Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Gold Resource Corporation Q4 and Year-end 2015 Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jason Reid, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Gold Resource Corporation's 2015 Fourth Quarter and Year-end Conference Call. I expect my comments to run approximately 25 to 30 minutes, followed by a Q&A session. Joining me on the call today for the Q&A portion will be Mr. John Labate, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued yesterday, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today, March 9, 2016, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC for the year ended December 31, 2015. 2015 saw the third consecutive year of declining precious metal prices, which weighed heavily on the industry. Precious metal equities were arguably one of the most unloved in the 2015 investment world. Although the year proved to be another difficult and challenging one for both precious metals and precious metal producers, I am proud that Gold Resource Corporation not only overcame many challenges, but delivered its fifth consecutive year of profitability. This accomplishment during these last several bear market years is uncommon in the industry. As we watched several industry peers declare bankruptcy during 2015's tough and volatile metal market, Gold Resource Corporation posted annual net income of $3.1 million or $0.06 per…

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from Harvey Volland [ph].

I'm looking at your 2016 guidance and comparing it with 2015 production. And I noticed that the guidance is 10% or so lower across the board and 20% lower as far as silver production is concerned. And I'm wondering, is that because of lower grades? Or is it because you actually expect to mine less tonnage?

Okay. It's not the tonnage. It is the lower grade, and it has to do with a particular area in the deposit in which we target this year. Grades in the deposit will vary, especially in an epithermal system. Generally speaking, in epithermal systems, your grades over time and at depth will decrease in precious metals and increase in base metals. But on strike, that's not the case, and we're seeing that, for instance, at Switchback, where we're finding a lot of high-grade precious and base metals at a higher elevation. So it is a function of the deposit where we are mining, and we are going -- targeting it deeper. It is also, in some extent, a function of we're having to do less -- or do more with less people. Manpower is my largest cost, and I have to run as lean as possible. And that -- it does make it difficult to execute. We are going to be targeting pushing more tonnes through, though.

So as a follow-up to that, if I understood you correctly, you said that Switchback and Alta Gracia is -- any production coming from there is not included in your guidance. Is that correct?

That is correct.

So if there is reduction -- but yet you do intend to develop Switchback during 2016. Is that correct?

Yes, we do. That is correct. And I fully expect and we target to be having mill feed from Switchback this year. Now we are still developing it. And given, for instance, the challenges of the second quarter and the fight we had with water and gas at that particular time and knowing that we're going into a new area somewhat unknown, we didn't want to put the pressure on ourselves. Given the fact the development is going to be subject to rock competency, water flows, if there's gas, many different variables, we didn't feel that we wanted to put any production numbers into the budget from Switchback or Alta Gracia. Now they both -- first, Alta Gracia has a permitting issue, which is out of our hands. The other one is us mining it. But if we can get them both coming online, that would be an addition to our budgeted numbers. But we're not going to -- at this point, we're taking a more conservative approach, and we're not going to start putting numbers to that.

Is there any -- let's assume that metal prices stay where they are or increase. And let's say that -- as you get into Switchback and you have more information, do you expect to update guidance?

Perhaps. But right now, we're just focused on what's in front of us in the budget. We may revise the budget going forward depending on what we see, but your reference to the metal price, I hope they stay here. I mean these are great prices, and hopefully, it's the turn. But as I mentioned several times in my statements, we were optimistic going into the last 3 years, and it was very difficult when you create a budget, you move forward and all the while metal prices are dropping out from under you. And then you have to start stripping your budget and taking drastic actions, and that makes it very difficult. So we're taking a more conservative approach. I think it's the right approach given the volatility. Metal prices could easily come back down to where they were toward the -- in the 2015 year. It hadn't been too many weeks or months and the sentiment [ph] on gold and silver is -- it was dead. It was over. And of course, it's quite different now, but we don't want to create a budget based on these rosier precious metal numbers and then have it drop out from under us again.

[Operator Instructions]

While we're waiting on another question, I did receive a couple of e-mail questions. So I'll go through that. These questions are from Chris Lewis [ph]. First question, where is GORO on Alta Gracia permitting? And are those figures in your production estimates? Yes, as we -- as I mentioned in the call, those figures are not in the production estimates, and we're waiting on our blasting permit. And we're optimistic. If we can get that in the next several months, we're going to be off and running, so that's very exciting. Second question is if Alta Gracia gets permitted, do you plan to start the agitated leach circuit? Obviously, that -- we hope we had that optionality, and we hope that it does. His third question is, where are you on drilling out the open pit expansion? And did you see that ore being accumulated for the agitated leach circuit? We continue to look at the open pit and evaluate that. It's not going to be a lot of tonnes, but it could be some -- lower amount of tonnes at a pretty good grade. So we continue to evaluate that. That would be, hopefully, agitated leach circuit feed. Having said that, we could put it through the float circuit if we so chose. Number four, since you need additional capital to potentially begin a Nevada mining unit, what plans do you have to raise this capital? Chris, I hope we have this problem, and that problem would be we do find deposits at Gold Mesa or one of our other properties. But right now, we're very much focused on Gold Mesa. It has excellent -- as I mentioned, excellent grade for potential shallow-lying open pit, and this would be open pit heap leach situation. It's going to take…

We have no phone questions this time.

Perfect. Well, with that, we will conclude the conference call. I appreciate everybody for making the time to listen. And thank you very much. Have a good day.

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.