Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to B2Gold Corporation's Goose Project Update conference call. 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, 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. Welcome everyone to our call today to discuss the update on the Goose construction and development and the revised budget. It's also a big week for us with news as we came out with news about reaching an agreement with the government of Mali. So since we're all together on the call, we'll go through Goose, and then we can also answer questions you have in terms of putting a little color on what we consider to be a very important development in Mali moving forward. We're not going to restate the news release here. It's quite a detailed news release. And the idea is to indicate, obviously, there's been an increase with this revised budget of about a 23% increase in the cost to complete construction and land development work to enable us to be on track for first gold production in the second quarter of 2025. Bill's going to give us a good update on construction. It's going very well. We'll talk about construction and land development. I think that, obviously, the numbers are a little higher than anyone would have liked. But I think the important thing to emphasize, Bill will give you some color, is what we're doing here in terms of what manner that we will start up. B2Gold and Bema have this history of bringing in mines and mills online that work really right away. And And with the industry standards, very low ramp-up, tied to full-scale production. That's really what we're intending to do here. And a lot of the driving force behind the 23% increase in cost is the mine development schedule. We actually are on schedule on the construction and could have met that, likely could have met that first quarter of 2025 original estimated date of first production. We pushed that back by three months, largely because of the mining piece needing to catch up, and Bill could talk about some of the reasons why. Unfortunately, we inherited some mining equipment that was junk. We had a lot of things to do and were placed to get to where we can meet this schedule. I think with that, I'll pass it over to Bill, and then we'll open it up for any and all of the analyst questions. Thank you. By the way, with me, I have Bill Lytle is on the phone from site, and we have Mike Cinnamond here, Michael McDonald, and Randall Chatwin, all here to answer any questions you have. Yeah. Thanks, Clive. Can you hear me all right? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So as Clive said, I'm going to give a little bit of color. If you remember how B2 normally does it, is we take a project, once it's got a feasibility study, and that's when we kind of inject ourselves. We look at everything that's been done. We spend some time turning it into a B2 project and then bringing our construction team in. This one was a little bit different in as much as they had already kind of ordered everything for that first sea lift season when we got involved with it. So we were kind of stuck with what was in the containers when we took over. And so we've spent the last year kind of going through that with a fine-toothed comb. And Clive is right. We certainly have turned it into a B2 project as far as the additional material that we put on site to make sure that we're successful when we start up. The commissioning team is already here on site. They've just arrived, so they're going through the manuals, creating the manuals, making sure that we have the appropriate consumables and critical spares, and putting all those lists together, and as Clive indicated, the construction schedule for the mill itself does remain on schedule. We'd always talked about really kind of having to, last year, we wanted to get the buildings put up so we could get weathered in for the winter, which happened. This summer, we wanted to pour all the concrete. We're at, for the outside concrete, in excess of 90% of what we need, with, we think, about 30 days left, so we don't see any issues there. We also have started running the electrical cables and everything. All the E-houses are basically up. And a lot of the internal steel's up. So we're at a very good phase as far as the mill. Talking about the seal ift for 2024, 2025, last time we talked, we were putting stuff together to get it on a boat. All of that made it to the boat on time. All of the boats—I think it was 11 boats—have all been filled and are on their way either already at Bathurst Inlet or soon to be there. So we've already offloaded four complete barges with cargo. We've got a big boat there right now offloading all the cement. The first two loads of fuel have already arrived. Remember, we've expanded our fuel capacity both at the MLA and at the Goose site in excess of 80 million L. So we are filling up all of the five tanks at the MLA right now. We anticipate all that will be done really by the end of this month. So by the end of September, all of the cargo will be offloaded at the MLA. And one of the things - I can't remember if we talked about it on the last call - but we talked about de-risking the project. And one of the key risks we saw in the project was really the way that the marine laydown area was designed and set up. So what we've done is we have expanded that, and that's some of our cost expansions. We put in a bigger camp there. We put in a desalination plant, a water treatment plant. We also brought in an additional 50 trucks and trailers, basically, to make sure that this next winter season, when we have in excess of 3,000 loads coming down the road, that we'll be able to do it in very short order. So that's double what we had there last year when we were so successful. So additionally, on site, we've spent a little bit of money extra bringing in on charter flights, bringing in materials which had been either redesigned or maybe