Conference Transcript - AEM 2026-02-23

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

We're now going to proceed with the Agnico Eagle session. Agnico Eagle is a major gold producer, Canada's largest mining company. It has operations in other top mining jurisdictions as well, Australia, Mexico, Finland. And happy to welcome Amar El-Jundi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Agnico Eagle. Thanks, Matt.

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

Well, good morning, everyone. And I'd like to start by thanking BMO and Matt and everybody who comes to this thing and has been before appreciates what a fantastic job they do. So thank you for that. So, you know, I'm down here from the coldest winter I think we've ever had in Canada and Toronto. I come to this beautiful weather. The gold price is above $5,000. I work, I think, for the best mining company in the world. I genuinely think I have the best job in Canada, but there is a sadness. There's a pall over this event, and we all know what that is, that Canada lost to the United States yesterday. Now, you can't be in this business without resilience, so I think before I start, maybe a quick applause to the 2030 Canada Men and Women's Gold Hockey Team, so let's start with that. so some forward-looking statements bear with me now I want to sort of spend only 15 minutes talking about the company and then some time with Matt to answer questions so I'm going to go through this quickly and what I want to do is really hit the highlights that I think are important for you but I'm going to start with this slide here and this slide talks it's an opportunity for me to say who is Agnico Eagle what do we do what's our strategy and what differentiates us. Now some of you have heard me say this before, some of you haven't, but it's been our strategy for the last 70 years so it's a good thing that you're hearing the same thing. I'll start by saying at Agnico Eagle we do not consider ourselves a global gold mining company. We consider ourselves a regional gold mining company. So what do I mean by that? Most of our peers consider themselves global gold mining companies. They'll go anywhere in the world to build a gold mine, and that kind of makes sense. There's nothing wrong with that strategy. There is a certain logic to say, if I'm going to be a big gold mining company or any kind of mining company, I need to be able to go anywhere in the world. And some people do it very well, and, you know, Newmont and Natasha, they do it as well as anybody in the world, and there's nothing wrong with that strategy, but that's not our strategy. Our strategy is we are regional miner. We will go anywhere in the world, but we will only go to regions that meet two very specific criteria. Again, since 1957. First criteria is, obviously, it has to have the geologic potential, but it has to have the geologic potential for multiple mines over multiple decades. And two, It has to have the political stability to allow you to operate multiple mines for multiple decades. Now, why is that? We think that going into regions that allow us to build multiple mines over multiple decades gives us a tangible competitive advantage in those regions and in business. If you think about it, or at least this is how we think about it, When you have 15,000 people in your company, what makes you better, minor, than the next person? I mean, everybody at that number, we're all kind of, I assume we're all equally smart, equally hardworking, equally ambitious. What really gives you an advantage? Like, honestly, if you're sitting across somebody at a dinner table, Amar, what is your advantage in the areas we operate? Well, I will tell you, in the areas we operate, where we've been operating for decades, Let's take a look at Canada. You know, in Canada, we produce more than half of all the gold produced in the country. You know, we've been in the, if I take a look at the Abitibi or Ontario, we've been there for decades. So what does that mean? It means we literally know, and I'm not exaggerating, we literally know every single junior in the areas we operate. What makes you a good miner? do you have better do you know the contractors better do you know the suppliers better do you know the first nations better do you know the permitting process better we have third generation third generation workers at our minds we don't have unions not that there's anything wrong with that and we have one third the turnover of our peers why because we've been the best employer for 50 years why wouldn't you work for us So we think that our regional approach, which is our strategy, makes sense for us because it gives us advantages in knowledge, in operation, in contract. Some of these suppliers, we help their grandparents start the business. And when things get rough, like during COVID, it wasn't just that the costs went up. It was, could you get the supplies? Could you get the people? And I'm telling you, in a situation where we've been their number one customer for 50-plus years, as tough as it was, we got the suppliers, we got the contractors. You know, we've been building a Malartic right through all of that. So does the strategy work? I think demonstrably it does. Now, take a look at the bottom right, if you can see the right of this chart. In the last 20 years, we've grown production by a factor of 14. That's good. That's great. Honestly, you shouldn't care about it. Our job is to make you money, and by definition, that means money per share. So while it's nice to talk about growth, and we've had more growth than anybody in 20 years, what you really care about is the next line. What has been our production growth per share? And this is something we're proud of. It's not easy to grow, but it's really hard to grow production per share. And in those 20 years, we've grown production per share by a factor of almost three. You know, we've grown EBITDA by a factor of almost 20 and our dividends up by a factor of 50.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

We've outperformed the S&P.

