Caledonia Mining Corporation Plc

Caledonia Mining Corporation Plc

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Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 11, 2026

Maurice Mason

Welcome to the Caledonia Mining Q1 2026 results presentation. I would like to now hand over to Mark Learmonth, who is the CEO, to begin the results presentation.

Mark, over to you.

Mark Learmonth

Thank you, and welcome to this results presentation for the first quarter of 2026. Can we just move through to the presenting team?

I actually can't see the slides there. Yeah.

Just move through to the presenting team. As you've heard, I'm Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's CEO.

I'm joined by Ross Jerrard, the CFO, Victor Gapare, executive director. We're not altogether certain if Craig Harvey will be able to join us.

We're having some connectivity issues to Johannesburg, which is where he is, Craig may or may not join us. Then there's Maurice Mason, vice president corporate development and investor relations.

That's the team. Should we move on?

Just by summary, as we've previously announced, gold production in the first quarter was somewhat challenged. There's about 14,700 ounces of production from Blanket Mine, and that was entirely due to, as you'll see in a moment, the lower grades mined during the quarter.

Notwithstanding the lower production, financial performance was still robust, supported by the higher gold price environment. Revenue was up 18% to just over $66 million.

Profit was also higher. Profit after tax was up nearly 70% to nearly $19 million, and also very strong cash generation.

In particular, free cash flow more or less tripled from $4 million to $12 million in the quarter. As you might expect, with lower ounces produced, and particularly the effect of the lower grade, that affected the cost per ounce.

Cost per ounce, the all-in sustaining cost increased to $2,700. Having said that, it's worth noting that our cost per ton was very much in line with our expectations, if we can get the grade back, and as I'll show you, I think we can, these unit costs, cost per ounce, should normalize.

It's fair to say that, again as you'll see in a moment, after the end of the quarter, April and so far into May, production at Blanket has very much improved, and Blanket is now running as expected. That's Blanket.

Bilboes gold project is proceeding very well. As we published the feasibility study in late November last year.

In January this year, we had a very successful convertible bond raise in New York, raised $150 million, and we're now continuing to implement the rest of the funding strategy, and we're also making good progress with DRA in terms of finalizing the designs and actually moving this project forwards. Victor will talk to us about that later on.

As we've had some very encouraging deep-level exploration results at Blanket Mine. Hopefully Craig will be able to join us and give a bit more detail on that, but that continues to support the long-term sustainability of Blanket Mine, and recognizes the confidence that we have in the resource.

As usual, Caledonia declared the usual dividend of 14 cents for the quarter. That will be paid shortly.

As another sort of housekeeping point, Gillian Lowve, who's a very experienced mining executive, joined the board in November 2025. At the AGM last week, he was appointed as chairman.

Let's move on to just consider the operating results, let's start with safety. Not much to say in terms of safety, it was a very, very good quarter, with improving ratios.

That really reflects our continued focus on proactive risk prevention. In particular, I'm very pleased to see there's been a substantial increase in the incidence of near-miss reporting, which is one of the key ways that we use to raise safety awareness and to act proactively to address safety issues before they become a problem.

Safety's very good, but clearly it continues to be an area of the significant focus. It's never finished.

Should we move on to the next slide? This is the usual two graphs.

The top one shows grade and tons. The bottom one shows recovery and ounces.

You'll see from the top graph the tons has been stable at approximately 200,000 tons milled a quarter. You can see the grade fell progressively from the second quarter of last year through into quarter three and quarter four and then further into quarter one, and that reflects an issue that we've disclosed previously, which is the effect of two falls of ground, which together meant that we were excluded from relatively high-ton, high-grade areas, which we relied upon to maintain the mix of our production.

You can see the damage that the grade did is reflected in the falling production profile in the second graph, where production fell quarter two last year into quarter three, quarter four, and again into quarter one. Again, just the reduction in recovery, that also reflects the falling grade, because the tail grade that we deposit onto the tailings facility is pretty much the lowest we're going to get is about 0.2 grams a ton, and so if the feed grade is lower, that means that recovery tends to go down.

Having said that, if we move on to the next page, you can see in a bit more granularity the progression of grade in December and into the quarter, and you can see that grade has recovered. December 2025, it was 2.55 grams a ton, increasing to 2.6 in January, 2.7 in February, and 3 in March.

