Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to this conference call to discuss the announcement of B2Gold Corp.'s acquisition of Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity for analysts to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Clive Johnson, President and CEO of B2Gold. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. Welcome, everyone. As the operator mentioned, we're here to talk about the definitive agreement that we've entered into with B2Gold and Sabina. Today I'm joined by Bruce McLeod, the President and CEO of Sabina, and a lot of the B2Gold executive team. Just want to start off, I guess we'll go into a number of speakers, gonna talk about various aspects of the deal. I'll start off, and then Bruce is gonna come and talk about how he sees this and from Sabina perspective. I must say, start off by talking about what we see as an excellent deal for us. If you go and look at M&A, what we've been looking at for a while and various opportunities, this one really checks a lot of the boxes and gives us a great opportunity to grow production significantly with a high-quality asset that's construction ready in a very good jurisdiction. It does further enhance our geographic jurisdiction. I must start by complimenting Bruce and his team and his board and what they've done in terms of advancing this project through a very challenging time. We look forward to working very closely with Bruce and the team in a collaborative effort to unlock the tremendous potential and value that we all see here. Bruce and I have been talking a lot, as you can imagine, over the last few months, and I think we found that we have quite a bit in common in the sense of, from our experience in the past, looking to try and finance and advance and permit and build projects when the market has not necessarily been on board for that, but also in challenging jurisdictions, whether it be climate or geopolitical. I know for Bruce and Sabina, this is a bit of a bittersweet deal. I've been there before in terms of the history of Bema Gold and Kupol, et cetera, and the history of pushing forward. It speaks a lot to the perseverance and the professionalism of Bruce and his team and the willingness to be contrarian. As we often know, when you do that, it's, there's, you're always gonna have your share of critics. Congrats to Bruce and the team, and we look very much as this as joining forces to move forward to develop this great asset. We're in a very strong position to do this, and their compliment was already there, as we said, with our construction expertise, our excellent construction team. A lot of the players in our construction team are still some of the team that built the Julietta mine and the Kupol mine in Far East and North Russia, far north of Russia for Bema Gold. Our team is very excited about this project. Also, I think we're in a very strong position financially to do this. You know, we have effectively zero debt. We have around $600 million in the bank. We have a credit facility that revolving credit facility with a consortium of banks for $600 million that is undrawn, and that has an accordion facility to go to another $200 million. Of course, we're generating significant cash from operations. We're also able to grow the company, and we see that continuing by paying an industry-leading dividend. We think that's attractive to our shareholders. It's also attractive to the Sabina shareholders who could become, through this transaction, shareholders of B2Gold. From our point of view, checks the boxes. I just think I wanna emphasize we've done a lot of due diligence here. We can answer some of those questions. We've done a tremendous amount of work. Part of our success of this company from zero production of gold 13 years ago to 1 million ounces a year today, has been accretive acquisitions, where we've been able to do win-win deals. In this case, offering a significant premium, which is deserved and warranted, as far as our valuation of the value of the project. This is another in a series, I think, of these types of win-win deals and how we've grown the company. It fits the profile very well. Technically, as I mentioned, the construction team. Also, this has checked all the boxes in some of the critical areas of due diligence. When you look at a project at this stage, that is the work done on drilling, on the geological reserve resource estimates, that Sabina came up with a very, very closely aligned to our view. Frankly, that's the area where a lot of projects that we look at at this stage don't go off our list because of that delicate balance of finding a realistic estimate of how much gold is in a ton of rock. A lot of the technical work has been done there, and our due diligence has come up very positively. I would say that obviously in a project, building a project today, inflation is one of the key concern legitimately. We've built in some factors there in terms of our... along the lines I think that Bruce is thinking about the capital cost. We will continue to look at the same schedule. Our objective is to stay on the schedule that Bruce has put forward, and that will involve continuing on the project as we go through this process of closing this deal. That will involve continuing all the work that's happening to get things to site and maintain that schedule. For us, a very exciting deal that we feel we're very pleased to see the initial reaction from our shareholders and Sabina shareholders. It seems to be getting a lot of support in the market. It's a win-win transaction. I wanna applaud also Bruce for the tremendous work that he's done and his write up, I guess, very much in our corporate culture about treating people with fairness, respect, and transparency and dealing very well with the Inuit partners in the region and all the communities. We're looking forward to continuing with Bruce and his team, that great work that is so important in our business today in terms of sure that everyone, including local communities, are benefiting significantly from a major development such as this project. Brian Scott will probably talk a little bit later about the exploration upside. Bruce has talked to us about this a lot, we see that for sure, that there's great potential here for more. We'll be hopefully soon announcing an aggressive exploration program to start, both to do some infill drilling but also drilling some of the