Golden Minerals Company

Greetings and welcome to Golden Minerals Company third quarter 2022 quarterly conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on the telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Karen Winkler, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to Golden Minerals Company's third quarter 2022 earnings call and webcast. On the call today are Golden's President and CEO, Warren Rang, our Chief Operating Officer, John Galassini, and our Chief Financial Officer, Julie Weidman. 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 risks and uncertainties 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 10-Q 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, everyone. I'll start the call by providing an overview of the company's third quarter performance, followed by full-year 2022 production guidance and several project updates. John will then take you through the quarter's operational highlights, followed by Julie, who will review our third quarter financial results and 12-month projections. After their remarks, we'll take questions from our analysts and from others who have submitted them. In the third quarter, 2022, we reported $5.3 million in revenue, $4.4 million in cost of sales, and a net operating margin of just under $1 million. Lower metals prices this quarter weighed heavily on their net operating margin as we saw both gold and silver prices drop significantly from the second quarter. Rodeo continues to operate close to plan. However, we have seen higher cash costs per ounce of gold produced than anticipated, although slightly lower than in Q2. These higher costs are due mainly to continued higher costs of explosives and to slightly higher than average waste to ore ratios as we reach the bottom of the Phase I rodeo pit. Compared to 2021, the main driver of higher per ounce costs is the lower average head grade of material mined, as has been in the mine plan since inception. For full year 2022 production guidance, we maintain our estimate for payable production of 12,000 to 14,000 ounces of gold, and we are projecting slightly higher production of silver between 47,000 and 50,000 ounces. Average head grades for the full year are projected at around 2.8 grams per ton gold, which is slightly lower than the prior 2.9 grams per ton estimate. and 10.8 grams per tonne silver, which is higher than the prior 9.4 grams per tonne estimate. Mill recoveries are expected to remain at between 75 and 80% for gold and 80 to 85% for silver. We announced last quarter that our plans to start mining at Velardeña would be delayed while we work through a modified mine plan and mining methods in order to counteract excess dilution we observed from one of the veins in the test mining we conducted earlier this year. We are continuing with this work, notably continuing to study ore sorting, which shows promise in initial tests. and may allow upgrading of mine material by rejecting waste using an automated system after mining and crushing. John will provide additional information about the work we are doing at Bellardania in advance of a production restart decision. On the exploration front, in July, we finished an additional round of exploration drilling at the Yoquivo Gold-Silver Project in Chihuahua State, Mexico. And we are now following up on some good results on the pertinent to San Francisco and dollar veins to tighten up drill spacing in advance of completing and publishing a maiden resource estimate for this property. We expect to have these results for release in the first quarter. At the Cerrito Este project in Salta Province, Argentina, we completed additional drilling that was designed to follow up on a discovery hole encountered in the initial 2021 drilling program. The discovery hole showed potentially economic-grade gold over an interesting thickness in an oxidized near-surface intercept. In August, we reported results from this program, which confirmed the discovery hole and continued to expand on the mineralized volume. We have since completed additional drilling that brings the total since inception to 4,925 meters in 51 core drill holes. Results to date point to a potentially economic shallow oxidized gold system, which is open to the south. In April 2020, we entered into an earn-in agreement with Barrick Gold at our El Kevar project located in Salta Province, Argentina. This past June, Barrick completed a five-hole, 1300-meter initial diamond drill program to test the highest priority targets at the property. Barrick reported buggy silica alteration, which is commonly associated with high sulfidation epithermal gold-silver deposits in all of the drill holes. Partial assays from the program point to high-grade gold over a narrow interval in an area that has seen very little drilling. Final assay results from the program are still pending. We expect Barrett to follow up on these results with additional drilling in 2023. I will now hand the call over to John to talk in more detail about our operations.