Randgold Resources' CEO Discusses Q4 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Randgold Resources Limited (GOLD)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call

February 6, 2012 11:00 AM ET

Executives

Philippe Liétard – Chairman

Mark Bristow – CEO

Analysts

Andrew Breichmanas – BMO Capital Markets

Josh Wolfson – Stifel Nicolaus

Presentation

Operator

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Welcome to the Randgold Resources Q4 Conference Call arrangement. My name is Anna and I’ll be your coordinator for today’s conference. For the duration of this call, you will be on listen-only. And at the end of the call, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions. (Operator Instructions)

I’m now handing over to your host Chairman, Philippe Liétard to begin. Please go ahead sir.

Philippe Liétard

Thank you. And good morning and good afternoon and welcome to this presentation of Randgold Resources result for the past quarter and for the whole year 2011.

As we mark a year of record results, Randgold sustained growth in the face of considerable challenges, demonstrates again the effectiveness of its strategy of continuing investment in its long-term future. In 2011, we harvested the fruit of seeds sowed over several years just in the years to come, it would benefit from the work done in 2011.

The company’s success has been based on our deep sense of the importance of partnerships and of sustainability and our consistent long-term strategy to address these in all our operations and activities.

The impact of these strategies can be seen in Randgold’s ability to create a real value for all its stakeholder through the discovery of multimillion ounce deposits and their conversion into mines profitable for all.

The impact is also evident in every other aspect of the business, from the safety and health of its worker to the care for the community and of the respect of the environment.

It has become clear to the world that despite of the company’s excellent work with regard to the environment, to the circle programs, to the respect of governance, and to the sustainability initiatives, small work needs to be done in communicating these – our initiatives to our stakeholders. Something we’ve started to do by consulting the various voting agencies and which we will be focusing on in our 2011 annual report due out at the end of March.

Randgold’s growth and successes are brought with its corporate as well as operational challenges, foremost among them is how best we manage a dynamic and increasingly complex corporation with multiple businesses in different countries, while equally importantly how best we protect and preserve the distinctive corporate culture on which Randgold’s success has been built.

That is why the board and management have and will continue to place particular emphasis on expanding and strengthening our management teams, structures and systems to meet the demands of its continuing operational development without diluting the company’s characteristic qualities.

Before I pass you on to Mark, I want to make sure you have noted also that the board decided last week to propose a doubling of the dividends to shareholders, the sixth increase in dividend in a row. And with that, I hand it over to Mark Bristow for a detailed look at the company’s performance and prospects.

Mark Bristow

Thank you, Philippe and again good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Again, I’ll just start my little presentation today pointing you to our webcast, I give a full presentation as discussed – lunch to the U.K. and in fact many of the analysts and investors that I have in Cape Town as part of the endeavor .

So I’m not planning to go through a full detailed presentation, but just to walk you through our presentation, those of you who all hooked up to our sock and then for questions.

Holding on from what Philip left off, our company has gone through a big strategic inflexion point over the last two years, 2010 being a year of consolidation and building the base on which we were able to grow our production in 2011, which we – which is now materialized and significant in every aspect primarily because we were able to deliver two new operations into our portfolio.

Sustainability, you heard that Chairman referred to it a significant part of our business as we always said, we want to be sustainably profitable and sustainability in the sense of ESG is also an important part of our business. We operate in remote areas and job creation and building our social licenses proven time and again to be an interval part of our business.

We’ve only said that for one to pristine in Africa you need to be able to create 34 stakeholders. On the safety side, another good year, last year of improvements significantly Morila achieved lost time injury free year in its operation, in Tongon following that tragic accident early in January last year 2011, since then it has also had a lost time injury free run, which is very significant given a new mine in an area where many of our workers have never worked before, metallurgy and heavy industrial environment.

We continued to improve our safety and we have make – have made good progress over the last year in our drop to be accredited both on the environmental program also and the safety Oso program in all our operations.

At the same time, we will also continue with our other social programs, reaching out to the communities which are not included in our mine social budgets and community programs. Those include supporting medical supplies to more remote clinics and looking towards people who are bypassed by – most in the form of women and the more remote education sites and we certainly continued to support those.

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