Before we get started, just a quick note. A replay of today's webinar will be available after the event, so don't worry if you need to step away. Without further ado, I'll hand things over to David. David, the floor is yours.
Okay, thanks, Kyle. You know, as we ramp up production and start to report, you know, meaningful financial results, you know, the idea is that we wanna start doing these earnings calls regularly, well, quarterly, and so this is the first one. We are still working out the kinks, and there'll be many more in the future. I'm very pleased to do this one and sort of, you know, get the ball rolling, so to speak. Talking about, we put out two press releases last week. One was our Q1 operations update, and the second one was the quarterly earnings from Q4.
Because, you know, because we're doing the year-end audited financials, that takes a bit longer, so that's why the Q4 is, it ends up being in April for us. In about a month we'll be doing this again, which will be our Q1, and that will be towards the end of May. We're gonna be, you know, jumping right back on this in the next few weeks to do another update for you. We will be making many forward-looking statements, so please review our important notices either now, or you can go onto the website and look at this, at our presentation at your leisure.
Just a couple of quick introduction slides just in case there are any new investors on the line today, but we're a silver mining company with our flagship project, Bethania, in Peru. That's mostly what we're gonna be talking about today. We do have a couple of other silver projects, the Silver Kings project in Northern Ontario, and the JV with Sumo Holding, which is in Saudi Arabia, which is called Umm Hadid, which is also a silver project with gold. In Northern Ontario we've got silver with cobalt. In Bethania we have silver, lead, zinc, gold, but mostly silver in actually all of our projects, but especially at Bethania. We're heavily weighted to silver. We love silver.
In terms of some of the, I think the key highlights about Kuya and what makes us different from our peers, well, we don't have very many peers, first of all. There are very few silver mining companies that exist publicly traded today, and of them, many, most of them are, you know, sort of around 50%, 60% silver by revenue, which is okay, but we've got 90%, and that makes Kuya, you know, up there among the top silver mining companies in terms of our exposure to silver. The Bethania mine, we're very blessed, it's high grade. The byproducts do not form a significant part of our overall revenue, although they are worth recovering, so that is why we get so much of our revenue from silver.
De-risk profile, I think your biggest risk with, you know, junior mining especially, is the time value of money, so the fact that we're already producing, we've already done most of the heavy lifting for you. Now it's a matter of ramping up. We've got a fully permitted mine in a mining-friendly jurisdiction. We also have a very, very healthy cash balance, which we said in our last press release, $27 million, so it's actually more than CAD 30 million, and no debt. We're low risk on the operating side. We're also low risk on the financial side.
The multi-year growth plan, you know, even though we're talking about, you know, short-term quarters here on this call, focusing on that, the long term is really what's exciting, and I think the reason why you're investing in Kuya, the reason why I invest in Kuya, is the long-term growth plan and the fact that we have such a long runway ahead of us to grow the Bethania asset is very, very exciting. Capital discipline, no near term need for financing. Certainly for the plans for Bethania, it's now fully funded for pretty much anything we can think of doing with that project going forward, especially at these silver prices. The valuation upside. We're still not getting really any value for future cash flow for this company.
I'm not gonna talk much about that on the call, but feel free to ask me about it later. I have lots of views about it. I'm a former Analyst myself, and I think that there's huge, huge upside when the market recognizes our cash flow. Okay. Last intro slide is our 100/100 growth plan. I think when you really look at, you know, junior mining companies, there's a sweet spot out there that does exist. It's very difficult to achieve, but when you've got a company that can grow production and resources at the same time, that is the sweet spot where you have companies that do what, real, you know, good or okay to companies that, you know, do exceptionally well and outperform their peers.
