Hecla Mining Co

NYSE:HL

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q4 and Year End 2021 Hecla Mining Company Earnings Conference Call [Operator Instructions]. Now it is my pleasure to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Anvita Patil. Thank you. Please go ahead.

[Anvita Patil, Assistant Treasurer]

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Hecla's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Financial and Operations Results Conference Call. I am Anvita Patil, Hecla's Assistant Treasurer. Our financial results news release that was issued this morning, along with today's presentation, are available on Hecla's Web site. On today's call, we have Phil Baker, Hecla's President and CEO; Lauren Roberts, Hecla's Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Russell Lawlar, Hecla's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Any forward-looking statements made today by the management team come under the Private Securities Litigation Reform and involve risks as shown on Slides 2 and 3 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. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures cited in this call and related slides are found in the slides earnings release. With that, I will pass the call to Phil.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Thanks, Anvita. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. We're going to start with Slide 4, where you'll see there's four key messages that we're trying to communicate. First, silver is fundamental to the transition to the lower carbon energy, with solar power being a key renewable to make it happen. Silver demand to be used for it, energy has increased and is continuing to increase. The United States Energy Information Agency projects that silver demand for solar will be 0.5 billion ounces annually. I realize the current silver market is only a little more than 1 billion ounces, so that's a huge increase in the demand for silver for energy use. Second, message. For the transition to solar power to happen, you really have to have a reliable supply chain. And so to do that, you need silver mined in reliable countries. And most silver is mined in China, Peru and Mexico. Hecla has the United States, the largest reserve of any mining company and produces more than 40% of all the silver mined here. We are the most reliable silver producer. Our third message is that on the ESG front, Hecla stands out with a safety record of our employees that is 40% below the national average. And we are also net neutral on greenhouse gas emissions for Scope 1 and 2 because we have among the smallest emissions in our industry, and that small amount allows us to use offset credits at a very, very low cost to get net neutral. And then the final message and really what we'll spend the bulk of this conference call on is what a great year Hecla had operationally as well as financially. Aside from our safety and environmental performance, our most significant achievement, though, was the implementation of the new Underhand Closed Bench or the UCB mining method at the Lucky Friday. Now we mined 86% of our tons last year with the UCB method. But we didn't speak about this until almost the end of the year because we wanted to make sure we understood how the cycle worked, confirmed how it would improve our seismicity management, determine how we manage dilution and consider the impacts on the workforce. We want to put ourselves in a place where we are now, which is where we're focusing on optimizing the method, not whether the method works or not. And it clearly works, with the UCB method contributing to the 75% increase in the Lucky Friday silver production over 2020 and 2022's silver production is expected to be a 20% increase over 2021. And we'll have even more growth in '23 as the mine becomes a consistent 5 million-ounce producer. Now the Lucky Friday has been around for 80 years, but this new mining method fundamentally changes this long-standing mine. If you look at the history of the mine, Lucky Friday has never had sustained production above 2.5 million ounces. So with the higher grade that we get as we go deeper, and this new mining method, that production doubles. And the costs stay relatively flat. And so what happens is the Lucky Friday generates 2x or 3x or more free cash flow than what we've done in the past. And so it's because of the innovation of this new mining method and our determination to make the mine safer to mine it better, that the Lucky Friday provides this growth exposure to silver without the risk of large capital investment. And in this inflationary time, having growth with low capital is very unusual, and you have so much less risk to get that growth. Now Lauren is going to talk about the method more in detail, and I also encourage you to consider our technical report that was filed as an exhibit to the 10-K that describes the method and gives a lot of visibility into the Lucky Friday strong economics. Now adding a strong Lucky Friday in 2021 led to a record financial year, with revenues of $807 million and adjusted EBITDA of $279 million. Cash flow from operations was $221 million and free cash flow was $111 million and those were the second highest in our history. This and last year's performance has allowed Hecla to generate in excess of $200 million in free cash flow over the past two years and further enhance our common stock dividend policy by lowering the realized silver price threshold to $20 per ounce. So as a result of this, about 20% of our free cash flow went to shareholders last year. Now if you turn to Slide 5, I want to take a moment to highlight the achievements of our exploration program. We spent little less than $50 million as drilling -- we were able to resume our drilling at our operations and sites after the slowdown that we had in 2020 due to COVID-19. So as a result of that, our silver reserves increased 6% over last year and they're now the second highest in our history at 200 million ounces, with Greens Creek's reserves at 125 million ounces, and that's its highest since 2002, and it's an increase of about 12% over 2020. The chart on the left shows not only that we replaced mining depletion but also converted 26 million ounces of resources to reserves. Now our gold reserves at the end 2021 were 2.7 million ounces, the second highest in our history, and that's shown in the graph on the right. Our company-wide measured and indicated resources declined largely due to reserve conversions. However, we did increase our silver inferred resources by 8% to 490 million ounces with increases at Greens Creek, Lucky Friday and San Sebastian. And we expect to continue to see increases in reserves and resources that should allow us to maintain our reserve lives, the 14-plus years that we have. I mentioned the technical report on the Lucky Friday. We also filed reports for Greens Creek and Casa Berardi to give support for the reserves. And in those reports, there's an economic analysis that's in Section 19 that shows very strong economics of the reserves. And what it does is it assumes that the inferred resources that we mine, which is about 5% to 15% of what we typically mine at those two mines that, that was waste. And so what we've also done is we've included in Section 21 the summarized information, the supplemental information that gives our long-term plans that includes this inferred materials at their expected grade. Given our long history of the two mines, we have a pretty good idea of what the mine will look like when you include the inferred material. So that gives you a sense of what that looks like. And so I'd encourage you to look at Section 21 as well as Section 19. With that, I'd like to pass the call over to Russell.

