All right. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us during the Lithium Partners Fall 2025 Investor Conference. My name is Robert Blum, Managing Partner at Lithium. And getting us going here today is Taseko Mines, ticker symbol of TGB, on the New York Stock Exchange. And presenting from the company is Brian Bergot, the company's Vice President of Investor Relations. Brian, thanks so much for your participation here in the conference. And with that, the floor is all yours.
Thanks very much, Robert, and thanks for hosting me today. Yeah, it's great to be here presenting what we think is a pretty exciting story in the copper space. Yeah, my name is Brian Bergot. I'm the VP of Investor Relations. I've been at Taseko for 20 years now, so that's really when modern Taseko started, when we started up our Gibraltar Mine and started building out a new management team and expanding our asset base. So I'll spend a bit of time walking through our story here for you and hopefully give you a good foundation of who Taseko is. So really, we are a producing company today. We operate and own the Gibraltar Mine, which is up here in BC, just about a six-hour drive north of Vancouver. Gibraltar is the second largest open-pit copper mine in Canada, fourth largest in North America.
So large open-pit copper mine produces on average about 125-130 million pounds per year. We have a very long life remaining. We'll talk a little bit about the history here, but we still have 20 years of reserves ahead of us. So long mine life, and it's been our foundational asset. We've taken all the cash we've generated from Gibraltar and put it back into our business. Initially, we spent; we used that cash to expand and modernize Gibraltar. And then since then, we've been investing in our pipeline of projects. And on that note, Florence Copper is our next project, which is actually almost complete construction. It's down in Arizona. We are 95+% through construction, and we expect to produce first copper before the end of this year. Florence, when ramped up, it'll produce about 85 million pounds of copper cathode per year.
So, adding increasing our copper production by about 70%. But it's a very low-cost asset, so it'll more than double Taseko's cash flow. So a very important project for Taseko. We have a pipeline of other projects back here in BC. We've got our Yellowhead Copper Project. We just started the environmental assessment phase with that project here about two months ago. We've got probably four years of permitting work ahead of us at Yellowhead. But that timing fits well with the ramp-up of Florence, gives us time to generate some cash before moving into another capital project. And then also we have our New Prosperity Project. We've had some recent news on Prosperity after about a decade of it being stuck in permitting and legal challenges. So we've had some positive movement there.
And if we have a chance at the end of this presentation, I'll talk a little bit about New Prosperity. But we view it as a free option. There's no value for Prosperity, New Prosperity, or actually Yellowhead in our equity today. So these are longer-dated projects, but very valuable projects to the company. It will get to their development at some point. And then finally, we have our Aley project, which is a niobium project in northern B.C. Aley wouldn't be considered core. Our focus is copper, but it is a good niobium asset, one of the best assets, niobium projects outside of South America. So we're doing some technical work there, but not spending a lot of resources or money on that project today. We are focused in North America, and that's not by chance. We made the decision to focus in North America.
We like this jurisdiction. Yes, permitting can be more challenging. Our jurisdiction can take a little bit longer, but we know once we get our permits, we don't have to worry about the government taking our assets from us. So we made that decision a number of years ago, and it's unlikely you would see us looking at projects in South America or Africa. We'll stick to the North American jurisdiction. We've got a strong financial profile. We've got the cash on hand to complete the construction of Florence and get it ramped up, and then I'll have a couple of slides later to talk about the future cash flow generation we can do from both those assets, so there's the overview, a little bit on our capital structure. We do trade on the NYSE under TGB, as Robert mentioned. We also trade on the TSX.
Ticker symbol up here is TKO. We trade in London as well under TKO. Our market cap today is about $1.2 billion, and our share price is just about $3.74. Actually, we hit a 14-year high share price earlier this morning, as you can see on that graph there. We're covered by most of the typical Canadian banks. We also have Stifel and Cantor who cover us. They're American brokerages, but they cover us out of Toronto. Most of the analysts have a buy rating on Taseko. Our shares are widely held. Our largest shareholder is about, say, 7%. It's a Brazilian fund. Our number two holder, who actually bought their entire position earlier this year, is L1 Capital out of Australia.
