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IAMGOLD Corporation (IAG)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 4, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the IAMGOLD 2015 Third Quarter Operating and Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode. And the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Bob Tait, Vice President, and Investor Relations for IAMGOLD. Please go ahead, Mr. Tait.

Bob Tait

Analyst

Thank you. Welcome to the IAMGOLD conference call. Our remarks on this call will include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language regarding forward-looking information in our disclosure documents and be advised that the same cautionary language applies to our remarks during the call. During our opening remarks, we will refer to slides which can be viewed on our website iamgold.com. Joining me on the call today are Steve Letwin, President and CEO; Gord Stothart, Executive VP and COO; Carol Banducci, Executive VP and CFO; Craig MacDougall, Senior VP, Exploration and Jeff Snow, General Counsel and Senior VP, Business Development. I will now turn the call over to President and CEO, Steve Letwin.

Steve Letwin

Analyst

Thanks Bob. Well, as we all know we continue to operate in tough times and because of that there has been no break from our drive to further reduce cost. And there is no decision we make that doesn't consider the impact on our balance sheet. Our total cash cost per ounce for the quarter were $791 and all-in sustaining $1,027. So we continue to improve from the previous year and from the second quarter. That's against performance in particular with outstanding all-in sustaining cost were $922 an ounce, $227 an ounce lower than the previous year. So our continuous improvement efforts continue at other sites where the emphasis on streamlining and reducing overhead cost. Rosebel is an excellent example of this having recently begun the process to reduce the number of employees by 10%. This will better aligned our labor cost with production levels. The actual progress that we have made to further reduce our all-in sustaining cost has allowed us to lower our cost guidance for 2015. Total cash cost for the year are now expected to range between $825 and $865 an ounce and all-in sustaining cost between $1,050 and $1,150 an ounce. Turning to production. Essakane achieved record production in the third quarter with a 29% growth year-over-year. The additional ore from the Falagountou satellite deposit was a significant contributor, a great example of the upside potential of our existing assets. At the consolidated level, we produced 197,000 ounces in the quarter bringing year-to-date production at 607,000 ounces. We maintained our production guidance for the year at 780,000 to 815,000 ounces. Great work continues on the exploration side, several projects at the resource delineation stage or moving forward including an initial resource estimate expected for Diakha by the end of the year. A resource update will…

Carol Banducci

Analyst

Thanks, Steve. And good morning, everyone. As Steve mentioned we continue to manage our business prudently in a volatile gold price environment. Our balance sheet remains strong with a net cash position. We are looking to refinance our credit facility but given the cash amount that we have on our balance sheet as well as if you not to pay fees for capacity that we don't intend to use will be looking for a smaller amount. We've done well to further reduce cost and we'll continue on that track. In the third quarter 2015 we reported a net loss from continuing operations of $85 million. Note that two significant adjusting items the $20 million unrealized derivative loss related to field contract and the $15 million adjustment to normalize Westwood cost given the interruption in production. Together these two items had a per share impact of $0.09. After normalizing earnings for all one time items, the adjusted net loss was $0.12 per share for the third quarter 2015. This compared to an adjusted net loss of $0.03 per share in the third quarter of 2014. Year-over-year variance and adjusted net earnings was a result of lower operating earnings. While cost of sales was down 13%, revenues decline by 28%. Revenues from continuing operations in the third quarter 2015 were $208 million, down from $287 million the year before. And this is mainly due to the lower gold sales and 12% decrease in the gold price. Gold sales were lower by 40,000 ounces due to lower production at Westwood and Rosebel as well as the closure Mouska in the third quarter 2014. Commercial production at Westwood began in the third quarter 2014, the production interruption in the second quarter of 2015 limited production and sales in the third quarter to 2,000 ounces.…

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Thanks Carol. Looking at the third quarter for IAMGOLD, this was very productive for us on several fronts. Essakane carried outstanding news with record production and lower cost. Rosebel took steps to reduce its cost structure to better align with production. Westwood completed a comprehensive review enabling us to layout the plan for moving forward. And Sadiola continues to be a cost effective operator. Additionally, we continue to develop and refine our long-term plan that we all operations to incorporate the improvements realized and to ensure that our business is viable even in a sustained low gold price environment. We plan to be in a position to share some of this longer-term picture with the market in the New Year. Beginning at Essakane, we had a record quarter on all key production metrics. Production increased 20% from the second quarter and 29% from a year ago. The record production year-over-year was due to higher throughput and higher grades. Net throughput increased 22% as the proportion of soft rock was 19% compared to 5% the year before. That might seem somewhat contrary to our previous messaging that the percentage of hard rock is increasing. So let me explain. In the first and second quarters of this year, we benefited from satellite stockpile drawdown and fed to the mill. And in the third quarter we benefited from the satellite ore coming from Falagountou encountering additional ore than was initially modeled and at higher grade. We currently estimate that there is sufficient satellite at Falagountou to take us through the end of this year. In addition to the positive situation at Falagountou, we also encountered additional transition ore at higher grades and plant in the new push back are at the north end of Essakane main pit. We expect that early in 2016,…

