Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (AEM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Perfect. Thank you very much, and it's great to see everyone here today. Please be advised some forward-looking statements. There's a lot to cover. I'm going to try to go fairly quickly. I'll try to wrap up my presentation in about 10 or 12 minutes and leave the rest of the time for Q&A. So I'll go quickly, but there are really 4 messages that I want to give you. First message is the business is going very, very well. Production is strong. Costs are exceptional, under control, and our people are safe. To put things into perspective, in the last -- in year-to-date, gold is up almost $1,100 an ounce. Our costs are up $10 an ounce. So when we talk about delivering leverage to our owners, you can see in that example, we are delivering 99% of the gold price increase directly to our owners. So one, the business is going well. Two, probably the most exciting, our projects are going well. I'm going to talk about the 5 big projects, and there are others, but the 5 big projects alone are between 1.3 million and 1.5 million additional ounces of production per year starting in 2030. Now some of that will offset some declines, but that is significant, and we'll talk about that. So production business going well, projects going well. Three, exploration going exceptionally well. And four, in this environment, and this is important, we are going to stay focused. We're going to stick to what we do well. We're not going to do anything crazy. We get asked the question. I want to be clear. We are not considering a bid on tech. The logic of that merger is all about synergies between Collahuasi and QB. That makes a lot of sense for them. There's a lot of players that will look at that. Agnico is not considering a bid on tech. So jumping into the presentation, I start with this slide because it's important. It's an important differentiator of what Agnico is. Agnico doesn't want to be all things all over the world, and we don't consider ourselves a global gold mining company. We won't go everywhere in the world to build a gold mine. We get the logic of doing that. We get the logic that says, look, if I want to be a big global gold miner, I've got to follow the gold wherever it is, that's a fine strategy. That's not our strategy. Our strategy is regional. We focus only on regions that meet 2 criteria. The first criteria is an obvious criteria, which is it has to have the geologic potential, but for multiple mines over multiple decades because that's how we think you get good. And two, it has to have the political stability to actually allow you to operate multiple mines over multiple decades. And when you think about it and when you think about what makes a good miner and when you have thousands of employees and thousands of smart, hard-working people, what really -- it's sort of disingenuous to say, well, we're smarter than everyone else or we work harder. The truth of the matter is what makes a good miner is, do you know the ground better? Do you know the suppliers better? Do you know the contractors better? Have you built mines there before? And you get all of that with this regional approach. In Canada, we produce more gold than the next 8 companies combined. We are the employee of choice. We have half the turnover. I'm telling you it is a big competitive advantage, and that's our business. Does this work? Demonstrably, it does work. If you look over the last 20 years, yes, we've grown from 1 mine to 11 mines. Yes, we've grown from 1 country to 4 countries. Yes, we've grown from under 0.25 million ounces of production to 3.5 million. But honestly, you guys shouldn't care about that. What you should care about our per share metrics because that's what translates into value for you individually. And we're proud to say over that period of time, our gold production per share is up by a factor of almost 3. Our EBITDA is up by a factor of more than 10 and our dividend, and we've been paying a dividend for 42 years straight, not miss a quarter, is up by over a factor of 50. Our gold production per share over the last 20 years has increased on average 4% to 5% compounded over 20 years. That's impressive. And when you look at the bottom left, you can see that, that has translated to not only outperforming the XAU index by more than double. We've outperformed the S&P and we've outperformed gold price. And guess what? We've outperformed the gold price almost by that 4% or 5% compounded annual increase in production per share. Our costs, as I mentioned, are under control. Margins in the last quarter were over 60%. Over 60% because gold has gone up and because we've delivered, as I mentioned, 99% of that increase directly to our shareholders. Obviously, in this environment, we're doing very well for our shareholders. We're making a lot of money. We have since the start of the year, we've gone from a net debt position of $200 million to a cash position of $1 billion. We've paid $400 million in dividends so far this year. We've bought back $150 million of share this year. We've invested about $1 billion back into the business this year. We have the best pipeline we've ever had and we have the best exploration results we've ever had, all doing this safely, all doing it responsibly within the community. Our strategy continues to work. Again, not a lot of time, so I'm going to go over these 5 big projects. And again, there are others, but we are -- we believe we're going to be able to bring Detour, a world-class mine from 700,000 ounces a year to over 1 million ounces a year. We have a plan to take Malartic from about 550,000 ounces a year to over 1 million ounces a year. In the world, depending on the year, there are 4 to 5 mines that produce over 1 million ounces a year. One is in Russia, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and sometimes Kazakhstan. The only one in the world producing more than 1 million ounces a year in the western world is the Nevada Gold Mines, and that's a combination, roughly 60-40 Barrick and Newmont. So by bringing Detour and Malartic to over 1 million ounces a year, we will have 2 of 6 mines in the world producing over 1 million ounces a year, 2 of 3 in the Western world, and these are multi-decade mines with mine lives well into the 2050s. Our EVP of Exploration, Guy Gosselin, also mentioned that Detour just is kind of interesting. These are ballpark numbers. But a $1,400 gold, the pit at Detour has 20 million ounces of mineable gold at $1,600 gold, it has 40 million ounces of mineable gold. These are serious gold mines in serious locations. We're going to build Upper Beaver, that is progressing very well, where that's about 220,000 ounces a year of additional production, Hope Bay, a fantastic mine in Nunavut, we believe that will be a 400,000 ounce a year mine, and then our share of San Nicolás, about 200,000 ounces. So just these 5 projects add up to 1.5 million ounces. Again, there's going to be some reduction in production as you go through at other mines, but we see a solid path to over 4 million ounces a year without issuing new shares at these prices, funding it ourselves continuing to do share buyback, strengthening the business. And all of these mines, by the way, are in jurisdictions where we've been for decades. Detour Lake, Canadian Malartic, Hope Bay, those mines are leveraging off existing infrastructure. So they're not just important big mines, but they have the best return on capital because a lot of the capital is already in the ground, and they have the best risk-adjusted return on capital. Just to hit a few highlights on exploration. I'll start by saying we continue to reinvest in the business, and we have 121 drills turning. Not because gold is $3,600 an ounce, but because we have some fantastic results, and we're continuing to drill. I'll just quickly hit some highlights at Malartic. Remember, Malartic was a mine discovered in 1923. It's still going strong. We found over 10 million ounces over the last 7 years. And we've hit another hole, I'll just some highlights, 3.4 grams over 36 meters at 2 kilometers depth. That's important because it is below the existing mineral envelope. Detour, confirming high-grade domain, 3.4 grams over 67 meters at 400 meters depth. Hope Bay, this is quite an exceptional hole, 53 grams over 8.4 meters at 750-meter depth. Meliadine expanding the Tiriganiaq zone, 15 grams over 5 meters, but only at 200 meters depth. I could go on and on, but we're getting a lot of success there. And then finally, I'll finish by saying we're going to stick to the same strategy that we've always had. We're going to stay in safe jurisdictions. We're going to play off our strengths. We're going to leverage existing infrastructure where we can. We're going to treat our people well, which leads to half the turnover of our peers. We're going to treat our contractors well, our suppliers well, our communities well, our First Nation partners well. It's a business that makes sense. Again, we've never had a stronger pipeline. We're in safe jurisdictions, which matter more now than ever before, especially when your margins are pushing close to 70%. The business is looking pretty good. And with that, I will -- we've got 6 or 7 minutes for questions. Thanks for the discussion.

