Americas Gold and Silver Corporation (USA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Americas Gold and Silver Corporation Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders. [Operator Instructions]. Meeting will now come to order. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this Annual and Special Meeting of Americas Gold and Silver Corporation. My name is Darren Blasutti, and I'm a Director and the President and CEO of Americas Gold and Silver, and I will be presiding today as Chairman of the meeting. This annual meeting is being held with physical in-person access and participation limited to shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders. The company has provided a Zoom webinar in order for shareholders who are unable to attend the meeting in-person to be able to listen to the meeting proceedings by phone or on their computers. Please note that the webinar and phone lines will be viewed for the duration of the meeting. I will now begin with the appointment of Secretary and Scrutineer. Your approval, I'll ask Peter McRae, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Chief Legal Officer, to act as Secretary of the meeting and Computershare Investor Services through its representatives to act as scrutineer for this meeting. Reports on the number of shareholders present in-person and the number of shares represented in-person or by proxy at the meeting and to report on the votes cast in connection with the business of the meeting. In order that we may have a complete record of those present, shareholders present in-person or by proxy have been recorded. In view of the need to attend to a number of formal matters, certain shareholders have volunteered to move and second resolutions were required in order to facilitate the handling of the formal matters. Each holder of common shares or their proxy is entitled to one vote per share held. I will now give notice to the meeting, and I'll ask Peter McRae, as secretary of the meeting to deal with certain formal matters concerning the meeting.

The notice calling this meeting, accompanying management information circular dated May 21, 2024, and form of proxy were distributed to shareholders of Americas Gold and Silver Corporation in accordance with applicable law. The Board of Directors adopted resolutions which provided that this meeting be held today and which fixed the close of business on May 6, 2024 as the record date with the determination of shareholders entitled to notice and to vote at this meeting and any postponements thereof. The management information circular posted online under this company's SEDAR profile at sedar.com. Company's EDGAR profile at sec.gov and on the company's website. Additional copies are available at this meeting. Proof of proper service of these documents have been filed with me, and I direct that a copy of each of these documents together with proof of service be retained with the records of this meeting.

I will now ask for a motion that the reading of the notice of this meeting be dispensed with and that the reading of the proof of service of such notice, the management information circular and the form of proxy also be dispensed with.

Mr. Chairman, I so move.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

All those in favor, please so signify. [Voting].

Contrary, if any? [Voting].

I declare the resolution carried. I would now ask the secretary to please advise the meeting as to the results of the scrutineers' report on attendance.

The screeners report reads as follows: 3 shareholders present, representing 1,152 shares, 96 proxy holders present, representing 108,291,405 shares. 99 management proxies received representing 108,292,557 shares. The total issued outstanding as at the record date of 251,019,930. Percentage of both of outstanding shares represented at the meeting is 43.14%. I'm advised by the scrutineer that all ballots have already been submitted by duly appointed proxy holders and registered shareholders who are entitled to vote at the meeting as well based on the preliminary report from the scrutineer of the proxies received, all items of business today have received a majority of the votes in favor. Accordingly, for experience, he will move through the motions and resolutions and questions quickly.

Thank you, Peter. As a result, I declare that the requisite quorum is present, and I declare the meeting to be properly constituted for the transaction of business for which it has been called. I direct that the confirmation and mailing of this notice of meeting and the scrutineer's final report be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as a schedule. Now I'll move on to the annual financial statements. So I'd now like to present to the meeting the audited financial statements of the company for the fiscal year-end December 31, 2023. Together with the auditor's report thereon, both of which were made available to shareholders upon request and on SEDAR. Additional copies are also available at this meeting and on the company's website. I now place before the meeting the audited financial statements of the company for the fiscal year end December 31, 2023, together with the audit report thereon. We will dispense with the reading of the auditor's report. Elections of the Director of the company will now proceed with the next item of business, the election of 8 individuals to serve as directors of the company unless the office is earlier vacated in accordance with the general bylaw of the company and the Canadian Business Corporation Act. The Canadian Business Corporation Act requires that for elections at which there is only one candidate nominated for each position available on the Board, shareholders vote for or against individual directors, and each candidate is elected only they receive a majority of votes cast in their favor. Majority information circular list nominees for election as directors of the company. If elected, these nominees will hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed in accordance with the articles and bylaws of the company. May I have a motion for the nomination of the 8 nominees?