You know, I was lucky to find a few of those companies when early on in my career, and I feel like Kuya's in that position today. We're growing the Bethania mine right now, ramping it up. We're gonna, you know, talk about that with the quarter. Then we're gonna continue to grow it. Next year we have plans to double production again to you know, 700 tons per day from 350, which we expect to end this exit this year at, and then we can potentially grow it even further down the, you know, 2029 or 2030. I think we're gonna have continual growth, probably for the next five years or so in terms of silver production from this flagship asset of ours. Then what goes along beside that at the same pace is the exploration.
Now we've really put forth an aggressive exploration program, 20,000 meters this year, mostly in the second half of the year. There's going to be a lot of drilling, a lot of news, especially in Q3, Q4. That's going to be very, very exciting because as we build our, you know, ounces, that further accentuates the value of the company as we grow production at the same time. That's very exciting. Let's get into the quarter now. In Q1, we reported our Q1 operational update as well as our Q4 financials. With the Q1 update, we had again, another record quarter of production. We should have a record pretty much every quarter as we're ramping up.
Most importantly, we did exit the quarter at 100 tons per day, and we have, you know, been able to maintain that so far in April and so far in Q2. That'll be the platform for us to grow again to do the next jump in production. We're very, very happy about that. That's a really nice amount of production that generates quite a lot of revenue for us and, you know, we'll be able to speak more towards the cash flow when we report our Q1, you know, in a little less than one month. In terms of how our production stats all break out, you know, we presented this table in the press release. You know, some of the highlights include the revenue we're generating.
You know, just remember that that's, you know, offsetting all of our expenses and you know, even some of our corporate G&A as well. That puts us in a really, really nice position, and of course, that number should grow every quarter. We don't even need silver prices to go up 'cause we should be producing more silver next quarter and the following quarter and then in Q4 again. That's something that should become more and more meaningful as the year goes on. That's coming from just under 20,000 ounces sold. $82 selling price was our average for the quarter. We got 91% of our revenue from silver.
One error we did find on this chart after we published it was the metal processed there says 14,000. We were missing one of our batches of silver lead concentrate in that number. It was actually over 20, a little over 20,000. That matches up with the other numbers. We're not gonna, you know, update this this time until maybe at the end of the month when we put out our financials out. It's not really material, you know, we did have somebody point that out. I wanted to recognize that. All right. The year-end financial summary, I mean, this seems like ancient history now, we were.
Things were going well at the end of the quarter, at the end of 2025, and then they got even better in January. This is exciting. You know, we did get some revenue in Q4. Obviously, we had way more in Q1. We ended the year with $9.3 million in cash and almost $10 million in working capital. We then did the financing, which was really predicated on the mill acquisition. That went really well and, you know, now we're sitting with around $27 million of cash. That's a really strong position to be in.
You know, given what's happened with the share price recently, the volatility, which I think is largely related to the Iran war, you know, I think the valuation of the stock, especially when you consider how much cash we have, has gotten pretty low. That to me looks like, you know, something that needs to turn around. You know, that's up to some degree up to us as well to deliver the results, and we're planning on doing that. The financial strength and the outlook, cash position I already mentioned. That's in U.S dollars, don't forget. The Camila acquisition, we are expecting to close that soon. We're in the final throes of the due diligence there.
It's taken a little bit longer than I hoped, it is well in progress, and there's no significant concern there on our end. We've increased our land package and also increased the drilling program. You may recall that we talked about 4,500 hectare land package. We've added to that in 2025 and early 2026. We now have over 5,600 hectares around the Bethania mine, and we will be doing a lot of drilling this year starting you know, basically in Q2, throughout the rest of the year. The 350 tons by the year end, that's our phase one. We are still on track to complete that by the end of the year, which is not that long far away now.
It's almost May 1st, so we're looking at seven more months, and we should be there. The ramp is the new ramp that we have talked about in the past, and we had a press release about it in the second half of 2025. That is gonna be a key part of our ramp up to 350 tons per day. We'll again talk more about that and give more details about that in the coming quarters. In terms of upcoming news and catalysts, we've got our Q1 financial results, which will come out in late May. That's gets back on sort of the regular quarterly cadence of financial reporting. We are planning on issuing more detailed guidance at that point in time.
