Good afternoon.
Good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for joining the call today. I'm Matthew Warintza, the CEO and President of Solaris Resources. Today is a very important milestone for the company, and the first time the market has visual of the size, scale, and uniqueness of this multi-generational project. Personally, I would like to thank the team for their efforts. We have an experienced team leading a tier-one project, and I'm extremely proud to be a part of this journey. As you'll see from the presentation, this is a globally significant copper project with a life exceeding 50 years. This is exceptionally rare in the world today. The project is simple in design with conventional mining and processing methods. Just recently, copper topped the Alameda seminar poll for the metal with the most potential upside.
Wood Mackenzie recently published an article saying global demand is set to surge by 24% by 2035. Which equates to adding more than 1 million tons of production to the market annually. The big question is, where is this copper going to come from? The Warintza project is a near-term executable project which aligns well to the world's desperate requirement for increased supply. Today's presentation will be hosted by myself and Javier Toro, the COO. I will take the forward-looking and cautionary statements as being read. Just looking at the investment case, the tier-one status of this asset drives significant cash flows over the life of the mine. There are no attachments to a major in the equity stack, which provides strategic flexibility for the company at the right time. We have an extremely good reputation in-country, and holding social license is a significant asset.
We have an experienced team with diverse skill sets covering all critical elements required at this stage of this Solaris development. Additionally, we are fully funded to complete the feasibility study through the $200 million financing package from Royal Gold in May 2025. Some of the PFS highlights I'll just touch on. We had a 312% increase in the measured and indicated resource category compared to the 2024 MRE. We'll produce a very clean and high-quality concentrate, providing marketing flexibility. It's very rare in Latin America to have a concentrate with no arsenic content. We have extremely good byproduct credits coming from molybdenum as well as gold. The pre-feasibility study is also prepared in conjunction with highly experienced consultants, Ausenco, Knight Piésold, as well as AMC. The reserve base supports a mine life of over 20 years.
The company has adopted a two-phased permitting approach limited by the 1.3 billion tons of tailings capacity. With the potential to extend the mine life by 30 years, the first 15 years is reflective of the life of the mine. Just highlighting some of the key pre-feasibility outputs: production of over 300,000 tons of copper equivalent for the first five years and over 240,000 tons of copper equivalent for the first 15 years. The life of mine strip ratio of 0.53/1 is one of the lowest strip ratios of mines globally, driving a best-in-class strip-adjusted grade. The all-in sustaining cash costs of $0.85 for the first five years and $1.07 for the first 15 years, and a post-tax NPV 8% of $4.6 billion and post-tax IRR of 26%. A post-tax payback period of 2.6 years. This certainly highlights the quality of the asset. Just looking at the.
Significant resource base, in 2025, the mineral resource increased by 38% versus 2024. With the large inclusion of the Warintza West deposit. The reserves account for a 22-year life of operation, with significant potential, as I said, to extend the life of mine by between 25-30 years beyond the reserves. The reserves represent less than a third of the Warintza current resource endowment. Looking at the reserves, we have 1.3 billion tons, which equates to 5.2 million tons of copper equivalent. In the resources category. From an M&I perspective, we have 3.7 billion tons, and further in the inferred category, a further 2 billion tons, which totals 5.8 billion tons of resources, and accounts for approximately more than 16 million tons of copper equivalent, with significant exploration opportunities beyond.
Looking at the right-hand side of the chart, y ou will see that the life of mine annual copper production places Warintza firmly in the top tier of future global producers. Only 10 of the top 30 greenfield projects of scale have no attachments to a major. As said before, this provides great flexibility to the project going forward. From a capital intensity perspective and the key drivers of low capital intensity for the Warintza project, we have to understand that Ecuador is an export-driven economy with substantial existing infrastructure, the likes of ports, a rail network, and power grids. We'll also operate at a low elevation of 1,200 m above sea level, which compares very favorably against future greenfield opportunities. We have freshwater availability and minimal pre-stripping capital as the ore body sits very close to surface. It's an open pit. Mining methodologies, and simple in design.
