Endeavour Mining plc

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Endeavour Mining's fourth quarter and full year 2024 results webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. For those who wish to ask a question, please dial into the phone line. Please note that due to time constraints, we will be prioritising questions from covering analysts. Today's conference call has been recorded and the transcripts of the call will be available on Endeavour's website tomorrow. I'd now like to hand the call over to Endeavor's Vice President of Investor Relations, Jack Garman.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Endeavor's Q4 and full year 2024 results webcast. Before we start, please note our usual disclaimer. On the call today, I'm delighted to be joined by Ian Cockrook, Chief Executive Officer, Guy Young, Chief Financial Officer, and Jaria Traore, Executive Vice President of Operations and ESG. Today's call will follow our usual format. Ian will first go through the highlights, Guy will present the financials, and Jaria will walk you through our operating results by mine before handing back to Ian for his closing remarks. We'll then open the line up for questions. With that, I'll now hand over to Ian.

Thanks very much, Jack. And hello to everyone joining us on the call today. I'm proud to say that 2024 was another successful year for Endeavor, where we delivered on our strategic priorities. We produced 1.1 million ounces of gold at class-leading all-in sustaining costs of $1,218 per ounce. while maintaining an industry-leading safety record. Our year-on-year production growth marks a positive turnaround in the group's production profile, and one that we expect to keep building on until the end of this decade. A large part of that growth is driven by the successful completion of our organic growth phase last year. The Lafigue mine and Sabadala Masaro biox project have increased our production base improved our portfolio quality, and increased our diversification. Following this growth phase, we delivered a free cash flow inflection in Q3, generating $97 million, which we've now followed up with a record free cash flow of $268 million in Q4, bringing total free cash flow to $365 million in H2 2024. And from here, we can certainly expect free cash flow generation to continue building throughout 2025. This strong free cash flow generation helped us to quickly deleverage our balance sheet to 0.55 times net debt to EBITDA at the end of the year, and we expect to reach our long-term target of less than 0.5 times very soon. Given the record free cash flow, low leverage, and strong operating outlook, we've declared record dividends for 2024 of $240 million, which we supplemented with $37 million of share buybacks. That brings our 2024 shareholder return to a total of $277 million, or a sector-leading $251 to every ounce of gold that we produced last year. During 2025 and 2026, based on prevailing gold prices, We expect to increase shareholder returns. And as you will have seen, year to date, we've increased our share buyback activity by 69% compared to this time last year. We have over $22 million bought back so far. All things being equal, we intend to continue with this activity. Our exploration program continues to underpin our growth. And not only do we increase our group reserves by a third this year, but we also achieved our five-year resource discovery target a year early, adding 12.2 million ounces of measured and indicated resources since 2021 for a discovery cost of less than $25 per ounce. Late last year, we completed the Asafo PFS, which defined a potential Tier 1 project that we expect to continue to expand. The DFS is now well underway, and we're on track to finalize this by late 25, early 26. Lastly, I want to highlight our 2024 Sustainability Report, which was published today, which demonstrates our continued commitment to protecting our operating environment, driving socioeconomic growth within our host communities, and supporting the long-term success of our business and host countries, thus creating meaningful values. We are pleased that this work is being recognized by the external rating agencies and we achieved an improved 17.3 low risk rating from Sustainalytics. And I'm proud to say that we are the best rated gold producer on the Sustainalytics platform. We've improved our score every year that we've been rated. Entering 2025, we've got strong momentum from the second half of 2024 and we're well positioned with a larger higher quality and more diversified portfolio. We're very pleased with performance so far this year, and we'll build on this focused on maximizing free cash flow generation from every ounce produced to support increased show returns and prepare the business for its next growth phase. Moving on to slide seven, You can see that our production increased each quarter in 2024, rising by 34% on 93,000 ounces in Q4 as our growth projects hit nameplate capacity, in addition to a particularly strong performance at Hyundai, which benefited from higher grades. In Q4, we also maintained our position as one of the sector's lowest cost producers, as our all-in sustaining costs decreased by $146 per ounce, primarily due to higher production and lower costs of Hyundai, MANA, as well as Lefige. On slide 8, and looking at the year ahead, as we announced in January, group production is forecast to grow by up to 14% year-on-year, while our all-in sustaining costs are expected to remain stable. Importantly, following the completion of our growth projects, our total mine capital is expected to decrease by 27%, or $162 million to just $440 million U.S. in 2025. Sustaining and unsustaining capital combined increased year over year in 2024 due to the addition of the two new growth projects and are slightly above the expected normal run rate due to higher than average stripping ratios across the portfolio. Our stable year-over-year all-in sustaining cost profile positions us as one of