Taseko Mines Limited (NYSE:TGB) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 3, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Brian Bergot – Vice President-Investor Relations

Stuart McDonald – President and Chief Executive Officer

Bryce Hamming – Chief Financial Officer

Richard Tremblay – Senior Vice President-Operations

Conference Call Participants

Ed Brucker – Barclays

Craig Hutchison – TD Securities

Alex Terentiew – Stifel

Alex Bedwany – Canaccord Genuity

Operator

Good morning. My name is Joel, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Taseko's Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you. Mr. Bergot, you may begin your conference.

Brian Bergot

Thank you, Joel. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining Taseko's second quarter 2023 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’m joined today in Vancouver by Taseko's President and CEO, Stuart McDonald; Taseko's Chief Financial Officer, Bryce Hamming; and our Senior VP, Operations, 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. Following opening remarks, we will open the phone lines to analysts and investors for questions.

I will now turn the call over to Stuart for his remarks.

Stuart McDonald

Okay. Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join our call this morning. Operationally, it was a decent quarter at Gibraltar. We had copper production of 28 million pounds, which is up 12% from Q1, and unit costs also declined. As we've spoken about previously, the lower benches of the Gibraltar pit are producing higher grade, more continuous ore zones, and the pit is set up very well for ore release over the balance of this year. Head grade in the quarter averaged 0.24%, and we should see similar levels for the rest of the year.