Good morning. My name is Mark and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Galiano Gold Inc. Third Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Badylak, President and CEO of Galiano Gold, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, operator and good morning everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join us on this call today to review the third quarter 2023 Galiano Gold results that we released last night. We will be making forward-looking statements and referring to non-IFRS measures during the call. Please refer to the cautionary notes and risk disclosures in our most recent MD&A as well as on this slide of the webcast presentation. Our release yesterday detailed the third quarter 2023 financial and operating results. It should be read in conjunction with our third quarter financial statements and MD&A available on our website and filed on SEDAR+ and EDGAR. Please also bear in mind that all dollar amounts mentioned on the conference call today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. With me on the call today, I have Matthew Freeman, our Chief Financial Officer. I will initially go through the highlights and then take you through the operations. Matt will then focus on the financials, and I’ll then wrap it up and open the call up for a Q&A session. Here on Slide 5, please note that I will be discussing these results on a 100% basis. On the safety front, during the quarter, we had 1 lost-time injury and 3 recordable injuries. This resulted in a 12-month rolling LTI and TRI frequency rate of 0.54 and 1.61 million man hours worked, respectively. Health and safety continues to remain a top priority throughout the organization, particularly as activity ramps up during the recommencement of mining. We consistently strive to reinforce our commitment to Zero Harm and the implementation of best safety practices at the AGM. Our gold production from stockpile processing again reached the high end of expectations. We produced nearly 36,000 ounces of gold during the quarter and expect…

Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone. I’d like to remind everyone that Galiano operates Asanko Gold Mine under a JV with Gold Fields. This somewhat complicates our financial statements owned to the fact that we are a quite equity account for the interest. On Slide 9, I’d like to initially discuss the results of mine itself on a 100% basis. And then following that, how that impacts the financials of Galiano itself. The Asanko Gold Mine had another strong quarter operationally and financially in Q3. As you know, we continue to process stockpiles which continue to perform in-line or slightly better than planned, resulting in production over 35,000 ounces which means we expect to come in the top end of our production guidance of 130,000 ounces for the year. Processing stockpiled material doesn’t incur mining costs and as a result, we’ve been able to generate significant cash, which bolsters our balance sheet and ensures our ability to execute on the next phase of the life of mine plan that we disclosed earlier in the year. The Asanko Gold Mine ended the quarter with cash of $137 million, an increase of more than $45 million since the start of the year with free cash flow of $24 million in the quarter. Gold prices remained positive, realizing just over $1,900 per ounce in the quarter for total revenues of $68 million. We focus hard on trying to keep costs down within the context of the global inflation environment. So I’m pleased that processing and G&A costs remain broadly consistent across the year. It all culminated in net earnings for the quarter of $21 million at the Asanko Gold Mine level. With the mine ramping up towards the restart of mining activities on October 1, we’ve seen an increase in capital expenditures to $15…

Hey, thanks, Matt. Moving on to Slide 12. I just want to point out that our new management team is heavily focused on continuously delivering to our stated guidance and building integrity with our existing and future stakeholders. We understand that this can only be done through consistently meeting our targets quarter-on-quarter. Apart from outperforming costs and production guidance and increasing the joint venture’s cash balance by over $88 million over the last 18 months, this slide highlights some of the other key milestones the team has delivered to on schedule. This includes the timely delivery of the updated technical report and Life of Mine Plan and the lead up to and the recommencement of mining. We are on track to double our production by 2025 and are making significant strides on the exploration side of the business where we expect additional positive news flows as we continue to aggressively drill both near mine and regional targets. On Slide 13, our final slide, I would like to recap the investment case of Galiano, the asset is located in the top-tier African mining jurisdiction, which is governed by the rule of more with a strong transparent mining regulation and a highly skilled workforce. We have an enviable resource endowment and hold a large, highly prospective and underexplored land package. The asset is highly derisked being cash flow-producing and post construction with all client, infrastructure and permits in place to allow us to execute our stated life of mine plan. We have a clear line of sight to a significant value-adding event, which sees us doubling production by the year 2025. The asset remains highly leveraged to gold price with NPV increasing significantly at current metal prices. Having a fully funded mine plan, no debt and a strong balance sheet further strengthens the investment thesis for Galiano. With these points in mind, the company is uniquely positioned to deliver superior value to investors through the execution of the life of mine plan and the ramp-up of production over the next 24 months. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to the operator and open the lines up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Heiko Ihle of H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning gentlemen.

Good morning Heiko. How are you?

Excellent. Hey, that saprolite rock waste removal, any idea how long that will take and how much the whole thing should cost? I don’t know how far is it brought? I assume you don’t really need to put anything underneath the waste material though you, because it’s mostly clay, right?

Yes. So, Heiko, the strip that we are talking about here is obviously, partially saprolite material, which is free dig and doesn’t require drill and blast activities. And we are kind of stuck into that at the moment. So, that’s the upper surface of the strip. And as I have mentioned on the call, probably about towards the end of this year, we will be getting into drill and blast activities out there. And that will continue into Q1 next year, where we expect material or ore delivery to be delivered to the mill in Q2 next year. So, that’s when you will see an increase in grade feeding the mill in Q2.

Got it. Okay. And how far is it transported?

Sorry?

Yes. How far is it…?

Oh, how far is it transported, yes, so the actual waste material is obviously stored near the mining facility, but the deposit itself is about 10 kilometers to 12 kilometers away from the processing facility, so that’s the haulage for the ore. And obviously, the waste is just going to be stored in waste stockpiles near the pit.

Got it. Okay. You had a little chart on Page 12 of your presentation for this call that you are working on several operational optimizations. What exactly are you still doing what has already happened? And can you maybe quantify some of the results you have gotten so far or maybe even what you expect to see in a quantified terms by the end of the year?

Yes. I think by the end of the year, we will still be progressing some of these optimization works. Obviously, Heiko, I mean I think we mentioned or I mentioned in the past that we have already utilized larger trucks for the mining of Abore, and we are expecting to do that for the other pits as well. So, in the short-term, that’s the one optimization that’s going to yield better productivity, and we expect better costs per unit moved as well. So, on that front, we are using 777 haul trucks at Abore and the feasibility study that we released earlier this year described 40-ton ADT trucks for that same deposit. So, that’s one optimization. The other things that we are looking more longer term is the ability to potentially apply ore sorting at the Esaase deposit, which will help us potentially increase the amount of lower-grade material that is profitable at that deposit. And on the other side of that, it could also increase the grade of the higher grade material that we are currently – that we will be mining at Esaase as well. There are some other smaller optimizations. We do have an ability to add two additional CIL tanks in the CIL circuit, which we are looking at in terms of increasing residence time there, and there is also a secondary crusher that we are looking to install by the end of next year, which would act as reducing costs in the crushing circuit as well. So, those things we are working on and advancing at the moment.

Perfect. That’s helpful. I appreciate and I will get back in queue.

Thank you, Heiko. Cheers.

[Operator Instructions] There seems to be no further questions from the phones at this time. So, I will hand the floor back to our speakers for the closing comments.

Okay. Thanks for that, operator. Well, listen, we are certainly at a stage of inflection at the asset level at the moment, and we are certainly looking forward to ramping up production over the next 24 months as stated in the conference call. So, I am very pleased with where the team is at and certainly looking forward to getting stuck into the high-grade material as of Q2 next year. And I appreciate everyone dialing in to the call today, and have a good day. Thank you.

Thank you. This now concludes the conference. Thank you all very much for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.