Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Atalaya Mining Q3 and YTD 2025 Results Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session through the phone lines, and instructions will follow at that time. I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to the CEO of Atalaya Mining, Alberto Lavandeira, to open the presentation. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, Operator. Good morning, everybody in Europe. I have with me César Sánchez, the CFO of the company, that can assist us in replying to any questions in relation to the details of the financial statements or the economic results. With that, I will start going directly into the presentation that is on the screen, and I hope that you have received it just in case. We are pleased to report a quite solid quarter. This leaves us on track to achieve our full year guidance. The production was solid, and we had already released that, and the costs have been quite good so far. This year, combined with good copper price, it means that our financial performance was quite good.
Even with our capital investments, we have generated strong free cash flow, and our net cost position, we do not have any debt, continues to grow, and we have an excellent working capital situation. I will cover a little bit more of that in the background of the presentation, in the later part of the presentation. Looking at some, you have in slide 6 the details of the results of year to date. There are some initiatives, corporate initiatives that are worth mentioning now. As you know, we re-domiciled out of Cyprus in order to be able to be included in the index in the FTSE 250, and we had some challenges with the physical certificates of shareholders coming from the old times of mining. We have implemented some arrangements to be able to facilitate those certificates into CDIs.
Also, preparing for the succession plan, we have a quite good team on board at our operating mines. We have appointed Fernando Araúz as General Manager of Riotinto. He's a very experienced mine engineer that has been Deputy Manager for some years, and he has taken the operations succeeding Enrique Delgado. I will give you some progress of our assets in the later part of the presentation. Looking at the ESG matters, our board and sustainability, our board continues to progress the change in composition, and we have had a few additions to our board, and some others have retired after having been over 10 years in our company. Of course, we continue focused in the places where we operate.
We are a very welcome neighbor, and Riotinto have the villages just around this historic mining area, and we have our foundation Riotinto that continues doing activities around the local communities with Riotinto. We continue, of course, to focus in improving our safety performance and culture. This is some of the most important things that we have in our company. Going directly into our results, the production had been released and is 12,000, a little bit over 12,000 tons of copper, which is slightly lower than the first half, but also consistent with our guidance that was expected to have a little bit better rates and production in the first half of the year. The mill performed very well. Very strongly, we treated 4.3 million tons of ore. Remind you that this mill has been designed for 15 million tons per year.
We are consistently, year by year, producing more through the installations. You will see in the upper part of the graph that quarter by quarter, there are some ups and downs related to, basically only related to the maintenance of the mill. Whenever we have a quarter that we have maintenance, our production is slightly lower. This will be the case in Q4. We will be treating slightly lower tons because we carried one of these one-week maintenance during the early days of October. Still, we expect to have a quite decent quarter, last quarter. The grades of the quarter were solid, 0.38%, slightly better than our reserve grade as Alterra Colorado, 0.7. We had some lower recoveries due to the complex metallurgy as soon as we blend a little bit of the material coming from the upper parts of San Dionisio.
All in, at the end, the production was solid. We expect this metallurgy to improve as we move deeper into the San Dionisio deposit as soon as we start getting away from surface and getting into the fresh material. With that production in mind, what did it generate as financial results? We had revenues that were solid, basically due to the higher concentrate sales and good copper price, and of course, low offsite costs. The cost performance was quite good also, even including a provision that we have around EUR 4.4 million of a potential tax reassessment related to the tailings land, and probably because we were underestimating the potential tax impact from the municipalities. We preferred to put this provision just in case, which affects a little bit of our EBITDA, but really, it is what it is.
Even with that, we had an EBITDA of around EUR 31 million, and operating cash flow was around EUR 42 million. Even after investments of around EUR 18 million, we had a very strong free cash flow of around EUR 24 million. The main investment in this quarter has been basically mining. The first strip in San Dionisio, the Hero San Dionisio, has been accelerated and subcapitalized strip in Atalaya Colorado, and of course, continuing to raise the existing tailings facility, which we plan in the future to construct a new tailings facility to avoid the recurrent investments that we have to do every year. As a result of that, our cash flow, our cash position increased to around EUR 90 million, and the working capital position is also very healthy, over $100 million. That is the quarter. What happens year to date?
Looking at nine-month figures, the EBITDA is around EUR 140 million, and the free cash flow around half of that, a little bit less than half of that, EUR 60 million. This position shows us that we are going to be having a very healthy last quarter and full year results. What generated all these numbers is the detailed breakdown of the cash costs that you are seeing in your screen. The cost performance to date has been quite positive. If you compare the third quarter with previous quarters, when you look at mining processing costs and site costs, they are very similar to what we had during the full year of 2024, but are substantially lower than when you look at the cumulative to date during 2025.
