Please take it away, George.
It's great to be at BMO again, and great to be talking about what we think is a fantastic combination of two Canadian-based companies. This is our typical forward-looking statement with cautions, and this is a map of our portfolio. What are we about? Well, at Eldorado, we got four existing operations. They're generating solid cash flow. We've been producing about 500,000 ounces the last couple of years. Where are we headed? Well, we're bringing in two fantastic, multi-decade operations that have gold, copper, zinc, and this is tremendous growth. You can see our production's going from about 500,000 ounces gold equivalent to about 900,000 ounces in 2027. It's strategic growth, it's got copper exposure, but it's immediate growth, and I think that's something that sets us apart from all of our peers.
We got 25 plus million ounces in M&I in the combined company. Our average mine life, I think, is peer-leading, we're 13 plus years. The 2 new assets that'll be coming into the portfolio are multi-decade. Skouries is 20 years on reserves, the underground ore body's open to depth, it's just hasn't been drilled. Foran's Mack Bay asset, again, it's an 18-year mine life as it stands today, it's gonna run for decades. Map of our portfolio, we have 2 operating assets in Türkiye. We've been operating there for a couple of decades, mature mines. We're looking for our third mine, we have 5 early-stage exploration projects that we think have good potential to creating our third mine in the country. In Greece... We're the only operator in Greece. We've got the Olympias mine running.
It's in an expansion this year that'll be completed in Q3. It's generating good free cash flow as we speak. We've got great exploration upside. If you look at our last press release on exploration, we've made some new discoveries in what's been a deposit that's been around a long time. There's 3 ore bodies that we're currently mining. We've got 2 new discoveries on this, on this wonderful asset. We're the only operator in the country. There's ginormous exploration opportunities. We have our Perama Hill project in northern Greece. You know, we've got a long future ahead of us. In Canada, we've got our Lamaque mine. We purchased this in 2017. I think we've out-delivered all market expectations.
We have Mack Bay, which will be coming into production, not in years or months, but in weeks. Pretty fantastic portfolio. We'll walk you through each of the assets. Lamaque, we bought it in 2017. There were no reserves. It was a significant resource, an old mill that had been idled with a wooden roof and wooden walls. Eldorado, we purchased it in 2017, $460 million. I can tell you there wasn't any analysts that were patting me on the back for that acquisition. You know, we said we'd have it... We'd have a maiden reserve out in six months, we'd have it in production in two years. I don't think anybody believed we could do that, and we did that. We delivered it.
Today, it's 7 times the value we paid for it, and so I think it's a credit to our technical teams that were under the hood. We had a toehold in that investment, and I think we've out-delivered what anybody thought. Since then, we've discovered a new ore body, and the future's bright. It's just shy of 200,000 ounce producer with an 8-year mine life, but it's gonna run, I believe, for decades. Olympias, this is an old mine. It's been around for a couple of decades, but we're expanding the plant. In today's market, this has huge margins. It's gonna be a really important contributor to free cash flow going forward. It's got a 13-year mine life, but again, we've got new discoveries. All 3 ore bodies are open to depth. This, again, I believe, is gonna run for decades.
Kışladağ's been operating for 20 years in Türkiye. It's an open pit heap leach. Currently has a 13-year mine life. We're currently working on some stripping that'll likely bring in another pushback, that likely will get announced later this year. Again, extending mine life on this asset. Efemçukuru, it's about an 8-year mine life right now, this is an underground mine that we produce a gold pyrite concentrate, export it. It's been our steadiest producer. It's hit its guidance in every year of its operation, which has been 15 years. There's not huge upside here on exploration. The main ore body we've been mining for the last 15 years will exhaust itself. We're mining some high-grade, narrow veins on the property that have extended the mine life to 8 years.
Maybe we squeeze another year or two out. That's probably the end of the story. Skouries is the big deal for us. This is been a project that wanted to be developed for years. Highlight, the copper byproduct for this 20-year mine life will pay all the operating and sustaining costs. You can take our 20-year average, 140,000-ounce gold production, multiply it by your gold price, and roughly that's the free cash flow this asset will deliver. It's gonna be in production this year. We're essentially finishing up the construction on the plant. We just announced we're about 3 months delayed due to a problem with a VFD on the cyclone feed pumps. This is news we just unwound as we were setting up this equipment in the MCC. The mining's in good shape, open pit.
