Equinox Gold

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, my next fireside chat will be with, Ryan King, executive vice president of Capital Markets of Equinox Gold. Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate it. Thanks, yeah. Ryan, before we, before we get into some of the more formal Q&A, maybe, just at a high level, for those unfamiliar in the audience with your company, just at a high level, just some key points on, on Equinox, where they, where they are right now, and, what the sort of overall strategy is. Absolutely, yeah, no, thanks, Ralph, and, thanks everybody for attending. I'm sure some of you might have heard of Equinox Gold over the years, but, as a high level overview founded by. I guess well known mining entrepreneur Ross Beatty back in 2017, Ross had a vision of putting together a company, acquiring assets, building up a company to have a solid diversified gold producer. So that is what we are today and actually we're very North American focused. So the company today has guided the market 7000 to 800,000 ounces of gold production this year. We've got a great pipeline of assets in front of us and very focused on, as we've, as we'll talk about, tearing up the portfolio over the last few years to have predominant production coming out of North America. So an exciting time, a big transformational year for the business last year with the merger between Equinox and Caliber Mining and a new senior management team in place led by a gentleman by the name of Darren Hall, who's a very seasoned mining entrepreneur, mining engineer. He was over 30 years with Newmont optimizing assets around the world with Newmont, so a very solid operating team and operating focus within the company now. Ryan, you talked about that sort of transformational growth, and, and how do you think about risk versus margin and sort of the trade up story I'd like you to talk, talk about that a little bit more and sort of the, the upscaling of the asset base on where you were in the last 5 years versus where you're gonna be in the next 5 years. Yeah, no, it's, you know, to your point, I guess you have to start somewhere and you typically, you know, you take an Equinox Gold or even a company that had acquired Caliber starting with lower quality assets and reinvesting into those assets to try to to deliver strong cash flows and build up the asset base and then from there. Through a creative, hopefully a creative M&A transactions you can tear up the quality of the portfolio and that's what's happened here last year between the merger with Caliber and Equinox. With that merger. The company now has two high quality Canadian long life assets, and these are, these are assets that have great margins in today's markets, and multi-decade mine lives, probably a lot of exploration upside from here, and typically Canadian assets do do demand or do get a premium valuation, especially those that are now in production generating good cash flows, so. it's been that pretty significant transformation through these, through these acquisitions and mergers that have teared up the portfolio from where it was a couple of years ago. a couple of years ago, more I would say mature assets in the portfolio grade was going down, costs were increasing, but we took this opportunity to, to go through this merger and at the time there was a lot of questions around the merger. There was a lot of question about why now, why this team, why this company, and, and we've seen some good operating expertise come out of this and some good delivery. but you know, a couple of years ago, even last year. We went through a significant balance sheet transformation as well as a result of this merger, so we were able to divest of some assets. Brazil, which 5 mines, 4 mills, so not easy, not a simple 1 big mine approach which what we have now. In a number of the different regions that we're in, so we've been able to simplify the portfolio, tear up the portfolio, and transform the balance sheet because of the divestiture, we were able to pay down well over a billion dollars of debt last year. you know, starting with the foundation being the 700,000 to 800,000 ounces of gold production, we've got two assets that are. Sort of in the hopper, right, development assets, in, Los Fios and Castle Mountain, you know, should we be thinking about this concurrent growth strategy sequential, and how do you think about bringing those into the portfolio production wise? Sure. Yeah, I mean, we're, we're a very fortunate company at this point in time because of, you know, because of the buildup of assets over the years. we have, and to your point now we've, we're ramping up two large Canadian assets, one in Ontario called Greenstone and one in the central region of Newfoundland called Valentine, and combined, once we get the nameplate, those assets will be producing between 5000 and 540,000 ounces combined of annual gold production in Canada. So that's exciting in itself and it's ramp up phase here is what we're in the middle of, right now in, in 2026, and then we look at the growth opportunities, so first and foremost, Valentine, we're working through a phase two at Valentine right now so that's, that's a near term opportunity. I believe we'll have board approval here, shortly. We just came out with a. A new technical update on Valentine. Capital cost about $400 million to take it from 2.5 million tons of annual processing capacity to 5. we see good exploration potential there, so there's one organic growth opportunity in the portfolio. What you just spoke about, Castle Mountain, I'll start there. Castle Mountain is an asset in California going through the FAST 41 critical minerals infrastructure permitting process. We just finished a public consultation at the end of 2025. We're now going through the environmental impact statement process. We've been told we'll get a record of decision by December of 2026. So if all goes well. And we end up getting a positive record of decision. We would anticipate getting state and county permits probably the first half of 27, putting the company in a position to make an investment decision, a construction decision at that time