GCM Mining Corp.

Welcome to the GCM Mining Corp Q4 2021 results webcast. My name is John. I'll be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. During a question-and-answer session, if you do have a question, press 0 then 1 on your touchtone phone. And I will now turn the call over to Mike Davies.

Great. Thanks, John. Thank you for joining us this morning for the GCM Mining Q4 and year-end results webcast. Joining me this morning from Guyana is our CEO, Lombardo Paredes. I'll first go through our prepared remarks and then Lombardo will be available through the Q&A session. First, let me direct you to our disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements that will be made by us during the webcast this morning. 2021 was a successful year for GCM Mining. We accomplished what we set out to do. Completed 97,000 meters of drilling at Segovia, our biggest year yet. Numerous high-grade intercepts led to successful increases in resources and reserves. It was our sixth year of meeting guidance. We returned $17 million to shareholders, $11.5 million through our monthly dividends, and $5.5 million through our normal course issuer bids. We continued to make ESG a part of how we operate, and we have since the beginning of the company in 2010. We reported strong financial results and continue to strengthen our balance sheet. And one of our milestone assets last year joining the company was the gold X Toro Peru project completed that acquisition in June, raised $300 million in the summer to fund it. And then at the end of December published an updated mineral resource and validated the economics and a positive PEA. Last night, we released our fourth quarter and annual operating and financial results. Although it was another year of coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, we generated solid results. Our net income for 2021 was $180 million, or $2.25 a share. Adjusting for various non-operating gains and losses, our adjusted net income was $71.6 million, or $0.87 per share. And over the next few slides, I'll take you through the details behind many of our metrics reported last night. We currently have 97.9 million shares issued in outstanding and at yesterday's close that translates to a market cap of 572 million, up 73% from one year ago. Our fully diluted share count is now 131.7 million and we have an ongoing normal course issuer bid under which we purchased 1.3 million shares last year at a cost of about $5.5 million. Over the last two years, we've purchased approximately 2.5 million shares at a total cost of $10.6 million. Our current NCIB expires in October, and we'll continue to use it as required to support our stock. Last year was our first full year under our dividend program that we started in late 2020. We paid a total of $11.5 million in dividends through our monthly program. We continue to be one of the top 10 mining dividend stocks based on return and the only one paying on a monthly basis. We'll continue our 2022 program at the same dividend rate of Canadian one and a half cents per share per month. From the analyst perspective, Canaccord recently raised their target to $9.75 a share and Red Cloud and Fundamental Research have maintained their targets. Both Canaccord and Red Cloud have viewed the recent news about the increase in Segovia's reserves and resources as positive catalysts, something we're pleased to see being acknowledged in the analyst community. We achieved our production guidance, as I said, for the sixth consecutive year in 2021 with just over 206,000 ounces of gold produced at Segovia. Driven by the Maria Dama plant expansion that will be completed by mid-2022, we've raised our 2022 annual guidance to a range of 210,000 to 225,000 ounces of gold. Taking a more granular look at Segovia's production, there are a couple of points I'd like to make. Back in 2017, Segovia produced 148,000 ounces of gold. El Silencio, even though it's been producing for more than 100 years, is still delivering the same level of production in 2021 that it did back in 2017 when we were getting going in our turnaround. Providencia has grown by about 50% since 2017, but if you look back at our 2017 PFS, Providencia should have come to an end by now. Sandra Kay produced 4,000 ounces back in 2017, and our development has seen it grow to more than five times what it was producing in that year with 22,000 ounces of gold produced in 2021. The small miners have also tripled in production since 2017 as we've added more groups to the contract mining model and grades have increased from about six grams to 11.5 grams in 2021. All this to say that Segovia is a district rich in gold and our exploration and development investment continues to pay dividends in our ongoing production from the Segovia operations. With a 5% increase in the volume of gold produced and sold in 2021, and a 3% increase in realized gold prices to $1,794 an ounce, Segovia set a new annual revenue record in 2021 at $377 million. At our ASIC margin in 2021, remains strong, about 33% of revenue. Our ASIC in 2021 was about $1,200 an ounce, with cash costs comprising about $824 an ounce of the total. We spent $45 million on sustaining capex at Segovia last year, including our expanded exploration and mine geology drilling at the four operating mines, which represented another $217 an ounce. Our social programs and contributions represented about $57 an ounce and the remaining hundred dollars or so announced comprised GNA, the free trade arbitration, legal costs, and environmental fees. For 2022, we see our annual ASIC being much the same as this year, albeit subject to the price of gold, which does have some impact on our cost. Our adjusted EBITDA continued to be solid. as a cash flow engine for Grand Columbia in 2021, reaching a total of $172 million, about 45% of revenue, and keeping our leverage ratio at about 1.8 times. Cash flow metrics continue to be positive in 2021, with operating cash flow of $80.6 million and free cash flow of $26.2 million. In 2021, we paid $73 million of income taxes, about $24 million more than 2020, and our cash flow was impacted by a change in timing to receive our VAT refunds in Colombia. In 2020 and prior years, the Colombian government