MAG Silver Corp. (MAG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of MAG Silver Corp. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. If you participate in today's meeting and disclose personal information, you will be deemed to consent to the recording, transfer and use of same. If you disclose personal information of another person in today's meeting, you'll be deemed to represent and warrant to Computershare and the corporation that you first obtained all required consents for the disclosure, recording, transfer and use of such personal information from all the appropriate persons before your disclosure. During the meeting, we'll have a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Peter Barnes, Chair of the Board of MAG Silver Corp. Mr. Barnes, the floor is yours.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Peter Barnes and it's my pleasure to welcome you and to call to order the 2024 Annual General and Special Meeting of the Shareholders of MAG Silver Corp. This meeting will begin with the formal matters described in the management information circular. Following the formal portion of the meeting, MAG Silver's President and CEO, George Paspalas, will give a short corporate presentation. For additional information regarding the company, please refer to the company's website at www.magsilver.com. Given the virtual format of this meeting, we encourage registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who have specific questions or comments on an item of business to submit these questions now. Only persons who are registered shareholders or named proxy holders may do so. In particular, beneficial shareholders who have submitted proxies through their brokers may not do so unless they are named proxy holders. To submit a question or comment, please click on the question icon on the meeting screen. Only questions and comments are relevant to the items of business at this meeting, which are submitted by registered shareholders and named proxy holders will be addressed. We will do our best to address any such questions received prior to the conclusion of the meeting. However, if for any reason we're unable to do so, we will endeavor to follow up with you after the meeting. For the purposes of the meeting today, voting on all matters will be conducted by online poll. Registered shareholders and duly appointed named proxy holders will be asked to vote on each business item. If you have already voted by proxy, it is important that you not vote again here at the meeting unless you intend to change your initial vote. Any vote on the ballot will void all votes on the previously submitted proxy. So any meeting participants who complete any section of the ballot at this meeting must complete every other section of the ballot in order to record their votes on the other items of business at the meeting. The polls are currently open for all items of business and therefore, you may vote on every item right away. [Voting]

The matters of business to be voted on can be seen on the voting panel on your screen. To submit a vote, please select the voting choice displayed on your screen. Ballots may be submitted until shortly before the termination of this meeting. At the end of the meeting, we will announce provisional voting results based on proxy votes received prior to the meeting. The meeting will now come to order. In accordance with the articles of the company, I will act as Chair and I appoint Jill Neff, Corporate Secretary of the company to act as secretary for the meeting. Olivia Craven of Computershare Investor Services, Inc. will serve as scrutineer for the meeting. We will now proceed with the formal portion of the meeting. To expedite things in accordance with the articles of the company, I will make all of the motions and no motion needs to be seconded. Now for the business of the meeting. Notice calling this meeting of shareholders, together with the management information circular and proxy form were filed and notice and access instructions were electronically mailed to the shareholders on May 15, 2024. A copy of the declaration as to such mailing has been provided by the scrutineer and will be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as a schedule. As such, proper notice of the meeting has been given. I will dispense with the reading of the notice calling the meeting. A quorum for a meeting of shareholders of the company is 2 shareholders or 2 proxy holders representing shareholders or any combination thereof, holding not less than 5% of the issued shares entitled to be voted at the meeting. The scrutineer has advised me that proxies were received from the holders of a sufficient number of shares to constitute a quorum. I declare the meeting to be regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. The formal report of the scrutineer will be attached as a schedule to the minutes of this meeting. The meeting will only consider a number of formal matters following which it will be terminated. I now present the annual consolidated financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31, 2023 and the auditor's reports on the financial statements as required by the BC Business Corporations Act. The financial statements are available on SEDAR under the company's profile. The next item of business is the election of directors for the ensuing year. The persons who are proposed by management for election are listed in the management information circular. All such nominees have indicated their willingness to serve as directors for the ensuing year. I nominate the following persons for election as directors: Peter Barnes, George Paspalas, Tim Baker, Jill Leversage; Selma Lussenburg; Susan Mathieu, Dale Peniuk and Tom Peregoodoff. Pursuant to the Advance Notice Policy approved by shareholders at the 2012 Annual Meeting and amended effective March 23, 2018, any additional director nominations for today's meeting were required to have been received by the company by no later than the close of business on May 7, 2024. As no nominations were received prior to that date, there are no further nominees eligible to stand for election today. Accordingly, I now declare the nominations closed and move that these 8 persons nominated be elected as directors of the company to hold office until the termination of the next annual meeting of holders of common shares of the company or until their successors are elected or appointed. Is there any discussion? Registered shareholders and named proxy holders may use the question line on their screens for raising discussion matters. If there is no discussion, we will now proceed with the vote on this motion. If you have not already voted, please complete your online ballot for each nominee by selecting a voting option on the voting panel displayed on your screen. [Voting]

