Good morning. My name is Ina, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Taseko's Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Mr. Brian Bergot, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Ina. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining Taseko’s second quarter 2024 conference call. The news release and regulatory filing announcing our financial and operational results was issued yesterday after market close and is available on our website at tasekomines.com, and on SEDAR. I am joined today in Vancouver by Taseko’s President and CEO, Stuart McDonald; Taseko’s Chief Financial Officer, Bryce Hamming; and our COO, Richard Tremblay. As usual, before we get into opening remarks by management, I would like to remind our listeners that our comments and answers to your questions will contain forward-looking information. This information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause the stated outcome to differ materially from the actual outcome. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, I encourage you to read the cautionary note that accompanies our second quarter MD&A and the related news release as well as the risk factors particular to our company. I would also like to point out that we will use various non-GAAP measures during the call. You can find explanations and reconciliations regarding these measures in the related news release. And finally, all dollar amounts we will discuss today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise specified. While reviewing our remarks, we will open the phone lines to analysts and investors for questions. I’ll now turn the call over to Stuart for his remarks.

Great. Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the time to join us today to review our second quarter operating and financial results. It’s been another eventful quarter and a busy first half, really. We’ve had a number of significant accomplishments so far this year, including consolidating 100% ownership of our Gibraltar mine, refinancing our bonds, completing Florence project financing, and then having a very positive start to construction activities of Florence. And more on that in a minute, but I’ll start with Gibraltar operations. The mine produced 20 million pounds of copper and 185,000 pounds of molybdenum in the second quarter. Production was impacted by the planned downtime in Mill #1 for the crusher move project and for maintenance on the SAG mill and also a strike of the mine’s unionized workforce, which shut down both mills and the whole site for 18 days in June. All of that downtime resulted in total tonnes milled being about 25% below nameplate capacity. And that has a direct knock-on effect on copper production. Copper grades averaged 0.23%, which was generally in line with our expectations, and copper recoveries were 78%, slightly below plan due to the inconsistent mill operating time as well as processing some partially oxidized ore from the upper benches of the connector pit. Mining rates were also impacted by the labor disruption, but our strip ratio remained in line with plan. We started accessing initial sulfide ore from the new connector pit and the transition into that new pit will continue over the next few months. We’ll be completely out of the Gibraltar pit this fall. Running part of the quarter with only one mill obviously impacts unit costs, and our total operating costs C1 increased to USD 2.99 per pound in Q2. The copper prices were very strong with a realized price of almost $4.50 a pound in the quarter. The strike in June was a disappointing outcome for us, but we’re pleased to be able to resolve that with a new three-year union contract and get all operations back to normal in the third week of June. In terms of earnings, it was our first full quarter reflecting 100% ownership of Gibraltar, and we generated CAD 71 million of adjusted EBITDA and CAD 77 million of earnings from mining operations. Those numbers included a CAD 26 million insurance recovery related to repairs that were done earlier in the year. Nonetheless, a very good result considering the operational disruptions and it demonstrates the earnings potential when we get Gibraltar back to full production levels here in the second half of the year. I’m happy to say that the in-pit crusher relocation was successfully completed in early July without any issues. This was a two-year CAD 50 million project and a major undertaking for our project team. So congratulations to everyone involved. Concentrator #1 is back up. And with both mills now running at capacity, we’re looking forward to a strong second half. We obviously lost some production during the strike, but looking at the potential to increase our mining rate slightly in the coming months. We also believe there are opportunities to push mill throughput to recover some of the lost pounds. Overall, we expect total copper production for the current year to come in between 110 million and 115 million pounds, and that’s slightly below our original guidance of 115 million pounds. So that means a 20% to 30% increase in production in the second half over the first half of the year. Looking ahead