All right, hello everyone, and thank you for continuing to join us throughout the day here at the Lytham Partners Fall 2025 Investor Conference. My name is Robert Blum, Managing Partner at Lytham. Our next presentation today will come from Americas Gold and Silver Corporation, and presenting will be Oliver Turner, EVP of Corporate Development. As a reminder, the company trades under the ticker symbol USAS on the New York Stock Exchange and USA on the TSX. Oliver, thanks so much for joining us. The floor is all yours.
Thank you very much, Robert, and hello everyone. Excited to be here at the Lytham conference here to present for the first time as Americas Gold and Silver, an exciting story, a turnaround story, and a story that's focused in the U.S. on producing silver in the U.S., as well as several other exciting byproducts, including antimony, and we'll get into that later on in the presentation. My name, of course, is Oliver Turner, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development for Americas Gold and Silver, and excited to take you through this presentation today. Draw your attention to the usual forward-looking statements and disclosures to read at your leisure. This slide here summarizes and captures what we've been working on over the course of the last year as the new management team of Americas Gold and Silver.
We've taken over a company that was struggling over the last several years for a number of different reasons, which we can step into. We've injected a significant amount of capital, raised $50 million in equity and $100 million in debt. We've unitized our primary asset, Galena, which is a silver mine located in Idaho in the U.S., and brought in Eric Sprott a s a 20% owner of the company. We've also brought in a new leadership team led Paul Huet as Chairman and CEO, myself, and some other gentlemen I'll touch on here in a few minutes.
We're about a year underway in terms of the turnaround in injecting not only the capital but our operational expertise into the Galena mine in Idaho and transforming this company and this asset base into one of the premier silver investment vehicles that investors should certainly be considering if they want exposure to silver, which is obviously one of the most exciting metals to be involved in today. The valuation we'll touch on at the end, and we'll talk a little bit more about the shareholder register and the opportunity for new shareholders such as yourselves when looking at this company. In terms of the leadership team, we're led Paul Huet, as I mentioned previously. Paul is the former Chairman and CEO of Karora Resources, as well as the President and CEO of Klondex Mines, two very successful turnaround stories.
He began his career as an underground miner, was actually on a jackleg for the first 12 years of his career before progressing through the corporate ladder all the way up to COO and eventually CEO, and has been at the helm of not one but two very successful turnaround stories over the last several years. Our Chief Operating Officer is Michael Doolin. He's a 35-year veteran of metallurgy and has also been involved in the last two turnarounds at Karora and at Klondex. Warren Varga, our CFO, over 25 years in the business, including quite a long period of time at the helm of Americas Gold and Silver and handling a very challenging period very, very well and a huge asset of the firm.
Then myself, Oliver Turner, over 15 years of experience in the finance, engineering, and corporate side of the business, formerly at Karora Resources as well, where I worked with Paul and Mike and were involved in the turnaround of those stories and that story in Australia. To highlight some of the success we've had, because one of the most important things when you're investing in a mining company is to invest in teams that have done it before. This team has done it not once but twice before to great success and in much more challenging market conditions. We all are enjoying the current environment for mining equities and particularly precious metals equities, but it hasn't always been that way, as I'm sure many of the people that are watching this video today will understand.
If we take a step back in time to Klondex Mines in Paul Huet and the team took over a struggling mine called the Fire Creek Mine in Nevada, just a single asset with no mill. Over the course of the next six years, we acquired two more mills and three more mines and transformed that asset from zero production all the way up to almost over 200,000 ounces of gold in Nevada, focused in Nevada, and that was sold for just under $700 million to HECLA, and that was in a bear market for precious metals mining equities. In 2018-2019, we took over a company then called RNC Minerals, but we changed the name to Karora Resources and transformed that from a single misunderstood asset in Western Australia called Beta Hunt, which is now a fantastic, very large producing gold mine for Westgold Resources.
We added two more mines, two more mills, followed the same playbook that we had done at Klondex previously, and sold that for $1.1 billion to Westgold, again in much more challenging market conditions. Two very strong outperformances of our peers buying assets that need some love, need some operational expertise, the right amount of capital, and the right shareholders, and we drive those forward through operational success, some very successful M&A, and obviously have had two wonderful exits for our shareholders. We're back at it again in Americas Gold and Silver, and I'll tell you a little bit more about how we came into this opportunity on the next slide here. Americas Gold and Silver, the same concept applies here.
