Q1 2024 Coeur Mining Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Mitchell Krebs; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Coeur Mining Inc

Michael Routledge; Chief Operating Officer, Senior Vice President; Coeur Mining Inc

Thomas Whelan; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President; Coeur Mining Inc

Aoife Mcgrath; Senior Vice President - Exploration; Coeur Mining Inc

Michael Dudas; Analyst; Vertical Research Partners

Mike Parkin; Analyst; National Bank Financial

Kevin O'Halloran; Analyst; BMO Capital Markets

Joseph Reagor; Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst; Roth Capital Partners LLC

Brian MacArthur; Analyst; Raymond James Financial, Inc.

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Coeur Mining first quarter of 2024 financial results conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please also note that this event is being recorded today.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Mitch Krebs, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Mitchell Krebs

Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. Before we start, I want to point out our cautionary language on forward-looking statements in today's slide deck and refer you to our SEC filings on our website.
I'll kick off with some brief highlights on Slide 3. Before turning the call over to Mick, Tom and Eva. Overall, we had a solid first three months of the year. Both Palmarejo and Wharf had strong quarters compared to plan, which puts the company in a great position for a successful 2024.
Slide 4 does a nice job of showing where production stood after the first quarter compared to the quarter-by-quarter guidance profile we provided earlier this year. We often talk about the strategic importance of being a multi-asset company and having a balanced portfolio of operations in the first quarter was a great example of that common rails and worse outperformance helped to offset Rochester's planned transitional quarter over to the new crusher, which began to process fresh ore on March eighth, commercial production was achieved just three weeks later, which was a great accomplishment, but it's what has been happening underneath the hood there that leads to our excitement for the balance of 2024 and beyond. More on Rochester in a minute.
On a company-wide basis, overall, revenue increased 14% year over year, while adjusted EBITDA jumped 76%. Capital expenditures dropped off significantly during the quarter with the Rochester expansion. Now in the rearview mirror, we're on track to flip to positive free cash flow in the second half of the year, which will be earmarked for debt repayment. That deleveraging process can be further accelerated, assuming current silver and gold prices continue leading to a rapid and dramatic improvement in our overall financial condition and outlook in the middle of all of these positive catalysts stands at Rochester, which is routinely processing and placing over 70,000 tonnes of ore per day and occasionally exceeding run rate throughput levels as we put the new crushing circuit through its paces. The rapid ramp-up curve is a real testament to the knowledge and operating experience the team is bringing to bear at this world-class operations.
Before turning the call over to Nick for some additional Rochester details, I want to touch briefly on our progress and plans at some other key initiatives that are expected to augment the near term growth we anticipate from Rochester. First up is Kensington, which is in its final full year of elevated investment aimed at extending this mine life and enhancing its operational flexibility, positive exploration results and impressive underground development. Progress are pointing to the potential for a substantial mine life extension by the end of this year, which equals we'll talk more about in a few minutes.
Over the medium term, we continue developing a comprehensive drilling and development plan at Palmer rail on the recently acquired lands located to the east of the current operation. The goal is to hit the ground running once the acquisition of these concessions from Fresnillo is completed. Hopefully later this year. The nearest of the two acquired blocks to Palmarejo is existing infrastructure sits just outside the boundaries of the Franco-Nevada gold stream and has the potential to materially supplement our production and cash flow profile within the next three years. Over the longer term, excitement continues to build at our high-grade Silvertip poly metallic exploration project in British Columbia, which iPhone will cover shortly. The convergence of all of these catalysts, higher commodity prices are completed. Rochester, stable suite of U.S. centric mines in North America and a world-class Canadian exploration project sets us apart from our peers and leaves us very well positioned.
Finally, we published our 2023 ESG report last week, which is summarized on Slide 16. The report does a great job detailing our leadership in this area and highlights our efforts to continue raising the bar as we tried to keep pursuing a higher standard.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Mick.

