DPM Metals Inc. (DPM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders of Dundee Precious Metals, Inc. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. If you participate in today's meeting and disclose personal information, you will be deemed to consent to the recording, transfer and use of same. If you disclose personal information of another person in today's meeting, you will be deemed to represent to Computershare and the corporation that you first obtained all required consents for the disclosure, recording, transfer and use of such personal information from all appropriate persons before your disclosure. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Jonathan Goodman, Chair of Dundee. Mr. Goodman, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Dundee Precious Metals 2022 Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders. I now call the meeting to order. My name is Jonathan Goodman, and as Chair of the company, I will chair today's meeting. We are holding this meeting in a virtual format with a live webcast, which allows all shareholders and appointed proxy holders from any location to join, participate and vote at the meeting. Guests are also welcome to attend or look into our meeting. We'd like to set out a few rules for the orderly conduct of the meeting. One, questions can be submitted using the instant messaging service of the virtual interface. Please note that there may be a slight delay in questions being received by us after they've been submitted. Please follow the instructions in the virtual platform, which will ask you to indicate your name, which entity you represent, if any, and confirm whether you are a registered shareholder or a duly appointed proxy holder. Two, questions in respect to the motions can only be submitted by a registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder. When reading other questions on a motion, we will note the name of the registered shareholder or proxy holder who made the question. Three, following the formal part of the meeting and management presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session where all registered shareholders, proxy holders and guests are welcome to ask questions of a more general nature. In order to deal with all questions in the timely fashion, questions that are similar in nature will be answered once and duplicative questions will not receive a response. If we are unable to address your question during the meeting due to time constraints, a representative of the company will reach out to you following the meeting with the response. Four, voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot. To allow sufficient time for the voting, the polls will be opened at the beginning of the meeting, and you will receive a message on the virtual interface requesting you to start registering your vote. I remind you that only registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who are properly logged in with their control numbers or user name will be asked to vote on each business item and be able to see the motion being brought forth at this meeting on their screen. We remind you that if you are a registered shareholder and you have already voted by proxy, you do not need to vote again unless you wish to change your vote. If you plan to vote at the meeting, you may choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait to cast your vote until after an item is discussed or following the conclusion of discussions on all voting matters. To vote, simply click on your choice for or withhold or against, as applicable. A confirmation message will appear to show your vote has been received. To change a vote, simply change your selection. The votes you have submitted on each polling item at the beginning of the call -- at the time of poll closes will be recorded. Totals in favor or against or withheld, as the case may be, for each resolution will be tallied by the scrutineers once the voting is complete, and the Chair will report on the outcome of all motions at the end of the meeting. We will now proceed with the formal portion of today's meeting. To expedite the formal part of the meeting, I will move all motions as the proxy appointee. Following the formal business, David Rae, DPM's President and CEO, will highlight our 2021 performance and will review the first quarter results and respond to questions. Before I proceed, I'd like to take a moment to extend a sincere thank you to Jeremy Kinsman, who retired from the Board in February, for his many years of valuable service to the company. His guidance and expertise contributed significantly to the company as we transition to a mid-tier producer. As previously reported, I will be stepping off the Board after today's meeting and congratulate Peter Gillin on his appointment as a Chair following his reelection today. Peter has served many years as the Deputy Chair and I know, I'm leaving the board in good hands. I now ask that the 2022 Annual and Special Meeting of the shareholders of the company come to order. I declare that the polls are open on all resolutions and will remain open until the last item of business of the meeting has been completed. Kelly Stark-Anderson, Corporate Secretary of the company, will act as secretary of the meeting. For the purposes of this meeting, I appoint Computershare Investor Services as scrutineers to compute the vote of any polls taken at this meeting and to report thereon to secretary. The items of business for today's meeting are set out in the Management Information Circular of the company dated March 24, 2022. Once again, we mailed it to shareholders using notice and access and delivered your material providing you with a notice and posting materials on our website at www.dundeeprecious.com, only mailing materials to shareholders have previously requested paper copies. The meeting materials were mailed on April 5, 2022. Unless there is any objection, which may be voiced by registered shareholders' duly-appointed proxy holders by using instant messaging service of the virtual interface, I will dispense with the reading of the notice of the meeting. Copies of the Management Information Circular and other meeting materials are available under the company's profile on the SEDAR website. As no objections have been received, we will continue. Our transfer agent, Computershare Investor Services, Inc., has attested