Good morning, everyone. Happy to see everybody here. Welcome to the annual and special meeting of the shareholders of Agnico Eagle Mines Limited. My name's Sean Boyd. I'm the chair of the board of Agnico Eagle, and as our tradition of this annual meeting started by our former chairman, Jim Nasso, who's here, I'll now invite Agnico Eagle representatives to welcome us to the meeting in some of the local languages where we operate. The first one is by tape, Alex Buchan, who will do the greeting in Inuktitut.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Alex. I think he said gold's going to $5,000 there at the end. I think that's what I heard. I'd like to introduce now Dr. Arianne Ballard, to say a French greeting. Arianne works with us. She's a registered nurse with a PhD in nursing science, and she's a lead for our Health and Well-being Group, with the corporate team. Arianne.
Thank you, Sean. [Foreign language]
Thank you, Arianne. And now for our Spanish greeting, Ana Luisa de la Rocha Palma. She's a Financial Planner with our Pinos Altos team in Mexico.
Thank you, Sean. [Foreign language]
Thank you, Ana Luisa. And now Jussi Saaskilahti, he's been with us for a number of years. He works in our financial performance group, a director in our corporate office, and he'll give the greeting and finish.
Thanks, Sean. [Foreign language]
Thank you, Jussi, and we'll have a greeting from one of our employees from the Detour Mine. He's an HVAC apprentice, and he'll give the greeting in Cree, and it's Ronald Nazarala.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Ronald. We'll move to Matthew Pukashish. He's from the Lac-Simon First Nation, and he works at our Canadian Malarctic Mine, and he operates one of our big trucks, and he'll give a greeting in Anishinaabemowin.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Matthew. The final greeting is a tape greeting from Australia. In March at the PDAC, we hosted Rodney Carter. He's the CEO of the Dja Dja Wurrung Group. When Rodney was here, he recorded a message in the Dja Dja Wurrung language for the annual meeting. So we'll run that tape now.
[Foreign language] the shareholders of Agnico Eagle Mines Limited, [Foreign language], Rodney Carter, and I am a partner of Fosterville Gold Mine of Agnico Eagle as the group chief executive officer of Dja Dja Wurrung. Mr. Sean Boyd, the chair of the board of Agnico Eagle, will be the chair of today's meeting.
Thank you, Rodney. Rodney's, they're the traditional owners of the land that we have the Fosterville Mine on. Thank you, Rodney. Before we begin, we'll do our land acknowledgment, and we'd like to acknowledge that today we're meeting on the traditional territory of many First Nations, including the Mississaugas of the New Credit, the Anishinabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat. This territory is now 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 the traditional lands of Indigenous peoples around the world. We recognize these peoples as being the traditional custodians of these lands, and we reaffirm our commitment to work with them to establish strong partnerships, mutually beneficial and cooperative relationships. As announced in the corporation's management information circular, Agnico Eagle is conducting a hybrid meeting, in order to allow registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders to participate in person and online. The meeting was called for 11:00 a.m. It's past 11:00 a.m., so I'll ask that the meeting now come to order. I'd like to take a moment to introduce our head table, our directors of the corporation that are with us today, and some other guests.
Seated at me, with me at the head table is Ammar Aljoundi, the President and Chief Executive Officer, also a Director of Agnico, Jamie Porter, Executive Vice President of Finance and our Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Vollmershausen, Executive Vice President Legal, our General Counsel, and also our Corporate Secretary. Seated in the tables in front, we have our other Directors. We have Jeff Parr, who's our Vice Chair. We have Jamie Sokalsky, our Lead Director. Unfortunately, Leona Aglukkaq wasn't able to make it today. We have Martine Celej, John Gill, Peter Grosskopf, Elizabeth Lewis-Gray, Deborah McCombe, and Mervyn Roberts. That's our board, a very strong board, and is a big part of our success, very supportive of management.
We work well together in partnership to the benefit of not only our shareholders, but our employees and all of the communities that we're fortunate to be partners with. In addition to our board and some of our senior management seated also in the front, we have eight participants in our Dr. Leanne Baker Scholarship and Development Program. We've already met and been in and have introduced Arianne and Ana Luisa, who are in that program. In addition, we'd like to introduce Larisha Bynoe, Nicole Furlan, Janica or Jelena Perovich, Stacy Ruddell, Natasha Van Loon, and Maveshri Ventar. We have a program that was named after one of our former directors who has passed away, Dr.
Leanne Baker, who is also a big part of our success, a trailblazer in terms of being the first female graduate with a PhD in mineral economics from the Colorado School of Mines, commodities trader on Wall Street, a well-renowned metals analyst, both base metals and gold. We were fortunate to have Leanne as our friend and a fellow director, and we established a program in her honor, and it's very successful in helping us develop a lot of our female talent in the company. We're fortunate today to have Leanne's husband, Stan Eden, here with us today. Stan, thank you for coming, and we certainly miss Leanne. So, in accordance with the bylaws of the corporation, I'll preside as the chair of this meeting, and Chris Vollmershausen, you'll act as secretary of the meeting.
With the consent of the meeting, Shirley Tom and Kate Stevens of Computers hare Trust Company of Canada, they're the corporation's registrar and transfer agent. They'll act as scrutineers, and Shirley's been doing this for well over 20 years with us, and she's at the back of the room today. After the formal business of the meeting, I'll provide some remarks on the state of the gold market, and Ammar will present the corporate update of the company, and we'll have enough time for questions and answers, and then we hope you can stay and join us for lunch after that. In order to expedite matters, Mr. Vollmershausen will move all the motions, and Mr. Aljoundi will second all the motions with respect to all the business of the meeting.
