Fresnillo plc (FRES) Q4 2023 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here for Fresnillo's year-end results, 2023. I'm Octavio Alvidrez, and I'm glad to be joined by Mario Arreguin, our CFO, also Tomas Iturriaga, our Central Area Chief Operating Officer, Guillermo Gastelum, the Vice President of Exploration, and also joined by Daniel Diaz, who is the newest addition to the team, and he will coordinate the northern part of the operations. The key theme that we will be discussing and talking about this morning, and coming back from a few years on operational challenges, I would say it's about operations for stability in our operations, or focus on how to control and cost. Of course, with a large setting on projects and across the area, how we go about discipline approach, and also one more aspect, which is the investment in exploration through the cycles. But as I mentioned, I mean in 2021 and 2022, We had these operational challenges across our operations. We had some difficulties to meet the guidance, so the very important aspect at that time was to have a much better grasp on the operations and therefore meet the guidance, something that we've been doing in recent years. However, I mean last year, with the inflation running globally and in Mexico more aggravated by the strength of the peso, now the focus is in controlling the cost, running very efficient our operations, and trying to be or get the best out of our current operations. I'm pleased with the performance of last year, despite the fact that we are running in a very tough environment in terms of all the way, I would say, in all the change in exploration, but also on the permitting process and also on the construction and across with communities. Therefore, despite all the challenges, I mean, we've been able to post a strong year...