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

We've outperformed the XAU. And our compounded return over 20 years, it says 13% on the chart. It's actually 15%. 15% compounded return share price over 20 years. And I started with what differentiates our strategy because it's not an accident. I really, I mean, I've been in this business for almost 30 years. I really don't think it's an accident. And the next slide here is probably the one I'm the most proud of. I'm 61 years old. I'll be 62 this summer. Like I said, I've been doing this for almost 30 years. It is hard to grow production per share consistently and create value per share consistently. It's not easy, but we've done it for 20 years. Now, it's one thing to do it going from one mine to 10 mines, but as the second biggest gold producer in the world, producing 3.5 million ounces a year, what I'm really proud of is that I see a clean path to growing production per share for the next 10 years. So if you're a CEO like me, and I'm genuine when I say I have the best job in Canada, I am very proud personally to be able to say to our owners, Not only have we done this for 20 years, but there's a clean path to continuing to grow gold production per share over the next decade. That's not an easy thing to do, and that's really what I want to talk about. And it's really these projects at the bottom, but it's going to be even more than that. So let's start with Detour Lake. Detour Lake is the biggest gold mine in Canada. It's been around since the 1980s. In the last five years at Detour Lake, we've grown with all categories combined. We've grown from 20 million ounces to 43 million ounces while having mined 4 million ounces. A net increase of 27 million ounces in the largest mine in Canada that's already built, already has a workforce, has green electricity, we've grown 27 million ounces. This mine is going to go from about 700,000 ounces a year to over a million ounces a year, starting at around the early 2030s. And how is it going to do that? Very simply. We are going to go from all open pit at around 0.9 grams to open pit and underground. we're going to displace some of the 0.9 gram open pit with sort of two and a half gram underground and that will increase the gold throughput to over a million ounces. It's not that complicated. When I'm talking about this growth, this isn't a brand new mine in the middle of a mountain range in a country I've never been to. This is a mine we've been operating for a long time where we've added 27 million ounces in five years that's going to have a mine life, frankly, out past 2070. This is going to be one of the biggest mines in the world in the best jurisdiction at some of the best costs. And importantly, what you really care about, if my job is to make you money per share, it's not just the best cost, it's the best return on capital. Return on capital is, frankly, a fancy way of saying return per share. And because this is already built and we're leveraging off existing infrastructure, it's not just low cost, it's not just profitable, it's exceptional return on capital, and that's my job to do for you, our job to do for you. Let's take a look at Canadian Malartic, the second biggest gold mine in Canada. This mine is going to go from 550,000 ounces a year to over a million ounces a year, about a million and 50. Now that's, so how do you get there? Well, again, this mine, actually, this mine was discovered in 1923. So it's been around for 100 years. You know, we've been operating in the Abitibi for 70 years. We know this mine.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

This mine, in the last seven or eight years, Guy and his team have added 22 million ounces.

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

So think about this. The two biggest mines in Canada and the best jurisdictions added almost 50 million ounces in the last 10 years. This mine is going to grow from 550,000 ounces. Because the open pit is depleting. We have a 60,000 ton a day mill. And that 60,000 ton a day mill, instead of producing from 0.9 gram material in the open pit, It's going to go to a higher-grade underground, which is already being built. The ramp is ahead of schedule. The shaft is ahead of schedule. We're going to put in a second shaft, the same team that's building the first shaft. We're bringing in ore from Marban. We're bringing in ore from Wasimac. I don't have time to go through all the details, but if you add that all up, it's 1,050,000 ounces a year. That's going to come in in 2033, and ramp up beyond that. By the way, in the entire world right now, there's only maybe four or five million ounce a year producers. And only one of them is in the Western world, the Nevada gold mine between Beric and Newmont. They've done a good job there. So when these become million ounce producers, they will be two of only six in the world and two of three in the Western world. The others are in Uzbekistan, Indonesia, and Russia. And I'm running out of time, so I'll go quick. You know I like talking about our stuff. Upper Beaver is going to be 200,000 to 220,000 ounces. Anybody who's been to visit, I mean, it's already well underway, well under construction. It's in a camp. If you take a look at the map in the bottom, this is how we do things. It's not just the 220,000 ounces from Upper Beaver that's going to be there for decades, where we're ahead of schedule on the ramp, ahead of schedule on the shaft. Because we build our own shafts. We build our own ramps. It's also going to open up an entire region. I'll go quickly. Hope Bay, you know, we are a third of the economy in Nunavut, just one company, the entire economy, not just the mining economy. This will be the third mine that Dominic and his team have built in Nunavut. It is, we've only explored sort of 12 kilometers of two parallel 80-kilometer greenstone belts. We're going to announce a go-ahead in May. It's going to be between 400,000 and 450,000 ounces a year for decades. Again, the third mine we've already built, leveraging off existing infrastructure, best return on capital, best risk-adjusted return on capital. So we're going to continue to create value for our shareholders. We have a clear path to continue to do that for the next 10 years. We've publicly said we see production growth of between 20% and 30% over the next decade. I think it could be more than that, and I think it could be more than that on a per-share basis. But, and in the middle column, you can sort of see the individual stuff, and we're happy to send this to you if you want. But also on the left, I want to identify that we are not only doing the projects I talked about, but the projects we have we're expanding, and the projects on the right are other projects that we have that we are starting to look at that have very good economics at these prices, none of which are included, none of which are included in that production growth per share that I talked about. So I think we're in the best position we've ever been, and that's my presentation.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

