Harmony Gold Mining Company Ltd (HMY) 2007 Q2 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Good afternoon and welcome to the Harmony Gold second quarter earnings results conference call. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Please note that today's presentation and the results are available on the Harmony Gold website. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time I would like to turn the conference over to Bernard Swanepoel. Please go ahead.

  • Bernard Swanepoel - CEO

  • Thank you very much, and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I would like to proceed with the presentation of our second quarter's results. A bit of a mixed bag of results. If you join me on the slides that have been available, it will be slide number 3, entitled, Quarterly Highlights. Which I summarize a bit. The net profit of courses is up, that is due to the booked profit on the Western Areas investment that we converted into Goldfield shares, and therefore there was an accounting event that crystalized the profit. So about half of that profit comes from there.

  • Headline earnings, when that effect is stripped out, is therefore down about one-third, 33% from ZAR0.66 to ZAR0.44 for the quarter. The really wild result of the quarter is once again our development meters, which is up by [30,11, 6%]. This would now be the third or fourth consecutive quarter of dramatic improvements in development. And this does go to our theme for the last year and which will continue in this year, which is about re-establishing orebody flexibility.

  • We also very happy with the two-year continuous operations agreement that was signed in our South African operations. And it certainly would smooth over the relationships between us and our unions for the next two years.

  • We continue to close out the Australian hedge book, another 50,000 ounces, at a cost of just over R$80 million, was actually closed out during the quarter. And I spoke to the conversion of the Western Areas shares. Before the placement we were the owners of the some 2.8 or 2.9% of Gold Field. I would expect that that has now been diluted down to an order of about 2.5%. And we continue to own those shares.

  • If we turn to the page to our safety performance, we are in a long-term downward trend, or upward trend as this should really be an improvement trend. We have had a really good run safetywise. And most of our underlying rates are actually improving significantly.

  • My next slide is slide number 5. And it just speaks in a little bit more detail about our development, or tunneling. And you see overall it is up by another 11, almost 12%. And this is really what will in time give us the ability to not only have higher grades from our South African underground mines, but almost more important, we will have more sustainable and predictable grades.

  • Last year at this time I just shared with you that we believe that this is a solution to our performance and performance problems, and also the variability in our results. And we did indicate that we would want to buildup by June this year to perhaps some 45 kilometers. As you can see, we were not too far off that. And we would then keep it at 45 kilometers for a quarter or two until we have achieved the right level of flexibility. In which case we would then be able to cut back quite significantly, of course, with a commensurate reduction in both capital and working cost from development as well.

  • If we then move on to the next slide, which is entitled, The Group Operating Results, that is actually a rand metric. I think we can actually go to rather than next slide, which is in the U.S. dollars and imperial. You can summarized there our gold production is down by some 25,000 ounces -- 24,000 ounces.

  • Really although there were other mines there were down, our flagship mine Tshepong can explain all of this. This was a very bad underperforming quarter, but in terms of volume, but especially in terms of grade. It is now behind us. Our January month is a clear indication that Tshepong is much better back on track. But it does leave us with gold down just under 4%.

  • The revenue was fractionally down in U.S. dollar terms. But really thanks to the exchange rate we received effectively the same rand per kilogram gold price. And the list gold divided by similar cost, of course, resulted in cash costs going up by some 4% in U.S. dollar terms.

  • Cash operating profit down by 17%. Foreign operating margin of some 28%. And I think we have previously seen that once we go above [13%], we really are cash generative. Cash earnings down 16%. All in all really a quarter that was negatively impacted upon by so-called quality assets, the South African mines of a higher quality.

  • My next slide, which deals with working profit by segment, you can really see that we had three sets of very acceptable performances and two sets of underperformances, where the Australian ones were much more expected hedged than that of the quality assets in South Africa. I have dealt with them, and I will come back in a bit more detail.

  • Quality assets, as I have said, suffered from mainly lower grades at our biggest mine. The growth projects had a very good recovery in grades quarter on quarter. That is what drove that 120% odd improvement. The leveraged assets, the grade was effectively flat. And therefore it was purely volume improvements that came through and resulted in a significant contribution.

  • Service operations, when we get to the detail you'll see that at project Phoenix, where we are basically doing a trial project, or a pilot plan to see if [this line's] retreatment is viable, it made a significant contribution to the enhanced profits. Australia, we can come back to on the detail slide as well.

