Ivanhoe Mines Ltd

TSX:IVN

Earnings Call Analysis

Ivanhoe Mines Q3 Results Show Record Revenue and Future Growth Potential

In the third quarter, Ivanhoe Mines recorded a revenue of $828 million, an 8% increase in copper tonnes sold compared to the previous quarter, despite a dip in copper prices. Cash costs rose to $1.69 per pound due to higher power costs. EBITDA reached $470 million, the second highest on record. For 2025, production guidance is slightly below 600,000 tonnes, expected to ramp up to 600,000 tonnes by 2026. The company is optimistic about ongoing projects, aiming for continued growth in production and profitability as power stability improves.

A Record Quarter for Kamoa-Kakula

In the third quarter of 2024, Kamoa-Kakula reported impressive financial results, achieving record revenues of $828 million. This was a notable achievement despite a decrease in the realized copper price from $4.34 to $4.16 per pound, highlighting strong sales volume with an 8% increase in payable copper tonnes sold compared to the previous quarter. The company successfully navigated challenges, including the handling of lower-grade material and an increase in unsold inventory, demonstrating operational resilience.

Cost Management Amid Challenges

The cash cost of producing payable copper crept up to $1.69 per pound, driven by rising power costs necessitated by the reliance on diesel generators during operations. Nevertheless, the management expressed satisfaction with the costs considering the circumstances. The second-highest quarterly EBITDA recorded at $470 million suggests effective cost management amidst production and inventory challenges.

EBITDA and Profit Stability

Kamoa-Kakula's EBITDA witnessed strong quarterly growth, bolstered by increased sales volumes, although this was moderated by a decline in copper prices. Overall, Ivanhoe Mines reported a profit of $108 million and a normalized profit of $112 million, largely unchanged from the previous quarter. These stable profits indicate consistent operational performance and the effectiveness of growth strategies in place.

Outlook for Production and Costs

Looking to future quarters, Kamoa-Kakula aims to further enhance production rates, with revised guidance projecting approximately 425,000 to 450,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate this year, moving towards an annual capacity of 600,000 tonnes in 2026. The management expects a strong end to 2024, largely due to the ramp-up of Phase 3 development, while resolving intermittent power issues that inflicted losses earlier in the year.

Liquidity and Financial Position

At the end of September, Ivanhoe reported $180 million in cash and cash equivalents, supplemented by a $75 million working capital facility. They indicated minimal debt levels compared to the industry's norms, which places them in a strong position to finance future growth initiatives while maintaining flexibility. This financial stability paves the way for continued operational investment and strategic developments.

Building the Future: Smelter and Western Forelands

Construction on the new smelter is nearing completion, expected to begin commissioning early next year, which will further bolster profitability. Concurrently, Ivanhoe has ramped up exploration efforts in the Western Forelands, targeting extensive drilling activity. The expectation is to substantially increase copper resources, leveraging Ivanhoe's established expertise in the region for future operational gains.

Aiming for Strong Returns and Dividends

Looking ahead to 2025, Ivanhoe plans to distribute dividends, contingent upon excess cash flow beyond operational requirements and existing obligations. The company anticipates streaming dividends upwards from its joint ventures, adding to investment appeal as they reach substantial production and profitability thresholds.

Conclusion: Future Growth and Market Position

In conclusion, Ivanhoe Mines continues to showcase robust operational capabilities, backed by strong financial performance and a solid outlook for production growth. The successful ramp-up of Phase 3, along with strategic initiatives in the Western Forelands and new smelter capabilities, positions the company favorably within the copper market, particularly as demand for sustainably sourced materials continues to rise. Investors are encouraged to watch for developments toward achieving guidance targets and upcoming production updates.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by welcome to the Ivanhoe Mines Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like hand the conference over to your speaker today, Matthew Keevil, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

Thanks, operator. Yes, everybody, thanks very much for joining us today. Our apologies. There was a slight technical glitch on the back end of the system. We will ask you today to refer to the slides that are posted to our website at www.ivanhoemines.com. You can click on investors, and you'll see the deck there. If you could follow along with management on those slides, that would be great to just deal with this a little bit of a technical glitch. We appreciate it very much, and thanks for your patience.

But welcome today. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Ivanhoe Mines third quarter 2024 financial results conference call. As the operator mentioned, my name is Matthew Keevil, and I'm the Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications with Ivanhoe Mines. On the line today from the company, we have Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Robert Friedland; President, Marna Cloete; Chief Financial Officer, David Van Heerden; Chief Operating Officer, Mark Farren; Executive Vice President, Project, Steve Amos; and Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alex Pickard.

We will be finishing today's event with a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. If your question is not addressed, please do contact our Investor Relations team directly for a follow-up and we'll be happy to answer that question offline. Before we begin, I will point to Slide 2. We do have -- to remind everyone that today's event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in today's press release as well as on SEDAR+ and at www.ivanhoemines.com.

It is now my pleasure to introduce Ivanhoe Mines' Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Robert Friedland, for opening remarks. Please go ahead, Robert.

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

Well, greetings, everybody, and we certainly apologize for the technical delays, trying to get a global system that is reliable. I'm addressing you from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where we are at the future investment initiative here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Our opening photograph shows my standing next to Marna and a lot of our key people and a team of international investors inside the actual furnace in our new smelter under construction. That visit was fantastic. For those of you that haven't been at the Congo recently, the progress on site is stunning and remarkable. So I welcome you all to this session. You can walk through the slides with us as I turn this over to Marna, our President. Let's go to the first slide with a picture of the smelter from a drone, and off we go. Thank you, Marna.

