I sold the majority of my position. I still have 30-some thousand shares, because my mistakes don't always go up 125%. So Ryan sent me the slides over the weekend, and there's a slide: 1.34 grams, 88.4% recovery in the month of October at Greenstone. So our question is going to be whether I should be paying up a point to buy back all the stock I sold 'cause things are so good. So I'm just giving a preview for things. And Ryan is saying, "Well, we didn't produce flat out in the mill. The tons per day were a little lower." And maybe we only mined 25,000 at Greenstone in October, but it's still getting a lot better.
I just wanted to. I got too excited, but I talked to Ryan before I bought back all the stock that I might sell. We're kidding around a little bit, but there's been a couple of bumps in the road. I thought that the Equinox stock was systematically undervalued 'cause the company, for seven straight years, missed guidance every year by an average of 14-point-something%. The market was anticipating the next three or four hiccups, and maybe the indigestion is over. Ryan, go through the slides, and if I kid around a little bit, it's okay. We're all making money.
Yeah. Perfect. Excellent. Thanks for the introduction, John. And, for those that are on the webcast, thank you for joining. You know, as John said, we are making some great progress at some of the key assets, particularly key assets in Canada. And that's what we'll talk about. Most of you that are on the webcast today know that Equinox Gold, of course, we're listed in Canada and the U.S., and we are a multi-asset diversified gold producer. So we'll go through a series of the assets and give you a bit of an update as to where things are at and how we're tracking. We will be making forward-looking statements. I know that most people don't have a copy of the presentation in front of them.
It's too quick to read all of this, but this is available on our website, so I'll take that as read.
It's on our website too.
Perfect. Thank you, John. So, yeah, just to give you a bit of a high-level overview again, the focus of the company today is to drive share price performance. We are a financial instrument driven by the exploitation, the exploration, development, and production of gold. We are at a very interesting inflection point, and John's talked a little bit about that on the introduction. We are going through a ramp-up of two major assets in Canada. We're going through a bit of a whole shift in the portfolio with predominantly, as we look forward, production coming out of North America. We've got a pie chart there on the right-hand side that shows, based on various analyst numbers, throughout the street, and of which we've got over 10 analysts that cover the company, all the major banks in Canada.
None in the United States yet, but I'm sure that would,
You didn't include me in your slide of the 10 victims.
I haven't yet, but I do have you on the website.
Okay. I'm Ross and Ryan. We're old friends.
But nonetheless, the point is A, you can see the diversification and the strengthening Canadian operations that are ramping up, so John talked about this, but we are seeing meaningful operational optimization happening at the Greenstone mine in northern Ontario. We are seeing a ramp-up, and it's a very effective, been an efficient ramp-up at our Valentine mine that had first gold in September, and this is going to be our first quarter of production, and it's a ramp-up quarter, so we'll talk a little bit about that. We have recently strengthened our balance sheet with some non-core sales in a smaller asset in Nevada, so it's brought in about $115 million of value, $90 million of cash, and that deal closed right at the beginning of Q4, so that's a positive sign.
But also, we had some debt reduction in the previous quarter. We'll go through a number of assets here as we traverse through the presentation. Now, I know John doesn't like me to do this, but I think this is worth just to take a look at as to where we're heading. Now, I am comparing ourselves to Alamos and Agnico, two gold producers with predominant assets in tier one jurisdictions. And that, the reason I bring this up is because we are going through this inflection of more production coming out of North America, Greenstone, Valentine as they ramp up through 2026, and then a development stage asset in California called Castle Mountain, which we'll get to. So we do see some similarities. We do see some opportunity for additional potential price appreciation as we continue to deliver.
John mentioned this at the beginning of the call, that there really has been a lack of confidence in Equinox Gold and their ability to deliver on expectations. So if we look at, upon the merger with Calibre Mining, which closed in June, Darren Hall took over as Chief Executive Officer and brought in a number of senior leadership team members who lead this business, we've seen a step change, albeit it's only been a short period of time, but we have seen it, seen a step change in the expectations in Q2. The expectations were met and exceeded in Q3, and we will continue to optimize and refine that. But the real focus is to meet or beat and deliver on our, on our commitments.
So, new operating team in place to be able to rebuild a track record so that people can have confidence in the product going forward. The best thing that we can do going forward is really be boring, really not have to explain any anomalies. So the focus is that. And then, of course, optimizing the Canadian production as we ramp up. So you can see here, it just presents a compelling opportunity. I won't go through this slide. I'll roll.
