Newmont Corporation

Good morning and welcome to Newmont's third quarter 2024 earnings pool. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tom Palmer, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. Today I'm joined by my executive leadership team, including Natasha Villioun and Karen Overman, and we'll all be available to answer your questions at the end of the call. Please note our cautionary statement and refer to our SEC filings, which can be found on our website. Before we discuss our third quarter performance, I would like to take a moment to remember Antoine Fortin, who tragically lost his life at our Illinois operation late last month. We recognise that this is our fifth fatality in less than a year and we are working diligently to strengthen and improve our safety systems along with the key safety tools that we use in the field. We are fully committed to understanding the factors that contributed to this tragedy and are taking decisive action to improve our safety culture. with a clear focus on effectively controlling all of the risks that could lead to our fatality. We will also continue to transparently share the lessons we learn from the investigation with our peers in the industry to help improve the safety performance of our sector. At Newmont, we know that a strong safety culture is fundamental to sustainably delivering on our commitments, and it is our accountability to ensure that everyone working at Newmont returns home safely after each and every shift. Turning now to a summary of our third quarter. I'm honored to have recently been appointed as the next chair of the International Council on Mining and Metals, or ICMM. I look forward to playing an even greater role in advancing sustainability and responsible mining practices, both at Newmont and across our industry. During my term as Chair, one of my key priorities will be building support for the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative, an effort we have strongly supported and actively engaged in over the last few months. These consolidated standards will be essential for strengthening the industry's reputation and providing stakeholders with confidence that the commodities we produce are mined responsibly. Last week, we announced that we have partnered with MKS PAMP to launch our first mine-to-market traceable gold bar for sale in the United States, making Newmont's gold directly accessible to consumers and demonstrating our commitment through transparent sourcing. Shifting to our world-class portfolio of Tier 1 and emerging Tier 1 operations and districts. In the third quarter, we produced nearly 1.7 million ounces of gold and 430,000 gold equivalent ounces from copper, silver, lead and zinc. And notably, this included 37,000 tonnes of copper. We generated $1.6 billion in cash flow from operations and $760 million in free cash flow. Our non-core divestment program has advanced meaningfully since our last earnest call, with the two recently announced transactions expected to deliver up to $1.5 billion in combined gross proceeds. The first announcement was a definitive agreement to divest the Telfer mine and our 70% interest in the Haberon project in Western Australia for total proceeds of up to $475 million. We continue to progress the closing conditions and expect to complete the transaction this quarter. The second announcement was a definitive agreement to sell the Achim mine in Ghana for up to $1 billion in cash consideration. And we also expect to close this transaction towards the end of the year. With this solid progress, we remain firmly on track to realise our commitment to generate at least $2 billion in gross proceeds from the divestment of our non-core assets. It is also important to note that this is in addition to the $527 million in cash proceeds that we have already received this year from the London Gold and Nita Hijau transactions. Our divestment progress and strong free cash flow generation have positioned us to be able to continue reducing debt and returning capital to shareholders. Since our last earnings call, we have retired $233 million in debt and returned $786 million to our shareholders through share repurchases and quarterly dividends. We also approved an additional $2 billion share repurchase program, bringing our total authorization to $3 billion. In addition, we continue to safely advance the three projects we have in execution. the second expansion at Tanami, our new mine at Halfo North, and the Panel Ks at Cadia. And finally, turning to synergies. When we announced our decision to acquire Newcrest, we committed to delivering $500 million in synergies from three areas, G&A, supply chain, and our full potential program. And as of today, we have achieved that $500 million synergy run rate. Starting with G&A, a $100 million synergy run rate was achieved through labour rationalisation and reductions in both insurance costs and contractor spend. Moving to supply chain, our team has been leveraging the scale of our combined company to achieve improved commercial outcomes that have already brought our synergy run rate from this area to $200 million. And finally, we have begun to realise significant value from our full potential program and are in the delivery stage of our initiatives at CADIA, Redcris and La Hia. From this work, we have successfully surpassed a $200 billion synergy run rate with potential upside to be realised in future years. The majority of the value realised so far has been attributed to CADIA to the work we've been doing to more efficiently move stockpile material and to optimize the output from our high pressure grinding roll system in the mill an initiative that i touched on last quarter and the remaining value has come from redcris and lahir at redcris we're improving gold and copper recoveries from the optimization of both the grinding and flotation circuits while also increasing throughput by delivering a more consistent ore feed to the mill. And at Lahia, we are focused on improving efficiency by de-modelnecking the materials handling and crushing circuits, as we mentioned on our first quarter earnings call. With our synergy commitment now met and our divestment program well advanced, we are now focused on the sustainable value that we will deliver from our go-forward portfolio of 11 managed large, long-life operations. So with that, I'll now turn it over to Natasha for an operational update and then to Karen to take us through our financial performance for the quarter. Over to you, Natasha.

