Hecla Mining Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 9, 2024

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Rochelle, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the First Quarter 2024 Hecla Mining Company Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Anvita Patel. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning, Rochelle, and thank you all for joining us for Hecla's 1st Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. I'm Anvita Patel, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Our earnings release that was issued yesterday along with today's presentation are available on our website. On the call is Phil Baker, President and Chief Executive Officer Russell Lawler, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Carlos Agouar, Vice President of Operations. Phil and Russell will make most of the presentation.

Speaker 1

Carlos, who is at FEMA Hill, will make a couple of comments. We will all be available to answer your questions. Any forward looking statements made today by the management team come under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and involve risks as shown on Slides 23, in our earnings release and in our 10 ks and 10 Q filings with the SEC. These and other risks could cause results to differ from those projected in the forward looking statements. Non GAAP measures cited in this call and related slides are reconciled in the slides or the news release.

Speaker 1

I want to remind you, if you would like to have a call with the management, you can do so by using the link under the section Virtual Investor Event in our earnings release that was issued yesterday. I will now pass the call to Sal.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Anita. Good morning, everyone. As you may know, I'm the Chair of the Silber Institute. I volunteered for this position because of the world's growing need for silver. And so I'm going to actually start the call talking about silver because I'm just very excited about the role that silver has in the energy transition.

Speaker 2

And something I didn't really appreciate, which is the silver demand in India. So let's go to Slide 3. I can't overstate how remarkable 2023 was for solar energy and silver. New investment in renewable energy was about $675,000,000,000 and of that $393,000,000,000 or almost 60% was for solar. And that's a 12% increase over 2022 and it's a new annual record.

Speaker 2

And this investment should continue. Silver's photovoltaic or PV demand increased to 194,000,000 ounces and that's per the silver survey that was put out about 4 weeks ago. And that's about 4 times more than the demand 10 years ago and it's and photovoltaics now represents 16% of global silver demand. Silver photovoltaic demand has had about a 17% annual growth rate over the last 5 years. And in 2024, there should be another 40,000,000 ounces for solar.

Speaker 2

So to put that into perspective, 40,000,000 ounce increase is about the same as the total demand that you had for photovoltaics in 2013. And you'd need 4 new Greens Creek's and 8 new Lucky Fridays to meet it. Now let's go to Slide 4. About 2 weeks ago, I attended the India Silver Conference where I learned 5 things. First, India silver demand is pretty consistent at about 17% to 19% of global demand.

Speaker 2

You had a drop off during the pandemic, but it has since come back. And as global demand grows, so does Indian demand. And Indians actually have to pay more for their silver because of 12% duties and taxes that they have now. That's going down 1% per year till it gets to 3%. So it's going to improve for them.

Speaker 2

February imports set a monthly record of 77,000,000 ounces. And if you take the Q1 in total, it exceeded all of the silver that was imported for the whole year in 2023. And what might be most surprising of all is the price of silver and rupee terms hit an all time high in April. And then finally, I learned the policy commitments the Modi government has made renewables has made to renewables has really created a very large new market for solar. And that was a lot of the conversation at the Indian conference was how they move forward with solar.

Speaker 2

If you put the solar in the Indian demand together, it's about 35% of Silver's global demand and they are both growing. And the 3 year deficit is now over 500,000,000 ounces and I expect more deficit this year and into the foreseeable future. Silver's fundamentals are unlike any time in its history. Now turning to Slide 5, let me talk about Hecla and its role with the deficit. With the Lucky Friday back to full production and Kena Hill ramp up progressing, we are the fastest growing established silver company as a result of innovation and the efforts of our people.

Speaker 2

If you go back to 2010, we produced a total of 10,000,000 ounces, Greens Creek produced 7, Lucky Friday produced 3. This year's guidance is Greens Creek at around 9 and Lucky Friday at 5. That's a 40% increase without considering Kenan Hill. And it's not just production growth for the sake of growth. We have maintained a low cost structure back the lowest in the industry.

