Jubilee Metals Group PLC (LON:JLP) Chief Executive Officer Leon Coetzer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their annual results for the year ended 30th June 2018.
Q1: Jubilee Metals have just released their annual results for the period 2017/2018, could you talk us through some of the highlights from these results?
A1: It’s been a very early and productive year at this past financial period. If you look at the results, we promised our shareholders back in 2017 that for this period we would focus on bringing projects into operation, we would target to generate earnings for the company and, of course, grow and diversify our project portfolios. I can confidently say that our results reflect that mission and that promise if we dip into some of the many highlights in our results.
Our results clearly show a dramatic growth in revenue as our projects coming on stream. Our typical project earnings has taken a massive jump as our Hernic operation is starting to perform, to add to our Dilokong operations, the percentages are a bit senseless when you look at a 200% increase in attributable earnings.
Of course, very importantly, we are going into a period where we have stacked our project full of surface metals recovery projects, we are starting to execute thee projects so we’re going through a strong growth phase for the company. It’s important during this time that we, as a company, also ensure that we deliver positive cash flow as a group because it ensures that the treasury remains healthy whilst we pursue growth in operations, growth from projects.
From an operational point of view, our Hernic project delivered nearly 17,500 ounces but yet if you look just 4 months into the future, we’ve already produced more than half of those ounces, so shareholders can base on that. Shareholders can look forward to yet another bumper year for the next period of growth in earnings and growth in production targets. These results reflect two projects yet at the moment we have three projects in execution mode.
We have Dilokong fine chrome project coming on stream in 2 weeks are we ramp up that production to start generating earnings for the company, already in January to return Dilokong back to its previous high earnings and extend those earnings. The potential of that project is to roll that initiative out into the chrome industry at large.
At the same, our PlatCro PGM project, we’re going into commissioning phase of that dewatering and classification circuit in December as we ramp up to deliver in excess of 700,000 tonnes per annum.
So, many many projects lined up to be executed, to build on these two projects and of course, not to forget in Kabwe in Zambia, where our lead and our zinc and our vanadium project is entering its execution phase and has promised to shareholders that in this period, which is this period. In December we are pushing hard to conclude our decision whether we are going to get access to an existing refinery which we’ll revamp and put in some of our new technologies or whether we’re going to construct a standalone refinery for that project in Zambia.
So, a lot on the go and I think these results, we’re very proud of the results we’ve delivered, there’s not a single area in the company that hasn’t shown growth.
Q2: Now, markets seem to have experienced some turbulent times which I think has been reflected in some metal prices, how is Jubilee Metals reacting to these risks?
A2: Yes, quite true, we’ve seen highly fluctuating markets and there’s a few facts.
The first is that no-one can deny Jubilee’s growth, just over this last financial period, our earnings growth, our revenues growth, our project growth, our real tangible asset growth. That said, our strategy is very much focussed on recovering metals at surface, some margins are strong in this metal group, so we have quite good protection against metals prices from that point of view.
Of course, what we’ve also done as a company recognising the drive in energy and electric vehicles and the massive talks around the use of cobalt, the use of vanadium, zinc, into these metals, we’ve diversified our portfolio in metals recovery to include those metals. Our Kabwe projects includes vanadium, lead and zinc and we’ve much set our target now on the copper and cobalt side, there’s a massive waste recovery opportunity, not just in Zambia but in Chile through its copper production. Large companies have taken note and we are in discussions with large global mining houses to assist them in extracting the value out of these metals on surfaces.
So, on the one hand, of course we’re buffered because we only operate at surface, we don’t incur mining cost and risk, but also, we have a diverse portfolio. On our platinum, very large components of our revenue is generated from palladium and rhodium which is enjoying great support in the market whilst platinum is subdued in the current period.