Currently, it's running at about 2.9 grams a ton, which is actually pretty much what we expected it to be in the second quarter. As I've already outlined to you, Blanket has now returned to the production level that we had anticipated.

We have already started with three remediation initiatives. The first is that a contractor has started work to accelerate access to higher-grade areas.

They will continue to work for the remainder of the year, and that gets us back into a position where we should be ahead in terms of development, which gives us much more operating flexibility and resilience in future, a contractor has started. The second thing that's happening is that we are implementing a revised shift system, which will move the operations of the mine from six days a week to seven days a week.

Now, that new shift structure is primarily intended to reduce worker fatigue, which we understood was a significant problem, but it will also result in increased run-of-mine production on an annualized basis, an extra 100,000 tons a year, which in due course will flow through into increased ounces produced. In the short term, the incremental production will be stockpiled, but once we've got a reasonable stockpile, thereafter, additional production will be processed.

Also, in June, July, we expect to commission an additional ball mill, BM3, which will increase our overall milling capacity by about 200 tons a day. Those are three initiatives that are taking place to increase and address the issues that we've faced at Blanket.

As you can't see, but you will see it in the second quarter, there has been a turnaround in the performance at Blanket Mine, which is an area of considerable focus for us. That's a few brief words on operations.

Can I ask Ross, please, to take us through the financial results?

Ross Jerrard

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. As always, delighted to talk you through the results.

As Mark has already discussed, it was really a concept of the higher gold price offsetting a lower production period. You'll see at the top of the table the outcome in terms of gold sold versus gold produced.

There is a higher portion of ounces that sit within bullion on hand, which does affect that in terms of timing, but largely that average gold price that you see on the table, the $4,816 an ounce, was really offset by those lower ounces in terms of gold produced and sold. Pleasing for the period was the absolute costs.

You'll see the on-mine costs in terms of dollar quantum and our all-in sustaining dollars spent, the quantum of 23 or just under 24 million dollars for on-mine costs and $38 million all-in sustaining costs. Those were largely on track with our budget and expenditures, up 3% on-mine costs and 9% all-in sustaining costs, we were pleased with the spend rates there.

Our unit costs were negatively impacted by the lower denominator in terms of ounces. Overall activity was really good, and we were pleased with the delivery by the teams, but obviously the ounce profile hit our unit costs.

As we exited the quarter, our EBITDA was up 50% at just shy of $34 million, and with cash flow coming in really strongly after capital expenditure, which is again in line, there are some timing differences in terms of capital expenditure profile, but we're really pleased with our free cash flow of $12 million, which is up some 153% on the comparative quarter. Very pleasing result financially, albeit that ounces were down, and overall our earnings per share were 78% up on the comparative quarter.

If we do a little bit more of a dive into our profit and loss, if I could turn to the next slide, please. You'll see the outcome of our revenue, and that higher gold price that we achieved resulting in revenue of $66 million for the period.

Our royalties are obviously based on that top line, they equally increased to $5.6 million for the period. Production costs were in line with expectation and largely on track, together with depreciation.

You see our gross profit is sitting at a shade over $32 million, which was a really pleasing result and almost 20% up. The key movements for the quarter are really driven around our financial instruments, and I'm going to do a little bit of a deep dive on the accounting treatments of that.

That net fair value gain on the financial instruments is represented in one line item, but there are a few different elements to that, which I'll discuss in due course. Further down on the chart, our net finance cost is up some 200%, but that is due to the convertible senior loan notes and the treatment of those financial instruments.

All other line items were largely in line, and we exited the period with a profit for the period of just shy of $19 million, which we were really pleased about. If we turn the slide, please, and we just talk a little bit more about the cash flows.

Our net cash from operating activities were up some 41% for the period. We did deploy against capital expenditure as planned.

There are some timing differences there, but there's nothing to report or there're no outliers that need to be highlighted. Then there's the combination of the various investing and financing, which really was around our capped call options, our convertible, and really the deployment of our financing program.

We had some maturity of our fixed-term deposits, which we deployed against our put option instruments, and there were timing of various payments there. The raising of the $150 million convertible, some of those funds were used to acquire a capped call option, and you'll see the deployment of $14 million going out of our cash flow.