As this meeting is held both online and virtually, we think it may be appropriate to set out a few procedures to ensure that we have the orderly conduct of the meeting. I'll turn it over to Chris Vollmershausen to go over these procedures.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will now outline the procedures for the orderly conduct of this meeting. Participants may also refer to the virtual meeting user guide, which included instructions on how to attend, vote, and ask questions at this meeting, and was distributed to shareholders, and is also available under our profile on the SEDAR+ website and the Agnico Eagle's website. 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. If questions do not indicate which motion they relate to or are received after voting on the motion, they may be addressed during the general Q&A session at the end of the meeting. For those here in person, you'll 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 the question. With respect to voting, for those participating online, voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot.
If you have submitted your vote prior to this meeting, there is nothing for you to do unless you wish to change your vote. 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 item of business through the virtual meeting interface by accessing the vote tab. To vote, select your voting direction from the option shown. You only have a limited amount of time to vote, so please vote quickly. For those here in person, 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 appropriate ballot when so directed by the chair.
The scrutineers will collect the completed ballots towards the end of the meeting for tabulation. For the general Q&A session, for those participating online, questions may be submitted by any registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder using the instant messaging service of the virtual meeting interface. If several questions relate to the same or a 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, again, 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 question during the meeting today, we will endeavor to respond to you after 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 this meeting as a schedule. Moving to the first item of formal business is the presentation of the audited financial statements of Agnico Eagle for the year ended December 31, 2024, and the auditor 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 today. 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 Q&A 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 five and a maximum of 15 directors. The board of directors has determined that the total number of directors to be elected today 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 Aljoundi, Sean Boyd, Martine Celej, Jonathan Gill, Peter Grosskopf, Elizabeth Lewis-Gray, Deborah McComb, Jeffrey Parr, Mervyn Roberts, and Jamie Sokalsky, all as named in the management information circular dated March 24, 2025. I 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 26, 2025. As no such nominations were received by the corporation prior to that 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? Any questions online, Chris?
No.
If there's no further discussion and no questions, I will ask the meeting to vote on the motion. For those participating virtually, you may now vote online. If you submitted your vote prior to this meeting, there is nothing for you to do unless you wish to change that vote. For those here in person, you may now vote on the motion by ballot.
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. 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 auditors of Agnico Eagle for the current year. It is proposed that Ernst & Young LLP Chartered Accountants be reappointed as the 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 auditor's remuneration be fixed by the Board of Directors of the corporation. May I have an appropriate motion?
I so move.
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 or any questions online? No questions? There's no further discussion. I'll ask the meeting to vote on the motion. For those participating virtually, you can vote online now. If you submitted your vote prior to the meeting, there's nothing for you to do unless you want to change that vote. For those here in person, you may vote on the motion by ballot. You should record your vote in respect of the appointment of auditors by marking an X in the box "For" or "Withhold," as the case may be on the yellow ballot for this one.
By signing and printing your name in the spaces provided on the ballot, the scrutineers will collect your ballot later in the meeting. The next item of formal business to consider at this meeting is the non-binding advisory on the compensation corporation's approach to executive compensation. 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 B to the management information circular dated March 24, 2025, be approved.
May I have a second to the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you, Ammar. You've heard the motion which has been seconded. Any discussion or questions online? No further discussion then. I'll ask the meeting to vote on the motion. Again, virtually, you can now vote online.
If you submitted your proxy ahead of the meeting, there's really nothing you need to do unless you want to change that vote. Here in person, you can vote the motion by ballot. You should record your vote on 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. That vote is to be made on the purple ballot, and you should sign and print your name in the spaces indicated on the ballot. As that concludes the voting on each of the motions for today, for those of you here in person, would you kindly hold your completed ballots in the air, so the scrutineers can see them and then collect them? For those participating online, please ensure you have entered your vote through the virtual meeting interface.
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 vote when we reconvene. Now, as tradition, during this short adjournment, I'm pleased to present the Paul Penna Award, which we do every year. This is the 18th year of the Paul Penna Award for Community Service. As many of you know, Paul was the founder of Agnico Eagle, and what made Paul special and what he was really noted for and remembered by is his philanthropy and his concern for the well-being of his employees and for the communities and the people in those communities.
So what we'd like to do is award this, the Paul Penna Award in memory of Paul to one of Agnico's employees that best exemplifies the philosophies of Paul Penna, either through community involvement, dedication, hard work. Paul was, you know, he was one of these people that would get up every day looking to do good, and that's why this award was established. So, for this year, I am pleased to announce the winner of the Paul Penna Award is Kani Ilangakoon , who works in the IT department at our corporate office here in Toronto. Kani's an excellent, exceptional individual who has made significant contributions to his community and beyond. His colleagues and team members have shared their experience working with him over the last seven years, highlighting his solid commitment to his coworkers and community.
Every year, Kani and his family donate books and supplies to the Dhammaladenya Children's Orphanage in Sri Lanka. Each year during their vacation in Sri Lanka, Kani and his wife, Sachi, volunteer at the orphanage, dedicating their time to educate and empower young girls. Kanis contributions have empowered the girls with knowledge, independence, and better opportunities, and his dedication to volunteering and providing educational resources has significantly impacted these girls' lives and the community that they are living in. When he's not volunteering abroad, Kani supports his community here in Toronto as well. He participated in the Princess Margaret Ride to Conquer Cancer, raising, with his teammates, more than $20,000. For this reason and more, we're proud to announce Kani as the winner of the 18th Annual Paul Penna Award. Kani, you're a role model as well as an inspiration to your colleagues.
