Good day. My name is Michelle, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the B2Gold third quarter 2022 financial results conference call. All lines are being placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then the number two. Thank you. Mr. Johnson, you may begin your conference. Thank you, Michelle. Well, welcome everyone. We're here to talk about the financial results from the third quarter of 2022, as Michelle said, as we released them last night. I'm gonna hand over to Mike Cinnamond here, our CFO, to talk about the financial results, and then Bill Lytle will give us an update on operations. As we previously announced in the production release for the third quarter, we were less than budget in terms of our ounces produced. There are reasons for that which are detailed in the news release, and we'll discuss them as well. Primarily, it was much higher than expected rainfalls in the Fekola Mine, which don't allow us to access some higher-grade material that was projected in our budgets. The other main factor was being a bit behind schedule at Otjikoto and getting into the underground because we had replaced a contractor who was underperforming with a better contractor. Both of those things are identified clearly as the prime driving forces behind being a little behind in production. Both of those are issues that are rectifying themselves as we speak. In fact, at the Fekola Mine, subject to final auditing, we have produced approximately 77,000 oz in October for Fekola. That's getting into this much better grade that we couldn't get into before because of the rains, and that's the kind of performance we expect for each of the months in the fourth quarter, which, if you do the math, takes us back to the projections that we have. That's why we've announced in the release very importantly, I think that we are very confident to say that we are still on target for our consolidated for the year guidance both in terms of production and in terms of operating and all sustaining costs. Similarly, on a positive note, if you look at the first nine months of the year, because we had such a strong first half of the year production, if you look at us at the end of the third quarter, we were actually very close on budget in terms of all-in sustaining costs, despite the fact that the third quarter was less than anticipated, as I've said. The key thing here is we had some of our fixed costs, and those costs are divided by less ounces in the quarter because of the production shortfalls as we discussed. You'll hear more about why we're so confident in returning to where we've been in the fourth quarter and meeting that year-end guidance. We've had over five years of meeting our own budgets quarter- by- quarter for over five years. Obviously, it's disappointing to have a quarter where we're a little bit behind, albeit catching up. We're as we'll hear today, one of the reasons why we're so confident of meeting that. We're also gonna hear a little bit today from Bill on the Anaconda update, the exciting progress we're making there with some excellent drill results in the Fekola Complex, as we now call it, and our plans to look very seriously at building another mill after initially trucking some separate material down to the Fekola mill, looking at building another mill to focus on separate material to the north, which can dramatically increase the annual gold production from Fekola. In terms of before I pass them on, just a couple of thoughts. We've got a lot to be announced officially that AngloGold Ashanti and ourselves have decided to put the asset up for sale. We discussed it before. I think in some detail, the reasons for that, despite our attempts to improve the project through cutting through some cost-cutting measure and capital cost, inflation ate away at that. We had hopes with further drilling to perhaps upgrade the resource. That didn't happen. It's about economics. At the end of the day, it did not meet our economic criteria, and then AngloGold Ashanti made the same assessment. We're looking to see where we can go with that asset in terms of an asset sale. This is consistent with our corporate strategy of recognizing things where they shouldn't be our priorities perhaps, or don't meet our criteria, such as vending the Nicaraguan assets into Calibre. They've done a very good job. We're happy to be shareholders of Calibre. Those projects were getting a little small for in our world. Similarly, when we did the deal with Burkina Faso, West African Resources, to be able to own some shares in them and cheer them on to go and build a successful project, it would probably be somewhat smaller than what we would have envisioned building there back in the days when we owned it. It's consistent with our strategy. Going forward, obviously, our focus will be to continue to catch up with the fourth quarter of our production, get back to our quarter, delivering on every quarter. Also, we'll be focused, as you'll hear, on the upside potential in the Fekola Complex and looking at other exploration opportunities. We are entering into more and more relationships with junior companies to help them in terms of funding their exploration programs and offering some technical assistance. I think that seems to be a very welcome strategy in the kind of market that we're in today. See if we can help juniors and ultimately down the road, if they want to joint venture their project, we'd be a likely candidate as a shareholder company. In addition to that, we are looking at M&A. We don't feel a sense of urgency in that regard, but we're always looking, and I think we've probably increased our interest in potentially finding the right fit. That'll require, as always, given our history of finding an accretive deal. That would make sense to us and to our shareholders. Well, perhaps we can bring our expertise, our financial strength, and our construction expertise to bear. The other issue there with M&A is finding a willing dance partner. I do think today's not the day to get into it, but I think one of the threats to the growth, the gold sector