We've taken over some struggling assets, we've injected a significant amount of capital, we're turning around those assets from an operational standpoint, and we've radically changed the shareholder base that is supporting us. Over the course of time, of course, we'll be looking at some consolidation opportunities, and then we'll see what comes after that. Following the same playbook, we've done this twice before, and fully anticipate this will be the third time we do this. In terms of a step backwards in time, taking a look at how we took over the company and became the new management team and have raised this capital and are leading this turnaround, a gentleman called Mr. Eric Sprott, who I'm sure many people on this video presentation and at this conference will be very familiar with, was a 40% owner of the Galena Mine.
In late 2023, he tapped us on the shoulder and Paul specifically to take a look at the Galena Mine for him from a technical perspective. We were still at Karora at that time, but we actually had four different groups at the table to buy that company. Westgold, obviously, in the end, were the successful bidder in taking out Karora for $1.1 billion. We began our due diligence over the course of 2024. During that period, we uncovered all the things that we like. A mine that had a huge amount of infrastructure, needed significant capital investment, had great people, just needed some additional training, and also the challenges were things that we knew we could fix, things that are in our wheelhouse.
All that checked out during our due diligence, and in October, we completed the transaction where Eric Sprott vetted his 40% of the asset into 20% of the company, becoming our largest shareholder. We also raised $50 million in a bought deal at $0.40 with key Karora shareholders or former Karora shareholders that backed us off the last deal. Later, over the course of this year and in June, closed $100 million debt financing, including an $11 million premium placement by Ocean Partners and Teck into the company to complete the recapitalization of the business. We've been off to the races with that capital in terms of injecting it into the mine and conducting that turnaround. It's been a very busy period for us. For all intents and purposes, we took over on January 1 of this year.
By looking at the date today, that's just over, we're at about nine months that we've been at this, and we've certainly been very active in how we've transformed these operations. I'll lay out a little bit of what's ahead for you as well over the course of the presentation. With respect to where our assets are, we are an Americas-focused producer. Our primary asset is in Idaho. That is the Galena Mine, which is located in the historic Silver Valley, certainly the best place in the United States to be mining silver amongst some other metals, which I'll touch on. We also have the Cosalá Operations in Sinaloa and Mexico, another currently producing silver mine, great place to be mining and lots of wonderful deposits around there.
We have the San Felipe development project, an exploration project, and then the Relief Canyon mine in Nevada, which is currently on care and maintenance. I will touch on that very quickly before we jump into Galena, which is going to take up the majority of our conversation today. Relief Canyon is a gold mine that the company decided to purchase in 2019. At that point in time, a lot of silver producers were struggling to make money mining silver at such low metal prices, and were pivoting to other metals. A lot of other producers pivoted to some base metals, other precious metals. The former team at Americas Gold and Silver Corporation decided to invest into a gold asset. Suffice to say that over the next several years, that asset was certainly a challenge. About $100 million went into the operation, and it failed. It did not work.
That is one of the reasons why the opportunity was presented to this management team late last year and why we took over. That asset currently sits on care and maintenance, not our focus. Our focus is on the revitalization and expansion of Galena and Cosalá. As I mentioned, Galena, the Galena Mine, which is those four blue circles, four blue dots circled on this page right there, just outside of Wallace, Idaho. There's been over 100 years of mining history in the Silver Valley, and a lot of really famous, well-known mines are our neighbors. You have the HECLA's Lucky Friday mine, which is just six miles to the east. You have the Sunshine mine, about six miles to the west, the Bunker Hill mine, and many others that are just beyond the scope of this page.
A great place to be mining silver, a long mining history, and as I mentioned, over 100 years of mining history, not just in the Silver Valley, but also at Galena. One of the most important things about that history is the year 2002. In 2002, Galena produced over 5.6 million silver ounces at a throughput or a mining rate of just under 600 tons per day. Now we could stretch this chart back another 50 years, 60 years, 70 years, 80 years, but that was the high watermark for the mine, its best producing year. To sum up the strategy of this management team, our management team on a page, we are taking Galena back to its former glory. We are going to be returning the mine to 5 million ounces and more per year of silver, and that's what we're executing on over the course of this year.
Over the last 10 years, you'll notice on this page there's been significantly lower production out of Galena. There's a number of reasons for that, about 1.5 million ounces on average. During a period of low silver prices, the company actually focused more on some of the byproducts at Galena. At Galena, we have several different byproducts: lead, copper, gold, and antimony, which I'll touch on more a little bit later. The company is focused on mining more of the lead. There's two types of ore at Galena: silver lead and silver copper. The higher silver grades are in the silver copper. The higher lead grades are obviously in the silver lead, but that comes with some slightly lower silver grades, which led to the lower production over the course of the last 10 years.
