Thank you for standing. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Equinox Gold Second Quarter 2024 Results and Corporate Update. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [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, Galene, and thank you everybody for joining us today for our Q2 call. Peter and I are dialing in from beautiful Princeton BC because we are two days into the ride to Greenstone. So, this is a big -- not cross Canada, I guess cross half of Canada. We're riding from Vancouver to our new mine in Geraldton, Ontario to celebrate the mine opening, but also to raise money for the Geraldton District Hospital, which is the hospital that serves the Greenstone Mine workforce and also five indigenous communities and about a almost a 3000 square kilometer region in Northern Ontario. So it's going really well so far. It's super exciting. We've got people from our mine sites in Brazil and the States and in Mexico that have flown up to Canada to join us for the ride, and we're making our way across the country, raising money for the hospital. Like I said, we've raised almost $1.2 million so far thanks to the generosity of our vendors and some industry sponsors. We're also raising money for four schools and a hospital in Brazil and for the Alzheimer's Association of California. So, if you're interested in more information about that, you can go to the Ride to Greenstone website or the Equinox Gold website and please do follow the progress as our cyclists make their way across the country. After that plug, we'll now turn it over to the conference call. So, we will of course be making a number of forward-looking statements today. Please do visit our website, SEDAR and EDGAR to learn more about the Company. And I'll turn the call over now to our president and CEO, Greg Smith.

Thanks Rhylin. Good morning and thanks everyone for joining the call today. On the line with me is our COO, Doug Reddy; our CFO, Peter Hardie; and our EVP of Exploration, Scott Heffernan, and of course our VP of Investor Relations, who you just heard from, Rhylin Bailie. Today we are discussing Equinox Gold's 2024 second quarter financial and operating results. I'll start with a broad overview of the quarter, and then I'll turn over the call to Pete and Doug for more details. I'm going to start with safety. We did unfortunately have a fatality at our Fazenda mine in Brazil in June. This was a tragedy for all of us at Equinox and we extend our deepest sympathies to our employees and also the family, friends and coworkers. We did have a site-wide suspension of operations at Fazenda in June to facilitate both the investigation and also to refresh our site safety training. On the environment side, we did have no significant environmental incidents during the second quarter. And as previously reported, we published our fiscal 2023 ESG report in May during the quarter, and you can find the report on the Equinox Gold website. Before the quarter, we produced just over 122,000 ounces of gold and sold just over 115,000 ounces at cash cost per ounce sold of 1,747 and an all-in sustaining cost per ounce sold of $2,041 per ounce. For the first six months of the year, we produced approximately 234,000 ounces and sold approximately 232,000 ounces at cash cost of $1,653 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of 1993 per ounce. We did have a few developments during the quarter that affected our production and costs in Q2 and also drove an update to our fiscal 2024 guidance. In mid-May, we completed the acquisition…

Thanks, Greg. We're now on slide seven in the presentation. During Q2, we sold 115,000 ounces of gold at a realized price of $2,328 per ounce for revenues of $269 million. Total sales included 10,000 ounces sold by Greenstone. Income from mine operations was $27 million. We had $199 million in operating expenses in Q2 ‘24 compared to $193 million in Q2 2023. Operating expense in Q2 2024 increased 3% compared to Q2 2023 primarily due to the contribution of operating expense at Greenstone, which was a construction project in 2023 and did not have operating expenses and a higher operating expense at Los Filos, which was driven by an increase in the underground mining activity, offset by lower operating expense at Arizona that Greg mentioned earlier. On a per unit basis, we had a higher than usual Q2 2024 cash cost of $1,747 an ounce. The increase over previous quarters is primarily volume driven with the lower production at Arizona due to the geotechnical issue at the Piaba pit. The same explanation applies to our higher than usual, all-in sustaining cost per ounce for the quarter. Note that Greenstone is not yet in commercial production, so when you're looking at our cost metrics, the 10,000 ounces it's sold along with the related cost of production are excluded from the calculation of cash cost and all-in sustaining cost metrics we reported in Q2. That said, the revenues and related operating costs are still reported in the income statement as required by IFRS. Our EBITDA in Q2 2024 was $510 million included in EBITDA is a fair value gain on remeasure of our Greenstone ownership interest that recorded when moving from proportionate to full consolidation. For counting purposes, we record the change as if you sold the 60% ownership interest we…

