Thank you for standing by, this is the conference operator. Welcome to the Equinox Gold Fourth Quarter 2022 Results and Corporate Update. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Rhylin Bailie, Vice President, Investor Relations for Equinox Gold. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ariel [ph], and thank you everybody for joining us today for our Q4 call. We will, of course, be making a number of forward-looking statements today. So please take a time to visit our continuous disclosure documents on SEDAR and on EDGAR and on our website. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Greg Smith.

Thanks, Rhylin, and thanks everyone for joining us today. On the call with me is our COO, Doug Reddy; our CFO, Peter Hardie; our EVP of Exploration, Scott Heffernan; and of course, our VP of Investor Relations, Rhylin Bailie. As you all know, we're here to discuss our 2022 fourth quarter and full year of financial and operating results. And as a reminder, Equinox is a diversified America's focus goal producer. We've got seven producing mines across Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. We also have several growth projects, including our large-scale Greenstone Gold Mine in Ontario that we are constructing now along with our 40% joint venture partner Orion Mind Finance. I'll start with a broad overview for the quarter and the year and then turn the call over to Pete and Doug for more details. Q4 is our highest quarterly production for the year of just over 150,000 ounces. In fact, this is the second highest quarterly production in the company's history. And while inflationary pressures persisted through the fourth quarter, we also achieved our lowest cost for the year with cash costs of $1,223 per ounce and all in sustaining costs of $1,523 per ounce. We finished the year with total production of just over 532,000 ounces at total cash cost per ounce of $1,328 per ounce and, all in sustaining costs of $1,622 per ounce. We also advanced a number of our assets over the course of the year. We submitted our permit application for the expansion of our Castle Mountain Mine and that is in process now. We also receive permits for three portal locations for exploration ramps at Arizona, so we can start to advance our underground development potentially later this year once we've completed a feasibility study that we're currently working on. We…

Thanks Greg. We're on Slide 5. Safety and environmental practices continue to improve over 2022. We ended the year with a 12-month rolling total recordable injury frequency rate of 2.12 and a 12-month significant environmental frequency rate of 0.63, also want to add, we had no LTIs in Q4. These are just great results. And we really want to and it takes an effort by everybody, the whole company. And so, we just want to say congratulations to all of our employees for making Equinox a safe place to work. It's really a great achievement for the year on safety. For the year, we sold 532,000 ounces. It was really an investment year. We invested $456 million in growth development, $328 million of that was at Greenstone, $49 million of that was at Santa Luz to complete construction there. And we also spent $43 million at Los Filos, that was primarily on Bermejal underground development and preparing the Los Filos open pit for its next phase. The $139 million we spent on sustaining items was primarily deferred stripping at Arizona, Mesquite and Los Filos. On slide six, as Greg mentioned, we had a good quarter. We had our second highest output for the company to date. We sold 149,000 ounces for revenues of $260 million, and an average realized price of $1,733 an ounce. As Greg mentioned, cash costs for the quarter were $1,223 and are all in sustain costs were $1,523 per ounces. The interesting thing we saw during the quarter in relation to costs is while our costs are up significantly, if you look at it on an annual basis 2022 versus 2021, or on a quarter-on-quarter basis, i.e. Q4 2022 versus Q4 2021, costs are up significantly. The interesting thing that happened in the second half of…

Okay. In addition to the production guidance that we have, I'll also mention that all of our minds are -- have been working on a program that involves continuous improvement as well as consumable reduction and group purchasing initiatives. All of that is above and beyond what we've put forward for our production and cost guidance. We've also doubled down on our adherence and reconciliation of mine plans benchmarking and productivity improvement work, which is all geared towards achieving and beating what we've put forward. Looking at the individual mines, mesquite in Q4. We were mainly in a stripping phase for Brownie and Vista East. That will ultimately contribute to the award going to the pads in 2023. Due to the emphasis on stripping in Q4, that means we had a relatively low number of new ounces going under leach in that period. And for 2023, we have adopted a new mine plan that'll see -- that we'll see less stripping and smaller pits in order to reduce cost at Mesquite. We continue with expiration and permitting work at Mesquite for mine life extensions. In Castle Mountain, in Q4, we were running with both run of mine and crushing and glomeration of the material going to the heat bleach pad. The plan is that we should be all going through crushing glomerations, so we'll continue working on increasing our crush and glomeration throughput. At the same time, as working on the Phase 1, we have been advancing our permitting on Phase 2 and met test work in support of the Phase 2 work, and I'll come back to that later on. At Los Filos, in Q4, we had a production impact related to a shortage of explosives that was caused by a strike at our explosive supplier. We also had…

