Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Equinox Gold corporate update and 1st Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. 0.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Rai Lynn Bailey, Vice President, Investor Relations for Equinox Gold. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, operator, and thank you very much for joining us today. We will, of course, be making a number of forward looking statements in today's presentation, so take a moment to visit our continuous disclosure documents on our website on SEDAR and on EDGAR. I will now turn the conference over to Ross Beatty, our Chairman to discuss the results of the PM and take
you through the presentation.
Thank you very much, Berlin, and welcome ladies and gentlemen to this call. I really, first of all, wanna start by apologizing for for doing this on a Friday afternoon just before a Canadian long weekend. This is, This is normally what happens when a company wants to deliver bad news, but nothing could be further from the truth for Equinox Gold. We had a great quarter We are just hitting on all cylinders and I just want to, to make that front and center for everybody. The reason we are doing this today is to accommodate our accountants.
We took about a month to, longer to close our Leagold deal than we had expected. And this put them right up against the wire to get the consolidation done. Tremendous amount of accounting to be done in changes that were required a lot of Scrutiny, a lot of review, and they asked us to go to the very last day before they had to file the quarterly statements, and that was today. So we accommodated that, won't happen again. I acknowledge it's it's a it's a rotten time to be doing this for everybody.
And by by Tuesday morning, when we reopen, Some of some of some people will have forgotten that we've put out such good results and they'll be moving on to whatever's going on next week. What is good about it is that we are ending the week on a very high note for gold. And all the reasons we did the Leagold merger and have have had such rapid growth in our gold production or gold reserves is is because of our conviction that we are in a secular gold market, gold bull market. And I think all events that have happened in the last, really the last 2 years, but particularly the last months or so have confirmed that that's been a very wise strategy. So what we're going to do now is I'm going to run through a few slides in our presentation that's on our webcast, to give some, some kind of, some high level overviews of what we're up to, some of the things we set out to do in 2019, this is like a report card of how we did.
This is the 3rd year we've done now. We did we started out our 1st year was in 2018. We did a report card then of what we were hoping to do that year. We did another one a year ago where we said it what we did in 20 18 versus our objectives, what we plan to do in 2019. And today, I'm going to talk about what we actually did in 2019 versus our our our objectives set out a year ago, and I'm gonna tell you what we're planning to do this year.
So that next year at this time, we can do exactly the same thing. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to start on page 3 of our webcast, presentation. And I'm going to talk about our leadership team, because after all, people in a company that build it, not anything else. If you have great people, you end up with a great company and great results. I'm gonna start with our board of directors.
This is a this is a relatively new board for many of the traditional Equinox shareholders. Unfortunately, we had to lose some of our very valuable board when we did the Leagold deal, but we brought in some great new directors from Leagold. Besides myself, I want to acknowledge Neil Woodyer, who was this previous CEO, of, of, Leah Gold, who is our vice chair. Christian Milau, of course, who's a brand new director as of today because he's the new CEO of the combined company. He's, of course, taking, transitioning from being CEO of Equinox Gold, and he is, he is going to be coming on as a director as of today.
Len Boggio, who's, independent board member also, who's chair of our audit committee, I wanna warmly welcome Maurice Belanger to our board as an independent director. Maurice has a long track record of of very successful, as a very as well engineer, minor in many places. She speaks fluent French, of course, fluent fluent Portuguese, and she lives near Vancouver and I'm very happy to be welcoming our first female onto our board as well. It's overdue. We need more diversity.
I'll say that right away and we'll be looking for that in the future as well. But I'm particularly happy to welcome her on to our board. Tim Brean, a director who is the representative Mubadala, who's, post conversion of the convertible securities they hold will be our largest shareholder. Tim Breen is an excellent director and and is representing the bottle in a very competent fashion. 2 new directors who've joined Equinox from Leah Gold, Gordon Campbell, who I've had the personal pleasure of knowing for many, many years, and General Wesley Clark, both independent directors.
And Marshall Covel, who is soon going to be independent. He was the chair of, pardon me, the CEO of Anfield Resources, which is one of the 3 companies at Farmbee Konox Gold, back at the end of 2017, also a dear personal friend and a strong engineering, engineer and a very, very solid project manager over the last 20 or 30 years of his career. Peter Maroney, who's the chair of Yamana Gold, also independent board member, And then on management, our senior, top 3 really, but really these, these 3 only represent the top of the pyramid of a, and it's a very flat pyramid where we have literally thousands of competent people reported to these 3 strong managers Greg Smith, our President, Head's business development as well, Eddie Rou, our COO, with a big, big team of, of Equinox staff, that's under his leadership. And then, of course, Peter Hardy, who's responsible for all the errors that are, pardon me, all the, responsible for all our financial statements. And, of course, banking relationships and I can't speak highly enough about Peter and his team.
Moving on to page 4, the 2019 report card. How did we did we say we were going to do and what did we do? Well, we, we, we guided, the market to production of 200,000 to 235,000 ounces at an all in sustaining cost $9.40 to $9.90. We hit both numbers. We, we built our mind at Aurizona successfully.
It opened up more or less on budget, more or less on schedule. We hit gold production for Aurizona gold production for Mesquite and we produced just over 200,000 ounces and beat cost guidance with all in sustaining cost of $9.31. So I'm going to say we ticked that off pretty successfully. In exploration, we targeted extending the mine lives of Aurizona and Mesquite, which the only mines that we owned a year ago. We had great success at both.
We put out a reserve report earlier this week where we demonstrated we'd We'd extended the mine lives at both of those mines, and I'm going to take that one as well. In development, we said we wanted to advance Castle Mountain into production, and at least our construction in 2019 and open it in 2020 and also develop the Aurizona underground plan And once again, we start a construction at Castle Mountain. It's underway. Christian will talk a little bit about more about its status. And of course, working on phase 2 at Castle Mountain doing a feasibility study as well as an underground preliminary economic assessment at Aurizona.
