Afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal roadshow. My name is Noella Alexander- Young, virtual event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we want to thank everyone in New York and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Alamos Gold, trading on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol AGI. Presenting today is Scott Parsons, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session for which you can participate using the chat box on the top right-hand corner of your screen. With that being said, I will now hand the floor over to Scott.
Thank you, Noella. 2023 was a record year for Alamos Gold, both operationally and financially. Given our strong growth profile and the near-record gold prices we are realizing today, we expect to be establishing multiple new records in the years ahead. We have been a significant outperformer over the past few years. Over the course of the next 20 or 25 minutes or so, I can outline the drivers of that outperformance as well as why we expect that strong performance to continue. One of those drivers has been value creation, whether that's been through exploration success or optimizing and expanding our operations. In the case of the photo on your screen, M&A as well. The photo shows our Island Gold Mine and the shaft infrastructure that we're in the process of constructing right now, which is going to expand the operations.
It's going to make it bigger, much more productive, much more profitable. In the background is the Magino operation. We are in the process of acquiring Magino. These are two mines that are currently operating separately. Once we conclude that transaction, which is expected in July, we're going to start integrating those two operations and create one bigger, more profitable operation with significant upside and significant synergies. Between the two assets, we're going to realize more than $500 million of synergies. And there's further upside from there, which I'm going to detail later in this presentation. I am going to be making some forward-looking statements throughout this presentation, so please do take a look at our cautionary notes. And I'll start with an overview of Alamos. So we are a diversified intermediate gold producer. But more than that, we're a good business.
We're a growth company, and we've got the financial track record to support it. We're currently producing at a rate of about 500,000 ounces of gold per year. We have two growth projects which can take us up closer to 800,000 ounces per year over the next several years. Over and above that, once you integrate Magino, that can take us up to 900,000 ounces per year. That's 80% growth from current levels. All of that growth is fully funded. We can fund it all internally while continuing to generate free cash flow over and above that. Collectively, this growth is all lower cost. You can see that in our current cost profile. This year, we're expecting our all-in sustaining costs to be around $1,150 per ounce. That's already well below the industry average, which is sitting around $1,400 per ounce.
But as we bring this lower cost growth online, we're going to see our costs come down over the next several years towards $1,000 per ounce. So we're already a low-cost producer, and our costs are going to be decreasing even further. Another key facet of our story is the concentration of our asset base in Canada. So the majority of our production and the majority of our growth is coming out of Canada. And that means our Canadian assets are supporting nearly 90% of our net asset value. And that gives us one of the lowest political risk profiles in the sector. And that is anchored by a couple of very long-life operations in Ontario, soon to be joined by a third with Magino. Collectively, between our Young-Davidson and Island Gold Mine, they share average mine lives of 18 years.
We fully expect that to grow given the type of exploration success and potential we see at both operations. Magino complements that perfectly. It's got a 19-year reserve life. There's exploration upside over and above that. Three core very long-life assets serve as a very strong foundation for this company as we continue to grow. I mentioned at the outset we have been a significant outperformer. You can see that in the chart on the right. Over the past 2.5 years, our share price is up more than 100%. We've outpaced the price of gold. We've outpaced the various gold ETFs. We've done significantly better than the S&P 500. That outperformance is really a reflection of a number of things. If you look at these collective attributes, we are uniquely positioned as an intermediate gold producer.
Between our high-quality assets concentrated in Canada, which gives us that really low political risk profile, the fact that we've got high-return growth, which is fully funded in an industry that's generally facing flat to declining rates of production, our costs are declining while industry costs are continuing to inch higher. We're generating solid ongoing free cash flow while we're continuing to grow as a company. We've established a really solid track record of hitting our guidance and consistently hitting our quarterly targets. I argue the most important piece there is ongoing value creation, which is both helping us outperform as a company and also a key factor why we think that outperformance is sustainable over the longer term. That ongoing value creation is coming through exploration success across our asset base. It's coming through expanding and optimizing these assets as the deposits grow.
