Good afternoon. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Discovery Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Mark Utting, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations for Discovery . Mr. Utting, you may begin your conference.
Thanks very much, operator. Thanks to everyone on the line for joining us today for Discovery Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. As you've heard, I'm Mark Utting, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Joining me today are most of our members of our senior management team, speakers who will be taking part in the presentation: Tony Makuch, Discovery 's CEO; Alison White, our Chief Financial Officer; Pierre Rocque, our Chief Operating Officer; Eric Kallio, our Senior Vice President, Exploration; Jose Jabalera, our Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Sustainability in Mexico; and Tony will conclude with some concluding remarks. Before we get going, I'll point out that, as you know, we issued our Q2 results pre-market this morning. Our press release, MD&A, and financials are all available on our website at discoverysilver.com, as well as at SEDAR+.
Before beginning, I'd like to remind you that during today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, and projections about future events. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such statements. I refer you to slide two in our slide deck, as well as disclosures on our website for more information about forward-looking information. In addition, we will also be referring to non-IFRS measures during the presentation. These measures are included to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with accounting standards. I will refer you to slide three in our slide deck, as well as in our financial disclosures issued today for more information.
Finally, all dollar amounts today will be in US dollars unless otherwise indicated. To that point, Q2 2025 represents our first quarter as a US dollar reporting issuer. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tony Makuch, Discovery 's CEO.
Hey, thanks, thanks, Mark. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for getting on the call. It's kind of nice to be able to be hosting Discovery 's first quarterly investor call here. It's our first quarter as a new Canadian gold producer. Since we took over the operations from Newmont , we've had some success and maybe give you some sense of what's been going on and then give you a sense for maybe some color for how we're going to proceed throughout the year. In terms of the results, Q2 was a quarter of transition. We integrated systems, reorganized management, began implementing investment plans. We had the operations for 76 days of the quarter, and I'll point out that there was also a two-week scheduled mill shutdown shortly after the deal closed in April.
At the same time, in spite of all this, we did turn in a solid quarter of operating and financial performance. I'll skip over the next two slides. This is the forward-looking statements, etc., that Mark Utting already alluded to or made reference to. Turning to slide four, I'll start with a brief look at the Porcupine operations acquisition. Currently, we have claims to operating gold mines for Hoyle Pond, and Borden, both underground gold mines. The Pamour open pit project is wrapping up the commercial levels of production, which we expect to achieve sometime by Q4 of 2026. I think some of the other exciting parts about it, though, is we have a substantial large resource base, a very active near-term growth project through these main targets being the TVZ zone and the Hoyle Pond, sorry, and the gold mine project.
There's lots of exploration upside up in Canada. At Borden, you look at it in this gap and you say, there's been 75 million oz of gold mined over 100 years. We come up with maybe resource here as part of the acquisition, over 15 million oz. That's really only a subset of a lot of other things, projects, and targets that we could advance. I'm sure Eric and the guys will go through stuff, give you some color, and the excitement is there on the exploration side. I'll turn to slide six. On this, really, as we reached the Porcupine and in order to support financing, we did complete a test report to a PEA level. I'm just going to discuss it briefly as we see it as a base from which to improve. The results from the report were favorable.
There was average production of 285,000 oz over the next 10 years, a total mine life, 22 years. Based on a $3,300 gold price, the net present value of that is $3.4 billion. For anyone who thinks that our share price has had a downturn, our market cap as of yesterday is just around $2 billion U.S. Very importantly, though, almost none of the upside we see in Porcupine is included in the PEA. That includes many opportunities to grow and improve existing operations and reduce costs. The major new projects like Dome and TVZ and all that exploration upside in the story.
Obviously, it also doesn't include any value for Cordero in Mexico, which is one of the world's leading development stage silver projects, which once built would be probably the second largest silver mine in Mexico, maybe the largest depending on timing, and definitely one of the top 10 big mines in all of Mexico. Turning to slide seven for Q2 2025, just giving a sense of the performance for the quarter. We did commence a number of key investment programs aimed at growing production, lowering costs, and extending mine life. We finalized plans for studies to be done at both TVZ and Dome. At the same time, we turned in some strong results. Production for 76 days beyond Porcupine was 50,000 oz of gold. Our gold sales were 42,000 oz. That kind of gap between production and sales is not something you will see again.
