Gold Fields Ltd (GFI) 2014 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gold Fields Q2 results. (Operator Instructions). Please also note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Nick Holland. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Dylan, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, or good morning, depending on where you are in the world today. Thank you for joining us to discuss Gold Fields' results for the second quarter of 2014. On the call with me today, Paul Schmidt, our Chief Financial Officer, Willie Jacobsz, our Head of Investor Relations, and Taryn Harmse, our General Counsel.

I'm pleased to report that our continued focus on improving execution and delivery at all the mines within our portfolio, as well as on better margins and generated free cash flow, has achieved appreciable success during the quarter.

As we've previously shared with you, all activities undertaken in the Group are singularly focused on the objective of generating a sustainable free cash flow margin of at least 15% at a $1,300 gold price.

However, as we have also said previously, this has to happen without compromising the long-term sustainability of our ore bodies through a lack of investment in ore reserve development and stripping, or through high grading, otherwise we will impact the integrity of our operations.

During this quarter, Gold Fields exceeded the 15% target for the first time, by achieving a free cash flow margin of 18%, compared with 13% in the March quarter. To achieve this, the Group recorded an all-in sustaining cost of $1,050 per ounce and all-in costs of $1,093 per ounce, from attributable gold production of 548,000 ounces.

Compared with the same quarter a year ago, the Group's all-in sustaining costs improved by 26%, from $1,416 per ounce, down to $1,050 per ounce. And the all-in cost, which includes everything, improved by 30%, from $1,572 per ounce to $1,093 per ounce, a fundamental change in our cost base, as I'm sure you'll agree.

Over the same period, however, attributable production increased by 22%, from 451,000 ounces to 548,000 ounces, reflecting the acquisition late last year of the Yilgarn South assets in Australia. So effectively, we've been able to bring our cost base down 30%, whilst at the same time increasing our production base by 22%. And that's a nice story to put together.

Notably, at the South Deep project, which is not yet at commercial levels of production, it really is a project still. If you exclude that from the June quarter results, then the Group's all-in cost was just over $1,000 an ounce, $1,030, and the Group's free cash flow margin was 23%. That really does demonstrate the robustness of the international assets in our portfolio.

Despite the 1% decline in the realized gold price and a 2% decline in gold production against the March quarter, cash flow from operating activities, after taking account of capital expenditure, debt service, environmental impairments, etc., improved by 20%, from $54m to $65m this quarter. Now that $65m is after all expenditures, so it really is what we put in the bank account at the end of the quarter and during the quarter.

Now notwithstanding a 7% decline in the gold price, from $1,372 per ounce in the June 2013 quarter, to $1,275 per ounce in the June 2014 quarter, cash flow over the same period improved by 128%, from a cash outflow of $230m in the June quarter, to a cash inflow of $65m in the June 2014 quarter. That reflects a positive swing of $295m quarter on quarter, for the same period last year versus this year. And that's despite a 7% decline in the gold price.

This brings the total cash flow from operating activities after capital expenditure, debt service cost and nonrecurring items for the year to date, to $119m. And that places Gold Fields, we believe, as one of the most cash-generative gold mining companies in its peer group.

And despite the lower production expected from South Deep for the year, the Group remains on track to achieve its full-year guidance of $1,125 per ounce all-in sustaining costs and all-in costs of $1,150 per ounce on attributable gold production of 2.2m ounces for the year.

Our strong cash generation for the year to date has enabled the Group to declare an interim dividend of ZAR0.20 per share. Now this is in line with our well-established dividend policy of paying out between 25% and 35% of normalized earnings to shareholders. And let me restate it again. If we generate the earnings, we'll pay the dividends, in line with the policy. That's our commitment.

Despite the robustness of our balance sheet, we have decided to further improve the strength and maturity of our balance sheet by reducing the absolute amount of our debt, as well as improving our net debt to EBITDA ratios, and also scheduling our debt out to longer periods.

Now in pursuit of this objective, we've reached an agreement with our group of bankers during this last quarter, to amend and extend certain facilities and draw a syndicated bank credit lines agreement. Under the amendment, the maturity date of commitments totaling $715m has been extended on the same terms, by two years, from November 2015 to November 2017. And that really gives us great flexibility and a much improved maturity ladder of our debt.

In addition, during the June 2014 quarter, reduced -- we reduced our net debt by a further $52m to $1.63b, and that's in addition to a $49m reduction in the March quarter. So for year to date, we've reduced our net debt, in other words the capital principal amount, by $101m.

