Michael Leonard: Yes. Can people see the questions or should we read them out?
Operator: No. They cannot see them.
Michael Leonard: Okay. So Stephen maybe you can read the question.
Stephen Mullowney: Yes. I’ll read the question. So, we have from private investor and I think this comes — I get asked this question all the time and it’s a question from the past. Is there a realistic possibility to get future dividends paid in physical gold? Right now in the short- to medium-term, I would say that, that is not something that we are looking at. As you’re aware, the Tanzanian government does put a royalty on gold. It does track its gold fairly closely and we have a joint venture partner in the Government of Tanzania through STAMICO. So I don’t see a dividend in short- to medium-term in physical gold. The second question from the individual is based on the grade exploration numbers the Board presented, would you agree with my personal opinion that there’s a high possibility TRX Gold has about 5 million to 10 million ounces of gold under the ground?
So obviously we are traded on the public markets. That would be a personal opinion versus a fact-based opinion at this point in time. We do need to do a lot of work on the exploration potential of this property to drill that out to 5 million to 10 million ounces. Personally, I’m hopeful, that that property will come to that sort of level. Andrew is hopeful that the property will come into that sort of level, but it does need to be proven out through the drill bit.
Andrew Cheatle : That’s correct, Stephen. It’s very much a personal opinion. I would say again, we’ve had very positive early results. And there is no shortage of exploration potential on our special mining license.
Stephen Mullowney: Exactly. But it does need to be proven out.
Andrew Cheatle : There’s a lot of drilling to be done but that’s the name of the game.
Stephen Mullowney: That’s the name of the game. Yes. So the next question is when do you expect to bring out an updated indicated and inferred resources report? How would you describe? Okay. So two questions there. So with regards to updated indicated and inferred resources report, what we are doing is looking at what is the economic potential of the Buckreef Main Zone? And as part of that, there would be an update on resources that are currently in the Buckreef Main Zone. Did I get that correct, Andrew?
Andrew Cheatle : Yes.
Stephen Mullowney: So that is expected to come out in the first half of fiscal 2024, by June.
Andrew Cheatle : Yes. Sorry, calendar.
Stephen Mullowney: Calendar, yes. So not fiscal. Yes. Sorry. Calendar. Yes. So the next question to that is, how would you describe the current relationship with the Tanzanian government since there were rumors some rumors of the old aggressive Tanzanian President not being so friendly to foreign investors. And I think we did it in [Steve Reiser’s] question, we did answer this. The current relationship is good. We have a good relationship with the mining minister and the old mining minister as well who’s now the Vice Prime Minister. We have a good relationship with the permitting secretary. We have a good relationship with the mining commission and with our joint venture partner. Reality is in countries in Africa, if you put an asset in production, you continue to grow it, you become a good taxpayer, become a good employer, have a good reputation.
You generally have a good relationship with the government. They want to see the asset grow just as much as we would and that’s in, what I’ll say aggressive regimes and more not so aggressive regimes. And you’re right, the old president was not as friendly to foreign investors. When we started, I came on Board with the old president in power and as soon as we started to build the asset, that relationship was fine. So, I think that I’ve often said this to people is when you go into foreign countries, and I’ve been to a lot of them, and I’ve done business in a lot of them, particularly my prior role of managing government relationships both on the government side and on the investor side, the world is open. And so what does that mean? Everybody has a smartphone.
Everybody has an Internet connection. Everybody has access to the same information, which wasn’t the case 30 years ago. And so in that and then a lot of the people now are very mobile and are educated in the same educational institutions, particularly in the West. As long as you have a fair, open, and transparent relationship, generally, you have a good relationship, an asset approach that we’ve been taking.
Michael Leonard: Well, I think, you know, you talked about foreign direct investment, Stephen. It’s fairly well publicized but one of the key metrics that the new government has put into place is growing mining as a percentage of GDP.
Stephen Mullowney: That’s correct.
Michael Leonard: And they put in some targets and numbers around that. So certainly a new regime and Stephen’s point, we’re getting along well. And as long as we continue to execute, don’t expect that to change.
Stephen Mullowney: And so the next question is when and how are shareholders going to be rewarded? So markets go up, markets go down, markets sometimes are good, markets are sometimes bad. And what’s within our control is not so much what the markets are, what the market value companies at, it is what’s in control of us is to reach out to as many investors as possible, put forward a story to as many investors as possible, but also come up to a business plan that is investable and a business plan that could survive those ups and downs from market perception, I think we’ve managed to do that. That was one of my — and I was asked this a lot over the last couple of weeks is why did you go with the business plan you went with? And a lot of people don’t realize, but a large part of my education is in economics.
There is the full realization that interest rates could never be at zero forever. They never were in the history of mankind. And when interest rates go up, generally, valuations go down. It’s a pretty simple equation. Liquidity usually dries up as well and the ability to access capital usually dries up with it. And so you need to have in place a business plan that will survive those ups and downs. And in the junior explorer, I could tell you, when I joined, the business plan would not have survived this market. Today, the business plan does survive this market. It’s predominantly a self-funding operation. We wanted to slow it down and build up liquidity we could. We don’t see that as being necessary at this point in time, but the business plan can survive this type of market.
And over time as the business grows out its cash flow profile, its EBITDA profile, and its resource profile, then shareholders should ideally get rewarded from that growth. So the next question I have is I hope investors who were part of this from the beginning could be made whole again. I’m in good shape. I feel those who got into the vision when TRE was trading at the all-time lows and highs. I appreciate the progress that you’ve made. And I address this in almost all presentations is, the management team came on board just over 3 years ago. I believe we’ve moved the project forward since that point in time. That business plan is much different than the original business plan of being a royalty company and predominantly an exploration call.
