Good morning, everyone. I'd like to get started. Welcome. Welcome, everyone, to the annual and special meeting of the shareholders of Agnico Eagle Mines Limited. I'm Sean Boyd. I'm the Chair of the Board of Agnico Eagle, and we were just talking outside. So Shirley Tom, who's our transfer agent, asked her how many years she's been doing this annual meeting. She wouldn't tell me exactly, but it's over 30. And this will be the 41st annual meeting that I've been at. So a lot of time has passed, and what we're gonna focus on today is not really talk about what we've built, talk about how we built it, which is what makes the company really, really special.
As is a tradition that was started by our former chair, Jim Nasso, we'd like to invite our representatives to welcome all of us to the meeting in some of the local languages that we operate in. So first, I'd like to call on Leona Aglukkaq to give us an Inuktitut greeting. Leona?
... Thank you, Sean. Leona Aglukkaq,
Thank you, Leona. We'll call on, Sarah Savoie to give us a greeting in French.
Thank you, Sean. It will be my pleasure to welcome everyone to this meeting with a French greeting.
Thank you, Sarah. I'd like to call on Merari Guerrero to greet us in Spanish.
Thank you, Sean. It will be my pleasure to welcome everyone to this meeting with a Spanish greeting.
Thank you, Merari. I'd like to call on Alexandra Heller to give us a greeting in Finnish. Thank you, Sean. It will be my pleasure to welcome everyone to this meeting in Finnish. Thank you, Alexandra. Alexandra speaks eight languages. We'll talk about the group of young ladies in a minute. We should just get her to do all of them next time. We'd ask Melissa Kerr to give us a greeting in Cree, please. Good morning, everyone. It's an honor to be here. I'll be greeting everyone in Cree this morning. Thank you, Melissa. And, finally, Taylor McPhee to give us a greeting in Anishinaabemowin .
Merci pour,
Thank you, Taylor. Thank you, all of you, for those readings. I would like to acknowledge that we're meeting today on traditional territory of many First Nations, including the Mississaugas of the New Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat, also known as the City of Toronto. This territory is home to diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people, and is also part of Treaty 13. I would also like to acknowledge that many of our activities take place on traditional lands of the Indigenous peoples around the world. We recognize these peoples as being the traditional custodians of these lands, and we affirm, reaffirm our commitment to work with them to establish mutually beneficial, cooperative, and productive relationships. Let's get the meeting started.
In terms of the business of the meeting, as announced in the corporation's Management Information Circular, Agnico is conducting a hybrid meeting, in order to allow registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders to participate both online and here in person. This meeting was called for 11; it's just past that time, so I ask that the meeting, now come to order. I'd like to take a moment to introduce, the head table, other directors of the corporation that are with us today, and some other important guests. So seated with me at the head table is Ammar Al-Joundi, our President and Chief Executive Officer, also a director of the corporation; Jamie Porter, Executive Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer; and Chris Vollmershausen, Executive Vice President, Legal, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary.
Seated near the front are our other directors, so would you kindly acknowledge yourself when your name is called? Jeff Parr, our Vice Chair and Chair of our Audit Committee, Jamie Sokalsky, our Lead Director, the Honorable Leona Aglukkaq, the Chair of our Compensation Committee, Martine Celej, John Gill, Chair of our Technical Committee, Peter Grosskopf, Chair of our Governance Committee, Elizabeth Lewis-Gray, Deborah McCombe, Chair of our Health, Safety and Environment Committee, and Merfyn Roberts. Thank you to our board for all your support and hard work, and support of our management team. In addition, seated near the front are eight of the participants in our Leanne Baker Scholarship and Development Program. You've already met Sarah, Merari, Alexandra, and in addition, I'd like to introduce Dr. Ariane Ballard. Thank you.
Mariana Pinheiro Harvey, Trudy Jackson, Michelle Moore, and Dr. Veronica Reissmann. So, as we said, they're all participants in the second cohort in a scholarship and development program that was initiated to honor, and in the memory of a former director, friend, and colleague of ours, Dr. Leanne Baker. And seeing, the quality of the individuals that are in the program, Leanne Baker would be extremely proud of each and every one of you. So, we're hoping you're getting a lot out of this.
We're proud to have you with this company, and again, I think Leanne and her family, and we'll make sure that she's aware of the contributions that you've made to the company and to the communities that you work in, make sure the family is aware of the contribution that you've made to the company. So thank you very much. In accordance with the bylaws of the corporation, I'll preside as chair of the meeting. Mr. Vollmershausen will act as Secretary of the meeting. With the consent of the meeting, Shirley Tom, thank you, Shirley, and Romella Mukherjee of Computershare Trust Company of Canada, the corporation's registrar and transfer agent, will act as the scrutineers of the meeting. After the formal business, Ammar will present a corporate update, followed by a question-and-answer period.
In order to expedite matters and move things along, Mr. Vollmershausen will move all the motions. Mr. Al-Joundi will second all the motions with respect to business that's being conducted at this meeting. As this meeting is being held both in person and virtually, we think it's appropriate just to set out some procedures to ensure this meeting gets conducted orderly. I'll now turn it over to our General Counsel, Mr. Vollmershausen, to go over these procedures.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As mentioned, I'll now outline the procedures for the orderly conduct of this meeting. Questions with respect to motions. For those participating online, questions in respect of a motion can be submitted by any registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder using the instant messaging service of the virtual meeting interface. Questions that relate to a specific motion must indicate which motion they relate to at the start of the question and must be submitted prior to voting on the motion, so they can be addressed at the appropriate time. If questions do not indicate which motion they relate to or are received after voting on the motion, they may be addressed during the Q&A session at the end of the meeting. For those here in person today, you will be given the opportunity to ask questions in respect of each motion.
