Good afternoon, and welcome to the Atalaya Mining Plc Q2 2022 and interim results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted any time by the Q&A tab situated in the right corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press Send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Alberto Lavandeira, Chief Executive Officer. Good afternoon to you, sir.
Good afternoon. Thank you, Alessandro. Welcome, everybody. Sorry you cannot see my face. I have a very bad connection. So just for the clarity of the voice, I have taken the camera off. We'll try later to see if you can see my face directly. In any case, we are here to go through a presentation of the last quarter. I have with me also disconnected the camera, César Sánchez, that is our Chief Financial Officer, which is at the mine. We are going to go through the second quarter results and as a summary of the first half results. You have there the numbers in the presentation. It has been a tough quarter from the cost point of view.
From the operation point of view, the company really worked quite well. We continue with productions as guided, and we recover from the small slump in the first quarter of 2001. The cash costs were much higher. The all-in sustaining costs were much higher, and we can go through that a little bit later. I will focus the presentation actually going through those numbers. As a result of that, the EBITDA was also lower than before. Our cash flow is also quite tight, but we continue to have a fantastic balance sheet because we continue to invest in the solar plant and in the E-LIX system through the quarter.
A few other things that are shown in the slide five of the presentation are completion of the Astor litigation and so on. I will not bother to go through all of those. You can read them. I would prefer to concentrate directly into the key points of the quarter and also to leave some time, make it brief, and leave some time for questions. If in slide six, you can see the evolution of the last quarters. First graph, you will see the production was of the mine, the ore through the mill, was close to 16 million tons, 15 million tons. Basically very much steady rate except the small slump that we had in the first quarter due to a national strike. Copper recovery, steady.
Copper production recovering from first quarter and going into the range of around 54,000 tons-55,000 tons of copper at the end of the year. Slightly lower guidance, our first guidance, but still very much what we had planned. If we go to slide seven, that's when you start comparing what happened in the first quarter and first half of this year compared to the previous quarter. Revenues have been lower due to slightly lower production, slightly lower copper price, and to a provisional adjustment, which is an accounting number of sales that were produced during the second quarter, but are going to be sold in the third quarter, paid third quarter.
Accounting rules ask you to make a provision. That means that if these sales are sold at a lower price, you have to take a hit in your revenue, and that's accounted for that. The big increase is in operating cost. There is almost a EUR 30 million increase from equivalent quarter of 2021- 2022. This is almost all of it due to the high electricity prices prevailing in Spain and Portugal, and I would say the whole Europe. We can go through that a little bit later. As a result of that, higher operating cost, almost in the same amount, our EBITDA goes down from EUR 52 million to around EUR 15 million, and our profits go down from EUR 30 million-EUR 11 million .
Still a decent result, but I would say quite a disappointment, although expected due to the high electricity prices and high inflation in general. The operating cash flow is lower. Remember that we include everything in this operating cash flows, including all our overheads and everything. But also we invested around EUR 20 million in the solar plant and in E-LIX and in other things, ongoing working capital, ongoing construction. We financed part of this investment with loans, basically dedicated to the solar plant. Our free cash flow during the period was reduced by EUR 26 million. Going to the same slide seven, you will see in the lower part our net cash position.
Still, after all these results, we maintain a very solid balance sheet with a net cash of around EUR 67 million-EUR 68 million, which is a big difference from our past quarters where we were even having almost EUR 30 million negative working capital. In summary for the whole half year, it's more or less joining what we had already reported during first quarter and during second quarter. The operating costs go up as a result, mainly of electricity. The profit's gone down to EUR 30 million and more or less the same thing that I just mentioned about the second quarter. The important point is that at the end of the year, at the end of this quarter, at the end of mid-2022, we had EUR 127 million in cash.
A fantastic working capital surplus of EUR 130 million, which is higher than what we had in 2021 or EUR 102 million. For a company of our size, it's a fantastic balance sheet to take us to 2023. Let me go and explain a little bit in slide nine, which deserves a bit of talk of what's the reason of the higher costs. The main one that accounts for almost 70% of all the inflation is the electricity prices. In slide nine, you will see that historic prices in the last 10 years have been hovering around 50-60 EUR megawatt-hour. The first part of this year, they went up to even EUR 300/ MWh , and actually in August, they were around 150/ MWh .