From a capital intensity benchmarking perspective, some of the majors have recently provided statistics on where their greenfield and brownfield expansion projects will be guided from a copper equivalent standpoint. That's somewhere between $15,000 per ton of copper equivalent to $23,000 per ton of copper equivalent. The peer median for development projects is approximately $21,000 per ton. As a key takeaway, this project has resounding capital intensity metrics and is highly attractive versus the peers. Just looking at it from a strip ratio perspective, Warintza has one of the lowest strip ratios in the world, and the ore body sits very close to surface, with the advantages of such being minimal waste removal, which significantly reduces costs and capital. It's high-grade at surface, and you would note the first five years of production is prolific in terms of that high-grade accessibility.
There's optimization opportunities for mine planning as the ore body is very homogeneous in nature, and again, low truck hours, which reduces the carbon footprint, which is a key driver of this project in terms of decarbonization efforts. Just looking at the world of large coal-free deposits, they need to be benchmarked against strip-adjusted grade with a median strip ratio of approximately 2.5/1. Warintza has a strip ratio of 0.53/1. As you will see from the head grade and the strip ratio, Warintza sits well within the top tier of future producers from a strip-adjusted grade perspective. As you will see, this again reflects the caliber of the ore body and the significant flexibility it offers over the multi-decade life of mine. Warintza will produce approximately 250,000 tons of copper equivalent over the first 15 years, with the first quartile all-in sustaining cash cost.
As you will note from the slide, it's robust and consistent production and cost profile over the life of the mine, and the reserve life continues for 20 + years. Further, looking at the slide below, the first quartile all-in sustaining cash costs of $0.85 and $1.07 per pound on the first 15 years drive significant margin and the ability for the asset to see through multiple commodity cycles. From an EBITDA and free cash flow delivery perspective, its first quartile cash cost drives significant free cash and EBITDA generation. The EBITDA and EBITDA margins remain very consistent over the life of the mine. As you will note, the average EBITDA for the first 15 years is $1.4 billion and the total life of mine EBITDA of $25 billion.
Looking at it from a cash flow perspective, the annual free cash flow over the first 15 years equates to approximately $1 billion, and the total life of mine of 22 years, approximately $17 billion. This is very prolific in terms of what this mine will generate for shareholders in the future. From a technically simplistic design perspective, the project design is very simple. It is an environmentally encapsulated design. Javier will go into a little bit more detail on these slides later on. The footprint is really encapsulated by the north, the west, and the south ridge lines demarcated with the red dotted line in the map below. It is a very small and compact footprint, and water flows downstream from southwest to northeast. As you will note, the principal access road to the port is demarcated.
What I will just highlight is this pre-feasibility study is prepared in conjunction with Ausenco, Knight Piésold, and AMC, world-class consultants. From a social license to operate, everyone understands that in Latin America, you have to have a social license to operate, and we are very proud of what we have achieved over the last seven odd years. We have signed multiple partnerships with indigenous organizations in the area of influence, and you would have seen the recent one that we signed and announced this year with the PSHA Shuar Federation, which operates in the area of influence. The free, prior, and informed consultation process led by the government is scheduled to commence shortly after a successful visit from the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Multiple impacts and benefits agreements have been signed with the host communities, the Warints and Yawi community, and updated in 2024.
We have a very proactive, engaging p olicy around the communities, kept informed, empowered. There is an element of significant trust between ourselves through transparency. Just looking at Ecuador as a whole, it is an export-driven country with strong infrastructure, as mentioned before, including deep-sea ports. The left, the right, the centralist governments have all supported mining intrinsically, and certainly, Daniel Noboa today is supporting mining, and it is a key pillar of economic growth for the country. It is a USD-denominated currency and very stable fiscal regimes, which is quite in contrast to many of the other Latin American countries. The final technical EIA report was submitted and is under final government review at this stage, and hopefully, we can obtain that before the end of the year.