  • On the next slide where I deal with the cash operating profit variance analysis. This is really just a summary to show you how December's 891 cash operating profits got influenced to be 755 million for this quarter. And volume overall, including surface underground South Africa and Australia was really flat.

  • Working cost in total was up by some 50 million. Expressed as a percentage that is just over 2%. The recovery grade was really the big negative variance for the quarter. The gold price, as I said earlier, was really flat in rand per kilogram terms, and so the net variance of 135 million, mainly due to the recovery grade.

  • This slide we just entitled, Earnings Per Share Analysis. It just shows you cash -- at cash operating profit level what is the earnings are. We call it cash earnings. We have been questioned on this terminology. But that is what we're trying to show you there. Basic earnings, of course, a significant contributor to that was the booked profit on the Gold Fields shares. If we strip that out to get to headline earnings, and you can see that is where earnings was down roughly one-third.

  • If I go over to the operational results for the leveraged assets, I should probably spend a lot of time here, because it is quite satisfying results. You can see that volumes were up 9%. And because grades were really maintained at the [Talkaman II] gram a ton level, we had some 7% more gold. Therefore our cost per kilogram improved by 7%. That of course implied that we did significantly higher volumes at similar cost levels. That always results in lovely leverage. Underground working costs per ton then was nicely down.

  • This was a quarter where we anticipated and forecasted this because to some extent -- or some of this is due to us bringing the Harmony II shelf back online after the fire of the previous quarter. But still very satisfying results all around.

  • If we talk about the quality assets, this is of course where the underperformance of the quarter was. The 6% volume reduction in its own right can perhaps be seen in the context of last quarter's record performance. We really had an unbelievably good volume quarter last quarter on the operations. That came down a little bit more than what we anticipated. But the grade was really just a combination of factors. And quite honestly most of them are quite disappointing.

  • At Tshepong, as I indicated, in its own -- on its own has contributed -- or could explain the fall -- the full 700 kilograms we were down. And we just lost at lower grades, and then were a bit surprised when we recovered lower grades. That surprise is out of our lives. And we are now blasting to the better grades again. And therefore so far after one month in the new quarter the grades at Tshepong seems to have recovered to the normal sort of level.

  • Kilograms, yes, you can see it is down quite significantly. As I said, overall the 700 kilograms can all be ascribed to Tshepong. Half of the underperformance at the quality assets really sat at Tshepong as well.

  • The underground working cost of R99,000 a kilogram is very disappointing. These assets are capable of much, much more. But you can also see what happens when this underperformance at quality assets -- it is still very fairly robust and comes in with numbers better than our leveraged assets, even when our leveraged assets has a good quarter.

  • Growth projects, which is really the summation of the Elandsrand project. We, as you will recall, we're mining the depth extension of the original Elandsrand mine, about 20% of the ton. And one-third of the gold is coming from the new mine. We then add to that for these numbers the Doornkop mine. We are really still mining all of the tonnage from a low grade shallow at Kimberly Reeves, whilst we are finishing up the development on the much higher grade South Reeves, which is really effectively a new mine, a separate mine at the bottom of this old mine. Doornkop had a good quarter and contributed significantly to our profitability.

  • I want talk a little bit then with you about Hidden Valley. We have had excellent progress with the earthworks for the road firstly. And we leveled off a mountaintop for the permanent camp. And the road construction to Hidden Valley and the Hamata plant 5 is continuing very well. I spent a lovely couple of days with the guys in December. And it is quite impressive to see what we're achieving, obviously in full collaboration with the local communities as well.

  • The new technical drilling at the Hamata plant site is completed. If you look at pictures from there, you would think we would never find solid rock anywhere. It looks like just sand everywhere. But we have found enough adequate rock to be able to site our mull and our mull sites. And so we don't expect any problems with regard to that.

  • We quite significantly in our minds managed to sign up what we think is quite a favorable fleet financing facility for $51 million. We signed this facility and the master lease term sheet with Westpac Bank of PNG. The funding is available for a period of five years after delivery of the equipment. And basically we pay the first 15% of each piece of equipment as a deposit, and the remaining portion has been funded through this lease agreement.

  • We signed a necessary supply and maintenance agreement in order for the equipment to be properly maintained. And we also finally got approval from the government on the Customs and (indiscernible) exemptions that was quite critical in the overall financing.

