Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Aveeno Silver and Goldmine's first quarter 2022 financial results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, You may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jennifer North, Manager, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Avino Silver and Gold Mines Limited Q1 2022 Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. To join this webcast and conference call, there is a link in our news release dated May 4th, which can be found on our website under News 2022. As well, you may find a link under the Investors tab, then click on Events, and you will see the link at the top of that page. On the call today, we have the company's President and CEO, David Wolfen, our Chief Financial Officer, Nathan Hart, our Chief Operating Officer, Carlos Rodriguez, and our VP of Technical Services, Peter Latta. Before we get started, please note that certain statements made today on this call by the management team may include forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risk uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different than those expressed by or implied by such forward-looking statements. The company does not intend to and does not assume any obligation to update such forward-looking statements or information other than as required by applicable law. For more information, we refer you to our detailed cautionary note in the presentation accompanying this call or on our press release of yesterday's date. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today. Replay information and the presentation slides accompanying this conference call and webcast will be available on the website. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Aveeno's President and CEO, David Wolfham. David?

Thanks, Jen. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Aveeno's Q1 2022 Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. Thanks for joining us. Before we begin, please note that the full financial statements and MD&A are now available on our website. On today's call, we will cover the highlights of our first quarter 2022 financial and operating performance and our plans for the second quarter, and then we will open it up for questions. Please note that all figures are stated in US dollars unless otherwise noted. We had a strong start to the year highlighted by record revenues and mine operating income. Our financial performance in the first quarter demonstrates strong operational achievements that helped to generate revenues of $11.1 million and $4.7 million in mine operating income. Nathan Hart, Aveeno's CFO, will expand on our financial results later in the call. We had a very active first quarter, which was highlighted by closing of the La Preciosa acquisition. La Preciosa hosts one of the largest undeveloped primary silver resources in Mexico and is located adjacent to our existing operations at the Aveeno mine. This is a major milestone for Aveeno and sets us on the path of achieving our goals of intermediate producer status. Also, during the quarter, we released drill results from our extensive 2021 exploration program, and the target areas included Breccia de Bajo vein, below level 17, and west of the current ET mine workings, La Malencha, Nuestra Sonora, Santiago, El Trompo, and San Jorge veins, as well as encouraging results from La Potosina and the oxide tailings project drilling. Overall production in Q1 was slightly down compared to the fourth quarter 2021. This was expected due to mine sequencing. The production came from a vino mine only and is compared to Q4 2021 as that was the most recent quarter of consolidated production. The highlights are as follows. Silver equivalent production decreased by 15% to 458,000. ounces, silver production remained steady at 164,000 ounces. Copper production increased by 8% to 1.2 million pounds. Gold production decreased by 66% to 801 ounces. Mill throughput increased by 7% to 111,138 tons. The recoveries for both silver and gold increased by 3% to 92% and 77% respectively. with the copper recovery is decreasing slightly by 1% to 89%. We continue moving forward on the capital projects that we outlined for the year. We are making great progress with the dry stack tailings facility and completion is expected near the end of Q2. To reiterate, we chose dry stack for its environmental safety and economic advantages with the high solid content. This significantly improves safety and stability and reduces the need to extract water from local sources by recycling the water removed from the tailings. We aim to be responsible community stewards. As previously touched on, at the beginning of the quarter we released drill results from phase two of the 2021 drill campaign and had completed over 15,500 meters of drilling focusing on several targets. In addition, the initial results from La Podocina were announced in early March and included 2,400 meters of drilling. This area of the Avena property has been known to host high-grade, low-sulfurization-style mineralization similar to what we saw at our San Gonzalo mine. La Podocina area is only 3 kilometers from San Gonzalo and just 5 kilometers from the mill facility at the Avena mine. We are excited to continue exploring La Potosina as it factors in prominently as one of our high-grade near-surface targets. We believe La Potosina has the potential to supplement our current mill feed from Aveeno in the near to medium term. Also, just subsequent to the end of Q1, we released results from the 110-hole drill program on the Oxide Tailings Project, which included 3,645 meters of drilling. And since we have drilled a further 17 holes on the oxide tailings project, samples are being prepared for metallurgical test work as recommended in the 2017 preliminary economic assessment. We are thrilled to be able to advance another Aveeno asset. The results from the program show the gold grades are better than anticipated, and we are excited to understand the implications for the total resource. To date, the company has completed 5,075 meters of drilling in 2022. With the dry stack tailings facility nearing completion, this means we are closer than ever to decommissioning the current tailings pond, TSF number one, we call it. The team in Durango continued to make significant progress during Q1 on the facility, which includes the infrastructure associated with transporting the dry tailings. As mentioned, this project is expected to be fully operational in the second half of this year and brings the company towards achieving the guidelines with the global industry standards on tailings management along with previously mentioned community stewardship. We have posted a great time lapse video on the website that shows the construction of the tailings filter plant, so I encourage you to go to the video section of our website under the investor tab and watch it. On March 21st this year, we announced the closing of the acquisition of La Preciosa project from Coor Mining. I've always believed that the Aveeno and La Preciosa projects belonged under one common ownership, given the clear synergies and common infrastructure. La Preciosa is an excellent strategic fit within Aveeno's existing operations. and further strengthens our presence in Durango by adding not only a large, high-quality silver development project with near-term production potential to our portfolio, but also increasing our mineral exploration concessions by more than seven-fold to over 7,000 hectares. We are moving ahead with our internal mine plans, focusing on Gloria and Abodancia veins. Our goal is to be producing from Gloria vein by late 2023, early 2024. Which would add three to 500 tons per day with the longer term outlook being to add 1500 tons per day from Gloria Abodancia and Martha veins. Our ESG initiatives continue to move forward as we incorporate principles of sustainability and social responsibility. During the first quarter, the company continued its training of local workforce at the mine. ESG initiatives completed during the first quarter were community road repairs to improve visibility of speed reducers and cattle guards for safer driving conditions, delivered water tank with capacity of 5,000 liters to the primary school in the community of San Jose de Avino, Supplies delivered to Health Center of Zaragoza to help with building improvements. Recycled containers for waste collection were given to the high school in Zaragoza. Sport and recreation are important to the communities, and the company repaired some lighting in its sports complex in San Jose de Avino, as well as donating volleyballs to support them in their local tournaments. vino hosted a mining in my Community conference at the high school in zaragoza and the students were provided with general knowledge of the mining processes, as well as the importance of the industry in the development of other sectors. vino continues to offer inclusive opportunities by hiring locally training women for many different roles at site, including. underground heavy equipment operators, rock breakers at surface, in the mill, and in the assay lab. The metal markets for the first quarter have been bumpy with volatility brought on by the global crisis. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is nearing its third month, has added uncertainty to the global economy, just as the world was emerging slowly from the two-year pandemic. We've seen a range in silver prices since the beginning of the year from $22 to $25 in the beginning of March. It has since tapered down and sits between $21 to $22. According to the World Silver Institute, with no clear end to the Russian-Ukraine war, the near-term outlook remains uncertain with the jump in energy prices, ongoing supply chain disruptions, and the reemergence of COVID cases in China. All of this points to downward risk to the global economy. With the Fed rate heights coming, these factors along with high inflation could mean investment inflows to silver. We continue to believe that the outlook for silver is positive and that demand should see solid growth from 2022 onwards and will be driven by record silver industrial fabrication, increase in green technology, and investment demand for physical silver. All this bodes well for the silver miners and their shareholders. The best leverage to metals is owning producers, such as Aveeno. I will now ask Nathan, our CFO, to present the financial results. Nathan?