not appropriately ordered by our predecessors. That now all of the piping is on site. We're in the process of bringing in all of the steel. That's all been designed to the B2Gold level of engineering. And so overall, we're looking really good as far as getting this project completed, in particular, the mill on time. The mine itself, Clive did indicate that we did struggle with the open pit area in particular, really related to running some of the CAT equipment that is certified for use in North America in extreme temperatures. They have rectified that. We are now running at full capacity. We don't see any issue really for getting the open pit ready for the tailings facility. The underground, in the previous design by our predecessor, they had talked about leaving a big chunk of the Crown Pillar, which was very high grade. We've included that in our mine plan. We're currently almost right at the face of the Crown Pillar. So we're going to start mining that out here shortly. We see that really as a high probability of success. We believe there's no problem there. We have opened up two headings underground. We've got the one vent raise in. We're almost through with our second vent raise. We think that'll be done by the end of the month, and so overall, things are going very well construction-wise. I'm not going to go into the details of the costs and where we had overs and unders simply because it's so well detailed on the press release, but I'll just tell you in big buckets, right? Obviously, we had that Q2 of 2025. That obviously carried some construction costs, but it also carried all of the operations costs for the mining and milling, which had to be brought into the budget now. We also had probably 1/3 of it was logistics, and that related to flying stuff in, which either was not ordered by our predecessor or was the wrong order, maybe poor quality, if not to be too candid. Then, of course, I already talked about it, some of what I would call de-risking with the project, which includes additional critical infrastructure like warehouse facilities, some civil equipment, and as I talked about, the equipment at the Marine Laydown Area. I think that's all I want to talk about on Goose. Maybe just quickly, I'm not going to give you a detailed update as soon as we just talked about the other projects. At Otjikoto, Masbate, Fekola, all three of those from an operational perspective are going very well. Everything remains within our released guidance at the end of Q2. So I guess, Clive, I don't know if there's anything else you'd like me to talk about. No, I think that's good, Bill. Yeah, I think with that, we'll, and obviously, many of you are going to be up on site with us not too long from now, actually, or a week, actually. So you'll get full opportunity there, full presentations, and you'll get a real opportunity to get on the site and see. I think it's pretty impressive how work construction is today and a full opportunity to get together and answer your questions on site as well. But I think with that, for now, I want to turn it over to questions on Goose, and as I said, we'll also answer some questions when we're done with Goose on anybody who wants more detail on Mali, and then I'll maybe give you a bit of a view of where I think we're heading with these two important developments this week. Thank you. And 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. And to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Our first question today will come from Wayne Lam of RBC. Please go ahead. Thanks, guys. Maybe just wondering, given some of the challenges you've encountered with the construction, you guys have obviously had some prior success building in cold weather environments. Would you just attribute some of the challenges at Back River more so to just figure out the logistics and maybe some changes in design? Or just wondering if there's certain lessons that can be applied as we think ahead to the upcoming operations. And maybe more specifically, if you might be able to provide some detail on how we should think about the mining unit costs given some of the things that you've seen as you've started getting through the development. Yeah. So the first part of the question, really, I think we've been very open that this one was a bit unique in the way that we've approached this one, simply because they'd already kind of designed and ordered a mill and kind of the infrastructure before we had a chance to look at it. So typically, our success has always been making sure on the front end that everything fits and everything works, double-checking, triple-checking. We didn't have the opportunity because a lot of the stuff was sitting in containers already on site. And so from an operational perspective, we don't see this any different than the successes we've had in Russia. I mean, at the end of the day, it is in a first tier-one jurisdiction. Canadians certainly know how to mine in the north, and we've got a very good crew here. So, I don't see really, as far as we go on, that we're going to have an issue putting it into operations. It was more of what we had inherited and, quite frankly, what we were told was here versus what was here when we got here. And then, yeah, I guess on the second part of the second part, I don't know, Clive, if you want to, or Mike, you want to talk to the cost as far as the operating costs. What I can tell you is, because we're still waiting on a resource model, we're still working on those numbers, but we don't see them kind of different than what we've seen before. Maybe I'll just give you a little from the corporate point of view, a little more color on. Good question, Wayne, about what's different this time and what have we learned from this experience. Well, as Bill talked about, the model, that being the B2Gold model, in many cases, was to acquire a project that had, obviously, the prior success of the feasibility study and