Good morning and welcome to the Atalaya Mining Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and I would now like to hand you over to CEO Alberto Lavandeira. Good morning to you.
Thank you very much. Good morning. We are here to review the presentation that's on the screen and will be available on the web page of Investor Meet and our web page also to review the results of the financial results of the first quarter of 2025. I will be with me accompanied by César Sánchez in the background, although he may not be available to answer some questions, but he will pass it to me. Going directly into the presentation that you will see on your screens, there is a good summary of the review of everything that has happened in the first quarter of 2025 and actually a little bit more of the year. I think the important thing here is that we are very happy. We are very pleased to report a strong start of 2025.
I would say that that was kind of expected because production had already been flagged. Since we, as we used to say, we had in our last presentation that our cost per ton per unit are quite constant due to the fact that we had good copper prices and good cost control, the financial performance has been excellent. I will talk a little bit more about this operating and financial results in a moment. From a corporate point of view, I think it's worth mentioning that we have been doing some changes in the board. We have strengthened the board due to the fact that some of our board members had already been or are going to be around 10 years on the board. This means that they no longer are deemed to be independent.
We have added Coriseo Gonzáles, a lady that's very well known in Spain as an independent executive director. Another important point that happened, I think I should highlight, is that finally we were included in the FTSE 250 index earlier in May. We didn't make it in the first cut, but we were there in May, and we believe we are going to be maintaining that in the future checks.
There are lots of things presented in this page six, but one thing that's kind of unique in our company, and I think that speaks a lot of how we handle things in the communities, which is very important, is that we have launched what's called Rio Tinto Experience, which is an experience that allows visitors, tourists, to visit the mine, active mine with a bus going through the mine and going through our installations live while the mine is running. This has been considered a kind of unique situation in Europe, certainly, and it shows how good relations we have with the communities, everything transparent. This is extremely important because we want to show that mining is a modern industry, which will help for the future of our company and for the mining industry in general.
With that, with those general introductions, I will go directly to the operating and financial results. You will see them in slide seven. We had a fantastic first quarter. Actually, it is the best result since we had a good quarter in, I think it was back in 2021. Of course, the reason for that was we had better grades. We had better grades of 0.42%, and the plant was running continuously. The plant actually was running at around 16 million tons per year rate, like you can see in the upper graph. Although we did not have a, we had slightly lower recoveries than has historically been in the last few years, still a record production. One of the reasons why this plant was running so well is that we had almost no downtime during the first quarter.
It looks to be, according to how things are going, like in the second quarter, we're also going to have a quite good quarter from the tonnage point of view because since we implemented a few changes in the mill, in the SAG mill, which requires to change, as you know, the SAG mill requires to change the liners as a preventive maintenance of around six, one week more or less downtime. Normally we had like two, even three of those stops during the year. With some changes that we have implemented, it looks like we would even be able to bypass the second quarter and move this stop to quarter three or the first part of Q3. We are there, which is extremely important because it also means that it looks like we are going to be having a good second quarter also.
The recoveries, you can see it's slightly lower, but we should be seeing this not as a continuous basis. We should be seeing simply we are feeding some of the higher grade ores of San Dionisio in a small amount, but they come in with oxidized soils. They're very close to old mining areas, and this lowers the recovery. Overall, it's more than compensated by the high grades because then what pays for what creates the profits is the copper recovered. Copper recovered with higher grades is better even if we have a slightly lower recovery in the mill. As a result of that, what happens is, of course, we have very good revenues, actually the higher revenues in the historical quarter per quarter, higher sales because we have good production and also good prices, good prices of copper.
As a result of that, and a result of control on costs, we had very high EBITDA, actually probably record or close to record EBITDA, and lots of that profits came directly to the bottom line on profits and cash flow. Still, at the end of the quarter, we had some inventories of concentration were quite high, which means that we had like EUR 16 million in inventory, and this will normalize by the end of the year, of the quarter. It means also in second quarter, we should expect to have lower stockpiles and also have a good performance on cash flow during the second quarter. On a unit basis, I mean, what's that cost per pound? Sorry, not cost per pound. In a unit basis, total costs, the cost performance was quite good, although the total figure was slightly higher, but this is simply treating more tons.
