StockMarketWire.com – Hochschild Mining unveils record full-year revenues, earnings and after-tax profits.

And it remains extremely confident about the prospects for its three advanced projects following positive scoping studies.

Hochschild revenues for the year to the end of December rose 39% to $752.3m.

Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation increased 59% to $397.7m with attributable after-tax profits up 79% at $94.9m.

The proposed final dividend of $0.03 per share is up 50% bring the total payout for 2010 to $0.05 per share.

Hochschild made an exceptional gain of $63.7m from the sale of its stake in Lake Shore Gold Corp and ended the year with a cash balance of $525.5m.

CEO Ignacio Bustamante said: “Our strategy to focus on organic growth through exploration has been a great success with a 23% increase in the resource life of our core operations to 8.7 years and an expanded project pipeline currently including eight Company Makers.

“We remain extremely confident about the prospects for our three advanced projects following positive scoping studies, particularly at Inmaculada where we have recently announced an increase in total resources to 128.3 million silver equivalent ounces.”