Michael Routledge

Thank Mitch. Before reviewing our first quarter operating results. I have made a recommendation to spend some time with cause 2023 ESG report. If you haven't already well, look, just as construction was a significant priority over the last three years. I'm an operator at heart and experiences told by building a very strong foundation and sustainability responsibility and CFT delivers operational success. In addition to the strongholds Mitch highlighted, I'm particularly proud to call out two headlines for the ESG report. First, our number one position among our peer group in key safety indicators for the 2nd year in a row. And second, our decision to adopt the global industry standard on tailings management, one of only 17% of normal ICMM member companies in the industry to do so, Kevin the period is not always easy thing to do to get the right thing to do, and we'll continue to dedicate ourselves to lead in both these areas.
Turning to our quarterly results. We are pleased with the solid start to the year. As slide 4 illustrates, 2024 production is expected to be significantly weighted towards the second half, consistent with the production guidance we provided earlier this year. Well, just as one of our day-to-day operating improvement will drive most of that change in quarterly production, same with Rochester, silver and gold production in the first quarter totaled nearly [700,00] and 5,800 ounces, respectively, right in line with our expectations.
Following the fourth quarter flush of ounces from Oakleaf closes to the new pod six lineup. Our focus in 1Q was commissioning the crusher and starting the placement of all in the centers using only crushed ore from the new circuit, which commenced on March, yet the crushing circuit wins when we wanted to run and we're maximizing our plan to refine and optimize operations. What has really stood out in the going is the tremendous flexibility of the new food storage line, having intermediate stockpiles and often can bypass certain stages argument it giving the team unprecedented levels of control of our ultimate size fraction of the ore going to Part six mining rates and refining capacity are more than keeping up with the increase throughput.
Looking ahead, we remain on track to reach the conclusion of the ramp-up by the end of the second quarter. The priority in the second half of the year will be on optimizing mining and processing rates and timing and precise to maximize recoveries project that remains on track for 2024 guidance. It's an exciting time and we're pleased with our progress, but we're keeping our heads then as there remains more work to be done to get this operation properly positioned. So it's long in northern Nevada.
Moving on to polymer vehicle on slide 23, the team hit the ground in the first quarter, reaching its highest quarterly gold and silver production levels in seven years, higher than expected grades from Guadalupe and Independencia to have strong quarterly free cash flow and positions us well for the balance of 2020 for continued high diesel prices in Mexico and other headwinds.
On the cost side, the primary will remain a challenge. The team continues to focus on mining and plant efficiency programs aimed at reining in costs and it continued inflationary pressures in Mexico.
Moving to Kensington, the focus in the first quarter was on stabilizing the operation following the challenging 2023 as our multiyear investment in mine development continues. Mitch mentioned the positive results on that front, with our investment validate 71% complete for current scope of the project, we're seeing a clear path to substantial mine life extension there and perhaps more importantly to the prospect of increased work versus underground with a more consistent performance.
Lastly, overall results were ahead of plan for the first quarter, benefiting from pending events is placed and each due to seasonality. The first quarter has typically worked most of the year. So we're particularly pleased to see the mine off to a good start in 2024 with three mines performing well on Rochester, well positioned to complete the one book. We remain comfortable with our 2024 production guidance.
With that, I'll pass the call over to Tom.

