Q2 2017 B2Gold Corp Earnings Call
Aug 10, 2017 AM CEST
BTO.TO - B2Gold Corp
Q2 2017 B2Gold Corp Earnings Call
Aug 10, 2017 / 05:00PM GMT
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Corporate Participants
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* Clive Thomas Johnson
B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director
* Dale Alton Craig
B2Gold Corp. - VP of Operations
* John Rajala
B2Gold Corp. - VP of Metallurgy
* Michael Andrew Cinnamond
B2Gold Corp. - Senior VP of Finance & CFO
* Thomas A. Garagan
B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration
* William Lytle
B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations
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Conference Call Participants
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* Chris Thompson
Raymond James Ltd., Research Division - Mining Equity Research Analyst
* Geordie Mark
Haywood Securities Inc., Research Division - Co-Head Mining Research
* Jeff Killeen
CIBC World Markets Inc., Research Division - Director of Institutional Equity Research
* Lawson Winder
BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division - Associate
* Ovais Habib
Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Research Analyst, Mining
* Rahul Paul
Canaccord Genuity Limited, Research Division - Director
* Steven Howard Butler
GMP Securities L.P., Research Division - MD of Equity Research & Gold Analyst
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Presentation
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Operator [1]
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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to B2Gold Corp. Second Quarter and First Half 2017 Financial Results Conference Call.
I would now like to turn the call over to Clive Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer of B2Gold. You may proceed, Mr. Johnson.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [2]
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Thank you, operator. Welcome, everyone, to the call. We're here to discuss the results from the second quarter this year and also for the first half of the year. And we've got the full executive team here either in Vancouver or on the phone. And the idea is to, of course, first of all, walk through the -- a little overview from me, then walk through the financial results from Mike. And then we'll talk about some of the things coming up, update on some things. And then we're going to really make it short on all that and open up to questions and then see if we can answer the various questions that you may have.
So in terms of our overview, the second quarter results and the year -- half year results were strong in terms of the financial side. Obviously, as everyone is aware, we put out a news release about 10 days ago about a minor miss, modest miss from -- caused by Nicaragua. And we -- on the basis of that, one of the things, we took a pretty conservative view, I think, about coming out with a slight re-guide. Now at the end of the day, as you'll hear today, there's -- we are pleased with the progress and what we've continued to see at Otjikoto and Masbate. And we have -- we've spent quite a bit of time on analyzing Nicaragua and where we are and then the steps we need to take to continue to improve production. And some of those are underway now, so we're -- we can speak to that as well. So for the -- at the end of it, in terms of the cost guidance for the year, for the full year has not changed. And overall, another positive year as far as we're concerned from that perspective.
In terms of the overview of the company today, obviously, the results are important, as they always are. And one of the reasons that we have been able to grow this company when so few could or would, over the last 5 to 10 years has been our operating performance. So we're very proud of that, and that's not lost on us. So even though the miss was relatively minor, we're not happy with the situation, and we'll take the steps needed to remedy that. Fortunately, the great success is that Otjikoto and Masbate has helped the situation.
Obviously, the big thing coming up, as everyone's aware, but sometimes people forget, maybe the forest through the trees, when we look at numbers is the fact that Fekola is ever closer to starting production in October. And we'll have an update from Bill Lytle on that, and John Rajala is on the phone as well. We can answer any questions with that. Obviously, there's -- that's a huge canvass in the company. And I understand when people want to look at a company, sometimes they want to talk about who's trading where, opposite their NAV, et cetera, well, whatever, 550 or thereabouts [ounces produced] producing now, and they're about to become 900 to 950 in the very short term on an annualized basis. So it was ever a fundamental argument for a dramatic impact on the company is increasing your gold production by 65% and significantly lowering your operating costs on a consolidated basis and the impact that will have in the company, not being far from now in terms of revenue, cash flow operations, et cetera, et cetera.
So the markets are mysterious places. If anyone has a really good explanation for me as to looking at our chart for the last year and the gold price and the index explaining to why we've performed rather poorly given the fact of what we've done and where we're going. So that doesn't really matter. I guess at the end of the day, build it and they will come. And we're on the verge of a fundamental change in this company in so many ways. And it makes us feel pretty good about our strategy, which is not to just join the ranks of people that couldn't do deals or wouldn't do deals or [had most of] to the show. As we said, don't try and grow because you haven't been very good -- you haven't behaved well and been very good at your business. So we're pleased to see, this is one of the major steps in our strategy of continuing to try and align ourselves up for growth.
So in addition to that, one of the other drivers in addition to Fekola is going to be exploration. And as everyone knows, way back to Bema and the loss of the B2, we've always seemed to have had that exploratory success after acquiring deals accretively without paying for exploration upside. So Fekola is a very exciting opportunity there, and we're also seeing some significant new discovery in Toega in Burkina Faso. Tom is going to talk to those. And we've also got some very exciting new development at El Limon that we'll talk somewhat about and Tom will give you an indication of what we think is going on there. And then we -- and there, we should be able to come up with the next -- hopefully, next couple of weeks a significant amount of drill holes on what we think is a pretty exciting development.
So I think with that for now as a bit of an overview. I'll pass it on to Mike to give you a fairly rapid, concise summary of the financials, which you all have seen by now. And then we'll do a few of the updates that I mentioned, and then we'll open up for questions. So over to you, Mike.
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Michael Andrew Cinnamond, B2Gold Corp. - Senior VP of Finance & CFO [3]
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Thanks, Clive. So firstly, I'll walk you through the income statement. Revenues for the period were $164 million, almost identical to the prior quarter last year. And that's a function of a 1% drop in the gold price, offset by a 1% increase in gold ounces sold.
On the production side, for the second quarter in a row, we beat guidance again. So consolidated production was 121,000 ounces, which was just over 1,600 ounces higher than budget. The component parts of that were -- it was driven by, I think, very strong performance at Otjikoto and Masbate, offset by some of the lower production and originally guided numbers for Nicaragua, as Clive already alluded to.
So just talking about the individual mines. Otjikoto had 41,000 ounces, over 5,000 ounces more than budget. That was mainly grade-driven. The grade from Wolfshag in Phase 1 has actually beaten models so far, and we're kind of starting to see how long we think that continues. That also drove a higher throughput through the mill. And so as a result, we re-guided our production at Otjikoto up to between now 170,000 and 180,000 ounces. We are now also looking at finalizing how we think Wolfshag will fall into the main life-of-mine plan as we go forward, and we expect to have that by the end of Q3.
