B2Gold Corp at Canaccord Genuity Resource Conference
Oct 17, 2012 AM EDT
BTO.TO - B2Gold Corp
B2Gold Corp at Canaccord Genuity Resource Conference
Oct 17, 2012 / 05:30PM GMT
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Corporate Participants
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* Clive Johnson
B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director
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Conference Call Participants
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* Rahul Paul
Canaccord Genuity - Analyst
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Presentation
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Rahul Paul, Canaccord Genuity - Analyst [1]
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Hi, everyone. Next up we have B2Gold, a gold producer that has been growing quite rapidly both through organic means and through accretive acquisitions. I'd like to welcome Clive Johnson, President and CEO of B2Gold, who many of you know from his time as the CEO of Bema Gold. And I must say that his team's track record has been outstanding, first with Bema and now with B2.
So he's been a busy man lately, so lots of positive news to talk about, including the acquisition of CGA Mining. Some very good progress in Nicaragua and Namibia. Clive, thank you for your time.
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Clive Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [2]
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Good morning. First of all, I like to start by thanking Canaccord Genuity for including mining this year and also inviting B2Gold to participate. You've seen this before; this is our cautionary statement. Basically, it's the cover-your-ass slide that says that some things I'm going to say will be forward-looking and therefore may be subject to change.
I'm talking about, as Rahul said, we've had a lot of activity happening in the Company recently. And we've announced, a few weeks ago, the intended acquisition or business combination with a company called CGA Mining that has a very impressive gold mine in the Philippines. And with the addition of that, that would give us three producing gold mines; two in Nicaragua, and the Masbate mine in the Philippines. We expect that deal to close at the very end of the year or possibly, the legal side, early in next year.
But what it does, it gives us, obviously, a big jump in production as I'll show you. And that, combined with our other projects that we already have in various stages, we see ourselves growing to around 700,000 ounces a year over the next three years or so.
We're in a very strong financial position. We have about -- over CAD80 million in cash in the combined Company. The new B2Gold with the completion of the CGA deal, we'll have about CAD180 million in cash and we'll be generating some very impressive cash from operations. We have no debt. CGA has about CAD27 million in debt but they've got about CAD87 million in cash, so a very positive situation financially, looking forward.
Great access to capital. I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding out there in the investment community perhaps, about raising money for gold mines. If you are a one-project company that is attempting to develop a gold mine, it's getting harder to finance because the institutions are asking those three critical questions -- how are you going to finance it, how much dilution, and who's going to build it?
But if you are a Company like ours that has cash flow and a track record, there's a lot of money out there. Well, you've seen IAMGOLD and others recently going to the high-yield bond market. There is a tremendous amount of money, whether it's that kind of structure. Equity, of course, which we haven't done for 2.5 years and would like to keep that to a minimum; but there's lots of project loans; there's lots of access to financing for good project and good teams.
Our management team, Rahul alluded to it a bit. We've been together for a long time. Our key geologists, engineers, financial people, myself, spent over 20 years building Bema Gold from a small exploration company into an intermediate gold producer, until we were taken over by Kinross in a CAD3.5 billion transaction. In 2007, needless to say, the best deal Kinross ever did by quite a bit. But we have a team that is extraordinary in our ability to find them, finance them, permit them, build them and run mines very well. I call it being a hybrid company.
What I mean by that is we all know that the few exploration companies that succeed in the gold sector, they don't produce gold and they shouldn't. They get bought out. And the producers of gold, many of them are very poor at exploration. So, we always -- we felt to become a successful producer, why do you have to give up that exploration capability? Why can't you keep your entrepreneurial flair that got you there in the first place and continue to do timely acquisitions but also find gold. The cheapest ounces will always be the ones that we find. So that's our strategy going forward and it's working quite well.
So this slide shows you our projected cash from mining operations. You'll see it growing pretty dramatically. The dashed red line, because the deal hasn't closed yet, that's the additional production that would come from the Philippines, the Masbate mine. By the way, the deal has been extremely well received by both groups of shareholders and I think it's a classic win-win deal. And we were very much expecting a very positive vote that will happen in the third week in December for both companies.