One of our KPIs is always going to be gold recovered equal gold poured equal gold sold. This is just some timing issues and some growing pains in terms of getting ounces properly poured and sold. We've worked out those bugs. All-in sustaining cash costs for the quarter was just over $2,100 per ounce sold. At the site-level, Porcupine's AISC was about $1,872 an ounce. I want to point out that these costs do not include Pamour, which is a capital approach that's still ramping up. On this slide eight now, it deals with the financial performance. I know Alison will get into more details a little later. I'll just say that we generated some solid financial results. Adjusted net earnings per share were $0.04 a share. The adjustments were the exclusion of acquisition and transition-related costs and some non-cash FX losses. Speaking of cash, we generated strong cash flow.
We had $67 million of operating cash flow and $27 million of free cash flow. If we had sold everything we produced, that cash flow would have been uniquely higher. It is not often that gold companies start out with producing assets. It is even less common to start out with producing assets that are profitable and generating free cash flow. With Porcupine, that is what we've done. We have a new gold company that's actually generating profit, making money now. We can take some credit for the ability to move forward in the assets we obtain. Definitely, the gold price helps us. As we progress over the next few quarters and into the next few years, we can judge us maybe on our own performance and not just on what the gold price and the market's doing for us or what others have done for us.
Slide nine looks at the investments. I mentioned that we commenced a number of investment programs during the second quarter. Total capital expenditures were $44 million, $28 million of which was growth capital. We made some good progress at the Dome mill during Q2. We took advantage of the mill shutdown in late April to advance a number of programs. We also advanced a major tailings project. Pamour accounted for more than $20 million of the total CapEx. A large piece of that was pre-stripping. You will hear more from Pierre, but we produced 7,000 oz from Pamour in Q2. This is pre-production ounces. We expect these numbers from Pamour to go up over the next few quarters as the strip ratio comes down. We intend on achieving commercial production by Q4 of 2026. Once we get beyond that, we expect production to normalize somewhere around 150,000 oz a year.
Of the $16 million of sustaining CapEx in the quarter, the majority of it was at Hoyle Pond and Borden, largely related to capital development. In terms of exploration, although Eric Kallio discussed it in more detail, I will say that we are ramping up an extensive exploration program. We expect to do about 140,000 m of drilling this year. If this is the beginning of setting ourselves up and we'll be doing that and even more, up to double that on an annual basis, I would like to believe for about 10 years. That's maybe a forward-looking statement, but that's also a goal that we've got a lot of the place to explore, and Eric's building up a solid exploration team with a lot of exciting new discoveries that come in. Slide 10 outlines some of our key priorities over the next while.
A lot of the drilling we are doing is focused on resource conversion. We plan to complete a study updating this year's technical report that will include an initial reserve for Hoyle Pond, Borden, and Pamour. That study will be released sometime during the middle of next year. We will also complete studies for the Dome mine and the TVZ zone at Hoyle Pond for expected release in the first half of 2026. The Dome study will focus on the incurred resource and provide a little bit more understanding on how we can move that forward. The TVZ study, sorry, will include a release of an initial resource statement. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Alison White, our new CFO .
Alison was most recently CFO at SSR Mining and prior to that was with Newmont in a number of roles, including CFO for North American Operations. Very pleased to have her on board.
Thanks, Tony. It's a pleasure to be here as a part of the Discovery team. I'm going to start on slide 11 and review our financial performance for the quarter. Overall, it was a strong quarter, as Tony mentioned. As you heard, our adjusted net earnings were $28.4 million or $0.04 per share. Very importantly, we generated robust cash flow with operating cash flow of $67 million and free cash flow of $27 million, bolstering the balance sheet. Looking at the $27 million of free cash flow, it's important to keep in mind a couple of things. First, as Tony mentioned, our gold sales were 8,000 oz below gold produced. We will make up those ounces in terms of sales during the third quarter. Secondly, we had close to $20 million of acquisition and transition-related costs that will not be repeated on a go-forward basis.