Speaker 2

In 2010, Lucky Friday's cash costs were $3.76 per ounce. We're going to be around $2.50 to $3.25 this year. And this improvement is due to investments that we've made, the 4 shaft, the patented UCB and innovation that we made, mining method, the service hoist ore storage bunkers and lots of other improvements. And over the same period, Greens Creek's cost have also remained consistently low. This year, we expect cash costs to be $3.50 to $4 and ASIC to be $9.50 to 10.25 and Green Creek has had growth in reserves.

Speaker 2

Since 2010, we've replaced 120,000,000 ounces and added reserves to maintain a 13 year mine plan. When Green Creek started its operations back in 1989, the mine had a 7 year reserve plan. I think Keno is going to be on the same path as these two mines. Turning to Slide 6. There's really three messages for this quarter.

Speaker 2

First, our silver operations are strong and consistent with Green Creek delivering a solid quarter and Lucky Friday achieving full ramp up. 2nd, Keno Hills ramp up is going well and we're seeing incremental and steady improvements in the safety culture and in engineering risks out of the mine. 3rd, we see the Q1 as an inflection point with strong free cash flow from our established silver operation, improving performance at Keno and the insurance proceeds, which we will use to delever over the next 12 months. Finally, we expect to release our 2023 stateability report at our annual meeting May 17th. And we are again net 0 in 2023 on Scopes 12 Carbon Emissions, where we view utilized UN certified offset credits.

Speaker 2

And this year, instead of using credits, we are investing in research to sequester carbon in our operations. With that, I'll pass the call on to Russell.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Phil. I'll start on Slide 8. In the Q1, we saw our financials begin to rebound as expected from the effect of the fire at Lucky Friday. We had nearly $190,000,000 in revenue, an increase of 18% from last quarter while we still invested free cash flow in the operations, we saw an improvement of approximately $30,000,000 from the Q4 last year, maintaining our net leverage ratio at 2.7 times. We expect to see the net leverage ratio improved to less than 2 times over the next 12 months as we see the full effect of Lucky Friday coming back into production, as well as the continued ramp up at Keno Hills.

Speaker 3

We also saw our positioning in silver continue to improve as 44% of our revenue was generated from silver, an improvement of 5 percentage points over 2023. The margin at our silver operations have remained strong during the quarter at 47% of the realized price of silver. We expect the margins and the resulting free cash flow from these operations will continue to improve as we continue to see the effect of Lucky Friday for the remainder of the year. Turning to Slide 9, with Lucky Friday back to full production and the Keno Hill ramp up going well, I'll speak a little bit about our financial priorities in 2024, which are hinged on the fact we have these great silver assets, which have generated over $600,000,000 in free cash flow since 2020. I expect this free cash flow trend to continue and even strengthen as we see support in the price for silver and see the impact of Lucky Friday being back into production.

Speaker 3

This free cash flow will first be invested in our operations including the ramp up of Keno Hill. We anticipate we'll spend $190,000,000 to $200,000,000 in capital lower than last year because of the completion of projects at both Lucky Friday and Keno Hill. We also anticipate spending just over $30,000,000 on both exploration and pre development with the plan to continue to add to our existing mineral endowment at our various operations and exploration properties. Our next priority will be to delever the amount drawn on our revolver, which we've used for liquidity due to investments made at Keno Hill and Casa Berardi while the Lucky Friday was out of commission last year. With strong expected EBITDA generation, our net leverage ratio to revert to our target less than 2 times over the next 12 months.

Speaker 3

With that, I'll pass the call to Carlos.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Russell. I'm Martino Hill and Remo for the rest of the team and we'll keep my remarks short. We started the year on a strong note with Lucky Friday achieving full ramp up, another strong quarter from Glens Creek and Kena Hills improvement on setting and environmental metrics as we ramp up production. Casa Berardi's transition to open pit is continue and we are focused on grading cost control. We have more work to do as we have a Lloyd extending underground operations.