When given the opportunity, please raise your hand to indicate you have a question. Once acknowledged, please clearly state your name and identify yourself as a shareholder or proxy holder prior to asking your question. For questions during the Q&A session, for those participating online, questions for the session may be submitted by any registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder using the instant messaging service. If several questions relate to the same or similar topic, the chair may group the questions and state that we have received similar questions. For those here in person, you'll be given the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A session. When given the opportunity, please raise your hand to indicate you have a question. Once acknowledged, please clearly state your name and identify yourself as a shareholder or proxy holder prior to asking your question.
We will try to answer as many questions as we can that are submitted online and asked here in person. If we are unable to answer your questions during the meeting today, we will endeavor to respond after the meeting. With respect to voting, for those participating online, voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who have not previously voted or who wish to change their votes, will be asked to vote on each business item through the virtual meeting interface by accessing the Vote tab. To vote, select your voting direction from the options shown. You'll only have a limited amount of time to vote while the polls are open.
Our virtual meeting user guide, including instructions on how to vote, was distributed to shareholders and is available under the company's profile on the SEDAR+ website and on the company's website. If you have submitted your vote prior to this meeting, there is nothing for you to do unless you wish to change your vote. For those participating here in person today, we will conduct the vote on all matters by ballot. All registered shareholders and proxy holders have been provided with color-specific ballots for each resolution. You should record your vote in respect of each resolution on the applicable ballot when so directed. The scrutineers will collect the completed ballots towards the end of the meeting.
Thank you, Chris. I confirm that I have received a sworn affidavit of an officer of Computershare Trust Company of Canada, stating that the Notice of Meeting, the Management Information Circular, and a form of proxy have been sent or made available to each shareholder, each director, and the auditors of Agnico Eagle. The affidavit, as to such mailing, has been signed by Computershare, and I direct the secretary of the meeting to keep a copy of the affidavit with the minutes of the meeting. With the consent of the meeting, I will dispense with the reading of such notice. The scrutineers have advised me that prior to the meeting, proxies were received from holders of a sufficient number of shares to constitute a quorum. I therefore declare the meeting to be regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business.
I direct that the formal report of the scrutineers be annexed to the minutes of the meeting as a schedule. The first item of formal business is the presentation of the audited financial statements of Agnico Eagle for the year ended December 31, 2023, and the auditor's report on these financial statements, both of which have been previously sent or made available to the shareholders of the corporation. If anyone would like a copy of these financial statements, additional copies are available here. I now place before the meeting such financial statements and the auditor's report. Questions regarding these statements will be entertained at the end of the meeting during the question and answer session. The next item of formal business is the election of directors of the corporation. The articles of the corporation provide for a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 15 directors.
The board of directors has determined that the total number of directors to be elected at this meeting is 11. I now declare the meeting open for nominations. May I have nominations, please?
I nominate as directors of Agnico Eagle Mines Limited, the Honorable Leona Aglukkaq, Ammar Al-Joundi, Sean Boyd, Martine Celej, Jonathan Gill, Peter Grosskopf, Elizabeth Lewis-Gray, Deborah McCombe, Jeffrey Parr, J. Merfyn Roberts, and Jamie Sokalsky, all as named in the Management Information Circular, dated March 22, 2024, and move that they be elected directors of the corporation to hold office until the next annual shareholders meeting following this meeting, or until their respective successors are elected or appointed.
May I have a second to the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you, Ammar. Under the bylaws of the corporation, any additional director nominations for today's meeting were required to have been received by no later than the close of business on March twenty-seventh, 2024. As no such nominations were received by the corporation prior to this date, there are no further nominees eligible to stand for election today. Accordingly, I now declare the nominations closed. You have heard the motion, which has been seconded. Is there any discussion? Anything online? Nothing online. If there's no discussion, I will ask the meeting vote on the motion. For those participating online, you may now through the virtual meeting interface. If you have submitted your vote prior to this meeting, there's really nothing for you to do unless you wish, as Chris said, to change your vote.
For those joining us in person here today, we now vote on the motion by ballot. All registered shareholders and proxy holders have been provided with a blue ballot for the election of directors. You should record your vote in respect of the election of directors by marking an X in the box entitled For or Withhold, as the case may be, in respect of each of the proposed nominees on the blue ballot, and by signing and printing your name in the spaces indicated on the ballot. The scrutineers will collect your ballot later in the meeting. The next item of formal business is the appointment of the auditors of Agnico Eagle for the current year.
Propose that Ernst & Young Chartered Accountants be reappointed as auditors of the corporation to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders of the corporation or until their successors are appointed, and that the auditors' remuneration be fixed by the board of directors. May I have an appropriate motion?
I so move.
Thank you, Chris. May I have a second to the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you, Ammar. You have heard the motion, which has been seconded. Is there any discussion? None here. Any online, Chris? No. So if there's no discussion, I will ask the meeting to vote on the motion. Again, for those participating online, you may now vote through the virtual meeting interface. Again, if you've already voted prior to the meeting, there's nothing you really need to do, unless you wanna change your vote, as Chris said. For those joining us in person here today, we now vote on the motion by ballot. All registered shareholders and proxy holders have been provided with a yellow ballot for the appointment of auditors.
You should record your vote in respect of the for the appointment of the auditors by marking an X in the box entitled For or Withhold, as the case may be, on the yellow ballot, and by signing and printing your name in the spaces indicated, and the scrutineers will collect your ballot later in the meeting. The next item of formal business to consider at this meeting is the approval of an amendment to the corporation's incentive share purchase plan, as fully described on page 37 and Appendix B of the Management Information Circular. May I have an appropriate motion?
I move that the resolution approving the amendment to the corporation's incentive share purchase plan, as set out in Appendix B to the Management Information Circular, dated March 22, 2024, be approved.
