Good morning, my name is Sharon, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Agnico Eagle First Quarter Results 2018 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Sean Boyd, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2018 conference call. We'd also like to remind those how have an interest in attending our annual general meeting which is this morning as well at 11 AM at the Delta Hotel on Lower Simcoe Street in Toronto. So you are certainly welcome to join us. We have a full room here in our board room in Toronto. A lot of our employees have come in to participate in the annual meeting, so they are looking their best this morning. I'd like to remind everybody there are a couple of slides, small print which is the cautionary language that we put out around production guidance and forward-looking statements, so please take note of that. I'd like to start and just talk a little bit about the strategic direction, of course there's no change. The focus continues to be on transitioning in 2018 into a larger production platform in Nunavut as we continue as well to optimize our existing assets. That will take us to 2 million ounces in 2020 with an ability to grow beyond that. So that remains the focus in the quarter. We continue to generate good cash flow to support the CapEx this year which is a little over $1 billion. We have made very good progress on the Nunavut projects and we'll talk about that which positions us very well. And we've also got some positive drill results from an exploration standpoint with a budget in 2018 of over $150 million. As we said in the start, we've been focused on that transition and in that transition we had a solid quarter this quarter, 390,000 ounces produced, total cash cost of $648 so that was expected. As a result of that we're tracking…

[Operator Instructions] Okay we do have a question from David Houghton with CIBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi Sean and team, thank you very much for the update. I'm just looking beyond what you've got in your current pipeline which is well in hand and just thinking what your plans could be for the Akasaba deposit near Goldex? How that could be moving forward because it's got some copper in it? And what you're thinking is with Kirkland, I know that early days yet, you've only earmarked $5 million thereabout for exploration, but where you can see that going forward?

Yvon will give a little bit of detail Akasaba but it is still in the pipeline, is just going through a permitting process in Quebec. But from the perspective of Kirkland Lake, it's one that we've clearly liked for years. We had an investment in Queenston at one point. We just felt it was a good opportunity for a reasonable price to bring it into the fold, own it a 100% and use our expertise. So we've currently got a drill program of about $5 million planned at Kirkland Lake. We're reviewing that now to see whether we should increase that, but there's multiple targets there as you know Upper Beaver, Upper Canada. Upper Canada has grown in recent years. So as we've said in the last week as we've gathered with our teams ahead of the annual meeting, we'd rather know sooner than later how big it is just for planning purposes, but we should also just tie in our view of spending capital there. We wouldn’t be spending meaningful capital there till after the bit of a platform is expanded in 2019. So we're sort of thinking late 2019 maybe getting started on something there by way of a shaft, but we still need to do a lot of work over the next 12 months to sort of fully define those plans. But I’ll turn it over to Yvon. He can give you some more color.

Just briefly on Akasaba. I think the permitting will be completed by the end of the year I would expect the last permit from the federal side in the second half. And at this stage as we go through the life of mine process and budgeting process we'll integrate the project, but the plan is to begin perhaps some work on it next year once all the permits are in. So that that's the plan basically just a the delay of one year. On the Kirkland Lake opportunities…

Just before we move off Akasaba, but if you don't mind, it just intended to be an open pit operation would you have any beneficiation of the ore on-site or would it be direct truck to LaRonde I presume given that you’ve got some base component in it, what's the broader thinking?

The plan would be to truck it directly to the go back spell and then ship the copper con for the pros will be pirating copper con in the process at LaRonde.

Okay, thank you and then for Kirkland interested to hear potential for a shaft possibly even next year, I'm just wondering where the center of gravity is as far as you can see and moving forward how you can see that unfold?

Yes, there's two ways to approach that and one of the concepts we're looking at is, maybe you go slower a bit and use the LaRonde plant as well, so given its proximity to our operations in Quebec. So we're still working a number of different options.

I think we are in a scenario analysis at this stage and we're looking at either a ramp or shaft. These options are going to be looked at within studies over the next six to seven months and we're planning to look at also in that scenario an analysis to look at the synergies of a longer term plan of integrating also Upper Beaver within the Upper Canada within the Upper Beaver story. So probably by the end of the year early in Q1 we will provide some clarity on what's our plan in that respect.

