Hello everyone and welcome to Taseko Mines' 2024 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Now, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, Brian Bergot. Please proceed.

Thank you, Carmen. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining Taseko's 2024 fourth quarter annual results conference call. The news release and regulatory filing announcing our financial and operational results was issued yesterday after market close and is available on our website at tasekomines.com and on SEDAR+. I'm joined today in Vancouver by Taseko's President and CEO, Stuart McDonald; Taseko's Chief Financial Officer Bryce Hamming; and our Chief Operating Officer Richard Tremblay. As usual before we get into opening remarks by management, I would like to remind our listeners that our comments and answers to your questions will contain forward-looking information and this information by its nature is subject to risks and uncertainties. As such actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties I encourage you to read the cautionary note that accompanies our fourth quarter MD&A and the related news release as well as the risk factors particular to our company. These documents can be found on our website and also on SEDAR+. I would also like to point out that we will use various non-GAAP measures during the call. You can find explanations and reconciliations regarding these measures in the related news release. And finally all dollar amounts we will discuss today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise specified. Following opening remarks, we will open the phone lines to analysts and investors for questions. I will now turn the call over to Stuart for his remarks.

Thanks Brian and good morning everyone and thanks for joining us for the fourth quarter and annual earnings conference call. As you can tell, I'm struggling with my voice, so I'm going to give slightly abbreviated remarks today and pass the call over to Richard to talk about our operations and projects in more detail. But just a couple of reflections looking back on the last year. We're very happy with the progress that we've made across our business. I think at Gibraltar it was a busy and at times quite challenging year. We've had milling disruptions. We had major maintenance. We moved an in-pit crusher. We had a labor strike for 18 days in June and we overcame all of those challenges successfully, showed a strong fourth quarter and strong annual financial results. We've also made great strides at Florence. Construction is advancing smoothly and that's soon to become our second producing operation. And through all of that we've also maintained a solid balance sheet. We opportunistically refinanced our bonds earlier in the year and we ended 2024 with over CAD330 million of available liquidity and that's after a significant capital expenditure at Florence during the year. Taking a closer look at our financial results we generated CAD224 million of adjusted EBITDA and CAD233 million of cash flow from operations. Those results are notable improvements over 2023 as a result of a slightly higher copper price and also our increased stake in Gibraltar as we stepped up to 100% ownership in March last year and that was obviously a very accretive transaction for us. So, before I lose my voice completely, I'm going to now pass the call to Richard Tremblay.

Thanks Stuart. Gibraltar produced 106 million pounds of copper and 1.4 million pounds of molybdenum in 2024. Scheduled project work and maintenance plus the unexpected labor strike resulted in lower mill operating hours for the year amounting to roughly 15 million pounds of lost copper production. That is roughly equivalent to the shortfall from 2023 production levels and we should be able to get those pounds back in 2025 with normalized mill availability. The operation finished the year with a solid quarter producing 29 million pounds of copper in Q4 at a cash cost of US$ 2.42 per pound. Mill throughput averaged 89,700 tons per day exceeding the design capacity of 85,000 tons per day and that was actually the best quarter in Gibraltar's history as we benefited from stockpiled ore in the Connector pit. Mill recoveries in the quarter were impacted from the transition ore, which has higher oxide content as we continue to mine the upper benches of the Connector pit. We expect to have mined our way through this material by the second half of this year. Moly production of nearly 600,000 pounds in Q4 was the highest quarter since 2021. The Connector pit has better moly grades than the Gibraltar pit, so we expect production to remain at the current levels for 2025 and combined with continued strong moly prices will provide us with a valuable byproduct credit, which was US$ 0.42 per pound in the fourth quarter. Going forward with no major mill downtime or planned in 2025, we expect -- we are looking to return to the life of mine average production levels. Our guidance is 120 million pounds to 130 million pounds for the year but it is important to note that the production profile is weighted to the second half of the…