I can interject. Alamos got shut down in Turkey and ended up getting a $400 million check for selling the asset. And it's not on, it's not out of the question that you don't reopen in Mexico, but you get a check instead, and it's a better outcome.
Could be. Could be. Yeah. And we can, we'll get to Mexico, and we'll talk more about that. But, you know, we do see there is opportunity for additional portfolio optimization and rationalization potentially. So we'll talk a little bit about that as well. And actually, this slide is a kind of an important one because it hits on John's point of the last several years of not meeting expectations in terms of production and cost. And you can see that as evidence, I believe, in the share price performance. You look at 2022 through year to date, I think this was at the end of November, and you can see that we have just caught up to the price of gold, let alone you own gold equities because you want the leverage to gold.
I believe we've gone through this inflection point with the new leadership team, optimizing Canadian assets, a big inflection point going from investing a significant amount of capital over the last few years to now looking at deleveraging the balance sheet and building up cash. So a very compelling time, I believe, to take a deep look at Equinox. And as John has mentioned, it's performed pretty well in the last few months. So here's the portfolio in an image, in a snapshot. Key assets, as we've already talked about, up in Canada, Valentine and Greenstone, which we will get into some more detail there. But we've got the California production out of Mesquite. So Mesquite is a 70-80,000-ounce-a-year producer. But importantly, we are advancing a growth opportunity there in California called Castle Mountain.
Castle Mountain is going through the FAST-41 permitting process in the United States. We have been told to expect and will be delivered a Record of Decision on the phase two expansion of Castle Mountain by December of next year. As a reminder, Castle Mountain is an asset that is going through the final steps of permitting. We are, as a company, now refreshing the technical aspects of the project. There was a 2022 technical report completed that outlined an asset that would produce about 200-220,000 ounces.
We're going through and refreshing that technical report now, and we should have that ready to present to the market by the end of 2026 to dovetail with the, what we would anticipate to be a positive Record of Decision, at Castle Mountain, and then potentially look at constructing, making a construction decision in the second half of 2027. So again, that asset could expand production beyond what we're looking at here, the 785,000-915,000 ounces in 2025, to an additional 200,000 ounces, from Castle Mountain. But also, important to note that out of the production that we're looking at here for the guidance for 2025, the Valentine Gold Mine is not included in that as well.
If we look ahead to 2026, as we continue to ramp up, we would anticipate Valentine would produce between 150,000-200,000 ounces of gold production for full year 2026. That will be the first full year of its ramp-up. Q4 here in 2025 will be the first quarter of production, and we're expecting somewhere between 15,000-30,000 ounces of production coming out of Valentine in Q4. As we continue.
Ryan, if I could try to put 2026 together, in my model, I estimate 1.05 million ounces gold, just under 1,300 cash cost and just under 1,800 all in sustaining for $500 differential, where the gains are 125,000 ounces of Valentine full year, 75,000-ounce improvement at Greenstone, and a full year adding about 125,000 ounces at Nicaragua. Just tell me where I'm full of prunes.
I think the number of ounces, John, is probably reasonable. There's gonna be a range bound in that, but I would also be, you're probably a little optimistic on the cash cost. We'll probably be a little higher than that. I don't know exactly where it'll fall, and it'll probably be a touch higher on the all-in sustaining cost. But, and directionally, I think you're in the right ballpark. Yeah.
I model $3,600 gold, so I got a little room to be wrong on cost.
Yeah, fair enough. We'll have a bit of capital in 2026 as well. We've got a few things we're gonna do at Valentine and Greenstone. And then we're also, remember, we're also working through the phase two of Valentine that could take it from 2.5 million ton throughput to a 5 million ton throughput. So we'll see how that all comes about. And we will provide the market with some updates. A Greenstone technical report will come out in Q1, probably the end of Q1, as well as a Valentine technical report update, really focusing on the phase two expansion by the end of Q1 as well. So we've got some interesting catalysts coming up. We, as we continue to go down the list here, John mentioned Los Filos. That is a growth opportunity.
Los Filos is probably, I think it's in all categories, about 15-16 million ounces of gold. Exactly to John's point, it was put on suspended operations in March of 2025, as the company works through land access agreements with three communities. We have land access agreements with two communities, and we're working through the third community. This is a heap leach operation, but in fact, based on a technical report that was done earlier in 2021, the best opportunity here to unlock full value of Los Filos is to put a CIL plant into that asset, into that operation. So we're working through some additional technical updates on that as well, but for the time being, we're also looking at maybe a two-community plan as well.
