Equinox Gold Corp.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Equinox School's first quarter 2024 results and corporate update. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then 0. If you're participating through the webcast, you can submit a question in writing by using the text box in the lower left corner of the webcast frame. I would now like to turn the conference over to Elaine Bailey, Vice President, Investor Relations for Equinox Gold. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Carl, and thank you, everybody, for joining us this morning. We will, of course, be making a call. Please do visit our website, Cedar and Edgar, to view the rest of our continuous disclosure documents. I will now turn the conference call over to our President and CEO, Greg Smith.

Thanks, Relynn. Good morning, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. On the line with me is our COO, Doug Reddy, our CFO, Peter Hardy, our EVP of Exploration, Scott Heppernan, and our VP of Investor Relations, Relynn Bailey. Again, today we are discussing Equinox Gold's 2024 first quarter financial and operating results. Today is also the first opportunity we've had to publicly discuss our recently announced transaction to consolidate ownership of the Greenstone Mine in Ontario. So I'm going to start with that and then move on to the first quarter results. So as most of you know, we already own 60% of the Greenstone Mine with our joint venture partner, Orion Mine Finance, owning the other 40%. On April 23rd, we announced that we are acquiring Orion's 40% interest. This transaction delivers full ownership of the Greenstone mine to Equinox Gold and consolidates ownership of one of the largest and highest grade open pit gold mines of scale in Canada. The total acquisition cost is $995 million in cash and shares. $250 million will be satisfied through the issue of 42 million common shares of Equinox Gold to Orion. The remaining $745 million will be paid in cash sourced from a new $500 million three-year term loan, the proceeds from the recently completed $299 million equity offering of common shares of Equinox Gold, and a deferred payment of $40 million due at the end of this year. We expect the transaction to close in the near term, so I want to take the opportunity now to thank Orion Mine Finance and their team for being great partners on the development of this mine and to welcome them as meaningful shareholders of Equinox Gold. As existing owners of Greenstone, we know this mine well and consider this a very logical and attractive transaction for Equinox. It is accretive to our cash flow and EBITDA, delivering substantial near-term value. It increases the company's average mine life, reserves, and production, while lowering our consolidated per ounce operating costs. It enhances our strategic flexibility and operational control and decision-making. And it increases the company's exposure to the top-tier mining jurisdiction of Ontario and gives us 100% ownership of a rare, long-life, high-quality mine of scale. Based on analyst consensus estimates, you can see on this slide that our consolidated production will immediately increase this year as Greenstone starts commercial operations. And over the next two years, we start to see our overall cost decrease with the increased exposure to the lower-cost production from the Greenstone mine. You can also see the meaningful increase to our EBITDA or our earnings before interest tax and depreciation and amortization. This headline increase in EBITDA also results in an increase of EBITDA on a per share basis, making this an accretive transaction for Equinox in the near term. Also based on consensus net asset values for our mining and development assets, you can see the substantial increase in overall exposure to Canada. which will exceed 52% with the completion of this consolidation. And this is specifically exposure to Ontario, which is one of the lowest risk operating jurisdictions globally for mining. Our current production guidance for this year is currently 660,000 to 750,000 ounces. On closing of the consolidation of Greenstone, our consolidated pro forma guidance increases to a midpoint of 780,000 ounces with a corresponding decrease to our consolidated cash costs and all-in sustaining costs. We will formally update our 2024 guidance once we have closed the transaction. So where does this take us? We've still got our seven producing mines across Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. And of course, we'll have production in Canada in just a couple of weeks. Pro forma, we'll see a production bump of around 160,000 ounces per year by owning 100% of Greenstone now. which we expect to be in commercial production in Q3 this year. Our production is supported by a large gold endowment, including pro form of the transaction, 19 million ounces in reserves, and an additional 17 million ounces in measured and indicated resources. And with this consolidation of Greenstone, we've taken another important step toward achieving our vision of a million ounces of gold production per year. I'll now give a quick overview of the first quarter results, and then I'll turn the call over to Pete and Doug for more details. During the first quarter, we produced just under 112,000 ounces of gold and sold just over 116,000 ounces. Cash cost per ounce sold was $15.67 per ounce, and all in sustaining costs per ounce sold was $19.50 per ounce. Q1 is seasonally and typically a lower production quarter for us. This Q1 was a good quarter, with Los Felos and Arizona currently both our largest mines, both exceeding planned for the first quarter. and setting us up well to achieve our fiscal 2024 guidance. We did report in April that we have experienced some geotechnical issues in the south wall of the Piaba open pit at Arizona, and have temporarily suspended mining in Piaba. To mitigate this, we processed low-grade stockpiled ore through April, and we have accelerated mining in the new Tadajuba open pit. We expect first ore from Tadajuba in early June. We are continuing to assess the impact this might have on production from Arizona for this year, But at this stage, we're not revising our consolidated guidance. Our safety performance this quarter was good. Six of our sites had no lost time incidents, and our 12-month rolling total recordable injury frequency rate stands at 1.55 per million hours worked. We had no significant environmental incidents in Q1. And shortly following this call, we will publish our fiscal 2023 ESG report, which this year is a consolidation of our ESG climate, tailings, and water stewardship reports into one comprehensive document. It will be available on our website, and I'd encourage everyone on this call to check it out. It is an excellent report. On the development side, commissioning of Greenstone remained a key focus for the company during the first quarter, and we were pleased to report in early April that we had started processing material through the full grinding circuit. Commissioning is progressing well, and we're looking forward to our first gold pour at Greenstone later this month. So this is coming very soon. Doug will have more details on the current status of Greenstone later in the call. We also did advance the permitting of our planned expansion at Castle Mountain, which would increase production at Castle Mountain to over 200,000 ounces of gold per year. We recently received the notice of completion from the Federal Bureau of Land Management, and are now working with them to complete the notice of intent, which will formally kick off permitting for the expansion And we expect that to finish up sometime in mid-2026. At our Arizona mine in Brazil, we also plan to start development of the underground portal at Piaba later this year. And as mentioned earlier, we have accelerated the development of the new Tata Juba open pit with mining commencing in May and first ore expected in June. With that, I'll turn it over to Pete to discuss our financial results.