Our production grows initially from Nicaragua in the sense that we have the La Libertad mine in Nicaragua, which is in the brown color here. In Libertad we've had some very good exploration success recently, discovering much higher grade, about 10 kilometers away, which we're starting to truck in January. We'll talk a bit more about that. So that shows our production increasing.
Over the next few years, and obviously with the addition of Masbate, we're looking at probably close to 400,000 ounces next year and the year after. And then it increases as we bring in the one that's indicated here in the blue, which is the Ojtikoto project in Namibia, where we're scheduling to start construction early next year.
And, ultimately, we have another project in Colombia called Gramalote, which is a joint venture with AngloGold Ashanti. We're talking there about potential production by 2016 or perhaps 2017 on adding another potentially 150,000 ounces to our account. The nice thing about this slide that I like about this, is that it's not based on a lot of arm waving; it's not based on any exploration success; and it's not based on any further acquisitions, which makes us one of the most rapidly-growing gold companies in the world today.
In addition to the impressive production growth, you'll see a dramatic growth in cash from mining operations. This year we made about CAD150 million in cash from operations. That will balloon to well over CAD300 million next year and continue to grow. In 2015 it should be about CAD500 million. This is all based on $1550 gold.
Just a bit of a summary on the transaction. A lot of you have seen this. We announced this, I guess, a month ago now. And we offered CAD1.1 billion in our shares to the CGA shareholders. And that was valuing them at -- we're offering about CAD3.18 per share when the deal was done. A fairly significant premium, but I think it's important to look back and see where the two companies were when we started talking in April of this year.
But I think the key here is what they're getting. This isn't a cash deal; they're getting our shares. And their shareholders seem very keen on becoming B2Gold shareholders and join the growth that we have. So it's got the normal conditions of a deal like this and I've talked about the vote, et cetera.
For the CGA shareholders, there's lots of benefits here. I mentioned earlier, a win-win deal. Obviously, they are a one-mine company. And the CGA group is a very impressive group of guys who have done this in the past. They build good mines and then they sell the company. And it's harder and harder these days to find a willing partner when you're trying to do M&A, which I've spoken on a little bit on in the past. It's frustrating because there's too many entrenched management groups that aren't actually representing their shareholders.
These guys are extremely good at what they do and they want to go off and do it now again in Africa and maybe five years from now, we'll perhaps maybe we'll do it again with them. But a win-win deal for their shareholders. They get the geographical diversification of everything that we have and, obviously, a big part of it will be if they remain shareholders of B2Gold, if they keep the shares, obviously they benefit from this dramatic growth that we're projecting.
Benefits to B2Gold shareholders -- this is an accretive deal. Our philosophy on acquisitions is pretty straightforward and we've done it -- this is the third time. We're not prepared to pay for ounces that might be there -- there a lot of companies who have done that and failed. Exploration is too hard to bank on exploration success to justify an acquisition. We didn't need a deal here. We didn't feel we needed one, but we found a very accretive deal.
And I mean accretive, I mean that on a cash-flow basis, immediately, a production basis, obviously, and on a reserve resource basis as well. So we're not prepared to overpay. We're prepared to pay fair value for a good project. And then if the exploration kicks in, which we think it very well might here, that will be reflected in our shares going forward. And the CGA shareholders who keep their B2Gold shares will obviously participate in the ultimate potential of the Masbate project.
So that's the discipline we bring to acquisitions. We're not going to chase things. When you do a bad deal is normally when you think you need to do a deal.
On a potential market cap basis, this is where it puts us -- in some pretty good company and, basically, heading towards where, hopefully, where New Gold and companies like that are as we continue to realize our growth. So, with the closing on the deal based on current valuations, we'd be about CAD2.7 billion market cap.
