Thank you for standing. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Equinox Gold Second Quarter 2024 Results and Corporate Update. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rhylin Bailie, Vice President, Investor Relations for Equinox Gold. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Galene, and thanks to everyone for joining us today for our Q2 call. Peter and I are currently in beautiful Princeton, BC, as we begin our journey to Greenstone. This ride is from Vancouver to our new mine in Geraldton, Ontario, to celebrate the mine opening and raise funds for the Geraldton District Hospital, which serves the Greenstone Mine workforce, five indigenous communities, and a nearly 3000 square kilometer area in Northern Ontario. So far, everything is going really well and it’s incredibly exciting. We have participants from our mine sites in Brazil, the States, and Mexico who have come to Canada to take part in the ride, and we are making our way across the country to support the hospital. We've raised nearly $1.2 million to date, thanks to the generosity of our vendors and industry sponsors. Additionally, we are collecting funds for four schools and a hospital in Brazil, as well as for the Alzheimer's Association of California. For more information, you can visit the Ride to Greenstone website or the Equinox Gold website, and we encourage you to follow our cyclists' progress across the country. Now, we will move on to the conference call. Please note that we will be making several forward-looking statements today, and you can learn more about the Company by visiting our website, SEDAR, and EDGAR. I will now turn the call over to our president and CEO, Greg Smith.

Thanks Rhylin. Good morning and thanks everyone for joining the call today. On the line with me is our COO, Doug Reddy; our CFO, Peter Hardie; and our EVP of Exploration, Scott Heffernan, and of course our VP of Investor Relations, who you just heard from, Rhylin Bailie. Today we are discussing Equinox Gold's 2024 second quarter financial and operating results. I'll start with a broad overview of the quarter, and then I'll turn over the call to Pete and Doug for more details. I'm going to start with safety. We did unfortunately have a fatality at our Fazenda mine in Brazil in June. This was a tragedy for all of us at Equinox and we extend our deepest sympathies to our employees and also the family, friends and coworkers. We did have a site-wide suspension of operations at Fazenda in June to facilitate both the investigation and also to refresh our site safety training. On the environment side, we did have no significant environmental incidents during the second quarter. And as previously reported, we published our fiscal 2023 ESG report in May during the quarter, and you can find the report on the Equinox Gold website. Before the quarter, we produced just over 122,000 ounces of gold and sold just over 115,000 ounces at cash cost per ounce sold of 1,747 and an all-in sustaining cost per ounce sold of $2,041 per ounce. For the first six months of the year, we produced approximately 234,000 ounces and sold approximately 232,000 ounces at cash cost of $1,653 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of 1993 per ounce. We did have a few developments during the quarter that affected our production and costs in Q2 and also drove an update to our fiscal 2024 guidance. In mid-May, we completed the acquisition of the 40% of our Greenstone mine that we didn't already own. We spoke about this on the Q1 call and in a couple of press releases, but as a reminder, this transaction delivers full ownership of the Greenstone mine to Equinox Gold and consolidates ownership of Greenstone, which is one of the largest and highest-grade open-pit gold mines of scale in Canada. This transaction is accretive to our cash flow and our EBITDA. It delivers substantial near-term value and it increases the Company's average mine life reserves production all while lowering our consolidated per ounce operating costs. Greenstone has been ramping up largely on plan with our first gold pour in late May, and just over 16,000 ounces produced through the end of June. Production has continued to ramp up with just under 20,000 ounces produced in July alone at Greenstone. We recently concluded a multi-day shutdown to address various wear and process issues identified through the startup and are now pushing toward achieving commercial production by the end of Q3. With the ramp up progressing well, we've maintained our guidance for Greenstone with an increase to reflect the consolidation of ownership. We previously reported in April that we experienced some geotechnical issues in the south wall of the Piaba open pit at Arizona and that we had temporarily suspended mining in Piaba. We continued to process stockpiled ore through April and production in Q2 at Arizona primarily reflects processing of this material. We then idled the mill in May and June and accelerated mining in the new Tatajuba open pit. We did begin processing first ore from Tatajuba in early July. We are working on mitigation activities to recommence mining in Piaba and this is progressing well. As the timing of starting mining again in Piaba does remain uncertain, guidance for Arizona has been reduced to take into account loss production during the suspension of processing in May and June, and also to reflect the lower grade ore mined primarily from Tatajuba through the remainder of the year. At Mesquite 2024 is primarily a stripping year as we pre-strip the ginger pit, which supplies ore to the mine or to the heap in 2025. Mining at Mesquite has been performing well with recoverable ounces of stacked exceeding plan. However, we are seeing slower than expected recoveries off the heap leach pad from ore stacked in prior periods in part due to the increasing pad height. We are working to accelerate production, but we have reduced our 2024 production guidance for Mesquite to account for the slower recoveries. Finally, the Company has concluded its previously reported assessment of the phase one operations of Castle Mountain, and we've elected to suspend the contract mining and processing at Castle Mountain Phase one and transition to residual leach only. We will continue to focus on advancing permitting and engineering of the phase two expansion at Castle. Our guidance has been updated to reflect this change at Castle Mountain and Castle will be reported as a development project going forward. Of course, we will continue to recover ounces off the pad through the year and into next year. With these changes reflected, consolidated guidance for 2024 has been updated from 660,000 to 750,000 ounces of gold to 655,000 to 750,000 ounces of gold with costs updated to cash costs of $1,305 to $1,405 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $1,635 to $1,735 per ounce. This continues to reflect a substantial increase in gold production at much lower cost over the second half of the year. With that, I'll turn it over to Pete to discuss our financial results.

