Equinox Gold Corp.

ounces with cash costs of between $13.55 and $14.60 per ounce and all in sustaining costs of between $15.75 and $16.95 per ounce. These costs remain somewhat elevated as they reflect a full year of the increasing input costs that we saw over the course of 2022. That being said, we are working to mitigate this cost pressure through optimization opportunities at all of our sites. Looking beyond 2023, we also expect to see the benefit of lower costs and the overall increase in production from the Greenstone Mine and the Castle Mountain Phase II expansion as those projects enter production. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Peter Hardy to run through our financial results. Thanks, Greg.

We're on slide five. Safety and environmental practices continue to improve over 2022. We ended the year with a 12-month rolling total recordable injury frequency rate of 2.12. and a 12-month significant environmental frequency rate of 0.63. I also want to add we had no LTIs in Q4. These are just great results, and it takes an effort by everybody, the whole company, and so we just want to say congratulations to all of our employees for making Equinox a safe place to work. It's really a great achievement for the year on safety. For the year, we sold 532,000 ounces. It was really an investment year. We invested $456 million in growth development. $328 million of that was at Greenstone. $49 million of that was at Santa Luz to complete construction there. And we also spent $43 million at Los Filos. That was primarily on Burma Hall underground development and preparing the Los Filos open pit for its next phase. The $139 million we spent on sustaining items was primarily deferred stripping in Arizona, Mesquite, and Los Filos. On slide six, as Greg mentioned, we had a good quarter. We had our second highest output for the company to date. We sold 149,000 ounces for revenues of $260 million and an average realized price of $1,733 an ounce. As Greg mentioned, cash costs, for the quarter were 1,223 and our own sustaining costs were 1,523 per ounce. The interesting thing we saw during the quarter in relation to costs is while our costs are up significantly, if you look at it on an annual basis, 2022 versus 2021, or on a quarter-on-quarter basis, i.e. Q4 2022 versus Q4 2021, costs are up significantly. The interesting thing that happened in the second half of the year, going from Q3 to Q4, is we actually did not see much by way of cost increases. In fact, costs stayed overall relatively flat. We saw some increases in consumables, such as reagents and grinding media in Brazil and the U.S., which were offset by decreases in fuel. So we're quite pleased to see that it looks like costs have peaked significantly. sometime in Q3 and at least remained steady for Q4. With respect to what that means for our financial metrics, we saw improvement in Q4, which we're, of course, happy about. EBITDA was $65 million, $75 million on an adjusted basis, net income of $23 million for earnings per share of $0.07, $7.5 million of income on an adjusted basis or $0.02 a share. Cash flow from operations also improved. Before changes to non-cash working capital, we had cash flow of 80 million or 26 cents a share, so happy with the quarter. With respect to liquidity and capital position, we ended the year with just over 200 million. We have 127 undrawn on our credit facility for total liquidity of 327 million. We did draw an additional 100 million on the revolving credit facility during Q4. The market value of our investments at February 17th was about $220 million. And I'll note that we realized proceeds during Q4, $52 million on Solaris share sales and an additional $20 million in the new year. Net debt increased due to that debt draw to about $630 million. And I just want to note a few other things, or at least during Q4, we did other things to improve our balance sheet resiliency. We filed the base shelf prospectus with the ATM supplement, I should say the at-the-market supplement. I will note we have used $25 million of that at-the-market supplement through the end of January, and we've paused that program since. Also, something we did in the new year to help with balance sheet resilience and cash flow funding, we did put in place a strip of hedge callers for 20% of our production through the end of Q1 2024. That represents about 150,000 ounces. The floor of those collars is $1,900 an ounce, and they have significant upside opportunity up to a ceiling of about $2,065 an ounce. Another thing we did in the new year is we worked with our lenders and just completed late last week to retool our covenants. on our revolving credit facility, which will take us through a Greenstone startup. And we, of course, want to thank our leads, Scotia, BMO, and ING, for working really constructively with us on that. On our next slide, page seven, what does that all mean for Greenstone funding? We think we've got about $340 million as our share to fund of the remaining budget, and that's going to be done through our existing cash of $200 million, our revolving credit facility, of $127 million. There is the $100 million accordion feature also in place on the revolving credit facility. We, of