMMs, the underground trackless equipment is getting old, and we need to seriously now consider whether it's economic keeping and repairing old and reliable stuff, or buying new stuff, which is more reliable and less prone to breaking down.

So I hope that -- and then on top of -- sorry, also on top of the final point to that question, within the quarter, we did incur some additional costs relating to repairing a ball mill, one of the big ball mills found. And whilst we could work around it in terms of maintaining tonnage throughput, it meant that we did incur some extra costs to fix that ball mill. But primarily, the increase in costs, I guess, is structural, not specific. I hope that answers the question.

Any further questions?

No further raise hands. So over to you for any closing remarks.

Let me just make sure there's no one. Okay. Look, thank you very much for joining us. It was a -- I characterize the quarter as being a solid quarter. It creates a good foundation. And as we say, the real news flow is going to be the imminent news flow relating to Bilboes.

So thank you all for joining us. Thank you very much.