Kani, can you come up and...
Thank you, Sean. Good afternoon, everyone. First, I must say that I feel incredibly lucky to be working at a company like Agnico Eagle. Agnico has always taken care of their people, and in turn, those people can now help others that are less fortunate. This generosity is now helping to drive the effort to improve the lives of 30 orphan girls in Sri Lanka, halfway across the globe. I'm deeply honored and humbled to accept the Paul Penna Award today. For me, this award is not just an individual award, but the testament to the generosity, incredible support, and kindness of many people that support me.
Therefore, I would like to first extend my heartfelt thanks to the corporate IT team for nominating me for this award and the global IT team for continuously supporting all the charitable work that I do. Thanks goes to Sam and Lino, Sam and Chris, whose continued contributions help me do the education for these girls. We pay tutors, math, and English lessons for these kids, and that has significantly changed the lives of these girls. I also want to thank my wife and the parents on both sides of the house for their continuous support and participating with me in the volunteering work that we do.
It brings me great joy to say that these changes that we've done, these donations that we've made, and the education that we've provided these girls have improved their confidence, and they now are looking forward to going back to school, looking forward to staying in school and studying, continuing their studies. Thank you again for this honor and your continued support. Together, we can make a difference. Thank you.
Congratulations again. As Kani mentioned, we, as part of the award, we donate $10,000 to the charity, and this will go to the children's orphanage that Kani supports. So, in addition to Kani there are several regional finalists that were selected from the many nominations received in each region, and we thank the regional winners for all of the work they do and all the giving back they do in their communities.
Also inspired by the Paul Penna Award in 2008, we established the Larry Connell Collaborative Excellence to honor the qualities of Larry Connell, who was with us for a number of years. Unfortunately, Larry passed away in 2024, so we lost a good friend and colleague with Larry's passing. He did retire from Agnico in 2017, with 40 years in the mining industry. Everyone that had the privilege of working with Larry was uplifted by his positive attitude. He set a high standard for achieving success through teamwork, here in the admiration and respect of all of his colleagues and his community members. Specifically, Larry was really in charge of our community efforts and initiatives in Nunavut when we first went there.
Without Larry's hard work and how he built strong relationships and partners in Nunavut, we wouldn't have the business that we have today in Nunavut. Now we'll move on to the results of the voting. We'll reconvene now, the formal part of the meeting, to proceed with the remaining business as well. The Secretary has advised me that the scrutineers have tabulated the results of the ballots that were conducted earlier, both online and in person. I'm pleased to report that the election of each of the directors, the appointment of the auditors, the non-binding advisory vote on approach to executive compensation have each passed. If any shareholders interested in the exact numbers of votes cast with respect to each of the motions, or he or she may obtain particulars of the voting after the meeting by contacting the Secretary of the meeting.
The corporation will also issue a press release and file a report of the voting results at this meeting on SEDAR+. As there's no further business that may properly be brought before the meeting, I'll now ask someone to move and someone to second a motion that the formal portion of this meeting now terminate.
I so move.
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 question and answer period. Before we begin this presentation, it's customary that we caution you that certain statements may be forward-looking. These statements are based on management's current expectations.
They're subject to assumptions, uncertainties, risks, and changes in circumstances, and certain factors may cause the corporation's actual results to be materially different from the expectations expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. We're not under any obligation to update the forward-looking statements in today's presentation. Please see the disclosure included at the beginning of the presentation for additional details on the forward-looking statements. There it is up on the screen. What I would like to do now is just give you some comments and let you know that we've been working for the last year or so on an initiative to essentially provide a platform for the people of the North to tell their story.
We felt that that was extremely important, and it's much more important today based on what's happened over the last couple of months, because all of Canada really needs to have a better sense of the challenges, but mostly of the opportunities that exist in the North. It will also give Canadians a sense of what we see as partners. What we see in the people of the North is we see a resilient people, a strong people. We see a trusted partner. We see a trusted partner not just for miners, but for Canada as a whole. This region and the people of the North are an extremely important part of Canada, and they're very proud Canadians. In this moment, in what's going on between the U.S.
And Canada around sovereignty, I think you're going to hear a lot more about the Arctic and its importance to the people, to Canada. I think it's on us as the rest of Canada to understand the opportunity set that exists there. When you talk about sovereignty, sovereignty isn't really largely about a new road or a new port there, or an airstrip or a military installation. Really effective sovereignty and good sovereignty, for not just the North, but for Canada, is going to come from strong communities and prosperous families up there. We're fortunate to be in a position where we're a significant part of the economy there where we can help out, but there's certainly more needs to be done. You can scan this.
The first episodes come out on May 1st, and we're excited to share these stories with all of you. I get to talk a little bit about gold, so I will concur with Alex Buchan. I think, as I said, he said $5,000. I think it's going to $5,000. Effectively, gold goes in trends, and I think the trend that we've seen over the last number of years is we've seen gold being, the gold price being strong in an environment that it generally is not that strong. So we had a period of time for a number of years where the stock markets were setting increasing records, and the U.S. dollar was strong and gold was strong and resilient. That was telling us that there was certainly underlying strength in the gold price.