Further down, you'll see the proceeds from the convertible notes coming in at $145 million. Overall, really at the bottom of the page, we exited the period in a fantastic position of $161 million worth of closing cash and cash equivalents, which shows that the whole financing strategy is really coming together.

You'll see that if we turn to the next slide, which talks to our liquidity. Together with our cash on hand of $170 million and those drawn-down bank facilities of $8.8 million, that gives us the $161 million that I just discussed.

Together with bullion on hand, which represents about 3,600 ounces, and some gold sales receivables really pulls together a very robust financial liquidity position and treasury that enables us to move forward with our various capital allocation decisions, deployment of funds, and most exciting of all is obviously moving forward with our development of the Bilboes project. If we move to the next slide, without doing a deep dive into the financial treatment of financial instruments, this is the first period that we will have disclosed the treatment of the convertible notes and the various accounting that goes with it, and the fact that we don't do a full set of financial statements that you would otherwise see, and that will come through in due course at the half year, we just thought it was important to articulate the various accounting around the convertible and also the capped call options.

In terms of best illustrating that, we raised $150 million, which you can see on the left-hand side of the slide, which is the compound financial instrument of the senior loan notes. Under the accounting standards, we have to split that into two elements: there's the host debt and there's a derivative liability, and those two are accounted for and treated separately.

One is under an amortized cost accounting treatment, and the derivative liability, there's fair value through profit and loss, it has slightly different accounting connotations. Then equally the second arm, some of the deployment of that $150 million went towards the capped call option, and that has a separate accounting treatment and also a fair value through the profit and loss, there's two arms and elements in terms of accounting and the valuation of that.

You'll see below the chart in terms of the various line items that are represented in the primary statements that are attached to this quarterly announcement, but you'll see that we hold a derivative asset, a non-current asset of $14 million. That asset really comprises both our capped call options and the treatment of that, but also our hedging program.

It's a combination of a number of derivative financial instruments. Then our liabilities, there's obviously the host debt that sits there, but also there's a derivative financial statement liability, the $97 million and the $38 million composed that $135 million compound financial instrument for the bond.

Equally on the financial statements in terms of our income statement, you'll see a net $4 million, or $3.9 million, and that's a combination of a number of these fair value adjustments that go through in terms of both our put options, the movements on the financial liabilities, and the financial assets. I know that's complicated, and hopefully this gives a little bit more color in terms of accounting for it.

The full financials and I guess a lot of the movement, the color, will come through at the half year with the June results. I might pause there.

It was a really good quarter financially, notwithstanding the lower ounces, but we're well-placed in terms of our strategy, both with I guess internal cash generation and our overall funding position, which I'll talk to in a bit more detail as we go through Bilboes. With that, I'll hand it across and we'll talk through the Bilboes project.

Maybe, Victor, if you can talk to Bilboes?

Victor Gapare

Thank you, Ross. Can we move to the next slide?

This particular slide and the next one really is information we have already published on the project. I won't go over it today because it's already been published, and it's already in our previous presentations.

What I will do is actually to give an update on where we are today. As Mark has said already, we appointed DRA as our EPCM contractor for this particular project.

At the moment, we have DRA and ourselves, we've frozen the project scope, which allows DRA to complete the detailed designs for the project commonly known as the front-end engineering designs. We expect to conclude these designs maybe by the end of the third quarter into the fourth quarter of this year, which will allow us to place orders for the long-lead items towards the end of the year, really in the fourth quarter of this year.

The construction for this project will take place over 2027 and 2028, and our expectation is that we should have the first gold pour towards the end of 2028. Basically, that's where we are.

We are busy with DRA, we are working with the various contractors...

Mark Learmonth

Thank you, Victor. I don't know if we've lost you.

I think Craig has joined us. Craig, have you joined us?

I hope so.

Craig Harvey

I actually have managed to join us, but

Mark Learmonth

I'm

Craig Harvey

on a mobile.

Mark Learmonth

Good. If you could just just just take us through the Oh, no, hold on.

Before we get on, sorry sorry, beg your pardon. Before we get on to if we get on to Craig, I think I think, Ross, were you going to just say a few words about the the funding strategy for for Bilboes?

Ross Jerrard

Thanks, Mark. If we could turn to the next slide, one more, please.

Victor Gapare

The next one. The next slide.

Mark Learmonth

Billy, next slide?

Ross Jerrard

Thank you.