Thanks, Ammar. Okay. Well, the presentation has a big focus on organic growth projects, 2 biggest pieces of which are Detour and Canadian Malartic, targeting 1 million ounces a year from each into the 2030s. So can you talk about the studies that are currently underway? What sort of decisions need to be made to maximize the value of those assets?

Well, I'll start by saying, while these are significant big projects in the scheme of things, they're not that complex. If you take a look at Detour in a nutshell, we would be -- remember, the mine is there. The mill is there, the power is there, the permits are there, the tailings facilities there. At Detour, really, what we're doing is we are going to replace 0.9 gram open pit material with about 2.7 gram underground material. So it consists of building a ramp, building a paste plant, building a conveyance system. And really, that's about it. And we're good at that. At Malartic, it's -- the mill is there. The tailings are there, the power is there, the people are there. At Malartic, it's kind of the opposite, where at Detour, you've got a mill capacity that's largely full and you're changing what you're mining to increase the grade. At Meliadine, you've got a mill that's going to have an awful lot of capacity as we transition from open pit to underground. So it's about new sources. And at Malartic, those new sources are -- we're building a shaft. We might build a second shaft. Eventually, we might even build a third shaft because the ore body continues to grow. We've got an open pit deposit that's 15 kilometers away that we bring in, we've got another underground mine nearby that we can source it. So it's really -- it's not -- they're not just big, important long-life mines. They're in good jurisdictions. And as a person who I spent a lot of my career in finance. I'm going to repeat myself, but it's important. They give you the very best return on capital, and they give you the very best risk-adjusted return on capital. This is not going to a brand-new country where we've never been before where we have to hire a floor to hint or some contracting company to build it. This is in our backyard, and they're going very, very well.

