Hecla Mining Company

Good morning. My name is Jeannie and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome you to the Q4 2023 Hekla Mining Company Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anvita Patil. You may begin your conference.

Good morning, Jeannie, and thank you all for joining us for HECLA's fourth quarter 2023 financial and operations results conference call. I'm Anvita Patil, HECLA's vice president of investor relations and treasurer. Our financial results news release that was issued yesterday Along with today's presentation are available on HECLA's website. On today's call, we have Phil Baker, HECLA's President and Chief Executive Officer, Russell Lawler, HECLA's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Carlos Aguilar, HECLA's Vice President of Operations. Phil and Russell will make most of the presentation. Carlos, who's at Keno Hill, will make a couple of comments. All of them will be available to answer questions. Any forward-looking statements made today by the management team come under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and involve risks, as shown on slide two, in our earnings release and in our 10-K and 10-Q filings with the SEC. These and other risks could cause results to differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Non-GAAP measures cited in this call and related slides are reconciled in the slides or the news release. I want to remind you, if you would like to have a call with the management you can do so by using the link under the section Virtual Investor Event in our earnings release that was issued yesterday. I will now pass the call to Phil.

Thanks, Indita. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our call. I'm going to start on slide three. 2023 was a year that was marked by wins and face of challenges. Some of the challenges were expected, some not. So let me first start with the successes we achieved. We reported the second highest reserves in our history. 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 in Greens Creek, and most recently by our acquisition of Keno Hill. We've also had a successful year in exploration with some spectacular results at Keno and Greens Creek. We recorded our second highest revenue in silver production, and this was achieved despite Lucky Friday not being in production for five months. Both Green Street 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 132 years. We received a patent on the underhand closed-bench mining method. 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. Now the Lucky Friday is already back in production and we expect to ramp up to full production by the end of the first quarter. Our decision in late August to transform CASA to a full open pit operation by mid-24 was a recognition that we needed radical change, and we prioritized margin over volume, and our execution of this strategy is already yielding results. At Keno Hill, exploration drilling has highlighted the potential and the opportunity at this mine. And while our ramp-up at Keno Hill has gone slower than expected, We firmly believe that by focusing on safety and the environment and getting the mine to HECTA standards is critical if we're going to be successful and provide that long-term value that Keno has the potential to provide. Now, we've navigated through the challenges of 2023 and we enter 2024 with four operating mines that will give us significant growth over the next three years. So I'm going to talk about expiration and operations after Russell talks about the financial and technical reports, and Carlos makes a few comments. Russell? Thanks, Phil.