Caledonia Mining Corp Plc (CMCL) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Scott, and welcome to this results presentation for Caledonia's third quarter. Can we open the presentation, please? Okay, let's move on to the disclaimer, which I trust you'll consider and digest. Let's move on. So, as I've said, I'm Mark Learmon, the Caledonia Chief Executive. I'm joined by Ross Gerard, who's our CFO, by Victor Gopari, who's another Executive Director, and he is primarily responsible for the Bilbo's project. Craig Harvey is our Vice President, Technical Services. He's going to talk to us about exploration, and Morris Mason is also in attendance. He does corporate development and Investor Relations. Could we move on, please? All right, just highlighting half a dozen things that come out of the quarter. The thing that's not on this slide is that actually it was an excellent safety quarter, which we'll talk about in a moment. The gold price was good. We realised over $4,100 an ounce, which was 20% up on the comparable period. And production, as we've previously indicated, was somewhat disappointing, just over 17,000 ounces for the quarter. And we'll go into that in more detail, but that was relating to production problems arising from a lack of compressed air, compounded by some problems in the metallurgical plant. The operating financial performance was quite strong. EBITDA was $28 million for the quarter. And for the nine months, that puts us nearly $108 million. Russell talked in a lot more detail about that, but it's fair to say that below EBITDA, there was an awful lot of very complex financial accounting, largely relating to the financial accounting for some derivatives, which went a long way to unpicking the reasonably solid financial performance. At the end of the quarter, we're delighted to announce that we've secured the third leg of our funding package for Bilbo's, which is a $150 million interim funding facility. But again, Ross will talk about that in more detail. Craig will talk to us a bit more about this, but we were also very pleased to announce a significant increase in the measured and indicated resources at her blanket, up 22%. And that includes quite an exciting short-term opportunity in respect of some oxides, which Craig will talk about. And then also a maiden resource at the Matapa property, just under 400,000 ounces there. And that's immediately adjacent to Bilbo's and we believe will, in due course, give rise to some exciting potential there. And then finally, it's worth just noting that we've declared another quarterly dividend of 14 US cents a share, which will be paid, I think, at the end of this month. Shall we move on? OK, let's just talk a little bit more about production. I've already indicated that for the quarter, it was just over 17,000 ounces, just over 49,000 ounces for the nine months. And that was somewhat less than we'd expected. So on the back of that, we did revise the guidance for 2026 down to a level of 69,000 to 72,500 ounces for the year, which implies a good, a strong quarter for Q4, which I'll go into in a bit more detail. And really, it's worth saying, what held us back in the third quarter? As I said, there was two issues. The first related to mining, we had a shortage of compressed air, which reduced our ability to mine effectively in the high-grade, deeper areas of Blanket. We had seen this coming, and we'd ordered four extra compressors to give us the additional compressed air capacity. Two of them arrived. Two of them, unfortunately, were held up at the port in Baira, Mozambique, due to congestion there. And we'll talk a little bit more about what happened after the end of the quarter, but what it meant is that particularly towards the end of the third quarter, we just weren't able to get the tons we'd planned from the deeper higher grade areas. Then the other difficulty we faced in the quarter was really two sort of mutually reinforcing issues in the metallurgical plant. The first related to some changes that we'd made to the gravity gold circuit, which meant that more free gold was reporting into the CIL plant. And that was compounded by a historic lack of efficiency and lack of capacity in the elution circuit, which meant that we weren't able to recover that increased loading in the CIL capacity, in the CIL process. So two mutually reinforcing factors that meant that at the end of the quarter, we had about 11,000 ounces of gold trapped in the CIL plant. So our focus for 2026 and into 2027 is to increase the compressor capacity to support mining in the high-grade areas on the 1334 levels. It is to add the elution capacity. First of all, stop the gravity circuit decanting into the CIL, which we've done, and then add elution capacity to recover the retained gold, and then also move on to recover the gold in the activated carbon that we've got sitting there. Also, we're focused on increasing production at the Little Lima Metallurgical Plant, which we've recommissioned in the course of the third quarter. It made a very modest contribution in the third quarter, but we're ramping up production there, and that should add more ounces in the fourth quarter. And also we're now beginning to reap the benefit of the accelerated development that we commenced earlier in the year to give us improved access to higher-grade mining areas and also to improve our operating flexibility to protect us from any unforeseen eventualities. So that's an overview of production in the quarter. Shall we just move on? Given the sort of dynamic situation we're in, we thought it appropriate to give an immediate update as to what's happened after the end of the quarter. So that was in October. In October, Blanket produced just under 7,000 ounces of gold. So that's a significant improvement from the run rate in the previous months. And you can see that was largely driven by an increase in grade. So the grade we achieved in October was 3.07 grams a ton, which compares to, I think, about 2.7 that we achieved in the third quarter. So a significant improvement in performance at Blanket. It's fair to say that we, pending the new compressors, the replacement compressors were commissioned at the end of, right at the end of October. But prior to that, in October, we had refocused what compressed air capacity we had to make sure that we delivered the planned tonnes from the high-grade areas. And so that reduced the rate at which we were filling the plant with low-grade material. And then we also commissioned the new Aleutian vessel on the 16th of October, and that's allowed us to make some inroads now into the 11,000 ounces of gold that was locked in inventory at the end of September. We do smelting about once a week. And so the most recent smelt for which I've got full results was done on the 7th of November. And at the 7th of November, we'd recovered about 750 ounces out of the 1,100 that were trapped. We'd expect the remaining ounces to be recovered maybe in the next smelt. And then once those trapped ounces have been recovered, we can then use the increased dilution capacity to address the 1,300 ounces of gold that are contained in, I think, about 60 tonnes of stockpiled activated carbon. So that's production at Blanket. And then also, which you'll see coming towards the end of the quarter and then into next year, is the work that we're doing on the K-pits. That's oxide mining and processing at a blanket. We've loaded, or we're currently loading, the test heat bleach pads with about 10,000 tonnes of material. That should be completed by the end of this week, and then we'll start irrigating on Monday. And then we'd expect to start seeing gold production by the end of November into December. And depending on the outcome, let's face it, this is still a test heap leach. Depending on the outcome of that process, we've received the EIA approval, which means that we should be able to move pretty much immediately into the full-scale oxide mining and processing activity, where we're targeting a throughput of about 40,000 tonnes a month. So that's looking very encouraging. So that's what's happened since the end of the quarter. Shall we proceed, please? So just a little bit more detail about the operations in the quarter. Next slide. It was, as I said, a very strong quarter in terms of health and safety. We had no lost time injuries, and we've now got a record of over 500 days without an LTI. So that's an excellent outcome, but long may it continue. Could we move to the next slide, please? This is a graph that we've used before, but it helps to just focus on the main components that drive production. The top graph shows a grade and tons. You can see the top line shows that tons were stable, but you can see the grade, even in Q3, only recovered to a level of about 2.7. Yes, it was higher than we'd experienced in the first quarter, but not as high as we'd So in the first quarter and a little bit of the second quarter, our ability to access high-grade areas was constrained by just lack of physical access. In the third quarter, we could get the access, but we couldn't actually go mining there as we planned because we had, as I've said, the shortage of compressed air. If you look at the second, the lower graph, the bars show the ounces, but the line shows the recovery. And you can see the recovery took a bit of a hit in the third quarter. And that reflects both the slightly disappointing grade, but also, more importantly, the fact that the gold was being locked up in the CIL circuit, and therefore we weren't getting the recoveries. And so a combination of lower than expected grades plus lower recovery contributed to a somewhat disappointing gold production in the quarter. Shall we move on? So that's a quick overview of what's happened in the quarter and what's happened after the end of the quarter. With that, I'll hand over to Ross, who will run us through in more detail the financial results for the third quarter.

