Hello, everyone, and welcome to SSR Mining's First Quarter 2023 Conference Call. This call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I'd like to turn the call over to Alex Hunchak from SSR Mining. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining SSR Mining's first quarter 2023 conference call, during which we will provide an update on our business and a review of our financial performance. Our first quarter 2023 consolidated financial statements have been presented in accordance with US GAAP. These financial statements have been filed on EDGAR, SEDAR, ASX, and are also available on our website. To accompany our call, there is an online webcast, and you will find the information to access the webcast in our news release relating to this call. Please note that all figures discussed during the call are in US dollars unless otherwise indicated. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. So please read the disclosures in the relevant documents. Joining us on the call today are Rod Antal, President and CEO; and Alison White, CFO. Now, I will turn the call over to Rod for his opening remarks.

Great. Thanks Alex and hello to you all and thanks for joining us. We ended 2023 focused on execution and operational delivery, and the first quarter results are well aligned to our expectations. We are on track for all our guidance targets and expect improving production and costs in the coming quarters to drive strong free cash flow for the remainder of the year. The first quarter began with the release of our updated three-year guidance, where we reiterated our expectations to deliver annual production of 700,000 ounces through 2025, a level we expect to maintain over the remainder of the decade without significant capital requirements. We are progressing a number of key work programs to support that longer-term production target, including preproduction activities at Çakmaktepe extension, where first production remains on track for 2023 as well as investment in four new haul trucks to support the waste stripping activities at Red Dot. In addition, we continued to showcase our exploration portfolio with the release of some very impressive near-mine results from Puna, which have the potential to drive mineral reserve growth at the mine, in turn, providing further support to our longer term 700,000-ounce production platform. We have a number of key catalysts planned this year. This includes first production from Çakmaktepe extension, the technical report updates at Marigold and Çöpler to showcase their upside and additional exploration results from the other targets we have. We continued our robust capital returns program in the quarter and given our positive outlook for the remainder of the year as well as our robust balance sheet with almost $900 million in total liquidity, we expect to remain active on the share buyback program. We have a proud history of explorers, mine builders, and operators, and our solid first quarter results have us…

Thanks Rod. I'd like to first focus on our capital returns program and track record, which are well-aligned to the three pillars of our capital allocation strategy. We remain committed to our disciplined approach to the three pillars this year, continuing to reinvest in our business, ensuring balance sheet strength, and executing on our final pillar to return capital to shareholders. Through the end of April, we've returned approximately $47 million to shareholders in the form of our base dividend and through our active share buyback program. Our strong start to returns in 2023 follows two consecutive years with shareholder returns averaging 5% annually. Since the beginning of 2021, nearly $400 million of total capital has been returned to shareholders or approximately 14% of our current market cap. As Rod had mentioned, we see a number of positive and value-additive catalysts on the horizon. As such, we view our share buybacks as an accretive way to deliver further value to our shareholders. Slide eight will provide a review of the first quarter, so let's take a look at our results. There are a few key points that I'd like to highlight today. The first quarter production of 147,000 ounces was in line with budget. All-in sustaining costs of $1,693 an ounce were also in line with expectations and reflects our guidance of a first half-weighted sustaining capital profile, which included higher planned spend associated with haul truck purchases at Marigold and purchases during the Seabee winter road season. Overall, our full year production profile remains 55% to 60% weighted to the second half of the year and our free cash flow outlook remains even more heavily weighted to the second half of the year. As planned, sustaining capital remains in Q2 and we remain on track for our consolidated 2023…

