You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: I'm Anvita Patil, Hecla's assistant treasurer.
With that, I will pass the call to Phil.
We're going to start with Slide 4, where you'll see there's four key messages that we're trying to communicate.
First, silver as fundamental to the transition to the lower carbon energy, with solar power being a key renewable to make it happen.
Silver demand for the use -- to be used for it, energy, has increased and is continuing to increase.
The United States Energy Information Agency projects that silver demand for solar will be half a billion ounces annually.
Realize the current silver market is only a little more than a billion ounces, so that's a huge increase in the demand for silver for energy use.
Second message, for the transition to solar power to happen, you really have to have a reliable supply chain.
And so to do that, you need silver mined in reliable countries.
And most silver is mined in China, Peru, and Mexico.
Hecla has the United States largest reserve of any mining company and produces more than 40% of all the silver mined here.
We are the most reliable silver producer.
Our third message is that on the ESG front, Hecla stands out with the safety record of our employees that is 40% below the national average, and we are also net neutral on greenhouse gas emissions for Scope 1 and 2 because we have among the smallest emissions in our industry.
And that small amount allows us to use offset credits set at very, very low cost to get net neutral.
And then the final message, and really what we'll spend the bulk of this conference call on is what a great year Hecla had operationally as well as financially.
Aside from our safety and environmental performance, our most significant achievement, though, was the implementation of the new underhand closed bench or the UCB mining method at the Lucky Friday.
Now we mined 86% of our tons last year with the UCB method, but we we didn't speak about this until almost the end of the year because we wanted to make sure we understood how the cycle worked, confirmed how it would improve our seismicity management, determine how we manage dilution, and consider the impacts on the workforce.
We wanted to put ourselves in a place where we are now, which is where we're focusing on optimizing the method, not whether the method works or not.
And it clearly works with the UCB method contributing to the 75% increase in the lucky Friday silver production over 2020.
And 2022's silver production is expected to be 20% increase over 2021, and we'll have even more growth in '23 as the mine becomes a consistent 5 million ounce producer.
Now, the Lucky Friday has been around for 80 years, but this new mining method fundamentally changes this long standing mine.
Well, if you look at the history of the mine, Lucky Friday has never had sustained production about 2.5 million ounces.
So with the higher grade that we get as we go deeper and this new mining method, that production doubles and the costs stay relatively flat.
And so what happens is the lucky Friday generates two or three times or more free cash flow than what we've done in the past.
And so it's because of the innovation of this new mining method and our determination to make the mines safer to mine it better, that the lucky Friday provides this growth exposure to silver without the risk of large capital investment.
And in this inflationary time, having growth with low capital is very unusual and you have so much less risk to get that growth.
Now, Lauren is going to talk about the method more in detail, and I also encourage you to consider our technical report that was filed as an exhibit to the 10-K that describes the method and gives a lot of visibility into the Lucky Friday's strong economics.
Now adding a strong Lucky Friday in 2021 led to a record financial year with revenues of $807 million and adjusted EBITDA of $279 million.
Cash flow from operations was $221 million and free cash flow was $111 million, and those were the second highest in our history.
This and last year's performance has allowed Hecla to generate in excess of $200 million in free cash flow over the past two years and further enhance our common stock dividend policy by lowering the realized silver price threshold to $20 per ounce.
So as a result of this, about 20% of our free cash flow went to shareholders last year.
We spent a little less than $50 million as drilling -- we were able to resume our drilling and our operations in sites after the slowdown that we had in 2020 due to COVID-19.
So as a result of that, our silver reserves increased 6% over last year, and they're now the second highest in our history at 200 million ounces, with Greens Creek's reserves at 125 million ounces.
And it's -- that's its highest since 2002, and it's an increase of about 12% over 2020.
The chart on the left shows not only that we replaced mining depletion, but also converted 26 million ounces of resource to reserves.
Now, our gold reserves at the end of 2021 were 2.7 million ounces.
