Equinox Gold Corp. Common Shares

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Equinox Gold first quarter 2025 results and corporate update. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity 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. If you are participating through the webcast, you can submit a question in writing by using the text box in the lower left corner of the webcast frame. I would now like to turn the conference over to Relynn Bailey, Vice President, Investor Relations for Equinox Gold. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Thank you, everybody, for joining us this morning. We will, of course, be making a number of forward-looking statements today, so please do visit our website, CEDAR, and Edgar to learn more about our continuous disclosure documents. I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Greg Smith.

Thanks, Relynn. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the call today. On the line with me is our COO, Doug Reddy, our CFO, Peter Hardy, our EVP of Exploration, Scott Heffernan, and our VP of Investor Relations, Relynn Bailey. Again, today we're discussing Equinox Gold's 2025 first quarter financial and operating results. For those of you who are new to the company, Equinox Gold is a fast-growing, Americas-focused gold producer with mines across Canada, United States, Mexico, and Brazil. I'm going to start with a broad overview of the first quarter, and then I'll turn the call over to Pete and Doug for more details. Starting with safety, our safety performance this quarter was good. Our 12-month rolling total recordable injury frequency rate across the entire company improved from last quarter. to 1.95 per million hours worked. For the quarter, our total recordable injury frequency rate was 1.07, with two lost time injuries across all our operations. We also had no significant environmental incidents in Q1, maintaining our excellent significant environmental incident frequency rate of zero for the rolling 12-month period. During the first quarter, we produced just over 145,000 ounces of gold, and sold approximately 148,000 ounces. These results represent the highest first quarter production in the company's history, and as in prior years, we expect quarterly production to increase over the course of the year. Including production and costs from Los Filos, cash cost was $17.69 per ounce, and all in sustaining costs was $2,065 per ounce. Those results include Los Filos. We did not include any production from the Los Filos mine in our guidance for 2025 due to the need to establish new long-term agreements with local communities to continue operations. So excluding production and costs from Los Filos, cash cost per ounce was $16.37 per ounce, and all sustaining costs was $19.79 per ounce sold. As we press released on April 1st, we were unable to conclude a new and necessary long-term agreement with one of the three communities at Los Filos, and so we have suspended operations at the mine. During the quarter, we also announced a proposed business combination with Caliber Mining. Last week, both Equinox shareholders and Caliber security holders voted in favor of the merger, and this week, Caliber received court approval for the transaction. We continue to expect this transaction to close sometime in the second quarter. I'm just going to make a few comments about this transaction now. This merger is really about two strong companies coming together to create a major new gold producer with our Greenstone mine in Ontario and Calibre's Valentine mine in Newfoundland as the foundation for the company. These are both brand new long life Canadian mines and together they'll make us the second largest producer of gold from Canada once they're both fully ramped up. The Canadian operations will be complemented by a diversified portfolio of other mines across the Americas with combined production of 950,000 ounces in 2025. This is at the midpoint of the company's combined guidance. Once both Greenstone and Ballantyne are running at full capacity, we're on a path to produce over 1.2 million ounces per year. This substantial production profile immediately takes advantage of these record high gold prices, which will generate meaningful cash flow and accelerate our plans to deleverage the balance sheet and ultimately implement programs to return capital to our shareholders. And with that, I'm going to turn this over to Pete to discuss our financial results.