Okay, thank you. I’ll leave it there for now. Thanks.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Steven Butler with JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Good morning guys. A question for you at LaRonde, the guidance for the year I think implied about or gave us about CAD115 per ton Yvon, costs were about CAD155 on the production side or 121 per ton mine site, so maybe just a brief comment if you don't mind about your confidence about getting those cost back towards guidance as you go throughout the year?

I think Q1 was a little lower on the total tons produced. Grade was obviously higher, so that affected the cost per ton basis and I think the other aspect is we're going to come back on a budget for the second half of the year. As far as tonnage from the underground operation we're not too concerned about that at this stage and also the base metal component is likely to start progressing also going forward and for the rest of the year the words are getting closer to the guidance, so pretty we're pretty comfortable that the cash cost and cash and all in sustaining cash costs profile will be online.

Okay, sounds good. Thank you. That's it.

Next question comes from Carey MacRury with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning guys. Just had a question on East Malartic Odyssey, do you have a potential development timeline in mind on that or is it still too early?

At this stage we're thinking perhaps a decision towards the end of the year on the project we're in the final stages of the studies and the permitting process. But likely, we would probably start development early into Q1 and perhaps as early as Q4.

And any thinking on how much tons per day can you give color there?

No, we're not at that stage. We'll provide more clarity on that as we go through 2019.

Okay, great thank you.

Yes, one of the things we did do Carey when we were up there a couple of weeks ago we are sort of revealing exploration plans and the guys had some ideas to drill deeper which we encouraged them to do. So the process now is to do some more drilling while we focus on permitting the ramp. And I think what was interesting is that the ramp that they, sort of proposal that they outlined was basically going into both the Odyssey and the East Malartic zones.

Is there any technical risks you see at this point there or is it pretty straightforward from a mining perspective?

No risk specific at this stage. Obviously, East Malartic is an old operation and we've taken that into consideration as far as the shallow area that we're considering to look at with the current ramp would be far away enough from the existing operations to get away from the mining risk and rock began challenges underground but at this stage there is nothing that really concerns us at this stage.

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Next question comes from John Bridges with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Morning Sean, everybody. You mention new technology in zone 5 which might be applied to LaRonde later, I just wondered which you are looking at, was this automation or something else?

Yes, I think we've purchased a fleet the equipment underground. We were originally looking at going with used equipment certain sectors and we’ve decided that we had the perfect lab setting to test more autonomous equipment both on the loading and then the trucking side. So we're going to use our LaRonde Zone 5 sector to identify how robust this with the LTE [ph] technology, how we could adapt it further as we continue to design mining sequence at LaRonde and we would sort of benchmark that going forward as how we would think perhaps of mining below 3.1 for example.

Okay, safer and fewer people and yes all good.

I think the - like on the people side of things I think the, we're trying as you get at depth and a lot of these deposits we're trying to maximize it 24-hours a day. So a lot of the focus at this stage on the automations done is to get the full operating time opportunity, so there's a lot of that involved and the right - trying to rationalize the manpower going forward.

How many hours a day do you lose at the LaRonde at depths because of clearing blasting team?

Oh you are probably mugging about eight hours per day, eight hours per shift roughly so...

Yes, I was just wondering between shifts when you blast, anyway and the normal two-hour gap?

Correct yes.

Okay, cool. Thank you very much. Good luck.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from Mike Perkin with National Bank. Your line is open.

Yes, just a follow up on that last comment. In terms of, so you're running kind of like 16 hours of productivity with the autonomous vehicles what would you think you could be running at, would it be closer north of 20?

Probably get close to that number yes, it’s a fair assumption.

Okay and then a major focus in the market on earnings, is there any major - like you mentioned here for the April period 10-day outage at Kittila, is there any other major area which is at any of your other core assets we should be considered of in your quarterly earnings estimates on a go forward for this year?

No.

Damn that's easy, all right, that's it from me guys. Thank you.

Okay.

[Operator Instructions] We do not have any questions at this time. I will turn the call over to the presenters.

Thank you everyone. Thanks for participating and again a reminder 11 AM Delta Hotel, Annual Meeting. If you can't make it at 11, we’re serving a nice lunch at noon. I'd love to have you over. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.