New Gold Inc.

Good morning, my name is Michelle and I will be your conference operator today. Welcome to the New Gold's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please be advised that today's conference call and webcast is being recorded. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press start. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ankit Shah, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Business Development. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for New Gold's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. On the line today, we have Patrick Godin, President and CEO, and Rob Chauvet, our CFO. Should you wish to follow along with the webcast, please sign in from our homepage at newgold.com. Before the team begins the presentation, I would like to direct your attention to our cautionary language related to forward-looking statements found on slides two and three of the presentation. Today's commentary includes forward-looking statements relating to New Gold. In this respect, we refer you to our detailed cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements in the presentation. There are caution that actual results and future events could differ materially from those expressed or implied in forward-looking statements. Slides two and three provide additional information and should be reviewed. We also refer you to the section entitled Risk Factors in NUGLE's latest AIF, MD&A, and other filings available on CDAR, which set out certain material factors that could cause actual results to differ. In addition, at the conclusion of the presentation, there are a number of M notes that provide important information and should be reviewed in conjunction with the material presented. I will now turn the call over to Pat.

Thanks, Ankit, and good morning, everyone. Before I turn the call over to Rob to discuss the quarter, I want to provide some brief opening remarks. It has been almost one year since I joined New Gold, and at that time, I saw a lot of potential for our operation and for our company. We worked hard through 2022, and this momentum has carried into 2023. I'm proud of our team's performance in the first quarter of this year. As I note in our April production release, the first quarter of 2023 was our strongest start in four years. I cannot say enough how important safety is to our success. This was a core aspect of the impressive first quarter operating results. Q1 saw no last-time injuries at our operations. New Afton reached a big milestone and exceeded one million hours we followed last time. Rainier River continued to operate safely and reached 1.6 million hours without last time. I strongly believe safety and production are correlated, and our first quarter performance proved this. As a result, we are well positioned to meet our production and cost guidance set out earlier in the year. During the quarter, we also continue to focus on the long-term strategy of new gold. We complete multiple steps to strengthen our balance sheet, which Rob will talk to shortly. And we continue to advance underground future production at both Rainy River and New Afton. Lastly, I would like to talk about our people. Specifically, the appointment of Yuan as new CO, the promotion of Enkit to Executive Vice President and Keith to VP Finance, as well as new hires Jean-François to VP Geology and Luc to VP Technical Services. These executives will all be great assets to our team as we continue to advance growth opportunities and pursue sustained and safe production at our operation. I would also like to acknowledge Rob's retirement at the end of this year. Rob has been crucial in the turnaround of new gold over the past five years. Over my career, I have worked alongside Rob several times, and he has been an excellent business partner for me. We are grateful he is going to be staying until the end of this year to ensure a seamless transition and support Keith positioning new gold for success in the year to come. With that, I will turn the call to you, Rob.