Welcome to the annual general meeting of the shareholders of Lundin Gold. I am Jack Lundin, chairman of the board of directors. Following the AGM, Ron Hochstein, CEO of Lundin Gold, will provide an update on our business. Today's meeting is being held as a hybrid meeting, taking place online and in person in Vancouver, British Columbia, in order to facilitate increased shareholder attendance and participation. The matters to be considered today are set out in our circular: Item 1, the receipt of Lundin Gold's 2023 financial statements; Item 2, the election of directors; Item 3, the appointment of PwC as the auditors for another year; Item 4, say-on-pay vote; and Item 5, any other matters properly brought before the meeting.
In accordance with the bylaws of the corporation, I will act as chair of the meeting, and Sheila Colman, Vice President, Legal and Sustainability, and Corporate Secretary, will act as secretary of the meeting. With the consent of the meeting, Marisa Bintema of Computershare Investor Services will act as scrutineer of this meeting. If you have an objection or question regarding the appointment of the scrutineer, virtual attendees now have 15 seconds to submit your objection via the message link, and in-person attendees may raise their hand.
No objections have been received.
Would the secretary please assure us that the meeting has been properly called?
The notice calling this meeting, together with a form of proxy and management information circular, have been sent to each director of the company, the auditors of the company, and each intermediary and registered shareholder of common shares of the company of record on March 20, 2024, which was the record date for the meeting. These documents are available for any shareholder to read. Therefore, Mr. Chair, this meeting has been properly called.
Thank you. Unless there are any objections, we will dispense the reading of the notice of meeting.
No objections have been received.
Okay. I am advised that according to the report of the scrutineer, a quorum is present. The final scrutineer's report will be included with the minutes of this meeting. I now declare that this meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. Before we consider the business of the meeting, as this meeting is in a hybrid format, I would like to comment on the voting procedures and questions relating to matters of business. To facilitate the formal business of the meeting, Sheila Colman and Ron Hochstein will propose and/or second the formal motions. Shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders attending in person may ask questions with respect to motions by raising their hand. Questions from those shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders participating online can be asked using the Lumi platform.
As the next item of business, I now present the audited financial statements of the company and the report of the auditors thereon for the year ended December 31, 2023. The audited financial statements and auditor's report have been previously distributed to shareholders who requested such statements. Are there any questions dealing with the financial statements or the auditor's report? For those attending virtually, you have 15 seconds to submit your question via the message link starting now.
No questions have been received.
As there are no questions, I will proceed to the next item of business. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors of the company for the ensuing year and to authorize the directors of the company to fix the remuneration of the auditors. It is proposed that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP be appointed as the auditors of the company. Accordingly, I ask for a motion that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP be appointed auditors of the company until the next annual meeting of shareholders and that the board be authorized to fix their remuneration.
Still moved.
I second that motion.
Are there any questions? You have 15 seconds to submit your question via the message link starting now.
No questions have been received.
As there are no questions, I would now ask those shareholders and proxy holders who have not already done so to vote. The results of today's voting will be announced at the end of the meeting. We will now proceed with the election of directors for the coming year. The information circular, which was mailed out to shareholders, contains the names of and information about management's nominees to the board of directors. I now declare the meeting open for nominations for directors.
I nominate Carmel Daniele, Gillian Davidson, Ian Gibbs, Melissa Harmon, Ashley Heppenstall, Ron Hochstein, Scott Langley, Jack Lundin, and Angelina Mehta, all to be directors of the company to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected, subject to the provisions of the company's bylaws. According to the company's bylaws, the company must receive advance notice of nominations of directors by shareholders. The company did not receive any director nominations in connection with this year's meeting within the time periods prescribed by the bylaws. Accordingly, the only persons eligible to be nominated for election to the board are the nominees named in the information circular.
I now ask for a motion that the proposed nominees be elected as directors of the company.
Still moved.
I second that motion.
The vote on the election for directors is to be conducted by way of ballot. I would now ask those shareholders and proxy holders who have not already done so to vote. As a reminder to registered shareholders and proxy holders voting at the meeting online, to vote for this item of business, you will find listed the names of the nine nominees for election to the board of directors listed in the circular. For each nominee, you may vote for or against that nominee. Those registered shareholders and proxy holders voting at the meeting in person will make the same selection on the ballots they were provided. If you have already provided voting instructions or submitted a proxy, you do not need to vote on this matter. As noted earlier, voting results for all resolutions will be summarized at the end of this meeting.