That gets ticked as well. On the next page, we said we wanted to refinance our balance sheet. We had some high cost debt. We got rid of all the high cost debt from Sprott and we reduced our, we converted the debt into a package debt package with the Scotiabank and the syndicate of banks, as well as $130,000,000 convertible note with Mubadala, retired the high cost debt refinanced our balance sheet. So we'll tick that as well.
We also said we wanted to improve our liquidity and market visibility We listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In, in October, we advanced to the TSX main board from the TSX junior board in December, and we increased our daily trading value by about 400% in 2019 versus 2018, and we've increased it again very significantly this year. So we'll kick that one as well. And then lastly, we said we wanted to work on accrete trend on an accretive acquisition. We also reminded our investors that we aren't here to grow for growth stakes.
We're here to grow and try to make money. We're trying to add value, not just size, but in the context of the year, late in the year, in December, we announced our at market with Leah Gold Mining. And this really has, added fuel to our ambition of becoming a major gold producer accelerate inhibition of producing more than a 1,000,000 ounces per year, and we could hit this in the very near future by the end of next year or shortly thereafter. We also put together a $670,000,000 financing package to fully fund our growth to get us to a million ounces of gold production per year. So we're going to take that one as well.
And I would say we hit all of our objectives in 2019. So what are we going to do this year? Well, we have a very ambitious plan again this year. We hope to, do a lot of development and operations enhancements. We are going to work hard in the Los Filos expansion.
Just today, we approved at our annual meeting, pardon me, at our board meeting, the, the restart of our Santa Luz project. So we're gonna at that rowing. We are going to complete Castle Mountain mid year, to produce about 45,000 ounces in phase 1 and we're gonna push ahead with phase 2 as fast as we can. And we've we we set out as an objective, completing a PEA for Arizona, underground, we completed that as well announced in the highlights of that a week or so ago. Exploration, our plan is to extend the mine lives at 4 of our mines and upgrade the Aurizona underground resources to support a preliminary feasibility study.
We're working on that right now. In corporate, We set out as an objective to get included in the JDXJ, GDXJ, I should say, and the GDX, which were both successful. We added, we were added in March April respectively. We also have been informed that we will be added to the S and PTSX index indexes in in both June September. We also want to work hard on our environmental and social governance reporting.
We're doing that right now, and we're going to publish this on our website quarterly. It's a very important part of our business to make sure we look after our communities, our employees and the environment, and that will be a fundamental part of our business plan going forward. And finally, again, if we see value, we will seek to exploit it. We are coming from a position of strength and we are going aim to be even a bigger company by the end of this year than we are right now. So that's our plan for 2020.
And I very much forward to reporting to you throughout the year as we achieve those different objectives. Page 7, we show here what our growth profile is and will be. I'm going to start with 2018, which was our 1st year in business. We produced in that year about 25,000 ounces that came to us from the acquisition of the Mes 8 mine in the fall of 2018. In 2019, we added Aurizona.
We started producing from Aurizona midyear and had a full year from Mesquite, so we produced about 200,000 ounces in 2019. Our objective in 2020 is to produce just under 600,000 ounces a year, and that goes from that will be that will include operations at Los Filos, which we of course, came to us from the Leagold deal, some smaller Brazilian operations, Pilar, Fazenda and RDM, our own Aurizona, a full year at Aurizona, and another full year at Mesquite as well as a tag end of production from the 1st, partial year from Castle Mountain phase 1, and that's going to get us to just under 600,000 ounces in 2020. Beyond this, you can see we have a very, very ambitious development plan, which will lead to production potential production of about 1,100,000 ounces by in the future when we add Sandeluz mine, Cassel Mountain Phase II, we expand Los Filos and we continue with operations in all of our other mines. So it's a very ambitious growth platform I don't know of any other gold company in the world that has such a strong growth platform either in the last couple of years or in the next couple of years.
From internal growth without needing any new acquisitions. So we're very pleased with that incredible growth outlook. On page 8, this is just sort of a snapshot where the mines are, our reserves, our gold production, 2020, the positive gold production, the growth we have, the different projects, we have 20, just under 22,000,000 ounces of measured and indicated gold resources plus which include 12,200,000 ounces of proven and probable gold reserves. Our estimate for this year, just over $1000 all in sustaining costs, which should give us a fabulous margin. Today's gold price is $17.50.
It doesn't take too much to figure out much money we're going to be making for our shareholders in 2020. And we start from a very, very good financial base. We have about $350,000,000 in cash in our bank at today's date. And Christian will go into some more details of that shortly. Page 9, This is a kind of a busy chart, but it shows all our peers or some of our peers and where they rank in terms of their price relative to net asset the price to net asset value ratio.
What we've So we're going to be estimating producing in the range of 800,000 plus ounces, 800,000 plus or minus ounces in 2021 could be higher. And if we don't change our valuation, we're currently, our our current price to net asset value is about 0.7 1, more or less. 0.71 on average. Maybe 0.71to.75. So we're going to be a much bigger company But what the next, to the right of that, you'll see a hushed blue circle with a very strong blue arrow upwards That's really where we expect to get to.
We expect to get to, in the next year or so, a much, much higher multiple price to net asset value multiple. In fact, we should be there today. And we would be much higher value. In fact, we've actually, and I'm going to say in the last month or 2, we probably underperformed our peers. Whereas we outperformed our peers for, for the period since December when we announced the merger.
And here's why. When you do these mergers, our merger was concluded on on March, 16th, I think, something like that?
March? 10th.
