AGNICO EAGLE MINES LTD Q2 2026 earnings call

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Agnico Eagle second quarter 2026 conference call. I'd like to remind everyone that we will be making a number of forward-looking statements. Please keep that in mind and refer to the disclaimers at the beginning of this presentation. Next slide, please. My colleagues and I are pleased to report another strong quarter with not only record free cash flow generated by our operations, but also record capital returns to our shareholders. Gold production of 856,000 ounces was, for the second consecutive quarter, above budget, with cash costs and all-in sustaining costs both within our guidance range. This is not a small accomplishment in a quarter where oil traded above $100 per barrel for much of the time.

As you'll hear on this call, the business is strong and we continue to move towards creating substantial additional value for our owners. This quarter, we're reporting solid operations, excellent progress on our growth pipeline, continued exceptional exploration results, all with yet another quarter of record financials. My team will go through all of this in more detail, but let me outline and summarize what I believe are the key messages that are important to take away from this call. The first key message is that we continue to work hard every day, not only to deliver what we promise, but also to continue to take every opportunity to improve our business, step by step, quarter by quarter. For example, this quarter, I'm pleased to highlight that at Macassa, we had record skipped tons, record mill throughput, and the first processing of our AK ore at LZ5.

At Detour, record total mine tons, and record daily mill throughput. At Meliadine, record mill throughput. At Kittilä, record mill throughput. Individually, these may seem like small accomplishments, but when we step back and when we look at the big picture collectively, this quarter, we've had record mill throughput at mines representing slightly more than half of our total production. In and of itself, record mill throughput at half our mines represents substantial continuous operational improvement. The real message we want to convey is that these improvements are an illustration of the culture and the dedication of our teams. A culture of commitment to always do the best they can and then to look to do even better, even when things are going well, even when gold prices are high, and even when we're delivering record financial returns to our owners.

I have to tell you sincerely, as a CEO, that makes me very proud. To be sure, mining is a challenging business and Agnico Eagle is not immune to these challenges. For example, on July 1st, we had a rock movement in the wall of our Barnat Pit. Of course, this was a disappointment, but I am proud of our team and importantly, of our systems and our processes, including the systems and processes we had in place to track potential wall movement that allowed us to move quickly to protect both our people and our equipment. The safety of our people remains the most important thing always.

I'm proud that within 24 hours of the event, we had a good understanding of its impact. We were able to communicate to our owners and to the market that we are still able to forecast 2026 production within our original guidance range of 3.3 million-3.5 million ounces, albeit toward the lower end of that range. Agnico Eagle is not immune to the challenges common to our businesses. We have a long and demonstrated history of managing these challenges well. We have a long and demonstrated history of recovering from these challenges quickly. The second key message I want to convey this morning is that we continue to aggressively reinvest in our business into projects that deliver exceptional returns at relatively lower risk. In many cases, we're well ahead of schedule.

We've announced the go-ahead of our Hope Bay mine. This will be a world-class, low-cost mine producing between 400,000-450,000 ounces a year that we expect to happen for decades. We had the opportunity to tour this project with our board a few days ago. While we're all impressed with the very real and substantial progress, I think what really stood out was the excitement of the team regarding the potential on these two 80-km greenstone belts. We really are just starting to scratch the surface of the potential at Hope Bay. Dom and Natasha will spend some time talking about continued progress in moving both Malartic and Detour to 1 million ounces of yearly production and moving forward on Upper Beaver, another high quality, low-cost, brand-new mine in our backyard.

Jani, who runs our Northern European business, will talk about our recent consolidation of what our team believes to be the most prospective exploration belt in the Nordic region. His team's plans to more than double that business to over 500,000 ounces of yearly production. We're making excellent and steady progress on our target of increasing production by up to 20%-30% over the next decade. That target was before the Finland land consolidation. We have the strongest pipeline in our history. We have the strongest pipeline in the business. There is more to come. We're only in the third or fourth inning here. We remain long-term bullish on gold. We remain heavily focused on steadily increasing gold production per share for years and for decades to come. The third key takeaway is, again, continued exceptional exploration results.