is financing alternatives such as streams and private equity financings that are very expensive and ultimately, in my opinion, damaging to the shareholders of these small companies down the road. We're hoping that we can encourage people to realize that to do the right thing in certain circumstances for their shareholders and consider opportunities where companies like B2Gold and others can come in and do a merger, an opportunity where everyone wins and these projects get advanced on reasonable financing terms and with teams that are proven to be able to build these projects around the world. With that, I'll pass it over to Mike Cinnamond to give us a rundown on the highlights from the Q3 results. As I said, Bill will talk about operations. We have our vast majority of our executive team here, or in fact, all of us here and on the phone. We will take questions after, and spend some time answering all your various questions. Shelly, sorry, Mike, over to you now to talk about. Thanks, Clive. I think Clive's basically set the scene there for the Q&A and had a look at it in the quarter year to date. I'm gonna try and focus just putting maybe this quarter in context of where we were at the half year, where we are at the end of the nine months, and where we expect to be for the full year. As we've reported in results, production was lower 45,000 oz in the Q overall on a consolidated basis. That's really. It's a grade, it's driven by grade, and it's a temporary change in mining sequencing that's driven that grade issue that we think it is recoverable overall in the year. We did have heavier than normal seasonal rainfall for Fekola, and that limited our ability to access the higher grade ore in Phase 6 of Fekola pit, which is what we've been stripping towards and forecast to produce in the second half of the year. Then we also had delays that we identified earlier in the year in getting into Wolfshag. The Wolfshag underground, higher grade ore, there were lower development rates earlier in the year, and we identified that as a problem. We did replace our mining contractor there, and underground development has picked up, and it's on budget now, but it did mean that Wolfshag production got pushed out. We thought we may have some of it in Q3, but it's actually got pushed into Q4, when we get into the higher grades there. Really, it's a sequencing issue. When you take in the context of the whole year, we expect to see it reverse in Q4. Fekola Phase 6, it's forecast the grades for that whole mining phase of Phase 6, somewhere between 3.4 g-3.5 g per ton. We'll see the benefit of that in Q4 and into next year. Through Q4 overall, I think we see Fekola Mine grade somewhere north of 3 g per ton. That's the kind of, like, pickup in grade that we see will drive us having higher production. We're already in that higher grade phase of Phase 6 now. Otjikoto, we're at the Wolfshag underground ore face now. We've got stope ore. We're also in higher grade portions of the Otjikoto pit that we've been developing. All of those are the things we think that will help us pick up that production number. With that reversal, overall, we still expect to make our full original production guidance range between, on a full consolidated basis, including Calibre, of 990,000 oz - 1,050,000 oz. We'll meet a big Q4 production on our target for Fekola and Otjikoto and basically business as usual at Masbate. Like I say, it's grade driven, and it's still, it was in the mine plan, it's still in the mine plan. It's just pushed into Q4. We think it's very doable. We think for overall, we think Fekola will be well within its original guidance range of 570,000 oz-600,000 oz. At Masbate, we think we'll come in at the lower end of its re-guided uplifted range of 215,000 oz-225,000 oz. Otjikoto, we think, will be at the low end of its re-guided range of 165,000 oz-175,000 oz. Overall, consolidated basis, right in the range. Just remember where we were at the end of half one. We were overall ahead. Fekola and Otjikoto were pretty much on budget, but Masbate was ahead. When you take that context to where we were at the first half, on Q3, where we are behind a little bit because of that sequencing. We're still a bit behind in Q3, but the shortfall is not as big as the overall shortfall in Q3, and we think we can pick it up in Q4. I think Bill will give a bit more detail on that in due course how he sees it. On the operating results side, I think you also have to read those results, cash costs, all-in sustaining costs, in the same context of where we were at the first half, what happened Q3, and where we expect to go for the full year. For the quarter, I mean, cash costs and all-in sustaining costs were higher at all sites than expected, with that primary driver being lower Q3 production. Costs in the quarter did continue to be impacted by higher than budgeted fuel costs, something that we've seen build up over the year at most sites and some other consumables, but by far the main one, the main driver is fuel. There were some offsets that, you know, because Wolfshag underground mining is not coming online production base until Q4, some of those costs didn't come in in Q3 as we'd expected. We did have some lower haulage costs and some lower than budgeted mining costs at Fekola due to the sequencing there of the Phase 6 production. We also had a weaker Namibian dollar, which benefited our costs at Otjikoto. On the all-in sustaining costs side, higher cash costs did flow into that overall all-in sustaining cost number as well. There were some other offsets within all-in sustaining costs. There were lower than budgeted sustaining CapEx. Again, it's a timing issue, and I think we expect this to reverse in Q4. We're also getting the continued benefit of fuel hedges as we realize some of the fuel derivatives that we've got, we see those as an offset in the all-in sustaining cost calc. Again, put it all together, we're for the full year still expecting to meet our original consolidated guidance ranges for both cash costs and all-in sustaining costs. Cash costs, we think will be at