Thank you, Tom. As we enter the final quarter of 2024, I'd like to start by re-emphasising the operational priorities I highlighted at the beginning of the year. Our focus remains on three key objectives. First is making sure that every person walking through a Newmont gate is fully equipped and authorized to do their work safely. Second is continuing to deliver strong performance from our managed assets, while also guiding our non-core assets through a respectful and productive process for divestment. And last, is enhancing long-term productivity at every one of our 11 managed Tier 1 and emerging Tier 1 operations. Turning to the next slide, and let's begin with an operational overview. In the third quarter, our managed portfolio delivered a meaningful step up in production as planned, producing 4% more gold than the second quarter. and building momentum for a strong finish to the year with an anticipated 1.8 million ounces of gold in the fourth quarter, or an approximately 8% increase over the third quarter. This performance has been largely driven by our six managed tier one operations, which I now will touch on in more detail. And I will start with Tanami. We began accessing higher grades from the Liberator ore body and remain on track to deliver the year's strongest grades in the fourth quarter. At Boddington, we continue stripping in the north and south as planned, which is expected to continue through 2025 and will bring forward strong gold and copper grades starting in 2026. Moving to Penesquito. We delivered steady gold, silver, lead, and zinc production in the third quarter from the Chile, Colorado pit and commenced mining ore in the higher gold grade Penasco pit, well ahead of plan due to efficient stripping. This will result in an increase in gold production in the fourth quarter and into 2025, and importantly, we have signed a new collective bargaining agreement with the union at Benesquito, which safeguards the rights of all workers and provides a solid foundation for operations at Benesquito through 2026. Turning now to CAIDIA. As factored in our guidance, grades at CAIDIA are expected to continue declining in the fourth quarter as we transition to and ramp up Panel CAIF to three, We are progressing integrated studies to align cave development with life of mine tailings capacity, setting up CAIDIA for the next three decades of all feed. Our focus for tailings is maximizing capacity in the current infant storage facility, repairing the southern wall of the northern facility that slumped in 2018, and then raising the wall of the southern facility. These efforts are expected to contribute to a period of increased sustaining capital spend at Kaidea over the next few years, as we make the necessary but disciplined investment to remedy and expand the current tiling facilities. At Lihue, we continue to progress the planned shutdown of the primary autoclave, which remains on track to deliver an approximate 30% step up in gold production in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the third quarter. As we look ahead to 2025, our operational focus at the year will remain on reducing complexity to deliver more sustainable and predictable results at this Tier 1 operation. In the short term, these efforts will result in lower than initially anticipated production next year due to lower throughput to allow for asset reliability improvement work and changes to the mine sequencing, including the establishment of wider ramps to manage surface water and repositioning all roads to be more effective and efficient. Once we complete this work, we will be processing a higher proportion of lower grade stockpiles in 2025. And we anticipate that gold production next year from the year will be largely consistent with this year's and around 250,000 ounces lower than our initial guidance for 2025 that we provided back in February. Importantly, this work will simplify and improve operations at Lihir for the long term, establishing it as a more consistent contributor as one of the 11 managed operations in our Go Forward portfolio. Similarly, at Bruce Jack, we have taken a step back this year to do the development and drilling work to ensure that we improve our knowledge of this nuggety ore body We continue to experience periods of exceptional high grades, including a one-day average of 52 grams per tonne last month, and an average of over 20 grams per tonne in the same week. As a result of the work we are doing, we anticipate that the gold production next year from Bruce Jack will also be largely consistent with this year, or around 100,000 ounces lower than our initial guidance for 2025 that we provided back in February. Moving to Ahofo South. In the third quarter, we achieved a significant increase in gold production of nearly 15% over the second quarter, driven by a higher mole throughput following the successful girth gear replacement in April and strong grades from our Subika open pit and underground mines. Looking ahead, we expect our half-hour south to maintain consistent production levels in the fourth quarter and into next year, before declining in the second half of 2025 when we complete mining activities at the Subika open pit as planned. And finally, during the fourth quarter, we expect to commence mining activities at our half-hour north. and will stockpile ore to be used to commission the mole next year. This will be an essential milestone for our African business unit as ACHEM is divested and production is replaced with new low-cost ounces from AHAFA North towards the end of 2025. Continuing with AHAFA North, we have made notable shift from land clearing and earthworks to constructing the infrastructure for this new mine. The carbon and leach tags are complete and we continue constructing the crushing, conveying and more infrastructure, which you can see in the photo in our presentation. We recently completed the lining of the tiling storage facility and are establishing the whole roads to begin stripping at this new mine in the fourth quarter. At the second expansion at Tanami, Our focus remains on the concrete lining of the shaft and we have completed more than a kilometre of this 1.5 kilometre deep production shaft. As you can see in the photo, the winder building is now largely complete and we are preparing to install the wasting machinery which will be used to raise and lower our people, equipment and ore within the mine shaft once complete. Al-Qaeda Panel Caves project is progressing well. At Panel Caves 2-3, we have achieved cave establishment, meaning that the intended fracturing has begun and gravity is now playing an important role in the mining process. This is a significant milestone for this multi-year project, and we are successfully processing gold and copper ore from this cave. Over the next decade, Panel Caves 2-3 is expected to deliver a million ounces of gold and more than 400,000 tons of copper and is anticipated to ramp up to an average of 400,000 gold equivalent ounces between 2027 and 2032. At Panel Guide 1-2, we continue to advance underground development and the construction of the materials handling system. As a much larger cave, Tunnel Cave 1-2 is expected to deliver nearly 4 million ounces of gold and more than 700,000 tons of copper over its 15-year cave life. And it is anticipated to ramp up to an average of 525,000 gold equivalent ounces between 2030 and 2014. And with that, I'll turn it over to Karen.