In that slide, you will see in third point, second point, last part of this second point, uncertainty remains in relation to realized rates and market rates. It means that the Spanish government and Portuguese government have disconnected or have been allowed to disconnect the prices of electricity from the gas prices in comparison to Europe. Until mid-June, the prices of electricity were set by the higher cost producer or the marginal cost producer, and there has been a regulation that has allowed Spain and Portugal to set a maximum cap for the gas prices in order to calculate that. Because actually we are not getting the gas from Europe. We are getting it from LNG stations around Spain and Portugal.
Because this has a cost for the gas producers that have to start their combined cycles, the gas generation, the power gas generation, generated by gas. Anyway, this extra cost is still not clear who is going to pay. Obviously, the consumers. The prices that are being mentioned in the public notes are around EUR 240, the global prices. Which means in addition to these market prices, there will be a compensation to the gas companies, to the gas producers of X kilowatts per hour, still unknown, depending on who are the payers, who are the consumers, which will increase the final electricity prices to, I would guess, around EUR 200/MWh . Actually, we believe around EUR 250/MWh .
This is 400% higher than what we had in 2021, and has a huge influence in our costs. Just to give you an idea. Normally, in our operation, we were paying around EUR 2 million per month invoices, and recently we were paying EUR 7 million, even EUR 8 million per month. There you can see where is the problems of EBITDA going. There are other sources of inflation that take us to the next slide, which are explosives, which are linked to gas, who have gone from basically 50% higher or more. Diesel. Diesel seems to be starting to go down already. Steel bolts going up, although starting to go down. Lime is still high due to the use of gas, but we are using less lime, so it's not affecting us too much.
The other two key drivers of inflation are diesel and explosives, which are key for our mining costs, where we have been going from around EUR 5.5 million normally in 2021 per month to EUR 6.8 million, which means EUR 1.4 million more every month. Still very far away from the extra cost of electricity. Prices of steel, reagents, and so on are not that inflated, and we have been able to control them by buying all over the world to maintain our costs down, because in some places the steel was not as bad as in Spain. Other things were transport costs. The Baltic Dry Index reached a peak in around May, but has been going down quite a lot for sea freight. We went. That also affects another $0.10 per pound.
With all those numbers, we come to the results of first half and our expectations and views for the remaining of this year. We expect to have a copper production of around 52,000 tons-54,000 tons. Right now as we speak, July has been quite good, August is going quite well. Grades, the grades are being higher than we had in the first half. It seems that we are going to be around 54,000 tons of copper with good recoveries of around 86% and throughput expected to be around 15.5 million tons per year. With those numbers, our cash costs are going to be around between $3-$3.25, and all-in costs, including the investments and so on, between $3.25-$3.45.
Of course, this depends on assumptions of electricity, and this can make a big swing depending on what happens in Ukraine or specifically in the gas in Europe. We are prepared for the worst, but we know that we have quite a tough year ahead. These prices of electricity, extra EUR 100/MWh means directly that extra cost around $0.4 per pound, extra costs. That's why we are guiding. In addition to that, we just announced a small dividend. Obviously, people would have expected probably more because we had an excellent dividend. We were questioning at the board if we should give a dividend or not, considering the uncertainties in copper prices and in inflation and so on.
We believe we have a good balance sheet, and we are prepared for the future. We know that this situation of high cost is temporary because I will speak a little bit later on the measures we're having to reduce these costs in 2023. We, the board decided to give an interim dividend of around GBP 3 pence per share. The details are shown in the slide and in the press release. We will review the final dividend at the end of the year or beginning of next year, depends on the results. The reason for even if this dividend is symbolic is that it's our policy that the moment we had cash that was ready to be returned to the shareholders, we will do so.
We did that last year, and we want to be consistent with this policy. Even with this hard situation that we experienced in this first part of the year, we still are giving out 30%-50% of our free cash flow to our shareholders. Is this all or is it just a bad quarter? Let's look how we advanced what we have in our pipe. The burden of a 50-MW solar plant that would take care of around 22% of our electricity already 3 years ago. We didn't do this in an opportunistic way. Simply, we did it because we thought it was a good thing. We also our construction of the Phoenix, which we will increase value. We are permitting and doing all the work for to.
Underneath, which is just beside the team. Continue to get four rigs there. Contains, shall we say. Continue with the permitting. We are very confident that this. We continue with exploration. What's the effect of this? First, the electric costs. We'll lower our footprint, recovery and extend the mine life, increase the optionality. With diversification, with trading, higher trading liquidity, higher production, we believe we have a good future. Going further into the details, what's the effect of this, 50-MW power plant? It takes care of around 20% of our needs. In more or less second quarter next year. We have already made the purchases, basically waiting for the delivery of panels and transformers. Starting, let's say second half next year, 22% of our electricity will have a cash cost of zero.