Exploration is the lifeblood of our business. Guy will spend some time going over some exciting holes that are both confirming and expanding our key mines and our organic growth projects. As Jamie, our CFO, likes to say, we're in a gold price environment where with strong operating performance and with good cost control, we're able to do it all. We're able to reinvest in our business to support the best organic growth in the industry. This quarter, we invested over $800 million in advancing key projects and in capitalized exploration. This quarter, we're able to opportunistically pursue strategic M&A opportunities that add value per share and that improve the quality of our business. This quarter, we consolidated the best land package in Northern Europe, including using almost $600 million in cash. We continue to strengthen the balance sheet.

In the second quarter, we added over $350 million of cash to reach a record $3.5 billion of cash on hand. All of this while delivering another record quarter of returns to our shareholders. In the second quarter, we delivered $625 million to our owners between our dividends and our $400 million of share repurchases. Second quarter of 2026 has been volatile. Volatile geopolitically, volatile economically, and certainly volatile gold prices. Even in this environment, our team was able to deliver the steady, reliable performance that Agnico Eagle is known for, delivering solid results across the business. Before I turn this call over to the rest of our team to talk about this in more detail, I need to spend a moment to talk about the very sad fatality we had since our last call.

Daniel Giroux, partner of Michelle and father of two teenage girls, tragically lost his life while on the job on May 1st. Every fatality is devastating, not only to the families involved but to all the people they've touched in their lives, including friends and colleagues here at Agnico Eagle. In the almost 70 years of operation from 1957 to today, we've had a total of 23 fatalities, and three of these have occurred in the last year. I will repeat what I said last quarter, fatalities, every single one is not acceptable. I want to assure all of you, and more importantly, I want to assure all of our people who come into work every day working hard for the company, that we are more focused on safety than ever before. Taking care of all of you remains our number one responsibility.

Again, with great emphasis, there is nothing more important than the safety of our people and of our communities. I'll now ask Jamie Porter, our CFO, to discuss our Q2 financial results.

Thank you, Ammar. This was another solid quarter for Agnico Eagle, reflecting our high-quality asset portfolio, solid operational execution, and continued leverage to the gold price. Strong operational performance and disciplined cost management, combined with a favorable gold price environment to drive record free cash flow of over $1.3 billion for the quarter. We also delivered excellent financial results, generating adjusted net income of approximately $1.5 billion or $3.07 per share, and adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2.7 billion. Gold production was ahead of plan at 856,000 ounces, reflecting a very strong finish to the second quarter. This outperformance was led by Detour Lake, Kittilä, and Fosterville, reflecting the benefits of continuous operational improvement at these sites. We are extremely proud of the work of our teams who remain focused on productivity initiatives, operational optimization, and disciplined cost control. These efforts translate into another quarter of solid cost performance.

Total cash costs were $1,054 per ounce, and all-in sustaining costs were $1,459 per ounce. Below our costs in the first quarter, below the midpoint of our guidance ranges, and hundreds of dollars below the industry average. This cost control is particularly impressive given the inflationary pressures we're seeing across the industry. Overall, our business continues to demonstrate the consistency and resilience that have long differentiated Agnico Eagle, allowing us to translate strong gold prices into record cash generation and record shareholder returns this quarter. If we turn to slide five, we remain in the strongest financial position in the company's history. Our strong balance sheet and record cash generation allows us to maintain a balanced and disciplined approach to capital allocation, creating value through shareholder returns, investment in future growth, and continued financial strength.