The second highest in our history, and that's shown in the graph on the right.
Our companywide measured and indicated resources declined largely due to reserve conversions.
However, we did increase our silver inferred resources by 8% to 490 million ounces, with increases at Greens Creek, Lucky Friday, and San Sebastian.
And we expect to continue to see increases in reserves and resources that should allow us to maintain our reserve lives of the 14-plus years that we have.
I mentioned the technical report on the Lucky Friday.
We also filed reports for Greens Creek and Casa Berardi to give support for the reserves.
And in those reports, there's an economic analysis that's in Section 19 that shows very strong economics of the reserves.
And what it does is it assumes that the inferred resources that we mine, which is about 5% to 15% of what we typically mine at those two mines, that that was waste.
And so what we've also done is we've included in Section 21 the summarized information, the supplemental information that gives our long-term plans that includes this inferred materials at their expected grade.
Liven our long history of the two mines, we have a pretty good idea of what the mine will look like when you include the inferred material so that gives you a sense of what that looks like.
And so I'd encourage you to look at Section 21 as Section 19.
With that, I'd like to pass coal over to Russell.
Turning to Slide 7, as Phil noted earlier, we generated record revenue of more than $800 million, of which silver contributed 34% while gold contributed 42%.
Each of our operations contributed significantly to our revenue, led by Greens Creek at about 50%, Casa Berardi at 30%, and Lucky Friday at 16%.
With the projected production growth at Lucky Friday, we anticipate its contribution to grow.
Record revenues, coupled with high margins, generated record adjusted EBITDA for the year of $279 million, resulting in our leverage ratio being 1.1 times, which is significantly below our target of two times.
Our cash flow from operations at $221 million and free cash flow of $111 million were the second highest.
As a result of our consistent and strong operational performance, our balance sheet has continued to strengthen as we entered the year with $210 million in cash and excess of $440 million of liquidity.
Turning to Slide 8, there's been a lot of discussion in the industry regarding inflationary pressures, both in the operating costs of companies as well as capital costs.
At Hecla, we are facing inflationary pressures, too.
However, we anticipate those factors to be muted relative to the rest of the industry for a few reasons.
First, for the most part, we operate high grade, high value but low tonnage underground mines.
And since we don't move a lot of rock, our production comes from processing less tons than others within the industry.
Therefore, making our mines less susceptible to some cost pressures.
Second, we are less exposed to increasing costs of energy as the majority of the power at our sites come from local utilities based on renewable energy sources.
And third, we don't have any large capital expenditures to speak of.
As you look on Slide 8, we don't have any planned large capital expenditures as our capital ranges from a low of $91 million in 2020 to what we anticipate spending in 2022 of $135 million.
In 2021, our total capital and production costs were approximately $480 million, split approximately $370 million as production cost and $109 million for capital.
Our 2022 total expected spend on production costs is about 6% higher than 2021.
And while our guided capital spend for 2022 is slightly higher than 2021, it is primarily due to our investment at the Lucky Friday.
A 5% inflation factor would add less than $7 million to the total capital spend.
Turning to Slide 9, what record revenue generation, strong margins, and consistent capital spend add up to as a strong free cash flow at all our operating mines.
You can see all our minds generate positive free cash flow, and companywide, we generated more than 110 million in free cash flow during 2021, which was the second highest in the company's history.
With this strong and consistent free cash flow generation, we've seen an increase to our cash balance of 60% over 2020 and more than three times that of 2019.
With that, I'll pass the call to Lauren to go through operations.
I will start on Slide 11.
Greens Creek had another strong year as the mine produced 9.2 million ounces at an all-in sustaining costs of $3.19 per ounce, which was below our lower end of guidance at $3.25 per silver ounce.
The cost beat was due to higher byproduct credits and more favorable treatment charges than originally estimated.
The 2021 realized silver margin at the mine was approximately $22 per ounce, an increase of 75% over 2020.