Craig MacDougall

Analyst

Thank you, Gord. And good morning, everyone. In the face of budget pressures and cost cutting initiatives across the industry, our exploration program continues to deliver positive results for the number of projects advancing as planned. Year-to-date expenditures of $36 million were 27% below what they were in the same nine months last year. For this reason we've lowered our spending outlook for 2015 by $6 million to $50 million and we will continue to look for more savings. As I give you an update on our exploration projects, please keep in mind that the drilling results have been previously disclosed in accordance with securities regulations and have been duly signed off by the qualified persons within the company who reported. I am going to begin with the Monster Lake project in Quebec. On Monday, TomaGold announced an amendment to the earning option agreement that we had with them respecting the Monster Lake project. Our original agreement with TomaGold commenced in November of 2013. That gave us an option to earn 50% interest in the Monster Lake project by completing exploration expenditures totaling C$17.6 million over 5.5 years to 2019. The amendment to the agreement gives us the option to earn an immediate 50% undivided interest in the project or one time cash payment of C$3.2 million. This means we will acquire 50% interest now rather than waiting until the completion of the expenditure commitment. In addition, we now have the options to increase our interest to 75% by spending a further C$10 million in exploration expenditures by the end of 2021. The amendment to this agreement underscores our confidence from this new discovery stage project based on the encouraging results we've seen to date. As most of you know the excellent grades that have been reported from our drilling…

Steve Letwin

Analyst

Thanks Craig. Well, look in closing as I said at the beginning our plan is to continue to focus on cost reduction and cash preservation. We can't do anything about the price of gold. It is out of our control. And we can't do much about the sentiment. But what we can do is work and continues to focus on our costs. So that's what we are going to continue to do. We are going to focus on cash preservation. We are going to make sure that balance sheet stays strong. And as you heard from Gord there is a lot of optimism about our mine plans going forward, which we are going to be communicating in January with specific emphasis on Westwood. So we will continue to do what we always do. And on that note we will take questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question today is from Anita Soni with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Anita Soni

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Just a couple of questions. First with regard to the use of proceeds from the Niobec sale. Could you give a little bit of color on and maybe color on in terms of just sort of allocating out exactly where you guys are planning to spend that $600 million? I know you said that you will not be using it to pay back any more debt; I was just wondering what the capital plans are for that?

Carol Banducci

Analyst

Hi. Anita. We just Niobec as an example and use $500 million, right now based on where we are tracking for our capital expenditure this year and based on what we expect to commit for next year and spend in the first half of the year, we are looking at somewhere approximately $300 million. And on top of that we would look at our capital leases, the settlement of our hedges and then what we announced earlier this month as the year resources, acquisitions and Craig spoke to Monster Lake. So when you add up all those components, you are looking at somewhere around $170 million and so we add the $300 million capital to the $170 million with these other components and of course we got others, there are other sort of applications on those lines that satisfies the requirement of these covenant.

Anita Soni

Analyst

All right. So then at this time there are no plans to I think obviously previously you guys have been talking about looking to acquiring as opposed to the production profile there.

Steve Letwin

Analyst

While we were -- we definitely were having lucky meeting, we need to look the challenge we seemed to have in the environment and that's probably the same challenge everybody else has is finding assets that are cash flow generating positively cash flow generating. After you take a look at paying a premium et cetera so not too much out there. We are much better off investing in our own assets organically improving our cost structure and maximizing revenue because we just can't seem to find anything out there that we can add to our portfolio right now that is going to be generating cash as opposed to using cash. Lots of development projects out there Anita but the last thing we want right now is the development project.

Anita Soni

Analyst

Right. And then moving on to Westwood. I would just want to get some color on the plans. I know that you are going to reveal that in January and it is before the provincial story at this point but do you anticipate an impact to production levels in 2016 and 2017, my experience usually tell me that generally after taking a little bit easy and slower when you have issues of those kind.

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Yes. I mean as we said we'll talk about it at some length early in January. Yes, I mean there is -- it is ramp up schedule. The preliminary plans we've seen get us back to where we were supposed to be, and we have talked about previously more of us in similar sorts of time frame so there is a ramp up to it and it looks quite promising.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from David Haughton with CIBC. Please go ahead.