Thomas Whelan

Thanks, Nick. I'll touch briefly on our first quarter financial results before spending a moment discussing our financial position and balance sheet, including our plans to materially delever beginning in the third quarter.
As detailed on slide 9, higher year-over-year bull production led to a 14% increase in consolidated revenue and a 76% increase in adjusted EBITDA, driven by the strong start to the year at Palmarejo and Wharf, along with continued favorable metals prices as expected. We had lower Q1 production at Rochester due to the decision to dismantle the Stage four crusher during 4Q 2023. The dismantling of the Stage four crusher is now complete, which has provided access to higher grades from Yanki bit.
Turning to costs on Slide 11, we continue to see moderating inflationary pressures across our U.S. operations. However, we are experiencing inflationary pressures in Mexico. Costs in Mexico have also been affected by the continued strong peso. Operating cash flow during the quarter was impacted by two onetime annual payments totaling $22 million, the annual EBITDA mining tax in Mexico and the company-wide 2023 annual incentive payouts, along with the $8 million semiannual interest payment on our senior notes.
Turning to the balance sheet, the company is poised for a sustained period of positive free cash flow following the successful ramp up at Rochester. As Mick described earlier, capital expenditures at Rochester were approximately $20 million during the first quarter, a $45 million decrease from the average quarterly Rochester CapEx in 2023, which contributed to the lowest quarterly capital expenditures level at core since the fourth quarter of 2020.
As noted on slide 12, we ended the quarter with an improved net debt to EBITDA ratio of 3.2 times and approximately $225 million drawn on our $400 million revolving credit facility. We would note that we do expect to drive further on the revolver during the second quarter as we await the breakthrough of silver ounces at Rochester. However, beginning in the third quarter, the Company expects to begin aggressively paying down the revolver and our prepaid gold sales agreements as we drive towards achieving our long-term leverage targets, have total debt to EBITDA of one times and net debt to EBITDA of No. While our work is not yet done we enter 2020 for a significantly stronger company with improving flexibility to fund our robust asset portfolio and maximize our potential in a strengthening commodity price environment.
Two final important reminders no ATM is currently in place or is being contemplated and the company's remaining hedges roll off at the end of the second quarter, commensurate with the Rochester ramp up to full nameplate capacity. I'll now pass the call to Eva.

Aoife Mcgrath

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Continued the good news story presented by Mitch, Mick and Tom exploration is off to a great start in 2024. A key highlight of this quarter is the drilling at Kensington for the program is going very well and the rigs are overperforming relative to budgeted footage at lower Kensington, the recently identified Zone 50 as being traced over additional strike length and is continuing to be a focus for exploration to add to mine life in the very near term and upper Kensington's results from already outlined.
Portions of Zone 30, continue to impress and excitingly potential for new parallel zones has recently been identified and is being investigated at the nearby El Morro deposit infill and extension drilling continue to intersect wide and rich zones, especially in the upper portions of the deposit. There is high confidence that inferred resources here will be converted this year by the end of 2024. We anticipate extending mine life to approximately five years, representing roughly a doubling since the start of the program two years ago at Rochester, drilling commenced early in the second quarter with a program there designed to test high grade potential when recently identified structures around the Rochester pit preparation work for drilling at Nevada Packard location, south of Rochester is also well underway.
At Silvertip, we began the year with a comprehensive project review that included one of the world's foremost carbonate replacement deposit expert. Significant leaps forward are being taken in our understanding of the controls to mineralization. And this new knowledge is guiding the planning for Core's busiest summer program ever. We aim to drill much more aggressive step-outs from known deposits and to identify high-potential targets. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure rapid resource growth over the next few years in order to allow a restart decision on this world-class high-grade deposits at Palmarejo.
Our aggressive 2024 programs are well underway with the key focus being scaled and expansion drilling across the district in order to fast track the growth of our inferred pipeline. This will include scheduling on three new targets outside the area burdened by the Franco-Nevada stream. At Wharf, we're finalizing preparations for brownfield drill programs aimed at adding very high-return ounces to our mine life.
With that, I'll hand the call back to Mitch.

Mitchell Krebs

Before moving to the Q&A, I want to quickly highlight slide 13 summarizes our top priorities for the remainder of the year following seemingly every conceivable challenge thrown our way we've arrived at this inflection point that we've been working toward for almost four years with a safe ramp up and optimization initiatives at Rochester remaining job one, we will continue pursuing the opportunities at our other assets. I mentioned earlier as we reached a free cash flow inflection point in the second half.
We look forward to beginning the deleveraging process and ending the year with a lot of momentum as we head into what should be a very strong 2025. Our U.S. centric exclusively North American precious metals assets, offer investors a unique investment proposition that is extremely well positioned for success and particularly in this current metals price environment and with Silver supply, demand fundamentals now better than I've ever seen them.
With that, let's go ahead and open it up for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Michael Dudas, Vertical Research Partners.

