McEwen Mining Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
March 1, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to McEwen Mining's Q4 Year End 2023 Operating and Financial Results Conference Call. Present from the company today are Rob McEwen, Chairman and Chief Owner Harry Ng, Chief Financial Officer William Shaver, Chief Operating Officer Stephen Spears, Vice President, Corporate Development Michael Medding, Vice President and General Manager of McEwen Copper Jeff Chan, Vice President, Finance and Carmen Diaz, General Counsel and Secretary. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Mr.

Operator

Rob McEwen, Chief Owner. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. I'm delighted to say we had a great year. Not only did our strategy to surface value of McEwen copper and its very large copper project, Los Azules, deliver large gains, but also our gold and silver mines increased production and met guidance and reduced their production cost per ounce closer to industry averages. In addition, our exploration efforts delivered solid gains in at Los Azules and at our properties in Timmins.

Speaker 1

And all of this allowed us to report a net income of $54,700,000 or $1.15 per share versus a net loss of $81,100,000 or $1.71 in 2022. These big swings in our bottom line are largely due to our investment in McEwen Copper and its 100% ownership in our massive Los Azules property. Prior to last October, we owned more than 50% of McEwen Copper. And as a result McEwen Mining's financials represented the consolidation of its financials with that of McEwen Copper, where we have been spending 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars advancing the Los Azules project, first to an updated preliminary economic assessment, which we released in June of last year. And now we're driving towards completing a bankable feasibility study in the Q1 of 2025.

Speaker 1

In October of last year, we completed our 3rd financing of McEwen Copper. And as a result of that, our ownership dropped below 50% to 48%. And that led to us no longer consolidating the financials of McEwen Copper. And it generated a significant gain, which is reflected in our financials, which was the strategy from the very beginning to surface value for McEwen Mining. Now the biggest I think we're trading at a substantial discount and I can see a price that although we're trading around $6 a share and it is biased.

Speaker 1

We have a management view that we're trading at anywhere between $7.29 a share. So I think there's a lot of room on the upside and that's driven by we have basically 3 sets of assets and that's the sum of the parts. We have McEwen Copper, which we own 48% of. We have a royalty portfolio. And we have our gold and silver assets.

Speaker 1

So we have values ranging from $8 to $30 a share. So I think there's you can look at it and say we're trading at a big discount or we're there's a lot of upside. Now it's been a hard couple of years for us as shareholders. From September and that was not the direction I ever wanted it to go. And that was down.

Speaker 1

And I call that the road to hell. Right now, I'll call it we're on the road to redemption. And if we compare our results and maybe it's a false cheer, but when you look at how we performed against the price of gold, the price of copper, the NASDAQ, the Dow, since September 2022 when we did our first financing in McEwen Copper. McEwen Mining is up 107%. The NASDAQ is up 37%, silver 20 7%, the Dow 23%, gold 20%, GDX 14%, GDXJ up 13% and copper is up 12%.

Speaker 1

We're clearly outperforming. I think we have 2 drivers. 1 is our copper, which I think is and have long considered a potential copper unicorn and that we're seeing shape out. And then the second is the turnaround in our gold and silver assets that are delivering positive cash flows and financing our exploration programs there. And we have some exciting development programs, 1 in Timmins where we expect to put a ramp down and start production in 2025 on a discovery we made several years ago, Stock West, Stock East.

Speaker 1

We recently put out some results, some intriguing high grade over there. And the importance of the Stock mine is threefold. 1, it's right beside our mill. So it would eliminate the transportation costs we currently have of about $10 a ton. 2, it doesn't have a royalty on it.

Speaker 1

So we're going to save on that royalty of about $1500 an ounce that we have to give up. And 3, the rock is softer, which means we should be able to process a higher volume of material through the mill and in theory produce more gold as a result of that and bring down our costs. At Los Azules in McEwen Copper, we delivered a very robust preliminary economic assessment in June. We've got a project there that I can't help myself, but I always look at something that's not gold and try to convert it into gold to try to get a sense of its scale. So when I do that with Los Azules, it's indicated in inferred resources.

Speaker 1

You get a resource of £37,600,000,000 of copper. If you were to take today's price of gold and divide it by the price of copper to find out how many copper pounds equals 1 ounce of gold, it's about 5.36 pounds of copper, 1 ounce of gold. Divide that into £36,700,000,000 of copper and you're looking at a gold equivalent deposit of 70,000,000 ounces. The average production of 321,000,000 pounds of copper per annum would translate into about 600,000 ounces a year. And with a cash cost of $1.07 a pound, the gold equivalent of that would be just under $600 an ounce.