Speaker 4

I look forward to having all the 4 operations running at full throttle this year. With that, we'll pass the call to Phil.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Carlos. I'm going to start on Slide 11 with Greens Creek, which reported another solid consistent quarter with strong free cash flow generation. The mine produced 2,500,000 ounces and the increase in production was driven by higher grades and throughput. And throughput exceeded 25, 50 tons per day. To put that into context, when we acquired operatorship of Greens Creek, we were somewhere around 19.52 tons, 2,000 tons a day.

Speaker 2

Cost performance is in line with the plan. Cash cost per ounce was $3.45 so in sustaining cost were 7.16 grams, that's lower than in the 4th quarter due to the higher silver production and the byproduct credits. Capital spending was lower than planned due to timing of equipment deliveries and less capital development because of unexpected ore where ramp was planned. That's a great problem to have. 1st, free cash flow generation for the quarter was $20,000,000,000 lower than the last quarter due to an increase in receivables.

Speaker 2

So we just have this working capital buildup, which is going to reverse. We're reiterating our production guidance of 8.8000000 to 9 point 2000000 ounces and our AISC guidance of 9.50000000 to 10.25000000. Throughput has continued to increase towards the 2,600 tonnes per day and it requires a significant focus on maintenance. We're expanding our predictive maintenance practices in the middle of the mine to identify problems proactively. This has improved availability, increased college capacity and identified numerous opportunities that the team will focus on.

Speaker 2

But we are reaching the limit of of what we probably can achieve in terms of the tonnage growth without sort of rethinking the kind of investment that we need to make. Turning to Slide 12, lots of achievements at the Lucky Friday. Full ramp up in the Q1 producing 1,100,000 ounces of silver, a 1000 days without a lost time injury, multiple days in March of record mill throughput over 1300 tons per day. And to put that in the context that traditionally the throughput rate was probably around 8 50 tons. We have completed 2 critical projects, the service hoist, which increased hoisting capacity about 25% and the course ore bunker, which decoupled the mill from the mine with 5 days of stockpile capacity.

Speaker 2

And that's a big deal to be able to have those two things decoupled, particularly when we're operating at these higher tonnages. The mill can't up otherwise. We continue to work on other improvements like grinding classification to increase throughput. Cash costs in ASIC were $8.55 $17.36 per ounce respectively, higher than guidance ranges due to the ramp up. So that will come down over the course of the year.

Speaker 2

The mine produced $12,000,000 in free cash flow, including the $17,400,000 insurance receipts and is on track to achieve production and cost guidance for the year and be cash flow positive for the year. Turning to Slide 13, and this is where I'll spend the majority of the remainder of time. Keno Hill is improving, and we are learning and trying to do everything through the lens of safety and environmental improvement. And we are making it safer. The all injury frequency rate is down 41%, but it is still too high.

Speaker 2

Like every operation, we have a 2 pronged approach where we're trying to change behavior and then we're also engineering and designing out risks. And so for behavior, we initiated a 10 step action plan to implement the best practices in training, reporting investigations of accidents and supervision. The program is about 40% complete and it's resulted in increased morale and has promoted a culture of transparency. So we actually have had more significant potential incidents or as many as we had a year ago. But there's been more reporting.

Speaker 2

And the point of this is the key to a safe site is really having no fear in telling what is really happening. And the team is responding well to that. This is where we're making, I think, great progress. On the design side, we're focused on modifications to environmental controls to bring it to Hecla standards. And our standards in many cases exceed the legal requirements.

Speaker 2

And I'm struck by a comment that Brian Erickson, who's long time Greens Creek leader, some of you probably have met him on tours of Greens Creek. And he's now well in June start overseeing both Greens Creek and Cana Hill. And he rattled off a list of things not legally required, but that we need to do in order to meet HEKLA standards. Now, it's going to like Greens Creek, it's going to be a long process. I mean, we're still improving our standards at Greens Creek, a 37 year old mine.