For Masbate, Masbate has just under 50,000 ounces for the quarter, which again was close to 6,000 ounces higher than budget. Masbate was driven by higher -- it was grade-driven, driven mainly by higher oxide content. We had some mill feed, which was 67% oxide compared to what we originally budgeted, which was 22%. That's off the rurals. We drove higher throughput. Results at Masbate had a -- beat budget by a significant margin. So again, we guided upward for Masbate, and we're now guiding to between 180,000 and 185,000 ounces for the year.
And moving to Nicaragua, firstly, Libertad. Libertad had 22,600 ounces, which is about 4,000 ounces less than budget. And that miss was driven by lower grade. We got a lower grade from Jabali Central Pit during the period. And we also -- there was a delay in the timing of accessing some work from Mojon Underground.
We discussed previously in previous calls that we're also looking at the sequencing. In Libertad, we originally planned that we'd have Jabali Antenna open pit coming through in the second half of the year. Now we've re-sequenced that, and we're planning to bring new areas in San Juan and San Diego in the second half of the year and also to access some of that Mojon Underground, where there was a delay in the first half.
Taking all of those factors into account and with strong support, I should say, from the government in order to get those new requirements to bring those new areas online, we have re-guided downwards for Libertad. We're now forecasting guidance between 90,000 and 100,000 ounces for Libertad for the full year. As we mentioned as well, I think we're bringing these new areas online. And also, the plan is to have Jabali Antenna come onstream in the first quarter of next year. And with that, we think we'll return -- in 2018, 2019, we'll return to sort of production levels similar to we've seen in prior years.
And moving to Limon. Limon has just under 8,000 ounces [material], which is 5,000 ounces less than budget. And that was driven by water control issues at the Santa Pancha 1 Underground, and -- which we're used to the volume and grade of ore that we were putting through the mill, the higher-grade ore that we were putting through the mill. We think those water issues have now been brought well under control and in hand, and we expect to return to normal production levels by Q4 of this year. However, factoring that in, we don't think that we're going to meet our original guidance range now for the full year, so we've re-guided for Limon to between 47,000 and 50,000 ounces.
Overall, on a consolidated basis, that -- so we had 121,000 ounces for the quarter. And with our re-guidance range, looking at where we are and with Fekola coming on, we re-guided down slightly lower for the full year production to between 530,000 and 570,000 ounces.
On the comp side, consolidated operating costs, we had a significant beat against budget. Consolidated operating cash costs for the period was $631 an ounce, $81 an ounce better than budget and mirroring all, that's exactly the same positive performance we saw in Q1. Again, Otjikoto and Masbate were the standard operations and drivers of that. Otjikoto had cash costs of $524 an ounce, $200 less than budget. And that's a function of the higher grade that we saw, higher production in the period and lower fuel and reagent costs. So with that, we've re-guided Otjikoto's total operating cash costs for the year to now between $480 and $520 an ounce.
At Masbate, cash operating costs were $516 an ounce, again, almost $200 an ounce less than budget, again, a function of that higher production level and also lower processing and general costs. So we've also guided improved comps at Masbate for the full year. Now our new guidance range is between $595 and $635 an ounce.
And then on the Nicaraguan side, Libertad at $841 an ounce, $120 less -- higher than budget; and Limon, $1,300 -- just over $1,300 an ounce, which is more than $600 an ounce higher than budget. And Nicaraguan ops are a smaller proportion of the overall production levels, but we have lifted the -- with our revised production guidance for the year, we re-guided upwards now for the costs of those. So Libertad, we now think, will be between $795 and $835 an ounce, and Limon, we think, is between $850 and $855 an ounce.
Overall, just to stress that when you take those factors, the process performance at Otjikoto and Masbate and then the higher guidance for Nicaragua, we still think we're going to come in, in our original guidance range on a consolidated basis for cash costs of between $610 and $650 an ounce.
Similar story on the all-in sustaining costs. Total consolidated all-in costs for the period were $974 an ounce, which is, again, almost $200 better than budget. That's a product of both the positive operating cash cost performance and also just timing of -- mainly timing of CapEx, purchasing of mobile equipment and some stripping costs. We have re-guided again downwards overall for our all-in sustaining costs. Our -- for individual operations, we've re-guided. So starting with Otjikoto, it's now $725 to $765; Masbate, now $935 to $975. And then on Nicaragua side, lifted up a bit, so Libertad is now $1,075 to $1,115 an ounce, and Limon's $1,415 to $1,455. Same story on an overall consolidated basis, so no changes to our overall consolidated all-in sustaining cost range of between $940 and $970 for the year.
And looking forward. Obviously, we're very excited now to see Fekola coming onstream soon. We're only a couple of months away from that now for the first. And when Fekola comes online, as we've previously indicated, we expect to see our cash costs and all-in sustaining costs to come back to the sort of record-low levels that we saw and reported in 2016. So cash costs in the range of $500 to $530 (sic) [$500 to $535] and all-in sustaining costs somewhere in the range of between $780 and $810 an ounce. Very positive on Fekola as they become a much bigger proportion of our overall production, and we expect to see higher revenues and significant dramatic change in overall operating cash flows.
So I think that's what I'd like to highlight on the operating side. Just looking at the income statement, nothing -- although it's very significant to highlight in the columns that we see there, the convertible notes. Obviously, we see those go up and down. And if you're able to get a small gain this period as the notes get placed closer to the end of their life, they're now trading at 106% trade value since both premium in there -- a smaller premium than there was previously.
Some movement in derivative gains and losses. Those were driven by some go-forwards that we had on the -- our original revolving credit facility and on our -- we were required to put some forwards on our Otjikoto gold mine and also on some dual hedges that we've put in place, which are currently trading right above par.
Overall for the period, earnings of $19.2 million, which was $0.02 a share. And on an adjusted earnings basis where we strip out mainly noncash items, adjusted earnings were just under $13 million or $0.01 a share.
I'll just comment on a few things in the statement of cash flow now. For the period, we had $48 million for the 6 months, $88 million from cash from operating activities. So that translates into cash flow per share of $0.05 a share for the 3-month period and $0.09 a share for the 6-month period.
