Good morning and welcome to Ivanhoe Electric's webcast call on the preliminary feasibility study for the Santa Cruz Copper Project. Today's call is taking place on Monday, June 23, 2025. The presentation portion of this call will be in listen-only mode. Following the remarks, analysts will be invited to ask questions using the raise hand function. I'll now turn the call over to Mike Patterson, Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development.
Thank you. Before we begin, please note that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements under U.S. and Canadian Securities Laws. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Refer to our June 2025 news release and SEC and CDAR filings for full details. This call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our website shortly after the event. I'd now like to turn the call over to Robert Friedland, our Founder and Executive Chairman.
Good morning to everybody. I'm in the West Coast of the United States, and I'd like to think a little bit with you and speak a little bit with you about how long it takes to build a new copper mine to ensure our country's national security. You're all aware of the news about what an unstable and difficult world we face. It was a remarkable weekend as we're concerned about the supply chain and nuclear weapons. All of this depends on America's ability to secure its own resources. This project, which we started working on about eight or nine years ago, would normally take about 12 years to get to this point. A typical new high-grade copper mine in the United States should take at least 15 years to build, historically.
This is the best producer available to the United States of copper in the current administration and probably the next two or three administrations. It will produce a refined copper metal on-site on private land in the greenest possible way in a state that has over 1,200 defense companies in the state of Arizona. What is this company? It's a group of remarkable individuals that have been pulled together into a disciplined management team based in Phoenix, Arizona, producing oxide copper underground in a historically mineral-rich area, right in the heart of a high-technology corridor that stretches from Phoenix, Arizona to Tucson, Arizona. Our immediate neighbors include Lucid Motors, producing electric cars from our supportive Saudi shareholders that control that company, Frito-Lay and Abbott Labs, and Nissan and others in a highly industrialized area.
We're not far from where Taiwan Semiconductor is going to invest massive amounts of capital to produce semiconductors in the United States. Now, in our country, we have a shortage of copper smelters. They're old machines. They belch sulfuric acid. A modern smelter hasn't been built in the United States in generations. This project is designed to heat-leach copper into a solution and then electro-win it into pure copper metal right on the site in Arizona without generating all of the environmental impacts of smelting. To find this high-grade copper oxide, and this is the highest grade significant copper in America, and to produce cathode is something we know is of great concern to Washington, D.C. We've spent a lot of time with the previous administration and with the current administration, and we're heartened by the support we're seeing out of Washington, D.C.
for something as so obvious as to keep our lights on and to keep our economy moving. Taylor, who is going to speak next, had a long career at Freeport-McMoRan, and before that at J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan helped us take this company public during COVID. You all remember that period. We went public at $11.75 a share, and we were the best-performing IPO in the United States during COVID. We traded up to $16 quite quickly. Maybe some relatively short-term investors lost faith during the long period of time we call the valley of death while these projects are engineered and designed and go through the permitting process. Now the shares are very attractively priced because the secondary offering that was done in New York post the IPO was done at $13.50 or so a share.
This is like artichokes fired for a dollar at Safeway. We have a national security crisis for our supply chain. We need to mine metal in the United States. The skill set that our team possesses to engineer and construct this mine in the United States is the exact same skill set you need to mine anything. We are either going to have a renewed mining industry in the United States, or we are not. I think we are, and this is probably the highest profile, most focused, most experienced management team building in a green mine. We have BHP, the largest mining company in the world, as a shareholder and also a joint venture partner to explore for more of these mines with unique technology we possess called Typhoon. We think there are 20 or 30 more giant mines hiding in the United States.
We have got to search states like Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, New Mexico, and others, or we are forever going to be junkies importing metal that we cannot run our economy without. We would urge all of you to take a new look at this study. This is a very detailed study, and it will enable us to proceed to funding. We are very happy to have received a letter of support from the U.S. Exim Bank. I recently met with their management in Washington, D.C. This is serious. This mine is going to get built. It is going to last a long time. The mine we are presenting today is just licking the top of the ice cream cone. We are just talking about taking the oxide off the top of a buried porphyry copper system. There is an ocean of sulfide mineralization for subsequent expansion of this mine.