This is a key slide, I think, if you look at our production growth versus the sector. We're looking at unmatched production growth, as we have the potential to go from where we are today to 700,000 ounces, once again, based on existing projects. And that puts us in a pretty good territory. And, obviously, that growth we expect to be reflected in a re-rating. I think when this deal closes we should get a re-rating in the market, I anticipate, and more so as we move along.
Just some more details on B2. Our share compensation, we haven't done equity for 2.5 years, which is a great thing to say, and we intend to keep equity to a minimum going forward. A lot of our growth going forward could be funded from our cash from mining operations. And I mentioned earlier, our access to capital.
The only thing unusual about our share structure, perhaps, is the second line here which says, stock options held by executive founders and the Chairman of the Company; and that is zero. We founded this Company. We have some shares. We are long-term holders, obviously, but we have skin in the game. So, we didn't think it was in our shareholders' interest for us to load up on a lot of stock options.
We prefer to use those options to allow others to have skin in the game. So, non-executive directors, our employees around the world, we have -- after this deal closes, we'll have about less than 4%, or about 4,% of our total outstanding in options. That's a pretty low number, but we use those options very effectively. And frankly, it's just a nod to our shareholders to tell them that we get the fact that we're public; we don't need to double dip just because we can.
Everyone's got one of these slides. All I'll say about this social responsibility, environmental standards that we have are extremely high. We were doing this kind of stuff before it got a fancy title. We did it in Chile; we did it in Russia; and we continue to do it.
And by the way, the Masbate project in the Philippines, CGA has a very similar strategy that we have. They're very good at what they do in the community and they have a very similar corporate culture. And so, it's a great combination and we'll continue to do our work and we'll continue with what they've -- done an excellent job in the Philippines. You really have to take care of your local communities. This isn't your grandfather's mining company. Mining has changed and I think we're on the cutting edge of showing the world the benefits of responsible mining.
This map just shows you the projects that I'll touch on -- as many of these as I can. We have the Nicaraguan projects -- just to mention exploration, we are very good at exploration. We're spending about CAD36 million this year in exploring around our mines. But, also, we always like to have a couple of good grass-roots targets. So right now we have two earlier-stage targets, one in Uruguay, which is a very intriguing amount of high grade, in fact, visible gold on surface. We're trying to find out where it comes from.
And that has big size potential. But also our joint venture with a company called Calibre in Vancouver. We have a joint venture in a very exciting project called Primavera, which is in eastern Nicaragua. We've been drilling there with some initial success. We always like to have the chance to hit it out of the park again. We did a few times in Bema, and expiration is an important part of what we're doing.
In terms of the financial side of how we're doing in mining, we had a very good quarter. We announced yesterday the production results. We had a record quarter for gold production. This is the 11th quarter in a row that we have beaten or matched our budgets and our expectations. There's very few mining companies doing this and it's a testament to the people we have in Nicaragua and what a great job they're doing at the mines.
So, strong performance. We're projecting about 160,000 ounces this year from the Nicaraguan mines, the two of them. And our operating costs are going to be around CAD600 an ounce with no debt and no hedging. So, that gives us an impressive cash from mining operations, as I mentioned.
Nicaragua has been a great place to be. When we first went there, frankly, we didn't know that much about it. And it appears that many other people don't. But it's actually a great country to be in in the mining industry. It has great potential for many other industries and I think you are going to see Nicaragua boom in the next 10 to 20 years, given its great infrastructure; given the two coastlines. And you can basically grow anything in this country.
But it's also becoming an important -- mining is becoming an important part of Nicaragua. We've had great government support. I think the reason for that is that we've been transparent with government and we've done a lot of good work in the local communities. But we've delivered. The promises I made to President Ortega, 2.5 years ago, we've actually delivered on every one of those promises. He's a big fan, because we're now one of the major investors in Nicaragua. We're one of the major taxpayers in the country and we're the third-largest employer.
It's a great success story and that's not lost on the government, so we've enjoyed a great relationship. There's also tremendous infrastructure -- highways, et cetera. It is ranked the safest country in Central America. I think you're going to see a big shift in attitude and investment in Nicaragua and we're leading the charge.
