Earnings Call: Q4 2023

Feb 21, 2024

Earnings release

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Victoria Gold Conference Call. We'll be discussing the company's Q4 and annual 2023 financial and operating results. Listeners are encouraged to read Victoria's annual 2023 consolidated financial statements and MD and A available on the company's website and on SEDAR. Available on the call today are John McConnell, President and CEO Mark Aranteau, COO and myself, Marty Rendle, CFO. Note that listeners and viewers will be muted while management provides a short review of the results. After the review, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To register a 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 this video call will be recorded and available for playback on the company's website. We will be making forward looking statements on this call and encourage participants to read our disclosure documents, including our corporate presentation, AIF and MD and A and the cautionary notes therein, which can be found on SEDAR and again the company's website. I'll now turn the meeting over to John McConnell, Director and CEO. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. I'll provide a brief summary of the Q4 and annual results 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 Q4 as one camp housekeeper contractor suffered a minor hip injury as a result of a slip. Our safety record continues to be strong as our total recordable injury frequency, or TRIF, for 2023 was 1.54, amongst the best in our industry. Operationally, the Q4 of 2023 saw the Eagle Gold Mine deliver consistent quarter over quarter production. For the year, we achieved an 11% year over year production increase. Both production and costs were well within our original guidance ranges for 2023. As with many other operators, despite inflation having peaked, we continue to see cost inflation at Eagle. We expect production levels to increase through 2024 2025, which will result in lower unit and per ounce costs as our largely fixed cost base is amortized over more ounces. We continue to deleverage our balance sheet in the Q4 as our total debt position decreased by $15,000,000 On the exploration front, we are excited by the potential we see across our Yukon Holdings. At Dublin Gulch, we have the Eagle Mine along with Raven and Links targets. Other Yukon assets include Clear Creek and the recently acquired Brewery Creek and Gold Dome properties. We are currently finalizing our 2024 exploration plans and look forward to providing an update on our 2024 exploration program in the coming weeks. I will now turn the call over to Marty, our Chief Financial Officer. Hello. I will briefly discuss our financials before passing it back to Mark to discuss operations. Currency will be in Canadian dollars unless otherwise mentioned. During the quarter, we sold 36,601 ounces of gold. This is about 4,000 ounces lower than Q4 of the previous year. About 2,000 ounces of this difference is attributable to lower gold production, while the remaining 2,002,000 ounces difference is due to timing of gold shipments. Even with the lower ounces of gold sold, quarterly revenue increased from $92,000,000 to $95,000,000 year over year due to higher average realized gold price. Quarterly production costs fell from $77,000,000 to 70,000,000 dollars year over year. However, this was more than offset by changes in inventory and capitalized stripping adjustments, which were a $6,000,000 reduction in Q4 2023 versus a $32,000,000 reduction in Q4 2022. This results in cost of goods sold of $64,000,000 during the Q4 of 2023 compared to $51,000,000 dollars in the Q4 of the previous year. The higher revenues during the quarter combined with higher cost of goods sold year over year resulted in a decrease in gross profit, operating earnings and net income after tax, which was $2,600,000 in Q4 2023 versus $10,500,000 net income in Q4 60,135 ounces of gold in 2023. This is more than 20,000 ounces higher than 2022. The increase is primarily due to increased gold production. The higher quantity of gold ounces sold combined with higher average realized prices led to 2023 revenue of 417,000,000 dollars versus $322,000,000 in the previous year. Full year production costs were $285,000,000 in 2023 compared to $262,000,000 in 2022, primarily due to cost inflation. Similar to the Q4, adjustments due to changes in inventory and capitalized stripping resulted in a much higher year over year reduction in cost of goods sold. In 2023, the combined adjustment was a $21,000,000 reduction compared to a 95,000,000 reduction in 2022. And this leads to cost of goods sold in 2023 of 264,000,000 versus 166,000,000 in 2022. Higher gold sales and revenues combined with higher cost of goods sold year over year resulted in a decrease to gross profit, operating earnings and net income after tax, which was $25,000,000 in 2023 versus $35,000,000 net income after tax in 2022. At the end of December 23, the company held cash and equivalents of CAD15 million. And I'd just like to remind listeners that we do use our revolving credit facility to manage our cash and treasury. Therefore, our cash balance stays fairly constant while debt will fluctuate to match our liquidity needs. Working capital at the end of December 2023 was 147,000,000 compared to 95,000,000 at the end of December 2022. 