The auditors of the company are Deloitte LLP. Management proposes that they be reappointed until the next annual meeting. I now move that the auditors be reappointed at a remuneration to be fixed by the directors. Is there any discussion? If so, registered shareholders and named proxy holders may submit it in the question line on their screens. If there is no discussion, we will now proceed with the vote on this motion. If you have not already voted, please complete your online ballot by selecting a voting option on the voting panel displayed on your screen. [Voting]

The next item of business is to consider and if thought fit, approve a nonbinding resolution approving the company's approach to executive compensation. The full text of the advisory executive compensation resolution is set out in the management information circular. I now move that the resolution set out on Page 13 of the management information circular for this meeting, accepting the approach to the company's executive compensation program be approved. Is there any discussion? If so, please submit it in the question line. There being no discussion, we will now proceed with the vote on this motion. If you have not already voted, please complete your online ballot now by selecting a voting option on the voting panel displayed on your screen. [Voting]

Is there any other business that may properly be brought before this meeting? If so, please use the question line on your screen to raise additional business. There is no additional business. For registered shareholders and named proxy holders who have not voted on all matters of business, please do so now and submit your ballots. Again, if you already voted by proxy but you are now submitting your ballot, please note that all votes in your proxy will be canceled. And none of those votes will be recognized, only the ones on the ballot will be recorded. We will be closing the polls momentarily. [Voting]

Balloting is now closed. That concludes the voting at today's meeting. Based on provisional results provided to me by the scrutineer, I declare that all matters brought before today's meeting have been approved. I declare the nominees, Peter Barnes, George Paspalas, Tim Baker, Jill Leversage; Selma Lussenburg; Susan Mathieu, Dale Peniuk and Tom Peregoodoff elected to the Board of MAG Silver for the ensuring year. I would ask the scrutineer to compile a report regarding the final voting results on all business matters and I direct that the results be included in the minutes of this meeting. The results of the voting will be announced in a press release in accordance with the policies of the Toronto Stock Exchange and filed on SEDAR. All of the business for which this meeting is called has been completed. I now declare the formal portion of the meeting terminated. I'd like to close my discussion with you today by thanking Dan MacInnis for his 19 years of commitment and service to MAG Silver. Dan has elected not to stand for reelection at this annual meeting. Dan joined MAG as CEO in 2005 and provided sterling leadership to the company through the discovery of the Valdecañas vein, partnering with Fresnillo and defending a hostile attack on the company. Dan moved from the CEO role to the Board in 2013, where he has served as an exploration and geological expert on the Board and a great mentor to the young geologists and technical people in the company. Dan's contribution to MAG has been immense and we will miss him dearly. Thank you very much, Dan, for the last 19 years. And with Maria, we hope you enjoy a healthy and long retirement. I would now like to introduce George Paspalas, President and CEO, who will continue by providing a short presentation regarding MAG Silver.