Mark Learmonth

There you go.

Ross Jerrard

Thanks, Mark and Victor. Just to provide a quick update in terms of the funding strategy for Bilboes, and as previously disclosed and discussed on previous calls, we have a four-funding pillar strategy.

The first two pillars are being completed, we previously disclosed to you that the hedging program, that's in place, and also the $150 million convertible note raise, those are all completed, and funds are received in treasury and ready for deployment. Importantly, steps three and four are in progress and well on track.

Step three is the interim funding facility, and that is where we're working with a consortium of Zimbabwean and South African banks to pull together a $150 million facility. We're working with our lead arranger, Stanbic, and CBZ in Zimbabwe, and the data room is fully functional, we're working through all the various due diligence, and we're expecting to have that facility in place by mid-2026, or July 2026 latest, and that facility is really going to be secured around the Blanket Mine cash flows.

The wider project finance facility is also well in progress, and we're working with a number of financial institutions on that. We do acknowledge that the timeline to reach financial closure is a little bit longer term, we expect that will to be completed over the next year or so.

Across those various work streams, we're well progressed, and we're quite excited in terms of status and positioning for our Bilboes funding. If we turn to the next slide, we'll see an update in terms of the construct that I've previously spoken to.

This is best read in terms of looking at the chart from right to left. You'll see in terms of the $590 million and the makeup of that 500 and $90 million in terms of our capital cost and including working capital and capitalized interest coming up to that quantum of spend that we expect to be able to need to deploy for Bilboes.

Then looking at the two columns on the left-hand side, at our $3,500 gold price per ounce and the compilation of how we expect to fulfill that funding requirement, we now have cash on hand, as I'd previously articulated, of $161 million. At the top end, we have our forecast net cash flow that will come out of our operations of $125 million, and between senior debt and other facilities, in terms of what we're targeting, the gap is now $304 million.

If we move that pricing deck closer to $5,000 per ounce, which is represented in the middle column, you'll see that senior debt and other facility requirement basically halves and goes down to $154 million. We're quite excited about where we sit in terms of our financing strategy, in terms of how that's all coming together, and actually we think that we're well-placed in terms of our ability to start deploying funds and moving this Bilboes project on time and to schedule.

That hopefully gives you a good overview in terms of where we sit with our funding position, and I might turn it across to Craig Harvey now to talk about exploration.

Craig Harvey

Thanks, Ross. I'll take you through our activities of what we've been doing at Blanket in the past couple of months.

This opening slide is from our RNS that we published on the 7th of April. For those of you that haven't seen it, it basically represents from 34 level down a depth of approximately 250 meters below 34 level.

That kind of gives you an indication of the scale that we looking at there, and this is only really in what we call the BQR and the Blanket ore bodies area. Some of the key takeaways, as I said, is we are intersecting the continuation of the ore bodies about 250 meters below our workings currently.

What the colored blocks represent, it's if you can make it out, it's the various different ore bodies. It's quite difficult to read because they stack behind one another, but that is the limit of the inferred mineral resources as we currently have, which was dated 31st of December.

Anybody looking at it can see at the bottom there we've got some nice warm colors, which is greater than 2, 3, 5 grams per ton that is sitting below our inferred resource base that we have in the public domain at the moment. Encouraging takeaways.

We drilling, and the ore bodies continue at depth. If we can move on to the next slide, this then gives a tabulation of some of those results that you have seen.

One of the key takeaways there, you'll see that the top four there is annotated as Blanket 7 under the ore body name. It was March, no sorry, it was June 2025 when we published our previous drilling update for Blanket.

We indicated that we had intersected a new ore body. This ore body is now being termed Blanket 7, and as we drill more, define more, this area is going to grow.

The key takeaways there is, Blanket 7, we looking at in the drill holes 40 meters wide. Any mining company that can find a 40-meter-wide ore body running at between 3 and 4 grams per ton is going to be extremely happy about it.

Inside that 40 meters, we have the option of being selective in what we do, we can narrow it down, and just by looking at the drilling assays, we can mine those at anywhere between 5 and 6 meters wide at anywhere between kind of 12 to 15 grams per ton. Now, it's not going to be all over, but that's the kind of results that we actually get out of Blanket.

It's very, very key. The drilling program is going along very well.