Thank you, Chris. May I have a second to the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you, Ammar. You've heard the motion, which has been seconded. Is there any discussion? No, nothing, nothing online, so there's no discussion. So I'll ask the meeting to vote on the motion. Again, if you're participating online, go to the virtual meeting interface. If you've already submitted your vote, you don't need to do anything. Again, for those here today, you've been distributed with a pink ballot to vote for the amendment to the corporation's Incentive Share Purchase Plan. You should record your vote in respect of the amendment to the Incentive Share Purchase Plan by marking an X in the box entitled For or Withheld, as you so choose, on the pink ballot, and by signing and printing your name in the indicated spaces on the ballot, and the scrutineers will collect that ballot later in the meeting.
The next item of formal business to consider at this meeting is the non-binding advisory resolution of the corporation's approach to executive compensation, as more fully described on page 38 and in Appendix D of the Management Information Circular. May I have an appropriate motion?
I move that the resolution approving, on an advisory basis, the corporation's approach to executive compensation, as set out in Appendix D to the Management Information Circular, dated March 22nd, 2024, be approved.
May I have a second to the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you, Ammar. Well, you've heard the motion, which has been seconded. Any discussion? No, no, nothing online, so there's no discussion. I will now ask the meeting to vote on the motion. Again, for those online, go to the virtual meeting interface to cast your vote. If you've voted prior to the meeting, there's nothing you need to do. For those here today, you can vote on the motion using the ballot. It's a ballot for registered shareholders and proxy holders. It's an orange ballot for this vote. So you should record your vote in respect to the resolution approving, on an advisory basis, the corporation's approach to executive compensation by marking an X in the box entitled For or Against, as the case may be, again, on the orange ballot.
Don't forget to print and sign your name on the ballot. Thank you for that. As that concludes the voting on each of the motions today, for those of you here in person, would you kindly hold your completed ballots up if you have them? For those participating online, please ensure you have entered your vote through the virtual meeting interface. So while the scrutineers collect and tabulate the results of the ballots taken, we'll adjourn the formal business of the meeting, and we'll announce the results of the voting when we reconvene. And during this short adjournment, I'm pleased to move to present the Paul Penna Award. This is always an important part of the annual meeting. This is the seventeenth year that we have presented the Paul Penna Award for Community Service.
And as many of you know, Paul was the founder of Agnico Eagle, and he was. What was special about Paul was his concern for the well-being of his employees, but also the general concern for communities and for the benefit of the communities, particularly in those areas in which we operate. And the nice thing about that is, a lot of this good emanated from this building, upstairs in floor 16 and floor 23, a big part of our history in terms of where we had our head office located, and emanating from this building, but through Paul and his good works and general concern for people. So we award the Paul Penna Award annually to the Agnico Eagle employee who best exemplifies the philosophies of Paul Penna through community involvement, dedication, and hard work.
We all know that Paul left an enormous impact on the people he encountered along the way, including us. And as we said, we've established this award to ensure that the values of Paul continue to play a significant role in who we are as a company. We made reference to it at the start. We've built an amazing company, so the what is pretty amazing, where we are and what we've done and where we've come from, but what makes all of it special is how we've done it. And we have individuals throughout the company, not just the recipient of the Paul Penna Award.
But I think one of the things that I've always said is, our job as leaders of the company is made easier every single day because we have the comfort and knowledge knowing that our 17,000 employees, as they head to work every day, are looking to do good. And so again, that's what makes all of this special. So, this year, we're pleased to announce the winner of the Paul Penna Award is Todd Murray, and Todd is from our Hope Bay project in Nunavut. Congratulations, Todd. And Todd, some background and why Todd is the recipient. He has a philosophy of always being there to lend a helping hand. He sees volunteering as a fundamental part of who he is and how he lives his life.
He's volunteered at numerous initiatives, including the Thunder Bay Youth Volunteer Program, cooking meals at Shelter House, ensuring event success with Easter Seals Ontario, as well as the Ontario Winter Games. Todd is an active member of Hope Bay's Emergency Rescue Team. Recently, Todd was recognized as an honorary citizen of Lynn Lake for battling forest fires in 2021. In a remarkable act of bravery last November, Todd's quick thinking saved a woman's life when he discovered her on train tracks, and he remained with her until paramedics arrived to render assistance. Todd's commitment to teamwork and service extends to his profession, where he leads by example and shares his expertise humbly, remarking, "It's better to teach.
The only win is when the team wins." So for all of these reasons, we're proud that Todd is our winner of the 17th annual Paul Penna Award. And Todd, you're a role model for the community, as well as an inspiration to all of your colleagues. And now I would invite Todd to come and say a few words, and we'll present Todd with the Paul Penna Award.
I'll keep it, I'll keep it short. Not really big on speaking in front of people. I just wanna thank the entire Agnico Eagle family. It really is a family, especially the Hope Bay team and my supervisor there, Chris, who went through the nomination process. I'd like to thank my mom, who's with me today, who's my inspiration on everything. And again, I'll just keep this short, so thanks very much.
So each year, as part of this, Agnico is proud to donate $10,000 to the charity of the winner's choice, and Todd's charity is the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. It's in honor of his nephew, Nixon Murray, who was diagnosed at age seven. So, congratulations once again, Todd. And we'd also like to acknowledge we have a number of regional winners. So, this goes out across the company, 17,000 employees. There's numerous nominations, and each year we choose regional finalists who, like Todd, exemplify the true spirit of the award and are all high achievers in giving back to the community. So again, thank you again, Todd. So now we'll reconvene. The formal part of the meeting will proceed with the remaining business.
The secretary has advised that the scrutineers have now tabulated the results. They're getting close?
One more moment, please.
One more minute? Okay.
We now have confirmation.
