Taseko Mines Ltd
TSX:TKO
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Taseko Mines Ltd
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Good morning ladies and gentlemen. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Taseko's First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Mr. Bergot, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Sergio. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining Taseko's First Quarter 2023 Conference Call. The news release and regulatory filing announcing our financial and operational results was issued yesterday after market close and is available on our website at tasekomines.com and on SEDAR. I am joined today in Vancouver by Taseko's President and CEO, Stuart McDonald; Taseko's Chief Financial Officer, Bryce Hamming; and our Senior VP of Operations, Richard Tremblay.
As usual, before we get into opening remarks by management, I would like to remind our listeners that our comments and answers to your questions will contain forward-looking information. This information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause the stated outcome to differ materially from the actual outcome. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, I encourage you to read the cautionary note that accompanies our first quarter MD&A and the related news release as well as the risk factors particular to our company. I would also like to point out that we will use various non-GAAP measures during the call. You can find explanations and reconciliations regarding these measures in the related news release. Following opening remarks, we'll open the phone lines to analysts and investors for questions.
I will now turn the call over to Stuart for his remarks.
Okay. Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our quarterly conference call, and the first quarter of 2023 was a busy one for the company, and we have a number of topics to cover on the call today. In mid-March, we closed the acquisition of an additional 12.5% interest in Gibraltar. In late March, we issued an updated Florence Technical Report, which incorporates operating results from the test facility and updated economics. And through the quarter, we've continued to make good progress on Florence permitting and financing initiatives.
But before we get to that, I'd like to start with a recap of first quarter earnings in Gibraltar operations. Copper prices climbed to an average of just over $4 a pound in the quarter, up from the $3.65 average in the fourth quarter of last year. The strong pricing and 27 million pounds of copper sales resulted in $36 million of adjusted EBITDA and $28 million of operating cash flow in the first quarter, and Bryce can provide some additional financial details in a minute.
From an operating point of view, Gibraltar copper production of 25 million pounds was below plan due to unexpected mill downtime and some operational issues with the crushers. In simple terms, we milled 7 million tons of ore in the quarter, and we should be closer to 8 million tons milled, which is the rate we were running at for the second half of last year prior to the weather-related issues in December. Issues have been resolved and April mill throughput was above design capacity where it should be. And on a positive note, mining activity has progressed on plan into the Gibraltar pit, where we are very well set up now in the larger and more continuous ore zones.
Head grade averaged 0.22% for the quarter, which was right on plan. Although recoveries of copper and molybdenum were impacted by the inconsistent mill performance, we expect to see improvements there with more stable concentrator operations. The Gibraltar pit will provide all of our mill feed this year and waste stripping in the connector pit is ramping up. We've also mined some initial oxide ore out of the top of the connector pit, which has been added to leach pad stockpiles. With this new source bauxite ore, we're now looking at a restart of the Gibraltar SX/EW plant, and we expect to be producing copper cathode again in either 2024 or 2025.
We've also made a decision to defer the move of the in-pit crusher, which was planned to occur in August and will now be deferred to June next year. This is a result of a maintenance shutdown that's required for a major repair on the SAG mill and concentrator #1. Rather than having the concentrator shutdown for the crusher move and then again for the SAG mill repair next year, we've been able to develop a mine and maintenance plan that coincides and means just 1 shutdown. By aligning the repair work with the crusher move, we minimize the overall downtime. And for the current year, it allows us to recover some of the mill run time that we lost in the first quarter. So we're maintaining the original production guidance of 115 million pounds, plus or minus 5% of copper for the year.
I want to now take a minute to talk about our acquisition of the 12.5% interest in Gibraltar, which closed in mid-March, increasing our stake in the mine from 75% to 87.5%. The acquisition price includes minimum payments of CAD 60 million and potential contingent payments of up to CAD 57 million, which depend on future copper prices and revenues. The payments are spread over 5 years, and there are no contingent payments if the copper price falls below $3.50 a pound.
