Fortitude Gold Corp

Greetings. Welcome to the Fortitude Gold second quarter 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Jason Reed, CEO of Fortitude Gold. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. And thank you for joining Fortitude Gold Corp's 2023 second quarter conference call. Following my brief comments and associated presentation for those who joined online, we will have a brief question and answer period. Joining me on the call today for the Q&A portion will be Mr. John LaBate, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, as described in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued yesterday, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today, August 2, 2023, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC for the year ended December 31, 2022. The second quarter was another strong one and positioned us to achieve the high end of our annual production targets. We achieved 19.2 million net sales, 3.6 million net income or 15 cents per share, 46.9 million cash balance on June 30th, 2023, 9,684 gold ounces produced, 3.36 grams per ton average gold grade mined, 91.9 million working capital at June 30, 2023, 11.2 million mine gross profit, $527 total cash cost after byproduct credits per ounce gold sold, and $680 per ounce total all-in sustaining costs, 3.9 million dividends paid, which included a 4-cent special dividend. Exploration spending was strong at $6 million, which resulted in great drill results like those just released, which included 10.67 meters, grading 5.39 grams per ton gold at County Line, along with geotech drilling for County Line mine planning and drilling for water monitoring and water wells for both County Line and Golden Mile. An extensive mapping and surface sampling program at the north end of East Camp returned extensive and widespread surface gold grading in grams per ton as high as 36.6 grams, 20.2 grams, 12.9 grams, and 10.6 grams gold, with multiple samples returning grades in excess of five grams per ton gold. We are moving forward with obtaining an exploration notice of intent to initiate our first drill program on these northeast campaigns after the near term drill program at the southern lithocap target is complete, though we might switch that and do the north first. We await questions on our plan of operations submitted to the BLM for our county line project and are positioning to turn in our plan of operations for our Golden Mile project in the near future. We continue to drill numerous targets on our Isabella Pearl trend looking for additional mineralization and have completed numerous mapping and sampling programs on most all of our properties generating additional drill targets to add to our list of future drill programs. Shareholders may also find interest in our growing physical metal bullion holding as part of our treasury diversification program. We currently have silver bullion and plan to begin adding gold bullion as well. To conclude, Q2 2023 was another strong quarter and we thank you for your continued support. With that, I would like to thank everyone for their time today on this conference call. And operator, if you can please open up the lines for a possible Q&A.

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we poll for questions.