March 10th. Almost always, you have a lot of churning in the shareholder base. So the the shareholders of both Equinox and Leagold who maybe didn't necessarily want to see the combination or for some reason wanted to exit. This is a normal thing. We've had lots of people exiting particularly non core holdings such as Humana.
Humana held, I think 8,000,000 they sold 8,000,000 shares, which was a significant mistake. And that's, that's fine. We accept that, but there was a lot of selling from could be legal chose or Equinox shareholders. And fortunately for us, it was it was taken up by a lot of buying from The indexes from new shareholders, we've had a wonderful, wonderful group of new shareholders come into us who've actually bought stock just in the last couple of months, but we've because we've had so much of this sort of, you could say overhang pressure. And there's been a lot of warrants exercised as well, and they're continuing to be exercised today, as warrants expire.
So before they expire, they they get exercised where they have to be canceled. And in fact, we've got some warrants that are being exercised, right now that expire on May 22nd. So some of that is holding us back. I think when we go through those dates, we're going to see a nice pop and we should kind of recover from from what I think has been under performance in the last month or so. And we should get more of that blue arrow, heading up towards a more of a 1 to 1 or 1 point 25 to 1 price to net asset value and get us more in what I think is a fair, fair place relative to our peers who have the same kind of production we do same kind of profitability we do and the same sort of size.
Moving to Page 10. This is the right time to build a gold company. You know, we, I say all of us in in management and our board, we're we're all bullish on gold. And I want to remind shareholders, this this is not, you know, the gold market, the gold froth, we're seeing this week, for example, in the, the, the optimistic outlook for gold. It's nothing new.
We could see this coming. That's why we started Equinox Gold in late 2017 when we put it all together. The gold market has actually, it actually broke out from a 4 or 5 year low in January of 2016. And so we were already in a secular bull market. I was confident gold was going to keep doing well and blow through its previous high of $1900 in this cycle.
I didn't know when. I didn't know, I didn't know where it was going to end up at, but I was sure that we are the underpinnings, the macro environment in the world is so bullish for gold right now. I was sure that gold was going to do well. What I didn't know that it was that a COVID crisis was going to come along and add gasoline to the fire, which is exactly what it's done. And I'll talk about that in just another minute.
But we did know it was a good time to build a gold company, but look at what on this chart, look at what gold equities have done relative to the gold price. You know, they're still undervalued. They're under owned. We need a lot more generalist investors to own gold stocks. I think it's starting to happen, but there's a long way to go.
When gold investors start buying equities, instead of simply the precious metal itself, you're going to see what happened back in 2010, 2011, you're going to see a tremendous outperformance of the equities relative to gold itself. And you're going to see this catch up, which is, which has not yet happened. So I see a lot of opportunities still for higher gold equity valuations and specifically to Equinox, higher share prices. And I'm going to end on the next slide, page 11, just with a couple of comments about gold. You know, as I said, I felt gold is in a pretty healthy secular bull market for the last 2 or 3 years.
In that environment, to build a gold company that's successful, you wanna build a big one. You wanna build a gold company that has big production, and big reserves and big resources. And that way you give huge leverage to your shareholders, both on your income statement and on your balance sheet in your economic, in your economic reserves and your resources. And so we've done that. We've built from nothing in just 2 years this tremendous amount of leverage, and we're going to keep doing that.
But this year, we've had this very very unusual tremendously, harmful, costly, deadly in many cases, pandemic, the COVID-nineteen crisis. Well, without talking about all the terrible things done to a lot of people's livelihoods and jobs and companies, it's been extremely good for the gold price. Why? Because all this easing, all this synchronized stimulus that is happening in every single country in the world to the maximum extent of governments ability to help stimulate the economy, get people back to work, help the people who are suffering from the from this tremendous crisis and the economic consequences. All of that is causing currencies, fear and currencies to be de based.
Government printing money like crazy. They're they're they're writing checks to to to to try to get the public to spend money again. It's it's just, I mean, it's like, it's, it's, it's just an orgy of money printing an GMD basing currencies. At the same time, we have 0 or even negative interest rates 1,000,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars of negative interest rate. So gold doesn't have a carry, but it has at least a 0 carry, doesn't have a negative carry.
The way the way some of these bonds have now. And of course, with the COVID crisis, we're seeing supply issues. We were seeing supply issues in gold anyway. The average grade of most gold mines was dropping. Gold mining was becoming more difficult, more socially difficult in many, many countries were increasing taxes.
It was just getting to be a more and more difficult business. We had, for 5 years, declining gold prices down to a price of 10.50 an ounce. Well, most gold mines are in economic at below, you know, $1100 an ounce. And so in that period, companies stopped exploring. So you have you have this tremendous lag time now between discovery and and and operation of a mine I'm going to say today, it's actually closer to 20 years.
So when people start exploring again, which they're doing now, it's going to take a long, long time for that really filters through the higher higher mine supply. And so the COVID crisis is just, again, is just increasing those supply problems. And so the last comment I'm going to make is, really, I just want everybody to try to use some sense of history for 5000 years. We've seen every single empire that's ever existed from the Greek empire, the Roman empire, you know, the holy Roman, like, every member, Spanish empire, British empire, and even now the American empire. Their solution to the problem of spending money and trying to control their budget deficits is to print money.
And what that means is that feed currencies, they are allowed to print, become less valuable over time, gold keeps its value. It's kept its value for 5000 years. It's a great place to hold value. That's why it's money. And What we're producing is money for the world to replace or as a substitute for fiat currency and other forms of investment.
More and more people will recognize that gold is a solid store of value. Some of those and that will increase the gold price Some of that money will flow into equities like solid companies like Equinox Gold. That's why we were built. That's why we exist provide that goal for those investors. And, that's why I'm extremely positive about the continuing Bulmark for gold and the prospects for Equinox Gold itself.
