Trekor Metals Limited Common Shares

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Teseco Mines 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines has been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. 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. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press the star one. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Burgow. You may begin.

Thank you, Jericho. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining TSECO's third quarter 2025 conference call. The news release and regulatory filing announcing our financial and operational results was issued yesterday after market close and is available on our website at tsecomines.com and on CDAR+. With me in Vancouver today is TSECO's President and CEO, Stuart MacDonald, TSECO's Chief Financial Officer, Bryce Hamming, and our COO, Richard Tremblay. As usual, before we get into opening remarks by management, I would like to remind our listeners that our comments and answers to your questions will contain forward-looking information, and this information by its nature is subject to risks and uncertainties. As such, actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, I encourage you to read the cautionary note that accompanies our third quarter MD&A and the related news release, as well as the risk factors particular to our company. These documents can be found on our website and also on CDAR+. I would also like to point out that we will use various time gap measures during the call. You can find explanations and reconciliations regarding these measures in the related news release. And finally, all dollar amounts we will discuss today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise specified. Following opening remarks, we will open the phone lines to analysts and investors for questions. I will now turn the call over to Stuart for his remarks.

Great. Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today to discuss the third quarter financial and operating results. As usual, I'll provide some commentary focusing on the operational results, and then Bryce will get into the financial performance for the quarter. As outlined in our release yesterday, third quarter results were definitely an improvement over the previous two quarters, both operationally and financially. Mining in the connector pit had presented more challenges in the early part of this year than we'd anticipated. But on the positive side, the higher mining rates in the last two quarters have opened up higher grade benches that we'd been anticipating. In the third quarter, grades increased to 0.22%, which is up from 0.19 in the first quarter and 0.20 in the second quarter. This higher grade ore and less transitional oxide material both benefited mill recoveries, which increased to 77% in the third quarter. Mill throughput has been very steady this year, consistently operating at around design capacity. So overall copper production in the third quarter was just under 28 million pounds, and that includes 900,000 pounds of cathode production from SXEW operation. Molybdenum production in the quarter was 560,000 pounds, which is also a big increase from prior quarters due to higher moly grades, which typically track copper grades. Costs in the quarter were 287 US per pound, an improvement over the prior quarter. Total site cost in the quarter was 7 million higher than the previous quarter, mainly due to SXEW costs now being expensed, as well as increased maintenance costs. Maintenance costs, including parts and major components, is one area where we continue to see steady inflation. And all of that translated into $62 million of adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter. Looking ahead, we expect to finish the year with a strong fourth quarter. Gibraltar produced 11 million pounds of copper in October, which was the mine's highest production month in two years. So the quarter is off to a good start. We will provide formal guidance for 2026 in the new year as we normally do, but generally we're looking for a more consistent year next year with less quarterly volatility. Now shifting over to Florence, where we've achieved a number of major milestones recently and the operation is now well on its way to producing first copper. In September, our general contractor achieved substantial completion of the SXEW plant and plant area. This is a huge accomplishment for the project team. In just 18 months since we broke ground to Florence, our team has been able to deliver this major capital project on time and in line with our previous cost estimates. So it's really a great achievement, and the project is now into the commissioning phase. In mid-October, we received the final regulatory approvals that we required to commence wellfield operations. We then initiated a short commissioning period, which included pumping water from the aquifer to establish hydraulic control in the wellfield. A number of normal course commissioning issues were identified and resolved, and in early November, about a week ago, we began acidifying the commercial wellfield. Overall, we're a few weeks behind our original plan, but we're very happy with the wellfield performance so far, as initial flow rates in the wellfield are in line with and even exceeding our expectations. So it's early, obviously, but the operation is off to a good start. About half of the wellfield is being acidified now, and the second half will start up in the next week or so. And in the weeks ahead, we expect to see the grade of copper in solution, or PLS grade, from the wellfield start to increase to a point where we can turn on the SXEW plant and start plating copper cathode. Commissioning of the plant area is advancing in parallel with initial wellfield operations, and we expect to be producing copper early in the new year. An important aspect of the production ramp-up in 2026 will be our ability to develop and integrate additional wells into the operation. We're now preparing to restart drilling activity with two drills planned to start up here in November, and an additional two drills will be added early next year. The operating team in Florence continues to grow. Recruiting has gone very well, and we're up to about 140 employees on site now. Needless to say, it's a very busy and exciting time for all of them. It's great timing to be starting up a major new supply of refined copper inside the US. Obviously, copper markets and pricing remains very strong. And there's some interesting dynamics in the US capital market. Although there are no US import tariffs on refined copper right now, the possibility of tariffs in the future has led to some speculative trading activity and growing capital inventories inside the US. The COMEX price has continued to trade at a premium to the LME, recently at about 4% premium or roughly $0.20 a pound. However, our understanding is that the quoted COMEX price may not reflect what can actually be realized in the physical market, and capital sales in the U.S. may be at a higher than normal discount that you might normally see to the COMEX price, although we're still seeing a premium to LME pricing. This is a situation we're going to continue to monitor as we start cap-out sales from Florence in the next few months. The U.S. government has stated that it plans to revisit tariffs in the middle of next year with the potential for a 15% tariff on cap-out at the end of 2026, increasing to 30% potentially at the end of 2027. So in the longer term, this shows the strategic value of Florence, which will become one of the few U.S.-based suppliers of refined copper. Before I pass the call over to Bryce, I wanted to say a few words about our recent equity offering that was completed in October. The proceeds of that raise have significantly strengthened our balance sheet. We've now repaid the $75 million that was drawn on our revolving credit facility, and the remaining funds provide additional working capital support ahead of the Florence ramp-up next year. We're also planning additional spending at Yellowhead next year on environmental and engineering work to support environmental assessment process in the third quarter we held open houses in the local communities and initial feedback has been quite positive so yellowhead project permitting is off to a good start and we continue to view yellowhead as an important longer-term growth project for us and with that i'll turn it over to bryce thanks stewart good morning everyone and thanks for joining us today total copper sales for the quarter were 26 million pounds