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Okay, excellent. Vizsla Silver, we are arguably the world’s largest, highest-grade, undeveloped silver primary resource. Our flagship project is the Panuco Silver Gold Project located down in western Mexico. We are listed both on the NYSE American and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker VZLA. I will be making some forward-looking statements today.
So leadership, arguably the most important asset any company has. We’re fortunate to have a group of industry leaders and corporate professionals and visionaries running the Vizsla Silver team. Michael Connort, Craig Perry, they teamed up together back in 2016 to form a cobalt company. They sold that very quickly and established two companies, Vizsla Silver and Inventa Capital. Inventa being the private parent umbrella to Vizsla, and of course, Vizsla being the flagship there. Simon Smerlik, although he’s been with the company since inception, he joined us in a management capacity back in 2024 prior to the PEA. He stepped down from his role of COO of Ausenco to help lead this next chapter of development for Vizsla Silver. Simon has built over 40 mines in his 30-plus year career.
On the bottom here, you can see Eduardo Luna. Most of you will know him. He is an industry veteran, Mexican Mining Hall of Fame member, spent the bulk of his career in our region at mainly one asset. That’s First Majestic’s flagship San Dimas asset. But you can look down at his bio. He’s basically been on that asset in every iteration. He brings the big picture look to not only the stakeholders, but what we’re doing in terms of growing and expanding the Panuco project. Luis Lazaro, president of Mexico, he’s a new addition to our team. He’s not from the extractive industries, but he is a corporate leader. He has the ability to articulate a value proposition to the Mexican communities, our stakeholders, and of course, the regulators in country. Lastly, we have Guillermo Hernández, our VP of Exploration. He joins us from the Lundin Group, Fruta del Norte. And he came to our project the first time and said, “Guys, this is the silver Fruta. It’s just much, much larger.” So we’ve got an excellent team to drive this project forward.
In terms of our cash position, we are fully financed to develop this next world-class silver project. We currently sit with almost 2x in financial capacity relative to the capital outlay stated in the feasibility study. That feasibility study is fresh. It was published in November of last year. You can see the initial CapEx there is 239 million. We sit with roughly 411 million following a convertible bond issuance that we did last year. We have $10 million in a working capital facility we took from FOFOMI. That’s the federal lending arm of the Mexican government. And we also have equity positions that hover right around that $40 million number as we stand today, namely through the sale of Vizsla royalties to Elemental Royalties that recently closed.
Now, in terms of our development timeline, where we stand today, we are certainly in the permitting process. It’s important to note, however, following the tragedy that occurred on the project site in January of this year, we are not on site right now in an official capacity. That’s part of the puzzle here is reestablishing site in an official capacity here in the coming months. We intend to be back on site with a temporary camp that’s gonna house army personnel, contractors to develop the broader infrastructure and army barracks, as well as our team and our security to drive forward the test mine that’s already developed down to the extraction level, 70 meters below surface. So permitting, reestablishing site, that is exactly the stage we’re in. We submitted our permits for the MIA in February of 2025. We’re now guiding the market to Q4 of this year, Q1 of next year to receive both of our MIA and our change of land use so that we can actively start mining and stockpiling and constructing the surface infrastructure to start first pour midpoint of 2028.
Some highlights of the feasibility study. Again, this was published in November of last year. The study highlighted an after-tax NPV5 of 1.8 billion US and a 111 post-tax IRR. We have a resource base here, a global resource base of 365 million ounces. You can see here life of mine payable is only 162. So there’s about 200 million ounces still to convert into a mine plan. These are not stranded or low-grade ounces. They just do not have drill density yet to bring them into a reserve. The initial mine life that we showed is 9.4 years. It’s important to note that every structure that makes up this resource base and this mine plan is open in every direction, both laterally along strike as well as vertically at depth.
20 million ounces per annum is the production profile for the first five years per year on average, scaling down to about 17 and a half over that nine and a half year mine life. I’ve talked about that initial capital outlay of 239 million. The payback period here on this project is only seven months. We have an NPV to CapEx ratio here of over seven times. It’s virtually unheard of in our space. Sustaining capital at 287, but really this all-in sustaining cost per ounce processed, first quartile at $10.61. When you factor in the enhanced security protocols that I’ve touched on, what we can see today on an implementation basis and an ongoing basis every year thereafter, we see an increase of 50 cents to that all-in sustaining cost. So you’re still sub $12 and you are still very much within that first quartile.
Just taking a glimpse of the production profile, this is all precious metals. We do have a component of base metals by weight. You’re looking at almost 8% in the global resource, but of course in value run through a DCF model, you’re sub 4%. We are only focused on the gold and silver. We are running a 3,300 ton per day process facility that’s producing doré. It ramps up in year four to 4,000 tons per day, and you can really see that distribution of gold and silver. This is of course by value, not by weight. Call it 60% silver, 40% gold. We are still very much a silver primary story.
