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Earnings Call Transcript Gran Colombia Gold Corp. (OTCPK:TPRFF) Q2 2018 Results Earnings Conference Call August 15, 2018 9:30 AM ET

Executives

Mike Davies - CFO

Lombardo Paredes - CEO

Analysts

Operator

Welcome to the Gran Colombia Gold Q2 2018 Results Webcast. My name is Christine, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to Mike Davies; Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

Mike Davies

Great thanks Christine. Good morning and thank you for joining us today for our 2018 second quarter and first half results webcast. Joining me on the webcast this morning is our CEO, Lombardo Paredes. I’ll first go through our prepared remarks regarding our performance in the first half of this year and then Lombardo will be available as we open things up for the Q&A session.

Before we proceed to presentation, I would first like to draw your attention to our legal disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements that may be made by us during the webcast this morning. Each quarter I have been providing you with an update on our progress against our stated priorities to execute our strategy in 2018.

Our first objective this year focused on the final improvements to our capital structure. We’re pleased to say that we have successfully closed this chapter with the elimination of all of the convertible debt that was put in place back in early 2016 reducing the potential dilution to shareholders from above 95 million shares under the former capital structure to about 63 million under the new structure.

With the issuance of shares settled at 2018 debentures earlier this week, we now have 48.2 million common shares issued and outstanding. We have reduced our total debt from approximately 180 million at the time of the debt restructuring in early 2016 to 93 million at present represented by our 2024 Gold Notes. The Gold Notes are currently unlisted and we are working through the listing application for TSX at this time.

We also have 12 million new warrants outstanding that were issued as part of the Gold Notes financing in April. We’re pleased to say that we have listing approval for these warrants and they should start trading on the TSX in early September under the symbol GCM.WT.B.

The second objective we've set for this year was to continue the implementation of the object optimized mine plan at Segovia. Segovia is our primary cash generating assets and was recently recognized in the mining intelligence study as one of the top five highest grade underground gold mining operations globally in 2017. We expect to invest about $30 million this year in the continuation of the exploration, development, expansion and modernization programs at Segovia of which we spent close to $16 million in the first half.

Of this total expenditure about 8 million was spent on exploration and development. We spent almost 5 million in various programs taking place within our mines upgrading mining equipment, improving infrastructure such as via [PK and hoisting] systems that move people and material in and out of the mines, ventilation improvements at Providencia and El Silencio this year, health and safety improvements and more.

And we also spent just over $2 million through the first half this year with some further equipment upgrades at our Maria Dama plant and its lab. Construction of the El Chocho tailings storage facility which started receiving material ahead of schedule in July and the commencement of construction of the new filter press which will be commissioned in 2019.

The water treatment plant implemented at Maria Dama in 2017 is continuing to do its job eliminating our exposure to environmental discharge fees likely we had incurred in the past. Overall execution of our 2018 capital investment programs at Segovia is moving on nicely.

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