Agnico Eagle Mines Limited

Good morning. My name is Joelle and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Agnico Eagle Minds Limited Q4 2024 and full year conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remark, 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 star followed by the two. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. I'd like to start by thanking our employees, our communities and our owners for their support throughout 2024 and into what we think will be a remarkable 2025. Next slide, please. Please be advised that we will be discussing forward-looking statements and I recommend you all review the language relating to that. Next slide, please. We'll spend a little bit of time today going over our 2024 results. You've seen the numbers. They're very good. And Jamie will do his usual excellent job of going through them in a moment. But what we really want to focus on this morning, what really excites us, is 2025 and beyond. After Jamie's review, Dominic will talk about how Patch 7 is helping to shape Hope Bay into potentially the next big multi-decade platform in Nunavut. He will also talk about something extraordinary, which is our vision to potentially get Malartic to over a million ounces a year of gold production. Then Natasha will talk about the potential to grow the Ontario platform by 50% over the next several years, including bringing Upper Beaver online and Detour's potential to get to over a million ounces a year. When I mentioned Malartic to over a million ounces a year, I purposely use the word extraordinary. That's because there's nothing ordinary about a million-ounce-a-year mine. With the potential for each of Mallardic and Detour to produce over a million ounces per year, Agnico Eagle would have two of the six biggest gold mines in the world, with multi-decade mine lives in one of the best jurisdictions in the world, 100% owned by Agnico Eagle. We think that is extraordinary. Guy will then provide a brief update on our exploration program. Agnico Eagle is investing more than we've ever spent on exploration, and all of that spend is justified by some of the most exciting drill results in the business. But I'm jumping ahead. I usually do. I don't want to steal their thunder. This time last year on this call, we said we were constructive on gold prices. We felt 2024 was going to be a good year for gold, And we explicitly said this time last year that we're going to focus on cost control in a rising gold price environment. Why? Because the reason our owners invest in gold mining stocks is precisely to benefit from leverage increases in gold prices. They expect margin and cash flow expansion, and it's our job to deliver that. As it turns out, 2024 was a big year for gold. And with the gold price up several hundred dollars per ounce, over the year. As Jamie will discuss, for Agnico Eagle and for our owners, this increase in gold price, along with strong operational cost controls, translated into record financial results, into record earnings, into record cash flows, and into a record share price. In 2024, we did deliver the leverage to gold prices that we promised we would. And we did this by delivering record production, by controlling costs, and by being disciplined with our owners' money. At the same time, we continue to invest heavily in and strengthen our business. We advanced important projects, Odyssey Underground, Detour to a Million Ounces, Upper Beaver, San Nicolas, Hope Bay, to name just a few. We made record investments in our exploration programs and we returned almost a billion dollars directly to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks and another $1.3 billion indirectly to our shareholders by reducing our net debt. Yes, 2024 was a great year for Agnico Eagle and our owners, but what you will hear this morning is that 2025 and beyond has the potential to be even better. Next slide, please. I'll start by saying that I believe we're in the strongest position in the company's history. I don't say that lightly. Consider. We are guiding for strong and steady production over the next three years. We are guiding for the best cost profile of our peers. We have the best project pipeline I've ever seen in 25 years in this business. We have a strong balance sheet with almost a billion dollars in cash and on our way to potentially no net debt very shortly. We operate in the best jurisdictions in the world, geologically and politically. We have great people who have experience who trust each other and who are motivated. And on top of all of that, we remain very constructive on the gold price. While we don't have a crystal ball, I would argue that all of the elements that have pushed gold up over the last 20 years not only remain in place, but in fact are accelerating. We think 2025 will be a volatile year across many markets globally, including gold. But for gold, we believe this volatility will be skewed to the upside and we remain determined as much as ever to deliver this upside potential to our shareholders by continuing to deliver strong production and by delivering best in class cost control. Our production guidance for 25 to 26 is down marginally about 2.9% from previous guidance. But let's put that into perspective. It's primarily due to accommodating some difficult ground conditions at Pino Saltos, some minor deferral of processing, some low-grade stockpiles at Malartic, and some other relatively small changes to mine sequencing. On the other hand, the steady production guidance for 2027 does demonstrate the ability of our team to deliver impressive, profitable production as we transition to some of our important growth projects in the early, starting in 2030 and beyond. With strong production, peer leading costs, and with strong gold prices, Agnico Eagle remains well positioned to one, continue to deliver excellent financial results, two, continue to invest in the best pipeline we've ever had, and three, continue to strengthen the balance sheet and return substantial capital to shareholders. We can do all three. And with that introduction, I'd like to turn it over to our CFO, Jamie Porter.