We've infill drilled the next three years of mining. Ore body reconciles well. We have 1,500,000 tons of ore on the ground right now that will grow between now and startup. The underground, it's an open pit and underground. Underground's in development. We've mined one test stope, and the second test stope's about half completed. It's technically verified our mining method. These are 60-meter stopes. They're about 60,000 tons per stope, the two that we're currently mining. We're gonna go to a larger stope this current year. We're gonna do four stopes this year, about five meters wider. They'll be over 90,000 tons per stope. I would say we're de-risking the underground. We got a finish contractor doing the development. They're ahead of schedule, and we're set up for a good year this year.
McIlvenna Bay.
Sure. I'll, I'll talk about McIlvenna Bay. So McIlvenna Bay. Sorry, on the western flank of the Flin Flon Greenstone Belt, where they've been mining for over 100 years and have discovered 29 different mines so far. When you go west, there's a layer of dolomite, and so the deposits aren't outcropping. However, it's 30 meters. All you need to do is combine a bit of geophysics with some structural geoscience, and boom, you've found McIlvenna Bay, Tesla, Bridge, all of that. The development and the build has gone extremely well, as, you know, despite having to deal with change in, in prime ministers and government funding delays, port strike, airline strikes, wildfires, you name it, we've gone through it, but we're very lucky.
We've got an incredible team of own-operated miners, as well as the construction team from G Mining Services, just probably the best mine builders in the world. They've been fantastic and done an amazing job. You'll see first production there in the next few weeks by the end of March. That's, that's very, very exciting. What's super unique about this asset is the fact that it can scale. It's very nice to have a long-life, multi-generational or decade asset, but when you've got one that can scale, that's truly unique. What do I mean by scale? I mean, it's gonna double and triple production from there, whilst going for so many decades, I think. That's something how you create true, true value and wealth.
Perama Hill, just on the topic of the team from G Mining Services, they signed up to build Perama Hill in Greece for our combined company. It's probably the best, gold, undeveloped gold project in the world, if, if, if I'm being objective. It's 3 grams per ton oxide open pit at a strip ratio of just 0.3, which is unheard of, so it's just gonna be an absolute free cash flow beast. The same with the Lamaque expansion. What you see on the screen there, the grades that they've been discovering are truly incredible. I'm talking, like, up to 300 grams per ton gold. Just very, very special.
Permitted for 5,000 tons per day already, to double production there will be incredible from a value perspective and in terms of maximizing the value per share, which is what our company is all about. We've spoken enough about, about the two new assets. I'm gonna before I get into why we do this transaction, what's so exciting about this new company, here you can see the metal mix. It's a wonderful mix of gold, silver, and copper, as well as zinc and lead as well. Diversified jurisdictionally, across Greece, Greece and Canada, predominantly, as well in Turkey, which, I'm gonna speak from the foreign side. Eldorado have done such an amazing job in Turkey.
It's, it's incredible, and I, I think, there's a lot more upside to that jurisdiction, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Really, if I could take your time, I know everyone's busy and got full days here. If there's one thing that I could leave you with, it's the next two, this slide and the next one, which is, you talk about, everyone always wants to talk about growth and production growth and having immediate production growth, i.e., like what we've got at McIlvenna Bay, Skouries, you know, McIlvenna Bay starting in the next few weeks, Skouries in the next few months, and building upon the existing base that you have, and then all the other internal projects we've got to expand further.
Just focusing on McIlvenna Bay and Skouries for now, you've got 80% production growth, but more than that, you look at the free cash flow growth for the combined company, and today, we would be doing around $2.1 billion on annualized numbers, so you have to discount that a little bit down for the ramp-up and time to get there. You see what an attractive free cash flow yield the combined company is actually trading at today, roughly 20%. Again, you have to discount it down for the ramp-up over 2026 to get there. Typically, you know, companies in the GDX will trade at a 5% free cash flow yield.
We think at a minimum, we can 3x the value of this company, and that's simply by just keeping your head down and bum up and executing and delivering on these projects and optimizing and just doing exactly that. Regardless of what the commodity price does, this will be an absolute free cash flow beast, and we will just use that to maximize the value per share for our shareholders.
