Good morning, and welcome to the Atalaya Mining PLC 2021 final results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted any time via the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just click Q&A, scroll to the bottom, type your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to César Sánchez, CFO, and Alberto Lavandeira, CEO of Atalaya Mining PLC. Good morning.
Good morning.
Please go ahead, Alberto. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Welcome, everybody. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be here again. We are going to go through the results of the last year, which were very good, as you probably all know. Most importantly, we are going to be going through what's the future of this company and what are the catalysts. We believe we can try to make a very short presentation and to leave ample room for your questions and to reply to those questions that have been pre-submitted. With me, I have César Sánchez, who is the CFO, and he will be very happy to assist in the responses of questions related to some specific financial numbers or the process that we are going through.
Hello, everyone.
To go away from Cyprus to really decide from Cyprus. Going directly to what was 2021. Probably you have already seen the presentation. You have had time to read the press release, so I'm not going to be reading the whole thing. The important things I would say is that the plant, the mine, continued to operate well over the design capacity, and now it's already two years in a row. We produced a record of slightly over 56,000 tons of copper. Good all-in sustaining capital cost of around $2.50, and this generated a very important cash flow and EBITDA. We ended the year with a fantastic balance sheet. Besides those operational and financial results, we continued to deliver in our targets, in our promises.
The first thing is that we paid as soon as we could. The Astor litigation, we closed that door, which finally has been concluded in March. As soon as we had money, we paid our dividend and we continued to improve the liquidity. Of course, getting ready for the future means confirming the reserves of well over 10 years at Cerro Colorado, our only existing open pit. Most important, announcing that we are doing some other work within the Río Tinto district, called San Dionisio, Masa Valverde, which is around 25 kilometers away, and acquiring some new exploration properties in the north of the Pyrite Belt and in the east of Río Tinto.
Besides that, mixing assets with ESG, we have been advancing the E-LIX system and decided to build a plant which basically will produce directly metals with electric systems, which is basically fantastic from the CO₂ control. We are also starting to build a plant of 50 MW of solar at our site, which is also essential when you look at the electrical situation, very worrying electrical situation in the whole Europe. Of course, we published already our sustainability report, added a new director and we continue to advance in things like moving away from Cyprus, which is very important for us. As I said, as usual, delivering into our promises. This is really seen in the graphs of the last six years.
We said we were going to be growing and we continue growing. Production, you can see in the first graph, continuously going up, almost doubling our production. Copper production as a result of higher throughput through the mill, also going up, almost doubling. With a steady recoveries, which have provided excellent economical results to the company. Those are expressed in slide 7, and the most important thing is, of course, sales go up as a higher production and higher gold price and higher copper price. The most important thing here is to see that how leveraged we are to the copper. Copper is going to stay higher for longer. Looking at the average prices that we had last year, which were just around $4 per pound, and we are now at $4.70.
This generated basically EUR 200 million of EBITDA, which is roughly 50% of the sales. Most importantly, this is real cash generation. It's not, let's say, accounting numbers. It's real cash. You can see in the bottom part of the graph how our balance sheet has improved. From being negative working capital during these last few years to a very strong cash position, net cash position at the end of the year after including and giving away EUR 50 million. Actually, this would have meant if we have not given out this roughly EUR 50 million dividend, that we would have a net cash position of around EUR 100 million in our company, which was not even EUR 500 million at that time, market cap. You can also see how we have
were able to manage the construction and the expanding and the development of Río Tinto during the first few years using with negative working capital, which means financing with minimum debt, financing with short-term loans, and with using the cash flow generated from our operations. Very prudent management of cash, but with very good result for the shareholders. The best result for the shareholder has been given the dividend in October. We declared it in October 2021, which was at that time, if I remember well, almost 7% yield or rate. The most important thing is that we decided to, as a board, give an official dividend policy between 30% and 50% of the free cash flow generated.
So, there was one question, which I can start already saying it, that when are we going to be announcing the next dividend? Well, before mid-year, we will announce again, looking at the results and complying with this dividend policy that has been approved. We will decide what has to be done with as the next dividend. Today, sustainability, ESG is essential for everybody, but not only for everybody in industries, for the world. What I would say is even more important is to achieve the credibility to be able to develop new mines and to demonstrate that actually the mines, mining, and specifically copper mining is not the problem, actually is part of the solution.
Consistent with that, we have published our first sustainability report, and we are about to publish our second with full data, public data, which we submit to the key stakeholders, and that will be available in our webpage. It is available in our webpage, where we have taken into consideration the views of all our neighbors. It's very important nowadays to be in full sympathy with the stakeholders, our villages around, our employees, even environmental groups that may be against us. This is essential, and you only need to see what's happening in the new mines being developed or trying to be developed, how difficult it is if you don't have the support of the communities. We can proudly say that our approach has been understood, and we are a very welcome neighbor.