Beyond that, you can see our shareholders. We don't have any large controlling positions, but we are definitely seeing more institutional ownership in our equity in recent months, so with that, I'll maybe spend a couple of minutes talking about copper and why we made the decision to invest in copper, and there's been quite a bit of volatility in the price here in the last, well, in the last couple of years. Specifically this year, when you look at U.S. pricing, and it all came down to the tariffs and the potential tariffs on copper, and that graph there, that one line, the red line, is the COMEX copper price, and earlier in the year, when the threat of tariffs was talked about, we saw the COMEX price diverge from the LME price, which has historically been the global benchmark price.
And then when the 50% tariffs were announced back in July, you can see how the COMEX price jumped up to a major premium. And then it was announced that there would be no tariffs on copper. So those prices have equalized today. Price of copper today is about $4.50, which is, if you look back historically, a very strong price. We believe the fundamentals point to an extremely tight market in the long term and very good fundamentals. And really, our view there is it's not so much about demand. There's a lot of new demand with AI and data centers in addition to the traditional demand. But really, the issue facing the copper sector is on the supply side. The big mines needed to fill that gap just aren't on the horizon or aren't anywhere near being built today.
We've had a few big mines start up in the last number of years, but the real large mines, the Resolution, the Pebble projects, mines that are going to produce 300,000-400,000 tons of copper per year, are years or decades away from production, and that's where we see the issue. The supply side just cannot keep up with the demand, and we've had some major closures. The Cobre Panama mine in Panama was shut down by the government about two years ago now, I guess, and that's tonnage that we're not sure when or if it'll come back into the market, but we've seen most industry experts believe we are headed to a very serious deficit. And Wood Mac here has got a supply deficit of 3.3 million tons in a 26-million-ton market, so that's a significant deficit, and that's in the next five years.
S&P Global has a much bigger deficit, but that is the consensus that we are headed towards that deficit, and that really comes down to the supply side, so yeah, we believe the long-term fundamentals are stronger than they've ever been, which is why we've made the decision to focus on copper, so we'll get into our assets now. I'll talk about Gibraltar to start. As I mentioned, this was our foundational asset. It's a large open-pit copper mine. We produce 125-130 million pounds of copper per year with 20 years remaining. It is a lower-grade mine. When you look at benchmark it to other global copper mines, our average grade here is 0.25% copper, so it means our unit costs are probably third quartile at $2.30 per pound, so it's highly levered to the price of copper.
But in today's copper price environment at $4.50, there's over $2 a margin there. So this asset can generate a lot of cash in these price environments. So we actually bought Gibraltar in 1999 for a dollar. The previous owner had just shut it down. That was bleeding. They were going to scrap it. The management at that team saw that there was some value here. So they bought it for a dollar, and we kept it on care and maintenance for five years until 2004, when the price of copper started to climb higher. We restarted the mine really on the cheap, on a shoestring budget, thinking we could operate it for three or four years while the price of copper was high. At that point, a high copper price was $1.50.
And then when the price of copper cycled back down, we thought we would mothball it again, and that would be it. The price of copper didn't cycle back. So we started investing in this mine, and we were producing and generating cash. We took all the cash we were generating, and we put it into this mine. We ended up spending $800 million between 2006 and 2013. We took the milling capacity from 30,000 tons per day to 85,000 tons per day, and annual production from about 50 million pounds per day to what it is today, which is 130 million pounds. And we modernized it. This mine was built in 1970, and at that point, it was tired and worn out. And all that capital investment we put into it brought it to modern standards, which it is today.