Our cash costs have been around $2.55 per pound, and all-in sustaining costs just under $3 per pound, at $2.98 per pound. This was during Q3. In year to date, we continue trending very well with cash costs around $2.33 per pound and $2.84 per pound in all-in sustaining costs. The main reasons for all this are several. Outside, the onsite costs are very consistent with the past, lower than previous year, simply as a result of better production. We are keeping inflation well under control, the lower costs come from better production. Of course, the big improvement comes from the byproduct credits, which, as you know, the silver prices have been increasing quite a lot in the last year, I would say, which is a big improvement from previous year, having $0.35 per pound accumulated negative in our cash costs.
Also, a very good improvement is the lower TCs or Cs in the copper industry, which we expect to continue, and we even expect to improve during Q4. The treatment charges and transport costs and freight and all these things to sell our concentrates are basically half of what we had during 2024, and just under $0.30 per pound. All in, our offsite costs mean that we had a negative rate of around $0.07 during the year or $0.20 during this quarter, negative to sell our products. We continue to benefit from selling some few spot sales into the market. As you know, sometimes in some of the shipments, you can get negative treatment charges and with zero penalties, very competitive terms, and we are looking to be selling some of these spot lots during the last quarter.
The rest of the production, we set at a benchmark, which, as you also know, is substantially lower than 2024 and likely to drop even more into 2025. All-in sustaining costs also decreased, even if we have some higher capitalized strip in Alterra Colorado. As we said, we kind of set that through to the other mining costs. The negative part has been that during 2025, the Euro strengthened a little bit versus the dollar. It went from EUR 1.05, EUR 1.06 to EUR 1.15. That is around a 10% increase in our site costs, and most of our costs are in euros, the local costs. That has been a kind of negative, but even so, as you can see, our costs have been quite competitive. We always like to benchmark how we are looking because, obviously, we benchmark with all our peers that publish results, always based on public information.
We continue to show that, basically, due to improving rates and good cost control, our all-in sustaining costs have been trending down nicely, even with inflation. Of course, some of our peers have the luxury of having very good byproducts in the form of gold. We have the wooden improvement in the form of silver. Regardless, we continue to see our costs well under $3.50 all-in sustaining costs, which starts to be seen as a kind of benchmark in the world. Even with large projects, this is slightly the new norm. How are we looking at 2025, the guidance? There is not much to go now. It is only a month and a half to go. We expect to be achieving our guidance.
We have maintained the guidance because we know that we are going to have slightly lower production in the second half of the year. The last quarter, considering that we are going to be having a stop, we have had already a stop at the plant, and the rates are going to be similar to what we are treating. We expect that we do not want to be changing our guidance, although very likely will be either in the middle range or the high part of the guidance from production. As a result of that, our all-in costs and cash costs are going to be in the lower end of our guidance.
For some accounting reasons, which César can explain later, we have the non-sustaining CapEx is not expected to be in the high end simply because the CapEx, the per strip in San Dionisio, we are still not in a normal steady production. So we are capitalizing that. So we will be having our all-in sustaining costs in the high end. I know most of the companies report more C1 than all-in sustaining costs, but anyway, just to be consistent with what has been our history. Now, moving on to our projects, the driver of the increase of grade is expected to be this area of San Dionisio. San Dionisio, just in case you do not know, it is this hill here seen in the center of the picture. We have accelerated the stripping activities during Q3, and you can see that slowly the red part of the hill is going down.
The red shows oxidation. Basically, we are slowly disappearing that hill that used to be quite higher. We continue to focus in waste stripping to provide access to better material, which is under the hill. In the far end, you will also see our solar plant that is now running and our process installations in the left corner of the picture. Another growth project is going to be Masa Valverde. Masa Valverde, there has not been a huge progress during the quarter, but we continue advancing there. Right now, we are finalizing the access to the land, to the portal, which is a small lot here. We ran into some administrative issues with the landowners, and we are expecting to have a forced occupation expropriation to sort out some of these administrative issues.
Once this is finalized, we expect to start the development of the ramp, of course, something to final board approval. The idea of that ramp is basically three sections that will drive first to one deposit called [Masa Valverde], which is a good polymetallic deposit that we discovered a few years ago, but it's a little bit complex that requires to have a zinc circuit. Basically, the idea is to get into the copper zone where we will start shipping all directly from high-grade material from this deposit to our plant at Riotinto. We will focus directly into the zone, and we have had during the quarter two rigs defining with wedges some of this zone to be able to finalize the reserve calculation of this high-grade zone.
