Hecla Mining Co (NYSE:HL) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 10, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Anvita Patil - VP, IR & Treasurer, Hecla Limited

Phillips Baker - President, CEO & Director

Russell Lawlar - SVP & CFO

Lauren Roberts - SVP & COO

Conference Call Participants

Heiko Ihle - H.C. Wainwright & Co.

Michael Siperco - RBC Capital Markets

Lucas Pipes - B. Riley Securities

John Tumazos - John Tumazos Very Independent Research

Joseph Reagor - ROTH MKM

Operator

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Hecla Mining Company First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Anvita Patil, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. You may begin your conference.

Anvita Patil

Good morning, Rob, and thank you all for joining us for Hecla's First Quarter 2023 Financial and Operations Results Conference Call. I'm Anvita Patil, Hecla's Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Our financial results news release that was issued this morning, along with today's presentation, are available on Hecla's website.

On today's call, we have Phil Baker, Hecla's President and CEO; Lauren Roberts, Hecla's Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Russell Lawlar, Hecla's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Any forward-looking statements made today by the management team come under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and involve risks as shown on Slides 2 and 3 in our earnings release and in our 10-K and 10-Q filings with the SEC. These and other risks could cause results to differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures cited in this call and related slides are found in the slides or the news release.

With that, I will pass the call to Phil.

Phillips Baker

Thanks, Anvita. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our call. I'm going to start on Slide 4. April 16th marked the 15th anniversary of Hecla's purchase of Rio Tinto's interest in Greens Creek. And Greens Creek has been our foundational asset. It's really what's allowing us to be the fastest-growing established silver producer. With that acquisition of Greens Creek that we made those years ago, we made a commitment to primarily focus our efforts in Tier 1 jurisdictions. Now we are the largest producer of silver in the U.S., and soon in Canada.

But Hecla is not just about jurisdictions, although I'm going to come back to jurisdictions at the end of our prepared remarks. Hecla is about creating real value on a per share basis by exploring, innovating and executing on our large property positions. And it all starts with Greens Creek, which has provided the stability cash flow and about 30% of our production growth over the last 15 years. Its employees have done a phenomenal job of continuously improving, making Greens Creek a longer lived, lower cost, more productive mine. This is real value to shareholders. And Greens Creek's success is allowing Hecla to invest in the Lucky Friday and Keno. The investment in Lucky Friday has allowed its production growth in the last 5 years to go from less than 1 million ounces to more than 4 million with more growth on the horizon. And substantial growth over the next few years will be primarily from Keno that should produce more than 2.5 million ounces this year and about 4 million ounces next year.