It's also coming through smart and accretive M&A, like we're seeing with our Magino acquisition. So these different value contributors are all helping the value of the company grow, which is underpinning that rising share price. We are a growth company. You can see that in our financial track record. Over the past 10 years, our EBITDA has increased tenfold. If you look out over the next couple of years with the growth we have coming online, and particularly with higher gold prices, we are expecting our EBITDA to grow even further still. These are based on consensus estimates here. A growth company, yet we're trading at an attractive valuation, both by historical standards and relative to virtually any other sector within the S&P 500. We're currently trading at a forward EV/EBITDA multiple of about 8x.
During past cycles, you've seen us trade up closer to 15x-16x. It's also lower than virtually every sector within the S&P 500 outside of energy, as well as the broader index itself, which is trading around 13.5x. So we're a growth company with an attractive valuation. And all of that's underpinned by what is a very attractive outlook for gold. You're seeing growing debt levels, rising debt service costs around the world. That's feeding growing deficits, which in turn is feeding increasing debt levels, which is just creating increasing risks, both known and unknown within the financial system. And it also is creating an unsustainable path, both in terms of rising debt levels as well as where interest rates are currently sitting. So rates have likely peaked. They are going to come down.
We've already seen the Bank of Canada and the European Central Bank bring down their interest rates. It's only a matter of time before the Fed follows suit, whether that's September, whether it's November. At some point, they are going to start cutting rates. If you look historically, gold performs really well during easing cycles. That's going to be supportive of gold. You've got stagflation and recessionary risks out there. On top of that, elevated geopolitical risks. A number of factors which are supporting the current near-record gold prices and why we expect gold prices are ultimately going to be going higher over the medium to long term. M&A has been a key driver of our growth as a company. It's also an area where we have been able to create a lot of shareholder value.
The way we've done this is by staying disciplined and focusing on the long term and waiting for the right opportunities and really focusing on high-quality assets with upside. You can see that with all three of our current operations. Mulatos was our first asset we acquired back in 2003. We've done the same thing with Young-Davidson back in 2015. Island Gold and Magino are our most recent success stories. Island Gold, we acquired back in 2017 for $600 million. By the end of last year, its consensus value had more than tripled to $2.1 billion. With the acquisition of Magino and its integration, its consensus value has now increased to $3.4 billion. So far more than what we paid for it.
If you look out across all of our assets and you include our Lynn Lake project, that's nearly $4 billion of combined value that we've created since each of these assets' respective acquisitions. Given the exploration upside we see at all of these assets, we expect that value is going to continue to grow. The acquisition of Argonaut Gold and the Magino mine is a great example of this value creation. You could see that on the photo of the front page of our presentation. This asset's located right next door to Island Gold. We're going to integrate the two assets together. And by doing so, we're going to create one of Canada's largest and lowest-cost gold mines.
The combined entity, once we complete the shaft expansion at Island Gold, is going to be producing more than 400,000 ounces of gold per year at first quartile costs of well below $1,000 per ounce. Collectively, the two assets will have nearly 12 million ounces of reserves of resources. That's supporting a greater than 19-year mine life. There's further upside to both assets from there, which I'll touch on on the next slide. But the other really exciting aspect of this transaction and what it's going to do for the company is by combining these two operations, we're going to see more than $500 million of synergies. Longer term, we fully expect those synergies grow. As these assets continue to grow, the synergies will grow.
We're also, by combining the two operations and expanding a centralized milling complex, it opens up opportunities to expand both of these operations further. So as a base case, we see this asset ultimately doing more than 400,000 ounces per year. But ultimately, over the longer term, we expect it to be doing well beyond that. And this plan view of the Island Gold and Magino sites gives you a good perspective on why these synergies are so meaningful. The two deposits are less than 300 meters apart. The two milling facilities are less than two kilometers apart. And the two tailings facilities are a similar distance apart. So we don't need two mills, and we don't need two tailings facilities. We were about to embark on an expansion of the Island Gold mill and Island Gold tailings facility this year. We no longer need to do so.