We have already given some highlights and some exploration update of these wide and high-grade intercepts in the past, and this can be found in the last part of the presentation. Obviously, another important thing is total. We have had this early this week, what was called a national forum of critical event, Proyecto Masa in Huelva, in our province, where in the picture shown, you can see the minister, the consellera of Galicia, where we have the Touro project of Extremadura, where we have the Arcangel project, and of Andalusia, where we have our operations of Riotinto and Masa Valverde. Certainly, it is showing a very good support of the mining in this part of the area. Mining is very welcome. There are several operators and several projects being developed.
We had also the luxury of taking advantage of the presence of the Minister of Industry in the area to bring her to visit our operations. She was at Riotinto in the central picture, very surprised and showed in all the newspapers and in the networks the support of the company, how impressive it was for the controls, and good quality and good sustainability practices that we have, mining very close to villages, and with our mines being crossed by a public highway, showing basically that the operations can be done nicely in any part of the world. I think this is very important for the development of Touro. We continue to receive very good support from Touro. Of course, we believe that Touro has the potential to be a huge value driver for Atalaya.
We are just developing one part of the deposit, permitting that that would run for over 20 years, likely it would have a production of around 30,000 tons of copper, and with a capital intensity which is going to be quite low, around $10,000 per ton of copper produced. We are already working with engineering firm finalizing all the engineering. This capital intensity, very low capital intensity, is much lower than most of the projects globally, and especially those that are being remote, due to the position that very good infrastructure we have. Operating costs are expected to be quite low with shallow pits, solid grades, better recoveries, high-quality concentrates.
All in, again, what this means is that the all-in sustaining costs of Touro are going to be around $0.50, maybe a little bit higher than lower than what we enjoy at Riotinto, which means you can think we are talking about a project that's going to be producing all-in sustaining costs in the range of $2.50-$3.00 per pound, which is excellent nowadays. Quite a busy year, 2025 so far, and we continue to have the rest of the year also to be very busy. I've already run through most of the points, but we will continue drilling in Masa Valverde, continue basically stripping in San Dionisio, finally, hopefully getting the final environmental impact declaration in Touro, finalize the bottleneck in E-LIX.
We are already drilling in, we are drilling also in a San Antonio satellite deposit, which is located east of Cerro Colorado. We also have a couple of rigs drilling in Sweden in our joint venture that we have in Sweden, just testing all the anomalies that have been defined during the geophysics campaign during the summer. Very, very, very interesting time. I will just finalize the presentation, just having a few words about what we are seeing in the market. As you have seen, we have had lots of M&A activity of copper gold during the year. I think the markets are realizing that the copper market, it's quite interesting. I think there's a lack of projects, and we continue to see lots of activity and lots of new investors coming into our register. Our share price has performed very well.
Our liquidity has increased substantially since we are in the 40%-50%. Anyway, we are just showing what's going on, and it looks like the copper fundamentals are improving. People are looking to grow, and we also continue to grow. We are continuously looking at new acquisitions, new proposals, and we'll continue to do that. The reason of that is very simple. The world is consuming 2%-3% more copper with the growth in population and GDP. On the other hand, in the right side of the picture, you will see that five of the 10 largest copper producers in the world have run into trouble.
Since we last spoke in the quarter two results, we have had an incident that has been quite challenging, which is the unfortunate accident that happened in the second largest mine in the world, Grasberg, which meant that there was a huge amount of production disappearing for the moment, at least during a year or a year and a half. We also know that Escondida, the largest mine in the world, has some plans of lower production in the near years later to be recovered, but we will go through a valley of production, plus some other challenges that we have seen with accidents happening in Cabaña, Teniente. Again, what this shows is that we will have a likely pool of production, which means we will have higher copper prices, which means that we will be enjoying better copper prices in an environment of growth.
Where we want to go, we have right now 50,000 tons, roughly, production. We will be growing our production by adding the copper zone of San Dionisio. We will also be adding in the future the copper zone of Masa Valverde, and we will also be bringing our total production hopefully in less than two years. We will be bringing some additional polymetallic ore, which contains zinc, also in the next years, which means that our company, we see a clear pathway to grow to 100,000 tons of copper equivalent in the coming years, probably not more than three years, including the polymetallics. We have an excellent balance sheet with no net debt, with net cash position, no hidden liabilities in our balance sheet, like streams, royalties, or anything like that. We are a company which is a consistent dividend payer.