And with those comments, I'm going to turn things over now to Peter and Christian to talk about our quarterly results. Thank you again for joining us today.
Great. Thank you, Ross. It's Christian here. Just want to take one second to say, acknowledge actually our long term and existing and new shareholders for just the support through this period of growth and buying into and believing in us and the vision. And also say thanks to the team, and the workforce, because it's been a really challenging time.
And I would never imagine going through a merger and managing, putting 2 companies together in COVID World pandemic and, really exceptional performance of people roll up their sleeves and actually working very closely together. So I'll walk you through a couple of slides here on the operating results. We had a very good and strong first quarter. We're very pleased with it. Both production and costs were ahead plan.
And please remember that there's only 20 days of the Leagold assets included in our results. So I'll sort of highlight those as we go through. From a health and safety perspective, we had a good result. From an operating result perspective, we had about 90,000 ounces of gold produced. On a full 3 month basis, we would have done almost 150,000 ounces if you had a full 3 months of the 4 Leagold assets included.
So a real step change over the last few years. And again, on the cost front, as Ross mentioned, 968 as announced all in sustaining costs was below that initial guidance range that we gave out. And we're seeing the benefits of, of FX savings. And so cost savings and good cost control in this environment. And traditionally, the first or first and second quarters tend to be a little bit higher than the last quarter or 2 of the year.
So we're really pleased to see that at the beginning of the And just looking through the individual mines, Mesquite produced almost 37,000 ounces, not quite as much as it produced in quarter 4 last year, But again, another strong quarter is really hitting its stride at the moment. We continue to process a bunch of the mineralized old dump material, which is fully oxide. And we're seeing the results of that at the moment. Just under $1000 all in sustaining costs, which again is within guidance and is reflecting also a lower diesel price that we're seeing in the U. S.
These days. Aurizona produced just over 32,000 ounces, a good quarter. It's our first quarter in the rainy season, And it was great to see that the mine actually produced at $952 all in sustaining cost. You know, that's well below our guidance range. So we're we're appreciative of the The grade, grade reconciliations have been strong there.
We had benefits from FX costs and as well, good cost control. And then the newly, merged assets from legal only had 20,000 ounces of contribution, which is on plan, but only for the last 20 days of the quarter. Turning on to Slide 14, in terms of financial results, revenue was $130,000,000, But what that translated to were good mine operating earnings of $43,000,000 and EBITDA of $65,000,000, which is $50,000,000 on an adjusted basis. So we've had good production, good cost control, benefits and tailwinds from FX and diesel costs. So ultimately, it translated to some very good earnings for the quarter.
Net income was about $11,000,000 with adjusted net income of $17,000,000. We had a few non cash items that were there. There's the warrant liability reevaluation, some foreign exchange callers and as well as the historical Leagold hedged. There were some unrealized losses in there as well. In terms of cash from operations, we had a strong cash of quarter, we did have the impact of some transaction costs from that that impacted our overall cash flow.
And in terms of a net cash flow basis, We did have about $17,000,000 of gold shipments, particularly from Brazil that went over the quarter end and turned into cash proceeds in the 1st couple of days of April. Flight delays did impact us right at the end of the quarter there, particularly with the COVID situation in Brazil. So, cash came in the door, but it was just after quarter end. So ultimately, we ended up with just over $300,000,000 of cash at the end of the quarter. And as of May 14th, yesterday, evening, we had $350,000,000 of cash and it continues climb.
We're seeing the benefits of some warrant exercises and the anti dilute that was exercised just post the quarter end. So overall, our net debt position and our balance sheet is in a very strong place. Our net debt to EBITDA type ratio is about one times and we have a very strong cash position as we work our way through this COVID situation. Turning to Slide 15, in terms of development and corporate highlights. Castle Mountain Phase 1 construction is more than 75% complete now.
Continues along, not completely unaffected by COVID, but very minimal impact so far. A few staff, not being able to make it to site on a couple of of the week, if they're having to look after their children or manage family matters during the COVID situation, but overall, it continues along nicely. We advanced the phase 2 feasibility study. It should be done in the second half of this year. As well, the Los Filos expansion activities, I have continued on, although the actual on the ground activity has stopped for May April, which I'll touch on in a minute, about the Mexico situation, We continue also to look at the carbon and leach plant and the appropriate size when we go to actually constructing it, starting probably later this year.
And I'll touch on that later as well. As well at Santa Luz, the other project down in Brazil. We think it's a very exciting project. Just at the moment updating the CapEx and the engineering work so that we can launch into construction as well at the appropriate time. And corporately, the merger was completed on March 10th.
The refinancing was done and we've been added to both the GDX and the GDXJ just before and after the quarter ends, we've seen 20,000,000 shares of buying in that process. I mentioned earlier there was extra cash that came in post quarter end, so about $12,000,000 from the anti dilute write as well as over $42,000,000 from warrants, and we continue to see some cash from that exercise. And I'll touch on the recent updated in reserves and resources and the underground PEA at Aurizona. Looking at Slide 17 in terms of more of an operational update and how the business is going. I don't want to dwell on and stop too much here on the COVID situation.
It's been mentioned and talked about a lot in our recent publications, but we're putting everything in place to both protect the people in our our areas, including workforce and community members, but we're also trying to protect their jobs and the income and keep contributing to the local governments and communities as well. So a fine balancing act that we're managing at the moment. On the health and safety front, we have the typical protocols you'd expect under these situations with a very contagious virus. As many travel restrictions and remote working policies in place as possible, heightened hygiene protocols, as well as we're looking at the business continuity side and we put in place contingent plans with suppliers, alternate supplier routes as well. We've stockpiled critical supplies, extra supplies on-site.
