For Mike. Is this the last time I'll ever ask him about hedges? It's presumably something he's quite pleased about. Here's how today's going to work, just for the folks in the room. I got a number of questions just to talk about the company's most recent exciting news from this morning. This is an interactive event. I know some people already submitted questions in advance on email. Appreciate those. We'll get to them. For everybody else, there's a chat button at the bottom. Feel free to ask questions during today's event. I'll get to as many as we can. We're hoping this is going to be a pretty quick event, probably 20-25 minutes. If I don't get to your question, I'll also make sure the Contango team gets them afterwards so you can walk through them.
The only other thing I'll say is this is being recorded and will be available for replay probably about 3:00 P.M. Eastern. It'll pop right in your inbox. It will also be available on 6ix's YouTube channel shortly thereafter. Let me get right into the protein because this is exciting news. Rick, I want to start with the headline. You converted the last 15,000 ounces of hedged gold into debt, which means, for the first time, thrilled to say it live and on air, the hedge book is completely gone. Walk us through what this announcement actually means for Contango shareholders.
Well, I guess it's doing what we say we're going to do, first and foremost. We obviously didn't put the hedges in place because we were betting on a gold price. We are betting against the gold price. They were put in place because the banks made us put them in place back in 2023 when we were trying to put this mine into production. As fate would have it, gold went up and more than doubled in price, now we have exposure to that upside in the gold price. This should really be Mike day because we've been working at this for a while. Investors invest in a gold-producing company, and particularly a junior gold-producing company, because they want that exposure, that leverage to the upside in the gold price. If you're betting against gold, then don't invest in gold.
That's pretty simple investment advice. Where we are now, we believe in the upside in the gold price. We think this is a good base from which to put the hedges to rest and replace it with debt. Not with equity. We didn't like our share price or we weren't going to issue any equity at this price, but replacing it with debt just made a lot of sense. I'll let Mike explain the details, but obviously we're a self-funded junior explorer producer. Our advanced stage projects are funded by our cash flow from Manh Choh. What this does is just give us more exposure to the upside in the gold price. Our plan is to go from 60,000 ounces of production up to 200,000 ounces of gold production and 5 million ounces of silver production here in the next four or five years.
Awesome. Mike, I am going to let you get in here because as Rick said, this is going to be your show, and I want you to get into the math. These contracts were struck at $1,935 an ounce. Gold trading obviously north of $4,000 for a while. Certainly an out cost, as I understand it, $33 million. How should people think about the math here? What is the cost of buying out those hedges versus what the 15,000 ounces are worth to the company selling at potential spot over the next year and a half?
No. These remaining hedges were the March and June 27 hedges that we restructured over a year ago when we pushed the debt facility out. That price actually came down from the $2,025 to $1,935. Those were the final two remaining hedge deliveries that we had for 15,000 ounces. When we locked in this hedge settlement, gold was trading at about $4,035. To settle them, we had to settle them using a forward curve, which was roughly $100 more. The way I look at it is it cost us $1.5 million in paying for the forward curve on those ounces. In addition to that, the other way I am looking at this as well is you pay that. I guess our floor price is at $4,135 on seven of these hedges.
The only other kind of cost to us is our debt increased from $12.6 million to $46.3 million. You are going to pay an incremental amount of interest, albeit at a lower rate coming down from 8.9% to 7.4%. It will be about $2 million in interest charges that we may pay assuming we take the debt to the whole term. Obviously, if we pay back early, that interest charge will come down. The total cost is the $1.5 million on the forward curve you are paying versus spot price and then the interest on the increments that increase.
Thanks, I a ppreciate that helpful to run through the numbers obviously for something like this. Rick, I want to talk about timing because I know gold dipped. I was at a conference below $4,000 in late June. I saw a lot of frowns that I had not seen in quite some time. For the first time under $4,000 since November. It seems like the Contango team moved on this almost immediately. Your quote in the PR called this pullback an opportunistic window. My question is, how much did that price move factor into pulling the trigger right now rather than taking a beat, waiting to see where it goes?
Yeah, no. Look, we think the $4,000 gold price is a good support level for gold. If you talk to chartists, they can show you chart wise why that makes sense. What I look at is central bank buying. Look, you had gold ran up to $5,500 very rapidly, and obviously, I think everybody kind of felt it was great. We all had smiles when we were talking to each other. We all felt we were heroes and very smart for being in the gold business. It corrected, and it corrected 30%. Which is a pretty significant correction. As I said, the central bank buying is what's been driving the gold price. They're the biggest buyers of gold, and they stopped buying.
