Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Pan American Silver Annual General and Special Meeting Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. Written questions may be submitted through the webcast platform.
The company will endeavor to address these following the meeting as detailed in its information circular. Please type your question in the Ask a Question box at the bottom left side of the page and hit submit. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ross Beatty, Chair of Pan American Silver Corp. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, operator, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. I will now call it twenty twenty one Annual General Special Meeting to order. I will start by saying it's a kind of a sad day for me, but also a happy one. It's sad because this is the last time I have the honor of being Chair of Pan American Silver.
We had our Board meeting prior to this and we appointed a new Chair, Jillian Winkler, which is following my decision to retire effective today. So after twenty seven years of working hard with a very large team of wonderful people to build this company into one of the world's leading silver producers and one of the most respected companies in the Mayan industry, it's time to turn over a page and succeed me by Jill's appointment, which of course brings new life, new energy and new blood into the senior chair position of the company. Managed succession is always better than chaotic succession, which happens when a chariot sounded too old or too daughtery or too infirm or perhaps even dies. And it takes the company into some kind of urgent need to do to have the succession that isn't always easy to do. In our case, we did a very good search.
We did a very detailed review of who would be best to follow me and I'm more than happy that Jill Winkler, who's been on our board for the last six years, has been requested to join and she's agreed. So I'm very pleased with that and I'm going to do the formal business of the meeting today and then I will make a final statement and then turn it over to Jill for a few comments following Jill. Michael Steinman, our Chief Executive Officer will provide a presentation of Pan American as it is today, and that will conclude the meeting of the General and Annual Ed Special Annual Meeting. Well, the other strange thing today is that it's another year of pandemic and we've had to do this twice in a row like all Canadian public companies and do this meeting virtually. This is very unsatisfactory because of course it's a really great opportunity for the Board and many of the senior management to meet the shareholders who take the time and trouble to come to the annual meeting.
And so we're going to miss you again today and it really is unfortunate because it's the nicest thing for me to do always to meet our shareholders, to meet our owners and to tell them in over the table in person what we're doing, what our plans are, where we're going and share with them the excitement I have as we've built our company and we will continue to do so. So we can't do that today. We're doing this all virtually, but I'm very, very sure that next year, same time, same place, we will be able to meet in person and I really hope that many shareholders as possible come to Vancouver and come to the meeting. I will be there, I promise. I'm not going anywhere.
The Board in its wisdom has given me the great honor of the title of Chairman Emeritus and I will honor that by nodding off at the right moment in the meetings that I'm attending from time to time and drilling a little bit and otherwise providing my own experience and accumulated sort of knowledge of how these companies work to Joe and Michael and to the Board as requested. But otherwise, I'll have no formal connection with the company and I will no longer be an insider. However, I will not be selling my shares. I want to make that perfectly clear. My shares will not be sold.
I actually own more shares today, twenty seven years later than when I started the company in 1994. So that's not going to change for a long time. So due to the current state of the global pandemic, we have therefore asked all shareholders to vote by proxy in advance of the meeting and to not attend this meeting. We thank all shareholders who are listening to the proceedings of this meeting via live conference call or audio webcast and we look forward to future shareholder meetings where we may host you in person. Today's meeting will be, as I said, in three parts.
The first will be the formal business, then Jill will say a few words, Michael Stavrin will then cover presentation of the company's affairs. We will then have a brief Q and A period and shareholders who wish to ask questions should submit them via the live webcast. Pursuant to the articles of the company, I will act as Chair of the meeting. Delaney Fisher, VP Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the company will act as Secretary for the meeting. Anita Bauci of Computershare Investor Services, Inc.
Will act as scrutineer of the meeting. Would the Secretary please assure us that the Annual General and Special Meeting
is the property call. Thank you. I have before me an affidavit of a representative of Computershare Investor Services, Inc. Attesting that
the notice following this Annual General and Special Meeting together with the
information circular, formal proxy and audit financial statements were delivered in accordance with the Business Corporations Act and applicable securities laws. Therefore, Mr. Chair, this Annual General and Special Meeting has been
properly called. Please read this scrutineers Report.