In addition to that, for instance, with this situation of high we signed a power purchase agreement, a PPA, with Endesa starting in January 2023 at EUR 52/MWh. I remind you that we are running right now at 245 EUR/MWh. We have signed something at almost 5x lower for 33% of our needs. That means that starting next year, even if the situation stays as bad as it is right now, which we hope it will not, our cost of electricity will reduce more than half. Basically, we'll reduce at least EUR 30 million or EUR 40 million less per year, which is a very significant amount. That's. And forever, because this PPA is for 10 years life. It's not only that. We have started already the permitting of four windmills.
In total, they are around 90 GW per year. Basically, another 25% of our needs. They will be located. They are 100 meters high. They are located beside Corta Atalaya, behind San Dionisio. The preliminary studies have been positive. We are with the permitting in parallel of detailed measurements during a couple of months while the permitting is ongoing. Looking at the numbers, this one seems that it's going to be positive and it's going to go ahead. The capital cost of this is around EUR 15 million-EUR 20 million. It's a slightly higher cost per kilowatt hour, per megawatt hour than the solar, but still quite economic and even more economic with the situation of energy that we have right now.
We have also been studying pumped hydro, but those studies have not been as successful as those related to wind. We continue with E-LIX. We have already started the construction of the building and the civil is ongoing. By the end of this year, we hope we will be able to show some significant progress in this place. We believe that the big addition of high-grade material will come from the extension of Corta Atalaya, which is called San Dionisio. You can see in the picture 18 how the higher copper grade goes all the way to surface. The past operators mined just the core of the center of the pit, and now we are looking at the expanded pit, and we are permitting this one.
We hope we can start sooner rather than later in 2023. At Masa Valverde, we are still in the permitting stages, a longer shot, and will not affect the short-term cash flows, just growth. I would like to mention a small but significant progress in Toro. Toro, as you know, it was a project that was delayed. It was stopped due to a negative environmental impact declaration by the Galician government. One of the issues of the anti-mining was that there were some acid water, historic operations that led some acid waters. One of the things we did is to advance a water treatment plant that was going to be involved anyway in the future project. We have started and finished the construction. The plant is already working.
You can see some of the pictures in picture 20 of the results of the first tests. The water is coming in as expected, of course, perfectly clean, and the authorities are extremely happy of our commitment. This is an endorsement that we believe that this time we will get the permits because all the excuses of the acid generation of the mines can be avoided. With that, I will probably go to the questions.
Yeah. Alberto, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we've received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and thank you to all the investors for submitting those. Alberto, could I just ask you to read out those questions and give responses where it is appropriate to do so, and then I'll pick up from you at the end.
Yes. Excellent. One question says, last quarter, you discussed your evaluation of other renewable energy options such as wind turbines, pumped hydro. Have you made any decisions on these options? Well, I just commented that we have already made the decision to start the permitting of the wind turbines, four wind turbines of around a little bit less than 6 MW each, 100 meters high and with a specific location. We don't know how long this will take, but we have taken the decision to do all the permitting as soon as we can. The pumped hydro, we have completed the first tests, and so far with our approach, this didn't give good economic numbers. Second question I have is diesel prices are high. Can your mining contractors switch to electric trucks like some other miners?
Well, in our case, the problem is that electricity prices is very high in Spain, and also, you need a certain infrastructure to go with electric. It's not very common in other places, and it's only possible when you have very cheap electric prices from hydro. In our case, it's not possible. What we are doing to minimize the effect of diesel is to optimize as maximum the distance of haulage. Also, we are looking carefully at the markets and looking at buying a significant amount of diesel to store at the port when the prices are convenient and use that. Let's say, buy it not only in the national market but in the general market. Another question is: When your Elix plant begins production, will it mainly produce copper or zinc? We will start with zinc.
It can produce both. All the test works that we have done in the last few months have been extracting the zinc from the copper concentrates. We will be able to treat some materials that have copper with lots of zinc in the concentrate, which right now we cannot produce, and we will be able to get paid for the zinc but still get paid for the copper. This is the way we will start, but the plant will be able to produce only copper or only zinc. The recoveries of zinc, which right now we are not paid for, are extremely high and very fast and without affecting the copper at all. Another question comes: When will you announce more exploration results from Masa Valverde? We will continue when we have a group of results.
