Corrado De Gasperis
Analyst · Wainwright. Please go ahead
Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone. This is Corrado. And welcome to our 2015 first quarter conference call. I also have with me Judd Merrill, our CFO, who has led our team in an effort to improve the timeliness of our reporting results not to mention streamlining and reducing our costs over the past year. Last night we filed again our 10-Q on a 15-day foreclosing audit review and reporting cycle. We will provide a brief summary of the information included in our 10-Q filed last night and our press release from this morning. Also we are really looking forward to the Annual Meeting this year being held much earlier on May 7th may possible in part by these faster reporting cycles. If you don’t have a copy of today’s release you will find a copy on our website at www.comstockmining.com under news/press-releases. Speaking about the website, excuse me, we have also posted in webcomic version of our annual report and proxy statement on the Homepage and it’s got this neat, like user friendly electronic page turning feature. Please take a look at it when you can. I will also refer to the website on a couple of other occasions this morning, where we have been able to post some really remarkable pictures of the road move progress, the mining, the excavation activities and even just some spectacular pictures of capping the historic Silver Hill Shaft. We have also got some good pictures of the underground target that I am going to be speaking about. Although, those are a little bit more of a teaser and there is a lot more to come in the next few weeks on that front. Please also let me remind you that in addition to the outlook, we may make forward-looking statements on this call. Any statement related to matters that are not historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements. The statements are based on current expectations and are subject to the same risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the reports filed by the company and the SEC and in this morning's release, and all of the forward-looking statements made during the call are subject to those same risks and other risks that we can identify. Okay, let me briefly overview some of the first quarter highlights. It was actually incredibly active quarter with some major strategic advancement, including advancing the leach pad, expansion ahead of schedule and a huge leap ahead in terms of moving the State Route. But truly as dramatic as that last story line was, the focus was and continues to be on lower costs and the safest possible operating performances. Despite already having reduced costs applicable to mining by almost $7.5 million when we were comparing 2014 to 2013, we further reduced the mining cost here in the first quarter by 22% when comparing to the first quarter of last year or over a $1 million driven by streamlined mining labor, operations and even lower fuel costs. We have also reduced administrative costs by an additional $0.5 million in the quarter. Although, we did incur about $400,000 in one-time cost overall to effect all of those changes. The operational improvement were lead by a 63% improvement in weighted average gold grade to 0.039 ounces per ton in the first quarter of this year, as compared to 0.024 ounces per ton in the fourth quarter of last year. That was coupled within even higher improvement 113% in weighted average silver grade to 0.734 ounces per ton in the first quarter of this year from 0.345. Let me say that again, from 0.734 ounces per ton this quarter from 0.34 ounces per ton last quarter, so more than 100% improvement there. Silver to gold production exceeded 11 ounces of silver poured for every ounce of gold so far this year. That’s consistent with our full year average to last year and up meaningfully from the first quarter of last year. Metallurgical yields continued running extremely well, holding at the 81% for gold during the first quarter of 2015. You may recall, we ended last year on that note and that’s also up from 74% in the first quarter of last year. Most dramatically, our strip ratio improved all the way to averaging 1 ton of waste for 1 ton of ore. So that’s a 1 to 1 strip ratio for the full first quarter of 2015, down from an average of last year, as most of you recall, closer to 5 to 1 for the year and even though it was below 3 to 1 by the end of the year, getting to 1 to 1 for the first quarter is really outstanding for us. Substantially all of that improvement came from the mining plant and the mining of the flatter Lucerne mine areas, with just under only about 34,000 tons of the ore that we mined this quarter coming from that, really lower or low to no strip material from the dump. So we are actually expecting the strip ratio to continue to improve as we interface and integrate more of this dump material into the mine plant. So we are look forward to some pretty good quarters in that context coming up this year. Mining revenue was $5.9 million for the quarter, as compared to $5.6 million last quarter of last year, first quarter of last year, sorry. Although, that was a 6% increase from the same quarter. This really was our only real disappointment this quarter. The revenue was slightly below what it was last quarter and it was really driven by the fact that we had almost three full-week in February where we didn’t crushing stack ore. Two of those weeks were plant downtime and associated with our heap leach expansion and extra week of downtime came because of the activities around the road. The road closure ultimately is an amazing outcome for the community to county and for us, but there was a quite a bit of planning and coordination and synchronization that had to occur with many, many parties and we loss some production ton because of it. We didn’t loose productivity because our current organization is quite flexible. We have crews now that can be mining, they working and expanding leach pad for those weeks in February. They’ve been working directly on constructing the road. And as I mentioned, there is some great pictures on the website those are our crews doing that work. Although, we are being supervised by NDOT, we are really doing all the work ourselves. So we are quite productive through the quarter. It just for those few weeks in February it wasn’t driving revenue. During the first quarter