On the financing side, we announced -- I think we put out a press release about 3 or 4 weeks ago now, just highlighting and giving details of the new upsized revolving credit facility that we've put in place. Same syndicate of banks that we had before, but we have uplifted the total amount available under the facility now to $500 million. It was previously $425 million. And also, that facility now will push us to get a new 4-year maturity, say, maturing in 2021. I think that gives us more flexibility with a bigger amount, and that maturity date pushed out. More flexibility when -- we can either use it to repay or prepay part of -- our [overall] convertible notes and/or any sort of acquisition other than general corporate activity that we put those monies to.
We did draw $50 million in the current period, so we've drawn cumulatively $250 million now on that now upsized $500 million facility. So we've got $250 million left, so less liquidity there.
Further down in the investing activities. We spent a total of $115 million in the 3-month period. The biggest component by far is Fekola where we spent $75 million. Fekola continues to be right on budget. We're still forecasting to come in right on budget for what we originally guided. And as we've said, it -- we think it's coming online earlier than originally anticipated by October 1. Those $75 million in costs in there are also included some costs that -- we accelerated the mining activities in Fekola, so we have a bigger stockpile than we originally planned. And I think you'll hear some more about that from Bill later, but we're building up that so that we think we can come out of the gates and feed that 5 million-tonnes mine right from inception.
Overall, that $150 million CapEx is a little lower than budget, but mostly, that's due to timing. So we will expect to see the total guided CapEx budget will be incurred through -- once we get through the whole year.
Overall, we ended the period with $88 million cash in the bank, and like I said, we have liquidity of another $250 million on that revolving credit line. So we think we're in good shape there.
I think that summarizes the main items I wanted to comment on. So I guess we can take questions at the end, Clive?
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [4]
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Yes, I think we'll take questions at the end. So thanks, Mike.
Just a couple of things perhaps to add a little bit to what Mike said. I think one of the real positives about Fekola and not only the ability to do it and the kind of market we went through when it was so uncommon to be growing, or in our favor was the fact that we actually funded Fekola with our equity. And we didn't take on amounts of debt that I think made us or any of our significant -- or shareholders that I know of uncomfortable. So I think that was a great success. And then perhaps due to our performance, as I think I alluded to earlier that the platform of good production, good performance gives the platform and then obviously great construction and all of the various things we do, exploration, et cetera. So I think that was quite an accomplishment to be able to do that.
And as Mike mentioned, we're in a strong position financially. And there's no better indicator, I guess, of how your relationship with your banks is than to have them continue to increase your facility. So obviously, that's been very successful. We may have a bunch of banks who, some years ago, when they did back what we were doing, and they stepped up and said, we think you're going to be one of the significant gold companies of the future, and we're prepared to put our money where our mouths are. So that was very much appreciated. And recently, CIBC has added their name to the syndicate. So the ability to continue to work with that group of banks and If I mention one, I should mention them all, so HSBC, Soc Gén, ING and Scotia in addition to CIBC.
So okay, I think that we'll move on now, and we'll get an update from Bill so we can have him mention Fekola. And go ahead, Bill.
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [5]
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Yes, how do you hear me, Clive?
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [6]
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Fine, thanks.
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [7]
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Okay. As Mike indicated. Fekola continues to be on budget and on schedule, about 3 months ahead of schedule -- of the original schedule.
Just quickly walking through everything, we're greater than 90% complete everywhere. That was at the end of June. So actually, right now, we're very close to 98% or 99% complete. So the takeaway is that basically everything is on-site, and we're starting to commission.
If you look at -- starting in the mine. The entire mining team is in place now. All the mining equipment is on-site. I think we've been doing hard rock drilling and blasting since May. We currently sit with more than 1.1 million tonnes of material on the ore stockpile.
Then if you look at the actual milling circuit, all of the major equipment is in place. What we're really talking about now is handing over to the commissioning team. So some of the early commissioning has already started. The powerhouse is continuing to be commissioned. We have enough power now to start commissioning all of the middle piece. The water that we needed to run the mill is being accumulated in the water dam. We have both an underground borehole and water coming in from the river. The milling team is growing every day. All of the SOPs have been developed. They've been training on-site now for several months, and we anticipate to have ore in the mill the first part of October.
That's -- I don't know if you want to talk about anything else, Clive.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [8]
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Well, I think that's a good overview of what's happening. So okay. Thanks, Bill. And obviously, we'll -- there'll be some questions, I'm sure, coming up.
Just as a couple of points, I guess, about Fekola, and [it's going to begin some]. And we -- I talked about it a little bit, so I won't beat that to death. [You never know, maybe we will] figure it out one day. But at the end of the day, just what we've done there, the accomplishment, and I think it's worth underlining, and I wish we could get more of our shareholders down there. We're going to go down next week, but down to see what we do every day, whether it's at one of our mines or whether it's at a project like this. So not only are we 3 months ahead of schedule, which was a pretty tight schedule to start, 25 months. We're 3 months ahead of that.
But in fact, don't forget we also decided -- we decided to do the expansion during construction. So at Otjikoto, we did the expansion and plan to do the year after we started production after a great ramp-up, 2 months. And that was -- sort of the general plan here at Fekola was to ramp -- to be able to build things and then be able to ramp from 4 million to 5 million tonnes a year within their first year of production. Construction has gone so well that the guys -- I'm sure they had some plans to this anyway, but they came and said to us, well, we think we can do the same job. We'd like to do that. So I think that's just a matter of if you have to love this team and this quite remarkable team that very few companies have the pleasure of having. And it goes back to a long time ago. It goes back to Russia in the Bema days. And I guess I'd like to think it's kind of an example of what we're about to go through, which is -- loyalty is 2-way street.
So a remarkable team and just a tremendous team of people going and building mines in an incredibly safe way. [I'd say it] the efforts were tremendous not only on existing mines but also with Fekola, and we're very much excited about start-up of that construction team. We've got some things for them to do. And then of course, we'll be looking into the future, continuing to use that team to build more mines. This is #5 on budget ahead of schedule. I don't think that gets emphasized, in my opinion, in the market enough because so many companies have a team like this and how many do it the way we do it. And I just think that not a lot of competition has got it, but that's not significant. I think that was one of the reasons why we succeed, and it's a great business model plan if you have it. It takes years to put a construction team together like this if you tried to do it, and if you use the contractors well. Some are great and some aren't, as I think we all know.