  • We have basically had constructive discussions with Rio Tinto. We would expect to sign an agreement in the next -- literally, the next day or two. And we would take out the remaining royalty that exists on the project. That royalty has always been built in the cost. And taking it out would reduce the overall cash cost by just over 10 an ounce. And that is an order of some 12 an ounce to be exact. Over 3 million ounces to be mined. You can see that it could be quite significant in [our lines], but in answer to the already acceptable cash cost of this project even further.

  • The next slide may be a bit fuzzy, because it obviously -- if I do the last presentation -- it is a [boat] slide. I really will just speak to the bullet points then. If we look at Wafi Golpu, which sits relative to some of our others sort of tenements, we are very happy that our -- effectively our first mover and sort of status in Papua New Guinea has given us a chance to sign up really good exploration licenses. And all of them so far are in the Morobe Province. And it is a total area of some 3,500 square kilometers.

  • Each one of these of course come with a minimum exploration commitment. But because these are such good areas, we find it quite comfortable to spend significantly in excess of the minimum commitments we have made. We are spending -- or plan to spend some AUD8,600,000. And that excludes the mine license or any of the work we do under the prefeasibility study expenditure. We've got a really top class exploration team, consisting of 14 geologists. And after having spend time with them, I can tell you they all dream about discovering the next big one. So that is really going extremely well.

  • And we are very happy with our exposure to the Morobe Province. It is geologically very, very prospective. It's got a long history of mining and exploration. It has really good land owner relationships in general. And it is quite a lot of support from the Morobe Provincial administration. And really it is probably one of the provinces with some of the best existing infrastructure. So for the moment we are very, very happy there.

  • Kerimenge draw results, I really just pulled the one slide through to this presentation. We, on Tuesday at the Capetown Mining (indiscernible), we will speak a lot more about exploration. And we also hope to be announcing the updated resource decoration for Wafi Golpu. So that may worth your while watching out for.

  • We are seeing good intersections here. I mean Kerimenge just as an example, with an intersection of over 20 meters at 2.72 grams per ton. By no means our most exciting exploration project. We are really -- the $60 million a quarter we spend now is up dramatically from even last year at this time. But we for the first time really have got exploration sites or targets worth spending money on, and so we understandably now take our own value creation and growth strategy into exploration as well.

  • The next slide deals with South African service operations, a good quarter. Not to worry about the grade, as extra times were really mainly from [slime stands], and therefore they are [.2] grams a ton. So obviously if you place a lot more tonnages of -- from low grade material, the overall grade is marginally down. You can see where more kilograms -- and we had a significantly lower cost, both in per ton terms and overall and in rand per kilogram terms.

  • If we were to do a sort of a direct comparison with last quarter, the big difference really here is the extent to which that project finished where we are doing [slam] retreatment in anticipation of their [trimega tons] project. Project finish is the real difference between the two sets of quarters.

  • The Australian operations, that survived quite a tough quarter, as we anticipated. And although the tonnage was supplemented quite significantly, the (technical difficulty) was watered down so much, but you could see that the blend between service and underground was different, and hence again what looks like a lower overall sort of grade. Most important of course kilograms were down by some 160 odd kilograms. And that resulted in us having significantly higher working cost at the cost per kilogram level.

  • We are continuing to see success in the delineating of the shoal underground resource. We have little doubt that will come on stream in the next 3 to 6 months. And certainly give us higher grade underground material for a few quarters after that. We also are having some drilling success at Golden Stream. And eastern [Desilite] opened for prospects. And although for the last five, six years this has been sort of shorter life hand to mouth type operations, we certainly are of the opinion that we can sustain those operations going forward

  • My next slide, or your next slide, should then be the income statement. We show you this December and last December, as well as last quarter. Obviously, quarter on quarter we dealt extensively with the low cash operating profits. I pointed out to you, you'll find the number that profit on sale of investment in associate. That is really the Gold Fields -- the Western Areas shares at the point in time when we converted it into Gold Fields shares. The profits remain on that accounting event.

  • The rest of the numbers are quite easy to understand. Exploration expenditure I indicated to you doubled from last year this time, and gone up 20% from last quarter. And we are very happy to spend money in areas where you could still make a (indiscernible) discover a real world-class orebody. Not much more to report on that. I would rather your questions -- get to the questions later.

  • The same applies quite to a large extent on the balance sheet. Certainly nothing I need to point out. You can look at the balance sheet, and this is just an abbreviated one. The cash reconciliation for the period also reads quite simply. In the end we had a few dollars more in the bank. Operating profit levels obviously it is offsetted by capital, the growth capital as well as development.

