Artemis Gold

Dale Andres, CEO and Director. Dale, welcome.

Thank you, and good afternoon. To start, I will be making forward-looking statements, and this is available on our website. We continue to execute well on our stage development plan for the Blackwater Mine. From an operating perspective, we’re on track for guidance this year, which is 265,000 to 290,000 ounces produced for around US$1,000 per ounce. And there’s lots of growth that we are driving, including with the Phase 1A expansion, which will increase operating throughput by 33% for next year, and a much bigger transformational expansion called Expanded Phase 2, which will see us operate at 21 million tons per annum by mid-2028, ramping up in the second half of the year and driving to be a 500,000-plus ounce producer as we ramp that EP2 up in the second half of 2028. We do have a robust capital return policy. We paid our initial dividend in September of this year, and we’re fully funded for the growth as well. So that’s the strategic rationale for investing in Artemis.

Last week, we announced a transaction to acquire all the outstanding shares of Vista Gold, which has the Mount Todd project in Northern Territory. This is a bolt-on acquisition for Artemis. It’s a US$427 million all-share transaction that we expect to close in the first quarter of 2027, so next year. And we feel we’re uniquely positioned as Artemis to advance Mount Todd with our experienced project team that has just done this and proven this capacity to take new gold mines through the development and operating phase with Blackwater, and a wealth of experience in other gold mines with the project delivery team, including Australian experience. So we’re looking forward to that as we move into 2027. Vista shareholders would own 5% of the combined company after closing. Our main focus continues to be on the stage development of Blackwater. And again, just a reminder, our board and management own 36% of Artemis on a fully diluted basis, so fully aligned with the rest of our shareholders.

Just taking a quick, closer look at Mount Todd. It is a feasibility stage project that is and has been fully permitted at the development scenario that we’re looking at, which is a 50,000 ton per day scenario. We’ll outline our development plans more after closing. But I would say that there’s very few jurisdictions that have the geological potential combined with good infrastructure, good regulatory framework, and good mining expertise to support their development, and Australia is one of those places. It’s a tier one jurisdiction, and again, a great exploration upside, timed very well with what we have underway with Blackwater, where we’re able to put our engineering, design, and construction expertise towards Mount Todd at the right time. Our focus is clearly Blackwater now, but this fits very well with our team and our development plans at Blackwater.

When we look at the pathway that we outlined to a million ounces, and we think this can be done as early as 2032, it’s both the stage development at Blackwater. As I said, we’re on track for guidance. We’re going to be processing 33% more material with our Phase 1A project, which is coming online next quarter, the full benefit of that in 2027. As we ramp up our EP2 project, which is a $1.44 billion spend that just kicked off major works at the beginning of August, we’re on track for that project on time, on budget, and being a plus 500,000 ounce producer by the second half of 2028.

We are already optimizing post EP2. Our goal is to drive our production rate up to 25 million ton per annum, and we’re currently doing engineering on that. It’s de-bottlenecking both the Phase 1A project and EP2, and we’ll be coming out with a new resource reserve mine plan, and hopefully an expanded, de-bottlenecked EP2 rate of up to 25 million ton per annum. Our target is to do that in the first quarter of next year. So we’re driving that growth internally at Blackwater. That remains our key focus.

Mount Todd, the previous feasibility studies, you’d have to go back to the 2024 feasibility study to look at what a potential 50,000 ton per day operation would look like. And that gives us this pathway to a million ounces. There’s nothing magic about being a million ounce producer. We think that it is a unique and rare opportunity. It happens to take us there, and this shows a pathway to achieving that. It’s more about the value we think we can add both at Blackwater and Mount Todd that drove us to make this transaction.

Just briefly, I mentioned we paid an inaugural dividend, five cents a share, earlier this month. Our capital allocation framework and shareholder return framework that we outlined earlier this year envisions that going to eight cents a quarter, so 32 cents a share, starting in 2027, aligned with the timing of delivery of our expanded 1A production. And that will be our base dividend rate, and then going to a variable rate as EP2 comes online in 2028 with a 40% of free cash flow return.

When we look at what makes Blackwater special, and just taking a deeper dive into Blackwater, we are blessed with a low strip ratio, cheap hydroelectric power in British Columbia and a downhill haul, which helps us be less exposed to higher fuel prices as well, and lower diesel consumption as a result of the downhill haul. We have a current mine life out to 2043 at EP2 rates, and as I mentioned, we are looking at coming up with a new resource and reserve, looking at extending that life at EP2 rates out towards 2050 by the first quarter of next year.

I’ll get into a bit more on our exploration in a second, but before that, on our mine operations, we are ramping up our mine to support EP2 rates. We’re bringing in additional shovel capacity and haulage fleet capacity. We recently commissioned a new tranche of delivery of that equipment. The pit looks great. It’s operating really well. We are seeing more low and medium-grade ore in the deposit than originally envisioned in the resource model. We are stockpiling that material. We currently have 24 million tons of low and medium-grade ore stockpiled next to the pit, and again, very well prepared both for 1A ramp up and to support mine feed for EP2.

As we look to the current performance of our mill, recoveries have obviously improved very much since the initial startup. And just a reminder, we declared commercial production in May of 2025, so we’ve been operating for about 17 months now, and recoveries through the process around 92% in the second quarter. So the operation continues to perform well. And I would say we’re continuing to drive and optimize performance in the mill.

We’re on track for our guidance for 2026. I mentioned that previously. I would say from a capital perspective, our current guidance has us spending growth capital of between 685 and 755 million. And as you can see, we’re back-end weighted, so the second half of this year, and that’s primarily associated with the EP2 spend. We just declared major works in August and are ramping up construction workforce and progress on that. So we should see a fairly large increase in the capital spending as we ramp up activities, aligned with guidance.