This is what we did last year, which was fantastic, and I'm very happy to repeat it. Everybody says, "Well, what about now?" First thing I would like to say is that we have the bad tendency of fulfilling our targets. We will try to continue with doing that. We will continue producing ore through the plant at a high rate, strip ratio of around two-one. Copper grade is around 0.42%, which is what we have in the mine plan. We will be producing between 54,000 and 56,000 tons of copper. This, we expect a good year. The production will be biased towards the latter quarters, the second and third quarter, simply for several reasons. We had some maintenance during the first quarter that we brought in advance.
We also had some strikes in Spain, which are still ongoing on the transport, which gave us some issues with receiving lime. We decided to advance some of the maintenance that was scheduled, big maintenance that was scheduled in Q2, to Q1, to take advantage of that forced stop for external sources. Of course, the key issue here is the guidance of costs. I don't think anybody is not aware of the situation with the gas prices in Europe and the systems of electricity. To fix the electricity prices in Spain are linked with the marginal cost of producer, which in this case is set by the gas prices. Until last year, we were enjoying a stable price of electricity, around EUR 60 / MWh.
This year, we're exposed to the market, and the market has gone up. It's not easy to give a guidance. We have assumed scenarios from EUR 100 / MWh to EUR 200 / MWh. The first two months in Spain, we have had an average of EUR 210 / MWh. I know people were alarmed when we said that we may take actions. Obviously, we didn't want to see these peaks of EUR 500 / MWh because we would be working for the supplier of electricity or for Mr. Putin. Thank God, those alarming prices have only lasted for a short period of time.
I'll get a little bit deeper in the electricity prices because we have lots of questions. Before that, I would like to point out that there are other investments going on at the mine, at the company, which are all consistent with our growth. The first thing is to complete the solar plant. Second is the first phase of E-LIX. Third is a lot of exploration around us. I mean, that's basically our future. Related to that future is to make a new dam or to start working in a new Tailings Dam expansion. People should not be alarmed by that.
They should be encouraged because it means that we have very good hopes that all this exploration in Masa Valverde and San Dionisio will be passing through this existing installation. Of course, when we started this mine, we were looking at only 120 million tons of ore. Now we are probably looking with our reserves and resources in these deposits based on public information, we are talking about over 300 million tons of material that very likely will end up in this installation. We are looking at our mine life extended around 20 years so far after having been working now for seven years. Very important and very worrying is the electrical situation. People ask us, "Is this normal?
What's going to happen? I wish I knew, but what we can look at is the history. Spain has had, in the lower part of the graph, you will see a price from 50, but quite stable, EUR 50/MWh, and only around mid last year when we had the gas crisis, and of course, after the invasion of Ukraine and so on, we have seen peaks going to the 200 level where we are right now with a small peak in March 2022.
This is due to the setting of the production schemes in Spain, where, well, in Spain, I would say in Europe, but Spain is linked with the same price of Portugal, where the marginal producer, which means the most expensive, one, sets the price for everybody. This was quite good and quite valid. It has been working for years when the prices of electricity and gas and coal did not change too much or oil. So it didn't really matter too much if there were certain peaks of production where coal or gas-fired stations went up to, let's say, EUR 60/MWh, so you have a few days with higher prices. When gas prices multiply by ten, there's something going on.
This is not normal because the gas prices in the United States or in Korea, Japan, are totally different to what we are enjoying in Europe. The funny thing is that Spain actually only consumes around 15% of the gas used by generation. You can see in the charts the division between nuclear, hydraulic, lots of wind and solar. It doesn't make too much sense in an unstable situation that these prices are set. This is by gas. This is affecting the whole industry. It's not only affecting us. Something will have to happen. One of the questions would be, well, what can we do? Well, there's a future market that anyone can check it in a place called OMIP.
It's a futures market where the futures is as soon as you go away three years. Right now, as we saw it this morning, at 38 EUR/MWh -40 EUR/MWh. That is telling us that the future will have to stabilize. Actually, right now, today, you could hedge, and you could fix those prices. This is what we have done. We've taken advantage of a small low point. We have fixed with electrical company around 30% of our needs at a price around 50 EUR/MWh for around 10 years. What we're also doing is building our power plant, our solar plant. Our solar plant basically is constructed around our installations.
You can see in the picture shown in kind of bluish that the plant surrounds our existing processing facilities, and this will be planned to start in the first half of 2023, maybe I would say between the first and second quarter. We have had certain delays in permitting, but also certain delays in the supply of materials because everybody's constructing all these kinds of installations. The net result of this is that this electricity basically will be net zero cost.
