Makko DeFilippo
Analyst · Canaccord Genuity
Thank you, Courtney, and thank you all for taking the time to join us today. I want to spend some time talking about the important foundational work we've been doing over the last several months to illustrate why 2025 is really a year of 2 halves. Early this year, we initiated an operational excellence framework. During the first half of the year, we made significant progress across our operating portfolio, laying the necessary groundwork to deliver safe and sustainable growth in production for years to come. It was a period of significant change, driven by a back-to-basics approach, combined with some major steps forward in strategy and technology across our operations. During this transformation, we refined our operating strategies, improved predictive maintenance, reduced our unplanned downtime, improved our fleet management and dispatch systems as well as hired and integrated new leadership in critical roles all throughout the company. This fundamental groundwork was necessary and nonlinear. The significant changes we have made across the company are focused on stabilizing operating performance and preparing our organization for the long-term growth we see ahead of us. This work was undertaken while successfully completing the necessary repairs at Tucumã and completely changing the mining method at our Xavantina operations. I am extremely proud of our teams for their effort on Ero's transformation over the last 6 months, and we are starting to see the benefits reflected in our operating results. Second quarter culminated in the announcement of commercial production at Tucumã and was highlighted by significant quarter- on-quarter increases in production from both Caraíba and Xavantina. The turnaround at Caraíba and Xavantina contributed to record consolidated copper production and solid financial performance, leading indicators that we have the right teams in place and the right operating framework to achieve our results, but I certainly recognize the first half was not without its challenges. When I look ahead to the second half of the year, I see a different picture. The foundational work we have completed over the last several months is setting us up well to continue building momentum in the coming quarters. Our revised guidance range reflects our expectation that our third quarter will be better than the second, the fourth quarter better than the third and that 2026 will be better than 2025. The way I think about this is that we arrived a bit late to the station, but if you step back with me and look at the second half of the year in isolation from the first, you will see an annualized rate that is closely aligned with our longer-term production outlook across each of our operations, late to the station, but full steam ahead. Before I turn the call over to Wayne to discuss our financial results, I would like to share a bit of detail on our improved operating performance at Caraíba and Xavantina, the progress we are making at Furnas and how this all aligns with our broader strategy. At Caraíba, we saw a solid turnaround in operating performance this quarter, highlighted by a 25% increase in copper production when compared to Q1. Initiatives that we launched to enhance operating performance and drive efficiencies are delivering results. A few of the behind-the-scenes highlights achieved during the second quarter include a 50% reduction in unplanned infrastructure downtime, record pace backfill rates and a more than 10% improvement across the board in our mobile equipment fleet availability. In parallel, we have started deploying new to Caraíba but well-established technologies in dispatch, tracking and monitoring that are transforming the way we operate. We are shifting our focus slightly in Pilar during the second half of the year to optimize our mining center of mass within the upper levels of the mine. We expect this strategy to result in full year copper production trending to the low end of guidance, but we see this implementation paired with ongoing operational improvements, giving us the ability to enhance our cost control efforts, and we expect C1 cash costs to be in the bottom half of our guidance range for the full year. At Xavantina, we spent the first half of the year setting up the mine for mechanization, a long-term investment that will unlock considerable value for the operation. We spent some additional time in H1 to get this transition setup right. We worked during Q2 to prepare the mine, prepare our teams, hire new roles that were needed on site, all fundamentally geared to ensure we could do it successfully and safely. The additional time was worth it. Gold production was up an impressive 17% versus Q1, and we expect the full benefit of mine mechanization to flow through our results in the second half of the year as mine tonnages improved sequentially. Our low-profile equipment is working well. The stopes we have mined using mechanized methods have been a definitive success, and we see a clear pathway towards meaningfully increasing production volumes from Xavantina over the next several months. At Furnas, we completed our Phase 1 drill program in early July and have maintained 8 drill rigs on the project to ensure we can complete most of the Phase 2 drill program, an additional 17,000 meters by year-end. Our Phase 2 program includes a greater proportion of extensional holes to depth and we are already seeing strong signs of success in this program. Technical work streams to support the preliminary economic analysis for Furnas are ongoing, and we remain on track to complete this study during the first half of next year. To briefly recap, we are delivering on our 2025 strategy. We set out this year to improve our existing operations, achieve commercial production at Tucumã, delever our balance sheet, aggressively advance long-term growth initiatives at Furnas and initiate returns to shareholders. We are well on our way. I was in our offices and on site last week in Brazil, and I am proud and thankful for the work our global leadership team is doing to achieve these objectives. To ensure we have sufficient time for Q&A, I will leave it there and pass the call to Wayne, who will provide more detail on our financial results.