Based on a 12-month rolling historical average, our net debt to EBITDA ratio improved, from 1.53 in the March quarter, to 1.47 in the June 2014 quarter. In fact, if you annualize the June quarter, our ratio was 1.44. So we are improving our debt to EBITDA ratio, and we're well within our covenants, which take us up to 2.5.

Now let's talk about South Deep, an important growth project for the Group. At South Deep, all mining related activities were severely curtailed towards the end of May, for the final one month of the quarter. This followed two fatal accidents, in quick succession, unfortunately. That was after a period of 13 months fatality free, as well as the separate and unrelated introduction of an extensive ground support remediation program.

As a consequence, South Deep's production declined by 14%, from 59,000 ounces in March, to 51,000 ounces in the June quarter.

The remediation program took all the legacy haulages and arterial routes on the current mine -- that's 95 level and above -- from where approximately 70% of current production is sourced, and took it out of service. The program will continue for the entire September quarter, with a commensurate impact on production for the September quarter compared to the June quarter.

While normal production is expected to resume at the start of the December quarter, the ground support remediation program is delaying the opening up of a number of long-haul stopes that were planned to be mined in the December quarter. And that has a knock-on effect on production during that quarter.

Considering the total impact of the safety stoppages, as well as the ground support remediation program, production during the second half of the year, therefore, is expected to be similar to that of the first half of the year.

I'm thankful, though, that we're making very good progress on the ground support. We're about 70% of the way through it. And we're certainly on track to complete this within the next four weeks.

A positive consequence of the ground support intervention, and in the absence of normal production pressures is that it has afforded management the opportunity to fast track a number of other critical interventions and of setting South Deep up for long-term success.

The leadership structure of the mine has undergone a fit-for-purpose transformation aimed at the introduction and enforcement of greater levels of accountability and responsibility throughout the operation. Management has embarked on a program to address the surplus of all high-cost equipment and people in the mine, both of which are prerequisites for an improved safety culture and improved productivity, and are deemed critical to de-risk the mine's buildup to full production.

After extensive discussions with the trade unions, a voluntary separation process was implemented, which resulted in rationalization of the employee body, by approximately 550 people. That represents about 14% of the workforce. Further rationalization is expected, as certain contractors are exited and existing employees redeployed to fill their roles. Post the voluntary separation process, South Deep currently has 3,400 employees, as well as 1,900 contractors.

The process of rationalizing the equipment is currently underway, and includes the removal of surplus and redundant equipment, as well as the limited introduction of more appropriate, specialized new equipment in certain areas.

In addition, management and the trade unions have reached agreement on changes to the shift roster, which is expected to lead to the optimal redeployment of employees to further improve productivity. The implementation of the amended shift roster is currently underway. The miners utilized the hiatus in normal production activities to fast track an extensive training program aimed at improving the mechanized mining skills of employees.

It is expected that the ground support program, as I mentioned, will not impact the buildup to full production of 650,000 ounces by the end of 2017. In fact, if anything, this will debottleneck the current haulages and ramps, make the mine safer, and improve logistics as well.

We're still hoping that South Deep will achieve cash breakeven, current gold prices prevailing, by the middle of 2015, as previously advised. We've also been looking at mining methods at South Deep, and I did report on this in our presentation this morning.

And soon after the appointment of the new management team in February and in line with the team's overall mandate to improve the mechanized mining culture of the mine, an international geotechnical advisory board, consisting of industry leaders from around the world, was appointed to review South Deep's current destressed mining methodology.

The Board's mandate was to consider the latest developments in the industry, as well as the accumulation of new knowledge and experience in the application of destress methodology at South Deep over the past five years, and see whether there was a different method that could be used to be more cost effective and easier in the future.

So after extensive studies over the past eight months, the Board has concluded that there might be two alternative mining methods. The first is what we call the 4-by-4 meter destress method, which effectively reduces destress mining from a three-pass to a one-pass system, by increasing the destress excavation dimensions from 2.2 meter high and 5 meter wide, to 4 meter high and 4 meter wide.

Now this will allow the use of conventional equipment throughout the mine, as opposed to having two classes of equipment, conventional equipment and low-profile equipment, which would have been needed in the destress area. So that gives us a tremendous rationalization opportunity.

In addition to removing the need for footwall stripping to increase the cavity sizes before mining, this will also alleviate logistical constraints and facilitate a fully mechanized mining process.