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Delighted to talk you through the results. If we turn to the next page and talk through the summary, I guess my overarching comments on our financial results for the quarter, whilst it was a challenging quarter in terms of top-line gold ounces produced and sold, and also some results in terms of working capital tie-up, as Mark has articulated, but also this fair value adjustment that's gone through for the quarter, So we do see the results coming through in terms of a solid blanket performance, and we're excited about the reset and the closeout of the year in the Q4, and importantly, as we go into 2027. So the activities and the expenditures and all our initiatives are coming through and bearing fruit. But very briefly, in terms of summary, you'll see on the slide our gold ounces produced were down some 11%, and Mark's already talked us through the compressed air shortages and some of the gold retained in the plant. And we did have a higher online cost where you jump to an online cost that's up some 23% based on some higher volume movement, but also those lower answers produced and sold, which affect that metric. I think the key thing is really looking at our online cost per ton milled, where that's gone up some 9%, but importantly for the year is only up 4%. 4%. So it's very much in line with our expectation and performance. So in terms of absolute costs, the teams have done well in terms of controlling their activities and their costs and making sure that they flow through. We did benefit from the gold price, up some 20% at $4,134 per ounce, which went some way in terms of offsetting the lower ounces, but did increase our royalties. So you'll see in our all-in sustaining costs that have gone up some 21% in terms of ounces sold metric, that average realized price of 20% increase in terms of gold price has affected that and dropped through in terms of our ASIC number. Overall, our EBITDA is down for the quarter, down some 16%, driven by those activities. And I'm just going to dive into a bit more detail in our P&L, and we can talk through some of those specifics. So if we can turn to the next slide, please. Just quickly walking through the profit and loss statement, you'll see our top-line revenue was up some 10%, which was that combination of the higher gold price and some lower sales volumes. The flow-on impact in terms of the royalty that I've discussed shows the royalty charge going and increasing some 15% on the comparative quarter. Production costs are broadly in line with high expectations, albeit they're up some 6%, but well controlled and happy with those activities. And then gross profit up 14%, driven by those improved margins and because of the gold price. So we've benefited at the top line. Going below the gross profit line, most of those line items are in line, and there have been movements, some reductions, but the key one is that 12.9 million derivative loss, or the movement in the fair value on the derivative. I would highlight that this is a non-cash movement, and it's driven in terms of the various valuation models. I would also highlight that we've booked gains in the first and second quarter. So if you look in the nine-month period, we're actually still up $2.5 million on that accounting. But it is non-cash, and it all gets booked at corporate, but it has significantly impacted our performance in the challenging quarter. And if you drop down a little bit lower to the profit for the period and importantly what that means for the NCI, whilst Blanket had a solid performance even with the challenges and produced cash and distributed and made a profit, those deployment of funds both to Blanket but also the corporate adjustments that have gone. One three that I've mentioned did mean that there was a lower NCI or a higher NCI versus profit attributable to the company, which ended up being just a shade under $3 million for the quarter. We move to the next slide, please. Talking a little bit through cash flows, top line cash inflow from operations was up some 19% at $31 million for the quarter. We've had our first finance cost charge come through in terms of the finance costs on the convertible bond of $4.3 million. And ultimately, the net cash flow from operating activities of $13.6 million was largely deployed against our capital expenditure profile, but is in line with our expectation for the year. And I'll talk a little bit more about CapEx expenditure in a minute, but very much on track and in line with what we've previously guided. And then outside of that, there were not many other movements within cash flows apart from our dividend payment of 9.2 million. So basically, the cash that was generated was deployed to CapEx. And equally, we had our dividend distributions, which meant that the cash balance went down by just a shade under $10 million for the quarter. And we ended the period with cash and cash equivalents of $158 million. If you move to the next slide, please. What that has meant for our liquidity position is shown in this table, and you'll see that the cash on hand is now sitting at $161 million. We had a larger build-up in terms of bullion on hand and our gold sales receivables, so there was 3,700 gold ounces sitting on bullion on hand at the end of the period, and also 1,600 ounces of gold sales receivables. Together with our normal facilities, which sit at around $20 million, with the drawn amount at just under $4 million, giving us total liquidity of $196 million across those various categories. We were delighted with our interim financing facilities. So as announced in November, we've now delivered on that strategy. So post period end, we're now sitting with just under $350 million worth of pro forma liquidity that's available to us. Move to the next slide, please. Just a quick reminder in terms of our updated cost guidance, and this is all as previously announced, we updated our guidance in line with the blanket gold production, I would say and comment on the CAPEX profile. So whilst we had reassessed the CAPEX with the re-guidance, this wasn't about delaying expenditures or deferring any deployment of funds. This is all around execution in terms of being able to make sure that those projects are delivered. There are some significant projects that are in the pipeline. And there's a lot of deployment of funds that are scheduled. So whilst we currently look as though we're behind our CAPEX spend, there is a large amount that is likely to drop or we're expecting it to drop before year end. But it is at risk, and it is about execution in terms of making sure that all those projects come in and are delivered. So whilst we've maintained our CapEx profiles, I just wanted to highlight that it is very much around execution and delivery rather than a deliberate attempt to delay any expenditures on our CapEx. If we move to the next slide, please. And I'll hand over to Victor to talk through our Builder's project. Thank you, Ross.

