All right. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us throughout the day here at the Lithium Partners Spring 2025 Investor Conference. My name is Robert Blum, Managing Partner at Lytham Partners. Today I'll be moderating a Q&A discussion with the Chief Executive Officer of Ivanhoe Electric, Taylor Melvin. Taylor, thanks so much for joining us.
Robert, nice to see you. Thanks so much for having us. Pleasure to be with you here today.
Fantastic. For those maybe not familiar with the company, provide sort of the high-level overview.
Sure. Ivanhoe Electric was founded by Robert Friedland. Robert has one of the most outstanding reputations in our global mining industry as a leader in innovation and entrepreneurship and as a company builder. His track record of success and value creation in the global mining industry is really unparalleled. Robert founded Ivanhoe Electric, took it public in the U.S. in the summer of 2022. We're a U.S. company. Our primary listing is on the New York Stock Exchange, American. We have a dual listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. We're based in Tempe, Arizona, the broader Phoenix area. We're a U.S. mining company focused on exploration and development of critical minerals resources. What really makes us stand out is we're one of the very few U.S. companies focused on the discovery and advancement of critical metals needed to help secure the U.S. supply chain.
We have got some projects we will talk about through the course of our conversation today. We also have very exciting and disruptive technologies focused on the exploration side of the business. We spend a lot of time and effort and money focused on exploration, and we have some groundbreaking proprietary technologies that help us accelerate the exploration process.
That's very good. You know, let's go into, you know, why is copper maybe so essential to the U.S. economy and sort of this energy transition that we're talking about here? What role does sort of this domestic supply chain play in meeting this demand?
Yeah. Look, we need copper for everything. And certainly, if you've been paying attention to any of the latest, you know, the news and some of the executive orders from the Trump administration, you know, increasing our domestic production of critical metals is a key focus of this administration. It really highlights the need for critical metals, including copper, for everything that we want to achieve in the United States. We need copper to expand and improve our electric grid. We need copper to help create and generate all the electricity that we need to support the massive growth that's in data centers that's necessary to support the growth in artificial intelligence. We need copper for defense applications. You need copper for all types of technology advancements.
Copper is really at the center of everything that we need to advance our own economy and the global economy, quite frankly. When you think about critical metals, copper is really at the top of that list. In the U.S., we're a net importer of refined metals. We need to find and develop more copper to meet the domestic needs in the United States. Ivanhoe Electric, with our Santa Cruz project here in Arizona, has a very advanced stage project that can help meet that domestic demand. Really, copper is at the center of everything that we need to do in our country, from electrification to technology advancements to the defense industry as well.
All right. Let's jump right into the Santa Cruz Copper Project there. It's on private land, access to major infrastructure. How does that sort of streamline development and reduce permitting challenges?
It does all the things that you just mentioned. We're very fortunate to have a high-quality, high-grade copper deposit entirely on private land, which we own here in Arizona, about an hour south of Phoenix in the city of Casa Grande. Santa Cruz is a large underground resource, and it has the ability to produce pure copper cathode on site, and that metal can go directly into the domestic market. At Santa Cruz, we've spent the better part of the last two years advancing engineering studies for the underground copper project. Our next critical milestone is our preliminary feasibility study that comes out in June of this year. In about one month from now, we'll be coming out with our final engineering study that will support project financing and allow us to advance our permitting.
Our primary permitting authority is the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in Pinal County, the city of Casa Grande. We're very fortunate to have such a high-quality project in such a high-quality location and have great relationships with our state and local partners.
Yeah. Maybe elaborate on some of the strategic partnerships or exploration partnerships you have with BHP and others there.
Yes, sure. In addition to our core project here in Arizona, we've used our exploration technologies, which is we have a ground-based geophysical surveying platform called Typhoon, and we have a software subsidiary called Computational Geosciences. CGI is based in Vancouver. Typhoon and CGI give us this powerful kind of hardware and software platform to help accelerate the exploration process by being able to look deep beneath the Earth's surface to identify chargeable and conductive structures. We've leveraged that technology into very expansive partnerships with some of the world's leading mining companies. In Saudi Arabia, Ma’aden is our partner in an exploration joint venture, 50/50 joint venture, where we're exploring over 48,000 sq km of highly prospective land on the Arabian Shield. Ma’aden invested about $150 million in our company in 2023 for a 9.9% equity stake.
We took about half of those proceeds and invested them back into the country of Saudi Arabia to advance and fund exploration. We're using our Typhoon technology and CGI to locate underground sulfide mineralization deep beneath the Earth's surface. It's a very large-scale, very exciting prospective exploration platform. We think it's currently the world's largest contiguous surveying program of its kind with induced polarization and electromagnetic surveying for new sources of copper, gold, silver, other critical metals. In the United States, you referenced our alliance with BHP. We're using Typhoon with BHP in the southwest United States. BHP contributed $15 million to fund early-stage exploration. We're operating that joint venture in cooperation with BHP to look for new sources of copper in the U.S.