Thanks, Greg. We're now on slide seven in the presentation. During Q2, we sold 115,000 ounces of gold at a realized price of $2,328 per ounce for revenues of $269 million. Total sales included 10,000 ounces sold by Greenstone. Income from mine operations was $27 million. We had $199 million in operating expenses in Q2 '24 compared to $193 million in Q2 2023. Operating expense in Q2 2024 increased 3% compared to Q2 2023 primarily due to the contribution of operating expense at Greenstone, which was a construction project in 2023 and did not have operating expenses and a higher operating expense at Los Filos, which was driven by an increase in the underground mining activity, offset by lower operating expense at Arizona that Greg mentioned earlier. On a per unit basis, we had a higher than usual Q2 2024 cash cost of $1,747 an ounce. The increase over previous quarters is primarily volume driven with the lower production at Arizona due to the geotechnical issue at the Piaba pit. The same explanation applies to our higher than usual all-in sustaining cost per ounce for the quarter. Note that Greenstone is not yet in commercial production, so when you're looking at our cost metrics, the 10,000 ounces sold along with the related cost of production are excluded from the calculation of cash cost and all-in sustaining cost metrics we reported in Q2. That said, the revenues and related operating costs are still reported in the income statement as required by IFRS. Our EBITDA in Q2 2024 was $510 million, included in EBITDA is a fair value gain on remeasure of our Greenstone ownership interest that recorded when moving from proportionate to full consolidation. For accounting purposes, we record the change as if you sold the 60% ownership interest we had at fair value. The gain results from the difference in fair value and the cost that the 60% interest was carried out, and that gain is about $470 million. Our adjusted EBITDA was $51 million for Q2, the same as Q1 2024 and down $19 million from Q2 2023's adjusted EBITDA of $71 million. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA in Q2 2024 compared to Q2 2023 was primarily due to the impact of an $8.8 million realized loss on gold contracts in Q2 2024. We didn't have any in Q2 2023. In addition, we had a small realized loss on foreign exchange contracts this quarter, whereas in Q2 2023 we had a $9.1 million realized gain on the same. We had net income of $204 million for basic earnings per share of $0.72 and $0.61 a share fully diluted. On an adjusted basis, we had a net loss of $6 million or $0.01 per share. Cash flow from operations before changes in non-cash working capital was $45 million or $0.12 a share. With respect to our sustaining spend for Q2, we spent $31 million, which is pretty much in line with what we did in Q1 this year. With regards to Greenstone with the mine and plant wrapping up, Greenstone should now fund itself from a cash flow perspective. For Greenstone on a 100% basis, a total of $1.37 billion project to date has been spent on construction and commissioning. Equinox's share of that spend was $55 million during the quarter, $109 million year-to-date, and $834 million project to date, which excludes capitalized interest and other non-cash amounts capitalized. We had a busy quarter for corporate financing activity. To fund the $955 million we needed to acquire the remaining ownership of Greenstone. We amended our existing senior revolving credit facility to a range of $500 million in term loan and completed a bought deal equity financing for gross proceeds of $299 million. We issued 42 million shares directly to Orion Mine Finance and issued a $40 million promissory note to Orion Mine Finance that matures in December 2024. Under the terms of the $299 million bought deal equity financing, the Company issued 56.4 million shares at $5.30 per share. The $500 million term loan matures May 13, 2027. No principal repayments are required under the term loan for