  • Corporate exploration expenditures, it is about half of that is exploration. And the care and maintenance costs is slightly down, and we think we can bring it down even further. The rest of the numbers are really all in line with expectations. Not a hell of a lot to report.

  • The Australian hedges we closed out was some [30,000] ounces. This coming quarter it is a bit lower at 42,000 ounces to be closed out, leaving us with the cash balance that you can see there.

  • I then move onto the slide which deals with capital expenditure. Again, very little to report. Actual capital very much in line with the previous quarter. The coming quarter we forecast on one hand slightly lower CapEx on the South African operations because this is the quarter the least working days. Thanks to the same as Christmas New Year break. And if you've got the last days to spend money on, you tend to spend a little bit less. That is what that is about.

  • Then the line to look out for on the projects in the Papua New Guinea in our P&G line, a huge jump. And that is partly because we are really ramping up work there now. But a good 90 million of that is expected to be drawn down from the fleet financing facility. And because obviously one of the first expensive cost licenses is actually the procurement of the fleet.

  • One or two final slide perhaps. I just wanted briefly to talk about Evander 8 Shaft, our overall improvement project. Just one of a few that we're looking at in the Company. The Board approved some R20 million for a raised borehole to really improve the ventilation. We will drill this hole hopefully with such accuracy that afterwards it could also be used for rock winding in the hope of us cutting out a very, very expensive decline conveyor system. And if we are successful throughout -- or at the end of this project, we will bring the cost of Evander down by significantly more than 10%.

  • On this slide we just incorrectly entitled, Leveraged Assets. And I do apologize for that. This is just really just a few sort of prospects I want to share with you. The megatons we spoke about at length last quarter. The Board then approved some 6 million for we to start the water balance exercise. We just indicated at the time that another 18 odd million would be required for prefeasibility. This was now approved.

  • Uranium, as you all know, has got everybody talking. And we do own some uranium on surface, mainly in our slime stands. And obviously we are going to regenerate the slime and move them from one site to another in order to remove the gold. It is a good time to also come to terms with what uranium content there is. We're investigating all alternatives to see how to crystallize the value. And if things go according to plan, we should be in a position to declare a resource for the first time, certainly (indiscernible) Harmony by June 2007.

  • That target we are, dare I say sick and tired of the continuous underperformance. And so we have commissioned a proper investigation to find out what is stopping us from getting the volumes up. And the orebody, the equipment fleet, and whatever needs to be recapitalized will be investigated. We have put the best brains in Harmony to it. I would hope that we certainly would also will make use of some outside consultants.

  • The next slide is sort of slide I always use to just remind you that by 2007, for example, we hope to have the underground grades back up at -- from 5 grams a ton. That in its own right I think would deliver significantly on the patience of shareholders over the last year, whilst we have been sorting out orebody through development. I also give you a sense of what difference are growth projects, Hidden Valley, as well as perhaps the megaton could make in our lives.

  • If you just perhaps sort of draw a vertical line on 20011, you can see by 2011 the so-called leveraged shaft would all be mined out for practical purposes. And what is left of Harmony is a significantly higher grade set of assets, and by definition therefore significantly better quality.

  • That is really an objective we have set ourselves as a Board and a management team as to complete this transformation of Harmony, which we have been busy with for the last 10 years, over the next 4, 4.5 years.

  • In conclusion then, our value creation strategy. We know that it is frustratingly slow, but we are making very good progress with improving the ability of our operations to perform more consistently, an 11.6% improvement in development on top of last quarter, as we chose on top of the previous quarter, has to be seen in that context. There is no quick fix. We just have to get the development done in order to have more flexibility in order to have hopefully better grades, but also more consistent grades.

  • The quality upgrade of our portfolio continues with the new mine. They are all coming onstream in the next 2.5 or 3 years. And we are a different Harmony with those five projects on full production by the end of 2010.

  • We are by definition reducing our exposure to some of our existing lower quality, higher cost and shorter life assets. They have just been mined out progressively. And therefore the blend of what we own increases dramatically. So I am quite convinced that Harmony could complete this transformation into what by any metric should be a world-class gold company by mid 2011.

  • Thank you very much for your attention. We do have perhaps some 15 odd minutes for questions. We will hand you over back to the facilitator. I think the basic rules of course would be that you try and put a question after you have stated your name, and give others a chance as well. But thank you very much. I now hand you back to our facilitator.

  • Operator

  • (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Heather Douglas, BMO Capital Markets.