Thanks, Pete. We're now on Slide 11 of the presentation. At the Mesquite mine gold production was 17,607 ounces with an all-in sustaining cost of $1,283 per ounce. Waste stripping continued in the Ginger pit and the majority of the ore from that pit goes to the leach pads starting in Q1 of 2025. For the rest of 2024 production is mostly draw down of the leach pad inventory, side slope leaching and leaching of additional ore coming from current mining and rehandling and re-leaching of the old Vista pad material. The recoveries from the leach pad have been slower than expected due to pad height and associated longer leach cycles. At Castle Mountain, production was up over Q1 at 6,148 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,424 per ounce. Phase one is a small operation that is mining and processing low grade historic backfill material that needs to be removed from the old open pits prior to mining in situ material in phase two. We completed a review of the mine plan and costs at Castle Mountain for phase one, and concluded that mining will be suspended in August for the duration of the phase two permitting. Residual leaching will continue through 2024, and we continue with the phase two permitting process. At Los Filos production increased during Q2 to 37,430 ounces, and this should continue to improve in H2. The all-in sustaining cost was $2,274 per ounce. During the quarter, the crusher was brought back online and all the material for crushing that it accumulated while the relocation of the conveyor was underway was then crushed and is now under leach. The productivity program that's been in place at Los Filos for the last two years continues to show improvement and we saw an increase in Los…

Thanks, Doug. Yes, it's been a mixed quarter for us. We've had to work through some challenges at a few of our minds, and particularly at Arizona, and we've had to make some revisions to our guidance as a result, but also a very positive quarter for the Company in that we were able to complete the acquisition of the rest of Greenstone, achieve first gold pour and then start the ramp up toward commercial production, and really, we're at an inflection point. Now, we expect a stronger second half from a number of our mines, but more importantly, Greenstone is ramping up to commercial production over the next few months. And we already produced more gold at Greenstone in July than we did in all of Q2. So, the big picture here is we are significantly increasing our production at lower costs during a period of historically strong gold prices and what we think is a continuing bullish macro-outlook for gold. And I think, I'll wrap it up there and turn it over to Rhylin to start the Q&A.

Thanks, Greg and Doug. Galene, can you please remind our participants how to ask a question?

[Operator Instructions]

So, I do have a few questions from online. So, one that came in first, we'll ask first. How are you going to catch up in the second half of the year to achieve your guidance?

Sure, I can take that. I mean, the main plan here, Rhylin, as you can see from the guidance, is that most of our sites will have a stronger second half of the year. In particularly, Los Filos, and of course, Greenstone as we ramp up to commercial production. Greenstone is a very large mine, and production of Greenstone definitely moves the needle for us. So, the second half of the year we'll produce a lot more gold than we did in the first half.

Mike Parkin sent me a question. He's our analyst from National Bank. Sent me a question by email. This is for Peter. What will Castle Mountain care maintenance cost be on an annual basis? Will there be any severance payments? And if so, how much and when will those flow through the financials?

I'll start with the later part. Yes, there will be severance payments. We haven't updated the market provided guidance on what care maintenance will look like heading into next year and beyond. We'll do so when we update guidance or perhaps earlier than that. With respect to the remainder of the year, we'll be residual leaching. So, the guidance that we provided for Castle Mountain effectively takes it through the point at which we go onto residual leach, which will be sometime during Q3. We expect to continue to pull ounces from the pad at -- for several months after, and we'll provide a more comprehensive update on those costs as we move forward. It will depend in part on when the residual leach tapers off and when it no longer is beneficial to continue to residual leach based on the ounces being pulled and the cost to do it.

I'll just add to that. At Castle Mountain, our mining and our crushing is contractors. So, those contract terminations have been provided to the contractors, and we have a very small team overall who will continue to work on the residual leaching. So, it is quite a compact and small operation, or remains a small team as we move into residual leach.

