Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the IAMGOLD 2017 Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 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 Ken Chernin, Vice President, Investor Relations for IAMGOLD. Please go ahead, Mr. Chernin.

Great. Thank you, Arial. Welcome to the IAMGOLD fourth quarter conference call. Joining me on the call are Steve Letwin, President and CEO of IAMGOLD; Gord Stothart, EVP and COO; Carol Banducci, EVP and CFO; Craig MacDougall, SVP, Exploration; and Tim Bradburn, Vice President, Legal and Corporate Secretary. Our remarks on this call will include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language regarding forward-looking information in our discussion documents, and be advised that the same cautionary language applies to our remarks during the call today. The slides that are referred to, during the presentation, can be viewed on our website. I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Steve Letwin.

Thanks, Ken, and good morning, everyone. I’m going to start on slide four. I think as you already know, we had an outstanding finish to the year. Exceptional exploration results drove our gold reserves up 86%. Our operating performance was robust as core assets proved to be significant catalyst for growth. Our achievements in 2017 set us up with a growing long-life production profile at a time when many of our peers are struggling with reserve life. And I do recall, when I joined the Company, it’s coming up to eight years, where our reserve life was literally less than eight years. And when you look at it today at 1 million ounces a year, we believe by the end of the year, it will be on 16 years. So, literally, a doubling in our life of mines around the planet, which has been a very, very positive experience. And, a lot of -- thanks to Craig MacDougall and Gord Stothart for that. Our growth in the gold business whether organic-driven or through acquisition is a major challenge for a lot of companies, but for us, we have a great organic pipeline in front of us. We’ve had a lot of great success. And as I said, a lot of that credit goes to the people at the sites and the people in corporate that headed that up. On slide five, I think, you’ve seen this map many, many times. We’ve focused, as you know, on extending the life of our mines and lowering our costs. At Rosebel by itself, the significant increase in reserves was a result of mine plan optimization and cost reduction. That allowed us to extract more value from this asset than we could otherwise. Our strategy to consolidate properties within the vicinity of the Rosebel…

Thanks, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. We had another solid year. Our financial results in 2017 reflect strong operating performance and continued cost improvement. Our balance sheet is in excellent shape, providing us with significant financial flexibility. Last year, we completed steps to improve our capital structure, and I’ll talk more about that in a moment. Then, Gord will cover our capital spending plans around our growth projects. This slide presents key performance highlights for the fourth quarter and for the full-year. The fourth quarter attributable gold production was 228,000 ounces, bringing full production to 882,000 ounces for the year. The increase in all-in sustaining costs in the fourth quarter from the previous year was due to higher, sustained capital expenditures due to timing and higher cost of sales. Higher energy cost and a weaker U.S. dollar relative to the euro and the Canadian dollar contributed to the increase in the cost of sales. We made excellent progress in reducing cost over the past five years. All-in sustaining costs for the year were $1,003 per ounce, 5% lower than 2016. Revenue of $291 million in the fourth quarter was us up 15% from the same period in 2016. Revenue for the full-year of $1.1 billion was up 11% from 2016 with revenue increasing at all sites. And more specifically, Westwood accounted for two-thirds of the increase as sales nearly doubled from the previous year. Gross profit in the fourth quarter increased by 116% to $41 million and for the year was up 50% to $153 million. Net operating cash flow was $65 million in the fourth quarter, up slightly from the fourth quarter 2016. Net operating cash flow for the year was $295 million. Turning to the earnings slide. Pretax earnings were $13.4 million. Fourth quarter net earnings were impacted…