[Martie Cloete, executive]

Thank you, Robert, and welcome, everybody, to our third quarter financial results. It's quite an impressive picture. If you see that, it's even more impressive when you drive around on-site. And it's quite exhausting to walk to the top of that building. When you look down, you can see quite a vista from that smelter. We're looking forward to completing this smelter in December and then start with commissioning early next year, but really a magnificent project.

I'm moving over to Slide #5 now, which is the highlight of our third quarter. We were really busy with the ramp-up of our Phase 3 concentrator during this quarter that will help us increase our annual capacity production capacity to 600,000 tonnes of copper. And we see ourselves probably producing slightly less than 600,000 tonnes of copper next year and then taking over the 600,000 tonnes of copper per annum in 2026 once we complete Project 95, which is our recovery project that Mark Farren will speak to a bit later in this call.

We've had another record quarter. It feels like we say that every quarter, but it happens to be true in terms of production as well as revenue at Kamoa-Kakula.

And unfortunately, we had to reduce our guidance slightly, and that was mainly due to the intermittent power that we experienced earlier in the year. We've really broken the back of our power problem. Some of the projects are longer-term projects. So it will take time to sort of get to steady state power the way we would like to see it. But we're currently importing about 65 megawatts of power. We've got 145 megawatts of backup power installed. That does have a cost impact. So we're trying to be as green as possible and stay on grid as far as possible. And Mark will also speak a bit later during this call about our power initiatives.

Very exciting for us as a management team, and we've hosted a number of tours to the Western Foreland over the past quarter. Is what we're doing at the Western Foreland really an exciting time. And we have indicated that we will put out a press release towards the end of the year with our plans for next year and give you a little bit of an update as to what we've seen at the Western Foreland.

We added some additional land packages to the Western Forelands, another 336 square kilometers. And we've also deployed 2 new rigs to the Western Foreland bringing the total number of rigs drilling to 11. We will probably be able to drill a bit through the wet season because we've prepared the [indiscernible] we're in our target areas.

If we move on to the next slide, Slide 6, health and safety. It's a continued area of focus for us. Unfortunately, we did experience a fatality due to a fall of ground during the quarter. I think a picture speaks a thousand words. You can see our workforce increased in 2021 to today. Currently, we sit with basically over -- close to 30,000 people working across Ivanhoe mines. And our safety statistics are quite impressive compared to the industry average, but it's never good enough when you do experience fatality incident on the side. We've closed out the report. We've done retraining. We've implemented mitigating factors. But every time we experience these incidents, it's sort of a reset back to 0 and it's a collective effort to ensure that all our staff goes on safely every day.

Moving over to the next slide, which is a picture of our first inaugural class at the Kamoa Center of Excellence graduating. Earlier this year, it was quite a joyous occasion, as you can see. And I had the privilege of visiting the center of excellence a couple of weeks ago together with an investor group, where we were greeted by the new [ CITIC ] students that really applied from across the Congo. We give preference to our communities and people that's in our footprint area, but we really choose the best of the best in the country and people as far as Giver, as of Knight to be accepted at the Kamoa Center of Excellence.

These students were in class for a 2-month period. And they came to the center of excellence basically only speaking, Swahili or French or Lingala and are presented in fluent English to us during this presentation. It was really a touching moment for me to see the impact that we are making at the Kamoa Center of Excellence.

So with that as an introduction, I will now hand over to David Van Heerden, our Chief Financial Officer, to take you through our financial results, and then that starts on Slide 8. Over to you, David.

[David Van Heerden, executive]

Thank you, Marna, and good morning and good day to everybody joining the call today. As I move over to Slide 9, the increased production in the second quarter, which Marna already mentioned, translated to a record payable copper tonnes sold for the quarter and an 8% increase when compared to the second quarter of 2024 because of the increase in tonnes sold, Kamoa-Kakula achieved record quarterly revenue of $828 million for Q3 even though the realized copper price decreased to $4.16 per pound for the quarter from $4.34 per pound the quarter before and notwithstanding the fact that we had an increase in unsold copper stock in inventory at the end of Q3.

On the next slide, with Kamoa-Kakula feeding lower-grade material into the Phase 3 concentrator during the ramp-up in the quarter. And considering the impact that had on total average grade we are pretty happy that cash costs came out at $1.69 per pound of payable copper in the third quarter. I would add that the $0.17 quarter-on-quarter increase of that $0.08 was due to the increase in power cost when compared to the previous quarter, where our power needs needed to be supplemented by the use of diesel generators to keep the plant operational.

Turning to Kamoa-Kakula's quarterly EBITDA, as shown on the right-hand side of the screen, EBITDA for Q3 2024 was $470 million and that is Kamoa-Kakula's second highest quarterly EBITDA on record. Due to the relatively low grade copper concentrate produced by the Phase 3 plant when compared to Phase 1, and Phase 2 plants, Kamoa-Kakula filtrated all Phase 3 concentrate into blister copper at the nearby Lualaba copper smelter to maximize profitability until the on-site smelter is completed, where normally, sales generally takes place as soon as the trucks are loaded with the concentrate bags. Toll-treating concentrate adds roughly 30 days to the time line as the sales are then only recognized, when the blister produced by the Lualaba copper smelter is loaded on to the [ offtaker's ] trucks.

