Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Magna Mining Inc. first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one, on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paul Fowler, Senior Vice President. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Before getting started, I'd like to mention that we may make forward-looking statements or provide forward-looking information on this call in accordance with applicable securities laws. Please review our most recent corporate presentation available on our website for cautionary language regarding the use of and reliance on forward-looking statements, which may be materially different from the actual results obtained by the company and for the risk factors applicable to such forward-looking statements that could cause actual results to be materially different from the statements that are set out in the company's annual MD&A. Any scientific or technical commentary on this call today has been reviewed and approved by David King, our SVP Exploration, who is a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101.
With respect to non-IFRS performance measures that are referred to on this call, please refer to the reconciliation to measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting standards of the company's most recently filed MD&A. All figures are in CAD, unless otherwise noted. Our press release, MD&A, and financial statements are available on SEDAR+ and our corporate website. With us today on the call, alongside myself, are Magna Mining CEO Jason Jessup, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Huffman, Chief Financial Officer Scott Gilbert, and Senior Vice President of Exploration Dave King. Following formal remarks from management, we will open the lines for further questions, and I would now like to introduce Magna Mining CEO Jason Jessup to present our quarterly results.
Good morning. Q1 2025 was a transformative quarter for our company. On February 28th, 2025, we completed the acquisition of a portfolio of base metal assets located in the Sudbury Basin from KGHM International, including the producing McCreedy West mine Copper, the Levack and Podolsky mines, which are permitted and on care and maintenance, as well as five exploration properties. The closing of this acquisition takes us from an exploration and development company to Canada's newest copper, nickel, and precious metals mining company. We also closed a CAD 33.5 million financing through the issuance of a CAD 23.5 million convertible debenture and a CAD 10 million equity raise. We were pleased to be able to welcome several new institutional investors to our capital structure and retain the support and commitment of our cornerstone investor, Dundee Corporation.
This financing puts us in a position to be able to invest in the underground capital and operating development at our McCreedy West mine to get it to an optimal, sustainable production level by 2026. I would now like to hand it over to COO Jeff Huffman to present an overview of our operational performance in Q1.
Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everybody. Subsequent to the transaction close on February 28, 2025, McCreedy West produced 790,000 lbs of copper equivalent payable, which included 631,000 lbs from the 700 copper zone and 159,000 lbs from the intermain nickel zone. The total ore processed was 20,388 tons at an average grade of 3.01 copper equivalent. In March, we made some organizational changes and started to get a detailed understanding of the mine plan in its current form. We have made good progress in strategizing and communicating what is going to drive improvement to the mine plan and ultimately realize value creation for our business. At current prices, the decision was made to cease planning towards any further intermain nickel production areas and focus on the 700 copper zone. We will mine the remaining intermain stopes that are already into the production cycle.
However, we will begin diverting focus towards the 700 copper zone in March. Also, in March, immediate focus was to increase mine development output along with contractor management and assessing our resources, including labor and mobile equipment. Magna's management team was also able to perform an analysis of general business functions with respect to processes, business routines, and reporting structures. Many initiatives commenced immediately in March towards improving the functions of the business, including improving overall culture and ensuring goals and key performance indicators were identified, communicated to the workforce, and are being used to improve day-to-day operations. I would now like to hand over to our Chief Financial Officer, Scott Gilbert, for the financial highlights of the quarter.
Thanks, Jeff. In accordance with the acquisition method of accounting, the acquisition cost of the KGHM assets was allocated to the underlying assets acquired and liabilities assumed based upon their estimated fair values at the date of acquisition. The preliminary purchase price allocation resulted in a bargain purchase gain of $36.6 million. The allocation is preliminary, and the fair values are subject to change as there has not been sufficient time to complete the valuation process. The valuation work must be finalized within 12 months following the acquisition date. Mineral properties, plant and equipment, exploration and evaluation assets, reclamation obligations, deferred revenue, and deferred taxes are all subject to change. Any adjustments made will be recognized retrospectively, and comparative information will be revised.
The mine generated CAD 0.3 million in cash margin during the month of March 2025, with cash costs of CAD 5.98 per pound or $4.16 U.S., all in sustaining costs of CAD 6.65 per pound or $4.63 U.S. For Q1 2025, the company had operating cash outflow of CAD 2.6 million and free cash outflow of CAD 10.9 million. Our cash balance at March 31, 2025, was CAD 38.3 million. The company raised CAD 33.5 million of proceeds through the private placement, which closed on March 5th, 2025, which included CAD 23.5 million from convertible debentures and CAD 10 million from equity. In connection with the acquisition of the KGHM International assets, the company entered into a letter of credit facility with Fédération de Caisse Desjardins du Québec, pursuant to which the company can obtain letters of credit having an aggregate maximum face amount of CAD 12 million.
At March 31st, 2025, the company had drawn down CAD 10.3 million under the LC facility. On March 31st, 2025, PNCI, the subsidiary of the company, entered into a factoring agreement with Desjardins. The aggregate amount factored under the agreement at any one time is limited to CAD 24 million. At March 31st, 2025, the company has not factored any of the receivables. I will now hand the call back to Jason for some final comments on the quarter.
Thanks, Scott. I'll now give a brief overview of current activities at McCreedy West, Levack, and Crean Hill, followed by a question-and-answer session and then closing remarks. Out of McCreedy West mine, we're focused on optimizing the current operation, and the key to this optimization is increased underground development footage and sustaining capital investment at the mine. The previous owner of this mine did not view McCreedy West as a core asset; therefore, it did not receive the capital and attention that we believe it deserved. I believe that we have the operations leadership, the mining and maintenance talent, and the technical expertise to unlock the potential in this mine. The rest of this year will be focused on underground mine development for long-term sustainability and providing access to the unmined western extension of the 700 copper zone. Diamond drilling at McCreedy West.
