Ero Copper Corp.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the AeroCopper fourth quarter 2025 operating and financial results conference call. 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 one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may reach an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Farouk Hamad, VP, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and welcome to AeroCopper's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. Our operating and financial results were released yesterday afternoon and are available on our website, along with our financial statements and MD&A for the three and 12 months ended December 31, 2025. A corresponding earnings presentation can be downloaded directly from the webcast and is also available in the presentation section of our website. Joining me on the call today are Mako DiFilippo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Wayne Dreyer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Jelson Batista, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Courtney Lin, Executive Vice President, External Affairs and Strategy. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. For a detailed discussion of these risks and their potential impact on our business, please refer to our most recent annual information forum, available on our website, as well as on CDAR and EDGAR. Unless otherwise noted, all figures discussed today are in US dollars. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mako DiFilippo.

Thank you, Farouk, and thank you to everyone joining us this morning. As we pre-released our 2025 production results and 2026 guidance in early February, I'd like to take a step back here and explain why we believe Arrow is extremely well positioned in the current market environment. Last week, as many of you would have seen, we released our maiden preliminary economic analysis on the Furnas project. This was an important milestone for the company and one of our key objectives this year. Over the past 18 months, Our exploration and engineering work, combined with extensive historical technical programs completed by Vale on the project since the early 2000s, has enabled the design of an integrated open pit and underground mine expected to produce a total of more than 1.2 million tons of copper, 2 million ounces of gold, and 9 million ounces of silver over an initial 24-year mine life. Highlighting the quality of Fernas and reinforcing why it is a cornerstone asset in our long-term growth strategy, over the first 15 years of operation, Fernas is expected to produce approximately 70,000 tons of copper, 111,000 ounces of gold, and more than 500,000 ounces of silver annually at first quartile C1 cash costs of approximately 24 cents per pound of copper produced. At long-term consensus metal prices, the PEA delivers an after-tax NPV of approximately $2 billion and an IRR of more than 27% on $1.3 billion of initial capital. Taken together, these metrics uniquely position for us from a capital intensity perspective relative to comparable projects while delivering strong economic outcomes across a wide range of commodity prices. Said differently, we see an exceptional project that is both financeable and buildable. As strong as it is, the PEA is just a starting point for us, and we are focused on maintaining momentum this year. In 2026, we plan to complete an additional 50,000 meters of exploration drilling, targeting extensions of high-grade mineralization around planned underground infrastructure. We will also continue pursuing opportunities we see to further strengthen economics, which include the addition of a magnetite recovery circuit to produce a high-grade magnetite concentrate, as well as a gravity pre-concentration stage to enhance gold recoveries. Both initiatives offer potential to further increase byproduct revenue, and we are encouraged by the initial results we are seeing. Getting back to what differentiates Arrow, we have clearly outlined a great long-term growth project in Fernost, and we are thrilled to be advancing it towards a construction decision over the coming years. Perhaps most importantly, the capital required to advance for NOS to that point is expected to remain relatively modest as we continue to advance technical studies, drilling, and permitting work streams. At the same time, capital spending across our existing operations is projected to decline as we transition out of a multi-year investment phase that included the construction of Tukama and major investments at Kairiba over the past several years. These investments are either complete or in the case of our new shaft project at Kairiba, our past peak capital spend. As a result, Arrow is exiting a major investment cycle with an exceptional long-term growth asset, increasing cash generation capacity, declining consolidated capital requirements, and three operating mines with the right mix of metals at exactly the right time in the commodity price cycle. When I look across the broader sector, many companies, including most of our peers, are jumping into major project builds within the next year. We like this dynamic. Switching gears slightly, I do want to touch on our 2025 results and 26 guidance. And I would start by recognizing the resilience and dedication of our teams that work through a number of challenges to deliver meaningful improvements across the business as the year progressed. These efforts resulted in sequential quarters of improving operational performance, the unlocking of a major new additional value driver for our business at Javanchina. Starting with Cariba, Q4 represented our strongest operating quarter of the year. Mill throughput reached nearly 1.2 million tons. Up 18% compared to Q3 and an all time record for the operation. This drove copper production 15% higher quarter on quarter and contributed to C1 cash costs of $2.27 per pound. At Tucumba, copper production increased more than 22% quarter on quarter, representing another record for the operation. Higher process grades helped offset an extended period of unplanned downtime in December, driven by a pull forward of Q1 maintenance for an early mill liner replacement. This pull forward was due to an OEM wear part quality issue that impacted multiple operations in the region, including ours. C1 cash costs in Q4 were $1.75 per pound, which I would note approximately 10 cents of this was attributable to expensing the unamortized portion of the liners. Turning to Javanchina, production increased 53% quarter on quarter, driven by higher grades and improved throughput as we began to see the benefits of our efforts transition the mine to mechanized mining. In addition, our gold concentrate program resulted in an incremental 15,000 ounces of gold in Q4. As a result, total gold from Javanchina, including mine production and concentrate shipments, was nearly 20,000 ounces in a quarter, and over 50,000 ounces for the full year. Behind these numbers, what makes 2025 one of our best on record in my opinion is that our operational teams deliver these results while achieving one of our best years ever in terms of consolidated safety performance. Whatever might be said about 2025, nothing matters to me more than this metric. As I look ahead to 2026, our guidance assumes the operational performance gains we achieved in the fourth quarter are effectively sustained through the year. While we continue to work on opportunities to further improve performance across the business, especially in the second half of this year at Tucumot, these are not reflected in our guidance. At Tucumot, we are well advanced on adding additional tailings filtration equipment this year to unlock additional throughput capacity for this operation. We have equipment being manufactured right now, and if all goes according to plan, we would expect this to benefit the operation in the fourth quarter. As I mentioned, the potential benefits here, as well as the associated capital investment, have not been reflected in our 2026 guidance. This was a deliberate decision for three reasons. First, guiding to steady state was important for us this year. Second, there is a lot of daylight between now and the fourth quarter. And perhaps most important, in the current metal price environment, we expect the payback on this investment to be one to two quarters. So while it is a very important objective, and we expect to complete it this year, it will not change our strategy or capital allocation decisions in 2026. At Javanchita, we are investing in our ventilation circuit, mine development, and equipment to increase mine capacity and output. This is a low-hanging, long-term value driver inherent to our business when we look at the available milling capacity we have there. Last but not least, at Cariba, we are advancing the new shaft project for the Pilar Mine and are pursuing several operational improvement initiatives we hope to discuss later this year. To touch briefly on cadence for 2026, we're guiding consolidated copper production of between 67,500 to 77,500 tons. This reflects year-over-year growth. driven primarily by higher sustained plant throughput at Kawariba and Tukama, partially offset by lower plan grades. Copper production is expected to be weighted towards the second half of the year due to mine sequencing and a modest increase in throughput throughout the year. At Javanchina in 2026, we are guiding mine production in 40,000 to 50,000 ounces. We expect Q1 to be the softest production quarter of the year, This cadence reflects mine sequencing as well as a tie-in of a major ventilation upgrade during the quarter, including the completion of a new raised bore to surface. Production is expected to be weighted towards the second half of the year as a result. Gold concentrate sales are expected to continue throughout the year, but we expect that to be relatively modest in Q1 due to the rainy season. For some additional context there, you'd be hard pressed to find a more simple operation in our portfolio. are only three steps we remove the material from stockpile we then spread it out in the sun to dry then transport the material for shipment as you can likely imagine step two in that process is far less productive during the rainy season with that i will turn the call over to wayne who will walk through our financial results in more detail thank you marco our fourth quarter financial results were driven by record copper concentrate sales