Perseus Mining

Be here today presenting Perseus Mining. And I hope to explain to you all today why I think that Perseus deserves a much larger position in your portfolios. So Perseus is an Australian-listed gold mining company with our assets based in Africa. And we’ve been operating in Africa for about 20 years now. And this year we’ve just delivered the company’s strongest financial results to date.

We have three operating assets in Africa. We have Edikan in Ghana, and we have Yaouré and Sissingué in Côte d’Ivoire. And we’re in the process of finalizing the development of the Nyanzaga project in Tanzania. We’ve just completed our first underground development, so the CMA underground project in Yaouré, which commenced operation in April this year and is in the process of ramp up into full production over the course of this financial year. Perseus as a company has 10.6 million ounces of mineral resources and 7 million ounces of ore reserves, and a very strong focus on building those resources and reserves over the coming years.

Maybe if I talk about why Africa. I think Perseus has been in Africa for 20 years, as I said, and over that period of time’s been able to build a very successful business. And what you see in Africa is some of the world’s most prospective and unexplored geological gold belts. But you also see countries with rising populations and expanding middle class, and this is driving regional growth and creating workforces which are very eager to better themselves and some incredible skills as a result of that.

We also see in Africa very supportive governments and governments that are competing for capital and development. A lot of these countries have good mineral endowment, and all they need is people to help them develop them. And so their governments are very supportive in terms of bringing people into the country and providing a platform for them to be able to develop on. We also see very supportive communities around the mines that we operate as well. And all of these things go to the economic value that a company like us brings to the African countries in which we operate. And Perseus is a great example of what can be developed in Africa.

In terms of the company itself, as of the 23rd of September, it was a A$9 billion market cap. We have over a billion dollars of cash and bullion on the balance sheet. And you can see in the top right-hand chart here that we’ve consistently outperformed the US dollar gold price for the last few years. Our shareholding base is predominantly in Australia and North America, but we have also a reasonable amount of shareholding in Europe and the UK as well.

The company itself has been built on developing assets or developing ore bodies into profitable and sustainable mines. And every one of the assets that sits within our portfolio, Perseus has built the mine, transitioned it into operations and continued to make highly productive and reliable operations through each of those assets. And the Nyanzaga project in Tanzania will be the fourth asset that the company’s built. We also recently delivered the underground project in Yaouré, which I referred to earlier. All of these projects have been built within the budget and timeframe set out at the initial stages, and that even extends to Yaouré, which was built during the COVID period. So a very successful outcome.

And none of that happens by chance. I think Perseus is built with a highly capable management team, a highly capable technical team, a highly capable operations and project teams as well. But we also have a very strong social license to operate in the regions in which we operate, and we think that’s a very important part of how you do business in Africa.

One of the strengths of the business has been its ability to extend its mine life through organic means, and we continue to focus on that as a business today. All of our assets have seen substantial increases in mine life, almost double for most of them. I think it’s only Yaouré which is almost double. The others are double. And this goes to the quality of the ore bodies that we have within the business, but also the ability that we have to sweat the initial capital that’s invested in these operations. And all of this work just comes from additional drilling. There’s no capital in terms of additional infrastructure and so forth. So it goes to the return on capital that we’re able to produce as a business.

In terms of our financial results for FY26, we’ve got industry-leading safety performance. We’ve got a total reportable injury frequency rate of 0.9 for the business. But we completed the year across the business LTI free. And our Nyanzaga project is actually over 10 million hours now LTI free, which is a fantastic outcome and goes to the core of what Perseus is about, which is making sure our people go home safely every day.

We also had a record financial performance for the year. Our operating cash flow was up 24% year on year, and our earnings per share up 17% year on year. And from a growth perspective, we increased our reserves by 40% and our mineral resources by 37% over the last twelve months. We completed the underground project and brought that into operation, and we substantially progressed the Nyanzaga Gold Project, which is expected to produce gold in January, this in 2027.

With our financial results this year, we also released a record dividend and our new capital management policy, which talks to delivering 20% of our operating cash flow as an annual minimum dividend. We increased our buybacks for the coming year to $350 million and also announced a special dividend of $100 million. So continuing to build and operate all of our projects whilst providing returns for our shareholders.