We have four rigs there, two with infill and doing some specific work in Masa Valverde. Another two in the satellite zone called Campanario Trend, where we have found some new areas. Totally, the area is five kilometers long, so it takes some time to be testing all these anomalies. So far, we will be announcing as they arrive, probably during this quarter. Another question is what proportion of your costs are in euros? I would say approximately 80%. 80%-84%, 85%. The only costs that are not in euros are the freight, the TCs, RCs, penalties, and some of the cost of buying materials outside, like poles and so on, that sometimes we have to pay. If we buy them outside, we have to pay in euros.
Non-current asset loans have increased from EUR 2.3- EUR 7.7 in relation to E-LIX system. The loan has a four-year grace period. Why has the contract been structured in this way? What is the maximum foreseen debt or balance, and how will Lain Technologies fund the loan repayment? Well, starting by answering the last one, it's a problem of Lain Technologies. We have warranties over the technology. We try to get an equity placement there, but Lain insisted that they just wanted loans because they don't want to lose the majority of this technology. This, we believe it's going to be a breakthrough technology. It's going to could change the way some things are treated. So we negotiated this system in order to.
We finance part of the installations that are, let's say, common knowledge. Those are ours. Some of the things we give them the Lain the money for them to buy some specific materials and some specific technologies that are not in the public knowledge. It was basically the only way we could advance in this way. Current assets, loans have increased. That's the same one. Why has the debt been drawn down rather than surplus cash balances? Does this not increase interest cost? It's a good point. Our interest rates are 1.5%-1.75% with no liabilities. Sorry, no warranties. It's a very good financing.
It's always good to have a good cushion in your balance sheet instead of having to go with negative working capital as we have been doing during the last year. That's the reason. It was a cheap financing without recourse, without hedging, without any sort of attachments, and we thought it was a good system. Why are VAT receivables so high? Is there a risk they will be fully recovered? No, there's no risk. Simply, they are higher simply because of the amount of business going on, specifically with the increase in electricity. An increase in operating costs. The VAT is basically goes attached to your operating costs, and there's no risk of getting this number. We have never had in all my life in Spain, we have never had any problem of receiving the VAT back.
Just to add some more color on the VAT. The VAT normally gets paid back in a period of time of around six months. The majority of the VAT has already been received, as you know, some amount of it dating from 2021. The amount has significantly dropped now. As Alberto mentioned, it is slightly, you know, the volume is slightly higher as a result of higher costs and higher investments. That's why the total amount has increased a little bit. There is no issue of recovering. The administration takes about six months to repay all the VAT.
Okay. Thank you, César. Can you confirm the dividends will be paid without deduction of local tax? I understand yes, like last year.
Yeah, exactly. The tax was an issue that we have dealt with the tax administration in Cyprus and we have now received a letter from them just to avoid having to go through the hassles of all the shareholders to submit their declaration of tax residency. I can confirm that we can pay the dividends across without any deduction and to everyone, to all the shareholders, as we don't have any shareholder in Cyprus.
A question here. Is there any plan to move your listing to the main market of the London Stock Exchange? Yes. We continue doing all the right steps. We may not achieve the premium listing because of our market cap has gone down, but so far we are doing all the steps to do that as soon as we can. How concerned are you that a global recession will reduce copper prices below your cash costs? It's a good question. Look, we are concerned. More than the copper price, we are concerned about the increase of our cash costs. Well, we don't believe that the copper prices will go down even with a recession for a long period, simply because the copper is needed for the green technology.
The copper is needed to actually counteract all the inflation that's coming from gas. There's no other options or diesel or oil. This will have to happen worldwide. This thing of inflation, diesel, explosives, all kinds. Even power is happening all over the world, in all the mines of the world. In the case of Europe, it's extreme due to the extreme situation of the gas dependency of Germany and Europe. It means that the most of the mines and the producers will also start suffering. What's more important is that new products are not going to be built unless there's an incentive of higher copper price. It may be a matter of one year, half a year, two years, or three years. The longer it takes, we believe that the copper price will explode up much higher.