That's going to save us about $140 million of capital. Then if you look at this Magino mill, this is a brand new mill that was constructed November of last year. It's currently ramping up to a rate of 10,000 tons per day. Ultimately, we're going to take it up to a rate of about 12,000 tons per day. It's a much bigger mill than the Island Gold mill. And as a result, it's much more productive. You benefit from the economies of scale. And net net, we're going to realize much lower processing costs. So by putting Island Gold ore through the Magino mill, that's going to cut our processing costs in half, save us about CAD 17 per ton. And combined with the G&A savings, we expect that to result in $25 million a year of operating synergies.
So over the life of the two assets as we currently know it, that equates to about $375 million. But again, we expect those synergies to grow as these mine lives continue to grow. So between the capital and operating synergies, that's a total of $515 million of pre-tax synergies. On top of this, we're also inheriting about CAD 1 billion of tax pools that come with Magino. And that's going to help shelter our taxes payable in Canada from what would have been 2025 into 2028. So this is an attractive acquisition from multiple perspectives. It's accretive across all metrics. We're going to see immediate benefits in terms of the synergies.
There's significant longer-term upside potential through a further expansion of this Magino mill beyond 12,400 tons per day, which would allow us to both expand the Magino open pit and potentially the underground mining rates at Island Gold and take this operation even higher. The Magino complements our overall asset base and outlook very nicely. It's complementing our growth profile, and it's helping us maintain those low and declining costs. We're currently producing at a rate of about 500,000 ounces per year. Once we close that transaction or that acquisition of Argonaut Gold in July, we're expecting our annual run rate to increase to about 600,000 ounces per year. As you move out towards 2026, that's when we expect to complete that phase three expansion at Island Gold, so that shaft expansion. You see our production growth from Island Gold starting to kick up.
So that's going to take us up closer to 700,000 ounces per year. It's also going to help drive our all-in sustaining costs down below that $1,100 per ounce range. And as you step out into the latter part of 2027 and into 2028, that's when we expect our Lynn Lake project to start contributing production. And that's also a lower-cost operation. So between that growth we have coming on at Island Gold and that low-cost growth we have coming on at Lynn Lake, we're expecting our all-in sustaining costs to trend down towards $1,000 per ounce. We'll be producing at a rate of 900,000 ounces per year. And longer term, there's upside to that as we look to evaluate opportunities to expand that centralized Magino milling complex even beyond the 12,000 tons per day we're initially looking at.
The attractive part about this growth is the majority of it's coming in Canada. It's all lower cost, and it's all fully funded internally. It's going to drive pretty substantial free cash flow growth into that 2026, 2027, and 2028 timeframe. This is a quick overview of our three producing assets. They all share similar characteristics in that they're all high-quality assets, all longer-life assets in good jurisdictions. Each one has significant exploration upside. Starting with Young-Davidson, it's a long-life bulk tonnage underground mine. It's currently producing at a rate of just under 200,000 ounces per year. It's just come off its third consecutive year of generating more than $100 million of free cash flow. Base case, this operation has a 15-year reserve life. We expect it to produce similar rates of production and $100+ million of free cash flow per year.
There's good upside potential from there. We just put out a press release last month outlining the discovery of a new high-grade zone, which is located just off our existing underground infrastructure. It's higher grade. It's a new style of mineralization. It represents upside potential. If we can define a sizable enough high-grade underground zone, we can supplement that into our existing production, help push our rate of production up higher, and given the higher-grade nature of that, or help push our costs lower. That's something that we'll be working on through this year. Stay tuned for additional exploration updates on that new zone. Island Gold is our second underground operation, also located in Ontario, about six hours away from Young- Davidson. It is one of the fastest-growing and highest-grade gold mines in the world.
It's also another long-life asset with a 20-year-plus reserve and resource life. We're currently undertaking an expansion of this operation, which is going to see its rate of production double from about 150,000 ounces per year to, on average, close to 300,000 ounces per year once that phase three expansion is completed in 2026. At that point, this operation is going to be generating well north of $300 million of free cash flow per year. Once we integrate Magino in there, this asset's going to be producing more than 400,000 ounces of gold per year and generating even more substantial levels of free cash flow. But I'll touch on that expansion a little bit more in the coming slides. Mulatos is our third producing asset. It's also our founding asset. It's an open-pit heap leaching operation.