Well, thank you, Carol. On February 12th, we’ve released our 2017 year-end reserves and resources statement. This slide compares reserves and resources year-over-year. Our gold price assumptions at our owned and operated mines remained unchanged. Reserves including the Côté Gold and Boto Gold projects were based on $1,200 per ounce. Resources for Essakane and Rosebel were based on $1,500 per ounce and for Westwood $1,200 per ounce. Resource estimates for Côté Gold Boto, Pitangui and Diakha, Siribaya remained unchanged to $1,500 per ounce. Reserve and resource estimates at Sadiola prepared by our JV partner, used price assumptions of $1,200 per ounce for reserves, up from an $1,100 for previous year; and $1,400 per ounce for resources, unchanged from 2016. Proven and probable attributable gold reserves after depletion, increased by 86% to 14.5 million from 7.8 million ounces at the end of 2016. The main drivers were initial reserves of 3.8 million attributable ounces at Côté Gold and 1.4 million ounces for the Boto Gold project, following positive result from prefeasibility studies and a significant increase in reserves at Rosebel. Last July, we reported an 80% increase in reserves for Rosebel. Taking into account depletion, Rosebel’s reserves at the end of 2017 were up 69% or 1.4 million ounces, as well, both Essakane and Westwood more than replaced depletion year-over-year. Attributable, measured and indicated resources, inclusive of reserves increased by 6% to 24.7 million ounces. The increase was mainly due to a 51% increase at Rosebel and the initial resource estimate of 0.7 million attributable ounces for Saramacca. This was partially offset by lower attributable resources at the Côté Gold project following the sale of the 30% interest to Sumitomo Metal Mining. Attributable inferred ounces increased by 44% to 8.8 million ounces, driven primarily by Rosebel, Boto, Saramacca and Diakha where…

Thank you, Gord, and good morning, everyone. By any measure, 2017 was a standout year with an 86% increase in reserves and multiple exploration successes. It’s important to note that this was not just a one year effort but the result of the disciplined approach to exploration over time. And I would say, it was well worth the wait. In 2017, we spent $57 million on greenfield and brownfield exploration projects. The 46% increase over the previous year mainly reflects increased spending on brownfield exploration including Saramacca. In 2018, we planned to spend $60 million, a level similar to 2017. Investment in feasibility and other studies will be higher this year with the advancement of such projects as Boto and Côté Gold. Before I begin, please note that the results I talk about today have been previously disclosed in accordance with security regulations and signed off by the qualified persons within the Company reporting them. Let’s start with our Boto Gold project in Senegal. Most of you probably saw the February 12th news release. The exploration team has done an outstanding job to advance this project from its initial discovery nearly five years ago to a feasibility stage project. Boto is located on the mineralized trend that hosts a number of significant producing gold mines and therefore has the right address. The prefeasibility study supported an initial reserve estimate of 1.4 million ounces creating 1.64 grams per ton gold. The study is demonstrated that Boto has potential to be a low-cost long-life operation. At this stage, we’re looking at a 13.5-year mine life with annual production of nearly 100,000 ounces, and a life of mine all-in sustaining cost of $829 per ounce. With optimization of the project design and the feasibility study that’s using 25% higher mill throughput as the…

Thanks, Craig. So, slide 33 really was meant to give you an idea of what we’re looking at for 2018 in terms of growth catalysts. And as Carol mentioned, it really is a year of execution but it’s also a year of some pretty important events for us. And as I said earlier, we’re looking at some really good opportunities, and Craig talked about this, at Saramacca in the second half of ‘18, some fantastic opportunities there to improve our production profile at Rosebel, both from a volume standpoint and a cost standpoint. And we’re looking at second half of 2019 that that would get going. But, in between now and then, you’re going to see a lot of announcements around our reserves and certainly as we develop our project, and we have an outstanding project leader down there, we’ll be giving you more news. We’re going to be doing further exploration at Brokolonko, as Craig indicated. I’m really excited about seeing that program get started, as Craig will tell you. I bother him pretty well everyday about it. And I’m excited to see what that mineralization looks like. And we’ll be walking that property in the next few weeks down in Suriname. So, I’m excited about going back there and taking a look at what we’re going to be able to do, given that we now have the property in our hands. And that will result in further consolidation of additional concessions at Rosebel. We’re looking at some great opportunities to the north of the mill and to the further northwest. There are some great opportunities that people are presenting to us now that we have this gold district established to the southwest. The completion of the heap leach, as I mentioned earlier, I’ll be heading there in the…

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from David Haughton of CIBC.