to the proper mailing of the notice calling this meeting. The transfer agent has filed with me proof of service of such mailing, and I direct that a copy of such proof of service be retained with the records of the company. I've been advised that there are 2 more -- 2 or more people attending the meeting who hold or represent by proxy voting shares, representing more than 25% of all outstanding voting shares of the company. Therefore, a quorum of shareholder is present and the meeting is properly called and duly constituted for the transaction of business. I have received the scrutineers report, and I direct that their formal report be retained with the records of the company. As the first item of business on the agenda for today's meeting, I present the audited consolidated financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31, 2021, and together with the auditor's report to the shareholders thereon. Copies of such documents have been mailed to shareholders who requested them. The next item of business is the election of directors. In accordance with the advanced notice bylaws of the company for nominations of directors by shareholders, we did not receive any notice of any director nomination for this year's meeting. Accordingly, the only persons eligible to be nominated for election as directors of the company are the persons nominated by management. The 8 directors to be elected by the shareholders of the company shall hold office until the close of business of the first annual meeting of shareholders of the company following election or until their successors are elected or appointed. Jamie Donovan, Peter Gillin, David Rae, Kalidas Madhavpeddi, Juanita Montalvo, Marie-Anne Tawil, Anthony Walsh and Nicole Adshead-Bell, have been nominated as directors for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed. Each of the persons nominated has confirmed that he or she is prepared to serve as a director. Since there are no other nominations, I move the motion to elect each of the individuals nominated as directors. Unless there are any questions, I will move to the next item of business. The next item of business is the appointment of the auditor of the company for the ensuing year and to authorize the directors of the company to fix the auditor's remuneration. The Board of Directors of the company has approved, subject to shareholder confirmation, the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants, as the auditor of the company. I move that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants, to be appointed the auditor of the company until the next annual meeting of shareholders and that the Board of Directors be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration. Unless there are any questions, I will move to the next item of business. The next item of business is to consider [ end of yield ] appropriate to pass, with or without variation, an ordinary resolution in the form of which is outlined in circular, approving the new 2022 stock option plan of the company, as more fully described in the circular. I move that the ordinary resolution to approve the 2022 stock option plan of the company as set out in the circular be approved. Unless there are any questions, I will move to the next item of business. The next and final item of business is to pass a nonbinding advisory resolution accepting the company's approach to executive compensation. The form of this resolution is outlined in the circular. I move that the nonbinding advisory resolution accepting the company's approach to executive compensation as set out in the circular be approved and confirmed. As we mentioned, voting today is being conducted by electronic ballot. I will now take a moment for registered holders and appointed proxy holders to complete voting. [Voting]

For those of you who have not yet cast your vote, please do so now. We will provide registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holder approximately 1 more minute to complete the electronic ballot. Once the electronic balloting closes, the voting page will disappear and your votes will automatically be submitted. [Voting]

Voting is now closed. I would ask that the scrutineer compile the report regarding the results of voting on all business matters. However, I've been advised that based on the proxies we've received today, all voted overwhelmingly in favor of each of the matters today. Each of the 8 nominated directors received more than 83% of the votes in favor of his or her election as director of the company to serve until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed. 95% have voted for the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the auditor of the company and to authorize the Board of Directors of the company to fix their remuneration. 93% have voted in favor of passing an ordinary resolution of approving the 2022 stock option plan of the company, and 96% have voted in favor of passing a nonbinding advisory resolution accepting the company's approach to executive compensation. I declare that each of the 8 nominees have been duly elected as directors, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has been duly appointed the auditor of the company, the 2022 stock option plan has been approved, and the nonbinding advisory resolution accepting the company's approach to executive compensation has been duly passed. I confirm that the results will be published on SEDAR and by press release following the meeting. The formal items of business as set out in the notice of meeting have now been dealt with. I move that this meeting now terminate. As there is no further business to come before the meeting, I declare the formal part of the meeting to be concluded. Before I turn the meeting over to David Rae, I'd like to take a moment and share that I'm extremely proud of what we've accomplished at DPM since the company was founded in 2003. I believe we have built an exceptional company with a promising future consisting of world-class assets, strong partnerships with stakeholders and a very unique culture. I have full confidence that DPM Board and Management team will continue to build on these successes to deliver value for all stakeholders. I will now turn the meeting over to Dave Rae, who will highlight our strong 2021 results and achievements, which will be followed by a question-and-answer period. Thank you.