Michael Dudas

Good morning, Mitch and team. Three quick questions. First, I'm Mitch, relative to Rochester is seems like things are going quite well and hitting some milestones as you reach this end, the second quarter milestones and look at second half, how do you how you feel relative to productivity to getting kind of a more normalized basis on this mine, given all the changes that have occurred last the last three years or so?

Mitchell Krebs

Yes, I'll hand that one over to Mick in a second. But I think it's fair to say that as we get into the second half of the year at that run rate of around 88,000 tonnes a day. There'll still be a lot of optimization work to do, particularly around crush size and making sure we get to where we want to get there in terms of more of a five, eight inch average product size out there under the new Stage six leach pad. So there will be some some dialing in to be done, but we'll still see that we have pretty significant drop-off in our cost structure driven mostly by the volume pickup, and then hopefully we'll be heading into 2025 with some of those tweaks are behind us and set up to see even some further improvements on the productivity and cost side.

Michael Routledge

Nick, did I leave any interest for you a little bit in the script, the Q2 is really about getting the open been steadily running at that average rate, and it's an average rate of eight years. So we've already seen that we're going to learn a little bit higher than that, which gives us good opportunity to really study that, that rate over the 88,000 tons for the second half of the year, at which point when we dial in the crush size, if you remember, the technical report was filed, it was insane side and some confidence that we should be able to dial into that five units for size. We don't know exactly how quickly, but we certainly expect that to be diluted in well through the second half of this year. And then if that all comes together, then we should land on our recovery codes and we should see the performance that we expected to see.

Michael Dudas

Thanks for that. Secondly, regarding Palma, real encouraged about some of the activity you're doing there on the exploration front, the thought on some of the opportunities outside the royalty boundary, which should be very helpful given where current gold prices are on do you see some interesting opportunities and line of sight there to kind of work that through over the next couple of years into the mine plans?

Mitchell Krebs

Yes. Yes, we share your excitement there in my mind are sort of three some levels of opportunities there. There's the now extensional stuff fits right down to the east of that Franklin, Nevada property line or the AOI. boundary. And those are extensions of things like nausea, own and Independencia where we are currently mining. So those represent more kind of near term on opportunities and then if you skip over further to the east, the company we acquired back in 2015, Paramount Gold and Silver, which gave us all that land over there to the east they had a large resource over in what's called the Grand Paris area.
So I think with in the medium term, we look at that as an opportunity to get in there to win some of that historical drilling and get a resource onto our books in the medium term. And then longer term in between those two, our team has been busy out there sampling and mapping and developing some drill targets that we think represents some big longer-term opportunities to add new new sources of production off there to the east.
Aoifa, you want to add to that?

Aoife Mcgrath

I think you've pretty much covered it, Matt. But yes, there are definitely short, medium and long term opportunities out there. And just to reiterate that, Tom, it's Ed typical case, I suppose in exploration until the work is actually the basic groundwork is done, don't fully understand understand the cost activity. And we've been really busy over the last two years during that mapping and sampling. And as we get to understand the area to the east a lot more, we're seeing the same level of productivity, especially even higher prices than we see on the project. So we're very happy with it.

Michael Dudas

My just my third finish up here. Good to see that the hedging roll off here in Q2 given where prices are? And maybe further, what are your thoughts on any hedging potential going forward and what would be the rationale behind doing an absolute?

Mitchell Krebs

Yes. Our thinking there, Mike right now is we've we had a we had hedges in place during the construction of the Rochester expansion to serve as sort of that insurance policy. In essence, as we've gone through this period of capital intensity for now. We have nothing, as you pointed out beyond the end of the second quarter and don't have any current plans to add anything on that, at least as we sit here today. But Tom, anything you want to?

