Joining me are José García and David Gleit, CFO of Silver X, who will be walking us through the company's story and latest updates. We're also very pleased to have with us a special guest, Jeffrey Christian, Managing Partner at CPM Group, one of the most respected voices in precious metals research and market analysis. Jeffrey will be sharing CPM Group's current views on the silver market and where they see prices heading. José and David will kick things off with an overview of Silver X's story and key updates from the business, followed by Jeffrey's market perspective on silver, including a brief discussion with José on what they're seeing on the ground. We'll then open up for a Q&A and are looking forward to addressing your questions. Let me hand over to José and David.
Thank you, Matt, on behalf of Silver X, thank you everyone for joining us today. We're extremely pleased to have Jeff Christian with us today, and many thanks also to Alliance Advisors, our IR partner. We're going to give you an overview of what's going on with Silver X. For those who are familiar with the company, as you know, we are the growing producer of silver in Peru. I think we're having very exciting times for the silver market, not only because of the silver price and overall metal prices, but because of the development of the company. For the last few years, we spent time not only increasing our resource and making a very significant resource, I think one of the most competitive or attractive in the silver space, but actually we've been building our production.
We've reached to a point late last year in which we are just reaching what we call the nameplate capacity, we're now facing our next growth phase. The whole presentation will go around that. I am going to try demonstrate you why Silver X is great value precisely at this point in time. Let's start with the typical corporate presentation, at the end of the presentation, we'll have a Q&A window. Of course, you know Silver X and our purpose is to become that outstanding mid-scale, medium-sized producer of silver. We are in Peru. We're a Peruvian company, and we have a lot to grow with in terms of organic growth. The whole presentation will explain to you how this district of Nueva Recuperada will become that mid-tier producer over the next three years.
Actually, when you look at Silver X, and I believe that most of you are excited about silver market and about the silver companies, you are going to compare our company with other companies. I think we're still trading at a discount against many peers for a number of reasons. Those things are starting to change over the last few months, not only because we are obviously better positioned because of the silver price, our performance has increased continuously. So little by little, we're closing the gap, and I believe that's one of the greatest opportunities. We're going to discuss how production evolved over the last few quarters, but this is summary of, let's say, the three pillars of value of Silver X. We are in production. We are at the nameplate capacity of 750 tons a day. We are surpassing that capacity now.
We are just above that capacity. We're going to stretch it to 1,000 tons a day in the next quarter. We are looking for every potential avenue to increase that further over the next two years. We'll come back to that in a minute. As I said, over the last five years of being public, we've increased our resources a number of times. I think we have a very competitive book. We have basically 20 million tons of high grade, and I believe that will continue to grow over the next few months. You've seen some of the exploration results we've been releasing to the market over the last two months, particularly one vein called BR, Blenda Rubia , on which we had amazing intersects of more than 40 m of true width. That opens a number of possibilities going forward.
Of course, on top of that, the outstanding potential that we have in our district in which we believe we are basically scratching surface. I don't think I need to tell you much about silver. You are all around this table because you believe in silver, you are excited about the silver market. There is a number of fundamentals I don't need to underline because we have Jeff Christian with us. He'll have a few minutes with you to provide a forecast on silver and gold and potential changes in the remaining part of 2026. Peru is one of the best jurisdiction for silver. It's been for centuries. We are the largest concentration of silver resources in terms of public companies and the second-largest producer. Silver X is that mid-tier producer or developer. Will actually be taking a more relevant position in this country.
You'll continue to see more and more silver projects coming out of this country. We are in an area called Huancavelica, up high in the Andes, a very high elevation, typically 4,500 m and above. This is not far from Lima, from the capital city in the core of the country. This is how our claims, our property looks like. We actually have a large land package, basically 20,000 hectares, more than 20,000, with three big mining areas, Tangana, Red Silver, and Plata. A mill that is in the middle of it. Is currently functioning, so it's producing ore as we speak. We are looking at the expanded scenario in which we are going to have two mills and three mines producing. That will be taking place by 2029.