  • Heather Douglas - Analyst

  • I just have a question about CONOPS. You mentioned that you signed a two-year agreement. Does that set the pay schedules in advance of the upcoming contract negotiations in July, or it is a chance that you could lose any of the progress on this CONOPS agreement, because it all gets thrown out in July?

  • Bernard Swanepoel - CEO

  • No, the two sets of agreements are completely separate. So in the coming negotiations in June/July we would be negotiating industrywide rates of pay -- let's call it basic salary -- and the majority of the perks and other costs associated with that.

  • Because we at Harmony, we are still effectively the only gold mining company in South Africa working CONOPS. CONOPS is a separate agreement. The two main components to CONOPS of course is on the one hand you need union and labor support for your permission to work on Sunday. I know this sounds horrific, but this is still the law of the land. We need permission from the Minister to work on Sunday. And in order to get such permission you need an agreement with your unions that they will support it. That is part of this agreement we reached.

  • And then, because we're the only ones who worked CONOPS, of course a CONOPS allowance sits outside of the normal chamber agreement. And so this agreement also settled the CONOPS allowance for the cycle of two years.

  • It is actually quite exciting, because it really just means that for the next two years CONOPS is really how we do things in Harmony. And we can't every two months or six months or twelve months have a disruption, whilst perhaps the union or somebody opportunistic tries to renegotiate. It does put it to bed. It does mean that the unions undertook to support our application to the Minister every time we need to apply for an extension of our Sunday permission.

  • In parallel with this, just because we are in a good constructive phase with our unions, we also settled all the outstanding issues from the past between the industry and the union. I am now talking about Harmony settling this. And the most significant one of that was really outstanding issues around the grading, and therefore the salary of all the so-called operators in the industry. We found a very workable and affordable solution. And, again, to the best of my knowledge is the only gold company that has achieved that so far.

  • That is why I highlighted it as something that should take one uncertainty or source of volatility out of our life. But it doesn't override -- it is separate from the wage negotiations which takes place later this year.

  • Heather Douglas - Analyst

  • Can you tell us what the CONOPS allowance is? Is that sort of a bonus over and above the regular rate of pay?

  • Bernard Swanepoel - CEO

  • Yes, it only applies to those people which are directly affected, because instead of the normal five-day workweek the gold and platinum industry has got so comfortable with, we obviously now expect people to work another roster, another cycle. And therefore associated with that is an allowance, which typically sits in the order of about an 8 to 10% allowance for CONOPS. So it is a separate allowance. And you're talking about a couple of hundred rands per month per person. But that has always been, and we just now extended that agreement by two years.

  • Operator

  • (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Heather Douglas.

  • Heather Douglas - Analyst

  • : I think you lost some people to a mine tour. Can I ask another question then?

  • Bernard Swanepoel - CEO

  • Of course, please carry on. If you ask enough questions we can cancel our phone conversation of next week.

  • Heather Douglas - Analyst

  • I was also going to put you on the spot a bit. Can you give us a little bit of guidance for Q3? Will we see an impact from the Christmas break? Do you expect some improvement in the grades?

  • Bernard Swanepoel - CEO

  • Thank you, Heather. I really mean thank you for reminding me. I did give a bit of guidance. And of course the guidance I give is of low credibility because we haven't always met it.

  • But as we stand here now at the end of January, we obviously have seen the impact of the Christmas break on volumes. And therefore the guidance would be that our South African underground mines would have marginally lower volumes. Underlying we have actually been in a nice upward trend volumewise on most of our mines. But if you've got a significantly shorter quarter it does impact. And so we are expecting our volumes to be marginally down.

  • And by marginally, I obviously am perhaps saying 0 to 5%, not the normal 10% of the past. That is the sort of the picture as we see it today. Thanks to the underperformance of the grade we actually expect grades to go up. And again, it could go up marginally in that sort of similar type sort of range.

  • If tons are down by 5%, for example, and grades are up by 5%, you come pretty close to just sort of gold production of the quarter we have just reported on. That would make a significantly better March quarter than what we historically have. I accept the risk of this sort of guidance, as it would imply that the impact of the Christmas break has at least partially been offset. The grade, of course, is understandable in that we had once off effects on our grade, and therefore you can really expect the grade to recover. The volume (indiscernible), but we really believe the underlying momentum is positive.

  • Now cost has really been showing signs of being under control. For example on the leverage operations had more tons, and yet managed to keep our cost flat in absolute terms. And so we are quite optimistic in our ability to maintain our sort of cost levels.