From a production perspective, we produced 405,000 ounces at an all-in site cost of $1,750 an ounce, producing a notional cash flow of $769 million, leaving us at the end of the year with over a billion dollars of cash and bullion on the balance sheet.

I talked to dividends before, but the company’s continued to build on the dividends it produces. And as the company grows and the performance of the company grows, we’ll increasingly be able to return money to our shareholders. Our dividend for FY26 was 14 cents per share, which was up 87% on the previous year and amounted to A$187 million being returned through the dividend stream. We bought $127 million of our own shares during the course of FY26 and approved the buyback for FY27, $350 million. And we also announced a proposed special dividend of $100 million, which is returning the proceeds of the sale of our asset in Sudan, which we sold during the course of the financial year. So since 2022, the company’s returned $667 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks and the like.

In terms of our dividend policy or our capital management framework, which we updated recently, it’s founded on our ongoing confidence in our ability to continue to generate cash, continue to grow the business, and at the same time, continue to return money to our shareholders. And that’s underpinned by the disciplined operational performance that we have as a business. For us, delivering on our guidance each year is something that we pride ourselves on, and we haven’t missed it yet. And last year, again, we delivered on both our cost and production guidance. And that’s important because it enables us to maintain our commitments to our employees, to the governments that host our mines, to the communities that support us during our operations and, of course, our suppliers as well.

We set ourselves a minimum liquidity position of $500 million, and we did that to maintain the strength of balance sheet that we wanna be able to maintain so that we can continue to take advantage of growth opportunities as they present. And to put that into context, we currently have $1.4 billion worth of liquidity in the business. We continue to focus on delivering on our high-yield capital projects. So we’ve got the Nyanzaga project, which is coming into production in January. The CMA underground, I’ve talked about just before as well. But we’re also doing our next cutbacks at Edikan and continuing to focus on exploration to increase our resources and reserves. And then when it comes to dividends, we’ve committed to a minimum of 20% of our operating cash flow being returned to shareholders, and if the balance sheet permits and at the discretion of the board, provide discretionary or additional returns through dividends, buybacks, and other means.

This year, we have doubled our exploration spend across our business, and that is focused on continuing to grow our mineral resources and ore reserves. We did increase our mineral resources by 40% this year. Sorry, reserves by 40% this year. A large proportion of that was at our Nyanzaga project, but we also built our reserves at Yaouré. And we also replaced our depletion at both Edikan and Sissingué through the year. We also increased our mineral resources by 37% and again, some significant increases at both Yaouré and Edikan. And the focus for the year ahead is to convert more of those resources into reserves and mineable inventories.

If we turn to Yaouré, so Yaouré’s currently got a mineral resource of 2.8 million ounces and an ore reserve of 1.7 million ounces. And we are mining in the Yaouré pit, and we’ve commenced the underground in the CMA underground. Our focus now turns to growing those reserves and we have a substantial amount of drilling occurring this year, primarily in the Yaouré pit. And we see a potential to extend that pit at depth through the drill program that we’re undertaking. We also see a potential for expansion in the underground through a number of means. Firstly, it’s currently mined through open stoping, so we’re looking at paste fill studies and looking for pillar recovery. And we’ve drilled some surface holes and demonstrated that there is potential for that ore body to extend at depth. And so, through the course of the year, we’ll be putting some development in place so that we can set up some underground drill platforms and look to further increase the size of that ore body and extend the life of the Yaouré asset for us.

At Edikan, we’ve got 2.5 million ounces of resource and a million ounces of reserves currently. And we’re mining in the Inkozer pit and have just started the cutbacks on the Fetish and Asuaja North pits, which will be the next ore sources for the Edikan mine. Again, a substantial drill program underway this year, and it’ll probably be a two-year drill program, and that’ll be focused on extending the existing mines that we have at depth. So the Agyebontrimso mine, which was the initial mine for Edikan, is a big focus for our drilling this year, looking to extend the known mineralization at depth. Similarly with Fetish and Asuaja North, so looking to further extend the life of the Edikan mine through those organic means.