Thank you, Peter and hello, everybody and I thank you for taking the time to dial in or watch our AGM online. MAG is a leading-edge North American tier 1 silver producer. I draw your attention to the fact that I will be making forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We are building a high-margin and sustainable cash flowing business. On this slide, you see our 3 principal assets. Juanicipio project in Mexico, Deer Trail exploration project in Utah and the Larder exploration project in Ontario, Canada. We're well positioned for continued shareholder value creation and we're focused on advancing high-grade, district scale precious metal projects in the Americas. Quickly about our capital structure. We have about 105.5 million shares fully diluted. We're held 73% by institutional shareholders and we enjoy the coverage of 13 analysts. They're listed in our corporate presentation on our website and you can see here their price targets for us. Our model is essentially disciplined capital management. Production from Juanicipio generates cash flow. Some of that cash flow is used to continue exploration of Juanicipio, at the Deer Trail project in Utah and the Larder project in Ontario. Along with the margins we are exhibiting at Juanicipio and expected exploration success at all 3 properties, we believe that there is a high potential for value creation for shareholders. We're committed to sustainability. We are about to issue our third sustainability report. And here you can see successive improvements in the external recognition of our performance with regards sustainability and ESG. Now I'm going to talk briefly about our 3 assets. Juanicipio in Mexico, high-grade silver deposit. It's a joint venture that we share with Fresnillo plc, who are the operator of the project. Deer Trail exploration project in Utah is currently drilling Phase 4 of our exploration process. This is a potentially polymetallic, silver-driven, gold, lead, zinc and copper opportunity. And we're well advanced, also drilling on Larder in Ontario, where we are drilling primarily for gold-driven targets, wonderful location in all 3 assets here. It's in world-class jurisdictions. Turning quickly to Mexico. The Juanicipio project. We want to talk about location. Here we sit on the Fresnillo Silver Trend, the most preeminent silver district in the world. And here in red, you see the Juanicipio joint venture property, nestled between the tenements of Fresnillo around us. Last year was a big year for MAG. We commenced the startup of the process plant in early 2023. We achieved commercial production during June of '23, nameplate in Q3 and we've exhibited now strong free cash flow generation and repatriation of that free cash flow back to Vancouver. On this slide, you see the maturity of our operating profile and mining tonnes are now up at the nameplate of the project. You can see the dark bars in this suite of column graphs represents Juanicipio only. We had the opportunity for a few years to do some sidestream processing through Fresnillo's facilities and that shows the elevated production rates at that time. And importantly, you can see in the bottom right hand, our all-in sustaining cash costs, quarter 1, we delivered $6.11, all-in sustaining cash costs of silver sold in quarter 1. And with the metal prices where they are at the moment, that's a magnificent margin for us. Juanicipio is a special asset. It's tier 1, it's world class. Here you see the resource and reserves, which are standout grades in silver, gold persists through the extent of the mineralization of the system and lead and zinc are very respectable and increase with depth. And we don't show it on here but at depth, copper enters into the system. And what makes this asset so special is the red arrow. We're sitting on a fluid upwelling zone, any permeable structure within the vicinity of this fluid upwelling zone will be mineralized. We released an updated technical report in March of this year, which continued to confirm Juanicipio is a high-margin, tier 1, district-scale silver producer. We have a -- about 1 hour long webinar on our website. I draw your attention to that because it explains a lot of the detail in the technical report and the progression of the technical report in 2024 from the precursor technical report of 2017. We announced an inaugural reserve. We show a robust production and operating cost profile through the initial 13-year mine life. And commensurate with the metal prices we assumed, which are a lot lower than where silver prices are at the moment, robust cash flows through the life of the mine. What's significant here is, as we get deeper in the Valdecañas system in Juanicipio, the silver grade does tend to drop like all epithermal veins but the uniqueness of Juanicipio is that we have multiple structures. So there are other veins with high-grade silver still to be mined. And as we get deeper, we get significant contributions from the base metals in the property. In fact, this slide here in the red shows the upside potential of Juanicipio. The blue areas within these long sections is the mine plan from the 2024 technical report. All of the red is bonus on top. And you can see in the table that some of this represents very high grade. So the technical report is the latest detailed update on the project and it confirms tier 1 robust asset long life. But there's more. We've only explored 5% of this joint venture ground. And we have a belief that there is possibly multiple further upwelling zones on the property. And that's going to be our focus moving forward over the next decade is to drill off and find more upwelling zones on the Juanicipio property. Turning quickly to Utah. Again, we have a great location here. We sit on the major fault separating the Great Basin from the Colorado Plateau of Western United States. You can see from the address here Bingham Canyon, Tintic, these are world-class historical deposits. And Deer Trial, we think, is a analog to the Bingham Canyon mine, a hub-and-spoke model. This is sort of a section through the mountain. There's the hub in the middle, the porphyry hub. We've drilled 2 holes confirming the existence of the hub and we're following up now on recent drilling where we've had significant mineralization and alteration in all holes that we've drilled looking for silver-driven mantos of size that we hope to be able to convert to cash flow units in the future. Jumping up to Ontario now, at Larder, again, we sit in a remarkable location. The Abitibi Greenstone Belt has historical production of over 200 million ounces of gold. You can see here where the Larder property is sitting on top of a very prolific Cadillac-Larder Break. And extending off that main break are second and third order structures, which the property also straddles, where a number of recent discoveries in this area have been found. We believe the opportunity we have at Larder is the absence of historical drilling on the second and third order structures. And particularly on the first order structure, the absence of deep drilling, where it's known in this area, the gold occurs at a depth below 500 meters. So looking forward now, our outlook and catalysts. Our major focus now is the optimization of Juanicipio with the intent of hopefully having further exploration on the property but generating significant cash flow. We closed the first quarter with $75 million of cash on that balance sheet. We intend to build on that, returning and thinking now to future allocation of capital. It's exciting times for us. Equally exciting is the exploration of Juanicipio and now the Deer Trial and Larder. So everybody, I thank you for your attention today. I hope you enjoyed the presentation and further information is available on our website. Thank you, everybody. I'll hand over to you, operator.

This does conclude today's meeting. You may now disconnect.