OceanaGold Corporation

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Oceana Gold Corporation Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines have been placed on hold in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. And if at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Also note that the call is being recorded on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. And I would like to turn the conference over to Rebecca Hanari. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Oceana Gold's second quarter 2024 results webcast and conference call. I'm Rebecca Hanari, Director of Investor Relations. We are joined today by Jared Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer, Marius Renikirk, Chief Financial Officer, David Landano, Chief Operating Officer, Americas, and Peter Sharp, Chief Operating Officer, Asia Pacific. The presentation that we will be referencing during the conference call is available through the webcast and on our website. I would also like to remind everyone that our presentation 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 included in the presentation, news release, and MD&A, as well as the risk factors set out in our annual information form. All dollar amounts discussed in this conference call are in U.S. dollars. I will now turn the call over to Jared for opening remarks.

Thank you, Rebecca. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. The first pillar of our corporate strategy is to safely and responsibly deliver goal production. I'll start off by acknowledging that we did not do that this quarter because one member of our DDPO team, Christopher Magistino, did not go home to his family. This was Oceana Gold's only fatality since 2016, and Dodipio's only fatality since 2012, before it started production. This loss has been profoundly upsetting to all of us at Oceana Gold, particularly for Christopher's friends and colleagues at the Dodipio mine, and ultimately, greatest to his family and local community. Preliminary findings of the investigation indicate that he fell from heights while completing a work-related task in the paste plant area. Operations were suspended for about 24 hours while the area was secured and crews were notified. The base plant where the incident occurred remained shut down for about a week. We continue to drive for a safe workplace across all our sites, particularly in the wake of this tragedy, and continue to implement our key safety programs, namely our safe behaviours and Stop and Think. Keeping our workforce safe remains a critical focus for all of us, and we are making it clear to our workforce that the only work we want is safe work. We have a number of other actions being implemented or considered in this never-ending pursuit of zero fatality or life-altering injuries. From a production perspective, we produced just over 98,000 ounces during the quarter, and despite a weaker-than-expected quarter of both the DPO and YHE, We expect to deliver our 2024 consolidated guidance with production strongly pack-half-weighted, as we outlined at the beginning of the year. In the first half of the year, our focus was on waste stripping at our two open pit mines, Hale and Macraes, to allow us access to high-grade ore. I'm pleased to say that Hale reached ore in Phase 2 of the Leadbetter Pit in May, and we expect to reach ore in Phase 7 of the Innes Mill Pit at Macraes in this current third quarter. At the same time, we've been ramping up production of the Horseshoe Underground mine at Hale, and this month we achieved target production run rates of around 2,000 tonnes per day. We were free cash flow positive in the quarter, assisted by the proceeds from selling the non-core blackwater asset. We also successfully completed the initial public offering of Oceana Gold Philippines, the subsidiary that owns the Dipio mine, and we listed Oceana Gold Philippines on the Philippines Stock Exchange. The proceeds of this offering, which we do not include in our free cash flow number, in combination with the quarter's free cash flow, put us in a net cash position at the end of the second quarter. We also continue to deliver on the capital allocation framework outlined at our recent investor day, with progression of our attractive growth options, a strong balance sheet, and a focus on returning capital to shareholders. We declared our latest one cent per share semi-annual dividend and recently introduced a share buyback. This slide shows how we're tracking compared to our guidance ranges. As outlined when we set the guidance at the start of the year, production was expected to be 60% back half weighted. We've reduced just under 40% of the midpoint of guidance in the first half, reflecting weaker production from the DPO and WAHI. but we're expecting a stronger second half to deliver our consolidated production guidance. In addition to open pit oil sources coming online at Hale and shortly McRae's, we expect Didipio to have an improved second half as well, driven by progressive sequencing of the high-grade breccia stoves and an increase in underground oil tons hauled with the addition of new mining equipment on site. Increased production from Didipio will also result in higher copper production in the second half of the year. From a cost perspective, our first half outcome was above our all-in sustained cost guidance for the year. The major driver for this is mostly due to lower ounces produced in the first half, and we expect unit costs to come down across the remainder of the year as production increases. Capital projects remain on track for the year, including open pit stripping and TSF expenditures at Hale and McRae's, continued capital development at Horseshoe Underground at Hale, and ongoing permitting and study costs at WKP. I'll now turn the call over to Marius to discuss our financial highlights for the quarter.