Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the NovaGold Third Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. 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] I would now like to turn the conference over to Melanie Hennessey, Vice President, Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Claudia. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased that you have joined us for NovaGold's third quarter financial results and also for an update on the Donlin Gold project. On today’s call, we have Dr. Thomas Kaplan, NovaGold's Chairman; Greg Lang, NovaGold's President and CEO; and David Ottewell, NovaGold's Vice President and CFO. At the end of the webcast, we will take questions both by phone and by text. I would like to remind our webcast and call participants that, as stated on slide three, any statements made today may contain forward-looking information, such as projections and goals, which are likely to involve risks detailed in our various EDGAR and SEDAR filings and forward-looking disclaimers included in this presentation. With that, I have the pleasure of introducing Greg Lang. Greg?

Good morning and thank you, Melanie. The Donlin Gold project is the western part of the State of Alaska as shown on slide four and it’s a 50/50 joint venture with Barrick Gold. Mining is the important part of the Alaskan economy and becoming even more important to this day as revenues and employment in other businesses decline. As shown on the map, there are six producing mines and numerous exploration and development projects in the state. In terms of scale, quality, and exploration potential, Donlin Gold's attributes far exceed any other gold development projects on the horizon. When combined with the company's excellent partnership with major corporations and co-owner of Barrick, the exceptional leverage to a rising gold price, strong cash position, and key federal permits and half, NovaGold is in a league of its own. Slide five highlights the strategic focus for the year. As COVID-19 positive cases rose in Alaska over the summer, Donlin Gold's stringent safety measures and on-the-ground support allowed us to operate full grade throughout the quarter, making up to the time we lost with the pandemic-related shut down earlier in the year. In August, NovaGold and our partner Barrick recorded initial set of assays from the planned 80 hole 22,000 a year program, the largest program in over 12 years. The work was carried out safely and finished ahead of schedule despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted activities on the ground, and affected the communities in which we operate. Other resource industries have been experiencing low or no growth in Alaska and the impact of COVID-19 on the crew ship and other tourism industries may take years to recover. With the long history of mining and a skilled workforce in Alaska, Donlin Gold offers the opportunity of a future with good pay, year-round…

Thank you, Greg and good morning everyone. Slide 22 highlights our operating performance. For the third quarter, we reported a net loss of $12.7 million or point $0.6 million higher than the prior year quarter. The net loss increased primarily due to the drilling program at Donlin Gold with higher corporate, general, and administrative expenses and foreign exchange movements also contributing to the increase. Reduction in interest rates also resulted in lower interest income on term deposits and in lower interest expense on the promissory note payable to Barrick. Third quarter 2020 cash flows are highlighted on slide 23. In the third quarter, we spent $8 million, $3.9 million higher in the prior year quarter. Again, the net increase in spending was primarily due to the drilling program at Donlin Gold, along with lower interest income and higher general and administrative costs. We ended the quarter with cash and turn deposits of $126.3 million. On slide 24, we noted our robust treasury. In addition to our cash and term deposits of $126 million, we have $75 million due next summer and an additional $25 million two years later as a result of our sales of our share of the Galore Creek Project new mine. Further continues to the payment of $75 million becomes good if the owners approved construction of the Galore Creek Project. We continue to anticipate spending approximately $31 million in 2020, which includes $20 million to fund our share of expenditures of the Donlin Gold project for the drilling program, permitting, and community engagement and $11 million for corporate, general and administrative cost. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dr. Kaplan, who will give us his insight into gold. Tom?

Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Actually, I'm going to spend a little bit of time today on explaining why as someone who 99% of the time is on the side of the table of the investors on this conference call, why it is that I believe that NovaGold will become one of the very few go-to stock in this space and has the potential to multiply many times in value from here. I know where I speak [ph], I have had multiple occasions where I've been able to be lucky enough to make 100 times my money. The common denominator in all those cases was being able to ride great assets, pick them up the value chain. Some of those assets were absolute category killers, some of the best in the world, but none of them could I describe as being truly unique. Now, what does it mean for me to say that I believe that Donlin is unique? I often ask the question of investors and analysts the following, what other gold development stage assets in the gold industries today compares in its combination of enormous size. You've heard Greg describe it, I don't think there's ever been a gold deposit that began production with 40 plus million ounces. High grade for an open pit gold mine. When I first got into Donlin, in 2008-2009, the industry grade was almost double where it is today. For a large scale, open pit operation, Donlin's grade of plus two to three grams of gold is absolutely extraordinary. And what that means is that [Indiscernible] if you've got one mine producing at a gram of gold, another mind producing two grams of gold, or other things being equal, the cash cost per ounce is going to be half for the higher grade…

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Lucas Pipes with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, everybody. And thank you tom for the description. It's always really interesting to hear the history of this truly unique asset. So, appreciate that. I wanted to ask a little bit more about the initial drill essays and he noted in the presentation, but they exceeded model expectations with multiple significant distance high grade integrals. And I wanted to ask, could you maybe frame the exceptional results there? And in what areas -- specifically on what metrics that they exceed your expectations? Thank you.

