Iamgold Corporation Ordinary Shares

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the IAMGOLD first quarter 2024 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 one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Graeme Jennings, VP Investor Relations for IAM Gold. Please go ahead, Mr. Jennings.

Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to our first quarter of 2024 Operating and Financial Results conference call. Joining me today on the call are Renaud Adams, President and Chief Executive Officer, Martin Venuson, Chief Financial Officer, Bruno Lemelin, Chief Operating Officer, and Tim Bradburn, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary. We are joining today from I Am 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 Anishinaabeg, Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. At I Am Gold, we believe respecting and upholding Indigenous rights is founded upon relationships that foster trust, transparency, and mutual respect. Please note that our remarks in 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 the non-IFRS measures, including 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 present CEO, Renaud Adams.

Thank you, Graham, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It is an exciting time at IM Gold. As a company, we're gaining momentum towards our goal of becoming a leading mid-tier and modern gold producer. The highlights of the quarter was, of course, the first fall at Cote d'Ivoire. With this achievement, we've brought online a key cornerstone producing asset in our third producing mine alongside of operations at Isakani and Westwood. At steady run rate, Cote Gold will be among the largest gold mines in Canada and is critical for the repositioning of Feingold. As Cote provides a higher production base, lower cost profile, and a longer life of cash flow generations and growth opportunity in Canada. We believe that Cote will be a model of modern mining done right here in Canada and for many decades to go. To the whole Cody Gold team and partner, I really want to express my congratulations and appreciations for a job well done, but a special thought to our resilient project and commissioning teams. This extends as well to operating teams in Quebec and Birkenau-Fasso, as Ryan Gold started this year with strong performance at both Isakane and Westwood, positioning the company well on the path towards our guidance targets for the year. Looking ahead, our primary target is on the safe and steady ramp-up of COTE. As we will discuss in a moment, the ramp-up has been progressing well, with all key equipment proving itself to be able to operate near NEM plate, and this compared to our targets of exiting the year at 90% plus of NEM plate. We remain very confident to achieve commercial production in the third quarter of this year. On the finance side, we will continue to prioritize the options to return to our 70% interest in Cote, as we believe that the value of this project is well above the current market sentiment and repurchase price. Longer term, we have a clear roadmap for NIAM Gold with strong free cash flow generation, and which will be essential to ultimately improve our balance sheet and deliver value to our shareholders. With that, we will now dive into the operating and financial results and highlights for the quarter. Starting with health and safety, IAM Gold is committed to our guiding principle of zero harm in every aspect of our business, putting the health and safety of the company's employee, contractor, and consultant first. IMGO started the year with a good performance on safety with the days away restricted transfer duty rate of 0.53 and the total recordable injury rate of 0.61, tracking below where we were last year. I want to take a moment to congratulate Issa Khan, which once again achieved a remarkable performance in health and safety with the total recordable injury days away, restricted transfer duty rate of 0.06. This is among the best health and safety performance in our industry and is a testament to the professionalism and commitment to a culture of safety of our people in Burkina Faso. On production, IMGOL started the year with strong attributable productions of 151,000 ounces, including a solid production of 150,000 ounces from Isakani and Westwood, which positioned us well for our annual guidance of 430 to 490,000 ounces on an attributable basis and excluding quality production. As we will get into a moment, the first quarter production results were driven by Sakani being able to operate without disruptions and benefiting from positive rate reconciliations, coupled with a continuing ramp up at Westwood as the mine benefits from the rehabilitation of the underground and opening of new mining areas. The strong productions and sales volume translated to a decline in our cash costs and all-in sustaining costs in the first quarter, excluding COTE, to $1,053 an ounce and $1,493 an ounce respectively, providing a major benefit to operating cash flow. With that, I will pass the call over to our CFO to walk us through our financial results and positions.