I think we know now why, because there was a lot of physical buying of gold for a number of reasons. We'll talk about these in a minute. But when there is stability and predictability and order in the world, then paper is king. When there's instability and when there's uncertainty in the world, investors and central bankers, they look to reposition their holdings. As a result of that, gold takes on a much more important role. Going to another level, when there's disorder and when there's a breakdown in the world, when debt is out of control and when debt is not sustainable, and when the two major superpowers are battling for supremacy in their currency, gold becomes even more important. Gold becomes an essential part of central bank reserves.
As the central banks look to diversify out of their paper currencies into gold, that creates demand, and the demand is high. I think that's what we're seeing now. This trend has been steady. It's been unrelenting. It's unlikely to end soon. But we will see volatility. We've seen a lot of volatility in the last week, and we see volatility around political announcements, announcements with respect to tariffs, those types of things. That won't go away, but I think we're fairly confident that the trend is up. I think, as a backdrop to this, I think we just look at not what China's saying, but what they've been doing. The Shanghai Gold Exchange was set up 20 years or so. In 2010, China opened up their country for the first time for the importation of gold. So clearly, there was something going on.
Chinese central banks, the Chinese gold ETFs, they continue to be strong buyers of gold. I think a few days ago, the Shanghai Gold Exchange announced that they're setting up a number of overseas warehouses to aid in the international settlement of specific gold products. Basically, they're trying to incentivize foreign traders to conduct transactions in yuan rather than in U.S. dollars. This will not go away anytime soon. Look at Germany a few weeks back saying, you know what, half of our gold is still vaulted in the U.S. We want it back now. We don't want it in the U.S. We want it back. Countries not just are buying more gold, they physically want it close to them. What we've seen is major banks revising their one-year targets, major U.S. banks. We're seeing ranges from $4,000 to $4,500.
We don't disagree with those. Given the extent of the uncertainty and the extent of the disorder in the world and the important role that gold plays in protecting portfolios and diversifying reserves, we believe this trend will continue. That's why we're comfortable saying we feel that gold could get to $5,000. How does that impact the equities? Ammar will talk about the best gold story to invest in out there in a minute, but I think what we've seen is we've seen the gold equities that have not really fully responded to what the gold price does in terms of the ability to generate superior financial results. We can see a little bit about how that can work with Agnico's Q1 results. I think the average price was a little shy of $2,900 in the first quarter.
Gold at current levels will even drive better financial results going forward. I think CIBC was out in the last couple of days saying that the precious metal sector is now 11% of the S&P TSX market cap. If you look at Canadian mutual funds, they only own anywhere from 3% to 5% of their portfolios in gold. There's tremendous opportunity to buy more. I think what that does is effectively put a floor price under the stocks in a way, because as we get pullbacks, those big funds that are underweight need to start building up their positions in high-quality gold equities. That's where Agnico Eagle comes in.
Before I turn it over to Ammar, I'd like to thank Ammar and the entire executive team for doing an outstanding job, for working hard on behalf of our shareholders, our employees, and our communities in delivering exceptional results and making big contributions in the communities we operate in. We have several of our senior management team here and all of our employees. The 16,000 to 17,000 employees that we're up to now come to work every day looking to make a contribution, whether it's to the company or whether it's to their community. That's a good idea. Let's applaud our employees. Excellent. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Ammar. Ammar.
What a great time to be in the gold space.
What a great time to work with the best gold company in the world, and the largest gold company in the world. You know, with record gold prices, close to record share price, the best pipeline I think I've ever seen in the business in 25 years. We'll talk about that. I mean, it's really, I mean, it's not an easy business, but boy, you know, you got to like being where we are right now, globally. This chart shows that it's not just luck. It's just, it's not just being at the right place at the right time. Yes, gold is up. The gold price is up since 2022 by 20% compounded. That's fantastic. But Agnico Eagle is up over 30%. Compare that with our peers. That's compounded year over year.
It's not just that we're in the right place at the right time. It's because we have a strategy that works. This is not a strategy that we just invented. This is a strategy we've been doing since the start of the company. While Sean was gracious enough to thank myself and all of the team, I'd like to also thank everyone here. I want to say two names in particular, and this is always dangerous because there's so many people you want to thank. But I'd like to thank Jim Nasso, who was with the company, I think, since it started in 1957. Jim really, you're a friend and good guidance. Then Sean. I mean, Sean, he built this company. Let's face it. You know, he's been here for 40 years.
He took it from a small, feisty company and made it tied with the biggest gold company in the world. You can see the performance. This performance is really a large function of the foundation that the company put in place under Sean's leadership. I'll spend a couple of minutes talking about our strategy. Most of you know it, but it is a unique strategy. It never hurts to repeat it. I'll talk a little bit about 2024, but really what I want to spend a few minutes on is 2025 and the next few years because I think they're going to be exceptional. Stepping back and talking about our strategy, I'll say something unusual that you might not expect. I don't consider, we don't consider Agnico Eagle as a global gold mining company.
We are global, but we're more of a regional company. What do I mean by that? Well, Barrick and Newmont and frankly, most, not just gold mining companies, but most large resource companies consider themselves to be global. There's a logic to that. If you're going to be big in the resource space, you have to go where the resource is. That's okay. I get it. That's not a bad strategy. Our strategy is different though. Our strategy is, we want to focus on regions. The regions quite simply have to meet two criteria. One, it has to have the geologic potential, but for multiple mines over multiple decades, not just one mine. Two, what a cute baby. This is also a nice thing. I mean, look at the family here. That's Sean's granddaughter.
