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Article Excerpt OPERATOR: Good afternoon. My name is Meg, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Atna Resources third quarter 2008 earnings conference call. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded today, November 17, 2008. Thank you, and I would like to now turn the conference over to Ms. Valerie Kimball, Investor Relations Manager.
VALERIE KIMBALL, IR MANAGER, ATNA RESOURCES LTD.: Thank you. Before beginning the conference call, Atna Resources management would like to alert you to the fact in that discussing the performance and operations today there will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and within the meaning of Canadian Securities Legislation. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are based on the beliefs, estimates, and opinions of the Company's management as of today's date and involve a number of risks and uncertainties.
Consequently, there will be no assurances that such statements prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates, or opinions or other factors should change except as required by law. Factors that underlie these forward-looking statements and that could cause actual results and future events to differ materially are discussed in the Company's various filings on www.sedar.com with Canadian securities regulators and its filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Form 20-F dated March 25, 2008. I would now like to turn the call over to the Chairman and CEO of Atna Resources, Mr. David Watkins. David.
DAVID WATKINS, CHAIRMAN, CEO, ATNA RESOURCES LTD.: Thank you very much, Valerie, and good morning or good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you might be. I'm very pleased to welcome you all to the third quarter Atna conference call. As we've said I'm David Watkins, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Atna. I have Jim Hesketh, the President and Chief Operating Officer; Dave Suleski, the Chief Financial Officer, and others from the Atna team on the line to help review the results of the past quarter.
First, I'd like to say that in spite of these turbulent times our Company has never been in a stronger position with more cash, more gold and closer to production than ever before. Since we completed the merger with Canyon in the first quarter of this year, we have achieved major milestones on the road to building a fully integrated gold mining company. We greatly strengthened our balance sheet, primarily through the sale of a package of royalty interests which we considered non-core assets for our corporate objectives. This added US $20 million to our account, leaving us with over C $24 million in cash and short-term assets at the end of the quarter. Most of the cash has been retained in US dollars and it's tucked away safely in treasury bills, I should add.
We have accelerated the restart of the operations at the Briggs mine in California where we now expect to start production and to generate cash flow late next quarter. Less than $9 million remain to be spent before production start-up. We're also drilling at Briggs and working on a mine optimization study which ought to increase our reserves. Jim will talk to you more and fill you in on some of the did detail in a few moments.
At the Pinson property in Nevada, Barrick had spent over $18 million at the end of the quarter, and they have advised us that they plan to meet the $30 million claw-back expenditure required before April 6 next year if they are to increase their interest. They appear to have determined that the underground plant is too small for their interest and are focused on drilling and designing a large pit that would integrate a number of the previously mined pits into a single larger scale operation. We've also made good progress in permitting at the reward properly in Nevada which should operate as a satellite to Briggs in many respects.
Subject to completing the permitting and to financing, reward may be in production about the end of next year or 2009. We've also added significant amounts of gold to the Atna account by acquiring about a one-third portion of the Columbia property which we didn't already own. This not only adds ounces but frees our ability to operate the portion of the property that we did own. Consolidation of Columbia brings the total deposit of about 830,000 ounces reported as SEC compliant mineralized material to our account. We are presently working to bring that material into national instrument 43-101 Canadian regulatory compliance in the first part of next year.
Finally, we have a number of partners who are working on exploration ventures in Nevada and drilling actively on some of them. Most notably, Yamana is drilling on the Clover prospect, and Golden Predator continues to advance the Adelaide and Tuscarora properties. With that brief overview, I'm going to turn the line over to Dave Suleski, our Chief Financial Officer, who will review...
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