Earnings Call: Q3 2023

Nov 10, 2023

Earnings release

Victoria Gold video and conference call to discuss the company's Q3 2023 Financial Results. Listeners are encouraged to read Victoria's Q3 2023 audited financial results report and MD and A, both available on the company's website and SEDAR, sorry. Joining us on the call today are John McConnell, President and CEO Marty Randle, Chief Financial Officer and Mark Aranteau, Chief Operating Officer. Please note that listeners and viewers will be muted while the management provides a short review of the results. After the review, there will be an opportunity to ask question during the presentation, please do so in the chat function and the question will be addressed during the Q and A session. Also note that the video call will be recorded and available for playback on the company's website. Will be making forward looking statements on this call and encourage participants to see our disclosure documents, including our corporate presentation, AIF and MD and A and the cautionary notes therein, which can be found on SEDAR and the company's website. I will now turn the meeting over to John McWonnell, Director and CEO. John? Thanks, Leonora. Good morning, afternoon or evening depending on where you are. Thanks for joining the call. I'll provide a brief summary of the 3rd quarter and then pass the call to Marty and Mark to provide more details. 1st and foremost, Starting with safety, we had one lost time injury reported in Q3, our first LTI of 2023 as a worker who was on modified work duties was unable to return to their full time role. Our total recordable injury frequency for Q3 was 1.82. And for 2023, our TRIF year to date remains amongst the best in our industry at 1.15. Operationally, the Q3 of 2023 saw the Eagle Gold Mine continue its strong operational performance despite an approximate 2 week shutdown due to wildfire evacuations in the quarter. As should be evident from Q3 results, we remain on track to achieve our 2023 guidance for both production and costs. Our operating team and on-site employees deserve credit for adapting to challenging conditions early in Q3. This strong operational performance allowed us to generate strong free cash flow allowing us to comfortably repay $15,000,000 of principal on our debt facilities in the 3rd quarter. On the exploration front, we have released the final assays from our 2023 program at our Raven Discovery located on the Dublin Gulch property approximately 15 kilometers east of Eagle, With results including 5.8 grams per tonne over 31 meters, We are excited by the potential we see at Raven and plan to release an updated resource for the deposit in the Q1 of 2024. Finally, in the Q3, we announced the acquisition of Golden Predator Mining from Sabre Gold, which included the 2,100,000 ounce Brewery Creek project in the Yukon and the exploration stage Gold Dome property, which is located near Ride Eagle. Notably, we elected to pay the entire initial consideration of approximately $8,000,000 in cash, a reflection of both our strong cash flow and importantly, our view of the unrecognized value in our share price. I will now turn the call over to Marty Rendle, our Chief Financial Officer. Hi, everyone. I'll briefly discuss our financials before passing it over to Mark to operations. Currency will be in Canadian dollars unless specifically mentioned otherwise. During the quarter, we sold a little over 40,000 ounces of gold, resulting in revenue of approximately 105,000,000 This was about 4% higher than the $101,000,000 in revenue generated during the Q3 of 2022. The improvement in revenue is a result of a higher gold price and stronger U. S. Dollar, partially offset by lower gold ounces sold. Cost of goods sold was $67,000,000 during the quarter compared to $65,000,000 in the Q3 of the previous year. Importantly, our costs have decreased since Q2 2023 when cost of goods sold were 75,000,000 This is the result of successful cost initiatives that we touched on last quarter and which are ongoing. We have seen a fairly wide range of commentary from our industry peers regarding inflation, with some peers noting that inflation is subsiding and others noted that it's still an issue. This might be influenced by jurisdiction or a host of other factors. But for Western Canada and Yukon, where we do business, inflation continues and we are seeing wage pressures as well as cost pressures across the board. Our number one cost input is labor and the persistent upward pressure on wages is causing increased cost and this also affects contractors and consulted costs. Fuel is our 2nd largest expense and while prices have fallen from their 2022 highs, year over year prices are relatively