We think it's a well-structured deal. It's accretive for Taseko relative to Gibraltar's current NPV. It gives us immediate production growth or at least growth in our attributable copper production and the deferred payment terms allow us to focus our financial resources on Florence, which we're readying for construction, and we expect will provide additional production growth for us in 2025. At the end of March, we filed a new 43-101 technical report for the Florence project. It had been 6 years since the previous technical report and a lot of work has gone into the project since then.
The test facility, which operated for 18 months, has provided our technical teams with a huge amount of data, which has been used to refine operating models. Detailed engineering has been substantially completed, which has allowed us to advance discussions with key contractors and obtain vendor quotes. And that recent cost information was included in the updated cash flow and economics. We've been in an inflationary environment for the last couple of years, and we wanted to wait until we were close to the construction start date to update the CapEx.
The result of all this work is a significantly derisked project that continues to have robust economics. We estimate that we have about $230 million of CapEx remaining to be spent. And the project NPV is USD 930 million with a 47% IRR after tax. So it really is a unique opportunity that we have in front of us here.
The permitting process is advancing on the final permit needed before we can begin construction. We talk regularly with the EPA and continue to receive positive messages about their progress and continue to expect the final UIC permit to be issued in the next few months. So it's a waiting game, but we know we're close to the end, and I believe patience is going to be rewarded as that permitting milestone is a key catalyst for us.
Meanwhile, as we wait for the EPA to wrap up the process, our project team continues to prepare for the construction phase, although spending and commitments related to the project have dropped off significantly as long lead items are already procured and much of that equipment is already on site.
One final topic before I pass it over to Bryce. Last night, we announced an at-the-money or an ATM equity offering for up to USD 50 million. This facility will allow Taseko to issue new equity from time to time at our discretion if and when we feel it's appropriate. We don't have any immediate plans to use it, but we view it as a prudent tool to have in place as we head into the Florence Capital project later this year. In addition, we continue to evaluate a number of other Florence financing options, including royalties and a project level loan.
So we're pretty excited about what's in store here in the next few months. It's an exciting time for Taseko as we get closer to commercial production of Florence. And with that, I'll turn it over to Bryce for some additional commentary on the quarter, and then we'll open up the lines for questions. Bryce?
Thank you, Stuart. Good morning, everyone. I'll provide a few more details on our financial results for the quarter. Copper sales in the first quarter were 27 million pounds on a 100% basis, 2 million pounds higher than production as we were able to ship additional tons and lower inventory at quarter end. The average realized copper price for the quarter was USD 4.02 per pound, which was a 10% increase over the fourth quarter. This resulted in $116 million of revenues in the first quarter.
Total site costs in the quarter were higher by $7 million over the fourth quarter. The biggest variance of the increase came from higher diesel costs. Diesel prices are declining. They're currently about $0.40 per liter lower than last year, so that will help on our 2023 cost going forward compared to 2022 if oil prices remain low.
We did also have increased maintenance costs in the mill in Q1, some other one-off mining cost increases for explosives and tires, and there were also some costs associated with clearing the TSF pipeline, swallowing the freeze up in December and January. Given this, we should see total site costs decrease in the quarters ahead compared to Q1.
Increased mining rates with focus on stripping the connector pit also resulted in higher capitalized stripping for the period. In the first quarter, $13 million of stripping costs were capitalized compared to $4 million in the fourth quarter. All of these tons in the connector pit that we've been mining are waste with the exception of about 800,000 tons of oxide ore that were mined and are placed on the leach pads.
Byproduct credits from moly sales continued to benefit from the recent moly price strength. The average price of moly in the quarter was $33 per pound, which resulted in a byproduct credit of USD 0.37 per pound produced. In recent weeks, the price of moly has subsided and is still at a sustainable level of about $21 per pound.
C1 costs in Q1 of $2.82 per pound were slightly higher, but generally in line with the fourth quarter. The unit cost increase is attributed to the minor decrease in production and the higher one-off costs I mentioned earlier. Given less volatility in the foreign exchange rate and copper prices, our GAAP earnings in the first quarter of $4.4 million or $0.02 per share was similar to our adjusted earnings of $5.1 million. With softer copper prices in the last few days, it's good to emphasize we have price protection in place for the balance of 2023. We have copper price production of $3.75 per pound for 52 million pounds of production.
