AGNICO EAGLE MINES LTD Q3 2025 earnings call

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Agnico Eagle third quarter conference call. I'd like to remind everyone that we'll be making a number of forward-looking statements, so please keep that in mind and refer to the disclaimers at the beginning of this presentation. Once again, we are pleased to be sharing a good news story with you. In a nutshell, with record gold prices, with strong and, importantly, safe production, along with continued solid cost control, we are once again delighted to be reporting record financial results across all metrics. Our business is running well, and beyond the record financial results, we continue to invest in the best pipeline we've ever had, and we continue to invest in the most ambitious exploration program we've ever had, which continues to deliver exceptional results.

With almost 70 years of history behind us, we have never been stronger than we are now, and we have never had a better future than we have today. Before I turn this call over to my colleagues who will go through our business in more detail, I'd like to spend a few minutes to summarize the key takeaways.

1.

We're reporting record financial results driven by, of course, record gold prices, but coupled with strong and consistent operational performance, we delivered another exceptional quarter of strong production at 867,000 oz, putting us year-to-date at 77% of our full year guidance range. We sold that gold at an average price of $3,476 per oz, another record, and a full $20 per oz higher than the spot average in the quarter. Well done to the treasury team. At the same time, we continue to work hard to control costs, which means we continue to deliver benefits of these record gold prices to our owners through record margins. While our reported Q3 cash costs of $994 an oz are higher than the previous quarter, the majority of this cost increase is due to higher royalty costs, which are a direct result of the higher gold prices.

If we back out the impact of these higher royalties, which again are the direct result of higher gold prices, our Q3 cash costs would have been $933 an oz, well below the midpoint of our cost guidance range. Year-to-date our average cash costs are $943 an oz. Again, if we back out the impact of higher royalties, our year-to-date average cash costs would be $909 an oz, well below the bottom end of our cash cost guidance range for the year. All of this, the record gold prices, the solid production, the continued good cost control has led to another quarter of record financial results for our owners, record EBITDA, record adjusted net income, and record returns to our shareholders.

2.

We continue to strengthen the company, to strengthen the balance sheet, and to return record amounts of cash to our owners. We repaid $400 million of debt this quarter, we returned $350 million directly to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, and we increased our net cash position to $2.2 billion while at the same time receiving an upgrade in our credit rating. We continue to invest heavily in building the foundations of our future growth, advancing construction, development, and studies of our five key pipeline projects, and investing heavily in an exceptional exploration program. At Canadian Malartic, we are ahead of schedule on the underground development, ahead of schedule on the shaft, and progressing studies for Marban, Wasamac, and a potential second shaft. At Detour, the ramp portal is built. We have begun building the ramp to access the underground, and we continue to optimize the mill.

At Upper Beaver, I was there just on Monday. We are on budget, and we are ahead of schedule. The team is doing an exceptional job. At Hope Bay, we continue to get great drill results, and we are accelerating on-site activity. We've upgraded the port, we're upgrading the camp, we've emptied the mill building, we're progressing the Madrid ramp, and we have completed the box cut for a ramp at Patch 7. At San Nicolas, we continue to progress engineering on this high-grade, high-quality copper project in the best mining jurisdiction in Mexico. These projects cumulatively represent about 1.3 million-1.5 million oz of potential production, all from assets we already own in regions we've been operating for decades and in most cases leveraging off existing infrastructure in place. At the same time, we are investing more than we ever have by a wide margin in our exploration program.

As Guy will illustrate at the end of this call, we continue to get truly exceptional results that will position Agnico Eagle Mines Limited well for decades to come. These three key messages are consistent with our story last quarter and are consistent with our focus over the past couple of years. On this call, I've asked the team to spend some time on a fourth key message. I've asked the team to spend some time to talk about our continued focus on productivity. Dominique and Natasha will go through a few examples to convey the message that even with gold at $4,000 an oz, even with record financial results, our teams continue to be absolutely laser focused on improving productivity at every opportunity at every mine.

We are proud of our teams and how hard they continue to work to deliver not only great and consistent results, which by the way make my job a lot easier, but to also focus every day on pushing themselves to operate even better and even safer. With that introduction, I will now turn over the presentation to our CFO Jamie Porter to review our third quarter financial results.

