—half years. There's a ton of value being unlocked in this mining company. Before I start, please be mindful, I'm going to be making multiple forward-looking statements. As I mentioned, we're a gold mining company. We've been producing gold for over half a century, paying dividends for several decades, operating two high-quality assets in Latin America. Two mines, one in Nicaragua, one in Colombia, and recently we acquired an asset also in Chile. We've been assembling very exciting growth opportunities, a pipeline of about 30 million ounces of gold is now sitting as growth opportunities for our company. We have a multi-decade track record of returning value to our owners. It's a turnaround story on a profitable mining company. We've been around for a long time, but we're also a pretty new story for most of North American and European investors.
Having listed only around 2021 in TSX. Most recently, the firm that I founded about 12 years ago, we started investing in Mineros. Started in 2024, have deployed over $200 million of gold in this company, and then unlocking a lot of value with an operational excellence agenda. Very fast growth is happening at Mineros, and the share price is reflecting that. The first half of the year is a good example of what we're achieving. About $560 million in revenues, up 63%, adjusted EBITDA of about $260 million, up 70%. We finished the quarter with about $230 million in cash and bullion. We are investing in our assets, we are paying dividends, we're doing buybacks and acquiring assets. But after doing all of that, we're still left with significant cash. We're now pioneering this bullion policy to provide that extra exposure to our shareholders.
In the screen, you have the last 10 years of dividends, together with the last two years that we're also doing buyback programs. Especially when we see value in the market, when there's significant corrections and we think the share price does not reflect the value of our business, we actively buy back our shares. Of course, investing in our business. We've been unlocking a ton of value. We have outperformed pretty much most mining companies. It's very unusual for a gold producer to multiply its market cap by more than 15x in two and a half years. We're doing that, and it's been a very rewarding process. Running very profitable operations. The focus has been primarily on the assets. We have a very clean balance sheet, almost no debt.
By focusing on the assets, we've been primarily in Nicaragua, having to do very exciting things like increasing our production guidance, which we just moved up to 240,000 ounces of gold. That's because in the first six months of the year, we've produced already 122,000 gold equivalent ounces. From a cost point of view, we're actually tracking below the lower end of guidance. We're investing in our business about $110 million. We're deploying within our assets, about half of it, $50 million, is going into growth opportunities and about $70 million into exploration. Because we're a mature mining company, we get a lot of bang for every dollar that we invest in exploration. Our drilling cost is about $100 a meter, so easily a fourth of what our peers are paying. Brand-new team. I'm going to talk mostly about our technical group.
Michael Doyle, he is leading the technical division in our company. He has spent decades with Rio Tinto. He is a mining engineer, geologist from Imperial College London, a partner in Sun Valley Investments as well. He is spearheading a lot of the operational excellence initiatives in our assets. María Vallejo, sitting here with me. She is now helping us with growth opportunities, identifying acquisitions for us, like the two acquisitions that we have made recently. Carlos Ríos, Vice President of Exploration. He is helping us understand the potential that we have within our assets, which is also a very exciting part of the story. On top of the two producing mines that I have been describing, we have added three growth opportunities that I will be describing down the road. I will start moving north to south, starting in Nicaragua, a very prolific gold district. It has produced about 8 million ounces of gold historically.
This is the asset responsible for the immediate growth. As you can see in the slide, in the first half of the year in 2025, this asset produced about 64,000 ounces. It is now, in the first six months of the year, producing 75,000 ounces, 10,000 ounces more this first half of the year compared to the year before. That is the level of operational improvements we are making with relatively small investments. To give you an idea of the sort of capital allocation decisions we are taking, we are deploying this year $25 million, expanding the processing capacity by 40%. That has been the biggest bottleneck that this asset has had historically. Adding about 30,000 ounces- 40,000 ounces, hopefully next year, to the production profile of this asset. Very significant return on a very small investment. $25 million and getting 30,000 ounces- 40,000 ounces. Several initiatives also improving recoveries.