to 2025, it’s shaping up to be a good production year and our concentrate production will be supplemented by additional pounds from the restart of the Gibraltar SX/EW plant. That plant was actually built in the 1980s and operated for about 13 years, producing on average 6 million to 7 million pounds per year. Taseko then restarted it in 2007 and operated again until 2015. So it’s a well-established operation. Over the last few quarters, we’ve been stacking new oxide ore from the connector pit onto the old leach pads. By next year, we should have well over 50 million pounds of contained copper on the leach dumps, and we have advanced plans to refurbish the plant over the next year at a cost of around $8 million, and expect to be able to restart cathode production in Q2 next year, which is a year ahead of the previous schedule. Our updated modeling indicates the plant could provide an additional 4 million to 5 million pounds of copper production annually for many years to come. So it’s positive news and a great outlook for the mine going forward. Moving to Florence. Construction of the commercial facility is advancing on schedule. Construction activity really ramped up in the second quarter. We now have over 200 contractors on-site in addition to our owner's team and site management. Well field drilling has gone according to plan so far with 18 wells completed at the end of June. We had two rigs drilling the production wells during the second quarter, and we added a third drill in July, now assessing the need for potentially adding a fourth. At the plant site, construction focused on earthworks and pouring the concrete foundations for the SX/EW plant and related infrastructure like tank containment systems. Construction CapEx in the second quarter was USD 37 million and USD 55 million year-to-date. In the next few months, earthworks will be complete, and we expect to begin mechanical installations and structural work on the SX. We’ve recently added some construction photos to the Florence section of our website, and I’d encourage everyone to keep an eye on that, and we’ll be adding more in the coming months, so you can follow our progress. But it's pretty exciting to see things happening on the ground. On the recruiting side, we’ve been very successful at building the permanent operating team for the project. We’ll eventually have about 170 full-time staff and operators for the commercial production phase. Right now, we’ve hired about 70 of those positions. Florence is in the middle of a great copper belt in Central Arizona. There are a lot of highly qualified candidates already living in the region. And we have a very innovative, exciting mining project that’s getting a lot of attention. So there’s a lot of interest and applicants for all our job searches and postings. That’s all going very well. I was actually down at Florence not too long ago and had an opportunity to see the progress and meet some of the new team members of the Florence team. I was very impressed with everything that’s taking place on site. We have a great project happening supported by an experienced and dynamic team, and we’re now less than 18 months away from First Copper. As we’ve talked about in the past, we believe Taseko is in a very unique position with a low-cost copper project in a Tier 1 jurisdiction and now so close to first production. Despite the pullback in prices over the last couple of months, we believe that the medium- to long-term fundamentals for copper have never been stronger. There continues to be very little new copper supply available to come online in the next 5 years. We saw some significant financial flows into, and then out of, the copper markets over the last 6 months. I think it’s a matter of time before we have a real supply deficit. Then the financial players will really move, and it’s going to be interesting at that time to see where prices go. The short-term predictions are always difficult, which is why we keep our price protection program in place. To remind everyone, we have a minimum price of CAD 3.75 a pound protected for the rest of this year and a minimum price of CAD 4 a pound protected for all of next year. These are copper collars, but the ceiling prices are high and provide Taseko with a lot of pricing upside over the next 18 months. Just one more topic before I pass the call over to Bryce, regarding our Yellowhead project. Certainly, let’s not forget about it. It’s a large open-pit copper project in a great location, just north of Camelot, BC. We updated the feasibility study a few years ago, outlining a project that will produce an average of 180 million pounds of copper a year over a 25-year mine life. That would make it one of the largest copper mines in North America. We’re getting ready to initiate the EA process. In connection with that, we’ve recently opened a project office to support community engagement. We’re also doing a small field program this year, which includes Geotech drilling and test pitting to gather data that we’re going to use as we move through permitting. On that note, I’m going to pass the call over to Bryce, who can provide some more color on our financials.