22. This material increase in working capital is substantially the result of reductions in accounts payable and current debt. During the most recent quarter, total capital incurred was 16,000,000 while full year to date total capital incurred was 70,000,000. This is comprised of sustaining capital, capitalized stripping, growth capital and growth exploration. A detailed breakdown was shared within our MD and A. I'll now review our non IFRS performance measures. We'll be looking at the annual measures on the call. However, quarterly metrics along with detailed numerical breakdown and commentary on the calculations can all be found within our MD and A. During this section, I will bounce around a little bit between Canadian US dollars as we want to allow for uniform peer comparison in areas like all in sustaining costs. The average realized price per ounce of gold sold in 2023 was US1929 dollars This compares to 2022 where we realized US1772 dollars per ounce. Cash cost per ounce of gold sold during 2022 were US1218 dollars This compares to 20.22 where cash costs were $9.16 US per ounce. All in sustaining costs per ounce of gold sold in 2022 rather 2023 were US1488 dollars and this compares to 2022 where all in sustaining costs were US14.41 dollars per ounce. Free cash flow before and after working capital in 2023 were C31 $1,000,000 and C5 $1,000,000 respectively. The working capital usage of cash in 2023 was primarily due to repayment of accounts payable. Free cash flow before and after working capital in the previous year, 2022, was CAD 19,000,000 and negative CAD 49,000,000 respectively. The significant use of working capital in 2022 was primarily due to the increase of gold inventory on the heap leach pad. EBITDA or earnings before interest taxes and depreciation and amortization in 2023 was a 142,000,000 Canadian or $2.15 per share. This compares to 2022 where EBITDA was 140,000,000 Canadian or CAD2.19 per share. I'll now turn it over to Mark Aranteau, our Chief Operating Officer. Good morning, everybody. And I really appreciate everybody's time here this morning. So first to reiterate John's emphasis on safety. As John noted, the Eagle Gold Mine performed very well across all safety metrics in 2023. Behind these excellent statistics is a dedicated team of hardworking employees who bring a safety first mindset to their jobs every single day. And I'd like to commend the Eagle's General Manager, Tim Fish, and our entire on-site operating team for the continued track record of safe work practices. In the Q4 of 2023, the Eagle Mine produced approximately 42,000 ounces of gold, demonstrating consistent quarter over quarter gold production. For 2023 as a whole, we're pleased to report that we achieved the production guidance we set forth at the beginning of this year. We produced 167,000 ounces of gold at an all in sustaining cost of US1488 dollars per ounce, a strong improvement in production year over year. Driving this production increase was a notable improvement in stacked tons as we stacked 9,000,000 tons of ore under our heap leach facility in 2023. This represents a 34% improvement over 2022 levels. The mining rate for 2023 was 55,000 tons per day, which is a 15% improvement over 2022. Both mining and stacking rates were relatively consistent for 2023 and it's a reflection of our achievement of year round stacking, which largely reduces the seasonality of gold production at Eagle. Now despite this, we do expect to see some moderate seasonality and this is largely due to improved warmer temperatures during Q2 and Q3, which allow us to do some activities like side slope leaching and bring some ounces forward. Our leaching pad performance remains strong for the Q4. Recoveries are continuing to trend in line with our forecasted levels. Notably, we saw an approximate 7,000 ounce reduction in our recoverable mineral inventory in the Q4 and a 16,000 ounce reduction for the year as ounces stacked in prior quarters were recovered to dore. And this is as expected in our leach recovery model. Stack grade of 0.72 grams per ton in 2023 remained in line with the Eagle Reserve model, which life of mine has reconciled well to actual production results. The slight decrease in stack grade year over year reflects mine sequencing, the impact of lower grade bonus ore, which was considered to be waste in our reserve model and has been converted over to ore, and a small amount of lower grade stockpiles, which were processed during the year. As demonstrated by our 2024 production guidance of 165000 to 185000 ounces, We are expecting production growth again at Eagle this year. We're planning for another increase in stacked tons in 2024, which we expect to drive increased production of gold at Eagle. We are also expecting to implement further cost optimizations in 2024 to improve the margin of our produced ounces over the long term. We have a number of optimization initiatives currently underway that we expect will contain inflation at Eagle across all our major cost centers. Although we believe we can fight and beat the persistent inflation impacting the global mining industry, the primary method by which we will reduce our per ounce costs through 2024 and beyond is spreading our highly fixed cost base over a larger number of ounces and we expect to be able to achieve this in the quarters and years to come. So with that, John, I'll pass it back to you for concluding remarks. Thank you, Marty and Mark. In summary, 2023 was a successful year for the Eagle Gold Mine as we achieved our stated production and cost targets. We expect to build on this success in 2024. Thank you all for listening and we will now open the call for Q and A. We do have a