Argonaut Gold Inc

TSX:AR

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning. My name is Christie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Argonaut's Q1 2021 Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Dougherty, you may begin your conference.

[Peter C. Dougherty, President, CEO & Director]

Thank you, Christie, and welcome everyone to Argonaut's Q1 financial and operating results conference call and webcast. I want to thank everyone for taking the time to join the call today. Today, we are going to walk through the Q1 results, which yielded record production and revenue. We will also spend time providing you with an update on the Magino project construction, as well as some of the exciting exploration results at both Magino and our La Colorada facility.Please turn to Slide #2, forward-looking information. During this presentation, we will be making forward looking statements based upon our best knowledge as of today. Please note that we cannot predict the future with 100% accuracy, but we'll do our best based upon the information that we have today.Please turn to the next slide. Slide #3, Q1 2021 and recent highlights. What makes Argonaut unique is that we are a one-stop shop checking all the boxes. Whether you are looking for operations that provide cashflow or you are seeking a growth oriented story through development of a new mine, or you are focused on the exploration sizzle, Argonaut provides all of the above in one complete package through a low risk approach.Please turn to the next slide. Slide #4, Magino construction update. Before we go into the Q1 results, I'll give you a brief update on our Magino project construction. Construction is tracking on to slightly ahead of schedule and has been advancing well. We completed 4 months of a 24 month scheduled program and these next 20 months will fly by quickly. We received or completed key milestones this past quarter with the logging for the year completed to date and have begun early earthworks, which are underway. We have also mobilized teams to the site and have set up an initial 144 person camp at the site. There will be another 450 person camp set up near the town of Dubreuilville as activities on-site begin to ramp up.We executed an agreement with the Garden River First Nation and held a ground blessing ceremony with the Métis First Nation of Ontario to bless the ground before construction activities commenced. We have launched a monthly newsletter and have published our second newsletter just this last Monday. In these monthly newsletters, we intend to provide a regular updated -- on the project and pictures of construction. Please note that you can find these updates on our website.Please turn to the next slide. Slide #5, Magino construction update, continued. As discussed, the project is tracking on schedule. In terms of budget, it is no secret that there is and are cost inflation all around us. Pretty much any raw material and costs are moving, as we've seen from the area of diesel. We have been fortunate to lock in a large portion of this build to a fixed price bid, but we still have other cost pressures. Today we are currently reviewing potential cost inflation to certain inputs, impacts of FX rates and changes in project scope while this review is ongoing and not yet complete.Based upon the best information we have available as of today, we believe the initial capital remains within a 15% of the previously guided estimate of CAD 480 million to CAD 510 million. When we think about the project timeline, we are about to get into the areas of the project in late Q2 and early Q3, that will increase the pace of capital spending, such as pre-production mining and the start of construction of both the process plant and tails facility. We anticipate first gold pour during Q1 of 2023, followed by a short ramp up to commercial production. This chart outlines the key critical milestones as we march towards this production date.Please turn to the next slide. Slide #6, Q1 2021 and recent highlights. Now let's talk about the Q1 results because we had another outstanding quarter. We delivered record quarterly revenue on the back of record quarterly production and earnings of $0.09 per share. It was a terrific quarter for delivering on our initiatives, both short-term and long-term. The Magino closure plan was filed and we completed the fixed bid contract with the Ausenco for the construction of the process facility at the Magino project, we then embarked upon construction. We also recently announced that Ausenco has made a CAD 10 million investment into Argonaut, which we believe aligns our partnership and gives Ausenco additional skin within the game. We also recently announced we've received the permit required to install and operate a new conveying and stacking system at Florida Canyon, which will lower our operating costs once in place and ramped up.Looking at longer-term growth initiatives. We continue to have success in targeting high grade mineralization at depth at Magino and during the first quarter, we announced that the south zone strike length had now extended to 1.5 kilometers westward from the border with the Island Gold project and we have hit one of our best ever drill holes on the property with over 10 meters at 19 grams at nearly 450 meters of depth. So very shallow within the system and very high grade with nice width. We also drilled some of the best holes in the industry that I have seen at our La Colorada project below the El Creston pit, where we saw 12 meters at 99 grams and 30 grams of silver and 21 meters at 45 grams gold with 275 grams silver. These are extremely exciting results and I'll discuss our view around these in a few moments. But first, I'd like to pass the call to Dave Ponczoch, our CFO, and have him walk through our Q1 financial performance. Dave?