The current source of, or the current primary source of production is La Yaqui Grande. It's producing about 170,000 ounces per year. It's the shortest of our three operations in terms of mine life. It has a reserve life of four years currently. But to put that in perspective, Mulatos has been producing for more than 18 years. It's had a reserve life of about six, seven years for most of its 18 years in existence. So relatively short mine lives, but we're continuing to have exploration success, which is continuously extending out that mine life. And we're working on another mine life extension right now via an underground deposit called PDA. It's right off the side of the Mulatos pit. We're going to be putting out a development plan in a couple of weeks. And we expect that's going to double that mine life to something eight years or beyond.
So in terms of our growth projects, this phase three expansion at Island Gold is one of the biggest, and it's going to continue to be one of our largest value drivers. We are in the process of sinking a shaft at Island Gold, which is going to convert this operation from a ramp access mine, which is operating at 1,200 tons per day currently, to operating from a shaft at 2,400 tons per day. So we're doubling the throughput. We're going to double the rate of production. By putting in a shaft, we're also going to make this a much more efficient and productive operation, which is going to drive its cost more than 30% lower. So post-2026, Island Gold alone will be generating gold production of around 300,000 ounces per year.
Excluding Magino, this is an asset that will be producing gold at an all-in sustaining cost in the low $600 range. Combined with Magino, this is going to be producing more than 400,000 ounces per year. Again, there's upside to there as we look to potentially expand that milling complex further. This shaft expansion is well underway. You can see a few photos on the right-hand side of your screen, which is the interior of the headframe and hoist house. We started the shaft sinking December of last year. We're expecting that shaft to be down to a depth of one kilometer by the end of this year and an ultimate depth of 1.4 kilometers by the middle of 2025.
And once this expansion is overall completed in 2026, and it's on track for completion in the first half of this first half of 2026, this is going to be a game changer for both the operation and the company in terms of our production and cost profile. And this chart showing our reserve and resource growth really helps illustrate why we are putting in a shaft. It's the pace of reserve and resource growth. When we acquired Island Gold back in 2017, it had 1.8 million ounces of reserves and resources. That reserve and resource base has grown in each and every year that we've owned the deposit to now sit at 6.1 million ounces.
This is not only one of the highest-grade gold mines in the world at a reserve grade of just over 10 g/t, but it's also one of the fastest-growing deposits in the world. One of the most attractive aspects of this reserve and resource growth is our discovery cost. If you look at what we've invested in exploration over the past 5 years and what we've discovered, we've discovered 4 million ounces at a discovery cost of $13 per ounce. So we're finding gold at $13 per ounce, and we're selling it at over $2,300 per ounce currently. So that's the type of high-return investment we're looking for and the type of internal value creation that's helping us perform well as a company.
If you look at the chart on the right-hand side of your screen, you can see what that growth in reserves and resources, as well as the expansions of the operations, have meant for the value of the operation. When we acquired Island Gold back in 2017, it had a consensus value of about $600 million. That value has grown in each and every year. It was sitting at $2.1 billion as of the end of last year. With the higher gold prices that we're seeing this year and the integration of Magino, it now carries a consensus value of $3.4 billion. That's a value we fully expect to grow given the type of ongoing exploration potential and success we're seeing at Island Gold, as well as the potential at Magino.
With the exploration upside at both the deposits and a larger centralized milling complex, we're going to be evaluating opportunities to further expand this overall operation. The long section on the left-hand side of your screen is a good illustration of the upside potential here. This deposit's not only open laterally and at depth, but we're also starting to define high-grade reserves and resources within the hanging wall and footwall of the deposits. If you take the deposit and you turn it sideways, we're finding high-grade ounces in subparallel structures, which are in close proximity to our existing infrastructure. Why that's exciting for us is these new high-grade additions are in close proximity to our existing infrastructure, meaning they're going to be low cost to develop and low cost to ultimately produce. But they're also providing additional operational flexibility.
