Good morning, everyone. I'm Sathish. I'm part of the North American Metals and Mining Equity Research team here at BofA. I'm pleased to welcome John McCluskey, the CEO of Alamos Gold. John has chosen a hybrid format, so he'll start with a few slides, and then we jump into Q&A. John, over to you.
Thank you.
Thank you, buddy.
Thank you. Thanks, thanks for having us. Just gonna go over a few slides from our presentation deck. They help more or less orientate anybody, especially anybody new to the story. Alamos has an amazing track record for growth. This company basically started in the early 2000s with an asset that we picked up when gold was under $ 300 an ounce. We secured an option to purchase our first asset from the Mulatos project. The company that had it, Placer Dome, they poured about $50 million into that project over about a six-year period. As they were spending that money, the gold price was just going down and down and down. They had several changes at the top.
By the time this new CEO had come in in the early 2000s, he wanted to sort of get out of Mexico and shed non-core assets, Mulatos was sold at around CAD 10 million, roughly $7 million at the time. We took that asset, by 2005, we'd built a mine, and we had it producing. If you saw the way we did it was quite remarkable. We bought a secondhand truck fleet. We bought secondhand crushers out of Nevada. We bought an ADR plant from a bankrupt gold operation in the Yukon in Canada. We stitched together that project in pretty solid, but we put it together for $ 72 million.
I'd been talking to Placer Dome and said, "We couldn't build that thing for under $ 150 million." That's the capability and the initiative that smaller companies are willing to take. That's why I think they've got a good place in this industry. Anyway, we had that mine up and running, and it's since generated over $1 billion in free cash flow. It's never had a longer reserve life than it does today. When we first started it had a six-year reserve life. That was 2005. We should have been out of business in 2011 on that basis, but here we are in 2026.
The last three years have been three of its most profitable years, and the mine is now transitioning from an open pit heap leach operation from going from oxides to sulfides. We're going underground to higher grades now, and we see, in reserves right now, another 10 years of production out in front of us, and we think it goes much, much further than that. That kind of template became our objective for growing the company. We wanted to do that again, if possible. You can see we've managed to do it a number of times. We didn't do anything really much between Mulatos and the acquisition of Young-Davidson.
When gold had pulled back from $ 1,900 back to about $ 1,100 an ounce in 2015, we did the first merger of equals in the mining space, combining Alamos with a company called AuRico . That brought the Young-Davidson operation into Alamos. It had a big reserve, but it needed quite a bit of capital to finish the construction of the project. We finished that over the next few years. Since we completed it's managed to generate at least $ 100 million in free cash flow from 2020 on. The last couple of years, we've done in excess of $ 200 million in free cash flow from the mine. It's, in other words, been a great acquisition for us.
If you look at our acquisition cost and then compare it to the free cash flow we've generated, plus the consensus now, it's another example of value creation. Probably the most extraordinary example is what we've done at Island Gold, where, in again, the depths of the markets, when summer of 2017, with gold at about $ 1,250 an ounce, we took over a company called Richmont Mines because we really liked this Island Gold project, even though it had a relatively small reserve at the time. It had less than 1 million ounces of reserves, another 1 million ounces or so of resources. We saw big potential there, and most people didn't. T he initial greeting of that deal was rather poor.
We've gone on to have tremendous exploration success. We've been ramping up the operation practically since we acquired it. Right now, we're in the process of sinking a shaft and expanding milling capacity and so forth. You know, we're on our way at Island Gold to turning that into a mine that will produce about 535,000 oz a year at all-in sustaining costs of around $ 1,100 per ounce. That's another great example of value creation. The market consensus value today on that asset is just over $11 billion. Relative to where we acquired it, if you look at the success we've had in exploration plus the capital we've invested to expand it it's just been another great example of how we create shareholder value.
I love talking to that slide. Each one of those projects is near and dear to my heart, and each one of them, they're gonna provide tremendous free cash flow generation. With the gold price environment that we're in today, it's just dramatic when you consider where we're going, once we've built out the whole platform will be generating like $ 1.5 billion in annual free cash flow at gold price assumption of about $ 4,500 an ounce. Another place where we've really driven value is through the drill bit. We've had a tremendous track record of exploration success, and particularly at Island Gold.