That's part of the reason why you saw the production dropping off and not really able to get back over that 1.5 million ounces per year. We're going to be changing that, and there's several ways we're going to be doing that. Before I step into what we're doing, here's a long section of the mine where we look at the infrastructure, the tremendous amount of infrastructure that's already in place at Galena. To construct this mine today, as you see it on this page, would be several billion dollars. There's over four shafts at Galena. Going from left to right on the screen, we have the Core shaft, the No. 3 shaft, the Galena shaft, and the Calide shaft. All of this is owned by Americas Gold and Silver Corporation. So four shafts. Underground, we have over 100 miles of underground development.
Again, this mine has been in production for over 100 years. That's a lot of development that's occurred and been put in place. We also have on surface two mills: the Galena mill, which is 750 tons per day and is currently active right now, and the Coeur mill, which is 500 tons per day and is currently on care and maintenance right now. The Galena and Coeur mill combine for 1,200 tons per day of milling capacity, and remember that that high watermark of 5.6 million ounces in 2002 was done with just 600 tons per day of mining coming out of the mine. Lots of room for us to fill those mills. What have some of the challenges been? At Galena, there's been two primary challenges. The first one was the No. 3 shaft. You see it bolded there in blue, and that's for a very good reason.
The Galena shaft is our primary hoist shaft. That's where all of our ore and waste comes out of the mine. The Galena shaft has been bottlenecked at about 300 tons per day over the last, let's call it, 10+ years. There's a number of reasons for that that we're working on right now, and we've actually announced some very exciting updates on recently, which I'll touch on in a second here. The second bottleneck at Galena has been mining. The mine has struggled to produce more than that 300 tons- 350 tons of ore per day and get it to the bottom of the shaft for it to be hoisted out of the shaft. In short, mining challenges, staff challenges, which meant that the mills have not been able to have been filled, which has led to low silver production over the last several years.
What is this team led Paul Huet and our very experienced operators at site, including and led by a man called Evan Pelletier, who is the General Manager of Galena? Some of you who are mining investors may have heard of him previously. He was previously the GM of the Macassa mine in Kirkland Lake, which is now under Agnico Eagle, one of the most successful deep mines with shaft access anywhere in the world. He is now the General Manager of this mine and has been leading the turnaround over the course of this year. We're focused first and foremost on the mining and on the shaft. We'll start with the shaft. This year, we are going to be tripling the capacity of the No. 3 shaft. How are we doing that? We're doing it by increasing the hoist motor from 1,750 horsepower up to 2,250 horsepower.
We are increasing the size of the skip, which is what you hoist the ore with, adding a modern braking system and communication system. All of this is going to cost us about $8 million in total. In fact, just last week, we put out a positive press release talking about the first major phase of that work is already completed. The second major phase of that work will be completed by the end of this year. We're ahead of schedule with the first phase, and the second phase is perfectly on schedule. The second part of the challenge at Galena has been the mining method. At Galena, and I'm going to move back and forth in the slide deck a little bit here, 100% of mining for the last 10 years has been done using jacklegs, which you see on our title slide right here.
That's using a method called underhand cut and fill, which is very labor intensive, requires a lot of expertise, and is lower productivity. What we've been doing is reintroducing a new mining method called long-hole stoping at Galena, which is going to allow us to increase the tonnage rate from the mine. I told you how we're going to debottleneck the shaft, and that will allow us to get more ore to those mills and eventually fill those mills with ore at Galena. One of the most exciting things about Galena is the size of the resource and the potential of the resource. Currently, there's over 150 million silver ounces at Galena. You do the math at a 5 million ounce a year mine life, that's a lot of mine life ahead of you.
It's not a resource growth story, but that certainly doesn't mean that resource growth doesn't exist, both within the existing operations and below our feet. Some of the best drill holes we've been drilling have been below our feet. If you look at this page, this is a depiction of the depth of the mines that you saw on that Sunshine, or sorry, on the Silver Valley map earlier, showing all of the mines and their active depth. In the middle is the Galena Complex, which is the core and the Galena shaft shown there. We are approximately half the depth of Lucky Friday, which of course is HECLA's very successful mine six miles to the east of us.
The reason why we want to show this slide to investors is we're hitting some tremendous results beneath our feet, but suffice to say that these veins are all on the same system. This mine will be going for a long time to come, not just on the resources we have today, but certainly on what we would expect at depth as we reach the depths that Lucky Friday is currently at and beyond. Very positive for future growth of this operation. I mentioned one of the things that we've been working on at Galena has been changing the mining methods. We're reintroducing a mining method called long-hole stoping, which will allow us to mine using remote scoops, which you see on the bottom of this page. It's basically a remote loader that allows you to mine with a remote control and not get too close to the working face.
