Hello, everyone, and welcome to SSR Mining's Fourth Quarter 2021 Conference Call. This call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the conference call over to Alex Hunchak from SSR Mining.
Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining SSR Mining's fourth quarter 2021 conference call, during which we will provide an update on our business and a review of our financial performance. Beginning with the fourth quarter and annual 2021 financial results, our consolidated financial statements have been presented in accordance with the U.S. GAAP. These statements, along with the comparative restated financial statements for the two years prior, have been filed on EDGAR, SEDAR, the ASX, and are also available on our website. To accompany our call, there is an online webcast, and you will find the information to access the webcast in our news release relating to this call. Please note that all figures discussed during the call are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise indicated. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, so please read the disclosures in the relevant documents.
Joining us on the call today are Rod Antal, President and CEO, Alison White, CFO, and Stewart Beckman, COO. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Rod for opening remarks.
Thanks, Alex, and hello to everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We're gonna take our time as there is a lot of positive information that we're excited to share with you today. The highlights include, firstly, our record full year production, lower costs, and significant free cash flow generation. Second, our substantial organic growth opportunities within our portfolio that have delivered a 14% increase to our reserves, which is a phenomenal success. Three, the publishing of our new technical reports, which lay out an incredibly positive 700,000 ounce a year baseline for our business. Finally, our upcoming execution plans for the near-term growth opportunities, which represent some of the highest returning projects in our sector. First, starting off with our performance.
2021, which was our full first year post-merger, allowed us to showcase the quality and resilience of our globally diversified asset base. We delivered nearly 800,000 ounces of production at the top end of our guidance range, while our all-in sustaining costs of $955 an ounce beat our previously low all-in sustaining costs guidance, bucking the inflationary trend. These results were a testament to our exceptional operational performance and proactive supply chain management, and that our performance resulted in peer-leading 2021 free cash flow generation of $444 million or a 12% yield. As we had committed to our shareholders, this free cash flow has translated directly into capital returns, and we distributed nearly $200 million to shareholders last year or about a 5% yield.
Given the robust outlook for free cash flow generation for years to come, we will continue to deliver against our capital allocation strategy. The recently announced 40% base dividend increase is evidence of that commitment. Second, in addition to our full-year results, we released our updated resource and reserve statements. They included an impressive reserve growth of 14% or 1.1 million ounces year-over-year. This was a direct result of our successful resource to reserve conversion at both Ardich and Gap Hanging Wall. This achievement is even more remarkable given the cutoff for our technical reports did not give us the opportunity to incorporate much of the drilling that occurred last year.
We now sit with over 10 million ounces in reserves with a weighted average mine life in excess of 17 years, anchored of course by Çöpler's 22+-year mine life. Third, as part of our transition to becoming an SEC issuer, we're obligated to issue the S-K 1300 technical report summaries at all four of our operating assets. As I mentioned, while the timing was not ideal, given much of the positive drilling results from 2021 did not yet make it into the update, we're excited by the outcome of the new production base line for SSR. Together, the new technical reports have added more than 2.5 million ounces of gold production over what was represented in the previous iterations.
This means our vision to sustain a production base of over 700,000 ounces of gold production for at least the next decade has just become a reality. Finally, on this point, we're excited by the prospect of improving this even further from the drill bit. The fourth highlight is in respect to our upcoming growth projects. As part of the Çöpler technical report update, we showcased both the maiden reserves and development plan to Çakmaktepe extension or Ardich, an initial resource and development plan at Çöpler Copper Gold Project or C2. This report highlighted how the abundant growth opportunities at Çöpler can significantly add value and deliver high return, low capital intensity projects. Both Ardich and C2 will add at least 1 million ounces of production to modest capital investments.
C2, for example, will provide us with 1 million ounces of production in its initial iteration for about $220 million of capital and an impressive IRR of 60%. Ardich will deliver 1.2 million ounces for about $70 million of capital. Overall, we had fantastic results across the board during 2021. Just moving on to slide four, which is ESG. I want to reiterate our commitment to our ESG priorities and initiatives. Before we do, I want to take a minute to reflect on a sad loss of one of our team members in Argentina. On January 26, Malena Estrada passed away when the vehicle she was traveling in was washed off a river crossing on Highway 70 while on her way home from the mine site.
The three other occupants of the vehicle were rescued, but sadly, Malena was not. Actions were taken to prevent a repeat incident and to support her family and those who have been affected. Our thoughts have and continue to be with her family, friends, and work colleagues. ESG is, has long been a core value and focus for SSR Mining as it firmly underpins the success of our business. We are committed to the communities and to the environment, and we continue to deliver against our priorities outlined in our 2020 sustainability report. We will review and refresh those priorities as we move into 2022 and are finalizing an updated sustainability report for release in the coming months. Importantly, we continue to work towards our commitment to an action plan for achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
We take this commitment and its path forward seriously and are baking it into our project development cycle, ensuring the longevity and quality of our assets. Additionally, we have already started to enhance our disclosures on climate and water, and disclose for the first time to the Carbon Disclosure Project. We are proud of our efforts to improve our approach to ESG, and will continue to evolve as a sustainable business in the future. Moving on to the next slide in our performance highlights. I just wanna highlight a few that are relevant to consider for the quarter. Operationally, we had another strong quarter with more than 210,000 ounces of production and an all-in sustaining cost of $961 per ounce. Financially, we delivered adjusted EPS of $0.46 in the quarter.