When you consider those factors, our $27 million of free cash flow was encouraging, but it could have been significantly higher. In future quarters, assuming similar pricing conditions, we do expect that it will be much higher. Turning to slide 12, this slide shows the details of adjusted net earnings and reviews the difference between our net earnings of $5.5 million or $0.01 per share and our adjusted net earnings of $28.4 million or $0.04 per share. As you can see, there were $16.6 million of acquisition-related costs, primarily expenditures for legal, consulting, and advisory services, and other expenses related to the completion of the Porcupine acquisition. There were $1.6 million of costs related to the acquisition on an after-tax basis, including a variety of activities around Discovery's integration of the Porcupine operation. We also had after-tax FX losses of $4.7 million, largely a function of the weakening U.S.
dollar during the quarter. As you've heard earlier in the call, we became the U.S. dollar reporting issuer starting in the second quarter. As I move to slide 13, slide 13 looks at EBITDA, which totaled $55.2 million in Q2. If I touch on each of the add-back items, let's look at financing costs first. The $14.3 million of financing costs mainly relate to the appreciation cost of $7.8 million from reclamation and deferred consideration, as well as $6.5 million in interest expense related to the Franco-Nevada royalty and its associated accounting impact. Depletion and depreciation of $16.4 million related mainly to the addition of over $560 million of depletable mineral interest and $314 million of depreciable plants and equipment related to the Porcupine acquisition. Finally, income tax expense of about $19 million is attributable to the revenues from production during the quarter.
Moving on to slide 14, this breaks down both cash costs and all-in sustaining costs. I want to reiterate one more time that our consolidated cash costs and all-in sustaining costs do not include Pamour , which is a capital project that's ramping up toward commercial production levels. I won't go through each contributor to the costs that are shown here. However, I'll highlight that the site-level AISC of $1,872 an ounce excludes the $213 an ounce gray box in the chart, which represents G&A and share-based payments. There is also about $38 an ounce in the $441 an ounce of sustaining capital expenditures, which is deemed corporate and related primarily to the Cordero project costs. We move on to slide 15 that dives into capital expenditures.
I know that Pierre Rocque will also discuss CapEx in his operating review, but I'm going to touch on it briefly before we get there. Total capital expenditures during Q2 were $44.2 million. Sustaining capital was $16.1 million, while gross capital totaled $28.1 million. Just looking at the chart, you can see that Pamour accounted for the largest component of total capital. CapEx at Pamour totaled $22.3 million, all included in gross capital expenditures. Of the $22.3 million, $14 million related to pre-stripping, with the remainder mainly reflecting allocated capital for the tailings management project. I will point out that for reporting purposes, CapEx at the mill and the number six tailings dam are allocated to the operating mine. The tailings project in total accounted for $16 million of capital expenditures. I'll let Pierre give you more details on that project a little bit later in the call.
The other significant areas for capital investment involve sustaining capital expenditures at Borden and Hoyle Pond. The largest component of these expenditures is capital development. As we continue to set the mines up for future production, we have also commenced investment programs to update infrastructure and equipment fleets. If we turn to slide 16, we can take a look at our cash balance. We had cash of $252.5 million as of the end of the quarter on June 30th. Just yesterday, our cash balance was $279 million. That suggests we're continuing to generate solid free cash flow. As you can see from the chart, the main contributor to the buildup in cash during Q2 was the financing package that we arranged concurrent with the Porcupine acquisition.
The $468 million you see is comprised of $300 million received from Franco-Nevada for the 2.25% life of mine royalty and the 2% royalty linked note. The other $168.7 million represents the net proceeds from the subscription receipt financing completed in February of this year. With the closing of the acquisition, the $275 million receipts were exchanged on a one-for-one basis into common shares. The other major contributor to higher cash was the $67 million of operating cash flow. These inflows were partially offset by the $200 million of cash consideration paid to Newmont for the acquisition. The cash component of our capital expenditures was just under $40 million, and we had $51.6 million of restricted cash, which is backing government-required financial assurances in relation to closure plans involving the Porcupine assets.
I'll also point out that in addition to our cash costs, we have a $100 million credit facility from Franco that remains undrawn, which is adding to our total liquidity balance. If we flip over to slide 17, we've obviously had and continue to have a significant accounting exercise following the completion of the Porcupine acquisition. This slide shows the purchase price allocation for the second quarter. I want to stress that the numbers represent the preliminary estimates of the fair values of identified assets that were acquired and the liabilities assumed from Newmont. It's a complex exercise, and we'll finalize the determination of the fair values of the assets and the liabilities acquired and the deferred taxes within the period allowed, which is 12 months from the acquisition date. You'll see that the value of the net assets listed on the closing date was $524 million.