I think the US government and the Canadian government should revisit their attitudes towards Nicaragua. This is not the Sandinistas of the past; this is a very progressive government. It is democratically elected and wants more investment. So I hope we'll see more of that in the future. But we're a very important part of the success of what's happening in Nicaragua. You can see our two mines there -- Limon mine, which is open pit and underground, and then the La Libertad mine which is our larger open pit mine.
Production for the two mines, I've sort of covered this, but it totals 160,000 ounces for this year, the larger one being Libertad. We've got -- increased the mine life at Limon, which is the underground and open pit mine. We've got a five-year mine life, but it's had a five-year mine life since 1941, so we expect to be here for a long time. The potential here is to find some higher grade, which we're starting to see. In Libertad we've had good a exploration success here, recently finding higher grade about 10 kilometers away from the mill.
Just a few thoughts on the Philippines. I just got back on Friday from the mine and it's a very impressive operation. It's about an hour charter flight from Manila to get to Masbate Island. This is in the Roman Catholic part of the country. We saw recently an announcement that the government has actually started successfully negotiating, or has successfully negotiated, the first phase with the Muslim groups in the south and the government is going to work with them to grant them some autonomy.
This is something that doesn't impact us at all, but it's a very positive sign of where the Philippines is going. Their economy is growing. Mining is an important part of that. And Masbate Island is -- the mining -- this mine represents about 80% of the economy here, so it's very important. The mine was shut down about 14 years ago. And it was very difficult for the island and the people on the island. So, the government has been trying to get mining investments so they gave projects like this a tax holiday, so we have a tax holiday to 2017.
And the reason for that is the government said, if you come and make a major investment in our country, we will give you a tax break for a period of time. There still is a 2% excise tax, which might increase a bit and we've modeled a 4% excise tax in our models going forward, but it's a very good place to be. It's got great logistics. And it has tremendous exploration upside.
We're very comfortable that we have a minimum 200,000 ounces a year here over at least a 13-year mine life, probably longer. And we'll be bringing our exploration capabilities to bare here, and the potential is to expand production here. We'll be looking at that -- as soon as the deal closes, we'll start investigating the opportunity to increase the production from Masbate.
So we're excited about the acquisition. We think it fits with us very well and CGA -- I can't say enough about the job they've done. The other great thing about this project is it's derisked. In other words, it's already built -- it's been mining for 2.5 years. So there's no permit required; there's no financing required; and they put together a very impressive group of people -- some Australian ex-pats and a Filipino community that is very impressive.
There's a lot of talent in the Philippines and this mine has a lot of great people and the intention of the people at the mine, they are actually excited about this opportunity to become part of a bigger Company. So, in terms of acquisitions, when you look at recent acquisitions, if you can find accretive production to buy, it doesn't get much better than that because of this derisking idea.
Just a few more details on the mine. It has produced 0.5 million ounces to date. It is, I mentioned, 200,000 ounces a year right now. They project an 18-year mine life. And there's a very good reserve, about three million ounces, and there's a very large resource of six million ounces. We think quite a bit of that has the potential to become reserves as we continue to drill.
It's a very large epithermal system, not dissimilar to what we have at La Libertad mine in Nicaragua. This stretches over 16 kilometers. And there is a lot of historic high grade mining in the past, as well, very similar to Libertad, again. So the exploration upside is pretty dramatic.
This is where I was talking about, La Libertad. Finding some higher grade. This is a satellite image; on the left-hand side you have the mill where we're mining -- processing 5500 tons a day right now from the pits that you see there. But when we got involved here we always felt this belt had great exploration upside. And this is the great -- this is the important thing about being good miners but also good explorers. It's amazing how many mines we see in the world that the property has not been adequately explored. Here's a great example.
