Operator: Hello, and welcome to the CAML results call. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand you over to your host, Mr. Gavin Ferrar to begin today's conference. Please go ahead.
Gavin Ferrar: Good morning, and welcome to the Central Asia Metals plc H1 2026 Results Presentation. Thank you all for joining, and looking forward to presenting what are a solid set of results to you today. I think if we go -- skip through the next 4 slides, which is basically disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. It's getting bigger and bigger because of the multiple jurisdictions now. An overview of our business as it currently stands today. We have a portfolio of producing base metal assets complemented by some exciting exploration prospects. The producers are the Kounrad project that is in Kazakhstan. We own 100% [Technical Difficulty] and it's been producing copper profitably for us since 2012 and it's licensed out to 2034. We have the Sasa underground lead-zinc mine in North Macedonia. Again, owned that since 2017 and has been producing lead and zinc consistently for a fair amount of time with a mine life out to 2034 based on our current reserve statement and adding a small proportion of resources into that life of mine plan. In terms of exploration, as I said, exciting prospects out in Kazakhstan, where we have 2 exploration companies focusing on base metals exploration targeting high-grade base metals projects that we can afford to build. We've completed some maiden drilling programs at 2 of our projects, and we've added another important project to that portfolio in Kazakhstan as well. Lastly, but not least, Aberdeen Minerals, which is a minority position we hold in an exploration company privately held looking for copper and nickel mineralization up in Scotland. Most recently, we've agreed to invest another GBP 1.15 million into that business to fund another drilling program, and that will take our ownership there up to around 38.9%. A great underlying asset base. Today, we present a string of solid financials. If we go to the next slide, please, which reflect this solid operational performance in an attractive commodity price environment. Having a look at the financial results on the left-hand side, we produced revenue of $145.5 million versus just under $100 million in the same period last year, with EBITDA correspondingly higher at $75.5 million, up from $39.9 million with a healthy margin of 52%. That has generated cash flow of $46.8 million, and that has driven a dividend that we announced today of 8p, which is right in the middle of our dividend policy range of 30% to 50%. So that 8p represents 40% of that free cash flow. Cash in the bank at the end of the period, $97.2 million leaves us in a very healthy position in terms of our balance sheet. Moving on to the operations. As you can see there, we've achieved a slight increase in production in Kazakhstan, which has been a really good result given the weather that we experienced in Q1, up 1% from the previous period. Importantly, North Macedonia, Sasa, we've seen some improvement in production there. We've got an extra 5% of zinc metal and an extra 6% of lead metal as some of the improvement initiatives start kicking in, in that operation. Unfortunately, we did suffer 2 LTIs. We do strive for a zero harm workplace. The focus for the rest of the year is really getting that number of 1.73 down to our targeted number, but it's looking good so far in terms of that. But as I said, very, very focused on health and safety there as well. If we move to the next slide, please, which is our investment case for CAML. Now I think if anything, this investment case has become stronger over the last few months. We'll go through the 3 elements of it just quickly for you. First of all, we've got cash generation. As I said earlier, almost $47 million of cash generated, which is an almost threefold increase period-on-period. With $97.2 million in the bank, it is a really healthy position to be in. That cash generation is from the higher-margin Kounrad copper production and improving Sasa performance. Returns, we've demonstrated consistent shareholder returns, returning over $437 million back to our shareholders in cash since our IPO, which is a lot more than we've ever raised from the market. We will continue with disciplined capital allocation. Importantly, we are now adding some really good growth to our portfolio. As I had mentioned earlier, the advancing exploration portfolio in Kazakhstan, Aberdeen Minerals and the proposed Cygnus transaction, which we'll talk about a bit later in the presentation, has the potential to add a near-term producer to our portfolio, plus with significant exploration upside. At this point, we'll just talk about that capital allocation on the next slide a little bit. I think what we've got here is the balancing of capital allocation, which is reflected in that 8p dividend, which I spoke about earlier and that we've announced today. That's basically provides attractive returns to our shareholders while retaining enough capital and cash on the balance sheet to finance our growth ambitions. As you can see in these 3 sort of bullet points here or 3 sort of columns of the slide, we've returned a significant amount of money to our shareholders via share buybacks and dividends. The strong balance sheet supports our growth ambitions. We've paid over 208p of cash to our dividends since IPO. Now we're going to continue with a balanced approach to capital allocation, funding both returns to shareholders, growth and continuing with a financially strong base on our balance sheet. Effectively, this allows us to build on the strong foundations that we currently have and set the business up for long-term success. I'll hand over to Louise now, her and her team have been slaving over the summer to generate the sort of financials that we're presenting today. So thanks, Louise.
