event, well participated, lots of people here, it's great to see, of course, a buoyant gold market, you know, helps that as well. No, it's been an interesting journey over the last seven months as we've, you know, blended these two organizations together, and we end up with , as we kind of announced this time last year, right? Is that we're stronger together than what we were months, is we've, you know, blended these two organizations together, and we end up with a, as we kind of announced, We've been able to surface that value by, you know, making clear what are we focused on as a business. That's about we're a financial instrument to create shareholder value, so share price appreciation.
I think that, you know, getting everyone aligned behind that mandate: Get paid fairly for a fair day's pay, but wants to be associated with something good. You know, creating the construct where we can start to have success has allowed for people to be able to surface those values, well, not values, but those ideas through the organization, be heard and act on them. You know, we are seeing a groundswell of. You know, we are starting to kind of reestablish credibility in the product. We've delivered a couple of quarters. We're starting to see that recognized in the share price. No, it's been, you know, we are starting to kind of reestablish credibility in the product. We've delivered a couple of quarters. We're starting to see that recognized.
On the key asset, which is the Greenstone mine. I mean, how are things going in general? It seems like the last few quarters, you guys have shown some really good improvements, w hich has been great to see. Maybe, you know, give us a bit of an update on the operation, and, what's been the driver behind improving that performance?
I think, I think it leads into the conversation. The leadership team at Greenstone to have a more visible presence. We've changed out some people as just a natural course of going from a, a build into operations, not trying to have builders operate things, which is never a good solution. Having those people live local in Thunder Bay, and then drive in, drive out, be present. you know, and we're, we're seeing that, you know, things are starting to come into their own in Thunder Bay, and then drive in, drive out, be present. you know, and we're, we're seeing today during the course of the year, we've seen quarter-on-quarter improvement in mill performance as well.
I mean, if we think about Q1 and Q2 of 2025, we're sitting at about 15%-17% days above.
Forward to dial in even further?
Yeah, no and it, it, I think there's, if we think about the mill, and that's kind of the key into everything we do, it's about providing the operations team with nice, cogent periods of time where they can truly stress-test the asset, work out where the bottlenecks are, and then, you know, systematically eliminate those issues while allowing the maintenance team to be able to do their work efficiently, which is allowing for good runtime, right? That's, it's an operating model that we've been evolving, and that's why we're seeing improving performance quarter on quarter in terms of throughput, and now we'll focus on reducing downtime in those periods, particularly on the shoulders running in and coming out of planned down. There is some investment, the majority of the investment is a little bit of catch-up growth capital.
You know, we've got $130 million-$160 million worth of capital this year. $100 million of that is associated with two things. One of them is some work in around the tailings dam in terms of putting in some shear keys, which, you know, arguably should have been done a couple of years ago when we put in the initial facility. It wasn't an issue that we didn't, but we'll put it in this year, so we've got good expandability and a nice, stable, you know, compliant facility over the life of mine. Then we're adding a trommel at the front end as well. You know, Greenstone is a, is a brownfields development.
It's an open pit on top of an old underground, and while we see underground potential below the open pit, currently we're focused on, on the open pit, and we're mining through those old underground workings. There's no ability to take out the tramp that comes into the process plant ahead of. We've got just over $20 million to invest in a trommel at the front end to take out the steel and those sorts of things, which will come in in Q4. You know, it's a lot of nits and bits, but they are the two big things in terms of growth capital investment. It's really about operating model, consistent, persistent, and systematically removing bottlenecks, but there's no significant capital investment in order to be able to get to, you know, our 27,000 tonnes a day nameplate.
Arguably, the trommel will allow us to deliver in advance of that or higher than that.
That kind of leads to my next question, which is, you know, you're dialing in to that 27,000 tonnes per day, but there is more potential at Greenstone. You know, can you give us your thoughts on potentially expanding throughput? There's also underground potential that you're not planning on right now, but perhaps that's something that comes along in the future. Can you give us your thoughts on that?
Sure. I guess there's, there's two parts if we break that down. There's the ability to turn rock and grade into gold bricks, which is process-driven, and then there's the mining component. If we think about the process plant as it stands today, you know, we've demonstrated the ability for that plant to do in excess of nameplate, the 27,000 tonnes a day. I mean, for the first time since it's been operating, we had 30 consecutive days above nameplate in December, which is, you know, again, it may seem like a pretty insignificant milestone, but given the journey that Greenstone's been on, it's a significant milestone. In that, we're seeing days at 30,000+ tonnes a day.
