Eldorado Gold Corp Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Cosmos Chiu - CIBC - Analyst : Thanks, George and team. Maybe my first question is on spurious. I know it's more complex than that and I appreciate all the pictures that were shown to us in terms of progress, but my question is on the 66% completion of phase two that you've given to us, and that increased from 60% last quarter. How can, we and also investors potentially use that as a yardstick of how your progress is going? For example, like, do we, is it, should we expect to see 100%? By Q1 or close to 100% by Q1 2026 ahead of your first production. Is that how we can use it? Maybe if you can help us out.

Question: Cosmos Chiu - CIBC - Analyst : And George, that leads in well to my next question here. As you mentioned in your MD&A, you proactively built contingency plans to protect the schedule and budget. You kind of touched on it just now, but could you maybe elaborate a little bit more in terms of, as you said, Plan B, Plan C, even a Plan B, and anything that you can share with us?

Question: Cosmos Chiu - CIBC - Analyst : Great, maybe switching gears a little bit, the NCIB, good to see that you've increased your NCIB or the potential shares that you can buy back, and I think if you do buy back, it shows the market you have confidence in your timeline for Skouries. In terms of that, like, should we or could we expect your usage of the NCIB facility to increase as we get closer to completion of Skouries, or is that really not a factor? It's really dependent on free cash flow on the price. It's not really dependent on how close you get to the completion of the construction of skills.

Question: Cosmos Chiu - CIBC - Analyst : Perfect, thanks, George and teams, those are all the questions I have. Have a good weekend.

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Great. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for taking my questions. Maybe let's start with the easy one. Just thinking about your year, and I know George, you mentioned a stronger second half of the year, and we know that Q2 we're supposed to see better performance coming out of Olympias getting back to normalized, but how do you see the year in terms of first half, second half? Am I looking at that 48% in the first half, 52% in the second half, and sort of Q1 and Q2 being similar?

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Okay. And then anything unusual on the maintenance side that I should be thinking about in that first half, second half, anything down for maintenance at any of the operations? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MAY 02, 2025 / 3:30PM, ELD.TO - Q1 2025 Eldorado Gold Corp Earnings Call

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Okay. That's great. Thank you. And since I have you on, George, I just wanted to come back to stories before I go to Paul on some other financials, just on stories, maybe just for my own understanding, you've mentioned, you've got your plan B&C, on your labor. You mentioned that, the next phase for Q2, Q3 are really the piping, electrical, mechanical. You mentioned you have the workforce on the mechanical and piping. What about the electrical or did you just missed that out, or maybe as I think about it, is any one of that area more constrained than the other, and -- ?

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Okay. And then maybe if we move to just the training on the open pit site, so you've got the equipment coming to site, and you're obviously self-mining starting in Q4 of this year, on the, in the open pit. How's that going?

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : And can you remind me, George, how many people you have right now for the open pit and how many do you need to have in place, or do you have them already all there?

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Okay, so you have 27 right now and having to go to 80. Okay, yeah, thank you so much for that and good luck and seems like you've got, the labor there which is good. Maybe if I can just move over to Paul to talk about just the tariffs and the prepaid. I'm sorry, with the prepaid, I'll do the easier one, the prepaid and can we just, you have it, have to deliver the remaining amount during 2025 just as a reminder for me in the income statement is it showing up under other?

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Okay. All right. And then maybe on the interest expense, which was quite high for me versus what I was expecting, what exactly is happening there? It's less being capitalized. I just trying to understand why it was so high and what should I be thinking about that.

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Okay, so we should think about it going back to a more normalized rate in Q2 onwards.

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Okay, and then maybe if I could just squeeze in my parrot question I'm just interested that you mentioned the couple of dollars per ounce impact I think it was. $4 on the total cash plus 6 on sustaining, but maybe just besides the numbers from a a a a higher level, Paul, what is, I'm assuming it's in the consumables that you will see that impact and maybe can you just review from a higher level what consumables would be impacted that you are either, getting from the US or Or other.

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Yeah, it's funny because I'm so, I guess, surprised that a lot of the mining companies buy explosives from the US and kind of surprised that we can't buy them in Canada. But are there alternatives for us in Canada to buy explosives? I understand cyanide with DuPont, but I'm just wondering on the explosive side, are there other opportunities within Canada?

Question: Tanya Jakusconek - Scotiabank - Analyst : Yeah. Yeah, thanks for that. I'm just surprised in general from how much of explosives come from the US. Thank you so much for helping me and I'll let someone else ask questions.

Question: Don DeMarco - National Bank Financial - Analyst : Thank you, operator, and good morning, George and team. So guys, scurious CapEx, bit light in Q1 if we just take simply take full year guidance and divide by four, was that intentional or do you expect to catch up over the balance of the year? I do see that open mining starting in Q4.

Question: Don DeMarco - National Bank Financial - Analyst : Perfect. And so continuing with Scurrius, procurement's complete, and should we take that as a mitigating risk to further CapEx increases? I mean, I know you've talked about labor, but just to the point, like overall, how would you characterize CapEx or schedule risk going forward at this point?

Question: Don DeMarco - National Bank Financial - Analyst : Okay, thanks for that. Then, just as a final question, and this is the continuation of what Cosmos had asked earlier, on the NCIB, I think, you indicated there's a step change increase from 350,000 over 10 million shares. So what's remarkable to me is just the magnitude of the increase. Can you add some color on on what, what's behind this increase in your intentions? Is it just to give you that flexibility if you need it? Or is this really you're thinking that there will be that material step change increase in utilizing this facility? This NTIB.

Question: Don DeMarco - National Bank Financial - Analyst : Okay, thank you for that, Paul. And Georgian team, that's all for me. Good luck with Q2 and the rest of the year.

Question: Lawson Winder - Bank of America Securities - Analyst : Yeah, thank you very much, operator, and good morning, George and Paul. I'm going to ask you about the buyback again and ask it in a in a bit of a different way, and that is, when you budgeted your balance sheet and your your liquidity for the build out of Skouries. I mean, I don't think selling those G mining shares was part of that and so why not just allocate that entire windfall from G mining shares to the buyback.

Question: Lawson Winder - Bank of America Securities - Analyst : Okay, and then, just back to Scorrius and thinking about the risks around skilled labor availability and then and then thinking about your competition for that skilled labor, there are huge fiscal programs being rolled out in Germany and we'll probably start to see them in other countries. We don't have a lot of visibility on the timing, and so maybe I'd ask the question, to what extent can you sort of plan for that competition? The timings, maybe it's going to work out perfectly. You can just get on the line before some of those infrastructure projects in Germany and elsewhere start to ramp up. But I mean, thinking about it from a budgeting point of view, have you budgeted to any extent the risk of some meaningful inflation and the cost of that skilled labor? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MAY 02, 2025 / 3:30PM, ELD.TO - Q1 2025 Eldorado Gold Corp Earnings Call

Question: Lawson Winder - Bank of America Securities - Analyst : Okay.

Question: Lawson Winder - Bank of America Securities - Analyst : Okay, thank you both.