K92 Mining Inc.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the 2023 third quarter 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 signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Medlack, President. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone, for attending K92 Mining's third quarter 2023 results conference call. We hope you and your families are doing well. In addition to myself, we have on the line John Lewins, Chief Executive Officer and Director, and Justin Blanchett, Chief Financial Officer. I would also like to remind everyone that after the remarks from management, the call will be followed by a Q&A session. As we will be making forward-looking statements during the call, please refer to the cautionary notes and risk disclosure in our MD&A and slide two of the webcast presentation. Also, please bear in mind that all dollar amounts mentioned in the conference call are in United States dollars unless otherwise noted. Now, I'll turn over to John to provide you with an overview. Well, thank you, David, and welcome, everyone.

We begin with safety. Very much K92's number one priority. In the third quarter, an independent safety audit was completed following the incidents in the second quarter. The findings from the audit indicate that our safety procedures and systems are good with room for improvement in our frontline supervisors to make sure that the safety procedures and systems are always followed. Actions have been taken and more actions that have followed. And I'm pleased with our initial response. Job safety assessments have significantly increased, which is a positive leading safety indicator. And in the third quarter, there were no lost time injuries. Since K92's inception, we have operated at a lost time injury frequency rate well below the industry average as shown in the chart here. K92 will always strive for zero harm amongst our workforce. At K92, We're proud of our positive socioeconomic impact locally, regionally, and nationally in Papua New Guinea. Some of our recent ESG highlights are shown on the slide, and they include significant progress on our infrastructure tax credit scheme, the first project expected to be launched in early 2024, a continuous ramping up of our training and development programs, both internally and externally, with various MOUs signed with P&G universities and a large number of scholarships awarded. and an expansion to our gender focused community development programs that upgrade local skills and business diversification programs to train local women. One of these programs that we're especially proud of is the adult literacy program. The video shown is one of the program's graduation ceremonies. In 2023, there has been approximately 150 graduates with 90% of them women. Literacy is a foundation skill. And from this program, many of our students go on to complete further education, including business development. In 2022, K92 received Women in Mining Award at the Papua New Guinea Chamber of Mines and Petroleum Investment Conference for the positive impact that this program has had. Demand to participate in the program is very high, and we continue to expand it. We would encourage you all to read our sustainability report, which is available on our website. Moving on to operational performance during the quarter, Kenantu produced 26,225 ounces gold equivalent with 121,201 tons processed at a head grade of 7.32 grams per ton gold equivalent, cash costs of $684 an ounce and all in sustaining costs of $1,300 an ounce. As previously disclosed, production was impacted during the quarter by the safety incident that occurred at the end of second quarter, which resulted in approximately nine days of downtime at the underground. Long-haul stoping performed to design, and it's important to highlight that all in-sustaining costs, as noted in our guidance, is elevated due to the considerable portion of our sustaining capital being that for effectively stage three expansion. we expect all-in sustaining costs to significantly decline upon the delivery of the Stage 3 expansion in 2020. Looking ahead, we expect the fourth quarter to be very strong, and we reiterate our production guidance of 111,000 to 116,000 ounces gold equivalent at a cash cost of $620 to $680 an ounce gold and an all-in sustaining cost of $1,180 to $1,300 an ounce gold. In terms of key operation quarterly physicals, Kenantu delivered record total material mined and near record development and total ore processed. This, I think, is especially impressive when factoring in the downtime to the underground mine at the start of the third quarter. As noted in the previous conference calls, increasing our development rates continues to remain a major focus as we catch up on development that was impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm pleased to report that in October we delivered a new monthly record of development advance of 903 metres for the month. Multiple initiatives are underway to increase our development rates, including moving more resources into the highly productive twin area as we open up that second mining front. Multiple infrastructure upgrades that are underway to transform mine productivity. Various operational excellence initiatives, which I'd say are the main driver for the strong October development meters and the arrival of more equipment with another jumbo plan to arrive in early January. and then a further one by April. A major positive in the third quarter has been the performance of the process In September, the process plant delivered a new monthly throughput record of an average of 1,542 tons per day, 13% above the run rate design of 1,370 tons per day. Subsequently, to quarter end, the process plant delivered a flurry of new records, the highest reported being 2,027 tons processed on October the 10th. The mill has shown that if it has the tons in front of it from the mine, it's extremely capable and provides us with significant operational optionality going forward. Following the completion of the stage 2A commissioning, which was a doubling of rougher capacity, the process plant has continued to deliver strong recoveries as shown in the bar charts here. Optimization work to further boost recoveries in addition to throughput is underway and yielding positive results to date. I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Justin Blanchet, to discuss our financial results for the second quarter.