processed our VAT refunds on a bimonthly basis. But in 2021, this changed to an annual basis, meaning that $26.5 million of VAT that we have owing to us for 2021 will now be received in 2022. While the change affects our 2021 cash flow compared with previous years, it does not affect our working capital and we expect to receive these refunds in advance of making our income tax payments in the second quarter of 2022. As many of you probably know, one of Grand Columbia's success stories over the last five years has been the work we've done to strengthen our balance sheet. This has been very important in setting us up to take on a project like Toro Peru. In August last year, we raised $300 million through our senior notes offering, and together with the $138 million of funding to come from the wheat and stream facility, our Toro Peru project is fully funded to carry forward with the planned expansion and getting into operations by 2024. The key component of our 2021 action plans was our drilling program at Segovia. We completed 97,000 meters of drilling with 81,000 meters at our four operating mines and another 16,000 meters at our high priority brownfield targets. In 2022, we plan to carry out another 91,000 meters of drilling with 67,000 meters at our mines and 24,000 meters following up on the high priority brownfield targets. Through the 2021 in-mine and near-mine drilling program, we've generated numerous high-grade intercepts across all of our mines as reported through several press releases over the last year. You can see from these key intercepts the reason that Segovia continues to rank as one of the top five highest-grade underground global gold mines. And the other exciting data from last year's drill program are the key intercepts from our inaugural brownfield program. These are areas of known vein mineralization that not only have documented prior production, but they also are the site of current small-scale mining operations, giving us real-time data on these areas. They form a key part of our growth plan as we look forward with the next 10 years of operations. The payoff for last year's drilling campaign was reflected in our reserve and resource update announced a week ago. Our reserves increased by 18%, 745,000 ounces. Our M&A resources increased by 14% to 1.6 million ounces. And our inferred resources grew by 41% to 1.7 million ounces. Key to the increases were additional resources that were added at both El Silencio and Sandra K. This is why we are confident that Segovia has many more years of life ahead to operate. And to support our future mining operations, we have two infrastructure projects on the go. The first is the expansion of the Maria Dama processing plant from 1500 tons a day to 2000 tons a day, expected to be complete by mid 2022. The second half of 2022, we expect to use about 85 to 95% of the plant capacity in our production operations. The second project is the construction of phase two of the El Chocho tailing storage facility, which will receive material after being treated in our filter presses and then dry stacked and eventually rehabilitated. And in 2021, we also completed construction of our new polymetallic plant in Segovia to treat material from the plant tailings to recover commercial quantities of zinc, lead and silver and to neutralize the material being sent to the El Chocho tailings storage facility. The plant has been operating since mid-October, treating about 100 tons a day of tailings and producing about 80 to 100 tons of zinc concentrate and 80 to 90 tons of lead concentrate on a monthly basis. We expect to increase production rates as we proceed through Q2, and we're currently in discussion with several buyers to finalize an offtake contract for these in-demand concentrates. I mentioned at the outset that one of our major accomplishments in 2021 was the major step forward that we made in our strategy to grow through diversification. With the acquisition of the Toro Peru project in June, and then we successfully closed the financing soon thereafter, we've now added a second cornerstone asset to Grand Columbia's profile. In December, we announced an updated mineral resource estimate for Toro Peru, that showed a 15% increase in measured and indicated resources to 8.4 million ounces of gold. What is important to note is that the resource update is comprised of fewer tons and higher grade than the last resource completed by GoldX in 2018. This is a result of an updated understanding of the geologic model as a result of drilling carried out by GoldX in 2020 and early 2021, which has added an underground resource element to the existing open pit resource. And in December, we also announced a positive PEA for this new resource, one that foresees a 24-year mine life starting up in 2024 and pays back its initial $355 million estimated capital cost in two years. PEA envisions 5.4 million ounces of gold and 141 million pounds of copper being produced over the life of mine with an average ASIC of $916 an ounce. We've also already started pre-construction activities on the Camp Airstrip access road, and we're carrying out additional infill drilling as we take the project now to the next step with a PFS expected in early Q3, about the same time as we expect to have the final mining license. We're also modifying our approach in the PFS to incorporate contract mining with our selection process narrowing down to a few experienced firms. We expect production will start in early 2024 with a 7,000-ton-a-day gold leach plant and open-pit mining, and by year six, we'll add a 7,000-ton-a-day copper concentrator. Underground operations will start in year 10, and all in all, Toro Peru is turning out to be everything we imagined it would be, and then some. And with that, John, and now I think we can open things up for the Q&A session.

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you do have a question, press 0 then 1 on your touchtone phone. Please note, by pressing 0 then 1, it's a new prompt. Again, to ask a question, press 0 then 1. And to remove yourself from the queue, press 0 then 2. If you're using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Our first question is from Carrie McCreery. Please go ahead.