the upper end of the range, that range $620-$660 per ounce. And again, that's, you know, it's a function of we'll get back to production number. There are slightly higher costs as fuel flows through for the whole year, but overall, we think we'll be within the range, but maybe at the upper end. All-in sustaining costs, we think will be in the range. Look at that where we are in the context of the nine-month period. Consolidated cash costs were broadly in line with budget. Growth costs are close to budget, and we've got the impact of higher fuel costs flowing through there for the full year. We've also got the offset, some of those offsets I mentioned, like lower mined tons of Fekola, some of the benefit of lower Wolfshag underground mining costs and that weaker Namibian dollar, all of those benefiting cash costs for the full year. Fuel prices have increased a bit over the year, but they're not uniform at all sites. At Fekola, as we previously explained, we actually haven't seen as big a fuel increase as we might have expected. There were delays earlier in the year as the government didn't pass on what we were seeing in the market as fuel prices with the government set pricing in the year. That means when you look at Fekola in context of year to date, fuel prices are actually basically in line with budget, and HFO is actually slightly under budget. But offsetting that, we do see higher fuel costs at the other sites. Just for the analyst, I guess for the balance of the year, we've assumed that what we saw at the end of Q3 is fuel prices, that's gonna flow into Q4. That may or may not be conservative depending on what's going on in the fuel market right now. Another power or energy point to make or couple of points to make are that Otjikoto is now connected into the grid in Namibia. Now we see that, it'll significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the use of HFO for powering the mill at Otjikoto as we go forward 'cause we can take that lower grid power. When we're not using, or benefiting from the solar plant there, which has significantly reduced our costs. We've also seen the same thing in Fekola. At both those sites, the solar, our solar capabilities there basically, reduced our mill power costs from anywhere from 17% onwards, in fact, in terms of overall cost. That's, that benefits our overall cost profile. When you look at all-in sustaining costs for the full first nine months, again, overall, pretty much in line with budget. We have our all-in cash cost pretty much on budget. We've got significantly lower than budgeted sustaining CapEx for nine months for about $36 million under, but this is another temporary thing. We think that'll reverse in Q4. That's what we've guided in our results. Production year to date below, but overall, we're kind of in that ballpark. The other thing that's benefited all-in costs for the nine months are the fuel derivative program. We are seeing higher fuel costs at sites, with Fekola not so much, but the other sites a bit more. We've also got realized gains on a fuel program of about $26 million, which are basically offsetting those fuel price increases. You put all that together, we think the cost, the overall cost profile for the business for the consolidated basis for the nine months and for the year is definitely in line or can be roughly in line with the budget. Production will catch up in Q4. That was temporary in Q3. CapEx will catch up in Q4. It was temporary by the end in Q3. Cash costs will be a little bit higher up the curve 'cause fuel's a little bit higher. But then we also have the benefit of Q4 derivatives. All of that means we think will bring all-in sustaining costs for the year just well within the original guidance range, which in the context of what's been going on in the world all year, to meet that original guidance range, we're pretty happy about. That's a sort of high-level picture of the operations. A few other things going on at sites. You know, we have continued to consolidate licenses as we've gone through the year in Mali. We picked up the Bakolobi license, we picked up Dandoko and closed that now. Now we're really looking at how do we bring all these new licenses that we have into the production plan. Bill, he'll talk a bit more about, you know, what we see in Anaconda. There's a Phase 1 trucking plan where we can get some more production through the mill from satellite trucking. Then there's Phase 2, where we actually look at building a second, maybe an oxide mill. That could significantly increase our production for Fekola in the short term and especially in the longer term. We're also working on the various technical agreements that you need, fiscal stability agreements to put all these things in place in the near to medium term, so that we can sustain this production level in the long term. Clive mentioned Gramalote. Yep, we have agreed with our partner there that, you know, we should start a sales process for Gramalote in Q4, and we'll see where that takes us. That's high-level, the production and the direct site results. A few other things maybe to comment on in the financial results themselves. Foreign exchange, we did see a hit of $8 million in the quarter. That's a function of we've seen currencies weaken significantly in Mali and in Namibia. In U.S. dollar terms, that once you translate those local currencies, you do, it is a foreign exchange loss. We did take a derivative loss of $8 million in the quarter as well. Most of that's unrealized. $70 million is unrealized, offset by $8 million realized gain in the Q. Like I say, year to date, the realized gains are $26 million, with unrealized losses of $8 million. The other thing I'd comment on in the financial results, like the tax rate, there's a significant deferred income tax expense, $35 million, and most of that's foreign exchange driven again. It's an accounting issue, it's non-cash, and it's basically related to the translation of tax balance sheets in Namibia and in Mali. As those currencies weaken, it leads to deferred income tax charge. Overall for the Q, factoring in the lower