Just from a district-level perspective and understanding the cluster and where we operate, we operate in the southeastern corridor of Ecuador, very close to the Peruvian border. The lines demarcated by the solid lines are the Warintza wholly owned properties, 100%. You'll see the mineral resource estimates of ours sitting just merely over the central, west, and east deposits. Further, we have option agreements with the government, [MRE], which is reflected by the dotted lines as the option properties to the east, west, and north of our properties. Further than that, we understand the EcuaCorriente assets sit between 7-9 km away from the direct mineral resource estimate that we hold.
If you looked at the inferred resource that they provided in the past, they own approximately 1 billion tons of inferred resource today. If you add that to our 5.8 billion tons, this region definitely has the potential to become one of the world's largest underdeveloped copper clusters with further exploration potential in the district. Just from where we operate, the Mirador mine is about 40 km to the south, and the Fruta del Norte mine is about 80 km to the south of us. Very well an accustomed area to mining. I would now like to hand over to Javier Toro to talk you through some of the technical slides. Thank you.
Hello, everyone. In this slide, we are showing how strategically we have encapsulated our footprint. As Matt mentioned, this is encapsulated to the north, west, and south. This is key important, considering the environmental, the social, and obviously the economical point of view. From the environmental point of view, with this print layout, it's easy to manage the water, where we will have all the non-contact water in the southwest of the figure that you see, and after we can monitor the water in the northeast.
This consideration has been key for our environmental impact assessment. Baselines and studies, and hopefully, we can receive the approval soon, as Matt mentioned. From a social point of view, this footprint also basically only impacts two communities that are from the direct influence, and we are not having other direct influence from other communities under this configuration. It's easy to go for the next stage to the feasibility, basically following this configuration. From an economical point of view, having this encapsulated footprint gave us different opportunities to improve the CapEx and also the OpEx cost for the project. In terms of resources, as Matt mentioned, we have 5.8 billion tons of resources. In comparison with the previous MRE that we published last year, we did around 80,000 additional meters during 2024, basically.
As you see in the graphic in the upper r ight side, we have still some opportunities in all the areas, especially in the bottom, in the east, and in the west area. In pink color, you can see the high grade, which is basically in the surface. In all the areas, you can see all the ore that allow us to have the lowest stripping ratio. We can play with different opportunities further on. In terms of the mine plan, which was key for this project based on the stripping ratio, we basically did different alternatives, moving more material or moving different amounts of material to expose the high grade and to have the high grade especially for the first five years, for example. That allowed us to have the low capital intensity, as Matt showed in the previous slide.
We also work in terms of the NSR variable cutoff that again allowed us to optimize our mine plan and all the economics that you have saw in the previous slide. Still, there are opportunities in the graphic in the lower part that we could keep doing some additional optimization that for sure we will do in the next stage of the project. Just to mention that all the resources and the mine plan, we basically were working with AMC, an international consultant company well known for the market and for all of the industry. The process plan here that we have been working with Ausenco shows in this graphic the layout starting in the left side with the track shop where the mining tracks will be, and after that, going to the crusher, to all related to the milling and the flotation.
Finally, to the concentrate, we will go out to the right side of this graphic with the concentrate to the port. The layout is a very optimized layout working together with Ausenco. It is a simple process plant, even though it is 165,000 tons per day. The configuration is basically primary and secondary crusher and balls and SAG and the flotation system. One important topic is that we will not have deleterious elements. Basically, our ore is clean, and that gave us opportunities to improve the recovery and also to work in a simple process plant layout. We will have two concentrates, copper with gold and silver, and moly concentrate. The plant also is located in the upper elevation in comparison with the tailings management facility, which means that the tailings will go by gravity to the tailings facility.