We replaced the entire mining fleet, and we've got a state-of-the-art mine here today, so we've been operating at the higher rates, steady state since 2014. This year, we had some production challenges after moving into a new pit. Earlier this year, we got behind in our mining rates, which delayed access to some of the higher grades we were trying to get to, so we had a tough first half of the year, which the market was aware about. But now we're into those grades we've been looking for, and so we're looking for a real strong half of 2025. Our guidance for this year is 110-120 million pounds. We're probably trending towards the bottom of that, but those strong grades that are only going to improve for the balance of this year will continue into next year.
So we expect a very strong 2026 as well. So this asset, like I say, can generate significant cash. On that table there, $4.50 copper at cost of $2.40 per pound, we can do close to CAD 500 million of operating margin. So for a mine this size and for a company of our size with a market cap of CAD 1.2 billion, that's significant. So our plan here is to, we've got 20 years of reserves ahead of us, is just to operate it, take that cash that's generating, and put it back into the business. So recently, most of what we've been spending that cash on is our Florence Copper project. We'll talk a little bit about that now. So Florence , as I mentioned, is in Arizona. It's in construction, although we're very near the end.
We're actually starting dry commissioning now, and wet commissioning will be starting here in the next month or two. When it's fully ramped up, it'll produce 85 million pounds of copper per year, and I think an important thing here is we'll be producing pure copper cathode, so 99.99% pure copper. This copper will stay in the U.S. domestic market. The U.S. is net importers of cathode. So there's a great domestic market for what we'll be producing here, and we're going to produce copper here for about $1.10 per pound. Relative to Gibraltar at $2.30-$2.40 per pound, this is half of that, so very low cost, very great. The economics of Florence are fantastic, and again, here we've got a long mine life of 22 years, so our last technical report was completed in 2023.
In that report, it detailed the 22-year mine life producing 85 million pounds of copper for $1.10 per pound. You can see the economics there. The after-tax NPV is $930 million USD at 375 copper. At 450 copper, that NPV jumps to $1.3 billion USD. And yeah, they are 50% in a two-and-a-half-year payback. So this is a great project, and we're excited to get it into production. And I guess the other important thing here is low upfront capital. It only cost us $232 million to build. I shouldn't say that. That was the estimated cost at that time. Once we got into construction in 2024, we updated that number and said we'd be coming in probably 10%-15% above that. So $260-$265 million. And we've been tracking towards that capital number for over a year and a half now.
So there's been no CapEx blowout like has been faced with a lot of other mines and miners. So why is it a low upfront capital and low operating costs? We are going to use a different technology at Florence. We are going to use in-situ copper recovery. So ISR, or in-situ recovery, it has not been used commonly for copper. It's been used historically on a smaller scale, but not at the scale we're going to produce at. And that really comes down to the fact that we have a very unique ore body here. But just to back up, ISR is commonly used in uranium and actually in potash. It's called solution mining. About 50% of global uranium production uses ISR. So it's not a new process. It's just we're taking that process and adapting it to copper.
So the reason it hasn't been used extensively for copper is, typically, copper is found in hard rock, like at our Gibraltar Mine, where we need to blast the ore and then dig it up and then crush it and grind it to get the copper out of it. Here at Florence Copper, or sorry, Mother Nature has done all that work for us. You can see that brown speckled zone. That's the oxide zone that we'll be mining or injecting solutions into. That ore is ground up. It's rubblized. When you pick up the core in your hand, it falls apart. So Mother Nature has done all that hard work for us. So we don't need to spend all that energy to mine the ore and then crush it. So it's going to allow us to use this process.
What this process is, is we drill a well field. That well field, the production wells are injection wells and recovery wells. We inject a low acid solution. It's a very diluted acid into the ore body. As that solution migrates through the deposit, it leaches or dissolves the copper. Then we take that solution and we recover that in recovery wells. We pump it to surface. Then that solution goes into a conventional SX-EW plant, solvent extraction, electrowinning. This is a very commonly used process around the world. That's where we produce the pure copper cathode. Because this process has not been used extensively for copper, we made the decision a number of years ago to build the project in two phases. The first phase was a test facility.