So I think with that, I'll pass it on to Tom to give you overview of some of the -- we got a lot of exploration going on, but -- and he'll give us a feel of some of the material results or material indications we're having so far, with a lot more, I think, to come out over the -- for the remaining months of the year in terms of results.
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [9]
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Hey, thank you, Clive. I'm just going to talk about a couple of the highlights we have in exploration. And if I go talking about other things, we would be here for a few hours.
So I just -- we recently added an additional $2.5 million to the Nicaragua exploration based on the results. So our total exploration budget now in Nicaragua is just over $14.5 million in total, but our exploration worldwide is now $55.1 million. That's an increase of almost $10 million from the original budget at the start of the year.
Let's start with Nicaragua. We're just -- more specifically, we -- as I alluded to at the AGM, we have found a new area at Limon that seems to have some legs to it. We've been drilling with 5 drills nonstop now for about 6 months on it. The new area is about 1.4 kilometers long, and it's about 200 meters deep. And it -- there seems to be at least 3 main zones within it, with the largest zone having a straight line to go about 400 meters. It's all on the same structure. The zone dips about 30 to 45 degrees. And so the preliminary look we've had, it suggests that it's going to have a relatively low strip ratio, as you can have for an advanced system with a bandwidth 6 to 10 meters wide.
We believe that the whole thing is going to be open pittable. So with the increase in budget of an additional $2 million for there specifically, we're hoping to get most of this zone into inferred and indicated. Well, probably half of it is indicated so that we start doing some reasonable mine planning by year-end. As Clive said, we plan to come out with a release with a bunch of our drill assets within the next couple of weeks.
On to West Africa. The drilling is now shut down in Burkina Faso for the rainy season, and we'll be doing the same in Fekola here shortly. In Burkina Faso and specifically Toega, we've drilled off a fairly large area that remains open to the North and Northeast recent drill hole on the Northeast side of the zone and around 250 meters of vertical depth and then -- and continuous with the veins on the -- that we've seen so far. We hit almost 90 meters and 2 grams. So the zone is still open. It still is fairly thick with decent grade. And that we'll continue -- once the rainy season's over, we'll continue drilling in that area.
At Fekola, we currently have 8 drills working plus an auger. The drilling is focused on -- in Kiwi area, both near surface and the extension of Kiwi into the Fekola Deeps zone. We believe it's all part of one body. And we're also drilling on the edges of Anaconda, the saprolite, and have now started drilling into the sulfide zones that we believe feed or created the Anaconda saprolite.
As I said, this drilling will probably shut down within the next couple of weeks for the rainy season. And once we started getting all our results back in, we'll come out with releases on those, probably I would guess September, October. Somewhere around that time.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [10]
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Okay, great. Thanks, Tom. Now just a couple of things I'll touch on that perhaps might be germane and maybe we won't take questions on, but you can come up with questions on.
Let's talk a little bit about where we are in the Philippines. Just a lot of discussion about the government and that whole work has been going on for the last while. And we've made our point clear before that we've -- we are the gold standard and one of them for sure in the gold mine space in the Philippines as we move everywhere, but that's not lost on the government. We recently got a pretty major award from the DENR. So we see some positive changes there in -- changes in some ministers. And we also see a positive view from the government, including the President, who had a conference -- sorry, who had a -- gave a speech to the mining industry that he requested a couple weeks ago, and they have some positive things to say about mining and the role of mining, be environmentally responsibly and taking care of local communities and creating jobs, et cetera.
So we stack up very well on all those things. And I think it's just important to remember that when Duterte first got elected that he came out very quickly himself or his top people who tried to signal that they want -- they realize that mining has a role to play in the Philippines, that they're not opposed to it. They just want it to be done environmentally responsibly. And as I said, it's creating good jobs and paying taxes and taking care of social programs, et cetera.
So we view these recent speech as a positive sign. Sometimes he's confusing, and we understand that. Sometimes he confuses us. But one of the reasons is that because there are some very large mines in the Philippines of other metals and other than gold that are perhaps some of the ones that are attracting some of the negative and some of the ire about environmental responsibilities, frankly, or lack thereof. So I think sometimes it all gets kind of grouped together. As the mining industry, we do think there are differences, and we firmly believe in environmentally responsible mining. We had set that standard a long, long time ago in Bema [caring what we do] and safety for people and community relations. So this is nothing new for us. And sometimes I think in the noise of some of the bigger other metals producers and some of the backlash, and we're just kind of caught up in that, and we get sometimes targeted with that same brush.
So we think that's probably going to -- that we'll continue to perhaps see divergence there. So we're quite positive about what the recent comments and developments are. And we're satisfied that we're going to continue to be able to run a successful operation there, which is 93% of the local economy down in Masbate. So it's very important work. So it's all about sustainable mining, and then that's really what it seems that the government wants. And obviously, there's been some mixed signals. We're not suggesting that's been the case for a moment. Our people have done a great job in working respectfully with the government and dealing with a lot of issues under Dale's leadership here and a great group down in Manila.
Finally, just M&A, probably a question on that. We've -- obviously, this is a major step forward here with Fekola and should set the scene, or set the stage for potential additional accretive growth? But for us, with what we have and the impact of Fekola coming on, it's most likely that we would want to see the rerating of the company to be able to do anything significant in terms of acquisitions. In the meantime, if we find things that make sense, we're obviously always looking. Any idea, we're pretty open for, as everyone knows, I think. From being -- taking things from whether it's past its expiration or some stage of expiration or something as a feasibility stage kind of acquisition or even a production merger type of scenario.
