CELTF - Centamin plc (CELTF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-03-21 20:13:11 ET

Centamin plc (CELTF)

Q4 2023 Results Conference Call

March 21, 2024 4:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Martin Horgan - CEO

Ross Jerrard - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Marina Calero - RBC Capital Markets

Daniel Major - UBS

Richard Hatch - Berenberg

Presentation

Martin Horgan

Thank you very much, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today as we run through Centamin's Full Year 2023 results. As mentioned, I'm Martin Horgan, CEO. I'm delighted to be joined today by my colleagues: Ross Jerrard, our CFO; and Michael Stoner, Head of Corporate. Let's move on to the next slide, please, Michael. Disclaimer, I'm sure you'll all read that at your own leisure. And if we just move on to the next slide there about portfolio. We'll get into it.

So, really a familiar slide for everyone that knows Centamin. It's our integrated pipeline, a combination of production, development opportunity and exploration sort of potential as well. So delighted with that. Obviously, our flagship Tier 1 Sukari Mine is our foundation asset, our source of cash flow at this stage and really is the driver of business at this point in time. Delighted though with our Doropo gold project which made great strides in 2023, publishing a PFS for that and allowing us to, for the first time have non-Sukari reserves within the broader Centamin Group. ABC project also in Cote d'Ivoire, that's under evaluation right now as an exploration project. And of course, the exciting developments in Egypt around the opening up of the exploration potential of the Eastern Desert with both regulatory and fiscal change and also our early-stage discovery success on the exploration there. So a fantastic portfolio, centered in 2 great geological terrains: the Arabian-Nubian Shield of Egypt which we know is a real focus increasing at this time between Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, of course, the well-established and prolific Birimian of West Africa. Moving on to our next slide, please, Michael.

Looking at our guidance for 2023. Well, look, I think a really good year for us. I'm delighted with the performance. It's our third year of delivering into or better in guidance. And when we look at that from a production perspective, coming in at 450,000 ounces towards the bottom end of that guidance. But I think the context of deciding to take some preventative sort of maintenance at the mill, despite taking that in the third quarter last year, I think that really showcases the -- sort of the flexibility and agility of the management team to respond to that.

And I think importantly as well, the -- sort of the contingency and operational flexibility within our plans, we still were able to bring in that production at the bottom end at about 450,000 ounces there, but in line with guidance. And despite that slightly lower-than-planned production number, I think the real highlight of last year, of course, was the cost performance, a significant beat there on AISC. I think that was an excellent result. Ross will take you through the components of that later. And I think that's particularly sort of pleasing and impressive. When we look at the broader context of the mining sector right now in what has been inflationary times across the sector is that we have been consistently taking costs out of our operational base and delivering outperformance there. And of course, if you produce the ounces at the right costs, it did allow us to leverage into and take advantage of what was a stronger cash -- sorry, a stronger gold price environment during 2023.

And of course, those ounces at the right cost into a good gold price meant good cash flow delivery as well and lots of benefits of that to our business. And again, Ross will take you through that as well. But again, delighted with the 2023. Really good performance by the team and that third year of delivery for us. Just moving on to the next slide. In terms of our sustainability highlights, I think another excellent year for us.

Starting off in terms of our decarbonisation. I think lots of companies talk about decarbonisation plans and strategies. They talk about plans to be implemented. I think one of the things that I'm most proud of at Centamin is that we're actually walking the walk in terms of decarbonisation. It was our first full year of the solar plants operating at Sukari....

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