Victoria Gold Corp

TSX:VGCX

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Lenora Hobbis, executive]

Welcome to the Victoria Gold Video and Conference call to discuss the company's third quarter 2023 financial results. Listeners are encouraged to read Victoria's third quarter 2023 audited financial results report and MD&A, both available on the company's website and SEDAR.

Joining us on the call today are John McConnell, President and CEO; Marty Rendall, Chief Financial Officer; and Mark Ayranto, Chief Operating Officer. [Operator Instructions]. Also note that the 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 see our disclosure documents, including our corporate presentation, AIF and MD&A and the cautionary notes therein, which can be found on SEDAR and the company's website.

I will now turn the meeting over to John McConnell, Director and CEO. John?

[John McConnell, executive]

Thanks, Lenora. Good morning, afternoon or evening, depending on where you are. Thanks for joining the call. I'll provide a brief summary of the third quarter and then pass the call to Marty and Mark to provide more details.

First and foremost, starting with safety. We had 1 lost-time injury reported in Q3, our first LTI of 2023 as a worker, who was on modified work duties was unable to return to their full-time role. Our total recordable injury frequency for Q3 was 1.82. And for 2023, our TRIF year-to-date remains amongst the best in our industry at 1.15.

Operationally, the third quarter of 2023 saw the Eagle Gold Mine continue its strong operational performance despite an approximate 2-week shutdown due to wildfire evacuations in the quarter. As should be evident from Q3 results, we remain on track to achieve our 2023 guidance for both production and costs. Our operating team and on-site employees deserve credit for adapting to challenging conditions early in Q3. This strong operational performance allowed us to generate strong free cash flow, allowing us to comfortably repay $15 million of principal on our debt facilities in the third quarter.

On the exploration front, we have released the final assays from our 2023 program at our Raven discovery located on the Dublin Gulch property approximately 15 kilometers east of Eagle. With results, including 5.8 grams per tonne over 31 meters, we are excited by the potential we see at Raven and plan to release an updated resource for the deposit in the first quarter of 2024.

Finally, in the third quarter, we announced the acquisition of Golden Predator Mining from Sabre Gold, which included the 2.1 million ounce Brewery Creek project in the Yukon and the exploration stage Gold Dome property, which is located near Eagle. Notably, we elected to pay the entire initial consideration of approximately $8 million in cash, a reflection of both our strong cash flow and importantly, our view of the unrecognized value in our share price.

I will now turn the call over to Marty Rendall, our Chief Financial Officer.

[Marty Rendall, executive]

Hi, everyone. I'll briefly discuss our financials before I pass it over to Mark to discuss operations. Currency will be in Canadian dollars unless specifically mentioned otherwise.

During the quarter, we sold a little over 40,000 ounces of gold, resulting in revenue of approximately $105 million. This was about 4% higher than the $101 million in revenue generated during the third quarter of 2022. The improvement in revenue is a result of a higher gold price and stronger U.S. dollar, partially offset by lower gold ounces sold.

Cost of goods sold was $67 million during the quarter, compared to $65 million in the third quarter of the previous year. Importantly, our costs have decreased since Q2 2023 when cost of goods sold were $75 million. This is the result of successful cost initiatives that we touched on last quarter and which are ongoing.

We have seen a fairly wide range of commentary from our industry peers regarding inflation with some peers noting that inflation is subsiding and others noted that it's still an issue. This might be influenced by jurisdiction or a host of other factors. But for Western Canada and Yukon, where we do business, inflation continues, and we are seeing wage pressures as well as cost pressures across the board.

Our #1 cost input is labor and the persistent upward pressure on wages is causing increased cost, and this also affects contractors and consultant costs. Fuel is our second largest expense. And while prices have fallen from their 2022 highs, year-over-year prices are relatively flat. So while inflation persists, our cost of goods sold has stayed constant year-over-year, showing that the site cost reduction initiatives are certainly bearing fruit.

The higher revenues, combined with flat costs year-over-year resulted in an increase in gross profit and in operating earnings. When we look at some of the nonoperational impacts on net income, we see higher interest expenses year-over-year due to higher interest rates, and we've experienced lower losses on foreign exchange.

