Phillips Baker: One of the things that we’ve had to deal with is the need for permits for those pits. And as we do the work, we uncover things that we’ve got to get all of the technical data in front of us in order to be able to get the permits for that. That work has been done. And so we’re in the process of getting those permits and that will allow us to open the Principal pit, which is the highest grade of the 2 remaining pits. But remember, we have in front of us more than a decade from those pits once they become operational.
Operator: Your next question will come from the line of John Tumazos with John Tumazos Very Independent Research.
John Tumazos: Congratulations on all the progress, especially in the Yukon. So my question is when will Hecla have the manpower capacity to digest more acquisitions. It’s an unusual time 5% short-term money. A lot of the small preproduction companies can’t raise money at all. And just looking at the last week, Osisko Mining, which has a beautiful 7.4 million ounce deposit is languishing because they issued equity. MAG Silver, which participates in a 20 million-ounce silver mine sold equity and sold down. And the companies that aren’t as big or good as those deposits, there’s just no market for their stock. So you could go on a buying spree and warehouse some deposits for whenever your engineers, your board needed a new project to build.
Phillips Baker: Well, John, I guess I’d make 2 comments. One is as far as the capacity with employees, it depends on what it is you’re acquiring. Something that you’re inventorying does not require much, much support. So those things are relatively easy to do. Things that we would need to develop, obviously, we have to have it compete with things that we already have as well as just acquisitions in general. Remember, we have a half dozen silver projects, plus we have another half dozen gold projects to explore and develop. So we don’t need to add to our inventory. Having said that, John, I would agree with you, we should look and consider what things could be accretive to our capacity, our capabilities and potentially try to bring them into the fold. But we don’t feel compelled to do such. We have growth with what we have. I mean this — the growth that we have in its sustainable growth is something that Hecla’s not had really in its history.
Operator: . Your question will come from the line of Dalton Baretto with Canaccord.
Dalton Baretto: I hate to beat the cash to death here, but I do have a couple of questions. I just want to make sure I fully understand here. So it sounds like you’re just waiting on permits for the Principal pit. When do you expect to get them? And then once you get them, how soon can you be in there?
Phillips Baker: Lauren, do you want to answer the question?
Lauren Roberts: Sure. So we’re in the process of permitting WMC, the West Mine Crown Pillar pit. It’s the next one in sequence. And over the course of this year, we will — the process is not submitting a single permit application. It’s a group of permit applications, some of which are already in and the balance of which will be in by August. Then it takes a little bit of time for that to process, and then we have a reasonable amount of pre-strip and strip that needs to happen. And so this should start delivering ore into the system in about 2027, 2028. And the underground resource on , the current pit we’re mining carry us to that point in time.
