Alamos Gold Inc. (AGI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Voting of all items at this meeting is now closed. Based on the votes submitted in advance of today's meeting, there are sufficient number of votes submitted in favor of each of the resolutions presented at the meeting. I therefore declare each of the motions carried. Scrutineers would tabulate the results of the meeting and a final report on the vote will be furnished by the scrutineers subsequent to this meeting. The results will be incorporated into our press release and posted on SEDAR+ and EDGAR promptly following today's meeting. That completes the formal business of today's meeting. If there is no further business to be brought before the meeting, I will ask Grace Tang and Greg Fisher for a motion to terminate.

I move that the meeting terminate.

I second the motion.

Thank you. Motion carried. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention. I will now hand the meeting over to John McCluskey, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you very much, Paul, and welcome to the Annual and Special General Meeting, everyone. Just before I get started, I'm going to draw your attention to the cautionary notes. It's truly lengthy, but I encourage everyone concerned to take note of them. I'd start off by looking at the year-end review. 2023 marked our 20th anniversary, and that was a record in terms of our operations and our financial results. All of our operations continued to perform well, driving record production and lower costs. This led to record revenue and cash flow. We also saw significant increases in free cash flow while advancing our growth initiatives. This included completion of the key shaft site infrastructure for the Phase 3 Expansion; an updated feasibility study for the Lynn Lake project, outlining another long-life, low-cost operation with attractive economics; and significant upside and exploration success across our assets leading to another year of reserve and resource growth. Recently, we announced the acquisition of Argonaut Gold, and it's Magino mine, through which we expect to create significant value through its integration with our Island Gold. Next slide. Our strong performance also extended to our ESG practices, where our focus remains on continuous improvement. This includes reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, where we are already a leader, with our GHG emissions per ounce nearly 40% below the peer group average. And we are looking to build upon that lead with a 30% reduction in total GHG emissions planned by 2030. We expect to achieve this target with initiatives underway at all our operations that are making more productive and increasing our use of cleaner power and reducing our reliance on diesel. Next slide. Key things rank as high in importance over safety. The safety of our employees, it's something that we are continually reinforcing through our Home Safe Every Day program. And we're seeing the results with a 56% increase in our -- pardon me, a 56% decrease in our lost time injury frequency rate over the past 4 years. Our work with local communities and focus on creating a net benefit well beyond the lives of our operations is also critical to our long-term success. And we continue to receive recognition for this commitment with numerous social responsibility awards in Mexico for our work with community all around the Mulatos mine. Our overall ESG performance and good governance practices are also being recognized. Across the key rating agencies, we rank well above our industry average and have demonstrated a positive long-term trend in our ESG rating for our focus on continuous improvement. Next slide. In 2023, we produced a record 529,000 ounces of gold, achieving the top end of our increased production guidance and a 15% increase over 2022. Our costs, which are already well below the industry average, decreased 4% over the year. This translated into a record financial performance. Revenue increased 25% for the year to a record $1 billion. Operating cash flow before working capital increased 44% to a record $519 million. We also generated $124 million of free cash flow, a significant increase from 2022, while continuing to invest in our high-return growth. Next slide. All 3 of our operations performed well, contributing to the record performance. This included record mine-site free cash flow of $118 million at Young-Davidson, the third consecutive year free cash flow has exceeded $100 million at Young-Davidson. This month, we also celebrated the 2 millionth-ounce of production at YD. With a 15-year mine life and exploration upside, we expect to be celebrating many more milestones in the years ahead. Island Gold had another strong year operationally, meeting its production guidance, while continuing to fund the majority of the growth capital invested in the Phase 3 Expansion. And in the Mulatos district, we had a standout year, reflecting the outperformance from La Yaqui Grande. This led to production coming in well above guidance and a significant increase in mine site free cash flow to $142 million. Next slide. We also had another successful year on the exploration front across all of our assets, with reserves increasing for the fifth consecutive year to 10.7 million ounces. Reserve grades also increased, reflecting another year of high-grade additions at Island Gold and PDA. Over the past 5 years, reserves have grown 1 million ounces or 10%, net of depletion of 3 million ounces, with grades also increasing by 9%. That represents a total of 4 million ounces discovered over the past 5 years and, at higher grades, we continue to grow our reserves, both in size and in quality. We've been a significant outperformer in the last several years. And with the growth initiatives we have