Die besten Gold-/Silberminen auf der Welt

We are active in four countries, but 85% of both our value and production comes from Canada in three primary operating regions, the Abitibi in Northern Quebec, Northern Ontario, and Nunavut. In those regions, we have developed a distinct competitive advantage. We're the employer of choice. We have employee turnover rates that in many cases are half of the industry average.

We've been operating there for decades. We have longstanding supplier relationships, we've got economies of scale. We're the largest mining company in Canada, so that helps in terms of keeping costs low. And all that contributes to, again, to that competitive cost advantage, which is the big factor behind how we've been successful in keeping costs low, while the gold price has been increasing and therefore delivering on significant margin expansion.

The strategy has worked. It's a focus again, on geologic regions with geologic potential, low political risk where we see the ability to operate multiple mines over multiple decades. And you can see the table on the top right. Over the past 20 years, we've gone from operating just the LaRonde mine in Northern Quebec to operating 11 mines in 2024 in four countries in Canada, Australia, Mexico, and Finland.

Over that time, our gross production's increased about 14-fold, but more importantly, our production per share has increased by a factor of three. There are very few companies in the sector that can say that they've done that, and that's what investors want when they buy a gold equity. They want exposure to certainly margin expansion when the gold price goes up by virtue of the company controlling costs. But they also want exposure to more ounces of production, more ounces, more gold per share. And Agnico successfully delivered that.

If you look at from a financial perspective, with the fact we've been able to control costs while the gold prices got up, EBITDA on a per share basis is up 10 folds over the past 20 years, and our dividends gone from $0.03 to $1.60 a share. We've paid a dividend for over 40 years and in that time, have returned over $3 billion to shareholders.

Sorry, just give a moment here. I'm having trouble with the advancing the slide.

Tanya Jakusconek

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Jamie Porter

Thank you very much. So, if we look back at 2024, it was a record from virtually every perspective. In terms of production, we achieved just under 3.5 million ounces, which was a record for the company. And controlling costs benefiting from the higher gold price contributed to record financial results across the board. You can see our quarterly financials from $0.76 earnings per share in the first quarter to $1.26 in Q4. Again, that competitive advantage that we have by having the lowest turnover and being able to benefit from sharing technical resources across the company helps to keep our costs low.

We're also predominantly based in Canada. We've been benefiting from a weaker Canadian dollar. Our all-in sustaining cost margin for 2024 was about 50%. The rest of the industry is around 35%. So, it means we're more profitable per ounce of production. We took advantage of that strong financial performance to dramatically deleverage the business. We went from a net debt position of $1.5 billion at the start of the year to just $200 million at the end of the year. And at these gold prices last year, our realized gold price was around $2,400 at $3,000 plus. We're just going to continue to grow free cash flow in 2025.

If we could go to the next slide, please. So, in 2024, we did a little bit of everything. I mentioned, we generated about $2.1 billion of free cash flow. We returned $920 million directly to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks, and we delevered the balance sheet by 1.3 billion. But we're able to again really do it all. We're obviously continuing to invest in sustaining our production base. We've got an organic project pipeline of five projects that we're increasing our level of investment in to provide growth into the 2030s.

So, we're in the great position of being able to deliver strong returns to shareholders, reinvest in the business, reinvest in exploration, and, really commit to growing the company longer term. For 2025, we have the largest exploration budget in the company's history of $500 million, north of $500 million. and we've increased our level of investment in our capital growth projects. And we'll perhaps talk about those in more detail, with Tanya. If we go to the next slide.

The company is really in the strongest position in its history. We have a stable three-year outlook of production at industry leading costs. We do have the potential for slightly lower production '28 and '29. We're working on that now. But our goal is to get to five years of balanced, stable production in around 3.4 million ounces, 3.5 million ounces, after which we'll start to see production growth coming from those organic growth projects that I mentioned.

So, we've got a great pipeline of projects, five in total. Detour Underground, we're taking that mine from about 700,000 ounces a year to a million ounces a year. At Canadian Malartic in Northern Quebec, we have a vision to get that complex to a million ounces a year. We're building. We intend to build the Upper Beaver Project just outside of Kirkland Lake. That will give us an incremental 230,000 ounces a year of production. We have our Hope Bay project in Nunavut, which has the potential to produce 400,000 ounces a year.

And last but not least, our San Nicolas joint venture with Teck in Mexico, has the potential to add significant additional production as well. So, the company is in great shape. We're delivering record financial results as the opportunity to increase returns to shareholders. We're investing heavily in our business and growing production into the 2030s.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q - Tanya Jakusconek

Okay. Let's dig a bit deeper into your assets. Let's do it. But I did want to just start first with the cost because one thing about gold price going higher, there are certain input costs like royalties that will go up as the gold price increases. So maybe, you have very good costs and you've done very well on your cost control. Maybe you can just share with the audience how your costs may differ from peers' because your peers are significantly higher in their cost structure. So, what are you doing differently?

Jamie Porter

Yes, I think it's a combination of what I mentioned, the fact that we're benefiting from some weakness in the Canadian dollar and certainly relative to a year ago or two years ago. We are impacted on the cost side; as the gold price goes higher, our royalty expense goes up by about $4 an ounce.