[David A. Ponczoch, CFO & Corporate Secretary]

Thanks, Pete. Please turn to the next slide, financial performance. During the first quarter we sold 59,116 gold equivalent ounces leading to record quarterly revenue of $105 million. We generated net income of $27 million or $0.09 per share and had strong cashflow of nearly $28 million. We ended Q1 with $227 million in cash and cash equivalents.Please turn to the next slide, Q1 2021 capital spending and cash flow. Looking at Q1 cash flow, we began the quarter with $214 million and generated close to $26 million in cashflow after working capital changes. We added 28 million through the CB flow-through financing and the Ausenco private placement while investing just over 38 million in capital. Therefore, our cash position ended with 227 million at the end of the quarter. In terms of capital spend, 26 million of the 38 million, or around 68% of the capital spend for the quarter, was related to the Magino construction project. I want to note that as pre-production mining ramps up and the process plant and tailings facility construction commence, we expect the pace of Magino construction capital to increase in late second quarter or early third quarter. I'll now pass the call back to Pete to walk through the operating performance for the quarter. Pete?

[Peter C. Dougherty, President, CEO & Director]

Thank you, Dave. As we look back over the past year, it has been an amazing year for the company. We have been able to achieve last year record production for the company, record quarterly production in the fourth quarter, and now here again in the first quarter, another record quarter for production with nearly 60,000 gold equivalent ounces produced. Overall production was up 44% over Q1 of 2020 with all in sustaining costs falling 1%. The 3 mines in Mexico are meeting or exceeding expectations at this time. Our Florida Canyon project had a tough start to the quarter and has shown month over month improvement throughout the quarter and into April.In early Q1, we were coming off the holiday season and to begin the quarter, we were at times without 10% of our workforce due to COVID contact tracing here in Nevada. This meant that we didn't have the people necessary to run all the equipment to move the material we would have liked to have moved and get the production out of Florida Canyon we were hoping for. We recognize that we need a big step change at Florida Canyon, and this will come once we have the conveying and stacking system in place and ramped up. I'll talk about this a little bit more shortly.Let's please turn to Slide #10, if we can. Slide #10, Q1 2021 and recent CSR highlights. I want to take a moment and recognize the hard work that our team has done and continues to do with respect to our environmental and social responsibility initiatives. On this slide, you can see examples of some of the initiatives, whether it be the new solar farm at La Colorada or the other community initiatives that we are embracing. In April, we published our annual sustainability report. In this report, which is available on our website, you will find many of the things that we have done to hit on ESG criteria as we move forward. I encourage all of you to take a moment and read through the document and learn about some of these positive initiatives that we have embarked upon with our employees and our communities where we operate.Please turn to the next slide, Slide #11. High-grade results at La Colorada. Now, let's walk through some of the best drill hole results I've seen in the sector in my history. Here, you see a plan view of the El Creston pit at our La Colorada mine. We recently announced the results from the first round of drilling to test down dip extension of the veins where we are mining within the pit today. The drilling program's goal was to, first, see if we could find grade that might support an underground mining operation once the open pit had been exhausted in the next 2 years. And grade, we did. We did find at this particular project.Let's turn to Slide #12. High-grade results at La Colorada. Here are 2 cross sections taken from the El Creston deposit where we are actively open pit mining today. The dark gray line that you might be able to see that is thinly placed on these slides represents the current topography at the site. The blue line represents the ultimate pit as designed today for this facility. And the red line represents what would happen if we use a $1,600 gold price. Now just below this red line, you will see 2 sets of bonanza-grade drill intercepts. And maybe just as exciting as the grade, look at these true widths that you see here. These are extremely encouraging results for the first holes ever drilled below this pit. To find widths of 21 and 12 meters at this project is amazing. And to find these kinds of grades is spectacular.As we mine down through the El Creston pit, it is not uncommon for us to come across historical underground workings. After all, this was an underground mine during the late 1800s and early 1900s before the Mexican Revolution. Today, we are essentially mining the halo around those old underground workings and processing the material that we are mining today, which runs between 0.5 and 0.6 grams as an open pit, heap leach processing method. Now, when we contrast this where the historical miners had previously been working, we're finding that this higher grade core extends deeper, but we seem to have discovered areas where the miners didn't quite get down deep enough to find all the mineralization as they chased these down, these veins deeper. We didn't know what the grades would be as the historical mining records were not there from the 1800s, but 21 meters at 45 grams gold and 275 grams silver, and 12 meters at 99 grams gold and 30 grams silver are some of the best drill holes this sector has seen over the past year.We are very excited to continue drilling to test the down dip extensions of these veins, but because we are actively mining in the pit, this is going to take some time. 100% of our ore supporting the La Colorada project is currently coming from the El Creston pit. And as I said before, this operation needs to continue forward for the next 2 years. Last year, this operation generated $25 million to the balance sheet and this year is expected to do considerably more. So we don't want to slow down that mining. That means we need to do a bit of planning around drilling. We will drill a bit on one side of the pit while mining on the other side