So we're good? So both the results, both online and in person, have been tabulated. So I am pleased to report that the election of each of the directors, the appointment of the auditors, the amendments to the corporation's incentive purchase plan, and the nine non-binding advisory vote on approach to executive compensation of each, passed. If there are shareholders that are interested in the exact number of votes cast with respect to each of these motions, he or she may obtain particulars after the meeting, contact the secretary. But we will issue a press release, and we'll file that press release on SEDAR+, and that press release will lay out all the voting results at this meeting.
So as there is no further business that may be properly brought before the meeting, I will now ask that someone move and someone second a motion that the formal portion of this meeting now terminate.
I so move.
Thank you, Chris. May I have a second to the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you, Ammar. I declare that the formal portion of this meeting is now terminated. We will now move to the corporate update, followed by a question-and-answer period. So before we begin the presentation, we just would like to point out that there will be some forward-looking statements in this presentation, and these statements are based on management's expectations, subject to assumptions, subject to uncertainty, risks, and potential changes in circumstances. So please see the disclosure. There's two pages of disclosure that are here. And, you know, be mindful that these are cautionary statements. So I would just like to just say a couple things.
First, I just wanna talk a little bit more about the how we built this company, and just use a couple of quick examples, and I'll talk to Gold, and then everybody's interested in hearing how excited Amar and his team are about the business. So, some of the things that we've been doing in the community, we'll just highlight a couple. And, one is in Nunavut with the Breakfast Club of Canada. So Nunavut has lots of opportunity, but there's still lots of challenges. And one of the things that we find ourselves is in a position of responsibility to ensure that we do our best as partners with the indigenous community to help where we can.
We're in a unique position, and in many ways, we're in a much better position than the governments are because of our strong presence across Nunavut. In many cases, the communities are reliant on our logistical capacity and our ability to get things done. One of the things we find is there's a lot of insecurity, housing, but also in food and food sources. So our team made a commitment just prior to COVID, and then COVID hit, that we would invest in mental health, and we would invest in young people. The team has recently worked with the Breakfast Club of Canada to put to work $2.5 million to ensure that young people showing up at school have a proper meal to start their day.
And that covers a large part of Nunavut in the areas that we operate in, and we're rolling that program out. And, you know, those are the types of things that, we're in a position to do it. We have a responsibility to do it. And, the question there is: How do we do it? How do we make things happen? And we find that, as the largest driver of, the economy up there, we're 20, 30, 40% of the GDP, depending on how you calculate it, we're in the position to do more. So our team's done an exceptional job putting that program together, and we're certainly looking to do more.
Closer to home here, so, we're always focused, and we're doing a lot of great things in many, many communities around the world, but we can't forget about our own backyard, which is here. And, through the initiative of Jim Nasso, our former chairman, and we have a gentleman here, Emmanuel Papathanasakis. I hope I got that right, Emmanuel. They're doing amazing work in at-risk neighborhoods with young adults, in putting together an employment preparation program with the Toronto District School Board. And some of us personally are involved, like Agnico Eagle is involved. We're working together with the Toronto District School Board to move this forward, and we can just see tremendous progress with the groups that have gone through, the cohorts that have gone through this.
This is starting to be recognized across the city, where other neighborhoods are asking for the same program. So Agnico's jumped in through Jim and through Ammar, and we're helping them to hopefully expand this to multiple neighborhoods. Because the solutions to the challenges we have in big cities aren't up here, they're actually on the ground, and it takes leaders like Emmanuel, with help from people like Agnico, to actually make a difference in the community. So that's some of the things that we do, and we've done for decades. And that's the special part that's made this a really special company. So and we can do more as the gold price goes up, and we'll talk a little bit about the gold price.
So you got a lot of reasons why the gold price is gonna go up, and those are all relevant reasons, and technically, the gold chart looks really good. But I think underlying all of this for decades has been the fact that the money printing presses have been going for decades, and the levels of debt have gone up exponentially. And at some point, there's a moment of truth, and you're gonna look at all these other things like geopolitical risk and you know, other supply, demand components that make up the balance of why gold goes up or down. But ultimately, we have something unique happening. The people controlling the printing presses of money are now the ones that are buying more physical gold.
What we've seen over the last 15 or so years, with things like China in 2010, saying, "Oh, we're allowing gold to come into the country." Before that, it couldn't come in. Why? Because they physically want gold there, and they want their citizens to own gold. And so what we've seen is, we've seen a lot of physical buying in gold for the reason, likely, that people see increased risks, but they see major cracks in the monetary system, the paper money system, and they want gold. Not only they want physical gold, they want it home. They want it home largely because of the geopolitical, problem. So that's driven gold up, but it hasn't driven the gold shares up.
But what you've seen, I think, in the last few days, particularly with Newmont and their performance yesterday, is that I think now we're starting to see, at least as we see it, based on our experience, you're starting to see that gap between the gold equities and the gold price, that valuation gap, start to narrow. There's still a ways to go. And so what I'd like to do, I'd leave you with that, and then I'm gonna turn you over to the CEO of the highest quality, best-run gold mining business in the world. And not only that, we've always said, you know what? We run a gold business, and we want to make it the best gold business. But it was more than that.
It was always, "We run a business based in Canada, and we just want to make it the best business that just happens to mine for gold." We've done that, and we've done that. The best part about it is the company's better positioned than it's ever been, led by Amar and his team. They've done an exceptional job, and we'll let Amar tell you all about it. So, Amar, I'll turn it over to you.
... Well, you know, it's great to see everybody here on a beautiful spring day, and, you know, I frankly never thought in my life I'd ever be a CEO of such a great company, much less have a full-time job. But, I'm really comfortable here because this is a lot of friends and a lot of faces I recognize. And, so I'm gonna go off script a little bit, and Sean gave a couple of examples of the culture of this company. And we've had a good quarter. The year looks great. I'm gonna talk about that. But what really built this company is the culture. It's the foundation, and I'll again give an example. Real-life examples matter.