the lowest cost producers in the sector, firmly in the lowest cost quartile. Whether measuring total cash cost, all-in sustaining cost, or all-in cost, we continue to rank among the sector's leaders, and that's where we intend to stay. As I mentioned, during 24, We were pleased to reverse our declining production trend over the last three years on a like-for-like basis, and we're aiming to grow production by up to 14% in 2025. Then, with progressive increases in production at Sabadal and Masawa, Iti and Mana, coupled with the introduction of Asafo in late 28, we expect to increase production by up to 36% from 24 levels to about 1.5 million ounces by 2030. As we add low-cost production at Alder Fiege, Sabadal and the sale of BIOX, and later at the SAFU, coupled with optimization and productivity initiatives at our existing assets, we expect to be able to offset cost pressures associated with inflation and maintain stable costs to the end of the decade. Looking at slide 11, we generated more than $1.3 billion in adjusted EBITDA during the year from our continuing operations. That's a 27% increase year over year due to the increase in production and the higher gold price. On slide 12, you can see we generated $313 million of free cash flow in 2024, an increase of approximately $487 million year over year. due to the increased levels of production, reduced growth capex, and the higher prevailing gold price. We generated $381 million in H224 alone, and given that we don't expect to incur any material growth capital over the next six quarters, we anticipate generating stronger free cash flow in 2025 and going into 2026, always assuming the gold prices remain supported. On slide 13, We show strong free cash flow in the second half of 2024 has put our phase of delevering well underway. We've already improved leverage to 0.55 times net debt to the long-term medium of adjusted EBITDA, and we have a clear line of sight to reducing this further to at or below a 0.5 target in the near term. Guy will give you further details on our robust financial health. across the group shortly. On slide 14, and given the strong operational performance, free cash flow generation, and financial position at the end of the year, coupled with our strong outlook, we declared a record dividend of $240 million in 2024. We supplemented that with an additional $37 million worth of share buybacks increasing total payout to $277 million. In 2025, so far, we've already completed $22 million in share buybacks, and that's a 69% increase on the corresponding period last year. And given our strong outlook, healthy balance sheet, and the prevailing gold price, we expect to continue increasing this activity. To put our 2024 returns in context, we returned $251 for every ounce we produced, and that's equivalent to a sector-leading indicative yield of just under 6%. Over the last four years, since we launched our first shareholder returns program, we've returned over 30% of our market cap at the start of the period, which is even more impressive when you consider that we simultaneously invested approximately $750 million in our two organic growth projects. We track our returns on a per ounce basis to ensure that as we grow the business organically, we are preserving our margins and hence our ability to deliver increasingly attractive returns. and our dollar per ounce return is sector leading and we're well positioned to increase returns and grow production. A key component of our future organic growth is the SARFU, which we're seeing here on the following slide. We were delighted with the results of the PFS study late last year, which outlined a 330,000 ounce per year project at an all-in sustaining cost below $900 an ounce over its first 10 years of production. and having an initial 15-year mine life. Asafoom boasts really attractive economics, including a $2.5 billion NPV and a robust 40% IRR at $2,500 per ounce gold price. We continue to explore in close proximity to the project where we expect that we will add additional resources in the near term. The DFS and permitting process is tracking well for completion between late 25 and early 26. On slide 17, you can see that with 2.2 million ounces of measured and indicated resource discovered in 2024, we are pleased to achieve a 12 to 17 million ounce five-year discovery target a year early, discovering 12.9 million ounces since 2021. for less than $25 per ounce. I think this underscores our ability to not only sustain our operations, but to extend mine lives and add new greenfield projects, such like Asafo. For 2025, we've committed $75 million to exploration, and we'll focus our exploration efforts on near-mine opportunities at our core operations, as well as continued exploration at Asafo and the targets in close proximity to Asafo. On slide 19, you can see some of the highlights from our 2024 sustainability report, which we also published today. On the environmental side, we achieved a sector-leading low emission intensity of 0.63 tons of CO2 equivalent per ounce produced. And we expect to continue to improve our emissions as we recently commissioned our Sabadala Masawa solar plant. On the social side, we continue to be a pillar for economic growth in our host countries, delivering $2.2 billion in economic contribution and spending $1.4 billion on in-country suppliers. On the governance side, I'm happy to declare that we've achieved ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 certification now at all of our sites. And I think this really reflects our strong commitment to reporting and transparency at our operations. A continued improvement is being recognized by the Climate Disclosure Project, who've given us an improved B rating, and Sustainalytics, who've given us a low risk rating of 17.3. positioning us as the best rated gold mining company on their books. And now, with that introduction, let me hand you over to Guy, who will take you through the details of the financial results. Guy, over to you.