Coeur Mining, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Core Mining fourth quarter 2021 financial results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal conference specialists by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jeff Wilhoyt. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Core Mining's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. Our results were released after yesterday's market close and a copy of the press release and slides are available on our website. I would like to remind everyone that our press release, slides, and some of our comments today include forward-looking statements from which actual results may differ. Please review the cautionary statements included in our press release and presentation, as well as the risk factors described in our 2021 10-K. I'll now turn it over to the team.

Thanks, Jeff. And good morning, everyone. 2021 was an important year for CORE, characterized by elevated levels of investment in our highly successful multi-year exploration program and in our robust project pipeline. These investments last year, along with several transactions intended to strengthen and streamline our portfolio, are key elements of our strategy to position Core as America's premier growing precious metals company. We're now quickly approaching a phase of expected high return growth, featuring sustained levels of expected free cash flow from a larger, longer life, lower cost production base generated by our collection of North American assets. Looking back at last year, I'm especially proud that our team accomplished everything they did while delivering another year of consistent operational excellence despite a challenging macroeconomic environment. I'll start off on slide three in today's presentation with a few key highlights. With a strong finishing kick in the fourth quarter, CORE once again achieved consolidated annual production and unit costs within guidance at each of our primary gold operations which contributed to our highest annual revenue in nearly a decade. I'll ask Mick to go into the specific operational drivers of our performance in a moment, but I'll touch on a few key highlights. Palmareo delivered particularly strong results with $25 million of cash flow in the fourth quarter on a 14% increase in mill throughput. Strong throughput and grades drove solid free cash flow at Kensington, Wharf delivered on plan following a near record third quarter and Rochester rebounded nicely from a third quarter marked by crushing and hauling work related to the POA 11 expansion. Four tons placed increased 12% despite a greater than 100 year rain event in October that impacted about 10 days of production. We've asked a lot from Rochester as we work our way through the POA 11 expansion project. The team has certainly dealt with its share of day-to-day operational and industry-wide challenges, all while embracing changes to the operation as the mine transitions into the linchpin of the company's future production and cash flow that we expect it to be. The full-scale test work taking place has been invaluable in de-risking development and informing our operational approach to the expanded project. The finish line at POA 11 is beginning to come into focus. The team conducted a comprehensive re-baselining during the quarter that included reviewing in progress and newly awarded construction contracts. I'm pleased to report that we consolidated the two outstanding SMPI contracts related to the construction of the Merrill Crow Processing Facility and the Crushing Circuit into one single contract. We've awarded it to TIC, a subsidiary of Kiewit Corporation, which you may recall did some great work for us at Silvertip over the past year. Having a proven and reliable construction partner in place reduces our development risk and increases clarity on project completion. In addition, this re-baselining led to the value-accretive decision to incorporate prescreens as part of the new crushing circuit. This work has led to a refinement of the estimated capital for the project. The updated capital estimate is now approximately $520 million, which reflects the 10% to 15% increase we flagged for you last quarter, driven by industry-wide inflationary pressures. In addition, prescreens on the new crusher and associated reassessment of contingency estimates are expected to add $70 to $80 million to the total cost of the project. The stage six leach pad is now essentially complete. Next up is the Merrill Crow facility, followed by the crushing circuit, which will now include the prescreens. The full project is expected to be completed mid next year. Moving to exploration on slide seven, we invested a record $71 million during the year, which led to new discoveries, mine life extensions, and resource growth. After depletion, Palmareo saw its silver reserves increase roughly 5% to 62 million ounces, while Wharf added about two years of high-quality mine life after depletion from about a $5 million investment in exploration. On a gold-equivalent basis, all classes of mineralization increased approximately 2.5%, thanks in part to impressive resource gains at Silvertip. We plan to invest approximately $40 million in exploration in 2022, with about half allocated to infill drilling, with the goal of converting a portion of this expanded inventory of resource ounces. Over the last five years, CORE has invested approximately $240 million in exploration, which is a key element of our strategy and differentiates us relative to the sector. In our estimation, Not many companies can point to that level of commitment to exploration or to the level of success in growing reserves and resources like we've experienced. In addition to replacing production over the past five years, totaling 1.8 million ounces of gold and 56 million ounces of silver, we've added another 500,000 ounces of gold and 85 million ounces of silver to our reserves. And across the resource categories, 3.5 million ounces of gold and 145 million ounces of silver have been added over the past five years, increases of 132% and 63% respectively. Silvertip has experienced its own significant growth since we acquired it in 2017. In just the past year, Silvertip's high-grade resources increased 50% for silver, 35% for zinc, and 43% for lead. These company-wide increases have been generated at low discovery costs and represent a tremendous return on investment as we monetize these ounces in coming years. Relative to our production last year of approximately 350,000 ounces of gold and 10 million ounces of silver, these reserve and resource additions extend the runways out ahead of our operations and provide a lot of flexibility and optionality for future growth. A quick note on Silver Tip. Studies are underway to determine the next steps toward a potential restart and right sizing of one of the highest grade silver zinc lead deposits in the world. With continued exploration success and strong metals prices, coupled with a potentially larger scale operation, we hope to identify a robust business case to support a restart following completion of the Rochester expansion. We expect to have the results of this work later this year. Before passing the call over to Mick, I'm proud to highlight CORE's recent ESG achievements, beginning on slide 17, including further progress on our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, an updated assessment of what ESG issues are most material to CORE, and a recent upgrade to an A rating by MSCI. I'm also happy to report that CORE's lost time injury frequency rate reached an all-time low in 2021, and our total reportable injury frequency rate remains among one of the lowest in the industry. The important accomplishments we achieved as a team last year would mean very little without the knowledge that we accomplished our objectives safely and to the mutual benefit of all CORE stakeholders. CORE's track record of succeeding responsibly isn't a matter of luck. Our culture and mission demand it. I'll now pass the call over to Mick.