My name is Tanya Jakusconek. I cover the senior gold companies at Scotiabank. I'll be moderating the larger gold producers this morning. I am going to just remind you, in order to keep our forum on schedule and also give the presenters an opportunity to tell their stories, please refer to their bios and company profiles on their websites and in the agenda. Our first presenter is Wheaton, Neil Burns, Vice President, Corporate Development. He will be doing a corporate presentation. Welcome, Neil. Over to you.
Thank you very much, Tanya. It's a pleasure to be back here at the Mining Forum Europe, which has become an important fixture on the annual conference circuit. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today and share the Wheaton Precious Metals story. During this presentation, I'll be making forward-looking statements, and I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the fine print on both this slide and on our website. I'll get myself organized here. Wheaton was the original architect of the streaming model, which we created back 22 years ago. The model was designed to unlock precious metal value that the market was largely overlooking from the operating companies. By transferring those precious metals from the operator to the streamer, there's a value arbitrage that's created and benefits both parties.
The production payment was structured to cover the cost of producing the precious metals, ensuring that the stream is not a burden on the mine longer term. The fixed nature of the production payment had an added benefit of providing investors with low risk, high margin, leveraged exposure to commodity prices. Items that I'll expand on during this presentation include the quality of our assets, our predictable costs, our dividend, leverage to commodity prices, exploration and expansion upsides, and optionality that we've not yet baked into our guidance. This slide shows a number of attributes that underpin our unique company. The one I am most excited about, and unbiased, being involved with Corporate Development, is the $4.3 billion Antamina stream that we completed in February with BHP, and represents the largest precious metal streaming transaction ever completed.
We'll also highlight our sector-leading growth of 50% by 2030 and our forecast cash flow of $10 billion between now and 2028. With additional capacity of $1.8 billion, our Corporate Development team is exceptionally well-positioned to pursue further accretive opportunities. Finally, it's worth noting that we do all of this with just 46 employees across our two offices, making our business extremely scalable. At approximately CAD 90 billion market capitalization in Canadian dollar terms, this equates to almost CAD 2 billion of market cap per employee. This map shows the locations of our operations that consist of 23 operating mines and 26 in various other stages of development. I'll also point out the locations of our cornerstone assets with Salobo in Brazil, Antamina in Peru, Peñasquito in Mexico, as well as Blackwater, one of our newer mines located in Canada.
I'll also point out two of our assets, Koné and Platreef in Africa, which are advancing through construction. Our initial focus was on silver, which is why we're so focused and concentrated in the Americas, particularly Mexico and Peru. Over the years, we've evolved, and gold now accounts for 52% of our forecast production. With this slide, I'd like to highlight that streaming works for companies of all sizes. These are our partners, and I'll highlight our smaller single-asset companies such as Hemlo and KGL, which are two of our newest partners, up to our largest partners, the diversifieds like Newmont, BHP, Vale, and Glencore. It really is a nice mixture of companies that we've assembled partnerships with. The foundation of our company is our portfolio of high-quality assets that we've assembled.
99% of our revenue is derived from precious metals, as you'll see in the pie chart on the left. This differentiates us from competitors that have taken a more diversified approach, having layered in commodities such as oil and gas, iron ore, and copper into their portfolios. Secondly, in the middle graph, you'll see we have 23 years of mine life based on reserves alone, which is unusual for a precious metals company. That's because the bulk of our production comes as byproducts from base metal mines, which typically have much longer mine lives. In addition, we have another 15 years from measured and indicated resources, plus another 23 from inferred. Finally, and perhaps most important, is that 80% of our production is forecast to come from mines that are operating in the lowest half of their respective cost curves.
These are the mines that are best positioned to withstand commodity fluctuations and are the assets that our partners will continually reinvest back into. This focus on investing in the highest quality assets has been recognized by the market and has resulted in our outperformance over the past several years. Our growth profile is another item that I want to bring to your attention and how it sets us apart from other companies. 2025 was an exceptional year for us, with key assets such as Salobo and Peñasquito outperforming, resulting in production that exceeded the midpoint of our guidance by 10%. In 2026, we're forecasting production of 860,000-940,000 gold equivalent ounces, growing to 1.2 million oz by 2030, which represents a growth of 50% above 2025.
This growth is coming from a combination of ramp-ups and expansions at our currently operating mines, as well as a variety of development projects, all of which have received their key permits and are either in construction or are close to starting. We're only including de-risked production in our guidance. Of the development projects listed here on the slide, Koné, Kurmuk, and El Domo are all in construction, with first production at Koné and Kurmuk scheduled for later this year, and El Domo mid-2027. I also want to highlight that a number of our partners are evaluating expansions that we've not yet included into our guidance, such as Vale, who are considering the installation of a coarse particle flotation system, which has the potential to increase throughput by 6 million tons per annum.
