Thank you for standing by. Good morning. My name is Jenny, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Silver Corp's Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Lon Shaver, Vice President, for opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

That's great. Thank you, Jenny. On behalf of Silvercorp, I'd like to welcome everyone for joining the call this morning or afternoon, wherever you may be to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results, which were released yesterday after market close. A copy of the news release, the MD&A and the financial statements for today's call are available on our website. Before we get started, I'm required to remind you that certain statements on today's call will contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Please review the cautionary statements included in our news release and presentation as well as the risk factors described in our most recent 10-Q and Form 40-F and AIF. So to kick-off and recap the quarter with respect to Q4, despite the regular impact of the Chinese New Year slowdown, our mines operated at roughly in line with expectations, as reflected in our previously released production numbers. Revenue for the quarter in Q4 was $34.1 million. That was down 18% compared to the prior year quarter. And this included a decrease of $4.6 million due to lower silver, lead and zinc sold as compared to last year's quarter, also a decrease of $3.6 million due to lower realized selling prices for all these metals. Based on production levels and the realized prices we obtained in the quarter, silver was 57% of revenues on a net basis compared to 55% in Q4 of last year. Our fourth quarter net income attributable to equity shareholders was $0.2 million or nil per share, as compared to a net income of $4 million or $0.02 per share for the same period last year. The main contributor to the decrease was the factors I mentioned before, which affected revenue, as well we had a mark-to-market…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is from Joseph Reagor from ROTH MKM.

So first thing, on GC, the cost guidance suggests most of the drop from last year will occur there. Is there anything in particular driving the lower cost per tonne at GC?

Well, I think it's been a renewed focus. Obviously, GC was not a great performer for much of this past fiscal year. Just a variety of reasons, nothing -- so nothing is a constant in mining. And so you had some issues that arose. And in particular, obviously, you saw that we had a production curtailment because of some additional capital investment that had to be done at GC. The law of small numbers in this case really threw things off. So I think this is more of a return to a more normal steady state.

Okay. Fair enough. And then last year, in general, a lot of the production came in a little below, but expectation, but zinc was well below. Like what's your confidence level that you guys have resolved whatever caused that issue?

I think the confidence level is good. I think it is useful to go back and look at the 43-101 that was published in September. There were a number of sort of changes in approaches to really looking at and addressing sort of what the zinc numbers were and sort of what type of zinc mineralization is kind of included in those numbers. So I do think that sort of the bad news on that zinc front is behind us and the targets that we put out for this coming year are achievable.

Right. Fair enough.

I think the thing I would add is that you're dealing with fiscal 2023 zinc at Ying 0.7% what we're calling for in 2024 0.8%. So we're not dealing with big numbers are incredibly aggressive forecast. I think it's just -- and some of that is obviously get factored in with rounding, but I do think we've addressed those issues.

Okay. Well, congrats on a good year despite the challenges.

Thanks, Joe. Appreciate the support.

Your next question is from Felix Shafigullin from Eight Capital.

So my question, I guess, is sort of builds on the previous questions. But your reiterated guidance, higher production, lower costs, could you just sort of provide, I guess, kind of like a rough road map of how you're planning to achieve that guidance because it's -- it seems kind of very lofty compared to your -- to the year that just ended?

Well, I think there's been obviously a lot of drilling and a lot of work that's gone into the mine planning off of that drilling. So I would say that from identification of resources and reserves, we have a better visibility and a better scheduling program, looking at where that ore is coming from. So I think that's going to help address the great question. Obviously, we're looking at certain things like ore sorting and some of this is a bit of a trade-off question because there are certain areas in the mine where you can make a call to go with resuing mining method, more surgical, more labor-intensive, higher cost where you can minimize dilution. On the other hand, shrinkage cheaper overall mining, more dilution, lower grade, but then can you bring the grade up and still be delivering to the mill, the ore up the grades that you're targeting. So I think that is really some of the optimization and some of the planning that's going into this mine plan. On the flip side, from a cost standpoint, there's a lot of factors that go into that. It's always noisy when we have this exchange rate changes, how it impacts the selling prices in the market when you've got silver moving, the U.S. dollar moving. On the one hand, a strengthening U.S. dollar is going to be a factor leading to lower costs on a reported basis. On the other hand, we then see the noise in the income statement when the U.S. dollar strengthens and that has an impact on conversion of other currencies in our cash and other asset balance. So I think to kind of get into all of the details, there will be a number of factors, sort of probably too much for this call. But it's a -- our projections are based on what we're seeing for the year in terms of cost performance. And as I said, that enhanced mine plan.

