Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the B2Gold Corp.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 Financial Results Conference Call. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Clive Johnson, President and CEO. You may proceed, Mr. Johnson.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us to talk about the year-end result for 2018 and the fourth quarter. We had a tremendous year in 2018 and a little disappointing today to see some of the comments and focus on the fourth quarter. We did extremely well around the year, and indeed, very well for three quarters. So the fourth quarter probably shouldn't have been a complete surprise perhaps, maybe we have to do things like update models every once in a while to get accuracy. At the end of the day, let's talk about the positives. We will talk about the fourth quarter as well. But in terms of looking at, well, 2019 here, we've got a great couple of months here to start '19 in terms of performance, but also in terms of marketing. I'm talking to a lot of our shareholders at Indaba, BMO and PDAC. And I think -- and we had a tremendous Board of Directors meeting yesterday where I can say that a lot of our shareholders are very happy with the performance of the company in 2018, and as is our Board of Directors. They seem able to see the forest, not just one tree. So when you look at '18 and see what we actually accomplished in that year, it was really quite transformative and a remarkable year. And I guess, it's worth reminding people, when we use words like miss in analyst headlines, that triggers arguments, which is a disservice to both your clients, the company and the shareholders. So in 2018, a few of the things we did was increase our gold production by 51% to 950,000 ounces. We've almost doubled revenue -- did double revenue to $1.2 billion in 2018, and we almost tripled our cash from…

Thanks, Clive. So I'm going to take a walk through, I guess, the quarterly and year-to-date statements that are attached to the back of the press release. So firstly, just touching revenues for the fourth quarter. $272 million, almost $100 million higher than prior year quarter, and of course, that is mainly due to having Fekola on and running full steam with commercial production for a full quarter in Q4 2018. It came online -- as you'll recall, commercial production started December last year. On the production side, very close to budget consolidated basis, 232,000 ounces against the budget of 237,000. The same -- it's really the same story that we saw in the first 3 quarters. Fekola continued to bring its 105,000 ounces against the budget of our 91,000. And Fekola continues to have higher throughput, I think Bill can to that a little bit later on. Higher recoveries, 94% against the budgeted under 93%, and slightly lower grade. Because we have higher throughput going through the mill, we were sourcing some of that extra material over budget from lower-grade stockpiles. So that's why we get slightly lower grade overall. But in total, Fekola just continued to outperform. Otjikoto, 45,000 ounces, almost on budget of 47,000. Masbate, 52,000 ounces. That's 6,000 ounces higher than budget. And as that -- even though we mined out Colorado vein at the end of Q3, we have some material in stockpile there and we continue to see the benefit of that, just more work than we originally anticipated and more oxide content, which improved our recoveries there. Then the -- offsetting those positives were -- Libertad and Limon continued to underperform in the fourth quarter. Libertad, the main reason in Q4 is that we didn't get into the Jabali Antenna open pit area…

Sure. Thanks, Mike. We're going to turn it over to Bill to give us a update on just more operationally how we've started off the year quite well, talk about that, and then we'll ask Tom to talk a little bit about the exploration budget, specifically for Fekola, and what our plans are there. And I'll talk about '19 as well before we open up for questions. So Bill, please?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Clive. I just want -- I'll just run through the operations real quick. Obviously, on the last call, we went into a bit more detail on the operational side. Starting with Fekola, I just want everyone to remember that we've been operating now for basically 5 quarters, 1 quarter of commercial production and then 4 quarters of operations, at which time -- over that period, we've put an additional 90,000 ounces versus what we'd had in our budget. We have continued to outperform on the mill side. We've continued to outperform on recovery versus what we'd originally discussed. And we see that already happening in January as of -- as through February, we're already up approximately 10,000 ounces at Fekola, and that's primarily related to throughput. At Otjikoto, I think in the press release, we talked about the fact that right at the end of the year, we had 2 high-grade blocks that we didn't get to. We got to one, but didn't get to the second one. But we did end up, as Mike said, above the midpoint of our guidance. In those -- that high-grade block, we've already seen it come through in January. So at Otjikoto, through February, we're up more than 2,400 ounces. That's related to the higher-grade block and basically throughput recovery remains as projected. Masbate, everyone is aware that we expanded the mill. That was commissioned early in 2019. We're currently running it at the designed throughput or higher at 8 million tonnes per annum. We have seen that, that expansion operates beautifully. We have seen higher grades and higher recoveries coming out of the Masbate mine. And so as of the end of February, we're up approximately 4,000 ounces. In Nicaragua, at Libertad, Mike has already discussed the fact that we have in fact now gone through public consultation for the Jabali Antenna zone. And so while in January, we were down slightly, we're starting to catch up. The throughput remains very good, and the grade is for February, basically, on track. So we see we're moving in the right direction there in the second half of the year with Jabali Antenna, and we don't see any issues. Limon, with the Limon Mine, with Limon Central coming on right at the end of last year, we're in a prestrip mode right now for Limon Central, but we are pulling some ounces out of some small pits there. We basically remain on budget at this point, slightly under budget, but materially on budget for that project with both throughput, grades and recoveries. So those are the five major operations, Clive.

