AEM - Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (AEM) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-04-26 11:52:09 ET

Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (AEM)

Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call

April 26, 2024 08:30 A.M. ET

Company Participants

Ammar Al-Joundi - President and CEO

Carol Plummer - EVP, Operational Excellence

Jamie Porter - CFO

Dominique Girard - EVP and COO, Nunavut, Quebec, and Europe

Natasha Nella Vaz - EVP and COO, Ontario, Australia and Mexico

Guy Gosselin - EVP, Exploration

Conference Call Participants

Ralph Profiti - Eight Capital

Michael Parkin - National Bank Financial

Gregory Barnes - TD Securities

Anita Soni - CIBC World Markets

John Tumazos - John Tumazos Very Independent Research

Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank

Presentation

Operator

Good morning. My name is Ludi, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Agnico Eagle Q1 2024 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Thank you. Mr. Ammar Al-Joundi, you may begin your conference.

Ammar Al-Joundi

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I have the great pleasure, along with my colleagues to report on another strong quarter for Agnico Eagle. But before we get into that, I'd like to acknowledge that the reason we're having another strong quarter is because of all the hard work of all of our employees, our people at the rock face work every day, sometimes in tough conditions, our geologists who are away from their families, sometimes for weeks at a time, our engineers and professionals who do the studies, I want to thank all of you for delivering. Again, it makes our job easier here at corporate. We'll have a number of executives talking about a good quarter. But again, it's thanks to all of you. Please keep yourself safe, keep the community safe, and the environment safe.

Before we jump into the presentation, I'd ask you to turn your attention to the forward-looking notes. We will be talking about some expected good results going forward. But again, please take a look at the forward-looking notes and statements. And if I could ask operator if we could start, I see on Page 6, that's great. We're going to cover a lot this morning, but there's really three key takeaways. One, we've had a very good start to the year. Two, we continue to make excellent progress on some of our key value drivers and the catalysts that will really move this company forward over the next 12 to 36 months. And three, we've had some tremendous drill results that we are excited to share with you today.

On the strong start to the year, solid operating results, approximately 880,000 ounces of production, good cost control, reiterating guidance both production guidance and cost guidance. Those strong operating results, along with an excellent gold price, has delivered strong financial results, as you would expect. Jamie will review these, but some of the highlights include our second consecutive quarter of record operating margins and our second consecutive quarter of record free cash flow.

On the key projects and the value drivers, Detour to a million ounces. We said a couple of years ago that we thought Detour had the potential to get to a million ounces a year. The team has been working very hard on that since, systematically, professionally, and we're making good progress. And we remain on target to talk about this midyear. In fact, we expect at this point to have a technical session in June, followed by a site visit, at which point we will talk about the project parameters as we see them at this point, and we will talk about the next step. And we've talked, we've hinted about what that next step will be, and it will be likely an exploration ramp that will allow us to get into the ore body, take some bulk samples, confirm continuity, put in an exploration platform, and really the first step of what we think will be an exciting project. And clearly that exploration ramp will become an important part of a future production ramp. ...

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