Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever this finds you. Welcome to the 88th Emerging Growth Conference and day two of our virtual investor conference, I'm Anna Berry. Today we're running until 5:00 P.M. Eastern. Now, when we switch to the next company, you might see a black screen for a moment. Don't go anywhere. That's just us moving over to the next presenter, and our platform does work best on Google Chrome, so if you're watching from an Apple device, you have to hit the play button to start the session. Now, during each company's presentation, you can submit questions through the webcast module, and we will attempt to address as many of these as possible at the end of the presentation. Now, all of our conferences are uploaded to the Emerging Growth Conference YouTube channel, so please subscribe, youtube.com/emerginggrowthconference.
After today's event, you'll be redirected to the registration page for our next conference in the new year. Please stay on or come back to reserve your spot early. Happy to begin with Agnico Eagle Mines. They trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AEM and on the TSX under the symbol AEM. It's Canada's largest mining company and the second largest gold producer in the world. It produces precious metals from operations in Canada, Australia, Finland, and Mexico, and has a pipeline of high quality exploration and development projects. Happy to welcome the VP of Investor Relations, Jean-Marie Clouet. Welcome to the program today, Jean-Marie.
Thank you, Anna, and good morning. It's a pleasure to talk to everyone listening in today. I'll be presenting the story of Agnico and discuss why Agnico we think is very well positioned to continue delivering superior leverage to gold. If we look at the gold sector, actually, it's having its moment in the sun, being one of the best performing asset classes in 2025. Gold itself has risen over 60% year- to- date, and it's really reaching record levels. The rise has been driven by geopolitical uncertainty, by central bank buying, by the high debt levels around the world, and the push for the de-dollarization of the world. So again, record levels at this point in time with gold over $4,200 an ounce.
What we've seen, it's really a strong performance that builds on all the strong performance in 2024 and reflects the enduring role of gold as a safe haven, and we believe there is still upside coming into 2026. Looking at the gold equities themselves, they actually outperform gold this year with share performance of over 100%, and this really demonstrates the interest from investors looking for additional leverage to gold. Based on this, I'm going to really just mention that there are some forward looking statements in this presentation. So please be aware, and I'll start talking about Agnico Eagle. If you look at Agnico Eagle, this is a high quality, low risk, senior gold producer. As mentioned, we're the second largest gold producer in the world, and we've built that over the last 20 years. Agnico has 10 operating assets located in five regions and four countries.
We have a simple and manageable business that relies on regional concentration, providing synergies that really benefit us in terms of building a reliable, consistent business. We have approximately 85% of our production and value coming out of Canada from our three regions of Quebec, Ontario, and Nunavut. Each region has the potential to produce over one million ounces per year for decades to come, so providing us with a strong basis for our production profile for the next years. We're also located in Finland. Kittilä is the largest gold mine in Europe. It has also a very long life. Its cash flow generating is producing over $1 million of free cash flow per year. Similarly, in Australia, we have one asset, Fosterville, located in Victoria State.
Fosterville is probably the best gold exploration option in the world, generating also close to $1 million of free cash flow per year. Finally, we're in Mexico. We do have one operating asset, the Pinos Altos operation. It's a mature asset coming close to end of life, but we have in place a local team that's recognized for its mine building, operating, and social acceptance capability, and that really will be building our next phase in the country. As you can see, we have a differentiated strategy. Our strategy is regional. We look at regions based on two criteria. First, we are in regions that have the geological potential for multiple mines over multiple decades. We do that because we believe that's how you become good, and that's how you create significant value. Second, we are in regions that have political stability.
We believe that's important to be able to operate those mines over multiple decades, as it takes really years to discover, build, and operate an asset. So thinking about it, like, you know, why does that matter? Why do we think that regional approach is key? If you think about what makes a good miner, there's a few things that you need to think about. Do you know the ground better? So do you know the juniors that are in the region? Do you have a workforce in place? Do you have relationships with local contractors? Do you have suppliers? Do you know the suppliers in the region? Do you have actually an established supply chain and economies of scale? Do you have strong relationships with the communities, with the governments, with the Indigenous communities? Have you built a mine in those regions?
Do you have infrastructure in place that you can leverage? So this is what we have in the regions where we are, and we believe it does provide you a competitive advantage. And this is really our business and what we believe we've been able to really outperform a lot of our peers. So if you think about Canada, we're bigger than the next eight companies in terms of gold production in Canada. We've been there for decades. We have an established relationship with the employer of choice. We have lower turnover, and we have the ability really to generate strong value in that region. And this is true in a lot of the regions where we operate. So does that work? It does, demonstrably so. If you look at how we've generated value over the last 20 years, there's really two approaches that we look at.
We're trying to increase your exposure to gold on a per share basis because that's what you carry. It's like how much additional value can we generate on a per share basis? And second, can we deliver leverage to gold as the gold price goes up? Looking at the gold exposure per share, if you look on the left hand side, we've gone over the last 20 years from one operating mine to 10 operating mines, actually. Now we had one mine close at the end of 2024. We've gone from a production of 250,000 ounces per year to a production of close to 3.5 million ounces per year. So an increase of about 14 times. But that's not really what you care about. What you care about are the next three metrics. You know, have we been able to generate value per share?
Our gold production per share has increased by about three times. That's difficult to do. Our EBITDA per share has gone up 10 times. Our dividend that we've been paying consistently quarter after quarter for the last 42 years has gone up 50 times. This is really how we create value for you, how we add additional production. So over the last 20 years, on a compound basis, we've increased production per share for about 4%-5% per year. That's impressive. And so when you look at the bottom table, that explains why we've been able to outperform the gold equity index by about twice as much. We've outperformed the S&P 500, and we've outperformed the gold price. So that's really how we create value over the long term. Looking at the leverage to gold, we've delivered reliable and stable production quarter- over- quarter.
We've maintained our cost under control. By doing so, we've been able to expand our margins to over 60% as the gold price increases. That matters. That's how we really return the value to shareholders. If you think about it, like over the last year, gold price has gone up over $1,200 an ounce. Our costs have gone up about $10 an ounce, so really, we've delivered the margin. We've delivered about 99% of the gold price increase to our investors. This is how we perform, t his is how we deliver. S o over the last two years, we've really generated a lot of cash, and we've strengthened our financial position, and we've achieved record stock prices, as you would expect at these record gold prices, so since the start of the year, we've paid down the debt.
We've reduced our net debt position of about $200 million per year to a net cash position as at the end of September of $2.2 billion, and we expect to be close to $3 billion net cash position at the end of the year, so we will strengthen our financial position. We'll continue to do so. We believe it is a competitive advantage in this sector to have the stronger balance sheet in a sector that is cyclical, that is capital intensive, and especially in a period where we are building an organic pipeline that will support our production profile for decades to come and where we also would like to remain opportunistic through the cycle.
If we look at our capital allocation, with this strong performance, we're in a fortunate position to be able to do a bit of everything while maintaining a balanced and disciplined approach to capital allocation. As mentioned, we've strengthened our balance sheet position, anticipating to be in a net cash position of about $3 billion at year end. We've also continued to pay a sustainable dividend, as we've done consistently over the last 42 years. We've paid $600 million year- to- date, and we should pay about $800 million on a full year basis. We've also increased returns for shareholders through our share buyback program. We've returned about $300 million year- to- date. We expect to do another $200 million in the fourth quarter.