Thanks, Doug. I'd like to briefly just acknowledge the Equinox team. We had some challenges in 2022, but the team has been doing a great job at navigating those challenges. We're in solid shape to fund the completion of construction at Greenstone, on budget, on schedule. And a year from now, we expect to be commissioning one of the largest gold mines in Canada. We're also working hard to progress our growth projects, as Doug mentioned, manage our costs and improve our operations, and we're looking forward to continuing that through 2023. I think, I'll conclude there and pass it back Rhylin for Q&A.

Thanks, Greg. Operator, can you please remind people how to ask a question?

[Operator Instructions]

Thank you. And while they're queuing up, Scott, we've got an exploration question for you. I can see from your MDA that you drilled about three, sorry, 30,000 meters of Arizona this year, and it looks like you're going to start the underground in Q4. When will we see those results?

The 2022 program at Arizona had 3 components. We did drill just under 30,000 meters. The first component was a few deep holes on Cabo itself to support the feasibility study that's been mentioned a couple times on the call so far. Those holes were looking at converting big areas of inferred resources to indicated to support reserve growth and also to address some geotechnical questions at the deep, in the deeper portions of the mine. So those results will funnel into the feasibility study that will be released mid-year Q3. The other two components included a regional program approximately 7,000 meters on a number of targets across the thousand-kilometer square land package. But the majority of the effort was focused near mine, looking to hit targets both east and west of -- itself within the main trend to support mine life extension, targeting the shallow open pit targets, the multiple targets that we have there. So those results will look to release here probably in Q2, early Q2.

Thank you. Officer will take questions from the phone, please.

Our first question comes from Wayne Lam of RBC. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Just wondering at Greenstone, can you give a bit more detail on what you see as the bottleneck items or and the large items left to spend? And where have you seen some of the savings optimizations? And then just curious, given the independent assessment complete last year, how has that reconciled the date and how much of the contingency has been utilized so far?

So in regards to bottleneck items, I'd say we always knew what our critical path was going to be. It's getting through to building enclosure and then starting in on the east end plant east end of the process, plant building for ball mill installation. We're four buildings done. The last two buildings finished off this week. And then, we're starting in on installation. I would say going forward, that remains our critical path for most of this year. Obviously, productivity is going to be the issues we move to the more detailed piping and electrical inside the buildings. But the team's been very good at being able to adapt and compensate for where we have delays in one area. They'll turn around and work out how to adjust the program to be able to compensate for it. Really, we're pushing through this spring to be able to maintain our schedule as we come into the summer where we're most productive, and then we get back into or areas such as the TSF and some of the other Earthworks projects that we don't progress as much during the winter months. So overall, I'd say very good against our overall schedule with minor things that they've been adopting and compensating for elsewhere within the overall construction.

Yeah, it's probably worth mentioning, we expect to do another quantitative risk assessment. It's currently scheduled, I believe, Doug, for around April. So, we're looking forward to doing that getting an update from an independent party on schedule and budget. With respect to your other two questions, Wayne, savings optimizations, one of the bigger ones frankly is foreign exchange. The Canadian dollar, unlike the pay on the Brazilian -- the Mexican pay so on Brazilian rail, the Canadian dollar has been a little weaker against the USD, that's helping. It's probably one of our main areas. With respect to contingency through the end of last year, we've used about $120 million of it.

Okay, great. Thank you. And then maybe at Mesquite, I'm just curious, how should we think about the mine beyond this year? Is it kind of a case of a mature asset approaching depletion given the short reserve life? Or how should we think about the future potential for reserve additions once you have greater capability to reinvest in the capital stripping there?