As I said, when we took it on, it had about 700,000 oz of reserves. This was, you know, back in 2017. Not many people observing the gold market at that time. I think in a meeting room like this, we might have six to eight people. Not a joke. We basically took the view that if you're gonna acquire countercyclically, you've got to invest countercyclically. We started to heavily invest in exploration because we knew if that mine was gonna turn into what we wanted it to be, we were gonna effectively have to sink a shaft.
Well, to justify the investment of upwards of $1 billion to sink a shaft, you've got to have a strong enough reserve platform to justify that investment, and 1 million oz just wouldn't cut it. We invested quite heavily through those years. When most of the peer group was really paring back expenditures on exploration, we invested heavily in exploration. That's driven our reserve growth from sub -1 million oz to over 5 million oz at Island Gold, net of depletion. Across the board, we've added 9 million oz to our operations over the last six years at a finding cost of roughly $ 33 an ounce. This is a great example of why you might want to invest in a gold equity, for example, rather than buying an ETF or buying the physical itself.
ETFs have to go into the market, they have to pick up an ounce of gold at a prevailing market price, where we're identifying ounces in the ground at $ 33 an ounce. If you consider we have to spend another $ 1,100 all-in sustaining cost to extract that gold, it's still an extremely attractive proposition. All of these assets that we're drilling still have further scope for growth. When you look at the track record over time, you know, we've depleted roughly 4 million oz over those years, we've added significantly, not only replacing the gold that we're mining every year, but actually growing our production or growing our reserves.
As far as production is concerned, we're in a heavy capital investment phase right now, and you can see where it's going to take us. This is very heavily driven by a major expansion we're undertaking at Island itself, but it also envisions the construction of the Lynn Lake project, which is a fully- permitted operation in a full- permitted project in northern Manitoba. We have about 200 people on site right now, and the bulk construction is underway there. We'll have it completed by the end of 2028 and into production in 2029, and it'll generate about 200,000 oz a year at sub -$ 1,000 all-in sustaining costs.
In addition to the fact that we're growing production from our current rate, we're forecasting about 600,000 oz this year. We're growing it to over 1 million oz by 2030. We're doing so at the same time as we're bringing down our costs. That's, that's just driven by productivity, and it's driven by the fact that we're bringing on more valuable ounces. I think that's a good place to end the presentation and open up to some questions. I'll just leave that there.
Thanks, John, for that excellent overview. There was a lot to unpack, we can go into each of these operations. Maybe we can start with a bigger picture question. When investors look at Alamos Gold today, I mean, do we look at us as a near-term Island Gold execution story? Should we look at as a medium-term free cash flow inflation story or like a longer-term Canadian champion, growth champion, given that you have a target of 1 million oz?
Right. I think you could look at it in every one of those perspectives. I mean, every operating company has an obligation to forecast what its production and costs will be and then meet those production and costs or exceed those production and costs. That's just that's your everyday business. You can see that we've, you know, we have a long-term track record of doing just that. We had a few hiccups last year as we integrated this the new Magino acquisition. There's just some elements of that project that, you know, the way it was designed, it wasn't perfectly suited for the Canadian climate. Nothing that we can't fix.
Frankly, as part of the Island Gold expansion, we are taking the mill throughput capacity to 20,000 tons / day, and we are doing so by, first of all, getting rid of the whole front end where the real problems exist. We are going to be putting in a gyratory crusher there. It will have 25,000 tons of capacity. We will direct dump into that gyratory crusher and then feed two 10,000 ton/ day mills. That more or less deals with the primary issues that we have been having at the Magino mill site. It is also powered right now by CNG, compressed natural gas. That means the site is, the mill is heavily dependent on gas deliveries.
That doesn't sound like much of a problem, except in a deep Canadian winter, similar to the one we've just had, they close the roads, and then you can't get the gas deliveries. That was never meant to be a long-term plant. In other words, the previous operator that put it in place envisioned eventually bringing in grid power. We've been working on a grid power project, getting it all permitted and moving it forward for the last three years. That grid, pardon me, that power line is being constructed as we speak, and it'll be completed by the end of this year and commissioned in the first quarter of next year.