Our robust margins and low cost production translated to $149 million in free cash flow and $444 million for the full year. After $191 million in capital returns and our continued debt repayments, we maintain a net cash position of $681 million, providing us with the required flexibility to advance our large organic pipeline while delivering continued capital returns in the future. We highlighted our growth portfolio with a number of positive exploration updates across the business, and we continued our successful track record in accretive and strategic M&A transactions. We increased our presence in core jurisdictions, including the announcement of the acquisition of Taiga Gold in Saskatchewan and an increase in our ownership in the Copper Hill prospect in Turkey.
Additionally, our portfolio rationalization continued, and we realized over $235 million in total consideration through the sale of non-core assets, including our royalty portfolio and the recently announced sale of Pitarrilla project in Mexico. Moving on to the next slide. As we look to 2022, it's worth highlighting our impressive track record of growth and execution. In January, we released the inaugural three-year guidance that shows our strong production platform, where we expect to produce over 700,000 gold equivalent ounces annually through 2024. This is a level that we believe we can maintain over the longer time horizon, given the wealth of exploration and growth opportunities, which Stu will discuss in greater detail and is supported by the suite of new technical reports we released today. Moving on to our outlook for 2022.
I wanna highlight some of the priorities for the business this year. We expect our stable production base and cost profile will allow us to generate significant free cash flow while continuing to return capital to shareholders through our increased base dividend and share buybacks. As announced last month, our portfolio rationalization progressed with the sale of Pitarrilla, and we continue to evaluate other opportunities to surface value within the portfolio. We've now completed the SEC transition, including the new technical reports that showcase our baseline production platform, and we've budgeted a 45% increase in year-over-year exploration spend to further accelerate some of the growth opportunities. On the cost front, we will continue with our continuous improvement efforts and supply chain management initiatives in order to limit the escalating impact of inflation.
At the asset level, we continue to invest across the business in several high growth rich opportunities, including breaking ground at Ardich later this year and advancing the C2 project towards pre-feasibility study and ultimately targeting first production in 2025. Overall, we're in a fortunate position with a plethora of exciting growth opportunities underway and on the horizon. As we look to improve even further the new baseline production profile contained in today's technical reports. A couple of highlights on the S-K 1300, and we recognize there's a lot of information in the technical reports to digest. I'll summarize some of the high-level details here, and Stu's gonna elaborate further in a few minutes. To start, we are proud to showcase the 14% year-over-year increase in gold mineral reserves, driven by Maiden Mineral Reserve at Ardich and Seabee's Gap Hanging Wall conversion.
Our current total gold reserves are now more than 9 million ounces, while gold equivalent reserves increases to 10 million ounces. With respect to the technical reports, it's important to note that these documents were a requirement of the SEC of all SEC issuers under the new S-K 1300 regulations. While we had expected to release the new master plan for Çöpler around this timeline, a lot of the exploration and study work at Seabee and Marigold, in particular, was not yet advanced to a level to be included in these tech reports. At Çöpler, we have released production scenarios with both a reserve case mine plan as well as an initial assessment case for the C2 project, which is similar to the PEA case for those used to this terminology.
The reserve case incorporates maiden reserves from Ardich, delivering a 21-year mine life with a total production of 4.4 million ounces of gold. This represents a 37% increase in life of mine production as compared to the CDMP20 reserve case driven by Ardich, which adds 1.2 million ounces in total production starting in 2023 for just $69 million in development CapEx. On top of the reserve case, the initial assessment case outlines the potential development of the C2 project. This new resource provides us the opportunity to further increase and extend the production profile by adding a copper concentrator to the existing flow sheets, unlocking additional gold production from sulfide material.
The initial assessment case showcases an overall 5.4 million ounces gold production profile with average production over 300,000 ounces per year in the first 10 years. The total CapEx of about $220 million. This production scenario drives a strong overall after-tax NPV of $2 billion and an internal rate of return of around 60%, which I'm sure you will understand are stunning returns. At Marigold, the life of mine planning includes 2.5 million ounces in total gold production over an eleven-year mine life. We see opportunities to optimize the production profile in the near term from targets like New Millennium, as well as the potential of further upside by incorporating exploration success at Buffalo Valley and Trenton Canyon. At Seabee, the mineral reserve production profile results in a six-year mine life.
In 2021, mineral reserves increased 18% year-over-year, driven by the conversion of the Gap Hanging Wall, and we see further opportunities to add additional reserves along strike the current mine development to complement and extend future production profiles. At Puna, the tech report reflects the recent outperformance at the mine, including throughputs of nearly +4,500 tons per day. We're ramping up exploration activities with opportunities to complement the existing production profile through in-pit drilling and targeting other greenfield opportunities. Finally, the key message is the combined technical reports establish a baseline production platform where we see clear opportunity to deliver +700,000 ounces of gold equivalent production annually through 2020.
