Ann: Presentation - Red 5 and Silver Lake Resources to Merge, page-203

I understand shareholders frustration with rising mining costs, but you can't relocate a mine to a cheaper labour market, and you have to burn diesel to haul ore and waste, and the cost of other mining consumables like electricity, mill balls, chemicals, steel sets and mesh have all been going in one direction due to worldwide inflation. All of these costs are unavoidable costs of the mining business, they are not optional, and if there was an easy lever for management pull to reduce unit costs then every mining company in the world would already be doing it. Economy of scale or an alternative approach of "quality profitable tonnes" over bulk dumb tonnes is a solution but that requires exploration success, mills being built or available in the right place or expensive automation.

Are you suggesting switching off higher cost mines/mills and keeping the gold in the ground? That is certainly an option, but it is a big bet that inflation is transitory, and in my opinion inflation isn't transitory, its been here since 2020 and has a history of the 2007-2019 period of zero interest rate/money printing/fiat money to work through the system. Switching mines off means you are paying for C&M, and if inflation doen't go away it becomes more expensive and time consuming to switch a mine back on. If inflation and labour force shortages continue then then there comes a point where you can never switch the asset back on no matter what the gold price does.