We've kept the capital low and the timeline quick to bring copper metal into production that this nation desperately needs. This country was very good to my parents, who emigrated to the United States in 1949. I'm an American citizen, and I'm proud of my country. I'm proud of the team of people here that realize we must mine this deposit because everything you touch, we either mined it or we grew it agriculturally. Even America's great agricultural potential depends on mining. With that, I'll turn this over to Taylor Melvin, our CEO, and Taylor will introduce the rest of the people and we'll get into the specifics of this great project. Thank you.
Thank you, Robert. Welcome, everyone, to Ivanhoe Electric's webcast. We're excited to be here today to discuss the results of our Santa Cruz Copper Project preliminary feasibility study and the updated mineral resource estimate and our first mineral reserve estimate. I want to start by saying that this study is the culmination of an extraordinary effort by our dedicated project team. We have a talented team of geologists, metallurgists, mining engineers, underground specialists, and processing experts who work together with our industry-leading consultants to deliver a world-class engineering study for a modern underground copper mine in Arizona. This is a project that will produce American-made copper cathode to support domestic demand. I'm extremely proud of the collective effort of our team. We have a lot to cover today, so let's get into it.
On the call with me, in addition to Robert, we'll have Glenn Koontz, our Senior Vice President of Mine Development, and Jordan Nieser, our Chief Financial Officer, and other members of our senior management team. The Santa Cruz Copper Project is a high-quality advanced copper project on private land in Arizona. The project has high-grade reserves. It will employ modern underground mining methods and technologies and have a heat-leach process that will produce 100% of its production in the form of copper cathode on-site. We're fortunate to have excellent access to existing infrastructure just outside the city of Casa Grande. The project has low capital intensity and operating costs. We're very fortunate to have a deep and experienced project team that's worked very closely with our world-class group of consultants to design this project. Santa Cruz is an advanced project with a short development timeline already referenced by Robert.
Importantly, we're going to be producing American-made copper metal on-site that will improve U.S. supply chain security and help meet U.S. demand for copper. I want to talk a little bit about our team, and I want to highlight a few key members who have had a major role in bringing this study to market today. I've already mentioned Glenn Koontz. Working under Glenn is Colin Shaw, who's Director of Underground Studies, Mark Fennell, Director of Process Engineering, Cammie Ballard, Director of Permitting, Environmental, and Social Responsibility, and Glenn Barr, who's our lead consulting metallurgist. You can see on this page the impressive years of experience of this team who have worked for some of the most recognizable names in our industry. We're very fortunate to have their leadership on the Santa Cruz Project.
Our preliminary feasibility study is backed by a significant investment in extensive fieldwork and testing. Since our 2023 initial assessment study, we have invested approximately $100 million to generate and analyze the massive amount of data that support this preliminary feasibility study. We drilled 149 new holes totaling almost 120,000 meters to support our updated mineral resource and reserve estimates and conducted extensive hydrogeological and metallurgical tests. Our team conducted over 250 trade-off studies to optimize the mine design and the process flowsheet. We conducted surface 3D seismic mapping to gain a detailed understanding of the underground fault structures that impact groundwater flow rates. All of this work was led by our internal team of over 40 engineers, geologists, and technicians supported by our industry-leading consultants, including Fluor as our project lead and BBA on our mineral resources and underground mine engineering.
The work and engineering that went into this study allows us to co-file a feasibility study in Canada under National Instrument 43-101. It's very important to point out that this is our final published study for the Santa Cruz Copper Project. This is the study that we will use to support all of our future project financing discussions. The Santa Cruz Copper Project study defines a high-quality copper mining operation in the United States with low capital intensity and low production cost that delivers attractive economics. At Friday's COMEX copper price of $4.83 per pound, the project has an after-tax net present value at an 8% discount rate of $1.9 billion and an internal rate of return of 24%. At a flat $4.25 per pound copper price, the project net present value is $1.4 billion with an internal rate of return of 20%.
