Coeur Mining, Inc. (CDE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Coeur Mining's 2020 Annual Stockholders Meeting. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Robert Mellor, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Coeur Mining. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Christie, and thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'm Robert Mellor, Chairman of the Board. And on behalf of the officers and directors of the company, welcome to the Coeur Mining Annual Stockholders Meeting. I hope you are all well, safe, and I would like to start by recognizing all of our employees from the corporate office to everyone out at the mine sites, who are working hard and safely to navigate the company through the challenges and complexities of the current COVID-19 situation. I would also like to thank frontline health care workers for their extraordinary efforts in the recent months. Due to the current COVID-19 situation, we were not able to hold our Annual Stockholders Meeting in person. However, we are pleased to be able to conduct our meeting virtually via the Internet and the originally scheduled date and time. By hosting the meeting virtually, all of our stockholders are still able to attend the meeting and vote as you would at the in-person meeting, and voting is now open and any stockholder who has not already submitted a proxy and wishes to vote their shares may do so by clicking on the vote here button on your screen. It is not necessary to vote through the virtual meeting platform if you have already submitted your proxy to the company. We will conduct the business portion of our meeting first. We will then deliver a short company update, and we'll answer your questions as time allows. You may submit questions in writing through the Ask a Question field in the virtual meeting interface. With that, let's get started. Joining me today are Mitchell Krebs, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director; and Casey Nault, our Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. I would also like to acknowledge the other directors standing for reelection, each of whom was elected at the 2019 annual meeting: Linda Adamany, Sebastian Edwards, Randy Gress, Eduardo Luna, Jessica McDonald, John Robinson, Brian Sandoval and Ken Thompson. Gerry Lane from Broadside Financial Solutions (sic) [ Broadridge Financial Solutions ] and Casey Nault are appointed to act as inspectors of the election for the meeting. Gregg Rusk of our independent auditors, Grant Thornton, is also in attendance today. The meeting is now called to order and officially open. Adequate notice of this meeting was given to the stockholders of the corporation as evidenced by the affidavit of distribution of the notice prepared by Broadridge, who completed the mailing of the notices. I will order the certificate and any related documents prepared by Broadridge to be filed with the permanent records of the corporation. The company has received proxies representing 75% of the total shares issued and outstanding, and so a quorum is present at the meeting. We have 3 proposals to come before the stockholders for approval. Today, if you have not already voted online, please do so at this time, and I will close the polls following the presentation of the proposals: #1 is the election of the Board of Directors; #2 is ratification of the appointment of Grant Thornton as our independent registered public accounting firm for 2020; and #3, approval of an advisory vote on executive compensation. The polls are now closed, and I will report the preliminary results of the voting. I'm pleased to report that by an initial review of all shares voted, all director nominees have been elected, and all other proposals have been approved. At the adjournment of this meeting, the inspector will count and review the final votes received and promptly issue an inspector's report. The company will release the final votes to the public by May 18, 2020. And this concludes the formal portion of our 2020 Annual Stockholders Meeting, and I declare the meeting now adjourned. Thank you for taking the time to join us today and for voting. I will now turn the meeting over to Mitch to give you a brief company update and to answer your questions as submitted through the virtual meeting platform. I encourage you to consult the rules of conduct by clicking the link under meeting materials on your screen before submitting your question. Mitch, I'll turn the meeting over to you.

Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone. I would like to remind everyone that some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements from which actual results may differ. Please review the cautionary statements and other information, including risk factors described in our SEC filings, including our first quarter 10-Q and our 2019 10-K. So thank you for taking part in our first ever virtual stockholders meeting. I know I'm really proud to be a part of this organization, the way we all work together, the path and direction we're taking the business. And especially over the past 2 months, the response to COVID-19 and primarily the way we've taken care of each other and reached out in a time of need into our communities, it's reminded me yet again just how special this company is and how special the people are who work here. So thank you to everyone from the Board of Directors, the executive leadership team, to all the great people at our operating locations, and our teams carrying out our exploration programs in the field to all of you for your dedication and tremendous effort on behalf of the company. I thought I'd take a couple of minutes and briefly highlight the company's strategy and some of the key priorities we're focused on to responsibly create long-term value for our stockholders. On the company overview slide, as you all probably know, we are a U.S.-based producer of precious metals with 5 operations located in North America. Turning to Slide 4. Our strategy is to keep building Coeur into a growing developer and operator of precious metals assets that can deliver solid returns and cash flow and effectively manage the risks that are inherent to our business. We are delivering on this strategy by focusing on the following 6 priorities shown on this slide. First, we focus on operating a balanced portfolio of assets in order to reduce any risk on one single asset. We also focus on safe jurisdictions, all in North America, primarily in the U.S., where 3 of our 5 operations are located. We focus on maintaining a unique revenue mix, mostly gold with also a significant element of our revenue derived from silver. We're also mindful of the asset-based requirements for a pipeline of new future high-quality assets, so that we can keep growing and improving the business over the long term. Secondly, we focus on ensuring that we take a disciplined approach to how we deploy capital in order to generate returns that will translate into long-term value for stockholders. We are constantly striving to enhance the quality of the assets we operate. For example, taking existing assets and making them better, and we have several examples of those throughout the company, whether it's the Palmarejo mine in Mexico, more recently, the Kensington operation in Alaska, where we're now seeing the fruits of the strategy we laid out and began to execute about 4 years ago. We also have engaged in selective mergers and acquisitions over time to help us continue to enhance the quality of the assets in the company. And the next sort of phase of enhancing the quality of our assets really exists out at Rochester, the mine in Northern Nevada, where we're evaluating and soon to be beginning an expansion project that we call POA 11. And we look at that as the next significant step in the company's progression toward creating value and higher quality, larger, long-life cash flowing assets. Fourthly, we focus on exploration and the value that can be generated from drilling activities. Just this year here in 2020, we have undertaken the largest exploration program in the company's 92-year history of $50 million in order to try and create value by making new discoveries and by adding to the current reserves and resources at our existing operations. We'll have more to say about our exploration program midyear when we plan to put out a midyear exploration update, but we're seeing a lot of good results at all of our operations, including down in Southern Nevada, where we've been drilling on some earlier stage projects we acquired about 18 months ago when we purchased a company called Northern Empire, and we're excited about what's happening down there in the southern part of the state. We also focus on maintaining a prudent balance sheet. Obviously, we're in a very cyclical capital-intensive business. And so we are very mindful of trying to maintain a conservative, simple balance sheet that can withstand the cyclicalities of our business. We've dramatically reduced our leverage ratios over the last few years, and we feel good now about the balance sheet of the company. And then sixth, and finally, on this list and then turning over to Slide -- I believe it's Slide 6, on ESG and our environmental, social and governance initiatives. We really believe, and a lot of people looking outside in to the company believe we have an ESG profile that is truly best-in-class. And we don't do this just to check a box or to try and obtain a certain rating from a third party. It's because it's the right thing to do. It reflects really who we are as an organization and as people. And frankly, it is good for business over the long term. And whether you look at the environmental side of the business and what we have done on the water management side, air, tailings management, on the social side, the investments that we make in our people into diversity, into development of communities and our workforce, and then finally, on the governance side, our governance structure, Board composition, the Board's level of engagement. I'd encourage you to have a look at our responsibility report that we recently issued that's available on our website. We believe this is a solid strategy, one that reflects our values and with solid execution should lead to long-term value creation for stockholders. So I want to thank you again for being a stockholder. And a special thank you to our Board and to all of our employees for your contributions and commitment to the company. So with that, I'd be happy to take any questions from anyone before we wrap up. Okay. There being none, I'll go ahead and wrap up the call by just saying thank you again for attending the meeting. We look forward to keeping you all up-to-date on our initiatives and results as the year progresses and stay healthy and safe, and thank you again for dialing in. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.