She, and that's Sean's wife. I hope so, or somebody's taken feeling the granddaughter. But so, you know, the strategy we have is focus on regions where you can operate multiple mines for multiple decades. And why is that? It's because we think that's how you get good at mining. You know, Sean mentioned we have 15,000 or 16,000 employees. At that level, you know, one has to be humble. You say, look, we're smart, but so are our competitors. Our engineers are good. Our accountants are good. Our geologists are good. And frankly, so are theirs. But the difference is what really makes a good, what gives you a competitive advantage in mining? Knowing the ground better than your peers makes a big difference. Knowing all the junior exploration companies where you operate, that gives you a knowledge advantage.
Knowing your contractors better, your suppliers better, that makes a big difference. The permitting process, friends with your First Nations, these are things that give us a competitive advantage. We have half the turnover of our competitors. That gives you a competitive advantage. When we go to spend money, we have a knowledge advantage because we've been in the region for 30 years. This strategy works for us. If you look at the last 20 years, we've gone from, and again, you know, this is under Sean's leadership, and Jim was the chairman at the time. We've gone from one mine to 11 mines. We've gone from one country to four countries. We've gone from 240,000 ounces a year to 3.4 million ounces a year, an increase of a factor of 14.
What really matters are the next three numbers because those are numbers on a per-share basis. That's what really matters to our owners. They give us money to generate returns for them on a per-share basis. This is hard. It's one thing to grow. It's a lot harder to grow on a per-share basis. Gold production per share is up by a factor of three. By the way, the equivalent for Newmont and Barrick is a 50% reduction in production per share over that time frame. EBITDA per share is up by a factor of 10, and the dividend is up by a factor of over 50. By the way, these are at the end of last year. Obviously, at these prices, the numbers are even better.
It's a strategy that's worked for us, and it's going to continue to work for us. Frankly, it's working better now than it ever has. Briefly, last year, we had a record year. We should have had a record year with the gold prices that we had. We had record gold production. We had record net income, record cash flows, and a record share price, which, of course, we've beaten since. We're also, last year, put a lot of work into building the foundations for future growth, which I'll talk about in a minute. We strengthened the business across the board. You can see that the dynamics there. We increased earnings per share. We reduced our debt. We increased free cash flow. We increased our margin. That's a good business by any measure.
Our targets for 2025, when we came out in February, were for stable production at the best costs in the industry. It was to continue to invest in our business and to strengthen the balance sheet. In the first quarter, we delivered exceptional production at the lowest costs of our peers. In fact, in the last 12 months, the gold price has gone up by about $1,000 an ounce. Our costs are pretty much exact. They've gone up $2 an ounce from this quarter last year. This is why our investors trust us, and this is why we've outperformed. Because when gold price goes up $1,000, $998 of that goes to our owners. That's a good business. That's why we get the outperformance. We've continued to invest in our growth.
We're spending more on exploration than we ever have, and we're not spending it crazily. We're spending it on the best projects in the industry. A good year last year, a good start to this year. Let's get on to the exciting stuff, which is our future. There's a lot going on, but I'm just going to talk about five projects. They're big projects. The first project I want to talk about is taking the Detour Lake mine to a million ounces a year. Right now, it's in and around 700,000 ounces a year. We think by going underground, you can see on the right is the open pit. Just sort of step back a little. This mine has been around since the 1980s. Started out as an underground mine. It's now the largest open pit mine in Canada.
That's the brown part on the top right. The yellow part is reserves, and the blue are resources. This is a mine that's been around since 1983. It's the largest open pit mine in Canada, one of the 10 largest in the world, and it's got a huge future. You can see by how much is left. This is going to be operating well past 2050. You can see it extends underground. You can see on the left there, it extends underground and dips down. By accessing the underground, we think we can get this mine to a million ounces a year. If I go to the next slide, this is the Canadian Malartic Mine. This mine was discovered in 1923. This is in the Abitib i. This mine's been around for 100 years.
It's the second biggest open pit mine in Canada. And it really shows you this logic of go to the best places that have the geologic potential for a long time. It shows you the potential. You know, the first one you saw, Detour Lakes in Ontario. This is in Quebec. This is the region where we've been focusing on. This mine's been around for 100 years. It is now producing about 600,000 ounces a year. This mine has the potential also to be a million ounces a year. So imagine a mine that's been around for 100 years, that's going to be around for another 40 or 50 years, producing a million ounces a year. To put that into perspective, in the entire world, right now, there are only four mines that produce a million ounces a year. One of them's in Russia.
One's in Indonesia. One's in Uzbekistan. So not easy places to operate. One is in Nevada that's shared by Newmont and Barrick, our two biggest competitors. But they share that. We will have, we have a vision to have two mines that are already two of the 10 biggest mines. They're going to be two of only six mines in the world producing a million ounces a year, two of three in the Western world producing a million ounces a year. We'll own the only two mines that are 100% owned producing a million ounces a year. That's pretty good for a company with pretty humble beginnings. The third item to talk about, the third interesting project, is the Upper Beaver Mine. This is a brand new mine. This is a gold mine with some copper byproducts. It's open at depth.
We've had this mine for a long time. Natasha and the team are doing a great job building this mine. It's going to be an additional 200,000 plus ounces a year for a long time. Take a look at the blue, the little red dots in the blue. We think the Upper Beaver Mine is just the start of a bigger district. This is how we've been successful. When you focus on a region and you know the region well, and you can leverage off of what you've already built, that's how you create, not only the best returns on capital, but the best risk-adjusted returns on capital. The reason we keep saying return on capital is because in our business, primarily capital is share count. How many shares have you?