The project will reach an average mining rate of 20,000 tons per day at full production and achieve 92% copper recoveries based on extensive column testing. The project has a 23-year mine life. Average annual copper cathode production during the first 15 years of production will be 72,000 tons. Thanks to the high-grade reserves, low initial capital, and low operating cost, the Santa Cruz Project has excellent economics and strong leverage to copper prices. In addition to the values and returns I quoted on the previous slide, I want to point out the almost $5 billion of life of mine after-tax free cash flow and a payback period of about four and a half years post-construction at a $4.25 copper price. You can see in the table the project's leverage to higher copper prices and that each 25-cent change in copper adds about $240 million to the net present value.
Importantly, as a U.S. producer of copper cathode, we will benefit from COMEX prices and cathode premiums at the mine gate. Thanks to our high-grade reserves, efficient and modern mining methods, and low-cost renewable power, the Santa Cruz Project is projected to have very low first quartile unit cash cost of $1.32 per pound of copper produced. This is an industry cost curve provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence on a co-product basis. Low operating costs give the project great leverage to higher copper prices and are a testament to the high-quality nature of our project. We've mentioned on the previous slide the project's low capital intensity, and at less than $17,000 or around $17,000 per ton, the Santa Cruz Copper Project stands out in our industry, particularly for greenfield projects.
Our low capital intensity is driven by a combination of our access to excellent existing infrastructure in Arizona, the consistent and high-grade nature of our reserves, and efficient, simplified processing flowsheet to produce copper cathode via heat-leach operation. We're fortunate to own almost 6,000 acres of fee-simple private land and associated mineral rights in Casa Grande, Arizona. Our project is located between Phoenix and Tucson with great access to extensive existing infrastructure. We're close to U.S. interstates and state highways. We have a power line running right through our project. We have rail to the north. We have existing water wells and rights associated with our land and access to a natural gas pipeline through our property. Being so close to Phoenix and Tucson, we have great access to a large, talented, young workforce.
We're close to the University of Arizona, Arizona State, Grand Canyon University, numerous community and technical colleges that can provide a talented and robust workforce. Plus, this is a state that knows mining. Mining is an integral part of Arizona's economy and its rich history in the mining industry. Our project has a small, efficient surface footprint. We envision using about 40% of our total land package for this project, and that includes about 900 acres for integrated solar and battery storage facility that will provide efficient, clean power to supply at least 70% of the mine's electricity demand. You can see that we have ample space for future exploration and expansion potential, particularly to the northeast, which is where our Texaco Deposit is located.
At this point, I want to turn the call over to Glenn Koontz, who's going to cover more of the technical aspects of our project, our reserves, and our resources. Glenn.
Thank you, Taylor. Good morning, everyone. As a result of over 100,000 meters of new drilling, we converted approximately 60% of our indicated resources to define 136 million tons of probable reserves with an average grade of 1.08% total copper to support our 23-year mine life. We will mine 106 million tons at an average grade of 1.1% copper grade over the first 15 years of mining. The current mine plan includes only the oxide and chalcosite domains. There is a significant amount of primary domain that presents a valuable opportunity for future mine plan expansion. This material will require a milled process at that time. Our entire project design is based on over 250 trade-off studies that incorporate all the data we have collected. These studies involve comparing different metallurgical and mining methods, mining rates, slope orientations, mine access, material handling, and backfill systems.
