RE:RE:Heclas's CEO on Keno Hill
You can thank Alexco for the low share price that HL managed to acquire Keno Hill with.
HL financed AXU with $30M USD in equity so Alexco wouldn't go belly up and then forked out $135 m USD's to WPM so that Keno Hill would be operationally successful. Then they bought out the shareholders.Round figure is $300m CAD that HL forked out to save AXU's rear end. I lost a lot of dough in this transaction but HL will do very well if silver ever gets going.
Read between the lines.Alexco was struggling to stay afloat:
“This transaction delivers significant benefits to our stakeholders,” said Clynton Nauman, Chairman and CEO of Alexco. “By partnering with Hecla, an industry leader in high-grade narrow vein silver mining, we further position Keno Hill to achieve its full potential. There is no doubt that we have fallen well behind the development and production plan at Keno Hill – and our original estimate of achieving commercial production in early 2022. There are myriad reasons for those challenges, but fundamentally, they all led to an increasing level of stress across our business, which was having a negative impact on the share price, our finances, our employees, and other stakeholders. As a much larger business, Hecla has the organizational expertise and financial strength to build Keno Hill to the level and capacity required, while being able to continue to invest in exploration across the district, something that we, as Alexco, independently would likely struggle to achieve. Frankly, the opportunity now afforded to our employees, to the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyk Dun and the wider Yukon community as a whole is superior to anything Alexco could offer in the short term. I look forward to working with Phil and his team at Hecla to close this transaction in September 2022.”