CMCL - Caledonia Mining Corporation Plc (CMCL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-04-03 13:48:12 ET
Caledonia Mining Corporation Plc (CMCL)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
April 03, 2024 09:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Camilla Horsfall - VP, Group Communications
Mark Learmonth - CEO
Chester Goodburn - CFO
Presentation
Camilla Horsfall
We're going to run through the presentation as always, and we will leave time for questions at the end. What we do ask though is if you do have a question, if you could just raise your hand and we will unmute you. We find that's a better format than the written Q&A.
I'm now just going to pass you over to Mark and Chester who can run through the presentation.
Mark Learmonth
Thanks very much, Camilla. I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's CEO. And I was going to give a few opening observations and comments before I hand over to Chester. It's fair to say 2023 was a challenging year. Most of the difficulty was encountered in the first half of the year with a difficult situation at Blanket mine and also the Bilboes oxides problem. Both of those are resolved and Q3 was a good quarter. Q4 started off reasonably well. It was sort of sideswiped towards the end of the quarter by a couple of unexpected things. But pretty much the bad news relating to 2023 was dealt within the first half.
Having said that let's just run through this. So annual gold production at Blanket was just over 75,000 ounces, which was in line with guidance. Gross profit for the year was $41.5 million, compared to nearly $62 million in the previous year. And that decrease was largely due to higher production costs, in particular at the Bilboes oxides mine in the early parts of the year....
Caledonia Mining Corporation Plc (CMCL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript