Kinross Gold Corporation

Thank you for standing by. My name is Sean, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to CUNY Rose Gold First Quarter 2024 Resource Conference Call and Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Lichtenholt, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. With us today, we have Paul Rowlinson, CEO, and from the Kinross Senior Leadership Team, Andrea Freeborough, Paul Champer, William Dunford, and Jeff Gold. For a complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties which may lead to actual results differing from estimates contained in our forward-looking information, please refer to page two of this presentation. Our news release date is May 7, 2024, MD&A for the period ended March 31st, 2024, and our most recently filed AIF, all of which are available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Paul.

Thanks, Chris, and thank you all for joining us. Today, I will discuss our first quarter results, provide high-level updates across our portfolio, highlight some of our ESG achievements, and confirm our outlook. I will then hand the call over to Andrea, Claude, and Will to provide more detail. Following our strong performance in 2023, our operations continue to perform very well, and we are generating significant cash flow. The strong gold prices so far this year are providing a tailwind for our business, which continues to be underpinned by a focus on cost discipline and margins. Our production in the first quarter was on plan, delivering 527,000 ounces. ASEUS, Paracoutou, and La Coypa contributed just over two-thirds of our production at strong margins, with an ASIC below $1,000 per ounce. Our U.S. operations also performed well in the first quarter, delivering on plan and remain on track for their full-year targets. Turning now to our development activities in the first quarter. At Round Mountain, the Life of Mine Extension Strategy that we announced last year is advancing well. We are making significant progress at Phase S and with our underground opportunities at Phase X and Cold Hill. I was recently at Round Mountain and was very impressed by the progress at Phase X, where we have completed approximately 1.8 kilometers of underground development. In Alaska, the MANCHO project is proceeding well and is on schedule to contribute to production in early Q3. Transportation of ore to Fort Knox continues to ramp up, and the mill modifications remain on track. At Great Bear, we continue to make excellent progress across several work streams. We had a highly productive few months with nearly 38,000 meters of drilling completed. As outlined in yesterday's press release, drilling continues to return significant results extending beyond our year-end resource update. In addition to drilling, other areas of the project such as permitting and engineering for the advanced exploration decline are progressing well. as our technical studies permitting and engineering work on the main project. We are on track to release our results from the ongoing work in the form of a PEA in the second half of the year. I want to provide some additional context around the level of study we plan to release. The PEA will provide a more fulsome view of the project, including both the open pit and underground resource. Publishing a PEA allows us to include some of the underground inferred resources. This will provide better visibility into our anticipated path forward for both underground and open pit mining. While it will be a PEA level study, we are putting substantial effort into our capital and operating cost estimates to provide additional confidence on the ASIC and margins. It is also important to note that our PEA will incorporate a subset of the ounces in our measure indicated and inferred resources. It will not include the deeper mineralization that we will not yet have drilled sufficiently to bring into the inferred resources. Our deep drilling has shown that the mineralization continues to dip well below the current resource in attractive widths and grades. As we continue drilling out the underground and commence underground drilling from the AEX decline, we expect the ounces in the mine plan to continue to grow. On permitting for the main project, the detailed project description was submitted to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada in Q1. The federal impact assessment is underway. and we expect to file our impact statement in the first half of next year. Turning to sustainability, our longstanding annual sustainability report will be published later this month. This report, which is in its 16th edition, will provide a comprehensive update on the progress we made in 2023 and what we aim to accomplish this year and beyond. Turning to our outlook, Following a strong first quarter, we are on track to achieve our 2.1 million ounce production and our cost guidance for this year. In light of the recent strong gold prices, we will continue to maintain our financial discipline and prioritize margins. With respect to capital allocation, our plan is to use excess cash flow to repay debt. Our first quarter is setting up 2024 to be another strong year. We believe that delivering on our guidance, coupled with our strong free cash flow, should continue to support strong share price performance. With that, I will now turn the call over to Andrea.