Yeah, I mean, this slide, you can see $1.3 billion in cash and equivalents. We got a solid balance sheet, to, to Dan's point, to finish the construction this year, to focus on bringing in a lead-silver circuit to McIlvenna Bay. They currently don't have one. With our balance sheet, we can, we could build it. We need to permit it. Essentially, there's $1 billion in free cash flow coming out of that lead-silver circuit, better silver payability. We got the balance sheet to invest that, we got the balance sheet to accelerate the expansion to double the capacity of the plant. Net debt for the combined companies, $225 million. Estimated EBITDA for next year is $2.1 billion.
4 mines with 2 fantastic multi-decade assets coming online this year, brings us at 6 projects with an enormous amount of growth. On top of that, last year, we started buying back our shares. We were clearly undervalued. We spent about $200 million last year. We're committed to continue those share buybacks this year, and we're gonna have our 1st dividend paid out this quarter, so that should give confidence to the market. We're confident about the growth that's right in front of us, and we're returning capital to shareholders, and we're buying our shares, which are, in our view, hugely undervalued. Here you can see the list of catalysts in front of us, and this is just over the next 1.5 years.
First dividend this quarter, commercial production of both assets this year. Teza will have a maiden resource, so that's the next deposit after McIlvenna Bay. We'll have a maiden resource on that this year and then focus on the drilling to convert that to reserves. Ramp-up of Olympias, our Olympias Mine's under an expansion. We'll start ramping that up in Q4 this year, expect to be commercial around the end of the year. Perama Hill, we filed the permit in December with the help of G Mining Services, did all the engineering for that. They're updating the feasibility study this year. We're hopeful to get the consultation process underway soon to be able to get that EIA approved this summer, which then could set us up for construction next year. Kışladağ, we've got the whole ore agglomeration project underway.
We've ordered the long lead equipment. Right now, about a third of the ore that we crush and stack on the heap leaches for heap leaching is agglomerated in a drum with cement. With this project, 100% of the ore will be agglomerated, and what we've seen from this project is much better permeability when all of the ore is agglomerated in a drum. We've got 6 different rock types, but a couple of those have a lot of fine material, and we struggle to get good permeability in those ore types. With this, we'll pull inventory down on the heap, accelerate the recovery of gold out of the heap, and create value. Again, this is just showing the dynamic of this company, the P/NAV, where we sit today. We're obviously gonna move to the right with these 2 mines coming on stream.
Same thing with the EV per, 2027 estimated EBITDA. This combined company's on the move. Why buy this combined company stock? Two world-class assets coming on stream this year, largely de-risked from the mining side. We've got ore stockpile on the ground. Ore bodies have been infill drilled, confirmed. It's just getting the construction done, and we're on the tail end of that work. We got a great revenue mix. From my perspective, it's 77% gold, 4% silver, so 81% precious metal, and about 15% copper, and the residual amounts, lead and zinc. Strong balance sheet with a lot of flexibility to deliver these assets this year. We're already investing in the next projects.
High margin, I mean, I think our company's gonna be one of the lower-cost companies in our space, delivering an enormous amount of free cash flow. The last thing I'd talk to is just the cultural alignment. I've been in this industry three decades. I've seen, startup companies typically focus on the easy stuff, getting returns, getting projects running, and they don't necessarily always pay attention to relationships with communities, First Nations, workforce. I can tell you at Eldorado, we focused on this very hard. We've got an entrepreneurial spirit in our company. We've got great relationships. Our new mines, we've started up non-union, and it's not that unions are bad, but unions aren't necessary when you treat your people extremely well.
If you look at our Lamaque operation, it's non-union, a new mine that we started up that had been unionized in its history. We got great First Nations relationships when we went and saw what Dan had done. dry stack tailings, it's dominantly used by our company. He's using battery electric underground equipment, the exact same trucks we're using at Lamaque. The relationships he has with First Nations are tremendously positive. Starting the mine up non-union in a unionized camp, I mean, Hudbay Minerals's next door and great company, but like many of the older mines, unions were brought in, maybe because they were needed in the old days, but. We saw just a huge synergy and culture, and this, this company is gonna be an amazing company. Just stay tuned.
Over the next year or 2, we should be a top performer in our space.
... and, I guess we do have some time for questions still. If you do have a question, please raise your hand so that a microphone can be brought forward. Oh, just got a shy crowd. I do have a, a couple of-
There's 1 there.
Oh, one here.