Thomas Whelan

No, I think that's that's corrected. People understood. The need both upfront equity holders as loans of our creditors, understanding the importance of hedging, but no plans to hedge when some ramp-ups complete.

Operator

Mike Parkin, National Bank.

Mike Parkin

A couple of questions. Mostly tied to Rochester, a couple of other questions were answered already on the first line of questioning with Nevada. Barrick seems to certainly talked about labor tightness. Is that something you're seeing at Rochester? Or are you guys managing pretty well on staff?

Mitchell Krebs

Yeah, we were just talking about better earlier this morning, Mike, that we have added had to add some people out there with this expansion, although not that many. And the team has not had a have an extremely difficult time filling those roles. I'd say where we do see some things similar to Nevada Gold Mines is in some of those skilled trades that I think not only mining, but other industries are challenged to find electricians, mechanics, welders, things like that. That's a more challenging part of the on the labor pool side in terms of what we've had to do at Rochester, we've had a lot of success on the labor front. But Nick, anything you want to add to that?

Michael Routledge

I mean, the super efficient expansion, of course, only 20% increase in headcount and that 20% we managed to get those folks all on early to support the operational readiness program. And that's why we really saw and that commission and this ramp of growth. So well, everyone was really conversant with the project and now what you're seeing. We quite typical turnover. I mean, everywhere, specialist skills like electricals, electrical, some things. And we had a little bit longer to get the right person on the team But otherwise, we're not seeing anything that's really giving a lot of concern.

Mitchell Krebs

Lot of excitement out there, as you can imagine, make a long good long mine life and good culture long track record out there in the community. And so it has a lot going forward and it's a place people enjoy working. So we've got a lot going for us out there.

Mike Parkin

That's an excellent point. You're on a relative basis here, a lot better to commute to versus a lot of the Nevada Gold Mines operations. What in terms of like localization relative to local communities with decent sized labor forces.

Mitchell Krebs

Now fair point. We bring people from a lot of different directions that otherwise some probably couldn't or wouldn't make the drive all the way over. Turning to the to the east there from around Alcoa, the level of area of purging County is a little bit more centrally located up there in the northern part of the state. So a fair number of our workforce comes from from from further to the west and to the Southwest now in places like that.

Mike Parkin

Okay. And then you guys took down the whole crushing circuit to access better grades. Can you give us a sense in terms of what you'd expect to be stacking on a blended grade basis. Is that something that will improve over the course of the year or should that be fairly steady?

Mitchell Krebs

Great. Well, this year now that we're into that area under the old X pit that we called Yanki, Yanki pit, Yanki zone does have some higher grade materially material, particularly on the silver side. And that was one of the big incentives for getting in there and getting that ex pit removed from when we did so that we could start prepping that area so that we could be in there here in 2024 from a mining standpoint, which we are in, and those grades seem to be and as advertised. And so this year, you will see a little bit on the on the silver kick on the silver gold or silver grade profile relative to the outer years as a result of being in that, that Yankee area today, if anything, our nose to spite.

Michael Routledge

The gold grade is inherently low at Rochester rate. So we'll see that that isn't changing too much and both will get an additional kick in, at least in the short term from Yankee area for silver, which weren't we're looking forward to seeing coming through the pipe.

Mike Parkin

And then on your leach curves, usually Gold's, obviously steeper than silver on its feet. When would you expect to kind of achieve this steady state recovery rate or call it was in the 90th percentile 95th percentile and you're going to get up to maximum throughput around quarter end, would it be fair to assume it takes a couple more quarters after that? So kind of starting in 2025, you probably see silver recoveries stabilizing at that point?

Mitchell Krebs

Yes, great question. Probably in the third quarter, when we are on this call to talk about third quarter, we'll have some data to talk about. And then obviously with in conjunction with our year end, we'll have a lot more visibility to share and talk about that.
Mick, you want to talk a little bit of the curves and reaching kind of steady-state.