The reality, if we sold this agreement to the supplier, we will have a PPA of around 25 cents-30 cents, 25 EUR/MWh -30 EUR/MWh . Then the end result of this is that we can guarantee that starting 2023 onwards, we will be having an average price of electricity of around EUR 40 / MWh, which is 80% of what we had last year and roughly 5x less than we have today. We are not stopping there. We are looking at installing further solar capacity in other lands that are not owned by us, but owned by the municipality of Nerva, which will allow us to be exposed to this, let's say, be able to sell electricity at a lower price, which can compensate any peak.
We have already a preliminary study of wind with four turbines of 4.5 MW each close to the San Dionisio open pit, to the Atalaya pit, which will be able to provide us around 15% extra, all of it for self-consumption, which means you don't pay taxes, and you don't pay the extra costs of moving the electricity through the net. We are also looking at several storage systems. Batteries are not economic from our preliminary numbers, but we do have two dams with quite a big difference of elevation, with clear water and with lots of water.
Somebody is doing a study of pumped hydro, where we could use the very low costs of solar during the day in Spain, and especially where we are, where we have lots of hours of sunlight in this part of the world, and store water and pump it and generate electricity during the night. Very heavily looking at this thing because it's we believe this is the most important thing that we have to sort. Looking at 2022 is going to be very active. We are in lots of catalysts. You are going to be having the solar plant. We are going to have the sustainability report. We will be providing soon the NI 43-101 evaluation or updating of the resources there after our drilling.
In addition to that, we will continue with several rigs exploring in the area. San Dionisio is other deposit. Basically, it's the continuation of the existing Cerro Colorado pit, and it's immediately beside our installations, and we will also be giving the update of the resource estimate calculated by an independent group from Denver, which is being finalized and will also be published very soon. In the case of San Dionisio, historic numbers show that we have a much better rate, so it should be quite important for our development at Riotinto. Touro is in the permitting. We are taking it quite step by step to make sure that we don't have a slippage in this. If it takes longer, it will take longer.
We are working with the authorities, and we believe that this year will be the year. Besides that, we expect to have some news of the exploration results in the north part of the Pyrite Belt, which is separate from Rio Tinto, and also the first results of E-LIX at the end of the year. Plenty of activities to be looking at. What's our goal? What's our view? I mean, the first thing I would like to say, well, where are we going? Somebody asked, "How are you going to be in three years-five years' time?" When we came here, we always said we are not going to be a single asset. One of the first things we did, even we didn't have too much money at that time, was to acquire Touro.
We have an asset in Touro where we not only have an existing deposit, but we have identified a whole belt which we have secured. Go step by step. First, start producing Touro. Demonstrate that this is a high quality, clean concentrate, sustainable mine with good quality. At Riotinto, totally separate, we have put together slowly but steadily, without too much commitments of CapEx and expenditures. In mining and options are quite an important land package in one of the most prolific belts. This is very relevant because we always try to do the agreements with a win-win situation where we only pay when we get permits, where we only pay with royalties. We only pay real cash if we are successful.
We will carry the risk of exploring, but we ask the sellers to also carry the risk of finding something or not. We don't like to overspend. The big future is coming from Rio Tinto. We want to do. We are preparing to do the same thing, same view that MATSA Sandfire has, which is a processing hub at our installations of Rio Tinto, which are shown in green in the center of the picture, where we'll be bringing ore from the different deposits to this central installation. Remember, we have 15.5 million tons of capacity and lots of grinding and zinc flotation capacity that's totally unused. With that, what's our goal? Easy to see.
You will see a table in your presentation and at the left, you will see some graphs. What we are producing is 56,000 tons, and where we see that in less than three years, we will be getting in the 70 range. With total, we'll basically get to 100,000 tons of copper produced. In the lower part of the graph is a very rough, very blurred timeline of when these things are going to happen. Remember that, when we said in 2014, we were going to build it in one year, we did. When we said we were going to expand it one year, we did. When we said that we were going to do a study, we did.
When we said we were going to expand and look for other exploration, we did. I think there are good chances of this thing happening as we say. What is the effect of these high-grade zones or the satellite deposits? If you look at that table, I will try to use this arrow, if I can. Okay. If you look at this line here, 0.7, you will see that there's a graph, which means that if we substituted 1 million tons of material from our existing pit, which runs around 0.4% copper, and we substitute it by something around 0.7, and if we brought in 4 million tons of the 15.5, it would add another 10,000 tons of copper without any significant investment.