[Russell Lawlar]

Thank you, Phil. Turning to Slide 7. As Phil noted earlier, we generated record revenue of more than $800 million, of which silver contributed 34%, while gold contributed 42%. Each of our operations contributed significantly to our revenue led by Greens Creek at about 50%, Casa Berardi at 30% and Lucky Friday at 16%. With the projected production growth at Lucky Friday, we anticipate its contribution to grow. Record revenues, coupled with high margins, generated record adjusted EBITDA for the year at $279 million, resulting in our leverage ratio being 1.1x, which is significantly below our target of 2x. Our cash flow from operations at $221 million and free cash flow of $111 million were the second highest. As a result of our consistent and strong operational performance, our balance sheet has continued to strengthen as we ended the year with $210 million in cash in excess of $440 million of liquidity. Turning to Slide 8, there's been a lot of discussion in the industry regarding inflationary pressures, both in the operating cost of companies as well as capital costs. At Hecla, we are facing inflationary pressures, too. However, we anticipate those factors to be muted relative to the rest of the industry for a few reasons. First, for the most part, we operate high-grade, high-value but low-tonnage underground mines. And since we don't move a lot of rock, our production comes from processing less tons than others within the industry, therefore, making our mines less susceptible to some cost pressures. Second, we are less exposed to increasing cost of energy as the majority of the power at our sites come from local utilities based on renewable energy sources. And third, we don't have any large capital expenditures to speak of. As you look on Slide 8, we don't have any planned large capital expenditures as our capital ranges from a low of $91 million in 2020 to what we anticipate spending in 2022 of $135 million. In 2021, our total capital and production costs were approximately $480 million, split approximately $370 million as production costs and $109 million for capital. Our 2022 total expected spend on production cost is about 6% higher than 2021 and while our guided capital spend for 2022 is slightly higher than 2021, it is primarily due to our investment at the Lucky Friday. A 5% inflation factor would add less than $7 million to the total capital spend. Turning to Slide 9, what record revenue generation, strong margins and consistent capital spend add up to as a strong free cash flow at all our operating lines. You can see all our mines generate positive free cash flow and company-wide, we generated more than $110 million in free cash flow during 2021, which was the second highest in the company's history. With this strong and consistent free cash flow generation, we've seen an increase to our cash balance of 60% over 2020 and more than 3x that of 2019. With that, I'll pass the call to Lauren to go through operations.