The scrutineers report reads as follows. One shareholder in person representing $2.89 shares, eight sixty one shareholders by proxy representing 136,373,722 shares and eight sixty two total shareholders holding 136,373,011 shares. The total issued outstanding as of the record date was 210,262,345 shares and so the percentage of outstanding shares represented at the meeting is 64.86%.
I adopt the scrutiny to report and declare accordingly that a quorum is present and now declare that the annual general and special meeting of shareholders is regularly called and properly constituted for the conduct of business. The first item of business is the reading of the minutes of last year's Annual Meeting. I will request a motion to take the minutes as read and confirmed. So moved. I declare the motion carried.
The next set of the business is presentation of the annual financial reports of the company and the report of the auditors thereon for the year ended 12/31/2020. The audited financial statements and auditors report were mailed to each shareholder who had requested a copy. I shall consider the audited financial statements and auditors report received by the shareholders as submitted to this Annual General and Special Meeting. If so, in order to proceed with the election of directors for the upcoming year, there are eight positions to be filled, each to hold off until the next Annual Meeting with Gerald. I now declare the meeting open for nominations for directors.
I nominate Michael Carroll, Neil De Gelder, Charles Jeunesse, Jennifer Mackey, Walter Segsworth, Kathleen Sendahl, Michael Simon and Julian Winkler, all to be Directors of the company and to hold office in accordance with the articles of the company.
Each of the nominees has previously consented and ready to act as a Director. I ask for a motion that nominations be closed. So moved. All in favor of the motion, please signify by raising your right hand. Against, if any?
Carried. We will now proceed with the election of directors. Each director will be elected separately by a show of hands. It's proposed that separate ordinary resolutions be passed, electing those members that were described by Delaney Fisher, the Secretary of the meeting, as Directors of the Company for the ensuing year to hold office until the next Annual Meeting. I would ask that each shareholder signify their vote on the following appointments I've reached in the right hand.
All those in favor of the appointment of Michael Carroll against, Carey all those in favor of the appointment of Neil de Gulliver Against? Kerry. All those in favor of the appointment of Charles Dudes? Against? Kerry.
All those in favor of the appointment of Jennifer Mackey? Against? Kerry. All those in favor of the appointment of Walter Seisgruent? Against Kerry.
All those in favor of the appointment of Kathleen Sandahl against Kerry. All those in favor of the appointment of Michael Steinman against Kerry. All those in favor of the appointment of Julian Winkler against Kerry. I declare that this year's Carroll, DeGeller, Sigmar, Simon, Jeannette, Pandas, Mackie, Sendoff and Winkler have been elected as directors of the company for the ensuing year to hold office until the next annual meeting in the shareholders of the company or until their successors are elected or appointed. And I want to particularly welcome Jennifer Mackey and Kathy Sendahl to the Board.
They are our most recent directors appointed in the last few months. And I'm really looking forward to their contributions. We've had a couple of meetings with them and I can tell our shareholders that they will be wonderful, wonderful new directors. Not only do they add diversity, they add talent and skill. And I will I'm going to be very interested to see in the next years how much they're going to be able to contribute to the affairs of the company.
They certainly have tremendous potential and we are lucky to have. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors. It is proposed that the company reappoint Deloitte LLP as auditors of the company. Accordingly, I ask for a motion that Deloitte LLP be appointed as auditors of the company for the ensuing year. So moved.
All those in favor, please signify everything you write down. Against? Carried. And again, we'll give a shout out to Deloitte. This is again their twenty seventh year audited us moving into the twenty eighth year.
They've given us sterling service. This is I think the third set of senior auditors that have come out of the Deloitte system. They have a natural periodicity within the company in terms of their audit team. And we just have had an excellent relationship with Deloitte. And I think we've gone literally twenty seven years without a single significant issue that we've had a disagreement on and long limit.