Collectively, we're talking about [Sheila] corp, so on. But we're pretty open in terms of the spectrum of potential acquisitions. Having said that, we fundamentally believe that as we get through the next -- for a while here, that there should be the rerating of B2Gold. If we're where we are today then I would suggest all of Gold prices are lower because the gold price must have went down a lot or where we'll be in a position that reflects a barrier and therefore makes it easier to find or at least potentially more likely to find accretive deals. And the focus will be as it's already been as part our key to success, discipline, due diligence done by ourselves, don't pay for something that needs a higher growth rate to justify the purchase price and don't and pay for something that requires exploration success over a higher gold price to justify the price. Sounds like a fundamental business principle to me but you'd be surprised, as some of you know how often that has not been followed in the sector. So the best way of -- far as we're concerned, a great way to grow is through the drop in as we're doing it. So tremendous targets. So one from Fekola, also the Kiaka Project including the Toega and some of the things we're starting to see elsewhere, Nicaragua, et cetera. Continued strong focus on high-quality exploration lot of the brownfields, but also some very exciting results. The [obvious ones] will always be the ones you find, and we -- obviously, Tom and his team think extremely highly of potential for [Fekola and the future of] (inaudible) and some other things there as well. So we'll continue to really emphasize exploration to see what we have there.
So I think that's -- was the what I wanted to give you update on, but obviously, open for questions, so operator, you can open it up for questions now.
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Questions and Answers
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Operator [1]
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(Operator Instructions) And our first question today comes from Rahul Paul from Canaccord Genuity.
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Rahul Paul, Canaccord Genuity Limited, Research Division - Director [2]
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Great to see Masbate and Otjikoto continue to do very well. I look forward to Fekola coming online soon. On the cost performance, all-in sustaining cost, looking specifically at Otjikoto, looks likes the AISC was $725 -- $726 an ounce below budget. Now Cash cost was $200 an ounce below budget so that's part of it. Was the remainder entirely to do with capital deferrals and if so, should we expect it to be incurred in Q3 would some of that be deferred to Q4 or possibly in the next year as well?
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Michael Andrew Cinnamond, B2Gold Corp. - Senior VP of Finance & CFO [3]
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It's -- there are 2 components to it. One is our mobile equipment purchases, that we expect to it comes through the next 2 quarters so that's a timing issue only. And the other component was, there were some deferred stripping cost that we originally felt we can capitalize, but that's since been expansible and gone through operating cash cost, so again that wasn't being incurred, and will be incurred through the whole year. So it's really just a timing issue, Rahul.
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Rahul Paul, Canaccord Genuity Limited, Research Division - Director [4]
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Okay, fair enough. And then Tom, the exploration results at Limon, know you mentioned the book build a little bit, and just I guess we're still waiting, you said you'd be putting out more information soon. But at this stage, does it change the way you view the asset? Or is it too early to say at this point?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [5]
------------------------------
Oh, no. I think it definitely changes the way we look at the asset, absolutely. There's a -- behind the scenes is a fair amount of work now being done by the engineering group. We've given them a none publishable resort with which they could start to play with, and they're starting to do studies of that as we talk.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [6]
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What, then I guess just to kind of see, certainly we really have been -- it -- we believe that impact is a minimally -- as a minimum increasing the mine life pretty dramatically. But then part of things we will always be looking at was what about potential expansion, et cetera. So can -- the month got some bigger. Indeed it was bigger in year 2000 and produced 100,000 ounces of gold, because the grade was almost double. So that was with the milled on, even pretty sure what it is now. So we'll be looking various things that decrease while under of course potential expansion. So yes, I mean, that's part of big mine, but this is a pretty -- potentially a pretty good development for us all.
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Rahul Paul, Canaccord Genuity Limited, Research Division - Director [7]
------------------------------
That's great to hear. And then last question at Fekola. Bill, has the -- has the rainy season commenced in West Africa yet? I mean what's the duration like? And do you expect the stockpile to continue to build during the rainy season? Or do you expect things to slow down and just see withdraw down in stockpile and then it would start again?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [8]
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Yes, so the answer is we're in the rainy season now for sure. The rainy season typically starts kind of end of June, beginning of July and then goes through, let's say end of September and mid-October. One of the things that we did do, which was very valuable is that we actually put the GM and the mining manager on-site early on in this project, so they actually adapted the roads and made sure that they were all-weather roads. So we've been running right through the rainy season. For example in July, we added an additional, I think 400,000 or 500,000 tons to the stockpile so we will continue to see that to grow, certainly there's days where we're going to have hours off, but we've been able to run mostly through the rainy season.
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Operator [9]
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Your next question comes from the line of Ovais Habib from Scotiabank.
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Ovais Habib, Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Research Analyst, Mining [10]
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Just wanted to have -- ask a few questions. On more, Mike if you could give me a couple of updates on how things are moving along with the ownership agreement at -- for Fekola? I mean that's -- first 10% is carried, you guys were negotiating on the second 10%?
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Michael Andrew Cinnamond, B2Gold Corp. - Senior VP of Finance & CFO [11]
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Yes, the second 10% we have evaluation agreed. We're just -- we're in the process now hopefully in the next couple of weeks of just finalizing the mechanics of the agreement for vitals say, how we'll pay for it and how we'll deal with it. So I think that's very close to fruition and finalization, on the second 10%. And similarly, the shareholder's agreement that we have with the government is also being finalized in the very near-term.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [12]
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But I think we -- at this point, we will categorize to this not negotiating. We would talk -- we would say the agreement. So that's what we see in right now. And obviously indications are, that's same for both. It's more of a getting now and we'll be doing shortly this after the next week, looking to take the final documentation steps to [colorize] from here.
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Ovais Habib, Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Research Analyst, Mining [13]
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Perfect. And then -- and just Mike, also, second question for you. In regards to the Prepaid's gold sales of -- we've seen over the last quarter and then you did the larger one previously as well. Is this something you guys are looking to use going forward as well? Or is that the last kind of what we've seen?
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Michael Andrew Cinnamond, B2Gold Corp. - Senior VP of Finance & CFO [14]
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Well, what we did was, we put on originally $120 million in 2016, as you know for Fekola and it was just over 100,000 ounces and that was based on the gold price just around $1,250. We actually like the gold price that we saw in the first half of the year in couple of occasions so what all we did was reload the one kind of already delivered in to, so we're back over $120 million, sales just around 100,000 ounces. So it's more opportunistic. It's not that we need to do it, but we thought we just reload back to the level that we were in.
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Ovais Habib, Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Research Analyst, Mining [15]
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Makes sense. Makes sense, Okay.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [16]
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Our long-term view when it comes to any part that's with hedging is the fact that we didn't really -- given that it was a corporate facility the kind of Fekola, we did not have to go there and that when you're building a low-cost mine like that, you obviously -- we believe in (inaudible) upside (inaudible) for our shareholders. So there's no [second] change in [impulse here]. I think in year-to-date, it was a great instrument, as I think everyone knows, do not do equity on the market that we [were, high sort of] equity in the market that we were [highly move to equity] to raise the money through a very innovative new financing for the gold space, and it was great for what we did it for. And then we had the opportunity to roll some out, and we [thought that, and that was something that was worth it].
