Kinross Gold Corporation ($K)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Kelly Osborne, and I am the Chair of your Board of Directors. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Shareholders of Kinross Gold Corporation. We thank you for attending our virtual meeting. I would like to note that Kinross is permitted to hold a virtual meeting of its shareholders, both under the Ontario Business Act and our bylaws. Voting on items of business to be considered at the meeting has been open from 9:45 a.m. and polls will remain open until the formal business of the meeting is completed, at which time I will declare the polling closed on all items of business. I will also pause briefly for you to vote as we go through the items of business today. Shareholders who have voted in advance are not required to vote again during the meeting unless they wish to change their voting instructions. Shareholders may submit questions for the Board or management through the question box on the virtual meeting page. Instructions on how to ask questions and the voting procedure will appear on your screens. The moderator will relay the questions and the CEO will be addressed after the CEO presentation. Joining me electronically this morning are the other director nominees, Rollinson, Paul, CEO of the company; members of the senior leadership team of Kinross; and Michelle Long, the Corporate Secretary of Kinross. Also joining us is Ms. Heather Cheeseman, partner at KPMG, the company's auditor. A recording of this meeting will be available on Kinross' website and on this meeting portal after the meeting. Pursuant to the bylaws, I, as Chair of the corporation, will chair the meeting, and I appoint Michelle Long, Corporate Secretary of the Corporation, the Secretary of the meeting. I further appoint Computershare Investor Services Inc. through its representative, Daniela Munoz, to act as scrutineers. The notice calling this meeting of shareholders was mailed on March 30, 2026, to all the shareholders of record on March 5, 2026. The Secretary will attach to the minutes of this meeting the declaration of Computershare Investor Services Inc. confirming the mailing of the notice of meeting. The scrutineers have submitted their preliminary report on attendance, and it shows that holders of more than 939 million common shares representing approximately 78% of the outstanding common shares are represented at today's meeting. As a result, we have a quorum for the meeting. In order to expedite the formal part of the meeting, I have asked Samantha Sheffield and Cassandra Spezza, both shareholders of the corporation, to move and second each motion. Notice having been given in accordance with the bylaws and a quorum being present, I declare that this meeting is duly constituted for the transaction of business. The minutes of the previous annual meeting of Kinross held on May 7, 2025, may be requested by contacting the Corporate Secretary of the corporation. Prior to commencing our items of business, I would like to report that the consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, including the balance sheet and accompanying statements, together with the auditor's report, are all contained in the annual report previously made available to shareholders. Printed copies of the annual report may be requested by contacting the Corporate Secretary of the corporation. The first item of business is the election of 10 directors to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed. At this time, I would like to take the opportunity to name the other director nominees who are present on this call. We have George Albino, Glenn Ives, Ave Lethbridge, Michael Lewis, Candace MacGibbon, Elizabeth McGregor, Kelly Osborne, George Paspalas, Paul Rollinson and David Scott joining us. I will now request the nomination for the 10 nominees named in the management information circular for today's meeting.

I nominate the 10 nominees named in the management information circular for election to the Board of Directors of the corporation.

I second the director nominations.

If you have not already done so, you may now vote for the election of directors. [Voting]

As the number of nominees is equal to the number of directors required to be elected, I now declare George Albino, Glenn Ives, Ave Lethbridge, Michael Lewis, Candace MacGibbon, Elizabeth McGregor, Kelly Osborne, Paul Rollinson, and David Scott elected as directors of the corporation to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed. The next item of business is the appointment of KPMG -- let me go back to the nominees equal to the number of directors required to be elected. Let me just repeat it. I missed one name, and it's George Paspalas. Sorry, George. The next item of business is the appointment of KPMG LLP to serve as auditors of the corporation until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders and authorize the directors to fix the auditor's remuneration. May I have a motion to approve and second such appointment? [Voting]

I so move.

I second the motion.

The motion has been moved and seconded. If you have not already done so, you may now vote your shares for the election of auditors. The last item of business is an advisory resolution respecting Kinross' approach to executive compensation. Details of Kinross' approach to the compensation of its executives and the text of the proposed advisory resolution are included in the management information circular. May I have a motion to approve such resolution? [Voting]

I so move.

I second the motion.

The motion has been moved and seconded. If you have not already done so, you may now vote your shares on the advisory resolution with respect to executive compensation. I now declare the voting closed on all items of business. The scrutineers have completed their preliminary count of the votes cast and have received the results, and I declare that all motions have passed. A report on all matters voted on at this meeting will be filed at SEDAR+. This concludes the formal business of the meeting. Before handing it over to Paul Rollinson for the CEO remarks, I'd like to make a few comments. Kinross had an excellent year in 2025. The Board continues to be pleased with the company's performance, achieving the results that generate value for shareholders and ensure a sustainable future for the company. Reliable and consistent performance is one of our defining characteristics, and I'm pleased to see us carrying this momentum into this year. On behalf of the Board, thank you for your continued support and engagement. And to our global team, thank you for all your hard work towards safely delivering on our shared goals. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Paul, who will provide an overview of the company.

