SSR Mining Inc.

Hello everyone and welcome to SSR Mining's first quarter 2022 conference call. This call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Alex Honchak from SSR Mining.

Thank you operator and hello everyone. Thank you for joining SSR Mining's first quarter 2022 conference call. during which we'll provide an update on our business and a review of our financial performance. Our first quarter 2022 consolidated financial statements have been presented in accordance with US GAAP. These financial statements have been filed on EDGAR, CDAR, the ASX, and are also available on our website. To accompany our call, there is an online webcast and you will find the information to access the webcast in our news release relating to this call. Please note that all figures discussed during the call are in US dollars unless otherwise indicated. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, so please read the disclosures in the relevant documents. Joining us on the call today are Rod Antle, President and CEO, Alison White, CFO, and Stu Beckman, COO. Now, I will turn the call over to Rod for his opening remarks.

Thanks, Alex, and hello to everyone, and thanks for joining us today. The first quarter of 2022 featured a number of positive and significant milestones. And I want to take this opportunity to recognize and thank everyone at SSR for all their extra efforts, enabling a smooth transition to becoming an SEC filer. Already this year, we released our inaugural three-year production guidance. And then as a function of our transition to an SEC filer, we released technical reports for all four of our producing assets. which led to a material increase in mineral reserves by 14%. Those reports not only supported our three-year guidance, but also outlined a clear pathway to maintaining a stable production platform in excess of 700,000 ounces annually for at least the remainder of the decade. A terrific result when you consider the ongoing exploration efforts across the business that did not make it into the technical report refresh. This solid long-term production outlook will support our goals for maintaining excellent free cash flow generation, reinvestment in high-yielding projects within our business, and capital returns going forward. At the start of the year, we increased our base dividend by 40%, further reinforcing our capital returns commitments. In addition, during the quarter, we released our 2021 ESG and sustainability report, We announced the accretive sale of our Pitoria project, and subsequent to the quarter, we have closed the Tiger Gold acquisition. And finally, we received board approval to progress the 60% IRR C2 development project through to the PFS stage. Definitely an impressive list of achievements in a short period of time. Now diving into our operating results, I'm once again proud to note our continued track record of outperformance through delivering on our commitments. Gold equivalent production of over 173,000 ounces and an all-in sustaining cost of $1,093 per ounce was in line with our expectations. These results included a record quarter from CV, which produced 53,000 ounces of gold and an all-in sustaining cost of $596 per ounce. CV's outperformance helped offset some of the inflationary impacts we encountered during the quarter, particularly with respect to fuel and consumables. Coupled with our previous commentary that our full year production is second half weighted, we remain well positioned to deliver against our full year guidance of 700 to 780,000 ounces of gold and all in sustaining costs of $1,120 to $1,180 an ounce. Overall, we're off to a really strong start. Moving on to slide four, and on this slide, I want to highlight our ESG performance and priorities. ESG is and has long been a core value and focus for SSR mining as it firmly underpins the success of our business. We released our fourth annual ESG and sustainability report in April, which highlighted a number of achievements during 2021 and some of the new initiatives for our company. During 2021, amongst other things, we've progressed our efforts to establish a science-based action plan to support our commitment on net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In 2022, we'll complete the rollout of our EH-SNS integrated management systems with full implementation expected this year. Furthermore, we will complete third-party closure reviews across all operating assets to ensure a positive post-mining future for our stakeholders and are also developing a water stewardship strategy as we seek to continually reduce our environmental footprint going forward. So moving on to slide number five. I'll take a moment to highlight our outperformance across key metrics and the impressive returns our shareholders have enjoyed as a result. In 21, we realized a free cash flow yield of 12%, well exceeding our peer group and that strong performance translated in peer-leading capital returns. Subsequently, and as I mentioned, we have increased our base dividend by 40% to $0.28 annually and continue to evaluate further share buyback programs and or further dividend increases. On top of our operating performance, we have delivered material value creation across the portfolio through operational improvement initiatives project development studies, and exploration success. This includes the recently announced reserve growth at Arditch and Seabees Gap Hanging Wall. The consolidated outcome of all the new technical reports provides an impressive increase of 2.5 million ounces of production against the prior technical reports. And we feel like we're a long way from being both done or satisfied. We have a number of new growth projects moving along through the various stages of development, and exploration continues across each operation on a number of exciting targets. The operational outperformance and value creation has translated directly into our share price performance, as we have outperformed both our peers and the GDX by more than 30% over the last 12 months. With a catalyst-rich year ahead, we fully expect this to continue. I'll speak to some of the catalysts on the next slide, as well as some of our key achievements in the year to date. As noted, we have had a busy start to 2022, delivering a multitude of positive milestones. Looking ahead, we continue to focus on our operational excellence, including supply chain management and issues aimed at limiting the impacts of inflation, supply chain weaknesses, and global disruptions on our operations. It is fortunate that we don't have any large capital projects on the books at the moment, as they seem to be most prone to material cost increases. As you're aware, our capital projects are relatively modest in terms of capital costs, but feature some of the best returns in the industry. We continue to progress Ardige towards first production in 2023, and in the CDMP21 released earlier this year, Ardige featured a 1.2 million ounces of gold production to just $69 million in development capex. And that production number could grow with continued exploration success. We have also approved the C2 project and moved into a PFS study where the CDMP highlighted another million ounces of gold production for approximately $220 million in capex to this stage beginning 2025. Now just moving on to the next slide, and our first quarter results in more detail. A few of the highlights that are relevant to consider for the quarter. Operationally, another strong quarter with 174,000 ounces of gold production and an all-in sustaining cost of $1,093 per ounce. Financially, we delivered adjusted EPS of 30 cents in the quarter. And as previously guided, our first quarter cash flows were impacted by timing and increased tax and royalty payments. Despite that, we delivered operating cash flow of $62 million and free cash flow of $28 million. We announced the inaugural three-year production guidance showcasing a stable production above 700,000 ounces and increased our quarterly dividend payments by 40%. We also highlighted our long-term production platform with the updated technical reports demonstrating our ability to maintain 700,000 ounce a year baseline for the remainder of the decade. We continued with our positive portfolio rationalisation with the say of Petaria, now realising over $240 million in total consideration for non-core assets over the last 12 months. And then finally, in subsequent to the quarter, we closed the acquisition of Tiger Gold, which expands our exploration platform in Saskatchewan to 131,000 hectares. So moving on to slide A. As we continue through 2022, it is worth highlighting our impressive track record of growth and execution. As noted, following a solid first quarter, we remain well on track against our full year guidance and expect our production will remain second half weighted as Marigold's performance improves, especially in quarter four this year. Overall, we start the year with momentum on the back of a host of positive news and are in a great position to again meet or exceed our commitments. So with that, I'm going to turn the call over to Alison, who's going to discuss our financial performance in detail, starting on slide number nine.