The primary issue is dogging that production in 2025 being ore stockpiles at the front end, basically freezing in the cold weather and slowing down the delivery of material into the mill and then delayed in power deliveries, keeping the plant running. Both those issues will be mitigated as a part of the expansion. Yeah, medium -term, we certainly have our job to do. When you look at what we're doing in terms of driving production and driving reserve growth, then it's extraordinary where we're going. There's very few companies that have a growth profile to match that one. It's not just growth for the sake of growth. I mean, we're bringing on more production at a lower cost.
I think that's kinda key to the overall message because it means if you've got even a fairly conservative gold price forecast, I was just speaking to your commodity analyst, he's looking at $ 6,000 gold. I think that's a perfectly reasonable forecast to have on gold in the market that we're in. I'd love to hear his presentation on gold. If you consider a $ 6,000 gold price, a company like ours generating effectively 1 million oz will be just over 1 million oz a year at around $ 1,000 all-in sustaining costs. You know, that's massive free cash flow generation. I mean, relatively speaking, our current share price looks cheap on those economic assumptions.
You touched upon the massive free cash flow generation. How should investors think about balancing the cash capital allocation priorities between your growth projects and capital returns in terms of buybacks and dividends?
We're in a heavily, heavy capital investment phase right now. In fact, this year is our, probably our biggest year. We're spending about $1 billion across the various projects. We're building a new mill down in Mexico to process the high-grade ore from underground. We're in the process of starting construction at Lynn Lake. You know, that'll be a $ 900 million project between now and the end of 2028. Of course, we're still in the process of expanding on the expansion we were already working on at Island Gold, because now it also involves the integration of the Magino open pit.
Between the two, you know, ramping up the underground to 3,000 tons / day, bringing on the Magino open pit operation to about 17,000 tons / day, we're effectively going to be doing 535,000 oz a year between those two operations. The interesting thing to consider, though, is that, you know, for the time being, that's a great mix because 3,000 tons/ day is that's a reasonable rate to expect from the Island Gold underground operation for the time being. We're developing across about a 2 km strike. The shaft, it can actually handle more than the 3,000 tons/ day that we're envisioning.
We also have a ramp system, and the ramp system goes through an area of the mine to the west, where we've been having great exploration success over the last year, and we're continuing to drill quite aggressively this year. What I envision is there are higher-grade reserves being brought on that west side that we'll be able to bring up through the ramp and at least 1,000 tons/day, maybe as much as 2,000 tons / day coming up that ramp because it's only about 400 m below surface there. You could easily do 2,000 tons / day of additional higher grade, supplanting the low grade. You more or less change the mix from 17/3 to, say, 15/5. By doing so, at a very nominal capital investment, it's basically development.
Yeah.
You're driving your production up at that very low cost rate. I think that's where the really great opportunities lie in terms of ongoing expansion.
Yeah. Maybe staying with Island Gold. Last year you had some seismic events towards the end of the year, and then you had obviously the winter production issues. Looking at the ramp- up process, I mean, like, the guidance implies a strong pickup in production from Island Gold in the second half. What gives you confidence that you might, you'll be able to hit that run rate?
Well, first of all, we didn't have a single seismic event every single day. Every underground operation in our industry basically experiences seismicity. That's just the reality. It's just rare from time to time, you might get a, you might get a higher seismic reading than, you know, what you typically get. You want a certain amount of seismicity because that's the rock settling, and that means you're not getting any buildup of stress.
The seismic event you're referring to wasn't really much of an event. I mean, it was a 0.27 measure on the scale, that's relatively low. It just happened to hit at a fairly critical point that affected our ability to mine in the particular stopes that were key to the mine plan. Normally, we would never have even announced something like that, except that by limiting our ability to access those stopes, it was gonna mean we're gonna miss our guidance for production from that mine. That's the reason why we announced. I think that our ability to handle seismicity is very good and we've been operating that mine since 2017 and in all that time, we just had that one relatively minor event. I mean, we continued mining elsewhere underground. We've gone in, we've rehabilitated that area, and it's completed now.