This is exactly what's happening when we look at our existing San Dionisio pit. San Dionisio historically has grades of copper and copper only of almost double or they have in Cerro Colorado in our existing mine. It means that just bringing, and this is just common sense, bringing between 4 million tons-5 million tons, you can just add, without any additional major investment at our installations, 10,000 tons-15,000 tons of copper while you are extending the mine life for another five years.
If you brought in some of the underground deposits of San Antonio, which have grades of around 1.6, 1.7, but they are smaller, let's say around 10 million tons of reserves, which means if you mine it in 10 years and you only brought 1 million tons each, you will also be adding another 10,000 tons. What this shows is that actually with the existing installation, our capacity is there to be able to produce the 70,000 range. That's our target for the next couple of years. In conclusion, we have a very active year going ahead. Important thing is to concentrate into copper, develop growth, develop new projects, deliver in what our promise is.
Longer term, I would say strategic, we'd say concentrate in multi-asset, not only have our eggs in the basket of Riotinto. Look at something regionally. Look into something, if possible, in Spain, because that's where we have our higher advantage. But we are not shy to look at new geographies where we can add value. We will concentrate in copper, but we are not saying no to things like zinc and lead and silver, which also have lots of future, and gold and are present in our Pyrite Belt. Another important thing that people ask us very often is to try to move to London at the right time, the main market, for several reasons. Simply the main one being that the AIM market is good for smaller companies.
At a certain time, we believe this company is going to be over $1 billion, and I think we have a place in the main market. We are doing the right steps right now to start with that. With that, I would probably start with the questions and
Fantastic. Alberto, César, thank you very much indeed for the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the team take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Alberto and César, we did have a number of pre-submitted questions. If I may, I'll just read these out and we'll start through those. The first one I think you have really covered off. It says, you've described that electricity prices in Spain are currently higher than normal. What is your long-term expectation for electricity prices versus today, just in case there's anything further to add?
Our expectations are figured marked by the future and by the history. Spain and Europe, I would say, cannot afford higher prices. It's not normal that you have, basically all of your 85% of your production at sub-40 and, due to the fact that something is happening with the gas, you are selling it at 200. This will have to be set at what's normal, which is around 40 EUR/MWh -50 EUR/MWh , which is the real cost with profit for what we have in Spain and Portugal. In some way, we'll have to decouple and remove and incentivize and/or pay the companies to use these gas installations where they are needed as emergency.
The longer term are already marked, but what you see in the market in the OMIP, O-M-I-P, which is already set in that beyond 2023, 2024, the futures prices that we could right now lock immediately could be in the range of EUR 35-EUR 45 right now. That's telling you something.
Fantastic. Thank you. The second question we have here is, I see that San Dionisio resource estimate will be released soon. Can you talk about how this deposit will be developed and when? Also, what is the production impact and capital cost, and what's the permitting process?
Okay. San Dionisio really is the massive deposit under Atalaya pit. It has been mass mined in the past. Actually, this created Rio Tinto Company, where they were mining very high grade copper and sulfur. Of course, at those years, they only mined the high grade. Why bother for something with around 1% when you had 5% copper? What really we see in San Dionisio is there are some massive sulfides left, but most of it is related to the polymetallic, which has copper and zinc. At that time, they were concentrated in copper. Mostly, and more important in the upper part, is the higher grade copper-only material. How it will be mined actually is quite straightforward. It's basically expanding the existing pit.
If any of you go into Google Earth and look for Cerro Colorado or Corta Atalaya, you will see a round elliptical hole of pit, partly flooded, which basically will be expanded towards our existing pits. They will basically be touching our existing installation. What's the production impact, capital cost, and how it's going to be developed? It's quite straightforward. We use the same mining fleet, we use same installation, the same processing facilities. It's at the same distance, actually lower than what we are mining in Cerro Colorado. What we need is up to, I think from year three or so, we have to remove the water, which doesn't give us any pain because we already done that when we were mining Cerro Colorado.
Those of you who have been knowing this company for years, remember that the pits were flooded. We had 5 million cubic meters of acid water, which we treated and used. We have a water treatment plant. That will be the one of the key components of the cost, which is around 0.5 EUR per cubic meter water treatment, so it's not the end of the world. From capital cost point of view, for the first few years, basically we'll only be moving the road, which we'll be doing anyway, which is around 7 million EUR. We'll do it anyway for the expansion of Cerro Colorado. We have to remove some electric lines that are crossing, but we have removed lots of them to expand the plant.
The permitting is we expect it to be quite straightforward because we already have approval for the road. The moving the electric lines, something that we do very often. Expanding the pit is like expanding the same way we expanded the pit at Cerro Colorado. Remember that when we started here, we had 120 million tons of reserves, and right now we have 250 million tons. Basically this is quite straightforward. If it doesn't go away from the current footprint of the project, which it doesn't. We expect it to be quite a simple thing and we're working on it already.