We've drilled just over 10,300 meters between the June 2025 and the April 7 press releases that we've done, and so clearly we have a need to update our mineral resource estimate, so that will be done during 2026, and reported and declared before the end of 2026. I think the upshot is that at depth there's no change.

If anything, it's getting slightly better. 40 meters wide, 4 grams a ton, I think it's happy days.

If we can move on to the next slide, and we'll talk a little bit about Motapa, the surface exploration project that's located directly adjacent to Bilboes that we've just been speaking about. I'm pleased to say that finally, the labs in Zimbabwe have been very, very busy, finally we have gotten all of our repeat assays back and all of the assays from the lab that we need.

We have now closed out our 2025 drilling program, exploration program. By doing that, we are targeting early Q3 2026 a maiden mineral resource estimate for the Motapa North sulfide mineralization.

That's going to represent the kind of $5 million of work that we've done during 2023 and 2024, that's what we've expended to date. Going forward into 2026, we will kind of be doing a rinse and repeat on the Motapa South.

It's also got historic open-pit oxides that have been mined, and clearly below those pits is the sulfides. We have done some reconnaissance drilling there, we will now formalize, and we are busy drilling there at the moment to do very much what we've done at Motapa North.

In addition, there's the Mpudzi oxides that we are still looking at, and then very interestingly, during 2025, some surface trenching to the east of Motapa South has exposed mineralized horizons in the trenches, it's looking like we've got another at-surface oxide potential target that we want to have a look at. I think Motapa, yeah, it's business as usual, it's going along very well.

We will close out Q3 2026 with a maiden mineral resource estimate. With that, I'll hand it back to Mark to take us further.

Mark Learmonth

Thank you, Craig. Just to finish off, there's a lot of words on this slides, but basically we've got two immediate focuses: the first is to return Blanket Mine to good health.

Based on what we've seen in April and May to date, we appear to be making good progress on that. Just building on what Craig's been telling us, we are convinced that Blanket has a good long life ahead of it, and so one of the things we're doing now is looking at ways to improve Blanket's resilience so that it can actually live that longer life and continue to generate cash flow.

Blanket is a pressing and immediate focus. Then clearly the other one is to get Bilboes into production as quickly as possible.

In this gold price environment, for an asset of that quality, every month lost is money not made, and so we are very, very incentivized to get Bilboes done as quickly as possible, with a view to continuing work on Motapa, which will then underpin our long-term growth potential. Those are the three main issues: Blanket, Bilboes, and Motapa.

With that, a little bit longer than we expected, I'll open for questions. I would just apologize again for some of the connectivity issues that we've had on this call.

I'm sorry about that. Open for questions.

Maurice Mason

Mark and team, thank you very much for the presentation today. I would just like to ask people to raise their hands if they would like to ask a question.

The raise hand button is in the bottom of your panel that's there. We'll just wait a moment before we go to questions, just for people to have a time to raise their hand.

Just give us one moment to... We've got our first question from Nick Denham.

Nick, please unmute yourself and ask the team your question.

Mark Learmonth

Nick?

Maurice Mason

Nick, please go ahead. You're unmuted.

I can see you've unmuted yourself, please go ahead and ask.

Mark Learmonth

No, can't hear anything.

Maurice Mason

Unfortunately, Nick, we're not hearing you at the moment. I'd just like to ask people if you'd like to ask a question, please do raise your hand.

Nick, we will wait to see whether maybe it's your microphone settings, which is in the bottom left-hand side of your screen. No, unfortunately, we can't hear you at the moment, Nick.

Mark Learmonth

Have

Maurice Mason

we got any other further questions from people? Please do raise your hands.

Mark, at the moment, we don't have any further questions. Unfortunately, we're not able to hear Nick at the moment that's there.

Do you want to give it a few more minutes or a few more seconds, should we say, to see if anyone else wants to ask a question?

Mark Learmonth

Normally, people are pretty quick out of the blocks if they've got a question, I'll assume that... I would agree.

Maurice Mason

Maybe hand back to you for closing remarks, Mark.

Mark Learmonth

Look, thank you all for your participation. As I say, the first quarter was a disappointment in terms of production.

The gold price saved us, and as you've heard, I'm personally very optimistic about the trajectory both for Blanket and for Bilboes, let's put the first quarter behind us and move on. Thank you all for your attendance today.

Thank you.