Centerra Gold Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Q1 2022 results conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in the 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 Wednesday, May 4, 2022. I would now like to turn the conference over to Toby Caron, Treasurer and Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Toby Caron, Treasurer and Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Toby Caron, Treasurer and Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. Welcome to Sentara Gold's first quarter 2022 results conference call. Please note that presentation slides are available on Sentara'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 are Scott Perry, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Darren Millman, Chief Financial Officer. I would 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 and MG&A issued this morning. For a more detailed discussion of material assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, please refer to our news release in MG&A, along with the unaudited financial statements and notes, and all of our other filings, which can be found on CDAR, EDGAR, and on the company's website at SinterraGold.com. And now, I'll turn the call over to Scott.

Thank you, Toby, and a very good day to everyone. Thank you for joining us for our Q1 Earnings Conference Call. Just referencing slide four of the accompanying presentation deck, just referencing the bullet points in the top left, I think we had another good quarter in terms of metal production. You can see during the Q1 period we produced just under 94,000 ounces of gold and some copper production of some 20.6 million pounds. This is a good level of metal output and you see that in the third bullet point just in terms of our corresponding oil and sustaining costs. After the quarter, we were producing our gold at a very competitive, very low $395 per ounce. And again, in parenthesis, you can see the individual contributions at the individual mine sites. Mount Milligan producing its gold as low as $15 per ounce, and Oxford producing its gold as low as $451 per ounce in terms of the oil and sustaining cost metrics. Mountain Milligan is really benefiting from the strong copper price environment whereby we take those copper revenues as a by-product, and that's what's resulting in those very low oil and sustaining costs per ounce. Just in terms of some key developments during the quarter, first of all, just referencing the fourth bullet point, back in February we announced the acquisition of the Goldfields District Project in Nevada. We think this is a very exciting addition to our portfolio and our project pipeline moving forward. We think this is going to be a key source of organic growth for Sentara moving forward and most likely will be our proverbial third leg to our stool. This year the plan is really focusing on drilling and exploration. As we make our way into 2023, we want to be in a position to publish an inaugural resource on the property, as well as a feasibility study, which we'll be looking to underpin a potential future construction decision. The fifth bullet point here, just in terms of Oxford and the identification of mercury within the mineralogy, we're continuing to conduct several studies in terms of identifying potential technical solutions to remediate this challenge. They are under evaluation as we speak. in addition to alternative means for monetizing our loaded gold in carbon. And I'll talk to this more in a future slide. And then just lastly on the last bullet point here in the bottom left, obviously during the quarter another key development on April 4th was when we entered into the Global Arrangement Agreement. with Kirghiz Sultan and the government of the Kirghiz Republic. This has been a very important development in terms of resolving the Qumtar issue, and I think this will be a good development for Sentara just in terms of us putting in place a clean exit and moving forward with our business. Just onto the next slide on slide five. A number of highlights here. I won't speak for them all. Just the first bullet point, just from a safety perspective, we had a very good quarter in terms of our all-injury frequency rate. We're actually operating below target, and we also had a number of milestones during the quarter, which gives us confidence that we can operate in an environment of zero harm. One of the particular milestones is at Oxford, where we achieved one million hours of lost-time incident-free operations. So I definitely want to commend leadership team at OXA. Again, a number of highlights here. Again, I'll just reiterate the third last bullet point. We're seeing very good levels of productivity and unit cost efficiency. And again, just given the strong metal output, you can see in terms of the result in all and sustaining cost per ounce, we're operating at a very low, very competitive $395 per ounce. Just moving on to the next slide on slide six, just in terms of our environmental social governance profile, again, a number of bullet points here just providing updates and some of the key initiatives during the quarter. Again, the first bullet point in terms of safety, obviously this is absolutely paramount and that key milestone that we achieved at OXCERT I think is indicative of our focus on obtaining a zero harm environment. I do want to touch on the third last bullet point. Sentara Gold is a member of the World Gold Council, and some two to three years ago, the World Gold Council rolled out its responsible gold mining principles, which is essentially a set of 52 environmental social governance principles. And we as an association, we as an industry, are looking to demonstrate full compliance with these principles by 2023. So as part of this program, we did our year two assurance at our site. And, you know, pleased to report that we're in excellent stead and establishing compliance with these principles. So, you know, in very good stead for achieving the targeted deadline. Just moving on to slide seven, just looking at Mount Milligan in a little bit more detail. You know, first bullet point, as I mentioned earlier, Mount Milligan had a very good quarter with regards to metal output, especially so in terms of copper production, which was fortuitous just given the strong prevailing copper price environment. But this strong level of metal production, you see that in terms of the corresponding oil and sustaining cost per ounce. So again, producing our gold as low as $15 per ounce. And again, really benefiting from the strong copper price environment and the quantum of copper by-product revenues that we're recognizing. Third bullet point, one of the key capital projects we have been working on at Mount Milligan is installing a new circuit of stage flotation reactors. The rationale here is we think this can add one to two additional percentage points of recovery on our gold and copper. Construction of this circuit has been underway for some time now and we're now actually in the commissioning phase and we expect to have this circuit commissioned here in Q2 of this year. So that should be beneficial just in terms of underpinning stronger gold and copper recovery efficiency rates here moving forward. Just the fourth bullet point, the team continues to work on the new 43-101 life and mine plan or the technical study for Mount Milligan. Those who follow Sentera may recall that we had a lot of success at Mount Milligan last year in terms of growing our gold resources and our copper resources. What we're focusing on now with this new study is looking to convert as much of that new mineralization into reserve category and we think that's going to underpin a meaningful extension in Mt. Milligan's delineated reserve asset life. So that study is on track and we expect to be publishing that here in the Q2 reporting period. Just on to the next slide, on the slide 8. Just the first bullet point, I touched on this at the outset. At Oxford right now, we are operating at full capacity. Be it our mining activities, stockpiling activities, crushing, stacking, irrigation and leaching activities, all of that is continuing at full capacity. We're continuing to convert our ore into loaded gold in carbon form, which we're currently storing and stockpiling in a securitized manner. In the interim, what the team here is working on is several potential sort of engineering technical solutions in terms of how we can upgrade the ADR facility where we do our gold processing. So looking at remediating some of these challenges to make sure that we can remove the mercury and continue to pour gold on site. But in parallel, we're also in discussions looking at alternative means of monetizing our gold and carbon and we're in discussions with some off-site sort of treatment facilities looking at is that a potential solution here in the short term. I think we're going to have a more meaningful update on this during the quarter and we'll look forward to reporting back on that shortly. Just the last bullet point here, the fourth bullet point, we continue to focus on all of our productivities, our unit cost efficiencies, big focus on trying to lower our costs even further at OXA. As you would have seen, OXA did have a very strong quarter during the Q1 period. They produced some 54,000 ounces of gold, and that's what resulted in, again, the competitive oil and sustaining cost of $451 per ounce. The mining continues to perform really well as we speak here in early Q2. Our productivity, unit cost efficiencies, etc. absorb gold. We're operating in line with target, if not ahead of target. With that, I'm now going to pass the call over to Darren Millman, our Chief Financial Officer, and Darren will drill down into some of the financial highlights a little bit more. Darren. Scott, and good morning all.