Mountain Province Diamonds Inc.

Also note that this call is being recorded on Wednesday, August 13th, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mark Wall, President and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sylvie. Good day to everyone who's dialed in to listen to our Q2 2025 results call. My name is Mark Wall, and I'm the President and CEO of the company. Also present on this call is Stephen Thomas, our CFO, and Jenny Lee, our Financial Controller. Reid, our head of diamond sales and marketing, is not on today's call, but we've incorporated his thoughts on the market into our presentation today. At the conclusion of this presentation, we will be available for any questions that you may have. Firstly, I'd like to draw your attention to our cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information. This presentation will be posted on our website for anyone who needs additional time to review this statement. Mountain Province Diamonds produces Canadian diamonds to the highest standards of corporate social responsibility, and that is something that we continue to be proud of. We own 49% of the Gacho Quay mine in the Northwest Territories, with De Beers, a division of Anglo-American PLC, owning the remaining 51%. Today, I'll speak to our Q2 2025 results and provide some insights into our plan as we move through 2025. Following that, Steve will discuss the Q2 financial performance of the company and I'll comment on the overall diamond market and then make some closing remarks and answer any questions that you may have. The summary of what I will cover is that there has been a laser focus at the operations on safety, production and costs, while the grade has been lower during the treatment of stockpiles and the diamond market has been weak. Starting with safety, the Goucher Clay operations have continued the strong safety performance of the first quarter and an overall improvement in safety at the operations. The total recordable injury frequency rate for half one of 2025 was 2.13, which is considerably lower than the H1 result of 4.38 for the same period in 2024. and massively down from the 14.62 result in 2022. Safety continues to be a key area of focus at the operations and efforts in this area will continue. Part one is a really challenging time at the operations with the extreme temperatures of quarter one, the ice road season to replenish the mine, and then the fresh air period where wet and slippery roads must be safely managed. We've navigated these periods and we will continue the focus for the remainder of the year. On the production side, both quarter two and the whole of half one of 2025 saw strong operational performance. On processing, the combination of the overall availability and the utilization of that availability for the processing facility was 82.5%. which is a significant improvement from past years. Looking back to the 2020 era, the OPU was 76.7% for the same period, and in 2021 was 69.2% for the same period. A focused effort on process plant stability through 2023 saw us get to 81.5% in H1 of 2024, and the continued improvement is the result that we're looking to generate. That translated into 1.8 million tons of ore processed, which is a record for the mine in H1. The focus on optimizing the operating time of the processing facility will continue through the rest of the year. Onto mining, where there's been an intense focus on mining optimization. Small improvements in equipment refueling, workforce planning, road management, together with other initiatives, delivered strong tons moved for H1 of 2025. We have beat our budget for total tons moved, which is steadily gaining us access to the high-grade 5034 NEX ore body. A strong focus on mobile maintenance delivered equipment availability that enabled the mining operations team to deliver the results that they did in H1. The grade of ore treated is a less positive story for H1. We were primarily treating ore from stockpile during half one as planned. This large stockpile is assigned a single grade number, and we know that geostatistically, the grade will vary in different areas of the stockpile. During H1, we averaged 0.81 carats per ton, which is down 44% from the same period in 2024 and down 54% from the same period in 2023. The Tuzo stockpile was expected to be low grade, although the grade performed lower than planned. The grade was helped by earlier than planned access to some transitional ore from the 5034 MEX ore body. During quarter three, we steadily ramp up NEX production with approximately 140,000 tons in August and 275,000 tons in September. NEX tons are expected to return to the 100,000 ton range in October and then back up to the 270,000 ton range going forward. We're working on increasing the October 5034 NEX tons through further improvement in mining efficiency. But to sum all of that up, safety is going well, processing is going well, mining is going well, while grade in H1 was definitely a challenge. We have some lower-grade Tuzo in the mix over the next few months, and then we're planning to treat mostly 5034 NEX ore. On the diamond market, the market remains really challenging. We were seeing some early positive signs. The recent US tariffs have added a great deal of complexity, and we will continue to assess the impact of US tariffs on the diamond market. Overall, I remain optimistic the market will stabilize, and I'll speak to this in more detail in a few moments. On liquidity, during H1, we were again supported with short-term liquidity from our largest shareholder, Mr. Dermot Desmond, during a period of lower grades and the challenging diamond price environment that I've mentioned. The company's very grateful to Mr. Desmond for his continued support of the company. In short, we're in a strong position operationally, and there has been tremendous progress so far in 2025, and we continue to look forward to the market improving. On cost, there continues to be significant focus on cost management. I will say that drawing from the stockpile has impacted production costs due to the release of previously capitalized costs in building that stockpile. Steve will cover this in more detail in a few moments. On a top line basis, we've mined more tons than planned and maintenance costs to deliver the equipment availability to achieve this have gone up. We're tracking in the range of our budgeted costs for the year as we continue to look for savings in all areas. Our focus will continue to be on the things we can control, which is safety and operational performance. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve to take us through the financial results.

Please unmute, Mr. Thomas. Steve. Okay, while we wait for Steve to join, I will start off.