And as well, of course, we've fortified our cash reserves, we now have over $350,000,000 of cash. And then on the workforce support front, we've gone to protect high risk personnel by asking them to work at home or to stay off-site during this higher contagious period of, COVID. We're also providing mental health services in guidance were needed as well. So we're not out of the woods yet. We see the virus cases still continuing in Brazil and Mexico.
They're not quite at the top of that curve yet. It appears, but we'll do everything we can to manage through this process. Looking at overall, the production for the year on slide number 18, we put out guidance just before the COVID situation hit. Obviously, we'll come out to update that at a practical time here when Los Filos resumes production. So in Mexico, the main impact has been the temporary suspension during April and it looks to be that, the Mexican government has just come out to say that we can ramp up production around the end of May.
So at the moment, that's the plan. So we've got a few more weeks here of getting ready to go back into production. So we've delayed the underground development Bermer Hall. We've also delayed some of the stripping here at Guadalupe. So some of our CapEx numbers will be adjusted to reflect that lower spend during the last 2 months.
As well, we'll look at our overall production as well once we have a high certainty of going back to production into production at the end of the month. As well, the other 5 mines in the portfolio that operate, they continue to operate not completely unaffected. We have different protocols on-site and minor impacts. We did have minor shutdowns at both RDM and Pilar in Brazil for anywhere from 8 to about 14 days. They are now fully operating.
So, overall, the portfolios manage the store nicely and we see the real benefits of diversity and having multiple jurisdictions and multiple mine sites. Turning over to 'nineteen, looking a little more closely at Los Filos. Currently, it's producing give or take 180,000 ounces per year and has a nice runway over the next sort of 12 to 18 months to get to 355,400,000 ounces of production per year. And I have to say that the Leagold team did a wonderful job of taking from 1,700,000 ounce reserve up to 4,500,000 ounces plus another 6,000,000 ounce resource. So there's lots of upside here in this sort of complex in Mexico.
So currently, just the heap leaching operation. And when those 2 expansion projects are done, in Bermehall Underground, we'll see the higher grade materials increase production, solely using the heap leaching technology. But on the back of that, with the actual optimization of the CIL plant that we're undergoing at the moment, we plan to have that done by about midyear this year, and we're likely to go from about a 4000 tonne per day plant to something more like a 6 or 8000 ton per day plant. So we're in the final stages of getting that updated. We're looking at the mine plan to support that.
And also in this new higher gold price environment, we think there's some real opportunity to expand and extend this mine life. And ideally, we'd like to get to the point where We're actually going into construction in the second half of this year for that CIL plant. Turning to Aurizona in Northern Brazil. Just last week, we had, results out on the the Tatajuba or not, sorry, not Tatajuba, the, Piava Underground study. We put out a new underground 740,000 ounce PEA study.
As well, we've added the Tata Juba resource to our reserve and resource update that came out just a couple of days ago as well. It's 112,000 ounces. And we're really looking this year to actually continue to test those two areas Mine extension, along strike at Tatajuba, we're investing about $4,000,000 in exploration this year as well. We're going to be spending another $4,000,000 plus at the the underground to basically continue to delineate more ounces there. And as well, we'll continue to spend a little bit of effort on regional target.
So this is a really big fourteen square kilometer property with lots of upside potential, and we've really been able to turn our attention to it now that it's been in production for about three quarters. When you turn the slide to 21, just a quick high level look at the PEA results from the underground, almost 750,000 ounces. And remember, our reserve there is just under a 1,000,000 ounces. So this is a meaningful potential impact. It's over $230,000,000 of net present value and a very nice IRR.
And with $70,000,000 of initial capital, this is a low capital intensity expansion or increase in our production levels. And the 2.8 grams per ton is about double our open pit grade. So very nice enhancement potential to the grade that we coming out from underground. And as well it would feed about 1 third of our plant capacity at 2800 tons per day. And again, this open at depth and to the Eastern West, and we've got about $8,000,000 this year for exploration at Aurizona.
Turning on to 22 and coming back to California now, The next expansion project in our portfolio is really Castle Mountain. Now just quick refresher, it's a 3,600,000 ounce reserve with senior mine life. So a fantastic large Western U. S. Based project.
It'll produce just under 50,000 ounces a year for the 1st phase. That phase could go for up to 10 years and it's only $60,000,000 of capital. So again, we're about 75% of the way constructed there. We're in the final stages right now. So in the next few months, will be in the place to start stacking ore.
In quarter 3, we plan to be pouring gold. And on the background, we're also working on feasibility study for phase 2, which would take this to 200,000 ounces a year. That should be ready in the second half of this year and we'll be able to look at amending and applying for permanent amendment, on the back of that feasibility study when it's ready. And also in the near term, we're also drilling for water for that phase 2. We need some extra water sources and that drilling work should start this month.
Turning on to Slide 3 and black back to Brazil and the next project in the pipeline, that's Santa Luz. Really excited about this one now that we've got a bit of time to get closer to it and understand it better. It's an 11 year mine life, just over 1,000,000 ounce reserve, lots of upside in a very similar fashion Arizona. It's got parallel trends and underground potential. It'll be 100,000 to 125,000 ounces a year of production at a very attractive cost.
And all of that for well under $100,000,000 So really when we look at this, this could be a $500,000,000 net asset value, net present value type project at current gold prices and foreign exchange rates. It becomes very exciting in this current environment. So we're really looking forward to finishing off the cost update and really launching into construction here. This year so that we can have this up in production late 2021 or early 2022 at the latest. And on Slide 24, I'll just quickly go through the other 4 assets.