We have been paying already EUR 84 million in dividends since we started in 2021. We believe that paying the dividends is not something that goes against the capital requirements that we will have for Touro because both things can be maintained, as we have said. I think we offer a unique combination of a copper pure play listed in London with being part of the market with proven team. I think teams today is one of the most important assets of the company. To be able to deliver continuously every day, 24 hours, 360 days a year is extremely important. It is also important to be in a stable jurisdiction where you have very low rotation of your teams. You have good support of the authorities. You have a legal backing. I think we offer a unique situation.
I would say that with this, I would like to open it to any questions. Maybe the operator can make the introduction.
Thank you. We are now opening the floor for a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Again, as a reminder, to ask a question on the phone lines, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for a brief moment to wait for the questions to come in. Your first question comes from the line of Paul Kirjanov of Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning, Alberto and César. It's Paul from Bank of America. How are you doing? I have a quick question on cash cost for Q4. I think, Alberto, you mentioned this already briefly, but if you can give more color. Just based on your guidance and what you achieved year to date, it seems like cash costs will be stepping up in Q4. Is that just a function of lower production, or are you expecting actual costs to go up? Thank you.
I think it will all depend on lower production. Actually, when we look at the breakdown in Q3 and also year to date, we expect the mining to be similar or lower than this year. Processing will be similar. The tension of production is quite constant in the cost per ton. Other costs, I think, will be slightly lower than Q3 because we have some things added this quarter that should not be there in the next quarter. That is on site costs.
In offsite costs, we will continue processing same type of material with similar production of silver. Anyway, the silver stays where it is. We would expect the similar byproduct rates. As per TCs or Cs and offsite costs, most of the material will be sold at our benchmark contracts, but we will have a lot being sold at spot, which we already have the conditions, which should be lower than we had in Q3. All in, I would expect it to be either flat or even lower than what we had in Q3. It is very similar in, let's say, the site costs, but lower in the offsite costs. Overall, I expect it to be equal or slightly lower.
Just to add a little bit more color on what Alberto just said, if you see Q3 quarter cost on absolute terms, they are even less than previous quarter. The only reason why we have a slightly high cash cost is mainly coming from the production of copper. It is not on cost.
Okay. Understood. Maybe if I can ask a second question, and you again alluded to this, Alberto, during your opening remarks, but can you give us a bit more color on what you expect in terms of timelines for Proyecto Touro? I know you are in discussions, but if you can shed a bit more light on how that is progressing and what you are expecting going forward. Thank you.
It is a very good question that I always say that I have been wrong for lots of times. It's true because we had the luxury of having this Minister of Industry, which is ultimately the person responsible for this, and we had her here during the conference and also visiting the site and having lunch and spending lots of hours. It's not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's when it's going to happen. It's going to happen for sure. We expected to have it. They acknowledge that they are late. They acknowledge they are late under the wrong imposed regime of one year without interruptions to get the permits. They are late due to the two reports. One is the Water Department, and the other one is Natural Heritage. For Natural Heritage, we have already seen a draft, so we don't expect that to be long. Water Department is still delayed.
What we understand is it has been some refreshing reshuffling in the Water Department. I mean, this is from informal communications where some people have moved to other departments, and there was a lack of people to go through this, our file. We have been promised that we were going to be getting the Environmental Impact Declaration, the DIA, before the end of the year. We are in November. I find it a little bit tight to have that. I would say probably during the first quarter. Certainly not in the second quarter or third quarter or next year. We are talking about weeks or months, not half of years or things like that.
With enough confidence, obviously from informal conversations, for us to launch purchase of land of some landlots for electric lines to be working with the engineering firm in all the detailed engineering of the project, including having everything ready to start purchasing big items, including already visits to suppliers to get basically ready to push the button. We are quite confident that this is going to happen soon.
Yeah, understood. Thank you.
Question comes from the line of Julio Mondragon of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Hi, Alberto, César. Good morning. Julio here. Just a couple of questions. I will start with the first one about stripping waste and stripping volumes. Where do you see the stripping of San Dionisio in 2026? Maybe just to have a broad idea, a ballpark number of how much of the stripping do you expect to capitalize in Q4 and maybe looking into 2026?
You have the numbers, César, there?