So while the U.S. dollar strengthened during the quarter, it strengthened less than it did in the previous year. You'll recall that the strengthening U.S. dollar leads to higher Canadian dollar revenue, which is very positive for us, but it also results in a loss in our U.S.-denominated debt. And this provides us with a partial natural hedge with respect to currency.

Income before tax for the quarter was $10.5 million, a material improvement over the $2.1 million loss experienced during the third quarter of 2022. Taxes, including current and deferred income and mining taxes stayed relatively constant year-over-year, contributing to a market increase in quarterly net income after tax. The third quarter 2023 net income after tax was $5.6 million or $0.08 per share versus a third quarter loss after tax in 2022 of $8.6 million or $0.13 per share.

By the end of September 2022, the company held cash and equivalents of $19 million compared to $21 million at the end of 2022. I would remind listeners that we do use our revolving credit facility to manage our treasury and therefore, our cash balance stays relatively constant, while debt will fluctuate to match our liquidity needs. Working capital at the end of September was $140 million, compared to $95 million at the end of December 2022. The increase in working capital is substantially the result of reduced accounts payable.

During the most recent quarter, total capital expenditures were $21 million, while 9 months year-to-date total capital expenditures were $57 million (sic) [ $55.7 million ]. This is comprised of sustaining capital, capitalized stripping and growth capital as well as exploration and a detailed breakdown is included in our MD&A.

I'll now look at our non-IFRS performance measures. Once again, the detailed numerical breakdown of each of the measures, along with commentary on the calculation is contained within our MD&A. During this section, I will use U.S. dollars for unit costs to allow for uniform peer comparison.

The average realized price per ounce sold during the quarter was USD 1,926 per ounce of gold. This compares to the third quarter of '22, where we realized USD 1,717 per ounce. Cash cost per ounce of gold sold during the most recent quarter were $1,484 -- sorry, that's all-in sustaining costs. All-in sustaining cost per ounce of gold sold during the most recent quarter was $1,466 (sic) [ $1,484 ] and this compares to the third quarter of '22, where all-in sustaining costs per ounce were $1,489.

Free cash flow before working capital during the most recent quarter was CAD 18 million. This compares to the third quarter of '22, where free cash flow before working capital was negative CAD 16 million, quite a significant increase year-over-year. Free cash flow after working capital during the most recent quarter was CAD 25 million, and this compares to the third quarter of '22, where free cash flow after working capital was negative $9 million.

Finally, EBITDA, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization during the third quarter of 2023 was CAD 35 million or $0.52 per share. And this compares to the third quarter of '22, where EBITDA was CAD 23 million or $0.35 per share.

I'll now turn it over to Mark Ayranto, our Chief Operating Officer.

[Mark Ayranto, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Marty, and hi to everybody on the call. As John noted earlier, health and safety at site remains a top priority, and our track record to date reflects these efforts. In the third quarter of 2023, the Eagle Mine produced approximately 42,000 ounces of gold. In the first 9 months of 2023, we produced a total of 125,000 ounces of gold, and that's a significant increase compared to 2022, positioning us well to achieve our 2023 production guidance of 160,000 to 180,000 ounces.

We stack 2.3 million tonnes of ore grading at grading at 0.65 grams per tonne in the third quarter, and that's for a total of 6.9 million tonnes, grading 0.75 grams per tonne stack in the first 9 months of the year. The mining rate in the third quarter was 55,000 tonnes per day. It's an increase quarter-over-quarter from 49,000 tonnes per day that we averaged in the second quarter of 2023. Mining rates are expected to increase further in the fourth quarter of this year, primarily due to availability of waste getting combined with shorter haul distances.

Our leach pad performance remained strong in the third quarter. Recoveries are continuing to trend in line with our forecast levels. And notably, we saw an approximately -- an approximate 7,000 ounce reduction in our recoverable gold inventory in the third quarter as ounces stacked in prior quarters were recovered [indiscernible], and that's as expected under our heap leach model.