Fantastic. Next question we've got here. Which project has the most potential to add value in the near term: San Dionisio, Masa Valverde or Touro?
Well, if I had to put my bets, I would say San Dionisio because the grade is higher and grade of copper is higher. Copper is. We are producing copper, so it's something that we will see very soon in the balance sheet. Second, without any question, Touro. Touro is a fantastic project, which has at least the quality or the size of the existing installation, but of course needs the permit and it needs to be constructed. I have no question that it's going to be permitted, but still needs to be built. Masa Valverde is exploration project. It requires some underground development. Masa Valverde is a long-term project, something that will add value, especially will add life. It will add expectations. It will take us beyond 20 years of life.
I would even say there's a fourth parameter here that we are not even taking into consideration. I mean, only recently we started exploring and we already found things. I think with a good budget, and in such a prospective ground, I would say that the perspectives of finding a new discovery in the next 10 years are very high. Another thing that would probably add a lot of value is that we discover a new deposit in our land, which is something that I would not rule out.
Thank you. Next one we have here is, you have a big exploration budget for 2022. Which project is the main focus for drilling?
You're right. EUR 10 million is a very serious project investment, which basically all of it will be in drilling because we have already been doing a lot of geophysics to define targets. We already have the targets there. Most of the targets are around Masa Valverde, because we had the good luck of being able to test geophysics on top of an existing deposit that had been untouched. We could see perfectly what was the reflection of the geophysics. Now with that reflection and that the signal, we see, okay, where is it? Is it duplicating or showing similar patterns?
I would say that the main focus will be Masa Valverde and the Riotinto East because the main volcanic trend continues towards the east of Rio Tinto, and we also have a few anomalies there. About 15 kilometers away from us, there's an old mine called Castillo de las Guardas, and we used to mine 3% copper historically. I think we have to give a chance that if there's something found there, it could have something.
Great. Thank you. What is the latest with Touro? Why is Atalaya building a water treatment plant at Touro?
Well, I don't know if I should start by the last part. It's very interesting. Why should we build something that's historic, is a legacy, something that is not our problem? You know, we received a negative environmental impact statement two years ago, and we had lots of dialogue, and we needed to change the perception that was used by the anti-mining groups saying, "Oh, look at what happened in the past.
They have done it bad in the past, and this is going to be the same thing in the future. It's very difficult to explain them that the same way that people thirty years ago, their toilets were not the same quality as they are right now, their cars were not the same thing, and the industry was not the same. It doesn't matter. The argument of showing pictures of the tailings, sorry, of the small acid drains in green bushes and you see a gray, a red stain was always there, and that was the picture they were using. Even if this red stain is something that you can even jump by with a small jump. It's not even one meter. It's not really a problem. It's the picture.
Also, they were using the pictures and films of this tailings disaster of Brazil that happened three years ago. You know what? We said, "We're going to change the perception of this. We are going to take care voluntarily, and we will do it as a part of future cost, like you do exploration. We are going to take care of this historic legacy to show you that it's not really a problem, and we are doing that." Actually, we already very advanced in that, and in a couple of months, it will be ready. All this has been done with the knowledge of the administration. They gave us the permits to do this very fast and moving very fast. This is really what it is. It's basically to show, look, it can be done.
Don't tell us that we are going to be throwing any water into the river because we don't want to be shut down the next day after investing $200 million. It doesn't make any sense. It has been done by prior consultation with authorities, with mayors of the villages, with fishermen, so that we could take away the arguments of the opposition.
Fantastic. There have been lots of copper deals recently with high values. MATSA is one, also KGHM and Sierra Gorda. Alberto, what do you think this says about the industry?
It's a fantastic question. Well, it shows you two things that first of all, it's not easy to discover new things. It's not easy to discover mines. It takes a long time to build, and it's showing you that big companies are the only ones that are developing mines and have the capability, technical and financial capability. How companies are going to be exposed to copper? They see the future, and one of the ways they do is buy production. This was the case of Sierra Gorda. It was the case of Glencore selling a minor asset and also Sandfire and MATSA. What is it telling us? It's telling us that the copper price will have to go much higher, much higher to incentivize new production coming fast and in a big wave. Because right now, the market is there.
We have seen the energy crisis in Europe, but also elsewhere. Everybody's trying to decarbonize, and all of this requires more copper. We are seeing huge installations of green energy being built by China in the Gobi Desert, wind and solar. That requires huge amount of copper. Where is the copper going to come in a green world? It needs new mines. It will require. This is telling us that all these companies are seeing higher copper prices. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. It's a fantastic indication of what we are going to be seeing in the future.