This increased our copper inventory on hand to 16,000 tonnes of copper at the end of September, impacting on our EBITDA for Q3. The EBITDA waterfall on the next slide nicely shows the drivers of the quarter-on-quarter EBITDA movements. Q3 EBITDA, of course, benefited from the increase in copper tonne sold. This was, however, more than offset by the decrease in realized and provisional copper prices from the levels experienced in the previous quarter. Logistics charges for the quarter decreased from the levels early in the year. But as I mentioned when speaking about cash cost, power cost was notably higher for the quarter.

Assuming equivalent tonnes, the impact of power on the above EBITDA waterfall was $18 million. And as one would expect, mining and processing for Phase 3 was more expensive in the quarter due to it being in ramp up. Having said that, the EBITDA for Q3 would have been very close to record EBITDA achieved in the second quarter, had we sold all the copper we produced in the quarter, even with the lower copper price in Q3.

The next slide shows a snapshot of Ivanhoe's consolidated results. I'm on Slide 12. Ivanhoe recognized a profit of $108 million and a normalized profit of $112 million in the third quarter of 2024, with normalized profit basically being flat quarter-on-quarter. With the last remaining portion of our convertible notes redeemed in Q3, there will be no difference between our profit and our normalized profit in future periods. As usual, our profit for now at least is driven mainly by the results from the Kamoa-Kakula joint venture, where our share of profit decreased slightly from the second quarter to this quarter of $84 million in Q3.

Although Kipushi commenced production late in the second quarter, sales of zinc concentrate only commenced in the fourth quarter, and we will start to reflect on our results from the next time we have an earnings call. Looking at Ivanhoe's adjusted EBITDA on the next slide, Slide 13. Given the environment in the quarter, we are happy with our adjusted EBITDA of $160 million in Q3. However, we continue to drive growth at each of our projects with the majority of the capital for the short-term growth initiatives already spent. So we expect our EBITDA will continue to grow in the upcoming quarters as we reap the rewards of our past investments.

In the near term, we expect that the increased production from Phase 3 at Kamoa as well as Kipushi will drive growth in our EBITDA. And then there is, of course, the smelter at Kamoa-Kakula, followed by Project 95 and revenue from Platreef. And we will, of course, not stop there. The next slide, Slide 14, shows our guidance for the year or capital guidance for the year. And we have been spending slightly ahead of schedule at Kamoa-Kakula and we, therefore, expect to be close to the top of our 2024 spending range. And that will mean that our 2025 would then be at the lower end. Spending at Platreef will be towards the lower end and this year.

We had cash and cash equivalents on hand at the end of September of $180 million and have added to our liquidity subsequent to quarter end. We recently closed a $75 million working capital facility of which we have already drawn $40 million and are in the process of drawing the first $70 million of the Platreef senior debt facility with the funds expected to hit our accounts in early November. We still have very little debt for a company of our size and strength and have a lot of flexibility and many options available to add gearing, and we will continue to do so as needed.

I will now hand over to Mark Farren and Alex Pickard for the latest updates on our operations.

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Thank you, David, and good day to everybody on the line. It's Alex Pickard here, EVP, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. I will take you through our production results at Phase 1 and 2 and then also the progress with Phase 3 that we've been making. What you can see on Slide 15 here is another fantastic image of the smelter construction site. I'll leave Mark Farren, our COO, to talk about progress at the smelter.

So I'll skip now to Slide 16, looking at Kamoa-Kakula's quarterly production. So given the ramp-up of Phase 3, it follows that we had another record quarter, as Marna mentioned, in terms of both mill throughput and copper production with 116,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate. If we break that out now by the 2 phases, we milled about 2.2 million tonnes at Kakula at a grade of close to 5% and then just over 1 million tonnes at Kamoa for Phase 3 at a grade of 2.6%. At Kamoa, in particular, we were feeding quite heavily from existing surface stockpiles at Phase 3. So about 40% of the total ore volume was coming from stockpiles and then the remainder is coming from rent of mine.

This will be a bit of a feature as we continue to ramp up the underground mining rate at the Kamoa 1 and Kamoa 2 ore bodies that support the Phase 3 plants. The good news is that we do have a huge amount of flexibility in this regard. We've got, I think, 4.5 million tonnes of ore that's been mined and paid for effectively stockpiled on surface at a grade of approximately 3% copper across the complex is obviously slightly higher grade at the Kakula side and slightly lower grade at the Kamoa [ construction ] side.

In terms of the concentrator, we are pleased to say that we announced -- we achieved, sorry, nameplate capacity just after the quarter end in early October. I'll come back to that on the next slide. And Marna mentioned the revised guidance for the year, which we announced a few weeks ago, is now 425,000 to 450,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate.

Just to give some context on that in terms of the impact of intermittent power particularly in the first half of the year. For the full year-to-date, we calculate that we lost approximately 56,000 tonnes of copper production to intermittent power and well over half of that was in the first quarter alone. But the good news is that going forward, I think the trajectory is very strong in terms of where we are today in order to catch up from the start of the year. And I think we are looking forward to Q4 to be a really strong quarter and hopefully, another significant record.