A couple of years ago, I don't know, 3, 4 years ago, I was in Rankin Inlet, and I was staying in, I think, the only hotel in Rankin Inlet, and I came down in the morning. It was early, the TV was on, and the headline, and this was, I don't know, 7:00 A.M., was that the water source at Iqaluit had been contaminated. I guess there was an old diesel tank somewhere, and it leaked into the ground, and it was contaminated. And I'm watching this on the news in this hotel lobby, and I got a call from Sean first thing in the morning. And Sean said, "Are you watching the news?" I said, "Yeah." A little bit of background.
Every week, we have 10 flights of 737s , 10 times a week from Montreal to Val-d'Or to either Rankin Inlet or to Meadowbank. The back of the plane is full of our employees. The front is full of cargo. So Sean said to me on the phone, while we're watching the news, he said, "With regards to our planes today, take all of the cargo off. Tell the guys to go to all the Costcos in Montreal and buy up all the bottled water they can and fly it up to Iqaluit." And so we did that, and we had fresh water, tens of thousands of bottles of fresh water in Iqaluit, probably within 24 hours.
Now, it's one thing for us to plan and try to do good things, and we do, but honestly, it's a completely higher level when somebody's watching the news and says, you know, "How can I help?" So this is the culture that we have, that I think Sean brings and Jim has brought over many, many years. So anyways, I'm very proud of that, but not as proud as I am of our share price performance coming up. So why don't we move to the next page? So this is an interesting chart. Look, the issue, and you see it on the far right, so the blue line are gold equities, the gold line is gold. And clearly, gold equities are underperforming gold.
There are people in this room smarter than I am that can explain this, but the story here is the equities are going to outperform. They just are. If we take a look back in 2000, the premium was about 40%-250% higher on equities versus gold. It dipped down in sort of the 2011-2015 range, because what happened then was, and you'll see a similarity to today in how it'll turn, when gold spiked, a lot of companies back then reduced their cut-off grade so that they could show expansion. The big push at the time, the big pressure on executives, was to increase production, was to increase reserves, et cetera. So they lowered their cut-off grade.
Costs went up, the margins weren't captured, because gold went up, but then so did costs. And if the margins aren't captured, then your share price doesn't go up, and gold equities underperformed. I mean, that's an oversimplification, but that was a big part of what happened. Since 2019, equities have been underperforming gold. Fair enough, but what really stands out is sort of the period from 2020 to 2022, where equities materially underperformed gold. And again, why is that? And again, it was largely, not so much for Agnico. We were able to control costs. But in that period, right after COVID started, until just recently, there was a lot of pressure on costs.
It wasn't this time because we were reducing our cut-off grade, but it was because it was hard to get people, it was hard to get, consumables, it was hard to get anything. You know, costs exploded, and when gold went from $1,600 to $1,900, well, you know what? Three-quarters of that, that increase didn't materialize in margins because costs went up, and so people were frustrated. But what you're seeing now are two things. One is, I think gold has caught additional momentum, and we can talk about that, and we think that, that this is really just the start of a, of a big run in gold. I, I don't know where it'll be in three months.
I don't know where it'll be in six months, but there are a lot of factors that are accumulating to be pushing gold up, and we think it'll continue. But on the blue line below, what you're seeing is costs are under control. And there are already a commentary out from some of the analysts saying, "Look, it looks like some of the companies, Newmont and Agnico in particular, are capturing a lot more of this recent run-up." And this, we believe, when the market starts to see that, simply put, when the market believes that companies are actually gonna keep more of this profit they will go in and they'll buy the stock. And so we think we're at that point. We also think we're quite well positioned to take advantage.
A lot of you have seen this slide, but it's worth reviewing. The strategy that we have, that we've had since 1957, is a little bit different than some of our peers. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but it is different, and frankly, it's delivered better results, and we're gonna stick to that strategy. And that strategy is, rather than going anywhere in the world to build a mine. You know, Papua New Guinea is a tough place. I've been there. I've not been to Balochistan, but that's probably a tough place, too. But where we operate is regionally focused on two criteria. The first criteria, of course, has to be geologic potential.
We'll only go to places that have geologic potential, but they have to have geologic potential for multiple mines over multiple decades, 'cause that's how we think you get good at mining. You know, we have 17,000 people at Agnico. Newmont has more, Barrick has more. At some point, if you assume people are roughly equally smart, equally hardworking, equally ambitious, what really differentiates is, do you have an advantage on the ground? I can tell you in the Abitibi, where we've been operating for over 50 years, we know the ground better, we know the suppliers better, we know the contractors better, we know the permitting better. We just have an advantage. We produce more gold in Canada than the next eight companies combined. We are the largest mining company in Canada. You know, I talked about 10 flights a week to Nunavut.
We can. Because of that, Guy and his team can explore for roughly a third of the cost of some of our competitors because of that infrastructure. We also have a strategy that's based on creating value through the drill bit, through operation, and through technical expertise. We've done M&A deals, but really, we focus on creating value through the drill bit and through the operations. And the deals that we do are strictly focused on improving per share metrics, which is really the, the third leg of, of, of that strategy. Always focus on per share metrics, always focus on return on capital. The two are one and the same. And then finally, as Sean said, it's. We've always had a view, it's not just what you do, but how you do it. So does this work?
It sounds logical and, you know, it's perfectly natural for a CEO to come up and say, "Look, our strategy makes sense," but does it work? And I think the track record speaks for itself. We have systematically built a very strong company, from very humble beginnings to the largest mining company in Canada, and the second-largest gold mining company in the world by market cap. Since 2005, and we went to 2005 because that's when we started from 1 mine to more. But since 2005, we've gone from 1 mine to 11 mines. We've gone from 1 country to 4 countries. We've gone from 240,000 ounces a year of production to 3.3, and this year, probably closer to 3.5.