To the east here we have a zone now, a new discovery called Jabali. And Jabali is 0.5 million ounces of close to 3.5 grams; recurring mining, 1.7 grams we're processing at the mill. So all we have to do is spend $20 million, which we're well under way, to build a new road. We announced that we got our mining permit here ahead of schedule. We announced that yesterday, as well. We're going to start trucking higher-grade ore in January. So that will increase our production from 100,000 ounces at this mine to 150,000 ounces over the next few years, just in the next two years alone.
But, also, the impact of that is you stay at 5500 tons a day, but because the grade is higher, you produce more ounces of gold and your operating costs per ounce go down. And we'll come up with those new projected numbers by the end of the year. In our business it doesn't get any better than this -- finding higher grade near a mill.
Now, call us old-fashioned, but if we'd gotten involved in this project years ago, we would have explored the whole belt and we would have built the mill near the high grade. It sounds pretty basic. It's incredible how many times we see a situation and we could see it again coming up soon in the Philippines as well, where there's just a great exploration potential on the property. And we see that here.
So this is a great demonstration of the value that exploration can add. There's numerous targets along the belt, as well. We'll continue to explore them. This is just describing most of what I talked about and I mentioned we just got -- our permit on the road construction is well under way; production to start from Jabali in early next year.
In Namibia, we did late last year to get into Namibia. And this is, in our opinion, the best country in Africa to be in. It's a very stable government; it has a small population, yet the mining has been an important part of its history and it needs jobs. So, we are going to be -- starting in January we expect to start construction of the Ojtikoto mine, which is located about three-hours' drive north of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.
We've got great government support here again. There is a reasonable tax regime here and the government is very supportive and wants these jobs. We'll create about 800 jobs, and if you can multiply by five to get the real impact of jobs that will be created in the area. We're looking at around CAD200 million to CAD250 million in capital costs here. That number will come out as the feasibility is completed by the end of the year. We are expecting very robust economics here and, obviously, a lot of the capital costs, or all of it potentially, could be funded from our cash from mining operations. So, very little outside financing required.
We like this one a lot. It is three kilometers from the paved highway yet it's far enough away from the two towns to not be any environmental impact. This will be the least impactful project, environmentally, that we have ever built.
We're also exploring. We think there's great exploration upside. There is a very solid reserve here of 1.4 million ounces -- sorry, it's not a reserve yet. It will become a reserve in a month or so when we get the final permit. But it's all drilled off. But there's great exploration upside and we've started drilling.
We're going to build this mine for 100,000 to 110,000 ounces a year initially, but we're going to build it with the idea of expanding it, leaving -- pouring extra concrete, just doing those intelligent things so that if you find more, you can actually expand the project to a higher level of production. It's going to be a very similar mine to what we have in Libertad in Nicaragua and it's going to be a SAG mill and one or two ball mills and a carbon and leach tanks recovery system. As I said, we're expecting very robust economics on this project.
Colombia, we have a joint venture with AngloGold Ashanti in Colombia. Anglo has 51% of Gramalote and we have 49%. We have been working on this for a long time. We were the operator in the past and did a lot of exploration work and Anglo is now the operator of the mine. It's getting into the prefeasibility stage and over the next few months we'll be working with Anglo to come up with a base case for feasibility. And the question is, how big do you make it?
Anglo has been talking publicly about making this quite a large mine. I guess we need to be satisfied that we have the reserves to justify a large mine. We always thought around 250,000 or 300,000 ounces a year. Anglo is talking about potentially larger, which is fine with us, as long as it's the best economics.
So it's a good country to be in. Obviously, there's been some disappointments in Colombia. Frankly, there's been a lot of high-grade gold and narrow veins that has been over-promoted, in my view. And Colombia is not as easy as everyone thought it was going to be in mining. And a lot of it depends on where you are. We are in Antioquia, which is the best address to be in in Colombia to build the first open pit gold mine in the country. It is mining-friendly; it's not high altitude; there's not a lot of population near where we are; and it's got great infrastructure.