Maybe just, just the growth capital at both Kışladağ and Lamaque this year, quite high, but just talk, talk. Elaborate a little bit there, how we think that can hopefully trend down over time. Obviously, production potentially going up, you know, brings it down, but just specifically the numbers of both. Growth capital is very high at those assets this year, and how they can trend down 2027, 2028. Thanks.
Yeah, for our Lamaque operation, we discovered the Ormaque deposit a couple of years ago. We did test mining the last two years. It's a different oriented ore body. It's a higher grade, horizontal laying deposit versus Triangle with steeply dipping, long hole stope mining. For Ormaque, it's cut and fill mining. It's basically a quartz vein, which you saw in the one photograph, pretty easy to see. What are we doing there? We're putting in a paste backfill plant, which we need for this horizontal cut and fill mining. We basically mine a drift, extract the ore, backfill it with cemented backfill, cemented tailings, and then mine next to it. We have to have the paste plant for that mining method. That's a key part of the construction this year.
With the extent of mine life that we have and are seeing, we need additional tailings space. The Sigma tailings area, it's kinda like building a pyramid, there's not a lot of space left in it. Again, to deal with minimizing impact on the environment, there's an historic. The old Lamaque underground mine was mined decades ago, took a pretty big footprint for tailings. Our plan is to take waste rock out of our Triangle underground mine, upgrade a buttress, rock buttress around that facility, which gives us a huge footprint then to stack tailings on, 'cause we think we have a very long runway here. There's some money going into that. Then we need to do development on the underground, so we're ramping up underground development to set up commercial production and putting in the required ventilation to support that ramp up.
Yeah, there's some new capital coming into the Lamaque to deal with bringing in the Ormaque deposit into commercial production. Kışladağ, it's essentially bringing in that whole ore agglomeration, so 100% of the, the ore will be agglomerated. We've ordered the long lead equipment, and we need to construct that facility up on the heap that will enable that. Those are the, the two key reasons. We do expect to see capital coming off subsequent to these investments.
Does anybody else have another question from the audience?
Well, follow up on that. I mean, you gave a 3-year outlook there as part of flat production, but with the recent good results, you spoke of the, the opportunity that, that, that might impact growth production. Is any of the spending this year on that growth capital tied to the thinking that that could be... Most of that tailings in preparation for, for larger production or not, not necessarily? To, to get to a higher level, you have to spend additional.
Yeah, the question is, at Lamaque, what's happening this year in terms of the ability to ramp up the production level? We currently run about 3,000 tons a day max through the Sigma Mill. It was originally permitted for 5,000 tons a day. For us to enable that capacity, we need to add grinding equipment, we need to upgrade more leach tanks, add some new leach tanks. That capital's not in there. What we are doing, again, here comes G Mining Services, we're gonna do a study and get an updated capital cost on what it will take to re-establish a 5,000 ton a day capacity in the plant, the construction will be subsequent to this year.
I do have a, a question from the app here as well. "With the move in commodity prices, what levels are you using to value potential transactions?" Which I guess, going forward, you guys are going off to other things, presumably as well, so perhaps this is a good question for the future as well.
Not really thinking about that right now. More just thinking about, sort of buying back shares until we get to a 5% free cash flow yield. Then probably giving, giving more back to shareholders. We'll have to see.
Yeah, I mean, I would say we've got a tremendous opportunity for growth within the portfolio.
Yeah.
This transaction for us was rebalancing the portfolio that would've been very heavy Greece, we're kinda now 40 Canada, 40 Greece, 20 Turkey. I, I agree with Dan. We'd focus on the internal growth and returning capital to shareholders.
It may be just in the last 30 seconds we've got here, one of my pre-approved questions to ask- ... was post the merger, and I think you guys have just alluded to it a little bit, what are the capital return plans for the combined company?
Post-merger and integration, we will put in a proper capital returns framework and outline that to give a bit more guidance and clarity there. We're not there right now. We just gotta get the merger closed, and that's where the focus is, and the assets ramped. I'd say, to sum it up, it's just gonna be to maximize the value per share. That's what this company is. It's gonna be a free cash flowing beast, and we're gonna do whatever we can to maximize the value with that free cash flow.
George, if you... Unless you have a, unless you have, like, one more comment you wanted to make on that, or we can just wrap it up.
Yeah.
It's good. Well, thank you very much for your time, gentlemen.
Thank you.
Thanks.