Tanya Jakusconek

For every $100?

Jamie Porter

For every $100. So, it has an impact but not an overly significant impact. Again, I think it just comes down to that regional consolidation strategy. I think our operations are very resilient. You look at when we've had operational challenges in the past, and in the third quarter of 2023, we had a transformer blow at a detour. We installed the backup and it went, but we were back up and running at full capacity in a matter of six weeks, in a partial capacity in a couple of weeks, because we were able to get the best of the best in terms of the engineering firms, the suppliers, the technical resources from other mine sites. Our operations are really benefit from, from that physical proximity to one another. And I think that helps keeps our costs in check.

Tanya Jakusconek

For, if I remember correctly, for every 10% move in the Canadian dollar, it's $50 per ounce in your costs.

Jamie Porter

That's correct.

Tanya Jakusconek

Above and beyond the CAD1.38 that you're using. What about the productivity? Because I think you gave guidance with 5% inflation. Do you think your productivity of your workforce can offset that inflation rate?

Jamie Porter

Yes, so we, for the second year in a row when we gave our guidance, we said we were seeing cost inflation in the range of 6% to 7%, but our guidance was going to be up 3% to 4%. We're doing better than the rate of inflation. And that's exactly right. It's through productivity initiatives, through automation that we're achieving that efficiency. We have over the past couple of years actually brought in a third-party consultant to look at our process flow [Technical Difficulty] but we actually see the potential to extend metal bank out to 2035 and operating in [Indiscernible]. It's all about your cost structure.

So, we were able through this third-party assessment and some other in internal work to actually reduce our cost structure by a $100 an ounce there. And that's added potentially eight years to nine years of additional mine life. So, it's that culture of continuous focus on improvement and efficiency that really is prevalent throughout the organization, and it's working.

Tanya Jakusconek

Maybe we should move on to the assets. And I want to talk about Canadian Malartic. I visited the mine several times, but maybe just talk to us about the underground. So, you've got the underground coming in by the end of the decade 2029. You've got excess mill capacity. So maybe just talk to us about, we've got a big mill, you've got to feed the mill and you've not only found some additional ore, but you also are supplementing it with investments in juniors or taking out some of the juniors. So, what are we doing in that camp?

Jamie Porter

Right. So, I mentioned in the presentation that we have a vision to get to a million ounces of production at the Canadian Malartic Complex. Right now, we're producing around 600,000 ounces a year there. Currently, we're mining primarily from open pits relatively low grade, about one gram per ton material at a rate of about 60,000 tons per day. And that's the mills rated for 60,000 tons per day by 2029, we will have transitioned from Canadian Malartic having been Canada's largest open pit gold mine to Canada's largest underground mine.

We'll be operating from underground at 3 times the grade but one-third of the throughput. So, 20000 tons will be going through the mill at a grade of three grams per ton. We'll still be producing the same amount of gold, around 600,000 ounces a year but all of a sudden, we've got 40,000 tons of excess capacity. So, our vision to get that complex to a million ounces is filling that mill. We have, we believe, based on the exploration success and resource growth potential there. That there will likely be a second shaft, another perhaps 10,000 tons per day another 200,000 ounces per year production could come from a second shaft.

We also acquired O3 Mining, closed that transaction this month. We see that as having the potential to be a satellite deposit that, starting in 2032, 2033 could add about 130,000 ounces a year. We also have a project called Wasamac that's about 80 kilometers away that we believe could add another 3,000 tons to 4,000 tons of daily mill throughput another 100,000 ounces a year.

So, you piece those building blocks together, you get us up to a million ounces. But there's, I think the thing I'd say at Canadian Malartic is there's tremendous upside and optionality there. When I joined Agnico a couple of years ago, I kind of looked through the fact that there, and was blown away by the fact that there was not an ounce in resources underground in Canadian Malartic eight years ago. We're up to 18 million ounces currently and growing at a rapid pace. We have 25 drills, the most we've ever had on the Canadian Malartic complex currently and are expanding the deposit significantly.

Tanya Jakusconek

If we add up all of those capacities, I think we get to about 35,000 tons a day. We have the 20,000 tons right now. We have another 10,000 tons potentially from a new shaft that brings us to 30,000 tons. And then I think oh no, we are up to 40,000 tons. Yes.

Jamie Porter

46,000 tons, 47,000 tons.

Tanya Jakusconek

Okay, so we're about 47,000 tons, so we still have about 13,000 tons per day of excess capacity that could be filled by either opportunities in the camp and or toll milling. Would that be a fair assessment?

Jamie Porter

Absolutely, I mean, we don't have a path to get there at this point but there is the potential to go beyond 1 million ounces a year at the complex, just given the excess mill capacity that we'll still have even after we develop all of those projects.

Tanya Jakusconek

So, that could be a million-ounce camp, and then as we move over to Detour, maybe share with us how you envision to get to a million ounces from the 700,000 ounces that you have today?