We have said with our press releases last week that we're on track to get the 350 tons by the end of this year. We'll provide more details on that in the next set of press releases or press release at the end of Q1, or with the at the end of May, I should say. Bethania exploration, that is gonna be very, very exciting. We can't wait to get results out into the market there. You know, we're drilling very low-hanging fruit, extensions of the veins that we're already mining, so we're very confident we have good results coming there, although you know, we're still in the early days of that drill program.
The nice thing is once we get that first press release out, we should be able to put another one, an update out every two to three months, probably for many, many years. Just because we've approved the 20,000 meters in 2026 doesn't mean we're gonna stop drilling. We're likely gonna keep on at a similar pace, if not even greater, in 2027. All the other, you know, kinda things that we have hanging out there that are frankly adding value, so we do wanna talk about them and report them to the market, are the Camila Plant closing. Silver Kings, we have been doing some work in the background there. We wanna, you know, update the market on that later this quarter.
Also Hadid, we are starting a new drill program there, in Saudi Arabia with our partners' support, and we'll have results on that probably in the next few months. That is, that's kind of the presentation. Before we go to the Q&A though, I did want to answer one question that came to me by email from an analyst, and I believe a shareholder in Germany about our energy exposure. This has been a question that I've been getting fairly regularly since the end of February when the Iran conflict/war started. Let's talk about it. I think in Peru we are in a very, very good position.
We're very fortunate that Peru has a diversified and relatively disconnected energy industry, disconnected from the global crude oil markets, and especially the Middle Eastern crude markets. There's really no exposure there. In terms of electricity, Peru is a self-sustaining electricity producer. They produce all of their electricity with domestic sources. About 60% of that is hydro and renewables, and 40% is from their own domestic natural gas production. Power costs in Peru tend to be in line with global average, and it's not tied to the Middle East or oil market. Liquid fuel and crude imports are largely coming from the other South American oil producers like Ecuador next door, Brazil, and Colombia. In terms of our specific exposure, we have three different jobs in the value chain that need energy.
One is the plant. The biggest one is the plant, and that's serviced by the national power grid, which gives us lower costs and stable pricing. Remember, that's not tied to global fuel prices whatsoever. Secondly is the truck fleet. We do a lot of trucking because we're trucking between the ore, the mine, and the mill, and then we truck concentrate as well, which is a smaller portion of our trucking costs. Haul trucks in Peru are either diesel or natural gas, that creates a local competition where, you know, essentially one can't raise their prices too much because then it becomes uncompetitive. The vehicles can also be retrofitted to switch between diesel and natural gas as well. We have not seen a significant increase in truck costs so far.
That's something that we would expect to be controlled as well. You know, there's gonna be general inflation. We expect that in everything over periods of years, but we're not seeing significant exposure to the Iran, you know, conflict with the truck fleet, with Camila. Even with our mine power, the diesel price hasn't gone up that much. Again, that may be because, you know, Peru is buying oil from its neighbors, not from the Middle East, and they do have some of their own refining capacity in country as well.
In general, we're not seeing big increases, and even if the oil price went to $200, really our only direct exposure would be with the diesel at the mine, which is the smallest of the three uses. You know, we'll try and put some more numbers on that when we, when we report, you know, results in future quarters, but I wanted to answer that question qualitatively for now because I do get that question a lot. With that, Kyle, I think we could open it up for questions.
Great. Can you all hear me just fine?
Yep.
Perfect. Thank you so much for the update, David. I think now I would like to invite Jake on for any questions, and then following Jake we'll have Brian on. Jake, if you're in the room, please come back on stage, and we're ready for your questions.