Gold recoveries have gone up from about 87% to 93%. Silver recoveries have gone up from 30% to 76%, so silver revenues have gone up 500% this first six months compared to the same period the year before. A ton of growth happening in our Nicaraguan platform. Exploring a lot, 85 km of exploration going into the asset. Although it has produced so much gold, the level of understanding the company had on its own assets was very small. This is one of the biggest answers we are pursuing. What is the real potential of our Nicaraguan district? Immediately southwest, the red star that you see on the screen is the Porvenir development opportunity. That is an asset that we are looking forward to start developing, hopefully. We are working hard on the permitting. These are the PFS numbers that we released earlier this year.
At 3,150 gold, we are getting a 38% IRR on a $200 million investment, and there is a ton of growth beyond the million ounces of resources that we have in this asset. Those are the sort of targets that we are actively drilling at the moment. We are looking at this as a phase 1 approach, one that will add about 70,000 ounces gold equivalent production to our Nicaragua platform, but hopefully grow from there. Together, Nicaragua, we are working towards taking that platform towards the 300,000 ounces of gold a year in about two years from now. That is Nicaragua. I will now continue moving south to our Colombian operation. Also a very unique asset, a mine that has been in production for over a century. It currently has about 2.2 million ounces in resources, but only producing 80,000 ounces- 90,000 ounces of gold per year.
We're working on a growth strategy for this asset. We expect to start submitting an application for expanded permits to add about 30%-40% more production with a capital program. Exciting opportunities. This is work in progress as well. It's happening, and we expect to release the details on the growth very soon to the market before the year-end. This is the latest acquisition that we've made at Mineros, also in Colombia. It's a top 10 gold deposit by size. It's potentially a transformational opportunity for a company of our size, 28 million ounces of gold. Remarkable asset. We were able to acquire this asset from AngloGold Ashanti. We acquired this earlier this year, a month with time to secure an asset of this quality. From a technical point of view, this is an outstanding asset. The challenge historically has been the social license.
Anglo was struggling to get the support from the local communities. They wanted to build something massive, colossal. This asset was known as La Colosa. The colossal. The aim was to build a mine of about 1 million ounces per year. About half of the deposit is located in an environmentally sensitive area. That beautiful forest that you see on the upper part of the picture. The approach we're taking here is very different. We're not optimizing this from a technical point of view. We're inheriting about COP 1 billion worth of technical information here, but our focus is truly in optimizing this from a social point of view to be able to put a mine into production. Start with something much smaller outside of that environmentally sensitive area, which is still very meaningful.
There's about 14 million ounces of gold that are outside of that environmentally sensitive area. For a company of our size, 14 million ounces is a great opportunity. Starting much smaller, simplifying the process, dry stack tailings, those sort of ideas, and leveraging the social license. As a Colombian operator, we've been mining gold for five decades in Colombia. We feel we can do things different, work with the communities. There are great tools at our disposal. One of them is called Works for Taxes or Infrastructure for Taxes. We get to pay our income tax in Colombia by building amazing projects. This year, for example, we're building a school for 2,000 kids. The same school that you would see in Colorado Springs, we're building that in our other operation in Colombia and providing that opportunity to our local community.
That creates very tight relationships with the community that matter most to us. We expect to start doing those sort of projects in this part of Colombia and leverage that local expertise and hopefully unlock the value here. Very asymmetric bet. We invested $1 million up front. There's a contingent payment of $60 million that we would very happily pay. That's contingent on getting the permits. We're getting the perfect four-year window with a very supportive new government that is all about developing the national resources for the benefit of all Colombians. This is a project that was recently declared also a project of national interest. Looking forward to unlocking the value here. Now, I'm moving further south to our Chilean asset in the Maricunga Gold District, a very prolific gold district. We have mines all around us operated by Kinross Gold.
Most recently, Rio2 Limited put the Fenix Gold Project into production. We are taking a very similar approach to Rio2 Limited in terms of developing this asset. We are starting with 2.5 million ounces of gold, which is a good place to start. We are thinking that this is a decent phase 1. We are working on a preliminary economic assessment to be released early next year, aiming at a production profile of about 100,000 ounces- 130,000 ounces of gold, and start that as a phase 1. There is potential growth to the north, to the south, to the west. The red circles that you see in the image are very clear gold exploration targets that we will be investigating in the due time. But 2.5 million ounces is a good place to start.