So we'll see how that unfolds in time, and we'll continue to update the market as things become available. But, of course, that presents a pretty attractive opportunity based on the 2021 technical report, assuming a CIL plant is fully constructed there at Los Filos. We could expect somewhere between another 250-300,000 ounces of annual production. And we can't say exactly what the CapEx range would be, but I'm gonna estimate it's gonna be somewhere between $700 million and $1 billion to put that in place. So there's a fair amount of CapEx when you factor in Castle Mountain, Los Filos, but tremendous amount of growth for the company, which is in a huge environment. Sorry, John?
You said $700 million-$1 billion of capital?
We don't know. We're looking through all the CapEx numbers and the technical report, technical details of Los Filos and Castle Mountain, but it's probably reasonable to.
Is that for one of them or both of them?
That's for, that's for Los Filos and very likely for Castle Mountain as well. Each one of them will cost in that range of Cap initial CapEx. Yep.
Okay.
Keep going down here. This year, 2025, included in these are consolidated production outlook numbers. We're 200,000-250,000 ounces at, in Nicaragua. Things continue to go well there. I would expect something similar in 2025, something similar in 2026. And then Brazil, the Brazil complex produces about 225,000-275,000 ounces. We're on track to meet those expectations and look at something similar in 2026, possibly a little higher cost as the assets are getting a little bit more mature. Nonetheless, you know, you put it together, John, somewhere between 950,000 and 1,050,000 ounces on a consolidated basis without including Castle Mountain and without including Los Filos. So it presents a very compelling opportunity from a growth perspective in a great gold price environment. Now let's dive into some of these cornerstone assets that we're ramping up. Greenstone first declared commercial production in 2024.
Darren Hall revised guidance at the end of June for the outlook for 2025 once that deal with Calibre Mining closed. So he revised that guidance to be more reflective of where the asset is and all of the aspects of the asset. We'll talk through this now, but he guided 220,000-260,000 ounces. We're on track for the lower end of that production range. So, you know, we were 220. I believe we'll probably get to the 220 range, particularly because we are starting to hit our strides on mining rates, getting a little better grades, as John mentioned. So we would expect that Q4 is gonna be somewhere between 60,000-70,000 ounces, you know, if all goes well through the month of December, potentially a little better than that. But that's kind of how things are tracking.
Let's take a look at, as John mentioned, how things are going. Since that deal closed, Calibre with Darren coming in as Chief Executive Officer, he also brought in a couple of key people, one of those being David Schummer. Both of these individuals have tremendous amounts of experience with large, lower-grade open-pit mining operations. Both have worked at Newmont for decades. In fact, Darren worked there for over 30 years, and a lot of his role was optimizing big assets like this. So his skill set fits perfectly for the opportunity that's in front of Equinox Gold shareholders now. We are seeing the benefits of that. We are seeing some changes happening at these assets.
In particular, and John mentioned this, March was one quarter of the production numbers that made him go, "Oh my gosh, I need to get out of this." And his clients were saying, "What are you doing, John?" Because the company ended up mining 130,000 tons a day when the expectation or the budget plan was to be around 175- 180, putting the whole mine behind in its sequence of where it should be, so in Q2, we saw some benefits, going to about 160-165,000 tons a day. But in Q3, we saw a good jump, another 10% jump to 185,000 tons a day. Where the mine is optimally going to be is somewhere between 200 and probably 215,000 tons a day of material movement, and we're making good progress on that strides. The guys have done an incredible job.
And we've got a few little tidbits here of what they've implemented in order to get the utilization and the effectiveness of the installed equipment. We haven't thrown more equipment at this. This is just practices and how the operations are being optimized through improved cycle times, things like haul road, pit floors, making sure that the vehicles can drive at pretty steady speeds, which wasn't the case, say, earlier in the year Q1 and 2024. Good progress is being made. Particular progress is also being made in minimizing some dilution and minimizing some of the ore losses so we can get some better grades. We are seeing some improvements Q3 over Q2. As John mentioned, we saw some good improvements in October, which is leading to what will likely be a little stronger Q4.
