Full Year 2024 DRDGOLD Ltd Earnings Call Transcript
Key Points
- DRDGold Ltd (DRD) reported a 14% increase in revenue, reaching over ZAR6 billion, driven by a favorable gold price.
- The company maintained its dividend record, marking the 17th consecutive year of dividend payments, despite a smaller final dividend of ZAR0.20.
- DRDGold Ltd (DRD) invested in a 60-megawatt solar plant and battery storage, which is expected to significantly reduce electricity costs and improve sustainability.
- The company achieved a 58% decrease in water consumption, with 95% of water used in mining being recycled, showcasing strong sustainable development efforts.
- DRDGold Ltd (DRD) is focusing on extending the life of its operations, with plans to increase gold production to 6 tonnes per year by 2028 through strategic investments and resource optimization.
- The final dividend was reduced due to significant capital expenditure, which may continue to impact dividend payouts in the near future.
- DRDGold Ltd (DRD) faced challenges in achieving its targeted volume throughput, reaching only 84% of the goal, which affected overall production efficiency.
- Cash operating costs increased, coming in higher than guidance at ZAR833,000 per kilogram, due to lower volume throughput and other operational challenges.
- The company experienced a fatal incident, marking the first fatality in six years, highlighting ongoing safety concerns.
- DRDGold Ltd (DRD) is undertaking a high capital expenditure program, which may prioritize capital investments over dividend payouts, potentially affecting shareholder returns.
Welcome, and thank you for joining us. This is our first presentation, live presentation after COVID. So it's really nice to be back in a venue where I can see more than just the upper section of the attendees. I think it's also the sort of results where we would have preferred to have people present and look you in the eye, tell you what we did, what we wanted to do and how we position going forward. Before we start, let me just switch this off before it goes off. There we go.
So, Riaan is joining me as well. Riaan Davel is joining me as well. He will be taking care of the financial portion of the presentation, and then Jaco's also joining us. There's other colleagues, too. So at the end of the presentation, we'll be happy to take your questions and provide some additional perspective on the material presenting.
So you're familiar with the disclaimer. There are some forward-looking statements, so please familiarize yourself with those. And then as we get going, let's have a look at the performance for financial '24
Access to All Earning Calls and Stock Analysis | |
30-Year Financial on one screen | |
All-in-one Stock Screener with unlimited filters | |
Customizable Stock Dashboard | |
Real Time Insider Trading Transactions | |
8,000+ Institutional investors’ 13F holdings | |
Powerful Excel Add-in and Google sheets Add-on | |
All data downloadable | |
Quick customer support | |
And much more... |