Allied Nevada Gold Earnings Call INSIGHTS: Sales Projections, Merrill Crowe Timeline

On Wednesday, Allied Nevada Gold Corp (AMEX:ANV) reported its second quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call. Take a look.

Sales Projections

Zach Zolnierz – GMP Securities: This is actually (Zach Zolnierz) calling in for George. So, I guess my first question, the 150,000 ounces in sales for the year that you guys are now projecting. Does that include the 16,000 to 17,000 ounces of gold on carbon?

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: Yeah, it does include carbon sales. And so, yeah, key to that number is we’ve got to execute on the carbon sales side. Part of that obviously, our plant is now although not at site yet, will be arriving in September. We think we’ll have a commission in October. It’s a real simple plant. It’s a batch plant; five tons every 72 hours of atmospheric strip carbon. So part of that is that where we can strip our own carbon. We still have the arrangement with Yukon Nevada, and finally we’re successful in getting about 900 tons process there just recently – or 900 ounces, sorry, about 10 tons of carbon, 900 ounces and recoverable or payable. And so, between the two, we think we can get the 16,000 ounce inventory. However, at the end of the year, we will still have ounces on carbon because we’ll continue to load carbon, and as our grades are improving, more and more ounces get deposited on carbon. So at the end of the year, we’ll still have an inventory on carbon. So, we will not be at a zero inventory in carbon at year’s end.

Zach Zolnierz – GMP Securities: So adding on that question, when we look to reach the gap between the 180 and 150, is there a way we can think about that between the carbon that won’t be sold and then the solution stacking, or is that 30,000; is that related more to the solution stacking?

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: It’ll be a combination of the two solutions stacking. But we’ll get that gold. It’ll be in carbon sludge in part solution. But we should start to see that gap close in the first quarter of 2013. Obviously, we’re not – we aren’t (releasing on) ’13 yet, but that’s when we see that coming out. And carbon, our plant, again, it will do 10 tons a week, if you’d like; five tons every 72 hours. So, 10 tons of carbon a week and not only will it process all we produced, it will allow us to catch up over a period of time, 180 day period and then we’d be caught up and so we’d be able to stay current at month-to-month if you like, week-to-week on the carbon production. Ultimately our goal is to shutdown the carbon columns, but you won’t see that towards the end of ’13 or early ’14.

Zach Zolnierz – GMP Securities: So, my second question in regards to recovery rates in the quarter. Could you comment on how they were pacing and maybe where they’re pacing today?

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: Yeah, recovery is still – and I’ll just talk to the Brimstone because, well over 99% – close to 100% of our ore has been Brimstone today, we talked a little bit about the crusher excavation, but it really was only 15,000 recoverable ounces placed, but yeah, recovery is still 56.6 plus, we look at 80% of those ounces coming out in the first year and then 20% thereafter. So, you get the bulk of your recoverable gold in the first year and we monitor that. We now have, I don’t know – 40 million tons under leach and so we’re pretty comfortable with that recovery. We’re now moving into, as I mentioned earlier in the conversation the Bay Area and that ore, we’ve got a lot of test work done on that both historically, they mined and processed a number of tons. So, we’re pretty comfortable with the recovery there. It’s slightly lower than Brimstone, but today, we’re still seeing kinetics and recoveries as expected. We see it in our solution (drays) we see it in the ore that we’re sampling as it goes on the pad. Just on the point of reconciliations as we’re talking about it, if you look at project to-date, gold reconciliation, the model has under predicted recoverable gold or contained gold however you want to talk about it by 3%, so really spot on. So that’s blast ore versus model or exploration or the oil reserve model. Silver, on the other hand, we are obviously underestimating silver in our exploration model. We’re still working on that to see what that variance is but we are underestimating silver. We know that for a fact and what it is, is we have, (we mine) and it’s going to quite frankly continue we see a bunch of high grade silver. They mined them historically at Silver Camel, they’re narrow. They’re less than a meter in width and when you’re drilling exploration holes, 20, 30 meters apart. The chances of drilling one of those vertical structures is nil and quite frankly if we do hit one, we discount it. We’ve lowered the grade, we throw it out of the model. So we’re seeing these in the field and that’s where we’re underestimating silver grade and we’re trying to come up with the best technical solution on how to model that in a long-term basis. We don’t have any answer as of today.

Zach Zolnierz – GMP Securities: So I guess my final question. Just in the past you guys had talked about upsizing the revolver, just wondering if there’s any update there.