That means more costs and more mining, mining more tons. Even with this increase of trade receivables that I have just mentioned before of having concentrates in stockpile, we had a good positive free cash flow generated in the quarter of EUR 26 million operating cash flow and global cash flow, even in spite of the investments that we carried during the year, during this quarter. The investments are basically higher stripping of Federal normal, investing in the tailing facility and as well as E-LIX. Still, after all this, the balance sheet remained strong with an increase in working capital, almost $70 million or $80 million at the end of the quarter. Going into the detailed breakdown of the costs, we see those in slide eight. It was a very good quarter, but why was that? You can see that the main reason has been the offsite cost.
The onsite costs have been maintained at a good level of obviously reducing, but reducing simply because we produce more tons of copper, more pounds payable. Our cost per unit of rock moved stayed around EUR 2 per ton with bias towards going slightly lower due to the diesel prices going down. Expect to be positive in the future. At the plant, we are always between EUR 7-EUR 8 per ton, quite constant, with expecting to have also a second quarter slightly better due to good electricity prices during the second quarter and also during the fact that our solar plant is already producing electricity and helping to reduce this consumption. Of course, all of that with higher production of metal. The big change comes from the offsite costs.
What the treatment charges, so what the smelters charge us to process our material and also the byproduct rates. Starting by this, we have benefited from producing more silver because remember that these previous years we have been mixing silver areas with a low copper in order to benefit from that high silver area while we were having lower copper, and this will continue during this year. This together by the fact that the silver prices are much higher than previous years, it means that our byproduct rates are substantially higher than previous years. You will also notice a big decrease of around $0.20 per pound in freight treatment charges and other offsite costs. This is due to the fact that last year we were selling our concentrates based on benchmarks, which were around $80 per ton of concentrate treated.
That's what we have to pay to the smelters. This year, starting in January, the benchmark has gone into the low 20s, which means there's a difference there of $60 per ton. In addition to that, we had some spot sales sold during the first quarter that were sold separately from the benchmark contracts at even negative treatment charges. All things together have reduced a lot the treatment charges. Also, we sold some of this material to local European smelters, which also lowered the freight. This tendency is likely going to continue because we believe that the treatment charges in the world are going to be maintained low due to the fact that there's lack of concentrates in the world. Looking at all-in costs, we always report all-in costs. Remember that our mining cost includes the capital cost of replacing the fleet.
That is already included in the cash cost. We only have one thing that highlights the capitalized stripping cost, which mainly corresponds to Federal Colorado, our existing pit. Why is that? Remember that in previous years we were a little bit tight in mining areas. We had some issues accessing ore the moment we had rain. We decided this year to try to move more ahead so that we can open more of the pit and avoid these problems in the future. It does not mean that the strip ratio has changed a lot. It is a matter of allocating working capital because the strip ratio of the global pit for the next 10 years is still under two-one strip ratio. When we mine at a higher rate than that, and we can right now due to our balance sheet, we capitalize those costs.
These are what's shown there in slide nine. All in, at the end, it looks like we will be much lower than we had anticipated. All this, we like to, all this is summarized in slide 10, where we like to show our all-in sustaining costs benchmark versus others. It shows that this quarter has been the lower in probably the last four years and also substantially lower than other companies due to these benefits that also others are benefited, of course, at the treatment charges and so on. In our case, it has been more patented due to the higher rates produced. With all this, how are things going for the future?
It would be a temptation to say, look, we are going to increase our guidance and produce more because we started well and things are going well in the second quarter. We have decided to maintain the guidance between 48,000 and 52,000, so roughly around 50,000 tons of copper, simply to be conservative and to make sure that we fulfill our targets. So far, it looks like the guidance and cash costs and all-in costs, although unchanged, so far it looks like we will be in the low end. I would accept that very likely our costs are going to be five, already five months have basically gone of the year. So far, are going to be in the low end of our guidance. What's going to happen in the year?
Finally, we got the environmental permits for Touro, which you can see in the slide. We never had doubts, as we said before, about getting this permit because we had obtained others, but simply it is quite bureaucratic in Spain. This will be an important focus in 2025, which will allow us to start moving the hill that you see in the pit, and also will allow us to access fresh ore, which is better material with lower grades than the one we are treating now, with high recoveries, with lower recoveries. Look, the reason why we have these lower recoveries can be clearly seen in this picture, in the center of, more or less in the center of the picture, where we are mining is this interim pit that we had a permit for, and that is kind of oxidized.