However, we're not done yet, and with the abundant growth targets at all four operations progressing, we're excited about the ability to build on this incredible result today. With that, I'm gonna turn the call over to Alison, who's gonna discuss the financial performance more on slide number nine.
Thanks, Rod, and hello, everyone. It's incredibly exciting to comment on another positive financial quarter for the business, as shown on slide nine. I'd like to preface this slide with the fact that this is the first time SSR recorded results under U.S. GAAP, which is the basis of the accounting for the numbers shown here. I also want to take a minute to thank our team members for what was a major undertaking over the last month. This was an incredible effort across the business and involved almost every function in the company to get us where we are today, filed for the first time as an SEC large accelerated filer. As we take our first look at the U.S. GAAP results, Q4 was another solid quarter operationally for the company.
We produced over 211,000 gold equivalent ounces and had gold equivalent sales of over 218,000 ounces for a total of $408 million in revenue for Q4, bringing total 2021 revenues to over $1.4 billion. Attributable net income for the quarter was $127 million, for $0.60 per basic share. Attributable net income was $98 million or $0.46 per basic share. For the full year, attributable net income was $368 million or $1.70 per share, and adjusted attributable net income was $402 million, or $1.86 per share.
As Rod highlighted, we continue to deliver in all aspects of our business and are proud of the cash flow and returns that are generated as a result, including $609 million in operating cash flow and $444 million in free cash flow during 2021, equivalent to a peer-leading 12% free cash flow yield. On the right side of the slide, I'd like to provide you some commentary on our reported $0.46 in adjusted earnings per share that are calculated based on the company's definition of adjusted attributable net income per share. We start with our attributable net income of $0.60 per share and then make adjustments to exclude the after-tax impact of specific items that are not reflective of the company's ongoing operations.
Each of those items is outlined in the waterfall chart on the right of the slide, with the largest of the adjustments for $0.28, primarily related to the removal of the FX impact on non-monetary assets for the purchase price adjustment recorded as a result of the Alacer transaction. We will get into more details of this on the next slide, as it's a new adjustment as a result of the U.S. GAAP conversion. The remaining material adjustment is one you've seen before for $0.14 due to the fair value adjustment for inventory assets at Çöpler. This adjustment will not continue in 2022. The smaller adjustments are for COVID-related costs, other tax impacts, and transaction or integration expenses. Turning to slide 10, we can talk about SSR's SEC transition.
Effective as of January 1, 2022, SSR Mining transitioned to U.S. GAAP, reporting as a large accelerated filer under the SEC. As a result, our full year 2021 financial results were released under U.S. GAAP and were reported along with restated 2019 and 2020 financial results. On this slide, excuse me, we have highlighted some of the more material changes to our financial reporting as a result of the U.S. GAAP transition. As we have spoken about previously, our underlying business remains the same. Our basis of accounting has changed and overall, despite performing a very thorough analysis of the details underlying the business that make up our financial position and evaluating the accounting positions necessary to complete the transition, we only have a few material adjustments to highlight. A few key points to consider that are also listed on this slide.
First, the equity component of convertible debt is reclassified from equity to debt and is amortized under U.S. GAAP. Under U.S. GAAP, changes in the fair value of marketable securities are reclassified from other comprehensive income to net income. This is adjusted out of adjusted attributable net income. Our reclamation and closure cost assets and liabilities have been updated to reflect the use of a company's specific discount rate under U.S. GAAP and the concept of tranche layering required to complete the discounting analysis. This results in lower liability, lower depreciation of the asset retirement assets, but higher accretion expense. The net impact to the income statement for the higher accretion and lower depreciation is not expected to be material. U.S. GAAP does not allow for the write-up of impaired assets.
Prior to 2019, under IFRS, the Pirquitas mill at Puna that had previously been impaired was written up when the Chinchillas mine presented an opportunity to extend the mill's operating life. This subsequent write-up has been reversed under U.S. GAAP to reflect the original impairment. U.S. GAAP also removes foreign exchange impacts on deferred taxes. However, under U.S. GAAP, when the functional currency, such as the U.S. dollar, is not the local currency or is lira in Turkey, remeasurement of non-monetary assets and liabilities is required. For example, purchase price accounting for mineral properties and equipment of approximately $1.2 billion, which was the adjustment created at the time of the Alacer acquisition, is considered a non-monetary asset that is remeasured, resulting in a book basis deferred tax liability that will never be deducted for tax purposes.
This item is adjusted out of the adjusted attributable net income as it is only a book entry for foreign exchange on non-monetary assets. Deferred stripping is no longer capitalized and instead is expensed through production costs, which increases cash costs and holds AISC relatively steady, dependent on gold prices and the total inventory value. Finally, based on the U.S. GAAP conversion, we remove the GAAP-related impacts attributable to the 20% non-controlling interest in Turkey. Overall, the changes associated with the U.S. GAAP regulations do not impact our underlying business and outside of deferred stripping, are largely immaterial with respect to analysts' estimates and forecasts. On slide 11, we can talk about SSR's continued balance sheet strength.
