Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Agnico-Eagle Mines Q4 and full year 2008 results webcast conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. (Operator instructions) I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 4:30 PM Eastern Time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Sean Boyd, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon everyone. With us here in Toronto is our full management team and operating team. And once we finish the formal part of the presentation, they’ll be happy to respond to any questions that you may have. Just off the top, just like to make a comment on gold. I think the conventional wisdom over the last few months is that we needed expectations for inflation to kick in before we would see an upward move in the price of gold. But I think what we’re seeing now is there is an extremely strong desire out there for wealth preservation, and the World Gold Council came out with some supply-demand statistics today and they were very striking in terms of demand in the fourth quarter of 2008. Total demand in tonnage terms was up 26% compared to Q4 ’07, so what we’re seeing is everybody expected jewelry demand to fall off and that would possibly negatively impact the gold price. But what we’re seeing is extremely strong growth in investment demand which has easily offset any decline in demand for jewelry. In fact, investment demand according to World Gold Council in Q4 was up 182% over the quarter in 2007; and for the full year 2008, investment demand was up 64%. So I think, the safe haven attributes of gold are coming to the fore, the ability to preserve value is certainly coming to the fore, and it’s just reinforcing that argument that people in the gold business have had that it makes sense in terms of portfolio diversification to have a component of your portfolio in gold, and in our case, in gold equity. So I just wanted to – those statistics came out today. I just wanted to highlight those. So, we will…

(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from Victor Flores from HSBC. Please go ahead. Mr. Flores, your line is open.

Sorry, I was on mute. Apologies. Good afternoon. A couple of questions regarding the ramp up of Goldex and Kittila. Could you give us a sense of how you see production increasing at Goldex, say throughout the year, maybe first half, second half or by quarter? And the same thing for Kittila because you’ve given us a fairly conservative first quarter outlook which implies that then things have to start moving pretty quickly from the second quarter onwards. Thanks.

Good afternoon, Victor, Ebe here.

Hi, Ebe.

The actual mining plan at Goldex – we have just started having a couple of major blasts in the range of 270,000 tons to 300,000 tons per day. So we’re starting to get into the core of the deposit. So I think the first half of the year will be very similar to Q4; and then on the second half of the year, as we build up the amount of available ore, we will be able to increase the tonnage coming up from underground to the mill. There are days that we have exceeded over 8,000 tons already in the mill, and we’ve also stress tested the shaft. As Sean mentioned over the past weekend, we’ve been able to hoist over 9,000 tons a day from the underground operation. So we feel it will be a stage Q2 much the same as Q1 and Q4, and then increasing in the second half of the year. With respect to Kittila, we expect to have steady performance improvements. Currently, we have well over 200,000 tons stock piled on surface. It is more a milling issue of where we have had issues of putting ore into the mill due to freezing. We have several solutions that we are currently looking at, and we expect to have some of those solutions available to us in March; and that’s why we foresee to have commercial production sometimes towards the end of the first quarter, beginning of the second quarter. After that it’s pretty much straight-lined – once we get the production up, it’ll be pretty much straight-lined, 11,000 ounces to 12,000 ounces per month during the rest of the year. The grade is pretty straightforward and then we will be just optimizing the operations, mostly in the mill and also in the open pit.

Great, thanks. If I could just ask two follow-up questions, how much production do you have to get out of Kittila to consider it commercial?

The definition is 30 days at rated tonnage at rated recoveries and ore reserve grades.

Okay, great. And then with respect to Goldex, once you get that steady-state mining going in say the second half of this year then that basically carries on for the life of the mine, right? Once you’ve set up, basically, the mining sequence, right? You’re not going to have lumpy production going forward.

One of the things with respect to Goldex, all of the blasting will be completed by 2012, and that means around, anywhere between 17 million, 18 million tons of ore will be broken and then it will become strictly a materials handling mine. That’s all conditional that we don’t find any other zones. There are zones that we are looking at, at depth. But currently, we see then the cost per ounce and the cost per ton declining as there will no longer be any drilling and blasting. There will no longer be any drilling and blasting of significance and any development, so then it will be a very simple mining operation. And then if we can find ways of upping the tonnage to in excess of 8,000 tons plus per day, metric tons that is, then we can see an improvement in output and ounces and declining gold prices plus per ounce.