[Lauren Roberts]

Thanks, Russell. I will start on Slide 11. Greens Creek had another strong year as the mine produced 9.2 million ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $3.19 per ounce, which was below our lower end of guidance at $3.25 per silver ounce. The cost beat was due to higher byproduct credits and more favorable treatment charges than originally estimated. The 2021 realized silver margin at the mine was approximately $22 per ounce, an increase of 75% over 2020. These high silver margins drive the solid free cash flow generation at the mine. In 2021, Greens Creek generated $185 million in free cash flow and over the past three years, has generated more than $445 million in free cash flow. In addition to the strong operational and financial performance, we increased reserves by 12% and at 125 million ounces, the reserves are the second highest since 2002. This high-grade, high-margin mine is among the best in the world. Silver production guidance for 2022 is 8.6 million to 8.9 million ounces as we will be mining lower grades for the production sequence. Silver cash costs are expected to be in the range of $0.75 to $2.50 per ounce, while the silver all-in sustaining cost guidance is $6.50 to $8.50 per ounce. Moving to Slide 12, introduction of the UCB mining method and anticipated higher grades at depth have positioned the Lucky Friday for a strong decade ahead. We are very excited about the UCB mining method, which is showing significant improvements in managing seismicity and improving productivity. Lucky Friday has 75 million ounces in silver reserves, which translates to a reserve mine life plan of 17 years. The Lucky Friday mine produced 3.6 million ounces of silver in 2021, with almost 1 million ounces produced in the fourth quarter. In 2021, production was a 75% increase over 2020. All-in sustaining costs for the year were $14.34 per ounce, in line with our guidance. The mine generated $32.7 million in free cash flow for the year, with 86% of the tons mined using the UCB method. The mine is expected to produce 4.3 million to 4.6 million ounces of silver in 2022 and cash costs of $0.75 to $2 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $7.25 to $9.25 per ounce. Production in 2022 is planned to be almost 20% greater than 2021, while the all-in sustaining cost per ounce is expected to decline by more than 30% due to higher production and byproduct credits. Turning to Slides 13 and 14, the UCB mining method is a new productive mining method developed by Hecla in an effort to proactively control fault slip seismicity and deep high stress narrow vein mining. The method uses bench drilling and blasting methods to fragment significant vertical and lateral extents of the vein beneath the top cut, taken along the strike of the vein and under engineered [backfill]. The method is accomplished without the use of drop raises or lower mucking drives, which may result in local stress concentrations and increased exposure to seismic events. Large blasts using up to 35,000 pounds of the pump emulsion and programmable electronic detonators fragment up to 350 feet of strike length to a depth of approximately 30 feet. These large blasts proactively induce fault slip seismicity at the mine at the time of the blast and shortly after it. This blasted corridor is then mined underhand for two cuts. As these cuts are mined, little to no blasting is done to advance them. Dilution is controlled by supporting the hanging wall and footwall as the mining progresses through the blasted ore. The entire cycle repeats and stoping advances down dip under fill and in a destressed zone. The method allows for greater control of fault slip seismic events, significantly improving safety. In conjunction, a notable productivity increase has been achieved by reducing seismic delays and utilizing bulk mining techniques. Moving to Slide 15. The Casa Berardi mine achieved record throughput as the mill achieved 4,187 tons per day in 2021. Our investments in mill optimization continued to deliver results in 2021, with mill recoveries increasing 4 percentage points in conjunction with the increase in throughput. For the year, the mine produced 134,500 ounces of gold at cash costs of $1,125 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $1,399 per ounce, while generating free cash flow of [$33.7 million]. From 2019 to 2021, the mine has generated more than $100 million in free cash flow. While our investments in optimizing production have yielded results, we are seeing increased costs due to the greater volumes mined and processed, contractor costs and higher underground maintenance costs. For 2022, our production guidance for the mine is 125,000 to 132,000 ounces at cash costs of $1,175 to $1,325 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $1,450 to $1,600 per ounce. Of note is a 16% increase in reserves at the mine to 1.8 million ounces, mainly attributable to additions at the 160 pit. With these reserves, Casa Berardi has a reserve mine plan of 14 years. With that, I would like to return the call to Phil.