Thank you Ammar and good morning everyone. Our operating teams delivered another excellent quarter with strong cost control, particularly on a per ton basis. By delivering on our production targets and managing costs, our investors continue to benefit from margin expansion. In a record gold price environment, a dramatically strengthened balance sheet and increased direct shareholder returns, we are in the strongest financial position in the company's history. The strong operational performance and cost control paired with higher gold prices to drive record financial results, including record revenue of $3.1 billion, record adjusted earnings of $1.1 billion or $2.16 per share, and record adjusted EBITDA of $2.1 billion. These are excellent financial results, delivering the leverage to higher gold prices you would expect at current spot gold prices. Key financial return metrics such as return on equity could be as high as 20% for the full 2025 year.

Gold production in the third quarter was approximately 867,000 oz, a total cash cost of $9.94 per oz and all-in sustaining cost of $13.73 per oz. We have achieved 77% of our full year production guidance to the end of September. Though we have budgeted lower gold production in the fourth quarter, we are confident in achieving the midpoint of our full year production guidance range of 3.4 million oz. We are benefiting from record gold prices. However, the higher gold prices do result in increased royalty expense. In the third quarter, cash costs were approximately $60 per oz higher than what we had budgeted, largely as a result of the increased royalty expense.

Despite this, I'm pleased to report that our cash costs remained within our guidance range on a year-to-date basis and we still expect to be at or near the top end of our cash cost guidance range of $9.65 per oz for the full year. Our teams have done an excellent job managing costs, the costs that are within our control and continue to work on ongoing optimization initiatives that Dominique and Natasha will talk about later in this presentation. All-in sustaining costs per oz were higher than the prior quarter, primarily due to the increase in cash costs and the timing of sustaining capital spending. We also expect to be close to the top end of our all-in sustaining cost guidance range of $1,300 per oz on a full year basis. Our all-in sustaining costs continue to be hundreds of dollars per ounce below those of our peers.

Again, this is the result of continued efforts by our teams to control costs and continuously improve while maximizing the cost synergies and benefits resulting from our regional strategy. We move on to the next slide. We had another strong quarter of free cash flow generation that directly and indirectly benefited our shareholders through direct shareholder returns to the dividend and share buyback and indirectly through the strengthening of our balance sheet. We generated $1.2 billion of free cash flow this quarter and added another $400 million through the sale of equity investments, which allowed us to continue to strengthen our balance sheet. Our net cash balance more than doubled in the third quarter, increasing to $2.2 billion. Given our strong financial position, we decided to redeem an additional $350 million of long-term debt in addition to the $50 million of debt that matured during the quarter.

Over the past 18 months, we have significantly delevered the balance sheet, reducing our gross debt in that period by over $1.6 billion. Reflecting this strength in credit profile and financial position, I'm also pleased to report that during the quarter Moody’s upgraded us from Baa1 to A3 with a stable outlook. We are again in the strongest financial position in the company's history, giving us the flexibility to take a balanced, disciplined approach to capital allocation. We move to the next slide. We continue to deliver record shareholder returns this quarter, totaling approximately $350 million in dividends and share buybacks and totaling $900 million on a year-to-date basis. This brings the cumulative shareholder returns in Agnico Eagle's history to over $5 billion, the majority of which has been returned over the last several years.

Our capital allocation strategy remains unchanged and we are well positioned in this gold price environment. We expect to continue to increase shareholder returns through increased share buyback activity and potentially through higher dividends. We also expect to continue strengthening our financial position and flexibility by increasing our net cash position. Given our profitability, we are expecting a significantly higher cash tax payment relating to the 2025 fiscal year in the first quarter of 2026. This is estimated at approximately $1.2 billion. We are allocating cash to fund that obligation. Lastly, and importantly, we will continue to reinvest in our business in order to bring our high return organic growth project. We have our five key value driver projects: Detour, underground, filling the mill at Canadian Malartic, Upper Beaver, Hope Bay, and San Nicolas, all of which generate solid returns at gold prices significantly below the current spot price.

At current spot prices, these projects have the potential to generate phenomenal returns. Detour, for example, once ramped up to 1 million oz of annual production, has the potential to generate over $2 billion of annual after-tax free cash flow at that mine alone. At these gold prices, we will continue looking for opportunities to accelerate reinvestment in the business to drive long-term shareholder value. At current gold prices, we're generating a lot of cash, but we will remain disciplined and continue to take a measured approach to capital allocation with a focus on increasing returns to our shareholders over the long term. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dom who will provide an overview of our Quebec, Nunavut, and Finland operations.