Great, perfect. Thank you very much, Alison. Earlier this year, we welcomed Bill MacNevin as our EVP Operations and Sustainability after a successful career at Barrick amongst other places. Since his arrival, Bill has been laser-focused on ensuring operational delivery from each of the assets. Already, he has identified a number of opportunities to help streamline and drive down costs and we're excited to see our portfolio continue to mature in both performance and ESG under his leadership. Right now and as you would expect, he's in the field, but you will hear from him later in the year. I'll now talk to slide number 12, starting off with Çöpler. The mine delivered quarter one production of 55,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,420 per ounce, reflecting our expectations for a production profile weighted 55% to the second half of 2023. Impressively, the sulfide plant delivered its second consecutive quarter with throughputs above 8,000 tonnes per day, showcasing the successful ramp-up of the operation since last September. In addition, we are finalizing the plans for a full plant shutdown, which will either be late this quarter or early in quarter three. Other work programs at Çöpler continued as scheduled, including first production from the more than 1.2 million ounces from the Çakmaktepe extension project. We're also continuing to work on the C2 expansion opportunity through the pre-feasibility study, which will be published in the fourth quarter. Technical work to-date has been built on the original technical report released in 2022, and we see potential to further improve the existing study through the incorporation of successful drilling results and flow sheet optimizations and refinements. Exploration work continues across the Çöpler district, including the regional Kartaltepe target, where we expanded our ownership to 80% in quarter four last year. We…

Thank you, Mr. Antal. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Michael Siperco with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much Rod and team for taking my questions. Maybe a couple of questions on Marigold and Puna, if I could. First, on Marigold, I know that you have the update coming. But can you talk a bit more about how you're thinking about the longer term there, what considerations you're taking into account for sequencing in New Millennium, Trenton, Buffalo Valley? And at this point, I suppose, could you say whether or not it's possible that the lower guidance in 2025 could be backfilled with some of the new pits?

Yes. Look, Michael, Marigold, the key focus for us is -- and similar to actually all of the assets right now, is getting some of the conversion of the exploration we've been doing over the last few years. The real particular emphasis, of course, as it has been, and particularly at Marigold is the near-term opportunities that will add life to the current production profile. And as you rightly point out, with an emphasis on looking for opportunities to fill some of the values that we have in the production profiles and improve them. So, with that in mind, it's really been an effort immediately around the oxide opportunities and in particular, around the New Millennium target. So that will be a key feature of the technical report. But while we're doing that, we've also got an eye to the future, and part of the work that we are doing is looking at and developing those sort of pathways, if you like, to the longer-dated opportunities down to the southern end of the property at both Trenton Canyon and Buffalo Valley. So, they're much more in early stage in terms of their life cycle. But in terms of our thought processes and how we're thinking about them, we are doing some initial concepts of how they might play into the longer-dated future at Marigold. But initially, it's really just a focus on improving the production profile and extending the production profile of Marigold.

Is it fair to characterize the exercise as figuring out how they'd be sequenced, how you'd move ore around? Or is it more at this point figuring out what the mineral endowment is at each of the targets or both?

It's a little bit of all that. And remember, we're talking about two different things there. There are -- and if you're talking particularly at both Trenton Canyon and Buffalo Valley, there's both the oxide opportunities and potentially the sulfide opportunities, so. And some of those considerations are is it large enough to support its own infrastructure. Should we put a heap leach pad down in that location rather than hauling it all the way up into the Marigold mining processing area, et cetera, et cetera. So, they're some of the early considerations that we're doing in trade-offs, but drilling is also catching up to help us define the size of the price.

Okay, that's great. That's helpful. And maybe just flipping to Puna. Could you update us maybe on how you think about Puna in the portfolio? You've obviously had the solid exploration results. You've been reinvesting. Obviously, silver has moved higher, too. Do you think you get full value for that silver? Should we still think of it as a core operation and core jurisdiction in Argentina? And do you expect this level of reinvestment and exploration to continue for the foreseeable future?

Yes, I think if you take a step back and look at Puna, probably from an exploration perspective, it's actually been under-invested for a number of years. And last year was our really first effort of putting some more effort and dollars into the exploration programs. And I guess, not a surprise to us, the drill results that we're releasing in quarter one were outstanding and do show clearly a potential there for mine life extension for the assets. So, that's a good place to start. So, while we're generating those results and understanding how they play into the longer-term picture for Puna for extending the mine life, they will get more dollars to invest into it. But at this stage, Puna remains an asset -- a core asset to us. And as it continues to evolve, that will be important to us to really understand its full potential as an asset in the SSR portfolio. So, it's pretty exciting with some of the results we're getting down there.

Okay, great. No, that’s helpful. Thanks and I'll pass on the line. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Cosmos Chiu with CIBC. Please go ahead.