A question from our Kerry Smith, our analyst at Haywood Securities, who is currently on an airplane. When do you expect to be able to get back into mining at Piaba? And how many tons of or ounces of production do you have at Tatajuba?

For return to mining in Piaba, we're doing work in Piaba now, but it's at the upper areas of the pit. We will, during the course of this year, be going in and mining certain areas especially on the west end of Piaba from pit. Overall, plan is based on doing all the dewatering program and all the geotechnical and recontouring activities. We would like to be doing some additional mining in Piaba pit by the end of this year, but the real focus is going to be doing a large program in 2025. But again, it all is dependent on working through all of our activities that we're doing to remediate and make the pit totally safe, keep the regulators totally informed and being able to move in and be able to mine, especially on the east end of the pit.

Thank you. Doug. Operator, can we please take some questions from the phone?

Certainly. The first question from the phone lines is from Anita Soni with CIBC World Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. First question I think I'm going to focus on Greenstone. When we look at the throughput rates that you delivered this quarter, can you just give us a little idea of how that ramped up over the course of the year -- sorry, over the course of the quarter and what the exit rates are right now in throughput?

So, April, May, we were 40, 50% of rated throughput, came up to just under 60% as we came into July. Then we had a major shut. So, we've taken care of a lot of the items that we've noticed during the ramp up and we'll continue. We've restarted and continue with the ramp up in August, I'm sure. I'm not sure exactly what the other details that you’re looking for.

No, that was, that's good. Another question in terms of the definition of commercial production, I noticed it said within 10% of the design grades. You guys are substantially over the design grades. And I have a second question related to that in a second, but the, does that mean that you when you're looking for commercial production, you're looking for it to come down to the sort of 1.5 that you were expecting over the next, I guess, three, four years rather than the 2.5 that you delivered this quarter?

Yes, it won't continue at the 2.5. I mean, that was essentially as you'll be aware, putting a lot of ounces that go into the circuit. And that was done where we had the ability to feed some high-grade material and be able to add that into the mill. And going forward we will, it gets tempered down to more the targeted production, overall production rate. So, it won't continue at 2.5. That would be glorious, but we can't do that forever.

It was a good surprise. I was, but it didn't hold my breath that it was going to be sustained.

Yes, I anticipated that somebody would do the calc and say, how come your ounce produced and you have 88% in recovery, but if you look at the number of ounces that go into circuit, then it all makes sense. And by putting in the higher grade, we took care of building up the ounces and circuit very quickly.

Okay. And then as we get to the, doing some calculations on the mining and the ore stockpile rates, I think, could you just talk about the truck availability? I think you're getting around 2 million tons per truck. If I did the math rate on that per annum, if you annualize it. And are design rates on those trucks more like, like could you just tell me what the design rates on the trucks are? I thought they were somewhere around three to three and a half, but of course that depends on your haul distances. So, can you just talk about the availability on the trucks? Yes.

Haul distances are affected at this very start for a couple reasons. One that while we've been in pioneering essentially the pit. We've been moving a lot of the soil material, some of which needs to be treated. So that means we have to take it down to an area where it can be dealt with, that consumes some of the cycle time. We've also been doing a lot of work, but taking clean waste down to our tailing facility. Again, longer cycle time for those trucks. So, you can't really, you'd have to separate them out between mine and those other activities. But essentially with a fleet of 25 trucks, four shovels on site, we'll be continuing the ramp up towards a capacity of 180,000 tons a day by the end of the year.

Anita, its Greg here. I might just add, I don't know if there's a recent picture on our website, but if there's not, I can send one to you. The first year of mining at Greenstone a little bit complex for a couple of reasons. And you'll remember when we were there, there's the old McLeod tailings that are there from previous mining. Part of our permit requires that we excavate those tailings and move them to our facility. And we do have some trucks dedicated to doing that. We also have this, we call it type D soil, which is contaminated soil in the main open pit, which is the delicate job to move that material. And we're in the process of doing that, and as we do that, it opens up additional areas of that open pit for us to mine. If you looked at a recent picture, what you'll see there is sort of a couple of awkward islands in the middle of our pit where we're still excavating the type D soil. And it does provide some complexity in mining efficiency in this sort of the first half of this year. We're working through that quickly, and I think over the next quarter or so, largely through the type D soil. We open up the pit, the cloud tailings are well advanced, and we start to really see those efficiencies as we go into Q4 here. So just for the first year, as Doug said, pioneering this pit with some of the historic issues does make it a little more complex. But again, we've been able to build a large stockpile, feed the mill and are on track to be able to meet our targets.