Michael Routledge

Yes. And I think you nailed it exactly in the growth curve. We're going to see where we land and in the second half of this year and the silver curve will be will steady out, and we expect to be steady on both silver and gold through 2025.

Operator

Kevin O'Halloran, BMO Capital Markets.

Kevin O'Halloran

Hey, Mitch and team. Thanks for taking my question. Yes, I gave you just the hey, maybe just the first one on the LCM adjustment at Rochester. You mentioned there was a positive revaluation on some of the legacy leach pads was that included in this Q1 LCM adjustment or is that something we should be looking for in future quarters?

Mitchell Krebs

Tom, you want to take that yet.

Thomas Whelan

And so we added approximately 900,000 ounces of silver and 6,000 ounces of gold. So we actually updated our model as a change in estimate, and it's recorded that in the first quarter. So the LCM would have been actually much higher had we not made that adjustment. But again, the team had gathered enough data and we felt confident that the recovery curves on the historic pads. And I supported that that either the higher amount of gold and silver that we're expecting to see here and in 24. So that made sense.

Kevin O'Halloran

Yes, no, that's That's helpful for sure. Do you have a sense of where that number would have been without the positive offset or maybe even more broadly, what should we be looking for going forward on the LCM?

Thomas Whelan

Yes, look, it would it would have added in the $10 million to $12 million range benefit. So we wouldn't have otherwise had a larger LCM and the question I always get is that so this is this it for LCMs. I'd like to hedge a little bit just to give me the bandwidth to get this ramp-up done safely and make sure things go really smoothly. I think we have one in the second quarter? Maybe depends on prices, silver, silver prices, how fast we start to see some of that silver come through, but certainly Q3 forward, absolutely our way out of the LCM business.

Kevin O'Halloran

Okay, great. Thanks for that. And maybe you guys touched already on the higher grades under the ex-pit crusher at Rochester. But can you maybe comment more broadly on where you're seeing or where you're looking for upside Rochester in terms of the grade profile, maybe sort of beyond this year?

Mitchell Krebs

Yes. No, great question. We had in 2020 for our budget out, there's somewhere around $9 million for Rochester, which is a big increase relative to recent periods when we've been more focused on that.
On the construction of the expansion, you go back to the mid 80s at Rochester when the Rochester pit was first identify the blinders were sort of put on, I think and our focus was on that. Our structure and that deposit and ultimately that project and only in the last few years has have the blinders kind of been taken off and we've started to look more regionally. You might recall we added almost doubled our land position out there when we acquired a lot of the land off to the to the west from Alio Gold and a few years ago.
So if I came into the picture here a couple of years ago and has really helped accelerate our thinking around where some higher-grade material could be on our on our existing land package, and I'll turn it over to her in a second, but most of the focus right now is really on the eastern side of the existing pit. One area we call these Rochester and then about the three four five miles to the south of the Rochester pit is a historic mining area called Nevada packer. There's going to be some drilling down there as well, where we think there's some potential for some higher grade. And then between those two from the Rochester pit down to Nevada Packard. There's a lot of opportunity untapped potential there that we'll start to investigate going forward that you've heard today steal all your thunder. Is there anything else you want to highlight?

Aoife Mcgrath

No, that's very suggestive of -- just to reiterate that succeeded mine will actually yield from those two pits. And Sumit, it's phenomenal that ITO. We established mine life ahead of us, and we're beginning to just beginning to look more seriously at the area between them because the work of your JV on the geology model where I see that there are there's potential for and higher grade on a whole host of a suite of structures that make up a really wide deformation zone basically between the two deposits. So is that most of what we will be looking at over the next few years is already on POA 11, it's right. It's permitted. We have good access below EBITDA. We are increasing our understanding of the biology. So there's a lot of attention right on our doorstep. It's a great position to be in given the runway we have that that might lie ahead of us already extremely good.