Yes. I do have some numbers. In terms of stripping from San Dionisio, Q4 will be very similar to Q2, the previous quarter. Altogether, we move around close to 900,000. I think that Q4 will continue in that line, similar to Q3, which mined around 379,000 tons. Could be meters. Sorry, could be meters. All the cost incurred in Q4 for San Dionisio stripping will be capitalized without going through the P&L. That means it will go directly to the balance sheet without hitting the stripping cost line for calculating the rolling sustaining cost.
In terms of 2026, we need to see when we start getting ore from San Dionisio on a steady mode. Once we get that, we will start expensing the cost incurring mining and then capitalize compared to the average of the life of mine. That means that probably during the first six months of 2026, all the costs incurring in mining for San Dionisio will continue to be capitalized as it's been in Q3 and will be in the full 2025. In the second half of 2026, it will go through expense and then only capitalize the portion above the strip ratio average. That will be and need to be confirmed sort of at mid-next year.
Perfect. Thank you very much on that. Just changing gears, but still in San Dionisio. Looking at the production chart you presented in your presentation, do you expect production to increase significantly in 2026? I know that you haven't provided the guidance yet, but is there a ballpark number for the contribution share from San Dionisio versus the whole Riotinto complex, like 10%, 20% of ore coming from there?
Our goal is to start with around 10% from there and then continue to be increasing. That's the plan. In order to pass over, let's say, 30% in the future or 20%, we need to do some work at the plant to include some areas to recover zinc because there are some areas with zinc that we'd like not to lose. That's something that we're working in already right now with some designs of an engineering firm working on this. Initially, this next year, you will see some increase, but not a huge amount of increase.
Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for the answers and have a good day.
Thank you, Julio.
Next question comes from the line of Laura Chan of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning, Alberto. Good morning, César. Thanks for the call. I just have a question with regards to the Helix fund. Could you just provide a bit more color of your strategy around that, your latest thoughts, and when you think we can expect the results from the third-party review? Thanks.
We have received already a report of the engineering firm reviewing this, and still, this is a draft. During this quarter, we will take some decisions at the board to see how we can optimize that operation. The way it's working right now is that it's either very close to break-even or breaking even, depending on the material that's fed through. It's working removing zinc from copper zinc concentrates and extracting a zinc precipitate with gold and silver contents, especially silver contents. They are constructing a small line to remove the gold and silver in a separate stream so that you can get better payabilities due to the high values of copper and gold. Right now, in the situation where we are, I mean, this company is working basically with loans and with very limited funding. We are contemplating the possibilities of providing some additional credit lines in order to finalize these streams. All this will be a little bit dependent on the analysis of this report.
I've seen the draft of the report. The report is positive. It indicates that it has a huge potential as an overall process system. The plant right now, the current plant where we call phase I, is small, and as such, it has an important content or important factoring of the fixed costs, which makes it a little bit less interesting. The potential is very important. I would say this quarter, we will take the decision, and we would like to have next year kind of a steady operation where the bottom line of that plan should be positive. We have it very clear that we have lots of patience, but what we will not do is drain cash. We have not drained cash recently in the last year and a half, but also have not provided any special, let's say, added value to the operations. The process is advancing.
It takes time, but it's advancing, especially when you consider it's a high confidential and quite new system, totally different to what's in the market. So the due diligence and reviews are not that straightforward.
Okay. Great. Thanks so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Tony Robson of Global Mining Research. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Thank you for taking my question, and good morning, gentlemen. Following on from an earlier analyst question on the timing for Touro, but Alberto, given just your comments, which are surprisingly positive, hopefully positive on E-LIX. How do you think of your timing in terms of your two big growth projects, Poly MS versus Touro? Could we assume now that, even with some permitting still to come, that Touro is now advancing more rapidly than the Poly MS option? Thank you.
I would say so. I would say that we expect the total project to be starting during 2026, including the construction. We have a team already, the engineering firm. The financing, I won't say finalized, but almost finalized. When we finalize it, we will announce it, but it's basically ready, plus the balance sheet that we have. In the case of the Poly, we are still in the engineering side. I expect that I would like to start at least doing something during 2026. Basically, the polymetallic , basically what it includes is the addition of one line of zinc, which also basically includes some flotation cells, associated thickener and filters, and some regrinding with these vertical mills or towel mills or isomills, any type of this small ceramic regrinding. We are already working in layouts and engineering and all these things.
Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if we started also in 2026, but I would say later part of 2026, while in total, we expect it to start in the first part of 2026.
Okay. All clear. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Tim Huth of Canaccord, U.K. Your line is now open.
