Welcome, everyone. I appreciate you guys joining me this morning to my presentation. I will be making some forward-looking statements, so bear with me for about 15 or 20 minutes. I will try to leave a minute or two for questions at the end. When it comes to silver, it is hard not to think about First Majestic and vice versa. These are some of the points that differentiates First Majestic from the rest. We have been in the business for over 23 years now. The majority of our revenue is silver, and that is really what justifies us being a silver company, 63% so far and increasing. We do have a very strong liquid stock, which again, attracts a lot of institutions to the space. Our beta and our leverage to silver is real, and you see that.
It goes both ways, obviously, today is a bit of a different day, but we are quite bullish on the long term for this metal. We are the only mining company that owns and operates its mint, which again, puts us at a different category compared to the peers. Before diving into the company, just a high-level view on silver. It is no surprise that silver has been in a constructive deficit for the last six years. Cumulatively, that is 840 million ounces. That is one year of annual supply basically being washed away in the last five, six years. Another key point here is 2025, 2026 had an accumulative deficit of 150 million ounces of silver. We had a record production year last year of just over 15 million ounces.
That is 23 years in the making, and that means we need 10 brand new First Majestics to enter the market right now to bridge this deficit. This deficit, interestingly enough, doesn't take into account additional supply or additional demand that is hitting the market. The buzzword these days is AI. Well, for every one AI data center, you need six and a half tons of silver. Forget about the solid-state batteries that Samsung is doing and all the solar panels. These are just additional supply, or sorry, demand that is coming in and without matched supply. On the company, so we are a silver company. About 63% of our revenue comes from silver, one-third is gold and the balance is lead and zinc. We own and operate four underground mines in Mexico, and we also have a significant gold pipeline asset that is coming online next year in Nevada.
What differentiates these assets, they are chunky assets. They come with a big land package, over 350,000 hectares across the portfolio, which allows us to invest, expand, and extend the life of mining these assets. As I mentioned, we are the only mining company that owns and operates its mint. Quite exciting and new part of the business, which I have a couple of slides to talk about that. We do have a very ambitious goal of keep growing in silver and become the largest silver-producing company globally. We updated our guidance in July, and interestingly enough, this is the second year in a row where we raised the guidance. We are shooting for about 14.5 million, 15.5 million ounces of pure silver. Most of the balance is gold and some lead and zinc in there as well.
Very robust production profile, sub CAD 30, so you can imagine the margins that we're recognizing right now at these current metal prices. Part of the CapEx, or part of the guidance is our capital investments. We see a lot of value putting money back in the business. One of the highlights here, obviously we're doing almost 350 million ounces or dollars of investments. The majority of that is exploration. We're putting 300 kilometers of drilling back in the business. We've seen dividends of that, and I'll touch on that in the next few slides. We're also expanding operations, and again, this is the time to put money back and invest in these assets. Some of the highlights, not going to go through that, but ultimately with cost discipline and metal prices, this is all translating in a much improved balance sheet. Obviously, revenue is expanding.
EBITDA, cash flow ultimately is what it comes down to, and hitting the bottom line and ultimately the treasury. We've had some success with some exploration permits as well, or construction permits at Santa Elena. I'll talk about that in a second. We've been active on capital return to investors between the dividends that was recently increased, as well as the share buyback that we've done really from last year throughout this year. These are just some of the graphical presentations of the previous slide, but you can see, you look 12 months prior to these quarters, production was relatively the same, but you see the massive step change, and that's really related to the metal prices. Twelve, 18 months ago, silver was around CAD 30. It's more than double right now, and you see that's hitting directly the bottom line.
Quarter of a billion dollars of quarterly free cash flow gives us a lot of flexibility in investing and extending the life of our assets. The assets, as some of you guys know, are spread across Mexico. These are the four operating assets. What differentiates them, again, they're all in adjacent states within Mexico, and these are arguably the most mining-friendly states in Mexico.
We also have Jerritt Canyon, that's in Elko, Nevada, as well as our mint, First Mint operation in Las Vegas, Nevada, head office is in Vancouver, Canada. Getting into the operations. Los Gatos, we closed this transaction last year, the largest and most significant transaction in the company's history. Very competitive process when it was ran, and we're obviously very happy and pleased to have won this bid. When we did the analysis, this asset made sense at CAD 23 silver. It was accretive on all fronts.
You can only imagine the cash flow and the rapid payback that we're recognizing right now. Relatively new assets, brand new mill. This asset currently has a 10-year life of mine, which we're quite excited about. But what we're more excited about is the land package that this asset comes with. It's tough to see on the slide, but in the middle of the slide, you see a small box that says CLG. That's the life of mine of this asset. However, all the colored boxes and concessions surrounding that represents 103,000 hectares that are virtually unexplored. This tells us that this mill that we saw earlier is going to be operating for way beyond the life of mine that's currently on paper. And that's what we like about these assets. They're district scale assets, majority silver over here, and some lead and zinc.