Thanks, Stuart. Yes, there were a few accounting one-off events during the second quarter, making it somewhat complicated from an accounting standpoint. So I’ll start with explaining these further. We posted a GAAP net loss of CAD 11 million, but on an adjusted basis, we derived an adjusted net income of CAD 30.5 million or CAD 0.10 a share. Some notable key items that were expensed in the quarter for GAAP over and above our usual unrealized derivatives and effects losses. These additional items that we adjusted for – just got a list here. So the first was the CAD 10.4 million in other operating costs that we incurred in Q2 related to the cost for the actual physical move of the primary crusher. Those are expensed under audit for us, although they relate to the overall capital projects. We also had site care and maintenance while operations were suspended in June for that 18-day strike that we had. We also had CAD 8 million in inventory costs that were written up back in March when we acquired the remainder of Caribou. When we sold or processed those in the current quarter, we charged that write-up to cost of sales and had higher costs, which we reversed in our adjusted earnings. We also had CAD 10.5 million in accretion on our Caribou liability for our deferred consideration and for our Florence royalty obligations. That arose due to the rising copper trends as well as the more positive outlook for copper prices in the years ahead. We also had a CAD 10 million one-time call premium that we paid on our bond refinancing, as well as a CAD 3 million write-off of our deferred financing costs related to the 2026 notes. We consider all of those items as either not reflecting the underlying operational performance of our business, extraordinary or unrealized, and definitely not indicative of future operating results. Therefore, we adjusted them. Financial performance in the quarter was strong. We had adjusted EBITDA of CAD 71 million in earnings from mine operations before depletion of CAD 77 million. Sales volumes were strong at 23 million pounds. That’s 100% Taseko’s account now that we own 100%, and it exceeded our production. We were able to draw down inventories by CAD 2.4 million. We also benefited from a strong copper price in the quarter. We realized just shy of CAD 4.50 a pound, which was CAD 0.60 higher quarter-over-quarter from Q1 and nearly 20% higher than the same quarter in 2023. One notable positive impact on financial performance was the CAD 26 million insurance claim that Stuart mentioned. We finalized that in June with the adjuster. We recorded it in the second quarter, and we had mentioned that in previous calls. Given Gibraltar’s our only producing asset, we carry business interruption insurance on top of our property insurance, which protects our gross profits should any of our milling machinery at the Gibraltar mine breakdown. We’re working with our adjusters. We determined that Gibraltar would have produced an additional 8 million copper pounds last year if not for a component that we needed to replace in Mill 2. This insurance is being received as we speak. We received about 30% of it already in July, and we expect the rest of it in the third quarter. Total site spending at Gibraltar was CAD 91 million in the second quarter, which is CAD 20 million lower than the previous quarter. Our general run rate is usually between CAD 100 million to CAD 110 million per quarter. This is mainly due to the 18-day labor strike during those two and a half weeks in June. We significantly reduced our costs at the Gibraltar mine as we put on temporary care and maintenance. Going forward, we expect Gibraltar’s total site cost to revert to more normal levels usually between CAD 100 million to CAD 110 million per quarter, including capitalized strip. Unit costs in the second quarter were CAD 2.99 per pound. The biggest driver of the increase from the prior quarter was obviously lower copper production, which should decrease in the third quarter as production increases as Stuart outlined. Starting in the third quarter, we’ll also benefit from the new copper offtake agreements we signed with extremely low treatment and refining charges we pay to our customers on some of these contracts; they are even negative. This will have a notable impact on our C1 costs, reducing our off-site costs by CAD 0.15 or more per pound produced. Cash flow from operations was impacted by the downtime in Q2, but we still generated CAD 35 million in the quarter, which was higher than the same period in 2023 due to the higher copper prices, but also because we drew down the finished inventory. In June, we submitted a concept paper to the U.S. Department of Energy for a tax credit under Section 48. We believe Florence Copper may qualify as a critical mineral processing facility given that we will be producing finished copper cathode for use in the United States. We expect to hear back from the DOE later this month at the end of August on whether we will be eligible for it. The application will come later in the year, and the award itself would be in early 2025. The credit is transferable, and we can monetize it. This incentive funding could further assist with funding our Florence spend in 2025. Last but not least, while we spoke a bit about it last quarter, was our bond refinancing. That was an important refinancing transaction that did not close until the second quarter. The impact of that CAD 500 million refinancing, which is now due in 2030, pushed our debt maturity out, was included in our second quarter financial results as well as our cash position. Factoring that along with the CAD 10 million we’ve received from Mitsui on their installments, we ended the quarter with a cash position of CAD 199 million, and we have available liquidity of over CAD 300 million when we factor in our CAD 80 million undrawn revolving credit facility. From a liquidity and funding perspective, we’re in a very comfortable position as we continue the construction spend at Florence over the coming quarters. With that, I’ll turn it over to the operator for questions. Thank you.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

Good morning, Craig.