Montage, as they finish constructing Koné, is looking to replace lower grade ore that's in their current plan with higher grades from nearby satellite deposits. What this will do is allow them to achieve at least 300,000 oz per year for the first 10 years. I'll point out that all this growth is organic without us making any further acquisitions, though we remain laser-focused on identifying high-quality opportunities to further enhance our growth profile. On February 16th of this year, we announced the acquisition of BHP's 33.75% of Antamina silver production. This doubling of our Antamina production, as well as a few other mines such as Koné and Blackwater, is increasing our asset diversification and results in a meaningful reduction in our Salobo concentration from 33% currently to 26% by 2030.
We're very proud of this portfolio we've assembled and believe it contains the highest quality assets in the streaming space. One of the most significant benefits of the stream model is that our costs are highly predictable. Currently, the majority of our assets have fixed production payment, which provides significant leverage to rising metal prices and strong margins. Our newer contracts typically have a production payment that is a percentage of spot price, which means the cost will increase slightly as those mines come online, but the margins are expected to stay very strong, consistently above 80%. You can look, but you will not find an operating company that has margins like these. Upon closing of the BHP deal, we had a net debt position of $2.2 billion. With our strong production guidance, we're forecasting more than $10 billion in operating cash flow through to 2028 at current metal prices.
As such, we expect to return to a net cash position in approximately one year, while maintaining strong capacity to fund existing commitments as well as growth opportunities. We've committed to returning value to our shareholders and have established a progressive dividend policy with the intention of increasing it annually. In 2024, we increased our dividend by 3%, and then by more than 6% in 2025. This year, we announced an increase of 18% for 2026, underscoring our commitment to shareholder returns. Since inception, we've returned $2.6 billion in dividends to our shareholders and continue to rank among the highest payers as a percentage of revenue in the precious metal sector. Since our inception, community investment has been a core focus for us at Wheaton, as we recognize the importance of contributing to the communities around our partner mines and our corporate offices.
Last year alone, we contributed more than $9.4 million to over 150 charitable causes aimed at delivering vital services and programs to the communities impacted by mining operations. I'll use this slide to summarize our impressive track record. Since our inception, we've invested almost $19 billion on streams and have generated $13 billion in cash flow. We've declared $2.6 billion in dividends, including a record year in 2025. We have one of the highest quality portfolios in the industry, with 23 years of reserve life plus additional years from resources, and we're forecasting approximately $10 billion in cash flow over the next three years. I think the most impressive statistic on this slide is that since inception, our portfolio has realized an average annualized after-tax return of 21%.
With an unrivaled portfolio of high-quality assets, a sector-leading growth profile, and growing demand for streaming, Wheaton is in the strongest position it has ever been, and we look forward to further growing the company. This statement on this slide conveys the message I want to leave you with today. If you like precious metals, Wheaton checks all of the boxes. Thank you for your attention this morning, and I believe I have some time left to answer a few questions.
Great. Thank you. Are there any questions from the audience? We have one up front.
Thank you. I wanted to ask about the financing of the BHP deal.
Sure.
The operating agreement was done out of the available cash plus using a credit facility. Can you elaborate a bit more on the terms of the credit facility? I could not find any public information.
Sure. You're correct. We had an existing revolving credit facility of $2 billion, plus an accordion of $500 million. We layered onto that $1.5 billion in additional financing, which was led by BMO and syndicated through the typical banks. On top of that, we did actually crystallize about $300 million in non-core equity holdings that we had and the cash on hand. We had $1.2 billion of cash on hand at the end of 2025. After all of that is flushed out, we have capacity now of about $1.8 billion to pursue further transactions.
What's the margin on the loan facility?
What is the margin on the loan facility? I am not sure about that.
Just trying to figure out if you're paying too much for your debt.
I think it's about 5%.
Okay.
Yeah. Thank you.
If there aren't any questions, I'll take over for a little bit. Maybe, Neil, can you talk to us a little bit about the deal environment? I always ask that. Is it more silver-oriented out there? Is it more precious metal, sorry, gold? Is it development? Is it production and sort of the size?
Sure. Thanks, Tanya. I always like that you ask that question, being the leader of our Corporate Development team. It is a mixture. Certainly, we hadn't seen a deal on the silver side of the BHP scale in a long, long time. It is certainly weighted towards gold opportunities. There are a few silver ones out there. Currently, it is more weighted towards development assets, and certainly that was our bread and butter from, say, 2018-2024. A lot of those assets that we acquired through that time are now coming on to production, which is why we have such a strong growth profile. In terms of size, I'm looking at probably about 15 opportunities in the pipeline, and they range, most of them in the $300 million-$500 million range, which keeps Vince, our CFO, a bit more comfortable.
We do have a few that are bigger, perhaps in the billion-dollar range, but those typically take a bit longer to germinate.
With Australia opening up, are you seeing more opportunities there?
Absolutely
Wake up to another Australia deal from Wheaton?
Well, it's interesting because although Antamina is not located in Australia, BHP certainly is based there. We did hear that that really got the attention of companies in Australia to have such a large transaction done in the streaming space. I've heard that, after they made their announcement, all the other mining companies in Australia that were having their conference calls, it came up in questions. To my pleasure, they all responded that certainly they would look at streaming. We followed that up with our actual first stream in Australia with KGL and their Jervois project, located just east of Alice Springs. We had been looking in Australia for quite some time, but there's been a bit of apprehension in the country about doing streams due to some streams that didn't go well or more royalties than streams years ago.