course, are using operating cash flows to help fund Greenstone. We have about a $200 all in sustaining contribution margin per ounce on that. And, of course, as we've shown with our Solaris share sales since Q4, we have our investments of $220 million as a lever that we can pull to help with funding. deem ourselves well funded to complete the construction at Greenstone. On to page eight, we have our guidance for the year. Greg has already touched on it, so I'll just highlight a couple of things. First of all, the midpoint of guidance represents about a 70,000 ounce increase over 2022 production when you pull out the 14,000 ounces attributable to Mercedes that we sold last year. On costs, our view is that inflation has peaked, but the costs will stay elevated through the year, and you can see that reflected in both our cash and sustaining costs. Our view is also that the Brazilian real and Mexican peso, which are two of the better performing currencies against the U.S. dollar, will continue to hold their current exchange rates against the U.S. dollar, so that's factored in. Seasonality will continue to weight production and cash flows into the second half of the year. And we'll just make a couple final notes on sustaining expenditures. The $137 million we have there includes really only essentials on tailings facility raises, deferred stripping, and equipment refurbishments that we need to do. And of course, the growth capital of $324 million is primarily greenstone at about $275 million of it. And with that, I will turn it over to Doug to kind of run through what we're expecting for the upcoming year.

Okay. In addition to the production guidance that we have, I'll also mention that all of our mines have been working on a program that involves continuous improvement as well as consumable reduction. and group purchasing initiatives, all of that is above and beyond what we've put forward for our production and cost guidance. We've also doubled down on our adherence and reconciliation of mine plans, benchmarking and productivity improvement work, which is all geared towards achieving and beating what we've put forward Looking at the individual mines, Mesquite and Q4, we were mainly in a stripping phase for Brownie and Vista East. That will ultimately contribute to the ore going to the pads in 2023. Due to the emphasis on stripping in Q4, that means we had a relatively low number of new ounces going under leach in that period. And for 2023, we have adopted a new mine plan that will see less stripping and smaller pits in order to reduce cost at Mesquite. We continue with exploration and permitting work at Mesquite for mine life extensions. In Castle Mountain, in Q4, we were running with both run of mine and crushing and agglomeration of the material going to the heap leach pad. The plan is that we should be all going through crushing and agglomeration, so we continue working on increasing our crush and agglomeration throughput. At the same time as working on the phase one, we have been advancing our permitting on phase two and met test work in support of the phase two work, and I'll come back to that later on. At Los Felos in Q4, we had a production impact related to a shortage of explosives that was caused by a strike at our explosive supplier. We also had some of the ore that was coming from the Guadalupe open pit It had a higher copper content, which meant that it had a reduced recovery over the leach cycle. So we're now separating that to be able to leach that separately from the rest of the ore feeds. As we look at 2023, we continue mining in Guadalupe open pit and Los Felos open pit, as well as the Los Felos underground with 20% of the tons coming from the open pits. We will be suspending Bermahal Underground. That's given the prolonged development period and the lower productivity than anticipated. Just to put it in context, we have developed down to the central zone, Zone 5 of Bermahal Underground. We've accessed into it and we've been mining from it, but we need to do significant additional development in order to have enough stopes in production at the same time to be able to achieve the 1,500 to 2,000 tons per day. So in the meantime, we'll be looking at plans to be able to improve overall productivity and reduce the costs. And we'll also look at the timing for this higher grade ore to eventually be fed into a CIL plant. In Arizona, we had a longer than normal rainy season in 2022, and we relied on stockpile material more than usual, which meant lower grades go into the plant over an extended period. By the end of the year in Q4, We had an increase by our contractor of their mining fleet with an addition of nine triple sevens and an additional six articulated dump trucks. And so we had a higher total tons being moved as we worked towards returning back to our mine plan. In addition to the expanded mining fleet, we're also bringing in a second contractor who will come with 14 articulated dump trucks so that we continue mining at a higher level through the rainy season and have a stronger start once we come out of the rainy season this year. And we want to build up our stockpile significantly during the course of 2023. In Fazenda, the mine did very