Okay, Thanks, Bill. Tom, can you talk a little bit about -- I know a lot of people are very interested in the exploration, and understandably so, particularly with us and what we've been doing, not just in Fekola, but in other places. But maybe you can talk a little bit about the 2019 Fekola exploration budget? I mentioned before the dramatic increase in the resource, and then Tom could talk about how we're going to -- what's happening in the filling with what, and also where else we're drilling and why is Fekola preferred?

Absolutely. The plan for Malian Fekola, in general, is to spend $17.5 million at exploration, which will include both 46,000 meters of RC drilling and 28,000 meters of diamond drilling. There's also a significant amount of air core RAB drilling going to be done this year also. The main focus of that exploration, certainly, for the first half of the year is to complete the infill drilling on the portion of the resource that we believe is going to be within a pit as part of this expansion study that's going on right now. That drilling will be done sometime in June. Additional targets that we will be working on in Fekola for the back half of the year will be the extension of Fekola's charter to the north. It remains open. If you recall, and certainly in talking to some people, our 1,400 resource pit actually went to the edge of the data. So we actually don't know how big our resource pit could get because it topped basically everything that was in the resource model. So the exploration will continue to the north. In addition to that, if you were at the PDAC, you saw the long section that the boys were developing a theory on, some shoots that are just below the main Fekola shoot that surfaced to the south of the pit, some of which is already within our resource, and it is in our mine plan for later in the life. So we'll be doing more drilling on these proposed shoots that are just underneath the main Fekola shoot that surfaced to the south end of Fekola. In addition to that, immediately west of Fekola pit, late last year, we hit on 3 separate vein structures, not -- certainly not as big as Fekola but…

Great. Thanks, Tom. So looking forward to what other milestones, I think, is going to happen in 2019. Obviously, we're going to continue to optimize our production on all sites, and we've got a good start to the year already. We're going to focus on our pipeline of internal growth. So as we talked about quite a bit on the release and touched on today, we've already completed our initial Fekola expansion study by the end of the year, and that was extremely positive, with the initial view of the economics of that very robust. We will come up with details of that by the end of March. And in talking about the impact on production and based on our conversation with our board yesterday, we're very confident that we will make a decision to go ahead and expand Fekola starting at the end of March, with the expansion program that could probably take somewhere around 12 to 15 months. In terms of Gramalote, there's been some interesting potential positives there. Last -- late last year, AngloGold Ashanti, our joint venture partner, came to us with some new modeling that they've done on their old prefeasibility model from some years ago. They may have seemed to be coming up with some better grade, potentially some better economics of the project. So we -- they asked us to review that. We have -- we ran our own model, which wasn't quite as rosy as theirs but still quite interesting, and now we're applying some economics. We're working well with AGA to try and come up with a model that everyone agrees. We've had a bit of a difference of view for some years because we felt there was more drilling required on the resource to really understand Gramalote. They didn't share…

[Operator Instructions]. And your first question comes from Michael Sroba from Macquarie Capital.

Clive and team, just a couple of questions in terms of the financials going forward. You've successfully paid off a large portion of the debt in 2018. Are you able to give us an idea of what to expect in a couple of years in terms of the magnitude of debt repayment?

Sure. Mike, do you want to answer?