The tailings management facility has been working with Knight Piésold, another international company. The capacity for the tailings is 1.3 billion tons. Basically, the tailings will have, or the tailings management facility will have, a principal dam and three smaller dams. It is a classic centerline method with a rockfill starter dam, and after that, the cyclone sand raising. Two important topics is the water management that we have been working with Knight Piésold, being sure that we will have beaching all the dams, tailings beaching all the dams. Also, the dam is love heart designed following the long-term stability and the operational and seismic loading condition following the CDA criteria, which is the Canadian Dam Association. The infrastructure for the project also is important, basically in terms of roads, in terms of ports, and in terms of power.
Ecuador, and especially in the area where we will be working, have a very good infrastructure in terms of the roads. For the port, the distance between the project and Port Bol í var that we are going to use is around 340 km with well-established and constructed road. For the power, we will take the power from a substation called Bomboíza, and we will construct a transmission line, which is 65 km from our project and Bomboíza. The rest of the roads for the logistics also have been well-established, which is more or less the same as Bolívar. These three key topics will be for our internal infrastructure. Go back to you, Matt.
Thanks, Javier. Just looking at the project timelines and catalysts for shareholders, as mentioned before, 2025 activities and 2026 activities are fully funded by the $200 million financing package by Royal Gold. That was concluded in May this year following a very competitive process. We raised the capital at a very low cost of capital, and we streamed a very small percentage of the gold and provided a 0.3% NSR on the property. A very compelling and non-dilutive deal to shareholders and highlights the real quality of the asset at the point in time. Today, we delivered the pre-feasibility study and the MRE. As said, we hope to obtain the technical approval of the EIA prior to year-end.
Looking forward into 2026, the exploitation agreements in the second half of the year, early work in the second half of the year, and the completion of the feasibility study. Into 2027 and beyond, that will be the construction period. Certainly a very exciting period of time for shareholders in the project. Also, the greenfield step-out opportunities and fieldwork does continue. Capital will be deployed in a very mature manner when assessing these opportunities. Just touching on the final slide for today. It goes without saying that today's presentation, I think, highlights the uniqueness of this multi-generational project. Warintza is very well positioned for the world's desperate requirements for future copper supply.
This is a region, it is a regional district hub, which is significant for the world. The team and I will continue to focus on maximization of shareholder value and continue to adequately de-risk the project. We look forward to some exciting news and announcements in the very short term. I would like to now thank everyone for joining, and I'll hand back to the operator. Thank you very much.
That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation.
Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab on the right-hand corner of your screen. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Richard, could I please ask you to share the Q&A, and I'll pick up from you at the end?
Thank you, Lily. We'll just run through the Q&A. We've got quite a number of questions to get through, so we'll try and answer as many as we can. I think kicking off on some of the technical ones, this is one for you, Javier. Are there some upsides to the PFS financial numbers provided? And are you moving directly into the feasibility study?
Hello, everyone. Thanks for that question. First of all, we are very proud of this pre-feasibility, which is very strong. Always, you can always optimize the plans, especially in Warintza. One of the key topics here is the low stripping ratio that we have. That gives us many opportunities for keeping, let's say, doing more exercise in terms of the mine planning. We have applied this NSR variable cutoff strategy. Now I call something that is called dynamic NSR variable cutoff in order to move more material, for example, and expose the high grade even further than the PFS. This is one exercise that we will do for the feasibility. The other is we are still seeing that we can optimize the metallurgical recovery. Our ore is very clean. We need to complete some additional metallurgical testing during the feasibility and some variability testing as well.
We are positive that we could do that improvement. In other optimization, also, we are looking at, for example, the mine equipment leasing. Our assumption right now in the PFS is that we are going to buy all the equipment. Also, we can run some exercises related to the crusher conveyor, for example. We are currently using the conventional shovel and trucks mining, but there are potential opportunities if we do some additional exercise. The last one could be the low-grade stockpile that we have. We are going to do the handle at the end of the last four years of this first phase of 22 years of you showing the presentation. I think we have a lot of more than 300 million tons in stock that we could do something, for example, the leaching sulfides or some other analysis so that we will be exploring during this feasibility level.