The next item of business is to consider and, if thought fit, approve a non-binding advisory resolution approving the company's approach to executive compensation. The company's compensation discussion and analysis is set out on pages 50 through 77 of the information circular. The full text of the resolution is set out on page 14 of the information circular. I'll now ask for a motion to approve the non-binding advisory resolution approving the company's approach to executive compensation.
Still moved.
I second that motion.
Are there any questions? Virtual attendees, you have 15 seconds to submit your question via the message link starting now.
No questions have been received.
As noted earlier, voting results for all resolutions will be summarized at the end of the meeting. That concludes the items of business set out in the notice of meeting. For virtual attendees, the polls are still open, and if you are a registered shareholder or proxy holder and have not submitted your vote by ballot or proxy, please do so now by selecting the applicable voting option on the voting panel. We will pause for 30 seconds to permit voting before closing the polls on all items of business. Voting on all motions has now closed. I have been advised by the scrutineer that the proxies deposited for the meeting have been voted in favor of all resolutions and that the requisite majorities have been obtained for the election of the nominated directors and the appointment of auditors.
In addition, the shareholders have voted for, on a non-binding advisory basis, the company's approach to executive compensation as set out in the management information circular. Rather than hold up the business of the meeting for the final tabulation of the votes cast, I direct that the results of in-person votes and votes compiled through the polls taken be included within the minutes of this meeting and be posted on the company's SEDAR+ profile at www.sedarplus.ca after this meeting. The formal items of business for this meeting have now been dealt with. Is there any further business? For virtual attendees, if you would like to raise any further business at this meeting, you can do so by using the messenger link. You have 15 seconds to submit any further business using the message link.
No further business has been received.
As there is no further business and unless there is any objection from those in attendance at this meeting, I shall now declare the formal meeting terminated. Since there are no other matters of business, I declare the meeting is now terminated. Now, Ron Hochstein, CEO of Lundin Gold, will provide an update on our business followed by a question period on that presentation. Over to you, Ron.
Thank you, Jack. Thank you for everyone attending the AGM today. I will be making some forward-looking statements, and I encourage you to read our cautionary note regarding forward-looking information attached here to the presentation and also available on our website. Just for those who may not be familiar, Fruta del Norte is an underground operation, one of only one underground operations in the country of Ecuador. We're situated in the southeastern province of Zamora Chinchipe. Our current reserves put us as one of the largest high-grade operating mine gold mines in the world today, with current reserves of 5.5 million ounces and a life of mine currently out to 2034. I want to spend a little bit of time speaking about how we create value. Our focus is on you, our shareholders, and all of our stakeholders.
In 2023, we generated free cash flow of $263 million, putting us as one of the highest free cash flow yield companies in the gold space today. It was a great year. We met our upgraded guidance. We upgraded both our production and cost guidance earlier in the year, and we met both of those. We paid just under $100 million in dividends. We announced replacement of all mined ounces since the start of production. In addition, our exploration programs, which are so important for future growth, were very aggressive, with over 11,000 meters drilled underground to bring those resources into reserves, and just over 43,000 meters drilled on surface in our near-mine and regional programs. On the ESG front, we've set a target to be carbon neutral by 2030, and you'll see later that Lundin Gold is one of the lowest carbon emitters in the gold space.
In addition, not only returning capital to shareholders with our cash flow, we also focused on cleaning up our balance sheet with the announcement of the early repayment of the gold prepay facility and the senior debt facility. 2024 is starting out well, with just over 111,000 ounces produced in Q1. As many of you shareholders know, we produce it both as gold concentrate and Doré. Throughput is up, and we're well on our way to meeting our 2024 guidance of 450,000-500,000 ounces. One of the projects we have this year, and as you can see through this graphic, we originally started out at 3,500 tons per day and have been constantly focusing on increasing throughput. One of the big areas is also increasing recoveries, which generates even more cash flow through that increased gold recoveries.
We have a project currently underway with expenditure of about $37 million to expand throughput now from 4,500 ton per day to 5,000 tons per day, an increased recovery 3% from 88 currently up to 91%. This will have a significant improvement on our operations overall. Based on our Q1 numbers, our all-in sustaining cost is well within our guidance of $820-$890 per ounce of gold sold at $868 per ounce. This puts us at one of the lowest costs on the low end of the cost curve of the industry. Again, we're well on our way to meeting our 2024 guidance as we've just walked through. This slide indicates our 2025 and 2026 guidance. You can see consistently either approaching or meeting 500,000 ounces per year of gold production at industry-leading all-in sustaining costs.
