SSR Mining - Earnings Call - Q1 2021

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good day, everyone, and welcome to SSR Mining's First Quarter twenty twenty one Conference Call. This call is being recorded. This time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Wes Sconce with SSR Mining.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to SSR Mining's first quarter twenty twenty one conference call, during which we will provide an update on our business a review of our financial performance. Our financial statements and management's discussion and analysis have been filed on SEDAR, EDGAR, the ASX and are also available on our website. To accompany our call, there is an online webcast and you will find to access the webcast in our news release relating to this call.

Please note that all figures discussed during this call are in U. S. Dollars unless otherwise indicated. All references to cash costs and all in sustaining costs are for payable ounce of metals sold. We will be making forward looking statements today, so please read the disclosures in the relevant documents.

Joining us on the call today are Rod Antal, President and CEO Alison White, CFO and Stuart Beckman, COO. Now I'd like to turn the call over

Speaker 2

to Rod for opening remarks. Rod? Thanks, Wes, and good afternoon and good morning to you all. Before we begin, I would like to welcome Alison White, our new CFO, to her first earnings call with SSR Mining. We're elated to have a person with Alison's caliber join SSR as we continue to set the foundation for the future.

In time and as travel allows, a number of you will meet Alison in person. But for today, you will have the opportunity to hear from Alison as she walks you through the results of a very strong first quarter. So now moving on to the quarterly review. The quality and operational consistency of our four operating sites were clearly on display in the quarter as we delivered production of 196,000 gold equivalent ounces at an all in sustaining cost of $1,004 per ounce. We generated $77,000,000 of unlevered free cash flow, and this great start to the year firmly puts us on track to achieve our full year guidance targets.

Our peer leading free cash flow generation and strong balance sheet have allowed us to take the last step to our overall approach to capital management and allocation. We already implemented a base dividend of $44,000,000 per year to be paid quarterly. Now and in addition to the base dividend, we announced a meaningful share buyback program of up to $150,000,000 The combination of the base dividend and our share buyback program aligns our peer leading free cash flow yield with our capital returns yield. Our total capital return to shareholders will be up to $194,000,000 this year, which is a peer leading position. It is important to highlight that we have entered into an automatic share purchase agreement with a Canadian broker and have full intention to execute on our share buyback programs, especially at the current share prices.

In a short period of time since closing of the merger, we have implemented a holistic capital allocation program that allows us to continue to invest in growth and maintain returns to our shareholders through the gold price cycles, which is great progress and provides clarity on our capital management going forward. From a growth perspective, we continue to invest in value adding capital projects while advancing our large organic exploration portfolio. The purpose of our exploration program is to daylight our ability to sustain 700 to 800,000 ounces of gold production for at least the next ten years. So moving on to the next slide, which is on ESG. We've done a tremendous amount of work on setting and resetting priorities of both legacy companies as well as finalizing a new suite of sustainability policies to align to leading industry practices.

This work formed the foundations for our 2020 sustainability report that was released during the quarter. The sustainability report reconfirmed our commitment to communities and the environment, and it also highlighted several achievements during 2020 and most importantly, out our priorities for 2021. This included a commitment to establishing an action plan to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 02/1950. We have also begun to improve disclosures on climate and water management responding to the Carbon Disclosure Project and aligning our reporting with the requirements of the task force on climate related financial disclosures. From a safety perspective, although COVID remains pervasive, we are doing a good job of managing it at all our sites.

Our COVID protocols focus first on protecting our people, contractors and the community in which we work, and our efforts have been successful in mitigating the impacts to our operations. We have a well resourced and experienced HS and E and operations team within SSR and are proud of our achievements and vision for the future as we continue to be progressive in our approach. Moving on to the next slide. Our year to date production and cost performance is tracking well to meet our 2021 guidance that you can see here on this slide. Our focus for the year is to ensure safe production, and we have several initiatives underway as we push to improve our overall approach to safety and results.

The quarter one safety results were a step in the right direction. We're investing in several high growth returns across growth opportunities across the business. Some examples of the growth initiatives include at Copler, the flotation circuit construction and ramp up, which is on track for commissioning in the second half. We have an ongoing and continuous improvement initiatives at Marigold. And at Seabee, we're focused on increasing the underground development rates to allow us to utilize the latent mill capacity in the future.