That would bring us to about $500 million, and an overall return to investors this year of close to $1.3 billion, so close to a third of our free cash flow generated. This is what we're targeting. We're also reinvesting in the business to a level of about $2.1 billion in sustaining growth CapEx as we continue to grow. We expect to accelerate some of that reinvestments in the coming year as we have what we believe is the best pipeline we've ever had that can really generate significant value and value per share in the coming years, and so we continue to do so in a safe manner and doing it responsibly in the communities where we operate. S o moving to our projects, a gain, we believe those five key projects, key value drivers, as we call them, will move the needle in the coming years.
On an aggregate basis, these projects can add close to 1.3-1.5 million ounces of annual production in the next five to eight years. This won't be fully additive. There will be some production coming off, especially if you think about our Meadowbank operation in Nunavut and Pinos Altos operation in Mexico, which are close to end of life. However, like with these five projects, we see the potential to grow production by about 20% over the next five to eight years. And more importantly, again, we'll be able to increase our production per share about 20% as all these projects will be self funded. If you look at the projects themselves, Detour Lake and Canadian Malartic, those are the largest open-pit gold mines in Canada.
They have the potential to grow to about 1 million ounces of gold producing per year, gold production per year, and they have decades of mine life ahead of them. Those are world-class assets, unique. They have green electricity. They have the infrastructure, the people in place. So those are simple expansions that will provide strong returns at current gold price and even really when we approve those projects at a gold price of $900 an ounce. Upper Beaver, that's a project located in our Kirkland Lake camp close to our Macassa mine, about 20 km. So it benefits from synergies, from, again, having infrastructure in place, from having our workforce and expertise in place. It has the potential to add about 210,000 ounces of gold per year starting in 2031 and contribute to the production increase in Ontario from about 1 million ounces to 1.5 combined with Detour Lake.
This is an asset that we're advancing in terms of the exploration. We're advancing the ramp, the shaft, and we think we'll be able to approve it in 2027 and start producing in 2031. Hope Bay, that's located in Nunavut. This asset has the potential to produce close to 400,000 ounces of gold per year and maintain the platform, so the Nunavut platform, to a production level of 1 million ounces per year for decades to come. We've had tremendous exploration results over the last two years, and we're getting ready to announce construction in the coming year. Finally, San Nicolas. This is a joint venture with Teck located in Zacatecas in Mexico, one of the best states in terms of geological potential.
We're currently advancing the feasibility study, and we're waiting for the permit, and we hope we'll be able to sanction it also in the coming year. S o again, overall, those five projects provide strong risk-adjusted returns. Risk-adjusted because we either have simple expansions of existing assets or they're mines that are being built in regions where we already operate, h ave expertise, and have a competitive advantage in place, and so we're really looking forward to be able to advance these projects over the next five to eight years, and I'll go a bit more in detail for the main ones, so for Detour Lake, Canadian Malartic, and Hope Bay. Detour Lake is the largest open pit gold mine in Canada, producing close to 700,000 ounces of gold per year.
If you look at this long section, mined out in brown, you can see about 8 million ounces have been mined to date. In orange below, that's the pit reserve. That's what is in the plans to be mined over the next all the way to 2054. It's about 19 million ounces, and it's really all in place. Below, in light blue, that's a pit resource as close to another 18 million ounces. If we include that in the production profile, it would extend the mine life to 2070. And then we've also, through exploration, identified significant potential underground below the pit and to the west. And we've provided a pathway really to bring this operation to 1 million ounces per year. This is the way you can generate value here. The mill is close to capacity at 28 million tonnes per year.
We think we can increase it to 29 million tonnes per year. But the key thing to bring value forward is to bring some higher grade forward. And to do so, we're looking to add an underground component and replacing about 12,000 tonnes per day of open pit ore at 0.9 grams per tonne with underground ore at 2.3 grams per tonne. By doing so, we go increasing production from 700,000 ounces per year to 1 million ounces. We think we can get there in 2030, 2031. And when we're at the 1 million ounce per year production for the next 14 years, that asset would be generating over $2 billion of free cash flow per year at current gold prices. So an incredible asset, long life, support for our production profile for years to come. Moving on to Odyssey. This is located in Quebec.
This mine, the initial discovery was in 1923, so over 100 years ago. It has been in operations as an underground mine in the 1950s to the 1980s. It was reopened as an open pit in 2010, so that's what you see in brown. The open pit operation is coming to an end close to 2028. At that point, we'll be fully transitioned underground, so the proposition here is a bit different than Detour. We do have currently an open pit mine in operation that runs at about 60,000 tonnes per day at about one gram per tonne, producing close to 600,000 ounces per year. We are transitioning to a full underground operation. It will be the largest underground gold operation in Canada and operating at about 19,000 tonnes per day, but at three grams per tonne.
So the gold production overall is expected to remain fairly stable at around 550,000 ounces per year. But by doing that transition by 2029, what we'll do is we'll liberate some excess mill capacity to a level of about 40,000 tonnes per day. And the opportunity there is to find new ore sources to fill in that mill and increase the production from 550,000 ounces per year to 1 million ounces per year. How do we do this? First, if you look at the underground deposit itself, it's grown to over 20 million ounces over the last eight years. We've established, we're developing the underground mine with a ramp with a shaft. Again, that will produce about 19,000 tonnes per day.
Because of the size of the deposit and because it keeps on extending, we believe we can add a second shaft, a second mining front that would add about 10,000 tonnes per day and contribute about 220,000 ounces to the underground operation. So the key here is the geological potential is still very much alive. We have 29 drill rigs operating this year and extending this deposit to the east, to the west, and at depth. So continuing to expand the potential there. We're also expanding within the camp itself, the 16.5 km strike that we own, and where we believe there's other opportunities to keep on finding new ore sources. If we look at how do we get to 1 million ounce, so we have the first shaft, as we mentioned, that will sustain operation about 550,000 ounces. The second shaft could bring us another 220,000 ounces.
That probably will be around 2032, 2033. And then within the region, we have satellite opportunities that we can add to our mill. The Marban deposit that we acquired this year, that would be a satellite open pit located about 15 km away from our mill. We could truck the ore there. We're currently drilling the deposit to define the optimum pit shape, and then we'll have to permit it. We think we'll be able to bring production probably around 2032, 2033 also, adding another 15,000 tonnes per day at the mill and adding about 130,000 ounces to the production. And then finally, we also have the Wasamac project. That's a satellite underground project located about 100 km away from the mill. It could operate about 3,000 tonnes per day at about 100,000 ounces per year.
So combining those four elements, we'll be able to get to 1 million ounces close to that 2033 year timeline. There are other opportunities within the regions, as you see in this map. In purple are the land patches that we own and where we probably have the ability to keep on drilling and finding additional deposits. So a lot of potential in this asset. We're working towards providing some more concrete figures as we're advancing the studies and the exploration, and we're hoping to provide an update to the market in early 2027. And then moving on to the third project, Hope Bay, again, located in Nunavut. The challenge in Nunavut, as always, has been the high fixed costs. The logistical requirements are fairly unique. You can bring material only by sea barge for about two months a year.
You really need to plan well in advance for your consumables, for your equipment. You need to plan for two years in advance. You bring everything a year in advance, and that implies a lot of fixed costs. So to be able to make this project economic, we believe you need to be at a level of over 350,000 ounces per year. And that has been the focus in Hope Bay. We really want to be able to prove economics of a project over 400,000 ounces per year for the next 10 years and returns over 15% to really go ahead and build the project. So over the last three years, we've really focused on exploration. We've been able to prove sufficient mineralization and three mining fronts that would be able to support that under 400,000 ounces per year.