As Ammar mentioned that I like to say we are in a gold price environment where we are truly able to do it all. We generate approximately $3.5 billion of operating cash flow in the first half of the year. Approximately 30% of that was returned to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks, with a record $625 million of shareholder returns in the second quarter alone. Nearly 40% of the operating cash flow year-to-date was allocated to sustaining and growing our business through investments in our organic pipeline. We invested over $800 million in capital expenditures and capitalized exploration in the second quarter alone. Advancing our five key value driver projects will support long-term production growth of 20%-30% over the next decade. Another 15% of our cash flow was used to support our acquisitions in Finland.

Again, these acquisitions strengthen an already high-quality regional business and create additional opportunities to generate value from our established operating presence in the region, which Jani, our Vice President of Europe, will discuss later in the presentation. The remaining 15% of our operating cash flow was applied to continue strengthening our balance sheet. We're paying healthy returns to our owners while positioning the company for long-term first share value creation. Our balance sheet continues to grow stronger. At the end of the second quarter, our net cash position increased to approximately $3.3 billion, reinforcing our position of having one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector. This financial strength was recognized in April when Fitch Ratings upgraded Agnico Eagle's long-term issuer default rating from BBB+ to A-. Beginning of the year, we set a target of returning approximately 40% of free cash flow to shareholders.

Through the first half of the year, we've exceeded that objective, returning approximately 48% of free cash flow through dividends and share repurchases. Given our strong free cash flow generation in the current gold price environment, we see the potential to exceed our original target for the full year. During the quarter, we monetized a portion of our equity investment portfolio, creating additional flexibility to accelerate share repurchases. We continue to view buybacks as an attractive use of capital. Again, at current gold prices, we see the capacity to continue to buy back shares while investing in growth and maintaining a best-in-class balance sheet. Overall, we are exceptionally well positioned in the current gold price environment, with record cash flow supporting record shareholder returns, continued balance sheet strength, and ongoing investment in our industry-leading growth pipeline.

This balanced approach remains a key differentiator for Agnico Eagle and positions us well for long-term value creation. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dom.

Thank you, Jamie. Good morning, everyone. In my section, I will cover the highlights for Quebec, Nunavut, and Finland. Overall, the quarter ended in line with the plans, and great to continue to see all initiative ongoing to control cost. In Quebec, Canadian Malartic are facing more challenges, but thanks to the team led by Dan, Serge, and Justin for their management of those challenges and their dedication to it. Overall, Canadian Malartic finished the first half on target, unless they have some challenges. Concerning Barnat Pit wall, I will explain what are the next steps. First, all the rock that move from the wall, approximately 1 million tons, going to stay there. The first step is to build some safety berm to allow us to get back to mining in the Barnat Pit. Second is to build access.

We already built one along the south wall to get back to that mining area, but we still need to build some access inside that pit and also to finish the berms. The berms height will be between 15 and 25 m high to catch, if ever, there's other rock that's going to come from that located area. We're planning to do those mitigation in Q3, and we expect to resume mining in Q4. For Nunavut, the first half of the year production is also on plan. Good news, the spring migration is over and it went very well. To date, six of the 19 vessels are already received from our sealift. An interesting highlight, Ammar mentioned about it, but the mill at Meliadine achieved a quarterly record over 7,000 tons per day average during the quarter. The target was 6,500.

For Finland, Kittilä delivered an excellent quarter, both on production and cost. Thanks to the entire team for their outstanding accomplishment. It is especially timely as we are expanding our presence in Finland. It is a good timing to give them a bigger playground. Jani will provide more details shortly. On the optimization initiative, I would like to highlight the LZ5 team that keep improving the performances when we do autonomous trucking. During the fully automated shift, which are Friday, Saturday, Sunday night, when our employees better like to be at home, this is when we do automated trucking or mining. They managed to increase the productivity by 65% in the first half of the year, so 65 more ton ore by shift by the trucks.