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Thanks, Lauren. Slide 17 shows our consolidated production guidance. So it takes all of the production guidance that Lauren has given you on a mine-by-mine basis and aggregates it. And then we also give you guidance for '23 and '24. And as we look at our business for the next few years, we anticipate seeing growth in the production of silver due to the high-grade material we'll be mining to Lucky Friday, coupled with the productivity gains due to the UCB method. With these improvements, we anticipate seeing margins and free cash flow generation of Lucky Friday continue to expand, and we expect that the mine will move to be in the best third of the cost curve of primary silver mines. Greens Creek will hold its position as a top-tier silver asset, continuing to deliver the significant margins and free cash flow. Just to comment on the guidance relative to the guidance that we gave a year ago, realize that with higher zinc prices, we're able to mine -- and remember, Hecla is the third largest zinc producer in the United States. So as a result, we're able to mine lower grade silver and actually generate the same or maybe even better cash flow. So that's why you see a little bit of a reduction in the production from a year ago to this year. On the gold side, we anticipate production over the next few years to grow slightly with our gold production coming from Casa and Greens Creek. So we're going to remain a very low-cost silver producer, with our all-in sustaining cost guidance being $9.75 to $11.75. On gold, we're guiding to an ASIC of $1,450 to $1,600 per ounce. And we're going to continue to work to improve the operations at Casa and deal with the inflationary pressure that we see in the Abitibi. Looking to capital, we anticipate spending approximately $135 million, as Russell mentioned, which is slightly higher than previous years. Remember that this change is driven mainly from new equipment, increasing the number of stopes at the Lucky Friday, and so just a slight increase as a result of that. Cost and capital assumptions include costs associated with managing COVID and assumed 5% inflation. We also anticipate spending $45 million for exploration and predevelopment. About a quarter of that will be spent at Greens Creek and Casa. In addition to extending reserves and resources, both properties have programs identifying and testing new targets. The Nevada program, which is about a third of the program, is going to focus on the two miles of the East [Graben] corridor at Midas where we've had some very high-grade intersections. And we're going to complete the predevelopment drift and exploration drilling at Hollister's Hatter Graben. At San Sebastian, we're testing for deeper mineralization near the mine infrastructure to try to expand the heat zone type mineralization as well as mining more for just silver and gold in an area called [La Roca]. Our programs for Republic and the Cree districts that have been on hold for a number of years will also have some drilling this year. I want to take a moment to speak about the reset that we are taking at our [Montana] assets. We withdrew the previous owner's plan of operations on both properties since it was based on their view of what the mines would be but they really didn't have the data to formulate what we need to do for a modern innovative mine plan. So we're submitting a new plan of operation limited to geologic and environmental activities for just the Montanore site so we can develop our own plans. At this point, Rock Creek will only have care and maintenance activities with our mineral and property rights intact. Remember that Rock Creek and Montanore combined are the third largest silver copper deposit in the US that hosts more than 300 million ounces of silver and 3 billion pounds of copper and that's an inferred. Given the growing importance of these two metals, we believe that this sort of one step back to allow two step forwards approach will allow production to begin as early as next year in the next decade. So that has not changed our view that early in the next decade, we should be able to be in production there. Before I open the line to questions, I want to take just a moment to remember my friend and predecessor CEO, Art Brown, who passed away recently. Art worked for Hecla for almost 40 years, and he was the CEO for Hecla for almost half of that. The UCB method is only the most recent example of Hecla's culture of innovation. Art had Hecla on the cutting edge of a number of new technologies, many that are standard in many operations around the world like pace backfill and the circular shaft that we had at the Lucky Friday. His legacy is continuing innovation, not only at the Lucky Friday, but the automation advances that we've had at Greens Creek and Casa Berardi. Hecla would not be the company that we are today without him. And so please keep his family in your thoughts. With that, operator, I would like to open the call to questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Lucas Pipes with B. Riley Securities.