Thank you, Amar. As Amar mentioned, 2024 was a record year on multiple operational and financial fronts. Our strong safety and operating performance drove record annual gold production, and that paired with good cost control and a higher gold price environment resulted in record earnings, record operating cash flow, and record free cash flow. We ended the year with a solid performance. Production in the fourth quarter was approximately 847,000 ounces at total cash costs of $9.23 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $1,316 per ounce. Higher sustaining capital in the fourth quarter was as expected as we caught up from underspending earlier in the year. For the full year, we came in above the midpoint of our production guidance at 3.49 million ounces. We were also very pleased to report that we achieved our cost guidance with total cash costs for the year coming in right around the midpoint of our guidance at $903 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $1,239 per ounce well within our guided range. We are proud of the work our teams have done and their continued efforts at controlling costs and focusing on continuous improvement. Our all-in sustaining costs continue to be hundreds of dollars per ounce below those of our peers. We reported several financial records in the fourth quarter. Again, record revenue of $2.2 billion, record adjusted earnings of $632 million, or $1.26 per share, and record operating cash flow of over $1.1 billion, or $2.26 per share. For the full 2024 year, we had record financial results again across the board, generating approximately $2.1 billion in free cash flow, at an average gold price of $2,384 per ounce. At current spot gold prices, we expect significant further margin expansion and cash flow growth in 2025. We move on to the next slide. I'm pleased to report that continued margin expansion and leverage of the gold price allowed us to strengthen our balance sheet significantly in the fourth quarter. During the quarter, we repaid the remaining balance of $325 million on our term loan facility ahead of the April maturity. Since the beginning of the year, since the beginning of 2024, we've reduced our net debt significantly from $1.5 billion at the start of the year to just $217 million of net debt at year end. In 2025, our debt maturities total only $90 million, which we expect to pay as due. At current spot prices, we plan to further strengthen our balance sheet and increase our financial flexibility in 2025. We move on to the next slide. Looking at 2024, we prioritize returns to shareholders. Through dividends, share repurchases, and the reduction of net debt, shareholders benefited directly and indirectly by approximately $2.2 billion. We paid $800 million in dividends in 2024, and repurchased $120 million in shares for direct shareholder returns totaling $920 million, or approximately 40% of our free cash flow. Again, from a balance sheet perspective, the remainder of our free cash flow is allocated to net debt reduction of $1.3 billion. At current margins, we are fortunate to be in a position to do some of everything we want to do. We can continue our program of strong shareholder returns through the quarterly dividend and opportunistic share repurchases, We can continue to strengthen the balance sheet and improve our financial flexibility. And importantly, we can reinvest in the business by allocating additional capital to our high-return internal growth projects. As you will have seen from our guidance, our sustaining capital spending in 2025 is flat relative to 2024, but we're increasing our growth capital and exploration spending. At Odyssey, Detour Underground, Upper Beaver, Hope Bay, and San Nicolas, we have an enviable pipeline of strong return internal development projects. We will continue to take a measured approach to capital allocation with a focus on generating strong returns to our shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dom, who will provide an overview of our Quebec, Nunavut, and Finland operations.