We're not foreshadowing any of that in any of our forward-looking information, but, you know, we look at our estimates this year, it's based on 9.5 million tonnes of, call it a gram 1, at feasibility-level recoveries. You know, it puts us in the midpoint of our guidance. At 9.5 million tonnes, it's really 25,000-26,000 tonnes a day. As we consistently deliver 27,000, there's some potential upside. We see that the opportunity to do 30,000 tonnes a day is real. The rate-determining step longer term is probably the HPGRs, and the HPGRs have demonstrated 34,000 tonnes a day.
I think that, you know, as we look to the future and we earn the right, and we start looking at 2027, 2028, and 2029, I think we'll continually, you know, chase the ace and, you know, drive that throughput up. In terms of, you know, what can we feed into that plant, I mean, we haven't done any material exploration on that property, period, as Equinox. I mean, the last exploration work was done was, you know, prior to the transaction with prior to Equinox transacting on the asset. We see good underground potential there as well, so we'll pick up some of that drilling this year. Importantly, you know, we've got 80 km of contiguous mineral concession to the west through a couple of, you know, very significant operating districts.
The potential to be able to explore and, and bring those material that material into the plant, maybe at a higher grade, or maybe look at an alternate processing facility, is real as well. We're currently putting in place the organizational capability to do that from an exploration perspective. Yeah, it's early days at Greenstone, but, you know, we are demonstrating the ability to deliver into those commitments, and that'll earn the right for us to talk about, you know, what comes next.
Yeah, for sure. Lots of potential there. Maybe switching gears, you're ramping up a second Canadian gold asset a t Valentine. Seems like that's been going really well. You guys hit first production ahead of schedule. Can you speak a little bit about the ramp-up there? Then looking forward, how should we be thinking about this phase two expansion?
Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, the team have done a fantastic job at birthing and ramping up commissioning and early stages of ramping up that asset. I mean, we put first ore into the plant at the end of August, so September was our first month. In Q4, we did 89% of nameplate capacity, which is, you know, an outstanding ramp-up. We've had some challenges in January. Canadian winters, t ypically, the first one, it tests the tenor of the property and, you know, we did only 70% of nameplate capacity in January, which is still pretty amazing, considering it's five months in and the first winter. In February, we're back to 110%.
The reason I raise that is that there will be a bit dips and weaves along the way, but what we are seeing is, is that the commitment of the team to systematically address those issues as they come up, and our trajectory is, is we're still very confident in being at nameplate in advance of Q2 of 2026. That's great. Think about phase two. Phase two was always , how do you say, anticipated within the feasibility study, and that was to take us from 2.5 million tonnes to 4 million tonnes. The work we've been doing over the last year and a half or thereabouts, clearly shows a simpler process design, which is a twinning of the ball mill, which gets us to 4.5 million tonnes to 5 million tonnes a year.
You know, I would anticipate it to be a nameplate around 4.8-4.9. We'll come up with an updated technical report at the end of this quarter, both for Valentine and Greenstone, given that we need to make Greenstone's tech report current, and secondly is Valentine going from a construction into an operation phase. We need to bring that current. Yeah, no, we're very, very encouraged by what we see about that expansion. You know, the only regret I would have is, is that when Marathon started building, they didn't build the full Monty up front, right? You know, that was a construct that they had available to them at the time from a financing perspective.
The sooner we can get that incremental capacity and , you know, the cleaner product we'll have and, yeah, the improved production we'll see.
You guys have had some really good exploration success around Valentine and kind of regionally.
Yeah, the cleaner product we'll have and, yeah, the improved production we'll see.
You guys have had-
I mean, you know, if we look at the resource that's there, and this updated. Include any of the recent success we've had from the extensions. The Leprechaun into Frank or Minotaur, the new discovery. It's just gonna be the resource that was there as part of the 2022 updated for depletion. That's gonna show a very robust product with the expansion. The opportunity that exists for further exploration successes is on top of. Yeah, you don't need to, you know, tickle out the returns. It really stares at you that it makes a lot of sense. You know, let's see where the exploration leads us to, but, you know, I think we're gonna be there for a long, long time.
Yep, makes sense. Maybe switching over to the development pipeline. I mean, you have this Castle Mountain asset in California. It's in the FAST-41 permitting pathway. What should we expect there? You know, once it's permitted, how are you thinking about financing that project?
Well, I'll answer the last question first. I mean, out of cash flow, right? I mean, if we look at the journey we've been on, we closed the transaction with Calibre in June, at the end of June, we had just over $1.4 billion in net debt. At the end of January, we had less than $100 million in net debt. I mean, that's a significant level of de-leveraging. If you look at, you know, the production profile we have with the cost profile we have, I mean, we're gonna be generating significant levels of free cash over the next year. By the time we get to a Castle Mountain investment decision, which will be in H1 of 2027, is that, you know, we will absolutely be fully funded from the checkbook, right, to do that.