Louise Wrathall: Thank you. Yes, if you go to the next slide and then next slide. Yes. Perfect. Thanks. If we just start off by looking at some of the macro conditions that are important in understanding the very strong results that we have announced this morning. Obviously, we've had strong production performance in the first half of this year, but I think it's important to acknowledge the commodity prices, which has been very supportive of our financial results today. In particular, we can see in the little table at the bottom, we've got a copper price, which is 39% higher on average for the first half of this year versus H1 2025 and also the zinc price 26% higher in the first half of this year versus the first half of 2025. Also, it's worth pointing out silver. The silver price has had spikes of up to $115 an ounce in the first half of the year. As we've explained before, silver doesn't affect our profitability, but it does affect our revenue and it does affect our costs. You do see increased revenue and increased cost of sales because of that silver. So that's been very high silver prices during the period, which affect the way the P&L looks. Looking over to the right-hand column, treatment charges. This has been very supportive for us as well during the first half of this year. In total, our treatment charges came in at $2.7 million, and that's $2.2 million less than they were for the first half of last year. That was very much supported by lead treatment charges actually turning negative in the second half of this year. We have those contracts to remind you from the 1st of April all the way through to the 1st of April 2027. We've locked in those negative lead treatment charges. Then finally, just to look at foreign exchange and inflation. This is a little bit more of a negative story for us with a weaker U.S. dollar against both of our operating currencies. So U.S. dollar is 7% weaker versus the first half of last year for the denar and 5% for Kazakh tenge. That's really impacts -- increase -- has the impact of increasing local costs in both of the areas. Inflation, it remained elevated at 11% in Kazakhstan, a little bit lower at 4% in North Macedonia. What I should point out in terms of the zinc and in terms of foreign exchange, we had entered into some hedge contracts, so 50% of the hedge of the zinc production at Sasa for this year, we've hedged at $3,011. We've recorded in the P&L a loss of around $1.4 million for that. On foreign exchange, we've also hedged some of the U.S. dollar-euro exposure because the denar is pegged to the euro. That's been more or less flat. I think it's a tiny loss of around $0.1 million for that hedge as well for the foreign exchange. Moving on to the next slide, and we can talk through the income statement. I think first to point out, our revenue is up 46% period-on-period, and that is from $99.5 million up to $145.5 million. That's driven by the commodity prices being much higher that we've talked about, the copper, the zinc and also the silver up 128% versus the previous period. But it's also due to not just strong production performance, but also higher sales. Interestingly, in H1 2025, we ended that period for copper with a fair bit of copper in stock. Our actual copper sales this year versus the first half of last year are 9% higher as well. Zinc and lead really just reflect the increased production of the 2 periods of around about 5% and 4%, respectively. Of course, we were also helped on the revenue line with the reduction in treatment charges because that comes off on the revenue line in the P&L. Cost of sales, that was up by about $10 million. You could explain more than all of that with the increased silver purchase price, the $8.8 million that we have to pay to purchase the silver to fulfill our contract with OR Royalties. Also, there was an increase in our depreciation, which I think we've previously flagged, that was from $14 million to $15.9 million, and that really reflects the sort of mathematically shorter life at Sasa that we're currently envisaging to 2034. That gets you to effectively an increase of $11 million. There's a big positive in cost of sales there because Kounrad's MET, which is a revenue royalty that we pay, that reduced from $5 million down to $0.8 million, and there was a reduction in the rate by about 90% there. There's a positive for our cost of sales there. We did also have cost increases of $2.4 million at the operations, and that was largely related to this weaker U.S. dollar against our operating currencies. Then finally, the last main factor in there is an increase in concession fee at Sasa due to the slightly higher production and due to the higher commodity prices as well. Admin, relatively flat there. It's up by 3% or $0.5 million. $0.3 million of that is increased business development costs, mainly related to the potential Cygnus acquisition. There's a few other ups and downs in there because actually U.K. costs were generally flat. We had $0.1 million up in Kazakhstan. Then at Sasa, there was also some elevated admin expenses in large part related to the severance pay that we've paid. Taking all that into account, EBITDA up by 89% just under $76 million and a good EBITDA performance at both of the operations as well, 78% increase in our EBITDA at Kounrad and 62% increase EBITDA at Sasa, up now to $19.3 million at Sasa. If we look as well some other aspects to pull out on the P&L, one of the biggest swings there is this fair value movement in share-based payment liability. This is since we accounted for our LTIPs as being cash settled rather than equity settled. There's a swing of around $9 million there. That reflects the weaker share price performance up until the 30th of June. Clearly, that will move up and down period-on-period depending on largely share price factors. Tax up quite significantly, up by $10.8 million. That's driven by higher profits