Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by. Good morning, afternoon, and evening. My name is Jake, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the I-80 Gold Corp. Third Quarter 2022 Financial and Operation Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Mr. Downie, you may begin your conference.

Hi, and thank you for everybody for attending today's conference. Today, we will be discussing our third quarter financials as well as provide some updates on what the company is doing. On Slide 2, the participants from management in this call are myself, Ewan Downie. We have Matt Gili, Matt Gollat, and Ryan Snow attending. Ryan will be presenting the financial portion of the presentation. On Slide 3 is our standard disclaimer statement, which also deals with forward-looking statements, and I urge everybody to read this when you read our presentation. On Slide 4, our company is a U.S.-focused gold producer, developer, and explorer. We are one of the largest holders of gold and silver resources in the state of Nevada and we have several exploration programs ongoing within the company as we advance our plan to become one of the largest producers in the state. In terms of our extensive resources, our company has approximately 6.5 million measured and indicated gold ounces and more than 8 million ounces inferred -- with almost combined 180 million ounces of silver. I will pass over the next slide to Ryan Snow, our CFO, and he will take you through this quarter's financials.

Thanks, Ewan, and good morning to those listening today. Yesterday, the company reported our financial statements and MD&A for the third quarter of 2022, and they can be found on SEDAR, EDGAR, and the company's website. On Slide 5 of the presentation, you'll see a graph of our production and sales by quarter for the year. This production is from the residual leaching activities at both Ruby Hill and Lone Tree and as highlighted by a record third quarter where we produced 9,332 ounces of gold. Moving to Slide 6 of the presentation. You will see our total cash cost and all-in sustaining costs by quarter for the year. Our third quarter all-in sustaining cost was $1,138 per ounce and year-to-date is $1,204 per ounce. Additional highlights for the quarter include the ending cash balance at September 30 of $76 million in addition to $32.7 million in restricted cash. We also continued to advance our exploration programs at Granite Creek and Ruby Hill with 27,551 feet of core drilling composed of 10,526 feet at Granite Creek, and 17,025 feet of core drilled at Ruby Hill. The company continued the engineering study on the autoclave refurbishment on plan and advanced the exploration ramp at Cove by 838 feet for a total advance of 1,938 feet year-to-date. On Slide 7 of the presentation, highlights our record revenue of $16.1 million, bringing year-to-date revenue to $25.3 million. This revenue generated mine operating income of $4.1 million for the quarter and $7 million year-to-date. The company reported a loss for the quarter of $11.3 million or $0.05 per share. When adjusted for the impact of mark-to-market gains on the company's convertible debt, outstanding warrants, gold prepay and silver purchase and sale agreement, the loss was $15.5 million or $0.06 per share. The company is…

Thank you. This year, we've had a highly successful exploration program, our highly successful exploration programs at multiple company projects. On Slide 10, you can see that our company is entirely focused in the United States. Every one of our projects is within Central Nevada, primarily within the Battle Mountain and Getchell Trends. When combined with the Carlin Trend, this part of Nevada represents one of, if not, the most productive bone district anywhere in the world. Next to Nevada Gold Mines, which is the largest producer in the district, i-80 Gold is the largest holder of gold resources, and we are targeting to become one of the largest producers in the state over the next several years to the development of several of our projects. We're planning to construct 4 different operations that feed a central processing facility at Lone Tree, and I'd like to highlight that our projects are all permanent or in the process of being fully permitted for development. All are road accessible with grid power, and we have water rights. On Slide 11, one of the things that provides our company with a competitive advantage is the fact that we are 1 of only 3 companies in the states in the state that has a processing facility capable of processing refractory ore. That's really important when it comes to our long longevity in the state as many of the easier oxide open pit projects have been depleted and most of the core operations of Nevada Gold Mines and in our projects are transitioning or have transitioned to sulfide-ore. on Slide 12 this year has been very successful when it comes to the drill bit. As I mentioned earlier, we are second only to Nevada Gold Mines with gold resources contained within the Carlin-Battle Mountain trends,…

[Operator Instructions]. We will hear first from Michael Fairbairn with Canaccord Genuity.

A few for me, really around some of the work that you have on the go at your various operations but I want to start just with Granite Creek and the ore that you've been mining there. Just wondering how much oxide ore you've been able to stockpile on surface so far as you advance that operation?