Through the extensive infill drilling program, we develop a comprehensive geotechnical and hydrological model to support the various rock types and alteration characteristics within the mine. The Santa Cruz deposit lies 310-940 meters below the surface and will be accessed via twin declines. We will utilize road headers to develop the twin declines and the 16 main access levels, and we will employ traditional drill and blast methods in our mine development and stoping areas. For this deposit, we have selected bulk tonnage with transverse long-hole stoping as the optimal mining method. Mining will occur in blocks, extracting ore from the bottom upwards with paste backfill providing ground support to sustain an average production rate of 20,000 tons per day for the first 15 years of operation.
We access the ore body using a centerline access approach, which offers us the flexibility to open up more mining faces, blend ore for surface transport and processing, and facilitate quick and efficient backfilling. Centerline access also reduces waste handling during development. At the end of the project life, a sill pillar will be mined, and the backfill will be designed to support adjacent fill stopes without the need for additional pillars. As one of the newest mines built in the United States, we will have the opportunity to incorporate the latest mining technologies available for such an operation, including teleremote-operated and autonomous equipment, telemetry, and grade control technologies. The extensive testing and engineering work conducted during this study has shown that both the oxide and chalcosite materials are highly amenable for the chloride-assisted on-off heat-leaching process.
As such, the flowsheet has been designed to cycle oxide and primary sulfide ores through an on-off heat leach to produce a copper-rich pregnant leach solution that will be processed in the on-site solvent extraction electrowinning circuit for recovery. The process and refinery plant designs are based on a geometallurgical test program, which includes hundreds of metallurgical tests, including significant column tests to create overall design that is based on existing technologies and proven equipment. The designs are conventional in nature to support the local variations within the mineral reserve. One of the primary advantages of this method is the complete elimination of tailings, along with the associated need for tailings storage facilities, as it produces copper exclusively in the form of copper cathode, ensuring both efficiency and limiting the surface footprint impact.
Ore produced from the mine will be processed using a heat leach and SXEW Flowsheet to produce high-quality LME, London Metal Exchange Grade A copper cathode. Ore will be transported with an efficient mining process by loaders from the stopes to an ore pass system, transferred by chutes to a conveyor system, and then loaded on the railbare train and brought to surface. On the surface, the ore will be crushed, agglomerated, and stacked on the on-off heat leach pad. The on-off heat leach pad will be divided into seven cells, creating multiple leach pads, which gives us operational flexibility. Ore will be stacked at 20,000-22,000 tons a day, and the cells will progress through the sequence from stacking, piping, irrigation, drain down, spent ore removal, and inspection for a total of 265 days for each cell.
Our overall net consumption of sulfuric acid is low, at just 6 kilograms per ton of treated ore. This is primarily because most of the fresh acid is needed during the initial curing and agglomeration stage. The processed flowsheet requires minimal fresh acid due to the low consumption of acid by the gangue material or gangue minerals, sorry. The pregnant solution is collected and continues through to solvent extraction and the electrowinning circuit to produce a 99.99% copper cathode. Spent ore will be removed from the on-off heat leach pad and processed for paste backfill or placed in a spent ore storage facility. Approximately 50% of the spent ore will be processed for use in paste backfill.
This approach allows for a simple process that offers attractive recovery rates at 92% over the life of mine and is scalable, making it well-suited to accommodate the varying ramp-up needs of the underground mine and the high-tonnage mine plant. There are multiple large operations throughout Chile that have been utilizing on-off heat leaching and reclaiming of spent ore with proven success. The Santa Cruz Copper Project involves three years of initial construction followed by 23 years of mining. The production profile for copper cathodes is based on existing mineral reserves. As I mentioned previously, there are significant additional mineral resources not included in this production profile, which present opportunities for future expansion of the mine plan. The mine plan uses a variable cutoff grade strategy combined with ore blending to ensure a consistent supply of high-grade copper during the first 15 years of mining.