David Haughton

Analyst

Good morning, Steve, Carol, Gord and Craig. Thank you for the update. Just a high level question for you. You must be going through your budget planning cycles right now. Last year your reserves were at $1,300, I am just wondering what you are thinking is firstly for your budget planning what sort of gold price you are assuming and secondly for reserves what kind of price you might adopt there?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

I'll back it and turn it around for you. On reserves we have done a fair bit of analysis and we are right now planning our reserves at $1,200 looking forward. So thus it is a drop from where we were last year. We are still quite comfortable with -- that's an appropriate level for reserve planning. And our cost or sorry the prices we are looking at in the near term are below that but climbing over it sort of longer in the five year time frame.

David Haughton

Analyst

And I presume one of the things you are looking at within your budget not withstanding you got some things to spend like the Westwood fill and et cetera that your goal here would be to go free cash like positive in 2016?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

It’s certainly yes. Not withstanding what we need to do at Westwood, everything else is more than focused in that direction.

David Haughton

Analyst

Okay. And by going from $1,300 down to $1,200 I presume to the extent that you have got a strong U.S. dollar and softer domestic currency that would help that step down in the gold price assumption?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Yes. I mean there are some offsetting movement certainly for North America and West Africa. Fuel price is obviously another offset for us that are working in our favor. And really good work that the sites have done bring down their cost to date is also working in our favor. By coincidence we've spent a fair bit of work at the open pit, you want to operate open pits anywhere in Rosebel and Essakane over the past years looking geo technically at our slope designs and have received a fair bit of joy with respect to that. At least something is breaking in our favor.

David Haughton

Analyst

Okay. Just going either to Essakane, good to see the contribution from the satellite and that satellite from there could extend into at least to the year end and maybe even to the New Year. What kind of sort of throughput should we be thinking about? I mean you had 35,000 tons a day in the September quarter, clearly that's not sustainable as your percentage hard rock goes up but can you see it is let say 32,000 -33,000 kind of range for the next couple of quarters?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Yes. I mean we are actually trying to find ways is best as possible to sort of stick at the number that you are talking about long term even with higher rock percentages. We've done -- we did a fair bit of investment obviously in the front end of the circuit in 2013 and now we are optimizing that. So looking at primary crushing, secondary crushing and what we can do there. And also spending a lot of effort right now on looking at blasting practices and sees what we can do for augmentation lies with that. I mean our long-term goal would be -- we would like to be running around 10% or above our nameplate capacity.

David Haughton

Analyst

Okay. And just to remind of that nameplate is 30,000 tons a day.

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Nameplate 10.8 million a year.

David Haughton

Analyst

10.8 million, okay. All right, just going over to Westwood, I know that you are going to come out with more detail in the next quarter, but just looking at getting to your target for the year, I mean that implies something like 10,000 -15,000 ounces in the December quarter. Are you still comfortable with that given where you have been and the kind of remedial work that you had and uncertainty of seismicity?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Yes. We are comfortable with it. That's a question that I have asked repeatedly at the site. There are some positive things. We have a fair bit of ore, reasonable grade ore in the surge system right now, and so working through that and understanding the exact stoops that are in front of us right now and also looking at some twin up and some surface material, we are comfortable where we fall comfortable within that new range.

David Haughton

Analyst

And just more generally what do you understand of the triggers and the causes and ways to avoid the seismicity that you have seen recently?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Yes, triggers and causes was really a localized weak zone that was over stressed and ruptured, it was a rock burst incidence, it was not a movement along a surface plain, I've just look through or translated about 400 slides with this technical information for our Board, so it is not a simple thing to describe in a two minute answer. What our opportunities are going forward specifically in designing our new areas ensuring that we are in the right ground that we are not moving parallel to shift seismicity when we are driving dress and installing the appropriate ground control package for appropriate areas, avoiding stocking of intersections and keeping away from four way intersection. So it has been a lot of design criteria come out of it. And reviewed by a very distinguished pre review group so we are pleased we can go back in and that our people will be safe. And that we can reach the productivities that this mine needs to have and we are happy it's going to be around for the next 20 plus years.

David Haughton

Analyst

Okay. So is there a certain location within say looking at the plan view of Westwood that you need to avoid or you need to be more careful obviously and area where you have more jointing or seismicity or some other structure that you got to stay away from?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

It's not an area we have to stay away from but we have to understand how to develop it appropriately. But yes there are specific zones that are -- they require a greater amount of technical attention to be mined appropriately. It is not that can't be mined, it's just we need to pay attention to them.

David Haughton

Analyst

And just one last one if I may over to Carol please. You've got $150 million worth of bullion on the books. What's your intention there? Just want to keep a status quo or do you want to top it up or sell it down? What's your thinking?