I hope that maintains it for many more years to come. And I will also give a shout out to our legal counsel, Board and Editor Gervais. Also they've been our General Counsel since our generally our General Counsel, they've been our independent legal advisor since the beginning. I I want to specifically thank Freddie Fletcher for his services. He has been a wonderful supporter.
His whole team here at BLG has been outstanding and again long live them as our providers of independent legal advice to us in the years to come. Next item of business is the fixing of the auditors remuneration. It is proposed that the Board of Directors be authorized to determine the remuneration to be paid as an LOP for the ensuing year. All those in favor, please signify by raising their hands, if against, carries. The next step in the business is to consider and approve an ordinary advisory resolution approving the company's approach to executive compensation.
The full text of the advisory resolution is contained on Page 14 of the information circular. For this meeting, I ask for a motion of the advisory resolution approving the company's approach to executive compensation be approved. So moved. All those in favor, please signify by raise in your right hand against, carried. I now call for
a motion to conclude
the formal portion of the Annual General and Special Meeting of the Company.
I move that this meeting
be concluded. All those in favor, please signify by raise in your right hand against. In that case, I declare this Annual General and Special Meeting of the Company concluded. And thank you again for joining us today. And so it is time for me to pass the baton.
That is my last formal function with the company that I founded along with John Race back in March of nineteen ninety four. And I can say it's been a heck of a journey. We started with a great mission with no assets, no cash, no properties, no management, nobody, nothing was a shell company, but with a vision to build the world's best silver mining company, a company that gave investors the best leverage to higher silver price. So that if silver went up a dollar or went up to 10%, our stock would go up 20% or 30%. And it would be the best way for investors to play the silver price as an equity investment.
Well, when you have a big mission like that, it's rather more easy to say than to do it. And I also have the severity to break the silver price by the end of that decade, by the end of the millennium, six years later from 1994 when we started Pan American, I predicted it was then $5 a share, dollars 5 an ounce I mean, and I predicted it would be over $10 an ounce by the end of the decade. And therefore, we bought all sorts of silver properties all over Latin America that were not economic $5 an ounce, but needed more like $7 or $8 an ounce to be economic. Well, I had no problem completely with great confidence staying in the silver brick would be over $10 an ounce and these properties would have tremendous value and people should buy us as a great option on a higher silver price and a great way to play the silver price. Well, needless to say, by 1999 or February, in fact even 02/2001, the silver price hit an all time low in real terms.
It went down, not up, it went to $4.03 an ounce and so much for that prediction. And it's because the more I learned about silver, the more I knew I didn't know. And this is often what happens when you get to be kind of an expert. I mean, you realize just how complicated things are and how much it's easy to make predictions when you're sort of naive, but not so easy when you know a lot. But what we did in the meantime is we backfilled the value.
We acquired some properties that actually had value even at $5 an ounce. And we had some great adventures. We bought a mine in Peru, the Caravolka Mine. We bought a mine in Mexico that was a small producer, produced like 100 tonnes a day, a couple of hundred thousand ounces of silver a year called La Colorada back in 1996, I think it was. We acquired San Jacinte in Bolivia in 1997 or 1998.
That was also run as a small silver mine. We spent I spent the most difficult and most frustrating time of my entire career on for four years in Russia trying to build what would have become the world's third largest silver mine, the Ducat Mine. Well, some things work and some things don't work. And while our projects in Mexico work and Peru work and Bolivia work and Argentina work, the Russian adventure was an absolute disaster. We ended up being attacked by a Russian company.
We lost everything we had there. We got our money back, but we lost basically, we lost four years of hard work and it was tremendous amount of work. So that was a flop. But despite all of those comings and goings and wins and losses in the 1990s, by the late two thousand and one, just as silver hit the bottom. And at the same time as silver hit the bottom, so did lead and zinc, as we also produced quite a bit of byproduct lead and zinc, mostly at our main mine in two mines in Peru, the Waron and Curacao.