Can you move to the next slide, please? As a recap, BillBoss is our flagship development project with 1.75 million ounces of proved and probable reserves. At peak, it will produce 200,000 ounces of gold per year. At a gold price of US$4,156 per ounce, it has an NPV of 1.5 billion and a post-tax IRR of 58%. Can we move to the next slide, please? We've started work at Bilbo's, so what I will go through is what we have done so far and what is next. We signed the EPCM contract with DRAE, and they commenced the front-end engineering designs, otherwise known as the feed phase, in March 2026. The feed phase is at an advanced stage with designs for the long-lead items already completed. The housing strategy for contractors and employees was finalized and is being implemented. The earthworks contract was signed, and the contractor started work in October. The clearing and grabbing of the plant site is completed. Excavation of the plant terraces has commenced. I'll be able to show you some pictures towards the end of my presentation. The quantity surveying and site surveying services contract was signed, and the contractor has started work. Given that we've started the Earthworks contract. The biops license with METSO was signed. The mine planning is at an advanced stage, with mining block models and mine designs having been completed. Mine scheduling is underway and is due to be completed by the end of this month. The process planned area configuration and layout has also been completed. The orders for the long lead items have been placed, and these include the mills, the cyclones, and then the flotation sales contract is near signing, and order placing is imminent. Again, this shows that the project is actually moving ahead. Next slide, please. The BIOX equipment supply contract is being finalized and is expected to be in place by the end of this month. The crashers, screens, feeders, and samplers packages are under evaluation with contract signing targeted before the end of the year. The construction power contract is to be in place by the end of this month. As you know, we have to bring power from Shangani, and we are going to have to construct a 132kV overhead line. The environmental and social impact assessment study is underway and is expected to be completed by the end of this month. Soon after completion of that ACER study, we expect to award the contract for the construction of the overhead line itself. The mining contract scope of work for tendering is expected to be completed by the end of January. That work is well underway, and once that's completed, we expect to award the contract by May 27, May next year. The water supply study was completed, and there's enough water on site. The water storage and reticulation strategy is now what we are working on, and we've made some progress on that. We also expect to complete that early next year. The strategy for structural mechanical piping and plate work is to be completed by the end of December, which means next month. This is actually a big contract, so it should be completed by the end of December and then awarded some time next year. And finally, the tailing storage facility, otherwise known as the TSF. The designs for this TSF are to be completed by the end of this month, with tendering for construction expected to be done in February next year. Can you move to the next slide? Here, we're just showing some pictures of the work which has taken place. So if you look at the first picture starting on the right there, you've got the aerial view of the earthworks contractor accommodation and workshop. Then the contractor's workshops in the middle. And the last picture on the top right. And then below, we're showing the work which has already started the clearing and the grabbing. The bulk earthworks underway and actually the equipment of the contractor already working on the site. So at least you can, those are the visuals which we can show you today in terms of the work which is being carried out. And that is the presentation from me. Maybe you can move to the next slide, Ross. You can talk about the financing.