the first two years of the three-year term. Quarterly repayments will commence on August 13, 2026, equal to 10% of the outstanding principal amount with the remaining outstanding principal payable at maturity. The Company may repay or prepay any portion of the outstanding term loan at any time without penalty. Interest, covenants, and other terms are substantially consistent with the Company's existing revolving credit facility, and the term loan benefits from the same security package as the revolving credit facility. During Q2, we also amended two of the convertible notes by extending their maturities by six months. The maturity date of the 2019 convertible notes was extended from April 12th of this year to October 12th, and the maturity date of the 2020 convertible notes was extended from March 10, 2025, to September 10, 2025. In addition, the conversion price of the 2020 convertible notes was amended from $7.80 per share to $6.50 per share. For the $500 million term loan, the Company was required to have in place 328,000 ounces of gold hedges of our forward gold production through mid 2026. The Company elected and we already had some of those gold hedges in place for the second half of this year that we added to. The Company elected to wait the hedges into the next 12 months using gold collars. The collars are arranged as follows. For the second half of 2024, there are 188,000 ounces hedged with a floor of $2,150 and a ceiling of $2,738 per ounce; for the first half of 2025, there's a 100,000 ounces hedged with a floor of $2,189 and a ceiling of $2,905 an ounce; and for the second half of 2025, 20,000 ounces with a floor of $2,100 and a ceiling of $3,487 per ounce; and finally for the first half of 2026, also 20,000 ounces with a floor of $2,100 an ounce and a ceiling of $3,487 per ounce. This was with respect to those convertible notes. Extending the notes, the maturity of those two convertible notes significantly enhances our financial flexibility as we advance commissioning of our world class Greenstone Gold mine, which remains on track to pour gold this quarter. Moving to Slide 8, with respect to our available liquidity at June 30th, we had $160 million of unrestricted cash on hand and $105 million available to draw on a revolving credit facility. The first of our debt maturities comes in October with a $140 million 2019 convertible note I just mentioned. It has a conversion price of $5.25 per share, should the note holders decide not to convert, the Company will repay the note using its existing cash and liquidity. Moving to Slide 9, with Greenstone construction complete and commercial production on the near horizon, the financial focus switches to de-leveraging free cash flow produced by the mines will be used to pay down debt. For the first few years at Equinox Gold, we've been acquiring and building mines and have been using debt as one of the funding methods for doing so, including an additional $500 million term loan to consolidate ownership. This slide demonstrates Equinox Gold's historical leverage as measured by net debt to EBITDA ratio from Q1 2020 through Q4 2023 and pro forma leverage through 2026 as per analyst consensus. The general trend we see is that leverage in the Company increased as acquisitions were completed and mines were built. This is a natural consequence of using debt as one lever for funding acquisitions and construction. Leverage peaked in Q1 2020 a few months after construction of Arizona was completed and again in late 2022 as construction of Greenstone was ongoing and construction of the Santa Luiza mine was completed. Another trend we see in this chart is that as the mines are commissioned and ramp up, that leverage decreases as Equinox Gold has a benefit of EBITDA and cash flow generated by the new mines, and we expect the same as Greenstone enters into commercial production hopefully later this quarter. With that, I turn the presentation over to Doug for a review of the operations.