Due to the extensive size and consistency of the ore body, more than 95% of the material brought to the surface will be ore, all of which will be stacked on the heat leach pad. Over the life of mine, only 6 million tons of waste will be mined and moved to the surface. Contract mining will be employed during the construction period, bringing in experienced personnel and allowing for a short ramp-up period in the project's early stages. Cemented paste will serve as the primary method for backfilling, providing support for the mining cycle and facilitating excavation of adjacent voids. Grade control will be incorporated through technology integrated into the material handling system. This will include crossbelt analyzers, XRF Bucket Loaders, scanners, and an on-site laboratory to reconcile results with the mine plan.
As we are operating on private land, our permitting authorities include the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the Arizona Department of Water Resources, Pinal County, and the City of Casa Grande. We have established strong relationships with our stakeholders and permitting authorities. To date, we have successfully obtained 10 permits to support our exploration activities, land use, and land reclamation. Currently, we are in the process of obtaining the necessary permits to begin initial construction on the box cut, which is planned for early 2026. We continue to collaborate with the city, county, and state to secure the key permits required to commence initial production under the anticipated development plan. The current indicated mineral resources total 3.1 million tons of contained copper, primarily found within the Santa Cruz deposit. Out of this total, 2.5 million tons are suitable for heat leaching.
1.5 million tons of the contained copper are included in the current mine plan as mineral reserve. Therefore, with additional work, there are indicated mineral resources that could potentially be converted into mineral reserves, providing further opportunities for mineral reserve expansion. Currently, the Santa Cruz and East Ridge deposits contain 0.6 million tons of inferred resources. Additionally, the Texaco Deposit holds 2.7 million tons of inferred contained copper. The significant increase in the Texaco mineral resource since the initial assessment is attributed to drilling 14 new holes totaling 12,703 meters and lowering the cutoff grade from 0.9% total copper to approximately equivalent to 0.45% total copper, which is $34 per ton of NSR, which supports a bulk mining, non-cave mining method. Important, none of the inferred resources are included in the current mine plan, which indicates further growth potential and options for the project.
Now I will turn the call back over to Taylor.
Thanks, Glenn. This next slide shows you our current indicative development plan and, subject to receipt of necessary permits and financing, you can see that we will be working the balance of this year and into 2026 to obtain the initial construction permits in ordinary course that Glenn just referenced. That will put us in a position to begin initial construction on our box cut and decline construction in the early part of 2026. While we are doing that, we will also be working on obtaining the final construction and operating permits, securing our project financing, and beginning our equipment procurement process to be in a position to start surface infrastructure construction in 2027, which will then allow us to mine and stockpile our first material in 2028 to begin the heat leach process and produce initial copper cathode in the second half of 2028.
Thank you, Taylor.
We'll have Jordan talk about our financing process.
Thank you, Taylor. During the preparation of this engineering study, we've been in active discussions with several financing institutions, including commercial banks, U.S. government agencies, and other traditional providers of mine financing. We have also held preliminary discussions with a growing group of potential asset-level partners. Thanks to the high-quality nature of the Santa Cruz project and its prime location on private land in Arizona, there is significant interest in financing our low-cost, high-cash flow generating American project. Further to this point, in April, we were pleased to receive a letter of interest from the U.S. Exim Bank to provide up to $825 million in project debt. We continue to engage with U.S. Exim and other U.S. government agencies to explore these funding opportunities.
Looking at the project economics and the significant free cash flow and corresponding debt service metrics at a range of copper prices, we may potentially raise up to 70% of the project capital via structured debt. In addition, pardon me, we intend to fund the remaining balance for the project through a combination of potential strategic partnerships, support from U.S. government agencies, and potentially accessing other sources of mine financing, including off-takers, specialist funds, and other direct mine financing groups. With the study now complete, we are very excited to move forward with our full project finance process, and we're aiming to have key commitments in place over the next 6-12 months.
We are very fortunate to have a management team with extensive experience in mine finance and broad relationships with leading global financial institutions, all under the leadership of our Executive Chairman and founder, who is one of the most successful company builders and entrepreneurs in our industry's history. Thank you, Taylor.