Thank you, Victor. Very exciting to see those activities. And importantly, from an update on the funding strategy. So as previously laid out to you, we've articulated a four-pillar approach in terms of our funding strategy, in terms of gold price hedging, convertible notes, the interim facility, and wider project finance. As we've discussed and announced, we have now finalized the third pillar of the strategy, so we completed our $150 million interim facility, and that's across a syndicate of eight Zimbabwean banks. So we're delighted with the outcome. We'd like to thank our co-leader rangers in Standard and CBZ Capital, and also the syndicate banks in terms of their participation. The facility is made up of two parts. So there's a term facility of $100 million, and then also a revolving credit facility of $50 million. Importantly, the interim facility was very much that in terms of interim. It was designed to make sure that we had enough liquidity and basically to allow us time while we navigated the wider project financing for Bilbo's, but equally in terms of that work stream, it has been well progressed. We're under advanced stage of negotiations, due diligence, and lender engagement on that wider project facility, and we're looking to close that out early in the new year. But this interim facility really supports our strategy to allow us time to navigate that process, but equally make sure that we've got enough funding in place to make sure that we can deploy the funds against Bilbo. So, overall, a fantastic result, and I think we've moved forward very nicely in terms of the overall funding strategy to match the activities that Victor had articulated. So, if we turn to the next slide, we just provide the update in terms of the normal slide in terms of our use of funds and source of funds. And again, if you look at the right-hand slide, you'll see the makeup of circa $600 million of funding requirement across both capital costs, working capital, and some capitalized interest. And then the makeup of those source of funds at both our hedge price of $3,500 per ounce and also the $4,000 ounce mark. And it really points to that middle bar of senior debt and other facilities of being somewhere in the order of $317 million to a lower amount of $277 million. And in our discussions and our work streams with that pillar four, we're certainly very confident that we can get that delivered and make sure that that can all get rolled out early next year. So with that update, I'll hand across to Craig to talk to us about exploration.