then doing a deep dive into due diligence. And then if we decided it was going to create a deal, do the deal, and then redo a feasibility study to our standards and actually design the mill ourselves and all the other things we've done for years and 80 mines in a row, whatever it is. And that's one of the keys to success. So in this case, it was a tough scenario technically and corporately because we had a lot of time pressure. Obviously, the former owner was a single-asset company on a shoestring budget and looking at things like construction contracts, etc., things that we would never do and never have done because we had to build our own mine. So there was a real time crunch on this in the sense of we needed to get, frankly, we needed to get the deal closed before the previous owner drew down what we thought was a very, very challenging financing for this project, including private equity streams, off-take agreements, very low-priced prepayment of gold sales, lots of things that made an extraordinarily expensive financing. So if they drawn down that one dollar of that financing as they intended to do last June from private equity, we would have walked away from this project forever because of the cost of finance and what we saw the challenges being ahead. So very good day for the Sabina shareholders and a good result for them, I would say. But at the end of the day, so that's what makes it different. And it was the timing issue, and we believe in the accountability. The one thing I guess we might have done a little bit better, the benefit of hindsight, was recognize earlier on once the deal closed. You have to remember we weren't getting a lot of information before the deal actually closed. So once we figured things out and started to realize where we were, we might have responded a little more quickly to really make changes and make it a B2Gold project a little bit earlier. But it's a bit of hindsight there. But at the end of the day, I would say that's true. So we ended up in a situation where we were trying to figure out on the fly and trying to maintain the schedule to get going to gold production the first quarter of 2025, now the second quarter of 2025. So I do think it's a testament to the construction team and the operating team and the whole team here to be able to have actually picked up the pieces and driven on and beyond the schedule. And keeping costs while higher, there are some of the reasons we laid out in the news release today about what Bill talked about, the different buckets of where we are in terms of financing and what is higher and why it's higher. So from the corporate point of view, we view this as an excellent asset, good jurisdiction, long-term gold production, tremendous exploration upside. We're on top of it now, and we think it's going to be a great project for B2Gold as we go forward. Okay. Perfect. Thanks. And then just wondering, what's the level of stockpile being targeted ahead of startup? And given the increased development, has that budgeted stockpile level increased versus prior planning? Yeah. I don't have the numbers in front of me. It's something we can take offline maybe versus what was previous. I don't have the numbers, I'm sorry, in front of me. Okay, but would it be higher or about the same level as previously? Yeah. I would think it would be very similar to the previous levels. Okay. And then maybe just last one, you guys appear to be pretty well funded with the $700 million credit facility and having done the prepay last year. Just wondering, with the working capital build, should we expect most of that increase to be incurred in Q3 for the sea lift? And then between the added CapEx now and the potential settlements for the Mali resolution, are you guys thinking of any additional levers to pull to provide some increased flexibility, or are you pretty comfortable with how the balance sheet sits? I can certainly talk to the – if you look at where we were in the report at the end of Q2, our cash position and drawn line. So yeah, we're comfortable that we can manage whatever we need to do here with our existing capacity and what we have available. I think from a working capital point of view, yeah, there's some pretty significant additions I think will come through this year. You'll see a little bit next year, but you're right. This year, the sea lift is the major component of it for sure, and a lot of the build-up of working capital is due to the seasonal aspects of this project and the challenges of logistics and the idea that you've got to order stuff so long before you need it on site that there is a significant working capital required because of that. And of course, it is working capital. This is not part of the sunk construction cost or mine development cost. Okay. Perfect. Thanks for answering my questions. Thanks, Wayne. Our next question today will come from Don DeMarco of National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. And good morning, Clive and team. So really putting B2's best-in-class stamp on the asset, and we look forward to potential operational outperformance in years to come. But first question, so there's been CapEx increases approximately every six months, yet there's still a year left before commercial production. So do you feel that you're at a point where, or with the level of conservativeness in the recent update, where the risk of additional CapEx increases is mitigated? Bill, you want to talk to that, please? Yeah. From an operational perspective, absolutely. Remember, the stuff that we need really to build this site is either sitting at the marine laydown area or it's currently on site now. There will be some stuff, some additional stuff that we're flying in, which is in the budget as far as additional design items, which we had fabricated. But in general, everything that we need to build this site, we currently own, like I say, with the exception of some minor stuff