though we did realized a very good average gold sales price, we are proud of that performance. We ended up the quarter averaging just over $1,280 price per ounce of gold, partly by capitalizing on just booking and pricing more ounces there in January when gold ran up to just over $1,300. In comparison the gold market price in the first quarter averaged a little over $1,219 per ounces of gold. So we did possibly enhance our revenue from a pricing perspective. Net cash generated by operating activity was a positive, $0.2 million in the first quarter of 2015. That’s our fourth positive quarter in generating cash from operations. We are very happy about that. We are looking very much forward to growing that number and it’s remarkably up from the prior year, where we used $2.5 million in cash rather than generating some cash. Net income was also positive $1.3 million, yes, that is our first net income for a quarter. We are very happy about it. It was driven by a number of things, most strongly by lower costs in the quarter, higher relative revenues and we did have a purposeful elimination of some liabilities that really also strengthened our balance sheet. We have spent quite a bit of time, Judd, especially over the last six months securing and getting releases to certain potential liabilities. We did that fully and successfully ultimately permanently eliminating over $4 million in liabilities from our balance sheet, strengthening it and even though those are non-recurring, the improvements to the liability profile and to the balance sheet are real. As I mentioned, we also did invest here in the first quarter. We expanded our leach pad. We originally scheduled that in our budget for the year in Q2, but we made a decision early in January to move it up to Q1. It ended up coinciding with the road work that was better lucky than good, because we didn’t planned for any of that road activity to occur when it did, but that really minimized the downtime that really resulted from that road occurrence. We were able to also consummate some pretty strategic land purchases, a handful of them. We did spend over a $1.5 million, but those lands were all adjacent to our mine, adjacent to our processing center and opportunistic. Although, we expect to spend some more money this year on land payments for purchases that have already been announced and committed. We don’t really foresee any major new land purchases or commitments like that going forward. I think that we have really have pulled together this consolidation. We have consolidated substantially all of the mineralized district, if not all of it in most context. We have effectively re-zoned and/or re-permitted substantially all of our properties for exploration development and/or mining activities. We are really full and complete in that context. And I am happy to report that we also expanded in the first quarter our Special Use Permit which most of you are aware was massively expanded last year, but we have already expanded it and updated it to include all of these new properties as well. Coming back to the road, that’s where most of this drama occurred for our quarter. We don’t love drama. It came in early February when the Nevada Department of Transportation closed about a 2 mile section of the State Route, which from this point forward I will called SR-342 standing for the number of the State Route. It’s south of Gold Hill and as a safety precaution following some roadway deterioration, some cracking and specific sinking that occurred in February because of weekend of heavy rain. The road was closed. The area of sinking really is a part of the road that sits above a historic mine shaft dating way back to the early 1900s and that portion of the road also sits on a significant amount by a limited context over 0.5 million tons of all historic sale and mine dumps that really from a structural stability standpoint really could never permanently sustain and maintain that road safely. Although some people would truly love to believe that we are the cause of that instability. It’s just hard wash. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the joint releases by us, NDOT and the county. We’re really the lead path of this solution, not the cause and we could not be happier with the reception from the county, the support and acceleration of permitting from NDOT and the county. And everyone has really rolled up their sleeves, worked as a team and really driving to an accelerated permanent solution where this county will get, not only a solid strong safe roadway but also it will be in proper proximities and proper positioning for our mining and the work that we want to do going forward. All of this has been accelerated ultimately to everyone’s benefit because of the fact and circumstances that occur here in this quarter. We’re implementing the plan. It’s fully moving forward. It’s really an accelerated realignment of the road to the east of historic mine-shaft. And frankly, we were well into the planning of doing this. We were thinking about various alternatives but circumstances allowed for a really coordinated accelerated approach. The whole realignment will occur in two phases, the first phase being completed in early June, the second phase being completed certainly well before the end of the year. And I mentioned earlier, there is just an exceptional pictures that are linked right in from the press release on to our website of all of this activity and that gallery will be kept current from this point forward. We’ve mentioned that the project has an estimated cost of $3 million. As we stand right now, we are on plan both in terms of time and money. We did draw on the revolver because of the road activities in some of these land purchases during the quarter. But we also paid down about $2.7 million of debt during the quarter. So our net debt increase was up. We're really not that dramatic. Our cash position is well over $4 million. We remain cash positive from operations and from an operational standpoint, things are getting very routine for us and very positive here as we move forward. If we summarize the big picture in the production standpoint, we’ve proven our great profile which improved all through the year as we’ve communicated and expected from our revised mine plans from last year. Our metallurgical yield is showing great stability and it’s a high