Just in March 2026, we announced the acquisition of a Pampas silver and gold project, which is a red, sorry, the blue property to the right. Pampas is very exciting. It's an earlier stage of exploration, but it's certainly the highest grade in this area. We are going to start drilling that project in the next quarter. We hope to be releasing very good results in 2026 and early 2027. This is how it looks if you look at it closer. We've got the mill right in the middle. Number one, two, and three are our mining units or mining zones in terms of priority. Number one is in production. That's Tangana. Everything we're doing today comes from there. Tangana is growing organically. Going to get it to 1,000 tons a day, hopefully next quarter, which is beyond nameplate capacity. Why is that?
Back in 2025, in September, October, we raised some money. We put that money to work. We actually did a very good deployment, increased production, increased grade. Now you will see the consistent increase in performance. Number two is our Plata mining unit, which is probably the most solid piece of resource we got on our books because it's 6.5 million tons of high grade. It's higher grade than Tangana. That project will be built to a relatively large capacity, up to 1,500 tons a day. You are going to see that coming online in two years' time with potentially some bulk sample in the next 12 months. Red Silver, which is a smaller project, but certainly the highest grade in this area.
Red Silver is an inferred resource of almost 35 million ounces of silver with average grades above 15 oz of silver. It's a little piece of mine that will likely be providing very good outcomes as we increase production with these silver prices. The whole objective here, and I'll try and be concise because it's all about the idea that at this current run rate, we are processing about 2 million ounces of silver equivalent per year. We are looking to increase that beyond 6 million ounces. That will happen by 2029. That's the organic growth that we are describing here. We'll have peaks of up to 8 million ounces of silver equivalent over the years. That's the whole summary on the organic growth that you want to take away. Silver X is growing 3x just organically with this project.
For those who have time, and perhaps in the Q&A section, we can discuss resources, either the compiled resource or just the resource on each of those mining units. I believe it will take some time. Let's try to be quicker on this because I wanted to get to this slide, which is the PEA we announced on our project back in September 2025. Remember, we did this at $33 silver. Today, we're looking at $75 approximately. At that time, that pre-production CapEx of $82 million could release a NPV of $440 million. Again, $33 silver. We haven't produced a new PEA at $75 or $100 silver. I believe that is certainly a number of times higher the NPV. I cannot say because we haven't made that calculation. Do your numbers.
At the end of the day, we are looking at 14 years mine life with 3,000 tons a day. An average production of more than 6 million ounces of silver. I think there is some value here. It is very difficult to find a silver project in pre-production stage that would compete with this in terms of metrics. Again, pre-production CapEx, IRR almost 70%. An NPV, as I said, $440 million at $33 silver. I think that reflects plainly the value of our district. That's our objective. Going to get there the fastest we can and the cheapest we can. I think that's some of the core competencies of Silver X. Just a quick snapshot of Tangana. This is what we are doing today. We reached nameplate capacity last quarter.
We are now pushing to go to 1,000 tons a day. The PEA scenario is 1,500 tons a day. The good news is that Tangana will get there organically. There will be practically not pre-production CapEx here. Tangana is producing good grades, and we're expanding the mine rapidly. It's a very typical narrow vein mine. Those veins are really attractive in the sense that they go on a strike for kilometers occasionally. Actually, they have a vertical extent of more than 1,000 m. I think that's extremely important when it comes to an epithermal system. These epithermal systems are very consistent, they're very good, and they're actually very well-known, and they have a lot of potential at depth. Okay? At the moment, we are doing mechanized mining. It's all overhand, cut and fill, long hole blasting, and the like.
That's our bread and butter. We are really good at that. We're expanding our mine. What you can see on that image to the left is that we're going to evolve from the current two veins we are operating towards the left and eventually going to multiply production very rapidly. That is happening as we speak. This is how an underground mine of this kind looks like. Basically, those two veins all together with a number of branches or veinlets, tensional veins we call them. We're now going to be expanding through those other veins in the next few months, making sure that we increase production consistently. This, again, just a little piece of that very big vein field that we have in Tangana. Look at Q1 production, because over the last few years, we were increasing tonnage. We were trying to increase grade.