that we're still getting designed. So I would say when we presented this to the board, we felt pretty good about the number where we're at. Obviously, if there's some force majeure issue, we can talk about it. But as it stands right now, we're feeling good about where we're at. Okay. Thanks. And Clive or Mike, do you expect to maintain continuity of the dividend in the home stretch of the build? Sorry? He's asking if you expect to maintain the dividend. Yeah. Well, we'll obviously review going forward, as we always do when we talk about dividend and talk about the quarter and talk about the future. So we'll look at all the various alternatives going forward and what we need in terms of funding. So right now, we're steady state. Okay. Thanks. And Bill, you mentioned with regard to the Crown Pillar, you're seeing high probability success. Is the Crown Pillar in your forecast for year one or for the first five years, full years? It is for the first five years, for sure. Okay. And then maybe just last question, just shifting to the settlement with the Mali government. Congratulations on that. And has the timeline for the repayment of the VAT credits been set yet, or what do you think that might look like, and when would it be finalized? Yeah. The timeline was one of the items that was built into the agreement. So we've got it spread out over five years starting in 2025 for the existing balances that were owed. And then obviously, there's also an agreed timeline for processing ongoing VAT just so that doesn't build up to significant levels again. That's all part of the agreement. Okay. Great to hear. That's all for me. Thank you. The next question today will come from Ovais Habib of Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Hi, Clive and team. Thanks for the update that you guys provided. Just a couple of questions from me. In terms of Goose and specifically Goose Underground, you guys were doing some confirmatory drilling into the underground to make sure that it's up to your standards. Any kind of update on that, and how has the drilling results been according to your expectations? Yeah, I would say that the drilling, talking to the exploration guys, they're very happy with the progress on the drilling, both in terms of some of the upgrading we wanted to do in terms of drilling, but also some of the step-out holes we've done to depth, etc. So I think there's a high degree of, fairly high degree of confidence in what the reserve resource is going very well, and we'll have that update out in March of next year with a full mine plan once we have that as well. So no, all reports from the exploration guys are going well. Some really sexy results as you would expect to get in a deposit of this nature, but it's going really well. Plus, we're getting more and more now, some more explorations, so testing the downplunge. And you know what these systems are like. They can go on for great depths, but also additional targets that have been identified over years but have never been drilled, surface targets at various levels or surface and underground targets, so we're starting to be able to and have been hitting some of those targets as well. We've had some excitement from the team up there, for sure. Thanks for the color on that, Clive, and looking forward to coming down to site next week. Just moving on to Fekola then and Fekola Regional specifically, just wanted to ask you just on the timelines specifically in terms of receiving the exploitation permit versus how well you are prepared for the 2025 guidance? And also, can additional work be done before you get the exploitation permit so basically we can remain on the 2025 guidance specifically for the regional stuff? I think I'll let Bill answer part of that or ask Bill to answer part of that in the sense of we're pretty much. I mean, from the point of view of what we have with the roads, etc., we're pretty much ready to go. Bill, can you talk to that, and then maybe Bill or someone else can talk to the timing of the permit now. Yeah. So absolutely. I think you remember, or I think you remember we got permission before all of this came to this. Audit occurred to actually put in all the infrastructure. So the roads are in, all of the regional structures are in, the workshop, the facilities for office and everything. We were just literally waiting on a permit. We had previously agreed with the government that we would complete the ESIA and we would complete the feasibility study. Those documents will be done this month. What we're talking about more than anything is something that they readily agreed upon the last time we talked to them was to really push through the putting all the licenses together and getting that done and getting an exploitation permit. We can't do anything more other than kind of pre-commissioning of the facility, but we're ready. And we're talking about a three-month pre-strip and then right into ore. So if the government holds their position, which we have every reason to believe that they will, we absolutely believe that we can hold our schedule in production for 2025. One of the comments that I'm hearing in the discussions with the government was the fact that the mutual interest and the mutual interest of obviously continuing to see Fekola be a successful operation, and a lot of that's under the 2012 Code as we've detailed in the news release, but also, they are very keen on seeing the expansion. They're looking for additional revenue for gold mining, and one of the quickest sources will be to get this permit, exploitation permit, and potentially, as we know, producing 100,000 oz per year from trucking the material down. The second source of revenue for gold will then for them to actually start getting some tax revenue from all the illegal gold mining, which is coming out of Mali, but that's a whole nother issue, but we have a lot of common interest in getting that trucking done as fast