So, Amar, in the last few years, Igniko's gone from generating under a billion dollars a year in free cash flow to generating well over a billion per quarter. And the company's close to $3 billion in net cash already, so no surprise there's a big market focus on capital allocation. Can you talk about how you're balancing the capital allocation priorities? So, you know, you've got the organic growth, the alternatives, giving it back to shareholders, buying assets, or just, you know, build it up on the balance sheet for future flexibility.

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

Well, thank you. And it's a good question. And, look, we're delighted to be making a lot of money for our owners. I'll start with something that's obvious but really is important, which, Matt, is it's not our money. It's our owner's money. we don't get paid to waste our owner's money we get paid to wisely invest our owner's money and I am telling you these projects that we're working on that we've been working on for three years they're the same projects we started when gold was $1800 and they made our 15% hurdle rate back then and that's why they're 30-60% now at these prices I think you can take some comfort that there's not 10 other projects that I'm talking about In other words, we are going with your money to invest it in things that give you a very good return on capital, and the truth is right now we're generating excess cash that we don't, you know, that frankly we shouldn't spend otherwise, and we're returning it to our owners. So our philosophy on capital allocation is simple. It starts with, it's your money. We're only going to invest in things that make sense. And as we're generating a lot more excess cash at these levels, we are going to return it to our owners and let them decide what they want to do with it.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

Okay. If we just dive in a bit more detail on the organic growth opportunities. So Canadian Malartic, evaluating the second shaft, targeting production 2033. What are the key technical evaluations that you're going through this year, and how does it affect timelines, economics? And there's a question in the app, when do we get a market update on those projects?

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

I mean, that's an excellent question. Our view has always been under-promise and over-deliver. So, frankly, we've been working on these already for three years. We've done a lot of work. When we announce Hope Bay, Dominic and his team will already have over 50% engineering done. A lot of times people go with projects with 20% of detailed engineering. We'll have over 50% of detailed engineering. I'm just using this as an example. We've already added camps. We've already emptied the old mill building. We're already upgrading. We've already upgraded the port, upgraded the airstrip. so Matt what I'm trying to say is we've done a lot of work already and what we're starting to do now is give a little bit more guidance as to where we are we're going to approve Hope Bay in May we're going to have a tour up there we're going to show people what we've got we will be announcing go ahead on these other projects as well but this is a tough business stuff always comes up There's always something you didn't think of, but I'm telling you we're pretty well advanced on all of these.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

And when you look at the future of the underground, do you think the economics favor expanding the underground over development of regional satellites?

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

Well, I mean, you know, it depends. I'll start by saying this. if I had two projects with the same return on capital, I will always go with an expansion rather than a greenfield just because it has less risk. With regards to underground versus satellites, it depends on the situation at hand. So, for example, if I take a look at both Detour and Malardic, in both cases, the underground are higher grade. So if I'm limited by mill capacity, and I can get the same volume from the underground, which is hard compared to open pit, then I would go with underground, but it depends on the specific circumstance.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

Okay, moving on to detour. So you've got the underground high-grade mineralized corridor. You've been growing it, and you're accelerating development. So what does the path to a million ounces look like there, and what do you need to see before you approve the underground project?

