They are on these slides here. They are also on our website. In gold and antimony, our project has the potential to provide significant economic benefits, including returns to our investors, hundreds of jobs, billions in tax revenue, and environmental restoration of an abandoned brownfield site. After a decade of permitting and study, we have our federal approvals in hand. Early works and critical path construction are already underway. This is no longer a permitting story. This is a construction story. On the deposit, we have 4.8 million ounces of gold in reserves, add in a measured and indicated and inferred, and the total endowment is just under 8 million ounces of gold. Gold is what drives the economics of this project and represents over 95% of our project NPV. There is a second story on the slide. We also have 148 million pounds of antimony.
This is not just the biggest, but the only antimony reserve in the United States Antimony is a critical mineral, and it matters for national security and for domestic manufacturing. Think about that for a second. Antimony goes into hundreds of munitions our military depends on, and Stibnite is the only near-term domestic source in the country. It is also one of the largest reserves in the entire world. Tungsten is a third critical mineral, and it is part of the site's history. Past production and drill data tell us the exploration potential here is high for more tungsten discoveries. Recent drilling has revealed new tungsten targets, and we will keep testing them while we drill for more gold and antimony. We are doing all of this in Idaho, a premier mining jurisdiction with infrastructure already in place, a workforce that knows this business, and a community that supports us.
The brownfield nature of our site presents an opportunity to use modern mining and remediation methods to improve site conditions with environmental restoration integrated into our plan of operations. By the time we are finished, we will have improved water quality, reopened a fish passage that has been blocked for over 80 years, and cleaned up the legacy tailings and waste left behind by decades of mining. We have a very supportive shareholder base, and we are covered by leading metals and mining brokers across North America. Our largest shareholder, Paulson & Co., has been invested since 2016. In October of 2025, we secured key strategic investments from Agnico Eagle and JPMorgan Chase, who collectively invested over a quarter billion dollars into Perpetua. The rest of our shareholder base is rounded out by ETFs, large global institutional funds, family offices, and retail.
Our balance sheet remains very clean, with last reported unrestricted cash on hand of approximately $574 million as of June 2026. Gold reserves. With 4.8 million ounces in reserves, Stibnite is the largest gold reserve in the Lower 48 outside of the Barrick Newmont Nevada joint venture, and that is gold only. It excludes the 148 million pounds of antimony that we also have in reserves. During the first four years of operations, our open pit grades will average 2.2 grams per ton, making Stibnite one of the highest grade open pit projects in the country. Grade is the primary driver of our project economics, and being at the top makes our project truly world-class. Recent drilling has opened up exciting new zones like the Clark Tunnel fault zone with grades above nine grams per ton.
That is more than 5x our reserve grade near surface and located on the edge of our permitted open pit. As we keep defining these targets, we see room to grow reserves and lift our grade profile at the same time. On the production side, as published in our 2025 technical report summary, we are forecasting to produce about 300,000 ounces of gold per year on average over the mine life and more than 460,000 ounces per year in the first four years, which would make Stibnite the largest producing mine in the U.S., again, outside of the Barrick Newmont JV. Keep in mind, that is based on 4.8 million ounce gold reserve only and does not include any of the 1.5 million ounces of M&I or 1.6 million ounces in the inferred category.
On the cost side of things, Stibnite will run on clean Idaho hydropower, one of the cheapest and lowest carbon grids in the country. Combining high open pit grades, a very low strip ratio, and a valuable antimony byproduct credit of over $220 per ounce, we expect to be the lowest cost mine in the U.S., Canada, or Australia, producing over 150,000 ounces per year. The result is an all-in sustaining cost, which are projected at $498 per ounce in the first four years and $833 per ounce over the life of mine. Let's talk about antimony for a minute. Antimony is a differentiating factor in our project, and it's a very valuable byproduct for us. Antimony is used in a variety of different industries, including the automotive and chemical industries, and the military also uses many forms of antimony for munitions, fire retardants, and explosives.
Similar to rare earths, antimony supply and processing is dominated by China. Stibnite is the only reserve in the United States and now has a clear path to production, which will help strengthen our nation's supply chain and industrial base. After China placed export controls on antimony in September of 2024, the need for domestic sources of antimony supply has never been more relevant. These restrictions were later replaced with an outright ban on exports to the United States in December of 2024, citing economic and national security reasons. Recently, the U.S. administration published a list of 10 priority projects in the United States, including our Stibnite project, in connection with the March 2025 Executive Order 14241 aimed at strengthening domestic mineral production and reducing reliance on China for critical minerals. This follows over $80 million in combined U.S. Department of Defense awards Perpetua has received.
