Spoke with RobHi.
I spoke with Rob at PDAC. Two things are going to happen simultaneously in the first quarter. The first will be a period of processing lower grade and recovery material from Cauquenes. This is part of the natural variation in the tailings pit, and occurs from time to time. I believe it was accounted for in the 2019 production and was to have been offset by the continued ramp up of Phase 2 (my guess, not explicitly stated by Rob).
Then, out of the blue, Codelco called up and said that there was to be a maintenance shut down of the tailings channel for 6 days. Obviously a lot of what comes into the MVC plant comes down the tailings channel, and everything that exits the plant goes through the channel down to the final Codelco/El Teniente tailings facility. I believe the last time this happened, it was 8 years ago.
So, with the channel shut, we have a total production stoppage. Amerigo is saying 7 days in total for a proper restart.
The silver lining is that everything is happening in the first quarter. Although i think that full year production guidance may be tough to achieve, it may still be possible. (and Rob did not say they would miss) If the shutdown were called by Codelco in Q2, when the normal grade material was being processed, I'm not sure Amerigo could've overcome the production impact to achieve the low end of guidance. From a sentiment standpoint, I also don't think anyone would've enjoyed two consecutive quarters of disappointment. Just making lemonade out of lemons.
For long term investors, this is hardly an issue, just some dumb luck. IMO, I was not expecting a dividend declared in Q1 due to current copper prices, but this lowers the possibiity even further in my mind for Q1. Hopefully, copper prices will strengthen with a resoultion to the trade spat, and my bet is that this will all be forgotten quickly.