Thanks, Pete. We're now on Slide 11 of the presentation. At the Mesquite mine, gold production was 17,607 ounces with an all-in sustaining cost of $1,283 per ounce. Waste stripping continued in the Ginger pit and the majority of the ore from that pit goes to the leach pads starting in Q1 of 2025. For the rest of 2024, production is mostly draw down of the leach pad inventory, side slope leaching, and leaching of additional ore coming from current mining and rehandling and re-leaching of the old Vista pad material. The recoveries from the leach pad have been slower than expected due to pad height and associated longer leach cycles. At Castle Mountain, production was up over Q1 at 6,148 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,424 per ounce. Phase one is a small operation that is mining and processing low grade historic backfill material that needs to be removed from the old open pits prior to mining in situ material in phase two. We completed a review of the mine plan and costs at Castle Mountain for phase one and concluded that mining will be suspended in August for the duration of the phase two permitting. Residual leaching will continue through 2024, and we continue with the phase two permitting process. At Los Filos, production increased during Q2 to 37,430 ounces, and this should continue to improve in H2. The all-in sustaining cost was $2,274 per ounce. During the quarter, the crusher was brought back online and all the material for crushing that it accumulated while the relocation of the conveyor was underway was then crushed and is now under leach. The productivity program that's been in place at Los Filos for the last two years continues to show improvement and we saw an increase in Los Filos underground mine production continue in Q2. Mining in the new Diegos underground area has also been picking up once the second contractor started development work in the quarter. Our dialogue with our community partners continues. We continue to work towards establishing new agreements so that we can ensure long-term economic viability and stability for the mine. We move on to the next page. In Brazil at the Arizona mine, production was 6,309 ounces with a very high all-in sustaining cost, over $3,000 per ounce. This reflects the standby costs that were being incurred while the plant was idle and the low ounces produced in the quarter, which resulted in a high cash cost and all-in sustaining cost. As previously announced and mentioned earlier in this call, we suspended mining in the Piaba open pit in April after geotechnical instability led to the displacement of material in two locations in the south wall of the Piaba pit. We accelerated the startup of Tatajuba open pit and after two months with no ore processing, we restarted the process plant at the beginning of July. We continue working on remediation planning and activities in the Piaba open pit with safety being the priority. Work at the moment on Piaba includes recontouring of the pit wall, and that will happen in two areas. We are drilling a series of dewatering holes and we've been installing additional monitoring equipment and completing external reviews of geotechnical and hydrogeological information. At the Fazenda mine regrettably, we had a fatality in the underground portion of the mine as discussed earlier in the call. Production at Fazenda was 14,178 ounces and the all-in sustaining cost was $1,876 per ounce for the quarter. Plant feed is currently 35% from moving pit, 65% from underground and recovery is at 91%. Currently, mining is approximately 50/50 open pit and underground. The open pit contractors now fully mobilized at Fazenda and is catching up on the mine plan through the rest of the year. In the underground mine, we are mobilizing additional equipment to facilitate a catch-up on development so that we can access additional stopes in Q3 and Q4. At RDM, gold production was 10,675 ounces and the all-in sustaining cost was $1,774 per ounce. We changed the rental mining fleet and are catching up on the mining in H2. Construction of the dry stack tailings area is complete and is now fully in operation with cyclone tailings being dried and placed in the storage area. At Santa Luz, production was up compared to Q1 at 13,627 ounces, and an all-in sustaining cost of $2,399 per ounce. Recovery was below plan at 60% for Q2. Dilution efficiency and electric winning modifications were completed in the quarter. SAG mill liners and a new trunnion were installed. The new trunnion has enabled throughput to be increased by about 10%, and a new de-sliming circuit was added. The de-sliming circuit is intended to remove a portion of the total organic carbon and improve overall recovery by about 6%. The circuit was brought online and is in commissioning through Q3. The objective is to achieve recoveries around 73% or higher for the second half of the year. Moving on to page 13. At Greenstone, first ore was introduced to the high-pressure grinding rolls and grinding circuits on April 6th. The first gold pour was on May 22nd, and the mine produced ore of 16,247 ounces in Q2. Milling throughput achieved a rolling 30-day average of 59% of the name plate of 27,000 tons per day as of July 22nd. And then, as we came to the end of the month, we had our planned major shutdown, and we were up and running back on schedule after that shutdown was completed. Overall, the ramp up is going very well. We mined over 7 million tons in the quarter with over 1.2 million tons of stockpile at the end of the quarter. The fleet now has 25 haul trucks and four shovels, and we look forward to commercial production during Q3. With that, I'm going to hand it back to Greg.

