Greetings and welcome to the Stillwater Mining Company Fourth Quarter 2016 Results Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mick McMullen, President and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, Sir, you may begin.

Thank you very much. And thank you everyone for joining in. I am joined here by Chris Bateman, Mike Beckstead and Brent Wadman. We will be going through the Q4 and annual results presentation deck. There is a deck that is loaded up. I will refer to the slide numbers as I go through that. And then we will have a brief Q&A session at the end. I do note that we will be taking questions predominantly around the operations. And if investors or other stakeholders have questions relating to the proposed Sibanye transaction, they will need refer to our preliminary proxy that's been filed or the final proxy when it's filed. So going to Slide 2 of this deck, the forward-looking statements. Again, this is a standard thing we have in each quarter. I'd like people to refer to that, in particular, refer to the discussion and the commentary around the Sibanye transaction. Going to Slide 3, this is additional information specifically regarding the proposed transaction. And I will be reading this out. The communication does not constitute the solicitation of any vote proxy or approval. The company has filed with the SEC a preliminary proxy statement it plans to file with the SEC and mail to its shareholders a definitive proxy statement in connection with the proposed transaction with Sibanye. The preliminary proxy statement contains, and other relevant documents including the definitive proxy statement will contain, important information about the proposed transaction and related matters. Stillwater and Sibanye shareholders are advised to read the preliminary proxy statement and other relevant documents filed with the SEC, including the definitive proxy statement, when they become available because they will contain important information about the proposed transaction. The preliminary proxy statement and other relevant documents, including the definitive proxy statement, may…

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Quail with Goldman Sachs.

Hi Mick and team. Thanks for taking my question. Just two industry questions for you, Mick. One is what are the trends you're seeing in costs on-site? Are you starting to see maybe the deflation that we've seen for the last 4 to 5 years is coming to an end or is limited in scope? And two, with Altar, obviously the copper prices -- what do the economics look like now that copper is above $2.70 and is this something that would get revisited above $3 or is now sort of a time that scoping studies and stuff would be looking more encouraging?

I think in the general industry area, as we have said before, the majority of our costs are actually all labor related, so we haven't really had big benefits from cheaper fuel or cheaper equipment purchases for arguments sake. I do here, anecdotally, within the industry that perhaps the days of sort of discounted machinery deals are probably coming to an end. But that's not much of our cost. We haven't really seen much of a benefit from that. I think as it specifically relates to us and our costs going up, it was volume, for us, and sustaining CapEx spend. But really volume actually was what drove our Q4 cost increase. So again, if you'd had the same volume ounces from the previous couple quarters, our cost per ounce would've been significantly lower. So I think you are starting to see and probably have been for about six months now, I think the deals that you could get on fleet discount of the 20% or 30%, I think they're probably gone, but that's not really benefited us to be fair. We have been doing quite a bit of work on Altar, actually, over the last 12 months. If you recall, we did drill there last season basically a year ago. We had some quite good results. We're actually down at Altar drilling now as we speak. And our view is that it's worthwhile for shareholders to spend that sort of circa $6 million a year on exploration because we reckon there's a favorite value to be added for that spend. And obviously, we have always said that it was a non-core asset for us, and to get the right result on it for shareholders we felt that you needed a better government in Argentina, which we've got. You needed to re-scope the project, which we have done, and this expiration is part of that, and you needed a copper price market and I think we're getting that. So yes, look, we have never felt that it was worthwhile for shareholders to just buy or sell the asset at a low price. We have always felt there was some value in the asset.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Lucas Pipes with FBR.

Hey good morning, afternoon everybody. Mick and team, I want to congratulate you on the great work you have done over the last year plus, bringing costs down and then culminating in the announced deal. Really good job in a difficult market. I wanted to ask a little bit on the operation side. I know you spend a lot of time benchmarking assets, where would you say Stillwater East Boulder fit in today? What's the progress been most recently? Thank you.

Again, benchmarking there's no two mines that are ever the same so you sort of like to get a wide range of similar assets as you can and benchmark them. And so you sort of end up with a pool of productivity in an area and you want to land in the pool is the best way I can describe it. We would still probably be, depending on which metric you look at, but we're still probably only 50% of the average in Western Australia I would say in general. And I am not comparing us to like a big blockade or something like that -- this is our narrow-ish, mechanized, whether it's deep or long travel time to the face mines. And we do think there's some opportunities still to improve the productivity. But obviously each successive bid gets a bit harder. We haven't got all the way I would say, and we think there is still some opportunities to wring a bit more out of it.

Our next question comes from the line of Sara Heston with ASA Gold.

Hi guys. I know that the government clearance and approval is out of your hands. Have you received any updates, though, on the timing of those, and particularly with regard to the change of administration in the US, has that impacted anything, either if it's delays in timing or how they are approaching things?

Well, Sara, as I said at the start, we can't really comment on anything to do with the transaction apart from what we publicly said. And so I think the best answer is we don't actually know and you will need to wait until we file the final proxy to get another update. End of Q&A

Mr. McMullen, we have no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Okay. Thank you very much everyone for your time, and we look forward to talking to you at some point in the future. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.