That's right.
Which is the higher copper prices.
That's good to hear. Can you talk more about the other solar and wind projects that you're studying?
Well, I mentioned a little bit. Simply adding more solar, you know that the solar distribution of the sun distribution, everybody understands that it's very light during the sunrise and the dusk, and it's at the peak at midday, more or less at three o'clock or so. This is different in winter and summer, but it's more or less a Gaussian curve, which means that your peak is basically your maximum you can demand at a certain time. If you build additional installation or additional surface, what you can get is that Gaussian bell be much larger, and you would be using 100% of your solar more hours during the day. What do you do with the excess during peak hours?
You sell it. You sell it or use it for other things like basically it's cheap, very cheap energy to pump or to generate hydrogen or to other things like that. If we had E-LIX working at that moment, we could produce cathodes and have electrowinning at that moment. This is what the reasoning behind solar. The other things like wind is simply because there is lots of wind power in Spain. Spain's a big is big in this industry. We started the studies, what are the patterns of winds? In our case, we know we're not in a fantastic wind, but there's lots of wind farms in the area.
We saw that if you are connected for your self-consumption and not to the grid, you don't need to have such a high speeds. The good thing of wind is it provides wind also during the night. Actually it's more during the night, which means we can also reduce our reliance on the external grid. What we want is to make sure we have not only green power, which is very nice, but we have reliable and cheap power.
I think the question we have here. Yes, you did answer that in the meeting when the next dividend will be declared. Next one we've got here, you've described option for managing electricity costs, and we've talked about that several times during the presentation and Q&A. What can you do about other areas of cost inflation?
Cost inflation, look, we have been very careful in buying things that are other consumables, like balls, reagents, and so on, out of the system before this, and we are looking elsewhere. Some things are not enjoying these prices because the steel price is not the same in Spain and elsewhere. That's what we have. We have a big stock of consumables. We cannot do too much of electricity. We cannot do too much of diesel because it's the market. How we can manage the cost of diesel, basically modifying the mine plan a little bit so the contractors use less transport, basically the distance. Try to shorten the distance to the dumps now, in spite of having them a little bit longer in the future.
We change a little bit our mine plan. We also, to reduce electricity costs, we are using more explosive to fracture more because so far, although the explosive have also gone up quite a lot, they have not gone up so much as electricity. Small things that we can do to optimize, to lower our operating costs.
Fantastic. The final question we have here is what is the process for moving the parent company to the UK?
I think, César is there, probably can give you the whole details, and is working very actively in it. César?
Yeah. Thank you, Alberto. Yeah. The process itself. We've been working with the legal advisors to see the best way and the quickest way to get to the UK. We think that is just establishing a UK entity which will acquire all the share of the existing Cypriot entity. Then we will do the IPO on AIM as a first step before going to the main market. That's the idea. The process will take between three to four months. We're now finalizing the due diligence on the moving to the UK just to ensure that we understand all the tax consequences, you know, accounting consequences, sales consequences.
We are expecting to get the due diligence done within weeks in order to start hopefully proposing to the shareholders in the next AGM in sort of during this year. That's it. That's just basically establishing a UK entity which will acquire all the share from the existing Cypriot entity.
Fantastic. César, thank you very much indeed. Alberto, we have actually seen quite a few questions come in during the meeting itself. If I may, Alberto, perhaps just ask you to click on the Q&A tab, and where appropriate to do so.
Yeah.
Just read out the question and give your answer.
Yeah, I can read a question and go through them. I think that some of them are very interesting. Some of them we have kind of replied. Look, when will the company release the results of the 43-101, will we? That we have already said. When will the company release the details of the 43-101s in San Antonio? Soon. Soon. What I mean by soon is we're talking about weeks. Finalizing, let's call it. Somebody's asking about last year, we said we are going to possibility of hedging the forward prices EUR 85-EUR 90. What happened? What happened is that the prices shot up and the future prices have also gone up substantially.
For example, the results of Q2 right now hedging for the future prices are around $250. For 2023, if we wanted to hedge, it was $133. Basically, it couldn't be done. We had to go with that. This offered us a possibility of giving us a lower price for the second part of the year, but basically increasing the rest of the years. Basically, it would be giving us a loan. A loan that we'll pay later. We believe that we will watch the market. We hope the situation of Ukraine unfolds, and we will be able to lock lower prices in the future.
