Pan American Silver Corp 2020 Preliminary Production Results & 2021 Guidance Conference Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Don DeMarco - National Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division - Analyst : First, my first question has to do with Dolores. I see you've switched it over to the gold segment, you're seeing increased gold grades. How long do you expect this sequencing to last?

Question: Don DeMarco - National Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division - Analyst : Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And certainly, AISC helps that gold group helps the gold segment. But shifting to another name in the gold segment, the costs at Timmins have increased a little bit over a year. Maybe can you speak to some of the reasons for this and your outlook or strategy for this mine?

Question: Don DeMarco - National Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division - Analyst : I see. Okay. So maybe it's a sort of a 1-year elevated cost. But in the past, you had talked about maybe selling this. Is that sort of been -- you're now content to keep it within your portfolio?

Question: Don DeMarco - National Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division - Analyst : Okay. And my final question is on the La Colorada skarn. And of course, this is a tremendous opportunity and base metal prices are cooperating here. We're looking forward to the PEA, but the release mentioned plans to develop some ventilation raises. Do you have something in mind with respect to developing this asset at this point?

Question: Trevor Turnbull - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Analyst : I just wanted to ask about the range on costs for guidance. You've talked about how many of these operations you feel will be -- continue to be heavily impacted in the first quarter. And then that will gradually -- that impact will lessen as we go through the course of the year. And I was wondering if we kind of look at the cash cost or all-in sustaining cost guidance ranges, if it's safe to kind of assume and we kind of start the year at the high end of that range and then maybe finish up at the low end. I guess I kind of wanted to understand, I -- none of those quarters will, I guess, fall outside of the guidance range. And certainly, we would expect costs to be going down through the year. I'm just wondering if it's fair to kind of use that range as how we step it down?

Question: Trevor Turnbull - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Analyst : And can you just remind me kind of how badly has throughput been impacted by some of the restrictions? Are you off greater than 10% or as much as 20% at some of the operations?

Question: Trevor Turnbull - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Analyst : Okay. Great. And then the only other question I had, maybe for Michael or Rob, I'm not sure. We saw that there was this proposal in Mexico on essentially a 5% mining fee. It was going to be a mining fee-based on revenue. This was, I guess, an early proposal by a congressman that's been put forth. Have you heard anything about that? Or any sense if this has a reasonable chance of moving forward? Or it's just kind of a one-off by a congressman that isn't necessarily destined to go very far.

Question: Trevor Turnbull - Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, Research Division - Analyst : Yes. It did seem like it came out of kind of a bit out of not necessarily nowhere, but didn't come out with a broad base of support and a lot of fanfare, just seemed like it just kind of got tabled and hopefully, it doesn't proceed too quickly.