Thank you, Jamie, and good morning, everyone. Our Q3 results for Quebec, Nunavut, and Finland continue to show strong and consistent operational performance just as we saw in Q1 and Q2. We are on track to meet year-end guidance, and we're positioning ourselves on a good foundation for 2026. The production costs remain well controlled, and as shown in the bottom right table here, we are seeing record profit margin thanks to the gold price. I'm very happy of our team's leadership and mindset. Even with higher gold price, the focus remains on debottlenecking the operation and improved productivity. For example, this quarter we have three mills that beat records, quarterly records at Meadowbank, Meliadine, and Goldex.

For the next two slides, Ammar asked Natasha and myself to explain more and give example about what we're doing at the site and regional level to control our cost to manage our business. You will hear not about cutting, cutting, and cutting. What you're going to hear is going to be more about productivity improvement, integrating technology, leveraging skill set, and leveraging our people. The first example is going to be at Kittilä, led by the team that you could see here on that picture celebrating the 3 million oz pour. The second one is going to be about new technology implementation in Underground. Next slide, please. At Kittilä, following the new shaft commissioning and ramp-up, the team were struggling to meet their operational target at Underground.

From there, I need to recognize the leadership of Jani, Mikko, and Kyösti for taking action, leveraging learning from similar initiatives done at Meliadine in 2023 to drive meaningful change. In June 2024, they've launched an underground productivity improvement program. As at Meliadine, their approach was built on ownership, focused on what matters, and on problem solving. They work in collaboration with the employees. They did benchmarks to define what perfect shift could look like and to be more productive. At the end, what they did, they worked with the guys driving the equipment. As you could see there, a scoop, to find how they could help them to be more productive. Some example, like just being at the equipment faster than it was before, is an easy one. It's things that they kind of implemented to be more efficient. I will just show you some results of that.

If I take the two graphs on the bars on the left, the bottom one, you could see the tons mined per day improved by 13% year-over-year. The first nine months of 2024 compared to the first of 2025, 13% more tons moved or mined from underground. This is with the same equipment, same fleet, same people, more efficient that allow them also to do more by themselves and less relying on contractor, which helps to reduce the cost. On the cost side, if you take the top one on the left, you could see that euro per ton mine site cost decreased by 4%. This is despite inflation and higher royalty. Very good job to the Kittilä team. Thanks for that. Next slide. The second example is about implementing new technology of remote operations.

The gains we are doing with those remote operations are not just helping us to control our costs and manage the business. It is more than just the current operation performance. It is also unlocking future growth projects. Enabling future growth projects. All of our projects. If we could improve what we use into our studies in terms of tons moved, tons mined as well as we're going to see at Odyssey, if we could improve the ramp development speed. This is significant improvement. I will start with the example of LZ5 in 2016 where they've implemented the first LTE system in the world underground. Since that time they really, really did very good progress. You could see with the yellow here through the time we are now approximately over 20% of the tons are done through remote operation. This is the gain.

Where is the gain is there were some areas sometime that we were not operating the equipment because we need to be out of the mine for ventilation addition purpose, for example. The same skill set and the same thinking have been applied to a DC ramp. You could see the jump done in the year in 2023 when we started to do remote mucking and remote drilling at Odyssey. We've increased the productivity by 20% again, same people, same team, just using the technology. This is significant improvement how it works. You could see the people here sitting on the front of a screen in a seat which is the same as the one in a scoop. They are able to operate three to four equipment each. We're collaborating very closely with Sandvik at LZ5, with Epiroc at Odyssey to push those technologies to do more and more.

This is helping us to control our costs. This is also enabling future projects. It is also an aspect on the workforce. Natasha Vaz is going to talk about opportunities and action on the workforce. Those type of things are in the balance to help the workforce. We are in Quebec, approximately 5% of turnover, which is fantastic. Those type of initiatives are helping us to have better conditions for the workers. We're giving them great challenges to our professional. This is helping for the retention, this is helping for the recruitment, and this is helping for the stability of our operations. Next step, stay tuned. We're moving into the fleet management system. The blue that you see on the graph there, this is still conventional hauling. Now, to be better in that area, we're implementing fleet management system underground.