And they were also hitting record lows. So zinc went down to, I think, $0.36 a pound, $11 to $0.18 a pound. These were impossible ways to make money and we were hemorrhaging like crazy. We were switching about $500,000 a month and we had three months of money left in our bank and otherwise we would have been bankrupt, we would have been done. Well, luckily, Bill Gates was a shareholder at the time and we had some tremendous support of shareholders.
Bill Gates, his Fund Manager, Michael Larson, who was on our Board. Bill Fleckenstein, who is a great Fund Manager and Shadow who is on our Board. And they did what we did in financing. We raised about, I think about six months or so of working capital or maybe ten months working capital at a $3 share price and we were saved for another year. And lo and behold, during that year, a few months after we did that financing, in 02/2002, the silver price bottomed, it started to go up and literally we haven't looked back since.
We had a tremendous run-in our share price from 02/2002 to 2,008, go from $3 a share to almost $50 a share. It was hammered down with the financial crisis and then it went right back up and then it came down a bit and it's back up again today. We're trading at tremendous prices today because of the gold price are high. And it just shows the vagaries of how these companies are built. But I wanted to give a little history of Pan American today for anybody who's interested.
Along the way in the 2000s, we acquired Moroccocha. We got Manantil Estebo in Argentina. We looked at a whole bunch of other projects. We ended up getting Dolores in a deal in about 2011 in Mexico. La Colorada has turned from being a very marginal small and we actually had to write it off not once, but twice because we lost the value of our reserves and the summer mix went down and we didn't think we were going to make any money there.
It's turned out to be a massive win for our shareholders. Our own work goes, our coaches work goes, and the said, they've all done well. So it's been a real, for me, a very happy kind of for me an ending today. After twenty seven years, I can tell you that our company is in the best shape it's ever been in now. We have a long term future.
I wonder it's all about the people too. The team we've put in place and has come into our company has just been such a joy to work with, so skilled, so just so impressive. Most of these are Latinos. We have a very small percentage of people that are based in Vancouver, less than 5%. Less than 5% of our company speaks English as the mother tongue, by the way.
Most of our staff are Latinos or indigenous people at a different operation, particularly in Peru and Bolivia and Mexico. So we have a lot of diversity. We have a wonderful workforce and it's that workforce that's built the company that we are today. More than anything though, I'm turning this share position to Jill and I'm saying goodbye at a moment that I feel we've also got this fantastic reputation and it's a reputation for excellence, not only in the engineering of mines, the building of mines, the discovery of mines, exploration or the financing. We've always been very conservative, financially conservative.
We don't have a lot of debt and never have. We've never had a financial crisis. It's our reputation and the other things, things that are important today. They've always been important, but they're being valued more today than ever before. Environment, social, governance, those are the big things that shareholders are valuing more today than ever.
And I can say we've lived that. It doesn't matter what you call it. You could call it CSR, corporate social responsibility. You can call it social license. You can call it environmental best practice, sustainability principles, whatever you call it, they're all in the same thing.
And what that is, it's doing the right thing. In this day and age where it's so easy for a blogger or somebody who wants to push an agenda forward that they're anti mining or anti capital or anti foreign or anti anything, they have a coating, they have the Internet. And people who are anti these sort of things are they have a platform. But at the end of the day, it's your actions and your real world events that happen that build reputations and build value. And I can say, turning this company over now to Jill and the team, that I am so happy and so comfortable in our record of excellence in our environmental, social governance aspects.
And I think, if anything, we're going to do even a better job in the future, So that our workers go home every day safely, our communities are happy with what we're doing and feel part of what we're doing. And of course, that we have good governance built into the fabric of everything we do. We have about 13,500 employees now I think at our operations or 10 operations in Latin America and Canada. We have every combination of nationalities really and ethnic groups in these operations. And around the operations are communities, whether it's Peru or Bolivia or Argentina or Mexico or Canada now, where there is literally 100,000 to 150,000 people who are living off the value that's generated from our mines.
