Caledonia Mining Corporation Plc (CMCL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Okay, I'm recording in progress. Here with me, Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's Chief Executive. There's Victor Capari, who is, as you'll know, one of the vendors of the Bilbao's asset. He's an Executive Director. We've got Chester Goodburn, the CFO based in Johannesburg. Donna Roots, also the Chief Operating Officer based in Johannesburg. Morris Mason, Vice President, Corporate Development. And Camilla, VP Group Communications. They're both based in the UK. Shall we get going? So without beating about the bush, it was another very challenging quarter. As I go through these, my comments will be focused on Q2 compared to Q2 previous years. We do, for reference, show six-month numbers there, but I prefer to focus just on the quarter. So production was 18,000, 18 and a half thousand ounces. That includes a very disappointing 1,000 ounces from Bilbo. So it's about sort of 17,400 from Blanket. I'll ask Donna and Victor respectively to discuss the operational issues facing Blanket and Bilbo respectively. Pretty much saved by the higher gold price. The higher gold price meant that revenues were broadly level at about 37 million, but gross profit was substantially reduced. down from $18 million in the second quarter of 2022 to just under $11 million for the second quarter of 2023. And that was a combination of higher, very high costs at Bilbo's with no commensurate revenue. And then at Blanket, the difficulty at Blanket was largely, largely relates to higher than expected use of electricity. which gave rise to about a couple of million dollars of extra expense there. That flows through into the net profit attributable to shareholders. Instead of being $11 million profit, it was half a million dollar loss. And that also flows through in terms of the earnings per share. And critica...