That's higher than the purchase price disclosed when the deal was announced. That's entirely due to the significant increase in Discovery 's share price following the deal's announcement. Basically, Newmont benefited from the market's view that Discovery entered a very good deal and the share price reflected that growth between the timing of the deal announcement and the finalization of the acquisition. With that, I'm going to turn the call over to Pierre Rocque, our Chief Operating Officer.
Thank you, Alison. I'll start with Hoyle Pond on slide 18. For those who may not know, HoyleP ond is one of Canada's highest-grade gold mines with an excellent track record for replacing reserves. A total of 45,160 tons were mined from April 16 to the end of June 2025. An average mining rate of 594 tons per day. Production mainly came from the lower S zone on the 1965 and 1985 level. Total material milled was 98,000 tons at the grade of 5.5 gram per ton. All of the tonnage and grade milled largely reflected the processing of stockpiles during the quarter. Going forward, we do not anticipate processing much stockpile material during the second half of the year.
Operating development during Q2 of 2025 was mainly focused on the main production areas in the lower S zone, as well as in areas of the upper mine where access to narrow hybrid veins is currently commented. Capital development activities during the quarter mainly involved continuing to extend the main ramp to depth in the lower S zone. Production costs in Q2 totaled around $20.9 million, with operating cash costs around sold, averaging $1,566, and all-in sustaining costs around sold, averaging $2,036. We expect lower all-in sustaining costs in the second half of the year as average grades will increase. Sustaining capital expenditures were mainly related to capital development activities, as well as Hoyle Pond's allocation of capital expenditures that are related to the tailings management area. Turning to Borden on slide 19.
As you may know, Borden is close to the town of Chapleau, approximately 190 kilometers from the Dome mill. We trucked the ore to Fome. Borden is located on a large land position that is underexplored and has significant exploration upside. Eric will talk about this in a few minutes. Commercial production started at Borden in 2019, and the mine has produced around 600,000 oz to date. During Q2, the mine produced 27,000 oz from processing 166,000 tons at an average grade of 5.6 gram per ton. Mine production during the quarter was 124,000 tons or an average mining rate of just over 1,600 tons per day. The issue we had was trucking availability. By adding stockpiles of ore from earlier in the quarter, we were able to process about 2,000 tons per day for the quarter.
Operating development during the quarter was mainly focused on the West, Central, and Upper East Zones. The capital development primarily related to the continued advancement of the main ramp and the exploration drift on the 575 level. Production costs in the second quarter totaled $22 million, with operating cash costs per ounce sold averaging $1,175. All-in sustaining costs per ounce sold averaged $1,621 for the quarter. Sustaining capital expenditures totaled $9 million, with capital development accounting for $5.7 million and the remainder related to allocated tailings management area expenditures, as well as investment in infrastructure and new equipment. Turning to Pamour on slide 20, we did our open pit project. Initial production was recorded in early 2025, and we are currently ramping up towards commercial levels of operation, which we expect in 2026. This timing is driven by the watering requirement.
It has been a wet year so far in Timmins. There was considerable pre-stripping activity ongoing during the second quarter. We moved 2.7 million tons of waste versus 104,000 tons of mineralization. The yield speed from the mine during the second quarter was mainly on bench number 19 of the phase one open pit, with production from bench number 13 commencing late in the quarter. Yield speed from Pamour is expected to increase significantly in the second half of the year, with the strip ratio expected to average below 10:1 during the final quarter of the year. In addition to mine production, 132,000 tons were processed from stockpiles during the quarter. As with Hoyle Pond, we don't anticipate processing meaningful amounts of stockpiles from Pamour going forward as the strip ratio comes down and we increase yield speed from the mine.
Production costs in the second quarter totaled $12 million. Operating costs per ounce sold averaged $2,051, while all-in sustaining costs per ounce sold averaged $2,194. All capital expenditures at Pamour in Q2 were gross capital expenditures and related mainly to pre-stripping and allocated G&A capital expenditures. I'll now turn the call over to Eric, our SVP for Exploration.
