Earnings Labs

DRDGOLD Limited (DRD)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 23, 2015

$27.35

-3.90%

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Transcript

Riaan Davel

Management

Thank you very much Niël. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. It’s my privilege again to take you through the financial indicators, the trends income statement and balance sheet; we will state more financial position for 31 March. And I love talking about trends like these as long as it continues, as we look at the operating margin just a remainder that is a major of the operating effectiveness, so that’s operating profit as a percentage of revenue. And again, very, very positive trends if we look at the five quarters there. All-in sustaining cost margin, Niël mentioned that often, yes, it does contain non-cash expenditure as well which you can clear see in quarter four of 2014, which was a very specific non-cash environmental estimate adjustment in the fourth quarter, this was accretive so that made that margin quite high. Without that, if you strip that out, if you want to look at a pure trend, it would have been in the region of about 3%, so again, also very positive trending upwards to the 9% in quarter three. EBITDA, I remain again, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, again a similar impact on the fourth quarter in 2014 of that roughly R90 million adjustments. Again, if you strip that out, would have probably driven that down to about 20%, R20 million and again, start as a very positive trend. Last quarter also had a specific sale of non-core land in that adjustment, which would have made the 69 slightly lower so extremely positive trending also in the earnings line. As Niël mentioned cash, as I said it last time and I will say it again, when you get back to the office or tonight to your family, friends, loved ones that’s the one you must talk about. So…

Q - Leroy Mnguni

Management

Hi, good morning. Leroy from RMB Morgan Stanley. I have got two questions. The one is relating to the throughput. So if you are targeting 60,000 tons a day, what are you running at, at the moment and how do we expect that to build up to your targeted number? And once you got the additional capacity will that increase and what do you expected to be then? My second question is around the reliability of power, so my understanding was that Eskom had to agree that if you can curtail your demand during load shedding that wouldn’t cut your power, but it seems like they have cut your power on some occasions. So I mean, are you concerned about that how do you expect that to impact your business especially running into coal demands with this higher demand for electricity?

Jaco Schoeman

Management

Look we are achieving the 60,000. In fact we built up capacity slightly higher than 60,000, which helps us to from time to time do scheduled maintenance without dropping to below the average goal of 60,000. So at this stage, or at this point in time, since about the middle of February, I think we have been comfortably maintaining the 60,000 tons a day. Your second question was the load shedding and the impact of that in the switching, is that right?

Leroy Mnguni

Management

Yes.

Jaco Schoeman

Management

So since January we haven’t had any of those. We haven’t had an instance where there was an unannounced complete interruption of power supply. We had one or two of those in January, but I think it was probably Eskom just settling into the load shedding schedule and inadvertently interrupting power without realizing that there was an arrangement in place. We haven’t had any of that since then. February, March we haven’t had any complete interruptions of power without notification. And in fact the load shedding arrangement or the load reduction arrangement that we had with Eskom has been honored. We haven’t been without power for the better part of seven weeks, I think now at any of our production sites.

Leroy Mnguni

Management

If you do get interruptions, it’s not the production, it will be due to [indiscernible]?

Jaco Schoeman

Management

Sorry, just the change in throughput once you have additional capacity. Niël Pretorius: I think we will stick to about 60,000. And we will use that additional capacity to - in the event that this maybe an interruption. Let’s say we have got the ability to do 68,000 with this additional site for argument sake per day. We won’t push for 68,000 unless we have fallen behind somewhere during the course of the month. And we need to push that in order to catch up. Because remember everything needs to leave the plant and ultimately end up on the tailings dam as well. And you don’t want to sweat tailings dam. You want it to be around as long as possible.

Abhishek Tiwari

Management

Hi, Niël. Abhishek from JPMorgan Cazenove. Two questions, firstly, extension from Leroy. Could you please guide us on your production going forward, what can be expected in terms of steady state gold production? Niël Pretorius: We want to do R0.2 a ton. And we want to do 2 million tons a month. So we want to do 400 kilos a month that’s what we want to achieve. The metallurgical performance of the business is set at this stage and the volume capacity of the business at this stage is such that those are achievable. So it’s either, if there is an interruption in volume throughput or a drop in volume throughput, or if there is a somewhat rather impact on metallurgical efficiency that will drop below that point. But, that is certainly what we are chasing is the two twos, 2 million tons at 0.20 recovery.

Abhishek Tiwari

Management

Okay. Thanks for that. And then, could you please remind us as to the amounts that you have received so far from the Balfour sale and how much is left - how much you can expect to receive once the offer from Heaven-Sent is completed, and then what do you plan to do with the money that you get? Niël Pretorius: Yes. In the last quarter I believe there were two milestones - important milestones and this is based on what I saw in the media and on sense. The competition commission approved the transaction and the shareholders also approved the transaction. I believe a key condition that is still outstanding is the consent from the regulator from government, the EMO for the transfer of the licenses and then it will go through. I think our - the two parts to this transaction, the shares that we hold are encumbered which once is sold I think is about 40 million, if I’m not mistaken here. And then they are escrow shares which are the shares that are in dispute we claiming those shares from EMO on the basis that it was non-compliances conditions of the agreement that got in the way of the delivery of those shares they are defending the claim. And then there is also an escrow dividend. I think those two had another 12, 15 odd million up to the total from - yes. Look nobody wants to litigate, I think hopefully in a pragmatism we will determine the outcome of that little dispute as well at some stage because it’s really become a dispute Balfour and liquidation, it’s really became a dispute about money and not much else. And those are resolvable. So we have to resolve that at some stage. But money that you can bank on is about - roughly 40 million, the unencumbered shares. And it will come into treasury and if we don’t have anything to spend it on or if we don’t have to hold on to in order to maintain our buffer, our working capital buffer then you will distribute it, we will either pay a dividend or we will buy back shares if the share price stays low.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

There is nothing from the podcast.