Great. Thanks.

Your next question comes from John Bridges from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Sean, everybody.

Hi, John.

I’m sorry, afternoon. It’s been a long day. Lapa, you’re getting your hands around that deposit now. Have you close that thing off yet or is it still open?

It is still open at depth like we really haven’t been able to put the drill grips in that we wanted. Also, it is open to the west right now with underground pre-production. The focus has been on infrastructure development and construction and we really have focus at depth and off to the west. Once we get the mine up and running, we do have a longer-term view where we'd like to put these exploration drives out there and open it up for further drilling.

Okay. And you’ve got a stockpile now of ore. There was an issue at one stage about the refractory nature of that stuff. Are you comfortable of how it’s going to work in the mill?

I will let Jean Robitaille, our VP of Technical Services answer the question with respect to the refractory nature of Lapa.

Essentially, in the study, Lapa will function up to (inaudible) grade will be between 83% and 86% recovery gold. This is a part of gold in the arsenal, all right? But this is not more than that, so we don’t have a (inaudible). It’s a straightforward, whole or leaching process.

Okay. And could I ask a recovery question on Pinos? You've got 100 million ounces. What do you think the recovery is going to be of the silver at Pinos?

Well, just off the top of my head, I think it’s going to be around 53% average life of mine.

Okay. And then, I think Sean has been getting off quite easy on the course so far. Sean, a bigger picture question, you've got production which gets up to the 120 level in 2010 and then looks pretty stable. Where do you see the company going to from there?

Well, we’re working on another five year segment in terms of our strategy and planning. And a big part of that will be these four internal growth opportunities which we’re evaluating and assessing right now. Ideally, given how we’re structured in terms of people and abilities and skills, we’re built to have a couple of projects in the development pipeline while we expand the existing portfolio. But there’s no urgency. There’s no pressure to do that and we don’t have to make a major acquisition to grow the company. So we’d like to do more of what we’ve been doing, but we just won’t do it to the degree where we’re building five new ones from scratch at the same time.

That’s definitely a challenge, but so far you seem up to it. Well done and good luck.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Steven Butler from Canaccord Adam. Please go ahead.

Yes, I’ve had a name change, guys.

If it’s only a name change, that’s okay.

Yes. Good point, Sean. Okay, the question for you guys on capitalizing or not interest expense on your debt facilities, Dave. How would that go through the income statement eventually?

Once construction is complete, we’re going to have to start expensing that. US GAAP requires capitalization during the construction period to the extent you’re drawing down the debt fund construction capital. And that is essentially why we’re drawing the debt at this stage.

Okay. So which project – I mean, is it project specific or –?

We’ll know. I mean, we’d look at the capital program as a whole and to what degree we’re spending on construction capital. And I would say this year, we’re capitalizing all but the standby fees on our bank debt.

Okay. And then ramp it up, I guess, over the next year or two?

Yes, we’ll start expensing – essentially expensing all of it starting 2010.

Okay. Why the big jump in reserves at Pinos Altos? 1.1 million ounces in gold. It’s a nice reserve add. Where did that come from?

Marc Legault?

Yes, Steve. Where it comes from, just exploration, we’ve been doing a lot of underground diamond drilling at Santo Nino and Cerro Colorado. So it is a portion of that in there and another portion comes from Creston, Mascota, and the new zone at San Eligio where we’ve defined open pit and underground reserves there. So all three of them put together top it up to about a million and something ounces of reserve growth.

Okay. That’s another thing that sounds like a name change is required on that mine. The last question, I guess was TC/RCs, I know you guys don’t really release them, but are we closer to $200 treatment charge on zinc in the quarter than $300?

Steve, the funds, this is the negotiations part really this week in California, so presently it’s nothing that's firm [ph]. Some indication for 2009, I will say, 170,000 [ph], but the escalation is unclear at this time.