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: Steve?

Stephen M. Jones – EVP and CFO: Yeah, (Zach). We are working on that and we are looking to grow it from 30 million to 100 million and I would expect that sometime between now and the end of the year, certainly we would have an announcement to that effect.

Merrill Crowe Timeline

Sam Crittenden – RBC Capital Markets: Just following-up. The Merrill Crowe, what’s the timeline for the expansion there and do you there’d be any sort of disruption to the Merrill Crowe, when you do have to do the expansion?

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: The Merrill Crowe, I call it an expansion. It’s a new plant, it’s a large plant and it really is a totally new plant whether you continue running the old one or just run the new one we’d have the operation flexibility to run both. So the old plant, as it existed a 5,000 GPM, we’ll continue to run. The new plant will be built and commissioned. We hope to begin construction on that before the end of the year. We’re getting ready to order of long lead items built to presses. And when we really want to have – when we need to have that plants is this first half of next year, so we’re in really good shape, i.e. the south leach pad comes on line. This is the same Merrill Crowe plant that is in the mill capital estimates. So it’s one and the same. So in other words, when the mill is running, this plant would have a high grade circuit as well. So, it’s the same plant and we’ll build it modular; just add presses as the mill comes on line. So we hope to begin construction before the end of the year on that.

Sam Crittenden – RBC Capital Markets: And what’s the capacity of that, and then if you ran the old plant as well, would you be able to stop using carbon?

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: Yes, and that’s – the current thinking is exactly that. That plant will be up to 20,000 gallons at the new one and then the old one is (5,000) and then you’d shutdown the carbon columns. Quite frankly, the carbon is really effective on low-grade solutions. So as your low grades drop, you’d probably be running the carbon out there. But we really would like to get away from, and we’re Merrill Crowe guys now, right. When we want that silver – the silver recovery, Steve talked about the ratio of over 9 to 1 right now ounces of silver per ounce of gold. Don’t forget, carbon is 1 to 1. So we’re being artificially biased. We know it. We know that we’re putting silver back in solution whenever we’re running across the carbon columns. And so, we really would like to get that silver out right now. So, anyway…

Sam Crittenden – RBC Capital Markets: And then another question I had, this high-grade oxide zone in the Bay Area. Do you know the approximate tonnage of that? Are you able to provide that?

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: Yeah, I don’t have the number in front of me, but certainly Tracey – and Sam we’ll call you as soon as the call is over with the exact number, certainly the ore reserve, I just don’t have the tech report. Yes, we do know the tonnage. And that short infill program, if you’d like, high density, RC program confirmed that tonnage. Unfortunately, it’s not in the hundreds of millions of tons, but we’ve been (indiscernible) mining the stuff for two years now and actually did not believe that we would have approval until next year; we’ve got it, we’ve started.

Sam Crittenden – RBC Capital Markets: So do you think like – is it something you’d be mining for a quarter two or into next year or like…?

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: It’ll go into next year. It’ll be a year or more, but not 10 years. We will get you the exact tons; tons…

Sam Crittenden – RBC Capital Markets: Another question I had on the mill, I’m just curious sort of what percentage of detailed engineering you’ve done now and then, if one (FACT) sort of work has been completed, is there a timeframe of when you might come out with sort of a refined capital estimate on the mill?

Scott A. Caldwell – President and CEO: Yes. First on the refined capital costs estimate, if indeed – and we see no major changes to the capital cost estimate, everything we’ve done so far is slightly under, but let’s just call it on plan or on the feasibility study estimate, we’re going to have an estimate out in the first quarter of next year. As far as engineering goes, it depends where we are in the circuit. Overall engineering is probably 35% done, but in some areas where the big dollars are, such as the grinding base; I’m talking the SAG mills and the ball mills – is much, much higher than that. The gyratory crushers obviously, I’ll call it 95% or a 100% because we’re handing drawings to the county for approval to build, so they can’t change. So, it just depends where we’re at and maybe offline, Tracey and I can go through or if anyone is interested, we can go through over the various components. But our focus is on what we consider critical path on the construction schedule and on the capital cost deployment is the grinding (bay), right. In other words, that’s the big bucks in this thing and that’s where our real focus is as far as engineering goes and the emphasis there are less on flotation or thickening if you like right now as limited power on the engineering side, although it’s ramped up significantly and we’re really seeing a lot of engineering done but I worry about engineering, I worry about how you would bid some of the stuff, but it’s starting to come together a lot better.