You can see it by the color, which means it's slightly lower recovery. The left side of the picture, which is basically the mountain, that is totally fresh material. In the past, recoveries were much better over the 80s, which means we are very confident of that in the future. I think one thing I should highlight here about San Dionisio is that the fact that we received the permit is an endorsement of how the constructed business environment that we have in Andalucía. I would say it's the best in Spain, in the southwest. It's also clear that we got the environmental authorization for the Valverde deposit. Also, our neighbors, MATSA, Sunfire, have got an authorization for tailings. Also, Grupo México also got environmental authorization for Los Frailes. It can be slow. Yes, it's slow. It's very bureaucratic, but it's certain.
This is very important for the mining business because, as you know, one of the issues right now in some of the countries is the uncertainty in permits and political stability, let's say. Another important thing that people thought is, look, you will never be able to obtain a permit to move the road, the road that if I go back to the previous slide, is basically dividing both pits. Actually, this road, we have already shown this in the past, is well advanced. It's been moved. We have everything's in place, and it's not affecting at all the development of San Dionisio, and things are happening. This is a public road with lots of traffic. An important thing also, E-LIX. E-LIX, we have been speaking about this for years now. Finally, this plant is working on a continuous basis. They're making progress. They have been treating zinc concentrates.
It's still not at full capacity, but the ramp-up plan is to get there in summer. Right now, they are extracting zinc from copper concentrates because to treat copper concentrates itself is not economic based on the very low treatment charges I have mentioned before. I think the important thing to say here is that they have gone through the problems of hiring new people, new management, doing some changes in the plant because, remember, this process is absolutely new worldwide, and potentially has a lot of future. Another important point that we will see in this year, looking ahead, is the Masa Valverde. PMV means Masa Valverde. Very likely we'll approve a ramp, as shown there, to get into the green part of the deposit. This green part of the deposit is an area with higher copper area that we have been really.
Right now, we have four rigs there. They are infilling with wedges, and they are specifically targeting this zone that's located immediately north to the massive deposit, which in the past, we have flagged some results of around 2% copper with very good widths. We will be updating the market soon, soon meaning certainly before the center part of the month, about this result that we are getting so that people can see, the investor can see the potential of this zone. The idea with this ramp is basically to get access to this copper zone where we can mine this directly, this coarse material, coarse grain material, and put it inside the existing plant and add some additional production for Rio Tinto. This additional production is not included in the plans of Rio Tinto itself.
It can be, assuming we get, let's say, 500,000 tons in at 2% with recoveries, it's very close to 10,000 tons of copper additional to what we have. Obviously, the important things for Touro, the important things for the company is the Touro project. Touro project is, as you all know, it's in the north of Spain, and lots of things have happened. It's slow, extremely slow. After information period completed in January, the company has been responding to all the requests, all from the administration, all the allegations. The administration itself, all the bodies from the administration have been producing what they call sector reports, let's say, water, roads, urbanistic, forest, blah, blah, blah, and all this. Basically, we have a full majority of them already received and in positive.
We are quite positive that we will be receiving the terms, the environmental permits sooner. In principle, this project has been declared strategic in late June, so in principle, it should be around one year from that. That is their targets. We are conscious that the administration, if it is delayed, it is delayed and could be a little bit later than that. Certainly, we are hoping to get those before the summer holiday period, which in Spain is August. Independent of this permit, why are we excited? I mean, why do we like it? We like it because it is a high quality, higher grade than Rio Tinto. You can see it in slide 17. Better recoveries, lower unit costs because it is very clean concentrate. It will be a premium concentrate, which the off-takers will love. Softer material, closer to surface, so lower mining costs.
All in, the costs are going to be lower. It is very important to mention that this will be producing concentrates that are very valuable because they are very clean. One of the ways we are looking at funding this project is a combination of bank loans from Spanish institutions that have already given us terms and we are ready to sign, but it also gives us the possibility to combine these local loans with financing through off-take rights. These off-take rights can come from directly the concentrates that will be available from Rio Tinto because most of the contracts that we have right now are expiring between this year and next year, which means we are free to negotiate with those off-take contracts with the smelters or traders for the Rio Tinto concentrates, in addition to the concentrate of Touro.
This is a fantastic opportunity where we can take advantage due to the very low treatment charges that are available in the market and the very high deficit of concentrates in the world, which is likely to continue for the next five years at least. In conclusion, and before we get into questions at the end, where are we going to center our work? It's going to be an exciting year for Rio Tinto. We are going to be able to get into a good production. We're going to get a new project going, which is called Masa Valverde, very likely get all the permits for Touro. We'll know how E-LIX can add value locally.