And the key point here is the local government and the federal government are very supportive. And the permitting process, Anglo's doing a very good job of moving that forward. They have a big discovery called Colosa for the South, in Colombia, that is in a more sensitive area. To their credit, they went to Colombia when I wouldn't have asked our geologists to go, 10 years ago. And they managed to find a deposit of 24 million ounces, which apparently can get a lot bigger.
If you have a major company as your partner, you hopefully have one that's motivated, because they can be slow and they can be expensive. I don't think I've ever seen a big company as motivated as Anglo. And part of the reason is they want to build Gramalote and do good job of it. But they also want to showcase it to the government of Colombia to earn the credibility to get to build the big one. So they're a good partner; we're very involved technically; they run it day to day. I think it's a very healthy joint venture. It's been very positive.
So, the next step here is to come up with a prefeasibility study, which should be in the next few months or maybe early next year. And then it's a final feasibility study and they're looking at potentially being in production by 2016. And the question is, as I said, how big do you make it? We think there's a strong economic sphere depending on the scale that we go.
One of the important things about our joint venture with Anglo, we haven't had any problems and don't anticipate any, but at the end of the day, we have a very strong joint venture. We're 49%, but it's not really 49%, it's really 50-50. And what I mean by that is you can't do anything here without your partner.
So, if we had a situation where we didn't -- where Anglo and ourselves disagreed, and we're not there now, but if we disagreed, for example, on the scale or the way forward, then someone is going to talk somebody else into something or we've got to compromise or somebody's got to buy somebody out. And we're very comfortable that this is a project that we are happy to stay with for the long haul. If Anglo has a different vision of that, there may be some possible scenarios by where we get value in a different way.
An intriguing idea is that Anglo has announced that they want to sell the Navachab mine in Namibia, not that far from us in Namibia. We've had some initial conversations. An interesting idea might be to trade the 49% interest of the mine that's going to be in production in 2016 or 17 for 80,000 ounces of production in Namibia today that can grow, we think, to 130,000 ounces. Very early stages, but that's the kind of idea that might be quite intriguing for their shareholders and ours.
So this is back to -- I like this slide so much I put it in twice. But this just wraps it all up into where we see ourselves going. This, as I mentioned earlier, this dramatic production growth is based on existing projects with minimal arm waving. And we think there's great potential to grow.
The next step of our growth may not be acquisitions. The next step may be exploration of all of these great projects that we have. And that may be the thing that drives us closer to 1 million ounces of production a year.
This is a slide I used in Denver that got a little bit of attention because the point I was making here was that, where's the M&A? It's been very frustrating as a Company that wants to grow, trying to find willing sellers. And I'm not asking any junior company to do something that we didn't do. We sold Bema Gold; exchanged it for Kinross shares in 2007. We were two-thirds of the way through building one of the great gold mines in the world, the Kupol mine in far east Russia.
We were well funded and that had been 25 years of my life. Do you think we wanted to sell to Kinross? We didn't want to sell to Kinross. It wasn't our decision. We had 75,000 shareholders. And I believe that if you're public, you have this incredible opportunity to use other people's money to explore your dreams.
The only downside is, it's their money. It's their Company. It's not yours. And there's just been too many companies that won't sign a confidentiality agreement. Or even worse, they will sign a confidentiality agreement with us and then they won't give you any data. So they've got you tied up for two years where you can't buy any of their stock and they laugh you off because they had no intention of doing a deal. So, we're trying to break that and I'm encouraging institutions to call me up anytime they want and ask who has not signed a CA with us. That might be of interest.
We've also changed our confidentiality agreement. Our confidentiality agreement now says that we will sign it up and you can have a two-year stance so we can't buy your stock, but there is a list on schedule A and that lists all the detailed information, financial and technical, that we expect to get from the company within three months. If we don't get it, the standstill goes away.
We're not going to play this game anymore. And I think it's really important that some of these small companies who are struggling with one project and they need to park their egos. And they need to represent their shareholders. That's called being public.
