Bill Cara

Cara Community GSM 50: Hecla Mining

Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL) reviewed 10-03-2020

Market Cap:       $2.7 B (USD)

Share Price:        $5.08 (USD)

Shares outstanding: 534,670,072 as of Jun 2020

Cash and cash equivalents: $75.9 M (USD) as of 30 Jun 2020

Debt: $468 M (USD) as of 30 Jun 2020

Credit facility: $50 M (USD)

Current operations: Yes

Insider holdings: 1.8%

Institutional:  275 institutions own about 62%

Website: hecla-mining.com

Investor Presentations: https://ir.hecla-mining.com/news-events/presentations/default.aspx

President & CEO: Phillips S. Baker

Mid-tier producer, mines silver & gold. Company has a 129- year history of mining

Produced a total of 6.65 M oz Ag and 59,982 oz Au in 1H 2020 (1 Jan-30 Jun 2020)

Owns the world-class Greens Creek mine in Alaska. Also, Fire Creek, Hollister, and Midas in Nevada, Casa Berardi in Quebec, & San Sebastian in Durango, Mexico

Lucky Friday (a 6 M oz Ag producer) in Idaho had been offline due to a labor strike for most of 2019; it was brought back online in Jan. 2020 and mgmt expects full production by the end of 2020

Montanore (183 M oz Ag inferred plus 759,000 tons Cu) and Rock Creek (147 M oz Ag inferred plus 658,000 tons Cu), both in Montana are in the permitting stages

AISC stated $7.11 per Ag oz

Bottom line:

  • Hecla has lost money in 4 of the past 5 years, and had an especially difficult 2Q2019 in which the stock dropped to ~1.25
  • Great assets, great pipeline of projects, but a high debt load relative to working capital
  • No position