Okay. And just a quick follow-up question. Last quarter, when you announced that the new mill at the Ying mine will be delayed by, I guess, about a year, I recall that it was -- the issue was kind of around permitting. So have you cleared that hurdle successfully at this point?

Yes. Yes. As noted and then I disclosed in my comments, we've got all the permits to proceed with the mill.

[Operator Instructions] The next one is from Justin Stevens from PI Financial.

Lon, just a few questions on my side. As far as the ore sorting tech, are you looking to trial at GC before you try it at Ying? Or are you potentially looking at targeting that for both mines simultaneously?

Yes. I mean it's simultaneously, I guess, is probably the best word, obviously, GCs got it first. We're not waiting for the final results on the sorting program at GC to go ahead at Ying. So we will be doing that.

Got it. And as far as the Ying application, are you looking at sort of running potentially a mine-by-mine like doing it at the portal or more sort of a, call it, the mill doing it on the whole feed, I guess, on a campaign basis?

Great question. So it's more mine-by-mine, but as you recall, the location of LMW, LME and TLP are somewhat close, and we've been working on a lot of underground access and ramps and tunnels to be able to sort of integrate the flow between those mines. So if I recall correctly, I think it's at the LMW mine that we're putting it at and...

Got it. There is that, sort of, transfer structure anyways, probably a logical spot to do that. But then, you'd shift the concentrated -- you track the concentrates up to the actual mill?

Yes.

Got it. Yes. That's probably the way to do it. I guess the thinking there is that like you were sort of saying, obviously, resuing is -- can be great, but it's obviously a pretty high cost and if you can move to a more mechanized method, the trade-offs at least on stuff that would probably be marginal, probably till pretty aggressively if you can reject a lot of that on economic material.

Yes. Yes. I think to the other of this question and to the previous one to sort of elaborate, this isn't talking about an abrupt change, but fine-tuning at the margin where you look at certain veins and certain stopes that you might have mined on a resuing basis now based on economics and the overall picture and doing all the math, you realize, yes, actually, this one now is probably better on an overall basis to run with shrinkage. And so then you realize with that comes some certain compromises in terms of greater dilution from the stope. And so can we implement an Ore Sorting Program to, on a cost-effective basis, bring the truck ore grade back up to where our targets are. But it's not meant to be an abrupt sort of hard pivot here in terms of how we're doing things. It's just looking at things with an improved stope-by-stope, area-by-area, mine planning focus.

Perfect. And I mean XRT should react pretty well with the material you're looking at here. So hopefully, it tends that well. Last one, I think, for me, given the [ north vein ] plan has been pushed out, are you sort of looking at targeting some of those shallow dip high-grade gold structures that you're getting now? Or are you maybe pushing those out to when that mill would be operational given the enhanced ability to recover gold with the new mill?

No, we've been working on that. And arguably, it's taken longer than anticipated because just given the orientation of those structures, they are requiring definitely a different mining approach to them. And we have added -- we've added to the flow sheet the ability to do gravity concentration. So for some of those particularly higher grade areas in the gold, we're -- we've been trial mining that -- so that will, based on the forecast, and you can see that in the projections in terms of production guidance in terms of gold ore for the year. That is still our target for this year, and it's independent of the mill.

Got it. So it is sort of working its way into the mine plan, just like you say, probably took a little bit longer, just given the different orientation, the different mining approach that you have to take for those versus the rest of the veins?

Exactly.

There are no further questions at this time, sir. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back to Lon Shaver for any closing remarks.

That's great. Thank you, Jenny, and thanks, everyone, for tuning in today. That's all the time we have for this call. But as always, if anyone has any additional questions, please don't hesitate to call or reach out to us by e-mail. Happy to sit down and answer those questions in greater detail. So again, thank you, everyone, and have a great day.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.