flat. So while inflation persists, our cost of goods sold has stayed constant year over year, showing that the site cost reduction initiatives are certainly bearing fruit. The higher revenues combined with flat costs year over year resulted in an increase in gross profit and in operating earnings. When we look at some of the non operational impacts on net income, We see higher interest expenses year over year due to higher interest rates and we've experienced lower losses on foreign exchange. So while the U. S. Dollar strengthened during the quarter, it strengthened less than it did in the previous year. You'll recall that the strengthening U. S. Dollar leads to higher Canadian dollar revenue, which is very positive for us, but it also results in a loss in our U. S. Denominated debt. And this provides us with a partial natural hedge with respect to currency. Income before tax for the quarter was $10,500,000 a material improvement over the $2,100,000 loss experienced during the Q3 of 2022. Taxes, including current and deferred income and mining taxes, stayed relatively constant year over year, contributing to a market increase in quarterly net income after tax. The Q3 2023 net income after tax was $5,600,000 or $0.08 per share versus a 3rd quarter loss after tax in 2022 of $8,600,000 or $0.13 per share. By the end of September 2022, the company held cash and equivalents of $19,000,000 compared to $21,000,000 at the end of 2022. I would remind listeners that we do use our revolving credit facility to manage our treasury and therefore our cash balance stays relatively constant while debt will fluctuate to match our liquidity needs. Working capital at the end of September was $140,000,000 compared to $95,000,000 at the end of December 2022. The increase in working capital is substantially the result of reduced accounts payable. During the most recent quarter, total capital expenditures were $21,000,000 while 9 months year to date total capital expenditures were $57,000,000 This is comprised of sustaining capital, capitalized stripping and growth capital as well as exploration and a detailed breakdown is included in our MD and A. I'll now look at our non IFRS performance measures. Once again, the detailed numerical breakdown of each of the measures along with commentary on the calculation is contained within our MD and A. During this section, I will use U. S. Dollars for unit costs to allow for uniform peer comparison. The average realized price per ounce sold during the quarter was US1926 dollars per ounce of gold. This compares to the Q3 of 2022, where we realized US1717 dollars per ounce. Cash cost per ounce of gold sold during the most recent quarter were 1484 sorry, that's all in sustaining costs. All in sustaining costs per ounce of gold sold during the most recent quarter was $14.66 and this compares to the Q3 of 2022 where all in sustaining cost per ounce were 14.89 Free cash flow before working capital during the most recent quarter was CAD18 million. This compares to the Q3 of 2022 where free cash flow before working capital was negative CAD16 1,000,000 quite a significant increase year over year. Free cash flow after working capital during the most recent quarter was CAD25 1,000,000 And this compares to the Q3 of 2022 where free cash flow after working capital was negative 9,000,000 Finally, EBITDA earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization during the Q3 of 2023 was CAD35 1,000,000 or CAD0.52 per share. And this compares to the Q3 of 2022 where EBITDA was CAD23 million or CAD0.35 per share. I'll now turn it over to Mark Arante, our Chief Operating Officer. Yes. Thanks, Marty, and hi to everybody on the call. As John noted earlier, health and safety at site remains a top priority and our track record to date reflects these efforts. In the Q3 of 2023, the Eagle Mine produced approximately 42,000 ounces of gold. In the 1st 9 months of 2023, we produced a total of 125,000 ounces of gold and that's a significant increase compared to 2022, positioning us well to achieve our 2023 production guidance of 160,000 to 180,000 ounces. We stacked 2,300,000 tons of ore grading at 0.65 grams per ton in the 3rd quarter And that's for a total of 6,900,000 tons grading 0.75 grams per ton stacked in the 1st 9 months of the year. The mining rate in the Q3 was 55,000 tonnes per day. It's an increase quarter over quarter from 49,000 tonnes per day that we averaged in the Q2 of 2023. Mining rates are expected to increase further in the Q4 of this year, primarily due to availability of waste headings combined with shorter haul distances. Our leach pad performance remains strong in the 3rd quarter. Recoveries are continuing to trend in line with our