Over the last two years, we really focused on the Patch 7 area where we've added about 1.7 million ounces in resources over the last two years. We're at a level now where we're close to completing our study and being able to provide that update in early 2026 and where we'll really be able to advance the construction. We're advancing some of the surface infrastructure just to be ready for construction. We're upgrading our camps. We're upgrading our power supply, our port. We're in a good position really to go ahead and move ahead with this project. Hope Bay, again, will be able to support the Nunavut platform, close to 1 million ounces per year for decades to come. Between Ontario, where we have Detour, that will be 1 million ounces plus Upper Beaver, another 200,000, and Macassa, another 300,000.
Ontario will be at 1.5 million ounces per year. Quebec with Canadian Malartic itself will be at 1 million ounces with the addition of LaRonde and Goldex. We'll also be above that, above the 1.5 million ounces, and then Nunavut at 1 million ounces. We have a very strong basis in Canada to continue supporting our production platform for the years to come. To conclude, I really want to mention that we'll stick to the strategy that has worked. We're going to continue to be in safe jurisdictions. We're going to play off our strengths, so our regional competitive advantage. We're going to be leveraging this infrastructure as much as we can as that provides the best low risk returns in the business. We'll treat our people well.
We'll treat our communities well, our indigenous communities well, and really continue to do what we've been doing really well so far. So it's a business that makes sense. We've got the best pipeline that we've had in years, and we're really looking to continue advancing it and sustaining our margin of over 60% per year. So really a business that's running very well and has a lot of potential to go on in the future. And on that, I'll pass on for any questions.
All right. Thank you so much, Jean-Marie. Yes, a few questions for you. Starting with Mike, what are your mine life estimates on your properties?
So we have about 53 million ounces in mineral reserves. So combined, we have over 15 years of mine life. Now, depending on the assets, like some are extremely long life, you look at Detour, we're past 2050. Canadian Malartic, we're past 2040, and probably once we upgrade our reserves and resources, it'll be past 2050. Kittilä over 17 years mine life. So we have very long life assets, which is key really in terms of giving us the opportunity to build our platform organically and not being under the gun really to do some acquisitions. We really can be opportunistic as we evaluate projects and look at how to fill in the pipeline in the future.
Brayden wants to know how many operating mines versus development stage projects do you manage, and are you still exploring and/or developing other sites?
We're operating 10 mines, but importantly, the way we look at it, it's through our regionals. We have five regions that we manage, and that's really how we maintain a simple and manageable business. We have those five key projects that we talked about. That's really our key focus going forward, but we also have additional optionality within the portfolio that we're working on, and we hope to be able to bring to the market in the coming years.
Jordan wants to know, what are your recovery rates, and how have they changed with the metallurgical improvements?
So that depends on the projects. We're typically between 90%-95%, but it's going to depend on the project, on the grade. High grade operations tend to have a much higher recovery, lower grade, lower recovery, but we're in that level. We're focused a lot on continuous improvement, on increasing our throughputs, increasing our recoveries year- over- year. That's part of what has been our success over the last few years.
And Jayden asks, What are your all-in sustaining costs per ounce? And do you see any geopolitical or political factors that can change this?
Yeah. So our All-in sustaining costs, it's close to $300 per ounce. So we're really a leader in the sector. We're easily $200 lower than our senior peers. The benefit for investing in Agnico is actually our low geopolitical risk. We're with 85% of our production coming out of Canada, also being located in Finland, Australia, Mexico. We are really a low risk, and it's really one of the benefits. And we're seeing really that our ability to operate, being in places where the rule of law is maintained, and we're not concerned about that ability to maintain our operations in place.
Perfect. And how sensitive are your operations to gold price fluctuations?
Yeah. So we're definitely sensitive to gold. We've seen with the margin expansion, with gold price going up, our margin has gone from 50% to over 60% over the last year. So for every increase of $100 in the gold price, we generate an additional $250 million of free cash flow. And that's really the key metric there.
George asks, how do you engage with local communities, and you mentioned this, and the indigenous groups?
Any operation, any projects require the involvement of the indigenous community. We have indigenous relationship groups at each of our sites, at each of our regions. We have IBAs in place. We have impact benefit agreements with the communities in which we operate. And we actually, Agnico is the largest payer to Indigenous communities in Canada by far.
Wonderful. And last questions for you, Jean-Marie. Aiden asks, what are the next major catalysts that could materially change production and/or valuation?
Yeah, I think the key ones. So the five key projects are really the main ones. The ones pertinent to highlight are Detour Lake and Canadian Malartic. Again, those are world-class assets. They have the ability to produce over one million ounces per year. There's about five operations in the world that do that. There's only one in the Western Hemisphere. That's the Nevada Joint Venture between Barrick and Newmont in Nevada. So once we have those two assets operating, that will have a long mine life where you have a strong, what's important there is operations that have a long life that have the ability to generate significant free cash flow year- over- year and have the ability to benefit from several cycles in the gold price.
Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the conference. We wish you a very successful start to the new year.
Thank you very much, and have a good day, everyone.
Thank you. All right, everyone. We'll be right back.
Bye.
Welcome back, everyone. Next, we have Highland Copper Company. They trade on the OTCQB under the symbol HDRSF and on the TSXV under the symbol HI. They're a Canadian company focused on exploring and developing copper projects in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Happy to welcome its CEO, Barry O'Shea. Welcome to the conference today, Barry. We're looking forward to hearing your presentation and some updates.
Thanks, Anna. It's really nice to be here. Appreciate you guys hosting, and yeah, listen, it's nice to be here off the back of some really strong news internally. At the end of the day, execution is what drives development companies, and certainly, I'll look to demonstrate some of the great advances that we've made in the last three or four months. Of course, when you have announcements in three or four months' time, of course, that's the back end of two to three years of great work, so I look forward to sharing that. It's also good to be here with the tailwinds that U.S. domestic copper developers are enjoying, and I'll walk through the factors that I think are setting companies like us up for development in the near term.
I think at the end of the day, Highland's critical advantage is its near dated status of the project. You can see even on our front slide here, we're targeting a construction decision in 2026 and with a goal then of production in 2029. You'll know that with the backdrop of a 20-odd year cycle from first drill hole to development in the U.S., this positions us incredibly well. Just at a high level, I guess I do want to reflect just how advanced the Copperwood project is. Arguably, it's one of the most advanced copper developers in the U.S. What does that mean? It means we have our feasibility study complete. We have all of our permits in hand, one of the most important de-risking measures that a company can take.
We've actually initiated our early site work, and I'll take you through that to some degree. We've awarded all detailed engineering contracts, most importantly, our process plant and mine engineering to DRA Global, so a very reputable partner, and all of this is what leads us to a potential construction decision in 2026. If we're fortunate, then we would then start construction in early 2027 and with a two year construction window, be producing copper in the 2029 timeframe, and that's really important when you think about the importance of copper in the short term in the U.S. and certainly funding available from the federal government and how it's prioritizing projects that are near dated and ready. I want to briefly talk about what I call that U.S. jurisdictional advantage.
I mean, you have seen a whole host of news flow in recent months and over the past year of support that is coming for critical mineral projects in the U.S. That support is coming in part because the U.S. knows that it's behind. Obviously, it takes a long time to develop projects in the U.S. and arguably relative to other countries, certainly China. The U.S. has been somewhat on the back foot, but really taking key steps now, both to support permitting and speed of permitting. That is less relevant to us given our permitted status, but more importantly, putting funding in to help short dated projects really come to development here in the near term. Broadly, when you look at this region, obviously looking to support Michigan and not the U.S. downstate, there's the likes of Ford and GM that need copper.