They did that by improving the network communication, the software, but also a better technology using a scanner that could see or analyze in 3D instead of 2D. That reflect. In the past, we had to do actions or to stop the sequence 1,700 times per shift. Right now it's down to 700 and it keep improving. Good job, team. Next page. On the project pipeline at Malartic, we continue to advance our fill the mill vision to potentially grow the annual production towards 1 million ounces per year. Two important milestones. We completed the first phase of the shaft sinking three months ahead of schedule. The last bench was taken on July 9th, reaching approximately 1.6 km underground. Now we're moving to the hoist changeover to get back to the production mode.

That is starting in Q3, and we're still planning to start the commissioning of this production shaft in Q2 2027. Another important milestone, we extracted our two first stopes, while the second stope is still ongoing. The team is going through that typical learnings to that first mining. We will mine another four stope during the end of the year in 2026, and we're planning to mine 30 in 2027 and above 90 in 2028. You could see the ramp up and this is why we need the production shaft to take those tons at the top. At Hope Bay, we've reached our target of the detailed engineering, which was the trigger for us to give the green light for construction that we did in May.

I have the privilege to work with a great team led by Chris, led by Ishan, led by Marc-André, and also working well with the exploration guys, with Conrad and Ashley, that they work together to develop a very strong study. This is where we know we're going to deliver that project well. I'm really confident we're going to deliver that project safely, on time, and on cost. We had the privilege to also expose the project and our people, to the Board of Directors earlier this week. Still a lot of work to do, but we are in good position. Why I feel we're in good position, because today we are over 70% of the engineering completed.

The team that are building it, planning it, have already did Meliadine, Meadowbank, and Amaruq project in the Arctic, and we have more than 15 years of experience operating into the Arctic. One of the critical path of the project is the logistic, and currently we are ahead of the delivery at Bécancour, receiving the material, which is the port where the vessel are starting, and the first vessel is going to leave the port to Hope Bay on the next weekend, the coming weekend. Around August 10th it should be at Hope Bay. We are on target. We're going to have nine of those vessels going to Hope Bay. Also, as you could see in the picture, there's three new wings.

The camp is ready that we could ramp up the workforce, the construction schedule is from what we learned, where we're going to close the building before the winter and work internally. On top of that, right now we see a good quality of contractor from the construction site. We are poking more into the west. Half of the crew of the construction is now coming from the west. We really welcome those new resources and this is helping us to deliver that. Guy will give you more information what we see into the exploration. Hope Bay is a world-class deposit and in the end of a world-class team. Hope Bay will create value for decades to come for shareholders, employees and Nunavut community. On this, I will pass the mic to Jani that will talk about our Finland hub.

Thank you, Dominique, and good morning, everyone. I'm Jani Lösönen, Vice President, Europe, and I've been leading our European business over the last 10 years. Today I'll talk about our Finland platform and our growth plans in the region. As you know, Kittilä Mine is the largest gold mine in Europe and even after 17 years of operation, it still has substantial upside potential. Mine site exploration continues to deliver exciting results. The deposit remains open both along strike and at depth, and I'm confident that Kittilä can continue operating for another 20 years. The investment program including shaft, mill expansion and surface infrastructure investments, was completed in 2023. After that, we have focused on operational excellence, cost control and productivity. Our results are very positive and comparable.

Cost per ton, excluding royalty and mining tax in 2025 was lower than in 2024 and again, first half of 2026 unit costs are lower than first half of 2025. Maintaining a declining unit cost trend despite inflationary pressures and a deepening underground operation is not easy and is clear evidence that systematic productivity work makes a difference. One recent example of productivity gains in Q2 was all-time high mill throughput, which helped us to achieve all-time high revenue, operating margin and cash flow in the history of Kittilä. All in all, I think that Kittilä is in the strongest position it has ever been. We have an experienced management team that has worked for Agnico for years, gaining experience not just in mining, but also building strong relationships with local authorities communities and other key stakeholders.