Michael Routledge

And additional to that. There is one area which is underneath our old historic leach pad. Number one, right adjacent to the current pit as we call it, the wedge actually, it's currently in mine plans as waste because we can't drill them through deals your leach pad. But we have put some horizontal drills into that, and it's giving you a little bit of excitement. We still have to investigate it, but that's 40 million tons of waste currently in my plan. And in the next couple of years. We'll look to investigate that and see how much of that we can convert. But were We're optimistic that that'll that'll results presents some really interesting material of that, that may be higher grade than the current mine plan.

Operator

Joseph Reagor, ROTH MKM.

Joseph Reagor

Hey, Mitch and team. Thanks for taking the questions, Joe. Good to hear from you. So most of my questions have been answered, but I did have a question in the cash flow for Q1. There's $55.2 million impact from deferred revenue recognition compared to prior quarter seemed a bit high of what was driving that and what are the components that go into that? And should we expect that to be lower than that quarters ahead?

Mitchell Krebs

Tom, you want to cover that?

Thomas Whelan

Sure. So in the financial statements, you'll see a reference to some gold prepaid activity. So we've got a prepay at Kensington, which we've historically used to help us manage short-term working capital. And last year we added prepaid debt, both Rochester and Wharf. Again, all just in the effort to smooth that the working capital as we went through the last of the expansion in our weight awaiting these wonderful ounces that Nick is placing on the bad. So we extended those. We renewed those prepaids.
Again, there was $55 million outstanding it at the end of December. We paid it all back and then drew down on those prepaids again. So just it's a nice way to help us manage working capital. In particular, the first quarter has three lumpy payments, the annual incentive bonus, we pay the Mexican EBITDA tax as well as the semiannual payment on that on the bond coupon.
And so it's just it's a helpful way to manage working capital. As I mentioned in there, starting in the third quarter, once all the free cash flow starts to arrive, the plan would be to begin delevering and will delever based on what's going to be the highest interest rates over there between the revolver and prepaid. So expect to see those balances decrease in the second half.

Joseph Reagor

Thanks. I appreciate the color on that. And then one other question just on kind of the overall company performance in Q1, it seems like you guys are already ahead of plan and feel and the range on guidance at Rochester is a little wide the plan like later this year to tighten that up once you kind of see what the first two or three quarters look like?

Mitchell Krebs

Yes, I think that's a fair fair point, Joe, that as we get past the end of the second quarter. And with that run rate at Rochester, that's a big, big milestone for us on the backside of that on refreshing Rochester's full year, our guidance would be a probably a good thing to do so and you can look for that probably as we think about third quarter results.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Brian MacArthur, Raymond James.

Brian MacArthur

Good morning and thank you for taking my question on. Can you just review where we are on your NOLs, your tax pools in the United States? Because as you eventually start to ramp up Rochester and generate cash and you have worse in the U.S. and Kensington. Is most of that going to the bottom line because if I remember there were significant tax pools. If you could just review how that works because that should impact, I guess how much free cash flow there is available.

Mitchell Krebs

Yes, great point it's an often underappreciated asset that we that we have and that we will start to take advantage of. Tom, you want to give Brian the.

Thomas Whelan

Yes, that's, by memory, in the 10-K is over $630 million of NOLs. And so we're not going to be paying any federal income tax in the near future. So absolutely should be forecasting at zero federal income taxes for core for for for that for the foreseeable future. We do pay tax in in Nevada. There's a there's a steady state tax there as well as worth. And at these higher prices, there's maybe a small amount at Kensington as well, but nothing particular material.

Brian MacArthur

Sorry, that was my second question. So just in Nevada, do you pay it or do you get to credit all the capital you've just spent, so that gets deferred a little bit too? Or do you start paying that right away

Thomas Whelan

Those are Nevada net proceeds tax that we will start paying right away.

Operator

And this will conclude our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mitch Krebs for any closing remarks.

Mitchell Krebs

I will Hey, we appreciate everybody's time today and look forward to speaking with you all in August to discuss our second quarter results and have a great rest of the day. Thanks again.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.