B2Gold Corp.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the B2 Gold First Quarter 2023 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Clive Johnson, President, CEO, and Director. Please go ahead.

Good morning, afternoon, wherever you are, everyone, and thanks for joining us. We're here today, of course, to talk about the Beachy Gold Q1 2023 conference. operational and financial results. We had another strong quarter of operating performance, which led to some very positive financial results. Mike Cinnamon, our CFO, is going to walk you through that. And then Bill Lytle, our COO, is going to update us on the Back River project, the status of that, and talk a bit about the Focola Complex expansion projects to be due to expiration, we'll talk to us a little bit about expiration plans for Back River, which just approves a large expiration budget. And he'll also update the progress in terms of expiration in the Focola complex. And then we'll open up for questions after that. So with that, I'll hand it over to Mike Cinnamon.

Thanks, Clive. So I'll walk us through the operating results versus the cash flows. On the revenue side, we sold 4,000 ounces more than we'd budgeted, so a total of 249,000 ounces from our operating mines. And good news is we had an average price of just over $1,900 for the Q. When we budgeted, we had $1,700, so we're very happy to see that $200 plus an ounce. And obviously, gold prices continue to increase, as you know, to today. On the production side, from All the operations, including our share of Caliber, 267,000 ounces. And from our three operating mines, 251,000 ounces, both of which were 5,000 ounces ahead of budget. And most of the 5,000 ounces were spread pretty evenly across the three operations. So Focola had 166,000 ounces. Production was higher. We expected it to be higher because we had that favorable higher grade material coming from phase six of the Focola pit, and the big grade was 2.47 grams per ton, which is right on budget. Then Mizbati. Mizbati was pretty much as planned. The grade this year is lower than it was in the comparable quarter last year. As we know, the feed grade was 0.95 grams per ton. And then Ochocoto, 38,000 ounces, slightly ahead of budget. We were in some of the higher-grade portions, Wolfshag underground mine. A reminder, too, for Ojikoto, as we look through to the balance of the year, it's more weighted to the second half of the year as we get into more higher-grade material in Phase 4 of the Ojikoto pit, plus continuing high-grade ore from Wolfshag. But overall, a good result in production, pretty much on target, slightly ahead of budget. Cash costs. we actually did considerably better than budget. So on a consolidated basis from all operations, total cash costs were $600 an ounce, which is $85 ahead of budget. And if you take our three operating mines, $576 an ounce, which was $88 lower than budget. And so looking at the individual operations for COLA, there were two main reasons why it was significantly, it was $60 lower than budget. One was that we mined less material in the period due to some of the tire working conditions and phase fix, including only having one ramp available for haulage, which has now been resolved in April of this year. And then we also had lower fuel costs. The mining tonnage shortfall is expected to be caught up over the balance of 2023. On Mizbati, again, we were $176 an ounce below budget. That was a function of slightly higher than budget gold production and quite significantly lower than budget diesel and heavy fuel oil costs. We haven't revisited any of the lower fuel costs for the balance of the year. We've assumed that it'll stay where we budgeted it at, but certainly current indicators are that definitely the prices have dropped a bit, and while the forward curve is a forward curve and not in backwardation anymore for fuel. It's pretty flat, so we may see some benefit as we roll through the balance of the year and the cost side. For the all-in sustaining costs, total all-in, including our share of Caliber, $1,060, which was $146 lower than budget, and same story from our three standalone operating mines. And it's really a function of the lower cash operating costs, as I mentioned, and then timing of capex we've seen capex for q1 was was below budgets sustaining capex was about 10 million below what we budgeted just for the timing of things like the uh completion of the tsf raises at focola and then some of the other uh fleet equipment rebuilds and that's just timing we expect to see all of that reverse as we go through the balance of the year a few comments maybe on the operations of phil i think bill's going to talk to the cola complex generally, but we are continuing with FACOLA regional developments through the period. And as we announced in our newest release, we're now, because we've done so much drilling on that FACOLA regional area, since we did the original Anaconda area resource, that we wanted to take those results and put them into a new resource for Anaconda. So that resource is going to take a bit longer to produce with the result that that FACOLA Phase 2 mill study is now expected in the fourth quarter of 2023. On the Ojikodo side, we continue to develop Wolfshag Underground. We continue to explore there. The Ojikodo pit itself is scheduled to ramp down in 2024 and wind up in 2025 based on our current plans, and we've disclosed that. On the Grand Malati project, that As announced, we are undertaking a joint sales process with our partner, HEA. That process is moving along. It seems to be good interest on phase one. We're still on phase one of the process. We expect to wrap that part up within probably the next two months, month to two months, with a goal that we'll wrap up this whole process before year end. And on Sabine, I think Bill's going to give an update, but we have some disclosures in there about the acquisition of Sabine. We haven't put in the purchase process. Bill's going to talk about currently what we're doing there. But one thing I will mention is that subsequent to the completion of the transaction, we did revisit a fair amount of the financing obligations that the financing plan that Sabine had put in place. And so we bought out the offtake agreement, all of it, 100% of it. So that's gone. We've also canceled that facility that they had and the goal prepaids that they set up. And in addition, as we were permitted to under the terms of the agreement, we bought out one-third of the streaming arrangement that was there with wheat and precious metals. So that's a total cost of $111 million cash, which you'll see come through in Q2. But it does let us really focus on financing with the facilities and the financing capacity that we have available through our own cash flows and our debt facilities. and also allows us to benefit more from future upside, which, as we've mentioned many times when we discussed Back River, we see a lot of upside there. On the earnings side, when you translate all those operating results, the tributary earnings to shareholders just under 86 million are 8 cents per share. Adjusted earnings to tributary shareholders, 106 million or 10 cents per share. And a couple of comments on the cash flow. So cash flow, not cash flow from operating activities, 203 million or 19 cents per share. Or as we've also disclosed in the news release, cash flow before working capital, 223 million or 21 cents per share. So very solid cash flow quarter. Of course, the gold price helped as well as some of those lower costs that I mentioned. On the financing side, we continue to pay a dividend at the same rate, 4 cents U.S. per share. It was an annualized 170 plus million per year pre-Sabena, but now with the additional Sabena shares that have been issued, the Sabena acquisition, you think we'll see that jump up to somewhere around 210, 210 plus, 210 million. On the CapEx side, look at 131 million spent in the queue. In total, we were about $42 million under budget. Ten of that was lower sustaining capital, as I mentioned already, and then $32 million was just lower non-sustaining capital, which is all related just to the timing of the underground development for Kohler Regional. Again, these are all timing, I think, and we think they're all going to reverse in the queue. Also, what are in the full year? And the other thing I'd highlight there is that, as we disclosed, we're excited to get going on the exploration site at Baccarat. $20 million really focused on additional drilling that we plan to do at Back River, and I think Vic can give you an update on that in a second. Overall, we finished the period $673 million in the bank and not been drawn on the revolver and really minimal debt on the balance sheet other than a few leases. And I think, anything else you want to touch on there? I think that's all the highlights.