A couple of questions on Gibraltar. Just the recoveries have been trending lower for the last few quarters, and I know it’s partly due to the connector pit. But can you give us some guidance in terms of what the recoveries look going forward? Is it going to be similar to what we saw in Q2, or is that impacted by the disruptions with the labor strikes?

Yes. Hi Craig, Richard here. Yes, you are right. The recoveries have been impacted by the move in the connector pit and similar to what we have seen when we transitioned to other mining areas. The ore at the top of the deposit is more transitional in nature, and the connector pit has higher degrees of oxidation. As we mine through that ore, we will continue to see the recoveries improve as we go forward and get back in more in line with what we have seen in the past when we are in the heart of the ore zones.

Okay. And maybe as a follow-up, to get your guidance to the 110 to 115, what should we be assuming here for throughput and grade in the back half of this year? I know you have had lost some throughput in the beginning of July just completing the work you were doing there. But should we assume you’re back up to a full design of 85,000 tons a day and kind of 0.24% copper grades for the back half this year?

Yes, I think certainly we had a little bit of downtime in the first part of July. But since Concentrator #1 came back online, we ramped up for a week or so, but it’s been running very well. We see good opportunities there to potentially push throughput over 85,000 tons a day for the next couple of quarters, so yes, I’m pretty optimistic on the throughput side. Grades should stay fairly consistent with what you saw in the first half. The opportunity will obviously come from having continuous mill operating time, and with both mills repaired and running well, we should see good upside on throughput. We’ve given a range, but we don’t like to be too precise in the different components of the guidance, but hopefully, that’s helpful.

Alright. Thank you. And then just on the SX/EW expecting to come back online next year, any sense in terms of what the cash costs are at this point for that kind of level of production?

I mean something in the range of $2 a pound is what we are seeing. Obviously, it’s not dissimilar from the rest of the operation based on what we are seeing at this point.

Okay. Then one last question for me, just on Florence, you mentioned the potential to get the credits from the U.S. government. What’s the level of credits we are talking about? Like 30% of the cost of the SX/EW facility? What kind of magnitude could that potentially be?

Yes. We are looking at that closely, Craig. I think the real question is how much of it is eligible and then what rate is the tax credit. Conservatively, we are probably looking at about a CAD 20 million credit based on our spend. That’s based on a 6% tax credit rate. There is the ability for it to go as high as 30%, so it could be up to 5 times that. But exactly where we land on that, we will probably have better guidance on it in Q3 once we have submitted the application.

Thanks guys. I will turn it over to somebody else.

Thanks, Craig.

Great. Thanks guys. Thanks for the call. A couple of questions from me. Simple one first, just on the wage agreement. Did that cover the whole workforce? And then secondly, another one on just kind of system inventories of a bit of a drawdown with more sales and production over the past couple of quarters. Do you expect to rebuild those, and at what pace going forward? Thanks.

Hi Ben, it’s Stuart speaking here. Generally on the workforce, roughly 750 employees at the mine and roughly 550 of those are in the union. So, the new contract applies to that 550 portion of the total, yes. We are happy to get that deal behind us. That will be in place for the next 3 years. On the inventory side, we had a bit of a drawdown this quarter. I suppose some of the mill downtime allowed us to move out a little bit of extra inventory perhaps, but not unusually low inventory at quarter end, so we should see something in those ranges continue for the future. So, nothing surprising should come out in terms of finished goods inventory in the next few quarters.

Okay. Great. That’s helpful. And actually, just following up on the SX/EW. So cash cost hopefully around the $2 mark, but with the restart, was the thinking about basically securing enough or was there also a price equation within that as well?

Sorry, Ben, Richard here. The question was what’s triggering the restart?

Yes, exactly. Is this just now you have rebuilt stockpiles sufficiently that it now makes economic sense to restart the SX/EW?

Yes, that’s correct. The connector pit releases a significant portion of oxide ore, that’s now been placed on the dump and allows it to be economic to restart the plant because we have basically replenished the leach pads.

Got it. Okay. Great. That’s all for me. Thanks.

That concludes your question-and-answer session. I will now hand the call back to Taseko management for any closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you very much everyone for joining our call, and we will talk to you again next quarter. Enjoy the rest of the summer. Bye now.

That concludes our conference today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.