When gold was $5,500, they just let off the gas pedal a little bit and came back down to $4,000, and now they're buying again. BMO just had a report out this morning, reporting on central bank buying. They bought 41 tons of gold in May. Poland was one of the larger buyers, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. Russians are selling, and we all know why they have to sell. It's meaningful that when the central banks, who have been the major buyers of gold, come back in and support that $4,000 gold level. We think it was the right time. Obviously, you've got to work these things out with the bankers. They've got to get approval. We've seen this $4,000 dip down to the $4,000 level several times.
Mike got everything, all the paperwork organized and all the authorizations completed with the banks, which they have a lot of that kind of work to do. Once we came back down to that $4,000 level, we pulled the trigger, and here we are.
There you go. Well, it's an opportunistic window, like you said. Mike, as I understand it, the amendment also brought the interest rate down from 8.9% to 7.4%, with no restructuring fees. Congratulations there, however you sorted that out. That's not a deal, as I understand it, a lender gives a borrower that they're worried about. What was the conversation with the lenders like, and what does it say about how they're viewing Contango Silver & Gold right now?
We've been having these discussions for a while. Rick and I weren't very comfortable when gold was $5,000. We didn't want to make that conversion then. It just didn't seem like the right time. The lenders were very supportive. I think they viewed the hedges as more risky than debt, just given the potential for gold to go back up to $5,000, $6,000. They were more excited to see that come off the books, which ironically they put in place to protect themselves. They were supportive. There was some back and forth on getting the right interest rate and not any restructuring fees. That didn't happen easily. At the end of the day, we could all work together to get to a spot that we were comfortable with, and as were they.
Once we got those terms locked down, it moved very quickly and they're pleased with this, as are we.
Great. One thing I wanted to ask, it's not the biggest story, obviously, but it's a little part of the setup. As I understand it, you also spent $715,000 on put contracts at $3,100 strike, covering those same 15,000 ounces. You got a floor under the position without putting a ceiling back on. Just curious if you could explain how that protection works, why $300 was the right level. How did this part of the arrangement come together?
The puts were a requirement of the lenders. They wanted to see downside protection at $3,000 or $3,100. They were the ones pushing for that. We put these in place using kind of a European style put where they actually funded it. We'll just pay them back. That got added to the debt, and we'll just pay them back in March and June of next year on the same timing as the principal repayments. More or less, it was driven by them. It's not that much money to protect us on the downside if gold does correct more so, and those puts do still carry value. I don't look at that as a cost. You can always sell those in the future here. That just made the lenders happy.
Yeah. Great. Fair enough. Sometimes you got to pay the piper, I guess. Rick, one question for you just on the repayment schedule, because there's a thing that struck me as interesting. As I understand it, $1 million a quarter through the end of this year, but the big payments, the $15.5 million, the $28.8 million, land in 2027. They line up seemingly almost exactly with when Manh Choh production is guided to nearly double. Obviously, 2027 is the big year Manh Choh production. Was that payment schedule designed around the south pit ramp? What was the thinking there? Am I just being conspiratorial? I'm not.
No, it was more along where the original delivery of the hedges was supposed to take place. It aligns with what our payment schedule via the hedges would have been. Which again, does sort of reflect back on the original mine plan, which 2027 was always the nice big year of production and low cost, because this year we're doing all the pre-stripping as we transition from north pit to south pit. It does line up with the expected large amount of cash flow from that extra production, from south pit. They both seem to sort of align with one another, and again, that all goes back to the original mine plan from the feasibility study.
Great. Speaking of getting into more details on the south pit, you mentioned Manh Choh's in a transitional phase right now, obviously, as mining moves over from the north pit, with that higher grade campaign closing out in 2026. What does the transition actually look like on the ground? When will investors start seeing it in the production numbers?
The transition took place over the whole year. We're finished mining in the north pit now. We're pre-stripping, doing a lot of pre-stripping in the south pit. We'll see sulfide production increase in the next two quarters. Next year, again, you're just in the sort of the best part of the ore body, if you will. That's why 2027 has always been a low cost year, because you've paid for the pre-stripping this year, and then you're in that high grade sulfide ore. Obviously they've been working on the mill to add more oxygen in the plant, which helps make the reactions go quicker when you're in that sulfide ore. All that work is always taking place this year, so we can benefit from it next year.
Great. Let's talk about the sweet year, 2027. Now you've guided it at 75,000, 80,000 ounces with cash cost, like you said, way lower because of all the work done this year, $1,200-$1,300. Every one of those ounces is now going to sell at whatever gold is doing that day, whatever Mike can make happen with the spot price. At current prices, that's a margin approaching $3,000 an ounce. How does that change what Contango can do with the cash? How does that change your situation next year?