production, the lower sales that came through and some of those other items that I highlighted, we had a loss for the period of just over $20 million, $21 million, or $0.02 per share on a GAAP basis. Once you adjust out the significant non-cash items or significant non-recurring items, we had adjusted earnings of $31 million or $0.03 per share. On the cash flow side, a few things to highlight. Cash flow from operations for the period, $93 million. We had guided that we expected to see cash flow significantly uplift in Q3 and Q4. It's very much a second half of the year weighted thing for this year. Operating cash flows for the period weren't as high as we thought because of that shortfall in production. Again, expect to see cash flows pick up significantly and be even more significantly weighted to Q4 as we see that higher grade come through in Q4 and the ability to sell more of those higher grade ounces. On the financing side, dividend for the period $42 million, just under $43 million. That's still about $0.04 per share quarter level, and still one of the highest dividend yields in the mining sector. We're happy to sustain that. Then on the investing side, only $55 million for CapEx in the Q. Like I say, we are significantly under in both sustaining and non-sustaining CapEx for our budget for the Q and year to date, but we expect that to pick up as we enter Q4. Overall, we see, I think, CapEx for the full year, we're pretty much gonna be in our budgeted guidance range. One item to highlight that did happen in the quarter, we had $45 million in deferred consideration that we were waiting to come in from our sale of, Clive mentioned, actually, the spin out of some assets, the Burkina assets to West African Resources. We had planned to take that $45 million, maybe in a mixture of cash and shares, but it ultimately, we elected to take all cash. That benefited our investing cash flows by about $22.5 million this quarter. All said and done, we ended up the Q with $550 million in the bank, very solid position. The line, our revolving credit facility line's fully undrawn, $600 million on the line with another $200 million accordion feature. A balance sheet that's overall virtually debt-free. There are some equipment loans and leases on there, but they're down to, like, not much more than $30 million right now. Basically debt-free on the balance sheet and very solid financial shape. I think that's pretty much all that I was gonna mention in the quarterly results. Thanks, Mike. Okay, we'll pass it over to Bill, give us an indication of why him and the operations team are so confident about our ability to meet our projections for these. Yeah. Thanks, Clive. As Mike and Clive have kind of already at a high level talked about, really there was two key issues. It really boils down to two key issues. The underground at Otjikoto, which I think we've really since Q1 kind of been forecasting that we were gonna be behind. So that shouldn't really be a surprise. And then, of course, the water issue at Fekola. Starting just working our way around all three operations. Masbate, we see in Q4 no issues there. It's steady state as you've seen the other three quarters. We certainly see us. We don't see any issues coming in at the lower end of our uplifted guidance. Otjikoto is, it's been discussed. We changed out the mining contractor in April that they got on site in April. It took them obviously a couple of months to get themselves all ramped up. As of June, they were meeting or exceeding the development meters as the production schedule required. As Mike indicated, we've already got into some stope ore. We see in Q4 a very good quarter kind of putting us at the lower end of our revised guidance for Otjikoto. Then at Fekola, Clive hinted at or said it actually in October we had an amazing month in excess of 76,000 oz, almost 77,000 oz unreconciled. Of course, it's still early in the month. We see, we definitely see the grades that we wanted to see. We have removed the water from the pit, and we don't see any issues. We're out of the rainy season now, so we don't see any issues for November and December of really seeing very similar numbers in production. As Mike said, we were seeing better than 3 g per ton coming through the mill now on average, and we expect that to happen through the end of the year and actually into Q1 of next year. We think we're set up really to meet our guidance as previously discussed. Maybe just a little bit on the development projects. Going forward into the Anaconda Area, really you have to remember kind of what we were trying to do. As Mike said, we're trying to do a Phase 1 and Phase 2 development for Anaconda, where Phase 1 is a trucking scenario. Basically, we're gonna pick out some of the higher grade saprolite areas of the Anaconda Area, the Anaconda region, and truck those down to Fekola. What we've done, we're in the process of finalizing all the permitting. In the meantime, all the equipment has been ordered and is actually starting to arrive on site. All the infrastructure, that being the support buildings, things like warehouses and shops, those have all been ordered. Those are currently on barges. The team itself is the B2Gold construction team is starting to come back together. The earthworks team and some of the infrastructure team is back already on site, doing takeoffs for electrical and that type of stuff. We certainly see that the schedule that we have, putting Anaconda into production next year, in Q2, we see that as very real. Additionally, we've talked about development of the underground at Fekola. We have signed a letter of intent with an underground mine contractor for that development. We are anticipating that they'll be on site in January. We've already received approval from the government for the infrastructure that goes along with the underground. We will put that in, and the plan really is to start development of the underground in Q2 of next year. That remains on schedule. Regarding kind of longer-term projects, we talked about Phase 1 being a trucking study, but we actually have Phase 