Well, I guess, like I said before, we'll balance off the degree to which we pay off the facility with what we will self-fund, I guess, for expansion activities, particularly at Fekola. So I think you've got to look at it like that. In terms of becoming debt-free, if we wanted to, I guess, the next couple of years, give or take, or certainly in early 2021, I think we could be debt-free, if we chose to be. But that's really a question of did you actually want to be completely debt-free or do you want to use those facilities to fund some other activities. So looking forward, we haven't got any numbers in there for -- like if it's for Fekola expansion or for anything beyond the whole budget in Gramalote. So you've got to balance those off. But certainly, at $1,300 gold prices, very strong cash generation. We certainly have the ability to pay down that facility rapidly, if we wanted to.

And the focus is going to be, as Mike said, to continue to grow the company, looking, first and foremost, at our pipeline of projects. In the longer term, what we aspire to be in the future is a company that's going to take some of its cash flow and spend on our growth and some of the cash flow on -- and, ultimately, pays a dividend to our shareholders. So that's the longer-term view. For now we think our shareholders are -- want to see us focused on what we've done pretty dramatically and very well for the last 10 years, which is grow profitable gold production.

Okay. Fantastic. And just on the G&A, do you foresee similar total G&A going forward given the Malian office and some of the additional cost that were incurred in late 4Q?

Yes, I think G&A for '19 to be somewhere in the ballpark of 18 months, right? You see Fekola's already in there in '18, so it will be in there in '19. And then we have hired up a little bit in the latter part of '18 in some areas, so there might be a slight increase on the salary side, but generally speaking, ballpark, would be roughly in the same ballpark.

And your next question comes from Geordie Mark of Haywood Securities.

Just maybe jumping the gun a little bit ahead of the optimized study coming out for Fekola. Instead of talking to the details, that will come out soon, just thinking about more holistically, about timing of investment decisions, if it comes out positive, which I'm sure it will, when you could hope to implement that expansion and expect the completion of expansion through to 7.5 million tonnes per annum.

Well, the details are going to come out. I guess, what we're looking at so far was spending -- do you want to answer about what we're going to spend this year or next year if we had in fact -- if we decide to pull the trigger on the expansion that we see today.

Yes, Clive. We're looking at spending about half of the amount this year, so $24 million to $25 million this year, $24 million, $25 million next year as far as the cash flow outlay. And right now, the expected completion is in September of 2020, but we're trying to move that date up if possible.

As we tend to do, we're going to look at fast-tracking that process and a lot more detail will come out of this by the end of the month.

Okay, great. And if I could add one more question there and stay close to home at Fekola and moving north up to Anaconda. Just thinking, obviously, you got a program there through 14,000 meters of work around there. Just thinking about what the scope of work is there in terms of infill versus expansion? What are you expecting on a footprint basis, how much you might expand it by? And what are the considerations on the trade-off studies through standalone versus tracking that back down to Fekola to further increase production?

Are you talking about the -- on the saprolite resource or the footprint of the sulphide resource?

No, just saprolite at the moment because I think you've got an idea of continuity there at the moment.

Yes. No -- certainly, the saprolite is open going north into the new license that we've picked up. And it's actually wide open. We know that there's small mining activity up there, so we'll be following that to the north. As for size and potential expansion, well, I have no idea yet. We've got some work on that. And then within the main snake areas of sulfur, we picked up a new area of saprolite mineralization in the last year in the Boomslang area. We plan to follow that up. So those are the main expansion areas of the saprolite resource.

And drilling forward.

And the reality basically is drilling below it.

Dennis, do you want to talk about what we're doing in terms of potentially -- at least looking at whether standalone makes any sense at the saprolite, I think that's part of Geordie's question as well.

Yes, we're updating the study that we did earlier where we've done some additional metallurgical work on it to -- what's the easiest and best way to process just the saprolite material, ignoring the hard rock that's under it. So we're doing a plant design on that right now, which we -- our goal here is to reduce both capital cost and operating costs from what we had in a previous version of that study, looking at the tailings disposal, getting those costs down, things like that. So we're doing that right now, and we hope to have some numbers out on that. Our goal is to have that kind of wrapped up by the end of May.

Right. Okay. do you think there is any trade-off to come back to Fekola for an expansion there? Or are you thinking more just a self-standing saprolite?

We'll look at bringing some of that material to Fekola. We're going to look at haulage cost, and we're going to look at what is the cost of actually putting that thing through the Fekola mill because saprolite goes through there pretty easy, actually. We can't get the blend too high at Fekola or shortstop some things up there, too. So we have to be careful with that. But we will look at that as a trade-off to the stand-alone plant, and we'll looking for those considerations.