Grade stack in Q3 do remain in line with our reserve model, which has -- which so far the life of mine has reconciled well to actual production results. The decrease in stack rate quarter-over-quarter primarily reflects mine sequencing, and we do expect to see an improvement in gold grades in Q4.

As demonstrated by our operational results in the first 9 months of 2023, our production levels and our asset availability have improved significantly year-over-year. And we've now turned our focus to optimizing our costs to improve our margin of the product -- of the ounces we produce. We do have a number of cost optimization initiatives currently underway, and it was encouraging in Q3 to see these initiatives starting to bear fruit as our operating costs were lower quarter-over-quarter on both a gross and unit basis across all categories, mining, processing and G&A.

And with that, John, back to you for concluding remarks.

[John McConnell, executive]

Thanks, Marty and Mark. In summary, the third quarter of 2023 continued our strong operational performance despite some unplanned downtime beyond our control. We are well positioned to achieve our 2023 production guidance and look forward to discussing our final 2023 results with you early in the new year. Thank you all for listening, and we will now open the call for questions.

[Lenora Hobbis, executive]

[Operator Instructions] John, Chris Thompson has a question.

[Chris Thompson, analyst]

John, can you hear me?

[John McConnell, executive]

I can.

[Chris Thompson, analyst]

Okay. I wonder if you could just give us a sense of where we're going to go through the winter period, if you wouldn't mind just looking at obviously stacked tonnes and what you anticipate, I guess?

[John McConnell, executive]

Sure. I'll start, and then Mark can jump in with more detail, but we're going to continue the stack through the year as we did last year. We've just finalized our budgets for next year and it calls for stacking January, February, March. And we will see continued reduction of the seasonality of the operation, although we will always have some seasonality, because we can't leach side slopes during the winter. That will be a summertime opportunity. But you'll see the seasonality in our gold production continued to reduce as we continue to stack during the full year.

Any further comments, Mark?

[Mark Ayranto, executive]

No. Yes, just one. I mean, I think you summarized it well, John. I'd add, Chris, is that we have just completed a short shutdown, which really sets us up well for the ending this year and starting into Q1 during winter period.

[Chris Thompson, analyst]

Just one more quick question. You did mention that we can anticipate a slightly higher stacked gold grades in the fourth quarter here. Maybe you could quantify that. Are we looking at 0.74-ish, obviously, higher than the 0.65 delivered in the Q3.

[John McConnell, executive]

Over to you, Mark.

[Mark Ayranto, executive]

Yes. I mean we're currently modeling, Chris, about 0.72 is what we're modeling.

[Chris Thompson, analyst]

Okay. All right. And just moving into next year, is that the goal that sort of grade on the pad?

[Mark Ayranto, executive]

Yes, we are letting just off the top of my head, somewhere in the order of 0.75 to 0.8 grams per tonne for 2021.

[Lenora Hobbis, executive]

Okay. And Alex has a question, John.

[Alexander Terentiew, analyst]

Yes, good to see that operation is doing well. You guys are paying down some debt and your cash is good. A question then for you on Raven and Golden Predator moving away from the operations and more towards exploration here. What's your plan for both of those for next year? I know Raven, obviously, saw some really interesting holes there. But how do you see that advancing over the next year? And then just kind of on the Golden Predator Brewery Creek, your exploration plans for that next year as well?

[John McConnell, executive]

Yes, Alex. It's a bit too early to provide a lot of detail. We're just working our way through the package of data we've received on those properties. And I'll be able to provide you a lot more detail and budgets on that early in Q1 2024.

[Alexander Terentiew, analyst]

Okay, that makes sense for that one. And Raven?

[John McConnell, executive]

Similar with Raven, we'll get out the updated resource sometime in Q1. And the guys are working through the recommendations on exploration versus going into engineering studies right now.

[Lenora Hobbis, executive]

If anyone else would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Okay. John, there doesn't...

[John McConnell, executive]

Are there any questions in the chat?

[Lenora Hobbis, executive]

I don't see any.

[John McConnell, executive]

All right. Well, if there's no further questions, I'd just like to thank everybody for tuning in and look forward to chatting to you with our year-end results early in the new year. Thanks, everyone.

[Lenora Hobbis, executive]

Thank you.