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Ovais Habib, Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Research Analyst, Mining [17]
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Make sense. Now that makes sense. Just moving on to Bill. Bill, we've had some discussions on and Tom as well, we've had discussions on the Kiwi zone next to Fekola and that -- how that's could be impactful to the Fekola overall. Is this -- can you guys give some color as to how you guys moving along over there? I mean, is there more exploration work that's necessary that you guys -- you don't start including Kiwi into Fekola or is there other studies that are going on that you guys are working on?
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [18]
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That's you, Tom.
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [19]
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Yes. The drilling is still aggressively going on. The upper part at Kiwi has been in filled to a point that we can do a reserve on it, but the zone between the upper part, as it was the Kiwi and Fekola is a long ways away from having a resource on it. It's going to take a lot of drilling and we're not there yet.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [20]
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[In terms and in terms of some holes from that type of drilling, timing].
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [21]
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Yes. Again, as I said earlier in the timing also, Ovais, September-October for results start to get that pretty good indication of what's going on.
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Operator [22]
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Your next question comes from the line of Lawson Winder of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
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Lawson Winder, BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division - Associate [23]
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Just on the Fekola stop, that was from me again. I believe I read in the MD&A that the average gold grades were in line with the geological model. I'm just curious if that when you say geological model, do you mean the average reserve grade? Or might be the original mine plant? Because the mine plant obviously changed a bit since the mill's been upsized.
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [24]
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This would be the reserve grade model.
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Lawson Winder, BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division - Associate [25]
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Reserves? Okay, so in line with reserves, that's great. And then you'd said that you added something like 350,000 to 400,000 ounces -- tons rather to the stockpile in July, and you said that you would continue adding going forward, but is that a fair rate?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [26]
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Yes, it is.
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Lawson Winder, BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division - Associate [27]
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Okay, that's great. And then just finally from me, on Libertad. So my understanding is that San Juan, San Diego and Mojon underground would be currently defined as an inferred resources in the year-end 2016 reserve and resource statement. Is that correct? And if so, have those been upgraded? Do you have more confidence now in the grades of those deposits?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [28]
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That's correct. That's how they are reported in the AISC. The only one that's been upgraded to indicated but that hasn't been published yet, because that's internal for us or for the planning, is the Tope, which is now called San Diego.
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Lawson Winder, BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division - Associate [29]
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Okay. And if you just -- sorry just quick follow-up for me. I think there was something like 400,000 ounces of gold in the year-end inferred resource statement. So if you take Tope, San Juan and Mojon underground, would that be -- would that add up to the total 400,000 ounces? Or are these just a small -- smaller proportion of those?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [30]
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Those are a smaller proportion. The big proportions of that 400,000 ounces comes from Montana. I will make a comment to your question about that. Mojon underground and Antenna underground, the inferred resources there, they're drilled off to -- from an open-pit perspective would be easily indicated, so they're what we call soft indicated, internally we call them soft indicated so they -- from a classification point of view, they would be inferred. Some companies would have them in indicated, but we're a little more conservative here.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [31]
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Bill, can you just clarify the stockpile? Say a little bit more, I mean what we talked about in July? Can you just talk about where the stockpile is supposed to be, when and where we are? And obviously the question is I think for a little ahead, but what do you see for the stockpile as we look just forward to the next few months? And what it is supposed to be at? When we're supposed to get there?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [32]
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Yes, no problem, Clive. So originally, when we brought forward the mining fleet, the concept was, as you pointed out earlier, to make sure that we had enough feed to feed the 5 million ton per annum mill. And so internally, we decided on a number of around 1.6 million tons, and so that's what we're shooting for in October. At the end of June, so the end of Q2, we had about 750,000 like just 740,000 tons. The end of July, we had 1.1 million, and we continue to go along on that schedule so if you look at it, we should easily make the 1.6 million tons.
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Operator [33]
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And your next question comes from the line of Chris Thompson of Raymond James.
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Chris Thompson, Raymond James Ltd., Research Division - Mining Equity Research Analyst [34]
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Just got 3 quick questions. I will start off with Masbate. I'm just trying to get a sense of what the mine plan's going to look like sort of post-Colorado. My sense is obviously that's going to be depleted next year. By memory, I recall it we're looking at for example Montana and Pajo are the next, I guess deposits to be mined. What can you comment? Can you comment on metallurgical characteristics of those 2? Are they comparable any way to Colorado or more like the Main Vein?
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Dale Alton Craig, B2Gold Corp. - VP of Operations [35]
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I'll comment on Montana, which could be the next one to go into the permit process. It's -- would be more characteristic or similar character to Main Vein. Pajo, should it come in to production, would be more outside.
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Chris Thompson, Raymond James Ltd., Research Division - Mining Equity Research Analyst [36]
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Okay, great. And so is Montana permanent at that point and now, I mean, ready to go?
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Dale Alton Craig, B2Gold Corp. - VP of Operations [37]
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Yes. We're ready to resubmit the permit. We submitted the permit last June, and we're ready to resubmit it under the new DENR regime.
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Chris Thompson, Raymond James Ltd., Research Division - Mining Equity Research Analyst [38]
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All right, perfect. All right then just quickly moving on to Fekola. This is -- Bill, this is one for you. I mean, fantastic news. Everything's going along nicely there but anything that keeps you up at night there?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [39]
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Well, it's more operational stuff. I mean, certainly the team on-site has done a good job of getting everything on schedule. I mean certainly, you want to make sure that the powerhouse continues on, on schedule. You want to make sure the all the last of dribs drabs and dribbles show up, but overall, we've got a very high degree of confidence, this thing's going to work.