When we talk about return on capital, we're exactly talking about what I said earlier, which is per-share focus. Again, this is something we've done well. So, Upper Beaver, again, in Ontario, in our backyard. By the way, we produce more gold in Canada than the next eight companies combined. So leveraging off our strengths. The next one is San Nicolas, a world-class deposit. Did I miss one? I just want to check. Yeah. I skipped Hope. Okay. Sorry. Hit the button. Hope is a very good one. It's in Nunavut. It has the potential to be a 400,000 ounce a year producer. So Hope Bay, if it goes the way we expect, will be another multi-decade mine in a region, Nunavut, where we have a big competitive advantage. Let's put that again into perspective.
Nunavut is three and a half times the size of France. It has a population of 35,000 or 40,000 people. There's a lot of potential up there. One company, Agnico Eagle, is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% to 30% of the GDP, not of the mining GDP, of the entire GDP. You know, we spend in excess of $600 million a year in local services and goods. That makes a big difference for the people up there. That creates economic opportunities. It creates a quality of life, and it's a good investment for our shareholders: 400,000 ounces a year. Finally, San Nicolas, it's a copper mine in Mexico, and it is a copper mine at 2% copper grade, which is about four times the grade of the typical new copper mine being built.
It's in the best part of Zacatecas, it's in the best part of Mexico for mining, and we've got a great partner with Teck. This is a mine that, on a gold-equivalent basis, is another 200,000 ounces a year. If you think about it, all of these mines we talked about that we already own, where we're leveraging off our strengths, we can see a detour to get from 700,000 to a million, that's about 300,000 ounces positive. Malartic, about 400,000 ounces positive. Hope Bay is 400,000 ounces, but it's actually going to be offsetting declining at Meadowbank. Let's call that net neutral in our Nunavut platform. Upper Beaver, about 200,000 ounces. San Nicolas, about 200,000 ounces.
You know, if you add all that up, you're pretty close to a million ounces of additional production from existing assets in the best regions, and leveraging off existing infrastructure. This is not arm waving about going to the top of the mountain range in a country I've never been to and saying, "We're going to do this." These are things that we already own, and we're already building. So we're sticking to the same strategy we've always had. We're going to focus on the best regions in the world. We're going to build a competitive advantage. We don't pretend to be the best everywhere in the world. But in the places we focus on, I think we are the best. We're going to continue to focus on per-share metrics. We're going to continue to pay a dividend.
We're going to continue to return capital to our owners, and we're going to continue to do it safely, and we're going to continue to do it responsibly. With that, thank you all very much for coming today.
Thank you, Ammar. We'd like now to open the meeting to questions from shareholders, from proxy holders. If you're participating online, you can submit your questions. There's an instant messaging service at the virtual meeting platform. Put your questions online there. Chris will be monitoring that. If you have a question here in person, you can step up to a mic. We just ask you to state your name and identify yourself as a shareholder or proxy holder when you're asking your question.
Yes. Hi. I'm Paul Drennan from Burlington, shareholder. 17,000 people.
There's something I want to explore a little bit further. I talked about it before. You are unusual in that you have your own construction people from within the company. The vast majority of mining companies hire an outside company to come and do the construction and wave goodbye to them when everything is up and going. Why are you unusual? Maybe you have a better way. How many, what % of the 17,000 are in construction right now?
I'll just deal with the first part because it's been consistent over our long strategy to basically put ourselves in control of project development, unlike most of our competitors who will hire good engineering firms but basically pull themselves back from the actual construction.
The way we have done it is we hire the general manager of the mine way before the mine starts producing, who is involved with our construction team to build something that they're going to want to run when it starts up, rather than having an engineering firm call after three years and say, "Here are the keys. Good luck with the startup." It's worked really well for us. But maybe, Ammar, you can explain the proportions of construction.
Sure. Two things. Let's say I'm, and I'm not picking on anyone, but let's say I'm Barrick, and I want to build a mine in Papua New Guinea. The truth is I don't actually have engineers in Papua New Guinea. I don't know who the suppliers are. I don't know who the contractors are.
Even if I had my own construction company, I'd have no ability to build a mine in Papua New Guinea. They do what's logical for them, which is they'll hire a Fluor or a Bechtel or a Thyssen. These are giant, as you know, giant construction companies that build airports and oil platforms. They can build a mine, but they can't build it like we can build a mine. I mean, you know, as Sean said, it's our own people who build the mine. We start with the general manager. We actually do have engineers in Ontario and Quebec. Those engineers, you know, the engineers building Hope Bay are the same engineers that built Nunavut.
You know, the engineers that are going to put in the second shaft at Mallardic are the same engineers and construction and geologists who built the first shaft there. The proportion of the 17,000 people is a tough one because a lot of people at Agnico Eagle get involved in construction. The operating people get involved in construction. The geologists get involved in the procurement. People get involved in construction. But we do have a specific construction team that's really excellent and has had decades of experience building mines. You're getting to know them.
Correct.
With more and more with each project. Correct. The same people. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Welcome back again. How many years have you been a shareholder?
Quite a few.
Okay. Welcome again. Nice to see you again.
Good.
What I want to know is, is there any chance of a stock split? And when you answer me, please, could you either speak up or get nearer the mic? Thank you.
Stock split. We've never split our stock. There's no plans for a stock split. No. There's no plans for a stock split. I think what we prefer to do is take advantage of the high gold prices, generate really good financial returns, and increase our returns to our shareholders rather than splitting the stock. The answer is no. Thank you for coming again. We really appreciate your, all your support over the years. This year, that was an easy question. Sometimes they're not as easy.