At the end of 2021, the company had cash and cash equivalent balance of over $1 billion after returning over $191 million to shareholders and $70 million in debt repayment that occurred during 2021. 96% of that cash balance is held in U.S. dollars. We remain well positioned to continue our capital allocation policy going forward, fully funding our portfolio focused on additional exploration spend and growth opportunities that align with our business. We continue to maintain a peer leading net cash to EBITDA ratio of 1.1. The magnitude of our capital returns is best illustrated on slide 12. We returned more than $190 million to shareholders through the inaugural 2021 share repurchase program and our base dividend payment in 2021, yielding capital returns of more than 5%.
As we have noted, our continued operational outperformance translated to robust cash flows in 2021, and we clearly aligned that free cash flow performance with our capital returns initiative. With our inaugural three-year guidance announced in January, we illustrated a strong production profile. Our board declared a dividend which increased our base dividend by 40% to $0.28 per share annually, furthering our commitment of significant capital returns to our shareholders. As we continue through 2022 and look beyond, our capital allocation priorities remain investing in growth, maintaining balance sheet strength, and returning cash to shareholders. We will continue to be disciplined when executing on our priorities, both financially and operationally as we move through 2022. Now I'm going to turn it over to Stu for an operational update.
Thank you very much, Alison. Before I dive into the detail, let me just comment on our composite production profile from the technical reports on slide 13. It is just the next step and a great foundation for us to leverage from. Remember that this slide includes C2, but does not include any production upside from our extensive near mine and in mine exploration portfolio. This year, we've made a considerable commitment to increase our organic growth spend to make sure that we can define and show what we believe to be a much longer, stronger future production profile. I'll share my positivity with you as we work through the slides for each of the properties. Let's start the discussion with Çöpler on slide 14. We started building the Çöpler District master plans a number of years ago to help direct and focus the strategic mine development.
We published CDMP20 in November 2020, outlining Ardich as PEA case with an intent to convert it to a feasibility level reserve in the following year's technical report. As promised, in this year's CDMP21 report, Ardich added 1.6 million ounces of reserves and 1.2 million ounces to our production profile, which was even better than the case that we laid out in the PEA. The production and development group and the Çöpler team have been busy with permitting and preparations, and we plan to start work on the ground later this year. The cost of the project is very low, limited to infrastructure work and expansion of the Çöpler heap leach. The ore at Ardich will be trucked to Çöpler for treatment. We are still exploring at Ardich, and it is still open.
Based on the ongoing drilling, we expect that the resource and reserve will continue to grow. We also have some ideas and studies underway on how to extract more value from the deposit by improving recoveries. There is still more value to be expected to come from Ardich. In addition to the success at Ardich, we have showcased an initial assessment or PEA case with a first look at the next development of the Çöpler deposit, C2 projects. I'm going to take a minute to describe the C2 project. Çöpler has a large amount of copper in the deposit, both in and surrounding the resource and reserve. In the past, this copper was assigned little or no economic value. After some successful drilling and metallurgical test work, we changed the paradigm and re-looked at the mine, assuming that we could leverage value from the copper.
The outcome of this study was the highly accretive C2 project outlined in the initial assessment case. In the initial assessment case, we add a small 1.8 million ton per annum copper concentrate to Çöpler. This will make both a gold-rich copper concentrate to sell to the smelters and a gold-rich pyrite concentrate, which we will use as supplemental fuel and gold feed into the autoclaves. We're also adding a copper recovery circuit within the sulfide plant that will make a copper concentrate for sale. Adding the copper concentrator and sulfide copper recovery circuit has two big impacts. The first, and really obvious one, is that it adds direct value from the copper and gold recovered from the copper/gold ore as copper concentrates. Secondly, the extra value from the copper allows us to make a much bigger pit.
As we dig this bigger pit, we uncover a lot more sulfide and oxide gold ore to feed the existing oxide and sulfide gold plants, giving a longer life and higher production from these plants. The C2 project is being accelerated into feasibility study. We expect to leverage more value out of the project as we optimize the metallurgy and the mine scheduling. Çöpler is a fantastic asset, and in addition to Ardich and C2 upside outlined in the technical report, Çöpler and the Çöpler District has a number of exciting and active exploration targets. Let's skip to Marigold on slide 15. Given the accelerated filing of the technical report, the recently announced exploration results at Marigold were not ready for inclusion. Marigold still delivered a strong base technical report with a couple of poignant features.
As we mine out the existing high-grade areas, there is a dip in production, especially in about 2026 and 2027, before Red Dot comes into production, with a big jump in production in 2028. Much of the recent and ongoing exploration you saw in our December release is aimed at filling the production dip 2024 through 2027, especially the near mine exploration within the existing plan of operation and the current application to extend Valmy, including much of the New Millennium exploration. In the longer term, we have extensive targets at Marigold, including Trenton Canyon and Buffalo Valley, which we do have some historic pre-permitting, which may make them easier to accelerate. Most of our exploration is focused on delivering high-grade oxide ores, which provide the lowest cost, easiest development pathways.
