Lundin Mining Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Lundeen Mining fourth quarter 2021 results call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Peter Rockendale, President and CEO.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining Lending Mining's fourth quarter and full year 2021 results call. I will draw your attention to the cautionary statements on slide two, as we will be making several forward-looking comments throughout the prepared remarks and likely during the Q&A. Yesterday, we announced that our Chairman, Lucas Lendeen, will be retiring at the upcoming 2022 Annual Shareholders Meeting. Our many stakeholders have benefited immensely from his vision, insight, and experience, shared over a lifetime of leading many successful natural resource companies. I would like to thank Lucas for his counsel and support, as Lundy Mining has grown over the past nearly three decades. I know he's very constructive on the outlook of base metals, and I share his confidence that Lundy Mining has the culture, people, and prospects in place to continue to deliver on his vision. On the call to assist with the presentation and answer questions are Jinhee McGee, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Peter Richardson, our Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Kira Talbot, our Vice President of Exploration. On slide four, I would like to touch on several of Lundin Mining's 2021 highlights as they position us well for 2022 and beyond. 2021 was an excellent year for safety as measured by the total injury frequency rate. We set a best-ever rate of 0.54 per 200,000 hours worked. we met or exceeded our most recent production guidance for all metals. Recognizing that Candelaria had a challenging first nine months, the balance of our minds operated in line with plans and all finished the year with strong fourth quarter results. We achieved cash costs in line or better than guidance, including particularly low first quartile cash costs at Eagle, while managing the impacts of global inflation. We took advantage of the strong base metal price environment and set new records for annual earnings, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flows. Planned, we advanced the zinc expansion project at Nevis Corvo. At year end, construction was substantially complete and commissioning is now underway. At Chapada, we continued to progress on our expansion study and last week announced initial results for exciting new high-grade sauva discovery. We will discuss this in greater detail later in the call. At Candelaria, internal study worked evaluating expansion of the north and south sector underground mines from the current 14,000 tonnes per day to 26,000 tonnes has been completed and is being finalized. At EGLE, we have completed internal study work on the upper keel zone. We believe the upper keel to be technically and financially feasible and aim to include it in our Life of Mind plans later this year. We remain focused on value creation through the disciplined allocation of our shareholders' capital. Dividends declared in 2021 increased nearly 145% over 2020, and yesterday, our Board of Directors declared a regular quarterly dividend of $0.09 Canadian per share and a semi-annual performance dividend of 11 Canadian cents per share. Throughout the year, we opportunistically repurchased approximately 4.5 million shares under our normal course issuer bid. Lastly, in late December, we announced the acquisition of Jose Maria Resources. The Jose Maria project will complement our existing portfolio of high-quality mines and will elevate our position to a major base metals producer with high-quality, low-cost copper exfoliator. Closing remains on track for the second quarter of this year. In short, we are well positioned to deliver on our strategy of operating, upgrading, and growing a base metal portfolio that provides leading returns for our shareholders throughout the cycle. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to Jinhee to review our financial results.

Thank you, Peter. On slide five, production of copper, zinc, nickel, and gold in concentrate all increased in 2021 over that of 2020. In particular, copper production increased nearly 15% year on year. We produced over 450,000 tons of base metals and approximately 167,000 ounces of gold. We also sold nearly 410,000 tons of base metals and approximately 157,000 ounces of gold on a payable basis, generating record annual revenue of over $3.3 billion. We remain predominantly leveraged to copper with the metal generating 70% of the year's revenue, zinc, nickel and gold each contributing 97%. Slide 6 presents a summary of our 2021 financial results and I will also touch on our fourth quarter results. We benefited from significantly higher base metal prices in the fourth quarter and over the course of 2021 compared to the prior period. We realized a copper price of $4.76 per pound in the fourth quarter, reflecting a 37 cent per pound of prior period adjustments. Prior period pricing adjustments for zinc, nickel, and gold were also positive, though less impactful. Details of the pricing adjustments are in our MD&A. 2021 revenue of $3.3 billion increased more than 60% compared to 2020. primarily owing to increased sales volumes and higher realized metal prices. Record gross profit of $1.4 billion was 175% higher year-on-year. Attributable net earnings from operations were $1.06 per share for the year and $0.31 per share for the fourth quarter. Record adjusted earnings were $1.11 per share for the year and $0.38 per share for the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter adjustments included write down of the Chapada or stockpile and recognition of insurance proceeds from the Chapada 2020 power interruption. Details of these adjustments are in our MD&A. We generated record adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 billion in 2021, a nearly 120% increase over 2020, which includes over $620 million generated in the fourth quarter. 2021 cash flow from operations was $1.5 billion, a 160% increase over 2020. Fourth quarter capital expenditures on a cash basis were nearly $155 million, bringing the total spend for 2021 to $532 million, lower than the most recent guidance of $575 million. We ended the year with nearly $600 million in cash and equivalents and a net cash position of over $560 million. As of February 17, 2022, this has further improved to $650 million in cash equivalents and $620 million of net cash. Lastly, our Board of Directors declared regular quarterly dividends and a maiden semi-annual dividend totaling 39 cents Canadian per share in 2021. This is nearly 145% increase over total dividends declared in 2020. And as Peter mentioned, yesterday our board approved the next quarterly regular dividend and semi-annual performance dividend, which together total 20 cents Canadian per share. We believe our regular quarterly dividend is sustainable throughout the metal price cycle and considers our capital requirements. As we progress with our growth projects, we expect limited semi-annual performance dividends to be declared during the development period. I will now turn the call to Peter Richardson to discuss our operations.