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: Overall, the third quarter reflected a continuation of our strategy of investing in our North American assets to further reposition the company with lower cost, sustainable free cash flow and solid returns over longer mine lives.
As you can see, it was a quarter with several significant developments and decisions.
Results were in line with our internal forecast and we're set up to deliver a strong finish to the year and achieve our original production guidance.
Mick will go through the operations in more detail shortly, but I'll quickly touch on a few main points.
Wharf led the pack and achieved its second highest operating cash flow and free cash flow since we acquired the operations 6.5 years ago.
Palmarejo and Kensington were largely on plan and are on track to deliver strong fourth quarters and Rochester's results reflect steady progress despite devoting 38.5 days, or about 45% of the quarter, to crushing and hauling over-liner material to the new Stage VI leach pad before winter.
It's worth pointing out that Rochester's year-to-date results reflect 2.5 months of essentially no stacking on the legacy Stage IV pad as they prioritize activities to support the POA 11 expansion.
On the exploration front, results continue to validate our ongoing commitment to these higher levels of investment.
We invested $20 million in exploration during the quarter alone.
This commitment to drilling has led to double-digit reserve and resource growth over the past few years and we look forward to hopefully delivering further growth again at the end of this year.
We anticipate investing $70 million in exploration in 2021, which is nearly 40% higher than the record we set last year and is one of the largest programs in our sector.
We remain on track to achieve our full year drill footage targets, yet investing slightly less than originally anticipated, which reflects efficiencies we are realizing from these larger programs.
We will plan to provide another exploration update before the end of the year that will focus on exciting new results at our assets in Nevada, both at Rochester and from the Crown district in Southern Nevada where there continues to be a lot of activity.
Switching over to our expansion projects, I want to walk through some updates starting with the Rochester POA 11 expansion.
This project remains our top priority and is a transformative well-funded source of production and cash flow growth for the company.
Things are moving right along.
Overall progress stood at 42% complete at the end of the third quarter.
In addition to completing the crushing of over-liner for the new Stage VI leach pad, the team also kicked off foundation work for the Merrill Crowe plant and the crusher corridor during the quarter.
As we mentioned on our last conference call, we're experiencing the impact of inflation on remaining unawarded work, like most companies are reporting.
Overall, we're fortunate to have had the vast majority of our contracts locked in prior to the current spike in costs and supply and labor disruptions.
We're trying to mitigate some of these impacts by rescoping and rebidding unawarded contracts, but we currently estimate that we're likely to see a 10% to 15% overall increase to the POA 11 construction costs.
We have kicked off detailed engineering and we'll be evaluating the merits of implementing this process improvement over the coming months.
Assuming we elect to pursue this opportunity, it could potentially extend the timetable for completion and commissioning of the crusher by three to six months.
In the meantime, we plan to install pre-screens on the existing crusher during the first half of next year to give us some full scale run time and experience that we can potentially incorporate into the new crusher configuration.
Now switching over to Silvertip.
Given the current inflationary environment and pandemic-driven supply and labor disruptions, it's not an ideal time to be kicking off a new capital project on an accelerated timetable despite multi-year high zinc and lead prices.
Fortunately, Silvertip expansion and restart is still in the early innings, which gives us a lot of flexibility.
Despite the uncertain macro-environment, which contributed to higher-than-expected capital estimates for an accelerated expansion in restart, one thing we are certain of is the quality and prospectivity of the Silvertip deposit.
The exploration results, along with the knowledge and new discoveries the team is generating, have led us in the direction of evaluating a larger Silvertip expansion and restart on a potentially slower timetable.
To take advantage of such a high-grade and significant resource, a 1,750 ton per day processing facility isn't likely large enough to maximize Silvertip's value.
We're going to take some additional time to evaluate what a larger design and footprint could represent in terms of economics and overall flexibility.
This approach will give us time to continue drilling and hopefully keep growing the resource, allow for the dust to settle on many of these current macroeconomic factors and allow us to focus on delivering POA 11 while not straining the balance sheet.
Finishing out the highlights.
We're pleased to announce that we entered into an agreement with Avino Silver & Gold to sell them the La Preciosa project in Durango, Mexico.
This transaction offers some real potential synergies to unlock value from that asset with their nearby Avino mine.
Strategically, the transaction checks a lot of boxes for us with respect to further enhancing our geopolitical risk profile, our metals mix and the timing of our development pipeline.
We can deploy some of the fixed cash consideration into the Rochester expansion and into our highly prospective exploration programs.
The transaction provides a lot of upside to the asset through the equity ownership we will have, along with contingent payments and two royalties we will retain.
Shifting gears, I want to quickly bring your attention to a set of slides starting on Slide 17 that highlight the great culture and diversity efforts we have at Coeur.
To be a high performing organization, a company's culture, strategy and capabilities need to be aligned, something that I believe we've achieved over the past few years.
To that end, I want to recognize our Head of Human Resources, Emilie Schouten, for her efforts on DE&I and for recently winning the industry's Rising Star Award from S&P Global Platts.
We continue to integrate our ESG efforts into our strategy and overall decision making.
Before having Mick provide an overview of our operations, I'd like Hans to follow-up on my Silvertip comment by providing a brief overview of the Silvertip exploration results and why we are so positive about its potential.
We bought Silvertip in late 2017 with the recognition that the asset has excellent growth potential.
We now have almost 3.5 kilometer of potential growth defined based on step-out drill holes or more than triple what we knew in 2017, as highlighted on Slide 8.
This year, we are completing the largest exploration program in the history of the project.
Impressively, Silvertip accounts for roughly 25% of our $70 million overall budget at Coeur.
The site team led by Ross Easterbrook has done an outstanding job managing the 1,000-meter drill program.