at Kounrad because those are taxed at 20% and also, there's been an increase in Kazakh withholding tax from 10% to 15%, and that's referenced from the 1st of January this year. We did bring all our cash back to the U.K. in the first half, but we just take half of that 50% of that through the P&L for the first half of this year. Then really just to finally focus on the EPS, which is up by 330% period-on-period. We've also highlighted there an adjusted EPS. All that does is strips out a $1.5 million unrealized hedge loss, which mathematically is accounted for what the hedge loss may be in the second half of this year. We've provided the adjusted EPS just so you can see the underlying profitability of the business on that basis. If we go on to the next slide, please, and we can look at the costs of both of the operations now. At Kounrad, our costs for the first half were up by $0.12, and that was really based on pretty much consistent cathode production, as we say, up by 1%. This was -- over half of that was related to the strengthening of the tenge versus the U.S. dollar. Actually, if we look at that processing total line, where we've gone up from $8.4 million to $9.5 million, over half of that was related to foreign exchange. The rest of the costs are up by about 6%, which is less than inflation. All in all, a pretty good result there. A couple of other factors just to point out. We also see higher payroll there. Again, payroll is very much linked to the strength of the tenge and also to pay rises, inflation-related pay rises, which we gave the workforce in January this year. It's also worth pointing out power costs were slightly lower period-on-period. That was rather due to a large amount of power used in H1 2025 rather than necessarily a reduction per se in this half. That's just due to some changes in the chemistry. But it's worth pointing out that we know we're going to get a power increase for 7 months this year, starting from the 1st of June, and that's because the tariff has been increased from -- rounded from $0.06 per kilowatt hour to $0.07 per kilowatt hour. So we will see a slightly higher power charge come through in the second half of this year. But all in all, I think a good performance in costs given the headwinds from the exchange rates, and we've delivered an EBITDA margin for Kounrad of 84%, of course, helped by the strong copper prices for the first half of this year. If we go on to the next slide, and we can look at Sasa now. We're very pleased with the performance of Sasa. Site operating costs, more or less flat or up by 2% or $0.4 million. Again, we're dealing with a weaker U.S. dollar there, so stronger operating currencies of 7%, and that cost is factoring that in. We can also see the largest increase in costs that you can see in the processing line. $1 million of that increase is due to our tailings disposal costs where we purposefully prioritized putting our tailings in the paste backfill underground and on the dry stack tailings as well to maintain the capacity in TSF4. That's the main factor. But actually, our mining costs have been very encouraging. That's an area where we've had a lot of emphasis on our improvements. All in all, our mining costs are lower by $0.7 million. There's actually an increase there in fuel, which is just to do with some of the conflicts that we see in the world. Actually, so taking that out, our savings would have looked even higher, reduced spare parts and payroll savings as well were 2 key factors from the headcount reductions, which we pushed through in November and also some additional ones in the first quarter of this year as well. Electricity costs remained stable because we hedged the electricity price for H1. They remain stable versus H1 2025. All that's very positive on the site-based costs. Encouragingly, our C1 cost base is actually lower period-on-period from -- that's fallen from $32.1 million down to $30.8 million. That's really helped by those lower treatment charges that I mentioned. So that brings the overall package of realization costs down from $6.4 million to $4.7 million. We've got an EBITDA margin now back into the 30%, which we're very encouraged about. If we move on to the next slide and just a quick look at our CapEx, which is very much on track. Group CapEx for the first half, $9.5 million. Sasa CapEx of that was $8 million, underground development, underground equipment and also the raise boring project. There was $1.4 million of that, and that project concluded in July this year. At Kounrad, we spent $1.4 million, which is the usual dripper pipes, some new anodes and also $0.2 million on replacement boilers as well. Then we reiterate our guidance from $14.5 million to $17.5 million for the 2 operations for the full year 2026. Exploration-wise, it's worth pointing out, we spent $1.6 million at CAML X and CAML XD. We've done maiden drilling programs at 2 of those sites, and we've done some geophysics at the third site as well. We still intend to do some more drilling as the year progresses there, and we should still spend between $3 million and $3.5 million in Kazakhstan as well. If we turn to the next slide, please, and we can look at the balance sheet. PPE, what we see there, the difference there reflects depreciation plus CapEx and a little bit of adverse foreign exchange movements in the difference between the $239 million and the $226 million on the balance sheet. Investment in associates, that's our holding in Aberdeen Minerals. We have -- since the period end, we've agreed to invest the final GBP 1.15 million or just under $1.6 million to take our percentage ownership up to 39 -- just under 39%. The $1.2 million of warrants mentioned there is what we exercised in January. The second half, we will see the last portion of those warrants exercised. Inventory, we were very pleased to see that, that's decreased by $3 million. That reflects a lot of