Actually, last year, we had to lower our tonnage, our throughput, to be able to increase grade and to protect ore value, let's say dilution. I think we did a good job. Towards Q3 and Q4, we are doing better. Q1, with all that money that we deployed since October last year, we made a leap. We actually make a step change. We produced basically 45,000 tons in a quarter. That was all-time high, all-time records. Reality is that we increased our grade. On top of that, we had better silver prices and gold prices. If you look at the financial results of Q1, they were really good. We are close to announce production for Q2. That likely come up First, second week of July. We have big expectations on that. Cannot advance. We are continuing the trend, and that's important to say.
Reality is that when you look at our production costs, the all-in sustaining costs per ounce of silver. Silver price, we try depict here that that gap is growing. Okay? As silver price goes up, typically our cost goes up a little bit. That's a consequence of the formula. Let's say silver goes up. Your silver equivalent comes down. Reality is that we are increasing that gap. We are making a huge change in our performance. Just in last quarter, we had $13.4 million revenue. We had a net income of more than $4 million. We had an EBITDA of approximately $6.1 million USD. That was a huge change in our history. Please keep an eye on that. Our company is well cashed up. We'll come back to that in a minute. We are producing money. Okay?
The next quarters, we are going to try to continue increase this performance. Keep an eye on that. Plata. Plata is probably the most attractive project in our Nueva Recuperada district. Plata is a 6.5 million tons, high grade. It is well-known. It was actually produced by Buenaventura in the early 2000s. Not big scale at the time. We are looking at scenarios of 1,500 tons a day by 2029. It is attractive because of the grade, particularly. It is probably about 25%-30% higher than in Tangana. That is why it is exciting. Our resource is basically based on five veins, and there is more than 50 in this property. If you look at that long section, you can see that those ore shoots are very continuous. All these veins are pitch as well, as you know.
In this case, they are very continuous for a number of reasons, which makes our life a lot easier. Reality is that it is high grade, so it is exciting. We are going to be seeing some bulk sample next year, and as I said, production in two years' time. Quick comments on exploration. Keep an eye on what we have said over the last few weeks, particularly two assets, I would say. BR, Blenda Rubia in Spanish, but we call it BR. There is a true width intersect here of almost 80 m. Two weeks ago, we published a 40 m. Why is that important? BR has got the potential to change the way we do mining. This is next to our mill. In looking at the expanded scenario, the PEA and beyond, we need at least 12 million tons of ore.
There is, of course, a lot more in the district, just BR might be able to contribute half of that, if not more. Okay? That is why exciting, because if we continue to intersect these true widths, going to be looking at a bulk mining asset that will be complemented with a high grade. We will continue to drill here. You will continue to see very good outcomes during the year. Obviously Pampas, which is the acquisition we made in March. This early stage, it has got a resource, it has got a historical resource. It is a non-compliant one. We are going to start drilling in October. We are going to be reporting results in Q4 and Q1, and hopefully, going to be able to put the first compliant resource in the first half of 2027. What is attractive about Pampas is the grade.
It is a gold and silver project, consistently, you find 4-5 g of gold with 5-6 oz of silver throughout. Okay? This is surface sampling. There is actually some historical production here with small-scale artisanal, but this is exciting. That is why we decided to acquire it. It actually is a significant piece in our regional expansion. Again, you are going to see results in the next two quarters, three quarters. Red Silver. There is also some results you have been seeing. I think it was in February, we published 60 m of a vein with 21 oz of silver. Reality is that this is a very significant inferred resource, basically 35 million ounces of silver, high-grade, and great skink. We are going to continue drilling here. We are actually drilling this week again. Hopefully, within the next month or so, you will be seeing results. Okay?
That said, there is a number of gold targets in our district. We'll not stop here. That's basically we'll continue reporting gold exploration as it comes, we do not want to deviate the attention of the presentation from the silver production. Just some final comments on our social performance and share structure. We have two long-term agreements with the two communities with which we live. We actually have 12 years left and 13 years left. I don't know. 11 years and 13 years left with both. Basically, it covers the life of mine. We're in very good standing. We have a terrific relationship, and most of our people actually come from the very local communities. There's very few companies able to do that or to say that publicly. Next catalyst for Silver X, please keep an eye on production and exploration.