Great. Thanks, Javier. Excellent. As you have excessive resources to continue the mine life, would you expect a similar production profile for the remainder of the life?
Yes. I think we will continue with 60 million tons per year. We have done a lot of exercises working with Ausenco for this throughput. The resources that we have allow us to work with more than 30 years in the second phase, sorry. The plan is to continue doing 60 million tons per year. Actually, we have some internal exercises for phase two. It is obviously better to have that, that we know the area, this encapsulated area that we show. During phase one, the first 15 years that we will be mining, we will allow us to probably after 15 years, expose more ore. The throughput, in order to not change the process plant layout and configuration and criteria. For us, it's good to continue with 60 million tons per year.
Great. Next question. Where are your identified future tailings opportunities located?
First of all, basically, as we show here, strategically, we worked in this phase one for 22 years' life of mine. We basically put the constraint related to the tailings capacity, which is 1.3 billion tons, in order to optimize from an economical point of view, but also from the permitting point of view. The first 22 years give us a very good number. The phase two, the following years, we will have time for doing some addenda. We need to do addenda, obviously, for the next stage of the project. We have around 26,000 hectares in our concession with different alternatives for the tailings expansion in the north of our current tailings, in the south of our current tailings.
There is plenty of areas that we could do the expansion. We obviously will need to work on some areas that we need to do condemnation. As a summary, we have a lot of alternatives for doing the tailings facility expansions.
Great. Thank you. Next question. You talk about the encapsulated footprint for the project. What is the direction of the water runoff, and why is that important?
As we mentioned during the presentation, this has been key in three topics. One of them is from the environmental point of view. The water comes from the southwest to the northeast. The water will continue to the northeast, not to the Ecuador coast. It will go to the east. That is, again, important because all the monitoring that we can do, we are going to do, and the government is going to do during the operation, will be easy to review and see if we are doing some not good work, if I can say that. Downstream in the northeast of our facility will be key for monitoring. We will show to everyone that we will not do any, let's say, from an environmental point of view, not bad work. Again, going from southwest, and the water will go to the northeast.
Great. We will run from that now. Is the free prior-informed consultation process decided by voting consent of the communities involved? When will that process be completed?
Thanks, Richard. Yeah. As we announced in September, the government-led team recently came to site and met with all different stakeholders, including the m ayor of the canton and the community members, to assess the readiness of the free prior informed consultation process. The visit was very well received, and we hope to formally commence the process in the upcoming months. Just from an ethnic perspective, the process does require community consent, with the ultimate goal to protect the collective rights of the indigenous communities. And really, as Richard has mentioned, we hope to start that process very shortly, and it'll probably complete in early 2026.
Thank you. I want to touch in now on energy. You mentioned the base case energy scenario is from the grid. However, could the government mandate you to build some self-generating capacity?
Yes. As we mentioned in the presentation, our base case is to take energy from the substation called Bomboíza and, after that, extend a transmission line with 65 km until our project.
However, based on this consideration from the government, we have started doing different alternatives. There are a lot of companies that would like to invest in Ecuador related to generate power. We are signing some PPA agreements right now to do some analysis and potential negotiation with them. I think there are different alternatives that we are evaluating. In the last two months, we had different meetings to see the alternative, not only with hydroelectric but also with gas and some other alternatives. I think Ecuador is now, with the new legislation, open to be more open related to this investing in power. We are going to take some of the opportunities, but always following our base case, taking the power from Bomboíza substation.
Thank you. The delivery of your PFS and EIA was slightly delayed. How does this impact the timing of the final investment decision?
Yeah, we had some delays in our own schedule, but basically to have a better and more robust PFS. Just to mention from a general overview, since we started this, we have completed this PFS in one and a half years. I think for the investment decision, we are still, I think, on track because we already have started different work for the feasibility. At the end of the day, when we complete and move forward with the feasibility that we already have started, our plan is to complete sometime in one year, but more or less, if we have some months, I think we will be ready by the timing that we will need to do this investment decision. So far, the team, and if you see all the p eriods, we have been working well on this project.