So, for Mesquite, essentially, yes, quite right, it is a mature asset. Every year you'll hear us talk about a stripping program, and then we get into the ore. So, it's essentially, diving down into particular areas where we have to strip to get down to be able to mine the ore, and that's been cyclical and this year is no different where we were doing our stripping in the latter part of 2022, and then we'll benefit from that ore during this year. We continuously are doing Joel [ph] programs and looking at revised models to be able to improve the mine plan. It just happens that this year we have a lower number of ounces being produced, while we work through revisions to the mine plan to see what we can do to be able to put more on the table as we go forward.

Yes. We -- down in in the U.S. we had a like everybody, pretty significant increase in costs. And so, when we looked at the mine plans for Mesquite in 2023, it made sense to go with that smaller pit scenario to maximize cash flow over that period of time. And so, as we progress through 2023, we'll have drill programs on Mesquite, and then working to extend that mine life 2024 and beyond. But that requires some additional drilling.

And the other thing is obviously, permitting's always something that we're doing at Mesquite, and we're currently have two heat leach pad expansion permits that we're working through, which we expect to get in the next couple months. So those obviously give us the opportunity to be able to continue to stack more. So, it's always add more pad space, while at the same time develop and permit additional resources so we can be able to convert them to reserves. So, it's not -- it's a never-ending process.

Okay. Great. Thanks. And then maybe just last one, just looking at the upper end of cost guidance across the operations it seems like a few of the mines have relatively elevated costs near breakeven especially in the first half of the year. As part of the optimization review, is there any scenario where you might see improved economics for, say, putting Castle Mountain on pause, and reopening that with Phase 2 or maybe putting Los Folis on care maintenance and reopening that with the CIL construction, just given the higher cost of those mines?

So, it's a something we discussed, but there's more than one reason why we do Phase 1 at Castle Mountain. Obviously, coming into operation while we're in the permitting process is a good thing for us. We wanted to be back into production during that process, so we were present and working through everything that our operation ultimately needs. It also means that aside from having our footprint there. We're also able to move the essentially dump material from previous operators and to be able to leach the gold out of that. So, it actually works as a pre-stripping for us for the Phase 2. So, it's a good outcome, we get that moot during this process. And then the third one is, we did want to get in and try the run of mine versus crush and Glomeration. So, we get an opportunity to be able to do a larger scale test by virtue of doing the phase one operations at Castle Mountain.

Yeah, I think you also asked about those, Felix Wayne, and I mean, Felix is a large vine. You know, it's very expensive to shut down a mine, restart a mine like that. I think it's fair to say our focus right now is trying to improve that operation, and we're working hard to do so. We've reduced some of the CapEx at Filos in the near term with the suspension of Birmingham Underground. But that doesn't mean we're not very focused on the Guadalupe open pit and the Los Filos underground mine. So, I don't think that that's on the table at all, and not something we're considering at this time.

That's all from me. Congrats on the corner and nice to see things going well at Greenstone.

Thanks for talking about -- jump in quickly, quickly and ask a question from online. Would you consider selling load Filos since it's consuming so much capital?

I mean, the quick answer is no. We -- I don't want to speculate on any individual mine. We've got no plans in process. You know, obviously in the past, we've been commercial on certain assets in the portfolio. We have sold mines in the past. But the challenge with Philos, and I think we addressed this in Q3, it's a huge deposit a huge reserve resource, lots of exploration, potential permitted infrastructure. I mean, that type of a deposit's incredibly rare. And so, parting with something like that would be pretty challenging. I think, again, our focus is working to improve that operation and optimize that operation and turn it into a long life, very valuable operation for the company.

Operator will take more calls from the phone lines, please.

Our next question comes from Anita Soni of CIBC World Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning and, thanks for taking my question. So, I just wanted to address first you mentioned that you had retooled your covenants for the revolving credit facility. Could you give us an idea of what changes were made?

Yeah, Anita, it’s Peter. The covenants reflect more, I guess what you would call a company and development phase. So, we effectively took a very conservative case scenario, had it a full turn, and adjusted accordingly. We're not going to disclose exactly what they are, but we're quite comfortable that there's plenty of room and covenants to see us through Greenstone Construction.