And is there anything you can do to accelerate the growth from the 2030s?

Well, I think we are moving these projects forward faster than we had initially assessed. I've been in this business over 25 years. It is rare when you have a plan to build something that it actually goes better than you expected. And so these are moving very quickly. Again, we have the teams, we have the people, we have the resources, and we are actually going to be accelerating some of these projects. I expect you'll see that as we give our guidance next year as we talk about what's going to be announced and we talk about the capital that we've budgeted.

Okay. Look forward to that. You're the largest miner in Canada. So I'm interested in your perspective, country of Canada has new leadership, a new cabinet in place. so far, it seems like the government wants to enable the resource sector to grow. Can you share any thoughts on implications of the political backdrop for Agnico or the broader Canadian industry?

We've been very pleased with the support of the new government. We are the biggest miner in Canada. Frankly, we had difficulty getting the attention of anybody in the previous PMO office. I'll tell you -- I won't say the names, but I will tell you that the weekend after the election I got text messages from very senior federal ministers directly. I mean I never met the people. I don't know how they got my phone number, but they reached out right away. So that just shows you, I think it's a bit of a sea change in attitude. It is going to take time. It's not that easy to do things instantly. But certainly, we're very encouraged by what we're hearing and seeing with the new government.

Interesting. One on the gold price and margins. I think the #1 question I get from generalists coming into the space these days is they see the unprecedented margin the industry is generating, and they say, how long can it last? A key part of that discussion is cost and CapEx. So I'm just interested in Agnico's process of setting mine plans and capital allocation when margins are this high.

Well, the interesting thing is these 5 projects we're talking about for any of you who have heard us talk before, they're the same 5 projects as last year and 2 years ago when we started the concept of them. So we are being disciplined. These are the highest return projects. We have our team focused on it. We're not stretching too thin. We can do all of this, there are other opportunities. I mean there's something like Hammond Reef. That's something that actually is going to look good at these levels, but it doesn't meet the returns. It meets the 15% hurdle rate, but these things are higher and they're easier and they're more impactful. So we are getting more opportunities. But I think the message I'd give all of you is we're going to stay focused and disciplined and deliver. And when we deliver, again, to go from roughly 3.4 million ounces a year to over 4 million, while you're reducing your shares, that's something our shareholders want. And again, return on capital really just means return on share on a per share basis.

Any questions from the crowd in the final few minutes here? No. Okay. I've got one more for you. When you look at your growth options, you've got these greenfields, Upper Beaver, Hope Bay, San Nicolás. How do you look at the attractiveness of those versus the brownfield opportunities?

Well, every project is different. But in general, and again, not always, but in general, it's better to leverage off existing infrastructure. It's less risky. It takes less capital, you've got the teams in place. And that's why having this regional approach really works for us. It's not just I've got a mill. It's I know the suppliers, I know the contractors, I'm the employee of choice. I know the community. We had a tour -- I'll just finish with this. We had a tour at Upper Beaver a few months ago. It's a very simple example. But I think people were surprised how much progress we've made and how we're actually ahead of schedule. But I'll give you 2 specifics. They seem small, but they're important. We went into the water treatment plant, and we're talking about the water treatment plant. And we talked a little bit about the plant, but what's interesting to me is the steel building around the plant is the 14th of those buildings we bought and had constructed from the same supplier, the 14th. So me as a CEO, when I get a number that says, well, this building is going to cost x, we've already built 14 of them. I have a knowledge advantage. The shaft that we're building at Macassa, it's the same team that just built a -- sorry, the shaft that we're building at Upper Beaver is the same team that just built a shaft at Macassa 20 kilometers away. It's the same team, the same equipment the same construction equipment to do it. It's a huge competitive advantage, not just in operation, but also in being able to make good capital allocation decisions.

Great. Well, that brings us the time. Thank you, Ammar.

My pleasure.