It's a very basic story, production and exploration, period. On top of that, we are working really hard on getting the permits for that expanded scenario, the PEA for 2029. That means that over the next two years, we anticipate getting permits for those new mills, so we can implement that. Final comments. We appointed a couple of board members over the last couple of months. I have David Gleit, our CFO here, based in Lima as well, José García, CEO, and we have Alvaro Domingo, our VP Corporate Development. In terms of board members, we have Darryl Cardey since the beginning of Silver X, based in Vancouver, Francis Johnstone who represents Baker Steel Capital out of London, U.K.
We recently announced the deployment of both Mark Ashcroft, a very technically savvy mining engineer based in Ontario, and Joseph Gallucci, a very renowned Canadian banker based in Montreal, Quebec. This is a share structure, basically 341 million shares fully diluted. I believe our share price today is around $0.75. We reached a peak in late January of $1.61, basically more than twice our current price. I believe that you want to see the research coverage that we have from both Red Cloud and Fundamental Research. That's it. That's all I wanted to say. I have David with me, all those who have questions on finance, on economics, I'm very well accompanied by him. Yeah, that's it. Matt, I believe this might be a very good time to let Jeff Christian tell us something about the silver markets.
Yes. Thank you, José and David. We're now going to turn it over to Jeff Christian with the CPM Group. CPM Group is one of the leading independent commodity research and consulting firms globally, Jeff has decades of experience in precious metal markets. Jeff, the floor is yours.
Okay. I want to start by thanking Silver X for inviting me to participate in this. Silver X is a company that we find extremely attractive. It embodies, in our mind, the characteristics that we look for in the future of major silver and gold mining companies going forward. They wanted me to talk about the silver market, and I think really I want to focus on the price. A lot of people have been asking. We've seen an enormous increase in the silver price from $35 an ounce in early 2025 to as high as $121 in January. The price has come off. It has come down to around $61 twice, very briefly, since January. Once in March, after the FOMC said it wasn't going to cut interest rates anytime soon, and once last week.
It has sprung back both times, and it's basically been trading between that $61 low and around $80 or $90 on the high side. Our expectation, our view is that the precious metals and base metals markets are now going into this period that is quite common, which is a summer period of relatively calm prices, where they consolidate. Our expectation is that over the next 2.5 months, the silver price will continue to consolidate in a very volatile way because of the unsettled economic and political environment, both internationally and domestically within a number of countries, including the United States, but not solely the United States. Our expectation is that for the next 2.5 months or so, through August, we might see the silver price primarily trading between, say, $60 and $85 over the next 2.5 months.
Possibility of a spike below $60 is there, and a possibility of a spike above $85 is there. In each instance, in each direction, we would think that those spikes would be relatively brief. Beyond August, our expectation is that the silver price, along with the gold price, will resume the increasing that we've seen over the last several years. The political environment is extremely unsettled. Our expectation is that it will become more unsettled and higher risk and generate increased investor anxiety, as we saw in the period from September of last year through January of this year. That will stimulate investor demand increasing in silver and driving the price higher. We've already seen, just in the first four months of this year, Silver Eagle coins sales by the U.S. Mint are up about 25% from the same period last year.
Last year was an incredibly strong year. We had seen the amount of silver that we estimate investors bought go from about 42 million ounces in 2024 to about 94 million ounces last year. More than doubling. Depending on how the world shakes out in the last four months of this year or in the last half of this year, we wouldn't be surprised to see a further sharp increase in the net silver purchases by investors. Longer term, our expectation is that the price of silver will stay high and rise higher. We do not see the annual average price of silver falling below $50 for the next 10 years. That depends really on the outlook for the political and economic environment of the world.
We are 25- 26 years into a period of time with increased risks, increased uncertainties, and higher anxieties on the part of investors around the world, which has been reflected in increased amounts of silver and gold investment demand. We are in an unprecedented area where we really see these markets completely changing. When people ask us what we think our long-term silver price expectations are, we tell them that we think that the silver price will remain elevated and move higher as long as the political and economic environment that we face on a global basis and in countries like the United States in particular, as long as those exogenous variables are unsettled and high risk, we think that investment demand for silver will remain high and silver prices will remain at historically high levels.