And finally, at Puna, the transition to an owner operator's haulage fleet is underway. All the initiatives that I just mentioned are now progressing to plan. On the exploration side, we're investing $65,000,000 across our portfolio and expect these efforts will take center stage as we advance the exploration targets and provide some clarity on their scale and time lines during the year. A good example is the step out in infill drilling at Ardich, which continues to support resource expansion and conversion to reserves for this sizable low capital intensity asset that is planned to come into production by 2023. Stu will touch on a number of these later in the call.

Just moving to the next slide and before I hand the call over to Alison and Stu, I want to touch base on a few of the quarterly highlights. As I said, operationally, all four sites had a good first quarter, nicely setting us up for the remainder of the year. Our gold production and costs provide a solid start. At Marigold, we set a record material movement and at Copler, CB and Puna all contributed to the strong results. From a financial perspective, we reported an EPS at $0.47 per share and generated $77,000,000 in free cash flow, adding to our strong balance sheet.

Finally, we published the updated mineral resources and reserves during the quarter. Gold mineral reserves increased 5% to 8,000,000 ounces, while M and I mineral resources increased 14% to 15,000,000 ounces. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Alison, who will discuss our financial performance in more detail, starting on Slide seven.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Rod, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here at SSR Mining and very excited to talk about the quarterly results as shown on Slide seven. We've completed a strong quarter with the assets all delivering on quality and consistency, producing 196,094 gold equivalent ounces during the quarter and selling 201,494 gold equivalent ounces for a total of $366,500,000 in revenue for the quarter. Attributable net income was $53,000,000 or $0.24 per share, and adjusted attributable net income was $102,400,000 for the quarter, with adjusted attributable earnings per share of $0.47 Operating cash flows were strong at $145,200,000 for the quarter, and our free cash flow was $77,000,000 before paying out $49,100,000 in shareholder and non controlling interest dividends as well as $17,500,000 to reduce debt. On the right side of the slide, there are more details on the $0.47 in adjusted earnings per share.

Blocking from the $0.24 in attributable net income per share to add $0.11 for the amortization of the fair value as a result of the adjustment to bump up to the fair value of inventory and mineral properties at Tripler at the time of acquisition, followed by $03 per share for COVID and integration costs, less $03 for taxes, and adding back $0.11 per share as a result of the foreign currency revaluation on the deferred tax assets held in Turkey. Turning to slide eight, we can talk about SSR's balance sheet strength. SSR continues to provide balance sheet strength amongst its peers and maintain strong liquidity, closing the quarter with over $900,000,000 in consolidated cash and $476,000,000 in net cash. Given heavier loads on working capital in Q1, especially at CB, where they restocked while the ICE Road was still formed, dividend payments to our shareholders of $11,000,000 and a $38,000,000 payment to our noncontrolling interest partner at Tripler, we are in an outstanding cash position. Net cash to EBITDA ratio is 0.6 times, again demonstrating our strength and placing us in the top quartile of our peer group.

SSR continues to act on its multifaceted capital allocation strategy, declaring a $05 dividend per share, again during Q1, coupled with a recently announced non course issuer bid share buyback program, set up to repurchase 10,000,000 shares through an automated purchase framework within twelve months. On Slide nine, we can talk more about SSR's peer leading free cash flow and capital returns. We are confident that our capital allocation program provides attractive yields for our shareholders. SSR Mining's peer leading free cash flow yield of 11% is more than double the MidCap peer group at 2%. And SSR's capital return yield is more than double that of the MidCap peer group at 5.4 for this year alone.

Our capital allocation priorities include investing in growth, returning cash to shareholders, and maintaining balance sheet strength. SSR is accomplishing this through a $05 base dividend per quarter, yielding 1% per year, which is supplemented by the share buyback program recently announced and discussed on the previous slide. The combination of a peer group leading return and significant free cash flow generation differentiates SSR Mining and demonstrates our commitment to shareholder returns. We will continue to execute on our priorities, both financially and operationally, as we move through 2021. Stu will walk you through the operational highlights starting on page 10.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Alison. Thank you, Rob. First off, for ESG, we had an impressive health and safety quarter with a sixty five percent reduction in recordable injury rate compared to 2020, with all the sites seeing improvement. We also completed the sustainability report, which I hope you've had time to read. It includes new commitments on greenhouse gas emissions and water.

