Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Q2 2007 Hecla Mining earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to Vicki Veltkamp, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed. Vicki Veltkamp: Thank you all for joining us today. As the operator said, I'm Vicki Veltkamp with Hecla Mining Company and we're pleased to be conducting our second quarter 2007 conference call. Our call is being webcast live today at www.hecla-mining.com. On our website, you can find the financial results in today’s news release. In that news release, we have reconciled the cash costs per ounce calculations, as required. Today's presentation will be made by Phil Baker, Hecla's president and CEO. He will be joined by Lew Walde, our Chief Financial Officer; Michael Callahan, who is our president of Venezuelan operations; Dean McDonald, our Vice President of Exploration; our Senior Vice President of Operations Ron Clayton, and our new Vice President of Corporate Development, Don Poirier. Before we start, I do need to let you know that any forward-looking statements made today by our management team comes under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. It involves a number of risks that could cause actual results to differ from projections. In addition, in our filings with the SEC we're allowed to disclose mineral deposits that we can economically and legally extract or produce, so investors are cautioned about our use of such terms such as measured, indicated in inferred resources and we urge you to consider those disclosures in our SEC filings. Now I'm happy to turn the call over to Hecla Mining Company's President and Chief Executive Officer, Phil Baker. Phil Baker: Thanks, Vicki. I will make a few comments and then my colleagues will add their take on the second quarter. I…

Just one comment on Dean's presentation. I think you said 250 feet; the gap area is 2,500 feet. Let me also make a couple of comments about Corporate Development and then we will go to Q&A. Earlier this year we are opened a co-corporate headquarters in Vancouver with Dean and that office now has six employees in it, including four geologists. One of the geologists we added was Don Poirier, who is our new VP of Corporate Development. Don has not quite 20 years of experience as an analyst so has close connections with The Street in Vancouver. The team that we have in Vancouver is going to be the primary base for identifying new opportunities and they, of course, will work with the technical team that we have in Couer D'Alene and north Idaho. We think that Hecla is really in a unique opportunity, in a unique time, for Corporate Development. You have to remember that most of our assets sit in North America. We have a strong balance sheet and we have a technical team to take projects forward. There has been exploration in silver, really for the first time over the last four years that are generating opportunities in silver of a size that can make a difference for Hecla. For gold, there is a dearth of companies that are interested in assets that fit our niche as an underground miner. We've already been very active in evaluating and even negotiating acquisitions of some of these types of assets. What we're looking for is adding value and getting incremental growth to our already-growing asset base. With that, Vicki, I think we can take questions. Vicki Veltkamp: Antoine, could you give the Q&A instructions, please?

Your first question comes from the line of Anthony Sorrentino - Sorrentino Metals. Anthony Sorrentino - Sorrentino Metals : In your press release, you said that the Lucky Friday expansion project would consist of an additional surface shaft, an internal underground shaft and a new mill. What would you estimate roughly the capital cost of that project to be?

Well, there are three elements to an expansion. Now, one element of that, the underground shaft, what we're calling the foreshaft, is going to happen regardless of whether we expand or not. The other two are what the prefeasiblity study is all about. You know, at this stage, it's hard to say what the capital would be when we have done a scoping study. We were anticipating $150 million to $200 million of capital would not be unlikely to achieve a doubling of the production from the Lucky Friday. Anthony Sorrentino - Sorrentino Metals : Would you have any estimate of what the rate of return would be on such a project?

Yes, when we looked at this previously and this would be with prices as of the end of the year or late last year, the scoping study indicated rates of returns in excess of 20%, maybe 25%. Anthony Sorrentino - Sorrentino Metals : That was based at the lower prices that prevailed at the end of the year?

Yes.

There are no further questions in queue at this time. Vicki Veltkamp: I'd like to thank you all for joining us again today. I guess our press release is fairly thorough. We had few questions today, but if you do have any more questions, feel free to give me a call at 208-769-4144 and that concludes the second quarter 2007 Hecla Mining Company conference call.