Good morning, Steve and team. Thank you very much for the update. I got a couple of questions. Perhaps I could start with Essakane and the heap leach, maybe for Gord. I’m looking at page six of the presentation at the main zone pit. And I think I heard you correctly in looking at layback of that pit. There is just not a lot of space, looking at the image that we’ve got on page six. Can you just talk us through what your idea would be there?

The layback is mostly to the north and east. You can see, there is actually -- there is couple of hundred meters between the current rim of the pit and the base of the stockpile there. So, that’s -- the primary area for expansion is to the north and east.

Okay. And for the heap leach, you were saying that there is potential for a two to five-year life extension. I think presuming that the heap leach of around about 10 million ton per annum would be operating simultaneously with the existing pit. Is it because you can reduce your cutoff grade, reduce your strip ratio that you could think about an extension of life?

Exactly. It’s the strip ratio reduction, it’s the combined value of both the heap leach ore, the newly defined heap leach ore, plus the CIL ore that’s helping to drive to pay for that stripping, on that pushback.

Okay. So, I will stay tuned for later in the year getting an update on this. Going over to Saramacca, you’ve changed your plan of transportation from rail to road. Was that to allow you more flexibility for other satellites in that area such as the Brokolonko deposit and Sarafina?

Yes. I mean, it was certainly one of the considerations. As part of the some of the scoping work that was ongoing at Saramacca, the team there went through a detailed sort of review of a number of different haulage options. I know previously we’ve discussed rail. As they looked into it more deeply, they felt that the capital costs were moving up more aggressively for rail than they had expected. And there was some potential uncertainties around that option. And obviously as we moved towards consolidating Brokolonko and understanding that the district was going to be expanding, the flexibility offered by road haul trucks, sort of made it rise to the top of the pile in terms of options.

As you’re working through more detail on Saramacca, has your thinking about how it could contribute to Rosebel changes from when it was first introduced maybe about six months ago?

As of right now, I mean, the work we’ve done so far is more or less along the same lines as we talked about previously, i.e., ore delivery as a satellite operation, taking advantage of the soft rock primarily or initially from Saramacca to supplement primary hard rock feed from Rosebel. That being said, we’re quite literally just in the last week and half sort of started to move into new LOM planning. So, there is actually quite a matrix of options that are being looked at as a part of that LOM exercise right now. I don’t want to presume what the final answers will be. So, we’re all sort of watching very closely and making sure that the team there has resources to do the evaluations properly as we move forward. And one of the interesting exercises for us there will be that -- we don’t always do with the LOM exercise, but for Rosebel this year, we are -- it’s really looking at some blue sky options, if we can fully exploit resources what that this thing need to look like. Because that will really drive how we’ll think about things later this year.

Our next question comes from Dan Rollins of RBC Capital Markets.

Yes. Thanks very much. Gord, really have you on the queue. I was wondering if you might be able to provide some color what the run a mine network at Essakane on the heap leach has been, if you’re able to release that right now.

Yes. I mean, we’ve reported previously that we’ve seen -- we saw last year sort of results in the 70% to 80%, maybe in our internal evaluations, we sort of looked at 60% to 65%. Currently, we’re running a lot more columns, a lot more variability, plus some additional composites. We’re seeing those results repeated. I was at a presentation here last week. Results are showing anywhere from 65% to 85% recoveries, depending on what type of material and what part of the pit. Initial round of work, we looked at crushers of 19 mills and 8 mills. This time, we’re looking at crushers of 8 mills; and also considering HPGR, down to a final grind and including some agglomeration, really trying to find where the sweet spot is in terms of the project for throughputs and capital intensity. But, yes, those recoveries -- there is certainly -- I would describe them as far as heap leach recoveries, certainly towards the good end of heap leach recoveries, and very consistent.

