Everyone, we are excited to welcome you back today. We are going to go ahead and get started with our first presentation. Please give a warm welcome to the stage from Dakota Gold, Carling Gaze, Director of Investor Relations.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us to listen about Dakota Gold. We are really happy to be at the LD Micro conference. This is the first time we have actually come to it, and we have really enjoyed our conversations with investors so far. I am going to be making some forward-looking statements today, and I caution you to read our disclaimer on our website and on our presentation. Dakota Gold is listed on the NYSE American. We are headquartered in South Dakota, and we are excited to be building the next gold mine there. We have two projects. One is a development stage project in Richmond Hill, where we have the largest undeveloped heap leach gold resource in the U.S. We published robust economics on that in July 2025 and are advancing with a PFS this quarter.
We also have a high-grade underground target at Maitland that we are advancing with an infill program this year and targeting a maiden resource next year. Both of these projects are on private land in South Dakota, which is very important. It means that our permitting is through the State of South Dakota and through the county, which is often more efficient than federal permitting. We are fully funded. We have $99 million cash in the bank and zero debt. This gets us all the way to a shovel-ready position, to the point where we can start construction. This company is being led by very experienced individuals in the mining industry. Our co-founder and Co-Chair of the company, Robert Quartermain, is a Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. He also founded Pretium Resources, where we built the Brucejack Mine in northern B.C., Canada.
It became Canada's fourth-largest gold mine, and that was built from discovery to production in under 8 years. Before that, he ran Silver Standard, now called SSR, for 20 years, growing it from a $2 million to a multi-billion dollar company. Our CEO, Jack Henris, ran gold mines, underground and surface ones, for Newmont and Goldcorp for about 20 years. Having a closer look at where our projects are, if you are not familiar with the Homestake District, it became famous because of the historic Homestake Mine, shown on the lower right side of the screen. This mine produced 40 million ounces of gold, and it operated for 125 years continuously. When it closed in 2000, when gold price was around $300 an ounce, it was the largest, deepest underground gold mine in the Western Hemisphere.
Today, there is a current operating mine owned by Coeur Mining called Wharf. It is a heap leach operation. It has been operating for 40 years and produced over 4 million ounces of gold. Dakota Gold now has 50,000 mineral acres surrounding these projects, shown in the gray, the green, and the blue. On the right-hand side in blue, you see Maitland. That is our high-grade underground target that we are advancing with an infill program. On the left side in green is the Richmond Hill near-term development project that we are looking to put into production as soon as 2029. Here is a closer look at the economics that we have for Richmond Hill. This was the July 2025 initial assessment with cash flow. For this study, we used a base case gold price of $2,350 per ounce of gold and $29 for silver, which are well below the current cost.
This was assuming a 30,000 ton per day operation, producing an average of 150,000 ounces of gold per year. We have a very low cost to produce this gold because it is this simple heap leach surface operation. The AISC, your all-in sustaining cash cost to produce an ounce is just over $1,000, giving us quite a high margin. The after-tax net present value for the project is between $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion. On the lower right side, we see a gold sensitivity chart. This shows us under a range of different recoveries and a range of gold prices, this project could be well over a $4 billion in net present value. Over the life of mine, for this initial assessment with cash flow, we are projecting 2.6 million ounces of gold production over the 17-year mine life.
Here is a mine site layout as we have proposed with that initial assessment with cash flow. In this study, we have used concurrent mining with reclamation. As we mine a pit, we would reclaim it and revegetate the area. In some of our updated studies, we have decided to go with a single heap leach pad, shown in the purple circle, rather than three small heap leach pads, so that we can have some more operation efficiency. Since we published that economic assessment, we have been doing a lot of drilling. We have done over 350 holes across the project, which will represent 30% new drilling data that will be going into the PFS this quarter.
That drilling consisted of metallurgy drilling across the project, northern expansion drilling, as well as infill drilling across the center at the top, where we are looking to move inferred material into a measured and indicated category, which will allow us to have reserves in this PFS. Following that, we had some very positive metallurgy results come back where we saw quite high recovery in the breccia zones, which are shown in the yellow at the bottom. This year we have come out, and we have two drills operating where we are going to be doing definition drilling to also move that material from inferred to a measured and indicated category. That will be part of our FS, our feasibility study, coming mid-2027. This is a closer look at some of the expansion results that we had from the northeast.
The average grade of gold was 0.55 g/ ton in that initial assessment with cash flow. In the northeast, we are seeing some intersections that are well above that, 2.8 g/ ton, 5 g/ ton, 11 g/ ton, and although we do not expect this to change the overall average of the grade up to these high grades, we do expect to be able to integrate this material into an updated mine sequence where we can mine some higher grade, higher recovery material earlier in the mine plan, therefore increasing our gold production profile. We have also been working on our trade-off studies from that initial assessment to incorporate into the PFS, and part of that is increasing our throughput. That initial assessment was 30,000 ton per day operation using a jaw crusher.
We are looking at now installing a gyratory crusher that will allow us the flexibility to go up to 60,000 tons per day. As well, we will be incorporating some of that mine sequencing so we can optimize the gold sequence there. As well, we have been looking at the options between truck stacking versus conveyor, and I think the project is now leaning more towards truck stacking as it gives us more flexibility. All this information will be coming out in the PFS. This project is located in an excellent jurisdiction. We are a 15-minute drive from our headquarters in Lead, South Dakota, and we have excellent access to labor. There are over 200,000 people who live within an hour's drive of this project. We have an existing power line. We have existing road access. All this means that we do not need a remote camp.