In essence, what this means is that we can use the same equipment that we use for our development drives, which will very quickly and efficiently do all of the necessary follow-on support at the same time, and we'll have one suite of equipment that our operators can get used to, instead of having two suites of equipment.

Now even though the dimensions of the destress could increase to 4 meters by 4 meters, the beauty of this is it's all on strike and it's all on reef, so once this adds an additional dilution, in fact, if anything, it may give us a little bit of extra gold.

The second method, and the most promising, is what we call the incline mining slot method, which is a one-pass system, which completely removes the need for conventional destress mining as we know it today, as well as the need for low-profile equipment. It also decreases the mining lead time, from opening up the open stopes, from around three years, to closer to six months, so it gives us the ability to accelerate the mining.

Now both of these methods, if successful, could significantly de-risk the build-up plan and further -- and future production profiles, and have a meaningful impact on costs.

I think it's also worth noting that we're also looking at the mining span. Currently, we're looking at four corridors of 240 meter mining span, and we're looking at reducing that to eight corridors of 120 meter span, which not only could improve the geotechnics on the mine, but would also provide greater flexibility and the ability to accelerate production in certain areas.

Now both of these methods will be piloted in discrete areas on a more proximal part of the mine, during the period from quarter four this year towards quarter four next year. So it's too early to assess whether either of these methods could be commercially deployed. The results of the pilot studies will determine this.

But I think the one point I would make is if the studies are successful, we could potentially roll this out in 2016.

Normalizing of production at Tarkwa in Ghana has taken place, and the transition from mixed heap leach and carbon and leach operation to a carbon and leach only operation has progressed well, and the heap leach operations have been closed. We continue to rinse the heap leaches and we continue to get gold out of that, but there are no new stacking taking place, as from the beginning of the year.

And the realized yield from our CIL plant in Tarkwa increased from 1.19 grams per ton to 1.29 grams per ton. During the June quarter, the low-grade stockpile material to the mill feed then was significantly less than in the March quarter. And so that resulted in the increase in the grade.

Tarkwa achieved year-to-date production of 285,000 ounces, at an all-in cost of just $1,021. A great performance from Tarkwa, and we believe that there's a lot more to come.

During the quarter, Damang delivered another strong performance, despite a nine-day mill shutdown, as a result of which gold production decreased by 13%, from 46,700 ounces to 40,500 ounces, and all-in costs increased by 15%, up to $1,282 per ounce. However, we believe that during the current quarter and given the fact that we shouldn't expect further mill shutdowns, Damang should further improve, closer to current levels achieved in the March quarter.

On the year to date, Damang has achieved production of 87,000 ounces, at an all-in cost of $1,192.

Despite the unplanned nine-day shutdown, Damang has consolidated its return to profitability from a loss-making position a year ago. And we think this is going to continue into the foreseeable future.

Now the strategy of revisiting historically mined open pits along the 27-kilometer strike between Damang in the north and Tarkwa in the south, which was last drilled when the gold price was between $300 and $400 an ounce is starting to bear fruit and is expected to contribute to an addition to reserves and resources by the time the next declaration is done, early next year.

Success in this program will redefine the future of Damang in the Gold Fields portfolio, and has potential to extend the life of the mine substantially.

Turning to Australia, the Group's Australian operations had an excellent quarter, recording all-in costs of $1,042 per ounce, on gold production of 257,000 ounces. This brings total production for the year to date to 502,000 ounces, at an all-in cost of $1,072 per ounce.

Central to this performance are the newly-acquired Yilgarn South assets, which have now been fully integrated into the Australia region, and are exceeding our expectations. The star performer was Granny Smith, which contributed 85,000 ounces, at an all-in cost of $692 per ounce for the quarter. Year to date, the mine has produced 151,000 ounces, at an all-in cost of just $788 per ounce.

The key focus of the Australian portfolio is the accelerated $52m of near-mine exploration at all of the mines in the region, which is aimed at increasing the resources and reserves position of these mines by the (technical difficulty) of 2014.

Good progress has been made, particularly at St. Ives, with the newly-discovered high-grade Invincible deposit and at Granny Smith, where exploration results are indicating significant resource and reserve expansion potential at the Wallaby underground deposit.

Good progress has also been made at Agnew/Lawlers, with potential extensions to the Waroonga underground mine, as well as the New Holland and Genesis underground ore bodies.

During the last quarter, we hosted a series of site visits to our Australian mines, to give the investment community some insight into the outstanding potential of these assets. And these presentations are available on our website, at www.goldfields.com.