Thanks, Doug. Yes, it's been a mixed quarter for us. We've had to work through some challenges at a few of our mines, and particularly at Arizona, and we've had to make some revisions to our guidance as a result, but also a very positive quarter for the Company in that we were able to complete the acquisition of the rest of Greenstone, achieve first gold pour and then start the ramp up toward commercial production, and really, we're at an inflection point. Now, we expect a stronger second half from a number of our mines, but more importantly, Greenstone is ramping up to commercial production over the next few months. And we already produced more gold at Greenstone in July than we did in all of Q2. So, the big picture here is we are significantly increasing our production at lower costs during a period of historically strong gold prices and what we think is a continuing bullish macro outlook for gold. And I think I'll wrap it up there and turn it over to Rhylin to start the Q&A.

Thanks, Greg and Doug. Galene, can you please remind our participants how to ask a question?

We already produced more gold at Greenstone in July than we did in all of Q2. The key point is that we are significantly increasing our production at lower costs during a time of historically strong gold prices and what we believe is a continued positive macro outlook for gold. I'll conclude my remarks here and hand it over to Rhylin to begin the Q&A. Thank you, Greg and Doug. Galene, could you please remind our participants how to ask a question?

So, I do have a few questions from online. So, one that came in first, we'll ask first. How are you going to catch up in the second half of the year to achieve your guidance?

Sure, I can take that. I mean, the main plan here, Rhylin, as you can see from the guidance, is that most of our sites will have a stronger second half of the year. In particular, Los Filos, and of course, Greenstone as we ramp up to commercial production. Greenstone is a very large mine, and production of Greenstone definitely moves the needle for us. So, the second half of the year we'll produce a lot more gold than we did in the first half.

Mike Parkin sent me a question. He's our analyst from National Bank. Sent me a question by email. This is for Peter. What will Castle Mountain care maintenance cost be on an annual basis? Will there be any severance payments? And if so, how much and when will those flow through the financials?

I'll start with the later part. Yes, there will be severance payments. We haven't updated the market provided guidance on what care maintenance will look like heading into next year and beyond. We'll do so when we update guidance or perhaps earlier than that. With respect to the remainder of the year, we'll be residual leaching. So, the guidance that we provided for Castle Mountain effectively takes it through the point at which we go onto residual leach, which will be sometime during Q3. We expect to continue to pull ounces from the pad for several months after, and we'll provide a more comprehensive update on those costs as we move forward. It will depend in part on when the residual leach tapers off and when it no longer is beneficial to continue to residual leach based on the ounces being pulled and the cost to do it.