and then do a dance, switching the rigs back and forth in order to advance this drilling. Needless to say, we are excited about what we have discovered and hope to know much more about this and what it could mean to La Colorada's future later in this year, but clearly very exciting.Please turn to the next slide, Slide #13. Optimizing Florida Canyon. Some other very good news that we received recently was the permitting required to install and operate a conveying and stacking system at the Florida Canyon project, which are now in place. When we acquired Florida Canyon mine last summer, we saw an opportunity to eliminate multiple rehandling of ore and reduce operating cost and gain efficiencies. Previously, ore was hauled out of the pit and then dumped on the ground near the crusher. Then a dozer would push it into a pile, and a loader would feed it into the crusher. And after being crushed, the ore would go back onto the ground, picked up with the loader, loaded into haul trucks and moved to the leach pad, dumped out on the leach pad, then dozed with the dozer to set up before operating the leach pad. During the fourth quarter, we installed a drop box or dump pocket so that the trucks coming directly from the pit can now dump directly into the crusher, thus eliminating the first set of rehandle. Secondly, and where we find ourselves today, is that now that the requirements and the permits are in place, we are ready to now install a conveying and stacking system on the back end of the crusher, which will then, in turn, lower operating costs. And secondly, an advantage out of this system will be that we can repurpose the trucks that were hauling ore from the crusher to the leach pad back into the mining pit to deliver an increased tonnage that we'll be able to mine and deliver to the crusher.All the equipment necessary to install this overland conveying and crushing system is expected to start to arrive onsite during this month with installation in the coming month and ramp-up to begin during the July through September time frame. This should lower our operating costs and lift our production at Florida Canyon in the latter part of '21 and into '22, going forward. Please turn to the next slide, Slide #14. Magino Plan View. And just before wrapping up our call today, I wanted to take a moment to discuss our exploration program at Magino because it is no longer just about the border between Magino and Island Gold, where we are finding encouraging high-grade gold mineralization at depth. Our geological team has outlined other structures that they want to test at depth below the middle of the pit and towards the Western edge of the pit as well. And our team has the geology correct, as we hit multiple high-grade gold mineralized veins on each of our drill holes as we moved towards the west. Last fall, we announced the discovery of the Scotland, #42, Sandy and South zones in the center of the pit. And then again, this year in the first quarter, we drilled further west where we extended the South zone to a strike length of more than a kilometer and a half. And we've found the best drill holes that we have seen on this project as represented by Hole number 57 and 424 on the Western edge of this map. This would be just off of where the open pit would run to. In its early, we are in our early days of this drilling, but over the past year and a half, we have drilled over 50,000 meters and have shown promise in delivering Phase 2 of Magino, which could potentially be an underground operation. Please turn to Slide #15. Drill highlights intercepting new South zone. This is a long section looking north on the project. When we look at this from an underground perspective in this long section one can clearly see the potential that we see. Our main focus this year will be tightening up the drill spacing in the elbow and central zones, where we hope to come up with a mineralized inventory by the end of the year. But that's not all that will be happening. We will be following up on other zones, particularly the far west, where Hole number 57 hit that 3 meters at 50 grams and 10 meters at 19 grams and 424, where we hit 7 and a half meters of 29 grams gold, very important drill holes.The distance between these holes number 57 and 424 is roughly 275 meters. So very widely space today. But also very encouraging and this is why we plan to do more drilling. Needless to say, we are very excited about what we are starting to see and believe in the potential of Magino as an underground operation in the future is tremendous. We have a targeted $11,5 million drill program this year focused on, as I said, defining better this underground Phase 2 for Magino. Please turn to the next slide, Slide #16. Magino upcoming construction milestones. And just before we wrap up today, I want to leave you with some of the upcoming milestones for the Magino Construction Project. Things are happening quite rapidly. The first 4 months have flown by and before we know it, we will be commissioning Canada's next goldmine. I encourage you to visit our website and subscribe to our monthly newsletter and see some of the pictures and the progress during the first -- while the first 4 months have gone very fast, I'm sure the next 20 will as well. Before you know it Magino will be pouring gold in early 2023 and will have become Argonauts flagship operation. Please turn to the next slide, Slide #17. Potential near-term catalyst. We expect to have a lot of news flow and catalyst upcoming. We are committed to providing you with regular information on Magino's construction progress. We will continue to test the high-grade mineralization at depth at Magino as well as part of the potential for Phase 2 of this project. And with the bonanza-grade intercepts at La Colorada, we are excited to have future announcements on the follow-up of these drill results as we expand the drilling there.We are also drilling at both Florida Canyon and the Standard Mine here in Nevada. And with all 3 of our Mexican assets performing extremely well and permits in hand to change the future of Florida Canyon, we are provided with the cash to fuel our transformation from a high-cost junior producer with short mine lives to a low-cost intermediate producer with longer mine lives. This concludes our presentation today. And now I'd like to pass the call back to our operator, Christie, who will set up a brief Q&A session. Christie?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we have a question from Eric Winmill of Scotiabank.