Thank you, Richard and Stuart. Maybe I'll start and reflect further on the 2024 year and then cover some of our quarterly financial highlights. For the year we had sales of 108 million pounds of copper which generated revenues of $608 million, which is the highest Taseko has ever reported and that can be attributed to our growth in Gibraltar to now owning 100% of it coupled with a healthy average copper price of US$4.17 a pound in the year. We posted a GAAP net loss of $13 million for the 2024 year or $0.05 loss per share. However, on an adjusted basis we had $57 million of net income or $0.19 per share, which was a $0.04 per share increase over the prior year. A couple of items to note, the weaker Canadian dollar has created an unrealized loss on our US dollar-denominated bonds and other debt. That totaled CAD 52 million for the year. We adjust for that in our adjusted earnings. The offset to that of course is our investment of our US dollars into Florence. And those FX moves go through foreign currency translation and OCI. So there's kind of an accounting mismatch. So we normalize for that. And given the weakness in the Canadian dollar, this move was more significant in the year. $19 million of our costs were expensed for site care and maintenance due to the labor strike. We had $2.5 million in June as well as the completion of our primary crusher relocation project. That project totaled CAD16 million that included costs for the demolition of the old station outlays for the physical move. And then there was a non-cash write-off of some conveyor equipment that was in the fourth quarter, which was made redundant with the crusher move. So these capital…

Thank you so much. [Operator Instructions] Your question comes from the line of Alex Bedwany with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple. The first one is, I just wanted to know what was behind the higher sustaining CapEx spend at Gibraltar in the fourth quarter? And what do you think for FY 2025? And then the second piece was just around Florence. So have you put in place any contracts for the acquisition of acid, so that you're ready to certify the fields when the drilling is complete in the second quarter?

Yes. I'll take the first half of that question Alex. It's just regarding the sustaining capital really nothing of note. Sometimes it's really just due to the timing of certain repairs and maintenance and replacements of engines and other components on our mobile fleet at Gibraltar. So I wouldn't highlight really anything that specific there. In the capital projects, we do separate from sustaining capital or capital project costs and we did have some write-off of equipment that I mentioned for about $4 million. I think going forward; we expect it to be in the more ordinary levels in that $20 million to $30 million range for sustaining capital. And again most of that is focused around our maintenance of the mining fleet. And for your second question maybe I'll pass that to Richard and you can talk about the acid strategy.

Yeah. Sounds good. Thanks Bryce. Yeah. Regarding the acid, we've been an ongoing dialogue with four acid suppliers, traders in the US, and there continues to be great interest in providing an acid for the site, and we'll be issuing an RFP here this quarter and start formalizing securing future acid supply with that RFP. That's the process we're undertaking.

Okay. Fantastic. Thanks, Richard. Just one more. How has it been looking so far this quarter in terms of throughput at Gibraltar are you still seeing it pretty high, because of the soft Connector pit ore?

Yeah. The Gibraltar, throughput continues to be strong. Connector ore is softer as we highlighted and saw in Q4 and we'll continue to see that here into this year. But as we highlighted, production is weighted to the second half of the year and Q1 will be our worst quarter, just due to the fact we're supplementing ore feed with stockpile material.

Yes. Okay, I think that's been well flagged. Okay. Thanks guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Duncan Hay with Panmure Liberum. Please proceed.

Yeah. Thank you. A couple of questions, first one just on the well costs. I saw the -- you updated on the number of wells you put in at Florence. Just how the costs were tracking and the sort of the rates? And how that was looking versus your forecast going forward? And then the second one, I missed the end of Alex's question, so he may have asked this, but just about acid what the situation was going to be for acid and securing that and how pricing was looking in the region as well? Thank you.

Yeah. Regarding the drilling, and our drilling performance continues to be a strong area of focus for the site team and continue to look for opportunities to keep improving overall performance. And we've been quite happy with how things have been progressing and continue to see opportunities for improvement and continue to refine kind of the efficiency and cost associated with putting in wells. So quite pleased with how that's performing, and that will serve us well on a long-term basis. Regarding acid...

So just before you get to the acid, is the plan still to sort of transition to doing that in-house eventually for the drilling?

Yeah. Eventually it will be something we would look and assess about bringing in-house. But for the near-term here, we definitely would remain utilizing external parties to provide the drilling activity. And we have a strong Florence team that we've recruited and put in place through the construction here which will stay on into operations, because I described drilling at Florence really is the mining activity at a conventional site. So we need to have a strong management team overseeing the drilling activity, but we will be relying on third parties in the near-term here.

Okay. Thanks.

Thank you. As I see no further questions in queue, I will turn it back to management for final remarks.

Okay. Thanks everyone .And we look forward to speaking again at the end of our first quarter and reviewing our progress.

And with that, we conclude today's program. You may now disconnect.