Stephen Mullowney: Yes. So currently, what we’re seeing is in our doré bars, there’s only a small portion of silver here because you do pick that up in the processing and there’s a small little amount of copper. We’re not seeing anything in the assay results that would indicate that this could be a copper gold project for instance. It’s just not that type of geological formation. Andrew, do you want to get into that just a little bit deeper, please?
Andrew Cheatle: Yes. No, we’re in an Archaean greenstone system. It’s predominantly gold. I’m assuming you summarized it. There’s a little bit of silver that comes with it, but this is a gold play.
Stephen Mullowney: Yes. It’s a gold play. And in the region, it’s almost all gold plays as well.
Operator: The next question is from [Steven Reiser with Assembly Office].
Unidentified Analyst : Firstly, I do want to congratulate the team on the strong effort for 2023 in terms of the cleaning up the balance sheet, increasing production, the exploration work, and of course, the very strong stewardship of shareholder capital and funds. That’s clearly evident from the discussion. The question I wanted to ask the team is really centered on market positioning and customer acquisition, a little bit of the softer issues in an environment where there really is tightened liquidity in the gold market industry and many miners that are competing for capital. From an asset manager standpoint, as you all will readily be aware, there will be some natural wariness to investing in Africa, particularly for U.S. asset manager or hedge fund or family office, when there are miners like, for example, Snowline Gold or Hercules Mining in Vancouver and in Idaho, for example, that have high intrinsic potential ounces, and are in regions that might be perceived as easier to work within.
So I wanted to understand what the team is doing on: One, in addition to the rhetorical discussions in past on Africa and that it’s safe and one can drive the car successfully, what might be going on from a more structural standpoint to see reports or information published, even put on the website that cast aside some of these concerns about Africa and Tanzania? And then secondarily and related point, what’s being done in terms of acquiring additional investors? I know that 15% institutional slice and the 15% friends, family, and officer slice have been fairly steady for a while. But given the intrinsic value of this firm, there is value in very strong programs to acquire additional investors and customers. So again, market positioning and then structural things to overcome perceptions that may exist about Tanzania and Africa and also the active cultivation of really deep pocket investors.
Stephen Mullowney: So with regards to the first risk around Tanzania, there’s been a lot of progress at the government level towards foreign direct investment. As you’re fully aware of the former President Magufuli passed away just over 2 years ago, the new President is all about foreign direct investment. We’ve discussed — where the government is going on foreign direct investment and where it wants to go and how Tanzania is improving as an investment jurisdiction, you’re seeing it in the funds flows. I think we’ve had that in presentations before around the investments that Barrick is making. There was just recently, acquisition of OreCorp by Silvercorp, and we’re starting to see a lot more investment in the infrastructure of Tanzania.
You are correct. There’s not a lot of that on our website. And as we’ve spoken before, we need to get that onto our website a lot of the positive articles that are around Tanzania. I think in my conversations and the team’s conversations with investors, that’s starting to come through, with regards to see a reduced risk in the current administration in Tanzania versus the prior administration and that is starting to resonate a little bit. I think you will see that come out in ratings around such as the Fraser Institute and other ratings over time. Kind of similar to the road — the analogy that I like to use is Ecuador, 10 years ago, not a lot of investment. Today, kind of put up there with other jurisdictions. With regards to the acquisition of — basically, what you’re asking is new shareholders.
When we go through the shareholder register, I do see a turnover in shareholders and new shareholders. I even see it — and I just go down the screen here today and look at the participants that are here on this call versus the participants that would have been on a similar call last year, it’s much more broad, and it’s new priorities as well. And as you’re fully aware, I was in Switzerland last week. I did meet quite a bit few shareholders and then they realized we’re shareholders because they would show up in the OBO list versus the NOBO list. So, those communications continue, we continue to have a lot of meetings and reach out to institutional investors and also large retail and family offices. So that continues. I would say that will ramp up significantly too as we start to formulate our more medium to longer term business plans.
I am hopeful that once that is more formulated, we become more investable than we are currently today. And that has to do with — you’re seeing the tenements of that today with regards to talking about underground mining, Buckreef Main Zone, plant expansions. Today, if you were to try to look at what does 4,000 tonnes a day or 6,000 tonnes a day look like at Buckreef Main, you couldn’t answer that question. I can answer that question much better, but I don’t have all the information on that yet. And that will be more into more knowns as we go forward here, which will enable people to put evaluation in a traditional mining sense onto the company. Does that kind of answer your question?
Unidentified Analyst : Yes. It does. And certainly, we’re going to be grateful and look forward for further fact-based insights on the site that dispel some of the perceptions that might exist for particularly Western asset managers about Tanzania and Africa.
Stephen Mullowney: Yes. And look, it’s helpful too, Steve, that you have acquisitions of mining properties starting to occur in Tanzania as well. That means that there are larger sources of capital that aren’t afraid to make investments there. To your core property, the envisioned CapEx for that is $0.5 billion. So that’s going to be a large equity check there written by somebody.
Operator: The next question is from John Tumazos with John Tumazos Very Independent Research.