So, I think there should be much more M&A. I think I was quoted a while ago saying that I believe that with all the hundreds of gold companies that were created since gold started going up, I believe we have the executive capability and the technical capability to run about 25% of them. And that might be generous. So we need massive consolidation in the gold sector because there aren't enough people doing it who know what they're doing. That's my new mission.
But anyway, we will continue to look at deals. There's a lot of people breathing a sigh of relief in the last few months because we did a deal. So, they know we're not coming anytime soon. And we're not trying to be unfriendly or anything. As I said, we're looking for people to walk the talk, as we did back in the Bema days. And it's in the interest of many shareholders. They want to see some of these companies smashed together.
When we do a deal with companies, their shares -- they do very well. Central Sun, when we acquired them; Auryx in Namibia; and I'm sure the CGA shareholders are going to be very happy, as well. This isn't about taking advantage and stealing assets; this is about offering life and hope to some companies that are stuck. The Central Sun guys did the right thing; the Auryx guys did the right thing; CGA wasn't stuck at all, they've got a great project, but their business model was to look for a good partner.
I am a little over time. That's probably most of what I wanted to tell you. So, any questions?
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Questions and Answers
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Unidentified Audience Participant [1]
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By the way, congratulations on a great (inaudible - microphone inaccessible).
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Clive Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [2]
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Thanks.
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Unidentified Audience Participant [3]
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You have got a lot on your plate right now with a lot of significant projects. (Inaudible) Can you give us a little bit of color in terms of the sequencing of events in terms of what you're -- when you plan on getting certain assets because of your geography and Namibia and Nicaragua and Colombia, et cetera, et cetera?
And my secondary question would be, you mentioned Anglo and then Namibia may be potentially looking at swapping those assets. Would that make sense to -- (inaudible) you half that 150,000, 200,000 ounces depending on how -- (Inaudible question - microphone inaccessible) -- potential for 80,000 ounces in Namibia does that -- how do you think about that?
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Clive Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [4]
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Well, it's going to come down to valuations for sure. The next step would be to sign a confidentiality agreement and get to know the project in Namibia better. But we think that -- from what we know of it, the Navachab project we think has significant expansion potential. They started off with 800,000 ounces. They now have three million. So they built the plant for 80,000 ounces based on what they had. Now they have much more. And I think they've been looking at expansion ideas. So that's the one thing we'll look at.
The other question is a very good one as well. And one of the things people look at us and say, well, look, you're all over the world and how are you going to manage all of this?
I think it's important to say, when you're listening to any of these stories, what have they done before? And in the Bema days, we had gold mines in Chile, South Africa and the far east of Russia. You can't get any further apart in the world than South Africa and the far east of Russia, and we did that extremely well. We're very good at what we do.
But also we empower the people we work with. We have great country managers and we manage them and lead them very effectively from Vancouver. But when you look at it, we don't really have as much on our plate as it might appear. We're not the operator in Colombia, so Anglo is doing a good job there so we don't have to worry about it.
We've got a great team in Nicaragua. We just announced our 11th quarter of beating our projections. We have a great team in the Philippines. This is, I mentioned, a team that is already in existence.
And we've got a very strong construction team in Namibia. The team that is going to build the mine in Namibia is actually the same team that built our mine in Nicaragua, that built the Kupol mine in Russia; and the Julietta mine in Russia for Bema. It's the same guys. That's why we don't run into some of the problems that you see.
I'm not going to take up any more time, so thank you for your time and I'll be outside if there's any more questions. Thank you.
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Definitions
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PRELIMINARY TRANSCRIPT: "Preliminary Transcript" indicates that the
Transcript has been published in near real-time by an experienced
professional transcriber. While the Preliminary Transcript is highly
accurate, it has not been edited to ensure the entire transcription
represents a verbatim report of the call.
EDITED TRANSCRIPT: "Edited Transcript" indicates that a team of professional
editors have listened to the event a second time to confirm that the
content of the call has been transcribed accurately and in full.
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THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN EVENT TRANSCRIPTS IS A TEXTUAL REPRESENTATION
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