[Matt Key, B. Riley Securities]

This is actually Matt Key here asking a question for Lucas. You mentioned that inflationary pressures aren't expected to be kind of as big of an impact on your business as others. But I was kind of hoping you could provide some greater details on that? Kind of compared to the previous year, do you still expect to experience kind of a percent increase in unit cost due to inflation or should this be kind of offset by higher kind of byproduct pricing than other moving parts?

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Well, definitely, we have the higher byproduct credits with the prices of zinc and lead. So that will, on a net basis, benefit us. But like everyone else, we certainly feel the inflationary pressures. Fortunately, our power is primarily hydro and that is a very, very stable pricing of that power. So the pressure that we feel goes to the other parts of the cost of our business. The biggest cost for us, of course, is labor. And we're not going to be able to avoid the inflationary pressure in the cost of labor. But I do think because of the byproduct credits on a net basis, we'll do well. Anything, Lauren, that you want to add?

[Lauren Roberts]

I'd just reiterate that we're relatively low volume and high grade, so the impacts associated with things like fuel, grinding, media, cement, the other things that we're seeing inflationary pressure in, are modest relative to our peer group.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Russell, anything else?

[Russell Lawlar]

No, nothing to add. I think you guys did a good job.

[Matt Key, B. Riley Securities]

And just one more for me. Obviously, 2022, looking to be hopefully, a very strong year for you guys. And I just kind of wanted to press you on capital returns to shareholders is share buyback something that you guys would ever kind of consider in this market or are you mainly focused on kind of just maintaining that recurring and variable dividend at the time?

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

We are authorized to buy shares back, so that's certainly not off the table. But I would suggest to you that the first thing we want to do is continue to strengthen our balance sheet. We do have further investments that we want to make, particularly exploration, we're anticipating success with some of the exploration that we think will require modest amounts of capital in the future, and so we'll need to build up the balance sheet for that purpose. We probably -- the next lever we probably would pull would relate to the dividend policy that we have. I think that's a more likely thing because the fact of buying shares back in order for it to be meaningful, it's got to be a pretty large number, and we're not going to burden our balance sheet to do that. Now we see higher prices and significantly more cash flow. Certainly, that's something that we consider if we're not seeing the share price react in what we think would be an appropriate way. Russell, anything to add?

[Russell Lawlar]

As we look at capital allocation, certainly, we'll look to the various metrics or the various levers that you can pull, share buybacks, like Phil said, we have an authorization to do so. But we think that we'll consider it. But frankly, there's probably better ways to return capital to shareholders, dividends being essentially that and then other investments for the cash flow that we produce as well, like the exploration.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Mike Jalonen with Bank of America.

[Mike Jalonen, Bank of America]

I just had a couple of questions, Phil. I noticed for gold reserves, the gold price was raised from $1,300 to $1,600. So I was just wondering what the logic was for that because other companies have been keeping their prices flat, and how much of the gold reserve increase was due to using a higher gold price?

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Well, Mike, in trying to determine what price to use, we look at a number of things. One of the things we did look at was where other companies were and we think we're sort of right in line with other companies. The other thing that's the reality is that Casa is a relatively high-cost producer. And it's not fair to that operation to set its reserves at some lower price when you're -- the operational, how you run the operation is based on the actual current price. So we thought we should be more in line. Lauren, anything to add?

[Lauren Roberts]

I agree, Phil. And I think the one maybe expansion I would put on that is we mined many, many different zones at Casa Berardi. And in those zones, there might be multiple lenses. And as we mine out to the limits of those lenses, we have to make an operational call, whether we leave or take material. And those operational calls are irreversible because this is at the end of stoping blocks and at the end of horizons. And so in order not to strand those resources, we felt it was appropriate to run at a bit higher price.

[Mike Jalonen, Bank of America]

So I don't know which companies you're talking about, who are even $1,600 from my work, but maybe I better go back and review. Just going back...

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

We have a slide on that, Mike that we’ll send you that has -- who we were comparing to.

[Mike Jalonen, Bank of America]

I don't think Barrick is on that list…

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Well, we don't -- yes, we don't really compete with Barrick, actually, Mike.

[Mike Jalonen, Bank of America]

Going back to the stranded reserves that -- this happened in 2010, '11, '12 when costs went up because companies went after the stranded reserves. So while mine life is longer at Casa Berardi, does that mean operating costs will remain higher also in line with 2022 guidance?

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Well, the issue that we have with our cost really relates to just the nature of the ore body, and we are working hard to try to drive those costs down. One of the key things we think we need to do is to continue to explore underground because we think there's more high-grade mineralization to be found. Remember, the 113 Zone was significantly higher grade than what we mined today. So there is a history -- and it was mined, I don't know, for the better part of seven years or so. So there's a history of high-grade mineralization there. So we're continuing to explore to try to find that higher grade mineralization. At the same time, we're working to try to lower the cost. We've done a lot of work. The first step really was trying to increase the throughput through the mine. Second was trying to increase the recoveries. We've had great success with both of those things. The third thing is really improving the efficiency, the productivity of the workforce. And we're putting all of our efforts into that. Lauren?