Everyone can go home to your friends and family in the evening, out for steak and wine. It is an awesome spot to be. Not only that, we have our JB Gold Zone with our Maitland project right next door, just a 2-km drive. This means that Richmond Hill, this is our near-term development targeting production in 2029. But as soon as we are in a cash flow position, you have the option to be able to do an underground drift over to your Maitland project and continue to advance and develop your next mine in your portfolio, all within the same 15-minute drive from your headquarters. This is our path to cash or our timeline to production, where we are advancing the project through disciplined phase responsible development.
As we can see right now, we are about to publish that PFS, and we have been collecting baseline data on this project for the past several years. Water wells, air quality monitoring stations, wildlife surveys, and all of this is going to be bundled up and going into our permitting. This year, we will also be filing our notice of intent, which is the first step in submitting our permits, and it tells the State that in 2027, we will be coming with our large-scale mine permit. Once the feasibility is studied or published in 2027, we will be submitting those permits. The first will be with the county, and that is the neighborhood that we are operating in with the towns and the cities, and then the other one is your large-scale mine permit with the State of South Dakota.
In September, we hosted over 50 State legislators to have a presentation on the company. We are excited to be sharing the story and sharing the opportunity with them and had a very welcome reception from them. As I mentioned earlier, we have $99 million cash in the bank. As you can see, that will get us all the way through the PFS feasibility study, through our permitting, all the way to the point of being able to put a shovel in the ground to start construction. We will still have $30 million left in the bank to purchase additional long lead items.
Earlier this year, we secured a power substation through a local company, or sorry, the build slot for it, which means that as much as we can, we would like to reduce any delays that could come up with our construction. To have that extra money to be able to do it means a lot to us. We talked about it a little bit earlier, but here is a closer look at Maitland. This is actually the long section that got Robert Quartermain out of retirement to start this company. Here on the right side, we see the Homestake Mine. Once again, this mine produced 40 million ounces of gold, and a portion of that area was called the West Ledge Zone, where the average grade was 11 g over 6 m.
Over at our Maitland project, which is contiguous with this, we see an average intercept grade of 11 g over 4 m within approximately 47 drill holes from surface. We would love to get back to this area, drill it off from underground, and really unlock that potential. Above this area is called the Unionville Zone. It is higher up in the deposit, and it is a tertiary epithermal gold system, similar to what we see at Richmond Hill. What we like about this is it has higher grade. It has an average of 4 g over 6 m. We believe that after some testing, maybe it would be possible to have material from this project be put onto a heap leach at Richmond Hill.
This year, we have been doing an infill program, and the goal is to put out that maiden resource in the first half of next year. Having another look at Richmond Hill, this is a study that Agentis put out, one of our analysts, showing how attractive Richmond Hill is for a U.S. heap leach and comparing us to other developers in the space. We have a significant resource size and a very attractive after-tax net present value and internal rate of return. Here, we see a number of our peers in the developer space. At the moment, Dakota Gold has a $50 enterprise value per ounce that we have in the ground. That is resources that we have not developed yet.
If we compare this to some of our other developer peers who are further along that pipeline of de-risking through different studies such as your PFS, FS permitting, and even securing your construction financing costs, we can see that those companies have achieved a re-rate. The furthest along would be Skeena Resources. This company has an enterprise value over $600 per ounce in the ground, and they are still in construction, targeting production in 2027. Another example would be Perpetua, and they're in the permitting phase with an enterprise value over or close to $250 per ounce in the ground. We too, as we complete our de-risking studies over the next two and three years, hope to achieve an increased valuation as we go. On the right side of the screen, you're going to see some different producing companies with multiple assets.
What we would like to see here is how significant 150,000 ounces of gold production per year can be. For these companies, that gold production would give them $2.3 billion in enterprise value. We're really happy to have a clean share cap table. We have 130 million shares issued. Our market cap is around $750 million . We have that strong cash balance, around $99 million . And we have a very good analyst coverage list. Agentis, BMO, and Canaccord began covering the company in 2022, shortly after we started our drill programs. CIBC, Freedom, H.C. Wainwright, and Scotiabank launched their coverage shortly after we published that initial assessment with cash flow. We have a very good shareholder list. Robert Quartermain, our Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the company, is a 6% owner of the company, the largest shareholder. And we have other very supportive institutional holders.
We have roughly 60% is institutional, 30% is retail, and the rest is insiders, including Robert Quartermain. We also are part of the GDXJ and the Russell 3000. We're very proud to be a responsible operator. We have five years with zero lost time incidents. Safety culture is very important to our organization. And we have zero notices of environmental violation. As well, over 80% of our employees are all based in South Dakota and are local. And this is really beneficial for us and our presence with the community, knowing that they can ask us questions as they come up and have that open dialogue.
Once again, we're very excited to be advancing through these next studies and excited to be filing that notice of intent this year, kicking off the permitting process, and we look forward to being the next gold mine in the South Dakota area. Thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions? Thank you. Yes, sir.
When you reach feasibility, I think the chart that we have on the table is the cost to build out the mines of $384 million.
That is right. The $99 million will get us through to the point of starting construction. Once we file our PFS this quarter, in between that and filing the FS, we will begin having conversations with different lenders on what is the best way to raise the money to build the mine. That initial assessment with cash flow was a $384 million CapEx, which included a $50 million contingency. That number will be updated with the PFS because, as we talked about earlier, we are looking at building a more robust throughput by installing a gyratory crusher versus the jaw crusher. Some of those things will cost more money. Building the single heap leach pad will give us operational efficiency, but it will also cost more money for the initial build of that pad.
There will be certainly some increases there, and we will be able to publish those soon.