Based on that experience, we believe we are in a good position to move forward with growth opportunities also outside of Kittilä. Over the last 10 years, Agnico has made several strategic investments in promising exploration and development companies in Finnish Lapland, gradually strengthening Agnico's strategic position in the region. In Q2, the time was right for a more significant consolidation transaction, which will solidify Agnico's position in Finland for decades to come. Based on years of work and thorough analysis, our conclusion was that the best potential for value creation can be achieved by acquiring three companies, Rupert Resources, Aurion Resources, and the Fingold joint venture. As a result of these transactions, Agnico gained a very strong position in the Lapland Greenstone Belt, which we believe is one of the most prospective areas for gold exploration.

In addition to a highly prospective land package covering approximately 2,500 sq km, a key component of this transaction is the Ikkari Project, which is the most significant gold discovery in Finland since the Kittilä mine. In June, after closing the transactions, we welcomed 44 new colleagues, and the integration work has started very well. The most important priority is that the field teams begin working seamlessly together while we also continue integrating business processes and systems. At Ikkari, consolidation transactions removed prior property boundary constraints, and we are now working on project optimization, including unconstrained open pit scenario. We expect the results of the optimization work will be available by the end of 2027. Preparation drilling to support surface infrastructure planning started in June. Exploration drilling will continue near the Ikkari deposit with three diamond drill rigs in August, increasing to five rigs by the end of the year.

In addition to the project optimization and exploration activities, we are also advancing work on environmental impact assessment and land use planning. Overall, we see great potential in Finland by optimizing Kittilä, advancing Ikkari, and unlocking the exploration upside across our 2,500 sq km land package. We are building a business with the potential to grow towards 500,000-ounce per year platform. Our team is excited for this opportunity and has the ability and experience to deliver on the vision. With that, I'll pass the call over to Natasha.

Good morning, everyone. I'll cover the operational highlights for Ontario, Australia, and Mexico. The regions delivered another strong quarter led by excellent performances at Detour, at Fosterville, at Pinos Altos, all of which exceeded the plan. The results reflected the operational and cost improvement efforts underway at each site, all aimed at extracting the full potential of our assets. All the initiatives that Dom and I speak about, they take time, they take effort, they take persistence by the sites to implement. Now we're seeing the benefits of that work with the records achieved this quarter. We just wanted to say thank you. Thank you to all our teams across the operations for their commitment in driving these results and for continuing to create long-term value for our shareholders. Now at Detour, we achieved another consecutive quarterly record in tons mined.

This is a result of the productivity initiatives started last year, which are now paying off. An example is increasing shovel utilization by increasing the amount of blasted material inventory that's available, also getting that higher shovel productivity by diligently improving on our loading practices. Detour also had a record in tons per day at the mill as a result of incremental improvements achieved now that the plant is operating at a stable state. Couple that with their lowest total medical aid frequency in the first half, it's made for a very strong first half for the site. Also at Detour, we continue to advance initiatives to improve our overall mine-to-mill performance. We have the newly created Integrated Operating Center, the IOC at Detour, aimed at improving the decision-making process by connecting the mine operations, the mill operations, the planning, and the maintenance.

Basically, the IOC is just an operational hub. The initiative here is to break down silos, to integrate people, to integrate processes and technology to enhance our safety, to enable quicker, better decisions, to help optimize performance from the mine to the mill. Over at Macassa, the mill delivered another quarter of record throughput, which was expected as the team continues to work on optimization efforts as we ramp up towards 2,000 tons per day by the end of the year. Fosterville also performed well. The commissioning of the primary fans underground in the quarter and significant step changes in development in the first half of this year marked important milestones for the operation. So far this year, we've seen a 14% increase in development rate year-over-year. This improvement reflects a number of productivity initiatives that started last year.