To match this resolve to deliver these extended ESG commitments, we started some restructuring of the EHS and S team. The rollout of our new integrated ESG management system progressed to plan and will provide our business leaders with better tools for delivery, risk management, and improve oversight and data analytics. While COVID remains a challenge for the world,

Speaker 5

it is

Speaker 4

now part of our ecology, and we are diligently managing it along with the other risks and business factors. Moving on to operations and growth. The business is off to a really solid start with all operations achieving above budgeted production and overall below budgeted costs. So we're in a great position to deliver guidance for 2021. Some cost savings are simply of timing of exploration and capital spend, which are both expected to catch up.

However, taking timing into consideration, overall costs were still slightly better than budgeted for the quarter. Across the business, we've been reviewing and improving our life of mine planning processes. The outcome of this long cycle will form the basis of the long term guidance, which we will include for the first time with the annual guidance starting in 2022. Moving on to Copler. The Copler sulfide plant continued to process well above design throughput rates.

Rates were good relative to budget and offset lower than planned recoveries. The chirper oxide plant stacked well above budget recoverable ounces onto the heap leach, with the gap in production simply a function of timing of the leach cycle. The flotation plant construction is well advanced and remains on schedule with commissioning and ramp up for the beginning of Q3. The flotation plant is really going to transform the chair for pressure oxidation plant. Drilling and study work continued in the district, which includes Copler Ardich C2 and the Copler Saddle.

And we drilled about 13,000 meters of diamond holes in the quarter. We currently have seven drills at Ardich. The deeper drilling in C2 is showing gaps in continuity of economic mineralization, and later in the quarter, we slowed the drilling. That said, there is already considerable copper driven mineral value within and immediately adjacent to the reserve resource shells, and the current mine plan does not exploit these. The study team are analyzing options to leverage additional value from this.

Ardich will be the significant feature of the updated CDMP 21 technical report, which we aim to complete by Q1 next year. In the last technical report, CDMP 20, Artich was included only as a resource and as a PEA case in section 24, which showed a potential to add about $500,000,000 in NPV and about 1,000,000 ounces of gold production. In CDMP twenty twenty one, ARTIC will be improved with the subsequent work and will be converted into reserve. That is, it will move to the base central case and evaluation models. Additionally, and I stress, of course, depending on the outcome of the work, we are aiming to include copper mineralization as a resource and as a PEA case in the CDMP 2021 technical report.

Now let's move to Marigold. Marigold achieved a quarterly record for mined tonnes and its second best quarter of gold production. This is doubly impressive given the site completed a scheduled thirty five day shutdown for the big electrical PNH 4,100 shovel. The two new hydraulic PC 7,000 shovels stepped up and filled the gap during the shutdown. In the mine, we started drilling and equipping the watering boards and commenced the construction of the rapid infiltration basin.

This is where the water will be put back into the water table. We also intentionally left some ore in the pit during the quarter while we completed construction of Cell 24. The cell is now complete, and we are stacking on it. Exploration at Merigold focused mostly around the existing pits, and we drilled about 25,000 meters with what is looking like good result. Please move to Seabee.

Seabee's production was slightly above budget. The annual ice road restocking is done, and we are set for the year. There were some new and additional underground mining equipment arrive on-site, which will go into service in the coming months. Mine development is also in line with budget. We've been very busy with exploration at Seabee, drilling out the Gap Hanging wall and the Santoy Hanging wall, looking to pull these into reserve and resource in the near term.

We're also drilling at exploration sites at Mac North, Joker, and Fisher, and we are setting up for more work at Amesk. We remain pretty bullish on the growth potential at both the Greater Seabee and Amesk. Please move to to Puna. Puna's mass production targets out of the park. They were well over budget on production, and unit cost was significantly below budget.