Okay. So, you mentioned some of the deferrals that you've had, and I think Greg mentioned that the sustaining capital that you are doing in 2023 is the essentials only tailings lists, et cetera. So, would we expect to see a catch up in sustaining capital in 2024 and 2025? Is that fair to say?

I think, I mean some of the bigger chunkier areas where we've deferred capital is Bermejal underground at Los Filos. That's a big one. And then, to a lesser extent, stripping at Mesquite and those are probably the two largest areas where we've retooled the mine plans to reduce near term capital. And so, with Filos, yes, I mean, eventually our intention is to get back into the Bermejal underground. We obviously want to develop, that's a big part of the future of Los Filos. So that is capital we will eventually spend. In the meantime, we're going to work to retool that program and increase the productivity and reduce cost. So, we will be back in Bermejal underground, exact timing of that is to be determined, but definitely at some point. Mesquite, same thing. I mean, we've got drills going and continuing to operate that mine will involve stripping. I don't think we're working toward a giant catch up in 2024 that's going to be crazy or anything. We're trying to smooth that out over time. But you're always going to have that at Mesquite, stripping as Doug mentioned, to get down to the ore. But otherwise, I don't think that, that we've carved out anything critical that we're going to have to be spending a whole bunch of money in 2024. Always looking at capital allocation decisions and with Greenstone coming online next year, that obviously frees up some funds for additional CapEx. I think, personally, I want to see us go underground in Arizona, and that would be another area where we haven't budgeted in 2023 for any sort of a portal construction or decline. But on the basis of the feasibility study, as we move into Q4 this year, once the pit reaches that the appropriate level in the west end, that's an area I think we'd like to start spending money on next year and even later this year. So, there's stuff that will come, but it's not a situation where we've carved out a bunch of necessary stuff and kicked it down the road.

Sure. So Bermejal underground though was -- that was in development capital, right? Not sustaining.

It was a mix primary development. I'm saying capital generally.

Yes, capital generally. I was just wondering if there was anything sustaining that I should be thinking about that might need to get done in the next two years if you're not doing it this year. And then just in terms of Santa Luz, what kind of recovery rates are you assuming when you guided for this year? I just want to understand where you think the recoveries are going over the course of the year.

So, for the budget, we backed it off to focus on getting stability. We were looking at achieving a minimum of 65% in the first half of the year, 70% in the second half of the year. As we came through December and changed the plan, we were at 62% in January, and we're over 70% in February. So, we're, but the key is stability. And a big key thing to that was ensuring our makeup water coming back in from a water storage dam was zero or less than 0.5 ppm cyanide, which is a real hindrance to activity of the resin. And now our system's working properly with all the detox. And so, we saw that that was really helping to be able to establish a good activity on the resin.

Okay. And then just last question was reserves and resources, did I miss that last night? Did you guys update it this yesterday or is that coming later on?

No, we did not update our global resource reserve statement yesterday. And looking forward throughout the course of the year, there won't be a single consolidated update. They'll be updated as available and as studies are complete, most of our projects are in a study state versus a steady state.

Consistent with what we've been doing over the last number of years, Anita. I think at some point in the future we do want to get to a 1 time annual global update, but what we've been doing is as and when those updates come available, we report it, we integrated into our consolidated reserve and resource summary on the website. And that's what we've been doing and probably will be continuing to do for another year or so until we get to the point where we've harmonized everything and do an annual update.

I was just calling from the context of a lot of people are updating their gold price assumptions and then also cost assumptions, so it would be good to have a sort of resettle on that. And then can you just let me know what the interest rate right now is on your floating rate debt?

Combined, it's about 7.5%.

Is that fixed and floating, or just the floating?

Sorry, that's just the floating. Pardon me.

Thank you, very much.

Our next question comes from Kerry Smith of Haywood Securities. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator. Just to follow-up on a youth question about the reserves and resources, would you just generally as a ballpark, would you expect that you replace depletion in your reserves and resources overall for the company on a year-over-year basis or kind of unchanged? Or do you think they're going to be down a bit or up a bit? Like how would you generally point us directionally?