Jamie Porter

So, Detour has now overtaken Canadian Malartic over the past couple of years as Canada's largest open pit mine. It's a massive operation almost 80,000 tons per day of 0.9 gram per ton material. But we've identified an 8-million-ounce underground resource at Detour that's higher grade. It's about 2.5 times the grade of what we're mining from the open pit, and the idea is to go underground and target some of that higher grade and obviously displace the lower-grade production.

By doing so, we put out a study in June of last year by doing so we can see ourselves getting to about a million ounces of production by 2030 and sustaining that for a minimum of 14 years. Now the study, I always like to point out the study that we put out last June incorporates only 4 million ounces of those 8 million ounces in the resource. So, there's significant potential in terms of being able to convert additional -- especially once we get underground, we'll be able to drill on tighter spacing. And convert more of that underground resource, get it into the mine plan and potentially extend that million ounce per year life even further.

But if you look at detour, I mean this -- it's a unicorn in our industry. It's a massive gold mine with the mine life of a base metal mine. We have reserves currently out to 2053, and if you factor in resources, we're mining there into the 2070s. So, there's significant, upside potential to try and bring some of that production forward and maximize the value of the asset even further.

Tanya Jakusconek

And when we moved to none of it we talked a little bit about Hope Bay, and I think you know we're looking forward to a study that's coming out I think, sometime next year or the end of next year or sometime next year. So maybe you know you mentioned a 400,000-ounce producer, so what do we need to see for you to make that decision? So, what are we waiting for?

Jamie Porter

Yes, so a bit of history on Hope Bay. It was a project that the Canadian government blocked the sale, to a Chinese company back in 2021. And Agnico Eagle stepped in and acquired the project from TMAC for about 280 million, operated for a few months and shut it down and decided it made sense to really drill it off and understand what was there. We've been operating in the end of it for two decades. We operate the Meadowbank mine that I referred to where we're trying to extend life. We also operate at our Meliadine mine, so we understand what it takes to operate it profitably in the Arctic and its scale. So, everything costs about 3 times as much when you factor in the logistics, so you need 3 times the production is a general rule of thumb.

So, we've been targeting 400,000 ounces a year at Hope Bay, and we've tasked the exploration team there with trying to drill off a sufficient mineable resource to be able to support 400,000 ounces of production for 10 years. And we had a bit of a game changer in the middle of last year, the exploration team hit into this patch seven zone, which will represent a third mining front for us. It's higher grade, amenable to mining. Represents the potential to bring some higher grade into the mine plan sooner, and I think it's really what's going to support that an economic mine plan getting up to that 400,000 ounces that we need.

So yes, as you said, about a year from now, we should be in a position to put out a PEA on Hope Bay. It's expensive up there to build, so it will be a high capital cost project well north of a billion dollars, up front, but again it's a. It's a project in I, I mean none of it just for context, it's the size of Mexico. It's 3.5 times the size of France, there's 34,000 people that live in Nunavut. It's massively underexplored.

Agnico Eagle represents a third of the GDP of the territory, so there's tremendous upside potential there. We're on the 80-kilometer greenstone belt with lots of geologic potential, so the idea is to get going with Hope Bay based on what we know now, and that will provide the cash flow to keep funding exploration and expanding, and we're hopeful that's a mine that will be growing for decades.

Tanya Jakusconek

We talked about lots of really big mines. One I wanted to just touch on is Fosterville. I get that question all the time. So, it's a little mine. What's your strategy there, and does it make sense to have a small mine in Australia?

Jamie Porter

Yes, we get that question a lot. I mean, Fosterville has gone from over its history has gone from a very small, barely breakeven operation to one of the most profitable gold mines in the world. They hit that super high-grade Swan Zone. And for a period of a few years, we're producing north of 1.5 million ounces a year, and I believe the Fosterville Gold Mines was actually one of the top three largest taxpayers in Australia over a two-year period.

So, there's tremendous potential there from an exploration perspective. We're spending about $30 million a year trying to find the next Swan Zone. Our geologists believe that their, the potential for another super high-grade zone exists. So, while production has come down, grades have come off, so we're down to producing closer to 150,000, 170,000 ounces a year there.

At these gold prices, we're still generating about $1 million a day of free cash flow and our VP of Australia. The way he likes to put it, it's the single best gold exploration option in the world that happens to generate $1 million a day of free cash flow. So, it's certainly not costing us anything, it's a very profitable operation, and we've got a potential lottery ticket in the event that we hit something in the future.

Tanya Jakusconek

Well with $1 million a day coming out of that little mine, what about capital returns?

Jamie Porter

Capital yes, so last year, as I mentioned in the presentation, we returned almost $1 billion to shareholders, $800 million through the dividend another $120 million through the share buyback. Gold price is north of $3,100 an ounce, I'm sure we'll be evaluating the dividend later this year. And I anticipate being much more active on the share buyback as well. I think there's the opportunity, like I said in the presentation, for us to do a little bit of everything right now. We can aggressively invest in exploration in developing our internal growth projects, while continuing to increase the level of returns to shareholders through the share buyback and potentially an increase in the dividend as well.

Tanya Jakusconek

Okay, we're out of time but thank you very much for that, and I look forward to hopefully the mine tour, too. I think it's upper beaver this year.

Jamie