However, we have had some really interesting sulfide intercepts at Marigold, for example, those recently at Trenton Canyon, and have a hypothesis on a potential for significant sulfide deposits. Given this potential and the company's skill set with building plants and treating refractory sulfidic ores, we do maintain some exploration effort on the sulfide ore targets. This year, we'll see significant increase in funding for exploration and resource at Marigold of about 20%. Please move to slide 16 and we'll discuss Seabee. A couple of key takeaways from the technical report. It more than doubles the life of Seabee. We had record production in 2021 of 119,000 ounces at Seabee and are budgeting for 2022 and 2023 to be successive record years.
Both of these years will be over 120,000 ounces, 120,000 ounces, the new normal for Seabee. While the technical report schedules the production to drop off in years 2024 and on, we expect to add higher-grade ore from Santoy 8 and 9, the current source of high-grade ore, to the production profile in the later years. Santoy 9, for example, delivered some wonderful upside production surprises in 2021, continuing into this year as a great reminder of the potential for in-mine exploration. We are increasing exploration and resource development drilling at Seabee by more than 20% to make sure that we maintain the current production profile at this new normal. Additionally, we have managed to achieve good production performance improvements at Seabee and are baking those into the plan.
Even with those improvements, we still have excess capacity at the mill, which we can take advantage on by building production rates in the mine. The operation is well-positioned to leverage up production on the back of exploration success in the mine and at very little cost. Outside of the active mining area, the Seabee District has a spectacular endowment of exploration targets at various stages of evaluation. We have a multi-year exploration strategy that incorporates the T holdings. Our focus is primarily on near mine low cost development with a modest spend still going to generative and target evaluation. One area that is bubbling to the top of our list right now is the Shane target, which sits just off the Haulage Road close to the Seabee plant. You will hear more about Shane through the year.
Please move to slide 19 and I'll give a brief update on Puna. Puna delivered a solid base technical report, which assumes the recently demonstrated improved mill performance at 4,500 tons per day. In 2021, we were busy at Puna revisiting the exploration database, some extensive field geotechnical, geochemical sampling, and re-logging and re-assaying of some of the historic drill cores. We have some very good targets and will start drill testing imminently. First, within and adjacent to the Chinchillas pit, we think that there is good opportunity for expansion of the resource and will start drilling soon. After re-assaying some of the Cortaderas drill core, we have some hypothesis on potential extension of the deposit and value. As with the depleted San Miguel pit, we are seeing gold starting to develop at depth in addition to the silver and zinc.
The geos are busy developing a drill program that tests possible extension and value proposition. We also have some regional targets that came from last year's work, and we will put some effort into developing these as well. Please move to slide 20 for close. SSR has a very high quality and extensive exploration portfolio, which we are aiming to leverage value in a structured manner. As we did with the Çöpler District Master Plan, we are strengthening strategic mine planning and charting pathways to a growing and long-term production profile. In closing, 2021 was a great year for the operations and development teams at SSR. We cared for our communities and teammates through another tough year of the pandemic. We delivered improved ESG performance, more than halving our total recordable injury frequency rate, and improved our ESG reporting, which was recognized by improved ESG ratings.
The result, as always, from this improved ESG and operational discipline, comes better production performance. In 2021, we delivered the top end of guidance in a merger year on the back of a lot of work, bucked the industry trend and managed to keep the cost down below guidance, grew our resources and reserves, and delivered a number of highly accretive projects for the business, which you can see showcased in our technical reports. We have a great team, great exploration portfolio, you can see on this slide, and a solid base, which we'll continue to develop and leverage value from. With that, I'll turn the call back to Rod for his closing remarks.
Well, thanks, Stu and Alison. Definitely a lot to get through today. To summarize, 2021 was a year of outperformance for SSR with respect to our operating results, our free cash flow generation, our capital returns, and of course, the outstanding results from growth. With today's technical reports, we have now delivered a robust baseline production profile with a clear opportunity to sustain our 700,000 ounces production profile into the next decade. We'll continue to build on that base in the near and medium term. 2022 will be another year of strength for our business, including continued robust capital returns and free cash flow generation. With a robust portfolio of organic growth opportunities, we expect our expanded exploration budget to help further identify and delineate an even brighter future that we've outlined today.
With that, I'm gonna pass the call back to Galene to take any questions you may have.
Thank you, Mr. Antal. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You'll hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Our first question is from Tyler Langton with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good evening, Rod, Alison, and Stu. Thanks for taking my question. I guess, you know, just maybe to start, I guess with Çöpler. For Ardich, I think you're kind of talking about production starting in 2023. Could you just provide a little more info on sort of, you know, if you need certain permits or, you know, other items to kind of, you know, to hit that production date? With C2, I think you said the next step was maybe a PFS. I'm just kind of wondering, you know, sort of the timing that you're expecting for that.
Yeah. Okay. Stuart, I'll answer that. We've been permitting Ardich for some time, and you may remember if you've been on some of these calls, about half of Ardich was covered by the Çakmaktepe EIA, which is why in a lot of the documentation and, you'll see it called the Çakmaktepe extension. The application for the extension for Çakmaktepe, the first stage of Çakmaktepe for the starter pits, is in process, and we're expecting to see that come out in the next couple of months. Then we'll have a number of local permitings that come on the back of that.
