Torex Gold Resources Inc.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Torex Gold Resources, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in the 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 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dan Rollins, Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Rollins.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. On behalf of the Torex team, welcome to our fourth quarter and year-end 2021 conference call. Before we begin, I wish to inform listeners that a presentation accompanying today's conference call can be found under the investor section of our website at www.torusgold.com. I'd also like to note that certain statements to be made today by the management team may contain forward-looking information. As such, please refer to the detailed cautionary notes on page two of today's presentation, as well as those included in the Q4 and year-end 2021 MD&A. On the call today, we have Jody Kazenko, President and CEO, as well as Andrew Snowden, CFO. Following the presentation, Jody and Andrew will be available for the question and answer period. This conference call is being webcast and will be available for replay on our website. Last night's press release and the accompanying financial statements and MD&A are posted on our website and have been filed on CDAR. Also, please note that all amounts mentioned in this call are US dollars unless otherwise stated. I'll now turn the call over to Jody.

Thank you, Dan, and good morning to all on the line. Welcome to the Torex Gold Q4 and full year 2021 results call. I will open my remarks by saying that underpinned by a solid fourth quarter, 2021 was outstanding by all measures. Challenging, but outstanding. We delivered on the safe, reliable, low-cost production that investors have come to expect out of the Torex team. We met or exceeded guidance on all production and cost parameters for the third year in a row, and we are well in stride for more of the same in 2022. Importantly, the MediLuna feasibility study is nearing completion. This is the year we deliver on the present while building out our future at Morelos. In terms of the agenda for the call, it's the same as usual. I'll provide a brief reminder of the strategic plan we are working to. Then I'll step you through the key business and operational highlights specific to the fourth quarter and full year 2021. Then over to Andrew Snowden for some detail on the financials. And after that, I'll provide a progress update on exploration and Medialuna. Dan's already commented on the safe harbor language, so I'll take you right to slide four. Before I get into the specific results, I wanted to orient you once again on this strategy summary slide. It hasn't changed, and it won't change, except for the fact that we have made substantial progress. These six strategic pillars continue to reflect the long-term vision of Torex, and as important as vision is, we have demonstrated our ability to continue to plan, to execute, and to deliver. Q4 and 2021 were no different. Notable highlights for the year of 2021 are set out on slide five with some key operational and financial metrics. We delivered a new production record in 2021 coming in at 468,000 ounces poured and at the very high end of the range guided for production. This was underpinned by a new annual record out of the underground at 1,260 tons per day, and a new annual milling record at 12,360 tons per day. We delivered total cash costs of $674 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $928 per ounce, beating and meeting guidance respectively, solidifying, in my view, our position as a low-cost producer and further demonstrating the cash generation capability of our asset. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $491 million and free cash flow of $98 million, which is a substantial amount given that we invested just over $150 million in non-sustaining capex into the future operations at Morelos. And critically, we bolstered our net cash position. You can see there on the very right of the bar chart that we closed the year at just over $250 million in net cash and importantly, no debt. Add in our undrawn credit facility and we have over $400 million in available liquidity. Essentially, we're right where we want it to be in terms of our plan to cash up ahead of the MediaLuna build. With 2021 behind us, slide six steps you through the outlook for 2022, which can be described as another excellent year ahead of us. The annual production range is a mirror image of 2021, Same total ounces, really, but lighter in the first half and then picking up in Q4. This just has to do with sequencing out of the pits and grade coming up slightly in Q4. Total cash costs is up slightly over 2021, as is the case with the industry more broadly. We're experiencing inflationary and COVID pressures. Specific areas of increase for us include reagents, electricity, and labor costs. ASIC is planned to be higher in 2022. Now, this is driven by the decision to do the pushback at the Elly Mall pit, and that decision was driven to de-risk the production plan in 2024. In order to get those 150,000 ounces and push pit life out, we had to add in select pit equipment rebuilds this year, and waste stripping has increased in 2022 to eight to one, from just over seven to one in 2021. And the last comment I'll make in this slide is about non-sustaining capital. ELG non-sustaining is down from last year as we will be completed our Portal 3 by middle of 2022. That was the key driver in 2021. And the MediLuna CapEx number together with the spend plan will be detailed in the feasibility study to be released in the last week of March. Slide 7 sets out some of the key accomplishments on ESG in 2021. There are three call-outs on this slide. First, foremost, on safety. We closed the year with one contractor lost time injury back in April. One too many from my perspective, but quite remarkable nonetheless. And I'm pleased to say that we're now sitting at just over 7 million hours worked lost time injury free. Second, on COVID. Like many regions in the world, we experienced a significant uptick in Omicron cases as at the end of the year and into January. This has driven significant employee absences, which were backstopped by contractors. Thus far, we've been able to deliver on expectations in terms of poured ounces, but it certainly has put a strain on production out of the pits and the underground and put upward pressure on costs. Third, Our leadership position on ESG was even further enhanced through 2021 as we improved our disclosure to accurately reflect the work that we've always been doing on the ground. And you can see some of the scores and ratings there in the top right quadrant, including an A on the MSCI rating, quite impressive progress in one year. Slide eight is a reminder of the multi-year production outlook we issued in mid 2021. You can see there that our 2022 guidance confirmed that we expect 2022 to replicate 2021 production. Under the current plan, YHS pit comes off in 2023, so we see a slight decrease in production in that year. And the 2024 number you see there at 300 to 350,000 ounces does not include any gold equivalent production from MediaLuna. These numbers will all be updated with the release of the technical report in late March. Recall that the goal line here is to deliver a smooth transition on production and cash flow during the period between ELG and Medialuna. And as between the contributions from the pit layback, the rates we're seeing out of the underground, and our stockpile, which now sits at just over 4.5 million tonnes, I'm confident that we can land on a production plan that delivers just that. Turning now to the usual suite of operational metrics on slide 10, you can see the bar graphs here on ounces, plant throughput, and underground tons per day, which I've already provided commentary on. The one additional piece of information is on the bottom left. Head grade to the mill averaged a healthy 3.65 grams per ton in the year. I think what impresses me most as I look at these charts is the obvious operational stability we've achieved over the last two years. With the exception of the COVID interruption in Q2 of 2020, there is little variation from corridor to corridor, which, from an operational perspective, shows me how robust our work systems have become. Slide 11 is our usual confessional about unit costs by area. This slide keeps us accountable. You can see upward cost pressures across the board, most notably in processing costs, as pricing and consumption of reagents increased from 2020 to 2021. On that note, I should point out that cyanide consumption actually decreased in Q4 to 3.8 kilograms per ton, down noticeably from Q3 and quite a bit below our own Q4 forecast. While the levels of soluble copper and iron were roughly the same from quarter to quarter, what changed was the mineralogy of the iron. We saw high levels of hexagonal and monoclinic pyrotite, which is less reactive to cyanide, and this makes cyanide consumption newly difficult to predict for us. The range we're using is between 3 and 4 kilograms per ton for Q1 and even in Q2. Thereafter, we've got two engineering projects in the plan this year to support cyanide reduction, so we'll update you on those and review this forecast as we head into Q2. We also had some tailwinds on PTU costs owing to the new legislation. You can see it on the last bar graph there. So that, combined with tight cost control throughout the business, got us to the place where we delivered a beat on total cash costs overall for the year. I will now turn the call over to Andrew for a more detailed look at financials.