other very attractive targets that we see in this very large belt. With that, I think I'll pass it over to Bruce, and Bruce can give you his thoughts on the deal. Over to you, Bruce. Thank you, Clive. Back River is truly a world-class asset, and I'm very proud of the work our team has done to advance this project through development to today, where we have a financed and in-construction project. B2 has a reputation for acquiring high-quality assets with considerable upside, and the validation of our execution plan and shared vision for Back River's potential will, in my opinion, deliver an even better project. We're confident in our abilities to execute, deliver the project as an independent company. However, with two years still left to first gold production, there are risks associated with development of the Goose Mine in the current environment. It's without question that a capital-constrained environment has limited the scope of the project that we could deliver on our own. With even greater financial resources, B2 can certainly add to our considerable success. Opportunities when exploring to optimize the mine plan to access higher-grade material early in mine life would require additional financing. We're confident our financing partners would be there to support us. Rather than incurring those additional expenditures, our board and executives believe B2's acquisition offers a significantly de-risked, accretive alternative for our shareholders. B2 is one of the few Canadian miners with a combination of a long track record of successful development, construction, and operations, northern experience, financial resources, and a desire to advance the project into a multi-mine district. They have a track record of delivering projects. Their compelling offer is one we're proud to bring to and unanimously recommend to our shareholders. The proposed transaction provides our shareholders with a 37% premium to the closing price on February 10th and a 45% premium to the 20-day VWAP. Additionally, the spot premium as of the day the LOI was received on February second was 45%. The combination also enables our shareholders and stakeholders to participate in a low-cost senior gold miner exposed to both further successes at Back River and at B2 projects globally. In particular, Fekola, a cornerstone tier-one asset with significant free cash flow generation that pays an attractive dividend to shareholders. B2's financial resources deployed to the project will solidify opportunities for our landowners and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association through success and increased access to training, jobs, and business opportunities. B2 also provides shareholders with an enhanced institutional investor following, trader, trading liquidity, and as I mentioned, participation in a peer-leading dividend yield. B2 has also indicated they intend to retain the majority of our staff. I believe our team, in conjunction with their build team and their impressive track record of project delivery, significantly reduces execution risk. With all these factors considered, the board and I have come to the conclusion that this business combination is in the best interest of all stakeholders. As you'd expect, these deals don't come together early or quickly. It's been almost five years since B2 first signed a confidentiality agreement with us, and in that time, they've come to learn the project and learn from us what we think the ultimate ability to deliver a world-class district in the North is. I look forward to the transition period between now and the closing. Together, I feel we can create an industry-leading gold producer. From there, I'd like to pass it on to Bill Lytle, the COO of B2Gold. Thank you. Hey, thanks, Bruce. So we've been fielding a few questions, and I really wanted to talk. I know that Clive laid down some of the background, and Bruce added to it, but, you know, one of the questions we asked earlier was, is given this northern experience, is this a project that B2 is comfortable with? I just want to remind everybody a little bit about what B2 has done. I mean, clearly with the Kupol project, that was a project which was north of the Arctic Circle in a remote area that had open pit and underground in a permafrost environment. There we constructed annually more than 400 kilometers of ice road, a combination of gravel and ice road. Very similar to Back River, we had to ship into the port in the summertime and then haul during the winter season. We had to construct all the infrastructure, the receiving area truck shop. There was a standalone gensets. It was a remote camp, fly in, fly out. There was a indigenous population, which required a full implementation of Indigenous Peoples Plan. Really one of the things that I think we really bring to the table is we do have a construction team that's been together now for five builds. If you look at it, that's Julietta and Kupol in Russia, Libertad in Nicaragua, Ojikoto in Namibia, and Fekola in Mali. We've got the experience of a construction team working from minus 40 degrees Celsius to plus 40 degrees Celsius. If you take that along with what Bruce McLeod was just talking about, you know, our assessment is he's put together a very strong team. We see that team as a critical component to the success of the project. You know, they've done a very good job. As you said, they've been capital constrained. But even with that, they've identified some very, I would say, elegant low-cost solutions. When we went through the timeline that they had put forth, very detailed and very realistic. Certainly something that we absolutely plan to attempt to adhere to. They did a really good job of ordering things when some other projects were seeing capital creep. They did a good job because of the schedule with the window of having to purchase and then bring it in, and then bring it up the winter road when it gets cold. They did a good job of ordering enough that they've been able to fend against capital creep. I think Clive mentioned already, but really one of the key things on these projects is the social license to operate. I think the team there has done, and over the last couple of days, we've really got to know, an amazing job with the indigenous communities. Of course, this project is fully permitted and ready to build. If you look at where, you know, where we think we can add some value, well, Bruce has