Drilling from underground has given us the ability to conduct exploration year-round and test different parts of the ore body from different angles, which has been a crucial part of the Silvertip growth story.
Underground drilling in early 2021 has led to the discovery of the Southern Silver Zone vertical feeder structures and thick manto ore zones and, more recently, vertical feeder structures under the Discovery South Zone.
These structures represent significant resource tonnage potential and demonstrate excellent upside.
We now have two rigs active underground with plans to add a third rig early next year.
We also expect to continue with three surface rigs testing resource growth to the south in the 1.5-kilometer gap between Southern Silver and Tour Ridge zones.
With the larger drill budget this year, we expect to continue significant growth at Silvertip, which will give our development team confidence to right-size the future operation to fit the potentially increased scale of the ore body.
The team reported last week they've cut the best hole ever with 11 mineralized manto horizons.
The hole is located under Silvertip Mountain about 500 meters or 1,500 feet south of the Southern Silver and Camp Creek zones in an area with no resource shapes at this time.
This new step-out hole is the significant indicator of the growth potential we expect for 2022 and beyond.
I'll now pass the call over to Mick.
Before diving into operational results, I want to recognize the team for continuing to prioritize health and safety and driving continuous improvement in this area.
Flipping to Slide 24, I'm proud to report that we recently received the NIOSH Mine Safety and Health Technology Innovation Award for our cross-functional COVID-19 response efforts.
I'm truly honored to be part of such a great team that is relentless in its efforts to work together and look after the well-being of our people.
Now turning to Slide 5 to cover the operations and starting off with Palmarejo.
The team did an excellent job maintaining higher throughput levels and maximizing recoveries to offset some of the lower grades that we've been experiencing with our resequenced mine plant.
We've also continued advancing development while focusing on increasing rehabilitation rates across the mine, which helps ensure that we've appropriately prioritized the health and safety of our workforce.
Quarterly operating costs remain within guidance helping to counterbalance lower realized prices and generate $15 million of free cash flow.
We expect a strong finish to the year at Palmarejo and we're excited to see how much production growth we can achieve here in this fourth quarter.
Switching over to Rochester.
We crushed just under 1.3 million tons of over-liner for the new Stage VI leach pad during the quarter, completing the necessary requirements for POA 11.
It's important to note, when we are generating over-liner, we were not crushing materials stacked on the legacy Stage IV leach pad, which had a knock-on effect for production during the third quarter.
Despite the near-term production impact, all-time energy and resources used to finish crushing overlay now was an important step toward completing this highly anticipated expansion project.
Now turning to Kensington.
Production was slightly higher during the quarter as better agreed [Phonetic] help to offset lower mill throughput caused by stope sequencing and drill parts availability.
The good news is that we anticipate more high grade Jualin material over the coming months and have already received the necessary spare parts for stope drills, leaving us very well positioned for strong production growth in the fourth quarter.
The Kensington team did an excellent job balancing multiple priorities and maintaining solid cost controls throughout the quarter, which helped generate nearly $15 million of free cash flow.
Finishing with Wharf, I want to start by acknowledging the tremendous achievement.
On October 3, the team at Wharf celebrated one year without a recordable safety incident, truly an amazing accomplishment.
From a results standpoint, Wharf put together yet another great quarter, which marks back to back periods of strong performance.
Gold production was up 17% and cash flow figures was the second highest since Coeur's acquisition back in 2015.
With that, I'll pass the call over to Tom.
First, I wanted to add a bit of color on the non-cash adjustments that impacted our third quarter earnings.
We wrote off $26 million of Mexican VAT refunds, to which we strongly believe we are entitled, but like many other multinational companies doing business in Mexico, we have experienced significant challenges from SAT in the Mexican courts in obtaining these payments.
We also had a mark-to-market adjustment on our equity investments, primarily related to Victoria Gold.
However, the carrying value of the investment remains above our original cost.
Turning over to Slide 4, I'll quickly run through our quarterly consolidated financial results.
Revenue of $208 million was driven by relatively stable metal sales and a lower average realized silver price versus the second quarter.
Operating cash flow totaled $22 million, which was lower than last quarter but also negatively impacted by changes in working capital.
Removing working capital, operating cash flow improved by more than 10% quarter-over-quarter.
Like most companies, we've seen cost pressures related to consumables and labor across all of our operations.
With stronger expected Q4 production, we anticipate operating cash flow levels to continue climbing as we finish out the year.
Turning over to Slide 12 and looking at the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with approximately $330 million of liquidity, including $85 million of cash and $245 million of availability under our revolving credit facility.
Also, it's worth highlighting that these numbers do not include the $140 million of equity investments on our balance sheet.
We did draw down modestly on the revolver.
We ended the period with a net debt to EBITDA leverage ratio of 1.4 times.
We will continue adhering to our disciplined capital allocation framework and remain focused on our goal of keeping net leverage below 2 times and maintaining liquidity of at least $100 million throughout the entire Rochester construction period.
However, we expect the revised timeline for Silvertip, along with the current robust metals price environment, will leave us well positioned to maintain a strong and flexible balance sheet.
I'll now pass the call back to Mitch.
Before moving to the Q&A, I want to quickly highlight Slide 13 that outlines our near-term priorities as we approach the end of the year.
With production guidance reaffirmed and a strong expected fourth quarter underway, we're feeling confident about our 2021 results and in our ability to carry this momentum into next year.
We'll continue pursuing a higher standard and execute at a high level to deliver consistent results and industry-leading organic growth from our balanced portfolio of North American-based precious metals assets.

user
q3 revenue $208 million versus $229.7 million.
reaffirms production guidance; updates cost and capital expenditure guidance.
full-year 2021 capital expenditures are expected to be slightly lower at about $35 million - $40 million.

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