Okay. Thank you very much. That’s it.

Your next question comes from Mike Curran from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

It’s like we all moved to Val d’Or. We’ve all got French accents and French names. Two things, guys; one, I’m having trouble with your stock-based compensation expense that’s rolled into the G&A. Your Q3 guidance said you were at $17.3 million; the year-end is $25.3 million; that suggests $8 million more, but then you say it’s actually negative $1.1 million. So, is your summary statement along the way or –?

No. We did a catch-up on capitalization on some stock-based compensation related to people working directly on the projects, which we had expensed in the prior quarters. So essentially, we capitalized over the year.

So, the full-year number is $25.3 million.

$25.3 million, of which $15 million is expensed and $10 million is capitalized.

Okay, great. And then, I didn’t see it when I was scrolling through, but can you tell us what the change in the gold price assumption for your reserves year-over-year was?

Yes, $725 versus $582 last year.

Great. That’s all for me. Thanks.

Your next question comes from Gail Howard [ph], private investor. Please go ahead.

Gold went up $18 today and AEM went down 20-some cents. Is this still reflecting a drop in the price of zinc and copper?

It’s difficult to say. You get movements within trading days, so that can happen. I think you have to look at the performance over a much more extended period than a simple day.

Most of the gold stocks did go up today, except for AEM.

Yes, I wouldn’t worry about that.

I do. That’s all I have.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Andrew Mikitchook from Thomas Weisel Partners. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. I just want to come back to the reserves price of assumption of gold. Can you give us an idea what it would have been if you stayed at $585 or –?

Every 10% movement of gold price has a 2% impact on the ounces.

Okay. So, we can back-calculate that.

Use whatever assumptions you want on that basis.

Okay. Then just to confirm my understanding at these mark-to-markets, if we look at these price charts of zinc and copper since January 1, they’ve been fairly flat. So, all else being equal, you would see much less variability for Q1 and going forward than what we saw in Q4?

Yes, exactly. I mean, zinc and copper prices since the beginning of Q1 have been very range-bound; so assuming there’s no significant move either way between now and March 31, we don’t expect to have any significant settlement changes.

Okay, but there still will be a small carryover if there were moves at the end of Q4. That still hits you in Q1, but going forward, there should be less.

Well, we value our unsettled at the 30-day average at the end of the quarter, so we’ve more or less baked in most of the December move into our unsettled, so I don’t expect any significant variability in Q1, again, assuming we stay in these ranges right through the end of the quarter.

Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Some of my other questions have been answered. Thank you.

Your next question comes from David Haughton from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for the update. I’ve got a question on the depreciation split. Would you be able to provide the split between LaRonde and Goldex?

Off the top of my head, I can’t remember. I’m going to have to get back to you, David, if I can call you back after. I just don’t have the split with me right here.

That’s fine. And in relation to the write-off and also the sales of securities, was there a tax impact in that $22 million that you reported for the corporate tax expense?

No. They’re accounting write-downs, so there’s no tax provision against those.

Okay, but there would be for the gain on sale of asset?

Which happened in prior quarters. Is that the one you were referring to? Because we didn’t have any gain.

Yes, yes. I’m just trying to get a picture of the $22.8 million for the tax for the year. How much of that is associated with non-operating business?

In fact, we didn’t have any tax on that because we had some unused capital losses from prior years, so we didn’t actually have to provide any taxes on those gains in the prior quarters.

All right. Now, I was listening to the comments about difficulty of presenting ore to mill at Kittila. Should we be factoring in some seasonality in the profile to take account of winter difficulties?

No, you should not. These are typical start-up issues similar to what we had experienced at the LaRonde once that operation started up, so these are typical teething pains.

All right. Thank you very much.

Your next question comes from Anita Soni from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

I was looking forward to a name change. I was pretty bang on there. My question is with regards to the ore difficulties that you’ve had and you said that you’d have some solutions. Can you go over a couple of those solutions and what you’re looking at?