If you can tell me when we might see a reduction in the political and economic and financial and monetary risks and social risks and social anxieties, if you can tell me when we're going to see a reduction in those trends, which have been deteriorating for the last quarter of a century and have gotten much worse in the last two years or so, I will tell you that's when we would see lower silver prices. I don't necessarily see it on the horizon. As I said, our projections going out over the next 10 years have the silver price remaining strong. I can go further if you want, or we can open it up for questions or whatever.
Awesome. Thank you very much, Jeff. We'll pass it on to questions here. First question that we have is, apologies, my Spanish is not very good. This one's for José. How are the relationship with local authorities? How do we feel in light of the upcoming elections for gobiernos regionales in October?
Yeah. Well, two things. We are, as I said, in Huancavelica, a traditional mining area. Not the biggest mining area of Peru in terms of throughput or output, better to say, but certainly a mining area for centuries, as I said. We have two communities on our property. We have very good relationship with both of them. We closed a 15 years deal with one of them. That was two years ago. Three years ago, we closed a 13 years , 12 years deal with the other. Basically, our agreements cover the mine life. As I said, about 60%-65% of our workforce come from the very local communities. We provide jobs not only that, but actually to local companies like all transportation, hospitality, civil works, and the like. We're very proud of having really good relationships with that.
When it comes to regional governments, reality is that regional governments have little to none impact on the mining activity. There is no intervention from regional governments. Having said that, we typically had very good relationships with the last three governments in Huancavelica, and as this gentleman says, there is elections coming out in October. We don't expect any surprises in Huancavelica whatsoever.
Perfect. Thank you, José. This one's for David. David, can you give us a sense of how the $69 million financing is being allocated?
Sure. The primary reason we raised that money was to fund the project. As José mentioned, we raised CAD 15 million at the end of last year almost. Yeah, it was like CAD 20 million in September. We used that to build out the project, and this money that we raised is going to be used primarily for that reason as well.
Awesome. Just to follow up on that, what are the top two or three capital priorities for the rest of 2026? How does management think about balancing the development spend with maintaining a healthy balance sheet?
Sure. Top investments are going to be at the plant, mostly. The plant and the mine, that's where most of the investment is going on. In addition, we're looking to reduce our current liabilities. Both of those things are going to contribute to increased production, increased revenue, better financial results, and de-leveraging our balance sheet. That's it.
Thank you, David. Back to José. This one, I'm curious about the Pampas acquisition. 7,700 hectares never systematically drilled. Strong historical grades. What gave you the conviction to move forward with this asset, and when can we expect the first drill results?
Well, it's a great asset. We got to know that asset pretty much at the time we explored the Huancavelica region, and we found our Recuperada project. We know the owner since 2017- 2018. We've been looking at it. We fell in love with the project. We thought it was a great timing because consolidation is key in terms to extend that value and actually to protect the value of the district from other people acquiring those projects. I am very excited personally because, as I said, it's the highest grade we've seen in Huancavelica. We got our exploration permit about a month or 45 days ago, and we intend to drill this since about October. You are going to be seeing activity hopefully by December. You'll be seeing the first drilling results. I'm excited. I'm very excited. I can't promise it.
I can't promise anything on it, but you'll like Pampas. I'm pretty sure.
Awesome. Thank you, José. This one is for everyone. Silver prices have been very strong. Are you seeing any cost inflation on the ground in Peru, labor, consumables, energy, et cetera? How is that affecting your AISC trajectory as you scale production?
Well, let me make a comment on that. There's been some inflation in Peru, I guess in pretty much every mining jurisdiction. Mainly because of diesel, I would say, and some of the supplies. Having a better mining market makes supplies more expensive. It's just a supply and demand thing. Actually, labor is increasing because it is becoming more difficult to find good labor in Peru because of the increase in mining activity. Obviously, other than diesel, as I said, and labor, we are not having an increase in the electricity price. We have a very competitive price in Peru, actually one of the lowest I know internationally. Extremely competitive. The way it affects the AISC, well, that's tricky. Of course, our cost is going up a little bit in terms of the labor, in terms of the diesel.
