B2Gold Corp.

Hi, this is the conference operator. Welcome to B2 Gold Corporation's fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity for analysts to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Clive Johnson, President and CEO of V2 Gold. Please go ahead.

Hello everyone. Thanks for joining us. As you heard from the operator, we're going to talk about the fourth quarter in 2024 and results as we just released on the full year of 2024. I'll give a few highlights and then pass it over to Mike and Bill to give you some detail. We did meet a new guidance for the year coming in at the upper end of well, it's a steady cost and the lower end of production. Basically, as we turn the page on 2024, we're going to do for much more positive 2025, increase the production of Focola and looking to start trucking one and also Focola Underground as well. So Bill will give you a little more detail. But all that, of course, you have a real high that you will be used for. Everything is going very well there for, first of all, for June of 2025. We'll spend a bit of time on that. On Mali, as many of you are aware, we reached an agreement in September of last year with the government on how to proceed moving forward, both with the COLA and also starting the truck or the regional projects. That was an important agreement for us and the government, and we're now very much on the same page. We're both authorities. looking forward to the revenue and the profits from mining in the regional area. We're now implementing the agreement with the government, and that's going very well, and we're looking at receiving, in the near term, permits to proceed. Based on media reports over the last couple of days, according to those reports, Americans and Malian government have come to an agreement on a way forward, and that's very important. for all of us, I guess, because I think we can all see a path forward now in relation to hopefully with the Malian government can be positive going forward, not just for us, but for the other parties there. So now we're also going to be able to produce, if it's true about America, reach an agreement with the Malian government that we can get on what we do. It's important to note that FACOLA, the problems at FACOLA were not about the government per se. We'll talk about the reasons why production was down in 2024. We've continued to operate through all the discussions with the government of Mali, and the relationship has actually been positive in terms of our gold production and our requirements from the government. So that relationship remains solid during the period of negotiations. We're going to talk, as I said, shortly about use. I think now I will actually be looking forward in terms of growth. So, as we said, we're going to see a substantial increase in production from the Foucault Act. But also, there's a lot of other milestones coming up this year, as we're seeing the permits for Foucault allow us to get up to 180,000 ounces on a manualized basis from the mining of the regional ore. And of course, this is going to represent significant growth for us as we bring it into production and improvement this year. And on a manualized basis, it is expected that we'll produce between 1,000 ounces more annually And it's subject to a positive feasibility study and a construction decision. Potentially another 235,000 ounces of annual production from the Gravelate project in Columbia. Now, as you said, that is subject to a positive feasibility study, which will come up in the middle of the year, and the production decision to go forward. We found the project quite attractive. Again, at VA, I know that there have been returns on IRR that present value. at $2,000 gold. So if you are at some higher gold price already, we think it'll go to $2,000. It's upside in terms of the gold price that may be blocking that gold price share construction. So if you add all that up, there's the expectation of $100,000 from the coal regional to improve the coal production overall. Over $300,000 as I mentioned from Deuce, and then $200,000 20,000 ounces, they're about the same as the potential for Mar-a-Lago, subject to the exact point of that. In addition, we've got a new discovery in the Ojikoto area, ever, that is the potential of the Elm Slope Zone. Good discovery of that depth, and that is the potential at 165,000 ounces by Ojikoto. So if you add all that up, you get over 650,000 ounces of gold production, and that is very importantly from existing assets. These are not assets we have to go buy. through M&A, then we don't have to find them. I'm sure we'll find a lot more, but that's where we sit today. So a very impressive growth profile, and there's not a lot of speculation there. Of course, grab our minds who would be the most speculative, but as I said, we're trying to get about that. So that's our way forward, and we have a difficult 2024, as everyone knows, but that's a roll off, and 2025, we're going to get back to what this company does well, which is meet clients. and also grow the company's production profile, which we've had great success doing over many years since Beecham Motors created it in 2007. So I didn't go out on that, but I would like the news from behind us, the financial, and Bill's going to give us a quick summary of what's happening for Gold, what's happening with Gold, according to this year, and also he's going to talk, of course, about data and the progress, the news piece of what he's doing. Sorry. basic earnings per share. We're slightly negative for this queue. That's primarily due to lower the budgeted production of FACOLA FX and tax from the weakening of the West African seed, but maybe a dollar, and also recording of the increase in the FACOLA priority dividend, which is now 20% after we implemented that as part of the MOU. It was previously 10, now it's 20. That gets recorded as a tax.

Adjusted net earnings for the quarter were $0.01 per share. Operating cash flow before working capital adjustments for the quarter was $145 million, benefiting from the higher average bill price. to 25 were maintained at a total of $1.54 billion Canadian. Balance-wise, we're in a good, strong financial position. We finished the year with a cash equivalent of $337 million. We had $400 million drawn on a revolving credit facility, but as you saw in early 2025, we completed a convertible note offering for gross proceeds of $460 million, which we subsequently used to fully pay down the balance in the RCF that we currently have not be drawn in the revolver 800 million capacity with the existing syndicate, plus another 200 million for your future, should we want to ever use that. With a good amount of financial flexibility, we think to be able to complete the goods construction by the second quarter of 25, complete the other sustaining growth initiatives across our portfolio, some of which Clyde mentioned already, and to continue to fund healthy exploration programs across all our sites to extend mine life. Those are the highlights I was going to touch on.