Speaker 2

But the geology at Keno and our culture warrants it. So for the next year or so, our focus is on better monitoring, getting more fulsome hydrologic studies and making water the water treatment plant upgrades. And design improvements are also being made operationally to make the mine more predictable and efficient, which makes it safer and more productive. There are a number of things, but the biggest is the cement and tails batch plant, which is going to allow underhand mining at Birmingham. And whenever you have the challenging ground conditions like we have at Keno, nothing could make it safer, more productive than having miners mining under a constructed back that the underhand method allows you to do.

Speaker 2

This plant is going to be finished by year end and full conversion to underground mining will happen by the end of next year. So we're at 2.77 tons per day and this is all from the Birmingham deposit, about 30% more than last quarter. We still have too much variability in how much we mine and mill each day, but it's getting a lot better and we're seeing even more consistency in April and into May. At the start of my comments on Keno, I said we're learning. And what immediately comes to mind is that particularly in the shoulder seasons, in order to manage the clay from Birmingham, we need the hard rock from Flame and Moth deposit to make the crusher run better.

Speaker 2

So despite flame and moth being lower grade, and when I say lower grade, I think it's like 24 ounces per tonne. So it's not super low grade. A portion of our feed is going to come from it in order to make crushing better. And you'll see start to see that in the next few months. With 600,000 ounces that we've done this quarter, we're confident we're going to hit our production numbers, reach commercial and full production probably before year end, but only if we're making the mine safer and more environmentally compliant.

Speaker 2

Now let me go to why Keno's life we think is going to be longer than current 11 year mine life and it's the exploration results we're seeing. So if you go to Slide 14. Last quarter, I highlighted high grade intercepts at Birmingham, including 1 which was 54 ounces per tonne over 39.5 feet as well as an intercept, which was 1,000 feet deeper than any previous drilling. And it provided the evidence that high grade silver mineralization can be hosted within the full depth of the 3,000 foot favorable basal quartzite host rock unit. Now we've continued drilling and the results we shared today are just as exciting where there were 2 additional intercepts in the footwall vein, one of which was 55.4 ounces per ton over nearly 41 feet.

Speaker 2

And the second was 51.2 ounces per ton of aromas 40 feet. These are multiples of the sort of widths of what we normally see. These holes are near existing infrastructure and they exceed our model's expectations. We also have 2 surface exploration drills that we just started turning targeting the 3,000 foot of strike length and 2,000 foot of zip length on the Birmingham vein system to test that deeper basal quartzite host. There's also other drilling targets outside of Birmingham to see if we have cracked the code how this system is in place.

Speaker 2

We expect to be here for decades to come. Turning to Slide 15, I'll talk about Casa. Casa produced 22,000 ounces at an AISC of just under $1900 capital costs of about $13,000,000 All of this is as expected per our guidance. We did experience lower surface grades about 10% to 15% lower than previous low grade quarters, some of it due processing low grade stockpiles. And we'll be watching this in the coming quarters.

Speaker 2

The mine had $9,000,000 of negative cash flow, and this is an improvement over the prior quarter. And this year is an investment year at Casa, but we do expect free cash flow before we reach the gap in production in a few years. So the investment we're making this year is as expected. Going to Slide 16, shows our guidance for the year. We're affirming our production cost guidance.

Speaker 2

And before I open the call for questions, I just want to thank all the Hecla employees across all the sites and ask them to continue to focus on safety, both designing out our hazards and making safe choices. With that, Rochelle, I'd like to open the call to questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Your first question comes from the line of Heiko Ihle of H. C. Wainwright.

Operator

Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Hey there. Thanks for taking my questions. I assume you can hear me okay?

Speaker 2

We can Heiko. Thanks.

Speaker 5

Hey Phil. So Keno Hill, your release states that your action plans should be substantially completed before the end of the year, but you do leave a carve out for some longer term infrastructure. I mean, obviously, Flybe and Moss are starting next month, but building on what you had on Slide 13 earlier, can you just provide some color on what exactly you're referring to with that carve out? When you expect to undertake this and maybe just even what you expect to spend by quarter? I assume it's mostly front loaded?