I would use that then as a run rate through into 2026. Again, we'll be able to optimize a little bit more in 2026 as we fine-tune things. But it's reasonable to think that 2026 will be in that 250,000-300,000 production profile range. We'll go down to the second Canadian asset that is just in the midst of ramping up, and this is the Valentine Gold Mine in the Central Region of Newfoundland. This came through the Calibre transaction, first gold in September, and the ramp-up has gone very, very well.
So much so that you can see in the month of October, we were probably just a touch over 90% of nameplate, nameplate being about 6,850 tons a day of rock material going through the plant, which, you know, based on the technical reports and information everyone's got, it should produce somewhere between 150-200,000 ounces of annual gold production at that rate. So exciting to see that, really effective ramp-up, come to fruition. And I would say really, again, I come back to Darren's leadership there because he brought in an operating team as the asset was still going through major components of construction in 2024 and 2025. But by bringing in that operating team early, they were able to get up to speed. They were able to dovetail well with the construction team.
You almost think about it like a, the operating team was like a client, and the client was telling and advising the construction team of how they needed to be to have an effective, operational, ramp-up and commercial production. Yeah, and on that, we've announced commercial production in November. And as I've already mentioned, we're expecting about 15,000-30,000 ounces. And I'll be a little optimistic here and say we're probably leaning towards the higher end if things go well through December, the higher end of that 15,000-30,000 ounces. We've talked a little bit about the growth pipeline in front of us with Castle Mountain. I include Valentine here as well because we, of course, haven't had a full year of production yet, but that's gonna lead to 150,000-200,000 ounces in 2026.
And we've got 180 life of mine average here, you know. We're still working through the ramp-up in Q1, so we've got a bit of a range there for 2026. But nonetheless, pretty exciting time for Equinox. One thing that we don't highlight enough as a gold producer and the size of gold producer we are is the fact that we always are investing in exploration. In fact, if we stepped back and look at Equinox, we would really fashion ourselves as an exploration company, backed by billions of dollars of revenue. See, in my opinion, in our views, some of the best value and share price performance can come from discovering new zones that are economic and expanding resources. And we've got a number of great opportunities across our portfolio to do that.
And we'll likely spend somewhere between. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say probably in order of magnitude of $100 an ounce. So probably almost $100 million invested in exploration in 2026. And I would, I would, I would look at that going beyond that because every year you'll invest about $100, $100 an ounce. So, stay tuned for exploration updates across the portfolio. Won't go too much into this because we're almost at the end of the year here, but continuous improvements happening at the Canadian operations. We've talked about some of the growth pipeline, but, you know, the second half of the year, in particular, Q4 should be a very strong quarter, possibly the highest production quarter for the company, through, through 2025, but lending itself to have that continuous momentum going into 2026. So encouraging times. So really, last slide. And, John, thanks for the time.
But again, the focus of the company is delivering into expectations, building a top quartile valued gold producer, unlocking the full value of this portfolio. Now, Ross Beaty, founder of Equinox Gold, that was led by Greg Smith for a number of years, did a great job of assembling this portfolio. Darren and team now are really looking to unlock and deliver the value of this portfolio to shareholders. I believe we can do that. I believe we can delever significantly the company at these gold prices and look to fund all of our future opportunities, but also potentially look over the next, call it 18-24 months to potentially start returning capital to shareholders, but not at the expense of investing in the assets. We will continuously invest in the assets for sustainable long-term in any gold price environment business.
And that includes exploration, active exploration, the assets. So, John, I mean, with that, I thank everyone's time. Open to questions if there are any, and if you have any, happy to try and answer them.
Certainly, everyone on the webcast can issue or offer questions through the question box. I'll ask a few. We're all very interested. In the second quarter, we milled 22,378 tons a day. That dipped to 21,433 in the third quarter. You were saying in the month of October, it stayed about the same as the third quarter. What's keeping us from doing more tons a day? Is the ore body in a harder zone with a higher Bond work index, or is there a broken gear or?
Yeah.
You're taking more maintenance downtime every week. We all wanna see 27,500 tons a day and bigger numbers and all that stuff.
Yep. Yeah. And you bring up a good point. So in Q3, even though the average tons per day was about the same, we actually saw an increase in tons per hour, about a 6% increase in tons per hour. So the guys in the plant are working through some of the operational things to unlock.
They're not running as much calendar uptime, but when they run, they run just as fast.