Plant throughput was sustained at greater than 4,500 tonne a day, a new record. The long awaited changeover to owner haulage from for the mine to the plant started in April and should further lower operating costs. We are reviewing the life of mine planning at a higher processing rate for Puna. Moving to the exploration slide. I've pretty much talked about all of these items, key items already.

And so in summary, for the business, safety was excellent. Production was above budget. Cost was low budget, and our organic growth projects advanced. A good quarter for the business and the operations and growth teams. Thank you very much.

Back to you, Rob.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Stuart, and thank you, Alison. So just to summarize, as I've all mentioned, a very strong quarter to start the year, both financially and operationally. Within our completed capital allocation framework and continuing strong free cash flow, our capital returns to shareholders is peer leading while allowing us to grow. With the operations delivering, low capital intensity growth, the balance sheet in terrific shape and now our capital returns in place, we believe we will regain share price momentum and offer an excellent long term investment choice for shareholders. So with that, operator, I'll pass the call over to any questions you may have.

Speaker 0

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer The first question comes from Tyler Langton with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess to start, are you seeing any sort of inflationary pressures for, like, materials, energy, you know, labor? And then I guess just, you know, somewhat related with, you know, exchange rates. You know, I guess any details on, you know, maybe impact on cost just, you know, sort of in Canada, Turkey or Argentina?

Speaker 2

Hi, Tyler. I'm gonna pass that one over to Allison.

Speaker 3

Hey, Tyler. So I'll take the first portion of your question off the bat about inflation pressures. So at this point, we really have not seen any material inflation pressures across the business. We are continuing to monitor that and stay close to the markets to try to this way anything that could be coming our way. But we have not yet seen that come through.

Speaker 2

And then on the second part of your question, Tyler, around exchange rates and the devaluation in some of the currencies in the countries where we operate. Again, it's usually a short lived win for us. We normally get offset by the country inflation rates increasing with the devaluation. So while it's a short wind live and it looks good on paper, it usually catches us up to being sort of net net neutral.

Speaker 6

Okay. No, that's helpful. And then just with Tripler, I guess, obviously, it was a good start to the year. And I mean, sort of just the annualized Q1 production would just get to the low end of the guidance. But I guess cost sorry, production should be sort of ramping throughout the year and then costs sort of came in sort of come around the midpoint of annual guidance.

Maybe can you just talk about the cadence of production for the remainder of the year and just kind of how to think about cost as well, especially as the flotation starts up?

Speaker 4

Tyler. It's Stuart. So you remember when we gave guidance at the beginning of the year, we said that we expected Chairco to be back end loaded. When we issued the technical report, one of the main drivers in the technical report was the construction of the flotation plant, which drives volumes up at Copler through the sulfide plant and significantly pushes the cost down. So our expectation has always been that the year would be back end loaded and the cost would drop in the second half.

Speaker 6

Got you. Great. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Tyler.

Speaker 0

The next question comes from Cosmos Chiu with CIBC. Great.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Rod and Stu, and welcome, Alison. Certainly a great way to kick off your journey with SSR Mining with a huge earnings beat. Maybe first off, my question is on the Marigold. I think in the MD and A, you mentioned that you know, the the heaps are getting fairly high now. And so part of the q one production was actually a result of, you know, stacking in q four.

You know, in that, can I ask you, you know, about the leach cycle these days at at Marigold? How you know, what's the height of some of these lifts here? And I guess the point of my question is you stacked, you know, 5,700,000 tons in q one, fairly good grade, point four gram per ton. When is that gonna come through?

Speaker 4

It's always an interesting question, Cosmos. So the for the rest of this year, we'll be stacking in Cell 24, which I mentioned we just started stacking on, and we'll start irrigating on soon. So for the remainder of the year, we're going to see us stacking pretty close to plastic, and so we'll see a pretty quick return or a short lead cycle. And we'll actually see a drawdown in inventory from the from the rest of the rest of the heat.

Speaker 5

Mhmm. Great. And then maybe moving to CB here. You know, as you mentioned, 8.45 gram per ton head grade in q one, lower than last year, but as expected as you were working through some of the lower productivity areas. Stu, could you remind us when are you getting back to, you know, some of the higher productivity areas, you know, potentially higher grades?