This support has helped us secure permits to construct, helped us put key financing in place, and laid the foundation for our future gold and antimony production at Stibnite. Tungsten is another critical mineral essential for military and industrial uses, and we have this on site. It used to be produced here as well during World War II. The tungsten mine during that period at Stibnite was crucial for the Allied war effort and the production of ammunition, and covered 50% of the supply for the U.S. and its allies during the war effort. Like antimony, tungsten production has largely been controlled, and recent export restrictions out of China have caused turbulent market pricing. Tungsten supply remains crucial for both domestic manufacturing and military applications. Exploration potential for tungsten remains high, and we announced some very encouraging tungsten results in our August exploration release.
This includes a new tungsten discovery on the flanks of our Yellowpine pit, as well as some impressive tungsten intercepts beneath our Hangar Flats pit, ranging from 1.2% to upwards of 4.6% tungsten. Let me give you an update on the ongoing construction at site right now. Construction is moving well on site, and I want to walk you through what that looks like today. Drilling continues with four rigs at site, and in the top left-hand corner, you can see some of our staff logging and inspecting core from our recently expanded exploration program that has now exceeded 10,000 meters. In the bottom left-hand corner, you will see some of our core from the Clark Tunnel fault zone fluorescing under black light. That fluorescence is caused by scheelite, a tungsten-bearing mineral which we continue to see in follow-up drilling at that target.
In the middle, you will see our team pioneering the Burnt Log Route, which will serve as our primary access route into the site once it is complete. In the top right corner, you can see a recent aerial photo showcasing our worker housing facility. This will provide long-term accommodations of the construction and operations workforce. Designed to be self-contained and support year-round activity in a remote environment, the modular units will form the core of the site's workforce lodging throughout the project life and will cover about 1,000 workers on site during construction. In the bottom right-hand corner, you can see a view of the service facility foundations being erected, which will support the kitchen, dining, and recreation areas for the staff.
On the exploration upside, early in the presentation we went through some of our project metrics and noted that Stibnite is one of the biggest gold reserves in North America not owned by a major. What is interesting is that the last time we calculated reserves was almost a decade ago using gold at $1,600 per ounce for our price assumption. On top of our 4.8 million ounces of gold reserves, we have 1.5 million ounces of measured and indicated, 1.6 million ounces in inferred, both of which were also calculated at $1,500 per ounce of gold. With 4.8 million ounces of reserves defined at that time, Perpetua focused on permitting rather than on exploration and making the resource bigger. But with construction permits and a significantly higher gold price, we kicked off our first major exploration program in a decade earlier this year.
Our new exploration program is focused on converting resources, finding higher grade sources of feed to supplement our base case mine plan, and testing our best prospects. In August, we announced initial exploration results from testing around our currently permitted pits. Clark Tunnel was one of our first targets this season. Again, located on the edge of our permitted Yellowpine pit, drilling showcased high-grade results starting right at surface, including 6.4 meters of 6.2 grams per ton of gold from surface and 15 meters of 16.3 grams per ton of gold from 11 meters below surface. These intercepts demonstrate new mineralization that is near surface within the permitted pit footprint, and a program also identified significant new tungsten mineralization, including 21.3 meters of 3.2 grams per ton gold with 0.9% tungsten from 24 meters below the surface at Clark Tunnel.
At the Hangar Flats deposit, which will be our second open pit, drilling continues to focus on high-grade gold, antimony, and tungsten either in or close proximity to our permitted pit. Drilling beneath the reserve pit was particularly exciting, where we encountered both high-grade antimony and tungsten. Assays included 22.9 meters of 3.2% antimony with 1.2% tungsten and 9.8 meters of 8.3% antimony with 4.6% tungsten. Simply put, these are exceptional high-grade results which continue to support an expansion of Perpetua's critical mineral endowment. In our press release this morning, we announced that we completed our planned 10,000 meter drill program in August. However, given the encouraging results we've seen thus far, we elected to continue that program into the fall. On the financing side of things, our comprehensive financing plan for the project includes over $3 billion in construction capital.
The first pillar of this strategy was executed with over $600 million of new equity raised last year from a variety of institutional and other investors. This was followed by over $250 million of strategic investments, including investments from Agnico Eagle and JPMorgan Chase. As of June 2026, we had $574 million in unrestricted cash on hand. The next major financing development is the closing of the U.S. Exim debt financing. In May, we announced the approval of a $2.9 billion loan, and we're working through final documentation with closing expected in the fourth quarter of this year. Valuation. Now that we have the funding plan in place, the value proposition for Perpetua shareholders is very clear and simple. This slide shows the illustrative equity value for Perpetua shareholders at different gold prices.