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Chris Thompson, Raymond James Ltd., Research Division - Mining Equity Research Analyst [40]
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All right, perfect. And then Finally, Tom, this is -- just this one for you. I mean it's good to hear that the positive exploration news coming from Limon, but is there anything that excites you about Libertad at the moment from an exploration perspective?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [41]
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We're not exactly having a lot of joy at Libertad. We've got a couple of small things, but nothing that -- I can't say that we've got another Montana or I'm sorry, another Mojon or Jabali. I mean everything that we've getting right now is similar sort of size as Tope. It doesn't mean we're not trying. We're spending a fair bit of money there but at this point, and I can't say there's anything big.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [42]
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As we know it, from our recent at (inaudible) .
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [43]
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As we're told -- as we say, we're the lady who sings.
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Operator [44]
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(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Killeen from CIBC.
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Jeff Killeen, CIBC World Markets Inc., Research Division - Director of Institutional Equity Research [45]
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I'd like to start with Bill, if I could. Lots of questions asked on the stockpiles at Fekola. Certainly looks like a very consistent growth in that number. Could you give us a little more color, Bill, just on the mining itself? It seems like it's been going well, but just in terms of the blasting drilling and blasting unit cost. What the overall blast sizes? Is all of that reconciling to your plans?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [46]
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Well, certainly I mean let's start with the unit cost. There's no way at this point we can talk about unit cost, which is now getting into the hard rock. And so we don't really have a handle on that, but certainly, all the initial work that we've done has borne out, what we had in the feasibility. We don't see anything, which is outrageous. We did adjust a little bit. Originally the design was that we were going to mine just in the Phase 1 pit. But what they decided to do to give themselves a little bit of optionality is we actually opened up the phase 1 and Phase 3 pit, so we have about almost 10 million tons of material to include waste and ore that we've taken out of Phase 1 and Phase 3 pit, and it all seems to be going very well.
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Jeff Killeen, CIBC World Markets Inc., Research Division - Director of Institutional Equity Research [47]
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Okay. And then just a couple of follow ons. Not thinking about grade numbers or anything like that, but just in terms of being able to recognize ore versus waste as you're mining and the transition from oxides to the fresh rock, is that pretty much in line with your expectations?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [48]
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I think -- I'll let the geologist talk a little bit about it, but certainly, everything we've seen has been in line with our expectations. I don't know as we go deeper what the geologist would say.
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [49]
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You should be able to see it.
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Jeff Killeen, CIBC World Markets Inc., Research Division - Director of Institutional Equity Research [50]
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Okay, very well. Then may be switching to Dale at Masbate. You noted in the MD&A that you're transitioning out of the Main Vein number 1. So for the second half of this year, would it be fair to say that you'll see some movement downward in terms of grade, in terms of recoveries as you get out of some of that more oxide material and out of that Main Vein pit?
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Dale Alton Craig, B2Gold Corp. - VP of Operations [51]
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Well the main driver on our throughput and recoveries has been material coming from Colorado Pit, and that's going to continue. We see -- remember, we've done a model rebuild through the front end of this year, and we forecast based on that and help through our forecast numbers. We see 65% to 70% off-site processing through the year, the majority of that coming from Colorado Pit, so that'll remain unchanged. So sources go from Main Vein 1 to Main Vein 3. That provides primary ore. The material that was transitioned translates to off-site and that's the impact that we see on the oxide content processes.
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Jeff Killeen, CIBC World Markets Inc., Research Division - Director of Institutional Equity Research [52]
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Okay, very well. So it looks like you could finish very strong there. And then lastly, perhaps for Mike, just on the upsized revolver. Would you expect that you may dip into that any further in the -- over the course of this year just to maintain a healthier cash balance? Or would you look to that just as a potential backstop if there's any hiccups?
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Michael Andrew Cinnamond, B2Gold Corp. - Senior VP of Finance & CFO [53]
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I think we'll like get -- we accelerated Fekola, the construction schedule. They'll bring it online on October 1. So I think we'll dig into a little more just as we get to that sort of earlier start date at the end of September, start of October, because we don't have to balance it as those last 3 months operating cash flow, so I think we'll dip into a little more, but we'll still have a very healthy margin on it.
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Operator [54]
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Our next question comes from Steven Butler from GMP Securities.
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Steven Howard Butler, GMP Securities L.P., Research Division - MD of Equity Research & Gold Analyst [55]
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Guys, the 1.1 million tons at the end of July, Mike, what would be the -- Bill, excuse me, what would be the grade approximately in the stockpiles at Fekola?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [56]
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Well, I think we've been a bit cagey or a bit dodgy about what the grade is, simply because we don't want people to take the tons and multiply it by the grade and think that's what we're going to produce because it's not a 1-to-1 obviously. It's what -- some of it will be blended with hard rock as it goes in. What we are saying is that it certainly is in line with our expectations, and we're very confident on what we've got there.
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Steven Howard Butler, GMP Securities L.P., Research Division - MD of Equity Research & Gold Analyst [57]
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Okay, that's fine. Because I -- we stretch, I think on the last conference call, you said near 4 grams, but we'll take your comments here into consideration. At Limon, Tom, this new area where you're drilling, remind us again on the -- I'm looking at a plan map from the June Investor Day, where are we located here on this new area of open-pit potential?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [58]
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Well that's the wonderful thing about Steven. We didn't actually show where it is. As you're well aware, Nicaragua has issues with landowners, service landowners and has issues as with small miners so we tend not to tell people where the things are, hopefully in the future though.
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Steven Howard Butler, GMP Securities L.P., Research Division - MD of Equity Research & Gold Analyst [59]
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All right, that's fine. What are you seeing? You seeing wider veins than normal here? What's sort of more unique or sexy about it? Does it also have a good grade?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [60]
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It's a little bit wider, the biggest thing about it is because it's shallow dipping and a bit wider, it's all going to be open pit-able. And then just it's well within this striking distance of the mills, everything that we need.
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Steven Howard Butler, GMP Securities L.P., Research Division - MD of Equity Research & Gold Analyst [61]
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And as there been -- there's been history of some open-pit mining or not on the Limon, historically, no?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [62]
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Well, certainly, Limon has always had an element of open-pit mining to augment the mill throughput.
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Steven Howard Butler, GMP Securities L.P., Research Division - MD of Equity Research & Gold Analyst [63]
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Okay. At -- then lastly, at Toega -- or the Toega party -- Toega project. Resources coming here at the end of the third quarter. Is that likely to be a combination against hereof inferred and indicated? Or what's your categorization you're thinking?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [64]
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It'll be a combination of inferred and indicated. Especially, you know the last drill results, they're right on the edge, so they're not going to get indicated.