I forgot to mention in the Colombian asset, we are working on doing a resource statement in the name of Mineros by the end of the year, and a pre-feasibility late next year. Those are catalysts that are hopefully coming soon. This is a good summary of what we are doing and where we are going. We are coming from about 220,000 ounces of production last year. This year, we expect to produce more than 240,000 ounces of gold. That is the increased production guidance. But we are also working on de-bottlenecking the operations, the initiatives I described in the earlier part of my presentation. We expect those would add 30,000 ounces- 40,000 ounces of gold per year. That is next year. So start approaching the 300,000 ounces mark. Then from there, we have these three very meaningful growth opportunities. Porvenir, almost fully permitted. We are already doing detail engineering on that.
We started to build access and preparing the construction teams to start the construction, hopefully early next year. The Tolima asset in Colombia and the Chilean asset are also very significant opportunities for the company. This is probably a good summary of who we are. Despite this very significant re-rate, the share price multiplying by 15, because the business is improving at a similar pace, we are still trading at a very attractive valuation, delivering record operational performance. Of course, with a positive gold price and silver price environment, delivering record financial performance. Very clear catalyst for growth. Approaching the 300,000 ounces, hopefully next year, and then unlocking the value on these potentially transformational assets. That local expertise we think is going to be very critical, very useful to unlock value where other companies have struggled to unlock value, potentially transformational opportunities like the asset in Tolima.
I am going to leave a few minutes for questions. Thank you very much for your interest.
Thank you, Daniel. I love the combination of returns to shareholders and also the organic growth within the portfolio. Any questions from the room? Happy to give you one. Just on Tolima, I wondered if you could just walk through the permitting process and the timeline in a bit more detail. Do you need to do environmental impact assessments, and what is the process there?
Perfect. Thank you, Ross. Tolima is actually a very advanced asset from a technical point of view. As I mentioned, over $1 billion invested in this asset in the past decade or so. In the data package that we inherited, there is actually two pre-feasibilities that were never published, done by Hatch. A bunch of trade-off studies done by the top. From an engineering point of view, it is actually a very advanced asset. We are leveraging all of that information to have a pre-feasibility ready by the end of next year. In parallel, are working with the Colombian government on permitting. We are going to be working on local permits in parallel, ideally taking advantage of a perfect four-year window of this upcoming administration that is being very supportive.
They took office, and the first week we were receiving calls from government officials telling us, "How can we help?" It is very exciting times, very positive developments. There were some rulings from the Constitutional Court of Colombia saying that local communities cannot oppose the development of mining projects because they are of national interest. This is a project of national interest for Colombia. Which is great, but at the same time, it is not what we want to do. We do want to get the community on board to support this asset. That is truly the critical path. The critical path for this Tolima asset is getting the support of a relatively small community that lives about 30 km away from the property. That is where we are going to be focused, working very hard on hopefully getting their support.
Okay. You have obviously got a lot on your plate, both in terms of the existing operations, in terms of the growth and the returns. Are you still looking for other acquisition opportunities, and are you looking in Colombia and Nicaragua, or are you looking more broadly?
Yeah. We're actively looking for investment opportunity. My colleague here, [María], she's actively meeting potential targets. We're going to be hopefully very busy in 2027 and 2028 with the construction of Porvenir. Then we have a gap in 2029 and 2030 for our construction teams that we would love to fill with a development asset. We're prioritizing opportunities in the Americas, looking for opportunities in the U.S., in Canada. But of course, in Latin America as well. We have evaluated assets also in other parts of the world, in Australia. We're willing to go for and look for the best opportunities out there. It is perhaps the more challenging part of our business right now, is finding accretive acquisitions. It's a very strong bull market. Things are expensive. We're very focused on our per share metrics and accretive transactions.
That's work in progress, but it has not been easy. We're happy that we managed to close these two acquisitions in the last year.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Fantastic presentation.
Thank you, Ross.