President & CEO, David Wolfin from Avino Silver & Gold at the 2012 PDAC in Toronto
Avino Silver
Mike: Mike Niehuser founder of Beacon Rock and with me is David Wolfin, president and CEO of Avino Silver and that’s ticker symbol a-s-m on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Venture exchange. David, congratulations about your New York stock exchange listing.
David: Thank you very much, we are very excited about it, we got to ring the bell on January 23rd it was a very historic moment for us.
Mike: Well you’re really coming of age, why don’t you give me kind of a quick run down since we last talked about what you’ve accomplished in the last year, because it almost seems that you are getting to a point of being a solid institutional quality stock.
David: Yes, thank you. We’ve got the mine up and running, we’re running at around 200 tons per day, we’re planning to go up to 250 tons per day, at that rate we can do about 1 million ounces of silver annually and we’ve got two other expansion project, the recently announces concessions that we extended are NSR for 20 years on, which is the original Avino mine and then the tailings pond scoping studies is coming out. So what our goal is in the next 2 to 3 years is become a multi million ounce a year producer.
Mike: You’re not in commercial production now but you are actually producing some ore and you’re actually still optimizing the plant, how are things going?
David: It’s going well, we’re making money, we’re producing silver equivalent for under $8 US per ounce, yes we’re in development phase and we hope to declare commercial production in the fourth quarter of this year.
Mike: I guess it’s really exciting you have a project that can be competitive with other junior silver producers here very soon and with a very tight share count, stock price where it’s at, institutional investors and the New York Stock exchange listing, seems like this might be more acceptable, more of interest and your market cap is certainly competitive.
David: Definitely we are trading around 60 million market cap and our competitors are anywhere from 250 to 600 million. So in the next couple of years as we expand our operation you can expect our market cap to grow.
Mike: And how many shares outstanding?
David: 27 million shares
Mike: And you’re goal over the long haul is to get to what in terms of production?
David: About 3 to 3 ½ silver equivalent ounces per year
Mike: And you’re hoping to get to a position of declaring full commercial production later this year?
David: Yes in the fourth quarter
Mike: And what else should we be looking for in terms of news flow coming out of Avino this year?
David: Lots of news, we got lots of drilling going on, we’re ramping down on San Gonzales, so we’re going to be announcing the results on those stomps that are coming out and they’re looking really good, it’s like a typical vein system where it’s getting richer as we go deeper, so people can anticipate some pretty good news coming from us.
Mike: So this a company that would you’d probably be looking for it to be valued on as production potential and you know, I don’t know if it’s possible to spend enough money to prove up a resource for all the silver that you have on your land position, but isn’t this historically one of the oldest and strongest silver producing areas in Mexico?
David: Absolutely this was the very first mine founded Durango in 1558, then in the 1800’s the British owned it, it had a smelter on site, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange, had a market cap of 1 million pounds, so there is a lot of history there. Our plan is to maintain a good share structure in use cash flow to expand our resources so later on this year you’ll see a new revised resource estimate.
Mike: Well I look forward to seeing that, and it says it’s a primary silver but you have gold as well don’t you?
David: Yes we do, its different areas of the property have different mineralization because the veins came up at different times. So the Avino vein has copper, silver, and gold in it, the San Gonzales just has gold and silver and some minor led and zinc and there’s all kinds of anomalies, we did IPG of physics, so there is deeper anomalies we haven’t even drilled yet, so we are going to use our cash flow to go after those ones. And we have also retained the services of two new geologists, so we are going to start digitizing all the raw data, so we are going to come up with all kinds of new targets in the ensuing years.
Mike: Well it’s really interesting, you’ve really pursued this company in a very disciplined way, where you’ve flown under the radar, where you’ve kept the share cunt where it needs to be, you’ve developed the project so you could actually process ore there at the project as well, continuing to take advantage. In fact you mentioned the tailings, when I was down there tailings where just kind of a twinkle in your eye, so this is all seems to be kind of coming together, do you think this could be your year, this sounds like a cliché, but honestly don’t you think with the listing and the share count, that this a very attractive for companies, there might be a real reevaluation?
David: I think so and the investors can anticipate from our scoping study on the tailings and in 2006 when we originally did it, they used $8 silver and $5 gold and it looked robust at that time, so you can expect some good news coming from us.
Mike: So a summary on the news, we’re looking for a scoping study on that, and what else, we’re looking for possibly full commercial production at the end of the year, and what about drilling and other studies?
David: Absolutely and we’re coming out with release this week, we’ve added a whole bunch of man power down there, geologists and engineers, mine technicians, so there’s lots of news flow coming and lots of drilling.
Mike: honestly, lots to be proud about David, thanks so much for your time again this is Mike Neihuser with David Wolfin, president and CEO of Avino Silver and that’s a-s-m on the New York Stock exchange and the Toronto Venture Exchange, well thank you David.
David: Thank you very much.