We'll also start drilling at San Antonio, which is a satellite deposit just one kilometer east of Terra Colorado, as well as continue doing some exploration in Sweden and the joint venture, where we have already completed the winter program for 2024-2025, and we look forward to doing the same thing next year. We are willing to start drilling as soon as we get cold ground, frozen ground, likely in October-November this year. In the future, at the end, what's the future of our company? Our company is to continue with our plans to go from the 50,000 tons of copper level to add another 5,000-10,000, just simply adding material from the stockwork of San Dionisio, and get the next leg of growth from adding copper from Masa Valverde, copper only, without the zinc.
Total can provide another 30,000 tons of copper. We're talking about just with these three items, we can basically double the production of copper only. Over that, we also have what we call the polymetallic, which contains copper and zinc, which we could bring in another 50,000-60,000 tons of zinc, which is equivalent to another around 30,000 tons of copper additional from the polymetallic. We are doing all the engineering work to get this down and make the decisions this year. With that, I will get into try to reply to all the questions that we have been receiving. Yeah, and then we'll go.
Perfect. Alberto, thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen.
While the company takes a few moments to view those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that the recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via our investor dashboard. Alberto, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. If I may now hand back to you and kindly ask you to read out the questions where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you.
Okay, thank you all. Thank you very much. Look, I'm going to try to, we have quite a few questions. Let me see if we have time. Yeah, we think we have. So I will try to reply all as usual. What are your views in long-term TC/RCs? I think it's excellent.
There's a huge deficit of concentrates in the world. This deficit comes from two parts. One is excess or a huge number of smelters that are hungry and working only at 70% capacity, plus the addition of new smelters in Indonesia, two, one in India and one in Congo. There are talks about others. Once you stop a smelter, it's very difficult to open it again. People will try to maintain a certain level. Can the smelters survive with negative or very low treatment charges? So far, they are doing it because there is a huge demand of sulfuric acid, and this comes from smelters. The sulfuric acid has been used for production of nickel in the treatment of laterites, plus other competing demand from fertilizers and so on. I think the prospects of the demand from smelters are very high.
On the other hand, there's no new big projects supplying new concentrates in the world. So yes, there can be some extra production with higher copper prices. There will be some better production, but the treatment charges are going to remain low for quite a period according to all the sources. Another question is, in the light of your success, shareholders might be pressing for a dividend, but even withholding tax would most not be better served by continued investment, reducing debt or share buybacks. It is true, but we are in a net cash position, so we do not have debt. We have some rolling debt, but very low cost, simply for working capital management. We always need some lines of credit to work. And share buybacks is a possibility. For sure, we do not like to be changing horses in the middle of the race.
So far, we believe we are going to continue with our dividend, even knowing that we will have to need some capital for the investments of Touro. The reason of doing that is simply discipline, showing that there are some investors that are people, our funds, or institutions or investors that want a minimum dividend, but on the other hand, they can get some growth, which is not so common in dividend stocks. I think so far, we will continue with the plan of dividends. Another question is, would you expect there ever to be a premium price paid for sustainability producing copper, mines using renewable energy? If so, when do you think that may happen? To be honest, I am quite skeptical of this. I am quite skeptical because at the end, it's the user that has to pay the premium.
Once the copper is molten and produced in cables, it's mixed from one source to from other sources. Some will come from South America in places where they are generating, or from Africa where they're generating their electricity with heavy fuel. It's very difficult to achieve that. I think several companies have tried to get a trademark of copper, green copper, whatever, or green alumina, whatever, but at the end, the problem with this is that whoever buys the car, whoever buys the cable, does not want to pay for it. I am quite skeptical that we will get a premium with this. Another question is regarding the next phase, given Atalaya has invested more money into it, what percent of probability do you have given this project achieving its set goal? When do you negotiate better terms for Atalaya to reflect time, money, and risk?
Is there a horizon where it gets scrapped and you move on? If the project is scrapped, what intellectual property will Atalaya still have? Look, probabilities, I really do not know. This thing, we know that E-LIX works. The question here is to make sure, does it work to be economic at this size? Does it require an upsizing? Right now, from a variable cost point of view, it is economic. The problem when a plant is treating not too many tons, the fixed cost people basically are eating the economics. Simply doubling the capacity with installing more tanks, same people will make it economic, at least cash break even. We think that this goal will be known this year. Chances of this happening, I really cannot say. Part of this depends also on the cost of the big inputs. The cost of inputs are some reagents and electricity.
