Fortuna Mining Corp

Welcome to the Fortuna Mining Company Q4 and full year 2024 financial and operational results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Carlos Baca, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Holly. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you to Fortuna Mining's fourth quarter and full year 2024 Financial and Operational Results Conference Call. Hosting the call today on behalf of the company will be Jorge Alberto Ganosa, President and Chief Executive Officer, Luis Darío Ganosa, Chief Financial Officer, Cesar Velasco, Chief Operating Officer, Latin America, and David Whittle, Chief Operating Officer, West Africa. Today's earnings call presentation is available on our website. As a reminder, statements made during the call are subject to the reader's advisories included in yesterday's news release, the earnings call webcast presentation, MD&A, and the risk factors in our annual information form. Financial figures contained in the presentation and discussed in today's call are presented in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Technical information in the presentation has been reviewed and approved by Eric Chapman, Fortuna's Senior Vice President of Technical Services and qualified person. I would now like to turn the call over to Jorge Alberto Ganosa, President, Chief Executive Officer, and co-founder of Fortuna.

Thank you, Carlos, and good day to all. We're building a proven track record of expanding margins and generating strong cash flow, driven by stable costs and rising gold prices. With a robust balance sheet and strong liquidity, we're actively investing in the business while delivering returns to our shareholders. In the fourth quarter, the company had record free cash flow from operations of $19.6 million, which represents an increase of 69% versus Q3 2024. And net cash from operations before changes in working capital was also a record 142 million or 46 cents per share, beating analyst consensus of 40 cents. For full year 2024, we surpassed $1 billion in sales for the first time. Quarter over quarter, we realized a 7% higher goal price of $2,660 and 10% higher revenue of $302 million. While cash cost per ounce was 4% lower, leading to an expansion of operating cash flow margin from 33% to 50%. For full year 2025, comparing against 2024, our outlook is for stable to lower cash costs in the range of $895 to $1,015 per ounce, and stable to lower ASIC as well in the range of $1,550 to $1,680 per ounce. Financially, today we're strong, and this only continues to improve in the current gold price and operating environments. Since the completion of the Seguela Mine construction in mid-2023, we have reduced debt by $118 million, moved from a net debt position at the time of $198 million to a year-end positive net cash position of $59 million. At year-end, cash was $231 million, a quarter-over-quarter increase of $50 million driven by strong growth in our free cash flow, and liquidity was over $381 million. All this while we maintained a very low debt leverage ratio of under 0.4. We returned $30.5 million to our shareholders via share buybacks in the fourth quarter, and followed with additional purchases in January of $1.8 million or 400,000 shares until the reporting period blackout setting. We look forward to remain active in our repurchase programs throughout the year. During full year 2024, $49 million was invested in mineral exploration and new project development. We plan to continue investing aggressively in the asset portfolio in 2025 with a budget of $51 million, with several high-value targets like Kingfisher and Sandbird Deep at the Seguela Mine Camp, the Tongon North Prospect in northern Cotiguá, the Dian Basud project in Senegal, and the Alizaro Gold Porphyry at the Lindero Mine in Argentina. Optimization of our mine portfolio is something I want to expand on as well. We're capturing two large opportunities. First, in line with our messaging throughout 2024, we announced at the beginning of the year the strategic decision to divest of our non-core San Jose mine in Mexico, which had become our highest cost mine and was producing from the tail end of its reserves. The sale process is ongoing and, once concluded, will allow us to refocus capital and management's attention on high-value opportunities. And second, the successful optimization and expansion of our flagship Seguela mine has allowed us to provide two-year production and cost outlook with the mine planned to reach, in 2026, a goal production of 160,000 to 180,000 ounces at an industry-leading ASIC of between $1,260 and $1,390 per ounce. For 2024 performance for total recordable injury frequency rate and lost time injury frequency rate was 1.36 and 0.48, respectively, compared to 1.22 and 0.36 in 2023. Importantly, our 2023 and 2024 performance measures consistently well against the published 2023 ICMM TRIFR figure of 2.59. And three of our mines operated free of any lost time injuries in 2024. However, subsequent to year end, this performance was tainted by the fatal accident at our Seguela mine on February 24th. We deeply regret this tragic accident and our heartfelt condolences have gone out to family and colleagues. A specialized service provider to our mine contractor Mota and Jill was fatally injured while conducting a planned inspection and recharge of fire extinguishers. Upon the accident, senior corporate managers mobilized to site and an investigation is underway. We're firmly committed to a zero harm work environment at Fortuna. Now, our chief operating officers will provide a briefing of their respective regions. We'll start with West Africa and David Whittle. David.