So down the road, once we complete this expansion to 2,400 tons per day, that added operational flexibility will give us opportunities to potentially push mining rates even higher and feed that larger centralized milling complex at Magino. But there's also significant potential at depth as well, too. Some of the best intercepts we've ever drilled at Island Gold have been in the lower portion of Island East, down in the 1,300-1,500 meter level. This deposit's completely open at depth. These types of deposits in the Canadian Shield can very easily extend down to a depth of 3 kilometers +. So there is lots of upside potential that we're going to be evaluating over the coming years. And the other area we've been having a lot of exploration success is PDA. And that shouldn't be overshadowed by the type of success that we're having at Island Gold.
PDA is a growing high-grade underground deposit. It's right off the side of the Mulatos pit. In fact, it's right in between the Mulatos pit and the El Victor pit, which you can see on the section or the plan view on the right-hand side of your screen. Over the past three years, we have taken PDA from zero reserves and resources to 1.2 million reserves and resources. We're currently putting that reserve into a development plan, which we expect to release over the next couple of weeks. We're looking at this as a 2,000-ton-per-day operation. We're looking at this as an underground target. Given it's right off the Mulatos pit, there's not going to be a lot in the way of development required. We can utilize components of the existing small mill on site and utilize components of the existing crushing circuit.
So it's going to help keep our capital costs low. So net net, we're expecting this is going to be another attractive project that's going to significantly extend that current 4-year reserve life in Mulatos to something like 8+ years. And there's upside at PDA. We're still drilling that deposit. We've got a $19 million exploration budget planned for Mulatos this year. A good chunk of that is going into PDA. The deposit's open in multiple directions. We fully expect it to grow. But by putting in a 2,000-ton-per-day mill that can accommodate higher-grade sulfide ore, it's also going to open up additional opportunities in the district. And one of those opportunities is Cerro Pelon. It's an open-pit deposit that we mined out about three years ago. Just north of that deposit, we hit 15 grams over 15 meters, so a really high-grade intercept.
It was an underground target, and it was sulfide. We didn't have the processing capacity, so we walked away from it. Now that we're going to be building a sulfide mill, we're going back and revisiting this target. So PDA is going to be the starting point, but we're optimistic there's going to be multiple deposits providing high-grade ore throughout the Mulatos district. And over to Lynn Lake. It's another key part of our growth plans. We're currently spending about $25 million on this project this year to finish off the detailed engineering, improve the site access to get us in a position to start full-scale construction on this project next year. This is an attractive project located in northern Manitoba, Canada.
We completed an updated feasibility study on it last year, which outlined average production of about 180,000 ounces per year over its first 10 years at very attractive all-in sustaining costs of $700 per ounce. So an attractive project, again, with upside. We're already working on doing some additional drilling on some of the satellite deposits that surround the MacLellan site where we're going to be constructing this mill. And similar to what we're doing at PDA and similar to what we're thinking with this centralized Magino complex, you build the mill, and then you have multiple different deposits providing mill feed to this centralized milling complex. And Burnt Timber and Linkwood are two of these satellite deposits. We're infill drilling them as we speak.
We're working on converting that existing resource into a smaller but higher quality reserve, incorporate that into the Lynn Lake plan, and put out a study on what Burnt Timber and Linkwood will look like towards the end of this year. So that's another one of these value creation exercises that we're working on. That's upside to the feasibility study. So stay tuned for that towards the latter part of this year. So to recap the presentation, we're growing. All of our operations are performing well. And we have a number of catalysts coming up this year that we expect are going to be ongoing value drivers. We've got this PDA development plan coming out over the next couple of weeks. The closing of the Magino acquisitions is expected to occur in July. We're spending $62 million on exploration this year, which is our largest budget ever.
We're already seeing the benefits of that in terms of the discovery of the new high-grade zone at Young-Davidson we outlined last month. We're going to have exploration updates out on Island Gold and Mulatos over the coming weeks and months. So stay tuned for exploration updates and stay tuned for progress on the Phase 3 expansion as well as that Burnt Timber and Linkwood study towards the end of this year. So you can expect a number of catalysts, lots of positive news flow this year. And we remain attractively valued. We in the sector are currently realizing gold prices north of $2,300 per ounce. If you look at where gold prices were back in Q1, they averaged about $2,070 per ounce. So we're currently averaging something close to $2,340 an ounce thus far in Q2, which equates to almost a $270 increase over the first quarter.