Thanks, Kyle, and thanks, David, for taking the questions. Just starting on the Camila Plant and the planned expansion there post-closing, I'm curious, are there any long lead time items that you still need either for refurbishment or to reach that higher 300 ton to 350 ton per day rate post-closing, or are you pretty much ready to go from a procurement perspective?
Look, in general, the equipment that we're buying that's on our list, we have our shopping list, the equipment is all relatively small stuff that can be sourced domestically, so we do not expect any significantly long lead turn, lead time items. When you know, long lead turn, long lead time items in mining and processing tend to be if you need something custom made, often that's overseas and there's nothing that we need that would fall into that category.
Okay. That's helpful. Just on the ramp of throughput at Bethania this year, can you just touch on a few development milestones we should look out for over the next few quarters as you ramp toward that 350 tons a day target and maybe the cadence of the throughput ramp over the next few quarters if possible?
Sure. Again, let me emphasize that we do plan on giving more precise guidance about this at the end of May, when we report our Q1. We will provide more details about this. Again, I can answer your question qualitatively. We have found as we are, you know, kind of updating our mine model and our ramp-up model that the ramp is becoming a real centerpiece of the mine expansion here, the mine growth to 350 tons per day, the new ramp. That's something that wasn't in our PEA of a few years ago.
The PEA had a design to ramp up essentially using the existing infrastructure. We've really taken a bit of a pivot to focusing on the ramp to get more tons out of the mine and really essentially allow us to decommission or, I mean, maybe we won't, like, formally decommission, but we won't need to use the other adits to move material out of the mine. What that means is that we probably have less, less growth in Q2, Q3. It's gonna be more related to, you know, opening up more working faces and getting more development done. Then a bigger jump in Q4 once we complete the ramp. I'm sure people will want updates on the ramp and how that's going.
I mean, and we plan on giving that, but we're sort of in the process of just starting the ramp commissioning now or in the next few weeks.
Makes sense. Okay. That's all on my end. Thanks again.
Yeah.
Great. Thank you so much, Jake. Brian, if you don't mind jumping on stage.
Hi. I guess continuing on with Jake's question as far as the, you know, the timing on the tons per day side. As it relates to the ramp, I thought that there's been some possibility that you might outsource or contract that work. Can you kinda tell us where you are in that process? If you're doing so, what kind of feedback or what have you learned at this point?
Yeah, that's a great question. We are looking to contract that job out, and we're, you know, we're in the final stages of awarding that work. What that means is it'll allow our crews, our staff that we have hired that work for Kuya or our subsidiary down there, Minera Toro de Plata, they can focus on production and development while the contractor focuses exclusively on the ramp. We're quite excited about that as a way to optimize our development here. Of course, you know, it's something that we can easily fund now with our strong cash position, whereas maybe a year ago we wouldn't have been able to do that. That's very exciting. Yeah, we are.
I mean, in terms of feedback, look it's the Peruvian mining industry is busy. There's lots of other gold and copper mines as well as silver who are all enjoying high prices and wanting to do jobs like, you know, extra development and drilling and all this stuff. We do have to compete with everyone else in the Peruvian mining sector. That's probably slowed us down a little bit, but we are in, as I said, in the final stages there, and we're confident that job will get started very soon.
How does that process work? I mean, obviously you're saying, you know, We'd like this completed by the start of Q4. Do they give you pushback and say, That's challenging, or have they given you?
No
Feedback that says, "We can accommodate that timeline"?
No, as long as we get it started pretty soon, there should be no issue there.
Okay. Then I'm gonna, I guess, I think you spoke to this, and probably you spoke to it as clearly as you're going to, but I'm gonna nonetheless see if I can nudge you further. You talked about providing further guidance as far as the rate in which you are going to be increasing the tons per day. I guess my understanding, and I think you, as I say, I think you've already supported that, is that it's quite modest in Q2 and Q3, and then the slope steepens rather significantly in Q4. Just in a general qualitative way, is that accurate?