Similarly, our second cornerstone asset is Santa Elena, and this is an attestment to what First Majestic does to these assets. We bought this asset 10 years ago, and it had a six and a half life of mine 10 years ago with about one third of the current production profile. Today, this asset is producing close to 10 million ounces, and it has an 11-year life of mine today. Significant producer and low cost. Similar to Los Gatos, it comes with a massive land package. All these color concessions represent the land package that we have, 102,000 hectares. All the exploration that was done is in that pink pin right in the middle. That is only 5 kilometers around the mill. Within that, we found four discoveries throughout the periods that we have owned it.
The bottom left shows you Santa Elena is basically the main complex in the top gray area, and then we have the most recent discoveries, Santo Niño and Navidad. Those discoveries added 90 million ounces of incremental resource to the current operation. I mentioned that we are investing in our assets. We are expanding the operation here from about 3,100 tons per day to 3,500 tons per day on the back of those two new discoveries that we have announced recently. You see them there. They are basically within 3 kilometers from the main mill. We have two ramps that these graphs on the right show. We are driving them. We got the construction portal about a month or a month and a half ago, and we are currently developing them. That expedited production from here by about 18 to 24 months.
This is again, going to be incremental growth starting potentially end of next year and early 2028. A lot of exciting stuff in this district, and obviously we are quite pleased to have it. Our third cornerstone asset is San Dimas, again, a very well-known asset in Mexico. It has been in operation for two centuries. Dory producer, 50% gold, 50% silver, one of the most important assets in Durango. One of the larger employer in Durango as well. And big land package. Similarly to the other two assets, this comes with 72,000 hectares with outcrops and geology all over the place. We have just put an update last month about some of the exploration success.
This asset is actually receiving the majority of our exploration budget, 117 kilometers of drilling is pretty serious and has yielded some really exciting results that we are going to continue following up on throughout this year and early next year. Look for further updates here. Quite interesting about San Dimas is we actually own and operate our own hydro dam. That obviously helps us contain our energy costs and reduces our exposure to diesel. This was a question that we do receive, what is going on with your diesel exposure? San Dimas is on hydro dam, Santa Elena, and La Encantada are on LNG. We are not really exposed to all these inflationary energy costs that a lot of others are witnessing. La Encantada is our smallest mine, but nevertheless is the purest. It is pretty much 100% silver, which is quite unique.
It is 100% torque and leverage to the silver price that we see going on right now. It is arguably the most improved asset in the portfolio in the last couple of years. It has been beating and setting new records for us. It just produced over 1 million ounces last quarter and is projecting to significantly beat the guidance that we put out earlier in the year. We are quite pleased to have this asset in the portfolio. Jerritt Canyon, quite important, quite unique asset. We shut down Jerritt in March of 2023 for a number of reasons. Obviously, lower gold price was one of them. Third-party contractors and just inefficient way of operating it. We paused, we wanted to reset it, and this is what we are doing right now. We announced a restart after getting a new mine plan in place.
New fleet has been ordered, so we are going to do this as we typically do in Mexico, self-perform mining, with a new mine plan and really a new improved way of doing things there. We are taking advantage of the mill being down, optimizing and modernizing that as well. Our target restart is in H2 of 2027. We put out an update recently and we will continue putting updates mainly on the exploration and really the project status in the next couple of months. Look for updates here. Our mint is one of the unique and exciting part of the business. Selling our own bullion, these are some of the examples that you see here, is nothing new to First Majestic. We started doing this in 2008.
This is our own silver that we refine, and up until recently, we used third-party mints to process it and deliver the product to us. But over time, retail demand has picked up quite a bit to the point that third-party mints were not able to supply us with that inventory. We decided to debottleneck this side of the business and go full vertical integration by building our own facility. We have a brand new facility in Vegas that got inaugurated about 18 months ago, and we are having lots of fun with it, different SKUs. The unique thing with this is you are able to capture additional margins above and beyond the spot price. Silver typically gets sold at spot.
Now we have the ability to divert currently about 10% to 15% of our production through this facility, and we are able to capture an additional 15% to 20% more margin that ultimately goes straight to the bottom line. It is exciting, unique, and profitable part of the business. Our balance sheet, it is probably a similar story to most of the people here, has been a new problem for us to have clean and continue to strengthen balance sheet. Our liquidity is over CAD 1 billion. We have CAD 1.2 billion, CAD 1.3 billion in the bank right now. And that is only really the leverage that you get from the metal prices that we are seeing right now. This liquidity, we do get a lot of questions what we do with it.