effort that we've put in at Sasa in a program to reduce our inventory, which has actually reduced from around about this time last year to here by almost $5 million, and we see $3 million of that reflected in these results. That's very pleasing to see. Other factor to point out there is, as we announced, we completed a share premium cancellation in April this year, and that really transfers from the share premium account to $206 million into our distributable reserves into retained earnings, sorry, to create distributable reserves primarily for future dividends. That sees that bigger swing on the balance sheet there. Then finally, just to say that we've got a really strong balance sheet, ended 30th of June with $97 million of cash. We also have $0.4 million of restricted cash and the $97 million does include a $0.9 million overdraft, but that's all the borrowings that we have. Then final slide for me. If we move to the next one, thank you, and we can look at the H1 2026 free cash flow. If we go across the waterfall chart, we've got cash generated from operations of $71 million, the $17.3 million of dividends. That was the 2025 final dividend of 7.5p. Income tax and withholding tax, that $19.8 million. That's less cash tax than we see on the P&L. That's because particularly in Kazakhstan, you pay your tax based on last year's profits. There'll be a catch-up that we'll have to do in paying some more tax from August to December this year, and we've put that plan in place. But that $19.8 million does include the full amount of the withholding tax of around $10 million that we paid when bringing our dividends back to the U.K., all of them in the first half of this year. CapEx exploration and Aberdeen investment, we've already talked about. The share buyback of $4.8 million, we completed a $10 million share buyback, half of which was in the second half of last year and the $4.8 million was completed by March this year. That was the final portion of that $10 million that we committed to buy back. So we ended the period with the $97 million of cash that I mentioned, excluding the $0.4 million restricted cash, including the $0.9 million overdraft. When we look at our adjusted -- our free cash flow and our adjusted free cash flow, which informs the dividend calculations, we have added back on half of that withholding tax just to spread that evenly over the two 6-month periods. That gives us adjusted free cash flow for the 6 months of $46.8 million, and that's an 189% increase versus the $16.2 million that we generated in the first half of 2025. I'll hand back to Gavin to run through the operations.
Gavin Ferrar: Thanks, Louise. We're going to start with the Kounrad on the next slide. Thank you. Yes, solid performance at Kounrad, as you've seen in the numbers that Louise was talking about, both in terms of costs and revenues. As I said earlier, the cathode production was up 1% with sales up a little bit against the previous period just due to inventories held in 2025. But we're on track to meet that full year guidance of 12,000 to 13,000 tonnes. We are solidly on track for that. Copper prices continue to be high. Looking for good revenue from Kounrad from the end of June out to the end of the year as well. We did have that one LTI. Fortunately, it wasn't too serious. But again, lots of learning to be taken from these things and procedures in place to try and prevent a similar accident happening again. In terms of cumulative production at Kounrad, really good. Since we started producing in 2012, we've done over 185,000 tonnes of cathode copper, all at very good quality, all sold into the markets with no problem. Excellent performer here. As I said earlier, licensed out to 2034. We jump on to the next slide, please, we can talk about a little bit of the outlook for the business at Kounrad. With those record high copper prices we achieved in first half at least, we're leveraging the strong operational performance, and we're looking to continue that into the second half of this year. Our focus remains on maximizing the efficiency of the asset. We've got industry-leading margins there, and we'd like to keep it that way. The only significant update really in terms of resources and reporting is that in support of the Cygnus transaction, we've published updated mineral resource and a maiden ore reserve actually at Kounrad out this month as well. That is both JORC and 43-101 compliant. The JORC ore reserve currently stands at just shy of 408,000 tonnes of contained copper. But as those of you who have followed us for a while know, this is the amount we can recover from that. Recovery rates range between sort of 38% and 55%, really depending on where we're leaching. We're never going to recover that whole 407,000 tonnes. As I said before, we've taken out 185,000 tonnes and that leaves in terms of theoretically, 75,500 tonnes remaining. And that's more than sufficient to support operations out to 2034. But if you look at that little chart that we've got in the middle of the slide there, we have outperformed our forecast recoveries all the way through the operations. We would look at that 75,400 tonnes as a minimum out to 2034 with potential to extend beyond that if we can get the license renewed. That solar plant, as Louise was saying, with an increase in electricity tariffs is becoming ever more valuable and has supplied 18% of our electricity for the first half of the year. Moving on to Sasa. As I said before, we started to see the benefits of the full review that we conducted in 2025. Now that review spanned resources, reserves, operating procedures, financial metrics. We are seeing some of the production metrics coming through that are reflecting an improved performance at Sasa. Not only are the ore mine tonnages higher, but also the metal that is contained within that ore, as I said, is 5% higher in zinc and 6% higher in lead. Again, timely given