As we move into 2025, as Marna mentioned, we're going to be pushing production volumes to get close towards the 600,000 tonnes and then 600,000 tonnes from 2026 and beyond.

Moving to the next page, 17, just looking in a bit more detail at the Phase 3 concentrator ramp up. So we commissioned the concentrator in May. We had a pretty good quarter that we achieved the nameplate capacity in early October, as I mentioned, some real positives here in terms of what the concentrates shown in terms of its potential to mill significantly above the nameplate capacity. So the nameplate is 5 million tonnes per annum. We've achieved over 19,000 tonnes daily recently, which implies 30% over that design capacity.

So 1 of the projects is to really try and lock in this optimized throughput over the next 12 to 18 months with a debottlenecking program. For the month of October, the recoveries have been around 84%. The recoveries are hampered slightly just because we're feeding all from the stockpiles, as I mentioned before, but we have seen numbers day-to-day at 86% or 87%. So we are well on track for design there. And then as David mentioned, and just to remind people, the concentrate that we produce at Phase 3 is slightly different from what we produced at Phase 1 and 2. Phase 3 is more chalcopyrite dominant. So the concentrate grade is in the sort of 30%.

So what that means in terms of sales strategy is that we have been shipping all of that material to the Lualaba Copper Smelter for refining into blister copper to improve the economics and we will continue to do that until we start stockpiling concentrate in anticipation of the smelter commissioning. So that stockpiling will take place from early next year. Looking at the underground ramp-up. And actually, what you can see in this picture is the ore handling system and the main belt that comes out of the Kamoa 1 and 2 box cuts and declines. So this is the exact same ore handling concept that we have at Kakula is really the backbone of the underground production and the tonnes coming out of the mine going forward.

The good news and very recent good news is that yesterday, we actually tipped the first ore coming from this system. And so going forward, this will allow us to ramp up the mining rate and notably improve efficiency coming from underground currently, all the material from Kamoa 1 and Kamoa 2 is being trucked out of the box cut. And then also, we will be looking to target improved grades towards 3% run of mine over time with this additional ore handling infrastructure. So that's an update on Phase 3.

I'll pass over to Mark Farren now to talk a bit more about Power on Page 18.

[Mark Farren, executive]

Thanks, Alex. I'm going to cover power in 5 different areas, and that should give a reasonable summary of where we are. So we took a decision about 2.5 years ago to make sure that our power was totally derisked by adding the generating capacity on the mine. It's expensive, but at the end of this year, this financial year, we'll have about 220 megawatts of diesel generation on the footprint, which is enough to run Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 under any conditions. So basically, if you have a total blackout, you'll be able to switch in and then run all 3 concentrators and all 3 mines. That decision, I think it was a good decision, but obviously, it's not something we want to do going forward.

Then inside the country, we've been working on a number of initiatives. The 1 is obviously the G25 unit at Inga to replace the unit and bring it to commission it and then take that power and get it through all the way from Kinshasa into the system and into our mine that's 178 megawatts. That 1 will run in about May commissioning in quarter 1 and full steady state I'm thinking about May.

And then along with that, we've identified and are executing a number of grid stability projects. They're big projects. They're not small projects. Some are at Inga. So there's filter bank projects at Inga itself. And then at the local substation in Kolwezi, you've got a DC line that transmits all the power from Inga through this DC line into another switching station in Kolwezi.

We've got a major project, which is to supply a very modern static compensator and install it. That will run by December next year. And in the interim, we're using what you call synchronous compensators, which we have also in terms of our engineering and our project management. We are also maintaining and upgrading. So through the last year and through this year, we've been working on the network to derisk and to stabilize the network to derisk the projects that we're going forward with and to stabilize that network. In addition to this, import power is very important for us, not so much for the Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3. But for the further phases that are coming.

So for us to grow into the next Phase 4, which we'll talk about at the end and potentially -- not potentially, definitely in the time coming to execute projects in the Western Forelands. We're going to need more and more power as we grow our footprint. So import power short term through the Zambian network, Zambian corridor, but some of the power generation comes all the way from Mozambique through that network and up to the mine. We have got 665 megawatts at the moment and agreements that we're working on to increase that in the short term to 100, well and potentially 200 into -- through next year, 200, 215-odd megawatts are being output and will be taken as we grow the footprint.

We are also executing a project with 1 of the suppliers, to do a dedicated line through the Zambian corridor right up to the mining footprint. That's an independent line that will take about 2 years, 2.5 years to execute, and that will be an additional 350 megawatts. So if you look at the long-term strategy in terms of derisking power, it's fixing the network here, the backup generation is in place, and we are working with [ wheeling ] companies and energy suppliers to help you to get dedicated power to Kamoa as we grow the footprint.

In addition to this, we've been studying solar for this year, right from the beginning of the year. We had a final bidding stage at the moment. We're sitting with 11 bidders, each offering between 10 and 50 megawatts. We will probably end up taking 2 or 3 of these bids and going forward with executing some solar projects with storage. That will take place, I think, in the next 12 to 18 months, we'll expect to see some significant solar installations on the footprint. And that can be grown incrementally over the next couple of years. I do believe that solar is another answer that we must, must pursue in addition to the import power and the generation projects that we're doing in the country.