Good morning. I'll take that question. Our drill program has two objectives this year, one validate the New Model X about half the hose. And the other is to look for extensions to the known high grade mineralization we would mine early in the project's life. And you know a couple of those holes where the grade came in relatively shallow around 30, 40 meters, I think that was -- yeah, that was exactly what we were looking for was extensions to the high grade. The intrusive structures that carry the grade come up like, like a series of fingers through the sediment rock around. And as our modeling focused on the intrusives in their high grade nature, we really saw the opportunity that, hey, with smaller equipment, you can mine these discreetly and selectively and enhance the grade. So the -- to answer your question, we have a model and as results come in, we compare them to anticipated intervals. And across the board, when I say we're seeing is less thickness, but it's substantially higher grade, which is exactly what we were hoping to find through this program. And we're due to release the next set of results later this month and we continue to be really encouraged by what we see. And there is a very real opportunity for standard value by drilling.

Thank you. Thank you, Greg and I heard you right there you said additional results should be forthcoming later this month.

That is correct. Assay turnaround times have been slower this year related to staffing issues with the laboratories caused by COVID. But we're working our way through that. We’re starting to get more coming in every day. Look for something -- an update later in the month.

And with -- Greg, will you be able to share that percent of the drill program would be released at that point?

Lucas, we're getting assays all the time that the initial results we released were about 10% of the program and we anticipate maybe next 20% of the drilling with the balance to follow later in the year.

Very helpful. Thanks. Thank you, Greg. And then one question for me today. Can you speak a little bit about the alignment between Barrick and NovaGold at this time in regards to the development of Donlin? And what is the risk, for example, that Eric would like to go forward with Donlin and develop but NovaGold isn't or vice versa? Would appreciate any thoughts on that framework?

Greg, you want me to take it?

Why don't you start Tom? And I'll fill in any gaps if you?

Sure. Look, from an operational standpoint, Greg will provide his answer. From the very bird's eye view. We have never been more aligned with Barrick than we are today. The fact that we've just completed the biggest drill program in the 12 years in which I've been in the company, or as an investor in the company is a very big statement, the fact that Mark has been out there and then approved this drill program. Mark has taken the attitude, as I said; he has described it as a key asset, a nice clean, gold opportunity, new opportunity. All of these things are extremely heartwarming, and they indicate is that we are -- Donlin is being viewed, for a lot of good reasons, the permits and everything else as being in a very different class than it was 12 years ago. The methodical way in which ran gold works on being able to get the geometry down just right on the deposit in order to plan the optimal throughput. And therefore to be able to tell us and everyone else, what the CapEx will be. This is exactly the way that smart prudent operators take what will be the largest gold mine, sure gold mine in the world, ultimately, up the value chain, there is complete and utter alignment as to when it goes into production, it takes two to tango. Our attitude is Barrick has more need in effect for production as a large scale gold producer. And when they decide that it falls into that category and wants to take it forward, we have zero doubt that we have access to whatever capital we need to meet our needs. And I think it's inevitable. The only question is when and that will be done when Mark views it as being optimal for his shareholders and when we do for ours. I have no doubt that we will be in sync at that time. Everything that we've seen since the Randgold-Barrick merger has confirmed that this really is a game-changing event for us. We have people in charge who really love to build great projects, they know how to do it right. And candidly, when the time comes, I don't think there'll be any stronger promoters of the asset than they are. We're one voice, but Barrick is the 800 pound gorilla in the mining industry. And when they put Donlin on the map, it's going to be transformative. Let them do it right. They're taking ownership of the story after their merger, as far as we're concerned, it couldn't be going better. Greg?

All right. Well, thank you for that Tom. But let me tell you great drill results are exciting in any company. And I think that's especially true with a geologic-focused company and CEO like Mark. To answer your question, day-to-day interactions are very common right now with the geologists and the technical people as the results come in. And it's really exciting to see the first answer brings a lot to the party in that regard. And Katlyn [ph] [Indiscernible], who is their Senior Executive with responsibility for North American Operations is the Chairman of Donlin Gold this year. And she's also very involved. So, yeah, I would say that that is probably this is as great as involvement is they had since the preparation of feasibility study back in 2010 and 2011. Nice to see, very capable people there.

Great. Great. Tom and Greg, very helpful comments, I really appreciate the perspectives and continued best of luck. Thank you.

Thank you, Lucas.

We have one more question coming online. And I'll just read it out. Is it fair to say that at the current price, NG stock is a bet on a future rise in the gold price and additional exploration potential at Donlin?

Short answer, Tom, you want to-- no.

The short answer is no. The longer answer is hell no. That's the thing I picked up in Texas. The reality is, we view NovaGold as substantially undervalued in the marketplace, we don't have any doubt that we're going to regain the premium rating that we had. But if you look at what -- where we should be, in our view, if we had not been the results, or the victim of the securities fraud, then I think we would have seen the stock already in the high teens, 20s, maybe pulling back a bit with the rest of the industry. But our history over the last year certainly, since permitting, and all of those good things, is that we outperform the indexes and so by that measure catching up, and in fact now surpassing where we were when the short report came out, is an indication that that's being put behind us, because candidly, there was no merit to it. But we want to see that stock regain the premium rating, that it should have. Adding reserve and higher gold price, that will just put fuel on the fire. But I've always said even when the stock was with a three handle or four handle that we find ourselves going into the 20s and considerably beyond that. Everything that's happened, since we made those statements, obviously forward-looking, but since we made those statements, we've only had good reaffirmation of the reasons why we made those statements. And so that's the long answer of saying, we are not just stocks -- stock price does not reflect today where we think it really should be, higher gold prices, obviously and more exploration. That's all going to only be icing on the cake.

Thank you, Tom. There are no further questions. So, I hand the call back over to Greg for closing remarks.

Well, thank you Melanie. It's already been fairly lengthy call. So, thank you everyone for joining us this morning. Stay safe. Bye.

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