And that test facility, we had to go through a whole permitting process to get the permits for that test facility. We got those in 2018. And then we spent $25 million to build the test facility, which included 24 wells and a small SX-EW plant. Out of those 24 wells, there were 13 production wells, 4 injection wells, and 9 recovery wells. So we operated that test facility for 18 months and produced over a million pounds of copper. And really, the reason we built and operated the test facility is, one, to prove to the regulators that we can inject these solutions 800 feet deep, control those solutions, and recover the solutions with no issues to the environment. We prove that without any doubt that we can inject and control those solutions and recover those solutions, which is why we got our final permits in 2023.
We also operated the test facility to prove that this process will work at Florence, and again, it was very much a successful process, which gave us the confidence to spend the money on the commercial facility, which is what we've been doing for the last couple of years. Another aspect about this project and this process is it's very environmentally green. You can see there, energy consumption, 65% less than in a conventional open-pit copper mine. Carbon emissions, 75% less, and water use, nearly 80% less. We're not digging a big hole in the ground. When we're done here in 25 years, this site could be turned into a residential neighborhood, a golf course, you name it. There's no permanent change to the landscape, and while we're operating, you can drive right by our site, and you won't even know that there's a copper mine there.
There's no blasting. There's no big equipment, no dust. So this is a very green way to extract copper. So on the $230 million of CapEx, which we've amended to +15%, so about $265 million, that is at the end of Q2 of this year, June 30th, we had spent $239 million of that. So we'll only have about $30 million to go, most of which will be in Q3, and then just a small amount of CapEx remaining in Q4. So most of the spending has already taken place here. It's been, yeah, we're, I guess, 20 months into construction. And yeah, it's gone. We've been on time, on budget, and it's gone exceptionally well. So the plan going forward is we expect to start injecting solutions in the next few weeks. And that's in the well field.
We need about three months of circulating solutions before we dissolve enough copper, and the grade in the solution is high enough to where we can start plating copper in the SX-EW plant. So we start injecting solutions about the end of September. And that should give us first copper about the end of the year. So we've been targeting first copper in late 2025 since we started this project. And we're right on schedule. So 2026 will be the ramp-up year. We expect to produce about 40 million pounds of copper next year. And then we expect to end, level, or I guess end next year, 2026, at the 80-85 million pound run rate. So 2027, we should be up to full capacity. That's our expectation. So like I say, it's a very exciting time for the company.
Adding a second producing asset, which is going to be as low cost as it is, completely transforms Taseko. We brought on a couple of really good partners at Florence to help the funding of the CapEx. Mitsui, who's a, well, Mitsui is a Japanese company, but we're dealing with the US group. They contributed $50 million towards construction. In exchange for that $50 million upfront, they get a 2% copper stream. And then they've got an option. It's at their option. They've got three years effectively from today. If they can exercise that option, they would pay to Taseko another $50 million US. And then that stream would convert into a 10% equity ownership of the mine, not of Taseko, just at the asset level of Florence.
We expect, assuming everything goes according to plan at Florence, that they will exercise that option and become a joint venture partner. They're big copper traders in the U.S., and they want access to Florence's copper cathode, and at that point, they would become our marketing agent as well. The other partner is Taurus Funds Management out of Australia. They contributed $50 million towards construction in exchange for a 2% revenue stream, which is a life of mine stream, and then Bank of America did a small equipment lease financing for us as well, so the project is well-financed. We've got some great partners here, and yeah, we're just looking forward to seeing first copper come out of the SX-EW plant here in the next three or four months, so I guess they have a very exciting time for us.
I have a little bit more time, so I'll quickly touch on a couple of other projects. New Prosperity, this is the project I mentioned, which has been tied up in legal and permitting challenges. We announced a couple of months ago that we signed an agreement with the province of BC and the Tŝilhqot’in Nation, who's the First Nations group in this area, to receive $75 million. We put 22.5% of the project into a trust for the future benefit of the Tŝilhqot’in Nation. They are going to work with the province on a land use planning process. At some point, we think that they may decide that they want Prosperity built. At that point, this project becomes extremely valuable. As you can see, there's 13 million ounces of gold in the ground here and 5 billion pounds of copper.