So all in all, Alex, we have lost 36,000 tonnes of copper this year, it did influence a lot our forecast. I believe we put ourselves in a very good position going into next year. And like Marna said, we're aiming in the half 500s, and we have put enough work in place to be able to derisk this and make sure that we can execute it. Obviously, we're going to be running the smelter. I'll talk about that again just now, but that's also going to demand some power. But in what I've spoken about now, we've catered for that as well. Carry on to the next slide.

Okay. The smelter -- I'm going to ask Stephen just to talk a little bit about the smelter you are seeing, where we are and the heat up [indiscernible]...

[Steve Amos, executive]

Sure, Mark. So things are going well. As it says on the slide, 94% complete. So we're almost there. Busy with the last bit of piping and the electrical installation. And we are hoping by the end of this year to be mechanically complete. We're on track for that. It will take us a few months to heat up. So Q1 2025 heat up and then first feeds by the end of Q1 2025, and then we're hoping for a fast ramp-up there. So big projects. It's been hard work, but it's going very well.

[Mark Farren, executive]

Thanks, Stephen. Okay. Then the future, I mean, that's what we're here for as well. I think we've gone very fast in building this mine. Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3. They have been ahead of schedule these concentrators are fantastic. They're all -- when you optimize them, it's not going to be a 14 million tonne mine, but you're definitely able to get these 3 concentrator is running at in about 70 million tonnes. And I think it will be happen in the next 2 years or so. So that's where I think we're going. Project 95 is in execution. It will be ready and running in quarter 1 '26. So that's why I'm honest here from the year 2026 will be over the 600,000 mark.

That implementation gives us about 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes of extra copper per year. And then Phase 4, if you think about the 3 projects taking us to 70-odd million tonnes, it means Phase 3 is much bigger than the past. So Phase 3, we think, is going to be about $6.5 million eventually when we've done debottlenecking again, in a year, in a year, in 2 years, maximum [ 2.5 ] years. It would be less than 2 years to get that running. And then we're actually working on what does Phase 4 look like and we'll come to the market. We'll come to you guys by quarter 1 next year with a proper study, it was a proper plan.

We're looking at how we're going to sequence it, what are the next priorities, how do we do it with the current power constraints, how do we develop enough power in the area to do it. Chairman [ Chen ], you would have seen has a plan to get to 1 million tonnes of copper. The next steps along the way to me, and I'm going to say, I think there's another 2 steps here on Phase 3, we get Phase 4. I think there's another 2 concentrate as the size of Phase 3 and potentially getting us to not to 20 million tonnes, yes, but probably 30 million eventually. 30 million we'll leave you -- you can work it out yourself, but between 700,000 and 800,000 tonnes of copper for the next 40 years.

So I think that's where we're going. And that excludes the Western Foreland, which is very interesting, and Robert will talk about the Western Foreland as well. So the focus for now is to make sure we get the smelter commission properly that we tap into the value of Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3. We get the recoveries up to where they need to be. We get our operating costs down. The smelter will have a massive influence on that. And then obviously, the dependence on diesel, David did speak about $0.10 per pound is expensive to run diesel.

So the work there is to actually derisk power over the next couple of months, over the next year and then make sure that we earn our own right to grow by creating enough power sources and getting stability into the networks, designing the projects as we always have. Properly and responsibly and making sure we execute target. So all in all, I think next year is going to be a great year. Going forward, we are doing a lot of work. We're doing a lot of work to line up the next steps. So somewhere between what I'm saying and what Chairman [ Chen ] wants, I think that's our future. There's another couple of steps that we'll be taking. We'll come to the market with those next steps by quarter 1 next year.

Carry on Western Foreland. I think Robert speaking to the Western Foreland slide?

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

Yes. This is Saudi Arabia coming back on here. So we're in a world that desperately needs copper, and in particular, green copper, copper that is produced without the generation of global warming gas. We expect that copper to trade at a premium as we derisk the hydroelectricity in the country. And we have not mentioned that Angola intends to export 2,800 megawatts or 2.8 gigawatts of excess hydropower to the DRC. That would be the final killer. That would be enough copper in this part of the world to produce 5 million or 10 million tonnes a year of copper. So we are limited more by the availability of stable hydroelectricity than we are by our ability to find more copper.

We told the world we're going to drill 70,000 meters in the Western Forelands this year. We've drilled over 63,000 of those, so we'll definitely make that target. And we're now up to 11 rigs turning. So it's quite exciting to go out there by helicopter and land in that camp because Makoko is maybe the largest copper system found in the world in the last 10 years that is not Kamoa or Kakula. So there's no exaggeration in the claim that the Western Forelands system is the best place in the world to find high-grade copper resources that can be mined in a green, safe and mechanized manner. And of course, the future of our company in large measure is also in the Western Forelands, which is fully held by Ivanhoe mines and a few minority pieces.

This new piece of land that we acquired and we don't sometimes think it's really in our interest to say too much above what we're doing in the Western Forelands is because some of this license acquisition was somewhat competitive, but this new piece of ground, which is almost as big as the joint venture area, we have with the Zijin Mining at Kamoa-Kakula, is in a very attractive exploration area based on our 20 years of experience in the Western Forelands. So we're putting 2 rigs on that right now out of the 11 rigs, and we're drilling 24 hours a day, and we've made provision to drill through the wet season.