the enhanced zinc prices we're benefiting from right now as well. So guidance of 18,000 to 20,000 tonnes of zinc and 26,000 to 28,000 tonnes of lead is still in range. We're looking to achieve that this year. Again, with the zinc prices remaining robust, we're looking for a solid financial performance coming out of Sasa over the rest of the year. Similar to Kounrad, we've published JORC and 43-101 compliant ore reserve statements and resource estimates in support of the Cygnus transaction. Just getting back to that improvement program I was talking about, we're still continuing to do that with the emphasis on mining performance and cost control. You can see from the chart on the right-hand side, you can see improvements in tonnage, improvements in grades, which means less dilution, and that's reflected in the higher metal tonnes that we've produced. Next slide, please. We're not going to sit on our laurels at Sasa. We continue to strive for more improvements there. So far, we're looking at these improvements in productivity, staffing levels and cost control. As Louise was saying, really good results on the inventory management there as well. For H1 2026, I think we've done some really good things in terms of drill meters that we're getting in lateral development, enhancing that grade control model and reducing the inventory numbers there. Those will continue. Into H2, we're going to continue to focus on executing on our life of mine plan and our 2026 budget. We're trying to improve maintenance planning through data collection and analysis there and also strengthening the team further. We had a new geologist joined, new Chief Geologist joined in H1. We've got a few key hires coming in. We've actually joined already a few of them already to strengthen the team, mainly around planning and execution of underground mining, which is where we see the major opportunity for improvement there. Moving on to the business in more general on the next slide, please. Sustainability remains a core part -- a core sort of elements of our business success. I won't go through the slide in a lot of detail, just provide you with a few of the highlights that we achieved during the period. In terms of health and safety, in 2025, we actually instituted a full review of the health and safety on both sites. We workshopped this all with the site guys as well and came up with a new sort of structure for a group safety culture, which we started implementing into 2026. That's been really well received on site and at head office. As I said, unfortunately, we did suffer those 2 LTIs during the half, but the really stringent focus on health and safety always and moving forward. In terms of community investment, we continue to invest in education, infrastructure and importantly, and more fun is some business acceleration program that we've got in Sasa, where we've actually now financed 4 businesses and 4 start-ups there. That's in conjunction with the other things that we're doing in terms of STEAM, children's, children's centers and just generally looking after our communities and maintaining that license to operate. Part of that is obviously environmental management, and that's been a continued focus. Three key elements there that we've kicked off this year is we've actually completed our biodiversity management and climate resilience reviews across both operations. We're updating our closure plans given the -- specifically given the changes at Sasa with the 2 new plants that Louise mentioned there. In terms of tailings management at Sasa, we've managed to put 77% of our tailings either back underground through paste backfill or onto the dry stack land form, thus preserving TSF4, which is the last wet tailings facility for 2034 and beyond. If we look at the capital outlook and allocation, if we can jump forward 2 slides, please. Thanks. We've made really good advances across the entire exploration portfolio. Just a little more detail on what we've spoken about before. CAML XD, which is 100% owned by us, we have an option over an additional project in the Tengiz Basin. This is a highly prospective region for sediment-hosted copper, and it also sits adjacent to an existing license that we've got already. We've undertaken some field work there. The minute we got hold of that option and have delineated drill targets with drilling of about 4,600 meters planned in the latter half of this year and into 2027. That's a highly prospective license that we've got hold of there. That option is for 3 years, and we can extend it for another year basis, exploration results there. CAML X continues to turn through its licenses, excellent team out there. We've had maiden drilling programs, very exciting at Otyar and Yuzhnoe. 4,300 meters were drilled across 15 diamond holes. Actually, we've intersected mineralization at both. At Otyar, a structurally controlled polymetallic mineralized system was discovered with visible sphalerite and galena. At Yuzhnoe, we've looked at -- we've actually looked at the core and seen copper moly mineralization, and this system extends over 1.2 kilometers of strike. Assay results, we're all on tenterhooks for those coming in quarter 3, and those will guide future explorations on those 2 licenses. The third license we focused on in Kazakhstan was Shaindy. That was a geophysical survey that we've undertaken. We're in interpretation mode there to generate drill targets, and we'll decide on where to target that drilling in the second half of this year. Aberdeen Minerals, I think we've both spoken about that a fair amount. Effectively, we financed Phase 3 drilling through that first warrant exercise. Phase 4 drilling will be financed through the final warrant exercise of $1.15 million. That will take our shareholding up to 38.9%. Wishing Fraser and his team in Scotland all the very best for that fourth phase of drilling. In terms of growth on the next