[Eric Winmill, Associate]

Just quick question. There's obviously lots of chatter about inflation these days. I appreciate the comments in the, the presentation, but just wondering if you could touch on any sort of supply constraints you're seeing in the Magino or any sort of cost pressures in particular that you're especially concerned about or tracking closely?

[Peter C. Dougherty, President, CEO & Director]

Yes, Eric, as we stated, we think we're within that 15%, but I actually have with me this morning Bob Rose our Vice President of Technical Services. Who's over the construction and management of this. So, let's have, let him answer what we're starting to see, but I think things are tracking nicely. Bob?

[W. Robert Rose, Vice President of Technical Services]

Thank you, Pete. Certainly, there are some, some inflationary pressures. I think one of the advantages that we've got at the moment is that with our fixed price contract, with Ausenco, they are actually managing much of the purchasing of the items that potentially have that problem. We're certainly seeing fuel prices that move around and, and some of the movement of materials is certainly becoming more difficult. So, it's certainly there. And that's part of what we're planning around right at the moment we can see that you need to look ahead. Shipping times are extended. Obviously, costs are going up, but again much of that is within Ausenco's ballpark. And they're very much on top of it right now.

[Peter C. Dougherty, President, CEO & Director]

Eric, and as you know, with the Ausenco contract, that is a fixed price bid, so they have locked most of that, those longer lead items in, and it's now setting up the shipping times to coordinate that within the time and scope and frame that they have to deliver. Because as you're aware with these fixed price bids, there is requirements for them to hit various milestones. And if they delay, there are also penalties associated with not getting this completed on time.

[Eric Winmill, Associate]

Okay, that's great. Really appreciate the added color. Maybe along as similar sort of vein just quickly on exploration. How are you seeing your turnaround time on the assay labs? And are you seeing any pressures there as well, in terms of getting a quick turnaround?

[Peter C. Dougherty, President, CEO & Director]

Well, Eric, again, I have the resident expert on this here in Brian Arkell, our Vice President, Exploration. He's been in this business for nearly 40 years. So if anybody knows what's happening, and how to get things lined up, drills and assays, et cetera, he's the man. So let's turn it over to him. Brian?

[Brian W. Arkell, Vice President of Exploration]

Yes. We're seeing some pressure, but it's not bad at all. We have about a 1 month turnaround time up in Canada with our assay lab. And we get priority there, because we have a pretty long standing relationship with those guys. And down in Mexico, we're seeing a 3 week turnaround. So Mexico is not bad at all, and Canada's about normal, 1 month.

[Operator]

Your next question is from Gabriel Gonzalez of Echelon Capital.

[Gabriel E. Gonzalez, Analyst]

Congratulations on another fine quarter. I wanted to ask, just following up a little bit on the question about the cost pressures. Just wondering, and bearing in mind that the review that is ongoing with respect to costs is not complete, and an ongoing process, but I was just wondering, is there any thought to the potential impact of a rising Canadian dollar, in potentially offsetting some cost inflation? Is there a delta or a sensitivity around that, that you'd be able to speak to?

[Peter C. Dougherty, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. Gabriel the interesting thing with this project, it is a Canadian project in every sense. Where out of that CAD 480 million to CAD 510 million that we're looking at Canadian, over 85% of this project looks to be in Canadian dollars. Okay? The biggest U.S. dollar impact here that we're looking at would be for the mining fleet itself.So that FX trade I'm sure that Ausenco has an FX trade issue for themselves, but that being a fixed bid contract in Canadian dollar terms to us, really locks in this as a Canadian dollar denominated project.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we have no further questions at this time.

[Peter C. Dougherty, President, CEO & Director]

Okay. Thank you, Christie. And thank you all of those who have joined us this morning, or those who may listen in the future that have been supporting us here at Argonaut. We appreciate your support. We look forward to Q2 as we continue to ramp up the operations, and push forward on these initiatives that we're seeing, with the construction happening at Magino, and the exciting things that will be occurring there as we head into Q2, where we're actually starting to pour cement and starting to see buildings start to come to life.And then with the exciting drill results that'll be coming out of the drill programs that Brian and the teams are leading, as we continue to explore and understand better, not only La Colorada, but Florida Canyon, Standard Mine, and then also at Magino. So again, thank you for all your support, and we look forward to talking to you in the upcoming quarter. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.