Yes. That's. Look, we are part of the reason why I don't wanna give anything more detailed than that right now is because, you know, we've got a bunch of new senior hires, and they're all in the room with our Chief Operating Officer working on, you know, updating the mine plan, which is what we want them to do, and then we want them to buy into it. You know, and that's a real, you know, positive process that's going on right now. Look, yeah, that's, that's why very, at a very, very top level view, that's how I personally see the ramp up going. We'll be able to provide more details and more support on that yeah, again, in a couple of weeks' time.
Okay. Okay. Your grades have been a bit, I'll say volatile.
Yeah.
I know that there's been times where you did quite a bit of stockpiled material, other times where it was maybe more of a mixture. As we go through 2026, what do you, how would you kind of guide us to look at what we should see in terms of average grade?
Sure. Let me explain the volatility in the last few quarters first, because it is actually different reasons why the grade was lower in Q4 versus Q1. In Q4, silver price started moving up, and we decided to process some of the historical stockpiles. This is material that was mined before we acquired the Peru, the Bethania mine. It's been sitting outside for 10 years weathering, and therefore is partially oxidized, but is, you know, is some value there. You know, it's 3, 4, 5 ounces per ton, these various piles that we have. We decided to try processing some of those, and we did. You know, that was in the Q4 results. Lower recoveries of course, because the oxidized material and also because of the grade.
You know, there's a strong correlation between grade and recovery. That'll be the same with pretty much any mine in the world. Then on top of that, you know, the oxidation, you know, hurts the recovery a little bit. In this quarter, we didn't mine any of that oxidized historical, or we didn't process any of that historical oxidized material. We did, take some lower grade development material and sort of, that, you know, that maybe three, four years ago we might have thought of as waste and we reclassified it as ore because, you know, the silver price is a lot higher and it was worth processing.
That, essentially the grades in Q1 are sort of a blend between, let's call it more of our resource grade type material, and then some other lower grade material that we're picking up as we dig these tunnels underground. Right? That you go through, you know, might be 4 or 5, 6 ounces per ton. It's worth processing that. It's worth blending that in with your higher grade material because, you know, you can make money at those grades. Of course a lot of mines, what we consider to be low grade, that's their normal resource grade. That's what's happened in Q4, Q1.
In terms of going forward, Brian, I think there'll be also a combination, especially in the next couple quarters, of additional development material, 'cause we're still doing a lot of development. We have to do that to get all the working faces ready to produce 350 tons per day. There's still a lot of development going on. That creates the potential for lower grade material that we might want to mix in with our, you know, sort of stoping average grade material that we have. That's what I would say is that we should evolve or we should trend upwards towards our resource grades by next year. This year will continue to be volatile because of all the developments that's going on. We're not gonna process stuff that we lose money on.
Let's just be clear about that. You know, anything we process, we're gonna be making money on.
Last question for me. The Camila processing plant is 150 tons per day. Can you walk me through what you need to do and I guess what your comfort level and your ability to execute on that plan to get it to 350 tons per day, or essentially to get it to match your increased production?
Yeah, sure. We're very confident. I mean, one thing to keep in mind is that the scale of the processing and mining that we're working with is very small compared to a lot of other, you know, mines in Peru and around the world. The reason we can do things at such a small scale and make so much money is because of the high grades that we have. It's not a bad thing, but that's just the reality, is to go from 150 to 350 is actually, it sounds like a lot percentage-wise, but it's actually not a very big job. You know, it's still a very small plant in the grand scheme of things. Specifically what we need to do is we need to add some milling.
One, you know, a, I believe one new mill there, a small one, that's easy to procure. Flotation tanks, and we also are adding drying equipment there, to reduce the humidity of the concentrate, and those are the main things. Then you have to basically hook everything together with piping and pumps and electricity. It's honestly not that complex of a job and, we're very confident that, you know, we can get it done pretty quickly.
Okay. Very good. Thanks. That's it for me.