This is a historic mining district that supports mining and enjoys and understands it. Obviously, it's private land that we operate on, so we get the benefit of state permitting, and I'll walk you through that. But as I say, most importantly really is that access to capital. We've seen EXIM announce $100 billion of investments coming into infrastructure, mining, and critical minerals here in the near dated future. One of our key shareholders, Orion, recently announced a $1.9 billion consortium partnership with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, again with a stated goal of assisting near dated projects like Copperwood. Before I get into Copperwood itself, I actually wanted to briefly talk about a divestment that we recently did. As a company like us, and acknowledging we are smaller cap, to prepare yourself for a construction decision, you need to have a strong balance sheet, strong corporate structure, and demonstrate focus.
We think we've done a host of these key objectives as we look at the transaction that we did recently. We sold our one third non-controlling interest in the White Pine North project you would have seen on the map. It's relatively near to the Copperwood project. Our 66% partner is Kinterra. They're moving that asset along well, but it is a longer dated project. And while we want to focus on Copperwood, we took the decision to sell our one third stake to truly capitalize ourselves well to a final investment decision to eliminate all of the debt and candidly demonstrate our focus on coming to production in the near term through the Copperwood project. This slide here just shows some of those metrics before the transaction and acknowledging it does need to close. There is $11.7 million in debt, $7.5 million in cash, and two assets to feed capital to.
Of course, that doesn't always fully add up. On the other side of the transaction, no debt, approximately $26 million pro forma cash and a single asset, Copperwood, to fund into construction here. So we feel very comfortable about that decision, its rationale, and the place it's put our company in as we step into 2026. And so now let's take a little more of a look at Copperwood. As I say, this is our flagship project. This is our fully permitted project in Michigan, and we're ready to move forward. At a high level, this is a very well-known project. We talk about that 20-year cycle in the U.S. Candidly, Copperwood hasn't quite bucked that trend. We just happen to be at about year 16 and ready to make a construction decision.
But it means a significant amount of work has been done here through our feasibility level study. Identifying a room- and- pillar methodology for mining, it's a known and tried and tested methodology in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, having operated like that at the White Pine project for the best part of 50 years. The project has enjoyed about four metallurgical campaigns, the most recent one being this year when we actually tested ultrafine flotation technology. And I'll demonstrate that we incorporated the Jameson Cell technology to improve our recoveries and lower our operating costs. But again, very well understood. And I'll show you also that the region has really nice infrastructure. And all in, it leads to a project that we're ready to build.
Remember now that we are at a feasibility level, so we only use our measured and indicated resource for the initial mine life of 11 years, but I'll demonstrate for you that we think this is certainly a 15- 20-year mine life, but initial 11 years at 30,000 tons of copper, so about 70 million pounds, a really nice scaled asset for a company like Highland Copper. I just wanted to give a little more detail on permitting. We don't have federal nexus at Highland or at Copperwood, and so that means all of our state permitting has been done on private land. It is an incredibly rigorous process. Again, a multi-year process through environmental baselining, permit submissions, public comment period. All of this is behind us, and as I mentioned, a really significant de-risking factor.
We've also had, actually, in the last two years to either amend or renew/update some of these permits, and we've demonstrated our capacity to do so, and I think that's in part because we have a very strong relationship with the local permitting authority and with good reason. I think we've operated reputably, and I'll show you some of the good work that we've done to gain that respect in the region from a site work perspective. This is a great historic mining region. This is a view kind of at a high level. You'll see Highway 2 kind of on the lower part of that diagram, about four or five towns through Michigan and west into Wisconsin that really feed both people and, of course, infrastructure into our mine site.
The are two ways that power can be brought to site overhead transmission lines, and of course, there's natural gas also available. There's rail, roads, broadly infrastructure in and around this region. So a nice area to be building. Sometimes I hear that Copperwood is considered to be, call it relatively small. I guess I want to maybe take a look at the facts here. The full Measured, Indicated, and Inferred resource is 3.7 billion pounds of copper. So that's quite significant. What you can see on the diagram here is that, as I mentioned, only half of that, so 1.8 billion pounds, it sits in measured and indicated. That's a nice 54 million tons at an excellent grade of 1.5%. But it's only that piece that gets used to develop the initial mine life as you're at feasibility level.
But you can see a host of inferred area and specifically 79 million tons at also a nice 1.1% grade that we think can be converted over time, developing certainly this 15-20-year mine life. But really a big distinguishing factor for our company, and you'll see it for very few others, is that we are also defined from the mineral reserves perspective. That means the full 43-101 feasibility study is complete. It's that 1.8 billion pounds used to convert and acknowledging we use a room- and- pillar methodology, so leave a good portion of the resource behind. But it gives rise to just over 800 million pounds of copper fully defined, fully proven out from an economic perspective and ready to mine. You'll have seen from that map earlier that obviously it's a sensitive area from an environmental perspective.
The project sits nearby Lake Superior, and we need to be incredibly respectful of that, and so we've done a whole host of things. We've done some early site work, and when you impact land in Michigan, you have an obligation to offset with mitigating wetland, and we've done that. Any wetland that we've impacted, we've offset with either creating wetlands onsite or preserving wetlands in and around the area. We've gone to great lengths alongside the permitting authority to prove that our ore is not acid-generating. Really important, again, when you think about the natural beauty of the area and ensuring we keep it that way. We've made a commitment as a company not to draw water from Lake Superior. That's a resource that is key, critical, and important to all local residents.
That's an important step that we felt to take in combination with ensuring that the safety features in and around our tailings design are first class. As a matter of fact, when we step into engineering, that is the one area that we'll be essentially fully engineering before we make a construction decision. So now let's just take a look at some of the high level economics of the project. Projects like Copperwood, I'll be quite honest, are not quite as robust down to lower copper prices. Certainly, below $4 would be a challenge for us to build the project. We did our feasibility study at a $4 copper price, and you can see that the economics are actually quite robust, $170 million NPV and an 18% IRR. Today, copper sits on a futures basis closer to $5.40.
I'm showing you in the middle column here the real leverage to changes in copper price. That increase in $1 from $4 to $5 actually gives rise to a 300% increase in net asset value to $507 million and a 33% IRR. Of course, copper price has gone beyond there. I'm showing you as well that ongoing leverage as you step toward a $6 copper price with a net asset value of $855 million and a near 50% IRR. I'll also point out that that doesn't include some of the key optimizations that we've done. I'll show for you shortly some of the good work that we've done in the process plant, actually to move from an 86% copper recovery that's in the feasibility study to closer to an 88% at lower operating costs.
We also don't include in here naturally life of mine additions and other key optimizations that we think that we can work towards, so when you think about the backdrop of our company, and today we have a market capitalization of about $65 million, and of course, a good portion of that is cash, it tells you that there's significant value as we drive through the development cycle, and having nice net asset values is wonderful, but you need to demonstrate progress, and you need to demonstrate ongoing movement towards a construction decision, and let me walk you through some of the key execution, and that'll be both at a site level, and I'll also show you some of our corporate development execution, but importantly, we've completed our concurrent reclamation work at site. I mentioned that we've done our initial impacts, which means you impact local wetlands in particular.
We have built the stream diversion structure around the overall project site, so it creates a clean, dry area to work in the future, and most importantly, we've done our concurrent reclamation, and remember that the local permitting authority, they're at site arguably every one to two months. They're seeing the work that we're doing. They understand that we respect the region, and I think that's why we've had good credibility from that perspective. Of course, it's given us a chance just to continue to build regional support, work with local contractors, build support with unions, and demonstrate to residents that we intend on operating well, and I think a key point to note is that we've received formal unanimous resolutions of support from all key local counties, townships, boards, just demonstrating really that this mine is wanted.