It includes improving the ventilation system, training, retraining our operators, enabling independent blast when we can. Together, these initiatives are increasing the development productivity, but it's also increasing our operational flexibility by opening up more mining areas and positioning Fosterville to sustain the higher throughput rate in the mill in the coming years. These are just a few examples of our ongoing focus on productivity and operational improvement. What's particularly encouraging is that many of our initiatives that I talked about today are still in their early stages, we see additional opportunity to further optimize and improve our overall mine and mill performance in the periods ahead. Moving to the next slide, I'll give you a quick update on the projects in Ontario and Mexico. I'll start with Detour and the site's progress towards becoming a 1 million ounce producer annually.

Of course, the Detour Underground Project plays a big part in this plan. We're still in the early days of the project, but we're making good progress and we're advancing on schedule. We continue to advance the exploration ramp and have achieved just over 1,000 m of development, reaching a depth of 180 m. We also continue to excavate the overburden for the conveyor portal near the mill, also progress on the camp expansion. As well, to complement the bulk sample that's planned, we continue to progress with the high intensity drill program in an area we're also considering to mine early, as early as 2028, Guy will speak to this program shortly. Over at Upper Beaver, progress on both the exploration ramp and shaft continued this quarter.

The ramp development, coupled with the lateral development, has advanced over 600 m in the quarter, reaching a depth of 165 m. Shaft sinking, which commenced in the fourth quarter of last year, it reached a depth of 470 m, and the high intensity drill program that focused, in Upper Beaver between the 500 m and 600 m depth, was also completed during the quarter ahead of schedule, and we now have an improved understanding of the mineralized zones in this area. Following these results, we're now evaluating the potential for an expanded exploration program by extending the shaft to support infill drilling and possible mineral resource expansion at depth. Finally, over to San Nicolás. We are very happy to share that we reached an important milestone. The joint venture received the approval for both the change of land use and the environmental impact assessment permits.

Now this allows the joint venture to advance on supplementary permits needed before construction can commence. As part of that, the JV, of course, will take into account the terms within the MIA approval. In parallel, the JV will also continue to advance detailed engineering and work on critical infrastructure to reduce the execution risk and better refine our capital cost estimate. The team will also work to accelerate construction and operational readiness activities to position the project for a potential sanction decision. Overall, we continue to make really good progress across our projects this quarter, and we remain really excited about the significant exploration upside emerging across our portfolio. With that, I'll turn the call over to Guy.

Thank you, Natasha, and good morning, everyone. We had another very strong quarter in terms of exploration drilling, safely completing almost 400 km of diamond drilling for a year-to-date total of 760,000 m, having 126 drill rig in operation on mine sites in our key value driver project. Well on our way to achieve our ambitious budget of 1.4 million m for the year, aiming to replace and grow our global mineral reserve and resources per share at the end of the year, as we have been doing for the last several year in a row. Diving now into some specific project on slide 11.

In Malartic, 21 rig are in operation, completing almost 61 km of drilling in the second quarter and close to 140 km year-to-date from underground drill platform, as well as surface drilling into the extension of the East Gouldie deposit, some regional target around Canadian Malartic and the adjacent Marban Project. We continue to get strong exploration result in the East Gouldie, both at depth with 3.8 g over 19.2 m in hole 354 at 1,950 m below surface in the lower portion of the deposit, and the upper eastern portion of the East Gouldie as well in drill hole 62 with 5.1 gram over 14.3 m at 915 m depth from Level 75.

To the north, in the Odyssey Internal Zone, we continue to get very exciting results in a structure known as the Artemis Zone in hole 13, drilled from underground at Level 57, with multiple intercepts reported, with the most significant returning 13.7 g over 14.6 m core length at around 1,000 m below surface, supporting our view of additional exploration upside from the internal zone at Odyssey, close to the mine infrastructure as we continue to add drilling from underground. On the adjacent project at Marban, four drill rigs completed 100 drill holes year-to-date, continuing condemnation and some exploration drilling to confirm the potential location of the surface and structure related to the project. On slide 12, at Detour Lake, nine drill rigs completed close to 53 km of drilling in the second quarter for a year-to-date total of 92 km of drilling.