Perfect. Thank you so much, Jake and Brian. There have been a few questions in the chat, David, so if you still have some time, I would love to ask you a few more.
Sure.
I have Christian on the line as well, just to let you know.
Okay. Great.
Mark has a question here. You've talked about 5,000 meters of drilling underground in the first half, 5,000 meters in the second half, and 10,000 meters of surface in the second half. Would you provide an update on the drilling program, and can we expect drilling results to roll out in Q2?
Sure. Getting the drill rigs mobilized did take a little bit longer, but we now have them. It's quite possible we will have results later in Q2. You know, it depends on how quickly we can get some of the assays back and all that. You know, certainly compared to 2021, when the last time we did a drill program in Peru, the industry is a bit busier. There's more drilling going on. The labs are going to be busier, but we're going to push very hard to get results out soon, because, you know, we want to see them just as much as you do.
Then as I said in the intro, I think we'll, you know, we'll have a press release out every two to three months after that with drilling updates, both from underground and from the surface program, which will start in the second half. The results will be very much weighted towards the second half of the year, with probably at least 15,000 meters being drilled in the second half of the year. We'd, we'd like to get that first batch of results out, you know, as quickly as possible.
Thank you. Sergio is saying, "Congratulations on the great quarter, and thank you for the updates. How does it impact the plan if the Camila Plant acquisition doesn't go through as intended?
Well, look, this whole time we've been processing at Camila, You know, it's been great. We have a good working relationship with them and we get good results and, you know, they more or less listen to our advice and sometimes we can make changes to improve the process even when before we even own it. You know, it's been going well. I think our plan would be to continue to use Camila regardless of whether we close the acquisition or not. We really do believe that we're gonna close this pretty soon. With that being said, it is a locally competitive market to do processing in the area that we are.
There's quite a few other mills and that's always an option if we need a additional capacity.
David, do you mind going back to the 100 100 plan slide please?
Sure.
Mark's just wondering if you could please go back to the 100 100 and a high-level view of the path to matching resources with anticipated production.
Sure. Just let that fire truck go by. I think as we go through 2027, I think right now we have enough resources to mine at 350 tons per day for many years. You know, our PEA had a seven-year mine life to it. For an underground high grade vein mine, that's actually a very long mine life, because normally it's shorter and you're kind of adding reserves as you go. That's more, that's usually how an underground vein mine works. Of course we know we can do a lot better than that and obviously we've got the money now and soon as well, the cash flow to drill aggressively and to expand resources. Let's look at 2027.
We've got a plan to expand Bethania to 700 tons per day. If you work out our grades that we're mining or that we expect to mine, that would be something in the order of 3 million ounces per year. We probably want to get the resource up to, you know, somewhere between the total resources of which some of them are going to be Measured, Indicated and Inferred, some division of the three categories. I think the total resources we'd like to see is, I mean, at least 30 million ounces and maybe more. 30 million ounces, you know, heading towards 50 million ounces and eventually 100 million ounces, right?
I think as long as we're seeing the signs that we're heading towards, you know, $30 million plus, we wouldn't worry too much about mining 700 tons per day. Beyond that, can we get that by the end of 2027? Absolutely. We're going to do a lot of drilling this year. As I said, we'll be continuing into 2027. It's just, you know, likely it'll be more driven by the cash flow of the mine, the budget, and maybe even we go more than 20,000 ounces next year. We'll have to see.
You know, based on our historical discovery rates and based on all the silver vein systems, both at Bethania and also the satellite vein systems, we're very confident that we can get there in the next, you know, year to 18 months by the time we need that resource for the expanded production of 3 million ounces a year, which wouldn't be until early 2028 or beginning of 2028. In terms of going beyond that to, let's say, 5 million or more, we will need to jump the resources up even more, I think, to kind of 50 million ounces-100 million ounces. I think anywhere in that range, we can probably comfortably be looking to produce 5 million ounces a year.