Thank you, Pierre. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm on slide 21, and it's great to be here and talk about exploration again, as I believe we have a lot of very exciting things happening. As indicated on the slide, our current plan indicates work on several different projects and about 140,000 m of drilling. One of the key projects is at the Hoyle Pond underground, where we'll be aiming for about 50,000 m on three main targets, including the ship's main deep, TVZ, and then mid-mine targets. Just to share a few details, work on the S-beam will be from platforms on the 1860 level and focus on infill expansion of the main zone, mostly near the 2000 level. Work on the TVZ will be from the 1210 level and include both infill and net testing in preparation for the new main resort in 2026.
The work on the mid-mine targets will be mainly between 12 and 1700 levels, testing for new discoveries, often an extension of many of the historic scopes that have been mined. In terms of progress, it's a little slower than expected, but we now have two drills in motion and adding four more this month, which should start to rapidly increase the rate of drilling. Now, let's say that Borden ranges about 20,000 m. The main target here being the 585 deep zone two, which is basically the northeast extension of the main ore body. Work for the program here will be with speed drills parked on the 585 level and drilling downwards into the zone over a 200 to 300-meter strike length. This is already well underway.
From the Pamour, we have another 40,000 m drilling, which will be for infill and expansion of what we believe is already a pretty good open pit resort. In terms of the plan, what we see happening is drilling along most of the strike length of the planned pit and then beyond due to mining activity starting out right now on the east and west extremity. Progress to date here has actually been very good with over 12,000 m completed to date, which is actually slightly ahead of plan. Finally, capping it all off here are projects for both regional and Dome, where we're aiming for 132,000 m with 15,000 at Timmins, 10,000 at Borden, and about 7,500 at Dome.
In terms of the plan for all projects, it will pretty much all be focused pretty close to the mine, with work in Timmins testing areas west of Hoyle Pond and near Elk Creek, work at Borden testing north and east of the mine, and work at the Dome near the main pit, and more specifically in the area of a possible starter pit, which we believe could provide a shorter-term opportunity with minimal impact to items such as mill. In terms of progress, work on all these projects is just getting underway, but it's ramping up very rapidly this quarter. I believe we have a great lineup of projects and look forward to providing another update on these in the near future. With that, I'll pass the call over to José Jabalera, our VP of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability from Mexico.
Thanks, Eric. Hi, everyone. In Cordero in Mexico, we deliver our feasibility study at the beginning of 2024. Currently, our main permit with the MEA in Mexico is being evaluated by the Ministry of Environment, and we hope to have a positive response in the coming months. During Q2, we continued de-risking project by evaluating energy options, such as gas generation, since we have a gas pipeline very close to the project versus power from the grid. The technical work and some measurements to contribute to the progress of the rehabilitation of the plant, the plan of the rehabilitation of the water treatment plant is our goal now. An important point in line with de-risking project, last week we were present at meetings in the visit of the Minister of Finance and Foreign Affairs of Canada in Mexico.
It was an official visit to President Champagne, advancing the visit of the Prime Minister currently that will be during the next month in Mexico. We know that in the next visit, one of the main topics will be mining authorizations in the agenda for Mexico. Thanks very much for the opportunity.
Okay. Thanks, José. Thanks, everyone, for all the insights you provided on the call. Appreciate that. As you can see, everybody, we are off to a very strong start with the Porcupine operations. There is a lot of work to do, partly because there's so much opportunity. We're excited about working forward to unlock that and get that information out to our shareholders. We do expect to see higher levels of production in both Q3 and Q4. We will also continue ramping up our investment in exploration programs and in CapEx with a target increase in the second half of 2025. We also are accelerating our exploration and initial exploration results should be coming during the second half of the year.
Another big thing as part of trying to work on deliverables, as we talked about coming into the end of this year, early into next year, is a bunch of work on a number of studies. As I talked about earlier, establishing reserves at our operating mines at Hoyle Pond, Borden, and Pamour, and to demonstrate the tremendous potential that exists out of growth projects that open the TVZ zone and at Dome. Before I conclude, I always remind you of the quote I hear from Indira Gandhi, where she said that she talked to her grandfather, where he said, "There's two kinds of people in the world. There are those that do the work, and there are those that benefit from the work of others," she said. Her grandfather told her, "Be part of the first group.
