Franco-Nevada Corporation

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Franco Nevada Corporation's third quarter 2022 results conference call and webcast. At this time the call is being recorded November 7, 2022. At this time all lines are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation we will conduct a question and answer session where you may ask a question through the phone line or the webcast. If you are joining by webcast you may submit your question for this question and answer session at any time during the call by typing your question in the Q&A section of the webcast platform. If you require immediate assistance during the call, please press star zero at any time for the operator. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Bonavitek, Vice President, Finance. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Franco Nevada's third quarter 2022 results. Accompanying this call is a presentation, which is available on our website at franco-nevada.com, where you will also find our full financial results. The presentation is also available to view on the webcast. During our call this morning, Paul Brink, President and CEO of Franco Nevada, will provide introductory remarks. Sandy Brana, Chief Financial Officer, will provide a brief review of our results. And Ian Gray, Senior Vice President, Business Development, will provide an overview of a recent Maginot transaction. This will be followed by a Q&A period. Our full executive team is available to answer any questions. Participants may submit questions by telephone or via the webcast. We would like to remind participants that some of today's commentary may contain forward-looking information, and we refer you to our detailed cautionary note on slide three of this presentation. I will now turn the call over to Paul Brink, President and CEO of Franco Nevada.

Thanks, Bonnevie, and good morning. I'd like to start by announcing that Jacques Perron will be joining our board of directors. We pride ourselves on the technical capabilities of our board, and Jacques will certainly add in that area, amongst others. Jacques had a very successful career in the industry, has led a number of companies, and I'm sure is well known to most of you. We got to know Jacques through his running companies where we have royalty interests, in particular while he is CEO of Predium, operating Bruce Jack, and is the CEO of St. Andrews Goldfields, running Horton Holloway. Jacques, welcome to the board of Franklin, Nevada. Turning to our Q3 results, we saw good underlying production from our diversified portfolio of assets in the quarter. While precious metal prices declined, the impact on our revenue in the quarter was partially offset by higher energy prices. Our Q3 Geos are lower than Q2 with two main items. While Colbury Panama had record production for the quarter, the strong performance isn't fully reflected in our Q3 Geo sales due to the timing of shipments. We also had a lower contribution from our Vale Ainur royalty. Despite these items, Frank Nevada has earned record Geos, revenue, adjusted net income, and adjusted EBITDA for the three quarters through September. We're on track to meet our 2022 guidance. We expect to be at the higher end of our overall geo guidance range and at the lower end of our precious metal range. The weaker gold price environment has led to an increase in demand for royalty and stream financing and in our business development activity. We're pleased to have acquired a royalty on Argonauts Maginot project in Ontario, currently advancing through construction. The project's had its issues with cost overruns, made only tougher in this inflationary environment, although we believe Argonaut now has a good line of sight on completing construction as planned. The asset has great upside. The current mine plan is a small portion of the total resource, and we believe far more ore will be recovered over the life of the mine. Last quarter, we announced the financing package we had provided to G-Mining for the construction of the Tocantinsinho project in Brazil. Since then, the company has received its license extensions and has commenced construction. Maginot and Tocantinsinho add to a growing list of minefields in our portfolio. Most advanced are Solaris Norte and Seguela, which are scheduled to start production next year, along with Maginot. We expect to see the first gold ounces from Greenstone, Mara Rosa and Tocantinsinho in 2024, and Valentine Lake is scheduled to start in 2025. Our other growth driver is mine expansions. The Cobra Panama expansion is on track to reach 100 million ton per annum of throughput by late 2023. First, Quantum commented this quarter that the mill is performed at the 95 million ton per annum rate and expect by year end it will operate sustainably at the 90 million ton per annum rate. At Detour Lake, Agnico discussed their plans to produce greater than a million ounces per year. The expansion work was ongoing through the quarter, and they hope to meet their near-term throughput target of 28 million ton per annum ahead of schedule. On the other hand, Stillwater have reduced their growth plans to 700,000 PGM ounces by 2027, down from 850,000 PGM ounces previously expected. The other mine expansions at Tagist, Macassar, Odyssey, and Island Gold are all progressing well. We continue to advance our ESG effort on a number of fronts. During the quarter, we have awarded four scholarships to diverse mining students at McGill, U of T, and Queens. We committed $225,000 of funding for community programs as part of the Maginot transaction. A number of programs we're funding are also currently being implemented, including community water infrastructure down to Pekai, an education initiative in partnership with Andamita, and community waste management at Cascavel. In summary, we're blessed with a business model that's high margin, largely immune to cost inflation, and exposes our shareholders to tremendous long-term optionality. With the prospect of global recession, it's a great comfort to have no debt, two billion in available capital, and to be generating operating cash flow at a rate that's close to a billion dollars per year. You'll recall that last year the board moved the annual dividend review earlier in the year, and we expect the same timing in 2023 with a dividend declaration in January for the first quarter dividend that's paid in March. With that, I'll hand the call over to Sandy.