Hello, everyone, and welcome to SSR Mining's Second 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 with SSR Mining.

Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining SSR Mining's second quarter 2023 conference call, during which we will provide an update on our business and a review of our financial performance. Our second quarter 2023 consolidated financial statements have been presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. These financial statements have been filed on EDGAR, SEDAR, the 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 U.S. 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, Executive Chairman; Alison White, Chief Financial Officer; and Bill MacNevin, Executive Vice President, Operations and Sustainability. 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. Before I get started, I wanted to introduce Bill MacNevin, who is joining us for his first quarterly earnings call. It's a pleasure to have him finally join us. He's been in the field for the last six months and welcome to the call, Bill. As we close out the first half of 2023, it is pleasing to report that our consolidated operational results to-date have been generally well aligned to our expectations. Production from Çöpler, Marigold and Puna have been solid, partially offsetting the slower start to the year at Seabee. Looking forward, and as we guided at the beginning of the year, we expect the second half to provide the majority of our ounce production and free cash flow generation. Our portfolio is expected to deliver strong production of approximately 400,000 GEOs split relatively evenly between the third and fourth quarters at reduced costs, generating positive free cash flow. Given our outlook for a strong second half of the year, and our recent share price, we repurchased over $45 million of shares in the first half of the year. Combined with our base dividend, we are on track to exceed $100 million in capital returns in 2023 or a 3.4% yield. This is a strong message that should confirm our free cash flow outlook for the second half of the year. It was a busy quarter advancing our organic production growth and announcing a strategic acquisition. At Çöpler's Çakmaktepe Extension, we began pre-stripping that will allow access to the first oxide ore this year and is aligned to our original timetable. For our team, this progress is obviously very exciting. Also, during the quarter, we announced a highly accretive acquisition of the world-class Hod Maden…

Thanks, Rod, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to first focus on our capital returns program, which remained active in the second quarter and is one of the three pillars of our capital allocation strategy, complemented by reinvesting in our business and ensuring balance sheet strength. Through the end of June, we have returned approximately $74 million to shareholders, and through our base dividend and share buyback program, we are on track to return over $100 million to shareholders for the third consecutive year. In total, we have returned more than $400 million over the last three years, which is something we are very proud of. The company is positioned for a minimum full-year capital return yield of at least 3.4% based on the activity that we've already had this year. As Rod mentioned, we see a number of positive and value-additive catalysts on the horizon as well as positive operational tailwinds and as such, we view the buyback as an accretive way to return capital to shareholders. During the last month of the quarter, we also renewed our share buyback program, enabling us to repurchase up to an additional 10.2 million shares over the next 12 months. Slide 9 will provide a review of the second quarter, so let's turn to that and take a look at our results. Second quarter production of 157,000 gold equivalent ounces and first half production of 304,000 gold equivalent ounces were in line with our expectations for a second half-weighted production profile. Sales in the second quarter were 148,000 gold equivalent ounces. The approximately 9,000 ounces produced, but not sold in the quarter was driven by a closure of the banks and metal markets during the last week of June for a Turkish holiday and a late arrival of a vessel at our…

Thanks, Alison. It's a pleasure to be here with you today on my first conference call with SSR Mining. Since joining the company at the beginning of the year, I've been focused on operational improvement and efficiency and have spent the majority of my time at each of our four core operations. Already, I've come to respect the impressive talent and diversity of skill we have throughout the company. I'm very appreciative of all the hard work that has brought SSR Mining where it stands today. At the same time, I see areas for improvement, and we will continue to define and prioritize these as we update our operating practices going forward. Before I dive into the individual assets, I want to start with a brief discussion about safety. Most important thing we do each and every day is getting our people home safe. As a core SSR value, this has always been a focus. Now we are driving increased leadership engagement and implementing simple tools to enable our people. Whilst this is improving safety, it is also improving the quality of work and results in the field, as safe production delivery is an integral approach to our long-term success. So now on the Çöpler. The mine delivered Q2 production of 52,000 ounces at an AISC of 1,384 per ounce. The sulfide plant delivered another strong quarter of production, the throughput is averaging nearly 7,500 tons per day, showcasing the continued optimization of this asset. The planned autoclave maintenance currently underway is on track to be completed this month. As usual, we continue to operate the second autoclave at higher capacity during the maintenance period, limiting the impact to production in the third quarter. Other key work programs at Çöpler continue as scheduled, including first production from Çakmaktepe extension where…

Great. Thanks, Bill, and thanks, Alison. As you've heard, we're in a good position as we move into the second half of 2023. Generally, the second quarter was aligned to expectations and positively also included the highly accretive acquisition of the up to 40% interest in the Hod Maden project. While we are tracking to the lower end of our consolidated production guidance due to the first half results at Seabee, we expect significant improvement in our operating and financial results in the second half of the year. We're also keen to share the updated technical reports to showcase the organic growth potential across the portfolio. So in short, with a key number of value-enhancing catalysts on the horizon and the anticipation of improving production and free cash flow in the coming quarters, we remain extremely optimistic about the business. So with that, I'm going to hand the call back over to the operators for any questions you may have. Thank you, operator.

Thank you, Mr. Antal. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Cosmos Chiu with CIBC. Please go ahead.

Thank you Rod, Allison, Bill and Alex. Maybe my first question is on your guidance. Rod, you've maintained your guidance at 700,000 to 780,000 ounces GEOs, but you've also said you're now trending towards the lower end. I just want to confirm, I think you've already kind of answered my question here, but the one sort of factor that you had not anticipated would have been the slower start to see. Is that why it's now trending to a lower end. Everything else is on target, all the other assets just really Seabee?