Turning to disposal of non-core assets, during the quarter good progress was made with the disposal of two further non-core assets in our international projects portfolio, with the disposal of both the Yanfolila project in Mali, as well as the Chucapaca project in Peru.

Gold Fields sold its 85% interest in the Yanfolila project in Mali to London-listed Hummingbird Resources for $20m, in the form of Hummingbird shares. The consideration represents an acquisition price of $16 per resource ounce, which is higher than both the weighted average enterprise value per resource ounce of listed West African gold companies, and recent M&A precedents of West African exploration and development assets of $14 per ounce.

Now through our shareholding in Hummingbird, which also holds the Dugbe asset in Liberia, we see real potential for Gold Fields to receive significant growth in the value of its shareholding, which was a key consideration in favoring this bid.

The latest sale is that of the Chucapaca project in Southern Peru, which was announced a couple of days ago. Gold Fields has sold its 51 stake -- 51% stake in CDH, which is the company owning the project, to its joint venture partner, Buenaventura, a Peruvian company. The total agreed sale price is $81m, all paid on closing of the agreement. And in fact, I'm pleased to announce that we actually have the check on hand. And in addition, Gold Fields will receive an uncapped 1.5% net smelter royalty on all future gold, silver, and copper sales emanating in the area of interest that was the subject of the joint venture.

Now not only does the consideration ensure that our historical costs on the project are essentially covered, the consideration also represents an acquisition price of about $26 per attributable gold resource ounce, which compares favorably to deals done in Latin America.

Of course, the royalty of 1.5% provides us with future production upside potential, especially as we see a company of Buenaventura's standing moving this project ahead.

The sale of our holdings in these projects is in line with our strategy of focusing on growing cash flow through quality assets, and this focus has also led us to move away from greenfield exploration as a strategy for growth, in favor of the acquisition as in-production ounces, such as the Yilgarn South assets and near-mine exploration and development at our Australian, Ghanan, and Peruvian assets.

With that, I conclude my prepared remarks. Dylan, we are now ready to take some questions. Thank you.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Andrew Byrne, Barclays.

Hi. Good afternoon, Nick. A couple of quick questions, if I may. The first one is just around St. Ives. With Neptune and Invincible coming on, where are you expecting the grade to go to for 2015?

Yes, we haven't yet done our business plans for 2015, Andrew. But Neptune looks like it's around about 4 grams. But we'll probably mine stage one by the end of the year. There's four other stages, and we want to see the results of stage one before we carry on further.

Neptune, we'll start stripping -- no, not Neptune. Invincible we'll start stripping in quarter four, and we'll probably get that into production, I would think, around about the middle of next year. And the open pit grades look like they're somewhere around 4 grams a ton. So this could contribute 25% to 30% of the total mill feed.

So it will definitely get the grade up, but I couldn't tell you, at this stage, what the grade is likely to be because in 2015, we would expect the mill contribution to come from Athena, Hamlet, Cave Rocks, and probably Invincible, with a couple of peripheral open pits. So it's going to be the weighted average of whatever they are.

Yes, sure. No worries. And I think with Neptune it was (inaudible) to do a phase one, maybe pausing and then going back, as I remember from the site visit.

Just looking at Ghana, on Damang and Tarkwa, from a tonnage perspective, should we expect to see volumes closer to what we saw in Q1 for the next two quarters? I know we had the rainfall out there, and then also the (inaudible) melted to tar at Damang. Is that the way to think about those two assets?

Yes, absolutely, because the rain was particularly tough in the last quarter. And I would think that we should see an improvement, from that perspective. You know, we've given guidance for the year for Tarkwa in February. And we should actually do quite a bit better than that. And I don't want to give definitive numbers yet.

And Damang I think should also do better. The nine-day shutdown of course hurt us as well at Damang. So I think the big thing we're looking to do on Tarkwa is finish the CIL expansion by the end of the year, which would give us 13m tons of processing capacity, Andrew. But we probably won't see the benefit of that until quarter one next year.

And the other thing is, at Damang, we're focusing on making sure that we're maximizing the grade, through to the plant, by really focusing on dilution in the pits. And we're getting into some of the better grade stuff now, deeper into Huni and in the Saddle and Juno as well. So the grade should improve. So we're more focused at Damang on the grade than we are on the volume, because we're focusing on probably about 4m to 4.2m tons a year, through the plant.

Yes. Okay, great. And then just two last questions, if I may. Looking at what you've done in Australia, do you kind of look at Iduapriem at all and think there's an opportunity there to consolidate that in with Tarkwa and Damang, even just from a regional management perspective and potentially look at some synergies on that side? Is that something that you've looked at, or are there some obvious reasons why you go, actually that just doesn't work?