South of us, the Zambezi River system has been experiencing drought that's putting a lot of pressure on some of the Zambian operators. They also have to import power to Zambia from Mozambique. So we're hoping that it starts raining to build up the Southern grid. The Congo watershed has had plenty of water. It's a different watershed and so our hydropower is very well backed by the waters in the Congo River. We have a giant mining conference held here in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia yearly now. It's the future Minerals forum. It's been graced by top management from Rio Tinto, BHP, Tech Corporation is coming this year and others.

And so we look forward to that in early January. It's a very good time for us to be talking about what we've been finding in the Western Forelands we'll have the entire mining industry there, a lot of state-owned actors. And we also will be in a position to update the market about our sister company, Ivanhoe Electric, which has been drilling here in Saudi Arabia. So January is the start to the new year. It's not far away. By then, we should be seeing our third phase, Phase 3 concentrator running at full speed and we really look forward to an either an earlier slightly late Christmas present for our shareholders, when we tell you what we've been doing at the Western Forelands.

But I'll repeat, there is no place on this planet as attractive to find copper metal. A, the acquisition cost is incredibly low. If we look at the monies we've spent to find coppers $0.01 or $0.02 a pound finding cost for high-grade resources and these high-grade resources are blessed because they're in a region with hydroelectricity, no ice, no snow, no need to burn coal, it's ridiculous.

[Unknown Executive]

Robert. We've lost Robert..

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

Because the hydroelectric power is coming to scale and the Lobito corridor. Sorry. Am I back? Am I back? So the last comment to make is the Lobito corridors down hill we're at about 4,500 feet elevation at Kamoa-Kakula. So an electric train going west to the Atlantic Ocean and will actually generate electricity going downhill to the ocean. So the Scope 3 emissions, once that railroad is up and running, and we will use it next year, we'll even further place this copper complex as the greenest copper complex on planet earth. And by the way, that also applies to Kipushi.

So I'll now turn this over to Alex or Mark to talk about the ramp-up of our Kipushi zinc germanium copper mine.

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Thank you, Robert. Okay, Kipushi. I'm just going to touch on it. It was a mine, it was obviously flooded for a long time. We dewatered it, we built it now. It's a fantastic beautiful zinc mine. It's a very high grade zinc mine. And we've got the concentrator running. I'm going to ask Steve to comment on now, we battled a little bit with commissioning. But it's -- the underground mining is very, very good. We've got a lot of surface stockpiles, the mining conditions are fantastic and I'll invite anybody to come and have a look at a very modern, beautiful underground mine. Steve, will just comment a little bit about how we battled in the beginning with the commissioning and then I'll talk some more.

[Steve Amos, executive]

Yes, sure. It wasn't easy. Initially, we had some metallurgical stroke mineralogical problems. We thought we were depressing pyrite, who were actually depressing zinc, so we weren't floating anything. Anyway, fortunately, that's behind us. We also had some issues with excess fines in the run of mine. So we sort of had to get our heads around how to cope with that, which is also behind us and a number of other odds and sods that crept up. I think the good news is we're on the up now and things are going well. Our recoveries are well north of 90%. Our con-grade is very, very saleable, well north of 50% zinc and our plan is Q1 next year to reach nameplate. So definitely, all the issues behind us and going from strength to strength.

[David Van Heerden, executive]

Yes. Maybe just to close it off. So we did that a little bit with commissioning. It is running very nicely at the moment. There's a couple of pumps and there's a couple of areas within the plant that need to be upgraded. Our quarter 1 next year pretty much will be on what the feasibility number was. And then you can see there on the last bullet, we're aiming to go 20% above that. And we will definitely go 20% above that. We know the infrastructure can do it. We've ordered the funds. We've ordered the switchgear, it's all up and it's going to be going by quarter 3 next year, 20% plus and well north of what we planned in the feasibility study.

So it's a good project. It's an exciting project. It's going to have a very low cost because it's a very high-grade mine. So by far, the highest grade zinc mine in the world. We run at about 33%. The feed grade next year is 33% plant. And I think the average across the world is about 7% so it's a good -- it's a small mine, but it's a wonderful mine. And a lot of good work has gone in there. And I invite anybody to come and have a look and see what the world class mine looks like. Thank you.

[Mark Farren, executive]

Alex, are you going to talk about Platreef?

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Mark. I'll close out the presentation. I'm looking at Slide #24, where you can see the impressive shaft #2 headframe at Platreef. So in terms of Platreef, we've really discussed this before around the commissioning of the Phase 1 concentrator. We took the decision to declare sorry -- I'm staring background noise. We took the decision before to defer that commissioning until later on in 2025. And the target of that was to focus instead our efforts on shaft development and the underground development ready for the Phase 2 expansion.

In terms of that, we actually hit a significant milestone. I think it was this weekend on Saturday, where we hold the 5-meter diameter shaft #3 from 950 meters underground. So we will now move to equipping that shaft to be ready for hosting from early 2026. And that will take our total hoisting capacity from around 1 million tonnes today from shaft #1 alone to about 5 million tonnes per annum. You can actually see that in the picture. It doesn't look like much compared to the shaft you headframe in the foreground, but where you see the blue crane in the background, that's the top of the raise bar from 950 meters to shaft #3.