Yeah. And actually, in fact, we're starting to squeeze that time of saying, okay, for those that are maintaining the asset, the plant, you maintain it, don't operate it and maintain it at the same time. So the guys are working through some efficiencies there. I think we'll start to see that. We've identified a few key things in Q4 here that are helping us getting some direct feed material into the plant, some different access points. So, I mean, again, I think November, December, we're gonna start to see that throughput increasing. And I would imagine we're actually probably budgeting somewhere between 24,000 and 25,000 tons through 2026. And there are some things, as you know, this is an open pit that sits over top of an old past producing underground.
So with that, you know, you're having to deal with some of that old tramp equipment or infrastructure, the wood.
So if there's steel or wood that's in the shovel, you have to stop and fish that out somehow or so it doesn't ruin the inner lining of the ball mill, the grinding mills.
That particularly in the primary crusher. If it gets into the primary crusher, it starts to create havoc and downtime. So yeah, we're working through some things now.
So you have to get it before it even gets into the mill.
Right. Right. So one of the things that we're looking at for 2026 is installing something called a trommel, which actually you can put in areas of the open pit when you mine, where there's past producing, old infrastructure.
This is like a big grid or grading.
It'll strip it out.
On a big scale.
Yeah. It'll strip out the steel. It'll strip out the wood. It'll strip out some of that equipment so it doesn't cause that downtime so that you can continuously work to optimize the plant throughput without having that downtime. So yeah, those are some of the things we're working on. I think that could be a benefit in 2026.
Tony Makuch told me a real cute story a few weeks ago. They liquidated $53 million of inventory in the September quarter at Equinox at Discovery Silver.
Mm-hmm.
He said that Newmont left all this stuff at the bottom of the Hollinger pit. It was 1.4 gram material full of wood and steel because it's so much trouble to strip out the wood and steel.
Right.
They went to the trouble of stripping out the wood and steel and that generated $53 million in one quarter.
So it presents a pretty compelling opportunity when you think about.
Anybody that's mining an old mine that used to have where they're mining through underground working has that issue. Sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
My associate, Alicia Hayden, is a native of Puebla, Mexico. We don't like to read the Gringo Press about politics. She reads the newspapers in Panama and Guatemala and Colombia and Chile, Guerrero, Chihuahua in Spanish and finds articles for me. We've been, you know, of course, show you the courtesy of sending you the articles. Even sometimes we put them in research reports. But I have the worry that Alicia's finding things before Vancouver does. Do you have a worry that the mine staff at Los Filos isn't being straight with Vancouver and not telling you all the details?
It's a tough question, but I would say.
Oh, no, no, Brian, I'm sorry. Brian, I'm sorry.
No, no, no. But I mean, there's people here in the Vancouver office that are liaisoning daily, and they go down regularly to site and to corporate offices down there. So I think we've got a pretty reasonable understanding of what's happening there. Doesn't mean we might not have the whole picture, but I think we've got a reasonable understanding. And I would say that, you know, as you work through land agreements, there's always gonna be, you know, this constant argy-bargy of negotiations to get to everybody wants to, you know, I would say a balanced outcome, but, you know, everybody wants what they want to get, to get there. So it's, it is sometimes hard to tell, but I think we've got the right people. I think we've got good people.
I think we have people up here that really, properly understand what's happening there. Yeah. Yeah, I do.
Is it fair to characterize the problems with the Carrizalillo, if I'm pronouncing it right?
Carrizalillo, yep. Yep.
That. It's sort of a stew of outside NGO problems. I get emails from MiningWatch Canada and some sorta U.S. policy institute that's progressive, and then there might be the local banditos, and then there might be people who are illiterate and very, very poor subsistence farmers, and there's this company with $100 million machines that won't give them a few bucks. Is that sort of the right way to characterize the stew?
Okay. So yeah, we have three, three, three communities there. We've got the Mezcala, Xochipala, and Carrizalillo group. We've got a.
Two of them are no problemo.
Right. Correct. So we've got long-term agreements in place with those two multi-decade agreements in place and ratified agreements in place with those two communities, which have probably the larger of the three populations. Then we're now continuing to have negotiations, discussions with Carrizalillo. And I believe that, you know, everyone wants to work there and wants to get back to work and operate the asset, as it has for years. Now, the one thing we have to do is also recognize that, hey, we really do need to put a plant in on site there, in order to have good reasonable margins. And it's gonna be a, as I mentioned, you know, I'm gonna say somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion capital cost to put that in place, which is a significant undertaking by the company.