  • Now if you bring all of those things together, then it is a quarter which with a different makeup should see more or less similar gold from the operations. And who knows, we may even average a slightly higher gold price again, if January is anything to go by. So the gold price is unknown.

  • I can't really with confidence tell you we will average the 150,000 around a kilogram we see now. But certainly at operating profit level, we are expecting to have a better quarter than a typical March quarter. However, that is brave enough. I am sure I will have some of those guidance numbers wrong enough that you can crucify me in three months. But that is how we do see the remaining two months of this quarter adding up to a sort of okay March quarter. Well, it will be a stunning March quarter, but it will be okay relative to where we have had to have been in the two quarters.

  • Heather Douglas - Analyst

  • My last question is just I notice on your -- the chart of production through the next 20 years or so -- a yellow slip of Rolspruit and Poplar slipping in quite early, 2014. If you're going to bring those projects about, can you give us what you expect CapEx and what work has started?

  • Bernard Swanepoel - CEO

  • I will gladly perhaps soon sort of talk about those numbers. You know in the recent process, which is in the final stages of being signed up by SRK for reserve decoration, purposes. , and so we obviously revisited the feasibility studies, in the one case in three feasibility studies, and the other case. And so we do have some sort of crude numbers.

  • These projects do need our hurdle rates at the R105,000 a kilogram assumption. For investment decision-making we have been operating at R115,000 a kilogram as a gold price assumption. And quite honestly, my expectation would be that in six months for new reserve decorations we will probably be using about 520 or 525 an ounce. If you then use R6.90 or R7 to the dollar exchange rate, given you're going to end up with probably about a reserve gold price let's say in order of R150,000 a kilogram.

  • Capital for Rolspruit, which is a depth extension of Evander [HR], we are actually talking of about R3 billion to R3.5 billion. And the Poplar one is a little bit cheaper at about R2.5 billion. But what I do undertake to do is somewhere in the next quarter or two perhaps put out -- what shall we call it -- fact sheets on these operations. Certainly by the time we get to year-end we can give you significant detail.

  • That slide in its totality I want to tell you is meant to be some sort of an indicative slide. We obviously do need to start some of the early stage work in the next 18 months or so. We do want to be in a position to bring them on.

  • Poplar again is a shallow mine of a kilometer deep. And we're doing exploration work there to see if the 500 meter access, or shallowest point, doesn't perhaps extend to even shallower than that, which would open up a whole host of new cheap alternatives of accessing.

  • The project that I briefly mentioned at Evander HR, if we can make that sort of small movable sort of hoisting shaft concept work, quite frankly then we can mine extensively into the all spread area for a fraction of the capital that we had in mind up to now.

  • On the one hand, I have given you the sort broad numbers as they are in this sort of prefeasibility study, and sort of briefly sharing with you the work we do in terms of optimizing the potential of these projects. That, you know, I may be around in 20 -- whenever that is, 2014 or whenever. But treat it as sort of an indicative number, not a firm commitment at the stage.

  • Operator

  • [Isuru Simpson], [Equinox].

  • Isuru Simpson - Analyst

  • Just to follow-up on a Heather's question. To reach this sort of 3.5 million ounces (indiscernible) at that rate, what kind of CapEx would you need over the next few years? And just a broad brush rough guidance for the CapEx for the next (indiscernible) to reach that target.

  • Bernard Swanepoel - CEO

  • We are -- with the exception of our Hidden Valley mine we are building in Papua New Guinea, the bulk of those ounces, 1.2 of the 1.5 million ounces we bring onstream in the next three, four, five years, the bulk of that is at the level of expenditure where we need to be now.

  • The two numbers that will be higher, that will come in is of course the Hidden Valley project, where we will be spending quite significantly, just under -- or just over R1 billion next year, and then a drop-off in the year after that.

  • Then also we are expecting the the three may mega slime stand retreatment plants to cost together, combined, in order of just over R1 billion. But so if you look at our current capital expenditure profile, some of those South African mines as they come onstream drop off a little bit. But it is in net increase thanks to Hidden Valley. And as Hidden Valley drops off, there will be some increase, but not nearly at the level of Hidden Valley for the three mega slime stands. Thank you very much.

  • Operator

  • There are no further questions. Would you like to make any concluding remarks?

  • Bernard Swanepoel - CEO

  • I really just want to thank you everybody who has dialed in. Thank you and goodbye.

  • Operator

  • On behalf of Harmony Gold, that concludes this afternoon's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.