Thanks, thanks, Ross. If we can move on to the next section there. Thank you. So, on the next slides, if you can go to the next one. So, during the quarter for Blanket, we, you know, we have had some good news. We've announced an update to our mineral resource estimate for Blanket, both for underground, and as you've heard, we now have a small at-surface mineral resource. So for underground, measured and indicated mineral resources have increased by 22%, up to just under 2.2 million ounces of gold, sitting within 17.7 million tonnes of ore, at an average grade of just on 3.8 grams per tonne. The total mineral resource has only increased 3% from 2.85 to 2.92, and there's kind of some reasons behind that. What this mineral resource actually represents is an improvement or... Yeah, an improvement in our resource categorization, our confidence levels. And it's really driven by on-reef development. So on-reef development, typically close space samples, levels 15 meters apart. It drives the measured resource category. And then, of course, we've got the normal run of mine drilling that we do, and then we have got the deeper long hole drilling that we publish results for every six months to every nine months. So, what comes after this is we are now refining our life of mind plan. There's a number of... The engineering type things that are taking place because we would like to take advantage of it. So a revised life of mine plan, which then offers the conversion into a mineral reserve will follow shortly. So as we said, in addition to the underground, we've now got a Yes, small, but quite a valuable surface mineral resource at the moment. There's approximately 22,000 ounces of indicated oxide and transitional material, with a further 8,000 ounces in sulphide. Of note, and everybody must bear in mind that the drilling that we did was... We were intentionally for oxide resources only, so the deepest level of drilling that we did was only effectively 40 meters deep. On the back of what we have seen, we did indicate that we would be looking and drilling from underground, so I can say that we've intersected the mineralized structure. At depth on 18 level at Blanket Mine. It's about 500 meters below surface. Assays are still pending. It's all independent laboratories. And that will be made public in due course. So what do we do with it? Looking ahead, as we have heard, we've constructed a trial leach leach pad. All of the approvals are in place for if the trial is successful, we can move ahead and kind of execute on this. So on the next slide, we'll see what the activities are. If we can just move to the next one, please. So, this is kind of the activities that are taking place at what we call the CAPITS heap leach pad, or heap leach surface operation. So, there's approximately 10,000 tons loaded, which is the intention for our trial. We need to confirm what all of our column testing has been telling us in terms of actual recovery from a proper pad, We test the metrics of the various reagents and concentrations that we trialed in the column testing. And you can see there's the heap leach. We've got all the requisite pregnant ponds, barren ponds, overflow ponds, emergency ponds, ponds coming out our ears. And then down at the bottom, you can see where the open pit is situated. The whole road distance, it's approximately, it's slightly over one kilometers away from the heap leach. So it's kind of close. And, you know, the exploration opportunity for surface, you can just see to yourself, we're actually looking north there. But all of those structures continue north. Now, whether or not they actually have gold in economic quantities, that's what we need to have a look at. So, if you can go on to the next slide, and we can talk a little bit about Mertapa. So, again, during the quarter, we managed to publish a maiden mineral resource form, TAPA, 379,000 ounces of measured and indicated, 7.8 million tons at a grade of 1.51, with a further inferred mineral resource of 131,000 ounces, 2.7 million tons at just under 1.5. What is important about this is that... You know, 500,000 ounces is not small. I mean, it's actually quite good. The majority of this mineral resource is reported out of Metapa North. Even in the Metapa North area, there are still mineralized shears that we have not got enough intersections on to actually do mineral resource evaluation and make a grade estimation on it. So this represents exploration 2024 and 2025. So what the 2026 Exploration Program has been focusing on is in-full drilling at Matapa North, gaining more intersections to, one, bring more resources in, and two, to actually up the confidence in what we currently see here now. 2027, we are going to actively move into Matapa Central and Matapa South. So... So, if you can go on to the next slide, one of the core takeaways here, and it's being mentioned, just for everybody's benefit, one of the key potential synergies is Matapa in that lovely purple color, which is the Matapa mining lease, and then what currently comprises the Bulbo's. Project that is on the table and being executed. We've heard that it's adjacent. I mean, you can see there that it's adjacent. So, you know, in due course, discussions will be had, but 500,000 ounces adjacent to Bilbo's, I think it can only bode well. So with that, I'll hand over to Mark for any closing comments.