These high silver margins drive the solid free cash flow generation at the mine.
In 2021, Greens Creek generated $185 million in free cash flow and over the past three years has generated more than $445 million in free cash flow.
In addition to the strong operational and financial performance, we increase reserves by 12%, and at 125 million ounces, the reserves are the second highest since 2002.
This high grade, high margin mine is among the best in the world.
Silver production guidance for 2022 is 8.6 million to 8.9 million ounces as we will be mining lower grades for the production sequence.
Silver cash costs are expected to be in the range of seventy $0.75 to $2.50 per ounce while the silver all-in sustaining cost guidance is $6.50 to $8.50 per ounce.
Moving to Slide 12.
Introduction of the UCB mining method and anticipated higher grades depth have positioned the Lucky Friday for a strong decade ahead.
We are very excited about the UCB mining method, which is showing significant improvements in managing seismicity and improving productivity.
Lucky Friday has 75 million ounces in silver reserves, which translates to a reserve mine life plan of 17 years.
The Lucky Friday mine produced 3.6 million ounces of silver in 2021 with almost one million ounces produced in the fourth quarter.
In 2021, production was a 75% increase over 2020.
All-in sustaining costs for the year were $14.34 per ounce in line with our guidance.
The mine generated $32.7 million in free cash flow for the year with 86% of the tons mined using the UCB method.
The mine is expected to produce 4.3 million to 4.6 million ounces of silver in 2022 and cash costs of $0.75 to $2 per ounce, and all-in sustaining costs of $7.25 to $9.25 per ounce.
Production in 2022 is planned to be almost 20% greater than 2021 while the all in sustaining cost per ounce is expected to decline by more than 30% due to higher production and byproduct credits.
Turning to Slides 13 and 14, the UCB mining method is a new productive mining method developed by Hecla in an effort to proactively control fault slip seismicity in deep, high stress narrow-vein mining.
The method uses bench drilling and blasting methods to fragment significant vertical and lateral extensive vein beneath a top cut, taking a long strike of the vein and under engineered backfill.
The method is accomplished without the use of drop raises or lower mucking drives, which may result in local stress concentrations and increased exposure to seismic events.
Large blasts using up to 3,500 pounds of a pumped emulsion and programable electronic detonators fragment up to 350 feet of strike length to a depth of approximately 30 feet.
These large blast proactively induce fault slip seismicity at the mine at the time of the blast and shortly after it.
This blasted corridor is then mined underhand for two cuts.
As these cuts are mined, little to no blasting is done to advance them.
Dilution is controlled by supporting the hanging wall and foot wall as the mining progresses through the blasted ore.
The entire cycle repeats and stoping advances down dip, under fill, and in the de-stress zone.
The method allows for greater control of fault slip seismic events, significantly improving safety.
In conjunction, a notable productivity increase has been achieved by reducing seismic delays and utilizing bulk mining techniques.
Moving to Slide 15, the Casa Berardi mine achieved record throughput as the mill achieved 4,187 tons per day in 2021.
Our investments in mill optimization continued to deliver results in 2021 with mill recoveries increasing four percentage points in conjunction with the increase in throughput.
For the year, the mine produced 134.5 thousand ounces of gold at cash costs of $1,125 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $1,399 per ounce while generating free cash flow of $13.7 million.
From 2019 to 2021, the mine has generated more than $100 million in free cash flow.
While our investments in optimizing production have yielded results, we are seeing increased costs is due to the greater volumes mined and processed, contractor costs and higher underground maintenance costs.
For 2022, our production guidance for the mine is 125,000 to 132,000 ounces at cash costs of $1,175 to $1,325 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $1,450 to $1,600 per ounce.
Of note is a 16% increase in reserves at the mine to 1.8 million ounces, mainly attributable to additions at the 160 pit.
With these reserves, Casa Berardi has a reserve mine plan of 14 years.
