Imperial Metals Corporation (III) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Imperial Metals Corporation Annual General Meeting. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. It is now my pleasure to introduce Pierre Lebel, Director and Chairman of the company. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Darryl, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Imperial Metals Corporation Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. As Director and Chairman, I will chair the business of today's meeting. We're very pleased to host this meeting through this virtual meeting platform accessible to all our shareholders regardless of their physical location to participate, submit questions and vote. I'm joined this morning by Brian Kynoch, Director and President; Darb Dhillon, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary; and also Rio Budhai, Assistant Corporate Secretary. We've got 4 agenda items to cover in this meeting, starting with the approval of the minutes of last year's Annual General Meeting. Next, the presentation of the financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020, this followed by the election of directors and the appointment of auditors. [Operator Instructions] I would ask you to limit your questions to those matters directly relating to the specific matters then being considered, and we will be happy to answer any other questions after we've covered the agenda items. I will pause from time to time to see if there are any questions, hearing none or seeing none, I will move on. So let's get started. I officially call the meeting to order and appoint Darb Dhillon to act as Secretary of the meeting. I appoint Jenny Karim of Computershare Investor Services, Inc. to act as Scrutineer of the meeting. Only registered shareholders who held shares in their name as of April 1, 2021, which is the record date of this meeting, or their validly appointed proxy holders are entitled to vote at this meeting. If you are a registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder, your attendance has been confirmed already with Computershare upon calling into the meeting. Those who are not registered shareholders or duly appointed proxy holders are not able to vote at this meeting. We are asking that the appointed proxy holders and registered shareholders, if you have not done so already, please log your vote in advance for all motions and agenda items when you speak with the Computershare representative. If you would like to change your voting instructions or have not yet voted, press star 1, and you will be directed to the Scrutineer to register your vote. The business of today's meeting is described in the management information circular, which is dated April 1, 2021. This accompanied the notice of meeting. We will conduct the votes on the matters before us by a poll. On a poll, every shareholder entitled to vote on the matter has 1 vote for each share entitled to be voted by that shareholder. The final voting results will be available on SEDAR and Imperial's website. The notice calling this meeting and the other required materials were mailed to shareholders of the company on April 13, 2021. These documents and the proof of service is retained with the records of this meeting. I have the Scrutineer's report -- preliminary Scrutineer's report, and it indicates that 89 shareholders have voted 81,380,882 common shares of the company by proxy, representing approximately 63.3% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the company. Quorum is 2 shareholders holding at least 10% of the common shares. I therefore declare that a quorum of shareholders, as recorded under the company's articles is present and that the meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. The last Annual General Meeting of the company was held on May 27, 2020, and I direct that the reading of the minutes of that meeting be dispensed with and that the minutes be approved as if read. The next item of business is the presentation of the annual consolidated financial statements of the company as at December 31, 2020, together with the report of the auditors. The 2020 annual report, together with the related management's discussion and analysis, were mailed to shareholders who had requested a copy and are available on SEDAR and Imperial's website. I see no questions, therefore, I will move on. I declare that the financial statements of the company for the financial year ended December 31, 2020, and the auditor's report thereon have been received. We will now proceed with the election of directors: Brian Kynoch, Pierre Lebel, Larry Moeller, Theodore Muraro, Janine North, James Patrick Veitch and Edward Yurkowski, have been recommended by management as nominees for election as directors to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed. Given that the company has adopted an advanced notice policy and the company has not received notice of any nominations pursuant to such policy, I declare the nominations closed. Seeing no questions. As chair, I propose the following motion. The 7 nominees to whom I have referred, be elected as the directors of the company to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting of shareholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed unless the office is earlier vacated. We now move to the appointment of auditors. Deloitte LLP, the current auditor of the company, is proposed as auditor of the company to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting of shareholders. Seeing no questions. As Chair, I propose the following motion: that Deloitte LLP be appointed auditor of the company until the close of the next Annual General Meeting of shareholders and that the directors be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration. Based on the Scrutineer's report, I have been advised by the Scrutineer that the majority of the proxies deposited for the meeting have been voted in favor of each of the foregoing resolutions at this meeting. I would ask that the Scrutineer compile the final report regarding the votes on all business matters and results will be published by the company on SEDAR and by press release. I also direct that the results be included with the minutes of this meeting. We are reaching the conclusion of the meeting. [Operator Instructions] Seeing no questions. We know of no other matter to properly come before the meeting, and therefore, as chair, I propose the following motion: that the meeting be terminated. I declare the motion carried. I thank you for your attendance, and I would now like to turn this over to Brian Kynoch, our President and CEO.

Thanks, Pierre, and thank you, everyone, for attending this year. Appreciate it. We're looking forward to an exciting year this year with up at Red Chris, a new discovery in what is called the East Ridge and South of the South Boundary Fault, really exciting, we might be looking at finding the other half of the ore body up there. So that's exciting. And the second big thing, Red Chris, I'm looking forward to, in about September this year, Newcrest is expected to finish the first pre-feasibility study ever done on a site that includes the deep East zone. And the deep East zone is really the prize that we found up at Red Chris and game changer for Red Chris, and we'll actually have a pre-feasibility study or we expect to have one by September this year. So that's an exciting thing to have that. Secondly, with the higher copper prices, and probably higher copper prices with a long time. If we're all going to drive electric cars, and we're going to green our economy and decarbonize our economy, looking forward to copper prices staying high for a while. Any rate, that leads to getting organized to reopen both our mines, both our mines are in care and maintenance, Mount Polley and Huckleberry. We're looking at doing Mount Polley first. And basically, looking -- we're already started getting ready to do that, but really planning to do that once COVID's under control in DC, and it looks like that's going to be in September this year. So working towards getting started in September. Normally, at this time in the meeting, I would make a presentation, I can show you a slide and stuff and discuss that in more detail. But in lieu of that, I'm looking towards putting a presentation on our website later this week, so you can all peruse that. And also, I don't think -- there's not that many people who took the time to join us. So I invite each and everyone who has joined this call to give me a call for a personal update if you'd like. Anyway, thanks again, and look forward, as I say, to exciting year at Imperial.

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a great day.

Thank you.