Eldorado Gold Corporation (NYSE:EGO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And we’ve got a very capable technical services group period head office. And so we do our own reviews overall the technical, and operating risks that you face in a mining business like ours. And so and I say one of the things that we do, we have an independent technical group. And these aren’t the engineers that design and kind of look over our operations, but an independent group that comes through periodically, and does an independent review. And so we have a lot of layers of protection to manage the critical risks that any mining operation face and so I feel like we’re in good shape here. And we stand ready to understand any key learnings that will come out of this strategy and deploy the appropriate reactions, if there are any pertinent to our business.

So no impact on our business today. Regulators, as you expect are taking a look at all the mines and we don’t expect any impact to our business.

Cosmos Chiu: Great. Thanks, George. That perfectly answers my questions and have a good weekend. That’s all I have.

George Burns: Thanks, Cosmos.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Tanya Jakusconek with Scotia Capital connect with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Tanya Jakusconek: Great. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for taking my question. Maybe just someone can help me on the progression of the year. First, I think Simon gave us some details on that, and then George [indiscernible] on the first half is going to be weaker. Q1 is going to be weaker at Efemçukuru. I understood. I think [indiscernible] is even. So can we just get an idea on Lamaque and Kışladag and then just overall, am I looking at that 48% in the first half to [indiscernible] in the second half? I know it’s an art not a science.

George Burns: Yes, thanks for that question, Tanya. Yes, I mean, at a high-level we’re softer in the first half with Kışladag just due to winter issues and impact the heap leach as you would expect. And then the bulk of the rest of the variability has to do with org [ph] rates. And I’ll see if Simon can provide you some details on.

Simon Hille: Thanks. Thanks, George. The — yes, so we typically have winning conditions, slightly slug conditions at Kışladag sort of in the first quarter. As we said, [indiscernible] (), generally fairly steady through the year, first quarter will be its lowest. We are back halfway there in terms of grades coming into [indiscernible] () with sort of a off quarter being at the higher end of our range that we said in the sort of 6.5 to 7 range where the first part of the year is in the 6 to 6.5 range. Does that help?

Tanya Jakusconek: Okay. Yes, it does help. I just — was just — thinking from an overall perspective, without having done all of these numbers, are we looking at that 48, 52? Or my not getting that right?

Simon Hille: Yes. Probably more like a, it’s probably up 45 in the first half, to 55 in the second half. Tanya, that’s what we’re probably seeing on a portfolio basis, if that helps to balance sheet. Yes, no, it’s just thank you for that fine. It’s just trying to get this right. Because as you know, divided by four isn’t how most of these mines are going through this year because of great variability and weather and other. So that’s very helpful. Thank you. My second question is maybe to George, I just wanted to understand you’ve got this to do with stories. You mentioned that, we’ve got these contracts to outstanding that are going to be finalized in Q2. So my question is, how comfortable are you updating the capital in Q1, when you haven’t really finalized these contracts until Q2, wondered why you did it now and not waited till these contracts with that.

Tanya Jakusconek: Yes, I just say we have really good confidence in estimating the contracts that that aren’t finalized, but we have all the bids in we’ve been having questions with the various contractors. And we do understand through all of the bids submitted so far that these trades, associated work is at a higher cost than we assumed in the FS. And I don’t know, I think part of that may be driven on there’s an uptick in work happening in Greece period. And so the availability people, the contractors are having to pay a bit higher rates than we assumed 3 years ago when we put this estimate together for that type of work. So — and our confidence is basically we’re through negotiations on a few of the contracts, and the remaining contracts, we’ve got good visibility from the bids, and we still have to finalize which contractor and [indiscernible] I cross the team, but we got good visibility of where we’re going to land.

Tanya Jakusconek: Okay. And those are the two major contractors and you’re 80%. You’ve already secured 80% of that span, right?

George Burns: Yes, we have, I mean, maybe just a little bit later. So the bids that we have that we’re basing this estimate our firm bids, we haven’t signed the contracts and necessarily awarded it, but that’s why we’re feeling confident these are firm bids.

Tanya Jakusconek: Okay. And maybe just to come back to Joe, and thank you for giving us the productivity numbers and for a layman, like myself that just I’m trying to understand that 1.35 going to close to 1.5. That’s an 11% increase. So should I be thinking that your productivity has declined by you’ve assumed a 10% decline in productivity in the numbers going forward? I’m just trying to understand how to use that information you provided me. That 10% is not unreasonable, Tanya, as George stated, for the overall project, it’s less than that because of the earthworks and early awards were more in line with feasibility assumptions, but the later work and the crafts are a bit lower productivity that we saw, but I think, generally we’re comfortable that execution within those productivities is quite reasonable.