Every year now, we've generated about $2,000,000,000 of value, of which about 11% comes back to our shareholders in the form of capital payback, dividends and so forth. And the rest, almost all of the rest stays in the country where we're generating this value. And it goes to support community services, infrastructure, all sorts of things, wages, spin off benefits, multiplier benefits for communities. That's what the engine of a good mine creates in terms of community value and tax revenue and local spending. And that's something that year after year, that's what we're generating for these communities that rely on our mines.
Well, nobody is perfect. Obviously, from time to time, we have issues that we would rather didn't happen and we are working so hard to prevent that. Sometimes things happen, but we are certainly doing every bit that we can to minimize those kind of things and become just the great to me, the great corporate citizens that I think we have the reputation of being. So those are the things that I'm proud of, building the company, generating employment for people, all that economic activity and also building a company that investors can buy as a really great way to play the silver price with long term silver production. We also have a lot of gold production and giant silver reserves and resources, which offer the fabric of value for the long term.
So for me, this is a little bit of a soapbox right now for me to say thank you to our management team, thank you to our workers, thank you to the communities that support us in all the places we work, thank you to the national the countries that we work in for their fair policies, their strong support and it's a partnership really with what they're trying to achieve, what we're trying to achieve. We work well with those countries. We don't have issues of significance. And it's a chance for me to thank our shareholders as well for their steadfast support over the years. Many of our shareholders I know are actually shareholders who started working with us when I started back in 1994, and a lot of them are new.
So I'm going over the history of the company a little bit right now to remind everybody that we have this good record. We have this long well, let's say, the long period that I've been involved in the company, it's now time to turn over a page to open up a new chapter in Pan American's life with Jill as our new Chair and me gone from the company, pretty well gone. I'm not going to be forgotten though, and I'm not even going to be that silent because I've been given this honor of being Chair Emeritus. And so I will be around to help advise if I can or ask questions and have some feedback if I'm asked to give my views on things, but there will be no formal role. And so with that, it's been a great run.
I'm very sorry we can't do this in person, but that's the way it goes. And my thanks to each and everyone who have made it a lot of fun and a big success. And now I'm going to let Jill take up the torch and I'm going to hand over the baton. Jill Winkler, the new Chair of Pan American Silver.
Thank you very much, Ross. And I must say obviously following on from Ross and after twenty seven years on the chair and after the speech he's just given the talk, it's very, very challenging, very big step very big shoes to solve. And I'm sure what I was going to say, Ross has said, you've just sort of said everything. But for me, it's a privilege and an honor to be taken over as the Chair of Pan American. I mean, as you know, Ross, as Chair of the company and his agent for the past twenty seven years, And it's going to be very different having me sitting here in the chair.
And Ross earlier today in our board meeting said today was a very poignant day for him. And I think it is true for many employees. I think a lot of people on the journey from the start and there's a lot of loyalty as people feel towards you. It's as you also said, it's a huge shame we can't be in person for this AGM. Normally at this time of year, key management from around Pan American all come to Vancouver.
Management has several days of meetings. We have the board meeting, we have the AGM and then we have a get together with employees, directors, advisors, shareholders. And it's really a time when everyone sort of shares what happens and excitedly talks about the year that's coming up and you just basically rebuild the friendships that exist in Pan American. So sadly, obviously with that, we're not able to have that this year, but that time will come and we'll have a chance to say proper thank you and proper good bye as well as Bob said, they're not good bye, they're just in this role as good bye. So I just want to do a virtual thank you and handover for now.
As you all know, Rostow in the company twenty seven years ago was a single mine in Peru. Today we have 10 operations in six countries and with 13,500 employees.