Then just a last question on the mining rates. I think, you guys mentioned that some of it was dedicate -- well looking back at the last couple of quarters, but basically it was talking about how the mining rates, some of that was dedicated to providing waste rock for the tail exam. Are you through that? Is it now, are you basically just using the fleet to do ore waste in the pit or are you still looking at helping at the tailing facility?

No, we're still hauling clean waste down to the TMF.

How much…

It's on a next stage.

So how much material like in terms of millions of tons do you have to deliver to the waste rock to the tailing facilities this year?

I will get back to you shortly. Don't have that number on the top of my tongue, but I'll get back to you shortly.

I'm a memorized deck. That's it for my questions. I'll get back in the queue. Thanks.

The next question is from Wayne Lam with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

I guess, maybe just circling back to Greenstone, really nice to see you guys hit the 2 million ton or stockpile as planned. Could you give us a grade an idea of the grade of that stockpile? And then maybe just as a follow up on the 2.5 gram of ton, typically we see much lower grade feed put through the early stages in ramping on the mill. But just wondering, if you guys are seeing any positive reconciliation versus plan and with some of the higher-grade material put through the mill to accelerate some upfront cash flow.

I'll start with the high grade into the plant and then Doug can respond to some of your other questions here. As we were ramping up, basically in the first couple of benches of or the first mining we did, we did have a fair bit of high grade ore. And as we started to ramp up the mill, we started to have very good recoveries right off the bat. So, we're seeing plus 90% recoveries pretty much right away. In part that's because of the increased resonance time in the tanks when you're not up to full capacity. But when you start one of these plants up, you've got of build up that inventory in the tanks. And then you have this sort of rolling gold inventory in your tanks. Because we had access to such high grade material and we were getting the very high recoveries right out of the gate, we took that opportunity to feed in some high grade or and ramp up that inventory quickly, which got us into producing gold more quickly than we otherwise would've. It wasn't a cash flow decision. It was more of a commissioning decision. And frankly, we had some very high grades that were coming out. Doug will get into it, but we've got different bins for stockpile and we had a couple days there where we were feeding. I think five grams per ton and material like that. So, we were able to do that and as part of our commissioning and it reflects in the grade over the second quarter, as Doug said to Anita, that's not something that's going to persist, but it was helpful as we were ramping up the plant.

I think the other question was just about the stockpile, where part -- we're partly feeding from stockpile, but we're also doing some direct feed to the to the crusher as well. So, it's not all first in, first out by any means. And reconciliation overall has been quite good. So average grade I'd have to look it up because we have been focused on certain bins. So again, I'll come back to that later during the call. I'm going to just take a moment and answer Anita's question about total Rockville for the TMF. It's 7.8 million tons in 2024, so I'll come back with a grade on the stock pot.

And then maybe just given the higher cost of Castle, I think it makes sense to suspend operations, but just looking across the portfolio you guys have a couple other operations kind of running up towards those cost levels at Filos and Santa Luz. And so just wondering, at Filos, if there's a more definitive cut off point on the negotiations where you kind of decide you can't subsidize it anymore? And then at Santa Luz, you guys are now several years through an eight-year mine life for an asset that's had challenges dating back a decade ago under [Humana]. So just wondering if there's a point at which you decide that that asset consumes too much capital and attention to continue to operate.