Yes. Primary goal with the exploration and drilling has been to replenish reserves as again, primary goal. Secondarily, a lot of our assets have been under capitalized over the last three, five years. So, there's a real need -- real push to build up the resource base. So, the expiration has been pretty aggressive in that respect in Santa Luz by year, so and so forth. So, there'll be a lag before we're kind of getting beyond replacing reserves resources on an annualized basis, but the hope is that with the significant expiration expenditures that we put into the ground for the last three years now that -- two, three years from now that will be paying off with substantive resource and reserve growth.

Okay. And just on the cast, this is for Doug Ashley on the Casa Mountain Phase two permit application. Given that you're now switching over to a hundred percent crushing glomeration for Phase 1, are you -- is there any thought that you need to revisit the assumption in the Phase 2 feasibility, which only looked at run of mine? Or like, are we expecting that at some point maybe you may have to add some crushing conglomeration, or are you pretty confident that phase two will just be a run of mine operation?

No, Kerry, we we're quite confident that we get better performance overall through the crushing conglomeration for the material that we're currently processing. But remember, we're dealing with dump material, and we're doing a lot of work to metal -- modeling on castle Mountain and look and lots of additional met test work for the Nstitute material. So, if it were all the same material, we would be doing crush and agglom for Phase 2, but that's why we're doing the additional network, the geo metal -- modeling because we want to make sure that as we look at in it material, that we're treating it the right way. So, it is part of the work we're doing in the background. We don't anticipate it'll change anything in regards to our footprint overall, but we're looking at all opportunities to be able to see whether we can optimize and also prove out everything that we've done in previous test work and concepts.

And Kerry recall that in that feasibility study, you do have a portion of the material reporting to a small mill in the highest-grade material. And so, we are looking at potential scenarios where you would ditch that mill not be required to triage the different ore grades and just put it through one circuit. And so that is something that we are kind of looking at and doing some trade-off studies on. If there's an opportunity to simplify the overall operation and flow sheet, reduce some capital, that's something that's pretty interesting to us. So, there is some work being done on that. Nothing confirmed and that'll progress over the course of the year. I can confirm that our permit application does contemplate pretty much any sort of modifications we want to make to that flow sheet. We would not have to go back and do any re-permitting compared to what we've already submitted.

Okay. So that's all covered off in that application then?

Yes.

Got it. Okay. And the other question I had was at Mesquite, you reduced the strip ratio in 2023, the lower of the cost as to help with the cash flow in the short term here. Does that impact 2024 mine plans or and what sort of in-house mine plan do you currently have for the life of mine for Mesquite like do you guys model three years or two years? Like how do you actually model it internally?

We continuously remodel it. The mine plan that we have in the budget, it's already, there's a -- we're already working on revision to that. What can I say? It's building in the latest information as it comes in from expiration and as we get permitting. So, I know it will change from the budget mine plan.

I think, it's fair to say we're working on a mine plan for next year that would bring production back up to level previous levels. But there's work to be done on that, Kerry. We had to adjust the mine plan this year. Just -- in the United States especially, we saw really significant increases in diesel, cyanide, explosives all the major input costs at Mesquite, right? That have an effect on production there and cost of production there. And so, this year kind of takes that into account and internally here we're working on what can 2024 look like, given the current cost structure and this year's mine plan, what will that do for next year? So, we don't have guidance on that yet. It'll -- that'll progress over the course of the year. And later this year we should have some more information.

Okay. And but would it be fair to say that the operating team at the site at Mesquite have a three-year mine plan that they're working against? Or is it one year then? Is it like just 2022?