I think that the local population understands that copper is needed in the U.S. Of course, the jobs are valuable in the region, but they also know that we'll operate responsibly and have a good operation. As another byproduct, of course, continuing to get the team in place allows us to think about stepping into construction in the next year. Aside from site work, also getting our engineering in line. Having a feasibility study is great, but at the end of the day, to make a construction decision, both to understand the project better, but also support yourself under project financing, you need to step into detailed engineering. As I mentioned, we awarded all of these contracts across all the key areas earlier in 2025. We'll come to conclusion of phase I, broadly identifying the key design criteria, most specifically on the process plant side.
We are doing some additional work on the mining side, and I'll show you that in a moment. But then the goal then is to continue to step towards a solid 40% engineered by the second half of 2026. We think that's the appropriate scale of engineering to support ourselves in the construction decision. As I mentioned, getting through engineering is important to defend yourself in a project financing. But along the way, we're not just looking to increase the scale of engineering. We're looking to improve the project. And we had a really great win on the process plant side. As I mentioned, we incorporated the Jameson Cell, so ultrafine flotation technology. So increasing our copper recoveries by about two percentage points, which, as you can imagine, is really important from a net present value perspective.
And at the same time, scaling down the size of the plant, that's good from an environmental health and safety perspective, reducing the reagent mix, reducing the power needed to drive the plant, and overall lowering operating costs from a process perspective. Very pleased with that. And what I would say is now we're also looking at process design on the mining side. And the key area that we are looking at is whether or not we can incorporate drift and fill as a mining methodology in place of room- and- pillar. It's unclear yet if we can technically do that. But the upside is that instead of having 60%-65% mine recoveries, as you do in room- and- pillar, of course, you're leaving pillars behind in a reasonable amount of the resource. With drift and fill, the mining recoveries are closer to 90%-95%.
We look forward in the coming few months to learning how we fare there. Either we'll have that upside or candidly, we'll move forward with the room- and- pillar methodology, as I mentioned, tried and tested. When you think about making a construction decision, of course, having the site, having your team, and having support locally is key. You also need to have a company that is ready both from a balance sheet perspective and a shareholder perspective. I want to take you through some key steps that we've taken both from the project financing side and the capital structure side in the last few months. We announced about two months ago a letter of interest from U.S. EXIM for $250 million in project financing.
This would be arguably with a tenor of 11 years, so longer than you might get from a private markets perspective, and certainly we think at a lower cost of capital, a really nice step forward. That diligence they've done essentially demonstrates that they see your project as eligible for this kind of funding. A lot of earlier dated projects, if you're in the outset from an exploration or early development perspective, not necessarily eligible, so to learn this has been fantastic. Naturally, our next step now here in the coming months is to turn that letter of interest into a formal financing arrangement with U.S. EXIM, and it's not just EXIM that will be available to us. We continue to do good work at the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense.
I think you'll have seen the Department of Defense in particular be very creative, not just with debt, but other equity and grants. Those are paths that will continue to go down. We're seeing really strong support in the U.S. Recently sat with the representative from the National Energy Dominance Council and really demonstrating and having them understand just how near term this project is such that it can even be built within the context of this current administration's timeline. I think that's extremely valuable. Clearly, I just wanted to point out as well, not just relying upon support from the federal government, there are a host of ways that we can look to finance this project. Orion Mine Finance owned 28% of our company. We also have a very clean concentrate that we think is marketable.
We're in discussions, early discussions with Glencore in particular and other refiners to see if there are other avenues both from a financing perspective. Naturally, having our offtake available is a really nice asset as we think about financing, so some very good steps still to be taken there. We also wanted to get our shareholder structure nice and clean, and recently, we announced that Greenstone, a natural resource fund out of the U.K., has been traded out of the company. They had a 16% position, and we've replaced them with about six new institutional shareholders. This was fantastic for us. When a 16% shareholder needs to exit, there's naturally some overhang from a trading perspective. Having orchestrated this really orderly transition into these new institutions, obviously, it decreases our shareholder concentration.
Moving from one shareholder into five or six, it opens up some trading flow and naturally takes away that overhang, so a very positive move from our side, and so this is what our capital structure looks like today, still with Orion Mine Finance sitting at 28%. They've been a very strong, loyal, long term shareholder, and we appreciate their support. Condire out of Texas moved from 16% to just under 20% as part of that Greenstone trade, so a really nice acknowledgement from a current shareholder, and you'll see that new group at 12% of institutional holding. Candidly, the first time we brought some really meaningful financial institutions onto the shareholder register, and I think a really good acknowledgement that the project is moving in the right direction. On the right hand side is our current capital structure. Note, of course, that's on September 30th.
Again, refreshing you that there we have less cash than we do debt. Naturally, the transaction that we've taken on with White Pine alongside Kinterra will resolve that where the pro forma view is zero debt and $25 million in cash, and really importantly, the cash proceeds from that transaction had meaningful strategic value. It capitalized us fully through 2026 and into 2027 with runway and a capacity to do all of the work from an engineering and project financing perspective to make a construction decision, very pleased with that. Just a couple of slides left here, and then more than happy to take some questions. Sometimes we don't necessarily get taken in the same breath as some of the other peers that I would call them on this list.
But when I just put in black and white some of the comparisons, I really do see that we sit alongside some really strong and well-valued U.S. and North American developers. We certainly stand out in that we are at feasibility and permit. As a matter of fact, against this set of peers, we stand favorably in that example. And even when you look at grade, capital intensity, and region that we sit in, I think, again, we sit very favorably. Despite that and despite our ongoing execution, I think we haven't enjoyed some of the capital, or I should say share price appreciation as some of these other companies have, certainly in the last six months as copper has gone on a nice run.
Certainly, as we step into 2026, move towards a construction decision, I see our shares as a really nice option for investors who think perhaps other companies' valuation have moved on them. Certainly, I would say for Highland Copper, there is plenty of value still to be seen. Just to close out here, just a quick refresher on the achievements that we've made over the last one to two years. Obviously, getting the EXIM financing lined up, announcing our increased recoveries from a copper standpoint, completing phase I, concurrent reclamation at site done, trading out the Greenstone block, and also executing on this White Pine transaction, which we think really structures the company well, structures Highland Copper well for a construction decision. It's this operational execution that, of course, drives upcoming catalysts.
I mentioned we'll look to make a decision on drift and fill in the first quarter of 2026. That adds a potential upside. Movement on a formal project financing and further clarity in and around state and federal funding in the first half of 2026. All of this leading to a construction decision in the second half of 2026. And looking forward to constructing then in 2027. So very excited about the prospects. Very excited, honestly, for shareholders that there is real value here with demonstrated execution in a wonderful jurisdiction. And with that, Anna, more than happy to take any questions.
Awesome, Barry. Thank you. Well, first of all, congratulations on trading the Greenstone block to institutional investors. So give some backstory and background on why Greenstone exited.
Yeah, no, actually, I think it's very important for shareholders to understand. Greenstone aren't exiting only our position.
They're actually formally liquidating their fund, so nothing personal, let's say, against Highland, and that fund, as I understand it, needs to have been liquidated into the first half of 2026. If we found ourselves in 2026 with that position still sitting there, it's challenging from an overhang perspective, but it gave a nice opportunity for new institutions to come in, right? Our trading liquidity has only been modest. It's tougher for larger institutions, naturally, to take a big position, so this gave them an opportunity, and it was nice to introduce them into our shareholder register.
Perfect, and it seems like the White Pine transaction achieved a few objectives. Give some more context around the White Pine transaction, and particularly around the valuation and overall rationale, please.