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

So, again, we're well advanced at detour, and before we give the final go-ahead, we want to take a bulk sample. That's just being extra careful. I mean, Guy and his team, I think he said there's been a million kilometers, a million kilometers of drilling over the last five years. We have a pretty good idea of what's there. We've already started the ramp. Once we take the bulk sample, which I think is going to be sometime next year, once that gets confirmed, then we give the final go-ahead to spend, you know, the money to do it. Now, the other thing I'll say about detour, and it's very early, very early, but if you have an ore body that's already going out to 2070 and you're continuing to find more gold at depth at sort of two grams and above, there is a concept to the next level of growth well beyond a million ounces, but it's too early to get into details. But, you know, the concept, it's really not that complicated to think about.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

Interesting, okay. Hope Bay, so it looks to be around 2 billion CapEx, 400,000 ounces a year. Do you feel like at this point project parameters are well in hand, or is there still some, you know, variance to CapEx or scale you're looking at as you go through the details?

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

It's really more we do want to do that last bit of engineering. I mean, we're already, you know, we've said we've tripled the budget from 100 million to 300 million. That's really to acquire material that we need to put on the barge. So we're, you know, obviously very serious about it, but we want to get to that level sort of of engineering, make the final decision, and then go ahead from there.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

Okay, question on cost inflation. At this stage of the gold cycle, I think, you know, that's one thing that people think about as a risk for the sector. Are you seeing any input, supply constraints? What's your view on the inflation picture?

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

You know, I would say there's two things on costs. There is actual inflation, and there's availability to get stuff. And what really will kill you isn't the 4% or 5% increase in the price of steel. What kills you is if you can't get the steel. and so a big advantage that we have is we've been getting the steel from the same supplier for 50 years you know we we you know the contractors were their biggest customer we have been for a long time so you know and Dominic our chief operating officer raised this point what you want to make sure is not just that you get people but that you get qualified people with experience so you are going to see capacity constraints in this business. We're not going to be immune from that, but I genuinely believe our regional strategy, which makes us the best employer, the best customer for 60 years, puts us in a stronger position than our peers in the regions we operate. So we've given guidance for next year. You know, the cost guidance is up a little over $100 an ounce. Two-thirds of that is because we've assumed higher royalties and we've assumed a weaker Canadian dollar. If you back that out, our cost increase is 4%, well below the sort of inflation rate of about 5% or 6%. So the team continues to really do an exceptional job. And that's part of the leverage we want to give our owners. You know, you buy gold stocks, you can just go out and buy gold. Why on earth would you buy a gold stock? Because by definition, a gold stock has more risk than gold. The only reason you want to buy a gold stock is if it gives you more leverage to gold. Now, we give you leverage two ways. We give you the standard way, which says if the price of gold goes up, we control our costs, which I think we do exceptionally well. But we also give you gold leverage by giving you more gold per share. That's what I was talking about. We've done it for 20 years, and we're going to do it for the next decade.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

There's another question in the app about M&A. You mentioned, you know, the areas you operate in. You know all the players. There's been a few M&A situations in your backyard that Ignico hasn't participated in. But you have been actively taking, you know, minority positions in juniors. Can you comment, like, how should we think about your M&A strategy moving forward?

Ammar Al-Joundi, CEO

we we've created most of the value through the drill bit so if you so when we do M&A it's typically not because somebody came to us and said hey here's your multiple here's their multiple let's look at the M&A deals we've done recently you know the merger with with Kirkland was really about solidifying a regional competitive advantage and a very strong view we had on detour. We know the guys at detour. We'd been up to detour maybe 15 times. You know, they used to ask us for advice. We had a very, very strong view on the underground potential. Take a look at Malartic when we acquired the Canadian assets of Yamana. You know, we paid full value for those. Nothing's cheap in this world, but we had a very strong view on the underground potential at Malartic. Now, is that because we're smarter? No, it's not because we're, it's because we've been there for 50 years. We literally know the people that we were, the JV partners there. You know, when you take a look at TMAC, we'd been up to TMAC five or six times. We knew the project. we knew the exploration potential in its come out. And so, you know, those two, you know, the M&A that gave us detour, the M&A that gave us in two stages Malartic, again, those two projects alone, 50 million ounces in the last 10 years of additional. So our M&A strategy is not based on growth. It's based on get to know what the upside is, because let's face it, nothing's cheap. You have to have a view on the upside. And again, I think our regional approach, which means we've known these projects for decades and been there a dozen times, look, we could make a mistake, but it's not because we haven't done our homework. Great. Thank you, Omar.

Matt, Analyst — Host / Moderator

Thank you, Matt.