I'll pass it over to Bill. All right. Thanks, Mike. Okay. Maybe stepping back into Q3 last year, remember that we had these sea lift in September, August, September. 2024 sea lift was successfully completed with 10 ships and one barge unloading approximately 123,000 cubic meters of dry cargo and more than 84 million liters of Arctic-grade diesel fuel. We also added 58 additional trucks to help us bring down the supplies down the winter road in 2025. I'm happy to say we opened the 2025 winter ice road two days ago. This is ahead of schedule and I've already begun transporting materials down to the GOOS site. As far as construction at site, all planned activities for 2024 were completed on schedule and the process plant is on track to produce first gold at the end of Q2. On the mining side, significant progress was made with the mining of the Ecopet. We are now currently ahead of our announced schedule. And the underground development at Linwell is consistently hitting new highs on mining efficiency. In Mali, we're gearing up to have contributions in 2025 from both the Pecola Regional and Pecola Underground, which would benefit the operations for years to come. And as Clive indicated, we did have a couple of runoffs in 2024. Just to refresh everyone's memory, we had an upset condition where we had operator error and we lost an excavator for a quarter. And we also had some illegal union activities, which we have since gone through our disciplinary procedure and all cases have been finalized. At Ma's body, the operations continue to perform to a world-class level. I think everyone saw they outperformed last year. And the operations delivered all in sustaining costs in 2024 materially lower than our guidance range, delivering very strong free cash flow at these gold prices. And at Ochocoto, once again in 2024, they outperformed. We also have, as Clyde mentioned, the new discovery, the antelope deposit. This PEA was released earlier this month and is a positive step towards new production later this decade. And this continues to remain open for exploration. We're working through a feasibility study, which we believe will be ready by the end of mid-2025, or released in mid-2025. With that, Clyde, I'll turn it back to you.

Thanks, Mike. Just a final thought. You know, what's been hanging over us for a while has been the reality and the perception of Dillard and Malley when they needed to reach agreement with the government based on the government coming up with a 2023 mining code. So I think with And then finally, once again, if the New Yorkers are true with barracks and all that, that takes solving their issues and moving forward. That takes a lot of weight off and I think pressure off of the space that our shares have got beat up a lot in the last couple of years based in part, or large part to that uncertainty about the future. And now, initially, I think there's been great concern about news just in the sense of is it going to be timing? Is it going to come in around the budget that we outlined when we reunited As Bill said, the good news is we're very much on track at Goose. So I think that's another factor that's been putting pressure on our market value has been the concern about Goose's significant cash cost overruns, which we're not seeing, and also the timing of Goose, which has improved very much on track. So with that, we've welcomed the market turnaround a little bit. And in fact, hopefully this last couple of days is the start of that as we remove these risk factors going forward. The other significant thing is going to be, they're not too feasible to be studied. It's going to be completed by the middle of the year. So in all, 2024, as I said, was a challenging year. We met the challenges. And as we go into 2025, we're turning the page back to solid production performance, strong financial position, and growth from existing assets. I think with that, we'll open it up to questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the analyst question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To answer your question, please press star then two. We'll pause for just a moment as callers join the queue. This first question comes from Uday Sabib with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Hi, Clive and B2Core team. A couple of questions for me. Sorry if you've already addressed on some of these questions. I've just been bouncing between a couple of conference calls, so I apologize for that. Just wanted to start off with the COLA in regards to the permit, and I'm glad to see things are moving ahead with TARIC as well. Is there any additional info the regulators require on the Pecola regional or Pecola underground, or are we just waiting for the final sign-offs?

What's coming on right now is consolidating three licenses that make up the majority of the property to the north, and that's what we've called Anaconda in the past. So that's on track. We're really expecting that any time. And then hopefully shortly after that, we will get the permit from November to start hauling ore. There will be a bit of a pre-strip to start on that. But basically, if we re-achieve those things, which we're expecting to do, as I mentioned, we're very much on the same page as the government in running this mining to start. This year, we've only projected 10,000 to 20,000 ounces to come from the regional. It will be, as we said, about 180,000 ounces in it. for the first five years from the regional. I think the other thing that's significant is the government gave us permission, a lot of them, to build the infrastructure for regional mining and trucking aboard after the Fukuoka melt. So that meant building the roads and other facilities, maintenance facilities, workshops, et cetera. So that was a good sign that the government was agreeing for us to get going even before we'd reached a full agreement as we did in September.

Okay, thanks for the comment on that, Ty. And just then moving quickly onto Goose. Again, great to hear you guys ahead on the ice road. You also mentioned in the press release that underground mining rates are a bit behind schedule. Is this just a function of experienced miners or is there anything else in terms of rock hardness, anything else, ground conditions that is causing that?

If I'm being honest, once again, it's two things really, both of them historical, both of them which we have fixed. The first one being, as you correctly pointed out, the quality of the miners that we inherited, which has been certainly brought that team up to scratch. That's why you can see, and I think I said it in my statement, that the daily rates are coming up every day. The second one is the equipment that was purchased by our predecessor, which we have now developed color in the process of changing out during this ice road. Some of the first stuff down the road is some new equipment to bring that, to bring the speed up. But we have seen, we've started meeting targets kind of in Q4, our daily production rates. And so we've readjusted our schedule and we don't see any real impact to 2025 production at our current rates.

Perfect. Thanks for that color on that though. And yeah, that's it for me guys. Looking forward to the ramp up at Goose. Thank you.

Thanks, Ernest.

Thank you. Thank you. And this concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Carl Johnson for the closing remarks.

Okay. Well, I guess that means we have a very complete presentation. Thanks for your time, and you can see why we're pretty excited about the future here at B2M. Thank you, operator.

Thank you, sir. This brings to a close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.

You have reached the end of playback.