Thank you, Kelly, and thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us for our Annual General Meeting this morning. Before I begin, let me call your attention to our cautionary statement on forward-looking information. As a reminder, shareholders may submit questions through the messaging icon on the screen, and we will address them at the end of my remarks. I'd like to begin by noting that all members of our senior leadership team, as shown on the presentation slide are on the call this morning. Today, I will discuss our operational and financial performance in 2025, our development pipeline, highlights from our first quarter results, our ongoing commitment to sustainability and close with the strong outlook for our business. 2025 was another excellent year for our business, underpinned by consistent operational and financial performance. We delivered on our market commitments, once again meeting all key guidance metrics. Importantly, we continue to demonstrate our focus on maintaining rigorous cost discipline. We delivered production of just over 2 million ounces and achieved our full year cost guidance despite the impact from higher royalties due to higher gold prices. This, combined with record gold prices resulted in significant margin expansion, which drove record free cash flow for the year. These accomplishments were achieved while operating at the highest safety standards across each of our sites and with a strong focus on mining responsibly, a testament to the exceptional performance of our global workforce. With an average gold price of $3,423 per ounce, we generated approximately $3.8 billion in operating cash flow, which led to a record free cash flow of approximately $2.5 billion. With the free cash flow generated, we completed $700 million of debt repayments and returned over $750 million of capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. In addition, we also continued to strengthen our investment-grade balance sheet, ending the year with net cash of approximately $1 billion and approximately $3.5 billion of total liquidity. Overall, our operations delivered strong results in 2025. Once again, our 2 largest operations, Tasiast and Paracatu, were both standouts, together accounting for more than half of our production with strong margins. At Paracatu, we saw another year of significant production. Full-year production of over 600,000 ounces exceeded the midpoint of guidance with production exceeding 500,000 ounces for the eighth consecutive year. Similarly, Tasiast also had another excellent year with production of just over 500,000 ounces, and the mine was once again our highest margin operation in the portfolio. At La Coipa, we delivered on full year production guidance and saw a strong performance, particularly in the fourth quarter. In the U.S., our assets delivered another strong year of operations with full-year guidance achieved. In 2025, we made notable progress across our attractive project pipeline, which continues to be underpinned by our significant resource inventory of over 44 million ounces. In January of this year, we demonstrated an example of leveraging this resource inventory with the announcement to proceed with construction of 3 high-quality organic growth projects, which are expected to extend mine life and benefit the long-term cost of our U.S. portfolio. Together, these projects are expected to add over 3 million ounces of production just based on the initial resource drilled to date. Each project demonstrates compelling economics and a strong case for invested capital and cumulatively represent the addition of more than $4 billion of net asset value at a $4,500 per ounce gold price. We are excited to be moving ahead with these 3 high-quality projects as we continue to execute on our grade enhancement strategy. We also continue to advance our 2 world-class development projects, Great Bear in Ontario and Lobo-Marte in Chile. At Great Bear, both the AEX program and main project are progressing well, and the project remains on track for first production in 2029. Surface construction for the AEX is well advanced. And having just received the 2 remaining permits, we look forward to starting construction of the exploration decline this summer. For the main project, both detailed engineering and permitting continue to advance well as we work with both the Ontario and federal authorities. We are pleased to report that the final phase of the main project impact statement was submitted to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada at the end of the first quarter. At Lobo-Marte, our team continues to advance the project. And early this month, we reached a key milestone with the submission of the project environmental impact assessment, which represents the start of the environmental permitting process. We look forward to providing a project update for Lobo later this year. Together, all of this contributed to our strong relative share price outperformance. Turning now to our first quarter results, which we announced yesterday. Our operations continued to deliver strong results in Q1. Production of 493,000 ounces was on plan with solid contributions from both Tasiast and Paracatu, which again provided over half our production. Cost of sales of $1,397 per ounce and an all-in sustaining cost of $1,732 per ounce resulted in strong margins and delivered our fourth consecutive quarter of record free cash flow of approximately $840 million. Our cash and liquidity position improved during the quarter to approximately $2.2 billion of cash and approximately $3.9 billion of total liquidity after returning approximately $300 million of capital through dividends and share repurchases. Turning now to sustainability. Our strong track record of sustainability performance continued in 2025. Our annual sustainability report, which is our 18th year of reporting, will be published later this quarter. The report will provide a comprehensive update on the progress we made in 2025 and what we aim to accomplish in 2026 and beyond. Some notable highlights from the report that we look forward to sharing include under the heading of Environment or E, we completed an energy efficiency program, delivering an estimated 1.5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions through the implementation of 38 projects across our sites. Under the heading of Governance G, we were once again named the top scoring mining company in the Globe Mail's Annual Corporate Governance ranking, including maintaining placement in the top 15% of companies overall. And under the heading of Social S, we spent approximately $2.9 billion on goods and services in our host countries and made approximately $19 million of monetary and in-kind contributions. We are particularly proud of the positive impacts our operations generate for host countries and communities. I'd now like to share a brief video highlighting 2 of the more meaningful initiatives we have advanced specifically at Tasiast, intended towards improving access to health care and supporting sustainable community development projects. [Presentation]

After a successful 2025 and first quarter of 2026, we are well positioned for another strong year. Our business is in excellent shape and is expected to once again deliver strong shareholder value this year through our strong track record of operational and technical excellence and rigorous cost and capital discipline. Our strong margins, cash flow outlook and leading free cash flow yield, our attractive relative valuation and share trading liquidity complemented by our very strong investment-grade balance sheet, our attractive return of capital through share buybacks and dividends, our strong exploration and attractive project development pipeline and our leadership in sustainability. We believe that by delivering on our commitments and given our attractive relative valuation, we continue to offer strong upside in our share price. In closing, I'd like to thank our global team for an exceptional year in 2025 and start to 2026. These strong accomplishments are a reflection of our employees' continued focus and dedication. With that, we'll now open it up for questions from shareholders.

There are no questions from shareholders at this time.

Great. Thank you, Samantha. And thanks, everyone, for joining us at today's meeting. We look forward to catching up with you all in the coming weeks in person. Thank you for joining.