That doesn't really matter to our, to our shareholders. What matters to our shareholders is, are we creating value for them? And that's always on a per share basis. I see Dave Smith here. If he said per share basis 100 times in an investor meeting, he still had 20 to go. We've on a per share basis, we've gone gold production, an increase of 2.5 times per share. That's hard. Increasing production is one thing, increasing it per share, that's hard, and doing it over that period of time is impressive. And in that same period of time, our dividends, which is payment per share, has gone up by a factor of more than 50.
If you see on the right, if you take a look at Agnico Eagle versus the broader gold index, over that same period of time, our share price has increased on average by 8.2% a year, compounded on average. Of course, some years it's more than, some years it's less, but on average, 8.2%. The index is below 2%. So the strategy, I think, works, demonstrably works. Interestingly, we've also outperformed the S&P 500. You know, I'm 59 years old. Anybody in my generation who put $1 into the market thinks they're a genius. Well, you're not a genius, just the S&P went up so many times. But interestingly, if you put $1 into the S&P in 2005, as of this morning, it was worth $4.25.
If you put $1 into Agnico as of this morning, it was worth more than $5. So we've outperformed the index, both the gold index and the broader index. I think the strategy works. It's continuing to work. In 2023, we had record performance. We had record annual gold production, we had record free cash flow, we had record operating margin, and most important of all, we had record safety performance. Record safety performance after 67 years of operating, we are very proud of that. Nothing is more important than keeping our people safe, our community safe, and the environment safe. We also had record mineral reserves, so not only are we performing, but we're building for the future.... We completed the acquisition of the other 50% of Canadian Malartic. We presented a good 3-year outlook.
We're continuing to improve our production, and we paid $800 million in dividends. And in 2023, in the first quarter, we just reported, I think most of you know, our second consecutive quarter of record margins and record operating cash flow. Very good progress on some key projects we're working on, I'll talk about in a minute. And Guy and his team, some tremendous, I think, I think he used the word spectacular, drill results. He won't be talking, maybe we should have had Guy up here talking instead of me. Just very briefly, the strategy continues to look good. To put picture to words, this is a view of the Abitibi.
In the entire world, based on geologic potential and political stability, probably the three best places in the world would be Nevada, and Barrick and Newmont have done a good job consolidating that. Western Australia, which is fantastic for more than just gold, nobody's consolidated that yet. But we think the best is the Abitibi, this part of Ontario and Quebec that's been around the longest, that's produced the most gold, and by the way, in the last five or 10 years, has had the most discoveries. What you see here, and we talked about this last year, and in the blue are our land positions. We control the best land positions in the best region in the world.
Again, when you've been there, you control the best land, you've been there for over 50 years, you produce more gold than the next 8 people combined. That's a good position to be in, and you're finding more gold than anyone else. I'm just gonna hit briefly. Up at the top, you'll see Detour Lake. We are working very hard. So Detour Lake, which is number 1, and number 2 on the bottom right, the Canadian Malartic, these are already two of the 10 biggest mines in the world. Canadian Malartic was originally discovered in 1923, and it continues to grow. Detour Lake was a mine that had been mined since the 1980s, and it continues to grow. Both of those mines, Guy talked about today with some exploration potential.
Detour Lake, we think we'll be able to get it to 1 million ounces a year from about 700 right now. And Canadian Malartic, which is also about 700, at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if that's over 1 million ounces a year. Two of the best mines in the world, in the best location, and then we talk about Upper Beaver. We'll be talking to the market about that towards the middle of the year, but that's another great asset that we think we'll be bringing into production. If we take a look at Nunavut, you know, we represent, I don't know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% of the GDP of Nunavut. So to be clear, that's not 40% of the mining GDP, that's 40% of the entire GDP.
We have a big competitive advantage there. Nunavut, I mean, most of us, you know, Canadians, we know this, but to put it into perspective, Nunavut is 3.5 times the size of France, with a population of 35,000 or 40,000 people. So imagine a country the size of France with a village of 10,000 people. It's wide open. We have two great operations there. In fact, I think, and Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Meadowbank produced the most cash flow of any of our projects this quarter, and some very exciting drill results in Hope Bay. So this strategy of going to the best regions is something we've done for years, it's something we're continuing to do, and we think continues to deliver great results.
And again, it's not just, as Sean said, and we've talked about what you do, but how you do it. We like to think of our business as a, as a global approach, but a regional focus. We have issued. We're proud to say we've issued our 2023 sustainability report. Everybody is now issuing a sustainability report, but for us, this is 15 years in a row we've been doing it. We're not doing this because it's the thing to do suddenly, it's that we're doing it because it's always been the right thing to do. We had record safety performance. We're putting a lot of effort into climate change. And I know a lot of people talk about that, but in our mining industry, we're focused on this. And the reason we're focused is because it's part of our business.
The vast majority of our greenhouse gases come from burning diesel, either in mobile equipment or generating our own electricity. I'll start by saying we are by far the best of any of our peers, as measured by greenhouse gas emissions relative to what we produce. Now, some of that's because we have a competitive advantage in where we operate. A lot of our electricity is clean electricity, but we are always focused and have always been focused on energy efficiency. It's part of the business that we have. And for us, the transition from diesel to electric is inevitable, and we're on it, and we've set targets, and I hope we beat those targets. We invest in our communities, we mine responsibly, and importantly, every year, we survey all of our employees and say: Are you happy with where you work?
What can we do better? We want to be, and I think we are, a great place to work. And then, just two more slides. Bear with me. I want to spend a minute talking about the work we're doing to strengthen the partnership with our indigenous nations. I think we all are very proud of this country. It's a very welcoming country. We do a lot of good things, but one thing we haven't done nearly as well as we should have is reconcile with the country's original inhabitants. As a country, we can, and frankly, we must do better. There's a long way to go, but we've started, and I wanna just hit on a couple of things. We started by formalizing more relationships with our indigenous nations and partners in advancing reconciliation.