With Los Filos, we knew the first half of the year would be weaker than the second half, and you can already see the -- now that we've done the relocation of the conveyor and we have all the material under leach, our ounces are significantly up in Q2. They'll continue to go up in the second half of the year. All-in sustaining cost is in that case being driven by the ounces that we're producing. So, we should see that improve in Los Filos in the second half of the year as well. The bigger question at Los Filos has been the establishment of new agreements. That's the key element for Filos being able to get a path forward and to build a CIL. So, it's a large mine with a great opportunity. We are giving it our best shot to be able to work out everything with the communities and we're in dialogue and we hope that we can determine the new path for Filos overall. With Santa Luz, yes, first of all, we're significantly better than the previous recoveries at Santa Luz. We invested in a new technology and we've been working on getting it to refine it. Obviously, scaling up from pilot plant to the industrial scale has had challenges, and we see it as a very prospective district. If I turned it over to Scott, he'd be able to talk at length about the opportunities that we have in the immediate area around Santa Luz. So, we're there because we believe in the long-term side of it, albeit we're in commissioning on the de-sliming circuit and we have a target that we want to achieve this year. And we will continue to look at this from the big picture. So, as opposed to doing a strategic view on Santa Luz at this point in time, we have these two larger projects in the plant that we wanted to get through and see them perform. And that's the trunnion and the de-sliming.

I mean, Wayne, as a general comment, we're in the business of producing gold, but obviously we want to produce gold profitably. We have no interest in being a charity here. So, of course, if a mine is proving not to be economic, but we don't see the long-term economic benefit of running a mine, then we're going to assess options for that mine. Castle's a bit of a different story because it was a very small contract, almost pilot plant type of operation while we worked toward the large expansion. And we ended up running it longer than we had anticipated just because of the permit timelines. So, in that case, to your point, it made sense for us to do that and really focus on the permitting for phase two. But, as Doug said, Los Filos is a large ore body, attractive deposit. Obviously, the long-term plan there is to build a CIL plant, and that massively increases recoveries and really changes the flavor of that mine. To do that, we've got to have new agreements with the community. So that's the focus right now. At Santa Luz, yes, no question. It's been a challenge for us. It's new technology and not around the world, but it is a novel use of that technology at Santa Luz. And the team has been -- it's a little bit like whack-a-mole. We get some great results and then something happens, and we kind of take a couple steps back. But I was just there, spent a lot of time with the team. They've done a lot of good work and we're expecting a much better second half of the year here at Santa Luz.

Okay, great. Yes, hopefully you guys can get it up to the 70% plus level in the second half. Maybe just last one for me, looking ahead on the convert coming due in October. Peter had alluded to having the cash on hand and cash from operations to cover that, but would seem to consume quite a bit of capital and reserve during the ramp up. So, I guess just in terms of alternative funding options, would you look to refi with another convert similar to the one done last September? Or is there potential to renew the ATM or just curious what the available funding options might be if you have to repay that with cash?

Pete, do you want to handle that one?

Sure. First of all, Wayne, we do believe we'll be able to manage it through cash and our existing liquidity. If you recall, when we did the convert last year, we were expecting in April maturity on that note. And so, we issued that, converted that time, then we took the proceeds of that, put it on the revolver to reduce interest costs in the meantime. We have room on the revolver to draw. That was put there thanks to that note issuance from last year as well as existing cash. With respect to Greenstone, we are given the ramp up rate and trajectory recurring we're currently on with, in addition with commercial production expected this quarter. We're currently comfortable that we can repay that note, if needs be when it comes mature through existing sources. With respect to prospective sources, of course, everything you mentioned is available, but they're not in our current plan.

Thanks for taking my questions and best of luck with the ramp up and operations on the months ahead.

We do have some questions online that I still have already been answered in the other things that the speakers have addressed. So, the archive of the website will be up on, and probably -- sorry, archive of the webcast will be on the website in a couple of hours. So, you're welcome to go back and have another listen. We'll have a transcript of the entire thing probably on Saturday. If there was other questions, I'll get back to you later this evening. I have to get Pete on the roads, because he's got a big cycle ahead of him today. But I will get back to everybody else sometime tonight. So, Greg, do you have any closing remarks?

No, just thanks again everyone for attending the call and where to find us if you've got any more questions.

Perfect. Peter?

I'm just going to add, please donate. It's a great cause.

Thanks very much. Operator, you can now conclude the call.

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