I think
what's most important and for me especially and I'm very pleased to say for everyone in the company is that we have this incredibly deep commitment to ESG and it's not worth everyone really feels and cares about all these issues and the culture of working together and that's also important because it's a company where you feel everyone will drive together for the same goal. So much of what Pan American has achieved is attributable to Ross. He is as passionate about the environment as he is of archaeology and business. And these passions basically have helped in my view, have helped make Pan American what it is today and it's a company that every single one of us is proud to be associated with. So I would like formally to express thanks to ROTH on behalf of current board members, past board members not that I speak for them, but I'm sure they would also behalf of the shareholders who have seen their value grow and the company grow.
And on behalf of all employees whose enthusiasm and love for the company stems from the culture that you installed in Pan American all those years ago. And I can assure you everyone will miss you in your role as Chair, but we all know you are disappearing. And for those who don't only as a board today unanimously, both to confer the title of Chair Americas to Ross in recognition of forming the company and being chair for twenty seven years. And with this title Ross fittingly will always be associated with Plan American and even if he is gone, he's always welcome in the Pan American family. And I speak for myself and the current Board, when I say to Ross, we will do all we can to keep growing the company, to keep those values, to grow in strength to strength.
And I'm confident that the values and culture that are fit so deeply embedded in the company will continue to make it a company that everyone is proud to be associated with. And we just wish you all the best in your care emeritus and in your semi retirement role.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Rob. Thank you so much, Joe. Thank you.
Thank you, Ted.
And I'll hand over
to my CEO. Excuse me, the applause is still waiting.
It was a standing ovation there. So thank you.
Thank you, Jill. Thanks, Ross. And I'm sure everybody agrees with me to wish Ross all the best for his retirement. And I'm looking very much forward to keep working in this company with Jill. This is my eighteenth year now with the company, so there's a long history for me as well going back.
But I would like to give you an update on the year that just after happened, which was a very strange year for all of us in this world. Probably for sure the first time in my life that something happened that impacted everyone, every person on the globe with this COVID pandemic. And it still does. It still impacts our operations very strongly depending a bit on the countries. We just published our Q1 results maybe an hour ago.
And now you will see Q1 was a challenging quarter with still a lot of issues with the pandemic and some issues that we're working through a lot going on with the ventilation. But they're all transitory issues that we're going to work through this year and very much looking forward to a steadily improving year here, improving on operations and production and hopefully roll out of vaccines that will make life of all of us on the globe easier with the ongoing 2021. But let's focus on that very strange year 2020, which obviously will be one for the history books. And please keep in mind that I will use forward looking statements in my presentation. If you're interested, you can read everything about the risk factors in our public statements.
I think Ross explained very well the history and that's the result you see on this slide here with our nine operations across The Americas or 10 depending a bit how you want to count, but nine operating plants and then a few locations where we use several mines to produce the ore for those plants. But very diversified production, gold, silver, base metals. That's just the fact how silver occurs when Ross was looking for silver mines, but silver does not occur by itself. You find silver with gold or you find silver with base metals. That's why we have a mix of all these metals in our production profile.
We have the largest silver reserves though in the world and that's very, very important to us to reserve and your resources, but especially a proven power reserves at the base of your business. And we have been very careful on that with our brownfield exploration to constantly replace what we mine and grow our reserves to now a record of five fifty million ounces. So very strong sale reserve and as well over 5,000,000 ounce of gold reserve. But beside that steady and strong business, we have three very large catalysts in our portfolio, catalysts for growth. And first one, Escobar in Guatemala, of course, the mine is on care and maintenance, but we all know that.
And it's already since we purchased Tahoe before that. It's awaiting a consultation with an indigenous group in Guatemala. The process is run by the Ministry of Mines. The pre consultation meetings actually have been postponed by a month due to a very large COVID outbreak in Guatemala, but is now set for later this month of May. We are looking very much forward to an inclusive consultation process with very broad participation and respecting the Chinca people's rights to consultation under the principles of good faith, mutual respect and transparency without any pressure and conditioning from the parties.