If electricity is lower, which in the future it looks like it's going to be, especially in Spain, then it becomes more economic. Most of the cost is, most of the variable cost is electricity. The thing is important. Another important point is, can it be used for other materials? I mean, it may not be interesting to treat copper concentrates, but it could be interesting to treat a blend or a global concentrate, for example, that's something that's copper lead zinc mixed, and the value, you don't get it from E-LIX itself. You get it from high recovery. I think that's what's going to happen. Is there a horizon where we get scrapped and you move on? I mean, I think the idea will be to try to benefit from installation by finding the right feed for it. We still have about rights. We still own.
We have ownership of exclusivity under certain conditions. Also, the last loans that we provided have attached to them an equity component that if we are not repaid, we will keep that. Yes, we will have a percent of that intellectual property, which will be a certain value. When do you negotiate better terms and things like that? I suppose this year, as soon as we get the final terms, will be time to be talking about what is the future of this venture. Right now, with the way we have it, is that we have a profit sharing agreement. Basically, we benefit from most of the added value to repay our investment. Of course, if there is no added value, we are not getting anything. I think at the end, we will find a way to get some added value back.
It will be decided this year, either one way or the other. You have not changed the full year forecast. Conservative? Maybe yes. Maybe yes, but last year was the only year that we did not fulfill our targets, and we want to make sure this does not happen again. Are you considering increasing the number of solar panels and retain tool? No, we are not at this moment. We are not at this moment simply because we cannot export electricity, and the installed capacity is the maximum we can consume.
Having said that, we are looking at installing batteries so we could use either we could install more solar or buy cheap solar power in the central hours of the day, where in Spain is very low, charge those batteries, and discharge that energy in the peak hours that happen every day before the sun goes up and after the sunset. This is something that we are looking at right now as we speak. Did the major power blackout of 28th of April affect operations? What lessons were learned and have there been changes to improve operational resilience? It affected us, I would say, around 10 hours of loss of production because we were going to have some maintenance anyway, and we advanced that maintenance partly to that stoppage. That is the maximum. As a company, what have we learned? It is difficult to say.
I think Spain, as a country, has learned a little bit. This is something that means that Spain has a lot of sustainable solar and wind, but also has a background of around 20% nuclear plus water, hydraulic, and gas. It is important to keep a balance. If too much solar and wind go at the same time in a moment of lack of demand, you have to have good interconnections to make sure that that excess production can go elsewhere, like it was going the day of the blackout. It was going to France, Morocco, and Portugal, but even better connections. Also, to keep a minimum source of electricity from synchronous power so that these things do not happen again. It is not the first time it happens in the world.
These small blackouts have happened in other parts in Australia, United States at least, and often due to the same reason. I think the lesson is that careful. We all like solar and wind, but everything with a balance. Not much more than we can do here because we get the electricity from the grid. About ESG, sustainability, CSG risk rating is 39, which is classified as high, while Atalaya ranks 86 out of 219 companies. It's a good performance relative to peers. Other companies like Antofagasta, 24, Medium, Central Asia, 28, have low risk ratings. Can we expect Atalaya to improve the ESG rating? Yes, and we have been working to reduce all parameters, and I'm extremely surprised to see Antofagasta having similar grades, open pit, and similar processing, how it can be lower.
I cannot judge from Central Asia, but I would expect that to get better ratings there. During your presentation, you mentioned that smelters were charging Atalaya. Just to clarify, Atalaya owns these smelters, or are they being operated by a third party? No, no. Smelters that are external smelters, any external smelter, the way they get paid for doing their job is they charge the suppliers of concentrate, in this case, Atalaya, by what they call treatment charges or refinement charges. They charge X dollars per ton of concentrate and X dollars per pound or cents per pound to refine the copper. That is the way they get paid for their operating costs. That has always been the case.
When the market is changing, because smelters need to be maintained alive and on, there has been some case where smelters have been buying concentrates in order to continue to operate and pay for those concentrates. Instead of charge for those concentrates, they pay for them. It means do not charge the company, but they pay the company to get the hands on top of their concentrates. Why do they do that? For several reasons. One, to have a good blend for the global. They cannot do that for 100%, but they can go into the market, buy some concentrates, get some revenues because they get the revenues from the acid that they produce or from the metal that they sell as refined metal or from the small impurities that they extract and that they sell in addition to pay for their costs.