underway, our outlook has never been stronger. In March, we announced the friendly acquisition of Argonaut and its Magino mine located adjacent to our Island Gold mine. Given their close proximity, we'll be combining the operations to create one of the largest, lowest-cost and most profitable gold mines in Canada. The integration of the 2 mines is expected to unlock significant value, including pretax synergies of $515 million. In addition to the synergies, the acquisition is accretive across all key metrics, including financial and operating metrics. Through the expansion of a single optimized billing complex, there will also be significant longer-term upside potential at both operations. Next slide. We continue to make progress on our Phase 3 Expansion, which remains on track to be completed during the first half of 2026. Key shaft surface infrastructure was completed last year, and shaft sinking is well underway, having reached a depth of 185 meters by the end of March. As of the end of Q1 24, approximately 57% of the total initial capital of $756 million had been spent or committed. With the Magino acquisition comes the -- they're already constructed a much larger mill, which means we will no longer have to expand the existing mill at Island. This has further derisked the Phase 3 Expansion and will contribute to the $140 million in capital savings we expect to realize through the acquisition. Next slide. We're also advancing our other key growth projects, including PDA in Mexico and Lynn Lake in Canada. Within the Mulatos District, La Yaqui Grande is currently the star. However, Puerto del Aire represents the future. Over the past 2 years, reserves at PDA have more than doubled to 1 million ounces, with grades also increasing to 5.6 grams per tonne gold. With the deposit open in multiple directions, we expect the growth to continue. We will be releasing a development plan for PDA next month, and we expect we will outline another attractive project and mine life extension at Mulatos. At Lynn Lake, we released an updated feasibility study last year, detailing a long-life, low-cost project in Manitoba with excellent exploration upside. We are currently working on finishing off the detailed engineering and upgrading the site access, putting us in a position to start full-scale construction in 2025. These growth projects are all key drivers of our strong outlook, providing growing production and declining costs in the years ahead. Currently, we are producing at a rate of 500,000 ounces per year. The addition of Magino will increase that 25% to over 600,000 ounces of gold. In 2026, the Phase 3 Expansion at Island Gold will drive our annual production to closer to 700,000 ounces per year and help decrease our all-in sustaining costs to closer to $1,000 per ounce. We expect PDA will take us above 700,000 ounces. Lynn Lake provides additional growth as early as the second half of 2027 and will take us to a longer-term rate of 900,000 ounces of gold per year. This gives us one of the best growth profiles in the sector, and all of this growth is coming from Canada and it's low cost. Next slide. M&A has been a key driver of our growth in an area where we have been able to create a great deal of shareholder value. We've done this by staying disciplined, focusing on high-quality assets with upside and waiting for the right opportunities. Mulatos was acquired for $10 million in 2003. We built it for $70 million. And to date, it has generated $540 million of free cash flow and carries a consensus value of over $600 million. That's over $1 billion of value created from a $10 million investment. Island Gold and Magino represent one of the most -- our most recent success stories, we acquired Island Gold in 2017 for $600 million. By the end of 2023, it had grown in value to $2.1 billion. With the integration of Magino, this now has a consensus valuation of $3.4 billion, a value we expect to grow further still, given the type of exploration potential we see at both deposits and longer-term expansion potential. We see similar potential across our asset base and are working to surface the value through our largest exploration budget ever and the ongoing optimization of our operations. Next slide. In closing, we've been a significant outperformer since the start of 2022, up over 120%, outpacing the price of gold, the various ETFs and the S&P 500. This has been a reflection of a number of things, which include our high-quality assets, our low political risk, a high return and fully funded organic growth, declining costs, driving increasing profitability and consistent execution and ongoing value creation. In this way, we are uniquely positioned. And with our best days ahead, we expect that strong performance will continue well into the future. So that concludes our formal presentation. I'll now turn the call over to Scott Parsons, our Senior VP of Investor Relations, for any of your questions that have come through the webcast. Scott?

Thank you, John. There are no questions from the audience at this time. So I will turn the meeting back to yourself for closing remarks.

Thank you. I just want to say, again, thank you to everyone for attending the Annual General Meeting. It's been my pleasure to be the CEO of this company since its founding in 2003. We've just seen amazing growth since then. We basically come from, essentially, a $15 million Canadian market capitalization to over $9 billion market capitalization as of this Annual General Meeting. And it's been just an extraordinary run. And it's really a reflection on this amazing Board and this truly amazing management team that we've come so far, and we've achieved so much, and why I feel very strongly about the fact that our best days do lie ahead. Thank you once again, and that concludes our meeting.