already talked about it. Certainly because we have a bit more capital, you know, we're talking about really kind of operating the plant at the increased throughput from day one, you know, kind of supercharging the underground development. It, you know, maybe there's some ability for us to optimize the underground design. The higher grade material we might be able to bring forward into the mill earlier. One of the things we're looking at is there the possibility to do wind power there. Then I guess maybe the last thing I'll talk about, we've been very public about kind of the opportunity we have at, in Mali related to the Anaconda area or, what we're calling the phase I and phase II Menankoto project, where phase I, remember, is a trucking scenario where we're trucking material down to the Fekola mill. We're in the process of completing a study which will come out in the middle of the year, which will guide us towards what we believe will be a second mill. The question is how does this all fit in? We actually, looking at the schedule, we think it's really quite elegant. Given where Bruce is at, Bruce's team is at in the construction process, we really see it like this. The phase I is basically coming online here very shortly at Menankoto. You see the Back River build, followed by the Menankoto phase II build. It actually, you know, there may be some overlap that we have to look at, and we'll look at that once we get together and really kind of hash out the schedules, but we see that they align quite nicely. I guess maybe I'll stop there, and I'll turn it over to Brian Scott on the exploration side. Thanks, Bill. It's Brian here. I'm VP of Geology and Technical Services at B2. I'll just spend a couple of minutes talking about the exploration potential. You know, Bruce's geologic team at Sabina has done an excellent job in the last 10 years unraveling the geologic complexity up there and has grown the resources significantly and advanced this project to the point that it's, it definitely got on our radar list. Within this group, you know, we understand these deposits. You know, several of us actually cut our teeth early on in gold and iron formation deposits up in the Northwest Territories, which now, as we know, has broken into Nunavut as well as NWT. You know, these are plunging bodies, much like Fekola. We understand the geometry, we understand the controls. It's, you know, we are extremely excited. We're encouraged by the exploration upside. You know, two of the five licenses up there that Sabina has have resources on them. You know, we're very confident that we're gonna allocate significant capital to explore this prospective belt and continue to grow the resources, as well as upgrade some of the inferred to indicated and convert them into reserves. Clive, back to you. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Brian. I, we're gonna turn over to Mike Cinnamond now to talk about how, as CFO, and how he feels we are positioned to finance this and some of the other details about our financial position. Thanks, Clive. Well, actually, I think I'll just try and fill in some of the details. Clive gave rather a good overview at the start, but I'll fill in some of the details here, a little more detail. Just remind everyone, we finished the last cash balance we reported was in Q3. Finished that quarter with about $550 million. As you know, we had a record Q4 production-wise and the cash flows that come with that, you can expect that we built on that cash balance. We should find ourselves at year-end, great shape with cash in a balancing position. We're pretty much debt-free. There's a few equipment leases floating around, but pretty much all intents and purposes, we're debt-free. That means we have a $600 million revolving credit facility that's there. It has an accordion feature for a further $200 million, that's easily fillable by banks that want to step in. That gives us $800 million on that line. We've got a great banking syndicate as we have them right now, great banking relationships and access to markets. When you look at all of that, and really we're talking about at year-end at this point in time, we have sort of instant liquidity somewhere close to the $1.4 billion-$1.5 billion range. We're well-placed to fund development of the project as being described here already for Goose. We're well-placed to continue to fund the Fekola complex development, as Bill described. Phase I with the saprolite trucking and then in due course, phase II for mill construction when we get a study done there to decide the timing of that. Also to continue to pay industry-leading dividend, including a dividend, I guess, to the new B2 shareholders will come from the Sabina deal. Great shape financially, I would say, and got the flexibility to be able to move forward and do all those things the way we want to. I think that would conclude what I was gonna say on the financial side. To that rate, maybe one thing we didn't really touch on was just what this does in terms of maintaining us as a, as a low-cost producer because of the, obviously, the projected low cost that we're seeing partly because of the... Well, we get graded, if you're talking about the combined company in terms of. Yeah. maintaining this. Well, I think I would say, obviously, you've seen the numbers that are out there already for Sabina, they got excellent for that average of two and a quarter thousand ounces a year, 100,000 ounces a year for a 15-year mine life, all-in sustaining costs sort of in that mid $700 range. You know, that's an excellent add on to what we have already. We finished this year, we've guided, we haven't put it out yet, but we've guided that we think we'll be in our original range for all-in sustaining costs, somewhere just over $1,000. You know, you look at that, you look at the development we see in Fekola, where especially as we get into the saprolite side of things and potentially develop the second mill, and we see a way to sort of maintain excellent cash cost of our own at Fekola, and then you add that with the $750 plus, whatever the, in that range for Sabina, that really puts us in great shape for consolidated all-in sustaining costs overall for as a combined operation. The mandate will be to continue to grow the company, but we're very focused, if you look at our history. We right now in the pipeline with this deal and as we talked about the two phases of