We've also brought in several long-hole drills underground and underground mining hauling trucks. This sounds very basic, but none of this equipment existed at Galena before. This is all brand new equipment that we have purchased, cut in half, slung and put underground, rebuilt underground, and is now in operation. Some of the $50 million that we raised initially when we announced the deal, taking over the company and merging Eric Sprott's interest in, was used for this equipment. That is part of the reason why we're already underway in this transformation of the mining method underground. Reintroducing a more productive and safer mining method called long-hole stoping. Now, for those of you who are not technical, I'll explain this as simply as I can.
Basically, what long-hole stoping allows you to do is instead of taking 50 ton- 100 ton blasts with the jackleg and that underhand cut and fill mining method that I showed you previously, we're now able to take 7,000 ton and bigger stopes of ore out of the mine in one go. This allows us to move a lot more tonnage per shift, a lot more tonnage to the bottom of that mine, and has been used by Lucky Friday, HECLA's Lucky Friday next door. They're using a modified method called underhand closed benching, which is a version of long-hole stoping. They've been using it very, very successfully. This is not only more productive, but it's also safer for our miners, and obviously when you're operating with a remote scoop, much better working conditions for them as well. We're going to be reintroducing more of this mining method at Galena.
Again, we are operators. This is what we do and have done very successfully at two companies before. This is what we're doing again at Galena, which is part of the reason why we're going to be able to get that ore tonnage all the way back up to 1,200 tons per day and fill those mills. The shaft work we are completing this year will debottleneck the shaft, and then of course we can think even bigger in terms of how do we use all four of these shafts at Galena and take Galena beyond 5 million ounces per year. Certainly very interesting and a lot of exciting work going on at Galena, which is our flagship asset. In terms of growing the resource, I mentioned we're not focused on adding more ounces, but what we're certainly excited about is adding even higher grade ounces.
Currently at Galena, we're mining about 400 g- 450 g per ton silver. Now, to give you some context, that is probably in the top five highest grade silver mines in the world today. We're already a very high-grade operation. What if we can replace some of that 450 g material with 983 g material? This is one of our new discoveries, the 34 vein. I'll show you where it's located on this long section right here. You see those two circles. One is a 34 vein on the lower part, and then we also have the 149 vein. 983 g per ton, fantastic drill results. I don't need to go through all of those with you today. You can read them on our website. The 149 vein, even stronger results, 25 kg per ton.
This is an extremely high-grade operation, and of course, as you know, high grades translate to high profitability, which is what we're focused on at Galena. Even without the tremendous silver prices that we're seeing today, this mine makes a lot of money. Adding more ounces isn't our focus, but replacing ounces at 400 g with 900 g and even more is certainly something that we're all very interested in. As you can see on this page, it's all very close to existing infrastructure. In fact, it's within existing infrastructure. What does that mean? It means that we can be mining this material very, very soon. We're active with the drill bit. We're changing the mining method, upgrading the shaft. We've made significant changes to personnel at site led by Evan Pelletier and training up the wonderful staff that's there already.
Galena truly is a different operation than it's been for the last 20 years, and we're excited to take it to the next level. When it comes to byproducts at Galena, I mentioned earlier we have several different byproducts. We primarily mine silver. We're always going to be a silver-focused producer, but we also mine copper, lead, gold, and antimony. In fact, this is the only producing antimony mine in the U.S. today. I'll say it twice because it really does matter. This is the only producing antimony mine in the U.S. today. Now, the Galena mine has been producing, as I said, for many, many decades, and in the 1980s and the 1990s, the antimony from this mine was going to Sunshine's antimony circuit. Remember, they're about six miles away just down the road.
In 2001, that was shut down, and for the last 24 years, over 20 million pounds of antimony has been produced, but the company was not paid for it. In April of this year, we announced a new offtake agreement with Ocean Partners and Teck, where we renegotiated all of the penalty elements. That means elements or metals that you produced that you weren't paid for into payable elements. We turned what was basically a fine or a charge into a payment. Now we're getting paid for copper, lead, gold, and antimony. All of those are payable elements for Americas Gold and Silver shareholders. We've also completed some very positive metallurgical test work over the course of this year that only reconfirms what was already done in the past. Again, this mine's been producing antimony its entire history.
We're just getting paid for it now, and we're going to be expanding it along with that silver. The antimony is hosted in a type of ore called tetrahedrite. All you need to know is that that ore has the highest silver grades. That's the silver, copper, and antimony ore. The highest silver grades come with copper, and the antimony comes for free. This does not require any capital, does not require any additional investment. This is already coming out of the ground, and you can see here for the technically inclined, some fantastic numbers in terms of the recovery, 90%- 96% from concentrate, and then most importantly, we get 99% of the antimony metal out of the ore.