forecast levels. And notably, we saw an approximate 7,000 ounce reduction in our recoverable gold inventory in the Q3 as ounces stacked in prior quarters were recovered to dore and that's as expected under our heap leach model. Grade 2Q3 do remain in line with our reserve model, which has which so far the life of mine has reconciled well to actual production results. The decrease in stacked grade quarter over quarter primarily reflects mine sequencing, and we do expect to see an improvement in gold grades in Q4. As demonstrated by our operational result in the 1st 9 months of 2023, our production levels and our asset availability have improved significantly year over year, and we've now turned our focus to optimizing our cost to improve our margin of the product of the ounces we produce. We do have a number of cost optimization initiatives currently underway And it was encouraging in Q3 to see these initiatives starting to bear fruit as our operating costs were lower quarter over quarter on both a gross and unit basis across all categories, mining, processing and G and A. And with that, John, back to you for concluding remarks. Thanks, Marty and Mark. In summary, the Q3 of 2023 continued our strong operational performance despite some unplanned downtime beyond our control. We are well positioned to achieve our 2023 production guidance and look forward to discussing our final 2023 results with you early in the New Year. Thank you all for listening. And we will now open the call for questions. John Kristoffson has a question. Hello, John. Hi, Chris. Hi, there. Can you hear me? Yes. I can. Beautiful. Thank you very much. Okay. I wonder if you could just give us a sense of where we're going to go through the winter period, if you wouldn't mind. Just looking at obviously stacked tons and what you anticipate, I guess? Sure. I'll start and then Mark can jump in with more detail. But we're going to continue to stack through the year as we did last year. We've just finalized our budgets for next year and it calls for stacking January, February, March. And we will see continued reduction of the seasonality of the operation, although we will always have some seasonality because We can't leach side slopes during the winter. That'll be a summertime opportunity. But you'll see the seasonality in our gold production continue to reduce as we continue to stack during the full year. Any further comments, Mark? No. Yes, just one. I mean, you summarized it well, John. Chris is that we have just completed a short shutdown, which really sets us up well for the ending this year and starting into Q1 during the winter period. Great. Thanks, guys. Just one more Quick question. You did mention that we can anticipate a slightly higher stacked gold grades in the Q4 here. Maybe you could quantify that. Are we looking at a 0.74 ish, obviously higher than the 0.65 that delivered in the Q3? Over to you, Mark. Yes. I mean, we're currently modeling Chris above 0 About 0.72 is what we're modeling. Okay. All right. And just moving into next year. Is that the goal that sort of grade on the path? Yes, we are expecting just off the top of my head somewhere in the order of 0 0.75 to 0.8 grams per ton for 2024. Great. All right, gents. Thank you very much. Thanks, Chris. Okay. And Alex has a question, John. Hey, good morning, guys. Yes, good to see that operations doing well. You guys are paying down some debt and your cash is good. Question then for you on Raven and Golden Predator moving away from the operations and more towards exploration here. What's your plan for both of those for of those for next year. Excuse me, I know Raven obviously saw some really interesting holes there. But how do you see that advancing over the next And then, yes, just kind of on the Golden Predator Brewery Creek, your expiration plans for that next year as well? Yes, Alex, it's a bit too early to provide a lot of detail. We're just working our way through the package of data we've received on those properties. And I'll be able to provide you a lot more detail and budgets in that early in Q1 2024. Okay. That makes sense for that one. And Raven? Similar with Raven, we'll get out the updated resource sometime in Q1. And the guys are working through the recommendations on exploration versus going into engineering studies right now. Okay. Great. That's it for me. Okay. If anyone else would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Okay, John, there doesn't Are there any questions in the chat? I don't see any. Okay. All right. Well, if there's further questions, I'd just like to thank everybody for tuning in and look forward to chatting to you with our year end results early in the New Year. Thanks, everyone.