I'll just add to that. At Castle Mountain, our mining and our crushing are contractors. So, those contract terminations have been provided to the contractors, and we have a very small team overall who will continue to work on the residual leaching. So, it is quite a compact and small operation, or remains a small team as we move into residual leach.

A question from our Kerry Smith, our analyst at Haywood Securities, who is currently on an airplane. When do you expect to be able to get back into mining at Piaba? And how many tons of ore ounces of production do you have at Tatajuba?

For return to mining in Piaba, we're doing work in Piaba now, but it's at the upper areas of the pit. We will, during the course of this year, be going in and mining certain areas especially on the west end of Piaba from the pit. Overall, plan is based on doing all the dewatering program and all the geotechnical and recontouring activities. We would like to be doing some additional mining in Piaba pit by the end of this year, but the real focus is going to be doing a large program in 2025. But again, it all is dependent on working through all of our activities that we're doing to remediate and make the pit totally safe, keep the regulators totally informed and being able to move in and be able to mine, especially on the east end of the pit.

Thank you. Doug. Operator, can we please take some questions from the phone?

Certainly. The first question from the phone lines is from Anita Soni with CIBC World Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. My first question is about Greenstone. Can you give us an overview of the throughput rates you achieved this quarter, including how they increased during the quarter and what the current exit rates are for throughput?

So, in April and May, we were at 40 to 50% of rated throughput, came up to just under 60% as we came into July. Then we had a major shutdown. So, we've taken care of a lot of the items that we've noticed during the ramp-up and we'll continue. We've restarted and continue with the ramp-up in August, I'm sure. I'm not sure exactly what the other details that you’re looking for.

No, that was, that's good. Another question in terms of the definition of commercial production, I noticed it said within 10% of the design grades. You guys are substantially over the design grades. And I have a second question related to that in a second, but the, does that mean that you when you're looking for commercial production, you're looking for it to come down to the sort of 1.5 that you were expecting over the next, I guess, three, four years rather than the 2.5 that you delivered this quarter?

Yes, it won't continue at the 2.5. I mean, that was essentially as you'll be aware, putting a lot of ounces that go into the circuit. And that was done where we had the ability to feed some high-grade material and be able to add that into the mill. And going forward, we will, it gets tempered down to more the targeted production overall production rate. So, it won't continue at 2.5. That would be glorious, but we can't do that forever.

It was a good surprise. I was, but it didn't hold my breath that it was going to be sustained.

Yes, I anticipated that somebody would do the calculation and say, how come your ounce produced and you have 88% in recovery, but if you look at the number of ounces that go into the circuit, then it all makes sense. And by putting in the higher grade, we took care of building up the ounces and circuit very quickly.

Okay. And then as we get to the, doing some calculations on the mining and the ore stockpile rates, I think, could you just talk about the truck availability? I think you're getting around 2 million tons per truck. If I did the math rate on that per annum, if you annualize it. And are design rates on those trucks more like, like could you just tell me what the design rates on the trucks are? I thought they were somewhere around three to three and a half, but of course that depends on your haul distances. So, can you just talk about the availability on the trucks?

Haul distances are affected at this very start for a couple reasons. One that while we've been in pioneering essentially the pit, we've been moving a lot of the soil material, some of which needs to be treated. So that means we have to take it down to an area where it can be dealt with, that consumes some of the cycle time. We've also been doing a lot of work, but taking clean waste down to our tailing facility. Again, longer cycle time for those trucks. So, you can't really, you'd have to separate them out between mine and those other activities. But essentially with a fleet of 25 trucks, four shovels on site, we'll be continuing the ramp up towards a capacity of 180,000 tons a day by the end of the year.