Carol Banducci

Analyst

Our thinking right now David is to keep a status quo, I mean again to provide our investors at the greater leverage to gold price and we are confident at some point that we will see the commodity rebound but we are not as Steve said counting on it. But you know what if we need to access it as we did when we acquired Essakane we will access it. So to us it is equivalent to cash or cash equivalent. So it is there for us to access and use within the business as we deem appropriate.

David Haughton

Analyst

So when we see a gap between production and sales, it is not you putting into the -- so it's just happens to be a slip shipment by one week to or a day or whatever happens beginning at the quarter.

Carol Banducci

Analyst

Absolutely, absolutely, we don't play those games.

Operator

Operator

Next question from Vishal Puri [ph] with Golden Tree. Please go ahead.

Vishal Puri

Analyst

Hey, how you are guys do? So you made a pretty clear that you are not going to buying back any bond at par but will you be buying any bond in the open market?

Carol Banducci

Analyst

And that's a good question. I mean we are very proactive about how we manage our capital structure. And as we noted we purchased $50 million already, so it is something that we will continually look at as we reach maturity. So it is something that is available to us. And we have the -- As Steve said the priority right now for us is maintaining our liquidity and using those funds right now to invest in the business to drive more attractive return to enhance the cash flows with long term. But it is something that we will continually look at. And if appropriate we will see whether it makes sense.

Operator

Operator

Next question is from CJ Baldoni with Principal Global Investors. Please go ahead.

CJ Baldoni

Analyst

Yes. I guess touching on what you just said maintain liquidity, I was curious about your comments earlier about refinancing your credit facility and reducing the size. It would seem that commitment fees are like its pretty small cost to pay as an insurance policy.

Carol Banducci

Analyst

Well, when we take a look at the overall capacity and again as I said earlier we are sitting with close to $800 million of cash and bullion and these facilities are quite expensive and we are not talking hundreds and thousands, we are talking about millions of dollars. And so as we look at our five year outlook and what our intentions are, the current facility has not been drawn and we take a look at our outlook over the course of the next five years. It is not our intention to draw on that facility. So it's there as capacity and so that factored into our decision.

CJ Baldoni

Analyst

And what kind of reduction and extension of maturity we should be thinking about?

Carol Banducci

Analyst

We are currently would launch the new syndicate so it is in process right now. And I will be able to talk more to that in the next quarter.

Operator

Operator

The next question is a follow up from Anita Soni with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Anita Soni

Analyst

Hi. Just a little bit more on Westwood. I was wondering in the areas that you too I guess pay a little bit more extra attention too, is there a difference in the grade from the outline areas that you are currently mining in. I noticed that the grades dropped that you have not doing mining in the areas that were affected.

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Look the couple of lands that were immediate affected by the seismic incident, yes, they are higher grade lenses that being said there is a wide variety of great materials that are available in both the more seismic area and in the more massive areas. It is high grade specifically there and that's one of the reasons we were there and mining. And also one of the reasons why it has impacted our production. But it is by no means disproportionately higher grade in that area versus other areas.

Anita Soni

Analyst

And then, as my understanding is you have a couple of horizons including that one that has been impacted that you opened the stage ultimately what -- how many mining horizons do you plan to get to?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Main horizon, so let me count them in my head. There is about seven main mine horizon.

Anita Soni

Analyst

And then in terms of stocking the intersection, that's interesting commentary I mean is that going to necessitate moving some of the or sort of staggering from the infrastructure that you have already in place, I mean you got sort of ramp winding down and I think that's where some of the issues happen so will be there a plan now to stagger some of that or --

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Yes. There is a bunch of things we can do. I think it will take us away from more conventional layout that require some thinking but it doesn't take us that far out. It is all completely manageable both from an operational standpoint and a geometry standpoint. It is just requires a lot more rigger at the design stage to make sure that we are not putting ourselves in a situation that's going to cause us problem.

Anita Soni

Analyst

And then into lastly on development capital. Is that -- how do you see that impacting your Westwood development CapEx for next year?

Gord Stothart

Analyst

That's exactly what we are working through right now and our budgeting is how much we want to do. We feel and the site has recovered their cadence if you will with respect to development. So we are hitting nice development numbers right now. And the opportunity to ramp up and also to develop multiple areas so that we are not as exposed to a single incident in the future. That's part of the recovery plan. So we are looking at what's the appropriate level of the development we need over the next couple of years to get us up to the design rate that we are looking for.

Anita Soni

Analyst

Yes. Usually this requires a bit more flexibility in terms of being able to mine on different front so good luck guys, thank you.

Gord Stothart

Analyst

Exactly, Anita.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's question-and-answer session and the conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating. And have a pleasant day.