Right now, I'm reading in a second the prices for 2024 for the whole year are EUR 87. In 2026, already EUR 50. In 2028 are EUR 42. Unfortunately, still 2022 is still in the 2023 is still the EUR 133 range, we believe is too high. David, given the energy prices, there is scope to increase the 50. Yes, I mentioned yes. Confirming dividend policy, yes. We confirm that we will continue. High court ruling, we will ask to drop any future litigation. Yes. We don't care if he litigates or not. He has nothing to litigate. He will have to leave the security. We continue paying a margin fee, yes, under a certain amount of material, although it's fixed, until we deliver all this concentrates.
We believe it still has three years or four going on. Management incentives. It is important. Recent board selling to finance options. Well, this can be misinterpreted, but let me tell you it's important to mention this. The reason for selling is because management has very short periods of open periods that we cannot sell because we are always in blackout periods. Otherwise, these options would lapse. That was the only way for some of the management to be able to finance the purchase. Myself, for example, I exercised the options, and I paid with money, and I did not sell any shares. I have paid the option, and I have, I'm a happy holder of additional 150,000 shares.
It was simply a matter of that, the management left it to the very last minute because the options were expiring, and we were entering in a blackout period. That's definitely replies to the question. You are not hedging any production currently, as far as I'm aware. Can you explain the rationale behind this, particularly against the backdrop of potential sharply higher costs? Are you expecting higher copper prices? And in relation to that, what is the copper price that your budgets are based on? Yes, we are not hedging. We have been asked to hedge several times at $4, at $3.50, when everybody thought it was going to be much lower. If we had done that at that moment, we would have been killed.
Right now, at least part of the losses of energy costs had been in some way compensated by electricity and higher copper prices. Today we are $4.70. I should remind that we only one year ago were not even at $4. I think we need to be exposed to this unless we hedge the whole thing. If we hedged copper energy and exchange rate, probably, yes, then you lock certain numbers. Otherwise, locking copper and then exposed to all the things, it can be very dangerous. Do we expect higher copper prices? Yes. I don't know when, but yes. The only copper that's coming on the world is the...
Right now is Congo, Kamoa-Kakula, and two other projects that have been built, significant projects that are being built in Peru, Quellaveco, and in Chile, Quebrada Blanca later in the year. Beyond that, there is nothing. Only to remind that the studies of supply and demand last year are showing a deficit of around 1 million tons of copper per year. An International Copper Study Group from Lisbon, which is very conservative, a deficit during 2021 at 475,000 tons of copper. What does it mean? It means that in spite of people saying that two years ago that the copper price was going to go down, in spite of the copper price having exploded up, we have not seen any additional production, and we are still in a big deficit.
Another important argument against hedging at this moment is the potential squeeze of margin calls. We have seen what has happened with some people trying to fix prices of commodities like copper and gas. I would not even know what has happened with coal and having to post margin cash. This can destroy a company. Why am I a little bit scared of this is that the stocks are very low, and we only need a huge problem in Congo.
We only need a problem in Chile, in one of these big mines, and this can happen anytime, that suddenly there's no copper, and because the demand is there, the copper can shoot like I have seen shooting in 2005 with the nickel going from 2.5 - 20 for good reasons. I believe that the copper is going to go up. As per our budget, I think we made our budget at $4.15, if I remember well.
$4.43. We normally use for the budget process the forward curves at the time that we do the budget. That's normally the Q4 of the previous year. We normally do quarterly forward price at the average of 20-
There is an interesting question here that are you considering any projects to recover minerals from historic tailings. This is something that somebody has published and is not with our knowledge or agreement. We have a partner called Rumbo, which has 50% of the gold tailings. The gold tailings contain around 0.35 gold and around 30 grams of silver. In theory, that's almost like 1 million ounces, but the recovery is very questionable due to being very refractory and very difficult. Unless the gold prices went up, it would not be economic. Somebody is saying that they have a fantastic system and they are going to be using the system, which is. It's a system of basically leaching the whole thing with nitric acid.
I'm not sure if people know what how you can leach with nitric acid. You can leach everything, including the tanks and the pipes. Only plastic holds it, and titanium. No, we are not considering that at this moment, although we don't rule it out if gold went to 200 or silver went to $40 an ounce. Is there likely to be any progress in Touro? Well, I've mentioned that. We expect some news this year. What is our current estimate of free cash flow for the full year 2022? Very difficult to say that in the light of the energy prices. Look, our operations are going to be similar to last year and for whoever has made the question, we consume 24 kWh per ton.
That means around 370,000 MWh per year. It means that, going from what was last year, costs of electricity, which are around 60, rough numbers, to 210 these first two months, the difference is 150. 150 EUR multiplied by per hour consumption, it means that this—if this electricity price stayed the whole year, it would eat around EUR 55 million off our bottom line. Against that, you have to add a better exchange rate, which will help, and you have to add a slightly better copper price if it continues like it is right now. I will only need a crystal ball to know what the electricity prices.