Thank you. Next one from Matt. You trade at a significant discount to some of your peers. Why is that, and what is the near-term expectations?
Thank you, Richard. Yeah, I think, as mentioned in the presentation, we have some very important catalysts coming up for Solaris in the near term. We hope to have the technical approval of the EIA prior to the year-end and then into 2026. Some very exciting momentum for the company. I do not think I want to speculate on discount to peers. I think the management team is really focused on delivering true and lasting value for shareholders. I will reflect on the word true value for shareholders, and I think today's presentation highlights that. It is also important to note that today's presentation and the PFS delivery is the first time the market sees the physicals and financials of this project. I hope it goes some way to showing the wider market the tier one qualities of this project, the longevity of this project, and hopefully re-rating to the appropriate level in due course.
Thank you. Next one. How does your balance sheet look from a liquidity standpoint? I'll take that one. As people will be aware, on June 30 this year, we had a cash balance of $47 million. As you'll recall, when we announced the Royal Gold transaction, the second tranche of that transaction is a further $50 million, which is due post the publication of the PFS, which occurred today, and then the technical approval of the EIA, which is well advanced. We hope to have that by the year-end. We're pretty well financed at this point. Just another one touching on strategy. Considering you have delivered the PFS, would you say that potential partnerships are on the horizon?
Yeah, I'll take that one, Richard. I think we're really focused on what we as a business can control and achieving our de-risking milestones and executing upon our strategy. Our clearly defined strategy is important for us and the shareholders. We're here to maximize value as a management team and remain very open to having conversations at the right time. Yeah.
Thank you. Next one. When you look to secure funding for the project, what are the various avenues that you'll look at? I think I'll take that one. At the appropriate time, we're going to look at all available options to secure funding for the project. They could include joint venture partnerships, traditional bank debt, further streaming transactions, offtakes, or potentially prepays. As you can imagine, given the scale and the quality of the project, we'd certainly expect there to be a wide range of interested parties looking to be involved in the funding of the project. Okay. Just the next one that's come in. Given the mine life and upfront costs, how sensitive is the project to the copper price?
Yeah, I can take that, Richard. I think we clearly illustrated the sensitivities within the study and in the press release. Obviously, copper is the largest sensitivity in the bundle of the array of products that we will produce, and I think that's pretty clear from the sensitivity table provided.
Great. Thank you. We've probably just got time for one more. So one on infrastructure here. What specific infrastructure investments are needed to support full production? Are there any third-party dependencies?
I think that's one for Javier.
Yeah. Basically, as I mentioned, in terms of the infrastructure to support the full production, we have been well coordinated with the port, right? If we are talking about the port, we have defined the power and we have the roads. As I mentioned, Ecuador has very good infrastructure in that area. In terms of the road for the port, we already have different conversations with Port Bolívar. They are very interested to do expansion. In terms of the power as well, as I mentioned, we have the plan with the government plus this additional alternative related to that. Inside the project, obviously, is all the infrastructure that we will need to develop during the construction. We have now roads to the project.
Everybody can go and visit the project, and you will see that we won't start from scratch. Basically, there are roads until the project, roads to different facilities that we will have. There is no, I think, third-party dependence since the port from Port Bolívar and the power from the government plus some potential investor. This is something that we will need, and we are working right now.
That's great. Thank you for answering all those questions you can from investors. Of course, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Matthew, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yeah, thank you very much. Just to close, I'd like to thank everyone for joining today. I think the presentation highlights the global scale and uniqueness of this asset, the ability to see through multiple commodity cycles. We look forward to, as a management team, delivering lasting value for all the shareholders. Thank you very much.
That's great. Thank you all for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Solaris Resources, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon to you all.