Yes. Thanks very much. Just two quick follow-up questions. First, on San Dionisio, I know you've indicated that the capitalized spend is going to be first half weighted. I'm just wondering on the strip. Is that strip supposed to be—I mean, I know it's trying to get maybe too cute, but is the strip supposed to be full on throughout the whole of the first half, or is that pulling back after a peak in stripping rates in the first quarter? And then the second question was a follow-up on Touro. I know very positive there, but worst-case scenario, you don't get the approvals by the end of the first quarter. Are there elements of the project that you can be moving forward on during the second and third quarter of next year? Thanks.
Your line was quite important, but if I understand well, we're talking about the strip ratio variations in San Dionisio. Look, globally, San Dionisio—I don't know exactly. Probably we can follow this with more details. The global San Dionisio is a hill that has roughly around 50 million tons in the upper part, open pittable. Potentially open pittable in around, let's say, 20 million in the part that can be mined underground. Obviously, it depends on the bottom of this open pit and still subject to geotechnical evaluations when you start getting deeper. Right now, it's quite easy.
You will pass some of this open pit to the underground. From this upper part, I would say roughly 25 million is copper ore with very limited zinc, but with some zinc, with some zinc in the edges of the old polymetallics because we are mining the stop work that's located in one of the sides of the polymetallics that have been mined out. The overall strip ratio based on this big pit was around 4.5-1, if I remember well. We have to look at previous reports published. From this copper-only part, I'm guessing, but I think it's higher, it's like 10-1 or whatever like that, if we only consider that high copper zone and you don't consider the lower part of the polymetallic.
The other one was if we do not start in the first part, will we start in the second part? Yes, yes. I am sure that—I would say 100% sure that by summer, there will be lots of activity going on there. There are several reasons for that. One is the political situation. One is that the summer period is—we are insisting a lot that we want to construct at least during summer to have all this activity. I think it is very unlikely that this thing is delayed beyond that. For us, it is important not to lose some windows, but we are quite confident. What will happen if we delay? It is a pity because we have a team there ready, and the only thing that we can do in addition to that is basically do some exploration, which we are doing already.
Also, at the same time, we do not want to publish too much exploration while you are in the middle of a permitting because it could create issues and change the scope of the project. It is a little bit of a chicken and egg. Yeah, but I am quite confident that during the first part of the year, there will be lots of activity going on in Touro.
Alberto, if I am—Tim, but just to give a little bit more information on the tons moved, which also complements my response to Julio from BMO. Year to date, during 2025, we mine 5.7 million tons in San Dionisio of waste versus 900,000 of ore. That is the strip ratio that will continue in Q4 and start to be reduced by mid next year.
That is great. Thank you very much.
Question comes from the line of Richard Hatch of Berenberg. Your line is now open.
T hanks. Just one question from me just on the recoveries at Riotinto. You post a recovery this morning of just under 75%. You talk about that recovery rate improving. Can you just, as you go deeper through San Dionisio, can you just give us some time frames as to when you expect to see that recovery move higher and what you expect it to settle out at, please? Thanks.
This next quarter, we expect it to go over 80% again because we are not mixing—well, according to the plans we have seen, we are not mixing this oxidized material. In the future, when we start mining normally in the—when we are mining in Cerro Colorado, which is more or less conventional ore, we are in the mid-80s, 84%-85%, depends on the top—it's a balance. If we push the tons more, we reduce a little bit the recovery, but it's around, let's say, 84%-85%. Historically, when this San Dionisio hill was mined using underground methods, and they were mining an area of stockware with grades of around 1.5% copper, historically, they used to recover 85%-87% of the copper. It means that when we start getting into fresh material, we should be in the mid-80s.
One thing—sorry, to support what Alberto just said, if you see the breakdown by month of the Q3 recoveries, the average is what you see in the presentation, which is 74%. If you split down in July, it was 70%. In August, it was 75%, and in September, it is 78%, so close to 79%. That supports what Alberto just said, that the recovery is increasing month by month, and it will be doing so during Q4 2025.
Okay. Just one clarification point. Therefore, we should assume that recovery settles out in the sort of low to mid-80% blended for the mine.
That is the plan, yeah.
Right. Right. Thanks for your time.
Thank you. There are no further questions on the conference line. I will now hand over to the management for closing remarks.
Many thanks. Thank you, everybody, for being here. Thanks to you for your continued support, as usual. Hopefully, we will continue delivering. If you have any questions, of course, you will have our contacts, and we'll be very happy to follow up with any things that you may have. Thanks very much for your time.