When we look at Phase 1A, again, I mentioned this is on track for completion in the fourth quarter of this year. We’ll be ramping up to an 8 million ton per annum processed rate. This is a C$120 million project. We were 57% complete at the end of Q2. We’re much more than that today. The new tanks have been erected. They’re fully hydro-tested, ready to go into service. We do have to tie in a new cyclone cluster in the fourth quarter, and that will split the feeds between our current ball mill and a new vertimill, which will get tied in in the fourth quarter as well. And that’s to the wet side of the circuit where the majority of the upgrades are happening. We’ve already de-bottlenecked our dry side, which is a three-stage crushing circuit, and that’s already been proven and ramped up to the 8 million ton per annum rate. So we’re in good shape to deliver this for 2027.

When we look a little bit closer at the much more transformational EP2 project, $1.44 billion spend for a 13 million ton per annum plant expansion. It’s a whole new processing train, will not interfere during the construction progress with our current operation. Again, very competitive and what I think is a low capital intensity per annual ton of throughput. And like I mentioned earlier, a 500,000 to 525,000 ounce production profile for the first full ten years, and we’ll be looking to extend that beyond with our additional resources and reserves that we’re updating. This will secure us as one of the top three gold mines in Canada.

We took a very, I think, prudent approach with an early works phase over the last seven or eight months. Early works really accomplishing four things. One, engineering, procurement. So all the long lead items for the EP2 project have been ordered. A third was earthworks, bulk earthworks, and those are nearing completion and went very well. So just eliminating all the geotechnical risk with the new plant. And then fourth was putting in all the camps required for the full construction workforce at peak, and those are in. So we just recently installed and commissioned a 714 bed construction camp.

Beyond early works, we did declare the start of major works at the start of August. We already poured the main raft pours for the SAG and ball mill. Pieces of the ball mill shell have already arrived on site. The SAG mill should be showing up on site towards the end of the first quarter, early second quarter of next year. So those are really taken off the critical path through our early works and early procurement approach. We’ve already started pouring the concrete for the ring beams for the CIL circuit. We’ve fully excavated for the primary crusher and should be pouring concrete for the vault there very shortly. Our internal goal is to pour 10,000 cubes of concrete before the end of this year, and by the end of the first quarter next year, we’ll have the mill building up and fully enclosed.

When we look at beyond EP2, as I mentioned, we’re looking at optimizing to 25 million ton per annum. And that’s really through debottlenecking. There will be some capital, but we think that’ll be very capital efficient, and we’ll basically be taking out the design contingencies in the EP2 build and looking at further optimizing the 1A build. We will incorporate both grade control drilling, which we do twelve months in advance of mining, and that’s with an RC rig and a very good QAQC program, our reconciliation work to date, additional drilling that we’ve done, and mine plan optimization and stockpile optimization into the new resource and reserve update at the end of the year that should come out in Q1. We’re looking at a bunch of other optimizations as well.

We are drilling the deposit at depth, and I’ll just go to the next slide here. This is a cross-section through the Blackwater deposit. You see the upper shell, which is our current reserve pit, which is done at a $1,400 gold price. The lower shell is our resource pit, a resource shell done at a $2,000 gold price. We have 156 million tons in that additional resource shell just going from a $1,400 to a $2,000 gold price without doing any additional drilling. And then we are drilling at depth. We’ve just mobilized our third diamond drill rig. We’re drilling 1,000-meter holes. We’ve released the first initial results from the first two drill holes, and we are finding very significant mineralization, both through the resource shell as we anticipated, but below that as well. Our current resource shell bottoms out in drilling. And we are doing a lot of regional exploration work and just ramping that up again. Regional exploration hasn’t been done on the property since 2012 or 2013. So stay tuned on upside for that.

Just from an ability to pay and fund EP2, we do have plans to fund that out of operating cash flow, including the ramp up with 1A, which comes online at the end of this year. We do have $179 million in cash at the end of the second quarter, a $700 million revolving credit facility that remains undrawn and available, although we don’t plan to use it. We did put in a put option protection insurance plan, you would call it, or at least I like to call it. It puts a floor on the gold price just to make sure, in a black swan event, if the price drops out, that we can afford and keep going on the EP2 build. And we’re well-positioned to finance EP2 no matter what happens.

Just a really quick look at our capital structure. Again, 36% owned by board and management and a very supportive registry that’s been with us for many years. And just to wrap up, and I’ll try and leave a couple minutes for questions, we’re executing well on our 2026 catalysts. We look forward, including with the Vista Gold transaction closing in the first quarter and progress on EP2, to further catalysts in 2027 and beyond. But things are going well and look forward to updating you and the market as we progress. So with that, I’ll leave it for questions.

I think we have time for maybe one question, if there’s one in the room. If not, I’ll just ask a quick one. As you think about Phase 1A expansion and the EP2 expansion, what milestones should investors be looking for over the next twelve months?

Yeah, I mentioned a few of them, but Phase 1A will both commission and fully ramp up for January, and getting the full benefit of Phase 1A throughout 2027. We’ll look to further optimize as soon as that’s up and running at 8 million ton per annum rate. And on EP2, it’s starting really, really well. But we’ll progress concrete, steel erection, and equipment installation throughout 2027. And our goal is to pour first gold by mid-2028 with EP2 and fully ramp up EP2 before the end of 2028.

Great. I think we’ll stop there. Dale, thank you very much. That was excellent.

Thank you. [audience applauding] Thanks.