Mesquite, again, has been producing on and off for 30 years. Has synergies with Castle Mountain and will actually smelt the gold for Castle Mountain in the early years. Reminder is that we bought this back in 2007 2018, when gold is about $1200 an ounce for $150,000,000. This is 125,000 ounce producer at a good attractive all stating cost of just under $1000 an ounce. Now, we've mined out about a year and a half.
We originally had a 3 year mine life. We still have probably two and a half years or more of mine life plus residual leaching left. And there's lots of potential upside on-site. Scott and the team had done a wonderful job of identifying more of the mineralized dump material and old leach pads with ore grade material. There's another 40,000,000 tons that we highlighted in our press release earlier this week that needs to be drilled out this year and Scott got the money to do it.
So we're really looking forward to the results of that over the next sort of 6 months or so. Fazend in Brazil produces 75,000 ounces a year. It's been operating on and off for 25 years, a low cost operator. It's actually been performing at or below its all in sustaining cost estimate for the year and had a good first quarter. RDM in Brazil, similar size 75,000 ounces a year on average, all in costs slightly higher.
It's now on grid power, and it now has a more permanent water source and storage area. So it has a more, sustainable cost structure going forward. And as well, PR is the 6th mine in the group, which is slightly smaller and higher costs, but contributes about 30,000 to 40,000 ounces a year. Just touching on a few other areas, coming back to the overall company. Since the merger closed in March, as Ross mentioned, we've had extremely good liquidity of anywhere from sort of $20,000,000 to $50,000,000 to $90,000,000 a day of trading.
About 40 new institutions have come into the name, but a $1,000,000,000 in value has been traded since December. So a lot of interest in the story. And we've seen the overall liquidity go from under $1,000,000 a day up to numbers that are 25 times more than that. So we've really been pleased with the uptick in the interest in the stock. And turning on to 26, that is translated into a much larger institutional proportional ownership of the stock.
But one thing that really, I think, sets us apart and makes us very unique to other companies is the unparalleled insider ownership. If all 11% of the company is owned by insiders. Ross, ourselves as management and other board members are very well aligned with long term shareholders here We think it's a unique feature of this company. When you look at all of our peers that produce about 300,000 ounces or more, there's almost none that are above 2% ownership from the insiders. So really good selling feature where we're well aligned with shareholders.
And just to summarize, on page 27 and bring back to the catalyst for 2020 before I open up for questions. Operations and development have a lot ongoing with all about execution at the moment. We've got expansion projects we're working on. We also have a bunch of exploration work to do extend mine lines to look at all the exciting upside at Los Filos Mesquite, Fazenda, and Arizona. And as well, corporately, we're looking towards being included in the TSX composites in June September could bring another 10,000,000 shares of buying, as well as Ross said, we think on the back of all that, There's a real chance for a rerate in the next 6 to 12 months as we continue to execute.
And don't forget, this platform is a fully funded platform, and that's a unique position to be in in this kind of market as well. So I just wanted to conclude by saying thanks to the team for managing through a very successful integration and thanks to shareholders support through another successful year. And we'll just pass it back to Ross or open up for questions.
Sure, operator. Could you please remind people how to ask a question? Certainly.
Questions. You. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue.
So we do have a few questions from online. So I'll start with those while people line on the phone line. I'm gonna combine two questions. They're both talking about, how we're managing the COVID virus. So the US and Brazil have both or responded differently than some of the other countries around the world.
What are our plans to mitigate the spread of the virus in these two countries and how do we think it will affect operations in 2020 unfolds?
I don't know, Atif, do you want to comment on that? And I can add comment as well.
If you look at the 2 countries, we started up fairly early, in our, COVID prevention program, by introducing preventative measures at our gates. This included the normal each screening, the hand washing, the social distancing, which we started long before it was promulgated in these countries. We have advanced on that, further with, activities that came from if it if it's a bit, mythologist, you know, where we get information on what's the the best practices in the world at the moment, and we're introducing all of that. Things like the, the risk group screening from the mine and to make make sure that they don't, you know, enter the mine areas.
I was just going to add that we've also looked at various rotations and people's travel and obviously limited that and tried to limit the impacts and introducing any kind of new potential, transfer of this virus in any areas that we're working in and, working very closely with the local community as well to, dialogue with them and get their assistance.
Operator, can you please take a question from the phone line?
Certainly. Our next question comes from Kerry Smith with Haywood Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Christian, have you seen much cost pressure at the site from the extra measures you've had to implement for the COVID program? Obviously, it costs more money. It's probably slowing your productivity a little bit. I'm just wondering if you are seeing a noticeable increase in cost because of that or if it's either not that big of an increase or it's being offset by the FX?
Yes. I mean, I actually please had a comment after, but I'll have a first go at that. Basically, we are seeing small amounts, I would say, of increases. We certainly are looking for extra sort there might be extra costs because of rotations and shifts and people and covering, covering off all the sanitary and hygiene measures that we have in place. I think we're being more than offset at the moment by FX and costs like diesel going down very significantly.
It's a little early to know because I think we're seeing in Mexico and Brazil, certainly the virus spread has been increasing, but the U. S. Is probably a little more stable where we are in ways. And at the moment, I would say it's been minor or
limited in a sense.
And it's on the other side of it, maybe Kerry think about is working capital. We've put a little extra money into having extra stockpiles and supplies at various sites, although that'll translate into cash in due course as well. So I call the impact so far pretty minimal.
Okay. And maybe a second question, if I could, Ross was saying in his introductory marks that the board had approved the Santa Luz restart today at the board meeting. Do you have a rough timing for us in terms of when you would expect to, to start construction? Yeah.
I think we want to officially get construction sort of in the second half of this year, maybe early second half of this year. We're still finishing off all the final bits of engineering in that to prepare ourselves. And this current COVID environment, we don't want to rush into it either. We want to sort of build up the project team in that. So, as I indicated earlier, I think it's early second half of this year is a good starting point.