Other inflation is diesel, in a certain way, explosives, all of them related to the oil and electricity price, but without the big influence of the electricity. Michael is asking, when could Masa Valverde begin initial production? Hard to say, but I think we could probably get some production from the polymetallic in around three years' time. When? Because we need to develop a ramp to get to the deposit called Majadales. We are getting the permits probably later this year to drive underground decline. The ideal situation would be to have the E-LIX working at that moment because it's polymetallic. The earliest, I would say three years. Maybe two years and a half or three years. But we have lots to chew in San Dionisio and San Antonio.
Marcos is asking about consolidation, M&A opportunities, pipeline consolidation in Río Tinto area, any recent approach to Atalaya. Starting by the end, no recent approach to Atalaya, but I'm sure we are in the radar screens of everybody because we are very good for showing very good value. Certainly, there is good consolidation potential Río Tinto with Sandfire being here. Remember, we also have Las Cruces with a polymetallic deposit of around 40 million tons further to the east. We have a couple of private companies drilling and making some nice interesting results. We have some private companies in Portugal. We have public companies with Lundin in Neves-Corvo and two other juniors drilling in Pan Global in Emerita.
There's lots of activity in the Pyrite Belt. I mean, I don't rule out that something happens with all of the six. Not necessarily with our neighbors, Sandfire, but with the six or seven. Consolidation is answering this question. It's basically the potential to use some synergies since they are some of these deposits are very close, and obviously we have a very big installation where we can handle more copper or more material if it was needed. It's very important to be in production. Juan C. is asking, just to check, could you give us the IRR with respect to the renewable investments that you are doing and considering, please? I don't remember the IRR, but I do remember, I mean, specifically in the wind.
I do remember the cost of solar, which has gone up a little bit due to the silver and costs. Even so, it was a payback of six years. The life of these things is around 25. It's not a fantastic, huge return, but it was a quite decent return. The important thing is you can finance this with loans from main Spanish banks with no recourse except the installation itself at a very low interest rates. The return is quite good and is very straightforward. There's no question they're economic. Are you able to provide an update of the E-LIX process? Well, we...
All the key equipment, electrical cells, anodes, cathodes, civil, have been ordered or are in the process of being ordered and started. We have not started physical construction itself in the ground, but all of the equipment and everything has been ordered and paid for. We believe at the end of this year we'll, it will be okay. In the meantime, the company is doing test work with existing pilot plant to test production of zinc, production of copper, and so on with existing installation so that this, the production activities will be better when we start. Joan B. Borras, is what's meant with the right time for moving to the main market?
Is it really we're relisting on the UK necessary as the first step? César, is it needed to really relist in the UK first?
No. Just simplify the process quite a lot. I mean, having been or being a Cyprus entity means that you need to comply with the Cyprus company law, and then during the process of listing into the main market, being the Cyprus law might create a confusion as many UK might assume that this is a UK entity when it's not. It just simplifies this.
If you apply the recent takeover prices for all their Sandfire acquisitions or per tonne on copper multiples of companies, would that mean? What would that mean for the share price of Atalaya? That's Uli asking about that. Well, very high. I would say very high. Probably, yes, probably double. Probably double than we have, which is probably the next question, which is it fair to assume that this translate into a theoretical price of EUR 800 million for Atalaya, eight? Yes. I think these are the two questions at the same time. If you look at the theoretical undiscounted discounted cash flows, our share price should be much higher, especially when you add Touro and when you add San Dionisio and so on.
Really, the numbers are very high. If you look at transaction multiples, yes, our share price should probably be double than that.
That's probably a great time to end it, Alberto. Thank you very much. César as well. Thank you very much indeed for answering every single question we've had through from the attendees today. Thanks for posting those. Just before we redirect your attendees to give you some feedback, Alberto, perhaps just a few closing comments, if I may.
Well, I would say thank you very much for the support. I think this company has each time more and more support, more shareholders. They see the value. It gives us also lots of, let's say, power to continue delivering and continue growing this company. We don't like to be still as we've done in the past and we really would like to see this company growing and getting better because I could recognize lots of these names in the questions, and they are shareholders which, like I am, in this company, we, and we believe it has a great future. I want to take the opportunity to thank everybody for their continued support through the bad times, and now that we are in better times.
We have gone through bad times, so this electricity is only one more. We will succeed.
Fantastic. César, Alberto, that's absolutely fantastic. Thank you again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll 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 moments to complete and is greatly valued by the team. On behalf of the management team of Atalaya Mining plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session. Thank you and good afternoon to you all.