few questions in the chat that we'll go through first. But if anybody has any questions, you can raise your hand as well, and we'll get to you. The first question comes from Hans. It's in the last 2 years, you produced 17,000 ounces more than you sold. Why and where is the gold? I'll answer this one. We have a 5% NSR royalty that we pay to Osisko Royalties that we sold to help fund construction of the mine. So that 5% of our production is delivered in metal. And so that does not hit our sales. While it does hit our production, it also does not affect our revenue or costs. So life of mine and generally annually are sold ounces will always be approximately 5% less than our produced ounces. There may also be a little bit of timing differences due to timing of shipments, but primarily it's at 5% NSR. The next question is from Heiko at HC Wainwright. Are there any planned large scale repairs that may be needed during the remainder of the year that may lead to temporary shutdowns? Mark, did you want to touch on that one? Sure, I can do that. Good morning, Heiko. We do have planned in our budget for this year planned shutdowns, none of them would be considered large by mining standards. Off the top of my head, we have a 3 day down and a 7 day down planned for later in the year. Beyond that, we have just regular maintenance scheduled throughout the year as we normally do. The next question comes from Paul Harris. How do you plan to address your liquidity issue in 2024? Cash is 15,000,000 and you've got $45,000,000 current portion of long term debt. I'll answer this one. As I mentioned quickly in my presentation, cash will always stay probably in the $0,000,000 to $20,000,000 range and we'll use our revolving credit facility to manage our short term cash needs. When we have extra cash, we pay down our revolver. When we need extra cash, we use our revolver. There is only a small amount of room on our revolver now about US5 $1,000,000 We also have room on our Caterpillar Finance equipment facility, which stands a little over $30,000,000 It's got capacity of $50,000,000 But primarily, how we will meet our obligations on the current portion of long term debt is from operations and producing gold and from free cash flow. The next question from Hans is what is the outlook for the current year on reduction of total debt? So related to previous question, our goal this year is to repay the term debt, which as of the end of 2023 was US25 million dollars That's our primary goal. Any excess free cash flow beyond that may be used to repay our revolver. Although it may also be used for other items such as exploration or capital equipment or expansion. But our primary use of cash for the year is paying down the term debt and then we'll look at paying down further debt beyond that. The next question, when can we expect the next set of results from Raven? Why are we not keenly targeting the debt versus looking at investing in a smaller operation like the Burry Creek Mine? The market seems not to appreciate our focus visavisheshare price. How do we get the share price back to a point we are valued semis fairly. John, 2 part question for you. Next set of results from Raven and why are we not targeting debt versus investing in Murray Creek? Sure. Yes, I think there were 3 questions there. We're working through the Raven results currently, and I would expect the guys will have an update on Raven within the next 1 or 2 months, so either March or April. I guess the question on why are we looking at paying down debt as opposed to acquisitions, that's partly in discussions with our Board, But we all feel that a focus on paying down debt right now is the appropriate thing to do. I will remind people though, we did make a small acquisition last year of the Bury Creek and Gold Dome assets, where we used $8,500,000 in cash for those assets. So we're open to doing that. But our priority is to pay down debt and we continue to look at acquisition opportunities in the Yukon and throughout North America. The next question from Delbrook to myself was where do you see costs to be the stickiest? And, there's a few areas. I would say the stickiest costs are, you could guess it is labor. Labor is our largest cost and it's very sticky. And when inflation went up, labor needed to go up with it. Unfortunately, when inflation falls, labor does not fall back down. So it's very sticky. I would also say labor in the mining industry is still very difficult, especially in Western Canada and Northwestern Canada. So labor is the stickiest and related to that labor also consulting costs, which is mostly labor as well. The other area we've noticed significant increases is in parts. That is an area we think we can battle back. And there are opportunities to switch parts, go to different suppliers. So we're working through those. One area that's been positive on the cost side is fuel. I know prices that the pumps are a little high right now. However, compared to, during the pandemic and over the last couple of years, we have seen a little bit of relief on our fuel delivered to site and we saved a little bit of money versus our budget. So fuel has been okay over the last year, but it's been more than offset by increases to labor and consultant costs. A follow-up call from HEICO. And that's to you, Mark. HEICO had asked around repairs and temporary shutdowns, if there are any. And the follow-up question is, can you provide timing on any temporary shutdowns or major shutdowns? Yeah, Heiko, I'm certainly happy to do that. We