And then just -- go on.

No, I'll wait.

No, they're disconnected so if you just take that one.

Certainly Iduapriem is contiguous to Tarkwa. The Teberebie portion of Tarkwa is contiguous to Iduapriem. Now it really depends on what AngloGold's aspirations are, given the fact they're pulling back Obuasi and what they want to do in the country. So it would depend on, first of all, their strategic direction with regard to Ghana, and then whether or not a deal could be done on terms that made sense.

But I think we would not be averse to the idea. We haven't got a good idea of all of the synergies that might exist between the operations. I'm sure that there are some. But if the opportunity arose, I guess we would look at it.

Sure, sounds good. And then just very, very finally, just looking at your full-year cost guidance, given that you've done all-in sustaining costs of $1,058 in the first half, when we look at the second half, and we say, look, volumes from Tarkwa and Damang are likely to be at least in line, if not somewhat better. Potentially some of the volume coming in from Neptune plays out in 4Q. When we look at your cost guidance, that seems to imply a second half cost of around $1,200 an ounce. Is that you just being cautious or is it something that we really need to just be wary of?

Andrew, it's Paul. Yes, we're just being cautious. And I think you also need to understand, we've said that South Deep will have a tough third quarter, based on the announcement we put out. But we're being cautious. I don't want to bring down my all-in cost and guidance. If we beat it, we're great. I'm not going to -- we'll see what will happen.

Sounds good. Best of luck.

Thank you very much, Andrew.

David Haughton, Bank of Montreal.

Hi, Nick. Thank you for the update. Can you just give us a bit of an idea for South Deep, where you're at with these two new methodologies, the 4-by-4 and the inclined slot? What's required for you to move beyond it simply being on the drawing board, to being implemented, and what kind of timetable could you imagine for that?

Sure, David. Now what we've done is we've identified two areas to run the pilots. And these are areas outside the current plan, on the eastern side of the mine, which is in a more distal area. And we've set aside these two areas, so we're hoping to get these pilots mobilized in quarter four.

We need our geotechnic review board to sign off on the final pilots and the design of that. And we'll probably run these pilots for maybe nine months or so, and then see how they go. And if it works, we'll decide which method to adopt. Clearly, if we could move to the incline slot method, that would do away with the need for the conventional de-stressing that we currently adopt, and would enable us to open up the ore body much faster than what we're currently doing.

So the only thing we'd need to do, though, before we could implement any of these, we have to make sure that we have all of the faces along the 1 kilometer strike all in the right position because when you change this mining method, you have to obviously change it across the entire mine. And we need to keep our geotechnic sequence in shape, in place. That will take a few months too.

So realistically, if it all works, I would say we're looking at beginning of 2016, to implement one of these two methods. The conceptual work has already been done, and the geotechnical review board is very confident that these methods should work. But that said, the proof is in the pudding. We've got to put this into action, run these pilots, and see how we end up.

So that is the best estimate I can give you at this point in time. Obviously, if it works, David, then we'll have to not only implement it, but we'll have to remodel the entire life of mine. And that will take some time too. But I think the best estimate is hopefully by the end of next year, we might be in a position to implement either one of these methods. They are mutually exclusive, of course.

And each of those two methods, do they use similar kinds of equipment? And I guess the follow-on from that is that if you select one or the other, how different is the equipment and the training, compared to what you do now?

So we wouldn't need to use any different equipment. It would be the same equipment we're using. We'd be using our conventional 282 drill rigs. And we'd be using our long-haul drill rigs, so no change there. The one benefit, the comment to both is we can get rid of low-profile equipment. So in other words, we can work with one suite of equipment we already have.

In terms of skills, this is box standard, mechanized mining. Whether you're drilling an incline slot or whether you're drilling a destressed face, it's all the same principles. It's just a change in the overall mine design. So we don't see a major challenge in terms of equipment, because we've got the equipment. And the skills are common. Whether we mine as we currently mine or whether we change, we've got to get the skills upgraded. That's common to all scenarios.

And given -- just sort of guesstimating from the description that you've provided, it would seem as though the incline slot method might have a lower sustaining capital number to the four-by-four and to the existing one. Is that a reasonable way to think about it, because you're not doing the destress slot as a separate kind of exercise?