There's less competition." Unfortunately, I know as I'm speaking to you today, I'm part of the second group. With that, I think it's important that I say thanks to all the people at Discovery, those who supported us to get here, and to our shareholders. Most importantly, I want to thank personally those that have done the work, got the results in the quarter for us. Some of you are on shift working now. Others are at home resting before coming back for the next shift. Thank you for your efforts, and please continue to work safe. With that, we'll just conclude the call, and we'll be happy to take any questions.
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question today comes from the line of Larry Liu from CIBC. Your line is open.
Hi, Tony, Alison, Pierre, Eric, José, and Mark and team. Thanks for taking my question today. I guess I'll kick off my first question asking about how, from your perspective, how are the assets performing compared to your initial expectations within a technical report? If we look at today's results, 50,000 oz came in strong if you factor in the timing of the transaction, as well as the two-week mill shutdown. I'm wondering if we can factor in any further upside compared to the initial technical report at this point.
Maybe I'll let Pierre give a little bit of color here, but let me just put it in perspective. Yeah, definitely, we took over the assets, and we did a review, and you got a sense of what can be accomplished here. We also recognize we did inherit over 1,000 very talented, skilled, and motivated people working here. We got a lot of upside in terms of intellectual property and opportunity that was given to us. There are challenges, but I think there's been some unique, significant effort done in the quarter and getting some positive impacts. I don't know, Pierre, do you have any thoughts there?
Right. In terms of the asset, Tony mentioned, we're really blessed with the operating crews here, whether it's at the mill or the mine, they're really top-notch. Thank you for that. When you look at the assets themselves, starting with Pamour, referring to the PDA, we were at about 3,000 tons per day for 2025. I can say we have exceeded that, and we're way ahead of that. When you look at Hoyle Pond, we were averaging around 500 tons per day. We are ahead of that as well. Right now, I would say the only asset that needs a little bit more attention right now is at Borden, where we were planning to get 2,000 tons per day.
We're a little short of that in the quarter, but we think that with a little bit of changes in the mining plan and more importantly, changes in the equipment, we'll be able to achieve and exceed the 2,000 tons per day. As I alluded a little bit earlier, truck availability, loaders availability during the quarter was really below expectations. That's only due to the age of the equipment. As we replace the equipment, it's going to improve for sure.
Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Pierre and Tony. I guess that kind of leads well into my next question. Speaking of ahead of schedule, I'm just wondering if you can share with us where you are in terms of your ramp-up process at Pamour, and then how much more CapEx do you still need to spend to push the asset towards commercial production, or how much more do you intend to spend before the end of the year?
You'll get it at the end?
You'll get it to us? There is still a lot of pre-stripping. If you look at the remainder of the year, what we're tracking with the PDA, that will be the main expense, I would say, the pre-stripping. After that, the allocated portion of the tailings. After that, some equipment replacement that we're doing there. It's still a challenge in the second half of the year financially, but we think that it's going to be compensated by improvement in terms of.
Remember, though, I mean, we expect to continue advancing Pamour this year. We expect to achieve commercial production by or before Q4 in 2026. It's a lot of work to do, right?
For sure. Sounds good. It's good to see more progress there for sure, and good to hear that things are ahead of schedule. I guess my last question is more numbers-driven. It might be more accounting, actually. For reclamation liabilities, I noticed that there is a slight change in the discount rate used for the estimate. That's why resulting in an increase in the reclamation liabilities. I'm wondering, what's the reason driving that change, and should we expect such a magnitude of changes going forward?
Larry, this is Alison. The change in the reclamation liability is all related to the purchase price accounting that we have done during the quarter. This is really a huge quarter of transition for us on the accounting and finance front. We're getting our arms wrapped around the systems, the people, the numbers. Part of what we have to do is take a look at what's come over from Newmont, as well as what's the reassessment of the fair market value of those reclamation liabilities. The increase that you see and the change in the discount rates that you see are all related to those purchase price activities. We do have a year to finalize those. If we have new facts that we need to consider going forward, we will. However, we don't anticipate a change in the discount rate to get back to your question.
Gotcha. Perfect. Sounds good. Thanks so much, Tony, Alison, and Pierre, for answering my question. Congrats again on a strong quarter.
Your next question comes from the line of John Tmazos from John Tumazos Very Independent Research. Your line is open.
Thank you, everyone, for your service to the company.
Thank you, John.
