Good day, welcome to the Hochschild Mining Q4 2022 production report conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ignacio Bustamante, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Karen. Hello, and welcome to our conference call to discuss our full year production results. I'm here in Lima and with me is Eduardo Noriega, our CFO, and in London we have Charlie Gordon, our Head of Investor Relations. I will talk about the operational performance first and then cover permitting at Inmaculada, progress at Mara Rosa, progress at Snip, and the resource we have announced at Pallancata, along with our financial position. Gold production in the quarter was just short of 98,000 gold equivalent ounces or 7 million silver equivalent ounces, which is our strongest quarter of the year. For the year as a whole, Hochschild produced 359,000 gold equivalent ounces, which is a touch below our guidance of between 360 and 375.
A result we are proud of given the disruptions that we have had to deal with in Peru for the last few months. Inmaculada delivered its strongest quarter with better-than-expected grades offsetting slightly below-budget tonnage. Production was just over 42,000 ounces of gold and 1.6 million ounces of silver, which is a gold equivalent total of 64,600 ounces. Overall, Inmaculada's output in 2023 has been just over 237,000 ounces of gold, which is in line with the revised guidance given to the market in August. Again, demonstrate the consistency of our flagship asset.
As you know, we had some local and then national disruption in the final quarter that I would like to commend our team at Inmaculada because these have been very difficult circumstances for them to operate in, and they have done a great job in delivering such a strong quarter and a reliable annual result. In Argentina, San José has had another solid quarter with better than expected tonnage being the key feature. Output was 3.1 million silver equivalent ounces, which therefore gives us 11 million ounces for the year as a whole. A total which you may remember has been slightly affected by the fire in the crushing area and COVID-related absences in the first quarter of the year.
Over at Pallancata, production was similar to the third quarter at around 800,000 silver equivalent ounces, which brings the annual total to 3.2 million ounces, which is a touch below the revised forecast and reflects the long-term declining silver grade profile in a mining area that is close to completion. In terms of costs, I am pleased to say that we remain on track to hit our 2022 guidance, which if you remember, is between $1,330 and $1,370 per gold equivalent ounce. Obviously, the key issue facing the company is the government decision on the modification of Inmaculada's environmental impact assessment for the MEIA for short. What I can say is that the process remains ongoing at this stage.
Our current expectation is that we can expect a final decision by the end of this quarter, and we have therefore today issued the production cost and CapEx guidance for 2023 on that basis. Clearly, if there are significant delays or a negative decision, this will impact the existing mine plan and resulting levels of production in 2023. Failure to secure approval of the MEIA will result in a suspension of operations at Inmaculada during the second half of 2023 until a new MEIA is approved. The specific date of suspension will depend on operational factors that are currently being evaluated. We have also decided that it will be preferable to issue full year results with a decision under our belt and have therefore moved results to the April 20th to allow further time for the process to be completed.
Turning to our Mara Rosa construction project, we have made more good headway in the final quarter of the year, with the total project now at 50%. Detailed engineering is now at 96% complete, and we have made good advances on the earthworks, procurement, and infrastructure, and the processing plant area is now 32% complete. We remain on time and within budget and still expect first production in the first half of 2024, which is now only a year away. We have also today announced the key results from the PEA that we have completed on the Snip project in British Columbia, which shows solid returns at a relatively conservative gold price, which is highly encouraging. We are currently working on our plans for next steps on the project.
Clearly the focus of the company remains on the construction of the Mara Rosa project in Brazil. The key piece of positive exploration news today is the size of the resource that we found last year close to the Pallancata operations. You can see in the release that the Royropata zone already has an audited inferred resource of over 50 million silver equivalent ounces at a combined grade of 848 grams per tons silver equivalent and with an average width of around 5 meters. Permits for this new zone will take approximately three years, we do believe that we have now secured an exciting medium to long-term future for Pallancata. There's still lots of potential to grow this number in the next few quarters.
On the financial side, we have approximately $144 million of cash, which translates to net debt of $175 million. An EBITDA to EBITDA for 2022 of 0.69. As I mentioned, we have also provided guidance for 2023 assuming approval of the permit in the first quarter. In summary, we expect to produce between 301,000-314,000 gold equivalent ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of between $1,370 and $1,450 per gold equivalent ounce. We have used the average ratio for 2022 of 83 times for silver. For those forecasts, we have used that ratio you see for those forecasts.
If you're interested in seeing the split of the forecast by mine, you can find it in the release that we have published today. Sustaining and development CapEx is set at between $125 million to $135 million, and project CapEx for Mara Rosa is approximately $100 million to $110 million for the year. To sum up, we are proud of all the effort from our operational colleagues in delivering output only slightly below guidance despite a complex social situation in the country and at costs in line. We are making further good progress with our Mara Rosa project in Brazil, and are really happy to announce a 50 million ounce resource already from the Royropata zone at Pallancata, which ensures the future of the mine in the medium to long term.
Finally, we currently expect the Inmaculada process to be completed by the end of the current quarter. With that, I would now like to open up to any questions that you may have.
If you do have a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. The first question today comes from Marina Calero of RBC Capital Markets.
Good morning, and thanks for the call. I have a question about the current operating environment in Peru. It seems you have managed to operate during the last quarter of the year without any major disruptions. I would be interested to see how you see this playing out this year and what mitigating actions have you taken to protect your assets or potentially offset any impacts in your supply chains. Thank you.
Sure, Marina. That's a tough question to answer. I'll try to do my best now because there's a lot of uncertainty around it. What I can tell you is that earlier in the fourth quarter of last year, we had some community-specific issues that we had to deal with that you have probably seen in the press. Fortunately, those conversations with our communities have been moving forward. I would say so far, advancing well. We have now dialogue tables with the participation of the government with our most important communities. Those conversations are going well.
