Hecla Mining Company

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. My name is Kelvin and I will be a conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q4 and year-end 2025 Hexler 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 this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mike Parkin, Vice President of Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Calvin. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us for HECLA's fourth quarter and full year 2025 results conference call. I'm Mike Parkin, Vice President of Strategy and Investor Relations. Our earnings release that was issued yesterday along with today's presentation are available on our website. On the call today with us is Rob Krichmaroff, President and Chief Executive Officer. Russell Lawler, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Carlos Aguiar, Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer. Kurt Allen, Vice President Exploration. Matt Blattman, Vice President Technical Services. as well as other members of our management team. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we will all be available to answer questions. Turning to slide two, cautionary statements. 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 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 will now pass the call over to Rob.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Turning to slide three. 2025 was a transformational year for HECLA, one marked by disciplined execution and strategic clarity. Heckler's 135-year legacy as the oldest company on the New York Stock Exchange is our foundation, but it's not our destination. What drives us forward is our clear, compelling strategy to become and be recognized as the premier silver company in North America. So let me walk you through how we're executing against this strategy. Our foundation relists on three critical pillars. First, legacy and longevity. 135 years old, we're the oldest mining company on the NYSE. We protect value through market cycles for over a century. Second, top jurisdictions. All of our mines and projects, from Greens Creek in Alaska to Lucky Friday in Idaho to Keno Hill in the Yukon to Midas in Nevada, they operate in the best and safest mining jurisdictions in North America. This jurisdictional advantage is a competitive advantage that protects our cash flows, reduces our risk profile, and safeguards our license to operate. Third, silver focused. We've made a deliberate choice to build peer leading silver exposure in both our revenue mix and our reserve base. While we produce gold, lead, zinc and copper as important byproducts, silver is the strategic anchor of our business. Our strategy delivers four key outcomes. Portfolio, value, surfacing. So we're actively managing our portfolio, Retaining and investing in our world-class silver assets while strategically divesting non-core assets. The pending sale of Casabradi, which we announced last month, is an example of this disciplined approach to capital allocation. It was a difficult decision, but one as fundamentally as a silver company we had to make. Operational excellence. We're relentlessly focused on core asset optimization and execution. Not at the expense of safety or sustainability, they are the foundation of everything that we do and key drivers of productivity, not a compliance exercise. Investment discipline. This is the new heckler. We utilize strict capital discipline with target ROIC thresholds to guide us in our path forward. Every dollar we deploy is intended to generate returns for our shareholders. And finally, organic growth. Through disciplined exploration programs, we are surfacing value for shareholders. And I think our recent Nevada exploration demonstrates this approach. We're working to discover and build the next generation of production from assets that we already own. This strategy is not abstract. It's delivering tangible results, as you'll see on the next slide. So moving to slide four. 2025 was a transformational year for Heckler. On the financial front, we delivered records, record revenue of $1.4 billion, record profitability, the income applicable to shareholders of $321 million or 49 cents per share. Record adjusted EBITDA, $670 million. But the headline number that matters most is what these records enabled, which is substantial deleveraging and balance sheet transformation. Our total debt has declined to just $276 million. Our gross debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio, 0.4 times. We generated operating cash flow of $563 million, which translated to $310 million in free cash flow. with each mine generating positive free cash flow last year. On the operational front, we executed well. Hit our top end of silver production guidance at 17 million ounces, exceeded our gold production guidance with 150,000 ounces produced. Lucky Friday delivered a record 5.3 million ounces of silver production, exceeding the top end of the guidance range. It was as recently as 2021 that Lucky Friday was producing 3.6 million ounces, nearly a 50% increase in just four years. Keno Hill achieved new record production of over 3 million ounces while achieving first year profitability and positive free cashflow under Heckler ownership. Our Lucky Friday surface cooling project is 79% complete and on track for mid-2026 completion. That's a critical investment in the health and safety of our workforce and a key milestone as we work towards making Lucky Friday a zero discharge facility. And we received our finding of no significant impact, or FONSI, at Aurora, which is a major permitting milestone, allowing us to kick off exploration activities this year at this historic, very high-grade gold-silver past producer in western Nevada. Turning to slide five. Now, I want to talk about the pending sale of Casa Barati to Orzone Gold Corporation. Transaction represents portfolio optimization and action. Casabradi is a gold mine in a tier one jurisdiction. It has a nice future. It's had a nice run with us. Its mid-range mine plan is for a gold miner, someone with a different schedule than us. So we plan to redirect capital and management focus towards our silver assets. We still have upside exposure with a 10% stake in ozone. Why does this matter strategically? Well, there's four reasons. First is strategic portfolio optimization. So we're sharpening our focus. Capital that was tied up in gold would now flow towards silver assets with superior economics and longer reserve lives. Second is the enhanced market position. Upon closing, Heffler should be recognized unambiguously as the premier North American silver mining company. So silver would represent about 73% of their consolidated revenues. The highest silver revenue exposure among all our multi-asset mining peers. with all our operating minds in the best jurisdictions. Third, strengthen balance sheet. We plan to use cash proceeds towards debt reduction and enhance financial flexibility. This positions us to a debt-free balance sheet with prices sustaining or better. Fourth is value maximization. We maintain exposure to Casa Barati's upside through our ozone shares. with Allzone well positioned to extract additional value from the asset given their focus and expertise in gold. You know, I think this is a sophisticated capital allocation. This is how we maximize shareholder returns. And so now I'll pass the call over to Russell.