Yeah, obviously, we've got strong cash flows from Manh Choh, and now we don't have to deliver into those $2,000 hedges. We were exposed to the upside completely now. This year always aligned really well with how we plan to spend money to advance our other projects, Lucky Shot, Johnson Tract and Kitsault. This is just giving us, I'd say, more comfort, obviously, and more exposed cash flow if the gold price goes up, and as we just talked about, if the gold price goes down for whatever reason, we've protected the downside. The other thing I want to mention here in terms of our overall cost, we've seen, when the war in Iran taking place, people got nervous about the price of diesel, price of oil, and what the effects are on the mining companies, because diesel is a big part of any mining operation.
Sure.
Especially for us with the direct shipping ore model and the transport costs. I think all those are part of the reason why all the gold equities have gone down as a result of the Iran war. Now here we see gold trading at less than $70, or sorry, oil trading less than $70 a barrel.
Yeah.
We've had four months of, I'll call it artificially high oil prices as a result of the war, and now are we getting into a different period? What are all-in sustaining costs going to be next year? We'll see where all this sort of levels out. Let's say it's a little higher. The big increase in oil prices only results in another $100 an ounce kind of production.
Sure.
It's rather contained. If we're at $1,500 all-in sustaining costs next year, you've got a $4,000 gold price, that's a pretty healthy margin. If gold goes to $5,000 or higher, as some people are predicting, obviously we're completely exposed to that. These are pretty significant numbers. Gold goes up $1,000 bucks, that's another $15 million free cash flow. These are very meaningful for a company our size. Keep in mind, I always remind people to keep in mind that we've only got 31 million shares outstanding, when you talk about leverage, all of these changes in prices, think about it on a per share basis.
That's great. Mike, somebody in the chat asked, they said they're a shareholder and they want to explain in further detail the jump in depth. That was actually the question I was going to ask next, it works well. Rick's quote in the PR emphasizes you can repay it anytime, you want to pay it down ahead of schedule. My question is why was taking on debt the right tool here rather than, as Rick referenced at the kind of his intro, issuing equity or just letting the hedges run off into maturity? Just the kind of dollars and cents rationalization.
Well, issuing equity at these price levels just wasn't acceptable to us, we weren't even looking at that. The intention still is to pay these down ahead of schedule. Especially if gold goes back up to $5,000, we're going to have that much more ability to repay it early. We do have a fair amount of cash still on hand. As we get closer to the end of the year, as production goes through campaign three and four, we'll continue to look at what our cash balance is then look to pay that back early. We just want to make sure we have plenty of cash on hand to advance our other projects, the debt's come down on the interest rate, it's manageable for us.
The intention is still to try to have this paid off ahead of the maturity date in June.
Great. No, appreciate that. Last one from me. Rick, I'd love you to zoom out. I know of the 150 or so people in the room, half of them have said they're not Contango shareholders. I'd love you to paint a picture for that crowd. You got Kitsault Valley drilling past the halfway mark on a 40,000 m program, Johnson Tract moving through FAST-41 and their year of permitting, and Lucky Shot drills turning again, exciting exploration news seemingly all the time. Now you got the gold engine funding, all of it is unhedged. How would you frame the Contango story today for folks who are in the room deciding whether this is the moment to get involved?
Well, I think a good way to frame that is, and just the analysts, obviously, when we made our news release this morning, all the analysts took that information and put it into their models. What we see is, and they all said, "Hey, the hedges were holding this company back." Now that's no longer an issue that's holding the company back. We're trading at about 0.25 of our net asset value price to NAV. Whereas our peer group average is double that, 0.55. We're a hell of a bargain at these equity prices. Now you don't have that excuse of, "Oh, well, they're hedged, and so they're not making as much money as they could." Now we'll make as much money as the gold price will allow us to make.
I think that's a very strong reason to, as an investor, to take another new look at Contango. The fact that we're unhedged, we've got this growth profile from going from 60,000 ounces of production to 200,000 ounces of gold and 5 million ounces of silver. That silver mostly coming from Kitsault. As we've seen, we're generating strong exploration results in all three of our main projects while the Manh Choh engine keeps churning out gold and keeps generating cash flow for us. Self-funded growth profile and a gold producer in a safe jurisdiction with only 31 million shares outstanding.
Good pitch. I love it. That's it for me. A couple of questions really quick, two that came in online, and then I'll get to a couple from the chat if I can, but thank you, guys. This is a short event today. Rick, quick one for you. When is mining meant to start at Kitsault? What's the general timeline for that project?