Anita, it's Greg here. I might just add, I don't know if there's a recent picture on our website, but if there's not, I can send one to you. The first year of mining at Greenstone is a little bit complex for a couple of reasons. And you'll remember when we were there, there's the old McLeod tailings that are there from previous mining. Part of our permit requires that we excavate those tailings and move them to our facility. And we do have some trucks dedicated to doing that. We also have this, we call it type D soil, which is contaminated soil in the main open pit, which is a delicate job to move that material. And we're in the process of doing that, and as we do that, it opens up additional areas of that open pit for us to mine. If you looked at a recent picture, what you'll see there is sort of a couple of awkward islands in the middle of our pit where we're still excavating the type D soil. And it does provide some complexity in mining efficiency in this sort of the first half of this year. We're working through that quickly, and I think over the next quarter or so, largely through the type D soil, we open up the pit, the cloud tailings are well advanced, and we start to really see those efficiencies as we go into Q4 here. So, just for the first year, as Doug said, pioneering this pit with some of the historic issues does make it a little more complex. But again, we've been able to build a large stockpile, feed the mill and are on track to be able to meet our targets.

I have one last question about the mining rates. I recall you mentioned that some of the rates were allocated to manage waste rock for the tailings. Are you finished with that? Are you now solely using the fleet for ore waste in the pit, or are you still involved in supporting the tailing facility?

No, we're still hauling clean waste down to the TMF.

How much…

It's on the next stage.

So how much material like in terms of millions of tons do you have to deliver to the waste rock to the tailing facilities this year?

I will get back to you shortly. Don't have that number on the top of my tongue, but I'll get back to you shortly.

I'm a memorized deck. That's it for my questions. I'll get back in the queue. Thanks.

The next question is from Wayne Lam with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

I guess, maybe just circling back to Greenstone, really nice to see you guys hit the 2 million ton or stockpile as planned. Could you give us a grade and idea of the grade of that stockpile? And then maybe just as a follow up on the 2.5 gram of ton, typically we see much lower grade feed put through the early stages in ramping on the mill. But just wondering, if you guys are seeing any positive reconciliation versus plan and with some of the higher-grade material put through the mill to accelerate some upfront cash flow.

I'll start with the high grade into the plant and then Doug can respond to some of your other questions here. As we were ramping up, basically in the first couple of benches of ore, the first mining we did, we did have a fair bit of high-grade ore. And as we started to ramp up the mill, we started to have very good recoveries right off the bat. So, we're seeing plus 90% recoveries pretty much right away. In part, that's because of the increased resonance time in the tanks when you're not up to full capacity. But when you start one of these plants up, you've got inventory buildup in the tanks. And then you have this rolling gold inventory in your tanks. Because we had access to such high grade material and we were getting the very high recoveries right out of the gate, we took that opportunity to feed in some high grade ore and ramp up that inventory quickly, which got us into producing gold more quickly than we otherwise would have. It wasn't a cash flow decision. It was more of a commissioning decision. And frankly, we had some very high grades that were coming out. Doug will get into it, but we've got different bins for stockpile and we had a couple days there where we were feeding, I think, five grams per ton and material like that. So, we were able to do that and as part of our commissioning and it reflects in the grade over the second quarter, as Doug said to Anita, that's not something that's going to persist, but it was helpful as we were ramping up the plant. I think the other question was about the stockpile. We are partially using stockpile material, but we are also feeding some material directly to the crusher. So, it's not exclusively first in, first out. Overall, the reconciliation has been quite good, but I would need to check the average grade since we have been focused on certain bins. I'll revisit that later in the call. Regarding Anita's question about total Rockville for the TMF, it's 7.8 million tons in 2024, and I'll provide an update on the grade for the stockpile.

And then maybe just given the higher cost of Castle, I think it makes sense to suspend operations, but just looking across the portfolio you guys have a couple other operations kind of running up towards those cost levels at Filos and Santa Luz. And so just wondering, at Filos, if there's a more definitive cut-off point on the negotiations where you kind of decide you can't subsidize it anymore? And then at Santa Luz, you guys are now several years through an eight-year mine life for an asset that's had challenges dating back a decade ago under Humana. So just wondering if there's a point at which you decide that that asset consumes too much capital and attention to continue to operate.