And then finally to Sissingué. Sissingué’s got half a million ounces of resource and 230,000 ounces of reserves. We’re currently mining in the Bagwe, Antoinette and Veronique satellite mines, and they’ve been performing very well for us. Again, exploration drilling this year focusing on extending the life of that asset, and we can see that we have the opportunity to extend the Sissingué main pit, as shown on the diagram here, which is gonna be a core focus for us. There’s a couple of satellite deposits that we are doing some further drilling on this year as well to hopefully bring them into the resource base. And there is some extensional potential at the Mbiasso mine, which we’ve completed last year, and we think that we can extend that through further drilling this year as well. So again, big focus to grow Sissingué. It’s a small mine for us, but it can generate a lot of cash, and so we’re looking to further grow its resource base.

And then finally, our Nyanzaga project. So we’re 80% complete on the construction. Very focused on delivering our production in January next year. We’ve incurred $374 million, so spent to date $374 million in construction capital and $26 million in pre-stripping. So the project is progressing very well, and it’s really down now to just completion of the milling facilities and bring them into operation. That gives us a sixteen-year mine life. Fourteen of those sixteen years are over 200,000 ounces per annum. So a very big driver for future cash flow and a cornerstone asset for Perseus for many years to come.

In terms of sustainability, I did talk about our safety record for last financial year. I think safety is core to everything we do at Perseus, and it continues to be a focus regardless of that good performance. And we do have a mantra that we want all our employees to go home safely every day, and that is truly how we run our business.

In terms of economic value that we create for the countries in which we operate, we returned $1.2 billion of economic value to those countries through the course of FY26. $714 million in local procurement and $384 million in taxes and royalties and other government distributions. Importantly, our workforce comes from the countries in which we operate. So 96% of our workforce is local to the countries in which we operate, and about half of that comes locally from around the assets themselves. And that’s a very important part of what we do as a business in the countries in which we operate. But it’s also a very efficient way to run a business, to have your workforce come from as close as possible to the mine that you operate.

This year, we expect to produce between 420,000 and 480,000 ounces at an all-in site cost of $1,835 to $2,070 an ounce. And this year is the first year that we start to bring Nyanzaga production into the portfolio, and that’ll continue to grow in the coming years.

In terms of our ability to generate cash, I think this chart says it all. I think the last average EBITDA margin across our business for the last three years is 57.7%, which is compared with our Australian or ASX peers of about 50% and international peers of about 50%. So our business has an ability to generate a lot of cash, and that comes from the way that we organically grow the business and the cost focus of the business. So we run very tight ship from a cost perspective, but there’s a slide I showed before that of the organic growth that sits within the business is how we’re able to generate these returns. Our average return on capital employed is 27% compared with our ASX peers of 21% and global peers of just under 20%.

So what you get with Perseus is you get a diversified African asset portfolio with a proven development and operational excellence capability. We do have a peer-leading return on capital employed and a track record of growth through exploration and through M&A. Our growth prospects are underpinned by the $1.4 billion of liquidity, and we have a track record and a mantra of doing what we say we’re gonna do. So we deliver on our promises. So thank you very much for listening.

And I’ve got 59 seconds left for questions. Any quick questions from the floor for Craig? Just one hand.

Just some comments about women in the employment and also development of new skilled personnel.

Yeah, thanks for the question. When it comes to female participation in our business, I think we’re about the same as our peers, around about 12% across the business, which seems to be fairly common in mining businesses. Certainly, we’d love it to be higher and we’ve got some initiatives in place, particularly our Nyanzaga project where we are bringing trainees into the business and focusing on maximizing the female participation in those traineeships. Which kinda goes to your second question. As I’ve stated before, about half our workforce comes from around the mines in which we operate. And so those people don’t have the skills when we start there, and we see our job is to build that capability and build those skills so that they can support our business, support their families, but also then go on to other things around different jurisdictions within Africa.

Okay, thank you so much, Craig and Perseus for presenting. Please stick around. We’ve got another session with... Thank you... 250 Montage Gold.