It does give us the flexibility in putting money back in the business, gives us the flexibility for M&A and doing more capital allocation avenues going forward as we move on. The shareholder list is here. I think one of the key takeaways from this slide is the liquidity of First Majestic. We trade about $200 million to $250 million a day. That's about 100% of the float gets turned over every month. That's a great number and a great position for a company our size to be in. It gives us lower cost to capital, it gives us the flexibility and really puts us on the radar for some of the big ETFs and index funds that enjoy this liquidity matched with dividends and obviously this exposure to silver. Our dividend policy has been in place for about five or six years now. It's quite unique.
It's designed as a percentage of the top line. It used to be 1% up until recently. In January 2026, we doubled that, so it's currently 2% of revenue. It's designed to give direct exposure to metal prices. So as metal prices run up, revenue increases and obviously the payout increases. So match that with improved production, higher revenue, and higher metal prices, our dividends per share increased quite a bit for this year and will continue to do so. Some of the future catalysts for us is really investing back in the business. The exploration program is quite robust, it's quite extensive, and has yielded a lot of dividends. We've been putting a lot of updates, and we'll continue to do so. We'll be putting a couple more updates before year-end, and then we'll be updating our 2027 guidance and exploration program in January.
So be on the lookout for that. Jerritt Canyon is obviously a key focus for us. All hands on deck on that. We want to make sure that this asset is properly capitalized and fully recruited for when it's operating. So that's going to be another significant producer and cornerstone asset for the company. Yeah, continue strengthening the balance sheet and looking for creative and better ways of capital allocation. This wraps up my presentation for today. Last couple of minutes for any questions if there are any.
Thanks, Mani. Yep. There's one question.
Just one second. I think there's a mic coming your-
I think it's on Jerritt Canyon.
Could you walk us through the Jerritt Canyon target underground mining tons per day, mill roaster operation tons per day, third-party roasting, et cetera? Congratulations. I represented Freeport-McMoRan doing a fairness opinion in February 1990, and I only admire you for keeping the old girl going.
Oh, thank you for that. We'll be putting a technical report on Jerritt's end of this year, early next year. But the plan is with this expanded resource, I'm not sure if you saw the recent update. We're currently sitting at 7.8 million ounces of resource at Jerritt's, so completely different story. That brings some of the old open pits, permitted open pits back in the mix, and obviously the undergrounds. The production plan will encompass a combination of underground and open pits commencing at the undergrounds. That's where we're operating recently, so that's the easier part. But we'll be putting more updates in the next five months or so.
How many tons a day you think you're going to be doing?
Well, the roaster can do 5,000 tons per day. We'll be a little bit less than that, but higher than what we were doing before. The main driver is really the new mine plan. We're doing more bulk mining. That's going to allow us to get more tons from both underground and open pits.
Thank you.
One more question at the front, please. Thank you.
Good morning, Mani. Good to see you again. This is really not a question, but a plug for the Mint. Last summer, I had the opportunity to take a tour with several of my Chinese clients, and it was fabulous. At the end of the tour, I was able to give them a silver coin of the horse that you made. I understand that you have capabilities of handling $50,000 orders for any individual corporation that wants to do that.
That's minimum 50. We do millions. Yeah, it gives us the flexibility to do custom minting, white label products, memorabilia, Christmas gifts, whatever you want to call it.
It was a magnificent time. I want to say thank you.
Okay. Appreciate it.
Any other questions or plugs? Oh, there's one back there.
When Jerritt Canyon was shut down, there was mining or you were having negotiation issues with the miners. How is that going on the restart?
Yeah, thanks for the question. The big issue was, you're right, third party, one-sided contract that was in place for almost a decade ago. By shutting it down, we declared force majeure. That basically collapsed all that contract and a few others. We have a brand new, basically clean slate to restart the operation, which gives us a lot more flexibility.
Any other questions? Maybe I have one. Mani, as you mentioned, 300 kilometers of drilling in 2026, an increase from 2025. Could you maybe talk about that context? As we've heard, a lot of your operations have a lot of exploration potential, multiple hectares in terms of land. Where is your focus at and what should we be expecting in terms of exploration?
Yeah. Thanks, Cos. We have seen a couple of discoveries, two significant discoveries at Santa Elena. That was the regional program. The main focus this year and last year was really infill drilling and conversion. Going forward, exploration probably at Santa Elena is going to continue focusing on conversion. We see a lot of upside at San Dimas. Pretty much 40% of our budget is going to San Dimas alone because it is a significant district. It has a lot of old working, plenty of targets. We are putting 117 kilometers of the 300 kilometers into Jerritt Canyon.
The balance is, again, going to Los Gatos. Los Gatos is quite unique. Ultimately virgin land. We are not really stepping out. We are continuing focusing near mine. At Santa Elena is a good KPI or as a reference point, our discovery ounce or discovery cost is $0.31 an ounce. These are the cheapest ounces you can get. These are permitted ounces right next to the mill. We would like to continue the programs close to the mill, permitted areas, and quicker entrance in the production plan.
Great. Thanks, Mani. I think that is all the time we have. Thanks a lot for your update.