Caledonia Mining Corporation Plc (AMEX:CMCL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Chester Goodburn: Yes. We want some debt funding in our business. We were conserved in the year or ungeared to a large extent. And we are looking for some data funding overdrafts were available in country. It’s not a big market and then to obtain term loans and long-term debt. So utilized overdrafts to fund some short-term funding gaps at Blanket, and it should be repaid by the latter part of this year.

Mark Learmonth: But I think the other thing is dollar denominated overdrafts in Zimbabwe have only relatively recently become available. Is that correct, Chester?

Chester Goodburn: That’s right. So dollar denominated debt, that’s few far between. I think, we were in a fortunate position to get it in country and we utilize that to plug it for the short-term gap.

Mark Learmonth: Yes. And then the other thing to understand is that in the course of any month, cash typically €“ it can be quite lumpy, you got €“ the cash should hopefully build up over the course of the month as you get deliveries and you get paid for those deliveries. And then it’s a big outflow at the end of the month as you pay your creditors and you pay your workers. But it is quite lumpy and it just helps to smooth our treasury and our cash management if we can extract cash by way of dividend payments and another payments, it just helps to smooth things out. But one of our other strategic objectives is to what I just used the phrase make ourselves relevant in Zimbabwe and part of that is they’re having local shareholders through the Vic Falls Exchange listing and having meaningful relationships with banks, we borrow money off them.

So that everyone that’s got some sort of skin in the game earn some participation in the future growth. But the availability of debt funding in Zoom is pretty limited and it’s very short-term.

Mark Learmonth: I don’t see any further questions. We’re just on the hour. That’s not me trying to cut this off at the hour. But genuinely I’ve got no further questions €“ can see no further questions. Just give it a minute. Okay. So no further questions, thank you all for your participation. It’s the end of March, so you’ll be looking for Q1 results coming out in mid-May. But I think to characterize the way we see 2023 after a fairly exciting time in 2022, we would hope to see 2023 as a period of stabilization and consolidation, which may sound quite boring, but actually is not a bad thing to do in this environment. So with that, I thank you all very much for your attendance.