And hopefully, that process, as I said, will start later on this month and is run as I said by the government of Guatemala by the Ministry of Mines. So it's a timing wise of course not in our hands. The next really large catalyst is La Colorada. Ross mentioned it. We had tremendous success in exploration over the last probably nearly decade now at La Colorada.
We're finding more and more of high grade veins that we are mining, high grade silver veins. And just about three years ago, we made the first big discovery there, big drill holes finding a skarn, a very wide mineralized zone below the veins, which is the feeder zone for that mine. Hundreds of meters of wide intercepts, high grade polymetallics with silver. And by the way, we put the press release out as well today with some of the just exceptions well results again and working out towards the PEA for that tremendous project at the end of the year. The resource estimate last year was over 100,000,000 tonnes sitting just in that scarring deposit and I'm sure it's going to grow on outsides because we did not find any end to this deposit yet.
And then the last one is Navitas in Argentina. I mean, you have that us already a long time with us. We can't go forward right now as the mining law in Chibout in the province of Chibout would need to be amended to actually allow open pit mining and the use of cyanide. Well, we don't need cyanide, but it's a ban on both of this. We would not need cyanide at this asset.
It's a sulfide deposit that would produce concentrate, but it's an open pit deposit. So the law would have to be amended for that and then we could, if that would happen, apply for permits. But we really believe that the properly permitted and regulated mining activity with sustainable mining practices both on the environmental and social side will be of huge importance for the development of the province of Djibout. Of course, that will go together with no investment in many other sectors to sustain support and improve the economy of the province. So those are our large catalysts.
So let's keep on here what we do here. Ross mentioned it, very strong company. We're in very strong financial position. We have no debt or no bank debt. Our line of credit has been fully repaid last year.
As I said, it was an interesting year, difficult with COVID, but actually very rewarding on the financial side at the end, allowing us to actually twice increase the dividend, double our dividend and pay back all our debt and be debt free at the end of the year. Just a few words on ESG. Please have a look at we just published our eleventh ESG report or at the beginning, we called it CSR report. There's a lot of details in the report on our website. But we are doing many, many projects without this crusted in great detail.
But there's a few changes this year. We're still reporting under the TRI standards, but we are also aligning with the disclosures on TCFD and SASP for this year. And you see a lot of other initiatives and obviously following the TSM framework from Canada, from the Mining Association of Canada that we applied to all our operations across the globe. So when you look back to 2020, record operating cash flow of $462,000,000 as we said, we repaid all our debt. We nearly replaced our sole resource, more than replaced our gold and as I said, have just made a large resource at La Corada for over 100,000,000 ounces.
And that's obviously that's from cash flow. When you look at it and I think the slide I have up right now is very interesting because it gives you the cash flow per share and free cash flow per share. It's basically doubled nearly every year from 2018 to 2019 and again to 2020. Very important because we did not issue actually any shares. The last public offering we did to raise money for our business was in 02/2009, so that's now twelve years ago.
So our share count is pretty stable and therefore, when our business is improving, our operational cash flow and free cash flow per share is improving as well. And so what do we do with that money? Well, if we look back, we generated about $1,500,000,000 free cash flow since 2010. We returned actually about 24% in dividends to our shareholders, about 9% that is the share repurchases early on. So over 30% was returned to shareholders and we are very happy to pay dividend and return to our shareholders at any time at any part of the metal price cycle.
We repaid all our debt as I mentioned and used the reminder as sustaining capital, lending project capital to build and expand great projects like La Corrada and Dolores. Just a few words to the silver supply and demand. There's great reports. If you need the resource, please go to the Silver Institute, there's a website. There's a lot of information available there.
On the silver market, there's the silver annual silver report there that you can read all kind of details on silver market, silver mines as planned demand. And you see actually quite strong demand last year still even though with COVID, but it wasn't that much on the industrial side and on the jewelry side as you can imagine that was actually a reduced demand but very strong demand on the investment side where we saw a record inflow into ETFs and a very strong demand for small bullion as well. And I think it's really fair to say that silver is a green metal and it's the metal of the future because nearly 55% of the current silver production is used for electronics, for industrial applications to make electric cars to build your five gs networks, you need silver. You need obviously silver to build solar panels, which is the largest single use of silver right now on the industrial side. So very, very important metal for the world to actually bring us where we want and where we need to be on a low carbon economy and you need absolutely silver to get there.