We're going to be in the first of the world to implement such a software advance like we're thinking about in the coming years. You're going to hear about that.

Next.

Slide moving to the project pipeline. As Ammar mentioned, both projects are on track and evolving very positively. As Guy will talk later, the drilling results keep adding value to the project. Very, very interesting. Canadian Malartic. In terms of shaft sinking, where we start? More conventional shaft sinking. In Q3 we did a record in terms of speed and we are about two months in advance of what we were planning initially when we updated the study in 2023. I would like also to highlight the construction team in Q3 did triple zero for 70,000 hours. What is triple zero is no lost time, no modified work, no medical aid and 70,000 hours. This is equivalent of one guy working in the construction for 30 years. Congratulations to the team. It's fantastic doing those type of achievements.

To close on Canadian Malartic, the study is progressing for division to 1 million oz with the second shaft. We're on track and the construction team keep delivering what's needed. For example, the administration building is going to be delivered in Q1. It's going to be a good thing for the team to be in better position at Hope Bay. Potential of 400,000 oz annual production from the good drilling. I see. I think it's going to be slightly more than that. Let's see where the study is going to end. In the meantime, the key thing is to advance engineering. We are currently around 25% achieved on the engineering and we are progressing between 3%-4% per month, which brings us to the 40%-50% we were looking before green lighting the project next year. Everything is in good position for that.

Also, the construction team are preparing the field to be able to do that heavy construction time. You could see here on the picture, there's two new wings. Both of them are approximately 133 people per wing. We're building capacity. We're going to have six of them ready to go for construction operation and keeping exploration on that. I will pass the microphone to Natasha.

Thanks Dominique and good morning everyone. I'll cover the operational highlights for Ontario, Mexico, and Australia. The regions delivered good safety, operating, and cost performance this quarter. Along with the higher gold price, this led to record operating margins at both Macassa and at Detour. At Detour, as we continue to stabilize the mill at the higher throughput, the team achieved another quarterly record mill throughput. The open pit mining rate in the quarter, however, was affected by slower progress around the historical underground workings. Grade is still expected to improve in the fourth quarter as we move into the higher grade domain in the pit. Over at Macassa, we had a really good quarter there too. The team continued to see some overperformance with higher than expected grades in localized areas. At Fosterville, production this quarter was on target following a very strong first half of the year.

In terms of business improvement, similar to what Dom discussed, the teams continue to push hard to optimize our business. There is a constant effort to keep all of our operations at a state of optimal performance. It's just part of their DNA. The optimization of the ore haulage system at Detour is a really good example of that. It's a good example of the many initiatives that are going on. It's a good example of how the team is looking at ways to sustainably lower costs and improve efficiency. This particular journey started 10 years ago with incremental slow enhancements made over time and significant progress made, as you can see from the utilization and payload improvements as noted on the graph. The team continues to look for ways of optimizing our unit costs by involving external experts to review their performance and help identify possible efficiency gains.

Similar to what Dom was talking about at Kittilä, not just as it relates to haul optimization, but really the entire mining cycle. Another hot topic, and Dom touched on this, is related to the skilled labor shortage that the entire industry faces. Labor is a large portion of our overall cost and our focus is to not just maintain our operational needs, but also secure the workforce to grow our business and at the same time manage the costs. We're taking a very proactive approach to workforce planning as we grow in Ontario by leveraging our regional strategy, by leveraging our competitive advantage, specifically when it comes to people. Our strategy to address the short and long term workforce needs is multi-layered. The first one is to ensure we continue to be a great place to work for our employees.

By continuously investing in our people, by continuously leveraging the culture that Agnico Eagle has built, we have increased the engagement levels of our teams. Macassa is a really great example of how powerful this combination can be. Since 2022, we have significantly increased production at Macassa and at the same time have significantly improved safety performance. They say that a safe mine is a productive mine. In our experience, it's also a highly engaged mine. In addition to that, we're investing in local workforce training. This quarter we started the Underground School of Mines for Macassa. Our plan is to, over a period of time, train local candidates to meet the increased demand for Macassa, for Upper Beaver, for Detour Underground.