potential expansion or expansion at the Fekola complex, we've got a lot of growth in front of us. We will not be pursuing aggressive M&A from this point on as we have it in the past. We tend to take something on, digest it, make it a success, and then continue to look at further opportunities. One thing I would just add to that, as I. One of the opportunities here that Bruce touched on was the ability actually to start this mine and produce in excess of 300,000 ounces a year for the first several years. Obviously the goal would be to continue that or even expand that going forward. Thanks everyone for your good summaries. I think we'll open it up to questions for our group and also of course, for Bruce, as well. Thank you. We will now begin the analyst question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Our first question comes from Owais Habib of Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Thanks, operator. Congrats, Clive and Bruce, on announcing this transaction. Just a couple of questions from me. You guys give a very good update in terms of, you know, how this project is going to be laid out, especially in terms of the fact that you have Anaconda, kind of growing in the background as well as going into phase I and phase II. I mean, essentially, you're talking a little bit about, you know, is there a chance that you would look to stagger these operations? Would, again, I think, Bill, maybe you have touched on it, that you could essentially go forward with both these projects in tandem. Yeah. I mean, I'll let Bill answer that again, but sure the idea is they actually, just from what we know today, they phase in pretty rather well with the phase I, which is trucking the ore down starting later this year at Anaconda down to Fekola. And then, coming in here, Back River and then, construction there. After that, we're. The timing works very well for phase II. Bill, you wanna enlarge on that at all, phase II? Yeah, no. You're absolutely right, Clive. Remember, Back River is completely permitted, and they've already started some of the initial earthworks and have brought in a lot of that kind of early infrastructure, the kinda the rebar bending and the concrete. That stuff is already prepared and on site. They've got a good jump on what I call, you know, the Menankoto phase II or the Anaconda phase II. You could absolutely see a scenario where your earthworks and your rebar guys and your concrete guys kinda get done in Back River. Let's say that it, you know, it. We get done with the feasibility and we wanna go to Menankoto, those guys could shift across, and we could see almost kind of a stepwise progression where they're not building two at the same time, because there's different trades operating at different sites, but they both come online within a year of each other. Okay. Thanks for that, Bill. Bill, in terms of, you know, again, you've mentioned Goose Project is construction ready, fully financed. Based on the timelines you guys have, you know, put forward or Sabina has put forward, does B2 come in and take six, nine months to kind of reassess, you know, in terms of what the upside could be and how to right-size the project in terms of the mine and the mill? You just go forward with what's been planned out right now, and then once the project has been built, that's when you assess if then expansion is necessary? Bill? I think the answer is in between there, Ovais. You know, at the end of the day, we want to hold the schedule, right? I mean, as I said in my talk, what they presented to us is a very reasonable and doable schedule. It's not aggressive, right? We see that there's the opportunity to get in and start doing the construction. As, you know, Bruce was very open with us, where he thought, you know, with the capital construction that if they, if the purse strings were loosened a little bit, what opportunities there were. This is not like we're coming in kind of blind and just kind of reaching around and, you know, what would B2 do here? Remember, they've ordered almost all their equipment and it's fully permitted and ready to go. Unless something we see something outrageous, that's what we're building. Got it. Thank you. Bill, if I may, is what we have seen is opportunities that we can make some subtle changes in the project that would actually have some big impacts. Some of those subtle changes come with additional working capital early, additional capital costs. You know, some of those are risk mitigation items that additional capital will help us. We've been very cognizant of looking at this from a risk basis. What we do believe is that removing some of those capital constraints will also reduce some of the project execution and delivery risk. We see some opportunities that we've been working with B2 over the last several months on trying to bring forward. I think we both expect that some of those will end up in the ultimate mine plan. It's I'd characterize it more a tweaking than wholesale change. Got it. Thanks, Bruce, for that. That's it for me, guys. really appreciate it. Again, congrats. Thanks, Ovais. Our next question comes from Anita Soni of CIBC World Markets. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon, guys. I don't cover Sabina, and I'm just wanting to understand what the timeframe for startup for Goose has been. What's the current thinking on when it starts up and when construction starts? It's right now we have first production at the end of Q1, 2025. As I've noted in an earlier comment, is by moving working capital forward and bringing in the first bills earlier, we believe the opportunity is there to better that. You know, I won't guide into days or weeks or months, but it's somewhere between those two square brackets. Again, something that not given our high cost of capital, we certainly would have done. Given what our blended cost of capital is, it was a difficult decision for us to make, and I think much easier for B2 going forward. Okay. Q1 is the current, 2025 is current and hopefully a little bit better than that. Just in terms of the of moving to Fekola and sort of staggering the phase I versus phase II. If you have 2023 dedicated to, I guess, doing the phase I at Fekola, 2024, I guess, building out Goose, then you move back to phase II in 2025. Are you still okay for that 800,000 ounces by 2026 at Fekola? Should that timeline be pushed out a little? Intend to stay. Well, obviously, we