Of course, we would love to work with all three communities. We're also assessing what does a two-community plan look like? Could that be a viable solution? We're working through all of these things, John. It's active. It's live. I think this is the first time in history where, you know, a company has really gone into suspended operations to work through such that we can have a great opportunity and sustainable operation for many years to come for all three communities.
Good luck. I realize it's patience and the people have a different literacy level and economic expectation, and it can be a little rough on the ground sometimes.
Oh, sure. Absolutely. But, you know, we'll see how things go. This is, this is Darren's approach, and this has always been the approach is we're friends with everyone, but we're aligned with no one. We wanna make sure that it works for everybody and for the long-term success of the communities. 'Cause we recognize the communities were there first. We've come in as a business to operate in that region, and they will be there after us. So we have to do the right thing.
So when my friends in the steel business pour the concrete foundations for a new furnace, sometimes they pour the concrete foundations for the second furnace too, since they already have a cement truck there and et cetera, et cetera. How much of the Valentine phase two has already been built the first time?
I mean, a pretty significant component of it. Like, there's gonna be lots of footings and foundations. We're likely gonna go with a second ball mill approach. So we were originally thinking flotation, but now after doing thorough reviews and studies, a second ball mill approach is the right way to go, particularly because it can also provide some redundancies within the operation as well. But this also, as you can imagine, John, would require expanded camp and infrastructure. This is gonna require expanded other infrastructure facilities, truck shops, fleet, et cetera, on site. So yes, from an infrastructure and plant perspective, you know, we've built a lot of it already, but there's a lot of other auxiliary CapEx that goes into getting it to a 5 million ton throughput.
Once again, we always invite questions from our dear friends in the audience, and there are some questions. With the two large new Canadian operations performing well, can you discuss the possibility, I lost it, of selling some assets, including Los Filos and mature Brazil assets to raise cash to reduce debt?
Yep. Yeah. Well, I mean, yes, we look at the portfolio and, we're not specifically set on a production number, an annual production number. We are looking at ways that hopefully can really drive share price performance. And we've taken a small step in that direction by divesting of the Nevada assets. They were 30-35,000 ounce a year producer. And it could lead to other opportunities. We've had a number of inbounds. We've had inbounds on Nicaragua. We've had inbounds on California. We've had inbounds on Brazil. We've had some inbounds on Mexico as well. And after, I'll call it almost six months now, we're coming up on six months of where Darren and our Corp Dev team, our exploration team, and everyone's had some level of input.
I think that the most that it's come in so far is there's been a lot of inbounds on Brazil. And so we've been entertaining what that could look like, if we were to divest of Brazil. I can't say for certain that it will happen, but we've been entertaining that. We're not running any official processes or anything like that, but it seems like there's been more attention there. So, you know, I think that the company will continue to evaluate that opportunity if we can get the right value that could make sense. You know, and I don't know what that value is, but let's say it's somewhere between $750 million-$1.2 billion of cash. Let's say it could be in that ballpark. If that were to happen.
Is that including Brazil or just Mexico?
Brazil. Just Brazil by itself. If it was just Brazil. To the question to the individual that asked the question, good question, because Brazilian assets and some of these assets in the portfolio are mature. So we have to look at, you know, especially in this gold price environment, what could make the most sense? Because we do carry, was it $1.2-$1.3 billion of net debt at the end of Q3? So we wanna look at ways to delever that, put ourselves in a great financial position to then look at what does the future financing look like or self-funding look like for the growth opportunities, albeit particularly at Castle Mountain and Valentine phase two. Those are two things that are really imminent on the pipeline focus.
So, yeah, always looking at any of these opportunities, and we will take them very seriously. And again, it's not about, we're not really focused on an ounce production level. We're looking at how can we become a top quartile valued gold producer and drive share price performance. So delivering is obviously a plan, but if you can do that quickly and rapidly, that could make a lot of sense for our business.
So the range that you quoted separately for Los Filos turnaround and Castle Mountain construction was close to the number I had in mind, Ryan, for the two together. So what you're saying is that the technical studies done four years ago, things have changed and cost more. And with the detailed engineering, maybe there's improvements being made and the numbers are bigger, and that's a reason, that's something that's going to use up a bit of the windfall from gold prices being higher or an asset sale or whatever.
Yep.