Speaker 1

By my book that is a big gold equivalent deposit and reflects the size and I think the power of Los Azules. This is we're looking at a 27 year life. And I think there's still quite a bit of room in improving the value of that asset and that improving the value of McEwen Mining. And then you look at the gold and silver assets, where we're doing exploration. I'm quite pleased with what we're getting there.

Speaker 1

It's taken a while, but we're moving in very much the right direction. Our press release outlines pretty well. We have another project in Mexico that we're looking at advancing later this year. And I want to come back to Los Azules for a moment because what we're trying to do there is a bit different than what's in the market right now. Mining generally has is held in poor opinion by most of the world.

Speaker 1

They feel it's very damaging to the environment and it's not important to life. But I can assure you if all the mines stop tomorrow, modern civilization would grind to an abrupt halt. And somehow we have to put that message out there that we can mine the earth's resources in a manner that is viewed as responsible and sensitive to the environment. So at Los Azules, several years ago, we engaged the services of an architect who's very prominent in the green living building space and asked him to help us redefine mining to look at it so that we could hopefully move in the direction of shifting the perception of the public's perception of mining. And so we're looking to create the future.

Speaker 1

And in order to create the future, it has to look like the future, Both in terms of its buildings, we have some wonderful renderings of very comfortable, safe, attractive accommodations for the workforce, but also looking at how do we treat the world. And we're looking at a project that will have a much lighter impact on the environment, initially emitting 1 third of CO2 emissions, using less than 1 quarter of the water of a comparable sized conventional copper mine being powered by 100 percent renewable energy sourced from hydro, water and winds and producing a sustainable copper cathode. Most of the mines, copper mines today in the world produce concentrate that has to be shipped to a smelter then converted into a product that is usable by industry. With our copper cathode, it can go directly to industry and cut out the transportation costs. And we think that will attract a premium in the marketplace as well.

Speaker 1

So with that, I'd like to open it up for questions.

Operator

Your first question will come from the line of Heiko Ihle with H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hey, sorry, I had you on mute. Hey, Rob and team, thanks for taking my questions. Early on this call, you were talking about the lower production cost, and it's now officially March or 2 thirds through Q1 at this point. How much more in these cost savings have you seen in Q1 thus far? And maybe if you could give a bit of a breakdown where they derive from?

Speaker 2

I mean, obviously, you have your guidance in the release, but maybe if you just want to provide a bit more color than raw numbers?

Speaker 1

I'll ask Bill to answer that question, Heiko.

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks for the question Heiko. I guess the drivers of the cost are basically pretty fundamental in terms of labor cost, power cost explosives, all of those things that make up the cost. So what we have to do in 2024 and then going forward is we have to produce more ounces in order to drive some of those monthly operating costs down in such a way that we can improve the overall operating cost and also improve, of course, the margin. And so that's basically the direction that we're going in.

Speaker 3

As we transition from mining at the Froome mine over into stock, we're going from ore that has a work index of between 21 23 to 1 between say 14 17. So that will allow us to increase the number of tons per day going through the plant. The grades are for the most part similar. And so that will allow us to move up the production from the present 50,000 ounces a year up to 60. And I guess in the longer term, we're also looking at ways that we can get that tonnage up a little bit higher by adding some capacity to our grinding circuits.

Speaker 3

So that's kind of the short term and the longer term aspirations in terms of getting the operating cost per tonne and per ounce lower.

Speaker 2

Yes. That was good. Thank you. Completely different question. You had a reasonably large flow through financing in December of last year.

Speaker 2

It was CAD22 1,000,000 How much of that have you already spent at Fox this year? And how much should we just more or less assume that it's even by quarter?

Speaker 3

Yes. So at the yes, of that total amount of money, approximately half of it is CEE for drilling. And I would say if you divide that by, say, something like 10 or 11 that will be the expenditures per month. The CDE is for development of the infrastructure at stock and that will get we'll start the spending in that, I guess, at the beginning of the second quarter. And so and it'll get spent over the rest of the year.

Speaker 3

So that's probably something like a little bit over $1,000,000 to $1,200,000 a month.

Speaker 2

Perfect. I'll get back in queue. Thank you all.

Speaker 1

Thanks Heiko.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Reagor with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Hi, Joseph.

Speaker 4

Hi, Rob and team. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess the first one is, since you had this large gain in Q4, can you guys just back that out? And for apples to apples sake, what would the earnings have looked like in Q4?

Speaker 1

Jeff, you.