Speaker 4

Yeah. So we are seeing some higher grades coming through, the mine at the moment. But you remember the guidance for CP was a little bit lower this year than the previous years on basis of that sort of mine schedule was doing. And with an expectation, it'll come back up in the following years. We will, as I said in my call, being be issuing long term guidance that'll help you to map, that out at least over the three years when we issued the long term guidance at the end of the year.

Speaker 5

Mhmm. Great. I guess, you know, bringing this all together, as you mentioned earlier, you know, is gonna be back end loaded. It sounds like Marigold, you know, in the second half production is gonna be fairly good as well. And CB, you're seeing some of the higher grades.

I guess what I'm trying to get to is if I look at q one production, a 196,000 geos, if I were to analyze that and, you know, you might say I can't, you would, you know, hit the top end of full year guidance. You know, is that how should we look at it? Is it? I know it's still early days, but is that is that possible?

Speaker 3

So, Cosmos, this is Allison. Thanks for the question.

Speaker 5

Hi, Allison.

Speaker 3

Hi. And thank you for the welcome earlier. I appreciate that. So, you know, I think that our guidance for the year remains consistent with what we've previously talked about. And, you know, we are going to continue to monitor if there's any intra quarter changes.

But right now, we are affirming what we've previously said, and we'll, you know, bring back any additional information that we have when we are aware of it.

Speaker 5

Sure. Thanks, Allison. And maybe one last question. You know, just looking at Turkey here, I think, two days ago or several days ago, there was, you know, the government announced a a shutdown given, you know, COVID nineteen. Maybe a question for Rod.

You know, Could you make some comments in terms of COVID-nineteen in Turkey? And that shutdown, does it have any impact on mining operations?

Speaker 2

No, it doesn't cause it. It's similar to what we've seen all through actually in Turkey. There's been at times where there's been restrictions placed that hasn't entirely brought the country on a shutdown. So the mining industry is sort of considering that the essential service group. And so we can continue to operate as long as it's done safely.

So the restrictions are really around just the public and restricting hours in out of their homes and that sort of stuff. They went through more recently quite a big spike in COVID cases, and it's really just in response to that in short term. Particularly the fact that they're just about to start celebrating their religious holidays as well, where it's a lot more people usually mobile moving around. So they're trying to avoid another big spike.

Speaker 5

Of course, got it. Those are all the questions I have. Thanks again, Rod and team, and congrats again.

Speaker 2

Thanks, guys.

Speaker 0

The next question comes from Mike Parkin with National Bank. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the solid quarter. Most of my questions have been answered. Just one, on the exploration side of things, where when could we expect the next exploration update coming out of Marigold? And, you know, just in terms of drilling the Trenton Canyon oxides, how are how are you kind of on that program?

Is that program well established and ramping up? Or are you still kind of mobilizing drills and stuff? And, you know, should we expect kind of a greater number of holes coming in the second half versus the first half in terms of updates?

Speaker 4

So we we are ramping up in in that area. We will bring out over the next, couple of quarters an update of, Trenton Canyon, and we will bring out updates of each of each of the sort of the more, advanced exploration sites, so from CB and from Copler, to provide updates of where we are across all of the businesses. In Trenton Canyon, we took a step back in doing more drilling before we advanced into study work at Trenton Canyon to to make sure we fully understand that resource before we proceed to the next step. But we are we are out there drilling.

Speaker 7

Okay. Great. And then with pitorrhea, when do you think you'd be in a position to start drilling from the underground?

Speaker 4

So after the merger, we took the opportunity, and we put the advancement of the underground decline on hold while we do a more wholesome assessment of the current resource, the current resource knowledge, and the status of that study. So, we don't have an immediate plans on drilling, in the Pederaya underground. This

Speaker 0

concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Rod Antal for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, Anastasia. And again, thank you all for joining us today. Really solid quarter, and it's obviously nice to introduce Alison that way to the company and hopefully have many more of them to come. Thanks again, and have a great day.

Speaker 0

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.