Yes, I think that's right, Cos. If you remember in the first quarter, we talked about the underperformance at Seabee and the reasons why. And clearly, that put us on the back foot. And if you remember, I can't maybe you actually asked the question, but I did say it would probably be difficult for us to claw back to the original guidance for Seabee, and that's held true during the second quarter as well. So as we look across the assets and how they're performing, we're actually quite fortunate. I think that we're in the position we're in, given that performance at Seabee were right on track for the first half and expect if we can maintain that sort of momentum moving into half two, we'll be able to meet our production guidance at the lower end.

Great. And maybe more specifically on Çöpler. You've done 107,000 ounces now in the first half. You're targeting 240,000 to 270,000 ounces for the year. If I work it out correctly, the math, it looks like you have to improve in Q3 and also Q4 as well, you've said Q4 is going to be 55% of the second half of production, but if I work it out, Q3 has to improve as well. I guess my question is, Rod, it sounds like there's some maintenance that still needs to be completed in Q3. Can you help me understand how Q3 is going to be better than Q2? Is it a combination of Çakmaktepe coming in? Or is it higher throughput. Could you just give me a bit more color?

As I'm going to – since we've got Bill in the room now, and I can deflect some of these questions to the team. I'm going to deflect this one to Bill.

Thank you.

Yes. Appreciate the question. We have several drivers heading into Q3 and then into Q4. We've done some work with the autoclave hubs on the throughput rate. So there's – we've been improving there. The other thing that impacted the first half of the year was the – our oxide performance that we didn't actually end up stacking as much material as we planned for. Moving forward, we've got plans to have that material be stacked, and that will help increase as well. And also, we've got some very good work going on in terms of improving the operating time in the autoclave. So that's the maintenance I talk about going to be finished this month, it's going to come in on a less time than we've traditionally done, and there's also been some changes in what we do with maintenance with that oxidization circuit. So several things there. So it is an increase, but we're very focused on working to deliver against it.

Great. And I don't know if this is related. From other companies, we've heard there was heavy rainfall in Turkey and parts of Turkey in Q2. Is that part of why your stacking of the oxides was impacted or is Çöpler a bit different?

We didn't – we weren't heavily impacted by the weather in Q2. Our oxide stack was purely about blending and having the right material at the right time. So weather wasn't an impact for us.

Got it. Maybe switching gears a little bit. Same question on Marigold, solid quarter, solid Q2 as expected. You've done 112,000 ounces now in the first half, slightly over, you're targeting 260,000 to 290,000. Once again, it sounds like the leach cycle is now more normalized without some of the fines that you saw last year. But what's driving that increase again into Q3 and Q4? Is it the stocking rate? Is it the recovery that's coming out from what you've already stacked in Q1 and Q2? Could you maybe, again, give us a bit more color in terms of the increase that we're anticipating?

Stacking rate is the big driver. So obviously, Q3 is very important to us. So it's mining through in the material we're getting coming towards us. As you say that we've normalized, we're through we had a positive return relative to – we were challenged with that area that needed work with the fines material. We're virtually through that. So now it's just really about the timing of the ore release and the stacking rate.

Great. And maybe one last question. Again, on something else here. Hod Maden, I've always said, I think that's a very complementary acquisition that you've made, Rod. I know you're looking – working on the technical report. It's going to come out next year alongside a decision in terms of building it or not. But in the meantime, should we anticipate, Rod, any kind of news flow between now and then? And then maybe, again, specifically, you talked about financing options, could you give us some insight in terms of what some of those options might be?

Yes. Look, Cos, it's really the work that we're doing to put us into a position to make a go decision on the project is just improving the fidelity that we have around the project itself. So we are doing some infill drilling. We're doing the work around the flow sheet's validation work. We're also looking at validating our own thoughts on ways to improve the flow sheets, et cetera. So there won't really be a lot of news flow to talk about here in the next little while moving into next year because it will all be pieces of work that we'll be running in parallel together to come to a conclusion for us. But – it really is just simply thinking about as confirmatory work from our DD that we overlay our experience of building the Çöpler sulfide plant and the approach that we took to building that plan with the same team that we've now deployed in some positions over to Hod Maden, et cetera, et cetera. So when we get going and start to bring it out of the ground, we have a high level of confidence to be, very successful for it. So that's really what the emphasis will be. There will be some small works going on. As we sort of mentioned, there is some early-stage infrastructure works. We've got some tunneling going on to access the site, some tunneling work that will be going on at site itself to put the access over to the TSF area. But beyond that, there won't be a whole lot more activity. So it's ramping up. It's getting the teams in place, some drilling, et cetera. So really look forward to next year. From a financial perspective, Alison is really busy at the moment, as you can imagine, I think she's made a couple of trips to London already to pick up on the work that was already sort of underway by our joint venture partners, and we expect to pick that work up to try to progress through to a project financing. And if there's obviously any news flow coming from that between now and the actual decision time, we'll obviously let you know. But that work will just quietly progress here to try to get the best terms as possible for the partners that we now have on the Hod Maden project. So I don't expect anything to come out of that here in the next couple of months. It will probably be, at best, late in the year or probably early next year.

Of course. Thanks Rod and team. Understood. And thanks again for answering all my questions.

Thanks, Cos.

[Operator Instructions] This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'll turn the call back over to Mr. Antal for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, and thanks, everyone, again for joining us today and participating in our call. Have a great day, and look forward to talking to you again in another quarter. Thank you. Bye-bye.

This concludes your conference call. Please feel free to disconnect.