Yeah, I mean, I'll start with the valuation. I think we were very pleased with it.
We sold the one third stake for $30 million. And for context, it was about two and a half years ago that we sold the other two thirds of the project to Kinterra at that point for $30 million. So there's been really nice appreciation in value over that time. Acknowledging capital has been put into the project. But as mentioned earlier, it turns our balance sheet into the kind of balance sheet that you can look at a development company like us and say, yes, this company is now well capitalized, sitting debt free, and capable of moving forward to a full investment decision.
Perfect. And the EXIM LOI, it's a great first step. So do you have any further insights on capital that's available at the U.S. federal level to support these critical minerals?
Yeah, I mean, I think I mentioned earlier, we're just seeing every day new capital announcements being made across all agencies. EXIM announced that they're putting $100 billion into critical minerals in the future here. So when you think about the capital that's available, and truthfully, when you think about how they're incentivized to work from a speed perspective from this administration, I think we're well placed to secure that $250 million that we have at LOI status. You'll have seen news as well also on equity placement side. The federal government is interested in and willing to take equity positions in companies. I'm not saying with certainty that we will do that, but we will certainly entertain all opportunities.
An equity position like that obviously brings an endorsement and understanding to equity investors outside of the federal government that there is a desire to move the projects forward at speed. So yeah, feeling very comfortable from that perspective.
Good. And you also had some success with process plant engineering. So are there further optimizations you're working on?
Yeah, interestingly, there are a whole host of optimizations. I highlighted, and I think it's worth repeating, the most important one in and around drift and fill. The capacity to recover a significantly greater portion of the ore deposit relative to room- and- pillar methodology. If you kept at similar mining rates, you could extend your mine life, or alternatively, you could look at increasing mining rates. So again, I don't want to indicate that that's a sure thing.
We need to prove out technically, I guess, particularly that we can create a competent base to support drift and fill. But we do know that at a $5+ copper price, the economics pay, meaning the additional copper revenue can pay for the additional expenditure that you see in a drift and fill operation. So excited about that opportunity and look forward to reporting on that in the coming months.
And there's been a number of new policies introduced recently that incentivize the development of copper resources in the U.S. So can you discuss how these policy developments can help Highland Copper's permitting and project economics?
Yeah, I mean, the one thing I'll say, and I'm pleased about this, is that in the U.S., obviously, not everything is agreed upon politically, but the one thing that I do see as being bipartisan is critical mineral strategy.
That could be either from a defense perspective. We've seen an announcement recently that from the White House, a really interesting statistic that I saw, that copper is the second most widely used material at the Department of Defense. So I think you can understand the urgency from that perspective. And of course, not to be lost is its importance to energy policy, with the coming electrification, with AI data centers, so on and so forth. And all of those reasons really are driving policy, both from a Republican and Democratic side that are supporting permitting. I mentioned that's less critical to us because we do sit permitted from a state perspective, but probably more importantly, the announcements that we've seen around creative and types of funding available for near-term critical mineral projects.
Following the White Pine North transaction, do you anticipate pursuing additional monetizations or bringing in non-operated partners elsewhere in the portfolio?
I think we're well placed at this point. I think we have really streamlined our asset portfolio. We would entertain bringing in strategic partners and corporates as we look at the Highland Copper project. But really, at the end of the day, we want to keep that project internal and 100% owned. It is our focus now.
Perfect. Barry, do you have any closing remarks for our viewers today?
No, just thank you very much for taking the time. Yeah, as I mentioned, as a company, I think we're executing very well. I think that execution should demonstrate that we'll continue to execute into 2026 toward our key goals around building this project, particularly while we enjoy the tailwinds in the U.S. at the moment.
So very excited. And I think there's a real opportunity for value appreciation as we continue to execute.
Wonderful. Thank you so much. We've got so many questions for you. We'll send them to you so you can answer on your own. And we appreciate you and have a Happy New Year.
Thanks very much, Anna.
All right, everyone. We'll be right back. All right, everyone, welcome back. Next, we have Vox Royalty Corp, trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol VOXR, and on the TSX under the symbol VOXR. It's a returns focused mining royalty and streaming company with a portfolio of over 80 assets spanning eight jurisdictions. Happy to welcome Chief Investment Officer Spencer Cole. Welcome to the conference today. We're looking forward to hearing the presentation.
Thanks so much for inviting us, Anna. We're excited to get into the presentation.
All right, the floor is yours.
Fantastic.
As Anna mentioned, Vox is a precious metals focused royalty and streaming company. Dually listed on NASDAQ and TSX. You're hearing about the Vox story and strategy at a really exciting time, both within our industry and within our company's sort of 10-year history. We find ourselves in a very constructive macroeconomic market, particularly for gold and then also for other metals like copper. We're at record high gold and copper prices. There's a lot of geopolitical uncertainty, and we've seen a huge influx of interest and buying, particularly from U.S. generalist investors in gold and gold related equities. So it's a perfect time to be looking at a royalty and streaming company such as Vox, and I'm excited to sort of unpack that and why we think we're the best way, particularly for generalist investors, to get leveraged exposure to metals within our industry.
I will be making some forward looking statements, so I'd refer listeners to the disclaimer on our corporate presentation on the Vox website. Now, mining is a tough business, and it's tough to pick winners within the industry if you're not a mining engineer and a geologist. Empirically and historically, mining equities have historically underperformed all major equity indices from the S&P 500 to comparable indices around the world. So you've got this interest and demand from generalist investors who want exposure to commodities and metals, but it's really tough for them to pick the winners without the right sort of mining toolkit. Vox was essentially built to solve this problem back in 2014. The company was seeded with $7.5 million of generalist capital, which isn't much in the mining industry, obviously.
And from day one in 2014, we were created by a group of investors to serve a generalist group of investors. And our North Star and our focus as a company from day one has been on compounding per-share returns and targeting some of the highest risk adjusted returns in the entire mining and royalty industry. And we've been able to deliver that over the last five years. And that's through a number of key competitive advantages that we've built over the last 10 years that are really picking up in momentum as we continue to scale up the business in a really capital efficient way. So as Anna mentioned, we have over 80 assets in our portfolio. So for investors who don't want single mine risk, we offer a large amount of portfolio diversification within just our existing asset portfolio.
And our team, we are a really passionate, dare I say it, team of mining nerds, mining engineers, and geologists on the front lines of the business who are meaningful investors ourselves. We have over 10% insider ownership, and we're obsessively focused at finding forgotten value within this niche of mining royalties and streams. So if you look at historical returns across the commodity complex, there's been three key ways, I guess, to play commodities and metals. One is to hold the physical metal. Two is to buy the underlying mining companies. And three has been to invest in royalty companies such as Vox. Now, it's interesting when you look at the returns. Unfortunately, anyone that's historically weighted towards mining companies and mining operators and their equities, they've seen the lowest return out of those three distinct asset classes.
The next best return has been actually holding the underlying physical metal. So since over the last 20 years, gold has appreciated approximately 700%. But the best returning asset class within the commodity and mining complex has consistently been royalty companies and their equities. So when I talk about leveraged exposure to metals and leveraged exposure to commodities, royalty companies have delivered that consistently over the past 20 years. So these three examples on this slide, from Royal Gold up to Wheaton, these are the large cap royalty names that got appreciated from 800% up to 3,300%. So these are capital-light business models that perform extremely well, both when metal prices are going up and even if metal prices are flat. So empirically, royalty companies have been the best way to get leveraged exposure to metals historically. Now, why is it that these royalty companies do outperform?
