Mark Learmonth
Analyst · Flinker & Co
Thanks, Steve. Okay. Turning to Page 10. What you see here is just a little sort of summary information on the results. So gold production for the quarter was 13,500, up 6% better than the comparable quarter in quarter 2. The number that really sticks out here, the on-mine cost per ounce, which increased from $534 an ounce in quarter 2 of 2019 to $811 in quarter 2 of 2020. I want to come back and talk about that in quite some detail because the last thing I wanted people to leave the discussion thinking that cost are under control. But the headline is that the second quarter of 2019, that $534 was -- is artificially known as various factors, and the quarter gets finished with artificially high for various factors. But I'll explain that in more detail and that really plays to --into the all of the pending cost per ounce.
Average gold price, as you know, the gold price is high. So we benefited by that [ dollar amount ] in terms of realized gold price. Gross profit, that's a good number. That’s gone up from $7 million to $9 million. That really does reflect the strong performance of the business. Net profit attributable to shareholders, $23 million in quarter 2 of 2019 and $5 million this quarter ending, don’t forget. Please don’t forget that $23.3 million in the second quarter 2019 increased about $20 million of unrealized foreign exchange gain due to the rapid devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar last year.
So really, if you're looking at profitability, the meaningful number is the adjusted earnings per share, which increased from about [ $0.24 ], up to [ $0.36 ], so approximately 50% increase there. And that really does reflect the underlying performance of the business. The adjusted earnings per share, excluding some business relating to foreign exchange gains that excludes any profit realized on the disposable asset in South Africa and exclude deferred tax. So we strip out all the numbers and that, frankly, is the underlying performance of the business. And if you don't like accounting, if you go look at cash, maybe a realistic approach, net cash increased from $7.8 million at the end of the second quarter of 2019 to $11.6 million at the end of June this year. And that excludes another $1 million or so, the gold ETF, which we're holding in South Africa on a short-term basis to protect cash in South Africa against further devaluation of the South African rand. So actually, $11.6 million in sort of real term is actually is over $12.5 million.
Looking at Page 11. We'll talk about revenue in a moment. The royalties still pegged at 5%. On production costs, I’m going to come back to in some detail in a moment. 7.5 million, up to 11.4 million. So gross profit 7 million increased to 9.2 million. Other income. That's a considerable increase in the quarter. That really reflects the Export Credit Incentive scheme, which was introduced towards the end of the first quarter of 2020 and running for most of the second quarter of 2020. It was terminated, I think, in May. And that we were effectively getting a 25% increase. 25% premium on the gold we were delivering to the government. It's [ circular ] really by the Zimbabwean authorities. It is paid in local currency. It doesn't mean a great deal. We didn't particularly welcome it, and we weren’t particularly sad to see it to go. We think it's a very distorting component in the arrangement with Zimbabwe. And if anyone -- I think we’ll talk about that in more detail, if anybody want to later.
Other expenses, 1.3 million in the quarter. That 1.3 million largely comprises $1 million of donations that we made to sort of COVID-19 initiative outside immediate mine area. So the mining costs -- the production costs include about $0.5 million of COVID costs on the mine, and there's another $1 million in the local community, which we donated. Then also, we spent about $200,000 evaluating those in preliminary work on the solar project.
Admin expenses down a bit because we're not traveling as much. Foreign exchange down, is only $1.4 million. Of the -- the asset base in Zimbabwe depreciates [ oil ] just simply less to write-down as the local currency depreciates so that's why that tends to diminish. The cash settled share-based payment 700,000. That largely reflect the increased value of the LTIP scheme as a result of the higher share price. So operating profit of just under $10 million for the quarter compared to $27 million for the previous -- for the comparable quarter. Don't forget that $27 million increase, $21 million of foreign exchange on exchange gain.
Tax needs a little bit of explanation. In the quarter, the tax charge was $3.5 million out of an accounting PBT of nearly $10 million. So that's an effective tax rate of about 35%. The bulk of that is the tax in Zimbabwe, income tax in Zimbabwe. The tax regime in Zimbabwe particularly [ earlier ], it's a 25% -- 25.75% tax rate. But we've got to understand it that although we -- our business in Zimbabwe has been U.S. dollar as its accounting currency, the tax calculations have to be performed on the back of Zimbabwe dollar accounts, which means that losses, foreign exchange losses in U.S. dollar term or foreign share gains in U.S. dollar terms have reversed in Zimbabwe dollar terms.
And what that meant, particularly for the previous quarter, for the comparable quarter in 2019 was that we were getting tax rates in Zimbabwe for the substantial unrealized foreign exchange movements, which meant that in quarter 2 of 2019, we're actually getting a [ working grade ] tax credit, which is why in quarter 2 2019, you see the tax expense actually is a small tax credit, which clearly was abnormal and not sustainable. So the tax charge for the quarter, $3.5 million. The bulk of that is fairly normal income tax in Zimbabwe. On top of that, we also have to pay some additional taxes arising from moving money around the place and the holding tax. And that also incur a small amount of income tax in South Africa arising on the procurement function. So tax is in Zimbabwe – I mean, the company profit, which is why -- so that's why in total, the overall tax rate might be higher, but it's [ only high for ] structural movements. So that’s the profit and loss accounts.