2, where we're looking at developing a separate mill up in the Anaconda Area for initially potentially oxides only, but then potentially expanding that into fresh rock. John Rajala and Peter Montano are the two guys developing that with Lycopodium. That scope has been identified and we're starting on that study right now. I think we're saying the end of Q2 next year is when we're gonna kind of start to see results on that. We see that as a very real thing so much so that we've already included some of the front-end engineering and design into the initial contract with Lycopodium. That's one you should look for us to try and fast-track. Just talking a little bit about, we don't give much talk to the solar plan, but I heard Mike mention it, and it made me think of something. We're actually, as part of our kind of ongoing studies, we've had a look at can we continue to decrease our reliance on HFO at Fekola. John and his team are looking at a study where we basically, during the daylight hours, take the HFO plant down to zero generators, basically running off of pure solar. That study is getting kicked off. I think we're starting the first meeting is tomorrow. We're talking about kind of a Q1 decision on that. That also has a fast track where we could move very quickly and put that into production over the short term. Then, of course, was part of our Anaconda development, we'll be looking at solar out there. I think that's maybe it's of course Dandoko or the Dandoko deposit. That is currently scheduled for really development in the second half of 2023. We have to remember, we did this study with Whittle Consulting, where we really tried to optimize production from everywhere. It's not really Dandoko, while it's important to get into our schedule, we're seeing similar type grades coming out of Anaconda. I wouldn't focus too much on when Dandoko comes in. Just know that resource is also in the pipeline, so we're basically gonna have the optionality of taking from wherever we're gonna be able to expose the highest grade. Thanks, Bill. Just before you open for questions, just to mention the exploration. We've had some tremendous results that we've put out in the, well, the Anaconda region, Mamba, et cetera. Not only giving us great encouragement about the validity of building a second plant. For oxide, as we discussed, it could increase production to 800,000 oz a year from Fekola, potentially. That continues with very good results. We're expanding that oxide through this entire 25 km belt we have now. Also some of the excellent drill results we've seen in Mamba and other areas in Anaconda and now further south indicate that the potential for additional Fekola sulfide-type deposits is extensive potential throughout the belt with numerous targets, some from that we knew of previously, some that are new based on some of the acquisitions that we've been doing. We see this very, as Tom Garagan likes to say, and the other exploration guys talked about internally is that we see this despite the great success of starting at 4,000,000 oz at Fekola and being somewhere over 10,000,000 oz in resource now. We really see we're still actually in the early stages of exploration of this rather extraordinary gold belt, what we now call, as Bill likes to call it, the Fekola complex. We'll have more results coming out through the year, with several drills turning into now a major program, looking to further expand the oxide saprolite, sulfide material, deposits, but also intriguingly, following up on some of this really good grade material below, through numerous targets up and down the belt. We're also exploring in Finland and other areas. You know, exploration's been a big part of the success of B2Gold for finding the gold for many years. That continues, with success around the mine sites, but also additional opportunities, the cheapest ounces will always be the ones you find. We have substantial exploration programs looking for more gold. With that, Michelle, we'll open up for questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touch tone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Lawson Winder of Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead. Hello, Clive, Mike and Bill. Thanks for the update today. I wanted to start off with a question on M&A. As you scour the globe for potential acquisitions or keep your eyes open for potential acquisitions, are you seeing any opportunities today? What are the target geographies and sort of how large of an acquisition are you guys thinking you could make if the opportunity comes along? Sure. Yeah. Hi, Lawson. Well, I think the good news is we're sort of open across the entire spectrum, given our success in the past and given our technical strength and our exploration capabilities and all of the rest of it, the ability to be so financially strong and also so technically strong in exploration, but also in construction. Because of our track record between B2Gold and being able to do this almost anywhere in the world successfully time and time again, and we always talk about that comes from the corporate culture and the perhaps secret sauce of just delivering on the promises you make everywhere you go. We can look at everything from, as we said, our early-stage exploration joint ventures or investments in juniors who are onto projects we think are exciting, that we can add to help them financially, but also help them with some exploration expertise and perhaps a larger relationship down the road. We're also looking for potentially development projects. You know, we have our construction team, as Bill mentioned, getting busy now on the Fekola complex in the Anaconda region, et cetera. We have the capability to take on another development project if we find the right fit. Our history through both B2Gold has been very disciplined with our intense due diligence, but very disciplined about the acquisitions we do. They have to be accreted based on a reasonable gold price, but it has to make sense to all of our stakeholders to why we would do transactions like that. Now, in every case we've