Thanks, Greg. We're now on slide six of the presentation. In addition to this being Equinox's best production for a key one, it's also our third straight quarter with more than $400 million in revenue. With respect to the operations, Greenstone unit costs were higher in the quarter compared to Q4. We had planned for Q1 to be our lowest production quarter. During Q1, we added four haul trucks to the fleet and incurred the related costs with operating them. There are no further haul truck additions planned for the year. In addition, we performed plant maintenance during Q1 to remediate items that we had noted were impeding the ramp up. We've seen the benefits of that maintenance by way of increasing throughput through March and April. We expect Greenstone's unit cost to decline throughout the year with increasing gold production. Included in the quarter's results are 65 million of non-recurring charges. We had an accounting adjustment for depreciation of 25 million at RDM in Santa Luz that is non-recurring. In addition, for Los Filos, we had a $29 million inventory net realizable value adjustment resulting from moving leech pad inventory from current to long-term and using long-term instead of short-term gold prices to value that inventory. and that's as a result of the suspension of the operations. In addition, there are 10 million of Los Felos mine suspension charges recorded as care and maintenance. Further, for Q2, at Los Felos, we expect approximately 35 million in mine suspension and care and maintenance charges. For the second half of 2025, we expect carrying costs at Los Felos to be about two and a half to three million per month, and we'll look to reduce those monthly carrying charges as we work our way through the year. With commercial production achieved at Greenstone in Q4, interest costs that were being capitalized to the project are now entirely expensed through the income statement. All interest costs will be expensed going forward. In addition, there was an expense of $15 million for the increase in a gold price-linked payment that Equinox assumed as part of the consolidation of Greenstone ownership. While we drew on the revolving credit facility after the quarter end, with the increasing production profile through the remainder of the year, We expect it to be our last draw, and our focus now switches to paying down debt, and I'll speak more to that in a moment. We're now on slide seven of the presentation. Equinox Gold had $173 million in unrestricted cash at the end of Q1. During the quarter, we drew $40 million on the revolving credit facility and invested $40 million in caliber mining convertible notes. The caliber convertible to venture provides them a liquidity contingency buffer as they complete Valentine construction should close of the merger be unexpectedly prolonged. Not that we expect that. We will cancel the $40 million of caliber convertible notes on close of the merger. We're now on slide 8 of the presentation. Note that the 2025 and 2026 data on this slide is analyst consensus. With the Greenstone ramp-up progressing at current gold prices, the company should generate strong cash flow in the second half of the year and beyond that can be devoted to reducing debt and unwinding the balance sheet. To start, in March, we made the first of the 3,900 ounces per month gold deliveries that run through September 2026 to begin reducing the deferred revenue balance on 87,000 prepay ounces. For 2025, we expect to reduce the obligation by 39,000 ounces and $74 million. As of March 31, 2025, the company had head collar arrangements on 90,000 ounces of gold that were put in place for the $500 million term loan used to help fund the Greenstone ownership consolidation in May last year. Hedges on 50,000 of those ounces mature in a straight line through Q2 2025. The average ceiling on those ounces is 2,900 per ounce. The remaining of the 40,000 hedges mature at about 10,000 ounces per quarter from Q3 through the end of Q2 next year and have a ceiling of about 3,500 per ounce. We look forward to predominantly unwinding the hedges by the end of Q2. With respect to reducing debt, there's a $140 million convertible note that matures in September with a conversion price of US $6.50 per share that we intend to retire when it matures. This note has been largely in the money since the beginning of February. If the note converts to shares on maturity, then the $140 million that would have been used to repay it will instead be used to pay down the revolving credit facility or term loan. Following retirement of the convertible note, free cash flow will be devoted to paying down the company's credit facilities. And with that, I'll turn the presentation over to Doug to discuss our Q1 operating results.