Capital spending in the first quarter was $25 million at Gibraltar and $10 million at Florence. At Gibraltar, work on the crusher move was restarted in the first quarter, with about $7 million being spent. With the crusher being deferred to next year now, we will see some deferral of the CapEx for Gib into 2024, which we estimate could be up to $10 million of capital spending being deferred. We ended the quarter with $102 million of cash, and we had approximately $150 million of available liquidity at March 31.
I will close with emphasizing our significant transaction this quarter, which was the incremental 12.5% interest in Gibraltar we acquired from Sojitz on March 15. So the first quarter results reflect only a small portion or an adjustment for this additional ownership for the last 15 days of the quarter. We will continue to proportionately consolidate this 12.5% ownership into our earnings going forward alongside our 75% interest. Future quarters will be reported on a full 87.5% basis. So everything else equal, our historical Gibraltar financial performance can be grossed up 17% to be comparable on a like-for-like basis with our future quarters.
As disclosed in our notes in the financials, including this pro forma earnings from January 1 from Cariboo from the additional 12.5% interest in Gib we now own, that would have resulted in revenue of $131 million for the quarter and net income was $6.5 million and would have increased our EBITDA by about $5 million for the period on a pro forma basis.
With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for questions. Thank you.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Alex Bedwany from Canaccord Genuity.
Just a couple of questions from me. The first one is regarding dilution. So there still seems to be a way to go to get the ore back to the reserve grade. How is the progress going on this front? And how comfortable are you now that we're 1/3 of the weight into the second quarter? And then the second question is regarding the sustainability of producing above the nameplate capacity of the plant. How many quarters do you think that, that can continue for, assuming that you've gone through April above that 85,000 tons a day.
Yes. It's Richard Tremblay here. Regarding the dilution, yes, we're comfortable. We're through the issues that kind of plagued us in 2022. The site team has done a lot of technical work and adjusted operating kind of practices and policies to ensure we're properly reflecting what we're going to be milling, so comfortable with that.
And then regarding your second question on throughput, the crusher issues that impacted us in Q1 have been resolved and do feel confident and expect the throughput to be at or above design capacity for the remainder of the year.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Alex Terentiew from Stifel.
My question is just on the oxide ore that you're talking about mining here. Is this ore that's currently classified as waste? I'm just trying to think from a cost perspective, if this is already captured in your stripping costs? Or how do we go about thinking about this? And just if you can provide some sort of quantum of potential production in the future that you might see from this.
Alex, it's Stuart here. Yes. No, the oxide, we know there's oxide ore on the top of the connector pit. It's been part of the long-term mine plan that we would be mining that ore and restarting the plant either next year or the year after. So definitely part of the plan. Yes, I don't know, Richard, if that was a surprise to get into it a little bit earlier than you expected. It was pretty much in line with plan.
It's pretty much in line with the plan. That's correct. Yes.
Okay. So these are -- I mean, I guess these are tons that -- or maybe the tons you're chasing these tons? Or are there -- you need to mine them any ways to get to the sulfide here is the better way of thinking about it, right?
That's right. Yes. We need to mine down through it. It's a new mining zone, so we're mining down through the oxide, and we'll get -- next year, we'll actually start to get sulfide ore and mill feed out of the connector pit.
Okay. And can you remind me how much capacity your SX/EW plant has? And what sort of production you might get from these tons?
Yes. In terms of annual production from the SX/EW plant, we're estimating in the 5 million pound a year range.
Okay. I'm guessing that would continue probably just really only for a few years or a couple of years anyways. And then until you go to another phase where you may encounter more oxides again?
Yes, that's correct. We would continue to run the SX/EW plant as long as it's economic, and we have enough fresh ore, oxide ore going into the stockpile to keep it producing a suitable grade to feed the plant.
Mr. Bergot, there are no further questions at this time. You may proceed.
Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining, and we will talk to you next quarter. Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Thank you.