done and every acquisition we've done, we've never paid up for exploration upside. I don't think we should. At the same, on the other hand, we've always found tremendous exploration upsides to make an accretive acquisition look even better. Also potential mergers with other producers. We're interested in the possibility of that. Is there somewhere else where we can bring our financial strength, our expertise to combine with someone else who's got expertise in other areas of the world, to combine to go and build a bigger company? That's definitely of interest to us, but once again, it's got to be the right fit. You know, we have a history of responsible development and acquisitions, and we wanna continue that. You know, I touched on it earlier, and I don't want to belabor my point too much today, but I am concerned about single asset companies that have a project that we may find attractive and could help with or do a friendly takeover as we've done in the past. The problem today is there's a lot of single asset companies out there that 10 or 15 years ago, they would have to be, in context of the market today, in play, in the sense that they would have to consider a merger or a takeover from a bigger company that had the financial capabilities and the technical capabilities to build the mine. A lot of these companies cannot get traditional reasonable debt finance to project financings. They also have a market that's skeptical, understandably, because of too many failures, unfortunately, in our industry the last 10 or 15 years of projects not being what was advertised in terms of construction, in terms of the projects or the price paid for the project. Today, though, unfortunately, I don't think it's a good thing for the long term of the industry because you have companies that really should be open to a merger for the best interest of their shareholders or a takeover, but they have this opportunity to finance through streams, which we know can serve a purpose, but they definitely mortgage the future of the company, pay me now or, you know, pay me later. At the end of the day, those can be in the extreme, I think, can be not good for shareholders. Secondly, some of the private equity financings we're seeing are very, if you really dig into the terms, often they're redacted in disclosure, which should change. At the end of the day, you look at some of the terms of financing. At the end of the day, the shareholder could lose out in the sense that the management of the company or the board gets to keep going and saying, "It's our baby," and understandably, they wanna try and build it. At the end of the day, it's the cost to shareholders of that in the short and actually more importantly, in the middle and long term can be quite extreme. I think that's a trend I don't like to see in the industry. I think we should get back to people that can do financings at reasonable terms, and people that know how to build mines should be the ones doing it. Because more failures in our industry doesn't help anybody in terms of what we're seeing. That's a disturbing trend in my mind, and I think people need to consider doing what's best for their shareholders when they look at the fiduciary duty to build shareholder value. We're looking at a number of opportunities. Once again, we'll continue with our disciplined approach. We definitely don't feel with what we have on our plate and some of the opportunities we're seeing, such as Fekola Complex expansion, we don't feel a desperation to go and do a deal. We seem to have, based on our last annual general meeting, a tremendous amount of support from our shareholders to continue the strategy of this company. Of course, the idea is to continue to grow after, you know, 11 remarkable years of growth from zero gold production to 2,000,000 oz a year so far, so more to come in that regard. Okay. A lot of food for thought there. If I may, I might just ask two more questions. I wanted to ask about the Mali Mining Company audit that I think we've all heard about, and just get your thoughts on the nature of that. Whether or not there's an expectation that there could be potential changes to the mining code coming or if there's some other read-through to take from that. Thanks. I think I'll pass it on to Mike. Yeah. Okay. I think the audit's pretty wide. Ranging, I think, is basically looking at how mining companies and the government interact, as I understand it. I think from our point of view, I think pretty well-placed in terms of the audit as it's going. Will you see changes to the mining code? I think we've heard rumors maybe of a new mining code. Obviously, whichever mining code you're under for your license, you're under, you stabilize. Could they look forward and change it? Maybe. I think they're also trying to figure out how the government and the companies best interact for the benefit of mining overall in Mali? I would say there's no significant ones I wanna comment on right now. Bill Lytle's probably a bit closer to it, so anyone adds anything. Yeah, I think you materially said what they're looking for. We've actually been working very close with them. What we're hearing is what they're really trying to do. There's a lot of talk in Mali amongst the general population is Mali getting the benefit out of their gold, right? This is really the government's attempt to try and quantify what they actually earn from mining. We see it as a very as far as any audit could be, I suppose. We see it as a positive thing that the Malians certainly could understand now just how much they do benefit from having foreign investment, for sure. The other thing is as part of this, they've actually asked from our side, are there any things that we think the government can do to improve the relationship? It is a bit of a two-way street. While it is still an audit, at least it seems on the face that it's. They're trying to make it better. Yeah. Just a couple of additional comments on that. We don't consider it to be a predatory audit, per se. This is something where I think it's really. I'm glad you asked the question