So once we have that shaft hoisting, that basically provides the platform to build the Phase 2 concentrator and with the Phase 2 concentrator, that's when we really get meaningful production scale and also cost benefits in terms of economies of scale at Platreefs. And we're targeting roughly 400,000 ounces of PGM production plus significant nickel and copper, just reminding that about 25% to 30% of the revenue basket at Platreef is coming from these base metals. At the same time, we are completing the initial raise far within the larger Shaft 2 head gear that you see on the page.

That will be completed this year. Shaft number 2 is what drives the further expansion to 12 million tonnes of hosting capacity, and that unlocks the Phase 3 expansion and the potential to produce roughly 1 million ounces of PGMs. All of this work is being updated in a feasibility study that we're working on now together with a PEA or scoping study, which includes the expansion case and Phase 3. That study will be published early on next year.

So with that, I will conclude the presentation and hand over to Matt Keevil to chair the Q&A.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

[Operator Instructions] First and foremost, we'll go to the phone line. Operator, could we please move over to those waiting on the phone, and we'll move through the phone questions and then we will field any webcast questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of Orest Wowkodaw from Scotiabank.

[Orest Wowkodaw, analyst]

I realize your updated mine plan for Kamoa-Kakula will be out in a few months. But I'm wondering if you can give us, I guess, a sense of when you would currently anticipate Phase 4 coming into the plan and whether we should anticipate that to be moved up from the previous plan, which I think had it around 2030.

[Mark Farren, executive]

I think it's too early to give you an answer to me. We're looking at different scenarios. As a timing -- so I did speak about it last time that we potentially will do the front end and start treating the old tailings to take out that additional 7% copper that's sitting there and then ramp up the workings, the underground resource and also, we have some open pits, which we're studying. So we ourselves don't have a definitive answer of the exact timing, but there's definitely a [ Phase 1 ], and I did speak to you about the size. So you can sort of work around sizing it and sequencing probably 2 more plants over time. But most probably, we still need to internally make sure that we're happy with the final profile.

Alex, I don't know if you want to add to that?

[Alex Pickard, executive]

I would maybe just add, Mark, in terms of what we published in the last integrated plan. Orest, you correctly said, I think we had Phase 4 coming in 2029, 2030. I mean I would view that as I'd say, the long stop date and certainly is not going to be any slower than that, much more likely to be accelerated.

[Mark Farren, executive]

It will definitely be ahead of that.

[Orest Wowkodaw, analyst]

And just a follow-up, if I could. I mean, obviously, a very prospective in terms of the Western Forelands, I'm wondering from a strategy perspective, when you think the right time line is to bring in a JV partner? Or do you want to proceed on a 100% basis indefinitely?

[David Van Heerden, executive]

Do think that's a Robert question?

[Martie Cloete, executive]

Yes. Is Robert still on, Robert? Not hearing Robert. We get this question a lot. I think that the landscape for Ivanhoe mines have really changed, and we don't necessarily have to bring in a partner on the Western Forelands. If we do bring in a partner, it must be compelling. It must be a partner that would add something to Ivanhoe Mines, but we are definitely geared to go at it alone and we will more certainly not do a deal at the wrong time in the value cycle. So I think it's sort of an open question, if we will bring in a partner to Western Forelands.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Lawson Winder from Bank of America Securities.

[Lawson Winder, analyst]

Could I ask about Western Foreland actually. And you mentioned that you've actually done some drilling, and I think gotten some results at the Sakanama and Lubudi targets. Are there any similarities to either of the existing Western Foreland mineralization that you would observe or share with us or either Makoko or Kitoko or Kiala?

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

Mark, I'm back on here in Saudi Arabia. I want to finish the previous remark about speculation about partners. I don't think we want to tell you that we need a partner, and I don't want to tell you that we don't need a partner. We don't negotiate in the media. And there's really no worry. There's nothing really turns on that question. We're in a very strong financial position. We have no debt, and we're going to tell you about more about the Western Forelands in January.

We have a Board of Directors to consider what the right thing to do is. But it is the world's preeminent exploration area. It could be divided into little pieces. It's an enormous area. It doesn't take a very big area to host an incredible amount of copper metal given the grades. And so let's just ask the questioners to exercise a little bit of patience, and we'll file this tender to be continued.

[Unknown Executive]

Well, I think, operator, Mark, if you had Lawson had a quick question on geological similarities between the areas, if someone would like to feel that one.

[Mark Farren, executive]

Yes. So both those 2 are new. There is work going on both of them, very new work. They're all highly prospective like Robert says. They're very prospective. And as we drill, it's just -- it's very exciting, and that's about all I can say. Just very huge. There is focus there. It will -- we will develop this footprint over time. But there's much more than 1 or 2 mines in that place.

[Operator]

And our next question will come from the line of Andrew Mikitchook from BMO Capital Markets.

[Andrew Mikitchook, analyst]

Maybe a question for David or someone else, will be the trajectory or expectations for dividends coming back from Kamoa to Ivanhoe in the balance of this year or into next year?

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Thanks, Andrew. I'm happy to take that. I think, firstly, I'd note that we are past our spending peak at Kamoa-Kakula. And then also that we are negotiating or drafting new anode offtake agreements. And as those are being finalized, we do expect that they would include a sizable advanced payment portion. That and then the increased cash generated by Kamoa's operation will give us pretty nice flexibility to flow funds upwards. And your question, I think more specifically, I think on our agreement with the DRC government is that we distribute 20% of our distributable accounting profit upwards as dividends.

