NQ Minerals plc (AQSE:NQMI) Executive Chairman David Lenigas caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss production figures at Hellyer, further increasing production and what to look out for in the next quarter in terms of news flow.
Q1: First off, great news on production figures today. David, can you talk us through the highlights?
A1: NQ Minerals had a very good quarter at our Hellyer operations, as we announced at the beginning of the year, we’ve been going through a number of programmes at our flagship Hellyer multi-polymetallic mine which is quite substantial to increase revenue and profit and turnover from the operations there.
Quarter three saw a big jump in our revenues and gross profits, revenues jumped to $19.1 million for the quarter, gross profits jumped to over $10 million and there was some adjustments that lifted it up to about $15 million for the quarter.
That is purely as a result of two things, one is that we upped our production rate to well over 1.2 million tonnes a year at effectively the first of the quarter, 1st of July where saw those results come through and impact the top and bottom line quite substantially. Towards the end of the quarter, we started increasing production even further to the point that I think we’re running pretty close to 1.35 million tonnes a year, and that has a direct influence on our top and bottom line.
So, it’s a very good result.
Q2: Now, you said that the company is currently finalising designs and operational procedures to further increase production. Could you expand on that for us?
A2: We’re currently just finalising some reconfigurations of the circuit and our mining practices to up our production to about 180 tonnes an hour which is about 1.5 million tonnes a year of high grade lead/zinc production. We produce two types of product, we produce a lead concentrate and a zinc concentrate, we also produce significant amounts of silver and gold as payables within those concentrates.
So, I think if we look at the numbers, I think silver is probably our biggest revenue kicker but we would like to see 180 tonnes an hour, 1.5 million tonnes a year by the end of this calendar year. I think that puts us in a very strong position for increased revenues and profits from the main operation.
Q3: Just looking forward, what other news can investors expect from NQ Minerals, perhaps in the next quarter?
A3: This is probably going to be the paramount quarter for NQ since I’ve joined the company last November.
We announced a little while ago that we were working with ING to restructure 55 million worth of NQ’s corporate debt, that work is proceeding very well, I would like to be in a position to announce to the market over the coming weeks that we’ve resolved that issue and we’ve restructured a very significant amount of the company’s corporate debt, which also increases our top and bottom line, our bottom line numbers very substantially.
That also paves the way for the work that we’re doing with the prospectus to move to a tier one global stock exchange main board listing and our lawyers has been working very hard on that with our legal and corporate due diligence teams.
So, fingers crossed within the next coming weeks, we’ll also be presenting a prospectus to a main board stock exchange with the view of having NQ shares traded on a far more liquid market than the current AQUIS Exchange at the moment.
One more thing that we’re looking very forward to is there’ll be quite a lot of news flow on what we’re doing with our new Beaconsfield gold mine. We’ve just been receiving all the engineering quotes to refurbish the plant to 2020 safety and operational standards, we’ll probably make some news on that quite shortly, and what our plans are with respect to opening up the Beaconsfield gold mine.
That alone has huge impact on our top and bottom line as a corporate entity so this quarter coming, there’ll be a lot of news and news that I think will excite our shareholders and potential new shareholders so things are going very well.