So when you start to see Q2 reports coming out across the gold sector, you're going to see substantially higher gold prices being realized, substantially higher margins, and substantially higher profitability. And I think that's one of these key catalysts that's going to start to bring back broader investor interest to the gold sector and start to push valuations back into more normalized territory. And as that interest comes back, we expect Alamos is going to be one of the key beneficiaries of that. So I'll turn it back to Noella for any questions you might have.
Thank you very much, Scott, for the presentation. We will now begin the Q&A. Your first question is, the $1,100 ounce in AISC guidance for 2024, is that cash cost or AISC, and is that in Canadian or USD?
That's in U.S. dollars, and that's all-in sustaining costs. That's our current guidance. That's based on our existing operations. We will be updating our guidance post the closing of the acquisition of Argonaut Gold and the Magino operation. We'll be integrating Magino's numbers into the second half of this year. So you'll see our costs come up a little bit as we incorporate Magino's costs for the rest of this year. But we're still expecting our costs to come down over the next several years.
Thank you, Scott. Next question. When will you complete the development plan for the Puerto Del Aire deposit at Mulatos?
That's coming out over the next couple of weeks. It'll either be late this quarter, so over the next week, or early into July, within the first 2 weeks of July. We're just in the process of finalizing that work and being in a position to provide an update over the next couple of weeks.
Excellent. Thank you for your response. Next, a viewer asked, the May 14th press release speaks of a new style of higher-grade mineralization at Young-Davidson. Can you explain why it is different from what you are currently mining?
Sure. And actually, maybe I'll jump ahead to a slide in the appendix if we can share that. Noella, just bear with me.
Yep.
And I'll track that down. So this is the Young-Davidson deposit. I'll see if I can get my pointer going. It doesn't look like it's working here. But if you look in the mid-mine level around the 9620, that's where we're drilling. If you flip ahead to the next slide, so that's a cross-section view of the deposit, the vast majority of the reserves and resources at Young-Davidson sit within a host rock called syenite. This new style of higher-grade mineralization that we've defined is sitting out into the Hanging Wall in a host rock called the sediments. So completely different from what we've seen within the main Young-Davidson deposit, different style of mineralization. And we're drilling that currently.
The other interesting part about this new style of mineralization is we actually have a lot of historical holes that went through the sediments as they were targeting the Young-Davidson syenite. This drilling, you can see these gray tracers on the screen. It was done back in the 2008-2010 timeframe. They were targeting this syenite mineralization, which has a very distinct reddish look. They were sampling the assays once they got into the syenite. They were actually crossing through this sediment zone, but they didn't sample it. We've got all this old core where it's sitting outside of our core shack right now. We're in the process of assaying it to give us much more information on what's going on in the sediments here. It's a really exciting discovery for us.
If you look at the grades here, the average reserve grade of the Young-Davidson ore body sits at 2.3 grams per ton. The type of grades we're seeing in this new zone is in the 5-20 gram per ton range. So even at the lower end of the spectrum, 5 grams per ton, if we start incorporating that into the Young-Davidson mine plan and have that 5 gram material displacing 2 gram material, that's going to result in production upside as well as help drive our costs lower on a per ounce basis given the higher grades. And the other really attractive facet of this new high-grade zone is it's right next to our existing infrastructure. So you can see in gray there, there's an exploration drift, which is 10 meters away from the closest intercept. And the furthest intercept away is 200 meters away.
This is similar to what we're finding at Island Gold, high-grade mineralization next to our existing infrastructure, which will make it a lot easier to access and lower cost to develop.
Thank you very much, Scott, for that explanation. Your next question is, what milestones or catalysts would need to be hit for management to revisit the dividend policy?
So it's really more a capital allocation decision and cash flow decision. Right now, our focus is on growth. And if you look at if we can share the screen again, Noella.
Certainly.
