Golden Star Resources, Ltd

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Golden Star Resources third quarter 2021 results conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode, and following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, November 2, 2021. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Michael Stoner. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Kelsey, and thank you everyone for joining us for our Q3 2021 results call, where we will obviously also address the transaction that we announced yesterday morning. On slide two, I'd like to point you to the disclaimer, particularly on forward-looking statements. The presentation is available on our website, and we'll leave you to read that in your own time. On the call, I'm joined by Andrew Ray, our CEO, Graham Crewe, our COO, Paul Thompson, our CFO, and then Mitch Russell, who is our VP Exploration. And with that, I will hand over to Andrew to kick off the call. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Michael, and hello to everybody. I'll start on slide four where very briefly there's a reminder of what and where we are as a business together there with the current and future plans for WASA. Moving on, and as Michael mentioned on slide five there, before we get into the Q3 overview and results, We should really talk about yesterday's announcement where we announced that Chiffon Gold is acquiring Golden Star in an all-cash offer at $3.91 US per share, which equates to value for the business of approximately $470. million U.S. dollars. Xifeng, for those that are not familiar, is an established gold mining operator listed in Shanghai, market cap of 4.3 billion U.S. They currently operate five assets, four of those in China and then the Sepon mine in Laos. They're quite a few years ago from MMG. There is no financing condition on this transaction, just to note and make that clear. In terms of the timeline, you can see there we're expecting January, so probably mid-January, we expect at this point in time in terms of the likely closing of the transaction once we've got through various uh approvals shareholder approvals regulatory approvals and other conditions met in terms of those approvals beyond the shareholder approvals i think the key ones really to mention are in ghana there will be the no objection approval sought from the minister in order for that the transaction to proceed and then the three separate regulatory approvals that Shifang are already working on in China, which are the standard ones for a deal of this nature. We'll come back to that, I'm sure, when we get to Q&A, but that just gives you an overview of the transaction itself. You can see what that value equates to in terms of the various premier to different points in time. As I said, we'll happily take questions on that once we've gone through the Q3 results. Moving on to slide six on those results there. I think overall, pretty solid quarter. The business, no real surprises. The results, fairly much in line. with our expectations. Graham will talk a little bit more about the operations and the key focus areas there and Paul, what that means in terms of financials and the balance sheet. But, you know, the key feature really, I think, is the above and beyond the underground run of mine. It's the continued processing of the low-grade stockpiles which we used to offset some of the lower volumes in terms of underground material. We continue to invest in terms of our capital program in the business for that future growth from WASA. Some good in-mine exploration results that Mitch will talk a little bit about later on and some further optimization of the balance sheet. during the quarter. And then on the Paceville restart and commissioning, Graham will give a little bit of detail around how that process is progressing. Moving on to slide seven, in terms of health and safety, I think the real focus there continues to be managing COVID. And we've certainly seen a noticeable uptick over Q3 in cases and case rates, both where we are in the western region in Ghana as well as the country as a whole. But the screening protocols we've got in place have helped us to capture most of that and also minimize the impact on operations. We've spoken a little bit previously about some of the expat jumbo operators, which, as it says here, we addressed in the second quarter. by bringing in more operators, more Ghanaian operators, so we get around that problem in terms of some of the travel inconveniences and barriers. And we've seen continued progress on development rates during the quarter, which is encouraging. And then just one final one from me before I hand over to Graham. In terms of the outlook, I think there the message is really with those results and just the fourth quarter to come, very much on track to deliver on guidance for the full year. So with that, I'll hand over to Graham to give a bit more detail on the operation.