Centerra Gold Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Sentara Gold 2020 Third Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we'll conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Wednesday, November 4, 2020. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Pearson, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome, everyone, to Sentara Gold's third quarter results conference call. Summary slides are available on Sentara Gold's website to accompany each of the speakers' remarks. Today's call is open to all members of the investment community and media in listen-only mode. Following the formal remarks, the operator will give the instruction for asking a question, and then we will open the phone line to questions. Please note that all figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. As we continue to work remotely, joining me on the call today is Scott Perry, President and Chief Executive Officer, Darren Millman, Chief Financial Officer, Dan Desjardins, Chief Operating Officer, and Yusuf Raymond, our General Counsel. I would also like to caution everyone that certain statements made today may be forward-looking statements and, as such, are subject to known and unknown risks, which may cause our actual results to differ from those expressed or implied. Also, certain of these measures we will discuss today are non-GAAP measures. Please refer to the description of non-GAAP measures in our news release in MD&A issued this morning. For a more detailed discussion of the material assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, please refer to our news release and MD&A, along with the financial statements and notes, and our other filings, all of which can be found on CDAR and the company's website at venteragold.com. And now I'll turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks, John, and good day, everyone, and I trust everyone is safe and well. As John mentioned, I'm just going to be referencing our accompanying summary slides, which are available on our website. And I'm just starting off on slide number five. Just in regards to each of these bullet points, first bullet point here, throughout the quarter, throughout the year-to-date period, obviously our primary focus has been on our WorkSafe, HomeSafe, Safety Leadership Program. One of the key highlights during the quarter, which Dan will mention, is at Oxford, our newest operating mine, we actually achieved a key milestone, whereby we've now achieved 3 million hours of consecutive lost time incident free operations. It was a fantastic milestone, so I just want to commend the management operating team there. Likewise, with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a primary focus as well, just in terms of the well-being of all of our employees. We've put in place a number of preventative measures and protocols as well as following the various public health measures. And to the best of our knowledge, each of our properties continues to be virus-free, and we haven't seen any meaningful impact in terms of our production or productivity levels. In terms of the second bullet point here, a key focus for us is our social license. We can see we've now achieved a consecutive period of 87 months without interruption. In terms of environmental, there was no environmental incidents during the quarter, but we did have a biodiversity incident at our Comest property in British Columbia. which was associated with the mortality of some migratory birds. The Canadian Wildlife Service's investigation concluded that our team took all the appropriate actions, including immediately notifying the authorities and implementing a corrective action policy. Fourth bullet point there, diversity and inclusion is a big focus throughout the company. Here at Sentero, we've got a number of initiatives underway, a number of goals and objectives, and we're continuing to advance on those. The next bullet point here, likewise, just in terms of our climate change initiatives, we've submitted our latest climate change reporting, and you'll see that being disclosed publicly shortly. Likewise, during the quarter, we published our 2020 tallying storage facility disclosure as well. And just lastly, the last bullet point there in the bottom left, you know, Conterra Gold, we are a signatory to the World Gold Council's responsible gold mining principles. There's actually 51 of these principles that we're rolling out at all of our operations. We're making really good progress. And as we continue to advance on these, we'll increasingly be looking to attest to compliance with each of these principles using a third-party service provider. Just moving on to the next slide, on slide six, just to sort of delve into the quarterly operational and financial highlights. Again, you can see the first bullet point just in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I mentioned, we didn't see any meaningful impact at either of our operations. And again, to the best of our knowledge, we think our properties are virus-free. I spoke to the key safety milestone at OXA. Again, that was a very commendable achievement. So fourth bullet point, very strong quarter in terms of gold output. We produced just over 240,000 ounces of gold and just over 23 million pounds of copper across the company. When you look at the second last bullet point, just that high level of gold output, Correspondingly, you're seeing a very low competitive oil and sustaining cost. On a company-wide