We think there has been some difficulty in Australia with taking on onerous debt and having hedge books blow up. There's been a number of those instances. I think they're really recognizing the benefit of streaming and the lower risk that comes with it. I'm hoping to see a lot more opportunities.
I'm circling back to the audience. If not, I'm going to come back to. I know that, Randy. You've been the company that's led the whole streaming, the contracts, and so forth, and you've often said that all streams are not created equal or royalties are not created equal. Maybe you can elaborate what's important to you when you do your stream deals that you must have in your contracts, and similarly on the royalty side?
Yes, good question. That's true. All streams are not created equal. Obviously, we're much more willing to aggressively pursue our own streams with our own contracts. Things that are most important is we look to have a corporate guarantee, and we have that in all of our contracts. We look for security ranking to be at least pari passu and secure basically for our portion of the economics the stream is taking. There's a lot of buybacks that happen that are significant buybacks, and we really don't like to bring an asset into our portfolio only to have most of it bought back. We really restrict ourselves to just allowing partners to buy back a third. That is important for developers, single asset developers, who recognize that there is potential for them to be bought back and they don't want to have the stream detract a buyer.
Kind of 1/3 is a good spot for us on that perspective. We have seen CMOC has bought back 1/3 of our Cangrejos stream, and there's been others that have done the same. Those are the main points that really make up the importance of a Wheaton stream.
How important is access to the whole property and land and so forth, because I think that's one important rather than limiting yourself on just the deposit?
Sure. Well, boy, when you look at opportunities where you don't have any data or visitation rights, it really is a lot more difficult to really understand the ins and outs of the operation, and particularly the improvements that can be had, and especially exploration upside. All of our deals, we have rights to annual reporting and annual site visits. That's not something we send an auditor to go check a box. Our team goes and visits the sites, and it's an interaction, it's a partnership, and we engage with the counterparty. We like to really understand what are the nuances of that site. We look for opportunities because we visit so many sites around the world. We see a lot of technology and interesting applications that can be applied to different sites.
We often are setting up a certain counterparty with another one that's got a new technology that we could see benefit there. We like to play in that space.
If we were to ask you what do you think the market or the analysts don't understand about your company, what do you think is a hidden value in your company? What would you tell us?
Oh, hidden value is certainly the exploration upside that we bake in every asset that we look at. We really spend a lot of attention on the geology and see where ore bodies can be extended or within the land package, there's opportunities for further discovery. I think a lot of times, analysts, not you, can have a very short-sighted view on only valuing the reserves. I think when you look at assets that are likely to become generational assets, there's a lot more value to come.
What would the top three be if you had to say, "Listen, Tanya, there's so much upside at these three that we don't think the market is giving us credit for"?
Oh, certainly Antamina. When you look at that deal, $4.3 billion, on face value, it did look quite expensive if you only look at the reserves, which run out in 2036. It was in the same situation when we did our deal in 2015 with Glencore, where the mine life, I think, was going to be ending in 2028. They got their permits in place for expansion of the pit and the tailings. In 2024, they got the approval from the government, and now the mine life is 2038. That is really just based on additional permits that will be required on the tailings and pit side. Antamina, we see as operating for, honestly, if you get into the underground eventually, which we think they will, it could be running for 40, 60, 80 years. It's a generational asset.
I think another exciting one to highlight is the great work that Montage has been doing on building out Koné, not just on the construction side, where they've done an exceptional job of being on budget and ahead of time, but also they're continuing to explore the satellite deposits in their large land package. It's interesting, as I mentioned in the presentation, to be able to replace, in the current mine plans, some lower grades that are in there with some feed from these higher grade satellites, I think is exciting.
If I can squeeze, unless there's any questions, I was going to squeeze one more in.
Of course.
How do you think streaming deals are going to evolve in terms of terms? Like now we see a stream, we see an equity interest, we see a debt financing portion. Is that sort of the classic new streams that I should be thinking about? As I look out, are they going to get more complicated?
No, I think that's certainly something we put a lot of attention to, opportunities where we can have a stream, fully finance a build, and perhaps there's a bit of a cost overrun that we can provide as well, where we're not then fighting ICPs with the bank and that kind of tough negotiation.
Oh, I think we can squeeze one more in there.
You seem to be very successful in internally kind of evolving and making processes and decisions better. Which are the main things that you're now working on for the next years to come?
In terms of.
How are you improving?
In terms of, you're talking about management or tweaks to our model? Both?
It goes together, model.
Both.
Model.
Well, maybe I'll just speak with management. Tanya touched on it with the changes we've had. Haytham joined the company in 2013. I think Randy had picked him at that point to be his succession. It's no surprise that he's now taken over as the CEO. We've had that succession planning. It's not something that happens overnight. It's well thought out. In terms of our structure, we're always looking for little nuances where we can change the model to remain competitive, to make it more attractive to the operator and provide additional backstops and protections for ourselves. That's something we put a lot of attention to, and we have made a number of tweaks over the years.
Okay. I think that's it. Neil, thank you so much for those insights.
Pleasure. Thank you very much.