I mean, if you didn't have any, if you didn't have any permitting timeline constraints, then it's very easy to model out a multi-year mine plan, and we'll also throw five years plus out there. But there is timing differences between -- in terms of we pad expansion eventually proceeding to the west, right? There's a highway there that we'd want to move, or sorry, to the east and other areas of the site that would need some permitting in order to continue on a plan that would utilize all of the resources that we currently have. So, a constraint is not really the deposit itself, it's actually the permitting timelines around some of that expansion opportunity at Mesquite. So, when you model that out you can kind of play, and the goal for us is continuing with that the permitting that we need to do and want to do, while filling in those gaps as best as we can. So, it's, as Doug said, it's kind of a continuous process at Mesquite, and has been since we bought it. I mean, Mesquite's been a great mine for us. Since we've acquired it in 2018, it's made us money every single quarter, I think, except one, we've recovered our acquisition costs well above our acquisition costs. I mean, it was a great -- it's been a great mind for us and continues to be. So, it's important for us to see it continue and that's kind of been our process all along. just with a mature asset like Mesquite that requires additional permitting.

Okay. Well, that's helpful. And the kind of the same question at Los Filos with the deferral of the Bermejal shutdown of the underground of Bermejal, does that impact the long-term plan there in any significant fashion?

Well, it doesn't actually. I mean, essentially because Bermejal would've been a pure net investment for this year, it actually alleviates some of the cash rain that be Los Filos would have this year. Deferring it gives couple opportunities. One, we need to change our productivity there to be able to make it so we can get to the 1,500 to 2,000 tons per day that we need. It's just prolonging the pain by doing the development at such a low productivity rate. And the cost per ton we're just coming in too high as we were mining in the initial stokes. So, it also gives an opportunity for the tire grade material to be able to go to a CIL. We know that by sending it to a heat bleach, it means that certain material you have to leave behind because it's not suitable for going to a heat bleach, but you can process it in the CIL. So that approach for us just means that, we'll push it off. And then meantime we will look to restructure how we'll deal with Bermejal underground.

And the near-term effect is you have a bit of lower production because we're not mining those ounces, but we actually save on free cash flow at Filos because of the deferral capital. Longer term, as I said, we we're going to go back into bur underground eventually. And the long term, plans for the mine of course include Bermejal underground. And as Doug said, if that materials going through a CIL plant, you're obviously getting higher recovery than you would just on the heat bleeds itself. And so, there is an economic tradeoff study to deferring it where you're going to get those higher recoveries once you've put that CIO in place.

And this last question for me then quickly, this explosive strike that your supplier had at Fields, I assume that's behind you now, and I just wondered if you could maybe give a little bit of an update on the pulse of the three communities and how all of that's been going?

Yeah, that explosive strikes was long past, I mean, it was earlier affected the earlier part of Q4. So that's done pulse in the communities. Well we're doubling down on our efforts to be in dialogue with the communities. And obviously, Bermejal underground will be another point where we'll be talking to all of the communities. I mean, we've tried to make it clear that there's -- it is a partnership. It's a dialogue that we need to have and we need to be able to work collectively on our relationship and be able to see what can be a bright future at Los Filos, but it involves everybody working together.

We've increased our and strengthened, I would say our community relations team at Los Filos, including in the last few months. And the informal feedback we're getting is that communication has improved quite a bit this coming from the communities. So, it's, it's been a good five or six months so far. And we're putting a lot of effort into that relationship, that communication and as Doug said, making sure that everyone acknowledges and recognizes that we're partners in this project. So, it's been good so far, karry, but we've had those challenges in the past and I can't necessarily say they won't manifest in the future, but we're certainly working hard with the communities to mitigate that.

Right. Okay. And I'm assuming Greg, that the communities were told a while ago that the Bermejal underground was going to be shut down, so there was some jobs that were going to disappear. So that's not new news today for them, right?

It's officially news today, I suppose, but there's been more informal conversations around the cost profile of Filos. And that it can't persist indefinitely under this basis and that some changes are going to need to be made. And so, and so actions going to need to be taken.

Okay. Thanks, guys. appreciate, great quarter.

Our next question comes from John Sclodnick of Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Thanks, guys. And most of them have been answered. So just a couple from me. Impressive gold caller contracts, and just wondering what changed your stance on Gold hedging, and if there was maybe a push from the lenders and finally if [indiscernible] was good with that?