basis, we achieved an oil and sustaining cost of $528 per ounce, which was a fantastic result. I think notably, if you look in parentheses there, you can see the individual oil and sustaining cost results at each of the operations. And I think the key takeaway there is all of our mines are clearly operating within the lower cost quartile. This obviously positions us really well. when it comes to profitability. So if we transition to the next slide on slide seven, you can see just that strong level of metal production with a very low cost. In terms of our earnings result here, the first bullet point, we actually recorded net earnings of some $205.7 million or correspondingly 70 cents per share. The third bullet point, obviously the strong earnings, the strong profitability, that's also resonating in terms of our company-wide pre-cash flow generation. During the quarter, we generated $281 million of positive free cash flow. And you can see in parentheses, each of our operations on a standalone basis are generating very meaningful positive free cash flows. Fourth bullet point, given that strong free cash flow, our balance sheet continues to grow. We finished the quarter with a cash balance of $484 million. We do not have any corporate debt outstanding on the balance sheet, so that is our net cash balance. You can see together with our revolving line of credit facility, we have a total treasury liquidity profile of some $984 million. Fifth bullet point, just with regards to our guidance, we haven't made any change to our production outlook for the year. We continue to maintain our originally guided levels at the beginning of this year. I think that's a conservatively sort of balanced approach that we're taking, just given some of the uncertainty with regards to the global pandemic. Having said that, we're very well positioned and we're certainly targeting the upper end of that production guidance at each of the individual operations. Where we did make a change was on our oil and sustaining cost profile. We've favorably reduced our guidance there to a new targeted range of $740 to $790 per ounce. And then last bullet point, again, for the quarter, the board did declare a quarterly dividend of Canadian 5 cents per share. I just want to talk to each of the charts at the bottom here on slide seven. I think it really does illustrate a fantastic profile. You can see at each of our operations, generally speaking, quarter over quarter, this is the year-to-date period, we have been demonstrating growing levels of profitability and growing levels of public free cash flow. But I think what's really impressive is the third chart, which is our Oxford mine in Turkey. So again, this is our newest chart. operating mine in our portfolio. Last year, we were exclusively focused on construction here. We poured first gold in January, declared commercial production in Q2. And you can see here in Q3, you know, generating $74 million of positive free cash flow. The mine is ramping up very, very well. And, you know, we're very pleased, obviously, to see this level of performance. And I think it's exciting. It just, you know, it bodes really well for Sinterra's go-forward fundamentals, you know, our ability to showcase a portfolio of three low-cost profitable operations, I think, positions the company really well. And you can obviously see that in the chart in the bottom right-hand corner where, again, just the level of company-wide pre-cash flow has been growing quarter over quarter. You know, we have been increasing our level of metal production, but all of this is obviously favorably coinciding with a growing gold price environment as well. Just the next slide on slide eight, you can see the chart here in the top left. As you'd probably expect, we're in quite a strong gold price environment and correspondingly, our all-in-sustaining cost profile has been managing our business really well. During Q3, it was our lowest all-in-sustaining cost of the year today period. So as you'd expect, in terms of our margin over and above our all-in-sustaining cost profile, we're seeing a record margin at the moment. So benefiting from higher gold prices, but also we do have favorable tailwinds. We have been benefiting from currency devaluation in each of the jurisdictions where we operate to be the Canadian dollar, the Turkish Lira, the Kyrgyz Dom, but also a favorable diesel fuel price environment. And again, just reminding everyone, all of our operations are open pit mining operations and diesel fuel tends to be one of the larger commodity cost inputs. The chart in the bottom left, I spoke to that earlier, just growing levels of positive free cash flow. And you can see as per the red line chart, the prevailing gold price. You know, these elevated gold prices are certainly resulting in growing levels of profitability and free cash flow generation. And then the last chart just in the bottom right there is our balance sheet profile. So you can see in terms of our treasury position, it continues to strengthen, you know, finishing the quarter with $484 million in cash, zero corporate debt outstanding. So I think in terms of our business model, it has been going from strength to strength and Obviously, when you look at our total liquidity position, I think in terms of Sinterra moving forward, we're certainly well positioned to be an internally funded business model. With that, I'd now like to pass the call over to Dan Desjardins, who is our Chief Operating Officer. Dan, please.