Thanks, Jordan. Let me go to the next slide, please. Okay, great. Thank you. Listen, you've heard a lot of detail about this exciting project, and clearly our team has worked exceptionally hard over this last kind of year and a half since our initial assessment in 2023. We're very proud to bring this project to the market today and discuss this detailed preliminary feasibility study. I want to point out that the Santa Cruz Copper Project, which is one of America's next, the next American copper mine to produce pure copper cathode on site with the high margins we've talked about and low capital intensity, is just one of the projects in our company.
While we're working on Santa Cruz, we continue to deploy our disruptive Typhoon technology and exploration technology-led exploration platform to look for new sources of critical metals in the United States and abroad, particularly in our joint venture with Saudi Arabia. We have a lot going on within the company. We continue to be focused on technology-led exploration while we advance and start to build the Santa Cruz Copper Project in the United States. We continue to pursue a very dynamic portfolio of 100% owned critical metals exploration projects in the United States. This concludes our prepared comments about the project. At this point, Operator, we turn it back over to you to answer any questions.
Thank you. We will now move to our question and answer session. If you have joined via the webinar, please use the raise hand icon, which can be found at the bottom of your webinar application. When you are called on, please unmute your line and ask your question. We will now pause a moment for the queue to assemble. Our first question will come from Andrew Mikitchook with BMO Capital Markets. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Okay. Can you hear me?
Yes. Hi, Andrew.
All right. Congratulations to the great technical team that brought this out this morning. If we could just go back to the permitting, what are the hurdles required for the box cut? There was also a reference in the press release for the mine permit, a requirement for a federal injection permit. I'm not stating the words correctly, but if you just have a little bit of detail on that, that would be helpful.
Mike, can you put the slides back to the permitting slide? Glenn and Cammie Ballard, who's also on the phone with us, I'll let you two get into the details of where we are in the permitting process and where we're going to be going.
Cammie, would you like to start with just the permits required for the box cut first? Would you like to start with that?
Sure.
Answer that?
Sure.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Good morning, Andrew. We are doing our permitting in a staged approach. We have our initial permits for the box cut, and those include some general aquifer protection permits and an amendment to our current mine land reclamation plan, as well as the city permit, the major site plan, and development permit. Those are all in progress. We've submitted our air quality, our Class two air quality permit, and that should be out right now and should be completed at the end of this month. All of those are tracking, and we should have them submitted and hopefully approved by Q1 of next year. We will need for paste backfill, we'll need what's called a Class five underground injection control permit. The jurisdiction for that permit currently sits with the EPA.
However, ADQ is looking to take over primacy of that permit process before the end of the year. We will be working with both agencies on that permit. It is a little bit different than what you are probably familiar with with the Florence Copper Project. That is a Class three UIC permit. The Class five is a permit by rules. It is a little less complex, and we do not see any challenges with getting that permit.
Thanks, Cammie and Glenn.
Okay. The press release on the $825 million of indicative debt had references to two or three government programs that could also be considered. Is that in the list of ongoing discussions with government? Is that still something to be expecting?
Yeah. Robert and I and our team are actively involved in multiple discussions with multiple U.S. government agencies. We're very fortunate to have strong support in this current administration for growth of critical metals and particularly copper production in the United States, and particularly production of refined copper metal. It's a positive and yet dynamic situation in Washington. The first step for us was to get this study published. Now with this study in hand, we can have much more detailed and advanced conversations with multiple agencies about the scope of the project and where it might fit within certain of the government agencies and their programs to promote domestic production. Getting this study was an important first step for us or kind of the important next step for us, I should say, to accelerate and advance detailed conversations across multiple agencies.
Okay. Thank you, Taylor. I'll take my hand down and let others ask questions.
All right. Thanks, Andrew.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand button on your application. There are no more questions at this time. I would like to thank you for joining. Have a wonderful day.
Thank you.
Thank you.