McEwen Inc.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to McEwen Mining Q4 and Year-End 2021 Operating and Financial Results Conference Call. Present from the company today are Rob McEwen, Chairman and Chief Owner, Shagan O'Donoghue, VP, Corporate Controller and Interim CFO, Peter Ma, Chief Operating Officer, Michael Metting, Vice President, Andes Corporation, Minera SA, Steve McGibbon, Executive Vice President of Exploration, After the speaker's presentation, 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, press the pound key. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Rob McEwen, chief owner. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. And hello and welcome to fellow shareholders and investors. As you know, we've been working to turn our fortunes around. Today, we're going to discuss the progress that we made in 2021 and provide our outlook for this year. In 2021, we had a number of notable steps of improvement. We increased our production, lowered the cost per ounce at our operations, delivered positive exploration results, along with a preliminary economic assessment for our fox complex, showing that there's a 10-year life out in front of us there. And we created MacEwan Copper to fund the advancement of our Losses of List Copper project. Today on the call, a number of our officers will be talking about 2021 results and looking forward into this year. And we're going to start with Shugun. And it's on your, you're up Shugun.

Thank you, Rob. Good day, everyone. Our financial performance is looking to improve at our global and first complex in 2021. after a 2020 marked by the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although most significantly impacted by COVID-19, our 50-50 generation operation, as one would say, managed to generate $10 million in dividend payments to McLaren Mining during 2021. Our liquid assets at the end of the year, which include cash and cash equivalents, of $54.3 million including a split cash of $6.3 million. Investment in short-term cash would be a cash equivalent of about $1.8 million. And precious metal inventory of $1 million, we have $63.9 million as of the end of 2021. In 2021, we completed three financing transactions. which included a $40 million private placement for the advancement of Los Angeles project. At the first complex here in Ontario and in Canada, the full mine attained commercial production during 2021 ahead of schedule. We are expecting that the mine will continue to deliver as planned during 2022. Also, in 2022, primarily we continue to manage our operating margin by reviewing capital expenditures, materials contracts, improving to our management systems, and also bringing synergies to our procurement between operations. So the year has started, as we are all aware and know what is happening in the global arena right now. We started the year with a very high diesel cost, which already impacting our cash cost per ounce of about $35,000. We expect to see offset with the increase in gold price, like at current gold price, averaging $1,900. This is something that we are expecting that will be a positive impact to us, even though the diesel price is increasing, but we expect to see offset with the gold price. We'll be working in Los Altos during 2022 to advance the project to the feasibility stage. This spending will be accounted in our income statement as an expense. So we expect to see our income statement in 2022 be impacted by the spending that we are doing at Los Altos. Substantial to the year end, at March 5th, we raised $15.1 million through a flow-through financing that will be used exclusively for our qualifying calendar exploration and expedition. On building on the business case applied in the PA for the Fox Complex. And these are all the things that we'll be working towards in 2022. I will now turn the call to Peter, to Operations Region.