There's a lot of work to do before we're putting any sort of guidance out on mining. We have a five-year plan. I'll kind of stick with that. I guess we're in the first year of that, so we're halfway through the first year of that. Just to remind people, we'll put out a new MRE, mineral resource estimate, here on Kitsault, before the end of the month. We've got 40,000 m of drilling ongoing. We're already through half of that. They're drilling over 500 m a day out there, which is amazing.
That's wild. Yes.
Hats off to the team out there, the drillers and the geologic team out there. That's an amazing feat to process that much core every day. At the end of that, the end of this year's program, you add the 40,000+ m into the MRE that we have. We'll use that then to start outlining a path forward on here's our vision of what production will look like. We'll do that next year, probably about this time with an S-K 1300 Initial Assessments , very similar to what we did at Johnson Tract. It outlines, here's the plan. We're going to stick with this DSO approach. We're looking at several options in terms of where to process the ore, the Kitsault ore and coincidentally, the Johnson Tract ore. I'd say look for guidance on when we envision production at Kitsault roughly this time next year.
Awesome. Appreciate it. One for you, Mike. How does today's news affect free cash flow over the next 12- 18 months?
Well, free cash flow doesn't really change if all things stay equal. We either we're delivering the hedges at $4,100 an ounce or we're paying down the debt. I'd look at it more so if you believe gold prices are going to go up to, say, $5,000, you're going to increase your free cash flow by $15 million. If you think it's going down to, say, $3,100, you would argue it's going to go down by that much. If gold stays the same, I kind of look at it as neutral. You asked me how happy I might be done with these hedges today. I'll be happier when all that debt's repaid early next year. That's truly when we're fully out of having all that debt and hedge in place.
See, that's the answer of a good CFO. He's never happy. That's good.
No.
No. That's okay. That's fine. That's all right.
He's been having a good day.
Yes. There you go. T from the chat, I think we've already gone over that question on production predicted in 2027 for Manh Choh, so I'll skip that. Barry from the chat asked a question that I'm sure will shock the room with trauma. Do you think you'll be forced into hedges at Lucky Shot? Might as well ask you guys now.
I can start. We're a junior company, single asset producer. You're looked at very differently from lenders when you're doing that.
Sure.
As you grow and have multiple mines in production, you get very different treatment. In addition to that, to move forward with Lucky Shot, we're already fully funded to do that. I don't envision us going back to lenders for Lucky Shot, depending on where we're at in 2030, we should have sufficient cash to advance those projects into production with minimal debt, if any.
Honestly, just the quantum here, what we're envisioning for Lucky Shot is on the order of $50 million, $60 million to get it into production. Part of which we're spending this year completing all the underground access and the feasibility level mine plan. Yeah, it's a different quantum.
Yeah. There you go. Brad from the chat, I'm going to shoot your question through rather than make Mike do a bit of math on the call, but I will send that question through so we can handle that afterwards. There's one question from Russell that, Rick, I happen to know that you're not going to be able to answer, but I'll ask it anyway. Somebody wants to know whether you're going to be using a mill or purchasing a mill. What are you going to do with a mill for Kitsault?
Yeah, we're looking at a couple of different options. There are three different opportunities ahead of us. All I can really say is stay tuned. We're under CA, we've got to be a little careful about what we talk about openly. It is probably the biggest priority of the company right now is securing a mill, a processing facility for both Kitsault and Johnson Tract.
Perfect. Final question. I assume they mean non-Kitsault. Somebody is curious if there's any news on the former Dolly Varden properties, their additional properties.
Well, yeah, they're all kind of in that southern golden triangle area. We are doing exploration work on the other properties. Porter Idaho is one, and Mountain Boy is another, I think. Yeah, there's early-stage exploration activity going on those other properties in the golden triangle neighborhood.
Great. Appreciate it. I'll be honest, I'm excited this is the last time that we'll talk about hedges on a webinar. Mike, I'm sure you're excited it's the last time I'll ask you a hedge question. I appreciate you guys running through all the questions today. I know there were some that we didn't get to. I think I've referred them in the chat. I will be sending those through to the team, so they'll be able to get back to you, either via phone or via email. Thanks, everyone. I know it was quite a large crowd. Thanks for coming on short notice, and appreciate everybody's time. Mike and Rick, as always, thanks for giving us the lowdown live.
Go, [Velvet].
Rooting for whoever team people support tonight. Rick, I hope your team wins. For those in the chat, I hope your team wins, too, unless they're in competition. Have a great afternoon, everybody. Talk to you soon.
Thanks, everybody.