Hi thanks, Rod and team for the conference call. Sorry, if you might have answered some of my questions here, but I missed the first 10 minutes because it took me 10 minutes to get in. But maybe first off on Seabee, Rod, not the best quarter in Q1, as you mentioned. Could you maybe elaborate on what the equipment downtime issues were and how they were resolved?

Yes, look, sorry you missed the first 10 minutes, but I'm happy to answer the questions. Happy to answer your questions. Look, the Seabee issue was just equipment availability. We had some on scheduled maintenance, which meant that the development rates and access to the mine schedule that we had actually planned for meant we weren't able to do that. So, instead of accessing some of the better grades, we're in areas where we hadn't planned to be. So, it was as simple as that. We've now overcome those, and the fleet is up back and running. But as you know, with a quarter behind us, we're going to do everything we can to catch it back up, but it might be a bit of a stretch to sort of get back to that bottom end of guidance. But again, if I look at it from an overall perspective in materiality, compared to the other assets, obviously, it's a smaller contributor. So, it's not a concern for us on a consolidated basis at this stage.

Of course. And I think in the MD&A, you mentioned that you're trending back up to reserve grade. I think reserve grade is 6.35 gram per tonne. How does it work? Is it like linear? Are you going to get back to it right away? And how should we look at grade?

Look, as soon as we get back into the more normal sequence, you would expect it to be on that average cost. So, to answer your question, yes, we would expect it to get back to that average for the year.

Yes. And then, Rod, last year was a very good year. There was positive grade reconciliation to the point where I think at one point in time, you're trying to look to see and do some exploration around the fringes to see if you could find some of that higher grade. I didn't see it mentioned in the MD&A, but could that be an X factor in terms of Seabee? Or is there any kind of potential here in terms of the higher grades that you saw last year this year?

We're certainly still -- in terms of the exploration efforts, we do have a program looking at the continuation of the mineralization at depth. That is true, and that's part of the actual work this year. In terms of planning for the leprechaun pots, Cosmos, that's a dangerous practice to do. But look, if that happens to play out, lucky us. But we don't play in that way.

So, where is the play if you don't bet on the leprechaun?

Well, if we do, Cosmos, you'll be the first to know.

All right. Thank you. Awesome. Maybe switching gears to Çöpler, great to hear a number of catalysts coming up, Çakmaktepe extension and then also C2. Have you ever disclosed, Rod, I forget how much of are you accounting for in terms of Çakmaktepe Extension coming in, in terms of production ounces to get to your guidance for the year for Çöpler? Did you ever talk about that or if you didn't, can you?

Cosmos, I don't think we actually put it into by location. But overall, the oxide production at Çöpler this year is 30,000 to 35,000 ounces. And part of that, probably a third of that is the Çakmaktepe Extension.

Yes. Great. And then on the C2 project, sounds like there's a lot of potential here. Could you remind us, the C2 project, is that within your -- what you talked about a few months ago, the 700,000 ounce sort of platform. Is that included? Or are we -- could we see more upside from what you've included?

Remember when we put out the technical report, there was also a discussion around the -- and remember the -- get back one step back, C2 itself in the first round was almost like a PEA case. So, it was a very initial sort of cut of what we saw at C2. That -- and those ounces were included. But as we've said a number of times, the work that we're doing since then to now take us into the next round of update, which is later this year, is to put it into a PFS, so a higher level of detail and study. And there's two really focus areas there for us. One is the continuation of including some of the exploration that we've been doing. But two, the really the flow sheet optimization efforts to lock down other opportunities that having that type of flow sheet available to us might open up beyond C2. So, it's not probably too much to go on to in this call because it's still a work in progress, but our expectation is what you saw in the study in 2022 was just the start of the sort of the evolution of what C2 will become. And more -- and I guess to say it another way, we expect more upside through the work we're doing at the moment.

Of course. Yes. Great. Thanks Rod and team and those are all the questions I have. Thanks again.

Thank you, Cos.

Thanks Cos.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I will turn the conference back over to Mr. Antal.

Right. Thanks very much. And look, again, thanks very much for joining us on the call. Look forward to a very strong 2023 and talk to you all soon.

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