K92 Mining Inc.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the K92 Mining 2023 fourth quarter and annual 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 then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Medlack, President and COO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Opto, and thanks, Evan, for attending K92 Money's fourth quarter and 2023 Annual 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 it over to John to provide you with an overview.

Thank you, David, and welcome, everyone. We begin, as always, with safety, K92's number one priority. As shown on the chart, K92 has operated with a safety performance that has been significantly better than the industry average since the start of commercial production. However, in 2023, our lost time injury frequency rate increased, and we take this extremely seriously. We've undertaken many actions to address this, and we've got more underway. In the third quarter, an independent safety audit was completed following the incidents in the second quarter. The findings from the audit indicated that our safety procedures and systems were generally good, with room for improvement primarily in our frontline supervision to make sure that safety procedures and systems are always followed. We have an additional independent safety audit underway as we look for further opportunities for improvement. We've introduced various technologies to improve safety, including in-cab monitoring of our entire surface fleet and that of our contractors operating on site. Implementation of other safety-enhancing technologies are currently underway, such as proximity detection system for our underground mobile fleet. Culturally, we've seen multiple positive leading indicators, including significant increase in job safety assessment, and we've also had changes to our personnel. We're required to drive this. I'd like to reiterate that K92 is relentless in its pursuit of our goal of achieving zero harm amongst our workforce. I'll now discuss the non-industrial incident which occurred on the mining lease on March 10th and which resulted in a deceased employee. Initially, the incident appeared to be an industrial accident. However, preliminary findings from K92 and the Royal Papua New Guinean Constabulary, which are the police, indicated the death was non-industrial, suspicious, fatal incident. K92 continues to work with the relevant government authorities under the Criminal Code Act and the Mining Safety Act to support the investigations. At this point, the Mineral Resources Authority are still treating the incident as an industrial accident and as such ordered temporary suspension of underground activities through the issuance of Reform 29, pending the completion of action orders in relation to an independent safety audit and the installation of a collision avoidance system. Work on these action orders is underway and we're in process by K92 prior to the issuance of the action orders. We have accelerated these and they are well advanced in terms of progress. Given the non-industrial nature of the incident and what we believe are misapplications of the Mining Safety Act in issuing the Form 29, K92 has appealed the Form 29 through various channels. This process is now well advanced and we expect to receive a positive outcome shortly with operations resuming immediately thereafter. In terms of impact to production, there's a moderate impact in Q1 production and is expected to have a moderate impact to Q2 production. K92 is working to resolve this expeditiously and will provide another update in due course. On the ESG front, K92 is extremely proud to have received the award for Outstanding Community Humanitarian Initiative for its Women in Mining program at the P&G Resources and Energy Investment Conference in Sydney in December 2023. The program champions women's empowerment initiatives, including upskilling and preventative health care. This is the second consecutive year K92 has been recognized with an industry ESG award. During the fourth quarter, K92 established a MOU with the Don Bosco Technological Institute. The MOU focuses on a number of areas designed to support and grow talent in Papua New Guinea, including information exchange, technical assessments, engineering studies and research, and participation in K92's tertiary scholarship and industrial trainee program. K92 now has four MOUs with tertiary institutions in Papua New Guinea, which is the University of Papua New Guinea, University of Technology and Lay, University of Garoka, and now Don Bosco. In February 2024, we welcomed the class of 2024 for the K92 graduate program and also the inaugural pre-vocation program shown on the left and right images respectively. These programs are designed to provide invaluable work experience training to develop local talent and future leaders in their respective fields. For more information on K92's many ESG initiatives, I would encourage you to read our sustainability reports found on our website. Moving on to operational performance, during the quarter, Kenantu Gold Mine produced a record 39,101 ounces gold equivalent with 151,908 tons processed at a head grade of 8.7 grams per ton gold equivalent. Cash costs, $430 an ounce and all in sustaining costs, were $1,062 per ounce gold. Quarterly cash costs were the second lowest on record. For the year, we produced 117,607 ounces of gold equivalent, exceeding the top end of our updated production guidance of 111 to 116,000 ounces gold equivalent. Cash costs $585 an ounce beat the original guidance range of $620 to $660 per ounce gold and all-in sustaining costs at $1,162 per ounce also beat the original guidance of $1,180 to $1,300 per ounce gold. As annotated on the chart, oil and sustaining costs have been elevated for the past few quarters as the company continues to make a considerable investment in the Stage 3 expansion, with costs expected to decline considerably thereafter. In terms of our key operational quarterly physicals, K92 took a major step forward in Q4, delivering record total ore tons processed, record total development meters, and record total tons mined. A major positive for several quarters now has been the performance of the process plan, particularly after the commissioning of the final part of the stage 2a plant expansion in May. In Q4, the process plant throughput averaged 1,651 tons per day, exceeding the stage 2a design throughput rate of 1,370 tons per day by 21%. A new weekly record was also achieved in Q4, where we averaged 2,136 tons per day, which is 56% greater than the stage 2a design throughput. A daily record was also achieved in Q4 of 2,320 tons processed on November the 19th. Now that's 69% greater than the 2A design throughput rate. The process plant has certainly shown that if the tons are in front of it from the mine, it is extremely capable and provides significant optionality going forward. The records also highlight the potential that the Stage 3 process plant, which basically uses the same design parameters as the existing plant, is potentially capable of much greater than its nameplate design. I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Justin Blanchet, to discuss our financial results for the fourth quarter.