Golden Minerals Company

Greetings. Welcome to the Golden Minerals Company second quarter 2022 quarterly conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the conference over to your host, Karen Winkler, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thanks, Operator. Welcome to Golden Minerals Company's second quarter 2022 earnings call. On today's call are our president and CEO, Warren Wren, our chief financial officer, Julie Weidman, and our chief operating officer, John Galassini. Following their prepared remarks, they will be available to answer questions. Before we get started, please note that certain statements made by management today will be forward-looking within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risk uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Please refer to our most recently filed Form 10Q for details of risks and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Warren.

Thank you, Karen. Good morning to all, and thanks for joining us. I'll begin today's call by providing a brief overview of the company's second quarter performance, followed by our 2022 guidance and several project updates. I'll then hand the call over to John, who will take you through the quarter's operating highlights, followed by Julie, who will discuss second quarter financial results. Afterward, we'll open up the call to questions from our analysts and anyone else who has sent in questions. As you all know, the US and Mexico are facing macroeconomic headwinds, including decades high inflation rates and continued supply chain challenges. And these headwinds have affected our operations to some degree, driving up the cost of production. Our rodeo mine produced approximately 3,000 payable ounces of gold and 12,800 payable ounces of silver in the second quarter 2022. generating approximately 1.3 million in net operating margin. Higher cash costs at Rodeo are due in part to the inflationary pressures on basic materials, but also and primarily due to the lower head grade from mine material that we encountered at Rodeo this past quarter as we near the bottom of the phase one pit. Grades in the remaining phase one pit and the current phase two pit are higher than what we encountered this last quarter, Expenditures for exploration at Yoquivo and our new discovery at Cerrito Este as well as costs of test mining at Velardeña have also increased our net loss for the quarter to just under two cents per share. Our full year 2022 production guidance for Rodeo remains unchanged. Available production for 2022 is estimated at 12,000 to 14,000 ounces of gold and 42,000 to 47,000 ounces of silver with estimated average grades of 2.9 grams per ton gold and 9.4 grams per ton silver. Our plans to start mining at Veledania have been once again delayed while we work through a modified mine plan and mining methods to counteract excess dilution we observed from some of the veins in our recent test mining. One vein in particular, the San Mateo vein, yielded results exceeding the range of dilution that we anticipated. We're looking at options to modify the mine plan by replacing the San Mateo vein in the plan with other veins that would not have the same characteristics that caused the extra dilution. We're also looking at the possibility of ore sorting to upgrade the diluted material. Investigating these alternatives will take several months. During this time, since silver prices have also dipped and have not yet returned to expected higher long-term values, we are better off not producing until we have reworked our mine plan and mining methods. John will provide additional information about the details of our rodeo production and our recent work at Bellardania later in the call. Moving to the exploration side of our business, Last month, we completed a third drill program of about 5,700 meters and 24 holes at our Yoquivo gold-silver project located in Chihuahua, Mexico. The drill program was designed to further delineate vein-hosted mineralized intervals that were identified during 2021 drilling. The first nine holes of the 2022 program, as reported last month, showed continued strong gold-silver grades and identified multiple new and previously unknown high-grade gold-silver structures. Complete assay results haven't yet been received. However, we expect this third round of drilling will give us sufficient information to estimate a maiden gold-silver resource later this year. At our Cerrito Este prospect in Salta Province, Argentina, we completed a second drill program in June that was designed to offset and delineate an oxide gold interval that we encountered in an initial 2021 drilling program. We're very pleased with recently received assay results that point to a potentially economic shallow oxide gold system. We are planning further drilling at Cerita Este to begin in the current quarter. In April of 2020, You'll recall we entered into an earning agreement with Barrick Gold at our LKVAR project located also in Salta Province, Argentina. This past June, Barrick completed a five-hole, 1,300-meter initial diamond drill program to test the highest priority targets on the property. Barrick reported buggy silica alteration, which is commonly associated with high sulfidation epithermal gold silver deposits in all of the drill holes. Final assay results from the program are pending. I will now hand the call over to John to talk in more detail about the operation.