Speaker 4

Sure. I'll take that one. So we reported net income for the year of $54,700,000 I would add back the accounting gain of $224,000,000 less the deferred tax accounting impacts of that of $37,000,000 So I think once you remove those factors that would normalize the earnings from that accounting. Yes, there's a tax that I needed there. Thanks for clarifying.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then as you guys think about 2024, other than misceiling the copper, what are the big things you guys are looking at for growth in this year and maybe into next? Is it the Mexican assets? Is it developing stock and drilling that out more? What should we be looking at?

Speaker 1

Number 1 would be behind Los Azules would be Timmins and the development of the stock property, which is serving as the next source of production coming on stream. And there's quite a bit of exploration going on there. We've had a couple of press releases out recently talking about the increase in the resource at stock. Then the over at Stock East, there's been some high grade that's intriguing. And we're also drilling it over at Gray Fox where there's over 1,000,000 ounces.

Speaker 1

We're looking at possible additions if we can make it adjacent areas that would be complementary to our production base. 2nd would be Mexico?

Speaker 3

Yes. 2nd would be Mexico. I think we have to complete well, we have to complete the engineering, but the driver is probably the permitting phase where we hope to have permits sometime middle of this year. But permitting is always a challenge in every part of the world today. So we don't know exactly where or when that's going to happen.

Speaker 3

But that's part of the future plan. We also have a plan to expand our production at Gold Bar. Gold Bar is an asset where we have a leach pad, as you probably know. And we have there's enough different workplaces at Gold Bar for us to increase production. And last year, we were able to construct our new leach pad.

Speaker 3

So now we have no constraints in terms of the area where we can put material to be leached. And so that's one of the strategies for this year is to increase the ore production at Gold Bar, get it onto the pad and that will result in an increase in the total ounces produced at Colvard. So I think we're looking at improving the production at all 3 operations or the 2 operations that are running today as well as in Mexico. So I think that's our goal this year. And then as we move forward, it's to do more of that kind of increase and maybe try and get the whole Timmins complex.

Speaker 3

So it's producing say 25% or 30% better tonnage going into 2025.

Speaker 4

Okay. That sounds good. And one final thing, Rob, do you have any thoughts on the potential repeal of the new mining exploration law in Mexico, and how it might impact you guys if it does get repealed?

Speaker 1

We're just watching it. We've had some permits there. But politics is a little difficult to predict, Joe. So we're moving ahead on the assumption that the in pit tailings disposal we've gotten approval for will continue. It might if it were to go in, it would impact 6 years later because the 1st 6 years of reprocessing the tailings or not the tailings, the heap leach pad.

Speaker 3

That's correct.

Speaker 1

Yes. So near term, we've got time to see if it's repealed.

Speaker 4

Okay. Thanks for the comments. I'll turn it over.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of John Tumazos with John Tumazos Very Independent Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning, John.

Speaker 5

Good morning. Thank you. Well, I'm looking ahead a year or so to after the definitive fees is completed in hand. Okay. What will be the path forward for McEwen Copper or I guess the consensus of the Board that's McEwen Mining, Rio Santos, Stellantis, etcetera.

Speaker 5

Would the next step be to apply for permits or do early works for construction? The access road that was built to facilitate the detailed drilling campaign, I guess, is one of those early works already done. Just give us a flavor for what the path forward is going to be when the definitive fees is in hand.

Speaker 1

It's a feasibility study Q1 of next year. And after which we'll have there'll be about a year of engineering required before we make a decision to put a shovel in the ground. In terms of we Mike has assembled a team, a very confident team of nationals that have a lot of experience building in San Juan province where Spas Ozules is located. And moving ahead on the basis that we they've built substantially large mines, gold mines down there. And there's a team that could build it.

Speaker 1

We do have some large shareholders that might want to have a would prefer to operate. But at the moment we're moving ahead as though we could build it. Mike, do you want to add anything to that?

Speaker 6

Hey, John. Glad to speak to you. We filed our environmental permit for construction and operation in April last year. We are currently going through the different meetings with the different ambulatory commission members. We expect our environmental permit in the second half of twenty twenty four.

Speaker 6

And then as Rob said, after having gone through the detailed engineering and at the same time obtaining remaining permits alongside we go, that will be the path forward. We haven't made any kind of decision yet on how we are going to construct, as Rob said before. But we think that Los Azules overall, when you compare it to other projects in the region, has high constructability with low CapEx. I think that should help us with financing and the construction going forward.

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Speaker 1

You're welcome.

Operator

And there are no further questions And there

Speaker 4

are no further questions at this time. Mr. Rob McEwen,

Operator

I will turn the call back over to you.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone for being on the line. I think that our future is looking much brighter than it looked several years ago. So hold on, we're going higher. Thank you.

Operator

And everyone that will conclude our call for today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

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