slide, please. We made lots of progress. We've been talking about adding an asset to the business and the proposed transaction with Cygnus is in the sort of reaching its final phases here now. We've effectively put out the scheme booklet, which is the one that gets lodged with the Australian exchange. That was published on the 13th of August. The U.K. circular to support the U.K. shareholder vote was published on the 14th of August. Now this, to remind you all is an all-share transaction. We value the Cygnus equity at around AUD 232 million. We're targeting completion in October this year. If all goes well, there are 2 key dates in that timetable on the right-hand side. 4th of September is the CAML shareholder vote. Those of you listening in, don't forget to lodge your votes by the 2nd of September, please. The Cygnus Scheme meeting occurs on the 18th of September, where the Cygnus shareholders will vote hopefully in favor of the scheme. Now we do have both Boards of Directors strongly recommending that our shareholders vote in favor. We've had proxy advisers, Glass Lewis, ISS and PIRC, all on the CAML side suggesting that shareholders vote in favor as well. The scheme booklet, I mentioned earlier, sets out all of the advantages and disadvantages of the scheme. I urge any Cygnus shareholders listening today to have a careful look at that and vote accordingly. Assuming this completes in October, what we really end up with is more copper exposure in the business in a Tier 1 jurisdiction. Really populating that area of the pipeline between the early-stage exploration we've spoken about and the operations that are underpinning this excellent set of financial results. If we move to the next slide, please, just a reminder to our shareholders of what we're buying. Chibougamau is a high-grade copper-gold suite of assets in a Tier 1 jurisdiction. There's effectively 5 copper-gold deposits, most of which are located within 30 kilometers of an existing processing facility. Now this processing facility will need significant refurbishment and upgrading, but it is a brownfields opportunity for us that sort of accelerates permitting and timetable to production there. Cygnus had started a preliminary economic assessment. That's been underway, and they needed to do quite a lot of drilling under the Australian rules to sort of get a lot of the resources into the PEA. We will continue with that drilling program. We'll also continue with that PEA study, which will probably be published if all goes well, sometime early next year. Not only have we got these 5 deposits, but there's also significant exploration potential if we go to the next slide. This is a district that's produced over 1 million tonnes of copper and 3.5 million ounces of gold historically. We really are in elephant country here. If you look at the -- I guess, there's 5-plus Copper Rand on the left-hand side, that's the sort of 5 core assets that form that 6.4 million tonnes measured and indicated resource. But that 18-kilometer strike length, all of those red arrows that you can see on that chart show you where the mineralization is either open at depth or along strike. There's a lot of exploration potential there, a large existing data set that the Cygnus team has been analyzing, and we will continue with the same team in Canada, remember. We're not looking to change the team up at all in Canada. We'll have a lot of continuity in terms of exploration knowledge and driving the exploration potential of this suite of tenements that Cygnus has pulled together. Not to mention that Cygnus itself has actually increased that resource base by 78%, just to show you what potential actually exists with this suite of tenements that exist out in Canada. Key dates there, as I said, 2nd of September for our shareholders, 18th of September for any Cygnus shareholders that are listening in today. Final slide, in terms of our outlook for the year. As I said a couple of times now, we're still benefiting from very good prices, both copper and zinc, and we expect that to continue for the rest of the year. That is going to drive good revenue as we look to achieve our 2026 full year guidance, and we're on track to achieve that both at Kounrad and at Sasa. Spoken about the shareholder votes in support of the Cygnus acquisition. One thing I didn't mention earlier is that we have a TSX listing application underway, also in support of the Cygnus transaction. That's gone particularly well. We're waiting for a conditional approval from the TSX within the next few weeks, certainly in time for the closing of that transaction. Then as all of the technical guys in our management team, which is 3 of us plus others, all waiting on tenter hooks for those assay results to come out of Kazakhstan because the core certainly looks interesting, but the proof of the pudding is still awaited. So looking for that. Then in terms of capital allocation going forward, 8p dividend, we're very pleased to announce that today, 40% of our adjusted free cash flow. CapEx at both operations moving forward now is really just going to be sustaining CapEx. Guidance, as Louise said, we're looking to sort of land within that $14.5 million to $17.5 million range. Cash on the balance sheet of $97.2 million provides us with a huge amount of optionality going forward, both in terms of investment into exploration, both at Kazakhstan, Scotland and Canada and at the same time, providing our shareholders with a look-through value in terms of capital returns there. A lot of flexibility and optionality now moving forward with CAML and the cash generation underpinning all of our growth ambitions, I think we're set up for a really good future for the business. Thank you very much all for attending and listening today. I think it's time to hand over to the floor now for questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today is coming from Laura Chan from RBC.