Okay. So, right now, you’re favoring going to a crush than stacking instead of just going direct run a mine.

Yes. We did some evaluation work on run a mine. We didn’t do any met test around run of mine. But, understanding the really close correlation we’re seeing between the crust size and the recovery results and also understanding that -- run a mine sounds cheap but there is still capital involved fro pads and distribution systems and so forth that -- for right now the dump leach stuff seems to be of a lower priority for us.

Okay, perfect. And then, quickly just Saramacca, any ability to give us the cost holdout [ph] at the mill?

I don’t have the number in my head right now, but I mean -- I’ll follow up on it. When we look at haulage from Rosebel pit to the mill which is about half the distance that’s in the order of about $1.25, something like that.

Okay, perfect. And then, Steve, maybe a question for you just on Sadiola, we’ve asked this before and I know your level of frustration seems to ebb and flow of the progress there. But, when is sort of the deadline to pull the trigger on this, put on care and maintenance and then just run the stockpile? How much more can you and your partner really go along with this plan without pulling the trigger on something?

Well, Dan, nothing has changed there. We continue to work with Anglo and I’m hoping to meet up with Venkat here next week. We continue to try and negotiate. The good news for IAMGOLD is that we have so many other things happening that Sadiola, which is a very -- I mean, it’s a world class opportunity but it’s got to have the right economics and it’s got to have the right fiscal regime associated with and more, and probably right at the top of the list what I call, protection of the tenure, which ensures the sustainability of the agreement. So, I’d love to see Sadiola go ahead. We’re just seeing a lot of Chinese companies coming into Mali right now. They’re donating a lot of money to the government. And the Chinese I think are running into a very quick grade degradation in their own country, their gold supply is being challenged. And as you probably know, Dan, China has now become the number one gold buyer in the world. They surpassed India. And so, what we’re running into, and if you look at the Shanghai Gold Exchange, it’s very robust. So, we’re seeing the Chinese take a very, I would call, aggressive position in gold, worldwide. So, we’re bumping into them in Mali. And they can probably offer more aggressive terms than what we’re willing to agree to. I’m not saying that we’re going to roll over there at all. But realistically, when we have something like Saramacca, Sarafina, Brokolonko, we have what’s going on at Essakane with the heap leach and exploration opportunities in the concession, you take a look at Côté, you take a look at Westwood ramping up, you look at Boto, you look at some of the exploration success we’re having at Monster…

Okay, perfect. And one last question for me quickly, just Rosebel, you’ve talked about potentially buying a larger chunk of the UJV from the Suriname government, any discussions on that front to update?

Well, Carol and I were just down in the jungle there two weeks ago and we -- the President was supposed to have a walk with me like we did originally seven years ago when we developed the UJV on the back of a [indiscernible] And so, we said you wanted to have a walk with me. And at the end of the day, he did -- got a lot in his plate. As you Suriname is struggling with their economy and they’ve had some challenges. We have an excellent relationship with the President. And we’re proud that we have an excellent relationship with the resources. We would look at the opportunity to acquire more of Saramacca, if we could reach deal terms that made sense. It would be much more efficient for us. But obviously, I am agnostic about it in many respects. We’ve got a lot in front of us at Sarafina. If the government of Suriname would like to dispose of their 30% in Saramacca at terms that are fair to them and fair to us, we would -- we could do that and would do that. It would help them; it would help us in terms of our operations. But, again, it has to be the right kind of deal. So, the answer is yes, we would look to expand our position if the deal terms are right. If the deal terms aren’t right, we have so much in front of us in terms of upside there. I’m not going to push it. And my relationship with the President which developed over the years is so strong that he knows at the end of the day, whatever deal we work out will be a win-win. And you’ve seen that happen there over the last few years. It’s been a great relationship and it’s been a great strategic move for our Company. It’s just changed our Company, changed years ago. So, same has happened at Essakane. Anyhow, that’s where we are at.

