Iamgold Corporation Ordinary Shares

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the I Am Gold second 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 then zero. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Graeme Jennings, VP Investor Relations and Corporate Communications for IAM Gold. Please go ahead, Mr. Jennings.

Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to the second quarter 2024 Operating and Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me today on the call are Renaud Adams, President and Chief Executive Officer, Martin Finussen, Chief Financial Officer, Bruno Lemelin, Chief Operating Officer, and Tim Bradburn, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. We are joining today from IAMGOLD'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 IAMGOLD, 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 on disclosures on 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 will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Bruno Adams.

Thank you, Graham, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It was another exciting quarter for IMGOL, with the first full quarters of operations at Cote and another strong operating performance from Misakane Westwood, putting us in a position to increase our overall guidance for the year. At a high level, I believe this quarter begins to paint a picture of what ultimately IM Gold would look like. Cote d'Ivoire is now ramping up, providing for higher production base, lower cost profile, and shifting the density of our value to Canada. At steady run rate, Cote d'Ivoire will be among the largest gold mines in Canada and a model for modern mining done right and for many decades to come. This is then coupled with strong and predictable productions in cash flow from Misakani Westwood. In addition, as a company, we are seeing our financial position growing stronger, quarter over quarter, with the potential for significant step change and improvement next year when Cote is running at full steam and our prepaid commitments are behind us. This will position us with a clear roadmap for success, which strong free cash flow generations will be essential to ultimately deliver the balance sheet and drive value accretions for our shareholders. And next quarter, we continue to improve the business and get closer to our objective. With that, we will now dive into the operating and financial results and highlights for the quarter. Starting with health and safety, IMGOL has continued to demonstrate a non-wavering commitment to safety excellence. At IMGOL, it is our priority to ensure everyone goes home safely. In the second quarter, a total recordable injury frequency rate was 0.6, an improvement from the prior quarter. I want to commend and congratulate the SFN team. which recently surpassed the record health and safety milestone of 5 million hours work with our recordable safety incident. Reaching triple zero over such a period is a monumental achievement in our industry and a testament to the professionalism and commitment to a culture of safety of our people in Burkina Faso. Looking at operation, on an attributable basis, IMGOL produced 166,000 ounces of gold in the second quarter, bringing the year-to-date productions to 317,000 ounces of gold. As we will get into in a moment, the second quarter production reserves were driven by Issaqan being unable to operate without disruption and benefiting from continued positive rate reconciliations. The continued ramp-up of Westwood as the mine benefits from the rehabilitation of the underground and opening of new mining phases, and of course, the first quarter of production of Cotea. The strong productions in sales volume translated to cash costs and all-in sustaining costs of $1,071 an ounce and $1,617 an ounce, respectively. Further, capital expenditure continued to step down quarter over quarter, totaling $119.7 million in the second quarter, as COVID transitions into operations and setting the stage for IMGO to see growing free cash flow moving forward. Looking at our guidance, the strong first half positioned the company to beat on our operating guidance for the year. Accordingly, we have increased our production guidance and lowered our cost estimate for the year. On production, IM Gold has increased its 2024 attributable gold production guidance per second in Westwood to 495,000 to 440,000 ounces of gold, up from 430,000 to 490,000 ounces previously. as both of these mine as a strong first half of the year. At Cote, we are maintaining our guidance of 130 to 175,000 ounces on a 60% basis, but we now expect productions to come in the lower end of this range as improvements are made to mill availability. But we will get more into this in a moment as we walk through each asset. On operating costs, the 2024 cost guidance for Sacan and Westwood combined is now expected to be in the range of $1,175 to $1,275 for cash costs per ounce sold, and $1,700 to $1,825 for ASIC per ounce sold. This compared to the previous guidance estimate of cash cost per ounce sold of $280 to $1,400 and ASIC per ounce sold of $1,780 to $1,940. While we have brought our cost expectation lower this year, the updated guidance ranges are above our year-to-date performance as the increased guidance reflects the outperformance we saw in the first half and grades are expecting to come down as we enter new mining phases. While inflationary pressures are easing, pricing for certain consumables, including finite and grinding media remains in line with the level of experience in 2023. With that, I will pass the call over to our CFO to walk us through our financials results and position.