Speaker 3

Yes. No,

Speaker 2

I certainly the guidance that we've given for 2020 4 is unchanged. There's nothing that all of this is as planned. I just wanted to make the make it clear to people that as we go to the underground, the underhand mining method that it's that it will be a process that will take some time before it will be fully underhand at Bermingham. And as far as additional capital in 2025, we haven't gone through those plans. But I'm not anticipating that there's going to be some major sort of capital outlay in any 1 year.

Speaker 2

But because of the exploration success that we're seeing here, it's a dynamic situation. And we're contemplating permitting for a much larger throughput than what we currently have. We haven't finalized that, but that's a path that we're on. And like Greens Creek that over the years, and I think if you go back to its early 90s, its rate was well below the 1900 or so that we had. I don't remember what it was.

Speaker 2

And I don't know if Russell, do you have any?

Speaker 3

I don't know. I'm not sure where it was.

Speaker 2

But it was it is so this is going to be an evolving mine and the exploration success that we're seeing justifies that. Carlos, anything you want to add?

Speaker 4

No, that's correct. So we are still a long road ahead of us and we are still evaluating all the stuff that we can make. Nothing to add. Got it.

Speaker 5

And then just a quick clarification. You had ramp up costs of $8,700,000 during the quarter at the site. Can you just break that down a little bit?

Speaker 2

When you say break it down, I mean, it is sort of the stub. So we have our total revenue that we generated that goes into operating costs and then the stub is what goes into to the ramp up costs. Any

Speaker 6

color?

Speaker 3

Yes, we can add I can add a little bit to that. Basically, the way that we handle ramp up costs are at Keno Hill, we will allocate you spend we spent this quarter, we spent about $15,000,000 in cash expenses at Keno Hill. And we generated roughly $10,000,000 of revenue. So we allocated $10,000,000 of the $15,000,000 to cost of sales because we're in a ramp up period, we're not actually earning margin. We're it's a combination of earning some revenue while we're actually ramping up or building the operation.

Speaker 3

And as such, then we'll allocate the remainder to ramp up costs. So as we see the revenue at Keno Hill increase, we should see the ramp up costs come down. When we do get to the point where we believe we're at commercial or full production, we would then allocate all of the costs to cost of sales. And at that point, we would expect we would have a margin as well.

Speaker 2

And we'll determine that we're in commercial production when we're confident that we have a stabilized operation. And that's in part reason for mentioning about the underhand method. I don't expect that we'll have to wait till we get all the way there to underhand, but I just be aware of that. That's something we will have to consider.

Speaker 3

And lastly, I would just add, it's the same methodology we've used at Lucky Friday. We did the same thing with Lucky Friday, whether it was last quarter or previously. In Q1 of 2024, we did have a little bit of ramp up costs in January. And that's we've kind of disclosed that within our financials, but it's supposed a couple of $1,000,000 And keep in mind that line item in the income statement is ramp up and suspension costs. There's some costs in there for Nevada and a very, very small amount from San Sebastian as well.

Speaker 5

Very comprehensive answer. Good quarter, stocks reacting well. I'll get of

Operator

B. Riley of B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, everyone. Phil, I wanted to first ask on Lucky Friday, just looking at Q1, obviously, going things are going in the right direction, but still more needed for the full year. So I wondered if you kind of could walk through a punch list of what you expect and what you need to see to hit that full year guidance? Thank you very much on that.

Speaker 2

Look, I don't think it's doing anything more than what we did prior to the fire, and we're on track to do that. It will be a function of what's the actual grade that we hit as we go through. But we're not anticipating any particular issue with getting to the 5,000,000 ounces. If we have any problem, it's really about getting the people that we need and maintenance. That's our biggest challenge.

Speaker 2

And so in order to have the availability, But it's I think we're going to be as the year goes on, we're going to be in a optimization mode. What additional changes can we make to get beyond where we are expecting to be? Carlos, anything you want to add or correct?

