New Gold Inc.

Good morning. My name is Ludi and I will be your conference operator today. Welcome to the New Gold's second quarter 2024 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 followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by the number two. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ankit Shah, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business Development. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ludi, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for New Gold's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. On the line today, we have Patrick Oden, President and CEO, and Keith Murphy, our CFO. In addition, we also have Luke Buchanan, Vice President, Technical Services, and Jean-Francois Rabenau, Vice President, Geology, available for the question and answer portion of the call. 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'd like to direct your attention to our cautionary language related to forward-looking statements found on slide two of the presentation. Today's commentary includes forward-looking statements relating to Newgold. In this respect, we refer you to our detailed cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements in the presentation. We are cautioned that actual results in future events could differ materially from those expressed or implied in forward-looking statements. Slide 2 provides additional information and should be reviewed. We also refer you to the section entitled factors in NUGL'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 endnotes that provide important information and should be reviewed in conjunction with the material presented. I'll now turn the call over to Pat for his remarks.

Thanks, Enquete. Before discussing the quarter, I would like to take a moment to discuss last week's events when we experienced the fatality at the Rennie River mine. More specifically, we'll ask the colleague. Our thoughts continue to be with his family and friends. Every quarterly call, I start by talking about safety. I talk about our courage to care culture. I do this because I believe that the key to consistent and disciplined production starts with safe production. It starts with the courage to care for our colleagues, looking out for one another, stopping work if it's not safe, and ensuring everyone goes on to their family and friends safely at the end of every shift. I've been proud of the health and safety performance by our operation and by the commitment of all employees. We have been able to celebrate the awards and milestone together, but in the instance, we mourn together with the family, friends, and colleagues who have been impacted by this tragic incident. I will now talk about our second quarter. The second quarter saw new gold deliver another quarter as planned. During the quarter, our new Afton Mine won two separate awards for having the lowest total recordable injury frequency rate in 2023. The first being the safest large underground mine in BC presented by the BC Ministry of Energy Mines and Low Carbon Innovation. And the second being the John T. Ryan Regional Safety Award in Mines in BC and Yukon presented by the Canadian Institute of Mining. I am pleased to take a moment to recognize their accomplishments. Operationally, we deliver on the quarterly plan with a strong adherence to our personal outlook release from February. You often deliver strong quarterly production results at low cost. Renewal River made excellent progress on the planned waste tripping program and the open pit is well positioned to deliver on our increasing production profile for the second half of the year. On our first quarter call, I know that we were one quarter away from securing the increase in production and cash flow expected in the second half of the year. I am pleased to say that not only have we entered that period, but we do so having finished the first half of the year with free cash flow positive. And with the company exiting the first half of 2024 free cash flow positive, I am pleased to say that New Gold has now entered a sustained free cash flow generation period. We also made excellent progress on key growth projects. Importantly, all key growth projects remain on track for completion in the second half of the year. We made significant progress with our exploration efforts at both operations during the second quarter. At New Afton, the company provided a positive exploration update on Key Zone. The team there also completed the exploration drift early in the quarter and immediately began advancing priority near mine targets. At Rainier River, exploration drilling continues to make meaningful progress from both surface and underground. Through the first half of 2024, the company has drilled approximately 20,000 meters at Rainier River testing various high-priority targets. We are anticipating providing an exploration update later in the third quarter. The company also achieved a number of corporate milestones in the quarter. We announced the publication of our 2023 ESG report, something the company has published annually since 2015, as well as our 2023 Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure report. All reports are available on website. As a last point, I'm extremely pleased to underline that we successfully delivered an accredited transaction for our shoulder by increasing our free cash flow interest in New Afton to 80.1%. To sum up, the second quarter in the first half of the year met expectations, and the companies were in position to deliver on guidance and sustaining free cash flow generation going forward. With that, I will turn the call over to Keith. Keith?