Thanks, Pete. We're now on slide nine of the presentation. At Greenstone in Q1, the mine and mill performed well through the first full winter, producing 44,449 ounces. Ramp-up continued with an average of 137,000 tons a day moved in the quarter. And that continued to increase in April and averaged 165,000 tons per day coming into May. Some loading unit challenges impacted availability, but the disruptions were generally short term. And the fleet was expanded with the addition of the four CAT 793s, bringing it to a total of 29 trucks. As noted in the last quarterly call, we are adding an additional PC5500 shovel. That will arrive in June and be operational by July 1st. The mining team is also focused on additional RC-grade control drilling, blast movement optimization, doing larger blasts, which are now hitting over a million tons per blast, and doing fletched mining, which helps with selectivity. Our mining flexibility has improved with the pit enlargement now that we removed the central area that was impeded while we moved some contaminated soil, so we're getting the whole pit to one level, which is good for flexibility in mining. On the process plant side, we averaged over 18,600 tons per day on the crushing and over 18,400 tons per day on the milling in the quarter. and continued ramping up into April. Milling is now over 23,400 tons a day, or 87% of design capacity. Downtime was reduced and CIP tank modifications were completed through numerous changes in the mill, which we had said in advance that we were going to do in Q1. And overall, we've seen the mill stability improve and the maintenance intervals continue to lengthen, which further boosts our overall efficiency. At the Mesquite mine, gold production was 12,271 ounces. That was principally from side slope leaching and was above plan for the quarter. Mining in the quarter was predominantly waste stripping of the ginger pit. We did have early access to ore in ginger and were able to stack more ounces than planned at the end of March. That ore started to report to the ADR plant in April and May. About 93% of ore mined in 2025 will be from the ginger pit. We've also started waste stripping in the Brownie 4 pit, and that will provide ore production late in 2025 and into 2026. I also want to note that during the quarter, Mesquite passed six million hours with no lost time incidents, and that's a testament to the attention to safety that's being paid by personnel in all areas and all levels at that mine. At Los Felos, minor amounts of open pit and underground mining continued into January. Production was 31,518 ounces. That was mostly from leaching of the ore that was stacked in Q4 and January, and the rest was coming from residual leaching. As mentioned earlier, operations have been suspended indefinitely, and no further leaching is occurring at Los Felos. On the next page, In Brazil, at the Arizona mine, the rainy season was in full swing in Q1, but mining did well, and the rain is now beginning to taper off. Mining was principally in the Piaba and Tatejuba pits, and we are ahead of plan on ore tons moved, although a bit behind on waste movement. We had higher grades from the Piaba pit at around 1.2 grams per ton, and Tatejuba tends to be lower average grade at just under 1 gram per ton. Stockpiles are used to supplement plant feed as necessary during the rainy season. And gold production was 15,555 ounces and on track with our expectations for the quarter. Excuse me again. Remediation work on the Piaba open pit area is complete and the 14 dewatering holes that were drilled prior to and during the rainy season have performed very well during the heavy rains. Later in the year, we are planning to mine the western extension of the Tadajuba open pit And we also plan to start work on the underground portal and ramp in late 2025 once the rainy season is over. At the Bahia complex, production was 27,565 ounces. And at Fazenda, open pit mining focused on the larger CLX open pit, which encompasses several smaller pits and areas that were mined previously and from the underground mining that was done in the earlier years of Fazenda's 40-year mine life. Open pit mine tons and grade were low at the start of the year and improved through the quarter. Underground mining at Fazenda was strong with 1,900 tons per day of ore being moved and over 3,000 tons per day of ore and waste being moved. And in the underground, we are transitioning to a long-hole retreat mining method. Feed grade to the CIL plant was low for the quarter at 1.26 grams per ton. That will improve in this quarter. And recovery was 89%. At Santa Luz, mine grade was up at 1.6 grams per ton from the C1 pit and 0.6 grams per ton as we started mining the A2 pit. Feed grade to the resident leach plant was 1.3 grams per ton. Recovery dipped in the quarter to 60% as we dealt with some sulfide and arsenopyrite-bearing ore in addition to the high TOC, total organic carbon, that was going into the resident leach plant. and we stabilized at 64% in April for recovery. A sixth leach tank is in construction and planned to come online in July. That will allow for servicing of the other tanks and increase our overall residence time, which will benefit recovery in the long term. At RDM, gold production was 10,710 ounces for the quarter. Ore mining was low while pushback seven was advancing on the hanging wall of the pit. and a footwall pushback was being completed to recover ore that had been left behind years ago in the upper portion of the pit wall. Average feed grade to the plant was 0.55 grams per ton and reflects the use of low grade ore while pushbacks are underway to give access to the higher grade ore. The new dry stack tailings facility has worked out well and we've started construction of the expansion to that facility for this storage area. We've also switched to an owner fleet for haulage of the dried tails, and that should help lower our overall costs at RDO. With that, I'll hand it back to Greg.