Thank you, Jonathan. I'm pleased to provide an update on our business, review our Q1 results and discuss how we are well positioned for the future. I'd like to first take a moment to acknowledge Jonathan for the pivotal contributions he's made since 2003 and he was the company's founder, shareholder, CEO and now Chairman. As we previously announced, Jonathan did not stand for reelection, and Peter Gillin, our current Deputy Chair, will be replacing him as Chair at the conclusion of this meeting. Starting with the acquisition of our Bulgarian assets and the transformation into world-class operations, Jonathan has been an integral part of our growth into the leading environmentally and socially responsible mid-tier producer we are today. His leadership and guidance over the years established a strong foundation for our company's values, which have been critical to our success and will continue to serve us well going forward. On behalf of myself, the DPM Board and all of our employees, I'd like to thank you, Jonathan, for all of your significant contributions to DPM and wish you success as President and CEO of Dundee Corp. and all of your future endeavors. I'm also pleased to welcome our newly elected director, Nicole Adshead-Bell, who will add considerable expertise to our Board with her significant experience in capital markets and the mining industry. Before I begin, let me draw your attention to our cautionary statement on Slide 7, as I will be discussing forward-looking information during my remarks and to the non-GAAP disclosures outlined on Slide 8. Overall, 2021 was an excellent year for DPM across a number of areas. We delivered record annual production for the third consecutive year, producing approximately 310,000 ounces of gold, and continue to manage our costs, resulting in an industry-leading all-in sustaining cost of $657 per gold ounce. This translated to record financial results in 2021, including $252 million of free cash flow and $202 million of adjusted net earnings. Notably, we achieved these results while achieving an impressive health and safety record, including a 33% reduction in our total reportable injury frequency rate. I'm proud to say this trend has continued in 2022 with our Bulgarian operations recently achieving 4 million hours without a lost time injury, which translates to 2 years without a lost time injury, a remarkable accomplishment that speaks the DPM's strong culture that prioritizes the safety and well-being of our employees at all levels. We have continued to strengthen our balance sheet, and we ended the first quarter with $382 million of cash, no debt and approximately $50 million of investment. We are committed to maintaining a disciplined approach to capital allocation that balances our strategy of maintaining balance sheet strength, returning capital to our shareholders and reinvesting in our business, a commitment that we continue to demonstrate in 2021. As we advance our growth pipeline, we've also continued to pay a quarterly dividend since 2020. And in 2021, we repurchased approximately 1.7 million shares under our normal course issuer bid. In aggregate, we returned approximately $33 million or 13% of our free cash flow back to our shareholders. In February, we increased our dividend to $0.04 per share, which has doubled since we initiated it 2 years ago and repurchased approximately 1.5 million shares in the first quarter. We also recognized the need for reinvestment in order to sustain and grow our business through margin improvement initiatives, advancing organic opportunities such as Loma Larga and Timok and aggressive exploration at all of our projects and evaluating external M&A opportunities. Our strong 2021 results demonstrate our ability to deliver significant free cash flow and our commitment to deploying this capital in a disciplined manner. Looking forward, our updated 3-year outlook, as showing on Slide 11, highlights our strong gold production profile, attractive all-in sustaining costs, and positions us well to continue delivering strong returns for our shareholders. The first quarter of 2022 was a strong start to the year, and we delivered solid metals production with each of our mining operations on track to meet 2022 guidance. With solid performance at Chelopech and Ada Tepe and a continued focus on cost management, we achieved an all-in sustaining cost of $684 per ounce of gold sold, which is below the low end of our guidance range and continue to generate significant free cash flow as a result. We also built on our financial strength, exiting the quarter with a cash balance of $382 million, no debt and $150 million available under our undrawn credit facilities. During the year, we also made significant steps towards building for our future. We continued our track record of replacing reserves at Chelopech by extending the mine life to 2030 and optimized the life of mine plan by adding 