while we go through the permitting process. We will also refresh the assets. So the asset has over 4 million ounces of gold in reserves. The previous technical report envisioned the asset producing approximately 200,000 ounces of gold a year. If all goes well, you know, we would potentially start construction in the middle of 2027. This would be about a two year build, and then put us in a position by the middle of 2029 where we're now ramping up another asset, 200,000 ounces a year. So. The nice thing about that scenario is, of course, one, it's in a tier one mining location in the United States. We have a lot of experience in California. Our current operating asset called Mesquite we've guided the market 700,000 to 80,000 ounces of production this year. This asset has been in production since the 1980s. It's actually produced over 5 million ounces of gold now. We do see good opportunities to grow and extend my life there as well, but I guess what I'm trying to raise is the fact that we've got good relationships with county and state and communities already established, so putting us in a, a fairly comfortable, or confident position, being able to move that forward. So that's one great opportunity. The second one, that you mentioned, Los Fios. Now many people in the room that is a mining investor have probably heard of Los Fios over the years. This is located in Guerrero state, Mexico. Los Fios is currently on suspended operations. We've had it now suspended for, I guess about 15 months now. What we're doing is we're working through land access agreements. We have land access agreements with two Ajito communities. We're working on the third community. We think there's an opportunity to reach a multi-decade land access agreement, really reestablish our stakeholder relationships, and, and that then we could look at restarting a heap bleach scenario. Now, a heap bleach scenario at at Los Feos is probably suboptimal. What we'd like to do, and we're doing all the technical studies now to see what that could look like. you know, we're, we're looking at various mill size scenarios at Los Fios, you know, 10,000 up to 40,000 tons a day. So, we believe there's a great opportunity there. But we've got to work through some things there first, as we do with Castle Mountain, we've got to work through the permitting process there. I think sequentially or overlapping is very likely the scenario. You don't want to tax the company too much from a financial and a human capital perspective, so we'll see how the sequence looks based on the timing of permits, the potential resolution of a social license there at Los Fios. You know, again, at Los Feos, this is, I think it's the 4th largest gold deposit in the Americas, a little over 16 million ounces of gold in all categories. I think the last design was in June of 2022 and the economics or the design of the of the asset was done at $1300 gold. So very likely our updated technical report will look at an $1800 to $2000 gold price environment which I think will present a very compelling reserve asset size. And, and that'll inform our decision about how we might be moving forward with that assuming we can, you know, potentially unlock the asset from a social license perspective so good opportunities with both but likely sequentially. OK, Ryan, I'm, I'm gonna pivot a little bit with, some questions on the operational and execution side and maybe just with a few on Greenstone and, and Valentine, you know, Greenstone, we have this upper end of the guidance at about 300,000 ounces for the year. can you talk a little bit about how the ramp up is growing. going, how the mill throughput, how the recovery, how the reconciliation is going with that mind plan, and what can we can look to sequentially throughout 2026. Yeah, I guess one aspect of that is we just, we just actually published an updated technical report. that updated technical report showed 5.3 million ounces at 0.92 g per ton of gold for the total reserve. However, when we're mining the open pit, we would envision that the average grade to the mill, the mill feed grade, will be roughly 1 to 1.15 g per ton of gold. In that scenario, Running at nameplate, which is 27,000 tons a day at about 85 86% recoveries, we should be getting an average annual gold production of about 320,000 ounces of gold a year. So where are we at in the cycle right now in terms of its ramp up phase? I would say if we're looking at a nine inning ball game, 9 is getting us to 27,000 tons a day. We're probably right now around in 6, you know, we're getting closer and closer to reaching full nameplate capacity of 27,000. I would say this quarter here I think we're around 25,000 tons a day. we have seen many days north of 27,000 tons a day through a period of time in the quarter. one of the things that we're working through right now is. You might be familiar a little bit with Greenstone. It's a past producing underground mine. So as we're mining the open pit and we get into some of the past producing areas, whether it be a void or a backfill, there's tramp underground infrastructure that will be ripped out and potentially get caught in the mill. So one of the things that we're doing now this year is investing a bit of capital into some equipment. One of them is a trammel. So this trauma will help us filter out or screen out some of this tramp equipment. That will help with the utilization time into the plant and give us more updates essentially so it will allow us some more consistency on a day by day, quarter by quarter basis and I think that's highly important here and that comes in in Q3 of this year. So we would expect an H2 weighting in our gold production this year at Greenstone. and I believe that that rummel will be very impactful to help us get that utilization and throughput rate, but you know our vision would be that assuming we get to 27,000 tons a day, there's a path to get us to 30,000 tons a day. I mean the plant on good days is running at $330,000 to 31,000 tons a day, getting, you know, between 80 and 86% recovery. So we're, we are seeing that demonstrated ramp up happening. but, post the tram, I would be encouraged, and I believe we all view the opportunity to get to 30, which is, which is another 3000 tons a day beyond the 27 beyond to get us that 320,000 ounces a year. So there's good optionality and upside potential beyond that. But yeah, I think we're, we're still in a ramp up phase here. 26 will still be that year at Greenstone where we're continuing to ramp it up. And, I think that, you know, as I've mentioned here, one key aspect will be getting that piece of equipment and to help us, increase the utilization of the plant. similar to the second half waiting at Greenstone, we have a second half waiting at, at Valentine. Both operations are ramping up. Valentine is a little bit more seasonality aspect of it tour to as we, as we work through some of the, some of the, sort of temporal issues there. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that plays as an extra variable into the ramp up over 26? Well, actually, I would probably say both have some seasonality to them. I mean, given the harsh winters that we see in Northern Ontario. this year was particularly harsh for central region of Newfoundland. I think this year we might have had, one of the largest, most severe winters in 10 years. I don't like using that as an excuse, but nonetheless we had to deal with a huge amount of snow removal. And remember Valentine first gold was in September of last year. End of September last year was first gold. by the end of November we were declaring commercial production. So from a ramping up perspective. you know, that's a pretty quick timeline. So Q1 here is our first full winter quarter. and yeah, to your point, we had some seasonality. We had some pretty harsh January. Where we had to deal with some belts breaking, some, some muck piles freezing, so some just, you know, real typical winter related challenges in your first season. So there'll be learnings out of that, and it'll help us understand how to prepare for next year. Going into Q2, we've, we're already seeing the seasonality changing. I think we even published recently in our Q1 numbers that February and March we're starting to see throughput rates through the plant getting closer and closer, if not above nameplate, nameplate being 6800 tons a day. Interestingly enough, this plant has been running quite well in a number of days. We've had it actually running well north of 9000 tons a day. So the plant is running well. We're working through all aspects of the mining and the tonnage, the material movement on a daily basis. We'll continue to ramp that up throughout the year. And yeah, pretty typical in the first full year where you're you're likely to have your weight in gold, and it'll depend on the face position that we're at in terms of where we're at in the pit with regards to grade, a little lower grade where we're at right now. We'll ramp that up, likely getting closer to 2 g per ton for the for the second half of the year. So right now things are going well. There's always little challenges that are coming up in a in a typical ramp up. And this is the first mine in the central region of Newfoundland I think in well over 10-15 years. So exciting for the region, great workforce, pretty exciting about the future of this asset. Great, Ryan, I'm gonna poll the audience for, questions. Do we have any Q&A from the audience? Ryan, if I can conclude with just one question on, Nicaragua, some questions that we get from investors are around the cost structures and the volatility of the cost structure. I just wondering, in 2026, what's behind that? Is that more of tactical mind sequencing or is there more underlying pressures? Well, maybe I'll just, for those that aren't familiar with Nicaragua, this asset was picked up and acquired from B2 Gold in 2000 late 2018, 2019 at the time. The asset had, you know, two mills, so El Limon and La Libertad combined can process about 2.7-2.8 million tons of processing capacity. At the time they were completely separate. They are separate, entities. So what Darren and team did was we really integrated them together such that material from El Limon, because the mineralogy is the same, can be transported over to, La Libertad and processed there. So we've implemented this very effective hub and spoke strategy. And you've got some transport costs that are related to that, but we've been building that out over the years. At the time we acquired this, we had about 10 150,000 ounces of reserves. So each year we've been reinvesting back into this asset from an exploration perspective, from a mine development perspective. We've gone from 50,000 ounces of annual gold production there to this year being $200,000 to 250,000 ounces to last year we produced a little over the top end, around 265,000 ounces. Now, since that time we've produced 1.4 million ounces of gold. So since 2019 to now we've produced 1.4 million on a reserve base of 100,000 ounces. So each year we've had very good success with the drill bit. And today at the end of 25, we've got 1.15 million ounces in the reserve category. So we've incredibly increased that reserve base and grown the production profile. And what we're doing now is we're looking ahead. So to the latter part of your question is we're really setting, we're investing this year. We've got higher strip ratios such that in 27, 28, and for the next five years we've got a good 2000 to 250,000 ounces a year in front of us. So I would anticipate. You know, I would anticipate that the, the overall cost profile goes down a little in the future years, but I wanna be cautious about that at the same time because we all are seeing inflation impacts within the business. So even if you called it a flat structure here going forward, you know, the margins are still fantastic, you know, 2100 to $2200 per ounce here we are selling at $4500. and again I'm very excited about the future there too because we continue to invest and find new epithermal gold veins, good mineralogy that feeds into either one of these plants, so it's, it's been a little engine that could. Great, you know, thank you for answering, my questions, Ryan, and I'd ask the audience to please join me in thanking Ryan for his, fireside chat. Thank you, thank you.