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Operator [65]
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(Operator Instructions) And our next question comes from Geordie Mark from Haywood Securities.
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Geordie Mark, Haywood Securities Inc., Research Division - Co-Head Mining Research [66]
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Just maybe some questions to Bill, if I can. On Fekola, when we're looking at the commissioning size. What are you looking as a reasonable time through, sort of commissioning through the crushing circuit then? And then a reasonable time once materials have been introduced into the mill to get it through the, I guess leaching and then to charge for the carbon throughput?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [67]
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Yes. So I would be happy to give you my opinion here, but I think John Rajala is on the line, and he's probably the most appropriate to answer that question.
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John Rajala, B2Gold Corp. - VP of Metallurgy [68]
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Yes, John here. We're actually commissioning the crushing circuit this week on the waste rock. We have the crushing manufacturer at site, so that's going to be completed this week. Most of the work that we're still completing on the process plant is around the grinding mills, and we're expecting to have what we call cold commissioning completed by about mid-September and then after that, we will start feeding rock into the plant. And we're expecting, oh, 7 to 14 days on waste rock and then low-grade rock and we should start feeding ore into the mill about October 1, that's our target date. The ramp-up, we expect to be at design capacity by about the end of the year, possibly sooner, depending on how things go.
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Geordie Mark, Haywood Securities Inc., Research Division - Co-Head Mining Research [69]
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And then moving over to maybe to Toega, maybe following on from Steve's question there. In terms of the obviously the recent drillings showed some interesting results at pit. When you're talking about the breakdown of, I guess indicated, inferred resources, are you looking ultimately at that inferred effectively being at tips and along with that strike extent, is that where you should sort of the see this sort of onion skin or are there other parts there that could be into?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [70]
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Well, there's going to be a little bit up to zone, there will be a little bit of inferred up to zone, but most of the inferred will be down plunged.
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Geordie Mark, Haywood Securities Inc., Research Division - Co-Head Mining Research [71]
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Okay, excellent and with the work on the Anaconda, if we're looking at the [high yield] materials, is that similar solid mineralization to what you're seeing at Fekola? Or maybe at Kiwi? Or is that there something here different again?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [72]
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When we're seeing -- While we're seeing several differences, we've seen something brand new that we've never seen before in that area. We are seeing Fekola -- well, Fekola/Kiwi style shears the host mineralization and we have seen a little bit of the sort of quartz veins style where the small miners historically mined at (inaudible).
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Geordie Mark, Haywood Securities Inc., Research Division - Co-Head Mining Research [73]
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Okay, does that give you a sense of like scale for the strike length or width size? Or you -- what's kind of dimensions you're looking at there? Or is it too early to tell yet?
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Thomas A. Garagan, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Exploration [74]
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It's way, way too early. We've had lower grade in near sections up to 30 meters wide in shear zone style mineralization and some of the more higher grades hits have been in the 5 to 6-meter range.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [75]
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Maybe just, I kind of feel it we need to clarify one thing in that's Steve's question about grade on the stockpile. I just say if you don't want to -- we want to make sure we -- that doesn't mislead at all. So -- and Bill, jump in here, but just maybe I think we need to talk about confirming the models we use today and we have seen some better results than that. We said it before, and I think we need to consider clarifying that, that we are confirming our model, but we've also seen areas of better grade as we obviously took discussion in the last conference call for one's Steve's alluding to, maybe just got that right, so maybe just clarify that because I don't want you to think that we had a higher grade and that's [gone way lower grade stuff]. So maybe we just need to clarify that. Hopefully, clarify a little bit?
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William Lytle, B2Gold Corp. - SVP of Operations [76]
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Yes, no. What you're saying is exactly right, Clive. We're not saying that there's anything wrong with the model. We're not saying that there's any misses. What we're saying is that we're very confident what we've got there before, as we said last time, we have seen grade above what was expected, and we continue to be very positive on what the model is showing. Certainly, it's reconciled with as -- at least as good as the model has shown.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [77]
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Okay, it looks like -- operator, it looks like there's no further questions?
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Operator [78]
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That's correct.
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Clive Thomas Johnson, B2Gold Corp. - President, CEO & Director [79]
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Okay. I want to say thank you all for being on, and we realize this is a summer event, and thanks for your continued following of B2Gold and your professional reports and your good questions. And some of our shareholders are on the line. Well, obviously thanks to them for their ongoing support. We should be heading into a very exciting time. I have a question for you analysts, but I'm not going to put you on a spot. But my question would -- I'll put the question to you and then I would choose you like to maybe have follow-up conversation. Just because my question is about when you have a situation like this and something like Fekola coming on, what point do analysts start to sort of step out a little bit more and start to say yes, on the PF today, you could argue there's sort of value that appears at 550,000 ounces. But, boy, when they get through the next 2 months these guys call it off, and I don't think too many of you or anybody else is betting against our ability to get this mine going. I mean I haven't heard a lot of that. That's for sure. So I guess as I said, I'm not putting you on the spot. So maybe we can talk about this after. But I'm just really curious as to how you guys see that when you have such a huge impact coming up so soon here that and if someone shows -- some of our shows, that are clients of your firm and you talk to sometimes. I'd like just to get a sense of what you're sort of hearing back? Is it the [turn by the same brush as] others so we need to get 3 to 6 months under our belt at Fekola before people go, holy shit. This is the real. Or do we actually start to see at some point a re-rating starting to happen? Sooner or later, you've got gold price moving and as I said, if you look at our chart [and line up], and we're obsessed with [progression]. But if you look at our chart from the last year, it's almost inexplicable to see what we've done given the time that every day goes by, we're closer to Fekola and given our relatively very good performance and nonequity -- financing without equity, et cetera. So that's quite a bit, so I'm sure you're writing that right now. But anyway after -- maybe we can -- some of you -- if you want to invite you to give me a call, and now let's see I'd really like your feedback into that kind of thing. So we have a bit of a better idea of what maybe to expect and if there's a better way we can position ourselves or at least communicate to people. Because I know you're not going to see it on this call [it's been streaming by] obviously. So we'll leave it there. But I would ask you to call me, so okay. All right, well, thanks, everybody for your participation. Thank you, operator.
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Operator [80]
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This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.
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