need to look, yeah, we need to look at it close, but it doesn't necessarily work like that, Anita. As I said, imagine if this year they're gonna be doing some of the earthworks and some of the rebar and concrete work, you know, getting ready to erect steel next year. Those guys will be available in 2024. Let's say they do most of the work at Back River this year. I don't see why they couldn't then go to, as I said, -40 to +40 next year and be in Fekola and do the same thing. The Fekola mill, remember that that satellite mill is we're considering that quite a simple mill, you know, in comparison to Fekola. Okay. Lastly, I just wanted to ask in terms of the capital costs at Goose. Is that, I think there was something in the original commentary where you talked about the initial capital. Like, how confident are you that that's the number when I look at the technical report that was put out, I guess a year ago? Bill? Mike? Who do you want to answer that? Go ahead. Well, Bill, I think you. I think the question is to B2 to say, what do we think of the capital cost of... Yeah. Yeah. When we had a real good look at this and, you know, once again, kudos to Bruce for kind of holding down the cost. I think, and I'm speaking from memory now. I think his costs were in the CAD 640 range. Then what we did is we took some opportunity to bring some stuff from the underground forward, and we inflated a little bit. I think that the general consensus out there right now is that it's, you know, between CAD 750 and CAD 850. We think that's probably right. We're somewhere in the middle there. Bruce, you can share with them. Sure. Again, just to be clear on our $640 capital cost. If you look at the capital raising that we did last year, we raised $807 million. When you look at direct capital costs, you also have to add in bonding, capitalized interest during the pre-production period and working capital. Those with bringing forward some of these objectives that frankly, we were capital constrained about bringing the underground forward. I think that kind of, you know, we'll call it $800 plus or minus is something that is consistent with our technical report given where we are for inflation. One of the things I think we're very proud of is, as of today, we're about 35% complete spending and about, you know, close to 65% spent and committed. If we look at other projects that are in, frankly, much easier jurisdictions than we are in Back River, we've seen capital below with some 100%-150%. We haven't seen that. We've seen those cost pressures of 20%-25%, which, you know, I think is a testament to the pre-planning and preparation and the quality of the team we have. In an environment like this, it's pretty easy to say that, you know, with fuel prices and some of the other input changes that they've done a great job of holding it together. The biggest risk to these projects is civil works. That's when most of these projects fall apart. Well, the bulk of our civils are already completed, all of our site civils. We're in the midst of finishing or working on our primary pond, which is our largest civil work, which is a winter activity. Being able to hold your civils in an environment like this and in the climate that we work in, I think is just a testament to the amount of pre-planning that frankly is necessary for a northern project. Again, a big part of how B2 and their culture has worked to be able to bring projects on time and on delivery. With that, I think a shared culture of project delivery, and I think that's why one of the reasons that this is such a good fit between the two, groups. Yeah, no, that's very true. I've covered TMAC and Agnico, so I've seen a few northern project builds. Then I guess just the last question is, I think you're saying that, you know, with B2, you guys could accelerate the underground development. If I'm trying to basically take the feasibility study as a starting point, I should probably try to move up the underground first- Yeah, the way, guys, is in the feasibility, it shows us commencing collaring the underground, in about a year and a half from now. Yeah. We're already down at the first level, driving crosscut towards ore. We have already done that. Look, it's been a project that has been, we'll call it barely financed. We were able to get some of the early underground works done with flow-through as an exploration ramp. Once a construction decision was made, that wasn't available to us. I think being able to accelerate that in the work that we've done in the last year and a half, we're already well ahead and some of that capital is already sunk into bringing this forward. A lot of the questions that are out there, especially in underground, the additional risk, what are ground conditions like? What's your rate of advance? You know, is permafrost as you expected? We've been able to check all those boxes geotechnically and otherwise and give ourselves and also B2 confidence, that the underground is something that can be accelerated and is accretive and will add to the production profile. Last one. In terms of the caribou, just reminding me from the Agnico. Do you have any impacts with caribou migration in your area? We have caribou migrating across our winter ice road, you know, for the most part in the summer. None of our operating areas actually sit in summering or wintering grounds, which does impact several other projects. Generally where we get them coming through the Goose Site is during the summer migration, where they're moving, you know, up to 20 kilometers a day. You know, We have kind of a threshold of 20 family units within that. We, I don't think in the last several years have actually passed that threshold. You know, we've got a lot of Inuit that work for us and part of wildlife monitoring and otherwise. You know, we're off of the main migration routes that again offer summering and wintering grounds. That certainly has been a benefit to permitting this project and getting buy-in from the various Inuit groups that do have a vested impact in harvesting off the land. Okay, thank you. That's it for my questions. I'll pass along. Our next question comes from Harmen Puri of Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you, operator. Hi, team. Thank you for taking my questions. My first one's probably around sort of maybe the process that B2 sort of went through to get here. To the extent that this obviously can