Because what they have to do otherwise is to shut down or to reduce capacity, which is quite difficult in some smelters because simply they cannot run. You cannot run them at 50% because basically it will freeze. It will not be able to smelt to melt the concentrates. Another question is, given world prevailing prices, any update on silver and gold production? Any focus on this as a viable business? Yes, we are looking at two things. We are looking at the possibility of extracting some gold and silver from tailings. It's not that simple, but we are looking at that. It's not that simple because you need first to find the space to put these new tailings plus the permits. Right now, at these prices, it looks like it could be economic.
Also, we are looking at some exploration areas that we have in Ossa Morena, where we have a small deposit which is open pitable and gold, and to see if we can get some value from that. Will you be hedging any metals or currencies this year? We have not decided yet. It depends on the conditions. We are looking at the possibility of hedging metals always, especially medium terms, and currencies the same thing. Currencies could be due to the exchange rate of the euro dollar that has worsened for us in the last couple of months due to the unstability of the dollar. It's not easy to hedge currencies in the long term. Medium term could be done, but it's easier to do it with metals than with currencies.
Another question is on medium-term basis, what should be the stripping cost capitalized on a dollar per pound basis for Felgarado? Medium term, meaning second quarter. I think second quarter should be similar to this year, to the first part, so around $0.25 per pound because we will continue with that rhythm. At the end, whatever you extract now, you will not have it in the future. When will Masa Valverde start production? If we start the ramp this summer, it will still need two years to get into the ore. That is something that we are talking about 2027. Given your strong balance sheet, is at risk of leverage buyout? Do you plan to stay independent? Would it be better to be in that position?
I think the market is seeing constantly some transactions where the debt is absorbed by the buyer or by the merged situation, and the enterprise value is higher than the market cap. In our case, the enterprise value is lower, but I do not think that makes a big difference for somebody trying to take us over or not. In our case, the good defense that we have is that we have two or three shareholders together that make around 40%-50% of the company, and that they would not accept any lowball offer, and they can control anything happening. We will be staying independent until these big shareholders decide that if somebody wants us not to be independent, it is a fair price for everybody. This has been the case, but even now, even more so. Have you considered do a list in the U.K., Spain?
Yes, we have, and it looks like there is the possibility of a list in Spain, but we also would probably lose the index in the FTSE 250. There is a balance there, something that we do not. If we are listed in Spain, it looks like we cannot be part of the index. We can still be in the main market, but not part of the index. Next question is, when is expected to start blending higher amounts from San Dionisio with better recovery rates? I think this year will continue as we are, but next year we will start accessing the fresh ore. I think from 2026 onwards, it will already be fresh ore with better recoveries. Another question is, how much is the CapEx to move the road so that San Dionisio is working full-time, and how much will be paid by Atalaya?
The CapEx total of the road is around EUR 10 million, and it's all paid by Atalaya. It's no rush. We don't need to move the road until probably next year. It's not affecting at all the movement, but we pay for it. What is the outlook of Spain in diesel prices? It's difficult. It's basically Spain in general. We use industrial grade, has been going down with the diesel prices, but it depends a lot on the oil prices and the refining prices. So far, it's going down, I suppose, probably because the demand is lower, which is good for us. I would say around 25% of the operating cost and the mining cost is diesel, 25%-30%, which means it has an influence. How much of San Dionisio this year and at what copper grades?
I don't have it here in my hand, but I will try to send it to you. I think it's going to be roughly around 10%, around 1.5 million-2 million tons, and average grades probably around 0.6 or in that order, maybe a little bit higher. Just rough numbers back from memory, but I need to check. Another thing is the light that you are considering installing batteries. Are there government grants available to help pay for the batteries? Probably they are, but we are very skeptical about grants because they always come late, and you have to apply for them and give it to you have to be awarded by the grants before you even start, which means you have to wait until you start like one year, and these things make sense if you move fast. I'm not aware of any grants.
Planning for any acquisitions locally and overseas, anything pending? We're always looking at things. We are always looking at things locally, and we are looking at things overseas that make sense, always in metals or copper, and always anything that makes sense and can add pipeline of growth. Another thing is nice to be the biggest rising stock of FTSE today. Very happy for that and happy that at last the values are starting to be recognized and the patience of everybody rewarded. That's all the questions. Thank you very much for your continued support. I see lots of names, positive of shareholders that are well-known, and always very happy for your continued support. For those of you that have our contacts, please send us any detailed question, and happy to also have individual sessions if you need to.
Thank you very much, and now I pass it to the operator to close.
Perfect. Alberto, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the board can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management of Atalaya Mining, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.