Kuya Silver Corporation (KUYA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
August 17, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
operatorOkay. As folks start coming in the room, I will say good morning or good afternoon, depending on where in the world you're logging in from today. I'm Romeo Maione. I'll be the moderator for today's call. But I've got with me today, David Stein, CEO, President and Director of Kuya Silver in order to go over the company's Q2 financials. David, how are you this morning?
David Stein
executiveGood. Thank you. And yes, thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. I'll just jump right into an introduction, and then we can open the call up for questions. So good morning. The second quarter was another meaningful period of progress for Kuya Silver as we continue to advance the Bethania mine from an early-stage operation towards our planned Phase 1 production level. I'd like to highlight 3 themes before we take questions today in terms of where we are today. First, production at Bethania continues to grow. Second, we have the financial capacity to execute our development and exploration plans. And third, we're building a broader pipeline of opportunities that can create value well beyond the current mine plan. Beginning with Bethania, we mined 5,097 tonnes of mineralized material during the second quarter, a 66% increase from the first quarter and a new quarterly record. We also processed a record 23,912 ounces of silver or just over 30,500 silver equivalent ounces during the quarter. June was particularly encouraging. We achieved record monthly production of 17 -- sorry, 13,273 silver equivalent ounces, while the average silver grade increased to 6.66 ounces per tonne and recoveries increased to approximately 82%. We also recorded a new daily production high of 124 tonnes. These results demonstrate that the operating team is making steady progress while simultaneously carrying out the underground development required to support higher production. During the quarter, we completed a record 437 meters of underground advancement, generating approximately 1,600 tonnes of development material. That development work is very important. Our objective is not simply to maximize the short-term production from the mine's existing infrastructure. We're investing in the access materials handling capacity and the available mining areas required to operate Bethania at a meaningfully larger and more consistent scale in the future. We are continuing to onboard contractors to supplement our workforce and accelerate both mine development and underground drilling. The mine team has also initiated a focused development program over the next couple of months, intended to make additional mineralized material available for mining later this year and into 2027. In parallel, we are installing a dual-car hoisting winch system, which is expected to be commissioned in October. This upgrade is intended to improve underground materials handling efficiency and provide additional flexibility and redundancy as development advances. Finally, financially, Kuya ended the quarter with approximately USD 25.5 million in cash. This provides us with a strong foundation to fund the Bethania development program, our expanded drilling plans and the infrastructure required to support our Phase 1 objective of 350 tonnes per day. Revenue for the second quarter was approximately $1.25 million, bringing revenue for the first 6 months of 2026 to over $2.7 million, more than double the comparable period of 2025. Our financial results continue to reflect the fact that Bethania is in capital development -- a capital and development-intensive ramp-up period. The net loss for the first 6 months of the year was approximately $2.8 million compared with $1.35 million in the prior period. This is principally as a result of increased activity at Bethania and expansion of our organizational capabilities, partially offset by higher revenue. We believe these investments are establishing an operational platform needed to increase production, improve consistency and support the longer-term growth of the Bethania district. Exploration and evaluation spending is expected to increase during the second half of the year as our expanded drilling program gets underway. Beyond Bethania, we reported preliminary results from our evaluation of historical tailings and stockpiles of the Silver Kings project in Northern Ontario. The initial reconnaissance program identified meaningful silver and cobalt grades in several areas, including a master composite sample from crush material at the Kerr Lake Mill that returned 168 grams per tonne silver and 0.365% cobalt. Another master composite sample from the Frontier at tailings were returned 75 grams per tonne silver. These results are preliminary and not -- should not be considered representative of an entire stockpile or tailings facility. However, they do support further work, including more extensive sampling, metallurgical testing and ultimately where warranted, resource estimation. This represents a relatively low-cost opportunity to investigate potential value in material already located at the surface -- at our surface across the extensive Silver Kings property. Taken together, the second quarter reflects a company that is continuing to execute on several fronts. We're increasing production, advancing critical underground development, maintaining a strong balance sheet and evaluating additional opportunities across the asset portfolio. There is still substantial work ahead of us, particularly as we advance Bethania towards a larger and more consistent operating scale. However, we believe the production records achieved during the quarter and the progress made in June with the work now underway provide a solid foundation for the next stage of Kuya Silver's growth. With that overview, I will ask the moderator to open up the call for questions. For those who may listen on replay, we welcome your feedback, and I would encourage you to visit our website at www.kuyasilver.com to book a meeting with management, send us an e-mail at info@kuyasilver.com and follow us on your favorite social media platform. Thank you.
Operator
operatorGreat. Thank you, David. Before I get into a couple of questions that I have, I'll call on Jake Sekelsky, who's back stage right now who's Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst from Alliance Partners. Asked to ask a couple of questions of his, and then I'll jump into a couple of additional ones.
Jacob Sekelsky
analystJust looking at the Bethania ramp and the record throughput during the second quarter, can you just touch on maybe a steady state rate that you're targeting for, call it, year-end heading into '27?
David Stein
executiveSo the target still would be to hit 350 tonnes per day. And we're putting a lot in the next few months into development. So we're really kind of building up towards a pretty big jump in the fourth quarter. And whether or not that's on December 15 or 31 or some date around there, not exactly sure yet, but we're getting very close now. And a lot of the DUCs are in a row and now they just need to execute on them. And then I think we'll be in that range, plus or minus by the end of the year.
