Endeavour Silver Corporation (EXK – Free Report) produced 2.3 million silver equivalent ounces in the first quarter of 2024. This reflected a 4% decrease from the year-ago quarter, primarily due to reduced silver production at both of its mines, which offset higher gold output at Bolañitos.
Consolidated silver production was down 10% year over year to 1.46 million ounces, attributed to lower output at both Guanacevi and Bolanitos mines. Meanwhile, gold production in the quarter rose 8% to 10,133 ounces. While gold production at the Bolañitos mine was up 17%, the Guanaceví mine reported a 2% decline.
At Guanacevi, silver and gold production numbers for the first quarter were down 7% and 2% year over year, respectively, mainly due to lower grades. However, throughput increased 12% from the previous year, slightly surpassing expectations, reflecting the impact of plant refurbishments and enhanced mining efficiencies implemented in 2023.
Meanwhile, at Bolanitos, gold production increased 17% while silver production plunged 32% due to lower silver grades.
Supported by this performance, the company believes that it is on track to attain its production target of 8.1-8.8 million silver equivalent ounces in 2024.
Silver ounces sold rose 5% year over year to around 1.76 million ounces, and gold sales were up 19% to 10,880 ounces. At the quarter-end, the company held 174,759 ounces of silver and 394 ounces of gold in bullion inventory. EXK also held 7,369 ounces of silver and 385 ounces of gold in the concentrate inventory.
Increased sales volume and higher gold and silver prices through the quarter are likely to positively impact Endeavour Silver’s first-quarter 2024 results. Likewise, we expect that the first-quarter numbers of other players in the Zacks Mining – Silver industry, like Pan American Silver Corp. (PAAS – Free Report) , Hecla Mining (HL – Free Report) and Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. (FSM – Free Report) , among others, will reflect this positive trend.
Fortuna Silver Mines recently announced that it produced 112,543 gold equivalent ounces in the first quarter of 2024, which marked a 20% increase from the year-ago quarter. This includes a gold production of 89,678 ounces and a silver production of 1.1 million ounces. Gold output marked a 49% year-over-year increase, while silver production was down 32%.
FSM maintains its gold equivalent production guidance for 2024 between 457,000 ounces and 497,000 ounces. The range projects a year-over-year increase of 1-10%.
Fortuna Silver’s gold production guidance is pegged at 343,000-385,000 ounces for 2024, which indicates growth of 5-18% from the 2023 reported level. FSM’s silver production guidance for the year is 4-4.7 million ounces, which suggests a decline of 21-32% year over year.
Hecla Mining reported a silver production of 4.2 million ounces in the first quarter of 2024. The silver production grew 43% sequentially. This reflects the consistent, strong performance at Greens Creek, the Lucky Friday mine reaching full production in March and the ongoing ramp-up at Keno Hill. HL’s gold production was down 2% to 36,592 ounces from the fourth quarter of 2023.
According to Hecla Mining, it is on track to produce 17 million ounces of silver in 2024. In 2023, the company produced 14.3 million ounces of silver.
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