We might, we might consider a stock split when it hits $1,000. Then we'll revisit the question. So remember the forward-looking statement, the cautionary at the front.
Paul, there's one online.
Go ahead.
Mr. Chair, the question comes from shareholder Christopher R. Allen. The question is, how soon can Agnico get to zero debt? Not zero net debt, but no debt at all on the balance sheet.
Jamie.
Yeah. So that's a good question. We typically refer to net debt or net cash, which is basically our cash less our debt position. We announced with our Q1 results that we got to basically break even. We had a $5 million net debt position as of the end of March of this year. In terms of our outstanding debt, we've got about $1.1 billion in private notes that are outstanding and mature between now and 2033. So unless there's an opportunity to opportunistically repurchase those earlier, we'll be zero debt by 2033. But at these gold prices, our net cash balance is increasing pretty significantly.
We'd expect to be well north of a billion dollars of net cash sometime in the third quarter of this year.
Any other questions?
There's one here, and there's
Andrew Gett, shareholder. I read the press release yesterday. I think it was yesterday. We're going to have a big share buyback. I'm so happy. Much bigger than the year before. If we're going to be retiring and extinguishing all those shares, that certainly opens up the opportunity for a dividend increase maybe next year. Because, you know, the number of shares go down, but the aggregate that we're paying in dividends, not per share, but in total, right, there would be the wherewithal exists to increase the dividend.
Yes. Yes. We've paid a dividend for over 40 years by design. When we managed to pay a dividend when gold was as low as $260 an ounce.
Yes, we're currently looking at that. I think the overall payout is about 43%. But you're going to see returns to shareholders that are going to come in the form of share buybacks and possible dividend increases. We can't say there's a dividend increase coming until the board approves the dividend increase. But you can see the financial results. As Jamie just said, you can see how we're generating significant free cash flow.
Ammar? Anything else?
No.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you. Okay. Was there a question here? Oh, there's one here. Hoping this works. Hi.
I'm Shiv Sharma. I'm a shareholder of Agnico Eagle. I've been one since I was 18 years old. Running around 15 years now.
One of the great things that I've seen as a shareholder in the last 15 years is Agnico become a national champion for Canada, not just locally and regionally, but globally around the world. As we become to get bigger and bigger in the regional areas that we work, whether that's Nunavut, whether that's in the Abitibi, as we get bigger, we get more scale. It gives us more leverage power with our suppliers. Now, a significant portion of the direct mining chain still is at some point sourced either through US or via US. The question then becomes, at what point does it logically make sense to go back to our existing supply chains and ask them to near-source through Canada instead of through the United States?
I'll just start with the procurement mindset and thinking over time is that we've always been focused on local suppliers, and we have a general procurement group. But the procurement process really starts at the sites who support local suppliers. So when we had periods in the mining industry where miners had trouble getting tires, we didn't have any trouble because we supported our local suppliers, and they would look after us as one of their best customers. So we've got really strong relationships for the local suppliers. But there's a bigger question there on how we're thinking about tariffs and the potential tariff impact. We're lucky there's no impact on the revenue side, potentially a small piece on the cost side. But Ammar and Jamie would give you some more details on that.
Yeah, Sean mentioned it.
We, to be successful in this business, you have to be welcome in the communities you're in or you're dead in the water. A big part of being welcome in the communities you're in is encouraging local procurement, local employment, just logical things that you would do. In the Abitibi, where we've been for 70 years and where there's been mining for 100 years, there is a very substantial local procurement, which is a good thing to your point. Actually, we don't buy that much from a US supply chain. You know, Canada's, frankly, Canadians are better miners than Americans. On the tariff side, as for example, on the cost side, Sean mentioned there's we don't have any exposure on the revenue side.
On the cost side, about 60% of our costs are labor and energy, which are not subject to tariffs. The other 40%, again, most of that is locally sourced. If you're buying a Caterpillar truck or something like that, that's made in the US. You know, there are certain things the Americans do very well, and the question on tariffs there is not the US tariffs, but the reciprocal Canadian tariffs. Right now, my understanding, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Jamie, there are no tariffs on that. So we will, or we should add that, where we can, we have already made changes to our procurement plans and future plans around the US, in terms of buying conferences, etc., to move them to Canada. We've already done that. So wherever we can, we're doing that.
Any more? One online. Okay.
Another one online. Mr. Chair, shareholder Christopher Allen follows up on the dividend question. Going forward, will regular special dividends be preferred versus being committed to permanently raising the quarterly dividend?
Jamie?
Yes. That's a good question. I think if you look over Agnico's history, there's a long track record of, as Sean said, paying a dividend and increasing that dividend over time. So I think that would be the preference certainly to be able to continue to grow the dividend. But it's obviously very dependent on the gold price, the level of free cash flow that we're generating. You know, if gold stays where it is or goes materially higher, there'd always be the potential of a special dividend as well. But again, we're committed to strong shareholder returns.
43% of the free cash flow that we generated last year was returned directly to shareholders. That same percentage in the first quarter. We'll look to continue to increase returns to the shareholders as we generate these strong returns.
Any more questions? Another one online? Do they know that people here may want to shop for dares after lunch?
Mr. Chair, another question related to dividends. What was the reasoning to reducing the dividend reinvestment plan discount from 5% to 1% offered when Agnico shares are held through Computers hare?
So as part of our dividend, we have what's called a DRIP or dividend reinvestment plan whereby shareholders can elect to take their dividend in shares rather than in cash. Historically, there was a discount associated with that of up to 5%. We changed that about a year ago.