While we remain focused on hiring First Nations and local employees, we're also seeing success in filling roles through our immigration program for skills that are generally hard to recruit for in Canada. I'm very proud of the team because even at these gold prices, like Ammar was saying, their foot is still on the gas. They continue to safely and responsibly make our mines more efficient and more productive and ultimately reduce our costs. Now moving to the next slide, I'll give you a quick update on the three projects for Ontario and Mexico. As you're aware, the Detour Underground project plays a big part in the plans for the complex to be a 1 million oz producer annually. It's still early days, but as Ammar mentioned, this quarter we commenced the exploration ramp and have advanced just over 250 m laterally.

We're also continuing with the infill and expansion drilling and continuing to see positive results. Guy will talk about that later on in the presentation. As for Upper Beaver, during the quarter, there's been a lot of progress made in a short period of time. We did have the pleasure of hosting our board and our senior management team this week at Upper Beaver, but also Macassa, and they were complimentary not just about the progress but also the strong teams that we have on the ground. I completely agree. In terms of the project, with respect to the shaft head frame, the structural steel and the cladding is completed, the winches have been roped up and the service hoist is ready for commissioning.

Shaft sinking is still expected to commence in the fall, fourth quarter, and over at the portal, the excavation of the exploration ramp began at the end of July and has advanced over 250 m. Finally, with respect to San Nicolas, we continue to engage with government authorities and our stakeholders related to the key permits that are needed. In the meantime, we're continuing to advance the engineering of some critical infrastructures, which will just help us further de-risk and build confidence in the execution strategy. All in all, good progress is being made on the projects, and I just wanted to end by thanking the operations team and the projects team for another solid quarter. With that, I'll pass it over to Guy.

Thank you, Natasha, and good morning, everyone. First of all, I would like to start by taking a moment to thank the team at all sites for another excellent quarter. Both safety and productivity and cost control went extremely well with in excess of 120 drill rigs in action. We've completed north of 370,000 m of drilling in the quarter, now exceeding a million meters year-to-date. That is ahead of our schedule by about 9% year-to-date in terms of meters, and our unit costs are approximately 8% below budget year-to-date. As a result of our strong involvement at controlling cost, our drilling excellence program continues to deliver. We're improving safety by introducing more mechanized features such as robotic arm technology to reduce weightlifting and repetitive motion.

We are ramping up our unattended drilling capacity that allows for drilling between shifts, which is very beneficial for our underground mining sites. Heading towards year end, we continue to focus on key value drivers, expanding a little bit the drill program on several sites such as Marban, Detour Underground, Hope Bay, and Canadian Malartic Odyssey, where we have good exploration results that continue to blaze the trail to support studies that will support studies to deliver on our vision of growth for these assets. From a result standpoint, I would like to comment on a few projects, starting on slide 15 with Canadian Malartic. We currently have 29 drill rigs in action at Malartic, both underground and on surface at Odyssey, in the extension of the deposit around the mine, including the recently acquired Marban project.

Once again, this quarter has seen some very exciting results in the upper eastern portion of East Gouldie. Same as elsewhere, 4.8 over 25 m at 800 m depth in the area we anticipate can get to millimeter reserve by year end. That could provide additional flexibility to accelerate ramp up of production in the upper portion of the East Gouldie deposit. Also, in the lower extension of the East Gouldie, with results up to 2.3 over 30 m, 2,000 meters below surface, which is also aligned with our decision to extend the depth of the first shaft down to 1,870 m, and the deposit remains open at depth and laterally. On the adjacent Marban project, we've so far completed 96 drills on the property for in excess of 30,000 m since the acquisition.

Since the drilling started in May following the acquisition, mostly to test the eastern extension of the deposit on ground that belonged to Agnico prior to the consolidation, the results have the potential to increase the ultimate pit design with results up to 3.3 over 11 m, 4.6 over 10 m, approximately 2,200 m east of the current open pit being considered now on Slide 16. At Detour, as mentioned by Natasha, the exploration ramp is now progressing well with just over 250, almost 260 m developed in the quarter, reaching a depth of 43 m below surface.