You know, we will not develop a property without being fully funded in advance with a management discretion level of overrun associated with it as well. So, you know, we're in a we're blessed with a positive gold price environment, but we've also structured the balance sheet, you know, through some recent asset dispositions to be able to provide a nice, stable base from which to build and fund our organic growth. Castle Mountain, we're in the FAST-41 process. We'll have a record order decision here in December. It'll then lead on to county and state permitting in Q1 of 2027. All insights from all of those agencies suggest that, you know, it's been viewed positively.
We're setting ourselves up for, you know, full funds investment decision in H1 of 2027 to a build of, you know, commencing in earnest thereafter.
You mentioned the, the kind of transformation of the balance sheet. You guys actually, just announced an inaugural dividend and an NCIB. Given kind of the current gold price, your cash generation, can we, you know, assume that that grows as long as everything goes to plan with the assets?
Yeah, from again, it's a first world problem we're gonna be in, you know, it's something we're getting our head around now in terms of what's our best capital allocation for the business. I mean, you know, we've cleaned up the balance sheet. We're ramping up the assets. We're delivering into expectations. We're doing that in a positive gold price environment, which is generating lots of free cash. We are blessed with a, with a pretty attractive organic growth portfolio as well, with Valentine phase two, Castle Mountain, and Los Filos. You know, I see the ability to be able to fund those all from cash flow in advance of a full investment decision for any and all of those assets and look at increasing dividends, or I probably, I lean more towards the share buyback than a dividend increase.
Because, you know, through the course of the journey with Equinox, we've diluted our shareholders, right, by issuing stock to allow for the M&A. Now to be able to, you know, buy that back at a discount as we look forward to the future and seeing, you know, our current share price at 20 odd, going to 30 and then to 40, it's like now is the time. It will all be considered in light of our organic growth pipeline.
Got it. You mentioned Los Filos there. C an you give us a bit of an update on how things are going there? You obviously shut down last year to manage some community issues.
Yep.
Has there, you know, been progress there? Then what would you need to see from a community standpoint to be comfortable investing in the expansion there?
Yeah, no, I mean, we have seen significant progress at Los Filos over the last, in particular, seven or eight months. We have three agrarian communities in which we have relationships with. We have fully ratified agreements in place with two of the three communities. We're now having very constructive discussions with the third community as well. There's been a material change in dialogue over the last seven months with respect to that third community. I think we're, you know, we're as close as we've ever been to having a positive outcome with that third community. It's important that it's not just the financial negotiation in and around what you pay, it's about the construct of how you pay. I mean, we were in the situation where we were paying a year in advance.
Now what we'll do is we'll pay as we go, and we've got some clauses written in there that move the balance of paver, balance of power more in the center, as opposed to putting us in the leverage position all the time. That's what's taking the time, right? Is it to make sure that , you know, as we look at a, you know, a $1 billion-dollar sort of investment to be able to produce, you know, 300,000 oz-400,000 oz , we wanna be able to do that and ensure that we can do that responsibly with our investors' money. We love what we see at Filos. I mean, it's 16 million ounces in all resource categories.
This is an important thing, Kevin, is that when that feasibility study was done in 2022, it was assumed from a design perspective, so the inputs into the plan were at $1,350 gold. Now, we're not in a $1,350 gold market now, which is great. Even if you start to think about a $2,000 or a $2,500 gold price environment to design the open pits and the undergrounds, it's a very different construct. No, I think we see some good organic growth opportunity from Filos. We haven't done any exploration there in the last 10 years. I mean, the total amount of drilling at Los Filos in the last decade is 350,000 meters, of which 90% of that drilling was focused on conversion, not exploration.
It's a world-class asset. You look at the great job that Jody and the team do at Torex. You look at what Los Filos can be, you know, it's, it's, it's arguably larger in stature compared to, t hey've demonstrated the ability to. We have been operating there for a long time. We are gonna be there for a long time, and I'm very excited by what I see at Filos.
That's great. And obviously, you divested the Brazilian assets recently, which has been a big factor in being able to pay down that debt really quickly. How are you thinking about the portfolio now? Are you considering any more divestments or changes, or is this the right mix going forward?
No, I think we're pretty well positioned. you know, again, we've simplified our story. We've, we've moved geographically further north, you know, with our two Canadian assets that are new and early in their life cycle. It's a great place to be. Nicaragua continues to generate cash, which, you know, provides us resilience. you know, it's now to start looking at that, that portfolio and looking at that growth that can come from our Californian assets as well. We haven't had material level of exploration in Mesquite, for example, right? Mesquite's had two years of life for the last decade, and it has been operating for 30 years, right? There's more to be had in that part of the world. Ontario, as I mentioned, with Greenstone, we haven't done any exploration.