This is a very, very profitable byproduct for this mine, and suffice to say that we're in conversations with all sorts of parties on what we can do with this product moving forward. It comes for free. We mine it already. That's a very, very significant difference for this mine. Not only are we one of the highest-grade silver mines in the world that is expanding silver production, we will also be expanding our antimony production, which of course, in this day and age, I don't need to tell any of the viewers here how important that is, particularly for the United States.
Touching on our second operation here, just before we do wrap up and talk about the sort of corporate picture and what the investment proposition is, is our mine in Mexico, the Cosalá Operations, which is a very steady group of very strong operators down there that are executing the mine plan that we have to perfection, doing an excellent job. This mine is ramping into a newer high-grade area called EC120. What you need to know is that it means higher silver grades and copper grades. It'll produce about 2 million ounces of silver per year for the next seven plus years, but most importantly, at surface, we have a huge number of exploration targets. Cosalá hasn't seen an exploration drill hole in the last five years, ever since all of the money started going to Relief Canyon. We're changing that.
There's been four outcropping, and that just means targets that are on surface, targets that have been drilled at Cosalá in the last 10+ years. All four of those have turned into mines. We have seven additional outcropping targets that we want to drill. There's a lot more left to come at Cosalá, and it's producing today, generating cash today for Americas Gold and Silver Corporation shareholders. Great operation down in Mexico while we expand operations in the U.S. at Galena. Combining, you take Galena back to 5 million ounces of silver per year, you get some of the Mexican production coming in. You're looking north of 7 million ounces of silver per year, and that's the starting point for this company. Certainly an exciting place to be. Where do we stack up next to our peers?
Those of you that are silver investors will be familiar with a lot of the names that are on this page. We are certainly an emerging growth story that has a lot of room left to run. We've recently reached a $750 million market cap U.S. That's come up significantly over the course of the last year. For those of you that are wondering, you have not missed the boat on this investment. We have three analysts that are covering us. I'll talk about them in a second here. There's a lot of growth that is not factored into this company.
We are certainly trading at a strong multiple, and when you start to factor in some of the things like the antimony, some of the things like the additional copper that's going to be coming out of this mine, and of course the growth beyond 5 million ounces of silver per year, there's a huge amount of value trapped here, all of that without silver price moving, which is a really important factor to note. However, if you are a proponent of silver prices increasing even more than they already have, and we certainly have a positive view on it here at the company internally, then you want more exposure to that metal. As it stands today, Americas Gold and Silver has the second highest exposure to silver of any silver producing operation today. Only Aya Gold and Silver has higher exposure to the metal.
One of the most interesting things about a lot of silver companies is that they're not primarily driven by silver. As I mentioned previously, a lot of companies tried to become gold companies or base metal companies earlier in their life, particularly when silver prices were depressed, including some of the other names that you see on this page here. However, Americas Gold and Silver remains extremely exposed to the silver metal. If you're looking for silver exposure, a silver growth story at a good valuation with a team that knows how to execute, this is certainly where you want to be. This page is a snapshot of our supportive long-term shareholders, the register that we have today, and the analysts that we have covering us, which we will expect to increase in short order.
In the last nine months, we've transformed this company from about 7% institutional ownership to 63% institutional ownership, of course, including Mr. Eric Sprott at 20%. Even if you remove him, that's to 43%. That took us two and a half years to do at Karora. A very strong institutional shareholder base, strong retail shareholders. Hopefully, we'll be getting some more of them following this conference. Of course, three very strong analysts that cover us, and we expect more of that over the course of this year. With that, I'd like to wrap up the conversation. Thank you for listening to our presentation. As I said, if you're looking for a growth story focused on silver in the U.S. with a team that's executed many times before, this is the name that you want to own. Thank you very much, and I'll hand it back over to Robert.
All right, fantastic, Oliver. Thank you so much for that presentation. I want to thank everybody here for watching. If you do have any questions, obviously you can reach out to Oliver or to the investor relations team there. Similarly, if I can help in Coordinatirdinating a meeting, whether it be at this conference here and in the short period of time we have left or maybe even afterwards, send me an email as well. That's blum@lythampartners.com. Further, to learn more about Lytham Partners, please visit our website or be sure to follow us on LinkedIn for additional interviews and discussions such as the one here with Oliver. So Oliver, again, thanks so much for your time. Thank you, everyone, for watching. Have a great rest of the day in the conference here. We'll talk to you guys soon.