Laura Chan: Congrats on your results. Just one question from my side. It's mainly on capital allocation. The H1 payout was at the midpoint of your policy. And with the transaction completing soon and Chibougamau development spend ahead, how should we think about the H2 payout ratio? And does your capital allocation framework change structurally post close? And I guess just a related question is, how should we think about your CapEx profile on a group level over the next kind of 12 to 24 months with that development spend likely to come in?
Gavin Ferrar: Okay. Thanks, Laura. In terms of the dividend, we made the decision a year ago, as a Board, to get the dividend back into policy. I think that provides us with the flexibility to finance both capital returns and also our growth ambitions. The 8p dividend is, as I said, right in the middle of the range of that. I think apart from you, Laura, I think it beat mostly the Street consensus expectations. But look, and I think the same remains. I think if we continue to benefit from really good commodity prices, that will give us a little more firepower to keep the dividend in that sort of towards the mid- to upper end of that range. But at the same time, we will have a larger shareholder base if the Cygnus transaction closes. There will necessarily be some dilution on a per share basis of that dividend moving forward. But we will look to continue to pay a dividend. Depending on what we end up doing with Chibougamau and the time lines there, we'll have to flex within that policy in order to finance the development there. In terms of development CapEx, the second half of your question, look, we've got -- I think Louise has set out quite well what the rest of the year is for the Kazakh exploration, and it's all set out in this presentation as well. Chibougamau, we've got a fairly good handle having spoken to management there over the last few months of what we're going to be spending. I don't think it's going to be an enormous amount of money for the first year. Certainly, we're going to be completing drilling programs. We're going to be completing that PEA and looking at options to accelerate into a DFS. It's really once that DFS starts that the capital, if you want to call it CapEx really will start -- development expenditure will start ramping up probably into the latter half of 2027 and into '28. I don't know if that answers all of your questions. Just let me know if it doesn't.
Laura Chan: No. That's fairly clear.
Operator: Next, we'll be going to Nick Chalmers of Cavendish.
Nicholas Chalmers: Improved performance at Sasa in the first half. Obviously, you're still in the midst of the operational improvement program. Is there much more in the way of cost cutting that's going to be undertaken there? Or is it more about optimization of the underlying performance going forward? And how should we be thinking about per tonne mining costs there in the second half? Do you think there's more improvement to come? Or is the H1 level the sort of normalized level we should be thinking of going forward?
Gavin Ferrar: Look, as I said, we're continuing to try and improve there, Nick. I think probably a conservative approach would be to keep those costs flat through the year, if I were you. We are looking for more operational efficiencies, efficiencies around planning and making sure that we don't -- we're not presented with any sort of geological surprises, which I think is the message we gave the market about a year ago. We were struggling a little bit with grade control and with drill density informing the planners and hence, the miners. A lot of investment into that has been made just to try and make that a lot more efficient. Then as I said earlier, there's a few mining efficiencies that are coming through. But I think a lot of the cost -- it's an interesting one because we've obviously always been a sort of cost-conscious business. But in the inflationary environment that we're operating in right now, it does make it quite difficult to reduce the cost significantly. We're kind of fighting a little bit of a rising tide, but as much as we can, at the same time, introducing all of the sort of initiatives and savings there as well. Next steps really once we get a firmer grip on that asset, we'd be picking it apart again and seeing if we can go beyond 2034 and looking at what the mine plan could be moving forward if we inform ourselves with a little more drilling as well. Quite a way to go yet, but we are pleased to be seeing the benefits of some of those initiatives now reflected in these results.
Nicholas Chalmers: One more question, if I may. I appreciate, for Chibougamau until the transaction is over the line. But I mean, assuming that all closes on time, what should we be thinking of in terms of timing of that PEA and budget to get there?
Gavin Ferrar: Well, in terms of timing, as I said earlier, we're probably looking at doing a little bit more drilling. I think Cygnus continues with the drill rigs on site anyway. We're just going to be sort of picking up that program and pushing it forward into the sort of middle of next year. Then once we've got a handle on those resources, we could sort of drive that into a PEA that's been run in parallel. We're probably looking at sort of -- and Louise, quarter 2, quarter 3 next year.