To calculate the implied equity value, we calculate the project NPV at the commencement of production and then deduct $2.4 billion of the Ex-Im loan principal, $500 million in interest and fees, and $150 million in corporate G&A. At $4,000 per ounce gold, this implies an equity value of $5.8 billion, or 1.8x our current market cap. At $5,000 per ounce, this implies an $8.2 billion equity value or 2.6x our current market cap. Just in terms of a peer value comparison, here you can see the stock price performance of some of the companies that have successfully developed projects in recent years. From securing financing to beginning production, stock price performance has ranged from over 400% to over 1,000%. With a clear plan for financing lined up and a very favorable gold price, we think the investment case for new investors is very compelling in our project.
The path forward and timeline. Looking forward, we have several catalysts on the horizon. In the near term, we anticipate continuing exploration within and beyond the limits of our permitted reserve footprint. As previously mentioned, we anticipate closing on the $2.9 billion Ex-Im loan later this year and announcing a final investment decision. Following the approximately three-year build after a full sanction decision, we would then expect initial production in late 2029. In closing, Perpetua is uniquely positioned for near-term success and long-term growth. We have a world-class project of scale and grade with extensive exploration upside. Our outstanding economics are underpinned by our high-grade, low strip ratio and access to cheap, clean hydropower. This is further strengthened by our valuable antimony by-product. Jurisdictions are critical in our industry, and there's no better place to be a miner than in the United States, and especially in Idaho.
We are fortunate to have extensive support from our government partners as well as our stakeholders. Perpetua's vision has always been to restore this abandoned brownfield site, to provide environmental solutions and to reestablish fish migration and improve habitat conditions. I'm excited for Perpetua's future as we continue working to deliver our plan. Thank you.
We have a few minutes for questions if anyone would like to raise their hand. If I could start, Jon, if I can ask you to put on your environmental engineering hat. Just talk a little bit about the metallurgical complexity of this flow sheet as you’re bringing in high sulfidation, low sulfidation, you're doing transition ores. Can you talk a little bit about the proven and tested methodology on how that flow sheet is going to deliver strong recoveries in gold, tungsten, antimony?
It's a great question. A couple of points on this. Part of the reason the government really likes our project, and this being the only reserve of antimony in the United States is, if you think about cobalt several years ago, where cobalt price went up, cobalt mines opened up. China flooded the market with cobalt, price went down, and the cobalt mines had to shut down. For single antimony mines, it's a very similar proposition. In our case, however, the antimony was going to come out of the ground with the gold. So we actually have to remove the antimony to purify the gold anyway. So the antimony is protected from price and commodity fluctuations.
In terms of how we're going to do that from a flow sheet perspective, it's a relatively straightforward process where we're going to do a standard sulfide flotation of the antimony on the front end. We'll remove that, we'll make a bulk antimony sulfide concentrate. About 90% of that will go to off-site processing to be turned into antimony metal or antimony trioxide. And about 10% of that, the highest grade fraction of the stibnite or the antimony trisulfide, that'll be reserved to be used for military munition products. Then from there, it's a standard process where we will make a gold concentrate, and that gold concentrate will go through a pair of autoclaves and then into a standard CIL process.
Thanks. Maybe one more question from me, Jon. You have what seems to be a front-end loaded mine plan in terms of gold. I'm just wondering how that could be influenced by some of the early exploration success that you've been having, sort of tacking on it to the front of the mine plan, or do you expect that to be more sort of middle to long end dated?
That's a great question, and having done this for over 37 years now in the United States, permitting always seems to be the biggest hurdle and takes the longest time. Once you get a resource or project that's good enough to permit, you need to lock it down and permit that project. That's what we've done over the last 10 years. We got the permits, we started construction, and now for the first time in 10 years, we've started doing additional exploration. If you look at our production profile, that first four years, five years, we're up at that 463,000 ounces per year mark. This exploration, and you can see by these higher grades that we're finding in the exploration, the intent is to use that to fill that gap and try to keep going with the higher gold ounces.
Rather, I mean, 300,000 ounces a year for the life of mine is nothing to sneeze at, but we're very excited to get back into the exploration game here and try to maintain that higher production level.
That's great. If there are no further questions, please join me in thanking Jon for his wonderful presentation. Appreciate it.