have generally we have a short shutdown, which short I would define as a week or less in the spring, and then we typically do a shorter one late summer or early fall as we head into the colder season. I think that's usually that shorter one in the fall is usually kind of 3 days allows us to change our lubes to winter lubes or fuel to winter fuel, make sure we get ready for winter in a number of other activities. Our routine shutdowns, we will typically do a very shorter shutdown, so 1 shift shutdown once a week. We have found that to be rather productive and making sure that assets stay up and you get repairs completed prior to unplanned shutdowns. That's all baked into our budgets for this year and factored into our production guidance. Thanks, Mark. A question from John Slodnick. Even factoring the deliveries to Osisko, there still looks to be roughly 3,000 ounce inventory build in the quarter, and you expect that to reverse in Q1. 3,000 ounces is the fluctuation that we'll likely see around shipping schedules. We generally ship every couple of weeks and we do expect the inventory build to reverse. I don't know if it will reverse in Q1 or Q2 or Q3. Again, it's just timing of shipping. And so if we have a shipment on the last day of the month, yes, it would reverse. But if our last shipment of the month is 10 days before month end, then it will not reverse. And we probably shouldn't discuss the specific timing on our shipments on the call here. But over time, that will certainly reverse. And outside of the OR 5%, our sales will equal our production. Next question is from Shri at Sprott. With the expected bump in free cash flow, would you be in a position to be in a very select company of producers who are buying back shares? Do you want to answer this one, John, or would you like me to? Yeah. No. We've certainly consistently had that suggestion from you, Sri, and we are certainly looking at that. And I think we'll probably put the mechanism in place over the next quarter to allow us to do that. You want to add anything to that, Marty? No, that's right. I'd reiterate that first and foremost, we do want to pay back some debt, but once we get a little bit of debt paid back, there's other options with free cash flow, including buying back shares. And certainly, we're not happy with our current share price and we think they're on sale. So it seems like it might be a good time. Next question is from Mitch. Is management considering a share issuance in 2024 to raise cash that can be used to offset or reduce debt? There's no intent to do an equity financing at this time, and I don't expect that to even come up as a Board discussion. Thanks, John. Another question from John Slodnick at Desjardins. Any color on what to expect for grade this year? Just wondering if you expect more bonus ore to make the stacked grade lower this year versus last year or if that will be around the same. Mark? Yeah, I think the, as I mentioned a bit earlier, the grade that we see is fairly consistent year over year and while you see fluctuations quarter over quarter, year to year you get pretty consistent grade through the deposit. And I would just say that the technical report grades and tonnages remain very intact. That's on our website that we posted about a year ago. Next question comes from Randall. Do you expect further pressure on grades from greater sequencing, bonus or other? Can you please remind of the average grade guidance? I guess, Mark, again, you might have already answered that one. Yes, I think so. I mean, I think what you're seeing right now year over year is fairly consistent. So that is roughly in line with the technical report. And as mentioned earlier, our grade and tons are reconciling well to the reserve model. We do get a bit of this bonus or we are mindful that often that bonus or is a bit lower grade. So we review our cutoff grades and our strategies usually quarterly. Thanks, Mark. One more question here from Sri again. How much visibility do you have on production and costs given your stacking year round? Want to touch on that, Mark? To be honest, not quite sure of the question, but I mean from a production standpoint, it's fair to say that Q1 and Q4 are a bit tougher challenges for production. You've got colder temperatures, you've got snow. Q2 and Q3 are certainly the quarters where we can really maximize area under leach, take opportunities, side slope leaching and do a few other things that allow us to get a lot more tons to the pad typically and bring ounces forward. And Marty, maybe you can touch base on the cost aspect of that. Yes, sure. Just like production is a little more consistent year over year subject to a little bit of seasonality Mark touched on, Costs are also very consistent, probably even more so than production. So if you look back at our production costs quarter over quarter over the last couple of years, you'll see they're quite consistent. Now that's not necessarily the case with cost of goods sold and earnings because of the adjustments around capitalized stripping and inventory on the pad. But our production costs are pretty stable and we have pretty good visibility on those costs. Capital on the other hand is a little more up and down and we do a little more capital work in the summer versus the winter. That's all the questions we have in the chat and I don't see any other hands raised or questions. Just give a couple of seconds here for any final questions. Okay. Thanks, everyone, for joining us, and, have a great day. Thanks everyone.