Drilling was dedicated to advancing the high-intensity drilling program in Domain 54 and close to the exploration ramp and continuing the resources expansion towards the west at depth. In Domain 54, close to the exploration ramp west of the open pit, the high-intensity drilling is aiming to confirm the geological resources model by reducing the drill spacing to 20 m. Some strong results were reported, such as 2.5 g over 62 m, including 15.2 over 5.9 in drill hole 1134A at 275-m depth. While in the exploration in the western extension of the deposit towards the current extreme west of the orebody, drill hole 1290 returned 20.8 g over 4.8 m at around 840-m depth, with a deposit that remains open towards the west and at depth.

Finally, at Hope Bay on slide 13, we've drilled close to 37 km of core in the second quarter, with six drill rigs for a year-to-date total of close to 70 km, ahead of our budget and well on our way to complete and exceed our 110 km of drilling budgeted at Hope Bay for 2026. We were on site earlier this week, as mentioned by Ammar and Dominique with the board, it was exciting to see some passionate people and the large number of exploration targets that are being developed on the entire belt, supporting our view of major long-term potential for this belt.

Resources to reserve conversion in Hope Bay and exploration drilling in the Patch 7 area continue to be the priority with, again, some very exciting results, such as in drill hole 478A, that those of you that were on site around the project announcement in May got to see on the table at the core shack. We got the results, we got 28.8 g over 21-m core length in that drill hole, including when considering capping an estimated true width, it's about 15.2 g over 15.6 m. It shows how spectacular locally the grade could be. It's quite significant to see those multiple double-digit grade and double-digit meter widths in that Patch 7 area. I'm also pleased to report that we have remobilized two drill rigs at the Boston Deposit and have reopened the camp with the aim to complete 7,000 m this year.

All of the drill holes so far that we have seen visually report strong visual mineralization, with assays expected to be available in the third quarter news release in October. Stay tuned for some more good news coming out of the exploration at Hope Bay. Before passing it back to Ammar, I would like to comment as well on the Finland consolidation. I shared Jani's excitement and the team enthusiasm around the acquisition. We're starting to ramp up activity with some condemnation drilling already underway and expected to have up to five drill rig by the end of the year to initiate the investigation of the extension of the known ore body, as well as the numerous exploration target on the large land positions.

I would also like to take the opportunity to welcome our new colleague from Rupert and Aurion Resources, who have joined the Agnico Eagle team in our quest to test the full potential of this underexplored geological belt that we consider to be the most prospective belt in Northern Europe. On that, I will return the microphone to Ammar.

Thank you, Guy. Very exciting stuff as always. Well done. Thank you to the rest of the team and to all of our people for delivering another strong quarter. As you can see, we continue to work hard for all of our stakeholders, and we'll continue to build off the same foundational pillars that have defined our strategy and have served us well for almost 70 years. We'll focus on the best mining jurisdictions based on geologic potential and political stability. We'll be disciplined with our owners' money, making investment decisions based on technical and regional knowledge, creating value through the drill bit, and through smart acquisitions where and when it makes sense. We are uniquely well-positioned with a high-quality project pipeline, leveraging existing assets in the best regions in the world where we believe we have a competitive advantage.

Importantly, we will continue to be focused on creating value on a per share basis and on being leaders in our industry and returning capital to shareholders, as evidenced by over 43 years of consecutive dividend payments and increasing share buybacks. We have a clear and executable strategy to create additional value per share for our owners well into the foreseeable future, with manageable risk, leveraging off existing infrastructure and regional competitive advantages. We have the assets, we have the projects, we have the resources, and we have the people. We are making it happen right now. We will stay focused, and we will not be distracted. Thank you again for joining us on this call and for many of you, thank you for decades of trust and support. We'll always work hard to maintain that trust, and we will never take it for granted.

Operator, may I now ask that we open up the call for questions?