And then I think you said production in late 2021 or early 2022, correct?
Exactly. Once we actually pin that date, then we can give you the exact timing on that, but it's give or take a 12 month build process once you get going.
Okay. Okay, that's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, operator. You can take another question from the phone lines, please.
Certainly. Our next question comes from Andrew Weekly with Smith Weekly Research. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator, and hello to the management team. Can anyone speak to what types of assets are being sought through the M and A activity going forward. I know you can't give much detail for strategic reasons, but a few hints as to what is being considered why are we are still in the lower valuations for potential growth deals?
Sure. Thank you very much, Annie. You know, it's it's hard to be specific. We try to be opportunistic. We want to add value and that very much easier said than done.
We certainly got that with our 2 deals that we've done. We did our Mesquite purchase at the bottom of the gold market that year when we were able to acquire that as a as a startup company, from a distressed seller and we then, of course, combined with Lia Gold on terms that I think will all agree are we're good terms. We could be looking at acquiring, another operating company, if, combination made sense, although I can say we have absolutely nothing in our horizon right now. Mostly because we spent the last couple of months integrating the Leagold deal, that's got to happen successfully. And I'd say that's pretty much behind us now and it has gone successfully.
We could look at, potentially even the development play if we thought it was going to be a really great long term asset for us. So you know, I think the 2 criteria that I would personally push for us are number one value and number 2, you know, looking for an asset that's at least as good as anything we've already got. And those are rare. They're hard to come by. They're hard to get wrapped up particularly in a bull market like we're seeing right now, but they are out there.
And if we can, if we can pull something off, we'll do it. And if we can't, we are very content with our existing internal growth pipeline. It will simply execute that plan. Which will lead us to great things as well.
And we continue to be focused on the Americas.
Yes, very well. I appreciate that, Ross. And Christian, I certainly agree that 2, the Leagold deal and Mesquite is fantastic. Christian, can you speak a little bit more about Mesquite? I know you had mentioned it just a moment ago.
Can you speak to Mesquite area potential what does management see as mine life expansion that could be had at Mesquite through expiration and does it believe that the trend at Mesquite provides sound economic reason to remain in the district?
I'm just going to make one comment. I'm going to actually let Scott speak a little bit to that, but basically, you know, when we bought it, we knew we had a certain amount of ounces in the ground and a certain mine life that was limited in that year or so since then, we've really been able to develop both the near pit and waste dump or old mineralized dump material into mine life extension very materially and very profitably. And it's already been about percent of our production last year. And Scott continues to identify more, plus think about the bigger longer term upside across the highway into the east of our property. And there's potential there and we'll wait for drilling permits in that area.
But, Scott, I don't know if you want to comment on anything that's near nearby.
Yeah, sure. I see it kind of threefold, with our most recent, renewal resource and a reserve update there this earlier this week. The new resource estimate stated exclusive shows 430 1000 ounces at MNI. These are exclusive reserves. So these form an immediate expiration, target looking to convert these resources to reserves and incorporate them into a mine plan.
So obviously, you know, bringing those ounces, adding ounces to break forward production faster is a is a guiding principle, guiding philosophy. So that's one that's one prong. Here's the dump material, which is proven to be a fantastic value and a big success. We are focused on that currently, testing another 40,000,000 short tons that are identified on-site and working quite hard on that. We've drilled 35,000 meters so far this year.
And, and then thirdly, for the upside, is the bigger picture. And, you know, there's rainbow, which represents several 100,000 of resource, sitting there with expansion potential and, to a little bit slower to permit some of these expiration targets. So when they're outside of the immediate mine footprint, but there certainly is a significant boost to that potential. To unlock in time.
Okay. Well, Scott, thank you for that. And just one other question, gentlemen, and ladies there, appreciate the time. Can you speak briefly to the diesel procurement practices in place and does management see an opportunity to secure additional diesel fuel reserves due to lower prices and uncertainties?
Yes. I mean, we've seen a we were budgeting I think California diesel, it was closer to $3 than the high 2s late last year. And we've seen current prices more in $1.8 per gallon type range. So we're seeing almost a 30% benefit there. In interestingly in my former life, when we owned Mesquite, we did do, I'd say, 50% of the years, costs we actually hedged out.
And that's something we're certainly looking at at the moment. And we've certainly looking at our fuel suppliers and seeing what we can put in place that has a little bit more longevity to it and secure some of that fuel at a very attractive price at well below budget right now.
Okay. Well, very well. Thank you to you all. Keep up the efforts and stay well
Thanks very much.
Thanks, Gener. Thank you very much.
We've got quite a few questions from online. I'm talking about the same things. I'm going to package them into few different versions. So someone noticed that we've run through ourselves as the premier America's gold producer. So I know you already touched on this Christian, but do we intend to stay in the Americas and will be considered expanding into other hotspots.
And on the back of that, I'm going to parcel in the, do we think there's any risk of nationalization of the projects in Brazil given the market weakness?
Yeah. I'll start on this and Christian could add anything he wants. Yeah, we really like being in the Americas. They're jurisdictions, we know very well. They're they've been very successful for us and for many, many other companies, specifically Mexico, Brazil and North America.
We see nothing whatsoever in talk or in even fact, even a reasonable rumor that suggests is ever going to be a naturalization. Those days are long passed and we just think that's absolutely impossible in this day and age. There could be pressure to increase their tax take. I think that's possibly going to happen everywhere in the world. And that's just kind of a normal battle between between producers of wealth like mining companies and consumers of wealth like governments.
And, and, there's a there's a you know, there's the rational governments. They realize that they can't, Gore the Bolt. If they do, they kill everything and nobody gets anything. So we have always Bell and we will continue that in the in the periods to come, I think. But never say never on jurisdiction.
