Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the NovaGold's First Quarter 2015 Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Chris, and I’ll be your conference moderator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, the conference is being recorded for replay purposes. And at this time, I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Ms. Melanie Hennessey, Vice President, Corporate Communications. Please proceed ma'am.

Thank you, Chris and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for NovaGold's first quarter financial results and to hear an update on the development of Donlin Gold and Galore Creek. On today's call, we have Greg Lang, NovaGold's President and CEO; and David Ottewell, NovaGold's Vice President and CFO. At the end of the formal part of the presentation, we will take questions by phone and by email. But before we get started, I would like to remind our listeners that any statements made today may contain forward-looking information such as projections and goals, which are likely to involve risks detailed in various EDGAR and SEDAR filings and in various forward-looking disclaimers included in this presentation. With that, I’ll hand it over to Greg?

Thank you, Melanie. Good morning. We appreciate you joining us today. What makes our company unique? We're a development stage company that has two great assets in North America, which are highlighted on Slide 4. Our flagship asset, the Donlin Gold project is well into permitting and poised to be one of the largest producers in the gold industry. Galore Creek, which is held 50% with Teck is expected to be the largest and lowest cost copper mine in Canada. Moving to Slide 5, I am pleased with the progress we've achieved at Donlin Gold. The key focus has been on permitting and more specifically the draft EIS. The Army Corps of Engineers, the lead permitting agency received comments on the initial drafts of the environmental consequences section from the cooperating agencies. These comments will be considered and incorporated into the draft EIS, which is scheduled to be released for public comment by year-end. At Galore Creek we continue to progress on technical studies in mine planning and design, waste rock and water management, environmental monitoring and community commitments as well as keeping the site on care and maintenance. We anticipate that when copper markets turn, this effort will further enhance the value and marketability of Galore Creek. During the quarter, we released the first segment of the four part video series titled Yup'ik Language and Culture. The objective of this initiative is to feature the heritage of the people in the remote communities in Alaska as well as the opportunities and challenges they face. Preserving and respecting the cultures of the region is one of our core company values and we felt it important to share different aspects of day to day life in the region. Specifically as it relates to people living near the Donlin Gold project. Lastly, we remain actively engaged with Donlin and Galore Creek in developing and maintaining excellent relationships in our communities by sponsoring regional activities, encouraging youth funding and scholarships and supporting them in their leadership endeavors. We have extensive ties and community outreach programs in Y-K and the surrounding regions. I'll now pass it over to David, who will walk us through NovaGold's first quarter financial results.

Thank you, Greg. Turning to Slide 6, our project activities continue as planned as we support Donlin Gold permitting activities and Galore Creek technical studies. We spent $2.5 million to fund our share of Donlin Gold and Galore Creek in the first quarter. For the full year, we expect to spend $14.2 million on our projects. Slide 7, highlights our income statement items for the first quarter. Our operating loss is unchanged from last year at $11.3 million. General and administrative expenses increased in 2015 as a result of higher share-based compensation cost resulting from higher stock prices. Galore Creek expenses were reduced as the prior year included severance cost. Our 50% share of the Donlin Gold study cost was $200,000 in the first quarter. Turning to our cash flow on Slide 8, our total cash and term deposits decreased by $8.3 million as planned and similar to the prior year quarter. We ended the quarter with cash and term deposits totaling $157 million. We expect to spend $45 million for the full year including the repayment of the remaining $15.8 million of convertible notes on May 1. We should end the year with approximately $120 million in cash and term deposits. Greg, now back to you.

Thank you, David. We're very thankful for the capital that has been entrusted to us by our shareholders more than three years ago. We continue to carefully manage our expenses and our balance sheet. The recent pause in the securable market for gold has resulted in some projects in our industry being shelved due to suboptimal quality and others just outright cancelled due to jurisdictional risk. Our flagship Donlin Gold as shown on Slide 9 continues to retain all its important fundamentally positive attributes. With 39 million ounces of gold in resources at an average grade of 2.2 grams is one of the largest and highest grade undeveloped gold deposits in the world. Over three decades in the industry and I’ve seen and worked on only a select few assets that achieve this scale this is the first time however that I’ve seen an asset that starts with such an impressive endowment. Moving to Slide 10 as a 1 million ounce a year gold producer for over 27 years Donlin would contribute great economic benefits to the region, the stake and our shareholders for many decades to come. The project's production profile is clearly at the top of the list when compared to its peer group of development stage open pit gold deposits. This point is further illustrated on Slide 11 with an average grade of 2.25 grams, it's unusually high for an open pit deposit in today’s environment. Donlin’s grade compares favorably to both emerging open pit gold deposits as well as the top 10 gold producers and the current mineral endowment is found on only a small percentage of the total land package. The future mine as shown in the graph on Slide 12 occupies only three kilometers of an eight kilometer belt. Tremendous exploration upside exists at…

Well, everyone thank you for joining us on our call this morning.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you so much for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.