Thanks, Doug. We'll move on to Q&A in just a second here. I'll just conclude by saying we're very pleased to have received the support of our shareholders for our transaction with Caliber Mining, and we look forward to getting the deal closed this quarter. On our next call, we'll be reporting as a combined company, and as Greenstone continues to ramp up and Valentine commences production later this year, we'll start to see the substantial benefit of having these two low-cost, long-life mines in one company. I think now, Rulon, let's move to Q&A.

Operator, can you please remind people how to ask their questions?

Certainly. Once again, to join the question queue, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. If you are participating through the webcast, you can submit a question in writing by using the text box in the lower left corner of the webcast frame. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue.

Thank you. While we're waiting, we'll take some of the questions that we've got online. So we do have a few questions about Greenstone. I'll try to combine them into one. When do you expect Greenstone to be operating at capacity, and will that bring your costs down closer to your target?

Sure, I can take that one, Lynn. Yeah, Greenstone is continuing to ramp up over the course of the year. Design capacity of the plant is 27,000 tons per day, and we expect to be in and around that range as we move into the second half of the year here. In April, the plan was producing at 87% of design capacity Some of the work we did in Q1 on the plant is actually really starting to pay dividends here as we move into April and into May. So very happy with the way the plant is progressing at Greenstone. On the mining side, that's probably an area where we've had more challenges in Q1. We did increase the size of the fleet by four haul trucks, which was great, but we did have some issues with availability of our PC5500 chromatic loaders. And that is probably the biggest single issue in terms of moving tons in the first quarter. As Doug mentioned, we do have an additional incremental shovel arriving in June. It'll be operating in July. And that, combined with the increase in the fleet, should result in an ability to move a lot more tons. And we're already seeing availabilities improve on our existing fleet. And mining rates have increased a fair bit in April, 160 on average. 165. 165. So we're continuing to see increase in mining rates as well. And I think that will only continue to improve as we get into the warmer weather, and in particular when we get the additional shovel on site.

1 other question that came in, how many down times did you see during the quarter? You mentioned that those are improving.

Yeah, we had a total of 10 down days on in the plant, but we were able to. Because we have a crushed or or dome and emergency stockpile, we were able to limit the number of days that affected the milling circuit. So. About 10 in total, but we were doing things that we said we were going to do change fixing. Downcomers that were causing some short-circuiting in our tanks and modifying valves that allowed for some leakage as well as changing slurry pumps screen decks and Some springs on the screens that were requiring frequent change out. So all of those have been rectified We're getting much longer periods between having to do shutdowns. So we're pleased with the progress it, you know, obviously impacted the quarter and but we're seeing the benefits coming into April and May.

Perfect. Thank you. Operator, can we take some questions from the phone, please?

Certainly. The first question comes from Wayne Lamb with TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, morning, guys. I guess first question, maybe just wondering on the balance sheet, with the revolver nearly drawn down now, just wondering how you're thinking about flexibility in the event of a more drawn-out ramp-up at Greenstone, And would you be looking to refinance shortly, maybe after the close of the transaction? And then just curious on the capacity to fund two new mine ramp ups here and how you're thinking about any contingency plans.

Yeah, so with respect to our liquidity, available liquidity, we do have a planned refinancing of our revolving credit facility. And I want to emphasize that was planned for this quarter. But that said, Wayne, we've seen great improvement in April with performance at Greenstone. And assuming that continues and we hit our targets throughout the year, we don't believe any further draws are required. And we're actually very much looking forward to starting to pay down debt in the second half of the year.

I guess I just add, Wayne, that Caliber also released their results and confirmed they're fully funded to get Valentine into production here. And so, you know, between the two companies, I don't see a liquidity issue coming up here. In particular, in the second half of the year, production increases, costs come down, Valentine comes online, Greenstone's ramped up.