Our next question comes from Mike Parkin of National Bank.

Hi, guys. Just a couple of questions. With the Saramacca initial reserve coming in the second half, how much of the drilling, post the maiden resource will be factored into that if any?

Well, all of the stuff that’s been done, certainly up till recently, will be factored into it. We are starting another campaign. So, Craig’s exploration teams have now moved off the footprint of the base deposit and they’ve moved into other exploration zones. The mine geology team has now sort of taken over accountability for Saramacca. So, Craig’s team completed their program. That is going to be factored into the next block model, and we’re going to be doing some infill drilling. And by the time we actually come out in the second half with the reserves and resources, there may be a second model to try incorporate as much of this current infill program as possible. So, I guess, the short answer is as much as we can, Mike.

Okay. And are we still waiting on a fair number of drill results of the tail end of that first campaign?

We’ve put out about 30% of the drill results and the rest will be coming out in the next couple of weeks. We’re just looking at that now. So, as soon as we complete all the QA/QC work and validation, then we’ll be ready to put [ph] rest of them out.

Okay. And then with the next campaign there, what would the timing that you possibly expect to update the market on, how about campaigns going to [technical difficulty] half of that’s done or whether?

Yes. We quite honestly haven’t had a huge discussion about it. Given that it’s really infill drilling, I mean, we can discuss it, but it probably won’t be -- it will be more around conversion than addition. That being said, Craig’s exploration campaigns maybe -- obviously if we start to see some material results there, we’d be very aggressively looking to put those out.

Okay. And then, one other thing. On the Essakane heap leach, do you feel like you’ll need any agglomeration on that project or would it just be a crush and stack?

We’ve looked at it both ways, Mike. And as I said, I just saw presentation on it. At prefeasibility, the current estimate, what we’re going to be looking at is HPGR with the single stage of agglomeration. So, yes.

And then, can you just remind us the impact on cost per ton at Essakane once the solar plant comes up and running fairly soon here?

Yes. I mean, Essakane, the current cost of the hydrocarbon side is probably in the $0.21 to $0.22 kilowatt and the solar is running at 17 on a taker pay for 9.5 years. And then, after 9.5 years, which we didn’t think actually we’d have to worry or think about, goes literally to zero. So, but, now with the extension of the Essakane mine life, that is going to be a huge help to us. I would say, because you’re looking at probably a 20% efficiency factor there Mike, so on 15 megawatts probably 3 megawatts of plus, it’s not a huge help. But here is the upside and this is what I’m excited about. We’ve got batteries there, where we’re at the frontend with Erin Energy, [ph] which is our based firm of testing new batteries. And the real upside here is whether or not these batteries can capture the solar power and then feed the mill. And we believe with the amount of advancement that’s happening on that site and the technology improvements that long term, it will have a dramatic impact on our cost there. As you know, probably about 30% of our cash costs related to energy there. And it would be significant for us. So, we’re very, very pleased about where that is going. And we’re very optimistic about the long-term gains on that. And you’ll notice as well that Carol’s genius hedging has helped us out the oil side because we’ve got some nice employees [ph] there which are really helping us with the volatility in oil. So, good luck to the year already. She’s going to offset that against deferred taxes next quarter.

I wish I could.

Our next question comes from Steven Butler of GMP Securities.

Well, thanks, operator. Guys, a quick question here, a couple of have been asked and answered already. With respect to Essakane, Gord, the strip ratio, what’s the effective decline at strip ratio that comes with this heap leach project that you’re visiting?

I don’t have the number right in my head. But I believe we go from our current 3.5 to below 3.

Okay. That’s fine we have. We’ll see more on the delivery...

Yes.

This concludes time allocated for questions on today’s call. I will now hand the call back over to Ken Chernin for closing remarks.

Thanks very much, Arial. And thank you ladies and gentlemen for your continued interest in IAMGOLD. We look forward to having you join us for our first quarter 2018 conference call in May. Thanks again.

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