All right, Michael, on -- it's good to hear from you. So can I say how many tons of stockpile… but I want to do that. I want to be good, Michael, and I don't want to give out guidance unduly. Let's use a nominal amount of about 10,000 tons of stock of oxide that we stockpiled on surface. We've broken that into 3 stockpiles. The high-grade stockpile above 5 grams a mid-grade stockpile between 3 and 5 and a lower grade stockpile around 3 grams. Right now, Michael, as Ewan has alluded to, we have started to transport the mid- and low- grade stockpiles over to Lone Tree for a very dedicated leach, high-intensity leach on the subset of the pile there, and that work is progressing. What we're doing right now, Michael, is really analyzing what we're going to do with the high-grade oxide that we have accumulated at Granite Creek, which direction we want to move that and what's best both short term and long term.

Okay. Perfect. And a follow-up question there. I saw you came out with the study on a possible restart of the Ruby Hill oxide circuit earlier this week. Any indication on the quantum of material that you'd like to have to move ahead with the restart of the Ruby Hill oxide plant?

Michael, I mean we haven't got to that stage of the analysis yet. We've really come out with looking at our option for oxide and those plants nominally at 1,000 ton a day in his previous life. And that material right now, if you're looking at sources of oxide for that, it would be from the higher elevations of the Ruby Hill underground gold as well as what we're encountering on the Ogee side of Granite Creek, just be very careful to keep you up to date there. We are encountering some oxide mineralization on the Ogee side. We're not seeing that on the South Pacific that looks to be very, very much majority refractory mineralization.

Okay. Perfect. And staying with Granite just for one more. Are you able to share how much ore you've sent over to Nevada Gold Mines so far?

So, Michael, what I can tell you is we have not yet sent the entire 10,000 tons that constitutes the first dry run or test parcel for Nevada Gold Mines. So, we continue to ship over there. They continue to stockpile it for us on site, but we have not yet gotten the first 10,000 tons.

I'm putting about 20% of the mineralization we've developed so far has been refractory and 80% is oxide, which has been a bit of a surprise to us. I would say that the previous operator here Atna didn't keep great records in terms of asking for cyanide solubility, et cetera. So, our assumption was it was going to be primarily refractory, but to date, it's been primarily oxide. So, we are doing some dedicated metallurgy on that material so that we can have a longer-term solution to that processing. There are options such as putting in on our dedicated leach at Lone Tree, which is what we're doing currently with the development material that is oxide -- and we're also -- as you saw earlier this week, we are considering our own facilities as a longer-term solution, primarily earlier on the Ruby Hill plant.

Okay. Perfect. So, from Nevada Gold Mines, are you still expecting to hit that 10,000 tons this quarter and recognize initial production through the toll processing agreement with Nevada Gold Mines this quarter? Or could that be in 2023 now as you're still mining more -- or more sulfide ore?

Look, we're certainly targeting that, Michael, and we're certainly working towards that. We've got 2 sublevels we're mining right now on the Ogee side, and we've got -- we're about 15 meters from ore on the third sublevel. It's really that ratio of oxide to refractory. That's going to be what determines whether or not we finish out that first 10,000 ton parcel this year or we roll that over to next year.

Our drill program in the Ogee continues to suggest oxide only in the old zone really continues to considerable depth even our deepest drilling we've completed so far and that does have significant oxide. It is transitioning in our deeper drilling. There is both oxide and sulfide but in the upper levels, we're finding it to be primarily oxide mineralization. And because of that, we've prioritized the decline to depth; to date, we're approximately 60% of driving the decline to the depth we need to have it as to drift over to the South Pacific zone, and we're prioritizing that development so that we can start delivering hopefully reach by the end of next year towards our 1,000 tons a day processing arrangement that we have with Nevada Gold Mines. And that's consistent with when we started this program, we stated that we did not expect to be at that 1,000 ton a day mark until at the earliest, late in 2023, as we're ensuring that we have substantial levels of development so that it provides additional flexibility for mining. And the South Pacific zone has become the priority for the project. So, we've actually, in the upper levels of the auto and Adam Peak have really slowed down any development in those areas to prioritize getting the decline to depth and drifting to the South Pacific zone.