Alison, could you explain the 75%+ quarter and 100%+ six-month tax rate? Is it because the transaction expenses and the currency charges are not deductible for tax purposes? Would the tax rate be 35% going forward?
Yes. John, thank you for the question and various observations. I would say, first of all, we are working through a little bit of transition, as I mentioned in the answer that I gave to Larry, just about the process that we're going through from a finance and accounting lens. You are correct. Our effective rate is hovering between 30% and 35% right now, and that's largely based on what's coming in at Dome. We are in the process of understanding what sort of tax planning initiatives we can put in place and how we might be able to bring those rates down going forward. We do need a little bit more time to work through that as an organization.
Thank you. Pierre, could you explain the thresholds for Pamour being commercial? It's confusing to me that the cash cost is $2,000 and there's a $1,300 margin with $3,300 gold, yet it's not commercial. How does the engineering reconcile with the economics?
Right. Commercial production, there's no set rules for that. Internally, we are converging towards 75% mining rate sustained for three months. We're not there yet. As I alluded earlier, we're having dewatering requirements that far exceed our capability to increase the mining rate right now. Our efforts are really directed towards dewatering. To the best of our knowledge right now, we will not be in a position to improve drastically the mining rate until 2026, at which point we will meet that self-imposed rule, if you wish, of 75% production rate over sustained three months. You have to remember that when we started here in April, the previous owner was a little bit behind the eight ball with dewatering. Basically, they didn't do much. The new water treatment plan that we put in place, we forgot to winterize that.
Basically, we had to pick up the pieces in April and May. That delayed a little bit our start for dewatering. We're catching up a little bit, but it's a very, very long process. Does that clarify?
If the gold price is good, you're going to make a profit lower than 75%, but you still won't call it commercial.
Like I said, there's no set rules for it. That's the one we decided to use.
I think a big part there, John, is that in terms of shift ratio, in terms of what we're doing and the amount of work that really set it up for proper mine production, is a lot of the finance stuff that gets you set up for achieving your average throughput. Right now, it is somewhat intermittent, and it's not just on tons per day, but it's also on grade and being able to really be into the airboat and get all the benches proper. It's just a matter of time that we're going to get there. Whether it's, you know, achieving 75% effective mining rate every day for three months, then we can call it commercial production. It's arbitrary.
[Mike].
Yeah.
If I can ask one to Eric. Eric?
Yeah.
What is the distance from the edge of the Pamour pit to the edge of the idle Hoyle Pond pit?
I don't know.
Is it two kilometers, five kilometers?
It's more than two kilometers. You know, it takes me about half an hour to drive, I guess. It would be small. Yeah, maybe 20 km, over 20 km, I would say.
How much information is there? Should we assume that that stretch of land is no geologic information, or are there areas where you know there's no gold, or what is the nature of the information?
That stretch of land, you know, it covers kind of quite a few different types of geology. I mean, there's a couple of major faults in there, the [Barrows] Benedict fault that offset things quite a bit. There is some mining along the full stretch, but you know they're mostly small historic mines that didn't go down very deep. It really didn't show the type of broad halos that you just see at the Pamour or the Dome either.
The Pamour, the Hollinger magnetite are on the sort of, I guess you would say, the western limb of the Porcupine sink line. Whereas Pamour is off on part of the eastern limb of that, eastern and far part of that. You can't just go straight across, but you're going from different mineralized or highly prospective mineralized parts of the structure to an unmineralized structure in the core of the sink line.
Yeah, the little part is quite different, I mean, than what you see either at Pamour or at Hoyle Pond.
It's not just a simple geographic line. There's geology, as you talked about, and faults to get through that change. It's a nice spot. There is a lot of potential mineralization. As I think Eric alluded to, it's an exciting camp. Not only can you find new drilling, you find new extensions of existing mineralization. You can follow up on new targets that can grow in terms of size and resources, and there's potential to find all new discoveries in the camp.
Tony, with the mill fixed up during the quarter and Pamour in startup and Borden at 2,000 a day and Hoyle at 600 ton a day, it looks like the mill is ahead of the mines at the moment. Is it worth having a contract miner go to the Dome pit and deliver 3,000, 4,000 ton a day while Pamour is starting up? Maybe you could drop a SAG mill into the Dome mill and get the party going a little better at the Dome pit.