How do you sort of balance sort of the top strategic priorities, right, with everything that you've touched about between the mine with Typhoon here with the ultimate goal, right, of supporting sort of this U.S. supply chain for critical metals?
You know, it's a challenge. We have a lot going on for a smaller company. A big critical part of this is having the right team. You know, we talked about Robert Friedland earlier and having one of the world's great mining entrepreneurs who started this company. We're able to leverage off of his vast experience and his network. You know, I bring over 20 years of natural resources experience to the company. We've got a very experienced exploration team, geophysics team. We've got a very experienced finance team, legal, human resources. It all starts with having the right people that you can really trust and delegate to operate multiple projects at once. For a company of our size, we've got an incredibly experienced leadership team across vast disciplines of the business. That's the first way that you're able to do it.
The second is, you know, really just focusing on the key projects that we can advance and deliver shareholder value. While we are advancing Santa Cruz in Arizona, we've got full teams who are very dedicated to the exploration joint venture in Saudi Arabia, an exploration team and geophysics team that's dedicated to our BHP alliance. We also have our own organic portfolio of exploration properties in the United States. We have a team that's capable of doing all those things simultaneously. We're very focused on our core projects and being able to find and advance new sources of critical metals in the U.S. and through our joint ventures in Saudi Arabia.
All right. That's helpful. Coming back to sort of the Santa Cruz project here, how are you sort of leveraging the recent financing indication from the U.S. Export-Import Bank on behalf of the project there?
Yeah, sure. That was a very exciting piece of news for us that we received back in about a month ago. And we've been in deep discussions with the U.S. Export-Import Bank going back to the beginning of the year. One of the really exciting changes, I think, in the U.S. landscape is certainly the focus that the current administration is placing on mining and specifically advancing domestic sources of critical metals, including copper. To get the endorsement of the U.S. Export-Import Bank for our Santa Cruz project is very important. Their letter of interest, as you saw, indicated the potential to provide up to $825 million of debt financing for the project. Once we get this preliminary feasibility study completed and released in June, we will then advance very rapidly. We're already in preliminary discussions for project financing.
We see the U.S. Export-Import Bank potential financing as an important part of a larger-scale financing package. We've got tremendous interest in this project from traditional banks to provide project financing for Santa Cruz. The combination of a high-grade, modern underground copper mining project on private land in the United States, and specifically in Arizona, a state that's very familiar with mining. Mining is a very important part of the state's economy. We've got great support for the project locally. All of that lends itself to a very financeable project. U.S. Export-Import Bank is a very important component of that. Over the balance of this year, we'll put together that financing package.
Our goal is to have a fully financed, permitted project in early 2026 and be in a position to commence initial construction in the first half of next year.
All right. So maybe that's where we can kind of end up here, right, which is what are some of the most important catalysts we should be looking for in project milestones? We talked about the preliminary feasibility study, partnerships, maybe some technological advancements. What should people be looking for for the next 12 months or so?
You know, as you think about the global mining industry and then you narrow it down to the U.S. mining industry, one of the things that's been a real challenge is bringing projects to market. You know, you hear a lot of data about the fact that it can take up to 15 years to find and permit and engineer and develop a project. You know, where we are with Santa Cruz is a key differentiating characteristic of our company in this project. We've spent the last, you know, three years spending upwards of $100 million on infill drilling and metallurgical studies and hydrogeological test work to get this project to the point of the PFS in June. It's very important to note for your investors that a PFS in the United States for a U.S.
company under our mining regulations, which is called S-K 1300, that is the final engineering study that we will take to the banks, as I mentioned earlier, to get our project financing. There won't be a feasibility study. This milestone in June is very critical for the project. This is the study that will allow us to apply for all the balance of our key permits to secure project financing and be in a position to bring this project, you know, into construction in the first half of next year. As you think about the landscape of projects in the U.S., we think that Santa Cruz has an exceptional opportunity to be the next project in the United States that will produce, you know, pure copper cathode to meet domestic demand.
On the timetable that I'm laying out, which starts with initial construction in 2026, we see the potential to be in initial production before the end of 2028. That's, you know, in mining terms, that's like day after tomorrow.
All right. Fantastic. Look, we'll go ahead and leave it there. I would like to, obviously, Taylor, thank you so much for the overview on the company here. I want to thank investors for watching here. Let me remind everyone, if you are watching, you'd like to schedule a meeting here at the conference or perhaps even afterwards here as well, feel free to send me an email. That's Blum, B-L-U-M, at lythampartners.com. Or if you'd like to learn more about Lytham Partners, you can visit our website, lythampartners.com, or visit us on LinkedIn and stay connected on future events here as well. Again, Taylor, thanks so much for the introduction to the company. Appreciate your time today.
Robert, it's our pleasure. Thanks for having us on. Really enjoyed talking to you. Look forward to doing it again. We'll certainly keep you informed of our progress at Santa Cruz and our other exploration projects in the United States and globally. We're excited about our future and excited about talking to you soon.
Fantastic. All right, everyone, have a great rest of the conference. Enjoy the day.
Take care.