At the same time, by increasing production, we are containing that cost, right? When you look at AISC, the AISC is basically the calculation, the ratio in between your total cost of production and the silver equivalent that you produced. Okay? When the silver price goes up, the equivalent grade comes down a little bit. That's why it's tricky. Let's say an ore value of, let's say, a head grade of 7 oz of silver today, equivalent, if silver goes up to $100, becomes 5.5 oz of silver. The AISC looks like it is increasing, but the reality is it's not. For investors, when you look at the AISC, try always look at AISC versus obviously silver price realized. For instance, in Q1, we have realized silver price of $91.50. Okay? That's the gap you want to look at.
If you look further into MD&A, you'll find the cost per ton. Let's say that's the unit cost per processed ton and the like, and you will see how we are managing those costs over time. Okay. I could get further on that. If any investor wants more clarity on it, happy to answer by email with all details and our MD&A that explains that in detail.
I guess I'll make a further comment. Just going back to the inflation aspect. The energy cost is a fairly low portion of our cash costs, energy and diesel. Materials are pretty much holding steady. The place where we're seeing in general in the market the inflation is what José mentioned also is the labor cost. I guess in our case, we have paid a decent wage throughout time, so the inflation isn't hitting us that badly. Yes, we're beginning to see it, but it's not affecting us at the moment.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you, José and David. Jeff, we have a question for you here. There's a lot of noise in the market around industrial silver demand, AI, data centers, solar, EVs. How much of that is secular demand? How much of that secular demand story is already priced into the market, and how much runway do you think is still ahead?
I think there's a lot of runway still ahead. You have seen some of it priced into the market. Solar panel demand continues to be strong. Our expectations are that the use of silver in electrical and electronic applications, which includes AI and EVs and all of the energy support, generation, and transmission that will go with AI and data centers. Our expectation is that the silver use in electronics and electrical applications will be at twice as intense over the next decade as it has been over the last 40 years. If we're looking at a historical growth rate of, say, 2% or 2.2% in silver use in electronics and electrical applications over the last four decades, we're looking at something close to 4% over the next decade. That reflects the increase in silver requirements with all of the electrification that's going on.
I don't think that all of that has been priced into the silver price already. Some of it has. There has been some overenthusiasm on the part of some people in terms of their expectations of data centers and AI and electric vehicles. We do think that there's still a tremendous amount of growth in that demand and that it will be. You're going to see a transition from what was this initial spurt of enthusiasm and then a dose of realism coming in. You're going to see a transition to a more nuanced understanding that this is a long-term growth where you're going to see steady increases in silver demand year after year for a long time to come. I think that that will be very supportive of investor interest in silver and prices.
Awesome. Thank you very much, Jeff. Back to José. The Red Silver Channel vein showed exceptional grades. How does that asset fit into the near-term production plan, and is there a restart timeline that investors should be tracking?
Matt, apologies, but for some reason, the quality of the sound was not good for me. Could you repeat that question?
Yes. Here we were. The Red Silver Channel vein showed exceptional grades. How does that asset fit into the near-term production plan, and is there a restart timeline that investors should be tracking?
Okay. I think I got it. You sound like a robot or something, but I got it. It was a question on Red Silver because it's high grade, when we expect to put that into production and the like. Right? Red Silver, as I said, is the highest grade within the Nueva Recuperada property. It's basically almost 2 million tons with 16 oz of silver grade, so that's 35 million ounces of silver. What we are doing currently is a bulk sample. A small production. We don't call it production, it's a bulk sample. We're trying to bring some of that ore, which is actually two things. First, obviously, silver production at very good silver prices, great margins, but more importantly, we are exploring that asset. We are drilling, and we are developing some of the galleries to get to know those structures a lot better.
Hopefully, that little thing called Red Silver will become an extremely beautiful and attractive silver mine within the next couple of years. You'll be seeing some news in the next quarter. Okay? I hope it answered the question because I didn't really get it, Matt.
David, this is Simon, one of Matt's colleagues. I'll step into the audio. I think Matt's audio has got jumpy there. Can you guys hear me clearly?
All good.
Excellent. Okay, Matt's still here. This is Simon asking a couple of questions until Matt's audio is repaired. Thank you. Yeah, you absolutely got the question on Red Silver there. David, this is a question for you has come in. Silver X has multiple assets now. Apologies, I'm going to do a horrible job of pronouncing the names, but Nueva Recuperada, Red Silver, Blenda Rubia, and Pampas. How does the management team prioritize where to put their time and particularly capital across all of these simultaneously without spreading too thin?