No, I think we've got about the right mix, but, you know, as I've said, right, we love all of our assets, but, you know, for the right price. If someone comes in and says, we're interested in doing something, it's providing something that's accretive to our shareholders, then by definition it becomes non-core. We don't have a lens at which we look at things in terms of scope or scale or margin. It's really about what can that add to our investment hypothesis and create shareholder value, if someone can offer something that is more valuable in their portfolio than ours, then by definition it becomes non-core.
We haven't yet talked about Nicaragua, but it's a pretty big piece of the puzzle. I mean, 200,000 oz-250,000 oz in 2026. T his year you are planning to make some capital investments there. Can you maybe talk us through what you're doing in Nicaragua to maintain those production levels?
Yeah, I think we've, you know, we've been active explorers. I like to consider us, you know, we're an exploration company backed by, you know, $5 billion worth of revenue, right? We've been committed explorers through all of our life cycle. We look at the assets that we partnered with B2Gold back in 2019, and what we've been able to do with those assets, we took assets that were, you know, 50,000 oz to 60,000 oz a year with, you know, basically no reserves. We've grown the reserves to in excess of 1 million ounces. We've produced 1.2 million, 1.3 million over that period. We're looking at, you know, call it 2.5 million ounces over a six-year period.
We've shown the ability to be able to organically replace production at 400,000 oz a year. you know, what we are seeing with the increased cost in Nicaragua this year is a reflection of increased stripping associated with starting larger pits and also in underground. We're seeing some capital demands that have increased our unit cost of production there, but it's not a an increase in the underlying cost per tonnes mill, cost per tonne mined. It's a volume-driven thing as we see increased stripping. It's basically a first-world problem as a function of our success from an exploration perspective. you know, we're very happy to be in Nicaragua. It's a great asset. It's , you know, particularly out of Limón, it's a little engine that could. It's been in constant production since the 1930s.
It's an epithermal gold deposit that's produced, you know, 5 million ounces and will continue to. You know, I'm very comfortable with where we sit there, and it's like I said, it's a reflection of our exploration.
Then maybe shifting on to costs kind of more broadly. We're, we're seeing some cost pressures across the industry. A lot of that comes from higher gold prices, boosting things like royalty costs and that sort of thing. What type of cost pressures are you seeing, and how do you manage those?
Yeah, no, I think that Well, two things, is, is that, you know, gold price is great for us on the revenue end, but it's also the single largest risk in our business, right? Why I say that is because, you know, we need 99% of our organization to be spending money like it's their own, making intelligent decisions. If we start to hear, well, we can because, and it's a function of gold price, then we've really got to question why are we making those investment decisions?
I think that as an industry, we need to keep really focused on, on making sure that people don't feel like they're smarter and brainier and more attractive than what they really are as a function of metal price, and that there's a small number of people who think about what do we do with those surplus funds. I think we will see some cost tension across the business as a consequence. We will because we can. Keeping the lid on that is going to be really, really important. I look at our business in terms of the twp ramping up Canadian assets. You know, we're going to see efficiencies on the mining space and the processing space and arguably the G&A space, which is going to lower our unit cost of tonne, per tonne mined, per tonne milled.
I think that in 2027 and 2028 will provide us a little bit of a hedge to some of that increasing cost pressure as well, which is a little bit perverse, but it's, I think it's a good way to look at our business.
Great. You know, final question here as we're getting low on time, but you mentioned you think of the company as almost an exploration company backed by a lot of revenue. What, what do you view as the highest exploration potential across the Equinox portfolio?
Well, this is you've got to pick a favorite child, right? You know, it's a difficult decision. We see, you know, great potential across all of our assets, but, you know, if you look at the enormity of what can exist with Los Filos, I think it's significant. You think of where it's valued in our portfolio from an NAV perspective, it's the lowest. So I think there's a lot of good potential there. Yeah, Greenstone, you know, who doesn't want to be in on Northern Ontario mining, right? The opportunities there are significant. Valentine is organic growth. I mean, we talked about Nicaragua, right? The reason we're sitting here today is, you know, look at Calibre and integrating into Equinox was because of Nicaragua.
No, I think we see good potential across, and I think we need to feed all of those pipelines, and you need to have the diversified portfolio because it's gonna insulate you against things when things do go bump in the middle of the night. You know, if I had to look at it, you know, if you had to pick one thing, you know, I think that, you know, Los Filos is the kind of the sleeping giant.
Right on. Well, that brings us to the end of our slot. Thanks a lot for joining us, Darren.
Appreciate it. Thanks, Kevin.