That would be an expansion of the Bethania plant at that point, which, you know, which we, before we were going to acquire Camila, remember, we were going to do it all with Bethania. Now Camila gives us a bit of a bridge where we can, you know, do the first few years of production with Camila and then eventually move the production more towards Bethania or maybe entirely towards Bethania. That would be the idea there. Again, I think we've got plenty of time to do that exploration and get those resources before we'll need it on the production, on the processing side.
Thank you for that, David. Could you discuss your operating costs and how you might expect those to improve, particularly on a per unit basis as you ramp production?
Sure. One thing is we're not reporting All-in Sustaining Costs yet because we're not classified as being in Commercial Production. That's something that will happen between now and the end of the ramp up. Actually, we do plan on addressing that in the next update as well at the end of May. That is something we do have our eye on and as a management team is when do we declare Commercial Production? At that point, then we start reporting all of our costs as we essentially write off the costs and then that becomes our All-in Sustaining Cost or AISC. That's something that we, you know, I wouldn't expect us to do in the next couple of quarters, but definitely before the end of the year, we have our eye on that.
With right now, you know, if we're, I think it's, I can't really give any more guidance than that right now. When we come out with our Q1 financials, I mean, if you see on a cash flow basis that we roughly broke even just hypothetically, then obviously that means our All-in Sustaining Costs was $80 an ounce, which is very high. Right. You know, at least we're not losing money. The reason is that when you're starting up a mine, you have a lot of fixed costs. Of course, there's variable costs, which, you know, the variable costs is what you use per ton to produce each ton of rock and each ounce of silver. Your fixed costs are just fixed no matter what happens.
Your fixed costs are very high in the beginning and your variable costs are low. What happens is as you produce more, your variable costs keep going up. Your fixed costs stay more or less the same. Your overall cost per ounce or cost per ton go down. That's what we expect. We you know, we know that our numbers from the PEA for four and a half years ago now are going to be out of date. You know, they were I think our average All-in Sustaining Costs in the PEA at a $25 silver price was $12 an ounce over life of mine. It's going to be higher than that. No question. It's still, I think, going to be very low relative to the industry. We'll be able to say more about that in the coming months.
Great. We've discussed the drill program underway already. We've also discussed how exploration fits into the bigger picture beyond phase one. What are the results you're most eager to see come back this year?
Look, I think the I'm eager to see everything, honestly, because it's all good. It's all has the potential to add huge value. I think. You know, obviously drilling the veins, the veins at depth, the ones that we're mining right now, Dos de Mayo, Espanola, Victoria, that's kind of the low-hanging fruit. We're expecting them to be good, but at the same time, you know, adding ounces and adding resource that we know we can mine very soon adds a lot of NPV to the project. You know, because the time value of money. There's not a lot of time to wait before we could produce those. Those are potentially very, very valuable.
I think as we drill off to the east towards the hilltop zone, that again, because it's on the Bethania property, you know, the Santa Elena mining concession where the mine is, gives us huge upside as we start to, you know, define potential resources on the eastern side, on the eastern flank of the mine. All the regional, you know, the regional drilling, very excited about as well, because we know these veins are at surface. We know they've been mined in the past by various artisanal miners. We're, again, very confident that there's something special, something potentially big in at least a few of those targets. Hopefully all 6 of them are multi-tens of millions of ounces.
Even if only two or three of them are, it's obviously huge for us. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna target the, what we think are the best ones first. That gives us the highest chance of making a big splash with the surface drilling results. I'm honestly excited about all of it. We'll obviously get the deep drilling, the deep extension drilling, that'll come first. That's obviously great.
Mark's also wondering if you could elaborate on the maiden drilling at Umm Hadid and your plans there.