Speaker 4

Yes. This is a really exciting time for Lucky Friday. Of course, the termination of the major projects that were completed last year. This is going to be our 1st year utilizing those projects and future comes right for us to find it.

Speaker 7

Thank you for that color. And But for my second question, I'd like to turn to Casa. So you mentioned previously that the free cash flow contribution should really pick up in 2026. Could you quantify your expectations around 2025? Give some color around that.

Speaker 7

And then with the significantly higher gold price environment today, Are you looking at that mine differently from a strategic perspective, from an operational standpoint? I would appreciate your thoughts on that. Thank you.

Speaker 2

So Lucas, probably the best source of information as to what we think 2025 and 2026 will look like is our technical report. And so I would point that out for your attention. And at this point, we don't see anything dramatically different from that other than we do have higher gold prices. We have experienced some lower grades than what we had in the plan. So we're going to be watching that closely and trying to figure what's happening there, if it's temporary or if there's more to that.

Speaker 2

I don't know anything else. I don't think I have much to add.

Speaker 3

Certainly higher gold prices could potentially cause us to have a little bit more material from the underground. I think you step back and you think about the entirety of Casa Berardi, it's probably around the market kind of around the edges. But we'll take the opportunity if we have the opportunity. And when

Speaker 2

you ask the strategic question, I guess, look, we see TASA as playing an important role of providing us with diversification, giving us scale. But frankly, we are certainly more focused on silver and always have been. And Casa and Gold was a means to an end of being able to be larger in order to take on more silver opportunities. And it's serving that purpose and I think it will continue to serve in the future, but the focus certainly is on silver, Lucas.

Speaker 7

And Phil, on that, you speak with a lot of excitement and passion about the outlook of the silver market. I think I've heard growth aspirations about Tecla and the S and P 500. And so when kind of taking a step back, how aggressive do you want to be over the next few years to pursue the Silver opportunity? Is this a time to focus on Keno, get that up first or maybe press forward on a couple of different fronts to pursue the opportunity

Speaker 2

outlined it? Well, I guess, certainly we've got to focus on Keno and get that up and running the way we think it can. But Keno is a long term gain. It is I had no doubt that it is probably we currently have an 11 year MIME life. I have no doubt that we are finding more and we will end up with a longer mine life than that.

Speaker 2

And so it's one that's an evolution. With respect to acquiring new things, we're certainly always looking and it's and we're more focused on what the opportunities when they arise and trying to put things together than trying to time something. So if things become available and it's people want they see the vision of Hecla as the continuing to be the premier silver producer and one that's even bigger and one that could conceivably reach this goal of S and P 500, we would want to have them join up with us to help us achieve that. But we don't have to do those things. I mean, we have within our portfolio, there's 8 projects that we have that are silver projects.

Speaker 2

And some of them, particularly the Willoughby exploration and things that we have in Montana have the capacity to fundamentally change Hecla and really have a step forward to be able to accomplish some of these goals on our own. But we're going to be continuing to look and we want to bring other assets in if we can.

Speaker 7

Bill, really appreciate the color and perspective to the entire team. Continue best of luck. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Lucas.

Operator

Your next question comes from Joseph Reagor of Roth and Kilometers. Your line is now open.

Speaker 6

Hey, Phil and team. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess following on something Heiko asked on the ramp up and maintenance costs. Can you give us any guidance on what those might look like over the remainder of this year and then kind of long term?

Speaker 2

When you say the maintenance costs, what are you referring to Joe? By the way, hi Joe, what are you referring to?

Speaker 6

So there was in Q1, there was like $14,500,000 between ramp up costs, which I know you guys attributed some of that to expenses versus revenue at Lucky Friday and Keno. But beyond that, like how much of that is ongoing care and maintenance for like Nevada and San Sebastian, etcetera?

