Centerra Gold Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Sentara Gold 2021 Third Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will 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 on Friday, November 5, 2021. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. John Pearson, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to Sentara Gold's third quarter 2021 results conference call. Summary slides are available on Sentara Gold's website to accompany each speaker's 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 instructions for asking a question, and then we will open the phone lines to questions. Please note that all figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Joining me on the call today is Scott Perry, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Dan Desjardins, Chief Operating Officer, and Darren Millman, our Chief Financial Officer. 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 the 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. And for a more detailed discussion of the material assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, please refer to the news release, MD&A, along with our unaudited financial statements and notes, and all of our other filings, which can be found on CDAR, EDGAR, and on the company's website. And now I'll turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks a lot, John, and a very good day to everyone. Thank you very much for joining us for our Q3 earnings conference call. I'm just referencing the accompanying slide presentation that's available on our website. I'm just going to start off on slide number five. So on slide five, a number of key bullet points here just in terms of some of the key corporate highlights. The first bullet point, just starting with safety as always, you can see during the Q3 period, we had a number of safety highlights. One of the key ones I want to reference is that OXSURT, our producing operating gold mine in Turkey, we recently celebrated two million hours, consecutive hours of lost time incident-free operations Moving on to the second bullet point, just with regards to the global COVID-19 pandemic, during the quarter, we're seeing very, very good uptake in terms of the vaccination rollout, whereby the majority of our workforce is now double vaccinated. Third bullet point, just with regards to the Comtor matter, as you would have noted in our disclosure, we continue pursuing legal actions to preserve the value of our assets and protect the interests of our shareholders. This obviously includes the binding international arbitration, as well as the court action in Toronto and New York. Moving into the operation results, the fourth bullet point here. We had another good quarter in Q3. We've seen good continuity there, just in terms of our operating momentum and our productivity, and that resulted in gold output of just under 77,000 ounces. That was a relatively strong level of production. So when you look at the sixth bullet point, you can see in terms of the corresponding All in sustaining costs, it was a low competitive $781 per ounce on a company-wide basis. In parenthesis, in terms of the individual contributions at the operations, Mount Milligan was operating at $727 per ounce during the quarter, and Oxfam was operating at $603 per ounce during the quarter. So again, both operations demonstrating relatively low unitary costs. As I mentioned earlier, you know, there's a good level of production in the third quarter. I'm just referencing the second last bullet point here. And we think that puts us in very good stead with regards to our outlook or our full year guidance. We think we're well positioned in terms of achieving our goal production targets, both at Mount Milligan and Oxford. Last bullet point, just given that strong production that we're seeing, particularly at Oxford, as you would have noted in Q3, it was a strong quarter. We're also seeing very strong corresponding oil and sustaining cost performance. And as a result of that, we've actually lowered our full-year guidance for Hoxha, whereby we've decreased the estimated range to $680 to $730 per ounce. Likewise, that has a favorable impact just on the company-wide oil and sustaining cost range, whereby we've now lowered that to a new range of $700 to $750 per ounce. Just moving on to slide six, first bullet point here, just in terms of the headline earnings result, it was an adjusted net earnings of $0.12 per share. Darren, our CFO, he will expand on this further during his remarks. But in terms of free cash flow, the third bullet point, given the strong production, given the relatively strong oil and sustaining cost performance, and just in light of the relatively strong gold price and copper price environment, we are seeing pretty good margins, both from a profitability perspective as well as a free cash flow perspective. But during the quarter, Q3, company-wide, we generated free cash flow of $41 million. And again, in parentheses, you can see the individual contributions from the operating mines. So Mount Milligan generated $25.9 million of positive free cash flow, and Oxford had a significant increase in free cash flow generation, coming in at $48.9 million for the quarter. The strong profitability, the strong free cash flow, just referencing the fourth bullet point here, we finished the quarter with a debt-free balance sheet and total cash reserves of just under $912 million U.S. The second last bullet point, taking into account our revolving line of credit facility, which is entirely undrawn, we have a total treasury liquidity profile in excess of $1.3 billion U.S. Just lastly here in terms of the last bullet point, again, just recognizing the solid operating performance and the strong financial position, the board has again declared a quarterly dividend of Canadian $0.07 per share. You can see the chart down the bottom. I just want to highlight the chart in the middle, which is OXA. Obviously, this is our newest operating gold mine operating in Turkey. You can see the quarter-over-quarter free cash flow and As you can see in Q3, it was a significant increase in pre-cash flow performance. And that's consistent with what we've been guiding to. We've always expected the backup this year to be a back-end weighted production year. And what's really driving that is the grade dissemination profile and just where we are in terms of our mine plan and the sequencing of operations. So we are now into that high-grade sequence. We expect that to continue. here in q4 and likewise that will continue into next year as well and beyond but particularly next year whereby you know we are expecting a very meaningful significant increase in gold production levels relative to what we are guiding for this year so suffice to say Oxford is in is in a very good position and we are seeing that in terms of its profitability and its free cash flow generation just moving on to the next slide on slide seven Just in terms of Sinterra's environmental social governance profile and just in terms of some of the key quarterly updates here, I won't reference all of these bullet points, but in terms of the first bullet point, obviously from a safety perspective, that's absolutely paramount. We continue to be relentlessly focused on achieving a zero-harm environment. As I mentioned earlier, we had a number of safety highlights during the quarter, which is fantastic. And I'm sure Dan will expand on some of this during his remarks. I do want to mention the sixth bullet point here. Sentera is a member of the World Gold Council, and the members of the World Gold Council, we're currently rolling out the responsible gold mining principles. I think all of us in the industry are very well advanced on this, but particularly at Sentera, that is the case. We're looking to be achieving full compliance with these 52 key principles by the end of 2022, and I think our operations are well positioned for us to achieve that. And then just lastly, I want to give recognition to Mount Milligan. You can see here during the quarter they received a mine reclamation award from the British Columbia regulators. And again, just recognizing their proactive approach to reclamation. So that was a good achievement during the quarter. With that, I'm going to look to pass the presentation over to Dan Desjardins, our Chief Operating Officer. And Dan can provide some more detail on the operating highlights. So Dan, over to you, please.