We've got one of the strongest growth profiles within the intermediate space. We're growing from 500,000 ounces to 900,000 ounces per year. This growth is high return, so really high return on investment. A good portion of our cash flow and free cash flow is being reinvested into this growth. But as you start to see these capital projects completed, the Phase 3 expansion in the first half of 2026, and Lynn Lake into the latter part of 2027, you're going to see both our production grow, our costs come down, and our capital spending also come down. You're going to see our free cash flow generation grow substantially. As we're starting to generate more and more in the way of free cash flow, that's when you can expect us to look to increase our dividend to a higher rate. We want to increase our dividend.
Dividend is an important part of our long-term capital allocation plans, but we want to increase it at a sustainable rate such that we can maintain it and continue to fund it through ongoing free cash flow. If you look at our spending over a 10-year stretch, about a third of our free cash flow goes into growth, a third of our free cash flow grows into building up our balance sheet, and a third goes into capital returns to shareholders via that dividend and share buyback when appropriate. More of it's going into growth right now, but that's going to balance out as you start to see that free cash flow grow. We'll look to return more to our shareholders via dividends.
Thank you very much, Scott. Next question. Has institutional ownership increased with the rising gold price, and have you seen increased interest from generalists?
We are starting to, I missed the first part of that question, Noella, but we are starting to see increased interest from generalists. And we've been seeing it over the last couple of years. We haven't seen widespread buying from the generalists, and I think that's the really attractive opportunity here. We have picked up new shareholders, which I would classify as generalists over the past couple of years. They're looking for very specific attributes from the companies they invest in. They're looking for companies with strong track records. They're looking for companies with high-quality assets, clean balance sheets, so minimal to no debt, and low political risk profiles. I think that's one of the most important elements that we're finding from generalist investors. They want that exposure to gold. They want high-quality companies that are going to give them that appropriate exposure to gold.
And they don't want to take on the political risk that you're going to find in other parts of the world outside of Canada, the United States, and Australia. So yes, we are meeting with a lot of new generalist investors. Some are buying. A lot are still kicking the tires and figuring out which companies they want to buy when they do ultimately buy. But we haven't seen that widespread buying from the generalists. And I think you'll see it. Once you see the generalists come back to the gold sector, you'll see the gold sector take off as a whole and certainly higher qualities like Alamos be leaders from that perspective.
Thank you, Scott. The first part of the question was, has institutional ownership increased with the rising gold price?
It hasn't changed substantially with respect to Alamos. I can't speak to the rest of the sector, but we're generally about 75% institutionally owned, and it varies from 75%-80%. So no, our institutional ownership has not changed dramatically with the rising gold.
Thank you for your response. Next, what is the status of your Turkish development projects, and what are approximate annual litigation costs?
Our litigation costs are about $2 million per year or somewhere in that territory. The status of these projects was in year three of the arbitration process. We're expecting there'll be a hearing later this year in London before a three-member tribunal. We'll present our case of facts. Turkey will present their case of facts, and then we'd expect a ruling from the arbitration panel at some point after that. So that's where the project stands. We're further along within the arbitration process than we were several years ago. We're closer to a resolution. We do have a strong case. We do expect we'll see a positive ruling. But in terms of trying to pin a value on what that ruling may look like, that's really hard to say.
But we'll certainly know more within the next year, and we'll have more color to share once we do have a ruling from this tribunal. But I think the way to look at it from an investor perspective is there's no value for Turkey within our current share price. Those assets were written down a couple of years ago. Any sort of positive ruling we see out of this arbitration process will be upside to our current share price.
Thank you, Scott. Next, a viewer said, what is the outlook for the Lynn Lake project and timeline looking like for progressing into construction?
So we're spending. I touched on a little bit through the presentation. We're spending about $25 million on Lynn Lake this year. And that's focused on getting the asset in a position to make a running start on construction in 2025. So we're finishing off the detailed engineering, which is about 80% complete as we speak. We're working on improving the site access, so the road infrastructure. And that's going to allow us to make a running start on construction into 2025. So we're expecting to make a full-scale construction decision in 2025. Depending on when that is, we could see initial production from Lynn Lake as early as the latter part of 2027, but certainly into 2028.