Sure. There are, you know, ourself and our partner just approved a new drill program, which it might have started already, if not very soon. I do have my other slides in here, so I'll just go to that slide just to talk about that. Here we are. This is from our corporate deck, which you can download, which you can go online and get any time on kuyasilver.com. If you look at the rectangles there with all the dots, that's the area that we're gonna focus in on, where we found a cluster of these silver-gold veins that are basically come right to surface.
We're the current drill program is focused on a few of the best zones where are the best veins, where we see the thickest potential for intersecting structures to blow out. Really we want to build up some tonnage and obviously, you know, we know the grades there because we can see it 100s of grams per ton and sometimes into the 1,000s, but we really want to build tonnage there to make a more meaty project. Our, you know, our geologists have, I think, a great idea with the drill plan. It's currently being implemented now, and we'll probably have results on that sometime in the second half or, you know, later in Q3.
One more question for you, David. Thank you for addressing all these questions today. We got one more. Take this as your closing remarks. We can wrap things up here and you can go on with your day. You closed Q1 with roughly $27 million in cash, and the company has said no additional financing is expected to hit phase one. How much flexibility does that give you if timelines shift, and how does the current silver price environment factor into your capital planning?
I f you take the $27 million that we have right now and you factor in what we are planning to spend on or allocate to the Camila acquisition, and then you also can deduct some capital for the exploration and the ramp, sort of take that out of the mine operations for the time being, then, you know, we still should have something like $10 million left over. That's if the mine breaks even. We expect the mine to do much better than break even. You're sort of adding to that $10 million position with whatever cash flow we can get from the mine this year. Obviously next year is a whole different story with the, you know, the potential cash flow from 1.5 million ounces a year.
I think that's the best way I can answer that right now. In, look, that does assume, you know, a certain level of silver price. I mean, right now we've got $75-ish, and that's, you know, we don't need that high of a price in order for us to not draw down on our, on our cash. 'Cause obviously while that might be kind of a break even price right now, as we increase production, then we.
Mm-hmm
The break even price drops to $60, $50, $40, below $30 eventually. That's kinda where we're heading with that. I think, you know, the balance of risks with what the silver price is, it's not gonna make it's not gonna matter too much. Obviously, if it goes way higher, we've got a different problem, which is, like, how to allocate excess capital.
Mm-hmm.
You know, which is a good problem to have. You know, do we buy back shares or just, you know, build a war chest to do acquisitions or whatever? That's if the silver price goes to significantly higher than $100 an ounce. But where it is today, it's not gonna significantly affect our plans, I don't think, for the next, you know, 6 to 9 months. After that, it's really a cash flow story from the mine anyway.
I always appreciate your outlook on the prices of metals. Where do you see silver end in 2026?
Well, unfortunately, I see silver and gold have been tied heavily to what's going on with Iran, that's very difficult to predict. My guess is that it drags out longer than people think, we're kind of probably trading in this range. I don't know if it'll still be that way at the end of the year, definitely for the next three to six months.
Mm-hmm.
I think we'll be, you know, in this, you know, call it $60-$80 range for silver and, you know, something kind of similar range-bound trading for gold. That's my best guess as to what happens. Still very good for us. We don't, you know, we don't need higher prices. We've got a great project with high grades. Obviously, then I think we set up for a bigger move once the market and governments kind of have to lick their wounds, print more money, you know, kind of figure out the, all the implications of, you know, what's been going on this year. I see more money printing and more inflation in the coming years. That's gonna be.
That should be good for gold and silver.
Definitely. Yes, nothing wrong with $60-$80 silver. David, thank you so much for this earnings call. Really appreciate it, as well as the analysts jumping on the call to ask their questions. If you like this format, please let us know. If you do wanna request a meeting, I'll give it a few seconds here. You can request a meeting with management with the Request Meeting button at the bottom of your screen. The replay will be available here within the next couple of hours. Keep an eye out for that if you joined a little late. Thank you so much for your time, David.
Thank you.
Have a good one, everyone. Bye.
Bye.