And your next question comes from Lawson Winder of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Just, first of all, Mike, thanks so much for the tax guidance for 2019. It's very helpful. When you mentioned the corporate income tax installment payments, totaling $65 million, are those just income tax? Or does that also include the priority dividend and the ad valorem tax from El Limon?

No, just income taxes -- sorry, and the ad valorem but not the priority dividend.

Okay. Okay, great. And then with regards to the fully participating 10% interest, I mean, right now, obviously, you guys have no need to pay a dividend to the Malian government at this point, the intercompany loan has to be paid off before that happens. But one thing I wasn't clear on is that loan could also be used for the Malian government share of CapEx. I'm wondering if you can provide any guidance around sort of when you think that loan might be paid off and then you would then start paying the fully participating dividend to the Malian government.

Well, yes. You're correct that the loan -- the deal we have is that we get to recoup our capital investment before any payments are made or any dividends are due. In terms of -- I didn't quite follow your question on if that loan could be used to pay the government share of CapEx. Look, we can self-fund Fekola going forward. We can cover any required further capital from Fekola's cash generation. So that loan, the original capital loan, that was put in for construction purposes is being paid down. We did disclosed in the MD&A, if you look on Page 14, at the end of December, we have approximately just over $400 million outstanding on those loans. Remember, those loans included the original loans we inherited when we bought Papillon. It includes the capital to build Fekola. It includes the fleet cost. It includes the early works. It includes the Fadougou relocation, all those things so -- and an interest charge. So right at the end of '18, there was about $400 million. So if you want to plug that into your model, I guess, you can figure out when you think that will be paid down.

Okay. Does that $400 million also include the $47 million for the purchase of the additional 10% interest?

No, remember that additional 10% is a loan, it is a payable that's due to us, B2Gold, by the state of Mali, right? It's not an intercompany loan with Fekola, right? It's due to the holder of Fekola. So that's over and above the $417 million.

Okay, got you. Okay. That's very helpful. And then on Jabali Antenna, I was just curious, so I mean now it looks like it should be going ahead in the second half of this year. I'm just curious, when you guys did the impairment, were you assuming a second half 2019 start-up of Jabali Antenna? Or is this something now that could lead to a potential reversal in the future? I'm not sure if you're able to speculate on that.

No, we don't need to speculate. I could tell you it did include Jabali Antenna from the second half of 2019. But remember, the impairment was based on the timing of Antenna coming in, right? Like, the previous life of mine sort of assumed that Antenna would be in much earlier and that the benefit of those cash flows would have been recognized earlier. So that had a positive NPV impact. With the delays in the country and the delay in some development, particularly with Antenna, and with the delays in getting to the order phase at Jabali underground, that had an NPV impact. So we are anticipating mining Antenna open pit and underground, but the timing delays caused by the unrest in the current 2018 year, it did have an impact on the NPV overall.

Pavon maybe a positive. I don't know.

Yes, Pavon. With positive developments at Jabali Antenna, there's also now new engagement on development on Pavon. Historically, we had looked at Pavon potentially as being mill feed for Limon, but I think it's probably -- it doesn't almost [indiscernible] between Limon or Libertad, where it could be a possible future source. The benefits of Pavon aren't built into the model because we don't have any indicator of when any potential permitting time line might be.

Okay. Got you.

Bill, do you want to comment -- sorry -- on Pavon?

Yes, I think very interesting development that effort's been that as we look at that property now, we've been around the community, we're in [indiscernible] neighbor, we've been invited to participate in development in the community. So our orientation is completely different. You may recall, at Pavon, we had on our plants roughly 50,000 ounces to be mined, the grades are good, 5 grams, mine development only. And the thought was always that we would transport that to one of our operations proposals.

Okay. Can you share the time line on that?

No, we will see how this proceeds.

Okay. And then maybe just one last one for me, if I might. Clive, you mentioned, with any acquisition, B2Gold wants to be the operator. And so I mean that, to me, relates well to Gramalote where, based on the current agreement, AGA is the current operator. And I'm just curious, for Gramalote to go forward, I mean is there any sort of impediment there, given that B2Gold is not the current operator?