Has the energy price increase changed your near-term strategy for growth projects at all? Will you consider incorporating more energy independence at Toro, solar, wind, and your other projects? Certainly, in Toro, we have already included a solar plant on top of the existing old tailings, and there's big wind farms in Toro. Actually, Galicia is one of the big wind producers, and this huge wind farm being built. By the time that thing gets built, we believe that the pricing will have stabilized as they were in the past. Spain has always been around EUR 40/MWh-EUR 60/MWh , basically due to the very low dependence of the gas. Yes, I think we'll have solar, and we'll have a PPA with hydraulic or with wind.
Near-term strategy for growth at all. Well, we continue looking at growth projects, but we look at them very carefully. We will not make investments in places where it doesn't make sense or if the costs are not clear. Another question comes in. In the E-LIX System, what happens to the gold and silver by-products? I believe, and I'm not an expert, that the silver stays in the anode sludge. I'm not sure in the gold. The silver does stay in the sludge. You have to remove and sell it as it is. Do you have any forward projections for copper price? Well, I don't know if it's projections or protections. Here it says projections.
Well, we expect the copper price to recover, and we are exposed to the copper price, fully exposed. Will the company in the future consider investing in additional solar energy and additional wind turbines? Yes, I have answered that. Yes. We are going to be very likely will include as this wind turbines and probably more solar, but specifically wind turbines. Another question. Major shareholder exited recently. Has the stock overhang now been resolved? Is there still any other stock to remove in the market? I think it's fully removed. I think the liquidity has improved quite a lot. This major shareholder, which was a Chinese one of the first shareholders in the company, they had 22%, around 30 million shares. Those shares were placed in around 44 institutions or blocks.
I would say that there's no overhang at all. Another question is, what would the base case timing for total permanent construction production? Based on what we see, we have been told that our project will be included, or we believe we can be included in what we call Proyecto Tractor, which means it's a tractor project. A project that has creation of jobs and quality in the area, which will expedite permitting. We have submitted all the papers, and we will likely get the permit for this in the first half. I would say the last part of the first half of next year, 2023. Construction takes during, let's say, 15 months. It means that during 2023, we'll be in construction. End of 2023 we'll be into production.
Another question is: What has the grade improvement been since the end of half, and what do you expect the grades to be over the next six months to 18 months? The first month of July and what we have seen in August, the grades have been around 0.43% copper, so back to normal or higher. We expect those grades to be maintained during the year. We're also trying to permit at least part of the San Dionisio project as soon as possible, so we can get higher grades and much higher grades over 0.6% copper, at least in some part of 2023. Has there been any conversation with the government or energy suppliers about capping the increase in prices?
Yeah, we have had a lot of meetings with these energy suppliers, and that's the reason why a few months ago, we got a power purchase agreement at around EUR 52 million for 10 years. Because basically we told them that otherwise we just close. The energy is something very complicated in Spain. All over Europe, I would say. The government will have to say something because these prices are not sustainable for the industry. Right now, the only reason why nothing is happening is simply because most of the industry players are enjoying lower prices established at longer-term agreements. Only part of the increase in price is passed to the industry and to the individuals. Something needs to be changed in the system.
The change may come through the system that has been proposed by Greece, where there will be two types of setting of prices. One will be setting without the gas price to balance the hydraulic, nuclear, wind, and other energies. Then the last part will be only for gas. This will avoid the use of gas pricing, very expensive to set the prices for electricity for the whole system. Spain only uses normally around not even 10% of electricity from gas, but this 10% is setting the price for the whole system, which doesn't make sense. This was something that was okay when the difference between gas prices and normal electricity from nuclear, from wind, whatever, was not very different. It doesn't make sense when the prices of one and the other are totally different.
For example, I was just checking that in the prices of gas. Europe gas prices in 2010 were EUR 10, and today, as we speak, it's EUR 200. Well, it doesn't make sense at all to apply this extra electricity, the 10%, for the whole system. The whole Europe will have to change the system because it doesn't work. In the context of generating negative cash flow from operations, how should we be thinking in capital allocation in second half? Well, we are looking at each of the investments. So far, we continue to look at this at our commitments of E-LIX and our commitments of solar, which are there already.
In the case of solar, we have a loan to complete that investment, and basically, we'll try to look at each of our euros. In addition if needed, we can always cut it down a little bit. That's what we can do, being very careful with our expenditures. Please, can you quantify any cost effect from E-LIX? Difficult to quantify. The big increase comes from E-LIX. The big advantage from E-LIX comes from high recovery. In a normal recovery of complex sulfides, you get, let's say 70% recovery of copper, 75% of zinc. By using E-LIX, we have seen we can get over 90% of copper and over 95% of zinc. You have more production.