Okay, understood. And then maybe just to follow up to the prior question on the greenstone ramp up, maybe if you could give us a bit more detail on some of the changes at the mill and what you might need for improved availability to get closer to the main plate capacity. And then just curious on maybe on the cost side, if you're seeing any pressures on things like labor and if you're still confident in getting to the full year cost guidance given the challenges in the quarter.

so in the mill we had said in at the end of last year that in q1 we were going to be making changes on slurry pumps and also modifications in in our our tanks specifically in valves and downcomers all that's been done at the same time we made a lot more modifications and other areas when we had the downtime happening and it's all been driven towards well obviously stopping short-circuiting the tanks which will improve our recovery long term but also to be able to extend the periods between downtime so just for example changing the springs out and related to our our screen decks is enable us to to be able to push out the periods between downtime the reduced downtime that we see in april to may is you know testament to one of the aspects of being able to bring the the tons per day up to 87% of capacity.

And then on the cost side, it's Peter. And as I was saying in my comments, Greenstone has been scaled up from a cost structure perspective to what's required to achieve its goals for the year. And it being a a low production quarter in Q1, as is part of the plan. Understandably, the costs per unit there are higher than prior quarter or in Q3 while it was still in commissioning prior to commercial production. We do believe, again, if we're on track with respect to continuing progress that we're seeing, that we're on track overall for our guidance for the year.

Okay, great. And then maybe just last one at Los Felos. Are there still ongoing negotiations or discussions being had there that leave you constructive on getting a deal done or are things at more of an impasse with the third community? And then maybe if you could provide a bit more clarity on approximate care and maintenance costs there.

Sure, Wayne. It's Greg speaking. I'll start. I think the best way to describe it is the way you just did, impasse. You know, we spent a year, more than a year, negotiating with all three communities. The government was involved. A number of stakeholders were involved. We came to terms with all three communities, signed a, call it a heads of agreement document on that basis, executed the two agreements with, well, executed long-term new agreements with two of the communities. The third community elected not to sign a new long-term agreement. The existing agreement expired, and so we suspended operations. And the reality is that the terms we negotiated with the three agreements are really the best we can do. You know, we need to maintain the economic integrity and the investability of that asset of Los Filos. You know, it has the potential to be a great mine, but it does require a substantial amount of investment. And it's critical that you have agreements in place that support that investment And so at this stage, not a lot happening on that basis. And of course, we're always open to dialogue. But at this point, I would not expect anything to move on that basis at Los Filos in the near term. You know, I think it's fair to say you don't expect any production from Los Filos for the rest of this year.

Okay, and sorry, just one follow-up, but in terms of your comment on the economics there, like that stance wouldn't change with the gold price move that we've seen?

Well, I guess one way to put it is our stance evolved over the course of the negotiating period. So, you know, gold prices go up, gold prices go down, but you have inflation to take into account as well, costs, etc., And so, again, there's only so much you can do when you're planning for the long term. And, you know, obviously, gold prices are helpful to the economics of any mine. But, again, you know, without getting into the details of how these negotiations played out, at this stage, no, it doesn't have an effect on our position.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking my questions, and best of luck in the months ahead.

And your next question comes from Anita Soni with CIBC World Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Greg, Doug, and Peter. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to drill a little bit down into sort of the way grades and tonnages, the way you see them evolving at Greenstone over the next three or four quarters. So I think you said the lower grades were – a result of mine sequencing, but it sounds like you also had some challenges with the equipment in the pit. How long do you think you would be in, when will you be accessing higher grade areas in the pit? And then, you know, how do you think the plant's going to, how do you think the mine's going to keep up with the plant over the course of the year?