Sure. I guess the key thing to understand there is that those projects that you're mentioning, that we've been talking about today, are all within the same district. We're really focused on one mining district, one mining property, and our management team easily covers these different projects that José is speaking about. Our operating mine, Tangana, which is 23 km from our plant. Plata is 10 km from the plant. Blenda Rubia is 2 km from the plant. The plant is where we have our administrative offices, and Red Silver is right in that region as well. Logistically, it's one of the strengths of the company, quite frankly. We have such a rich district that we're only scratching the surface of, as José likes to say, that it's very efficient to deploy manpower and capital.
Excellent. Thank you. Appreciate the color there. Jeff, back to you for a question here. We've got one here. For investors trying to understand silver's price behavior relative to gold, the gold-silver ratio has been a topic of a lot of discussion. Where do you and CPM see that ratio going, and perhaps what does that signal about silver's relative value today?
Yeah. We don't put a lot of emphasis on the gold-silver ratio. I think the gold-silver ratio really is a good barometer of what investors are thinking. Now, you saw a situation for several years, until last year, where the gold-silver ratio was rising. You saw gold outperforming silver. That wasn't surprising because it reflected the fact that, I guess, more investors were interested in gold in more parts of the world than were interested in silver. You also have central bank buying in the gold market that you don't have in the silver market. Gold is a monetary reserve asset by definition among central banks and central banking operations. Whereas silver is not a monetary asset, it's a financial asset. In addition to that, you had seen a fair amount of two-way traffic on the part of investment demand in silver.
As we were going forward over the last several years, you saw investors continuing to buy large amounts of silver on a growth basis, but you had other investors who had bought silver 2011, 2012, 2021, who were taking advantage of the higher silver prices above $35 to $40 to $45 to sell some of their silver. That ended last summer, and that's when the gold-silver ratio came down because all of a sudden, you had an absence of that reflow of investor silver products. You had continued an increased demand for silver, for new silver purchases by investors, and that's what really caused the silver price to rise in value relative to gold. Going forward, we sort of expect that to continue, and we think that the silver price will remain stronger relative to gold than it has been, for a variety of reasons.
One of the things is that we have now crossed that changeover that we've seen repeatedly in the silver market, where investors who own silver have stopped selling silver. It's been particularly pronounced in India, where there is enormous amounts of silver owned by people who use it as a store of value and a currency. What we've seen over the last year or so is that Indian investors and holders of silver have stopped selling their silver. They're using their rupee to live because the rupee is depreciating, and they're holding onto their silver to see how high the silver price will go. People talk about the tightness of silver supplies and gold supplies in India. A big part of that is not import restrictions, a big part of it is the fact that existing holders of silver and gold in India have stopped selling.
You've also seen that in other parts of the world, and you've seen it historically. If you go back to 1978- 1979, when the silver price went from $5 to $50, the first thing that you saw were that investors who had been continually selling silver for several years stopped selling the silver. The price started rising. Other investors said, "Okay, the price of silver is rising, I'm going to buy into it." The first thing that you saw was those investors who were, if you will, suppressing or depressing the price of silver by selling said, "I think I'm going to wait until tomorrow.
I might get a higher price." Tomorrow came, and the price was higher, and they said, "I think I'm going to wait another day, another week." You saw that in 1979, you saw that in 2002-2005, and you're seeing it again now. It's a very positive thing for silver prices on a long-term basis when you have those gross sales of silver by investors disappear. I think that's one of the reasons why you've seen the silver price outperform gold over the last six or eight months.
Fascinating. Thank you, Jeff. That was a very in-depth answer. Much appreciated. Got a few more questions left. Thank you to everybody on the call for the breadth and depth, and range of questions today. There's some fantastic ones. We try to keep up and spread them around to keep the team challenged. Got another operations one here for the Silver X team. Water availability. Can you give us a little bit of your thoughts and philosophy around water availability, the situation for current and future projects?
