Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Lawson Winder: Okay, great. And then hopefully just one final question that should be fairly straightforward just on the silver unit cost guide for Q4. And by the way thank you for providing the quarterly guidance. So unit costs step down in Q3 versus Q2 on higher production, and then there’s still even higher production in Q4, but the cost step back up, is that just – are you expecting a decline in some of the byproduct credits in Q4 versus Q3?

Steve Busby: Yes. Hi, Lawson, Steve here. No, it’s more reflective of our sustaining capital timing. We see a heavy quarter in Q4 for sustaining capital spend, and that’s really weather related particularly in some of our assets. Q4 is kind of the peak time for our construction on leach pad, waste dumps, things like that.

Michael Steinmann: Really weather-related in many places when we go from the wet into the dry season. Just something to the quarterly guidance, Lawson, in case, people didn’t see that it’s in our MD&A. And when you look at the quarterly in the Q1 MD&A, and if you look at our guidance there per quarter, we actually – our costs were actually below our guidance right in the guidance for the annual one. But when you look quarter-by-quarter, we did very well in Q2.

Lawson Winder: Okay. Thank you all very much. Appreciate that.

Michael Steinmann: Thank you, Lawson.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Craig Hutchison of TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Craig Hutchison: Hi, good morning.

Michael Steinmann: Good morning.

Craig Hutchison: I had a question on the MARA, you plan retain and I think you could have kind of touched on it. Is that something you hold longer term or would you be looking to monetize that post the deals closed? And I guess, have you gotten any expressions of interest on that NSR since you announced it last week?

Michael Steinmann: Well, look, I mean, at the moment it’s really – selling, focusing to sell some of these non-core assets. And as I said, whenever we can try to keep access to future upsides through royalties, I think, it has worked for us really very well in the past. Would like to remind everybody of the Maverix transaction we did with our former portfolio of royalties we had in 2015 where we started Maverix Metals and we are very strong and long time shareholder until the company got sold earlier this year, I think it [indiscernible] lots going on the transaction side. So that worked out really very well for us. I think we got in about $152 million cash from quite a smaller portfolio. This royalties we’re talking now are very strong royalties you can imagine.

I mean, we are talking especially in the case of MARA about a life of mine, copper royalty, probably one of the larger copper deposits in the world that is to be developed. I don’t want to make a decision right now what we do with this royalties. You can imagine there’s a lot of demand for royalties and of course people are asking what we are doing with them, but at the moment we’re just focusing on optimizing the portfolio and collecting those royalties. We’ll decide later on how we create most value for our shareholders out of that portfolio.

Craig Hutchison: Okay, great. Maybe one last question just on the tax. You mentioned cash taxes are higher in Q1 and Q2. Can we expect them to drop off fairly substantially here into Q3? And can you just provide some context of why it was so high? Is this for catch up payments from 2022?

Ignacio Couturier: Hi, Craig, this is Ignacio speaking. So in general, yes, as you know, we pay installments throughout the year, however, there’s always a catch up that we do, usually typically between March and April, and in this case, there was a large catch up in April from some taxes. Specifically, I think it was in Chile. But yes, that’s just a normal cadence of our tax payments, installments and then a catch up and sometimes in March and April. So do you either land in Q1 or Q2?

Michael Steinmann: But yes, you’re right. It’s normally our biggest – largest tax payments are in the first two quarters of the year.

Ignacio Couturier: That’s correct.

Craig Hutchison: Great. Thanks guys.

Michael Steinmann: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Don DeMarco from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Don DeMarco: Thank you, operator. Good morning, Michael and team. First question, so looking at the asset disposition late July, does this change your care maintenance guidance for 2023? I think it was about a $100 million for the year and maybe $50 million has been spent in H1?

Michael Steinmann: Yes. Look, really good point. I mean, it’s not only the cash that comes in and the royalties, but a lot of care maintenance costs that will go away with those transactions. The biggest ones for the care maintenance cost really Morococha and of course MARA. It really depends, when the transaction closes, but as soon as they close, yes, that will go away. Depending which month, we make and adjust a little bit the care and maintenance capital down at the end of the year, but really depends on that date, but definitely for future years that will be a big improvement.