With those production levels and continued focus on operational excellence in reducing our costs, we are generating a lot of free cash flow. Remember, we've only been in operations since the first gold was poured in November 2019 and reached commercial production in February 2020. Unfortunately, cash flow in that first year was negative because we had three months of shutdown due to COVID in that first half of 2020. But since then, I've been generating significant free cash flow for use in growth and for return of capital to shareholders and cleaning up the balance sheet. In the second half of 2023, we generated $143 million. We've talked about cleaning up the balance sheet. I mentioned earlier the prepayment of the gold prepay, which was done in January of 2023.
And then in the fourth quarter, we announced the repayment of our senior debt in essentially two and a half years prior to what was originally anticipated. And then just recently, we announced the acquisition of the stream from Newmont for consideration of $330 million. Effectively now, we have paid back what was originally a $750 million debt facility in four short years. And by the end of 2024, Lundin Gold will be debt-free. But with that cash flow, what it allows us to do is focus on continued expansion that I mentioned, but most importantly, the long-term future growth, which is exploration. You can see here that in 2024, we have one of the largest drill programs ever done on this land package going back from 1997 when this package was originally put together.
One of the key factors, I think, to take away for shareholders on this slide too is the last highest drill program, which was in 2007, was 100% focused on Fruta del Norte. We are now looking at the area around Fruta del Norte, both the resources itself around Fruta del Norte and on the large land package. This is the first time that this district has really been explored. And this is just a quick, a little bit more micro look. So conversion, again, focusing on improving our resources, so moving inferred resources to indicated and measured, so increasing our reserves.
The near-mine program is focused right around Fruta del Norte, and the regional program is a little longer term and looking for finding another Fruta del Norte. Our conversion program has been extremely successful. If we go back to 2016 when we put out our original feasibility study, we had reserves of just over 4.8 million ounces.
Since then, we've mined just under 1.9 million ounces, but have added 2.6 million ounces, essentially putting our reserves today higher than originally planned in 2016, plus producing just under 2.6 million ounces. This has been an amazing feat by our geological team that we have at Fruta del Norte. In addition, the resources, which is what you really want to look at, is the blue sky. Essentially, these resources are we continue to add and improve the confidence in our resources through our conversion drilling program and some of our near-mine program. On the near-mine program, you can see here all the targets that we're focused on. The colored and blue area is the current resource envelope of Fruta del Norte in the graphic on the right. The yellow boxes are areas that we are drilling either through surface or underground in and around Fruta del Norte.
For example, at depth, underneath the current resource, underground to the east, and then on surface as we move to the south and north. Essentially, what we're seeing is originally all the drilling was on Fruta del Norte, but that's just really essentially the eyeball of what could potentially be a much larger area and effectively a district. And then when we look at regional programs, the Suarez Basin is 32 square km of very prospective terrain. And if we look back at this, Fruta del Norte was found very early by Aurelian, which put this land package together. Kinross did some work, but all surface work. This is the first time in this very prospective area, and what our exploration team feels is one of the most prospective areas in the world today for epithermal gold deposits, has had very little work done.
We are just beginning to scratch the surface with our near-mine program and our regional program. This is so important for exploration is to have this pyramid or pipeline of opportunities. We have teams in the field that are continually out looking for new prospects that then we move up the pipeline to try to bring those ultimately into inferred resources. In closing, Lundin Gold focuses on creating shareholder value for you, our shareholders, through three pillars: operational excellence, focusing on continued optimization, reducing our costs, improving our recoveries. And the big project this year is to increase our throughput and recoveries with an expenditure of just around $37 million.
With that focus on operational excellence, and given that Fruta del Norte is an amazing deposit, we're generating significant cash flow, which has allowed us to pay off in full all our project finance debt and currently returning capital to shareholders.
As mentioned in our Q1 report issued earlier this week, we are reviewing our dividend policy. We have the cash as well to pursue growth, and our exploration program can continue to grow. We're drilling on a minimum of 65,000 meters, the largest program ever on the district in 2024. And the most important part, those three pillars cannot be done without the continued focus on ESG. This is part of the Lundin Group culture, has been from day one when we first set foot in Ecuador, almost 10 years ago now. And it's part of the Lundin Group brand amongst all companies and is so important to Lundin Gold's continued success. On that note, I'd like to thank you as shareholders for your support given to the company, to the board, and look forward to speaking to you continually through the upcoming year. Thank you very much.