Louise Wrathall: Yes, some might depend on. One of the things we've talked about is, obviously, you can make changes to what your approach after a PEA, but we want the PEA to reflect as much as it can at this stage what we want to do. One of the factors will be some trade-off studies that we plan to do where there's some obvious questions we've asked throughout the process? Would we go about that aspect like that? Would we change something else? It will be a little bit dependent on those kind of isolated pieces of work that we might do to feed into a PEA as well.
Gavin Ferrar: There's an opportunity for us to sort of pause step back and have a look at different approaches. We've already started doing that in conjunction with the Canadian management team of Cygnus. We're trying to -- as best we can to hit the ground running in September, but there may well be some reflection on the way forward there. In terms of budget, I know that the finance team has been working together with the guys in Canada again to set out what we're going to be doing. It's fairly modest for 2027, at least first half of 2027, just finance probably 2 to 3 rigs plus G&A there and the study work.
Louise Wrathall: Yes. I mean, again, it depends on what we choose to do, but we will be probably -- in terms of the drilling and the kind of run of the business, we'd certainly be talking millions rather than tens of millions.
Operator: Next, we'll be going to Richard Hatch of Berenberg.
Richard Hatch: Just 2 questions. The first one is just on strategy. So obviously, with Chibougamau being a bit longer dated in terms of volumes, how should we think about possibilities for additional sort of near producing transactions? Or I mean, just looking at your portfolio as it stands at the moment with the exploration potential that you flagged and also perhaps some improvements from the existing operations, should we view that the potential for a near producing additional asset is probably lower than more probable? And the second one is just on working capital. I mean, it was just very well controlled again, just a small sort of increase in working cap, but should we think about any working cap movements in the second half?
Gavin Ferrar: Okay. I'll take the first question and hand another one. Thanks, Richard. In terms of strategy, look, I think if the Cygnus transaction closes, then clearly, our focus for the next 12 months is really going to be integration of that asset, setting out the direction of travel to get through to a feasibility study and a production date. That's -- the next 12 months is going to take up a lot of our focus and management time on that. We've got a pipeline of opportunities that we've always sort of kept warm in the background. But let's assume that Cygnus does close. I can't see us doing anything else significant for the next 12 months. But once we've got that set up and running and we're happy with the way it's -- with the direction of travel, and we've got a firm focus on what we're looking to achieve and a time line to production there, then we may or may not have a look at something else. It depends on what comes along. As you know, this is not an easy exercise, BD in the junior mining space and particularly in the base metal space. But we always say never say never. We do have that flexibility on the balance sheet. We've proposed an all-share transaction so that we can have the flexibility to finance our growth ambitions. I'm not saying we're going to go and spend a huge amount of money on a new operating asset. But if an opportunity arose for a merger with someone that's operating or close to operations, then clearly, we'd look at it if it made sense for the shareholders. But I can't see us doing anything significant in the next 12 months.
Louise Wrathall: On the working capital, Richard. I suppose a couple of things just top of my head would be on the inventory side, we'll still push harder at Sasa. We've done a lot of work and a lot of analysis. I think it had got a bit too high the inventory. But we've also put a kind of system in place to better analyze what we need, how quick items can turn over, how long it takes to reorder certain items, making sure we're not being overcautious, but ensuring that we've got key items to ensure production continues. That's an area we'll still carry on focusing on. The other thing off the top of my head that you might see is in terms of payables, the tax aspect in Kazakhstan. It looked quite high that we were owed money back from VAT in terms of receivable. We've actually got -- I think we've got a couple of million back since the 30th of June. But then on the sort of payable side, there was that aspect I mentioned about CIT. You end up paying your tax on the profits from the previous year, but obviously, commodity price has been higher and the copper price in particular. We'll end up owing money on CIT in cash terms by the end of the year. We've decided we're going to pay that in kind of effectively equal installments from August through to December. By the time you see those accounts in March, then that will be more normalized as well. Those would be the 3 aspects in terms of receivables, VAT, payables, CIT and then keep pushing on the inventory aspects at Sasa as well.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We do not appear to have any further questions coming in. Mr. Ferrar, I'd like turn the call back over to you for any additional or closing remarks.
Gavin Ferrar: Thanks, George. Thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning to attend this presentation of our results. If any other questions come up, please, you've got Richard's address and details on the slide there. Please direct them there, and we'll do our best to get back to who have asked questions as quickly as possible. Lastly, I'll say, again, just to reiterate, there's a couple of key votes coming up. Please do exercise your right to vote. Thanks very much for that. Once again, for your continued support of our business. Thanks very much, and good morning.