It's Peter, good question, John. At the end of October and October Gold was below 1700. It had -- as we all saw, a very rapid rise right through the end of January. We have a capital-intensive year again this year, especially to fund construction at Greenstone. And with the way gold had continued to rise through January, as a management team, we just wanted to take an opportunity to lock in some cash flow. So that was the change in the thinking. And particularly given, the floor and the quite high ceiling, and that was just kind of a function of the curve as a result of three months of steady uptick and gold, I suppose. So, given that large spread that allowed us to, or will allow us to enjoy a higher gold price through the end of Q1 next year with those callers. We just thought it was a really prudent thing to do. And the fiduciary really responsible thing to do. With respect to lenders, and with [indiscernible] they of course were quite supportive generally speaking, they like to see hedges in place during capital intensive period.

I think, John, if you kind of look back over the last four months or so, it's just one more action we've taken of many, maybe incrementally smaller actions, but collectively designed to ensure that we've got enough resiliency in our cash flow profile, our balance sheet to absolutely ensure we get across the line on Greenstone, and get to commercial production next year. So, we've done a number of different things. That's one more part of it. And it wasn't without consideration. We had just rolled off all of our hedges from the legal transaction, and we're kind of high fiving on the back of that, and gold was going up, and then when we looked at what that caller looked like the -- and rationalizing it, we're like, well, listen, if we put this in place in gold runs, then hurrah anyways, right? It's going to be great. And if it doesn't, at least this introduces some risk mitigation and cash flow and EBITDA protection over the next year and a half while we complete this build. So that was kind of how we rationalized it. It was opportunistic. I think if we had waited one day later, we would've got maybe a slightly higher caller. But since that day we kind of printed the top of that recent bump and we're sitting here pretty happy that we put those in place.

Yeah, no, makes sense. Great levels to get in at that was impressive and nice risk mitigation there. Last one for me, just at Castle now I'm just curious how long kind of the status the Phase 1 operation could continue four additional permits are required.

I mean, probably 10 years plus like you -- because you could just keep -- once you get through the dump material, you can get into -- it's a pretty small operation given the size of the overall resource there. So, we've got plenty of headroom. I think in the past we've communicated around nine years or so, but we have no intention of writing it out that long. I think, like we -- again, it's impossible to pin down exactly the timing of receiving that permit. I like to say mid next year plus or minus six months, maybe it's more plus six to eight months than the minus. But we're certainly pushing and trying to target having that permit sometime in 2024 so that we can get busy on expanding that line.

Our last question is from Mike Parkin of National Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. That actually brings up a bit of a good question is how would you rank order your project pipeline in terms of assuming this kind of gold price environment? Where would you look to deploy capital after Greenstone first? Is it Castle Mountain Phase 2 or something else?

Yeah, I mean, it does come down to capital allocation decisions. And so, in the context of the goal price and cost environment in the future we've made those decisions. But it's pretty fair to say, you look at our portfolio, you've got some smaller assets and then we've got some bigger, longer life chunkier assets and that would include Greenstone, obviously, castle Mountain, Phase 2, Arizona, especially with the addition of the underground and of course Los Filos. And so as mentioned earlier, we're very keen to get underground at Arizona and start to build out that mine. And that's something I think, we're actively working on being in a position to start after Greenstone is back up and running or is up and running. Castle Mountain absolutely is one we want to get into the expansion of -- the only one that that is probably ranked lower right now is Filos. And that's -- it's a big nut to crack. It's had a higher risk profile and we've got to do more work there as we've continued to say before we're ready to start investing heavily at Filos. So, Greenstone's happening, castle Mountain I think will happen as soon as we get the permit. And, Arizona subject to results of the feasibility study and where we stand in terms of available capital by the end of this year is something I think we'd like to get into as quick as we can.

And maybe just one last question back to Los Filos with the underground suspension, does that impact any use of three communities far more than the others?

Yeah, it would affect Carillo more than the other two communities.

Thank you everybody. We're actually out of time and didn't have a chance to get to any of the online questions unfortunately, so we will get back to you later today by email. My apologies for that. Greg, do you have any closing remarks?

No. I think, just thanks again everyone for attending the call, and for the well-considered questions. And again, you can always reach out to any of us by email or by phone if you have additional questions or comments to make.

Thank you very much everybody for joining us today. Operator, you can now close the call.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.