Management doesn't like debt, and you definitely want the debt level falling.
Yes. I think it's reasonable. I, I mean, again, we're working through all those details, but directionally, I'd rather people thinking bigger than less to surprise to the, to the upside versus the downside, and we will have, we should have, John, an update on Castle Mountain potentially by the end of 2026. But again, we've been saying directionally it should be in that number from an initial CapEx perspective. Yeah. That's just how much these big, big, big plants cost with related infrastructure, with related tailings, with related earthworks, and fleet, et cetera, right?
It always costs more.
It always costs more. Exactly.
I was kidding one of the earlier speakers, and it was at an early stage, and I said, Ryan, that in my experience, there's a lot of projects that are 18%-22% return and very few that are 40%-60%.
Mm-hmm.
Not because of the mines, but because the consultants escalate the cost until the rate of return falls to 18 or 20 so they can milk it for what they can. I'm cynical, but hopefully you guys can control things. I'm looking at the minute-by-minute chart of your stock today, and since around lunchtime, it's been almost the horizontal line. So it didn't go up too much when I asked whether I need to buy the stock back up a point, and it didn't go down too much when you said $700 million-$1 billion for each of the two major projects rather than the two combined. So I was. I just thought I'd look at the minute-by-minute.
Nice.
But, we're okay. We haven't gotten wiped out during the conversation.
Okay. Good.
Once again, everyone's welcome to ask a question. And there's another one. It's a little hard for me to read the question box. Bear with me one moment. No, it is the same question over again. So, Ryan, I know that you have a very creative team at all levels and board. At what level of the paydown of debt do you think the pivot is going to be from, optimizing assets or selling assets to, exploring and acquiring and building up more assets?
Well.
Are you waiting until there's no debt or $500 million too? It is better than $1 billion plus.
I think we're going to have some reasonable level of debt. We would just like to make sure the cost of capital is the lowest we can possibly have because there's some instruments on our balance sheet that, you know, the Sprott Resource Lending Facility, for example, is about somewhere around 12% cost of capital. So, ultimately, we'd like to find the lowest cost of capital as a bigger entity, especially with these new assets. And I would say reasonably, John, it's probably somewhere where it's on a net neutral basis between cash and shares. So it's probably somewhere.
And I probably can't talk articulately about this because it's a moving environment, especially with gold price, with as things come on, because you think about Valentine phase two starts potentially as early as second half of 2026. And then we've got CapEx in 2027 for Valentine phase two. So I would say that it's probably in the, you know, reasonably half of what we're carrying now for a company of our size. So, a net debt to EBITDA ratio somewhere about 0.5-0.7. But ultimately, I mean, I would say that, again, we'd like to be eliminate that if we could, and have a revolving credit facility on the balance sheet that is available to us at a good cost of capital.
Because again, you look at the, you know, 2027, for example, you've got Valentine phase two and potentially the beginning of Castle Mountain if all goes well there, but at these gold price environments with this gold production, I think we're in a good position.
In terms of gold prices, what gold prices do you think your board and management team models in planning the company forward in these big capital projects? Do you plan for $3,000, $2,000? Some people are at $2,000, some are at $3,000, some are at $4,000?
Yeah. I mean, you're gonna take a couple of things into consideration here. It's the, when you're modeling the deposit, right, you're gonna look at a cutoff and a gold price for modeling the deposit. Then you're gonna look at the economics at various gold prices. And I would say that when you look at the economics of various gold prices, we're likely somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000 in that ballpark between those two from an economic return on investment perspective in that range. 'Cause you think about it, right? 2026, I mean, 2025, I should say, we've begun the year at $2,600, $2,700 an ounce. So let's be prudent.
Let's make sure that whatever we do and decisions we make, they're the least wrong as best we can, and model a lower gold price environment because it can be very volatile.
A wise man told me once, "Plan for the worst and let the upside take care of itself.
That sounds reasonable.
You've got almost $100 million exploration program. When the company was capital starved and, you know, doing Greenstone for $1.23 billion, buying out Orion for $960 million, there weren't a lot of dollars for exploration. Do you think this is a year where the proven and probable reserves increase by two or three years of production, or would that take several years of drilling and engineering studies and metallurgy testing, et cetera?