Okay. Perfect. That's really good color. I want to switch gears here a little bit and just chat about your significant base metals discovery at Ruby Hill. Wondering if you would consider bringing in a partner to help you advance that, helps offset some of the capital costs that you might face there as you focus on the gold side of the business? Or is that still -- are we too early days to be thinking about that yet?

I'd say that's something we would definitely consider. The base metal opportunity is there that is really both from historic work and our drilling has really emerged as a real priority target. We've been approached by several parties about the base metal opportunity here. And we are sharing data, and we continue to drill that project with the view that, that could be an option for ourselves to move forward is a potential partnership on base metals or the project. So, we are keeping our options open and ensuring that we are in a position to advance multiple projects. But really, we've always viewed the base metal opportunity at Ruby Hill. Even when we did the due diligence, it's one of the things that had me very intrigued about the project because the autoclave facility once running at full capacity can do about 1 million tons a year but it's very difficult to get more than that. Really grade is our only option to get more ounces. So, using the Ruby Hill facility has been something that we've been internally discussing for some time. And in the recent study that we released by DRA, we also asked them to look at what an estimate of what it would take to convert it to a base metal plant and because the base metals or using that plant could result in significant additional gold or gold equivalent production for our company.

Okay. Perfect. That makes a lot of sense. And one more at Ruby Hill in regards to the base metal. I think you mentioned that you were considering a drill program to test the area to the south of the Hilltop discovery. Have you decided on kind of the scale of what kind of a drill program would be appropriate to test that target?

Not yet. We've just completed the geophysical surveys, and we're compiling the final results of that. Combining that with historic surveys, like the Titan survey and magnetics gravity that was done and planning a program. We still believe we can do substantial step out drilling in both the upper and lower Hilltop zones from existing platforms. And we did do a couple of holes, including one about 500 meters south of Blackjack that we're waiting on assays. We did see considerable mineralization in that hole, so we're waiting for assays. And from that platform that we drilled; we could do quite a bit of drilling along strike from Blackjack. So, we do have the opportunity to continue from our existing platforms, but we have to permit additional platforms to the South, and we expect that's probably going to be a 4- to 6-month process. The primary goal for the Blackjack is once we drive the decline into the 426 is a drift to the east and from that decline doing a detailed program on Blackjack from underground. I'd like to highlight that underground drilling on a per meter basis cost us about half of what surface drilling is. So, once we get the underground infrastructure like we have it granite and ultimately, what we expect to have at Ruby Hill, we will be moving to have a lot of our drilling, including step-out drilling done from underground to reduce our costs that we have in growing our resource base.

Okay. Perfect. That makes sense. So, I guess we'll stay tuned on more details to come there as you keep pushing everything ahead. That's it for me. I'll stop hogging the line here and turn it back over to you guys.

[Operator Instructions].

Thanks, Mike. There are some questions that we received online from Eleanor from Sprott and Matt Gili will go through her questions and provide answers to those questions.

All right. Elanor. I get your questions in front of me here. Your first question is curious on the status of going through the faults at Cove, how much farther did you get through? So, Elanor, the faults you saw there, the gold one fault that you saw at Cove. We successfully crossed through that last month and we're now on the other side, making the turn, getting ready to cut the first drill station for that infill drilling program that Ewan alluded to in his part of the presentation. On your second question, what are the current active headings at Granite Creek? There're essentially 6 current active headings at Granite Creek. So, we have 2 sublevels that we cut across and we backfilled the first panel on those 2 sublevels. We have the third sublevel that we're cutting towards the ore. As I mentioned, we're about 15 to 20 meters from hitting the ore boundary on that sublevel, and we're progressing on the main decline itself. So those are the 4 headings on the Ogee and the main decline. We also run normally about 2 other headings in the remnant pillars. Those are secondary headings. They're kind of opportunistic headings. The real focus, as Ewan alluded to, is to drop that main decline, continue to develop sublevels on the Ogee side and then drift over to the South Pacific and do the same thing on that side. Your third question is what's the latest on ground conditions. We are getting the ground conditions we expected. So, it's certainly not poor ground conditions than anticipated. In fact, the ground conditions on Granite Creek are really very solid. They're very much what we'd expect for mining in Nevada. We haven't had any appreciable ground falls and we're not having to pile…

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference for today. We do thank you for your participation.