All you see on Page 12 is just some background information, helping us navigate how the revenue increased and what contributes the revenue increments and was mainly on gold price, but to a lesser extent, it was tonnes milled growing production. I’ll just try to give you some more context as to what was driving the good news on the revenue side.
Page 13 is production costs. And let's focus on this a little bit more because this really gets to the reason why the on-mine costs per ounce increased from $534 to $811. So to break down production costs, wages and salaries is 2.9 million -- 3.9 million increased about 4.9 million. And that reflects an increase in head count and an increase in the number of man hours worked. And also, to a small extent, about $300,000 or so arose from the fact that in the lockdown period, we have to change our working practices so that we achieved social distancing in the mine operations. To do that, we had to reduce the number of people who went on the ground. We had told the workers that we were going to pay them all, whether they would come to work or not. But then the workers we all called come to work, made a point quite fairly, but why should I get paid the same for actually going down the mine and doing the that work as to a guy who was sitting at home doing nothing. So we felt obliged to offer a premium rate to those people who were called upon to work during the lockdown period. We added about $300,000 or so of costs in the quarter. So wage and salary.
Consumable materials. They went up from 2.6 million to 3.7 million. The increase was largely due to the increased cost of maintaining the fleet of underground trackless equipment which we're using in the decline. We got second-hand refurbished equipment, which is somewhat expensive in terms of the maintenance. To address this issue, we have identified a contractor based on Johannesburg, who in due course, will be at the mine, helping to improve the maintenance of the equipment and reduce the maintenance costs. But from the current COVID-19 environment, they’re not able to travel up there. Employees can't travel up to the mine. And so we had a plan in place to address this increased cost. We just can't implement it quite at this time.
And the big reason for the increase in costs, as you can see is electricity costs, which in second quarter of 2019 was less than $0.5 million. This quarter was 2 -- just over $2 million. The reason for the increase is that the $447,000 electricity costs in 2019 reflects the fact that we're paying for electricity at that time in Zimbabwe dollars. As the Zimbabwe dollar diminished in value then the effective unit cost of our electricity fell from $0.128 per kilowatt hour to less than $0.02 kilowatt hour, all of that being reflected in the second quarter. Now clearly, that wasn't sustainable, and there was a bit of a win for profit for us, and that has now normalized to a level of just over $2 million, which includes about $300,000 of genset usage. So that's the prime [ swing ] in the reason for the increase in the on-mine costs.
So really, if you look -- if you try and reconcile why $534 on-mine costs per ounce increased to $811, there's really 4 components to it. The component of the sort of artificially low electricity costs in the second quarter of 2019, which accounts for approximately $150 an ounce; use of gensets in the second quarter of '20, the increased use of gensets in the second quarter of 2020, which added about $22 an ounce; the increased maintenance cost on the trackless equipment, that's about $64 an ounce; and the COVID-19 expenses, both at some consumables and the labor, that's about $38 an ounce. So taking all those into account, [ amounts to ] at the cost of $534 up to just over $800 an ounce, which pretty much explains why the -- why that cost per ounce has increased. So special factors and reasons that we've got under control. So don't please leave this call, thinking that we're not controlling the costs. The costs remain well under control, and that is to sort of unusual events. And they are within guidance. We are well within our guidance range for the year.
Cash flow, a lot of numbers here. There is 5 points I’ll make on the cash flow that’s listed. We have to adjust the very big unrealized foreign exchange gains of, what, $22 million. The second thing is just look at the strength of the cash coming from operating activities. So second quarter of 2019, it was just over $2 million for the quarter. This quarter just finished, it’s nearly $4 million. And so for the half year, it's $14 million. So we really continue to generate good cash from the business. You can see that the cash -- the CapEx, [ 0.3 ]. You can see the CapEx. It's still quite high, $4 million or $3 million a quarter. In the second quarter 2020, CapEx was -- the CapEx spend was sort of adversely affected by the coronavirus, which why we weren’t able to procure and do as much as we would hope to. That will catch up towards the end of the year.
But then by early 2021 onwards, we do expect the working capital expenditure to diminish. You can see the $1 million purchase of the gold ETF. That's not really an investment, but really just putting money into another pocket. So I do -- I would actually say that, that increases the cash from 11.6 million really to just over 12.5 million. And if you see the dividends, the dividends paid, little red number five, dividends paid increased from $882,000 to just over $1 million. And that reflects the 2 dividend increases that we've made in the course of the year-to-date, one in January and then other one in 31 July. And as the number of shares issued have increased as well. We issued about 700,000 new shares in January to Fremiro in the quarter, the other 15% to Blanket mine.
Page 15 just trying to show the main components of our quarterly cash flow, the cash from operations, and then how that might be affected by working capital and the cash from investing activities. Nothing really of note on the balance sheet. The balance sheet continues to grow as we invest in the project. And also the current assets typically tend to improve as we build up inventories to be defensive in the case of several interruptions to our supply chain. And also, we're finding increasingly even to make prepayments in Zimbabwe because there's no availability of supplier credit. So really, that's all I have on the finance. If anyone has any specific questions, we can come back to that in the Q&A session.
Steve, I hand back to you.