Okay, thank you. Can we move on to the next slide, please? Okay, so we've got four clear focuses as we move forward. The first is to restore Blanket to some sort of production consistency, and the key elements to that have already been implemented in terms of increasing the compressed air capacity and increasing the elution capacity. The second is to continue with the fundraising for Bilbo's with the objective of delivering first gold at the end of 2028, with 2029 being the first full year of production. Continue our exploration activities at Matapa to build on that maiden resource and in due course evaluate how potentially Matapa could be folded into a bigger project at Bilbo's. And then the final thing is to continue exploration and another activity at Blanket to extend Blanket's mine life, potentially increase production beyond where we are at the moment, and unlock the oxides that we've got there. So I think the outlook is looking particularly rosy. So that's the end of the presentation. We can open it to questions.

Mark, thank you very much for the presentation today. If you would like to ask a question, please do press the raise hands button, which is the bottom of your screen. So we'll just wait a few moments whilst people get the opportunity to raise their hands before we put you through. So we've got a first question from Nick Dinham. Nick, please go ahead.

Hi, everybody. I just wanted to ask a little bit about the capex on Bilbo's, which has fallen, the estimate which fell from 132 million, then to 43 million in this year, and now down at about 38, what's left. So that's all going to be spent in this quarter. Has there been any sense from you about what the underlying... What escalation in CAPEX could be? I see you're referring to the previous study, the feasibility study, but do you have a sense that some of the costs may be rising quicker or in line with what you had expected?

Who's going to do with that, Ross or Victor? I would point out that we are currently in the middle, towards the end of the actual procurement process, which is giving us visibility. So, Ross, Victor, do you want to engage with that?

I think you can take it, but Victor, I think you've been on the course as well.

Yeah, sure. We are in the middle of procuring the different packages, as I have indicated in the presentation. What we actually have left are the packages which have gone to tender, which we haven't received the final figures. So we actually know about that, the final figure. Towards the end of January next year, once we receive for the TSF, then the mining will come later. That's when we'll be able to give you a clear indication.

Are we seeing anything that's particularly alarming at this stage?

Nothing alarming at this stage.

There you go. It's the best we can give you, Nick.

Thank you. So something about June next year, you're expecting to have your metallurgical plant up and running at full capacity, and also the Lima plant up and running at full capacity. So part of the strategy that you originally developed for that was to have a large stockpile ahead of all of those plant expansions. Is that still the plan? And how much do you think a stockpile will be at the end of June?

Yeah, well, we need a stockpile to... We'll do some work on the central shaft. We're converting the central shaft winder from AC operation to DC operation to improve the controls for safety reasons and also to reduce the operating cost. That will require the central shaft to suspend operation for about 15 days, and so we need a stockpile to see us through that. That stockpile would need to be about 30,000, 35,000 tonnes, because obviously we'll continue to hoist some material at No. 4 shaft. Thereafter, the only need for the stockpile after that is to provide a buffer for future production. So the need for the stockpile is really only, the only real need for the stockpile is to provide us that sort of, that leeway during the ACDC conversion.

Okay, thanks. My last question, Mark, is that you have put a lot more people underground, and I know you have been prevented from seeing the full benefit of that because of the lack of access that you talked about and the lack of equipment that you talked about. Have you seen any material benefit of those people yet, and in what way?

Yeah, because we've got a stockpile. If you remember, we'd run the stockpile down to pretty much zero in the middle of the year before we initiated the new seven-day working system. At the moment, we've got a stockpile of about 18,000 tonnes. So yes, we are seeing a benefit in terms of runner mine production. And we're also seeing a benefit which will come through in the second half of the fourth quarter in terms of increased mining activity and therefore increased overall grade as we're doing more mining from the deeper higher grade areas. So yes, we are seeing that benefit.

Okay, thank you. Thanks very much for your questions, Nick. If I could remind people, if you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand. We'll pause for a moment to see if we've got any further questions. One moment. Well, we don't have any further questions at the present time, so maybe if I could hand back to you, Mark, for any closing marks.

Oh, no, I'd like to thank you for your participation. Challenging.

Actually, sorry, Mark, we do have one further question if you'd like to take it. It's from... It depends on who it's from. Sorry, Jonathan has actually just put his hand down on this.

All right, go on. We can take another question.

No, he's actually taking his hand down, so I will pass back to you for... Oh, and the hand's back. You are good to do your closing remarks, Mark.

Okay, good. Well, it's a challenging third quarter. We've set ourselves up for a fairly high target for the fourth quarter, which I'm confident will deliver. And as I say, the outlook, both at Blanket and elsewhere in the group, for a strong 2027 is looking very attractive. So thank you for your participation.