In Q1 focused on production support, primarily in the 1010 and the 1150 levels of the 700 copper zone. Two drill rigs are active in the area, defining remnant mineralization adjacent to historical stoping, which will support detailed mine planning. As development progresses this year, it will provide new diamond drill platforms to drill holes outside of existing resources. I would expect that the first results from this drilling will be reported in Q4 this year. The Levack mine was operated by KGHM International until 2019 and is currently under care and maintenance. There are two surface diamond drill rigs active at Levack, and a third drill was mobilized to site in late April. The 2025 drilling program at Levack is designed to support Magna's internal Levack mine restart study and exploration for new footwall and contact-style deposits.
Since the end of March, drilling at Levack has been targeting the near-surface keel footwall copper zone and deep footwall copper targets in previously underexplored areas of the Levack mine. The drilling done in the keel zone has provided Magna with more certainty in the orientation of the vein trend and provided fresh core, which can be used for metallurgical testing as required. We are now able to move away from the known keel zone mineralization and begin expansion drilling with the goal of growing the resource closer to surface and to the east towards the main ore body. Now moving on to Crean Hill. In Q1 of 2025, we continue to advance engineering and technical work at our Crean Hill project.
The second half of 2025 will be moving forward with power engineering, further commercial discussions, and water pretreatment design and installation activities as we continue to advance that project. I will now open up the line for questions.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question today comes from Brandon Gaspar with SCP Resource Finance. Please go ahead.
Hi, Dens. Good update here today. I was just wondering about maybe a little bit more detail on the initiatives that you guys have initiated since taking over the asset in terms of development rates and costs or throughput. Maybe you could just touch on that, sort of what were they doing before when KGHM was operating it and how you guys improved it already.
Jeff, you want to take that one?
Yeah, absolutely. Brandon, thanks for the question. Great question. As Jason said, development has really been the focus as far as key performance indicators and just understanding resources. From a labor perspective, the mine operated up until we took over in March on a shift schedule that only allowed 12 out of 14 shifts to be manned up at the mine. Nobody was working within the underground McCreedy West operation on Saturday nights and Sunday nights. We moved to maximize just coverage there by changing the shift schedule immediately. Due to the fact we're in a unionized environment, we did have some dealings with the workforce and the union to make sure that that was a smooth transition, which happened in April.
In order to do that as well, we started to recruit to fill more positions as we spread those shift schedules out across a complete sort of 24/7 coverage. Lots going on with respect to the labor workforce with equipment as well, doing an analysis essentially of what we had for development and production gear. A lot of the equipment is quite aged. We have moved on our fleet management strategy. In March, I would say we moved to understanding the fleet management strategy and putting that strategy together, and we will begin to execute that in Q2 with some new equipment coming into the mine. As far as output, as Jason alluded to, this was a non-core asset, not a whole lot of development being put into the operation historically. We moved to increase. I believe we started development on March 7.
We increased immediately by 10%-15% on just average daily output and will continue into Q4 to increase that. Lots of initiatives going, that is just specifically development, general business, essentially every department. Brandon, we have got working on business improvement initiatives, lots identified, and yeah, lots going on.
Excellent. Thanks for that. What does steady state sort of look like for you guys by the end of the year in terms of throughput? The implied tons per day by this one month, obviously, is not that 600-700 tons per day for the quarter that was when you guys took it over. Is steady state towards the second half year still in that sort of above 1,000 tons targeted?
Yeah. I mean, yeah, Jason, I'll just maybe put it across to you. I'm not 100% sure how forward-looking we want to discuss on this call.
Sure. Yeah. That was going to be part of my answer. We still see a great potential in increasing throughput, but we also recognize there is a very big importance on quality. It is a balance between getting the overall tonnage to the optimal level where we can maximize revenues and really maximize profits. That comes down to both grade and tons. To answer your question, I do believe we are on track to produce an average of more than 1,000 tons per day. What that final number looks like is really going to depend on the grade, and we still have more work to do in diamond drilling on that, and this will be a continual optimization out to the end of the year.
Understood. My last question is just about the exploration that you have planned. Is there plans to do a resource update after all this drilling is done, and sort of when would you look to do that?
At this time, I can't give firm guidance on when we will put out another resource update at the McCreedy West mine. We will be looking at that in Q4. Our ambition, our hope is to be in a position where we'll be able to give some guidance and perhaps an updated resource in Q1 of 2026. At this time, that's not certain. It could be later.
Okay. Thanks, guys. I'll leave the questions to everyone else. Cheers.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one to join the question queue. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jason Jessup for any closing remarks.
Thank you. Again, Q1 was a transformative quarter for our company, and we continue to execute on our strategy for growth around three pillars: production, exploration, and acquisitions of non-core assets. We are planning on providing some guidance as to the production and costs for the second half of the year sometime in early Q3. We'll be continuing our exploration and infill drilling for the rest of the year, and we'll provide results on a regular basis. We're also expecting to close the previously announced property acquisition from NorthX, which will grow our exploration property portfolio in Sudbury quite substantially. We have uplifted recently to the OTCQB from the OTCQB to the OTCQX and plan to uplift to the TSX from the TSX Venture later this year.
I believe that over the next two quarters, we will begin to demonstrate the impact of the changes and optimization initiatives we are currently undertaking at McCreedy West, and this will set up Magna Mining for a strong 2026. Thank you very much.
This brings to a close today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.