286,000 ounces of gold and 47 million pounds of copper. We are also exploring aggressively on the Chelopech mine concession and surrounding Sveta Petka license as well as at our other assets near Ada Tepe and Timok. We acquired the high-quality Loma Larga products -- projects in Ecuador, which is a great fit with our core strengths, where DPM has a proven track record of unlocking value. We also advanced the Timok project to a feasibility study, which is nearing completion. Loma Larga has the potential to generate meaningful production growth and significant value for our stakeholders, and this project is expected to produce approximately 200,000 ounces of gold annually at a low all-in sustaining cost, which would continue to support DPM's peer-leading cost profile. With a similar geology, mining methods and process flow sheets to our Chelopech mine, Loma Larga leverages our proven operating strength. Our approach to advancing this project will benefit from our firm commitment to the highest standards for engagement with local communities and environmental stewardship to unlock the significant potential of the project. We have seen strong support from the national government under the leadership of President Lasso and that with regard to advancing key milestones. We recently received approval for the EIA to advance the citizens' participation process, a very important step forward for the environmental license which is expected in the third quarter. And we continue to work proactively with stakeholders to obtain the project's social license. Our Timok project in Serbia continues to advance as a potential future growth opportunity for DPM. We expect to complete the feasibility study in the second quarter. We also see an opportunity to unlock additional value through exploration [indiscernible], which is a [indiscernible] target where we are hoping to receive permits to drill later this year. I'd now like to highlight 2 of our strategic pillars that we believe set us apart from our peers. Our industry-leading ESG performance and our success in adding value through innovation. We're focused on generating value for all of our stakeholders through our strong ESG performance and ESG being fundamental to our culture, it is integrated into all levels of our organization. We have long understood the strategic importance of maintaining our social license and have seen firsthand how excelling in this important area is a competitive advantage that can unlock additional value and lead to superior long-term returns. Our approach to ESG is centered around maximizing the net positive impact from our operations. In our view, this is a broad concept that goes beyond measuring our financial and economic impact, and also captures how effective we are at minimizing environmental impacts, maximizing socioeconomic value, nurturing positive stakeholder relationships and building sustainable livelihoods that will extend beyond the life of our mines. In 2021, DPM scored in the 91st percentile for ESG performance among companies in the metals and mining industry in the S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment, which is recognized by investors as a high-quality ESG rating agency. As well, we received a rating of, a, by MSCI ESG Research LLC, a well-respected independent ESG rating agency. These results are a testament not only to the skills, knowledge and abilities of our employees, but the way in which our core values are closely integrated throughout the organization. While we are proud to be recognized for our strong performance, we are constantly seeking opportunities to improve and generate a net positive impact from our operations. During 2021, we made progress on several social and environmental initiatives, including refining DPM's approach to climate change. We have a long track record of actively managing and improving DPM's greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. For example, we're very proud of the fact of what we achieved at Chelopech, which has one of the lowest greenhouse gas emission intensity rates among gold mines in the world. And our significant investments at Tsumeb have resulted in it improving its improving environmental performance. We previously assessed the risks and opportunities of climate change on DPM's business, which was summarized in our inaugural climate change report published at the end of 2020. In 2021, we continue to build on our progress to develop the company-wide climate strategy that incorporates our growth strategy, capital resources and operational priorities, and this is aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. The culmination of that work, which we announced last night, is a commitment to reduce our absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 37.5% by 2035 and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. However, in order to achieve the real reductions needed