28th Sep 2015 10:56
LONDON (Alliance News) - Goldplat PLC Monday said its pretax loss widened in the last financial year after gold sales were hampered by lower production and weaker gold prices after the company faced issues with its third-party refinery and with its recovery operations.
Chairman Brian Moritz also made a u-turn on Monday after announcing he would remain as chairman for up to another 12 months, despite his previous plan to resign at the company's upcoming annual general meeting.
The gold miner reported a GBP796,000 pretax loss in the year ended June 30, widening from the GBP248,000 loss a year earlier as revenue dropped to GBP16.6 million from GBP21.0 million.
The drop in revenue was the result of marginally lower production, totalling 30,524 gold ounces compared to 30,977 ounces, which led to lower gold sales of 21,181 ounces from 26,485 ounces a year earlier. The lower levels of production are the result of the issues with its third-party refinery during 2015.
"During the course of the 2015 financial year, Goldplat experienced extreme challenges to both recovery operations primarily as a consequence of the Rand Refinery issues. Measures have been put into place to mitigate the single refinery risk going forward and to process all backlog stocks by December 2015," said Goldplat.
Those lower level of sales was also compounded by lower gold prices in the period.
"During the year under review it was only above $1,300/oz for a few weeks, and for most of the year it was around USD1,200 per ounce. It is currently below USD1,150. To combat these price reductions Goldplat has instituted many cost saving initiatives," said the company.
Gold was trading at around USD1,134 per ounce on Monday.
Goldplat said the two most significant cost reduction initiatives taken are to improve the utilisation of cyanide, the biggest element of its cost, and increased elution capacity to enable it to produce bullion from concentrates previously processed externally.
"With Goldplat having returned to profitability in the second half of the 2015 financial year, and this forecast to continue through the 2016 financial year; Gold Recovery Ghana returning to profitability at the end of the 2015 financial year, and expected to improve during the 2016 financial year; and progress towards eliminating losses at Kilimapesa expected to continue during 2016, the outlook for the 2016 financial year is positive," it said in a statement.
"I had envisaged standing down as chairman at the forthcoming annual general meeting and handing over to Gerard Kisbey-Green. In the event, Gerard has successfully taken over the reins as chief executive officer, so that he is prevented by corporate governance rules from also being chairman. I have agreed to remain as chairman for up to another 12 months, and we are instituting a formal process to identify my successor," said Chairman Brian Moritz.
Goldplat shares were down 0.6% to 3.36 pence per share on Monday morning.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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