McEwen Mining Inc. (NYSE:MUX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Meding: Yes, sure, Rob. No problem. So, what Rob has said, is that we set up a local management team. So, in Argentina, we have myself or the majority of my time. I have about 16 years in Latin America and 10 in San Juan in Argentina. I spent about seven years with Barrick being responsible in financing operations for their — for all of their assets in Argentina. Then, we have our project director, who’s American, but who also relocated to San Juan in Argentina to be directly connected with the team. And then, the next line of management from human resources with a person more than 16 years in Tier One, Tier Two operations to our legal manager, 20 years of experience with Barrick and — in natural resources. Our environmental and health and safety manager, (ph) years of experience in Tier One operations with Barrick.

Through all the different functions, we have a very, very strong team that is capable of bringing this project from where it currently is over to feasibility, engineering and construction and operation. Rob?

Rob McEwen: Yes. So, Heiko, does that covers your…

Heiko Ihle: Yes, it does. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Rob McEwen: Thank you.

Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Mike Kozak from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

Mike Kozak: Yes, good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for hosting the call. A couple of questions from me. First one, you put out 2023 cash cost and ASIC guidance in your December 21 press release last year. But I — that guidance was noticeably absent from your press release this morning. Was that just an unplanned omission? Or should I interpret that as your previous 2023 cash cost guidance should no longer be relied upon?

Rob McEwen: I’m sorry to say, an omission.

Mike Kozak: Okay. So, you can just say reiterate the cost guidance. Good. All right. Second one, yes, so — and Michael you mentioned that the PEA at Los Azules is now expected in Q2, which is small delay from Q1 before. Now on the site visit a few weeks ago, it’s abundantly clear just how much work is going on there right, exploration drilling, met testing, the geotech drilling, new iterations of the life of mine plan that seem to be changing like almost constantly. So, my question is by pushing the PEA to Q2 from Q1, how much and what type of extra data might you be able to jam into that PEA that you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to — that could presumably improve the project economics there?

Rob McEwen: I was just going to say one aspect is deciding on the base case. We’ve done a number of optimization runs and we’re just finalizing that base case and getting agreement across the board on all of our consultants. Mike, do you want to add further information?

Michael Meding: Sure. Yes. What we looked at beginning of this year was that we had some interesting additional drilling information that we wanted to include. And this requires update on the work around the mineral resource estimate from the works of the (ph) over to the geos to the mine planning. And while we said, well, we’re going to publish — we’re going to complete the PEA by end of Q1. We now think, okay, we are going to complete it end of this month, beginning of next month depending on the optimization work that Rob just mentioned, because we still think that we can do some further work that will run a couple of weeks later publishing of the PEA, especially in the framework of the obtained financing that gives us more headroom to look for, as Rob said before, a buoyant financial market. So, we have the time we want to make sure that we get the best possible outcome for this PEA. I think we owe that to our shareholders.