Well, I think there's going to be some discussions. There's already been some preliminary discussions with Kelvin Dushnisky, the new CEO of AGA that we've got a good relationship. And I think if this project looks like it's in an economic interest, I'm sure that we'll -- both companies would be keen to see it move forward. Kelvin said publicly that he's very impressed with our ability to build mines, and I think there will be some interesting discussions around that. My comment on operatorship was merely -- that was when -- I think when I was talking about exploration. Also though, we do want to build our own mines and run our own mines as well. But I think if you have a -- with new economics and/or better gold price, or whatever it is with Gramalote, if you got an asset of that size with a mining permit already in hand in Colombia, I'm pretty sure between [indiscernible] group is going to be weighted and advanced. But we'd be willing to build it. Our team is ready to build.

[Operator Instructions]. Your next question comes from Chris Thompson of PI Financial.

I actually thought you did a great job in the fourth quarter. So just one quick question on Fekola. You've spoken about, I guess, low-grade stockpile supplementing mill feed. Can you give us a sense of percentage of mill feed from mined ore versus low-grade stockpiles as well as the grade of each?

Yes, what period are you talking about? Are you talking about going forward? Are you talking Q4? What are you talking about?

Yes, maybe just going forward, Tom?

It's just funny that you asked that question because we were just talking about it before the call. It's going to be like 50-50 for Q1 and Q2. We have approximately 4 million tonnes of low-to-medium grade stockpile left at an average grade of 1.77 grams. And So right now, we're hastily beating down Stage IV to get in the high-grade zones where we want to be in the second half of the year. I don't know if you remember, we're actually weighted second half ounce-wise for Fekola because of that.

And your next question comes from John Bridges of JPMorgan.

I think I did have to say miss, but I didn't really mean that it was a bad miss. Just wondered, with Gramalote, what's changed? And then could you give us a little comment on the security situation around Gramalote?

Sure. Well, I'll talk about what's changed. Well, we're not really sure yet what's changed, John. I think that -- I mentioned in November, there seemed to have been a change in AGA. There was some personnel changes. And perhaps it was a more receptive audience to hearing the ideas that maybe they had a lot -- they've been able to create a lot but tried to make it bigger. And we had some issues with their model for some time and felt there needed to be more drilling because the model can swing so much. They told us that we need more data points, so we're drilling. For some reason, some people within AGA had believed that they need more drilling, but that seems to be changing now. So they came with a new model, which showed some improved -- potential improved economics. But they said, look this is a work in progress. Can you guys check it? Can you run it among yourselves, and let's get an independent to do it. All very positive things from a joint venture partner, and we're working very well with them. So I think we're closing in right now on coming up with some of the economics for the new models that we've run, and they're doing the same thing. And we'll to try to come together with one model or at least very close over with the next month or so. So what's changed is potentially better economics than we were seeing. Before, the economics are quite poor. They had a grade of like a 0.66 or something or 1 point a while ago, making it bigger. And the economics were not attractive to us, we actually took the decision to start diluting rather than to spend money. We're not as…

Security?

Security. Yes, Dennis, you -- Dennis spends a little more time there than I have. And Gramalote is located in an excellent place to build a large open pit gold mine in Colombia. And as I've said, we have a permit and a tremendous local government support as well. So Dennis can talk about security. Thanks.

Yes, it's a mining district, too. That's why the permitting there -- I mean the people want the mine and everything. In all the years -- we've been there quite a while now with -- as an operator originally, and then now with AngloGold as operator, and security has never been a major issue there. We do have a military contingent in the area that helps secure that. But it has always been a very, very stable area in that part of Colombia. So no issues, really.

And you say the original grade was 0.60. The new model is pointing to what, 0.8 or 1?

Too early to say, John. We're looking at a bunch of different models and cases, et cetera. So I just don't want to -- we're not ready to answer that question yet. But there are some models -- some ones that are showing an improvement in grade, and maybe some of those ounces but an improvement in grade, but we really...

More ounces.

Sorry?

More ounces.

More ounces, and potentially an improvement in grade. But once again, it's just too -- we're not prepared to -- we don't have a number for you yet in terms of where it's going to go, but we'll have a much better idea in the next 6 weeks or so.

And we've come to the end of our Q&A session for today. So I'll turn the call back over to Mr. Clive Johnson for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thank you all for joining us. And thank you for your interest and support and your questions. Have a good day.

And this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.