So we do expect that to occur in 2025. Just a clarification note on the 2024 dividends. And so the dividends declared in 2024 has for now only been flowed up to Kamoa Holding and not all the way up to Ivanhoe mines and [ Jazan ], and that's just to maximize flexibility for Kamoa and noting that -- I mean that might still be sent upwards if Kamoa has excess cash. Yes, so looking at the current forecast, we do expect '24 -- dividends in 2025 to flow up all the way. And then, I mean, if there's cash flow generated exceeding Kamoa-Kakula's operational requirements, and what it needs for approved future growth projects, then that excess cash will be utilized to start and the repayment of shareholder loans under the current agreements in place. So I know it's not a definitive an answer with an exact date, but I think that does give you a bit of a framework to make your own assumptions. Andre.

[Andrew Mikitchook, analyst]

And if there's time, could somebody just briefly comment on the scheduled drilling in South Africa on the license in neighboring Platreef in terms of time lines and what to expect, please?

[Unknown Executive]

The Makoko and Kiala. They are so green at the moment, we've defined the target areas. There's 3 of them. We've mobilized the drilling contractor. And we're engaging with the community. So that process is almost finished. Patricia, who is 1 of our VPs, she's really helping us with that. And we believe that those holes will start being drilled in quarter 1 next year. Potentially this year, but I think quarter 1 next year.

[Operator]

Our next question will come from the line of Carlos De Alba from MS.

[Carlos de Alba, analyst]

Just a very quick question, maybe for Marna or Alex. You mentioned that in 2025, copper production is expected to be maybe slightly below or close to 600,000 tonnes. That could be a wide range or a wider range [indiscernible]?

[Martie Cloete, executive]

We've got a bit of an [indiscernible] cut there. We will put out guidance. We will put out guidance towards the end of this year, where we will give you a narrower range. We just wanted to guide you to the fact that it might be slightly below 600,000 tonnes for next year and then we'll definitely be 600,000 and above in 2026, once we've completed Project 95, but we will provide a more definitive number in due course.

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Yes. Sorry, just to add that guidance will be when we announce our Q4 production numbers, that will be kind of first, second week in January.

[Operator]

Our next question will come from line of Daniel Major from UBS.

[Daniel Major, analyst]

Yes, the first one, you yourselves come a bit below production, the 16,000 tonne build in inventory this quarter, would you expect to reverse in Q4 or carry into 2025? And then the second part of that question, what would be the expected concentrate inventory build during the smelter ramp-up. So what should we expect as a gap between production and sales in 2025?

[David Van Heerden, executive]

So for the quarter 4, we are [indiscernible] concentrator sales and ahead of the smelter ramp, ahead of the concentrator ramp-up, the smelter ramp-up, we'll stock probably 30,000 tonnes of copper equivalent and that will have part as we ramp up the smelter, so we think there will be a lockup of about 2 weeks or 15,000 tonnes continuing ahead of that smelter at steady state and we believe steady state will be quarter 4. So quarter 3, 75%. Quarter 4, we're hoping to get 100% capacity going and then lock up about 2 weeks of copper, 15,000-odd tons.

[Daniel Major, analyst]

Okay. So 15,000 over the full year?

[David Van Heerden, executive]

Next year. So this year, we'll wipe out the deficit and next year, we'll probably lock up about 15,000 roughly.

[Daniel Major, analyst]

And then just second one, Alex, you mentioned we'll get the guidance update for the group with the 4Q production update. Robert, you mentioned around the resource update at Western Foreland, when should we be expecting that? Is that kind of with the production numbers or later in the quarter?

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

We'd like to make you as nervous as possible. Christmas comes once a year, we might do it at Christmas. We might wait until we come to Saudi Arabia in January. We might wait for the BMO conference in February. We'll do it when we feel like doing it. We'd like to keep you on your toes. We don't want to keep you fully satisfied.

I mean, we have 11 rigs churning, man, like think about that. There's nobody on the planet earth with 11 rigs churning in the high-grade sedimentary copper. So I think that's enough for now. We love you, though. Don't take it personally. It's just a good things take a little bit of time. And your mother taught you to be patient, when you were a kid. So let's just exercise a little bit of patience, and at the right time, we'll have more to say. We just acquired some really important ground in the Western Foreland, I want to emphasize that. Our understanding of the geology there is better than anybody on the planet. So we know what to acquire and getting ground in the Congo through the regulatory process and getting a properly licensed and betted down is -- it's not easy.

It has to be done right and then you have to build roads out there and infrastructure and caps. But we'd love you to come out there and take a look. I think you'll really enjoy it. We just had a institutional tour, and I can assure you it was extremely well received. So come on out, and we'll show you what we're doing with your own eyes. We like that.

[Operator]

I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back over to Matthew Keevil for any further questions.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

Thank you, operator, and thanks to all our analysts for the great questions. In light of time and our slightly delayed start again so much for bearing with us and your patience. I think we'll wrap the call up here for today. If there were any questions unaddressed, please do reach out to the IR team directly at www.ivanhoemines.com, and we'd be happy to answer them. But once again, thanks, everyone, for joining us, and we look forward to providing some very exciting news as we move into the fourth quarter and 2025. Thanks, operator.

[Operator]

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.