I think we'll refer to what we said in the last call as well was we were expecting to be at this grade for Q1. We see it ramping up during the course of the year and getting to 1.5, 1.6 in the latter part of the year. So grade-wise, it's evolving the way we expected. We are a bit slower on the mining, yes. We're aware of that, and that pushes things out a little bit. At the back end of the year, we may end up with not getting the higher grade as quickly as we anticipated in the original plan for the year, but overall, it should evolve that way. That goes to the tons per day being moved. In Q1, the average is 137,000 tons a day, but we had peaks at over 193,000 tons a day. As we came into April and May, you know, the 165,000 tons a day is average, and so that's good. We're getting peaks where we're doing over 200,000 tons a day, so it's definitely picked up the pace as we came through the winter months, through the challenges that we had with loading units, a little bit of absenteeism, but we're good now, and the team's doing really well. Yeah, I think I just added... Go ahead, Mia. Sorry.

Go ahead. What's the actual grade that's being mined right now, the direct or feed grade, rather than what was processed?

Well, we get a lot of material that goes to the stockpile. So average grade being mined ranges from 0.6 to 1.2, anywhere in there. I'd say we're typically just under one gram. So we're using a bit of the stockpile and getting it to 1.1 on the feed.

Sorry, Greg, you were going to say something?

Oh, I was just going to say that kind of as mentioned earlier, the challenge we really had was around availability of the large shovels. And that really did cause us some issues in January and February. As that availability increases, we were able to see the tonnage increase substantially. But as Doug said, we are behind on the mining. And the key for us is to start working on catching that up. This additional shovel will help with that. You know, we were bang on pretty much our feed grade for Q1, our expected feed grade. And so, you know, good from that perspective, but definitely need to catch up on the mining through the year. And, you know, we're seeing that start to happen now and keen to get that additional shovel into the fleet.

And, sorry, just could you tell me how many, sorry, how many, I'm not sure how to say the word, trucks. How many trucks did you have in the first quarter?

Sorry, I'm tired. We went from 25. We brought four more online, and this was always planned, and we're now at 29 trucks.

Okay. So you went from 21 to 25 during the quarter?

No. We went from 25 to 29 in the quarter.

Okay. All right. Thank you. And then last question, a little bit more bigger picture and related to the deal. Greg, can you go through what you view as – core assets and non-core assets. There's been a lot of talk about asset sales post the merger and then focusing management time and resources on some of the bigger assets, but where would you see shedding assets if you were to do that?

Sure. I think the easy comment to make is that Greenstone and Valentine form the foundation of the company. And both in Canada, both long life, both with a lot of exploration potential. So obviously those are core. We have the development project down in California, Castle Mountain. We are making substantial progress under the new administration in terms of permitting. And so that is becoming much more, I think, relevant to the future growth plans of the company in the near term here. So Castle Mountain, that's another 200,000 ounces per year long life mine in the Americas, in the United States. Clearly a core asset for us. And then we've got a fairly large portfolio of other assets. We've got obviously operating scale in Brazil. We've got some operating scale in Nicaragua. And then, you know, Delos, the Nevada assets, and Mesquite. You know, Anita, I never want to isolate individual assets as being core or non-core at this stage. We're going to close this transaction. The management team will, you know, do a full review. It's a pretty good market for thinking about divestments of assets or some M&A around gold assets. So it's definitely top of mind for us. It is something that we're going to focus on. But, you know, big picture, easy process. comment is Valentine Castle and Greenstone of course as the you know the major core of the company and then and then focusing on the the other assets here over the next year and and then determining what we're going to do it's obviously there are some you know just to scale the company there are some that are going to be non-core and we've had a fairly robust amount of interest in in various assets in the portfolio and again we'll kind of consolidate All of that as we close the transaction and then go from there.

Thank you. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Nina.

And your next question comes from Jeremy Hoy with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Picking at some of the details here and going back to Greenstone, recovery was relatively in line with where it was at Q4. You've seen spikes up to 90% range. At a high level, can you just walk us through the ins and outs of what it takes to get grade up to design? Recovery up to design.

Yeah, sorry.

Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, higher grade, higher recovery. So, you know, with the lower grade coming in this quarter, we did know it would be lower. We knew we'd be doing plant modifications to rectify some short-circuiting and solutions. So the solutions are – that's preg solutions, so we're losing solutions to tails in a couple areas due to a short-circuiting in the tanks and a valve design that was not working properly. So we've made those modifications, so we anticipate as we go forward – that we will see an improvement in grades overall. Recoveries overall.

Okay. Sorry.

Got that. The same thing you did. The same thing you did. Recoveries overall. Sorry.

That must be my influence. Okay. Just one more from me on Los Felos. In the disclosure, you mentioned that you started layoffs. If the community were to come back and sign an agreement today, how long would it take to restart that operation?

Well, I think the question would be whether it makes sense to start the operation right away. I mean, the path to prosperity at most fields really is through the construction of a new CIL plant, 10,000 ton per day CIL plant. And to do that, we need to continue with some engineering. We need to get some permitting done on site and obviously advance toward a construction decision, then build it. to go back into production on heap-leach-only basis immediately after having wound the operation down economically might not make the most sense. Now, never say never. We'd have to assess in the context of those discussions and determine what the best path is. But I think at this stage, again, we're not in a position where we see a resolution in the near term. Our current expectation is that Phyllis would remain suspended for the remainder of this year, certainly, and we'll assess it as we go.

Okay, that's really helpful, Greg. Thank you. I'll step back in the queue.

Thanks. Okay. Lots of questions online. I'm trying to combine them. Lots of questions about cost of the mines. How did these Q1 results compare to what you had budgeted for the year, and what's your target ASIC for the year end?

So, other than Greenstone, on a pronounced basis, they are a little higher than budget, but overall, as we've been saying, we believe we're still very much on plan for the year. For the rest of the mines, they actually performed within what we expected. Q1 is very typically for the company. the lightest production quarter every year and as Greg mentioned this is a it's a record for us for q1 so so we're happy with overall with where we're headed and and you know as as a company as a whole believe we're on track with our overall cost guidance I mean all the I guess part of the challenge we have at Equinox is typically q1 is our lowest production quarter and we have increasing

production quarter over quarter. As you increase your production, the denominator goes up and your average cost per ounce goes down and that results in your average for the year. So we typically have a higher cost quarter in Q1 and then see those cost per ounce come down over the course of the year as production increases. This happens at Equinox pretty much every year. It's based on seasonality typically and it's the same this year.

Thank you. We've had some questions about the finance costs and other non-recurring costs that occurred during the quarter, and how we have record production and record gold prices, but still booked in net loss. So can you explain that from an accounting perspective?

Yeah, so I'll refer to it. So there's two major contributors there, or three. There's the low-fee, low-suspension, which creates noise in the income statement. as there's a lot of non-normal costs associated with suspending operations, principally severance for employees that are being laid off. We did have the accounting adjustments that I mentioned, non-cash, and those won't recur. And finally, with the very fortunate completion of Greenstone Commercial Production last quarter, we had the opportunity, I suppose you could describe it, to capitalize costs related to greenstone construction and pre-commercial production. But with completion of that, those charges, even when they were being incurred on a cash basis, they weren't going through our earnings statement, but now do. So those are the three primary components of the loss for the year. And then reflecting Greg's comments just now, as we see our production increase throughout the year, we'll see the earnings increasing throughout the year. And then again, as we deliver and reduce the obligations side of the balance sheet, of course, the finance charges with respect to those charges decrease and you wind up with this virtual cycle of having more cash available to deploy to pay down obligations while also reducing the cost of those obligations overall on your earnings.

Okay, perfect. It looks like Jeremy did not come back into the queue. We did have a lot of questions coming online. I think most of them were addressed during the call or during the Q&A. If I missed your questions, my apologies. I'll get back to you by email today, or you're welcome to give me a call. Greg, did you have any wrap-up statements?

No, I just, again, appreciate everyone for joining the call today, appreciate your support. You know where to find us. All of our contact information is on the website. You can reach out to Roland or me anytime.

Perfect. Thank you. Operator, you can now conclude the call.

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