Thank you for that response, Scott. Next, what other regions outside of Ontario and Manitoba has management looked for expansion?
Québec. We just acquired a company called Orford Mining earlier this year. This is a company we were already significant shareholders of, but they've got a project in northern Québec called Qiqavik. It's an early-stage exploration project. We're going to be spending about $4 million on exploration on that project over the next year. So Québec's certainly a jurisdiction we like. There's other parts of Canada that we certainly like, but the core of our assets are in Ontario and Manitoba. We're happy to look elsewhere in Canada and expand beyond that, but that's currently where we're situated.
Thank you for shedding some light on that. Next, do you lease or own your equipment at your mine sites?
It's a mix of both. Some of our equipment is leased and ultimately owned, but the majority is just owned outright. In the case of an asset like Magino, the equipment is leased, but ultimately, you own the equipment once you buy out the lease at the end of the lease agreement.
Thank you for clarifying. Next, a viewer asked, why not spend more on exploration with the positive results announced and the strong gold price?
That's a great question. We are spending more. We're spending $62 million this year, which is our largest exploration budget ever. But you have to be disciplined in terms of how you approach that exploration spend. So we certainly could throw more money at it and throw more rigs at it. The trouble is you're drilling faster than you can evaluate the results. So we take a very measured approach to how we explore our different assets and deposits. So as we're drilling and as the results are coming in, we're using those results to inform the next holes that we're putting into an asset like Island Gold. And that allows us to run a much more effective drilling program. If you're spending $62 million and you're just drilling through the year and you're not evaluating any of those results until they all come in, you're missing an opportunity.
By drilling one hole at a time, well, we're drilling more than one hole at a time, but by evaluating all the holes as they come in and using that to inform the next series of holes, we're gaining valuable insight and allowing us to target more effectively, which is ultimately showing through in the results we're seeing at the end of the year in terms of Island Gold, $13 per ounce discovery cost.
Thank you for your insight, Scott. We're coming up on your last two questions. The first one is, do you expect any issues following the closing of the Argonaut acquisition?
No, we don't. This is an asset that we've been keeping an eye on since 2017. It's right next door to our Island Gold Mine. So we're very familiar with the asset just given our proximity to it, but having also monitored it for the last seven or so years. So we're already working closely with the team at Magino. We expect this transaction to close in July. We do expect it's going to be a seamless integration given how close the assets are to each other. This is an asset that's ramping up. It's ramping up open-pit mining rates. It's ramping up milling rates. So it's not at nameplate capacity yet. The Argonaut team is working on ramping that operation up as we speak. We'll carry on that work into the second half of this year and ultimately expect it to get there.
So no, we're not expecting any issues. We're just expecting this operation to continue to ramp up to where it needs to be.
Thank you, Scott. Your last question is, any concerns with the newly elected president in Mexico?
No, we're not concerned. Claudia Sheinbaum is just part of the Morena Party. She's widely viewed as a protégé of Obrador, who is the outgoing president in Mexico. We have a lot of familiarity with working within Mexico under the Morena Party and Obrador. We built permitted and built La Yaqui Grande under his administration. We'd expect the same with PDA and continuing under the Morena Party's administration with Claudia Sheinbaum. So we're not concerned. We're expecting a similar administration. You can get things done in Mexico as a mining company within existing operations. It has been more challenging trying to develop new projects, new greenfield projects in Mexico, but that's not what we're looking to do in Mexico. We're focused solely on operating Mulatos and investing within our current footprint within the Mulatos District.
So from that perspective, we're not concerned, and we look forward to working with the new president and the Morena Party.
Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Scott, for your responses today. And thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you did not get a chance to submit your question, you can reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. That concludes our presentation for today. But before we go, I will turn the mic over to you, Scott, for final remarks.
Thanks, Noella, and thanks everybody who attended the presentation. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us if you're ever looking for an update or have any further questions. Thanks again.
Thank you very much, Scott. Once again, this was Alamos Gold trading on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol AGI. Thank you to everyone in New York and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for this virtual non-deal roadshow will be available on our website 24 to 48 hours after this presentation under the VNDR Library tab. Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area, and see you next time.