I won't go through all of these in detail. There are a lot of them, but let me just say that we take this very seriously, and we find the indigenous nations we work with to be great partners who are really just interested in a better life for their kids. Right, a lot of us here have kids, who would knock anybody for that? And again, it just makes sense. We spend about $1.9 billion a year on regional supply chains, and I'm proud to say more than 50% of that, more than 50% of that $1.9 billion, are with indigenous-led organizations and businesses. So to end where Sean introduced, we're really here to continue to build a high-quality business.
We admittedly take some pleasure in now being the second-largest gold company in the world. But that's not-
A lot of pleasure.
A lot of pleasure. But, you know, our objective is always per share focus and quality. And frankly, that's what's got us to the position we're in. We're gonna continue to be a high-quality business through mining in the best jurisdictions by being serious about ESG. Every company wants to do the right thing on the ground, but when you want to be there for 60 years and build the second, third, fifth, sixth mine, you have to be a welcome partner on the ground. We think we're uniquely positioned in the best regions with a competitive advantage, and we are always going to continue to be focused on making money for our shareholders on a per-share basis in a responsible way, with the support of our communities and with the support of our employees.
With that, I will hand it back to Sean. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ammar, and it's time to open the meeting to questions from shareholders and proxy holders. If you're participating online, you could submit your questions using the instant messaging service that's on the virtual meeting interface. If here in person, raise your hand if you'd like to ask a question. If you could, once you're acknowledged, just state your name and identify yourself as a shareholder or a proxy holder before you ask your question. So there's a question there.
Good morning, Mr. Boyd. My name is Paul Durnin from Burlington. I was at the Burlington Senior Center chatting with a guy, and his name is Charles Davies, and he wrote the Agnico Eagle coffee table book called Gold Standard, and he gave me a copy of it, and I flipped through it. I thought, "Boy, it's really well done. It's quite detailed." And now the question I have is: Are there a bunch of copies in the back closet? And if so, why not sell them to shareholders and employees? And if there isn't any in the back closet, have another printing.
Yeah, there's lots of books, and we can personally autograph them if you pay a bit more. And, given the theme of this meeting, we'll donate it to charity. So, who wants to get those emails? Not me. Don't send me those emails.
Chris Vollmershausen.
You have.
We will be glad to send them.
How many books do you have now? How many books do you have?
I don't know. Kerry?
Uh, lots.
Okay, well, the people of this room, plus the employees in the whole system, would might just like to buy a book.
You know, it's a great book, and it follows on an earlier book that was done really around Paul, Silver Threads Among the Gold, which basically tells. Both books tell our story, which you've heard a lot about today, which is just patient and focused on doing the right thing, but focused on making money for our shareholders and uplifting communities and our partners and our employees. So it's a good read. You can read them fairly quickly. So if there is an interest, let us know. We'd be happy to send out the books. Good question. Question over here.
Thank you. My name is Juan Chung. I'm a shareholder of Agnico Eagle. My question relates to Bitcoin. People have said Bitcoin is the new digital gold. We are in the gold business. What is the company's view about Bitcoin? Well, editor, is it a trap?
Yeah, maybe I'll start, and then Ammar's got some thoughts on this. I think that one of the things we've done to ensure over time we stay focused on our business is try to not pay too much attention to, I'd say noise, not calling Bitcoin noise, but I think cryptocurrency, there are some differences between cryptocurrency and gold. You know, to say, and one argument for crypto is that it's finite. It's not true. You can create all sorts of cryptocurrencies. So, I'm not gonna sort of say not to own Bitcoin.
I would say that you should prefer gold, in our view, because it has, I think, characteristics that you're really looking for in terms of safety, in terms of a form of money, in terms of history and backing behind it. You can see what's happening in the market, where big governments are looking to move away from paper and buying physical gold. One of the things we use, and this is sort of to reflect on the way some of those cryptocurrencies have unfolded, they have not all been successes. One of the things that we've said is that our business, we mine deposits, gold deposits, and in some cases, promoters of cryptocurrency are mining the public instead of mining deposits.
We would prefer gold, but I know Ammar has some thoughts on the cryptocurrency as well.
So with regards to the value of a Bitcoin, you know, my view is, the value is worth what somebody's willing to pay for it. I don't know what a Gordie Howe original hockey card is worth. It might be worth $5 to Chris, it might be worth $1,000 to Jamie. You know, I view Bitcoin like many other things, it's, the value is in the eye of the beholder. But it's not really anything tangible. It will never be a currency. Let's just be clear on it. It will never be a currency. Governments will never let it be a currency. You know, the Central Bank of China is buying gold for its reserves. They're not buying Bitcoin, and they're pretty digitally savvy.
Now, with regards to gold, I actually view, you know, maybe I look at things half full rather than half empty. I do think Bitcoin has brought an entire generation of young people into the world of justified distrust of fiat currencies. You know, there are some young people who are just, "It's going to 1,000,000, it's going to 100,000, it's..." But most young people are looking at it and saying, "Well, you know, Bitcoin might be a hedge against the US dollar. They're printing a lot of money," et cetera, et cetera. And I think that entire generation, as they go down that path, is quickly going to realize that while their argument might make sense, that, that fiat currency, you know, maybe you should have a hedge against it.
I really do believe that most of them, as they give it further thought and become more educated, will view that actually the real solution to that is gold. So I have no view on the value of Bitcoin. It's in the eye of the beholder. It'll never be a currency, but I think it could actually bring a generation of young people into gold.
I just have one more question.
Okay, go ahead.
Thank you for your comments. We are, after all, in the business of gold. Just wondering if the company's treasury can put aside a small portion and invest in Bitcoin and hold it in your balance sheet. Would you consider that?