[Lauren Roberts]

It's a good conversation. And I guess the way I would look at it is we are desiring to increase our underground production relative to the open pit production because the grade is significantly better. And so as Phil says, we're focusing very directly on productivity in the underground mine in order to increase that throughput level. And in some aspects, Casa is actually leading the curve for us as Hecla. It has the lowest overall development costs because they're extremely productive developers. So it's really a matter of sorting out the remaining bits of the underground mining system in order to increase the productivity and deliver more underground ore to the mill. And then I would just touch on your comment about what happened in past years, and I can assure you that we're not chasing stuff that doesn't make cash flow and money today. We just don't do that.

[Mike Jalonen, Bank of America]

And I look forward to hopefully be a mine tourer of Casa Berardi in 2022. It's getting -- I'm sick and tired of my basement, Phil…

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Well, I hope to do that, and I also hope to have a mine tour of the Lucky Friday, so we can show you guys up close what we're doing there. Really, really excited and we think there's even more productivity gains to be had there as we optimize the method.

[Mike Jalonen, Bank of America]

I look forward to that also. Just one last question. I've been dominating. But did you provide a breakdown of the capital spending of $135 million by asset? Maybe I missed it.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

No, we haven't, but we certainly can.

[Russell Lawlar]

Yes. We certainly have that detail, but we did not provide it in the press release.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Do you have right there? What was that last?

[Lauren Roberts]

This is this year.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Yes, so do you have it handy? Or...

[Russell Lawlar]

Yes. I would say that most of -- the largest portion of that comes from Lucky Friday, call it, roughly $45 million, $50 million coming from Lucky Friday. At Greens Creek, call it, $35 million to $40 million. And then roughly $35 million to $40 million at Casa Berardi as well. So yes, I'm doing the math in my head and those -- I'm giving you ranges, so we should be coming up pretty close to that $135 million.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Joseph Reagor.

[Joseph Reagor, ROTH Capital Partners]

It's Joe from ROTH Capital. A couple of questions. First, you guys touched on it already that the inflationary pressures aren't hitting you guys quite as hard as some large open pit guys. But have you seen any issues in supply chain as far as just availability of things you need, if you had to order ahead? And should we expect maybe some working capital consumption, anything like that?

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Lauren?

[Lauren Roberts]

Yes. So I guess taking a step back first, let me just say that when we began reacting to the COVID situation a few years back now, we increased at that time, our inventory levels. So our working capital went up a bit, as we increase working capital in anticipation of difficulties with the supply chain. So we've sustained those levels going forward. So I don't think I would expect an increase in working capital from that perspective. With respect to things where we are seeing inflationary pressure, I think there are some common themes across the industry. We're seeing price of steel go up, for instance, grinding media reagents has gone up. Fuel is going up. As Phil mentioned, our core energy consumption for the mills, which is our biggest consumer, of course, is essentially all hydro. So we're not seeing pressure there. We do see odd little perturbations, I guess, in the supply chain, where maybe it's difficult to get a particular item from a particular supplier, but we've been able to find workarounds for those things. So I would characterize it more as a frustration than a significant impact to the business.

[Joseph Reagor, ROTH Capital Partners]

Just something that a couple of other companies have pointed to, so I wanted to get your take. Then Casa had a strong finish to the year. I know you guys mined from many different areas, you said that already. But should we continue to assume that there's going to be some volatility quarter-to-quarter in grade, or is there any expectations going into 2022 of what might be your best quarter, what might be the worst?

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Well, absolutely, with Casa and Greens Creek, you will have huge volatility in quarter-to-quarter. And it's just the nature of these underground ore bodies, not so much for the Lucky Friday, but for those two, it's remarkable how big of a difference you can have from one quarter to another. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure which -- if one quarter is better than the other. I just don't remember.

[Russell Lawlar]

You'll certainly see volatility it does seem to...

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Is one quarter better than the end of the year, I think, is where you'll see probably a bit better production.

[Lauren Roberts]

More back-end weighted.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Yes, that's right.

[Lauren Roberts]

But not super heavy.