We certainly like being in the Americas. But, you know, if there was a great value opportunity, just about anywhere, we we might look at it. I I I them loathe to see. We'll never go outside the Americas. You never know.
But, for the moment, it's not in our plan.
Yeah. I just echo Ross's comment there, particularly on Brazil, I've had conversations directly with the Mind Ministry over the last few years, and interestingly that topic of nationalization came up and they felt a bit aggrieved by comment that they're a very developed mining country that's very mining friendly, and they see themselves as very much being, at the forefront of mining globally and it's just not something that's done there.
Okay. Thank you. So our shareholders in Germany would like to know that if we're planning to sell any assets that we currently have on our portfolio. And then a shareholder in the UK would like to know, would we consider selling the entire company, it's the right offer came along from a Barrick or a Newmont.
Yeah, I can address that too. The answer to the question of whether we would sell to anybody. Well, of course, you know, never say never once again, but Equinox Gold is has been built to be an acquirer or not a seller. We are planning to be in this business for a very long time. We'd like to build as a household name in the gold business to become one of the world's best gold producers with the best reputation for growth in quality and finance and manage and everything else.
That's our ambition and it's not submit to set us set ourselves up for sale to someone else. What was the German question?
Someone else wanted to know if we were considering to sell any of our assets?
Oh, are we selling any of our assets, Christian?
Yeah. I mean, I think we'll go through that natural process of as we continue to grow and opportunistically sort of enhance the portfolio with larger, longer life, higher quality type assets along the way, we now probably won't want to manage some of the smaller assets in the long term. And I think it's a natural progression of the portfolio. And so I won't say again never say never, but, we would consider if the smaller end of things potentially selling along the way.
Thank you. Operator, can you please take a question from the phone line?
Certainly. Our next question comes from Robert Zeitzer, a private investor. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you very much. My question is I was a I'm I'm a US investor, and I was a holder of Castle Mountain, which became Equinox Gold. And part of that, we received a dividend from Equinox Gold in Solaris copper, which became Solaris Resources. And as a US investor, we we I have never received any update on what's going on.
The only thing I did here through your conference call last time we had was that the Augusta Group was involved with this company now. Is there any way that a US investor like myself can get information on what's happened since Equinox gave Augusta, whatever deal they made with Augusta Group to run, this company to see if there's been any new developments Has there been any private placements and things like that? And what's in what's in the future? Thank you.
Yes, thanks for that question. It's a good point. You know, as we've grown, it's become a smaller proportion. We own about 30% of Solaris Resources as it's called now. And basically they have a website that you can get out of information if you want to see it at Solaris Resources.
And you'll be able to obviously contact the management there, Richard Work and general or leading that company at this stage. And it basically does continue to progress. It acts like basically a public company because you can find all of its press releases its information on the website and also on SEDAR. So you can use both those sources and also you can reach out to them. They're based in Vancouver and Toronto.
And They are currently not publicly listed, but the intention is when the market conditions are right, they would like to get back to the public market. So I think keep an eye out for that. We still continue to be very excited about that as an investor and we own that 30% block and we think it will be a very valuable company one day. They have started drilling there in Ecuador. And, we think it's a really interesting situation with COVID ongoing.
Obviously, it's put a little wrinkle in the timing of getting that drilling work done. But, keep an eye out on that Solaris Resources website.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Robert. We have a question from online and it's from Saudi Arabia, so it makes sense that the question is about oil prices. So how much is Equinox gold benefiting from the low oil prices that are considering hedging your oil prices.
I was going to just say on oil prices, we're particularly feeling and seeing the benefit in, in California where I'm going to say about 15% of our costs give or take are linked to the diesel price and we're seeing roughly a 30% decrease in the diesel price currently. Will that continue? I don't know, but at the moment, we're benefiting from it. Diesel price is probably more like 10% of our cost in other jurisdictions. It's not quite as significant.
And interestingly in both Mexico and Brazil, the diesel and oil prices tend to be more government controlled. So they don't tend to oscillate, like, the open markets like it does in the US as much where instead of getting a 30% benefit right now, we're probably getting more like 10% to 15% benefit on that 10% of our costs?
Yes. It's Peter here. I'll also add that for operations like Mesquite in the US. It does take some time for, the cost to reflect that because they work their way through the heap leach and and there's coverage curve that takes a couple of months there. So and for the operations that that have plants associated with them, you see the benefit of that cost quicker.
Thank you. Ross, I know you've been asked this question before at previous conferences with Lumina Gold for sale, would we consider investing in Equinor?
I think I answered that question exactly 1 year ago. And what I said then was it's very hard for me to be buying and selling at the same time. An obvious conflict and I've tried to maintain a pretty good reputation for avoiding those things and I will do so with that as well. So it's very unlikely I guess not impossible, but it's extremely unlikely. Unfortunately, it's a great deposit.
We have one final question from online just asking about guidance. So do we still have the same guidance targets for 2020?
Yes, with the guidance, we said we'd update our guidance when practical when we have clarity of the startup in Mexico. I mean, it's looking very much like early June or late May. And we'll basically be able to reassess our plan and update the guidance then. The other 5 mines so far had, call it, minimal impact. So, at the moment, it's looking mostly Mexico, but it is a very fluid environment.
So we'll update as soon as we can there and the next month or 2.
Perfect. Thank you. I'll remind people that this webcast will be archived on the website for 3 months, and we'll also post a post transcript and few days. So thanks very much for joining us today. I'll turn it back to Christian and Ross for closing comments.
Any more questions?
No, there's no
more questions. No more questions on the phone. Okay. Well, I have no further comments. Thank you all for joining us.
And apologies again for doing this on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend. It will not happen again.
Thanks very much, everyone.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.