At this stage, we see our way to having those permitted, to allow us to start work in the fourth quarter of this year, and then progressing in line with what you see in the technical report. As always, with the permitting, there's a series of subsequent permits that come about. We're writing the scope of work for the feasibility study for C2 now. We do have work obviously ongoing that came out of the order of magnitude or scoping study work that we were doing through last year that's ongoing. We're at the stage now. We did use Ausenco to do the capital cost estimates, and then we factored those based on the numbers that we had from the recent construction of both the float plant and the CIC plant.
We think that we've got pretty solid numbers there. We're at the stage now for much more detailed scheduling and engineering work, which we expect to have approved at the beginning of April and start work in earnest directly after that.
Great. No, that's helpful. Thanks. I guess just on sort of capital returns, Rod, I mean, I know the dividend, you announced recently the increase in the dividend. Just any thoughts on buybacks? Obviously last year you had a fair number of non-core asset sales. Is there anything else that you're potentially looking at or have you kind of divested mostly what you wanted to?
I'll answer the second part, Tyler. I'll let Alison answer the first question. From the portfolio review process, it's still ongoing and, you know, we are looking within just to make sure that there's obviously the obvious targets that you could ask about like San Luis and others, but we're also taking that same discipline across the exploration portfolio. You know, we're land rich. We have a lot of land around our asset bases, and we sort of continue to churn through that where, you know, the hypothesis might not have lived out in terms of our exploration efforts, and we'll turn those over and replace those as well.
That churn will continue as normal course of business for us as 2022 rolls on. We did do a heavy lift in 2021. You know, I think the sort of larger scale opportunities have pretty much been done now.
Tyler, I'll answer the first part of that on the share buyback plan. You may recall earlier in 2021, we announced a plan to be able to repurchase 10 million shares, and we still have about 1.2 million shares outstanding on that plan. Our intention is to execute against it as long as it would be accretive for us to do so. We will take a look at, you know, what that valuation constitutes, and act accordingly.
Great. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Cosmos Chiu with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Rod and team. Maybe my first question is on the Çöpler and the, you know, growth potential here. You know, as you talked about, the copper rich ore will allow you to open up the pit. How much of that, you know, potentially additional sulfide and oxide material have you included in your technical report today?
So Cosmo, um, with the...
Thank you.
All of the material that's mined, that's above the cut-off grade, for feeding to the plants when we've made the larger pit, is included in feed to the plant. You know, the value of C2, although the copper drove us to be able to make the bigger pit, most of the value comes from gold. In fact, the concentrate that we make from the concentrator, you know, runs about two ounces. It's predominantly a gold concentrate, as far as value goes.
Great.
I think.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Sorry, Stuart.
You go, Cosmos.
Okay. Yeah. I just want to follow up on the CapEx here. You know, $218 million at C2. You know, you have a very good track record in terms of delivering on budget and on time. But I'm just wondering how much, you know, inflation have you factored into, you know, your CapEx estimates. Stuart, you kinda touched on it, but I just wanna, you know, get a bit more, you know, granularity on it in terms of, you know, how have you factored that in. There's also been volatility in the Turkish lira. You know, how have you accounted for that potential risk as you come up with these CapEx numbers?
Yeah. Remember this is an initial assessment case. The-
Of course.
The estimate's sort of a ±50% estimate. However, I would say we've got a pretty good handle on what the costs are. We just finished building the flotation plant, concrete, steel costs, particularly those which we can source locally, in Turkey. It's a very cost-efficient place to build things. We did have, as I said, Ausenco supported us with the engineering work. Then we factored that with good factoring numbers. As far as an estimate goes, it's a good estimate, a really solid estimate for a project at this stage.
We do have a lot of work to do, and I think there's actually quite a lot of opportunity for what we end up with ultimately in the plant, and how we might be able to leverage value out of the plant going forward. We've been looking at whether or not we would get a significant advantage by bringing Ardich ore and some of the higher grade Ardich ores, the oxide ores, and treating those through the sulfide plant, either just grinding or augmenting them with sulfide to increase the recoveries, and leveraging quite a lot of value out of that. That's quite a large exercise in scheduling, which will happen subsequent to this piece of work.
I think there's a lot more to come from it yet, Cosmos.
Yeah. That's, it's great that you brought it up 'cause, that kinda connects well to my next question in terms of, you know, leveraging the infrastructure, the copper concentrate. As you mentioned, you've increased your ownership at Copper Hill. You know, things like that, was that taken into consideration as well? Could you leverage that, later on down the road in terms of some of these other sort of copper richer, areas?
No. You know, there'll be some synergies from the business of course, but the distance between the operations is going to preclude us sort of moving any of the material around. With Çöpler, what we see at Çöpler is a very clean chalcopyrite ore that's really just chalcopyrite. And it's close to the coast, and it's actually very close to the smelter. You know, we'll move it there. Çöpler was also blessed with sort of amazing infrastructure as well. You might remember when you were there, we had a railway directly underneath the mine.
Mm.
which sits right next to the hydroelectric power station, on the other side of the highway. As far as infrastructure for building a copper concentrator, couldn't be in a better place. A little bit more flat ground would've been handy, but that's all.
