Wall Street Transcript Interview with Phillips S. Baker Jr., CEO and President of Hecla Mining Company (HL)
67 WALL STREET, New York - December 3, 2013 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Gold and Precious Metals Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This special feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs and Equity Analysts. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.
Topics covered: Precious Metals - Lower Gold Price Environment - Precious Metals Exploration and Production - Increasing Capital Expenditures - Emerging Markets Silver Consumption - Mining Safety and Environmental Concerns
Companies include: Hecla Mining Co. (HL) and many more.
In the following excerpt from the Gold and Precious Metals Report, the CEO and President of Hecla Mining Company (HL) discusses company strategy and the outlook for this vital industry:
TWST: Which mines have been your strongest producers and which looks most promising going forward?
Mr. Baker: The Lucky Friday silver mine in Idaho and Greens Creek silver mine in Alaska are mines that have been operating for decades; Lucky Friday for almost 70 years, Greens Creek for 26 years. Greens Creek is an exceptional mine. It is a mine that has consistently been one of the largest silver producers in the world and has consistently been one of the three or four lowest-cost silver producers, and we see that continuing in the future. The Lucky Friday has been a strong silver producer but amazingly enough, despite the fact that it has been in production for all these decades, we see the best ore, the most economic ore in its history in its future, and we are developing a new shaft that's going to allow us to access that deeper, higher-grade, more economic ore.
TWST: How closely is your company's share price tied to mining production and/or to the metal's underlying spot price?
Mr. Baker: We're tied very closely to both what we produce and to what happens to the metal's price. If you go back to 2010, we saw the silver price move dramatically, but by early 2011 it had reached close to $50, and you saw our share price really outperform the move in the silver price as well as outperform our peers. So it's a company that has leverage to the silver price, and we would expect when silver prices rebound from the decline that it's had over the last three years, that I would expect you'll see our share price move, and quite dramatically. I would expect the share price to move up as a result of us putting the Lucky Friday mine back into production. The mine was shutdown in 2012. In 2013, after a year of full rehabilitation of the Silver Shaft, the main haulage way for the mine, as well as more than eight miles of underground workings, we restarted the mine in February and are now up to full production, and so I would expect you should see the share price move on that as well.
TWST: Do you see trends developing in the global marketplace that could affect either gold or silver demand or the spot price?
For more of this interview and many others visit the Wall Street Transcript - a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs, portfolio managers and research analysts. This special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.