Yeah, thank you for the question. That's it, it's not something that we've actually ever seriously contemplated. I mean, we're focused obviously on selling our gold for cash. And really, we're in a position now with the higher gold price to be able to delever our balance sheet and make it stronger. So having a speculative, you know, part of our financial assets in Bitcoin is something that's not on the table in the foreseeable future.
I think the follow-up to that is, going back to the initial comments, is that our success is we've kept our business simple and easy to understand, and we focus on things that we're good at, and we stayed away from things that we're not good at or not that familiar with. So that would eliminate that suggestion. I think there's a question back at the back.
Hi, Emil Boychuk, shareholder and Blue Jays fan here. Going along this topic, wouldn't it be wise to keep current assets, or more current assets in the form of what we produce? We're going along talking about Bitcoin, Bitcoin and all this other stuff. I noticed that the cash equivalents as of December thirtieth was over $300 million, and inventories were, I forgot what they were, but whatever we pull out of the ground, can't we just sort of keep that and have less cash equivalent or cash?
... if we believe in it that strongly, let's keep that and less of the fiat currencies.
Yeah, thank you for the question. I think, you know, our job is less about trying to predict where the gold price is gonna go in the short to medium term, and more on operating a sustainable business where we can generate strong returns and deliver those to our shareholders. So, you know, as I mentioned, we're fortunate with our focus on cost control. We've seen our margins expand as the gold price goes higher. We added $186 million in cash to our balance sheet in the first quarter. We're up over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet, but we do have $1.8 billion of debt, and we are looking to further strengthen our balance sheet, use that cash flow to reduce our debt position.
The reality is, we have tremendous exposure to gold. We have 54 million ounces in proven and probable reserves and over 100 million ounces across all categories. So we, we've got long-term significant exposure to gold, and right now it's really a focus on strengthening the balance sheet.
We've got that exposure increasing on an individual per share basis as well. You're getting lots of exposure. Oh, there's a question here, up front here.
Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for an excellent presentation, as always. I have two questions, if I may. The first is to Ammar. In the course of your tenure, I wondered if you'd like to comment. You've spoken about the culture and the great things and everything else. I'm wondering if there were any challenges that were unexpected, and how you may have overcome them with the resources and support of your team, or any surprises, good or bad? The other question has to do with the demand for the underlying product and the shares.
I'm wondering, as you look back over time, if this is a question you can address, what the, shareholder-- how the shareholder base, what kind of institutional conversations you may have, institutional meetings, both in Canada and overseas, with other institutional investors, and how the shareholder base may have, in any way, shifted toward greater consumption of shares by institutional shareholders? Not saying that that's smart money, but just wondering how that composition may have changed over time, in one direction or another. Thank you very much.
Well, thank you for those, those questions. On, on the first one, you know, really, genuinely, I, I think I have the best job in Canada, and, and, part of that is because, you know, it's a great company, but mostly it's because it's great people. You know, I'm 59 years old, and, you know, as you go through your career, people tell you how important culture is, but as you get older and you have more experience, you realize they're absolutely right. Every year, you realize it's more and more important. Of course, we've had challenges, and, and we've had a lot of challenges, but mostly they've been operational, sort of something breaks or something happens, and, that's normal. That's part of our job. But what's really impressive is, at, at Agnico, everybody really does work together.
You know, if you take a look at this room, and you split it in the middle, and you compare this team versus that team, if this team works really, really well together and this team doesn't, this team's always gonna win. And that's sort of been my experience at Agnico. With regards to the second question on demand, you know, in 1999, I thought, and I use 1999 because that's when I came into the gold business. I like the gold business, but I thought gold was becoming less of a currency and more of a, it'll just... Demand will grow with population. I never thought, in 1999, that the U.S. deficit would be at a federal level, what, $35 trillion now?
You add sort of, municipal and state, you're probably at $40 trillion. You divide that by the working population, you end up with a obligation per tax-paying family of about $400,000 after tax. It's impossible. They'll never pay it back. And so gold, for bad reasons, frankly, has become a currency and, a necessary currency. You know, people say, "Well, why do you need gold? It's just a luxury." That's just not true. You can go to, an ATM and pull out money, and you know that money is roughly worth what it was when you put it in. In half the world, you can't do that. You don't trust the government, you don't trust the banks, and you certainly don't trust inflation.
So for us to say to half the world, ironically, you know, the rich people in the world saying to the poor people, "Well, nobody needs gold." Well, they need gold. They needed it for a currency. And so, you know, I think gold demand is there as a currency, as a hard asset. And to finish, to your point... we're seeing a lot of large generalist investors who are interested in gold, and they're interested in gold because they see the same things we talked about. And then just one final thing that I learned from them, and they're starting to come into the market, I think, bigger than they have before. And what they're worried about is the broader market. You know, we've had a very big run on the equity market.
25% of the entire market is in seven stocks, and they're getting nervous. There's gonna be an election. There's elections throughout the world. There's wars throughout the world, and since 1929, there have been 15 corrections. I have to remember the numbers. I think on average, in those 15 corrections, the average correction has been 35% in the market, and gold has outperformed in 14 of those 15 corrections by 45%. So, you know, I think gold is in a good spot. I don't know where it's gonna be next week. I don't know where it's gonna be in six months. But again, in 1999, when I got in the business, gold was $290 an ounce. It's now $2,300 an ounce, and somehow people have hated it ever since.
It makes no sense. I think what we'll do is, is there's nothing online, Chris? No. So we'll conclude the meeting, as there's no more questions. We wanna thank everybody for their participation here in person. We'd like to thank those of you online for making this a successful meeting. For those of you here, we'd like to welcome you to stay for lunch with our board and our senior management team. And again, thanks for another successful Agnico Eagle Annual Meeting. Take care.