Phillips S. Baker
Analyst · HC Wainwright
Thanks, Carlos. So going to start on Slide 11 with Greens Creek, which reported another solid consistent quarter with strong free cash flow generation. The mine produced 2.5 million ounces and the increase in production was driven by higher grades and throughput. And that throughput exceeded 25, 50 tonnes per day. To put that into context, when we acquired operatorship of Greens Creek, we were somewhere around 1,950 to 2,000 tonnes a day. Cost performance is in line with the planned Cash cost per ounce was $3.45, so in sustaining costs were $716 per ounce. That's lower than in the fourth quarter due to the higher silver production in the by-product credits. Capital spending was lower than planned due to timing of equipment deliveries and less capital development because of unexpected or where ramp was planned. That's a great problem to have. First, free cash flow generation for the quarter was $20 million lower than the last quarter due to an increase in receivables. So we just have this working capital buildup, which is going to reverse. We're reiterating our production guidance of 8.8 million to 9.2 million ounces and our ASIC guidance of $950 to 125. 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 mill and the mine to identify problems proactively. This has improved availability, increased college capacity and identified numerous opportunities that the team will focus on. But we are reaching the limit of what we probably can achieve in terms of 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 first quarter, producing 1.1 million ounces of silver, 1,000 days without a lost time injury, multiple days in March a record mill throughput over 1,300 tonnes per day. And to put that in the context that traditionally, the throughput rate was probably around 850 tonnes -- we have completed 2 critical projects, the service hoist, which face hoisting capacity about 25% and Corser Bunker, which decoupled the mill from the mine with 5 days of stockpile capacity. And that's a big deal to be able to have those 2 things decoupled, particularly when we're operating at these higher tonnages, the mill can't catch up otherwise. We continue to work on other improvements like grinding classification to increase throughput. Cash costs in ASIC were $855 and $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. The mine produced $12 million in free cash flow, including the $17.4 million 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. Like every operation, we have a two-pronged approach where we're trying to change behavior. And then we're also engineering and designing out risks. And 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 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. 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. And I'm struck by a comment that Brian Erickson, who's a longtime Greens Creek leader, some of you probably have met him on tours of Greens Creek. And he's now -- well, in June start overseeing but Green creaking Keno Hill. And he rattled off a list of things not legally required, but that we need to do in order to meet Hecla standards. Now it's kind of -- 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. 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 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 Keynote, nothing could make it safer, more productive than having miners, mining under a constructed back that the underhand method allows you to do. This plant is going to be finished by year-end and full conversion to underhand mining will happen by the end of next year. So we're at 277 tonnes 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 plume moth deposits to make the crusher run better. So despite Flame and Moth lower grade and when I say lower grade, I think it's like 24 ounces per ton. So it's not super upgrade. -- a portion of our feed is going to come from it in order to make freshens 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 are 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. Now let me go to why Keno's life, we think, is going to be longer than the 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 one, which was 54 ounces per ton 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 minimization can be hosted within the full depth of the 3,000-foot favorable basal courtside 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 tonne over nearly 41 feet and the second was 51.2 ounces per ton of almost 40 feet. These are multiples of the sort of width 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've just started targeting the 3,000 foot of strike length and 2000 dip length on the Birmingham vein system to test that deeper basil courtside host -- there's also other drilling targets outside of Birmingham to see if we have cracked the code for how this system is in place. 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 $1,900 capital costs of about $13 million. All of this is as expected for our guidance. We did experience lower surface grades, about 10% to 15% lower than previous low-grade quarters, some of it doing processing low-grade stockpiles, and we'll be watching this in the coming quarters. The mine had $9 million 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 and cost guidance. And before I open the call for questions, I just want to thank all the Hecla employees across all the sites and has been 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.