Eldorado Gold Corporation (NYSE:EGO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Joe Dick: Cosmos, where we sit today is that we did an update based on completion of award of contracts. And when that work is completed, we’ll update, should we see any type material information that needs to be passed along. So, that’s where we sit today is we’re not updating based on the commitment schedule. And as that completes through the end of the year, we’ll update based on any material changes that we may see. And if not, then I think we’ll hold where we’re at.

George Burns: Cosmos, let me just add a few comments to that. So, I just want to make it clear, when we said that in Q2, we’re not signaling that we expect anything to come out of that necessarily. It’s just — it’s an important milestone in the work. It will give us some updated information. So, in the feasibility study, we obviously made assumptions on productivity, numbers of employees required to do each piece of work. And so, once we get a contract negotiated, we’ve got improved information. And so, we’ll digest that. We’re not expecting anything to change, but if it does, that will be a time to bring the market up to speed. And I would remind you again that it was roughly half built when we started. We have the confidence in all that work that was done that was built into the feasibility study, and we’ve done quite a bit of work beginning last year, including putting up the building around the mill facility, the cranes and the work that you saw on-site that we’ve completed this year.

So, we’ve got a lot of confidence in our estimate. We have a lot of confidence in the work we’ve done. We don’t have any critical equipment that we have any concern about. The filters was really the last major piece of equipment that we needed to acquire. And the filters essentially are manufactured. So, we’re already working on plans to put those filters together on-site. That risk is essentially eliminated now. So, we remain confident. And again those things we pointed to in Q2 are going to be additional data, additional information. A little later than planned just due to these contracts slipping a little bit, but again, not affecting schedule. And maybe one last comment. On the civil works, we had originally contemplated that as four individual contracts.

We took time to digest all the bids that came in, put a lot of work into optimizing that piece of work and in fact that landed with one contractor and we’re seeing synergies out of that work. It’s a contractor we’ve got familiarity with as they’ve done work on the [indiscernible] the last couple of years. So, we’re taking our time to make sure we’ve got the right partner and the optimized execution strategy, and so far things have gone very well for us. So, I wouldn’t be concerned about a little bit of slippage in the spend or getting these contracts. It’s actually so far turned to be positive to take our time and get the best possible contract to ensure the best possible outcome on this project.

Cosmos Chiu: Maybe one last question, switching gears a little bit to Olympias. Very good quarter in Q3. And so, I guess going back, there has been a bit of not volatility, but a bit of difference in the quarters. Q1 was good, Q2 was not as good. Q3 now is good once again. Could we expect more stability, going forward, now that you’ve implemented say bulk emulsion, you’ve implemented — or the ventilation is now in place? Is the current level, what we can continue to expect in terms of production? Costs were fairly good as well, $1,319 an ounce in Q3. Is that a good level of cost or can we expect even better?