For sure. Maybe moving on to Marigold. You know, as you mentioned, today's technical report was really just a base case, you know, just based on reserves. Could you remind us, you know, as you showed on the map, there's quite a few targets here, New Millennium, Buffalo Valley, Trenton Canyon, Valmy, just to name a few. What's been included in this base case? What can we expect in terms of what's being included? I believe another technical report will be coming out later on this year.
Pretty much the reserves as they were is all that's remained at Marigold. Just the existing deposits. The areas that we're looking to leverage going forward are the areas around the existing pits. You remember we also have an application in for an extension to Valmy. That extension to Valmy was done at a much larger pit shell with regards to the application. It takes in pretty much all of the New Millennium and that will pretty much make it into that new pit.
We're busy focusing on drilling out that area so that, you know, in the next year or so, we'll be able to include that into the reserve and then show that value and fill that gap that I referred to in the production profile before we get to Red Dot.
Maybe one last question, just a follow-up here. I read in the MD&A that there's the potential for separate infrastructure for Buffalo Valley and Trenton Canyon. Maybe could you elaborate on that? Is that just, you know, just getting it to a bigger size or are you alluding to potentially for the sulfides? You know, could you elaborate a little bit?
Yeah. One of the opportunities that's come up to really drive some efficiency, and maybe some significant rescheduling at Marigold, would be to build a heap leach at the southern end of the property, where the current pits are, and reduce the haul, and then be able to use that also for Buffalo Valley, and also for the southern pits from the existing Marigold deposits. Then we would take the carpet from there and then take it up to the existing desorption circuit. So we're just running through that at the moment, but we think that we might be able to, you know, squeeze some real value out of Marigold by doing that.
We haven't done enough work yet to really wrap our arms around what it might be worth.
Great. Thanks, Stu and Rod and team, and once again, looking forward to all these different growth opportunities.
Thanks, Cosmos.
Thanks, Cosmos.
The next question is from Ovais Habib with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Hi, Rod and SSR team, congrats on a strong quarter. Really thanks for updating all the mine plans with all the tech reports you released today. Most of my questions have been answered, but maybe a bit of a follow-up question from last question asked by Cosmos. In regards to tech reports released today, you pointed out that these are all base case scenarios and do not include drilling that took place in 2021. Now, based on the info on hand and your exploration team's expectations, which operating asset do you see the most potential upside in the near term?
That's a difficult question. There was some inclusion. You know, for Ardich, for example, the cutoff date was sort of at the end of May, beginning of June, for the drilling. We had about, I think, a subsequent 104 holes there. I think Ardich will continue to grow. You know, we're sure that we're gonna see growth around the existing pits at Marigold. We'll leverage that over time. We're really excited about what's in Seabee. I think, you know, when you look at the numbers at Seabee, you sort of see this high production rate, then a step off.
We're quite sure that we'll be able to fill that as we've been able to do with the extensions on Santoy 8 and 9, you know, extending those laterally from where the mine currently is. Given that we do have so much, you know, headroom free capacity in the mill, then we can put the, you know, slightly lower grade, you know, 5 or 6 grams is lower grade at Seabee. We'll use that to top up where we've got spare capacity in the mine. You know, ultimately, you know, in the future, and there's a long way to go to get there, we'd like to see, you know, maybe another decline at Seabee and an all-weather road and a material increase. You know, that's perfectly conceivable at Seabee.
We've got a lot of work to do and a bit of exploration luck to go with it as well. You know, indications are good.
Yeah. I think you can take it, Kos, when you look at it, Ovais, across the, you know, across the portfolio, that they're different, but they're all just as exciting as each other as we work through it. I think the. You know, what Stu's outlined here and what the team have done, during 2021 has just been terrific in terms of, you know, prioritizing and being very methodical and thoughtful in the way we've approached it. That's gonna continue into this year. You know, if we have time and obviously success, you can see what we can do, you know, if we have the focus on the right areas. We do expect that to come from the rest of the portfolio as Çöpler district.
I think you should start to get excited about Copper Hill at some point too. You know, if you look at the drill intercepts we have there and that it's open around, it's a nice high grade copper deposit, relatively easy. You know, it looks like it'll be easy to treat, you know, at daylight, so relatively easy access. We're hoping we can develop that story pretty quickly as well, but that'll rely on getting access to drill.
Perfect. Thanks for that. Just follow up on that. I mean, obviously, we've talked about all this, you know, outside the parent on your current portfolio. Any thoughts on M&A? Any thoughts on, you know, projects that you're looking at, you know, extensions to your existing, you know, assets or anything, that's out in the market?
Look, it's the same answer as I think we've always given us. You know, we'll be thoughtful. We will look at opportunities. We won't stop looking at opportunities that aren't in our portfolio that would stay on strategy for us, to ensure, you know, they sort of complement the great asset base we have, but also, you know, the great fundamentals of the business that we've built. You know, we'll progress them. You know, unless we talk about them, they're obviously not interesting to us, and we're not talking about a whole lot. You know, there's really nothing else to talk about at this stage. We will keep looking.
Okay, perfect. Thanks. Thanks, Rod. Thanks to you for this. That's all for me.