This is a tier one asset and is worth anywhere from $5-$10 billion at today's metal prices. It's a very important asset, which is why we haven't given up on it in the last 10 years and have continued to work away at trying to find a path forward with the province and the First Nations group to find a path forward. So we're pretty excited about this deal we announced. And we'll be working closely with the province and the group in the coming year or two. And then Yellowhead is what we think could be the next mine we built. Yellowhead is in BC again. It's just north of Kamloops, only about two and a half hours from our Gibraltar Mine. We just issued a new technical study a couple of months ago in June.
So the project that we estimate there, it's a $2 billion project. Initial capital is also $2 billion. This is a much larger scale project than Florence. This would be similar scale to our Gibraltar mine, but it is higher grade. So it will produce about 180 million pounds of copper per year over a 25-year mine life. It's a great project in a great location. Costs, as you can see, for the first five years are $1.62 per pound and life of mine $1.90 per pound. So really good economics. And again, this would generate significant ca
sh. Adding 180 million pounds of copper almost doubles our copper production again from where we'll be with just Gibraltar and Florence. So we've got four to five years of permitting work ahead of us here. So we could maybe be construction ready by potentially 2029-2030. And again, that timing fits well.
In the near term, we need to focus on completing construction and ramp up at Florence and spend a couple of years with cash flow from two assets. So then just a little bit on our valuation. I think every company would tell you they feel undervalued. And I'll give you, we feel the same, and I'll tell you why we think we are undervalued. In terms of reserves in the ground, we have more than any of our peers. And a lot of our peers have market caps that are five, six, seven times us. And you can see between Gibraltar, Florence, Yellowhead, New Prosperity, we have almost 15 billion pounds of copper in reserves in the ground. That doesn't include our gold or our niobium. So on a per market cap basis, you can see we trade at a pretty significant discount compared to our peers.
And then just finally, I'll touch on this screen. And this is where we see the real valuation case. If you look at the value of Gibraltar and Florence, and then you subtract our debt, there's significant value. There's almost CAD 3 billion of value there. And our market cap in Canadian dollars is about CAD 1.6 billion today. We believe most of that valuation gap relates to Florence. And we're starting to get some value in our equity today from Florence, but we still have a long ways to go. And even though we're trading at multi-year highs, we think there's still a lot of value that's going to come into our equity as we ramp up Florence here over the next year.
And then, when you look on a cash flow EBITDA basis between those two assets, depending on the copper price, we could produce anywhere from CAD 5 million to CAD 700 million or CAD 6 million to CAD 700 million of EBITDA per year. You apply a five or six times multiple to that, which is where our peers would be trading. It shows you the amount of our share price could effectively double from where it is today to get to those type of metrics. So just to wrap it up, it's a real exciting time here. We're moving from one mine to two mines, more than doubling our cash flow here in the next 18 months in a copper price environment, which is exceptionally strong today and only appears to get stronger here over the next number of years.
So yeah, can't say it enough how excited the whole team is here after 10 years of working away at Florence to be this close to producing. So I think with that, I'll turn it back to you, Robert. Thank you, everyone.
Yeah, fantastic, Brian. Thank you very much for the detailed overview on the company there. Thank you to everybody, obviously, for watching here. If there are any questions or if you'd like to schedule a meeting with the company, either here at the conference today or perhaps at some point in the future, feel free to shoot me an email. That's blum@lithiumpartners.com. Further, learn more about Lithium, please be sure to visit our website or make sure to stay connected with us on LinkedIn for future events such as this presentation from Brian here. So Brian, again, thank you so much. Appreciate the time today. Everyone, have a great conference here.