Jacob Sekelsky
analystOkay. That's helpful. And then just on the Camila acquisition, are you able to provide any additional color at this stage on the remaining gating items that you need to clear for closing? And is there a ceiling on processing capacity under the toll agreement where you'll need to close prior to increasing throughput higher?
David Stein
executiveSure. So on the first part of the question, the status is that we're very close to finalizing the agreement and announcing that closed final agreement. So we just need to continue to work on that with the vendors and with Camila -- with the other party, and we will get there. I'm very confident. There certainly could be a ceiling of production with what we can put through the Camila plant over the span of a few months, perhaps, depending on the timing of the expansion, et cetera, there's definitely the potential where we could be capped out. Again, it would just be for a few months, I believe. And fortunately, with our very large cash position, we're more than happy to just stockpile material if we need to. We don't -- we're not desperate to go and process every single tonne that we mine, and we're in that fortunate position. So that's how we expect that we'll handle it. If it's just going to be a short-term delay, then we can just stockpile that extra material that we're mining and process it later.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] So far, there's somebody saying thanks to the great team for your dedication during this milestone quarter. But let me get into just a couple of questions, give people a chance to ask their own. I would say it's going to be a shorter event just for the folks in the room. One thing I wanted to know, David, you're sitting on the USD 25.5 million in cash as of June 30. How is that number shaping what you're able to do in the second half of the year?
David Stein
executiveWell, it allows us to do a number of things all at once, which before we had raised that money, we would have had to do things kind of in sequence. And now we're able to do multiple capital projects at the same time, which means -- it just means that things are going to happen quicker and which should be better for shareholders because time is money. So in terms of what we're prioritizing right now in the immediate months, we're looking at the -- investing in underground development, especially with the ramp project that will -- much of that will happen in the second half of the year of 2026. And the other big expenditure item we're looking at would be the exploration drilling, which we have big plans for here in the second half as well. We've talked about that in the past. And those bills will start coming due here in the second half pretty soon and perhaps go into 2027. And then those would be the main 2 things. We are also looking at potentially starting some plant development for the early plant development for the Bethania plant. So smaller projects that we can also use for the mine that we can -- basically that will also help us with the mine operations and that we had originally planned to build into the plant many years ago, several years ago. So we have -- again, because we have that flexibility, we are looking at doing that. And we -- for example, we might build on-site lab here in the second half of the year. It's not a huge expenditure, but it's something we would have had needed for the plant anyway, and we can also use it for the mine. So that's an example of ways that we're kind of being creative and also moving things forward a lot faster.
Operator
operatorGreat. I know you talked about how you initiated a focused development program to unlock mineralized material for mining later this year and into '27. How should investors in the room and very good number for [indiscernible] and I appreciate everybody joining us. How should they think about the trade-off between developing for the future and feeding the mill today?
David Stein
executiveWell, the way -- that's a great question, and I think it's something that a lot of investors struggle with. Look, at the end of the day, your -- I think your biggest risk as a junior mining investor is that potentially unlimited dilution when you just don't know how much money the company is going to need, what price they're going to be doing financing that, et cetera. And obviously, that something very common for companies in our market cap range because usually, they don't have a producing mine. They're just at the whims of the exploration market and spending and costs related to that. We're fortunate now that we're sitting on all this cash that really we can focus on the future and make those investments today in mine development and basically trade off the short term for the long term because the long term, in my view, is a massive opportunity. And that's really my motivation as a CEO and as a very, very large shareholder of the company is really what we can do in '27, '28 and beyond, not so much this quarter, next quarter, et cetera. Like I realize it's important to establish credibility, but we're really still building our team, building our network of contractors and that process will continue to go on for the rest of this year and into next year. So that's -- and why we're able to make that trade-off is because of our cash position. That's the bottom line. If we were sitting on $5 million or $3 million, we would have to focus more on mining every time possible and getting that revenue back and being in that sort of flywheel of cash flow breakeven, we're fortunate that we can actually break out of that and really build for the future here, and that's extremely exciting.
Operator
operatorAwesome. Last question for me. So also last opportunity to ask questions from the audience today during this question to ask them. I just propose watching the second half of 2026. You've gotten through it already, but what are kind of the 2 or 3 milestones that's going to tell them that the plan is still on track?
David Stein
executiveI think we watched the progress on the ramp development in Q3, Q4. And that's going to be a big one. I think the exploration results that we can generate really are going to add something really special to the story that we've unfortunately never been able to do before because of capital constraints and tough markets in the past, we cannot do that. I think that's going to be a big factor as well. And when we start putting out exploration results, really think about a couple of things. Number one is it's going to solidify the current mine model because a lot of the drilling is going to be going deeper, but from where the mine levels -- where we're mining right now. But it's also going to add ounces for the future. And that's our goal is to go well beyond just what's needed in the next few months or years. And we think we can do that with the budget that we've assigned and the drill plan that we've developed internally. And so I think when results start coming out of that, you're going to -- the market can kind of see what we're delivering on that front, and that's very important as well. So those would probably be the 2 biggest things in terms of really setting us up for 2027 and beyond and really adding a lot of value in the short term. I think the production, quarterly, monthly production results, they're still going to be kind of up and down and frankly, less important than those 2 things.
Operator
operatorGreat. Well, David, thank you so much. Jake, thanks for joining us as well. For everybody who's in the room today. As soon as the room closes, you'll have an opportunity to request meeting, but there's also the way to request meeting that David and I have talked about today. But David, thank you so much. I hope everybody has a wonderful end of the Monday.
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