Mr. Chairman, I move that those persons specified in the management information circular, namely Darren Blasutti, Christine Carson, Alex Davidson, Alan Edwards, Bradley Kipp, Gordon Pridham, Manuel Rivera and Lorie Waisberg be nominated as directors of the company to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed in accordance with the articles and bylaws of the company.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

In accordance with the advanced notice positions of our bylaws, no further nominations may be received at this time. Therefore, I declare the nominations closed. May I request a motion that the 8 individuals nominated as Directors of the company be so elected.

Chairman, I so move.

I second the motion.

If there are no comments, it is now in order to -- if it is now time in order to vote on the motion. The vote for this resolution will take place by a show of hands. All those in favor, please signify by raising your hands. [Voting].

Contrary, if any? [Voting].

Motion carried. The next item of business is the appointment of the auditors. I will now ask for a motion that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Chartered Accountants, Toronto, Ontario, be appointed auditors of the company until the next annual meeting of the shareholders or until the auditors are moved from office or resins and their successor is appointed, and that authority be granted to the Board of Directors to fix the remuneration of the auditors.

Chairman, I so move.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

If there are no comments, it is now in order to vote on the motion. The motion for this resolution will take place by a show of hands. All those in favor, please signify by raising your hands. [Voting]

Contrary, if any? [Voting]

Motion carried. Next item of business is the approval of issuance of up to 27.5 million common shares, which is in excess of 25% of the issue in sending common shares of the company issuable upon the retraction of the convertible debentures.

Chairman, I so move.

Chairman, I second the motion.

If there are no comments, it is now in order to vote on the motion, the vote for this resolution will take place by a show of hands. All those in favor, please signify by raising your hands. [Voting].

Contrary, if any? [Voting].

