Andean Precious Metals Corp. (APM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Andean Precious Metals Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded. Today's presenter is Simon Griffiths, Andean's President and Chief Executive Officer. Joining Simon for the Q&A portion of the call is Jeff Chan, Chief Financial Officer; and Fraser Buchan, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please, note comments made on today's call may contain forward-looking information, and this information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, please consult the company's relevant filings on SEDAR. These documents are also available on Andeans website at andeanpm.com. And now I'll pass the call over to Simon Griffiths. Simon?

Thank you, Stesha, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 results conference call. The strong and sustainable nature of our operations in Bolivia continues with positive cash flow generation during Q3. At quarter end, our current assets were $104 million, including cash of $83 million. We're especially proud to have reached the milestone of over 900 days with no lost time incidents, and there have been no environmental incidents at our operations. This speaks to a steadfast commitment to safety and to the commitment and dedication of our employees. So during the quarter, we sold 1.5 million silver equivalent ounces as compared to 1.7 million ounces during Q3 2020. The realized price of those ounces was $24.13 compared to $22.48 for the same period last year. Year-to-date, we've produced 4.4 million silver equivalent ounces, and our full year production guidance, as previously published, remains at 5.8 million to 6.1 million silver equivalent ounces for the year. Revenue for the 9 months ending September 30 was $113 million as compared to $75 million during the same period last year. And revenue for the quarter was $36.7 million as compared to $38 million for Q3 last year. Income from mine operations was also up $9.7 million from $7.8 million last year. And pleasing to see that our cost base is lower with cost of sales of $24.6 million for Q3 this year versus $27.5 million in Q3 last year. G&A for the quarter increased $3.3 million versus $1.9 million. And overall, our net income for the quarter totaled $1.8 million, adjusted EBITDA totaled $7.8 million. Free cash for Q3 is reported at $4 million. However, there is an additional $3.2 million of sales collections, which have been deferred into Q4. So in real term, $7.2 million of free cash was generated during Q3. Our all-in sustaining cost for the 9 months of 2021 was $18.08 and this compares to full year guidance of $17.50 to $19.50. So the results are very pleasing. Our revenues are up. The cash flow is positive. The all-in sustaining cost is trending downwards. So all very pleasing moving in the right direction. Our subsidiary in Bolivia has a long history and has maintained strong relationships with the government and with our community stakeholders. These partnerships are critical to Andean and we view them as a major contributor to both our success story and continued confidence in Bolivia as a mining-friendly jurisdiction. We plan to release our comprehensive sustainability and ESG framework soon, which will highlight the success story and describe in more detail how we plan on moving forward in Bolivia and how we work with the communities in the country. Within Bolivia, we have a clear strategic advantage. We have the only commercial processing option for oxide ore. On to growth. At San Bartolomé, we have commenced an expansion study. This will determine the technical and economic viability of extending the life of mine. Our objective is to deliver a 43-101 compliant 10-year mine life during '22, which will be an important year for us. It will be -- it will underwrite our transition to a long-life asset. Resource drilling for the first mineralized stockpile also referred to as the FDF is now complete, and SLK will conclude the resource estimate during December. Following from that, the scoping study for the expansion is expected late in February 2022, with the purpose of the study demonstrated in the economic viability of reprocessing 10 million tonnes of mineralized material. And our production records at San Bartolomé suggest there is potential economic quantities of recoverable silver and tin present in that deposit. The second important growth stream for Andean is corporate mergers and acquisitions where we continue to assess opportunities. The M&A environment is active, and we're confident that accretive opportunities do exist. Andean is uniquely well positioned to execute on both asset-based and corporate transactions. And we have a team with technical expertise, the Board of Directors with a wealth of experience, building companies, the balance sheet with no debt, a capital structure with no warrants, and we've been actively evaluating projects for acquisition both in Bolivia and Latin America. With our balance sheet and bank balance closing in on USD 100 million, we do have purchasing power of multiples. Lastly, we do have active exploration pipeline. And for those activities remain ongoing, earlier this year, we began exploration on our 100% owned San Pablo and Rio Blanco properties, and we expect to release the results on our exploration activities within the next 10 days. We remain confident that Andean will grow into a successful multi-asset, multi-jurisdictional mining business and in doing so, consolidate our position as the miner of choice in Bolivia. Thank you for your time today. I will now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Simon Griffiths for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Stesha, and thank you, everyone for listening in. Please feel free to reach out to our Investor Relations team at [email protected] if you have any further questions.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.