Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.
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| Statement |
|---|
| All four operations started this year strong |
| We continue to have very strong margins from our silver operations, with a margin of 50% of the average realized price of silver for the year |
| Our drilling programs continue to provide quite remarkable mineralized drill hole intercepts from both underground definition and surface exploration drilling |
| Since as we grow, Greens Creek will continue to be the foundation providing stability and consistency in our cash flow and production well into the future |
| In 2024, we anticipate seeing strong free cash flow generation from Lucky Friday and Greens Creek, and relatively small investments at Keno and Casa, as well as we expect $50 million from the insurance on the Lucky Friday fire |
| It's been remarkable, the improvements that we've seen over the course of the last few months |
| We recorded our second highest revenue in silver production, and this was achieved despite Lucky Friday not being in production for five months |
| Both Greens Creek and Lucky Friday recorded their lowest all injury frequency rate of all time, and we continue to be rewarded for the innovative culture we've created at our long legacy of 133 years |
| This past year's underground exploration had good success in seven of the eight zones drilled with four of those zones in the fourth quarter |
| We're fortunate in that we have growth in the near term |
| We have very good cash flow between now and that pause time when we're doing that stripping |
| First, on safety, we have a strong overall safety record, off of one of the mines suspected by [inaudible] have done |
| By several measures, 2023 was a very good year |
| Greens Creek got the weather events behind it and Casa Berardi’s continued the good performance of the last few months |
| The mine reported a strong year, which could have been even better without the weather reducing 12 days of production in the fourth quarter |
| On the previous slide, I mentioned the strong margins we see at our silver operations |
| It's actually the 11th largest in the world, and I just want to congratulate the team on delivering excellent and consistent results and giving it a great future, because this is truly a world-class asset |
| But also, even at $1 or $1.10 zinc, both Greens Creek and Lucky Friday, have strong positive margins |
| And so our team has really very successfully implemented the change |
| Phil will speak to this later in the presentation, but the value that we expect to be added at Keno Hill through the drill bit and our exploration success confirms the significant exploration potential |
| Turning to slide eight, we've owned the Casa Berardi mine for more than a decade, and it's been a good mine over that time |
| And so I think it puts us on a good path to see the improvements |
| Now, we've navigated through the challenges of 2023, and we entered 2024 with four operating mines that will give us significant growth over the next three years |
| We've also had a successful year in exploration with some spectacular results at Keno and Greens Creek |
| I can appreciate you're not… Phillips Baker Yeah, I'm really excited about the potential for the synergies |
| We reported the second highest reserves in our history |
| And like we've done at Greens Creek for 30 years, we still see opportunities to have lower costs, that you know these investments to allow us to have lower costs, and also increased recoveries with some of the investments |
| So we're very excited about this year's program that coordinates the drilling underground with the surface drilling in the East Ore, the Upper Plate and the Gallagher |
| Our silver reserves have increased almost 40% over the past 10 years, and we've accomplished this by not only replacing 130 million ounces of silver production, but adding 65 million ounces through the drill bit, primarily at the Lucky Friday and Greens Creek, and most recently by our acquisition of Keno Hill |
| But given the maturity of the systems that we have at Greens Creek, this really should accelerate Keno into becoming a strong cash flow generating mine |
| Statement |
|---|
| Now in terms of challenges, this year it was really marked by three events; the unexpected fire at the Lucky Friday, our decision to pivot to a surface only operation at Casa, and to prioritize safety over production at Keno, which has resulted in slower than expected ramp up of the mine |
| Keno’s safety was unacceptable |
| We started mapping this past year, but had logistical issues |
| Some of the challenges were expected, some not |
| Having said that, the ability to do those transactions are difficult |
| Green's Creeks, all of injury frequency rate was 0.29 and Lucky Friday 0.66, both the lowest in their history |
| But having said that, we want to be cautious that we're not pushing the organization faster than it's really capable of moving safely |
| Technically, it's not – there’s challenges, but technically they're all manageable sorts of challenges |
| My first question, maybe just building on the last caller's question about M&A, we’ve seen – with regard to pursuing silver assets, we've seen some of your peers challenge to add silver assets to diversify into gold |
| First though, I want to talk about the second thing we're struck by, which is the safety and environmental performance that's not met our standard |
| These and other risks could cause results to differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements |
| As we indicated when we made the change, we had fortunately no incidents that have resulted in injury, major significant injury |
| This is primarily due to Lucky Friday not being in production for the last five months of the year |
| Russell Lawlar Remember Casa, we had the fire in Quebec that caused this to have to be shut down |
| Certainly, one of the things that we've seen is that we have a lot of young, relatively inexperienced people that come from all over Canada |
| 2023 was a year that was marked by wins and faced with challenges |
| I think what we didn't appreciate was the ability of the organization to deal in a systematic way with the issues that arose |
| Now turning to slide 15, last year we concluded that we could not generate enough margin mining two separate underground deposits in open pit, like I said at the beginning of our remarks |
| But one of the things we're thinking about is doing rebuilds |
| Based on this report, we anticipate seeing the cash flow from the property be slightly negative this year, turn positive next and be significant in 2026, which should return a large portion of our investment of the past couple of years, prior to taking a production pause while accommodating a permitting time frame for the higher grade pits |
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