McEwen Inc.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the McEwen Minings Q1 2023 Operating and Financial Results Conference Call. Present from the company today are Rob McEwen, Chairman and Chief Owner, Perry Ng, Chief Financial Officer, William Schaefer, Chief Operating Officer, Michael Medding, Vice President and General Manager of McEwen Copper, Stephen Spears, Vice President of Corporate Development, Jeff Chan, Vice President of Finance, After the speaker's presentations, 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, again, press the star and one. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Rob McEwen, Chief Owner. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'll make this quick. We've gotten our mojo back. From September 1, of last year to last Friday, May 5th, our share pricing has increased by 200%. That represents an increase four times greater than the GDX and the GDXJ indices, 11 times greater than the price of gold, and 15 times greater than the price of copper. And isn't it about time? And we still have much to regain. This outperformance was driven by a number of factors, which you'll hear in greater detail as we go on today. But the big ones were a 30 billion Argentinian peso investment in McEwen Copper by Stellantis, who is the world's fourth largest automobile manufacturer, and also an investment by the World's number two mining company, Rio Tinto, their technology arm, they increased their investment by $30 million to $55 million. Also factoring in is our increase in gold production and decreasing cost per ounce at our Fox and Gold Bar mines. We've also had encouraging drill results from Fox in Los Azules. And we benefited from an improving gold, silver, and copper price. We're going to be improving our balance sheet, deleveraging it by reducing our debt by 38% on Friday of this week. And I believe the best is yet to come. I will now ask Bill Shaver, our director and chief operating officer, to speak of our operations and growth projects for next year and Just before he starts, after Bill, there'll be Stefan Spears, our VP Corporate Development. He'll speak about our exploration progress, followed by Perry Ng, our CFO, and Jeff Chan, our VP Finance, to address our finances. And we'll conclude with Michael Medding, our VP and General Manager of McEwen Copper. Bill.

Thank you very much, Rob. Good morning, shareholders. This morning, we are happy to report our operational and financial results for Q1, which have improved dramatically over last year and are expected to continue to incrementally improve based on changes we are making in our operations. On the safety front, our safety record continues to be the cornerstone of our plans going forward. Our three mining operations worked without a lost time incident in Q1. We did have a minor medical aid in February when a Diamond Grove contractor employee cut his finger on a sharp piece of metal, but other than that, there were no injuries to people or contractors working for the organization. On an operational front, at the Fox Complex, we have continued our operational improvement process which has resulted in a higher gold production and lower costs in Q1. We processed 107,500 tons of ore and produced 12,929 ounces of gold in the first quarter versus 68,000 tons of ore processed and 7,246 ounces in Q1 of 2022. Thus, a very significant improvement of 57% on tonnage and 78% on ounces. Costs have also improved by approximately 30% over Q1 of 2022. We now have cash costs of $1,088 and all in sustaining costs of approximately $1,300 per ounce. The Fox complex is basically continuing a path of incremental improvement that began in Q2 of 2022 and have made steady improvement since then. We hope to continue this improvement over the remainder of the year. At Gold Bar, we completed the transition to a new contractor in January as planned and on schedule. We also moved the operation the open pit operation that is run by the contractor to the Gold Bar South pit, which produced most of the ore in Q1. In part, this transition was done because of the very heavy snowfall that we had over the winter in the pick pit, which is at a higher elevation. In Q1, we placed 578,600 tons of ore on the leach pad versus a budget of 459,000 tons. We produced 6,456 ounces of gold versus our budget of 8,952 ounces. The cash cost per ounce sold was $1,491 and is a significant improvement from 2022 of $284, and the ASICS was 1725 versus 2633 in Q1 of last year. The shortfall of 2,496 ounces was due in part to the slower beaching rate of the Gold Bar South Ore, but also due to record snow over the winter, as well as a very wet and rainy spring. The very heavy snowfall over the winter led to very high snow melt, along with very heavy spring rains, which resulted in a diluted gold braid in our solution that goes back and forth from the leach pad to the gold recovery plant. This had some impact on our recovery. A very high spring runoff also interrupted production and site access for approximately three days in the corridor. During that time, our two access roads were flooded, and getting to the site involved a boat and helicopter for a few days. With the help of our own people and our contractors, we were able to mitigate the impact of these unusual weather events. We are working diligently to get our production back on track, and we have returned to work in the pig pit in mid-April, where the ore has much better leaching kinetics, which will allow the gold to be released much quicker. This will improve our gold production in the remainder of the year. In Mexico, at the El Gallo Phoenix project, we have moved the plant that we purchased last year to the site and are planning for production in early 2024. We are presently working on three important aspects of the project. Number one, the permitting modifications required by the revised plant configuration and production rate. The construction, engineering, and scheduling for the project and the financing for this construction. As you might remember, we will reprocess the heat bleach pad, which has a grade of 0.6 grams per ton. To accomplish this, we acquired a used 7,000 ton per day gold processing plant, which was recently operating at another mining operation. We have moved this plant to our site, and we will assemble the front end of the plant, meaning the grinding, cyclones, and leaching portion of the plant, and use the present El Gallo Gold recovery circuit when we start production. The acquisition of this equipment reduces the capital cost for the project down to approximately $12 million. with potential to allow us to increase production as we move to production. We see this plant operating later this year or early in 2024. In all of our operations, we are continuing our progress in stabilizing and improving operations so we can obtain predictable outcomes for gold production and cost in 2023 and into the future. Thank you very much. And now I'll turn it over to Stephen Spears for an update on our exploration efforts.