be answered. Were there any other development projects in Canada that were perhaps looked at? What sort of inclined you to Sabina versus maybe the other ones? We haven't been looking. We haven't had a really hard look at many other Canadian projects. This one, as you heard the history, you know, we've known and been talking to Bruce for a long time. We've always been quite attracted to it for the reasons we've discussed today, grade, size, where it is, all the things we discussed. We, you know, we've looked at lots of things in the last couple of years, I would say, knowing that we wanted to continue to grow beyond what our internal growth was. We haven't been a big push to say, you know, it's got to be Canadian project. We have the ability and the company clearly has demonstrated to do this internationally. This one we've known about for a long time and the timing was right. We didn't come close on anything other, any other Canadian deals, I can tell you. Okay. My second question, maybe my final question is just around. I think we touched upon a little of the dividend and sort of the capital spend that's sort of laid out for the next couple of years. I mean, we're at a flat dividend for the year. Am I thinking about it right when I think that it's probably best to go to, like, a formulaic approach to the dividend? When might be the time that we get some clarity on this? Right. I think what we've said historically is that we don't have a formulaic approach to the dividend. We set ourselves a dividend rate, which for the last two, two and a half years has been 4 cents US per share per quarter or 16 cents per share annualized. We set that rate on the basis that we want it to be industry-leading, so that gets us right up at the top of the gold company dividend yields for a start. Also the one that we could maintain, right? That we could weather changes in gold price if we chose to. Also we wanted to remind our investor group that as well as paying an industry-leading dividend, we wanted to leave sufficient funds to grow the company. That's where I think we are, and that's what I think we're saying here with this deal. Obviously, we're gonna add more shares and a higher dividend with the Sabina shareholders coming in. We would pay dividend at that rate, that $0.16 per share annualized. Also leave ourselves enough capital to fund the capitals required both to complete to fund the construction of Goose and also to maintain the expansion activities that we have going on in Mali. There's no set formula where we take free cash flow and say it's gonna be 50%. If you look back over the last couple of years, even in heavy investment years for us, you know, the dividend we've paid is a very significant percentage of free cash flow. It's because we had the funds available, and we're committed to paying that to our shareholders. There's no formula that it's a balance between growing the company and giving our shareholders a good return. Yeah. I think because of our fiscal responsibility and the way we funded Fekola, and we're able to pay that back so quickly because of the quality of the mine, and we've left ourselves in this goal and this objective for quite a while, which is reward the shareholders with a, with a very healthy dividend. At the same time, in listening to our shareholders, the mandate is to do what we've done so well for 15, 13 years and going back through the Bema days for a couple of decades before that, which is build through accretive acquisitions and combined with exploration success and quality construction, et cetera. We feel very well positioned to continue this. This fits right in, you know, to the plan. I do think it consistently shows the capability of our company to grow responsibly and accretively. I do think we're in the position now where we're starting to appeal to more generalist funds, not just people looking for gold equity investments in the sense that we run this like a real business. Not that many gold companies do. There are some others. At the end of the day, the dividend, the liquidity, the attractiveness of proven growth, the responsible mining, the ESG setting some pretty high standards. We think we check all the boxes for not only people looking to invest in gold equities, but actually looking to generalist funds, looking at us as a real business. That's great color. That's it for me. Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Farooq Hamed of Raymond James. Please go ahead. Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. Some of my questions have been answered, but maybe just gonna build on one from earlier in the call. Just regarding the potential to expand this operation or to optimize this operation, specifically as it relates to, you know, any potential expansion, would you need to amend the permitting in any way pre-startup to factor in an expansion? Is that expansion already part of the accepted permits? Well, our desire, of course, like all of our projects, and you see it in Fekola and Ochoa before, was the ability to always leave the to do things intelligently so you can expand at minimal cost, which is one of the objectives in the way we run this business. I'll let Bruce answer the specifics on that. When I joined Sabina, there was a feasibility that came out that it was 6,000 tons per day that included a production from a number of deposits that we've elected not to bring forward today. We use the basis of that feasibility for our permitting. We're actually permitted at Goose for 6,000 tons per day versus, you know, what our feasibility shows at 3,000 tons per day with an expansion to four. Again, for some of the analysts that maybe haven't covered us, is in our disclosure, you'll see that we made the decision that rather than building at 3,000 tons a day, and expanding to four at the end of the second year, we made that decision to build it at 4,000 tons a day. What's not in our feasibility study is the effects of that extra 1,000 tons a day for the first two years. If you look at our feasibility, when we start the plant, there's almost two years worth of broken feed sitting adjacent. The decision to build at three and moving to four was really based on tailings limitations. What we've done through some changes to design, scope, and additional test work, we've limited that tailings storage deficit, and we're able to move it at four. Look, there are some things I think analysts be able