The key reasons for investors who are new to this space is that a royalty is typically just a percentage of revenue from a mine without any underlying exposure to capital costs and operating costs. So as a royalty company, even if there is operating cost inflation or capital cost inflation, we bear none of that exposure. So we don't experience any of the same dilution that junior explorers and developers typically sort of deliver for their investors as they're trying to explore and build mines. So we get pure top line exposure linked to the revenue of the mine without any of that inflationary drag or share dilution. So those are the attributes that really stand out in these high quality royalty companies. That's typically why these royalty companies trade at a premium and typically outperform over the long term based on the historical benchmarking that I mentioned before.
Look, one interesting feature of our business model is we are focused on tier one jurisdictions where mining is still a very sort of well supported industry. And part of that extends or that strategy really sort of culminates in a jurisdiction like Western Australia. So of our 80 assets, approximately 55 of them are located in Australia. And specifically, Western Australia is one of our key markets. And what's interesting is most investors realize that the gold price is at a record level, but what they don't realize is underlying currencies have devalued relative to the U.S. currency. So the Aussie dollar has weakened, but at the same time, the gold price has strengthened. So for our 55 Aussie royalties, the mining companies selling gold in U.S. dollars, they've seen sort of record amounts of margin expansion, which means more free cash flow that they can reinvest in the ground.
It ultimately means for us as a royalty holder, we're seeing more exploration, more development, and production expansions being brought forward to capitalize on this record margin expansion because the gold price in Australian dollars is over AUD 6,000 an ounce. We've been investing patiently and quietly in Western Australia and Australia generally exactly for markets such as these. It's sort of a perfect storm of capital allocation where we're starting to see increasing momentum in our assets being brought online into production and ultimately expanded to the benefit of our royalty revenues. A little bit about our capital structure and our portfolio. We're approximately a $360 million market cap. We're sitting on a net cash position. We have a credit facility of up to $75 million, which is almost entirely undrawn.
Very strong balance sheet with potential to bolt- on new accretive royalty opportunities. And then in terms of our shareholder base, we have some of the largest mining specialist investors such as BlackRock, U.S. Global, and a number of other European and North American funds. And then importantly, in June of this year, we were successful in being added to the Russell Small Cap Indices. So we've seen a lot of sort of index-based buying into the stock post that index inclusion in June. On the right hand side of this slide, a little bit about our portfolio of assets. So we are 80% weighted towards precious metals, and the majority of that is gold. 20% of our portfolio is non-precious, which that's heavily weighted towards metals like copper. We've also got some iron ore, some zinc, and some nickel in there as well.
It's largely base metals in that non-precious bucket. And then, as I mentioned before, from a geographical perspective, we are heavily weighted towards Australia by design. We view Australia as the best mining jurisdiction globally. I'm obviously biased based on my accent, but in terms of a country and a jurisdiction that is pro-mining, where there's ample capital, skilled labor, and a supportive government that wants new mines built, we see all of those conditions maximized, particularly in Western Australia. Approximately 70% of our portfolio is weighted towards Australia. And then we have another 20-odd percent that's weighted towards Canada and the U.S. And then importantly, in terms of the number of assets in our portfolio that are producing today, we have of our 80 assets, we've got 14 that are producing today.
Over the coming years, over the next sort of two to three years, we expect that to increase to close to 22 producing assets generating revenue. Look, we have, over the last 10 years, built some very deliberate competitive advantages, and they have allowed us to generate some of the highest returns in our entire $70 billion industry. It's essentially three parts of our sort of stool, three legs to the proverbial stool, if you will. One is a technically focused management team. So we're a team of mining engineers and geologists obsessively focused on identifying risk and value in the ground. So we do the hard work so that our non-mining generalist investors can put their head on the pillow at night knowing that we are focusing on very simple, low risk mining ore bodies and mining operations.
The second one is we are sort of hawkishly tracking developments through a range of disparate information sources. So we're typically focusing on events and catalysts that might be tiny to the untrained eye. So something as simple as from a satellite image, we can see a drilling pad is being developed, or we can see a road is being developed that is essentially giving us a clue that construction is just about to commence on that property. And so we opportunistically seek to acquire royalties and streams on that property before the market realizes that this mining property is being fast tracked into construction and production. That's how we consistently are able to find assets at compelling value.
And then thirdly, over the last 10 years, we've developed the world's largest proprietary database of mining royalty contracts to find overlooked or sort of hidden value in contracts that were created anywhere from 20- 40 years ago that cover mines that are just about to be built. So it's those three legs of the stool that allow us to generate superior risk adjusted returns. And look, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. This is sort of a snapshot of the last sort of five years of what some of our returns have been. Up until the end of last year, we deployed approximately $50 million of capital into acquiring royalties, and we'd already been paid back $45 million of that. So we've already been fully paid back on all the capital invested with significant mine lives in front of those assets.
So on the left, you see some of the returns on capital we've generated. So between sort of 2x, 5x, up to 14x our money over the space of a matter of years. So very rapid payback on these investments. And investors can see that we're compounding capital at a very sort of rapid rate, and the per-share sort of implied returns on that are very substantial. This slide just illustrates a little bit about our revenue growth over the last sort of five years. And keep in mind, this revenue is largely linked to the $50 million of capital invested up until the end of last year.
When you work those numbers through, generating $11 million on $50 million invested, and then this year, our guidance is for $13-$15 million, it gives you an idea of what the return on capital is for our business and just how compelling those types of rates of return are. While we've had sort of transformational growth in our revenue over the past five years, we're really optimistic and confident about what's in front of us. We have a number of key producing assets that are looking at expansions. Then also, we have a number of new assets that are expected to come online in the coming quarters based on the operator's disclosure.
So a really exciting point in the company's history where we have a really compelling portfolio of assets, and some of which are really only just stepping into their most productive years at the moment. This slide, I guess, touches on a few key sort of points. One is we do pay a dividend. It's actually the highest dividend yield in our entire $70 billion industry. But look, candidly, I would say people aren't buying us as a dividend stock. That's something that was important for our long term investors. And we are an investor-centric company. So where a large portion of our investors wanted a dividend, given we had growing revenue and free cash flow, we were able to deliver that dividend over the last three years. And we've raised the dividend consistently year- on- year by approximately 10% for the last three years consecutively.
I touched on our growing revenue already. And then in terms of the five brokers that cover us, we continue to trade at a discount to the consensus price target that the street has on us. So yeah, a huge amount of growth. We're rewarding investors by returning capital. We do have an active buyback program as well. So we're very prudent allocators of capital. We're always looking for the best way to use each incremental dollar. I won't go into detail on this, but we have a huge amount of organic growth coming in front of us. One of our cornerstone assets is called Red Hill. That has very meaningful revenue potential. And the underlying project that that's linked to is going through a $1.5 billion expansion at the moment that's more than halfway completed.
We have some mines that are being restarted and some that are being expanded that have meaningful revenue attached to them. And then we have a host of new mines that are expected to be built and come online over the next two to three years based on their operator disclosure. And these are projects in Nevada, projects in Australia, some really tier one jurisdictions operated by multi billion dollar major mining companies. Look, in September of this year, we did announce our largest ever acquisition. And so it's worth just briefly touching on some of the features of that $60 million deal. So you'll recall up until the end of last year, in the company's history, we'd allocated $50 million of capital invested. We basically doubled that at the end of September through this large global gold portfolio acquisition. So for $60 million, we acquired 10 separate assets.