because it's really important to understand the history of gold mining in Mali, the history of governments of good government policies and laws towards foreign investment. I mean, mining is a very important part of the economy, and that's not lost on the current government or previous governments or future governments. It's a great relationship. We have an excellent relationship and if you listen to the government talk about B2Gold, we're definitely. They hold us up as a good example of what they want in terms of responsible, transparent, respectful foreign investors. We're very comfortable there and working very closely. The government is a 20% partner, don't forget, not only in Fekola, but also in the entire Fekola complex. The government, when we talk about Anaconda, they say to us, "Well, how fast can you get that in production?" Because of the substantial revenues. Another point I'd make is what Bill said, that all the people around the world are trying to figure out what the benefits of local communities and countries are to the mining industry, as they should do with every industry. If you look at a case like Fekola, once we recoup the original $500 million-$600 million in capital cost to build a mine, which we funded 100%, then the numbers suggest that, the numbers show that the benefit of, From operating activities, from the profitability of the mine and the benefit created to the mine, the Mali people, through their government, through 20% ownership, through dividends, royalties, et cetera, actually get more than 50% of the economic benefit of the Fekola mine. That's something that we're proud to talk about. The fact that this has to be win-win situation in the future of this whole mining industry and other businesses if you're gonna be a foreign investor in those countries. I think that's a really important point to remember, and that is not at all lost on the government of Mali. We're comfortable with the current government and future government in Mali, and they're moving back to democratic elections, or will continue to recognize maybe even more so after COVID and the financial struggles for many countries in the world, the importance of further foreign investment. Also COVID, I think we really did an excellent job through all of our operations. We actually set records for gold production during COVID, which is quite remarkable, and more importantly, kept our people safe and working in these jurisdictions that critically need these jobs. Final comment, in terms of mineral concessions, it's really important to point out that many countries, including Canada, don't have the protections that you have in Mali, which is that you lock in your mining convention, you lock in your tax rates. If you look back historically to the early 1990s when Randgold was one of the first movers in West Africa and Mali and others, it was incredibly successful to their credit to go in there early and explore and discover. They had some very low tax rates, 3% royalties, five-year tax holidays. Those things but not that many years after looked like they weren't perhaps the best thing. They were industry standard deals at the time, but they may not have been the best thing with the benefit of hindsight in terms of for the country, the people of these countries. The government of Mali never went back ever and tried to change those conventions that Randgold and other companies had. It's under the rule of law, which is subject to international arbitration. They'd be breaking their laws if they were to go and try and suddenly arbitrarily change tax rates, et cetera. That's very important, and we've seen a history of them not doing that. We have higher tax rates, of course, than back in the day, and I think they're appropriate. We have to be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg in terms of making taxation in any country too high to encourage foreign investment. But we're very comfortable with our history there, our relationships there, and the current convention that we're under. We don't just see. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding in the marketplace sometimes of these countries where they're all just gonna wake up one day and decide to nationalize mines or to dramatically increase the taxes, et cetera. We just do not see that. There's no history of that, and we have no reason to see that, going forward. This is an excellent relationship with B2Gold and the government of Mali, the local communities, the local governments, and we're proud of our relationship. I believe the government, as you can hear them talk publicly about, good investors, not just us, others, but B2Gold being a good model for responsible foreign investment in Mali. Okay, fantastic. Just one final question, which would be on looking into 2023 on cost, but in particular, the Fekola complex development. It sounds like you're pretty far advanced if you expect to have a study out in Q2 of next year. Could you give us an idea of what kind of CapEx you'd expect that project to be overall? I mean, also very importantly, how much of that CapEx would you expect to show up in 2023? Just if you can provide any sort of sense of directionally, where you think CapEx will be going in 2023 versus 2022. That's it for me. Thanks very much. Yeah. I think John would kill me if I started throwing numbers out since we're just starting the study tomorrow. He is sitting here. He is sitting right next to me. I don't wanna comment on it. Certainly, you know, when we did kind of the scoping level study, we were throwing kind of back of the envelope numbers around, which I think we actually put out there at, you know, a million or $300 million or something like that. That was just a kind of a scale-up from a study we'd done earlier. Let us take a little bit of time and get some real numbers in and come back to you. We do have. We've got a major tailings expansion next year. We're doing a whole tailings facility, so that's a big one. Certainly, as you know, we're putting in the road and the underground. We've got $50 million in capital already in this year for that. All those projects will continue. We're writing the budget cycle right now, so I don't wanna say what the final numbers are until we talk about it internally. Thank you. The next question comes from Anita Soni. