Hecla Mining Company announced certain preliminary results for Q3. Highlights include: silver production of 2.5M ounces, and gold production of 72,995 ounces; silver equivalent production of 10.9M ounces or gold equivalent production of 135,096 ounces; lead production of 4,239 tons; zinc production of 12,795 tons; cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of approximately $61M at September 30 and the revolving line of credit was undrawn. The cash balance includes proceeds from closing out the base metals hedgebook for $32.8M and receiving $9.5M of cash from the release of collateral posted by Klondex for reclamation bonds. "Our gold and silver production met our expectations, with gold production increasing due to the addition of two months of production from the Nevada operations and silver production declining due to lower expected grades at Greens Creek," said the company. "We are on track to meet annual production estimates at all operations. At our new Nevada assets, we are focusing on completing enough underground development at Fire Creek so by about mid-2019 we should have consistent production with an expected 50% higher throughput. We have begun the access drift to the Hatter Graben, which could provide the next leg of growth in Nevada. With Hecla's strong operations and balance sheet management, we don't anticipate any significant utilization of the line of credit, which is currently undrawn."