to take from, you know, the grade of that stockpile at worst, and at best, taking some of that grade, particularly from the intercepts that we've been drilling at V2, which, you know, our average drill hole intercept is 325 gram metres in the last several drill programs. Bringing some of that to the plant early, I think it's very easy to come to the conclusion that the production profile with capital will be far in advance of and exceeding what was defined in our feasibility study. Okay. Thanks for that. Maybe just to clarify, that feasibility study is based on 4,000 tons per day, if I'm not mistaken. What you're talking about is in addition to 4,000 tons per day, going up towards that 5,000 or 6,000 tons? No, the feasibility was based on our initial production of 3,000 tons per day, and at the end of the second year, expanding to 4,000. Rather than going through an expansion and tying that in, we took the additional capital hit, which were by the way, it was about $17 million that wasn't included in our feasibility estimate of building at a 4,000 tons a day as initial rather than building expanding. That two years has got an extra 1,000 tons per day that's not reflected in the feasibility. Oh, okay. Okay, thanks for that clarification. Maybe just to expand upon that, I mean, that gets you kind of, I guess, in your first five years, about 280,000 ounces, but life of mine is 223,000 ounces. You know, B2 was talking about, you know, potentially a operation that's north of 300,000 ounces per year. Was that within your permitted envelope? What would you think that would be needed from a capital perspective to get up to that higher production number? If you look at the first five years, we have a year over 300,000 ounces even where we sit today. I think bringing in that even that lower grade from stockpile, when it's tongue in cheek with lower grade, you know, that lower grade stockpile is still plus 6 grams. So bringing that in the first two years, we're already at plus 300,000 ounces a year if you look at stockpile plus plant. What the difference is that material that we've been encountering, and almost without miss in B2, where we've been seeing, you know, a pretty typical interception, intercept is, you know, 15 grams over 20 meters, to try and bring that out early. Look, I'm not under the illusion that you'll have 15-gram head grade. If you can bring that out at +10 grams, it's not within a stretch to be able to say the potential is there for 303,000 ounces-340,000 ounces a year. If you look at a lot of our inferred resources, in particular in Nuvuyuk and Llama Deep, there's almost 1 million ounces there that is close to 7 grams that hasn't been infilled to an M&I. All of those deposits are still open. If you look at our average conversion ratio between inferred to measured and indicated, we average almost 73%. I think one of the other statistics that considering our drilling costs in the north, which is amongst the highest of any in North America, we're close to $700 a meter. Are all in finding cost per ounce of gold, since between our last two resource updates, is sub CAD 25 per ounce. All of our top deposits being open, again, looking at this, and just the conversion of our inferred to M&I, at our historical conversion ratio, it's easy to say, "No, this is... this has got the potential to be 300,000 ounces life of mine. How long is the life of mine is an open-end question that I think that the more time that some of the people aren't familiar with this are, I think that it'd be very hard for them not to come to the same conclusion that Sabina and B2 have come to, that this is a long life asset that is certainly going to be world-class. Okay, thanks for that. Maybe just switch gears a little bit and talk about the financing. This project, you know, was financed with some of the deals that Sabina did, you know, specifically with Orion and then with Wheaton Precious. B2, I would imagine, has a lower cost of capital than the cost of capital for those deals. I'm just wondering from a B2 perspective, B2, do you have any options to change the financing or to maybe not move forward with the financing that's in place and use your own internal financing, which has a lower cost of capital? Yeah. Look, Mike answered that, be part of the attractiveness of looking at the project where it is today and the stage that today was we do have a lower cost of capital, clearly, and we can utilize that ultimately the benefit of the project. I can let Mike talk a little bit more about that or. Yeah. I think, you know, as Sabina's already announced, there's a stream in place that they've been drawing on that's out there and an offtake arrangement that was part of their financing package. From our perspective, you know, we've got cash flow from our existing operations that are generating cash flow right there. We've also got a revolver where, you know, it's kind of financing cost of summarize, you know, the floating rate plus 2%, 2.25%. Very attractive, I think, in terms of cost of capital. To the extent that, some of the other elements of Sabina financing haven't been drawn upon right now, it certainly would be our goal that we'd step in and use our capital to replace some of those more expensive forms of capital that are available to Sabina, so they were able to finance to get themselves to and get through construction. We can step in and supersede those with what we've got available. We. Okay. We built the items to that today and the stream into our projections into our model for the project and our modeling for financing. It's important to note that we would welcome a relationship with Wheaton Precious Metals and also look to discuss with the other parties that have financed Sabina to date, possibilities. As Mike said, we come at this from a financial firepower that of course sits in a guest list of everyone going forward to see how we can utilize that. No, absolutely. I just was wondering if you would be in a position to replace it or if that was a possibility as part of the agreement that were already signed. Thanks for that. The last question for me is, what is the B2 Canadian tax pools right now? Like, what's the size of the tax pool currently? We've got NOLs right now that are encumbered of somewhere around $200 million that we could utilize. We've obviously thought about those as we look at this deal. On an ongoing basis, you generate further Canadian