Fortitude Gold Corp

Greetings. Welcome to the Fortitude Gold 2025 Third Quarter 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 and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining Fortitude Gold Corp's 2025 third quarter conference call. Following my brief comments and associated presentation for those who joined online, I have a brief question and answer period. Joining me on the call today for the Q&A portion will be Ms. Janet Turner, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind everyone, certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are 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 this earnings release that we issued yesterday along with the comments on this call are made only as of today, November 5th, 2025, 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 31st, 2024. Second, excuse me, third quarter financial results and highlights include 4.7 million net sales, 0.2 million net income, or one cent per share, 11.7 million cash balance at September 30th, 2025, 1,384 gold ounces produced, 28.5 million working capital at September 30th, 2025, 2.5 million mine gross profit. 1.6 million exploration expenditures. 1,244 total cash cost after byproduct credits per ounce sold. 1,956 per ounce total all-in sustaining cost. 0.7 million dividends paid. 619 ounces of gold rounds or bullion at September 30th, 2025. Our Isabella Pro project, we continue to move waste from the pro-pit layback. We've begun to access the top of the mineralized gold zone trending southeast deep from the bottom of the pit. Due to the leach of our heat leach pad and the mineralization in the pro-pit, both areas are expected to provide the bridge, including our county line project, into production. We are pleased and excited to now have all our county line permits We thank the pro-business and pro-mining Trump administration that is working through the permit backlog. After the brutal four years in the Biden desert, we finally have all the necessary permits and the bonding is in place for our counterline project. We have begun drilling the water well and are planning for other infrastructure projects in the near term. We hit water and are pump testing and developing the well now. It's looking promising. that we have enough adequate water for the project. We are looking at the possibility of taking a few pieces of equipment over soon and mining some gold in historic pit as initial mining before the larger pit layback and waste removal. It's nice optionality to have, and we see and we will see if we ultimately use it. look to take advantage of this permit momentum and are pushing permits for Scarlet South. The government shutdown hasn't helped, but we feel we are closing in on a permit to mine that mineralization. In an ideal world, that permit would drop in soon, and we would take advantage of the mining equipment at Pearl and cycle the equipment back and forth between Scarlet and Pearl. If the Scarlet South permits take too long, we would then plan to move our focus to County Lines. But the possibility of mining Scarlet before County Line is attractive for numerous reasons, including efficiencies and extra runway to bring County Line online. We are pleased to announce we have brought our mining in-house and have leashed a brand new feed of Komatsu equipment. We'd like to thank our previous mine contractors for their work. With the near-term movement of equipment to various mines, it made more sense to bring the mining in-house. We received our power grid permit and await NV Energy to begin the power line installation. They have been on site and we are optimistic they will begin construction soon. We look forward to the energy cost savings by connecting to the power grid. We now have our heap leach expansion permit and look to acquire mine permits for North Scarlet and Golden Mile, as well as an exploration EA for East Camp Douglas. We target permitting as many projects as possible under the Trump administration so that we have numerous mines to build and operate for many years in the future. This would allow us to weather another four years in a Biden-equivalent desert if the next election cycle goes against the mining and business. With gold having reached record highs recently, I believe this pullback in the gold price is healthy as no market should go straight up. It's been my experience that pullbacks to fill in the market are important for the next leg higher. So while we are not at 4,300 gold highs today, we're rather closer to 4,000. And that is still a wonderful price to be selling gold at. Mainstream media is quick to tell you that the gold bull is over, and they may be right. But where was the mainstream media in giving us the heads up that the big bull move was coming in the first place? More signs point to a higher gold price after this pullback concludes. Continue to defensively position the company to overcome the challenges created by the Biden administration while targeting to offensively position the company to permit and build our next minds under the Trump administration. With that, I would like to thank everyone for their time today on this conference call. And, operator, if you could open up the lines if there are any 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. Once again, that is star 1 to ask a question. One moment, please, while we poll for questions.