You speak about the Kittila ore bin?

Yes.

Essentially – presently, we are looking a couple. One of them is to put the temporary crusher plant and process the ore through the crusher separately of the current ore bin, so essentially bypass until we finalize a permanent solution.

Okay. And, Dave, perhaps you can walk me through – sorry, I’m just having a little trouble with the G&A expense and I guess the run rate’s a little lower than I thought for this quarter. Can you just – I think you explained it to Mike, but I missed it.

Yes. We ended up having a small credit on our stock option expense in the quarter because we did a bit of a catch-up capitalization on some of the stock-based comp related to the project-managing people, so that’s why we didn’t have as high G&As we normally do. Normally, we have $2.5 million to $3 million of stock-based compensation expense, but this quarter we had actually a negative, a small negative number, so that’s why the G&A was a little lower in the quarter.

And then the G&A ex the stock-based comp, I guess, that was running around $7 million then?

Yes, that’s right.

Thank you. That’s it for me.

Your next question comes from John Hill [ph] from Cambrian Fund. Please go ahead.

Thanks and thanks for a very detailed presentation as always. Just curious, you’ve had some pretty exciting exploration results in Nevada, at the West Pequop property. We’re working towards a resource on that. Obviously no numbers in the press release, but how is it going and what should we be looking for there?

Alain Blackburn speaking. What we are doing now, we are doing an exercise to see what will be the potential for the resource and at this moment, we are looking at the next program next spring. We do not have any program this winter because of the road condition, but we expect to reach the target that we planned during the winter probably in April or May. But at that moment, we don’t have any resource calculation in hand.

Okay. So, should we look for – I’m not sure I followed you. Should we look for a resource number in April or May or later in the year from that?

Probably later in the year, but I don’t expect any big number for now.

Very good. Thank you.

(Operator instructions) Your next question comes from David Christie from Scotia Capital. Please go ahead.

It’s David Christie. Just quickly on the reserve increases and the sensitivity you provided in the release. Which deposit has the most sensitivity to gold? You talked about 2% on a temper – on a moving gold there.

I can do that in a second. Overall, it’s 2% and it’s (inaudible) to the amount of reserve tons. Just a second.

Maybe another question while you’re looking for that is to get the 20 million ounces to 21 million ounces, which deposit are you thinking is going to return that number for you in the next couple of years?

I think we are putting a lot of pressure on – well, actually, we’re putting a lot of resources, as Sean mentioned, on Kittila. I think Kittila presents (inaudible) a real opportunity to increase reserves. We’re seeing really good drill results at depth, really good exploration results – this year resulted in well over 1.3 million ounces of additional resources being added to Kittila. So, that’s where we think we have the most potential for conversion to reserves. We’ve got a lot of – we have nine drills on the property. Currently, we are drilling deep holes, wedge holes to try to increase the confidence level of those resources at depth, which aren’t that deep, release between 650 meters and 1,100 meters. So, we’re putting a lot of resources there, a lot of talented people working on that project. The project that’s got the highest sensitivity of gold price is, believe it or not, Lapa because of the high grades and it is the niche of that department. It’s around, if I can say, it’s around 7%, so it’s – that one there is the more sensitive than others.

Okay. And one more question, at Goldex, you put out that there’s a $24 per ton milled rate right now. Do you expect that to improve as the ramp up improves over the year or was it going to stay around that level?

We expect that to improve, Dave. We currently have a portable crusher on site and when we have a final solution to get rid of the portable crusher, we expect that to drop. But I would say the biggest drop would come after 2012 once all of the blasting of the ore body has been completed and all of the development has been completed, so it’s not as great line drop.

Okay.

Yes. Dave, just as a reminder, we were guiding $25 a ton for ’09, so it’s roughly where we are now.

Yes, I know, I know. I just saw that it was dropping there. I was wondering if it was going to keep dropping. Okay.

There are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

Just to wrap it up here, thanks for your continued attention and if there’s anything else you need post-call, you can give any of our team a call and they’ll help you out. Thanks again.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. Please disconnect your line.