Exactly. First of all, it's one-pass mining, instead of three-pass mining. We would need much less support because the slots would be a no-entry area, so they would be unsupported. And the open stope of course is a non-entry area, and you just blast that out. So we'd need a lot less mesh, steel, anchors, split sets, all of those kind of things.

So we'll save some money there, and we'll save time. I think the biggest benefit here is you can actually get mining areas opened up in six months, as opposed to anything from 24 to 36 months, with the current destress mining grid, which really requires us, David, to have a whole grid opened up of main access drives, secondary access drives, coming through, ripping out the footwall to make sure we can get the big fleet in. So it's going to save a lot of time. I think that's the biggest benefit here, is the time that we'll save.

Okay. Just switching now, a last operational question on -- looking at Granny. In your slide deck -- you've got quite a number of slides there about the geology where you're sitting and expectations. But the quarter itself was surprisingly good grade. Is that just a spike in the grade profile, or is it something that we should be thinking about, a better grade going forward? How should we be thinking about Granny, in a go-forward situation?

Well, we said, when we bought the asset, that we thought the grade would improve as we get deeper. The other thing is we're finding that we're getting positive reconciliations on the grade, compared to the resource model. And that's something we flagged when we bought the mine, so that doesn't surprise us.

The other thing we're doing is we're reducing our dilution. There's been a big focus on reduced dilution. We've probably chopped our dilution by 10% to 15%, since -- if you look at the period since we bought it.

But the other thing that's good, and doesn't come through in the head grade, but it comes through in the yield is that we've improved our process plant recoveries by 5%, from 87% to 92%, simply by just changing the cyclones that we use, putting in smaller cyclones has given us better grind. And then also just changing pumping systems to get better water flow and more consistent flows. So that's given us a 5% increase in recoveries, which we think is sustainable.

But as you get into the deeper parts of the mine, you will see the grade getting better. And that's borne out by the exploration results. So I think this quarter has been particularly good. I'm not saying that you should model the grades that we're showing here going forward. But certainly we will be getting better grades, we believe, than the historical grades achieved.

Okay. And last one, probably more an accounting kind of question. With the sale of the assets, would you expect to record a profit or loss on sale, or is it close to break even?

Close to break even on both of -- the sale of Yanfolila. Actually, on Yanfolila, we're going to be reversing $4m of impairment we did last year, so a $4m positive. And on Chucapaca, it's pretty much break even or a small positive probably we're going to make. And (inaudible) account for the royalty stream.

And the royalty stream, if you could value the royalty stream, I think we'd be in a profit.

Yes, we can't value it.

Can't value at this stage.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Dave. All right. We're going to try -- and Dylan give another five minutes or so. What time are we now? We can probably do about another five to six minutes, maybe two more questions.

Thank you, sir. Patrick Mann, Deutsche Bank.

Hi. Afternoon, guys. I think just a follow-up to the previous question. Have you got a sense of the tax implications on the sale of Chucapaca?

And then I think just on the safety review, when you announced the management-imposed one, you said that it was the new management team identifying weaknesses in the system and that it could potentially -- that they could find other things or you couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't. Have they finished that process of looking through the mine now? Are you more comfortable that they are up to speed with everything that's going on and what the support structures across the entire mine look like? Just an update on that, please. Thanks.

Yes, I think we are in a much better position, Patrick, compared to where we were six months ago. But I think we probably need the rest of the year to really make sure we understand all of the issues and areas. But I think slowly but surely, the list of issues coming out of the review is getting less and less, in terms of new issues coming on.

But I think when we finish the year, we'll identify if there's anything more that we think is going to impact any of the years that follow, but certainly, much less surprises coming out.

There is obviously ground support issues to be done across the mine. But these are not urgent, and we think we can do a lot of those concurrently, with normal activities. We had to stop these areas because they were really impacting what we thought was safety, and not really the required standard we'd see internationally.

But I'm not seeing any roadblocks for us to get back to normal production -- maybe put it that way -- in the last quarter of the year. At this stage, we believe we can get back to normal production and flow that into next year.

And Patrick, to your second question, as I said, if anything, we may -- we've recouped our costs and maybe made a small profit, so the tax implications are going to be negligible.

Thanks a lot.

Are there any more questions, Dylan? We could probably take one more.

There are no further questions, sir.

Well, thanks very much, everyone, for joining us today. And we look forward to talking to you again, following the year-end results, and seeing a lot of you face to face, in the various meetings and conferences that we'll be doing over the next number of months. And once again, thanks for dialing in and showing your interest. And thank you. Bye-bye from us.

Thank you. On behalf of Gold Fields, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.