The motion is carried. This brings us to the conclusion of the formal business of this meeting. There being no further business, I now declare this meeting to be formally terminated. We will now be proceeding with a short address to shareholders and the management presentation. Some few forward-looking statements, so please make sure that all shareholders and all people attending the meeting, please read the disclosure statement provided above in the presentation. Obviously, the meeting dispense with the 2023 year. I think it was a difficult year for all shareholders of any company in the mining space, especially difficult for silver companies as the valuations of most of our companies dropped quite precipitously over the course of 2023. Despite that, we have a great list of shareholders. Our market capitalization today is around CAD 100 billion significantly lower than we would anticipate given the assets we have. We have roughly 256 million shares outstanding, but our shareholder base continues to be strong with almost 50% institutional and large institutions. We've got some great shareholders, and they have been supportive throughout this. They believe that the assets of the company can be worth significantly more than they are today. And we've been spending quite a bit of time in 2024 getting ready to kind of change the trajectory of the company. We fully believe in the assets and the team that we've put in place, talk a little bit about where we're going. And I think the most important thing that's occurring in the company is that we're transitioning in through 2024 and into the beginning of 2025. We believe by the end of Q2 2025, we'll be well over 80% silver revenue. I think that's a significant change for the company. We've previously been mining a lot of base metals, a lot of zinc and lead, which we'll continue to do over the next year or so as we transition EC120 at Cosala. We believe we will have most of our revenue will come from silver and then a bit from copper and from lead, and zinc will no longer be mined as we get into Q3 next year. The Galena Complex has a massive amount of silver resources at 100%. This is over 200 million ounces of silver in all 3 categories. We've been ramping up the silver production. In 2021, we were only around 670,000 ounces there. We expect to ramp up this year somewhere between 1.8 million and 1.9 million ounces. And we expect that to continue to grow through 2025 and '26. We expect resource growth, but we're working on a new resource model that will come out at the end of June. This year, we'll start at June 30, 2024. Again, we think that the Galena Complex will grow its P&P prudent and probable reserves and its M&I resources. And we continue to add every day. We have 3 drilling teams working at Galena on 10-hour shifts a day, drilling out lots of new prospective ounces that we can get mining, especially as we see higher prices. So Galena is in good hands. We've changed management there. We've done a lot of work given this large resource base. We put in a lot of money in the next big decision, which will be coming in July is to start to finish the Galena shaft repair. On the Coastal operations, as I said a little bit earlier, thesis to high-grade silver copper mineralization with the EC120 start, we have been working with a large international trading group that will give us the cash that we believe we need to start EC120 early in the third quarter. And again, that will transform the company, we believe, by April or May next year, where we're producing somewhere between 2.5 million and 3 million ounces per annum in Cosala. So a lot more silver, which again gets to our transition to over 80% silver revenue. If you look at the chart on the bottom of the screen, you can see how many ounces we have in resource of silver, gold, zinc, lead and copper. So the majority of those with the exception of the gold at Relief Canyon here are reasonably permitted and in production, and we're going to grow that production, we think materially over the next couple of years. And the focus is to not be a poly-metallic company anymore. It's to be a silver company as we go forward. We talked about our leverage to silver. Silver is currently about 79:1. But what's interesting where we are today is we've got two mines that are operating. They're transitioning to higher production and more silver, but we trade at a very small $0.36 per silver resource and 0.3x or less based on our consensus NAV estimates. So as we work through higher silver prices and getting our balance sheet fixed up and getting this new production out we think that we're going to move towards emerging in -- the NAVs of emerging and senior silver producers. From our point 3, we think we can rerate definitely to 0.6 by the time we get EC120, as we show and deliver capital or deliver operating cash flow and free cash flow as we get into next year, I think that will be very attractive for our shareholders. But we're very leveraged to silver. We're going to be one of the few companies a year from now that has as much silver revenue but very few times that have as much silver revenue percentage as we do. We think that's the major change from what we've been doing. We've left our best silver grades, our highest silver grades in the ground for better silver prices and now we have it. And just to look at some recent developments since the beginning of the year, you can see where metal prices have gone, obviously, all of these prices fluctuate up and down quite materially. But if you look between January 1 and May 31, silver is up 30%. And zinc's up 18%, lead is up 9% and copper's up 18%. They're all probably moving up and around sometimes a little lower than that, sometimes a little higher. But that manages 3 things. It's allowing us to actually generate operating profits at the operations. It's allowed us to reduce negative working capital balances and improve our balance sheet. And it's allowing those projects like the Galena shaft repair and the EC120 project to be moved forward with some help of some external financing that we're working on today. That's been very important for change in metal price. As we've seen a little bit of movement in the share price. I think you'll see more of that as people see the leverage in the company in all of these metals companies to these higher prices as we go forward and we report our Q2 results. What else have we done, we've hired a world-class Chief Operating Officer to lead our technical team and improve operating assets. He was the former COO of Equinox Gold, Pretium Resources and New Gold. He has a ton of underground narrow vein mining experience. He built the Brucejack Mine, which is one of the highest grade vein gold mines in the world. And he's already brought in new senior management to the Galena Complex as well as the corporate office, we've got a new General Manager at Galena. We've got a new Corporate VP, Secretary of Environmental. We got a new mine super intended coming in, in the next few weeks, and we've hired a new environmental superintendent. So all of these things are going on at the mine site as we're starting to build up production at Galena with higher silver prices. And I know Jim Cury is genuinely excited about the quality and the growth of the assets. It realizes that we're kind of at that 85%, 90%. We've done all the hard work, seeing prices come and now we're able to build these mines out. So we're quite excited about that. And of course, the transition to primary silver that's been approved by the Board. And again, as EC120 comes on, it's fully operational at the end of Q2 next year, will be, I mean, almost at 85% silver revenue. So that's very exciting based on today's prices. So as we look forward, we think the future is much brighter than it's been. It's been obviously a very difficult time for silver producers. And it's still difficult. I won't say that is easy. But with the change from [ '23 to '29 ], it's changed the internal view of what the company can do and get done and how much silver can bring on. It hasn't happened in our share price yet. We haven't seen that real movement, but I expect that we will see a lot of these companies move when the Q2 results come out in August as people start to see the leverage that's been created by these higher prices. So I look forward to that. I think the team that's here that works for the shareholders is energized by the change in silver price, and we're working hard to create shareholder value for everyone here. And it starts with higher prices, getting up more silver out of the ground, getting operating profits at the mine levels that will translate eventually into operating profits or profits at the corporation level. So we're excited about that, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us, but we've got the team to execute it. So with that, I want to thank all shareholders for their patience and perseverance. It's been a very difficult time. And with that, I'd like to thank you for your attention and your attendance at this AGM. Did anyone attending or in person or on the phone or on the webinar have questions or comments about on the company, please reach out to management to our Investor Relations to Stephan or myself or contact information is available on our website. And thank you again. Enjoy the rest of your day.