to avoid the global tipping point in the climate crisis, we also need to work closely with our suppliers and customers along our value chain. And we are, therefore, also committing to develop the Scope 3 emissions target by 2025 and to -- in order to create or engage with existing and potential new partners within our value chain to pursue opportunities that will have a meaningful impact. These commitments will require a significant amount of work and collaboration throughout our whole value chain, and I'm confident that we have the skills we need to be successful. We look forward to sharing our progress as we work towards these commitments. Innovation is a hallmark of DPM. And our leadership in mining innovation has long been recognized as a unique DPM strength and a competitive advantage. We have established a strong track record of unlocking value through innovation, including achieving improvements in safety, lowering costs and reducing our environmental impact. At Chelopech and Ada Tepe, we have successfully implemented a highly advanced process control solution, which has resulted in greater process efficiencies, reduced variability and improved recoveries. Also at Chelopech, utilizing mechanized emulsion charging for blasting has helped to reduce costs and improve fragmentation control. At Tsumeb, embedding machine vision technology into our operations has helped to improve safety adherence and the efficiency of our smelting process. We've achieved these successes by encouraging creative thinking and problem solving, whether through new technology or simply smarter processes, and we are continuously looking for new ways to improve. To that, in late last year, we launched a new internal program, which we referred to as [indiscernible] DPM. We issued a challenge to our employees to consider innovative ideas to find new ways of doing things with the ideas with the highest potential being selected for further development. In total, over 60 new ideas were submitted by our employees, demonstrating DPM's strong culture of innovation, and we are evaluating the ones with the most potential through a staged review process. Shortly, we're going to be launching a new innovation campaign to support the greenhouse emission targets that I just spoke about. As we move forward, DPM has never been in a stronger position, and we see a lot of opportunity as we develop on our strategy, leveraging our strategic pillars of ESG and innovation to support our asset optimization and growth ambitions. Before we open the meeting to questions, I'd like to close by acknowledging the contributions of our dedicated employees across the company and our local stakeholders, all of whom have contributed to our strong results. We are proud of what we have accomplished in 2021, and I feel confident that we have laid the groundwork for an exciting future ad. We believe that DPM represents a compelling opportunity for investors given our strong outlook for production, costs and free cash flow, our strong balance sheet, our proven track record of disciplined capital allocation, our continued success at extending mine life at our Chelopech mine, our portfolio of attractive growth projects, our unique capabilities in ESG and innovation and our attractive valuation relative to our peers. We entered 2022 committed to building on our record of strong operational performance and delivering superior value for all of our stakeholders, and we are excited by the opportunities that lie ahead. On behalf of our employees and our Board of Directors, I would like to thank you for your continued support. Thank you for your attention today. We'd now like to answer any questions that have been submitted through the virtual interface.

[Operator Instructions] And while we wait for the audience to submit their question, we also received questions from investors about the potential for mine life extension. And Dave [Techincal Difficulty] recently extended Chelopech's mine life to 2030. If you can comment any further on potential mine life extensions at our other assets?

Yes, certainly. We're excited this year to have a permission to commence the commercial [indiscernible] Sveta Petka license immediately around the concession at Chelopech. And we received the license to go in to in that process, which is one and we've [indiscernible] 50,000 meters of drilling, which is intended to build on the geological discovery exploration results. This is the first time that we've been able to commence significant activity in Sveta Petka for the last 18 months, and we're excited to be building on our understanding [indiscernible] and we have the potential to extend our reserves and resources to Chelopech. .

At this time, there are no other questions to the chat line. So that concludes our question and answer session. Thank you all for joining us.

Thank you.

This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.