I think it's gonna take a couple of years. But, you know, if you look at the overall reserve and resources of Equinox, I don't think there's been a full, you know, proper depreciation, reasonable depreciation for a while. So at the end of this year, we'll do that for 2025. Now, what does that mean for 2026? I can't say for certain, but we've got some fantastic opportunities at Valentine, real good opportunities in Nicaragua, and I would also say Brazil. So let's see how it goes. But I mean, we've made a discovery at Valentine that is outside of resources, that is outside of reserves, that looks like it has the potential to be a whole nother system. So we'll see. But, and that one next year, I think is our highest capital allocation from an exploration perspective.
We're somewhere between $20 and $25 million, likely in that range, for Valentine exploration. 'Cause it, it's one of those opportunities if we step back and think about that asset. It's a greenfield. So it's never been a producing mine. Think about the evolution of that 2.7 million ounces of reserves within 4.1 million ounces of measured and indicated resources. It was discovered in 2000, really discovered in 2010 in what's called the Leprechaun Pit, which is over a million ounces now. The next was discovered in 2015, thereabouts, what's called Marathon Pit. And actually the third pit, as the company was doing engineering and permitting and exploration and basically condemnation drilling, they found the third pit under some cover.
So this is 90% of the drilling that's been done on Valentine, more or less in these resources and reserves that we have on the books today. That's about five kilometers of a 35-kilometer major fault system that goes through that property. So that's why we're very excited about the potential at Valentine 'cause it's got the same geological settings, if you will, to like a Porcupine-Destor Fault where there's been tens of millions of ounces discovered there. So we're pretty optimistic on that opportunity as one example.
At Valentine, how is things going so smoothly, ramping up so fast? Where the employee training appears to be ahead of schedule. Nothing was installed, Ron. None of the motors were installed, busted to begin with. All the suppliers work. I mean, how did it get done so good?
A couple of things. Again, I briefly mentioned this during the presentation. So let's start with the plant itself. The operation itself is a relatively simple design. 2.5 million tons. It's not an overly large operation or a big open pit mining operation. So reasonably, I'll call it reasonably simple. And again, as I mentioned, Darren became involved halfway through the construction. We would have ultimately liked to do this before construction even started, but we became involved halfway through construction. So that allowed us to look at things very closely, bring in some of the right people that we've again that Darren has worked with. You think about, you know, Darren's been involved with major builds, big, big dirt moving operations, Boddington in Australia. He's been involved in Batu Hijau, Yanacocha. So big, big assets, right?
So he, he's got a Rolodex of people that he's been able to rely on, and work with. And so he's been through that build phase and optimization phase. One of the things that I think he did really well was look at and focus on the human capital side of the business to make sure that we bring in the right people so that they can critically think about all of the things that could go bump in the night, all of the hurdles that could come up and start addressing those as we're going through construction. One of the things we brought in was RCC, Reliable Controls Corporation of Salt Lake City to help us with the commissioning process. So we brought those guys in early before the build was even done.
Brought in Jason Cyr, the VP of Operations there, who's been involved in these types of builds and operations. He was actually, I believe, GM of the Hemlo Gold Mine in Canada. So brings a lot of experience. But importantly, we brought him in a year, a year and a half almost before Valentine was actually birthed into operation such that he could go, "Hey guys, we need this." And he could also start to assemble his team, you know, a mill manager, a mine manager, and all the people from a senior leadership perspective such that we could identify things and what we need well in advance. That was a little bit of extra capital, a little bit of extra operating cost. But as you can see, we're seeing the benefits of that through this effective ramp up.
It's not gonna be perfect. We're gonna have some things that go bump in the night. In fact, what we try to do is minimize the damage as much as possible such that we don't have to talk about it externally. We just manage it within the business. There's always things that are happening. Nonetheless, it has been a smooth ramp up. I think it's all been largely driven by some of those things I've mentioned and Darren's foresight and experience because he's gone through it a few times.
Super, super. We're so pleased that the company has improved so much so quickly. An extra $1,000-$2,000 in the gold price doesn't hurt. The most important thing is to produce gold and make hay when the sun shines.
Yep. And
Congratulations to all the team and thank everyone for their service to the company.
Thank you, John. We'll do everything we can to continue that momentum into 2026 and beyond and do everything we can to ensure that we have a nice, sustainable, boring business, such that you don't have to pick away at some of the issues that may come up.
We'll keep reading in Spanish what the news reports are in Guerrero, just to be sure.
Perfect. Thank you, John. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, and thanks everyone for their attention.
Take care. Thanks, John.
Thank you.