It's not really part of a current mine plan, we're going to be getting back into it, probably early next year. It's just part of mining that you have to accept. In terms of our forecasted production for this year, we've built in a lot of conservatism to our forecast. You could argue that we might have been a little too, maybe a little too aggressive. We're probably experiencing that level of confidence because we've gone 14 straight quarters without a miss. We either met or exceeded guidance for 14 quarters in a row. You know, we had a couple of things happen and it threw us off, but it doesn't mean that suddenly we don't know what we're doing anymore.
You know, we're more or less, we're back on track. This year, we were scheduled to have our lowest production quarter in Q1, and it continues to ramp up over the course of 2026. We're gonna exit the year with our best quarter, and we'll achieve record production this year of 600,000 oz. It should be a year of record cash flow generation as well. The interesting part of it all is, as we go through the balance of this year, you know, we've already taken the shaft down to shaft bottom. We'll have finished building all the shaft infrastructure.
We go into Q1 of 2027 transitioning from a ramp operation at Island Gold to a shaft operation at Island Gold. That allows our throughput to start to scale up and our costs to come down. It's a pretty exciting year.
We have less than 5 minutes. I wanted to give the opportunity to anyone to ask any questions.
To what degree do you look at per share metrics in terms of reserve growth, production growth? Secondly, over time, you've timed your acquisitions well. What gold price would make you think about selling something? If there was a gold price.
Well, I suppose if we start selling off all our assets, we're not in the gold mining business anymore. I would rather consider expanding on our assets through further investment in exploration. I think one thing that's been really overlooked by investors, and I've been in this job long enough to see, you know, fashions come in and fashions go out again. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, reserves. Investors were really focused on reserves and on per share metrics as well. In the current market environment, there just hasn't been that much investor focus on reserves. Yet, if you were to ask the average CEO what he worries about most, that would be it, you know, depletion reserves.
If you look at the big mining companies and where they were in the early 2000s relatively, relative to where they are now, I mean, there is a mad dash for reserves. They've been depleting the reserves at some of their best assets. Where they have reserve growth, it tends to be in some of their riskier assets and riskier jurisdictions. There's no doubt that that's a concern for the industry, and I think it's going to be something that'll be more of a focus for investors going forward. We have heavily invested in that. I learned very on in my career that they're absolutely key to the value creation for a company. We have firstly, you know, nearly 20 years of reserve life across all of our operations. That's probably best in class, and that really matters.
If you, if you wonder where I think further valuation is gonna come from, it's maximizing that reserve profile by making sure you match it with a production profile that takes full advantage of what you've created. We created most of those reserves when nobody was really paying attention to the gold market at all. Now there is a focus, just watch how they're going to start to underpin the value of our shares. Now, we have another slide in our deck. I didn't include it in this presentation. I was told to keep it to a few slides, but it shows how we've added value per share in terms of reserves per share, cash flow per share. You know, we basically show how we've created value on per share metrics.
Like we've never done an M&A transaction that didn't result in an increase in value on per share metrics. Again, I think that track record is very hard to match. If anybody wants to see that slide, I'm sure Scott can pull it up for you on his laptop. I think this is absolutely key. It's something that we've been focused on. It's why we tend to do M&A on a countercyclical basis. You know, we were extremely active between 2015 and 2017. We did something relatively unusual in making an acquisition in 2024 with the gold price at about $2,200 an ounce.
That was a completely unusual circumstance where, you know, the next door mine became available. Their share price had gone from $ 4 a share down to $ 0.22 as they struggled with execution on that project. We took full advantage of that. Even though the gold price had gone that way, their share price had gone down. There was an opportunity. There'll always be anomalous opportunities, and if you're in a good position to take advantage of them, then so much the better. We're never gonna just grow for the sake of growth. We're never gonna add a project just because it makes us bigger, then we can say we're bigger than the guy next to us. I don't think that's the name of the game.
I think the name of the game is value creation for shareholders, and that's the one we're focused on.
Any other questions? We are actually out of time. I think we can stop there. Thank you, John, for your time, and I appreciate you.
Thank you.