I would say regarding community-specific matters and company-specific matters, I would say we are in a much better position now than we were a few months ago. The big challenge now is pertaining to the overall country situation, which is impacting mainly, although it's impacting the entire country, but most of the focus are focused on the southern part of the country, which is where our operations are located. What we are seeing is on-and-off roads getting blocked, and that's demanding significant challenges for us and for our personnel at the mine because the uncertainty on whether the shift changes for the personnel is going to happen or not, you know.
Fortunately, with the cooperation of all our people and a significant effort and commitment, now we are having to deal with this uncertainty and necessarily having to delay for a few days the shift changes. The people is helping us really to cope with that. Same with materials. You know, materials, it will be different because you can advance them during the blockades, you know, depending on which roads are open and which roads are blocked. Once the road gets unblocked, then you can advance to the next piece of the territory. It's been a challenge. I would say so far, we are doing well.
We have managed to produce at pretty much full capacity. We have recently completed shift changes for most of our personnel in our mines, and we have a good level of stocks in our mines, you know. We do not anticipate any short term or very short term matter. We do believe that these protests are going to continue for some additional time, you know. We need to continue being very active in managing logistics and our people to make sure that we are prepared for that and that we minimize any potential impact to them, you know.
I'm afraid that the social situation, the political situation in the country is still so uncertain that we need to be prepared to deal with this uncertainty and social situation for the next few weeks.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question today comes from Daniel Major of UBS.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me all right?
Yes. Yes, Daniel, how are you?
Yeah. Okay, thanks. Yes, the first question around I guess, scenarios with respect to the shutdown of Inmaculada if you don't receive the environmental permit. I think you mentioned you've got $140 million of cash on the balance sheet. Can you give us and just a quick review, any other liquidity, whether you've got any covenants on any debt if your EBITDA were to dramatically decline as a consequence of shutting Inmaculada, and your ability to, you know, complete the Mara Rosa project from a perspective of, you know, sort of funding if there was essentially very limited or no cash flow out of Peru?
I found that the details on the financials to Eduardo Noriega, Dan, no? What I can tell you that at the end, there's no exact answer yet because clearly as you can imagine, it's not that we're dealing with a binary scenario which is either yes or no. No, there could be many things, you know, around along those lines, and it's gonna be dependent on the answers that we get from the government that the different scenarios will be able, no, whether it's a delay of a few days, of a few weeks or more than that, or months or whatever, you know. It's gonna be highly dependent on that.
Let me pass it to Eduardo so he can give you a look on our financials at this time.
Thank you, Ignacio.
Thank you, Daniel. Yes, as you pointed out, we have close to $144 million in cash. And the total debt of the company is close to $300 million.
Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Dan, can you hear us?
Yeah, I can hear you loud and clear.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah.
And then the pending CapEx for Mara Rosa is a little bit higher than $100 million. No, as Ignacio pointed out, we need to evaluate the situation to see what further actions we need to take in case there's an issue with the MEIA. There are certain, there, certainly there are discretionary spending that we can manage and we're looking at other options as well to, you know, to prepare for that scenario. So far we're continuing planning for different scenarios.
Sorry, can you hear me okay?
Yes. Yes. We can hear you now. Yes.
Oh, yeah, sorry. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I guess it's gonna be see what happens with the decision. Just a second, sort of question on that. In terms of what part of the government or where is the decision, sort of sitting, and is there any impact of the political and social turmoil on the decision around the environmental permit, or is that sort of independent of the current sort of crisis situation?
Yes. There's an entity at the government that is called SENACE. That is an entity that centralizes all the permitting process. Okay? SENACE is subscribed to the Ministry of the Environment. Now in terms of SENACE, it's in charge of coordinating with all different organizations within the government that participate in this process, such as, for instance, the water authority or the national parks authority, or the archaeological section or culture. No, and they interact, and they centralize everything. Right now the main coordinations that we're having are with SENACE, no, and with the water authority and with the parks authority. Those are the three that we're currently interacting with.
In general, I would say that the overall social situation in the country, shouldn't have any impact or a negative impact on this process. Obviously there are certain things that are particular to some of our operations on the social front. Those are things that could play a role in the permitting process. But as I mentioned, we are feeling much more comfortable now than we were feeling a few months ago on our own community relations front. Again, the national protest, which is the point that we're facing today, shouldn't have an impact.
Okay. Well, good luck with it.
Thank you, Dan. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Charlie Rothbarth of Berenberg Bank.
Hi, everyone. Can you hear me?
Yes, Charlie, we can hear you well.
Perfect. Thanks very much for the call, and thank you very much for taking my question. My question revolves around Pallancata. Just in terms of if you were to shut the mine at the end of next year, would you have any inventory you would expect to release from there over the course of this year that we should think about?
Yes. I mean, the current plan of Pallancata should stop production sometime this year in 2023. No, that's the way that we have released our guidance. We continue doing efforts to try to extend the life of mine, but the working assumption is that it will be shutting down sometime in Q4 of this year. If there are any changes to that, no, either to extend or to reduce it because for whatever reason it might not be profitable, we're gonna be updating the market as soon as we have the most clear picture. No, right now our current assumption, working assumption is that we will continue producing until the last quarter of 2023.
Do you have any inventory on site that you would be selling above your guidance over this year, assuming that the mine plan shuts in Q4?
No. No. No. Basically no inventories.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Charlie.
As there are no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Bustamante for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you very much to everybody for participating in this call. Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact Charlie Gordon at our London office. Thank you very much and have a great day. Bye.
That does now conclude today's conference call. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.