number, higher than we originally expected. We were really proud and happy about that. And finally, the strip ratio has not only come around, it’s actually looking very excellent. So except for the production disruption, we’re firing on all cylinders. We’ve expanded the land, expanded the permits, expanded the leach pads. We passed MSHA, MSAT, NDEP. You name it, we audited did this quarter multiple times in some cases. And those activities, they not only do we pass but we get stronger in our relationship with their regulators get stronger and we couldn’t be safer. We’re very, very happy about all of that. Let me move on to looking forward a bit with the discussion about exploration and development. We previously discussed how our geological and engineering teams have really significantly advanced our understanding of Lucerne geology over the past year. I mean, a tremendous amount of pre-drilling development of that geology, including mapping out detailed cross-section and level plans. They’ve all been completed for the east side. And now the result is the quantification and identification of some very, very precise targets. You are aware of the surface targets, which we’ve already been drilling. And we reported tremendously good results. Just recently, we updated those results with an additional 30 drill holes on the east side on the surface. We defined a zone of very, very high grade near-surface mineralization on the Succor and Holman patent claims on the east side of Lucerne. We’re confident about their economic recovery based on what we know so far and we’re working very, very hard to define and expand the mine plants associated with that and that will occur here in the second quarter. As you see from the details that were released and we resubmitted in this release, we have 25 hits with intercepts of greater than tenths of an ounce per ton and with average grades well in access of our current surface mining averaging over 0.05 ounces per ton. More remarkably and what we’re talking about here now for the first time is that we’ve defined a very specific first phase underground target. And if you again link to our website from the press release in this section, you’ll see some very, very early but detailed cross-section examples, level-plan examples and ultimately structural pictures of this zone. The area that we’re talking about fits just north, just in front of the base of our northern Lucerne mine pit floor. There is over a 0.5 million tons of an almost immediately accessible high grade quartz porphyry host that we already have within scope of this rock type and within the scope of this mineralized host. Over 44 drill holes intercepting again over a tenth of an ounce per ton but with average grade not similar to the surface, ones that I just described but much, much higher. We have average grades in these intercepts that we’re talking about over a tenth of an ounce per ton hits at almost a quarter of an ounce per ton. We similarly had another 22 drill holes just outside this host rock with the exact same results, creating over a tenth of an ounce and averaging over almost a quarter of an ounce. So these structures which extend off of the floor of the existing mine and then connect over further north of the Woodville structures which are bigger than this whole structure I just mentioned. We haven’t really named it yet. It looks like an elephant’s head when you are looking at the slide or the picture on the website then connects back across and down dips into the Chute Zone. And so there is this entire interconnected high-grade hosting structures. You can expect a lot of upcoming details goes out in parameters on this geology in future detail releases in reasonably near term over the next few weeks and months will be a fully focused on getting into these structures. I expect that will be mining underground this year although we do have final feasibility work to complete. And we have to develop a drift and establish drill stations underground. But all of that will be at a lower investment cost initially. I think we were talking about before just the underground drilling in this first phase. We’re expecting to spend a little over a $1 million. Actually, if I think about the next phases of exploration, it can be summarized as this underground drilling that we want to do into these high-grade targets. We have some surface core drilling to complement the results that we’ve had over at the Succor and Holman and then we’re not counting out in our 2015 program, of course, the Dayton and the Spring Valley areas. The Dayton detail is being finalized early as we speak in terms of plan. We’re going to be sharing those plans with the public and the community as we’ve committed previously likely over the next number of weeks. We don’t have dates and meeting schedule but we have to and want to do all of that before the plans are truly finalized in any real drilling and development commences but it’s imminent. Those activities are imminent and again we’re going to be very happy to share separate releases and details to those areas as much as we can. So the transparency will be good. The excitement will be high and the progress will be accelerated I think as we move forward from this first quarter. Our goals this year are to ensure the lowest operating cost possible to expand Lucerne both surface and is rapidly developing underground opportunity. We expect to be cash positive from operations throughout 2015. And now that we have a better line aside for the next few quarters under development that I’m talking about while expanding the mine in the mining activities in multiple fronts both in the third and fourth quarter. And lastly, getting to the point where we have a second fully integrated mine plan, community plan and ultimately moving forward in the Dayton for commencing the permitting. So let me pause there Michelle. We’re going to go to questions and answers. I do want to let everybody know that the format for the Q&A session will be more concise as Michelle mentioned previously to the extent that any investors are not able to get through under new format, our team, including Kim, Judd, myself et cetera. We’re all available for direct calls and we’ll most certainly make sure that ultimately we connect with everybody and that all of our questions are answered. But with that, Michelle, can we return to the Q&A format?