Okay. In terms of water availability in our districts, I don't think there is any significant problems or bottlenecks. We are very high up in the Andes, in areas where it rains quite a lot, particularly between October, November and April, May. There is reservoirs of water, including our tailings, so we circulate pretty much all the water that we use for our tailings back to the plant, and we have several sources. Looking at the growth, which is basically 3x the current production or a bit more, there is no bottlenecks that we've identified in terms of the use of water. Okay? Hopefully, that answers your question. There is no dry, say, seasons up there in the Andes.
Excellent. Thank you, José. Got quite a few questions around Tangana. I'm going to try and merge these into one. Tangana, how are we looking at the permitting at the moment? Where are you with the permitting, and what's the timeline for future production? When do you expect to hit 1,500 tpd?
Well, the Tangana is in production, just to underline that. We're hoping to get the permit to get to 1,500 tons a day, hopefully in the second half, or let's say during 2027. It'd be actually happening the second half of 2027 the latest. Basically, within a year to 15 months. Okay? At that point, we'll begin the construction of a new mill at the Tangana mining unit.
Thank you. This is quite a good question, I think as a wrap-up, so I ask for everyone's thoughts perhaps here, but Silver X has come a long way in a short period of time. If you had to distill down for investors and our audience on the call today, what's the most important thing that you'd want them to take away and make sure they understand about where the company is headed?
That's a great question as a summary as well. I think that the summary on Silver X is we built a very significant resource over the last few years, and we actually took the risk or the chance of building a mine in difficult times with little availability of capital. We made it. We made it. Now we are enjoying the benefits of gold, silver prices, good metal prices, and a good environment for mining as well. I think you are going to see Silver X growing at a relatively fast pace over the next two years. We say we're trying to multiply this by 3x in terms of production, and you'll continue to see a great district shaping up, a great geology shaping up. I think Silver X will become, as I said in the beginning, a mid-tier producer. You'll see great things happening.
Best is yet to come. This is probably the perfect time to invest on smaller producers, because I do believe personally that we are in a market for producers, and over the next few years, we're going to continue being in a market for producers, particularly in strategic commodities such as silver. I think it's a great timing for us, and I hope that when we're in 2030 or 2035, we can say great things about how Silver X developed over time.
Excellent. Thank you, José. What I'd like to do then is, as we wrap up now, I'd like to just get a final thought from everybody today. Jeff, any final thoughts that you'd like to just leave with the audience today from your perspective on silver generally? Anything you'd like to just drop into our minds as we head off?
Yeah. One of the things that is happening with the way CPM Group thinks about silver, as I said, 25- 26 years ago, we said that we thought we were entering a new era for gold and silver in terms of investment demand and the price, and that this era would develop over decades, and it wouldn't be like a one or two-year deal the way it was in the past. We've seen that over the last quarter-century. Now, over the last year or so, we're looking at the markets again and saying that the whole system seems to be shifting into a higher level price-wise and investment demand-wise, and gold and silver seem to becoming much more important to more people around the world. I think that's good for the price, and it's good for the overall market.
Thank you, Jeff. Same question to you, David. Any final thoughts for the audience from the CFO seat?
Sure. Thanks, Simon. I think it's important that folks realize that we are real focused on meeting our production goals and growing the company organically, inorganically also potentially. What we are very tuned into is doing so on a profitable basis. We're very focused on controlling our costs as well, and improving our margins, and providing a solid investment for all of our investors.
Excellent. Thank you. Mr. García, final thoughts from you from the CEO seat.
Thank you, Simon. I already said that. Keep an eye on Silver X. I think it's going to be fun times over the next few quarters. Going to release production in early July. Going to release financials likely in early August. Keep an eye on the company for those retail investors looking for silver companies. Keep an eye on Silver X. Try compare with other peers. I think we're very well positioned, and you'll have a good time. Reach out to us if you have further questions. I think you can find our email address on every presentation on our website. We personally take that. We reply to every email. Yeah, further questions, please reach to David or myself.
Excellent. Well, in that case, I'll say thank you so much to Jeff for joining us today. Thank you, David. [Non-English content ], José. On behalf of Alliance, thank you to everybody again for a very informative session today. I appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Look forward to keep you updated on Silver X's progress. Thank you, our audience, and have a great day. You can disconnect at your convenience.
Thank you, Jeff. Great having you.
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I hope it was good for you.
Amazing.