All right. Thank you.
The next question is from Mike Parkin with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Really everything's kind of been asked. Just in terms of the exploration work that you're doing at Trenton Canyon and Buffalo Valley, can you give us, you know, kind of walk us through? You've given us some pretty good information in terms of what you're thinking. How can we kind of think in terms of updates beyond exploration updates? Like, where do you kind of target seeing resources starting to kind of, you know, come together there if drill programs kind of continue to show success?
I think that'll probably become more clear through this year, probably into next year. Buffalo Valley is, we did do a sort of a lot of geochemical work, making sure that we were, that we hadn't missed anything, and we were looking in the right places and using some different techniques. We have been drilling to extend the known resource that's there. We're also seeing some interesting things at Trenton Canyon, and we're seeing a bit more sort of narrow vein, higher grade material there compared to sort of the larger emplacements of low grade that we see at other parts. That would be sort of consistent with the way it was mined in the past as well, which was, you know, relatively narrower compared to the way we mine that now.
We do have a bit more work to do before we come out with sort of a clear development pathway there. Later this year.
Are you guys okay? Do you have access to the historical drill core that the legacy pits were based on?
Yeah. All of that data was handed over. You know, as is the case when these things happen. You know, a lot of it was quite old, so it's not, I wouldn't say it was perfect. But we do have all of the old data.
'Cause from my understanding, it was kind of done on a smaller scale, smaller benches, so cutoff grade is probably elevated. Do you see potential that some of that data could be kind of low-hanging fruit for you? That you probably, I guess, maybe just given the age of it, look to confirm with some holes. Is that some of your thoughts that, you know, maybe historic low grade.
Yeah.
Actually very good in terms of what you mine at Marigold today and make lots of cash doing on a bigger scale?
Yeah. I think if you're thinking about that, you probably think more about Buffalo Valley. We do get some anomalies in that part of the world with the drilling, because, you know, when it was done, and certainly we see this at Trenton Canyon, when it was done some time ago, you know, where the grade was below the cutoff, the grades weren't reported in some of the datasets. It was just reported as no report. So, you know, we've got to be going back and redoing analysis of some of those samples. That's, you know, that in part drives the drill plans that we're putting together for those projects.
Okay. Just last question, we're seeing some, you know, tightness in drill crew availability in mostly Canada. Are you seeing any of that kind of constraint in Turkey or in Nevada?
We're doing okay. We've got all what we want in Turkey. Certainly the laboratories are struggling. Jim, the manager in Nevada, has managed to secure the drills he needs for this year, but it wasn't easy, I'm told. We have seen that there is some tightness there.
Okay. That's it for me, guys. Thanks very much, and looking forward to the next years.
Thanks. Yes, sir.
Our final question is from Michael Sprung with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Thanks for staying late for me here. Maybe just looking at the three-year guidance, obviously you had a great year in 2021, and almost at that 800,000 mark, but the outlook is lower over the next couple of years, understandably on sequencing things you've discussed. How concerned are you about that lower headline production number? Are there any levers you can pull maybe in 2023 or 2024? Is an 800,000 ounce a year possible from the base you've established, or are you fussed about it at all?
No. Look, Michael, I think it's really just a consequence of the mine sequencing that we have. Particularly at Seabee, if you look at the aggregation of all the operations, we had telegraphed in the public reports the life of mine production profiles for it, and it does take a step down while we bring Çakmaktepe online. It's as expected, and no, we're not worried about it. Our job is really been focused on creating a longer dated future, and you know, trying to set that next decade out where we can sustain at least 700,000 ounces, and give ourselves a very stable platform.
If it goes to $750, and then $800, and down to $750, we're okay with that as well. But our priority has really been around targeting that 10-year, plus 700,000-ounce production profile. Like today, you know, with the tech reports that have been published, you know, you heard us say probably about four times during the call that we're, we feel very confident that we're gonna achieve that. So that's really been the priority for us.
Okay, great. Thanks. Very quickly, on capital allocation, apologies if I missed it earlier in the call, but you're hitting your 52-week high or close to it now. Can you update any guidance on how you're thinking about buying back stock, where you'll be active, and maybe is there a point at which you'd rather do a special dividend than a buyback?
Yes. Thanks for the question. You know, we do have intention to continue on with the share buyback program that we had started in 2021. We still have a few months left on that program to repurchase shares and we also still have some shares left on that program to repurchase. There's about 1.2 million shares left. And then in addition to that, we will take into consideration the current market prices as well as the valuation for the company and reassess, you know, does it make sense to have another share buyback program, or would we look at other options like a special dividend or even something else?
We'll definitely be taking a look at that, and just need some time to kinda work through all that based on everything that's come out today and all the information that we have.
Okay, great. Thanks very much. Have a good evening.
All right. Thanks, Michael. Thank you.
This concludes the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Antal.
Well, thanks everyone. Obviously a lot to get to today, so appreciate your patience, as we troll through it. Obviously, you know, a huge amount of, really interesting and exciting, news, building on a, you know, a fantastic 2021. Look forward to keeping you up to date during the year and, talk more as 2022 unfolds. Thanks, everyone.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.