as possible. The government's made that very clear in our conversations. So we're looking for them to expedite that process, working closely with them. Perfect. Thanks for the color, guys. I'm going to take some more questions. Sorry, Ovais, just to add on, as we talked the other day, there is actually a specific date in the agreement that we've settled for the combination of the three permits, which Bill was talking about, that the new feasibility study ESIA that they've created. And that is actually by the end of this month. So those documents are being submitted by us now as far as the combination of the permits. That's the first step. And then they've agreed to move on the next step, which is the actual exploitation permit, as soon as reasonably possible thereafter. Thanks, Ovais. All right. Thanks. At this time, showing no questions in queue, I will turn the presentation back over to Clive Johnson. Okay. Thanks, operator. Just a maybe final thought about where we go from here. Two very important announcements this week, obviously, on Mali. And I just want to emphasize that Mali has been a good place to be in the gold mining industry for decades. You can talk about the Randgold success and Barrick and other companies that have been there and ourselves as a major player there, the second largest gold mine in the country and Fekola, and now the ability to expand it. Mali, when people talk about political risk, etc., Mali is a little bit misunderstood sometimes because it has been a government, as I said, that's actually been recognizing the importance of foreign investment in the gold mining space. And that's actually been a country that's honored the laws over years pertaining to mining codes and mining conventions, etc. This is an opportunity now to keep this alive. It's taken a long time to negotiate the details of this. But now is the opportunity to move forward. And yes, we're seeing some higher tax levels. We have some protection from Fekola, the Menankoto license, because of being under the 2012 Mining Code, and we're still under that code. But at the end of the day, we expect the government now is involved through this process, even though we've had some negotiations that have been intense at times. At the end of the day, trying to find that balance between making sure that all stakeholders can succeed in a mining operation. But all through this process, we've worked extremely well. Fekola has continued to work well. We've continued great relations with the government. This is not as if there's been a big falling out or a big problem. We've continued to mine every day. We've continued to be successful in the interest of all the stakeholders, including the government of Mali and the people of Mali, to start to see the value of Fekola mine. Just to make sure people realize that this is weaving in, this is an important step to understand going forward and get back to the business and continue to run for the expansion and working very closely again or continuing to work very closely with the government of Mali. In the bigger picture, I think this and getting out the new Goose numbers and looking at how well construction is going at Goose, this now puts us on a track to focus on growth. Growth with the expansion of Fekola, obviously growth coming with Goose, production in the middle of next year, around 310,000 oz a year annualized gold production. And then, of course, potentially down the road to Gramalote project, which has an extensive PEA, I guess, and a number of feasibilities done historically, now with a single owner being B2Gold, where we put out some encouraging news in the recent PEA about the economics of the project. We're getting quite keen on that. See what the feasibility study says in the middle of next year. So we have a great pipeline of growth if you look at the expansion of Fekola, bringing Goose on, and then ultimately potentially bringing on Gramalote for another 240,000 oz a year. These are ounces we own. We don't have to buy any of these ounces. This is a tremendous amount of total of potentially 650,000 oz of additional gold production from existing assets. So we're not going to be out there charging around doing any M&A, especially given our share price. We see this as a chance to get back in the market and show people that we're on top of what we're doing, on top of Goose. Let's get back to growing this company with all the assets that we have. That's the focus. That's the strategy going forward. Of course, exploration is a very important part of what we do at B2Gold, and historically, with great success, we're continuing the exploration programs throughout the company, throughout the assets of the company. It'd be important to note that one of the things that's happening in Mali. We had halted drilling while we waited for the exploitation permits on the regional. Now, with those permits coming, we're actually already starting now getting back to exploration drilling, both at Menankoto, but also at Fekola, but also to the regional. So an aggressive $10 million exploration budget there for the rest of the year to further assess the ultimate potential value of the regional. We have numerous discoveries there, as everyone knows, and numerous zones to be drilled and hopefully extended or new additional targets that we need to come. So that's how we see it. This has been a very challenging year, obviously, in many ways between Mali and between Goose, etc. We feel like we're now coming into a stage of. We always said this year would be a transition year 2024. We see a bright future now as we're moving along, as discussed with the various projects and assets that we have. I think with that, we'll leave it there. Thank you all very much for your time. And I think we'll see a lot of you next week, either at the Colorado Springs or on the trip up to Nunavut with Goose, which we're looking forward to. Thank you, and thank you, operator.