[Joseph Reagor, ROTH Capital Partners]

Still very helpful from a modeling standpoint. And then one final thing. On the capital budget, it seems you guys are putting a little bit more than maybe we anticipated into capital this year. Is that a sign of additional projects? Is it inflationary pressures? Like how do we kind of bridge from maybe previous expectations to what you're ending up spending on capital?

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

So Joe, I would characterize it as really two primary drivers or three, risk reduction, so you have the opportunity to -- we have the cash flow available to us. We have the opportunity to reduce the risk of upsets because we've upgraded our fleet or upgraded pieces of equipment. Second is we identify things that have very strong returns. And the third is this transition at the Lucky Friday to a more bulk mining method where we need equipment that we didn't need before. And these pieces of equipment are, call it, million dollar pieces of equipment. So we're not talking about huge capital and we have the ability to throttle it up or throttle it back. Our ability to throttle up a lot more than this is not great. You just have enough room to spend more capital even if you wanted to. Lauren, anything to add?

[Lauren Roberts]

I think the one thing I would add to what Phil said is we do have couple of sustaining capital expenditures that come along periodically, and these are tailings raises and there's two of them in calendar year 2022. So that needs a chunk of capital, but it just sustaining nature of the business. And we are making a modest investment associated with the increase in throughput at Lucky Friday, some infrastructure things as well as fleet.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your last question is from the line of Ryan Thompson with BMO Capital Markets.

[Ryan Thompson, BMO Capital Markets]

Just a question on the growing production at Lucky Friday. Should we be thinking about, is that more grade driven or tonnage driven or both and maybe you could just remind me sort of the mill capacity there? Is there any opportunities for an expansion or pushing that mill harder? Just any comments around that would be helpful.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

Well, it is both. Now it would have -- grade is going up, and it would have happened anyway, but because of the mining method, it's been accelerated, that increase in production, metal production, silver production. So it is both -- I think we get to 1,000 tons a day during 2022, where we primarily average about 1,000 tons a day during '22. We think that our limit is about 1,200 tons a day hoisting capacity and mill will certainly look at the ability to go beyond that because the mining method conceivably could go more than the 1,000 tons a day from a seismic management standpoint. But at this point, we would expect to try to get to about 1,200 tons a day over the course of the next couple of years. Lauren?

[Lauren Roberts]

Yes, I think the way to think about Lucky Friday milling capacity is historically viewed as kind of 300,000 to 350,000 tons a year being the full capacity of the mill. But when we looked at that a bit closer, that was really the full capacity of the mine. And unburdening the mine, we're able to take advantage of latent capacity in the mill, which we think is going to be on the order of 425,000 tons a year. So a significant increase in milling capacity with no investment in the mill fundamentally, it's simply improving our ability to deliver more ore from the mine. So there are a couple of modest infrastructure improvements we're doing in the hoisting system and the ore handling system in order to move the larger volumes, but the mill is just sitting there ready to chew it up for us.

[Ryan Thompson, BMO Capital Markets]

And then I think in your last comments, you said there was two tailings then raises, but I didn't catch is one of those at Lucky Friday? Do you have to sort of increase the tailend there to push more time?

[Lauren Roberts]

Yes. There is a raise at Lucky Friday and a raise at Casa Berardi in 2022.

[Ryan Thompson, BMO Capital Markets]

And how many years like will that get you of capacity? And when should we be thinking about, I guess, the next raise as you push more tons there?

[Lauren Roberts]

Lucky Friday, this raise will give us at least two years before we start construction on another raise. And Casa Berardi, it's really going to be -- I think the way to think about it is it's an annual process at Casa Berardi. We go back and forth between two different tailing cells. So we try to do one, one year and the other the other year.

[Phil Baker, President and CEO]

One thing, Ryan, on your question about tailings reminds me of is the fact that we've got the land position now at the Lucky Friday that really covers off the next few decades of the ability to have a place to put the tails. And land comes at a -- there's not a lot of flat land up in the Silver Valley. So it was a big deal for us to get this position. So we're in great shape from that regard. So okay. I appreciate it. It looks like we don't have any more questions operator. So I just want to thank folks for being on the call. And certainly, if you have any other questions, give me or Russell or Anvita or Lauren a call. We do have available some slots for calls later this morning. And please let us know if you'd like to talk to us later today. Thanks very much.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect. Thank you so much. Have a great day.