There are a lot of these, you know, that's part of what you can figure out. Right now, we're not mineralization or deposit limited in terms of what we can do. We need to do the technical work to advance with the Dome project, TVZ, as well as really solidify production from Hoyle Pond and Borden and get Pamour up. It's not just about managing production, but it's also about managing costs and really setting yourself up to be what we like to be, a low-cost producer. I want to lower cost producers and focus on responsible mining. There are a lot of things we need to do. We do have it as part of our goal. I think, as we talk in future quarters about what we're doing to the Dome mill to get it up. Right now, the mines can't keep up to the mill.
There are low-grade stockpiles that I guess we can put in if they make sense to keep the mill full. I think Gord's made a lot of very good progress. We have demonstrated that the mill can run at 11,500, 12,000 tons a day and get pretty good recoveries in well over 91%, 92%. It's just a matter of time. We're working through that. We want to be able to do it consistently and responsibly. Similarly, with the mines, get them up consistently and responsibly to achieve that. The big picture is, I would say in two years from now, we're going to be.
We could have our first hockey game.
Yeah, sure. Even before we get our first hockey game there, John, in that sense, we got lots of significant upside between you and others, all these projects. There's, you know, as we say, there's the ability to grow this into being a tier one asset in the gold space. As defined by some of our senior peers, they'll say 500,000 oz a year for 10+ years at the lower half of the cost curve. That's part of our goal. We're not going to get there next year, but it's not going to take 10 years to get there either.
Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Phil Ker from Ventum Financial. Your line is open.
Thanks, operator. Everyone at Discovery , congrats on the transformational quarter. Most of my questions have been touched on or taken care of by the presentation, but just a few simple ones here. In terms of G&A, the reported number there was relatively quite high compared to your peers. I'm just curious, I would assume there were some one-time items in there, and I'm wondering what this number may level off at for the rest of the year moving forward.
You're right. There were a lot of one-time G&A costs that were sitting in the quarter, and that is largely due to the acquisition and the costs associated with that. I think that, you know, we will not run at that same rate going forward. We don't have an exact number yet for you, but by March, the quarterly G&A that was attributable to the acquisition was close to $20 million. There is certainly a lot of it that's sitting in there that will be coming or will repeat itself going forward.
Okay. In terms of exploration dollars, I think the breakdown of meters allocated about 25,000 m to regional targets. Would those targets be and those expenses, those costs be expensed?
Yeah, they would be for the most part. Yeah, up to pretty much all.
What sort of drilling costs per meter are you seeing?
Drilling costs per meter right now, it's still kind of, I guess, kind of hard for me to say what we're going to get going forward. I mean, they vary a lot from project to project. Pamour is very relevant in this case. We have a rate of speed. Dome or Hoyle Pond, for example, you know, we've been underground with only one drill for a while, so you know, you're going to have fairly high costs per meter.
Okay. Then.
It just varies a lot right now, but you know, we'll be able to give you a better answer on that. I mean, they can vary between probably $150 to $300 a meter, I guess.
Okay. In terms of the Franco-Nevada royalty, I did see a line broken out in the production costs. As we added it up into the income statement, I sort of lost where that, I think it was about $6.5 million, where that was being reported or where it was lost in translations from operations to the financial statements.
Yes. That is a complex accounting arrangement that we have entered into in relation to the Franco-Nevada royalty. That's largely due to a number of terms that are present in the contract, two different tranches that are included in that royalty. It qualifies for embedded derivative treatment underneath our accounting rules. Effectively, the royalty gets recorded as deferred revenue, and then it amortizes over the life of mine. The deferred revenue ends up being reduced by the ounces produced, and then there's a royalty and an interest expense reported. We're happy to walk you through anything in terms of model offline, but hopefully, that high level just kind of helps you understand the general mechanics of how we're accounting for that royalty.
Complex accounting set it off. Thank you.
I could have stopped earlier.
Thanks for the questions.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to the presenters for some final closing remarks.
Yeah. I just want to thank everyone for taking the time to participate in the call. I'll just repeat something Tony said. There's a lot of work going on, and there's a lot of work to do, and that's a function of there being a lot of opportunity here. Having calls like this gives us an opportunity to talk about the progress we're achieving and what we see going forward. We'll look forward to keeping you updated, and that includes our next quarterly call in November. Thanks very much again.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.