Slide 17 shows our consolidated production guidance, so it takes all of the production guidance that Lauren's given you on a mine by mine basis and aggregates it.
And then we also give you guidance with -- for '23 and '24.
And as we look at our business for the next few years, we anticipate seeing growth in the production of silver due to the high grade material we'll be mining at the Lucky Friday coupled with the productivity gains due to the UCB method.
With these improvements, we anticipate seeing margins and free cash flow generation at Lucky Friday continue to expand, and we expect that the mine will move to be in the best third of the cost curve of primary silver mines.
Casa Berardi will hold its position as a top tier silver asset, continuing to deliver the significant margins and free cash flow.
Just a comment on the guidance relative to the guidance that we gave a year ago, realize that with higher zinc prices, we're able to mine -- and remember, Hecla is the third largest zinc producer in the United States.
So as a result, we're able to mine lower grade silver and actually generate the same or maybe even better cash flow.
So that's why you see a little bit of a reduction in the production from a year ago to this year.
On the gold side, we anticipate production of -- over the next few years to grow slightly with our gold production coming from Casa and Greens Creek.
So we're going to remain a very low cost silver producer with our all-in sustaining cost guidance being $9.75 to $11.75.
On gold, we're guiding to a sic of $14.50 to $1,600 per ounce and we're going to continue to work to improve the operations at Casa and deal with the inflationary pressure that we see in the Abitibi.
Looking to capital, we anticipate spending approximately $135 million, as Russell mentioned, which is slightly higher than previous years.
Remember that this change is driven mainly from new equipment increasing the number of stokes at the Lucky Friday.
And so just a slight increase as a result of that.
Cost and capital assumptions include costs associated with managing COVID and assume 5% inflation.
We also anticipate spending 45 million for exploration and pre-development of that.
A quarter of that will be spent at Greens Creek and Casa.
In addition to extending reserves and resources, both properties have programs identifying testing new targets.
The Nevada program, which is about a third of the program, is going to focus on the two miles of the East Graben Corridor at Midas, where we've had some very high grade intersections.
And we're going to complete the pre-development drift and exploration drilling at Hollister's Hatter Graben.
At San Sebastian, we're testing for deeper mineralization near the mine infrastructure to try to expand the huge zone type mineralization, as well as mining more for just silver and gold in an area called La Roca.
Our programs for Republic and the [Inaudible] districts that have been on hold for a number of years will also have some drilling this year.
I want to take a moment to speak about the reset that we are taking in our Montana assets.
We withdrew the previous owner's plan of operations on both properties since it was based on their view of what the mines would be, but they really didn't have the data to formulate what we need to do for a modern, innovative mine plan.
So we're submitting a new plan of operation limited to geologic and environmental activities for just the Montanore site so we can develop our own plans.
At this point, Rock Creek will only have care and maintenance activities with our mineral and property rights intact.
that host more than 300 million ounces of silver and 3 billion pounds of copper.
Given the growing importance of these two metals, we believe that this sort of one step back to allow two-step forwards approach will allow production to begin as early as next year and next decade.
So that has not changed our view that early in the next decade, we should be able to be in production there.
Before I open the line to questions, I want to take just a moment to remember my friend and predecessor, CEO R. Brown, who passed away recently.
Artworks for Hecla for almost 40 years, and he was the CEO for Hecla for almost half of that.
The UCB method is only the most recent example of Hecla's culture of innovation.
Our art had Hecla on the cutting edge of a number of new technologies.
Many that are standard in many operations around the world like pace backfill and the circular shaft that we had at the Lucky Friday.
His legacy is continuing innovation not only at the Lucky Friday, but the automation advances that we've had at Greens Creek and Casa Berardi.
Hecla would not be the company that we are today without him.
And so please keep his family in your in your thoughts.
With that operator, I would like to open the call to questions.

user
sees 2022 capital expenditures of $135 million.

assistant