Orezone Gold Corporation

Good morning. My name is David and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the AuraZone FY 2022 conference call and webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key followed by the number one on your touchtone telephone. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star one once again. Thank you, Patrick Downey, CEO. You may begin your conference.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. On behalf of Orzona, I'm very proud to present our inaugural financial and production report for the year 2022. 2022 was a transformational year for the company, and I'll talk about that and what we're doing next and where we're going. But first, I just want to bring your attention to the forward-looking statements on page two of the presentation. As I stated, 2022 was a transformational year for the company. We built our phase one oxide mill on time and under budget. We reached commercial production and achieved rapid ramp up. We also completed a very successful drill program, which will set us up for our next stage of growth. And I'd like to say that we did this all without an LTI, a single LTI, which I think is an amazing achievement for a young team. And I want to acknowledge the team for that achievement. 2023 will be a year of bedding in the oxide plant and also setting the stage for our next stage of growth, which we are very excited about. As I stated, we reached commercial production on December the 1st, 2022. We had some power issues with our power supplier. which negatively impacted production during commissioning, but that's now squarely behind us. And you'll see that as we go through the presentation. And the rental system is in full operation and running well. The process plant has ramped up rapidly and is performing above expectations. We are 4% above nameplate for 2022 and 12% above nameplate for the first two months of 2023, which has continued into the third month, which I think will set us up for a great first quarter of 2023. Process recoveries are consistent with design levels, and we are now initiating certain improvements, which we believe will improve those recoveries. With a strong gold production performance in 2022 has carried right into Q1 2023. As you can see, we started ramping up in September 2022. We had first gold, and then we had the power issue, so absolutely zero in October. But we rapidly turned that around, got a power plant in, got it started up within a month, which I think is a remarkable achievement. We were at 348,000 tons in November, and then you can see we're above design throughput for December, January, February, and that's continued into March. So that's reflective of the type of design we've done on the plant and the team that we have on the ground. I'm now going to hand it over to Peter Tam, Chief Financial Officer, who will walk you through the financial and operating highlights.

All right, thanks, Patrick. So the financial and operating highlights for Q4 and full year 2022. For gold production, the company produced 22,258 ounces in Q4 and 27,831 ounces for 2022. Gold production commenced in September with our first gold floor on September 10th. Production was intermittent in the month due to unreliable power from the site power plant. Production was halted at the end of September due to a major failure to one of the two operating Gensler Gensets. Production was restarted at the end of October when two of the three delivered Gensler Gensets were brought back into operation. Despite restarting production, plant throughput was restricted due to insufficient power and concerns remain about the reliability of the Gensler power plant and the high likelihood of further breakdowns. But through perseverance and good fortune, we were able to sort a turnkey power system in very short order from a reputable provider. This rental system was mobilized to site at the end of October and became operational in the first half of November. With full power in hand, the bone beret processing operations began to show its true potential in December, with throughput exceeding nameplate by 4%, as mentioned by Patrick earlier. As such, Q4 gold production of 22,258 ounces represents less than two full months of steady operation. As shown earlier, the process plan is operating ahead of expectations in the first quarter of 2023, and we expect to report strong quarterly production for Q1 later this year. For gold sales, our first sale was made in October. Therefore, our gold sales revenue and all the sustaining costs per ounce sold are the same for Q4 as they are for the year. In Q4, the company sold 24,676 ounces at an average realized price of $1,760 an ounce for revenues of $43.4 million. All in sustaining costs was $1,075 an ounce sold, which includes a combination of commissioning and commercial production ounces. Q4 was a profitable quarter, leading to net income of $3.8 million and earnings per share of $0.01 attributable to shareholders of Oritone. Operating cash flow was $23.2 million for the quarter and $6.6 million for the year. Cash at year-end stood at $9.2 million, and I've got a bit more detail to show on that in a later slide here. Next slide. Yes, so on the production and operating highlights, we process 807,000 ounces, or sorry, tons in the quarter, fourth quarter, and just over a million tons for the full year. Head grades was 0.93 gram per ton gold for Q4 and 0.92 gram per ton gold for the 2022 year. Coincidentally, plant recovery was 91.9% for both the quarter and the year. In terms of unit cash costs, processing costs was $12.47 per ton for Q4 and $11.86 per ton for 2022. Site G&A costs were $4.87 per ton for Q4 and $5.32 per ton for 2022. One key point to highlight is that unit cash costs for processing and site G&A were elevated during the period and not representative of steady state operation. Already for this first quarter of 2023, with higher monthly throughput and efficiency achieved, we have seen a downward trend in these unit costs for processing and site G&A. Next slide. So in cash and liquidity, as mentioned earlier, we ended the year with $9.2 million in cash, which was an increase of $1.8 million from the previous quarter. This is after repaying $5.1 million in deferred interest and fees accumulated in the second half of 2022 on the Coors Bank senior loan. Working capital was negatively impacted by the longer-than-expected commissioning, which led to our working capital deficit at year-end. However, I'm happy to report that cash and working capital have improved dramatically during Q1 of 2023, with their strong goal production and sales and the high gold prices. The final point to add is that we have commenced principal repayments on the court's loans in the first quarter of 2023. Even with debt repayments, we do expect to report a healthy and significantly greater cash balance at the end of the first quarter. I'll hand that back to you now, Patrick.