Fortuna Silver's Q1 production drops but on track to reach annual guidance

Fortuna Silver Mines (NYSE:FSM) +0.3% in Wednesday's trading after reporting a decline in quarterly gold and silver production.

Q1 gold production of 60,092 oz fell 10% compared to the year-earlier quarter, due mostly to a decrease in head grades at both mines that still was in line with the mining sequence and mineral reserves.

Q1 silver production fell 5% Y/Y to ~1.58M oz, with marginally lower tonnage and head grades milled at the San Jose and Caylloma mines.

Fortuna (FSM) reiterated FY 2023 production guidance of 6.3M-6.9M oz of silver and 282K-320K oz of gold, or 412K-463K gold equivalent oz.

The company also said the Seguela mine in Côte d’Ivoire is on track to initiate gold production, with first gold pour expected in May.

Fortuna Silver Mines (FSM) has been one of the sector's more disappointing stocks, due to continued disappointments over reserve replacement and rising costs across its portfolio, which have overshadowed strong exploration results from Seguela, Taylor Dart writes in an analysis published recently on Seeking Alpha.