Speaker 3

Do you have the breakdown? I do certainly for Q1. Most of that cost $9,000,000 was related to Keno, dollars 2,000,000 was Lucky Friday and then Nevada and San Sebastian were $3,500,000 respectively.

Speaker 2

So that $2,000,000 at the Lucky Friday relates to that

Speaker 3

one month. Just one month. I think that long term, it'll go down to just the Nevada, San Sebastian numbers. And certainly one of the things that we're working on actively is looking to minimize those as well because we anticipate we want to make sure that those expenses are as small as we can. Yes.

Speaker 2

And Joe, I'm glad you followed up on Heiko's question because I probably should point out again that we are taking Brian Erickson, who's been Greens Creek for 27 years and has been the GM, I don't know, last 4 or 5 years. And we've asked him to be a Regional Vice President over both Greens Creek and Keno. And the reason for that is to try to look for synergies between the two operations because in the mining world, these are actually very close together. There it's about a 6 or 7 hour trip from one mine to the other. And if you fly the whole way, if you flew, you could do it in 2 hours, including immigration.

Speaker 2

So, and you think about materials, it's all coming up through the Inland Passage. It actually goes right by Greens Creek. And so we're going to try to combine procurement and nobody will be better than Brian at looking at what things we can do together between those two operations in order to drive the cost structure down, try to apply fixed costs that we have at Greens Creek to Keno without increasing Greens Creek's fixed costs. That's the idea. And it's going to again, it's going to be an evolution at Keno.

Speaker 2

It took a long time for Greens Creek to be cash flow positive. It will not take that long at Keno, but it's going to be a period of time that we will be investing in. I just don't have the visibility at this point as to what those synergies might be in order to drive that quicker.

Speaker 6

Okay. Okay, fair enough. And then as you think about Keno, progress again in Q1 compared to Q4, you're maintaining your guidance for the year, but are there any issues that are ongoing there that you guys feel may ultimately result in you needing to make a significant capital investment to fix something or increase the fleet size or whatever?

Speaker 2

I think it's going to be driven more by the exploration success we have and wanting to increase throughput there, that could cause us to make a substantial investment. If we stay at 400 tons a day, now there's it's just hard to you don't have a lot of space, at 400 tons a day to make a significant capital investment. But what we're anticipating is, I mean, the exploration we're seeing is the potential is so great

Speaker 4

that

Speaker 2

I don't think that will be the case. I think you will over time. But I don't have any visibility on what that might be at this point.

Speaker 3

But it is a very

Speaker 2

exciting, exciting, place, and we're we've focused a lot of attention to try to get this right with start, because the only thing that can really, I think, cause a problem for us is really safety and environmental poor performance. And we got to get those right. So we're focusing a lot of time and attention on those.

Speaker 6

Okay. And then one last one. On Nevada, the assets have been idled for a while, but given the current gold price north of $2,300 is there any opportunity to consider restarting operations in Nevada or selling that asset to another company who might want to look at that opportunity? Is there any way to generate some value there?

Speaker 2

Yes. So certainly, we are evaluating if there is material that in Midas that could be mined at these higher prices. And we are continuing to do the work necessary in order to get back underground at Hollister on the Hatter Graben. There is nothing that I can well, there is a huge opportunity for value creation if you could restart those operations at Midas and Hollister. As far as selling it, I mean, it's always a possibility, but we view it as having so much long term exploration opportunity and so little has been done on the Eastern Robin corridor and in Hollister that we think that's not likely something we would do, but it's we're not going to be wed to an asset, particularly gold asset.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thanks. I'll turn it

Speaker 2

over. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference back over to Phil Baker for the closing remarks.

Speaker 2

The only closing remark I have is I know this is a busy day with lots of companies reporting, and I appreciate you folks being on this call and certainly understand if you wanted to reach out to us later, Envita Russell or I, and we're happy to answer questions and look forward to speaking to you. Thanks for being on the call.

Operator

Thank you. That concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining and you may now

Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Hecla Mining Q1 2024
00:00 / 00:00