Iamgold Corporation Ordinary Shares

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the I Am Gold fourth quarter 2023 operating and financial results conference call and webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Graham Jennings, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications for IAM Gold. Please go ahead, Mr. Jennings.

Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to the IAM Gold fourth quarter and year-end 2023 Operating and Financial Results conference call. Joining me today on the call are Renaud Adams, President and Chief Executive Officer, Martin Theunissen, Chief Financial Officer, Bruno Lemelin, Chief Operating Officer, Tim Bradburn, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, and Jerzy Orszakowski, Executive Project Director, Cote Gold. Before we begin, we are joined today from IAM Gold's Toronto office, which is located on Treaty 13 territory, on the traditional lands of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabek, the Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. At Eye on Gold, we believe respecting and upholding Indigenous rights is founded upon relationships that foster trust, transparency, and mutual respect. Please note that our remarks on this call will include forward-looking statements and refer to non-IFRS measures. We encourage you to refer to the cautionary statements and disclosures on non-IFRS measures included in the presentation and the reconciliations of these measures in our most recent MD&A, each under the heading non-GAAP financial measures. With respect to the technical information to be discussed, please refer to the information in the presentation under the heading Qualified Person and Technical Information. The slides referenced on this call can be viewed on our website. I'll now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Renaud Adams.

Thank you, Graham, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Last year, IMGOLD made significant strides towards our goal of becoming a leading mid-tier gold producer. leveraging its asset to build a mining platform with a long-life cornerstone asset in Canada. As we will get into more detail shortly, Cote d'Ivoire saw remarkable progress in 2023, with the project starting the year with construction approximately 64% complete, but ending the year at 98% complete. This progress included major milestones across the project scope, including the mechanical, piping, electrical, and instrumentation of the plant, completion of the first stage of the tailing facility, electrification of the site to the provincial hydro grid, and initiation of a successful ramp-up of our autonomous mining fleet, making Cote d'Ivoire North America's first gold mine to be designed and built for the usage of autonomous haulage, which is changing the face of mining today. Cody is poised to start production shortly, with more than 5 million tons of stockpiling plates, commissioning activities ongoing, and a full hands-off of all primary facets of the project to the ownership team this quarter. Our primary focus and efforts continue to be on positioning the project for steady ramp-up of goal production through this year to achieve commercial production in the third quarter. At a steady run rate, Cody Gold will be the third largest gold mine in Canada, and it's critical for the repositioning of Fein Gold as the ones online. Cody provides a higher production base, lower cost profile, and a long life of cash flow generation and growth opportunities in Canada. Further, over the last 12 months, the company has seen significant changes in leadership across the organization. with a renewed focus on operational excellence and accountability while continuing to build on IMGO's strong and widely recognized sustainability practices. Operationally, I'm very proud of the team, with attributable those productions from continuing operations of 465,000 ounces, which was the top end of the guidance range of 410 to 470,000 ounces. I really want to congratulate the ESSA Canada team who achieved their targets while facing considerable challenges within the region, and the Westwood team who continues to execute on the plan to ramp up underground operation while employing industry-leading underground seismic monitoring and management. Last night, we also announced an update to our ERM, Mineral Reserves and Resources, with a net increase after depletion of the Sacana Westwood reserves, extending the mine life of these assets. Mineral resources saw significant increases while driven by updates to Cote and Gosselin as we grow our gold pipeline and future for the company. Longer term, our goals for IOM Gold remain. To be a leading intermediate gold producer with a portfolio of assets centered around a corner asset in Canada that have a proven record and ability to generate strong, consistent free cash flows and attractive returns for shareholders. Build on our pipelines of project and strategic geographies and organically grow our assets. Establish ourselves as a leader amongst peers in health and safety, talent development, and ESG, including biodiversity, tailing management, water stewardship, and community health and education. And of course, to be recognized as a leader in applying leading proven technologies that drives performance and sustainability across our business. Financially, we will prioritize returning to the 70% position in COETE with our partner Sumitomo. as well as use our cash flow to optimize our balance sheet and deliver the company to have a more efficient and balanced capital structure. With that, we will now dive into the operating and financial reasons and highlights for the quarter. Starting with health and safety, the company continues to perform extremely well with a days away restricted transfer duty rate of 0.39 and total recordable injury rate of 0.69, both based on 200,000 hours work. I want to take a moment to congratulate SACAM, which achieved its best ever performance in health and safety with a days away restricted transfer duty rate of 0.06. This is a testament to the professionalism and commitment to a culture of safety for our people in Burkina Faso. Ensuring all of our employees and contractors go home safely would always be a primary focus for IMGO. As we like to say, every gold ounce produced has to be done safely. And our goal continues to be zero harm. Zero harm for the people and the places where we operate. On production, in the fourth quarter, the company produced 136,000 ounces. bringing total annual productions to 465,000 ounces on an attributable basis, which was near the top end of our guidance of 410,000 to 470,000 ounces. As we will get into in a moment, the production results were driven by Isakani being able to operate without disruptions and benefiting from positive grade reconciliation. And the continued ramp up in rehabilitations of underground zones at Westwood. our cash costs and all in sustaining costs declined in the fourth quarter to $1,197 an ounce and $1,735 an ounce, respectively. This brings our year-to-date cash costs to $1,261 an ounce and an asset to $1,783 an ounce, in line with our revised guidance estimates here. On a year-over-year basis, we've seen a step-up of costs due to continued pressures at the SACAC, as well as sustained elevated price from the recent inflationary period. We are seeing some sign of price easing on certain consumables, but on the whole, there are several costs that have a long tail and slow to decline. With that, I will pass the call over to our CFO, to walk us through our financial results and position. Martin?