To divide your cost by this lower production and overall costs are quite low. We have done some numbers specifically in the case of San Dionisio, and the added value for San Dionisio and San Antonio of E-LIX was in the order of higher than the whole market cap of the company. Almost double the market cap of the company. It's very significant simply because higher recoveries. How are you assessing the risk of CapEx inflation for both solar and E-LIX projects? In the case of solar is totally capped and very clear. We had some inflation in E-LIX. The building itself costed already EUR half a million more. The cost of copper and bars or whatever was higher. Yes, we had a little bit, but not a big amount.
All the equipment and everything has been bought, so we don't expect anything else from now on. Our early estimates for E-LIX first phase was around EUR 12 million, and the last ones were around EUR 15 million, so not too bad. Another question coming here is, it looks like oil, gas, other fossil fuels, and many other costs will be higher in the midterm. CapEx will also be higher. What could be the copper incentive price required to invest in a new mine? 100% agreed. I mean, I bet you that none of the greenfield projects that are being looked at in South America, North America, none of them will be economic if they use the current costs. Current operating costs.
I am totally sure that no new big projects will be invested in this, be constructed in these places, except those that are already ongoing. Maybe with the exception of some in Congo with very high grades where the capital intensity is not that high. For several reasons. One is the CapEx, but also the OpEx and permitting delays, COVID restriction, traveling time. Right now, with these higher operating costs, the price of copper will probably have to go over $5 per pound sustained in order to have one big project being sanctioned and being approved. Finally, and I left it for the very end. I have it here.
Normally, I wouldn't answer these questions, but it looks like there was an investor that was saying that where was the incentive of investing in Atalaya because it's been a terrible investment because he bought shares in 2010 from EMED, and now the price is lower and 12 years wasted for investors. That's fine. One thing I didn't like is that he was saying that the executive board has made millions selling gifted shares to extremely well-timed point. Packages with bonus and share options. Sell shares at the very peak and then watch the price collapse immediately. Well, I don't think this is a fair thing, and that's why I thought it was something important, and I addressed it.
Back in 2010, I checked because I really got angry, not because of somebody buys shares and loses or makes money. Well, that's part of the investment. To the question of management and board that has made incredible efforts to keep this company afloat. Back in 2010, if somebody had invested $1, our share now would be we have lost 19%. If I had invested in Freeport-McMoRan, same dollar had gone down to 26%. Freeport-McMoRan is the, I would say, benchmark for copper. I can only be responsible for my team, which is excellent since mid-2014. At that time, from mid-2014 to now, even with this slump in share price, our stock is still up 20%, while Freeport-McMoRan is down 15% the same period.
About the, I would say, unfair accusation of executives exercising share options on the peak. Two executives exercised some share options. The last day it was available for them to exercise shares. The last day, waiting until the last minute, actually requested some extension to see if they could extend it. Another executive, which is my case, I paid my taxes and money and paid for the shares without selling them. We are in the same boat of shareholders, and these accusations are very unfair because this company has been able to survive very difficult times and will continue to do so. This is one more. Nobody would have thought that the price of gas in 2010 would go from EUR 10 to now EUR 200, 20x .
Electricity in 2010 go from EUR 40-EUR 250. Certainly, we wouldn't. I wouldn't. Be sure, whoever it was that sent this question, that we will continue to do the best for this company. If it happened to be a bad investment, well, there's always safer investments to invest in, but not that we as management are not doing the best that we can. I think this is all the questions I have. Yeah.
Alberto, César, thanks for that. I think you've actually managed to address all the questions from investors. Of course, the company will review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to you both, Alberto, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yes. I think it's a very difficult time for our company and for management. It's difficult because they're all external factors. I've seen this happening in my life several times when gold went to EUR 240 only to move up to EUR1,800 a few years later. I've seen this with nickel going to EUR 2 and then going back to EUR 15. I've seen this with the crisis of 2008 when the copper price reached less than $2 and then went up to $4 in one year later. I believe this is going to pass. I think we have a very tough few months until we get into January and into April next year, where the energy prices will give us some breathing space, but we will go ahead. This is a long-term investment.
Our operations will have, from now on, at least 15 years-20 years life. When we arrived here, it was only 12 years. This is a long-term road. We always look for the money of our shareholders, and we'll continue to do so. I think we have a decent future, although we have some difficult times ahead in the next few months.
Alberto, César, thanks once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few minutes to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Atalaya Mining PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.