At Los Filos, we anticipated that the first half of the year would be weaker than the second half, and now that we have completed the relocation of the conveyor and all the material is under leach, our production significantly increased in Q2. We expect production to continue to rise in the second half of the year. The all-in sustaining cost is being influenced by our production levels, so we expect improvements at Los Filos as well. A key concern for Los Filos has been establishing new agreements, which is essential for moving forward and building a CIL. It is a large mine with significant potential, and we are committed to working with the communities in dialogue to create a new path forward. Regarding Santa Luz, we've made considerable progress compared to previous recoveries. We have invested in new technology and are working on refining it. Scaling from a pilot plant to industrial scale has presented challenges, but we view the area as very promising. If I handed it over to Scott, he could elaborate on the opportunities in the vicinity of Santa Luz. We believe in the long-term potential, even as we work on commissioning the de-sliming circuit and aim for specific targets this year. We plan to maintain a broad perspective, primarily focusing on these larger projects in the plant that we want to evaluate, specifically the trunnion and the de-sliming.

Wayne, to put it simply, our primary focus is on producing gold profitably. We are not here to operate as a charity. If a mine is not proving to be economically viable and we do not foresee long-term benefits from it, we will explore our options. Castle is somewhat unique because it started as a very small operation, almost like a pilot project, while we aimed for a larger expansion. We ended up operating it longer than expected due to permit delays, so it made sense to focus on the permitting for phase two. However, as Doug mentioned, Los Filos is a substantial ore body with an attractive deposit. The long-term goal there is to build a CIL plant, which would significantly enhance recoveries and transform the mine’s potential. To accomplish this, we need to establish new agreements with the community, which is our current priority. Regarding Santa Luz, it's certainly been a challenge for us. The technology we are using is new and not widely implemented, but it represents an innovative application at Santa Luz. The team has faced ups and downs, achieving great results in some instances but encountering setbacks as well. I recently visited and spent considerable time with the team. They have made significant progress, and we are optimistic about a much improved second half of the year at Santa Luz.

Okay, great. Yes, hopefully you guys can get it up to the 70% plus level in the second half. Maybe just last one for me, looking ahead on the convert coming due in October. Peter had alluded to having the cash on hand and cash from operations to cover that, but it would seem to consume quite a bit of capital and reserve during the ramp-up. So, I guess just in terms of alternative funding options, would you look to refi with another convert similar to the one done last September? Or is there potential to renew the ATM or just curious what the available funding options might be if you have to repay that with cash?

Pete, do you want to handle that one?

Sure. First of all, Wayne, we do believe we'll be able to manage it through cash and our existing liquidity. If you recall, when we did the convert last year, we were expecting in April maturity on that note. And so, we issued that, converted that time, then we took the proceeds of that, put it on the revolver to reduce interest costs in the meantime. We have room on the revolver to draw. That was put there thanks to that note issuance from last year as well as existing cash. With respect to Greenstone, we are given the ramp-up rate and trajectory we're currently on with, in addition with commercial production expected this quarter. We're currently comfortable that we can repay that note, if need be, when it comes due through existing sources. With respect to prospective sources, of course, everything you mentioned is available, but they're not in our current plan.

Thanks for taking my questions and best of luck with the ramp-up and operations in the months ahead.

We do have some questions online that I still have already been answered in the other things that the speakers have addressed. So, the archive of the webcast will be on the website in a couple of hours. If there are other questions, I'll get back to you later this evening. I have to get Pete on the road, because he's got a big cycle ahead of him today. But I will get back to everybody else sometime tonight. So, Greg, do you have any closing remarks?

No, just thanks again everyone for attending the call and where to find us if you've got any more questions.

I'm just going to add, please donate. It's a great cause.

Thanks very much. Operator, you can now conclude the call.

Thank you. This brings to a close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.