62 km of drilling were safely completed in the quarter with 9 drill rigs that continue to infill and extend the deposit from surface in areas that are targeted for the underground mine project, both below the saddle portion of the deposit with results up to 3 g over 40 m, 2.7 over 55 m, and to the west of the pit where the planned exploration ramp, with results pretty significant up to 7.4 over 27 m. The results so far should lead to growth in the underground mineral resources system at Eran. Based on these good results, we've added an additional 55,000 m of drilling in the fourth quarter, expecting to achieve almost 220,000 m by the end of the year. Now on Slide 17, as discussed by Dominique, again some very good results in exploration. We have six drill rigs in operation.

We've completed in excess of 100,000 m year-to-date, expecting to achieve north of 120,000 m by year end. We continue to see very strong results in the Patch event area. First of all, in the southern extension of Patch with results up to 6.7 over 10 m, 10.7 over 3.8 at shallow depth, 350 m below surface, showing that the deposit remains open to the south on the right-hand side of that graph. Two at depth in Patch Seven with very strong results up to 12.7 g over 9.3 m and 16.9 g over 4.6 m, both at around 880 m depth in the strong new discovery at Patch Seven that shows that the deposit remains open at depth and laterally. We anticipate that all of the good results we've seen at Top Bay this year will have a very positive impact on the mineral resources at DRM.

As mentioned by Dominique, all of that will be integrated in our potential project development scenario to be communicated in 2026. On Slide 16, I would like to add a little bit more color on Meadowbank. As you are aware, we're looking in a current gold price environment to look at opportunity to continue to operate Meadowbank. We've been since 2024 validating some option for west pit pushback in the IVR area, but also continue to de-risk the underground extension of the deposit that is known to be still open at depth. All of those good results that we are displaying will be integrated in our scenario analysis to evaluate the pushback scenario and eventually to continue to mine from underground only with mill operation at a lower throughput once the open pits are fully depleted.

Finally, at slide 19 at Fosterville, not mentioned in our press release because it came out right after the cutoff of our press release yesterday, we're pleased to announce that we've reached an agreement with S2 Resources to acquire their 39,000 hectares exploration license that surrounds our mining leases at Fosterville. This will consolidate in total more than 260,000 hectares stretching over more than 100 km along the break at Fosterville, to allow the continuation of the full investigation of those structures without any property boundary constraint. The transaction obviously is subject to the Victorian government approval, and the closing is expected to close within about two months. On that I will return the microphone to Ammar for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Guy. As you can see, we continue to work hard for all our stakeholders and we'll continue to build off the same foundational strategic pillars that have served us well over the past 68 years. We will focus on the best mining jurisdictions based on geologic potential and political stability. We will be disciplined with our owners' money, making investment decisions based on technical and regional knowledge, creating value through the drill bit and through smart, disciplined acquisitions when it makes sense. We are uniquely well positioned with a quality project pipeline, leveraging existing assets in the best regions in the world where we believe we have a strong competitive advantage.

We will continue to be focused on creating value on a per share basis and on being leaders in our industry in returning capital to shareholders as evidenced by over 42 years of consecutive dividend payments and increasing share buybacks. Finally, before we open up for questions, I'd like to comment briefly on the current exciting gold environment, both the gold price and the sector more broadly, including our recent investment in Perpetua. On the gold price, of course nobody has a crystal ball and nobody can predict near-term moves. It is very common that when a market moves up quickly, there is often a measured retracement and a period of consolidation before the next leg up. I think that is where we are on the gold price.

Long term, we remain very constructive on gold as all the factors that have pushed gold to outperform over the last 25 years remain in place and in many cases have become more prevalent. On the M&A front, while we do have the best organic growth in our history, while we continue to have great success in our exploration programs and while we feel absolutely no pressure to do anything, we will continue to look at opportunities to create more value for our owners through smart and disciplined opportunities. On the M&A side, our owners want us to look at these opportunities. Our owners expect us to look at these opportunities. It is frankly part of our job. Our investment in Perpetua is a good example of this. Perpetua is one of the largest, highest grade undeveloped open pit gold mines in the United States.

To paraphrase one of our senior exploration people, it is the most exciting U.S.-based gold exploration project she has seen in many, many years. Perpetua is also an investment in gold. Yes, there are valuable byproducts that will reduce cash costs, but that's a good thing. This is what we do. We focus on geologic potential and safe jurisdictions and we try to get in early to gain a knowledge advantage. Thank you again for joining us on this call. Operator, may I ask now that we open up the call for questions?