So please have a look on the website of the silver and seed if you look for further details. So that's my last slide here. They're very simple points really. It's what makes a great mining company beside to care and have strong ESG programs, you need long and large silver reserves, you need a strong treasury, you need a very strong management team. And I think we combine all that in Pan American Silver and really looking forward to the advancement of this year, 2021 and see how we get out of this pandemic and with strong metal prices return very strong free cash flow to our shareholders.
With that, I would like to hand it over to Kieran and see if she has any questions for me.
Hi, Michael. We do have this following question from a shareholder. Does the futures market suppress the price of silver?
Yes, I got this question quite often actually or once in a while. The silver price is like any commodity in the world. It's really a question of supply and demand. And maybe I can go back one slide where I talked about or two slides, sorry, about silver supply and demand there. The difference for silver is just that there are two different supply demand stories in the silver market.
One is the industrial side and one is the investment side. So it depends a bit how they work together. Right now, we're coming out of this pandemic and of big financial crisis. There will be big growth and there will be a lot of demand on the industrial side coming. People will go out and buy jewelry again, people will buy electronics plus we're going to work on important advances on our clean energy production in the world and build electric cars.
So the industrial side will grow. At the same time, a lot of people right now are worried about inflation, losing value of our major currencies, etcetera, and use silver as that as an inflation hedge or as a store of value, that's the other side of the silver story of price, supply and demand. So when we look back, as I said last year, very strong demand on the investment side, less so on the industrial side because of COVID. The investment side is still very, very strong and I'm looking forward to a very strong demand and growth on the industrial side for the example such as Kate and I think that bodes very well for a very strong silver price here going here in the sort of near term future.
Thank you. We have another question. Are you concerned that a less business friendly political administration in Peru could be detrimental to the company?
No, I'm not. First of all, elections will happen in Peru, the second round in June. It's a political process in any countries we live there are elections. We've had to many, many events or I went through any of us in our careers and these are process and Peruvian population will decide who should be their next President. So we are very happy in Peru.
It's a great place to be and do business in Peru. And when the new administration comes in, however, they will be elected by the population of Peru, we'll work with that administration and looking forward to do so.
Great. Thank you. Could you also provide an update to the Tahoe Resources acquisition? How that acquisition has been for Pan American?
Sure. I mean, it's now over two years already. So it's going quite a bit back. But as you know, we got not only the Esco Bald mine, which I explained at the beginning, is on current maintenance right now, but we also received through the acquisition the two mines in Timmins in Canada and two in Peru, La Reina and Shawwindo, which mostly produce gold and have been fabulous assets for us for the last two years, of course, helped by higher gold prices, but also helped by a lot of exploration success on our side. I just want to recall that in last August, we announced that we already found another 400,000 ounces of new gold reserves at Shawwindo.
We have been able to replace our production at La Reina, still drilling and still finding more and the same, I can say, on Timmins as well. So they have been great assets for us. They will go out in production for a long time, some of them longer than the others, but are great assets. While we, as I said, preparing for this consultation process on the Escobar mine. So I think overall, it worked out very well.
It worked out well for both assets of shareholders as our share price increased substantially since the transaction and really looking forward to keep working with those assets.
Thank you, Michael. Those are all the questions pertinent to the business of the meeting that we've received from shareholders. Should we proceed to concluding the meeting?
I think we conclude the meeting and I will, as I said, my last act will be to adjourn the meeting. And thank you again everybody for joining us today and I look forward to being here as a shareholder next year and listening to how great the company's done in 2021 from Jill and Michael again. Thank you. Thank you all. Good day.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.