Our view was that it didn't make sense to be issuing shares at a 5% discount while at the same time we have a normal course issuer bid and we're actively buying back shares. So, we reduced that to more of a market rate of about a 1% discount. I think that's more consistent with our peers and with the rest of the industry.
And there's a question over here.
Hi. My name is Ren. I've been the shareholder for Agnico since seven years. And eventually, I got hired by Agnico two years ago. I'm now an employee. My question is about the diversification of your portfolio. I see that San Nicolas Mine is more focused on copper. We also have an investment in Chile. I saw that ATEX Resources in Chile, which is a copper-focused mine. Again, there, that is an investment by Agnico.
Apart from that, lithium prices are at a record low. There was a lot of acquisitions going on over there as well. Paladi n took over Fission Uranium. Probably there is some steam. If the lithium prices gain steam again, then again, that's a good barter over there. Uranium is also doing pretty well with all the artificial intelligence and all. So would you be looking at the diversification of your portfolio more towards the other resources? At what percentage would that diversification be focused at? For example, copper, gold, what percentage it would be? Because we're too gold-focused now.
Well, thank you for the question. So we are a gold company. We're gold-centric. We have a higher percentage of gold than any of our peers. We like that.
It's worked well for us. It's worked well for the shareholders. You can certainly see the gold continues to play its historic role of being an offset to broader market volatility. That said, we're not just the biggest gold company in the world. We're the biggest mining company in Canada, even outside of gold. Our objective is to continue to play off our strengths in gold. But if we see opportunities to generate great returns for our owners, playing off our strengths, which means doing the type of mining we know how to do in the regions we know how to do, we would consider it. Just as a caution, something like lithium, there's different types of lithium mining. There's different types of lithium mines. There's sort of soluble lithium. There's hard rock lithium.
Lithium is a chemical process as much as it is a mining process. Not all metals are equally minable in the same format. But we are a gold company. We like being in gold, but we will be open to other metals, to the extent they make a lot of money and they're in regions that we know well. Nothing online?
I've been a shareholder of Kirkland Lake, and I got gobbled up. I was going to ask you, Mike McMurray is my name. Places like Detour Lake and your other places, your energy costs must be out of sight. Have you ever thought of joining some other energy company or investing in an energy company to help you out?
Because I think in the long term, from what I read about artificial intelligence and so on, energy costs are going to do nothing but rise. Have you ever given any consideration to investing or trying to figure out what to do? Because, you know, 10 years from now, these costs could be out of sight.
We put a lot of thought into our, the energy portion of our business. Just so you know, at Detour Lake, actually, the energy prices are pretty good. We're connected to the main grid. And Ontario has a sophisticated approach to producing electricity economically. But clearly, energy is a big issue in our industry, the big industry in many industries, as you said, including in data centers for artificial intelligence.
One of the things that is even more interesting for mining than for most industries because of the nature of our business, which is you have to go where the ore is, which means you could be in the middle of nowhere. We're looking quite a bit at small modular reactors, nuclear reactors. Now, that's 10 or 15 years into the future. But we have a very sophisticated approach to energy. We have a lot of really smart people. We produce actually a lot of energy where we need to.
There's a question. Just expand on the last question.
By the way, I'm a shareholder, been a shareholder off and on since about 1999, 2000. Anyways, I was just looking at the price of energy.
Back in 2004 to 2008, for every ounce of gold you produced, you could buy like eight or nine barrels of oil. Now, for each ounce of gold that you produce, you can buy 53 barrels of oil. I'm looking at the gold-oil ratio. Wouldn't it make sense now, until you can do something with nuclear, to hedge out into the future as long as you can at this gold-oil ratio?
We actually do hedge diesel prices, and you know, we actually have a fair bit of sophistication in that area. We're aware of how far out you can hedge. So we do quite a bit of hedging there. I don't know, Jamie, did you want to go through the numbers?
Sure. Yeah.
I mean, for the remainder of this year, we've got about two-thirds of our exposure to diesel hedged at a price that was well below what we budgeted. So yeah, we have a team that's actively monitoring pricing and looking for opportunities to protect our cost structure by locking in prices below our budget.
One online?
Mr. Chair, the question is, with the recent investment in collective mining, is Agnico interested in returning to Colombia to operate a mine? It seems like Colombia is underexplored.
So our strategy on regions is they need to meet two criteria. They need to have the geologic potential for multiple mines, multiple decades. And it has to have the political stability to operate multiple mines for multiple decades. Colombia certainly meets that first criteria. It is an exceptional country with regards to geologic potential.
At this point, it doesn't meet the second criteria, which is our view of political stability, be able to operate right now for 20 or 30 years. Now, it might get there. So if you were us, what would you do? You would take a if there's a place with great geologic potential and not quite yet comfortable with the political situation, what would you do if you were us? You would take a small position. You would get to know the country. You'd get to know the geology. You'd get to know the people so that to the extent it got to a point where it has the political stability that you're comfortable with, you can then go into it. So right now, I don't see us building a mine in Colombia.
What we're doing with the small, smart investments with smart people on the ground is frankly logical, given our strategy.
No more?
Chris, that's good.
No more?
Very good. Thank you very much for attending today, those in person and those online. Thank you very much for the questions. Thank you very much for the long-time shareholders that return each and every year. Thank all the shareholders for their support and making this a successful meeting. The meeting is now concluded. For those here in person, you're welcome to join our senior management and our board and employees for lunch. Thanks again.