losses that would be available as we go forward. That's sort of the quantum of where it's at right now. High-level guesstimate over the life of the project, say $300-$350 million. That's what I'd sort of throw in the mix for now. Okay. That's very helpful. Thanks very much. That's all for me. Thanks. Our next question comes from Geordie Mark of Haywood Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, morning, all. Congratulations on the transaction. Makes a lot of sense on both sides, so that's really good. Have to agree with the expansion coming forward into sort of moving to 4,000. Maybe an extension to some of the previous analyst questions in terms of structurally looking at the processing plant, it reminds me of what B2 did at Otjikoto in Sukola. When you look at 4,000 tons a day, is there a limitation to the plant design to go beyond 4,000 tons per day? Not looking at that now. Two, what aspects of drilling on the geology are looking to, you know, convert that inferred to M&I into a mine plan to bring forward production rates to meet 4,000 and potentially beyond that? Bill, I don't know if you or John wanna answer the first part of that question. The second part's over to Brian. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. John, I don't know how much time you've spent studying the engineering design factor on this and whether or not you think it's really expandable. Maybe Bruce would have what it would weigh in on it. It is a little bit... It's slightly different than what B2 normally does in our design. I don't know how expandable it is, easily. I would say that, look, any well-designed plant has got 20% of headroom in it. You know, we have learned from others that have juniors that have attempted to build mines in Nunavut, that there are certain areas that you can take risks, and there are certain areas that you can't. We believe that partnering, particularly with FLS, that we've designed a plant that's robust and has some flexibility in moving it. I think where some of the real opportunities are is if we look at grind, I think we are quite conservative on a 50-micron grind. There is test work out there, but that shows that there could be some optimization to 60 or 70 micron, and that it builds in additional headroom. Look, I wouldn't say we're hemmed in, but it's certainly not a 4,000-ton a day plant that could turn into 6,000 tons a day without significant capital. You know, second grinding lines, additional leach, you know, are once the infrastructure is in there and built, are certainly within the realm of reasonableness to be able to expand in the future. Obviously, that's a big. Yeah. -of what we'll be looking at going forward. Yeah. Clive. Clive, sorry. This is John. I think we should assume that it's 4,000 ton per day capacity for now. You said we should launch it or, John, can you say it again? I would say, I think we should just assume that the plant capacity is 4,000 tons per day for now. We really won't know what it's capable of until it's commissioned and started up. For sure. Yep. I'm stepping on time. Geordie, anything else? Potential, I guess you can announce a program soon going forward. Are you gonna focus on targets of depth or shallow targets to bring in grade? Well, you've already got grade, but lower strip, higher grade material to foster, you know, that expansion and accommodate 4,000 tons per day sort of production with a greater grade profile or look to extend out overall life of mine? Yeah. Hi, Geordie. It's Brian here. I think the plan is to really sit down with, you know, the Sabina geology team and our operations team, and there's a little bit of optimization that we'd like to look at. Clearly, there's some low-hanging fruit just below the established Sabina pits that we see that we could expand the actual open pit size that is very encouraging to us that wouldn't need, you know, infill drilling to bring that up to an underground indicated class. You know, there's six targets on that Goose property, and there's clearly some great targets down plunge. To drill those from surface, you're eating some pretty significant exploration funds there. To infill those. If we could do it, kind of like what we're doing at Fekola right now, you know, we're planning to go underground at Fekola to drill off that down plunge component. Same thing would happen at Bruce as well, that you could actually get underground and drill it off from underground, and it would be a lot more favorable from a cost perspective. There's gonna be a fair bit of diving down in the next few weeks on where the exploration dollar should be spent. Okay, thank you. If I may indulge in one more question there, and expanding on some other analyst conversations. In terms of, you know, meeting project scheduling between, you know, Fekola, Anaconda and I guess Back River. Is it gonna follow something along the lines of seem to remember being at Ojikoto, seeing the tailings dam completed there and the team then moving to Fekola for early earthworks, et cetera, before Ojikoto sort of stepped in? You have that sort of history of being able to deliver on different aspects of different projects at the same time. Is that kind of the thing you're looking at? Yeah, Geordie, I mean, you're basically hitting it right on the head. What we're talking about just how do you schedule your artisans, right? At the end of the day, do we have the bandwidth with this new team to manage it and to engineer it? I would say yes. Like I said, our initial take on the Sabina team is they're quite strong. You know, we're adding the bandwidth across the management side. The artisans, you know, Sabina's got a team already going on out there, and of course, we've got our team. It's just mixing and matching them and, you know, kind of mashing them up and making sure everybody's, you know, in the right place at the right time. I While it is, it's actually more fun than just doing one all by itself. It's not something that B2 hasn't done before, as you said. Okay, thank you. That's it for me. Thank you. Thanks, Geordie. This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Clive Johnson for any closing remarks. Okay. Well, thank you all. Bruce, thank you for your participation. I'm sure that more questions will come up as we go along, and we'll continue to keep you posted. Thank you for your interest. Have a good day. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.