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I just had most of the questions Lawson asked about costs going into next year. Can we just get a little bit more color on Otjikoto and the types of grades and tonnage that you're expecting to see at Wolfshag in Q4? You know, will that persist onwards at this point, or should we expect a bit of a pullback in the first half of the year next year? You're talking specifically about the underground? Yes, I am talking specific to Wolfshag, the underground, yeah. Okay. Just so happens that I asked because I thought somebody would ask this today, reading an email from site. What we're really talking about is in excess of 6 g in Q4. Then coming from underground, of course, that'll be blended, as you know, with the open pit and some of the lower grade stuff. In particular in Q4, basically over the next little bit, let's say for the next year, we're 6+ g. Okay. What kind of tonnage are you guys pulling now out of the underground? Well, let's just say for the year, we're gonna project about just about 73,000 tons. Okay. The full ramp-up rate is what for the underground? Yeah, I don't have that. I think Peter Montano's online. He probably, Peter, if you're on, can you jump in here? Yep. We're in the range of, you know, 1,000 tons a day, long term, but that's, there's some variability on that, especially because, you know, we're just preparing that first slope now. I think in another quarter or two, we'd be able to give you some much more, much better information on that. Okay. I guess a little bit more color on what's similar in terms of costs. As we're seeing, you know, costs, you talked about some of the offsets and, you know, the good Q4 that you're gonna have. As you go into next year, you know, how are you looking at costs? Is it gonna be more similar to the unit costs that you've seen in the third and, you know, what we'll see in the fourth quarter? Are you seeing any abatement in, you know, in some of these inflationary pressures? You know, would you have some grades to offset it or other sort of operational efficiencies that you could talk about? Yeah. It's a bit of a mixed bag, right? Yeah. We've certainly had a look at what we think fuel's gonna do, and then of course had a long-term look at that a year behind. There's also, you know, shipping costs and stuff. We're starting to see some of those come down. It's a bit of a mixed bag. Once again, we're right in the middle of the budget process, so it's tough to say, you know, where we're gonna end up here. You got to give us, you know, another quarter. Okay. I'll await that. Thank you. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question, please press star one at this time. The next question comes from Don DeMarco of National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Well, thank you, operator. Good afternoon, good morning, team. First question to Mike. So Mike, guidance is unchanged, but you have that guidance for the cash flow from operations. In Q2, you mentioned it's $575 million for the year. How is that tracking? Is that also still unchanged? Well, a couple things there. That number had a $1,700 gold price assumed for the balance of the year, obviously seeing a lower number right now. We did see some cost inflation, like I mentioned, although overall, if we're at the higher end of the cash cost range, we may see some of that ground away in terms of overall operating cash flow. The other thing, just as we get into Q4, it's grade-based, right? It's grade-weighted. Yeah. The post will be on at the end of the quarter to see what we can get sold, right? Mm-hmm a slight production, or there may be a slight lag between production and sales as we get those higher grade ounces. Through the mill and available for sale. I'd say, yeah, $575, we may be tracking somewhat below that right now, but it's a little hard to say until we see how this grade sequencing is gonna work and how our production profile is gonna work in Q4. Okay, great. Just shifting, a couple of questions for Bill. Bill, continuing with some of the questioning on Wolfshag from the last caller. Are you actually producing ore from stopes right now? Literally right now. I think, like yesterday or the day before was the first time that they'd slashed and delivered to the mill. Okay, sounds great. Moving to another potential underground operation, Fekola. You mentioned underground Fekola. What would be the timing of a release for a maiden underground resource? Well, that's a good question for probably Brian. I mean, and remember, the whole intent of developing the underground is to get down to the face and drill it off at the face, as opposed to kind of releasing a resource. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I guess my question really just, you know, comes from just trying to get an idea of what the grades might be, like 4 g, 5 g, 6 g, 7 g, 8 g per ton. I'm not sure when we'd have an idea. Do you have any sense right now what the underground grade potential might be? Brian, do you want to take that? Yeah. It's gonna be in the 4 g-6 g range. You know, right now everything is inferred, and that spacing sort of varies between 60 m-40 m, depending if you're looking at down plunge or down dip. The plan is, as Bill said, to get underground and once we're underground, then we can start drilling off the underground and updating that inferred material to sort of an underground indicated. You know, maybe by end of Q1 next year, you know, we might be able to look at releasing what it would look like in an inferred above certain cutoff grades in that 4 g-6 g. Okay. Okay, that's all for me. Thank you very much. Thanks, Don DeMarco. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn the conference back to you. Okay. Thanks, Michelle. Thanks everyone for joining us. Have a great day. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.