well in Q4 and for the year. Open pit mining contributed higher grades and tons overall and offset the lower production that came from the underground mine this year. throughput and plant recoveries at Fazenda were both above the overall plan. And our exploration work at Fazenda continues to work on resource and reserve replacement. We also continue the exploration program in the greenstone belt between Fazenda and Santa Luz. At RDM, we were processing low-grade dump material in Q4, but we suspended processing in mid-December as we waited for permitting of the additional material for dump material at RDM. In January, we've restarted the in-situ mining and we're using owner-operated equipment. We also completed the TSF raise and we've begun permitting for a filter tailing storage facility at RDM. Looking at Santa Luz, Q4 was difficult. We had lower throughput due to the hardness of the ore. We also had a high sulfur content in some of the ore that impeded our recoveries, and we also had to deal with the thiocyanide impact on the resin, which related to overdosing with cyanide. Each time that happened, it happened twice. It takes the system several days to be able to recover from that, and we have to regenerate the resin activity so it can perform properly again. So I will note the resin and leach plant is achieving higher recoveries overall than were possible by previous operators using carbon and leach processing. So it is working, but we still are working through some of the issues. By December, we changed our blending strategy, and we also adopted a new fragmentation plan in the open pit, and that's enabled us to achieve a higher throughput. And also since year end, we've seen an increase in stabilization of recoveries as we've come through January and February. Moving on to Greenstone. Ultimately, Greenstone's going to become the cornerstone for Equinox, one of the largest gold projects in Canada. It's got a 5.5 million ounce reserve, annual production of 400,000 ounces, and first production coming in the first half of 2024. On to the next slide. We are on budget and on track. The project is 70% complete at the moment, and the team has just passed two and a half million hours with no lost time injuries, so a good record. They've also had great progress, as you can see in the slide, with several of the buildings being fully enclosed. Mining started in Q3 with four trucks and one shovel, and we now have four additional trucks coming and getting ready for use. And a second shovel will be added in the second half of this year. We're 54% complete on the capital spend at the end of the year. And if you move to the next slide, you can see several more of the buildings. Four of the buildings are enclosed and heated, and next week we expect the last two buildings to be enclosed. The HPGR building, is one of the two buildings that was just being finished off this coming week, as well as the East End Mill building, which I'll note already has the roof on and a lot of the cladding is already done in the photos I saw as of yesterday. So it's progressing really well. So just moving on to the next page, upcoming milestones for Greenstone. The main ones are the buildings being closed this quarter, commencement of the ball mill installation will start, In Q2, mechanical piping and electrical installation will be happening as we move inside the buildings. And all the equipment will be on site in Q2. In Q3, we're looking at pre-commissioning of the power plant and the crushing circuit. And by Q4, we're completing the TSF and the highway relocation will be completed. And the first half of 2024 will be in commissioning and first gold pour. And moving on to the next page, our other expansion projects include Castle Mountain, where we'll see an increase in stacking to over 45,000 tons per day going to the leach pads and production of around 218,000 ounces a year over a 14-year life. We submitted the permit application in March. We continue working through the process of permitting. We'll see environmental review and public scope happening in the first half of 2023. For Arizona, we're working on the feasibility study, which involves mining from both the Piaba Underground at the same time as we're mining from open pits. That feasibility study will be wrapped up in Q2. As Greg noted, we have received permits for three portal locations. We have selected one for the initial ramp location. And we would look at establishing a exploration ramp that ultimately will allow us to touch into and mine on ore. At the same time, we would also be able to establish a series of exploration cutouts so that we can do a drilling program from underground. And there would be dimensions so that it ultimately could also serve as a production decline. On Los Felos, we delivered the updated feasibility study for the construction of a 10,000 ton per day CIL plant. Reserves in that study were increased 44% after depletion was taken into account. But as we've noted previously, we will wait on making a construction decision while we're in a high CAPEX period for Greenstone, and also while we work on our operational efficiencies and having stability with local communities. I'm going to pass it back to Greg.