gcc is not Creating an Output File - powershell

Question

The following command (via PowerShell in Windows 7)
PS C:\Users\gvkv\projects\stats> C:\mingw\bin\gcc.exe .\lex.yy.c -o gmstats.exe -v output
gives the following output
gcc.exe: error: output: No such file or directory
Using built-in specs.
COLLECT_GCC=C:\mingw\bin\gcc.exe
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=c:/mingw/bin/../libexec/gcc/mingw32/4.8.1/lto-wrapper.exe
Target: mingw32
Configured with: ../gcc-4.8.1/configure --prefix=/mingw --host=mingw32 --build=mingw32 --without-pic --enable-shared --enable-static --with-gnu-ld --enable-lto --enable-libssp --disable-multilib --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran,objc,obj-c++,ada --disable-sjlj-exceptions --with-dwarf2 --disable-win32-registry --enable-libstdcxx-debug --enable-version-specific-runtime-libs --with-gmp=/usr/src/pkg/gmp-5.1.2-1-mingw32-src/bld --with-mpc=/usr/src/pkg/mpc-1.0.1-1-mingw32-src/bld --with-mpfr= --with-system-zlib --with-gnu-as --enable-decimal-float=yes --enable-libgomp --enable-threads --with-libiconv-prefix=/mingw32 --with-libintl-prefix=/mingw --disable-bootstrap LDFLAGS=-s CFLAGS=-D_USE_32BIT_TIME_T
Thread model: win32
gcc version 4.8.1 (GCC)
and I have no idea why. In particular, I don't understand the error at the top of the output. If I invoke gcc without the -v option:
PS C:\Users\gvkv\projects\stats> C:\mingw\bin\gcc.exe .\lex.yy.c -o gmstats.exe
I get:
PS C:\Users\gvkv\projects\stats>
Nominal success! This would be great if I also had gmstats.exe in my directory. Just for fun I've also tried running PowerShell as an administrator and I've also invoked gcc with an absolute path:
PS ...>C:\MinGW\bin\gcc.exe
just to make sure. I last used gcc to compile something (via make) and it worked fine.
I also considered that there was a linker (ld.exe) problem but there's no file to link and the search directories are fine.