Eight of them were offtake streaming contracts, which allow us to receive approximately $1 billion of gold a year and effectively trade that metal. And then there were two royalty contracts as well. Over the 12 months prior to when we acquired the assets, they've been generating approximately $16 million of revenue. And so on a per-share basis, we were trading at the time about $0.20 revenue per share, and we were acquiring $1 per share of revenue. So highly accretive on all key sort of per-share metrics. Importantly, for investors today, we believe that that portfolio and the gold revenue that came with it has the strong potential to unlock additional index inclusion in March of next year. And that takes the form of the GDXJ Gold Index. So we'll wait and see how that plays out.
But there's strong potential as we progress through January and February that we could be successful in being added to that index in March. So watch this space, but this transaction and the gold revenue attached to it was instrumental in terms of that index. And then in terms of the operators of these properties, some multi billion dollar tier one mining companies that operate these 10 assets. So an incredible acquisition, truly transformational on all key metrics, and particularly on per-share metrics. And a portfolio that, as we progress over the coming quarters, I think, and as the market starts to see some of the revenue attached to it, we would hazard some optimism that the market doesn't fully understand these assets until they start seeing the revenue generated. So I mentioned we're heavily weighted towards Australia.
That portfolio really filled out our exposure to the Americas in a really complementary way. So it really did spread out our sort of geographic diversification from Australia to places such as Canada, U.S., and Brazil, so really complementary from a geopolitical perspective as well. I won't go through the detail on this, but from some of the maps, you can just see some of the countries I've referenced, and a number of these assets have very large ore bodies. That Blyvoor asset, just by way of example, they have over 20 million ounces of gold in the ground, so that ore body alone has potential to be producing well in excess of 30 years. With that, I want to leave some time for questions, so I'll take a breath, and I'd open the floor to any questions anyone has.
Great. Thank you, Spencer. Yes.
Can you talk about your current portfolio breakdown by commodity?
Yep. Absolutely, Anna. So we're 80% precious metals, and of that, the overwhelming majority, almost all of that is gold. And then the other 20% is largely copper with a little bit of iron ore as well. So that's the current revenue mix. Going forward, a lot of our growth that's coming online is heavily weighted towards gold and then, to a lesser extent, copper.
And how diversified is your revenue by asset, operator, and geography?
So we have 14 paying assets at the moment. So we have a lot of diversification. I think on a per-asset basis, it would be less than I don't think we've got any single asset that's everything's below 25% on a per-asset basis. So we deliberately construct the portfolio to have that sort of asset and operator diversification.
Then by country, as I mentioned, we're still very heavily weighted towards Australia. So Australia has historically been in excess of 50% of our revenue in some years up to sort of 90%. But that's an exposure by country that we're very comfortable with, obviously.
And if you can talk about the average remaining mine life of producing assets, what is it?
Yeah. So the way we look at that is sort of on a weighted average basis. So currently, if you look at the producing assets in the portfolio, the mine life on a weighted average basis is somewhere between 8-12 years. But the assets that we have coming online over the next two to three years, we have a number of assets that have anywhere from sort of 15-30-year potential or mine lives.
So we would expect that weighted average mine life over the coming two to three years to increase. My expectation would be somewhere between 10-15 years. So yeah, it's certainly moving in the right direction from that perspective.
And what type of agreements make up the portfolio? NSR, GSR, NPI, Stream, Offtake?
Yeah. So with this most recent deal we announced at the end of September, we do have, I guess, a large percentage of our portfolio weighted towards these offtake streams. So effectively trading gold and generating a margin on that. So we haven't provided revenue guidance for next year yet. We'll provide that in Q1. But there will be quite a substantial weighting to those offtake streaming contracts just because the gold price right now is obviously quite strong.
Yeah, my expectation is they will represent a very sort of it's hard to put a percentage around it currently before we put out guidance, but they will be quite a meaningful percentage. The balance of the portfolio will be generated from royalties. Within that royalty bucket, the majority of the royalties are sort of NSR, GRR, revenue linked royalties. We do have some production linked royalties. One gold royalty that's linked to tonnages. But that's a sort of minority portion of the portfolio's revenue.
Perfect. Any royalties subject to buybacks or reductions by operators?
No, it's interesting. We have a few small exploration and development stage royalties in Canada that had some fractional buybacks. But because we weigh so heavily towards Australia, we see less buybacks in Australian royalty contracts compared to Canadian and American royalty contracts.
So I'd hazard, I guess I haven't done this benchmarking, but I'd say we've probably got one of the lowest buyback percentages in our portfolio because of that Australian weighting. So yeah, there's none of our producing assets that are subject to buybacks and of our development sort of assets that are expected to come in online in the next two to three years. There's no buybacks that I'm aware of that are likely to be triggered over the next sort of two to three years on development or producing assets.
Okay. Perfect. And who are the operators of your major cash-flowing assets? And what's their track record? Can you talk about them a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely. So we have about two thirds of our portfolio is operated by mining companies that have market caps over $2.5 billion.
Some of our largest operators in Australia are groups like Northern Star Resources, which is a $40 billion Australian gold producer, Australia's largest gold producer. They produce about 1.6-1.7 million ounces of gold a year. Very stellar track record. We have two iron ore royalties operated by a $5 billion company called Mineral Resources. They're one of the largest Australian iron ore producers. Another key counterparty for us is Zijin Mining. That's a sort of $100 billion company based out of Hong Kong. In North America, we have groups like Equinox Gold. We also have a number of other groups like Vault Minerals. These are multi billion dollar companies that have built and expanded mines before.
So yeah, it's really having two thirds of that portfolio that are over two billion in market cap, I think, is a bit of an anomaly for a company of our size.
Sure. And what is your process for monitoring operator performance and production reporting?
Yeah. So we've got a fairly well established process. We get regular royalty statements. We'll obviously review and sort of reconcile those statements. Over 90%, over 95% of our operators are publicly traded. So we have regular public reporting, obviously. And then selectively, we do have audit rights. So selectively, we will audit certain statements at different times where we just need a bit of extra detail or where we need to put boots on the ground. So it's a fairly well sort of tested process.
Perfect. And how would you characterize the current market for acquiring royalties and mineral interests?
Are you seeing more opportunities today than, say, a year ago?
Look, in gold, particularly, the market is hyper competitive. There's a lot of people chasing producing gold royalties. But our business and in our DNA is to avoid competition. Everyone says that, but I think our returns speak for themselves. So the benefit we've had of essentially building the world's largest royalty database, and in some cases, it takes years to get sellers comfortable to sell royalties. So we're still able to carve out an uncompetitive niche in the industry. It just means we have to work quite hard to find those assets and cultivate the seller relationships. So if you're knocking on boardroom doors in Toronto, Vancouver, and Denver, it's hyper competitive in gold right now.
If you're out in the bush dealing with salty prospectors, dealing with technology companies who've forgotten they own royalties, there is still a blue ocean in front of you. So that's the blue ocean that we've worked extremely hard to cultivate.
Yes, absolutely. And are there particular precious metals, properties where you're finding more attractive valuations or better acquisition economics than others?
Yeah. Look, I think, not to overgeneralize, but Australia is still quite misunderstood from our perspective. And relative to, say, gold projects in Nevada that have had a lot of consistent access to capital, in Australia, we still see this dynamic where we can buy a royalty for $100,000-$300,000, and it covers a deposit that's sitting next to a big hungry processing plant.
Then the deposit can be fast tracked and brought into production very quickly, sort of within two to four years, compared to in North America where it can take 10-15 years. I'd say structurally, Western Australia is still mispriced from our perspective, and that's why we continue to focus on that market.
Perfect. Thank you so much for jumping on here, Spencer. We appreciate this time and presentation of yours and can't wait to follow you along in 2026. Happy New Year to you.
Happy New Year to you too, Anna. Thanks for your time.