Now looking at the cash flows here, you can see in year one we’re set to do almost 400 million US in after-tax free cash flow. That is stated at $35.50 silver and $3,100 gold. When you migrate on this sensitivity chart to 50% increase, which is the most that the regulators would allow us to do in our technical study, you can see closer to spot here, it’s a $3.2 billion after-tax NPV5 with a 165% IRR. The cash flow in terms of after-tax free cash flow, you’re doing almost a billion dollars a year. And when you look at where we’re trading now in terms of EV, it’s pretty close to that first year’s cash flow.
Now, I mentioned that the reserves are only a portion of the global resource base. Those reserves were stated far more conservatively than the study itself. In fact, we used $28.50 silver and $2,300 gold for those reserve pricing. I love this because there’s an on-paper lever that we get to pull on the back of updated drilling, obviously translating it into updated mine plan where we can adjust the cutoff grade. Now we’re gonna balance that. We’re not trying to destroy margin here. This is very high margin rock, but we do have that ability to capture more mineralization in terms of the overall production profile here.
Now, I like this slide on the right. These are 2025 annual production numbers from the top silver primary producers. Well, if we were in production at Panuco today, first five years we’d be the second-largest silver primary mine on the planet, full stop. And when you look at all the others that are really on this list, Fresnillo, Fresnillo, Fresnillo, Fresnillo all around us, this is the biggest silver producer in the world. We are the only junior on this list and of course the only independent.
We do have a fully permitted test mine, and you can see progress to date in the lower right-hand corner of this slide. When the incident occurred, we were drilling from both bays one and two, and we crossed the vein. We did not extract that bulk sample, but at 10,000 tons, that’s not truly enough to reconcile meaningfully to a resource block model. This was always designed as a test and to get a jump start on development. So all of this infrastructure is in place, the portal’s in place. This will be main mine access once we initiate mining. But this is also test your development rates, test your pumping rates, test your ground conditions, all of those key components before you enter that production decision.
But also it decouples the mine startup risk from the mill startup risk. If you look in our feasibility study, it’s our intent by the time we receive our permits, we can actively start mining from underground. We’ve got two levels. We’ll have four faces. We’ll never have a starved mill hungry for feed. It’s the intent of the company to stockpile a half a million tons on surface at 3,300 tons per day. That represents six months worth of production or 10 million ounces to bring this mill to commissioning or our pre-production phase. But also we have efficient drilling, both from a targeting perspective and from a cost perspective from underground.
I mentioned that the structures are all open laterally. This is our Copala structure. This is the backbone of the project. What you’re looking at is roughly a mile wide in terms of strike length and about 33 feet wide in terms of width. This structure, all the gray that you see there is inferred. It’s not low grade and it’s not stranded. Again, it doesn’t have that drill density. The ellipse that you see there represents where we can attack from these underground drill bays all within the first five years of the mine plan. So 25 million ounces of inferred mineralization exists there. That’s the first priority for the exploration team once we reestablish site here in the coming weeks.
Now, there’s a whole host of upside remaining in this district. Just for scale, this is about the size of the island of Manhattan. We’re about 14 kilometers long by about 8 kilometers wide, and we’ve only mapped about 70% of this district. We’ve got about 93 kilometers of cumulative vein strike, and the feasibility area, that hash polygon in the western corner there, that’s where the 360 million ounces sit. That’s the $1.8 billion after-tax NPV5. That blue ellipse is our proximal zone. We’ve got a host of extension targets, we’ve got geophysical targets. There’s about 20 kilometers of untested vein strike just within that area. But also, to highlight to the group, that’s quite reflective of what the company’s going to ring-fence. We’ll have an army barracks there on site, we’ll have multiple layers of security, including federal police and private security forces to support our group, not only in the develop and construction stage, but to ensure that we can operate here in perpetuity uninterrupted.
Now, if we zoom out even further, you can see we’ve been very active in terms of securing all the key ground in this frontier district. If you go 80 kilometers to the north of the Panuco project, you have one of the 14 billion ounce silver districts in the planet. There’s only ever been 14. First Majestic San Dimas, it’s a direct analog to what we have in terms of geology. The big delta here is they’ve had 150 years of commercial production. They’ve produced over a billion ounces of silver equivalent during that... Well, we’ll say 800 million ounces of silver on top of 11 million ounces of gold over that time period, where Vizsla Silver at Panuco has had zero years of commercial production. So that’s the size of the prize we’re after.
We’ve cobbled together really all this key ground as mentioned. Lagarta to the north is a past producer, been in private hands since the 1940s. I’m a geologist and an engineer. This one gets me very excited. It’s never had a single diamond drill hole poked into it. Similarly, as we move down south to San Enrique, Santa Fe, past producers with very limited modern systematic exploration efforts. And so when we look at the contiguous nature, we can stack them up to two billion ounce districts. We’ve identified 360 million ounces so far ourselves, and we know that there’s been 100 million ounces extracted historically. Well, we’ve only tested, again, you can see on this slide, 28% of that known 93 kilometers. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to highlight that this could be the next billion-ounce silver district in Mexico.
So re-rate potential, as mentioned, this is a permitting story. We are fully financed. We have an excellent team that we continue to build out. So it continues to be de-risked. Now we need to show the support from the military, show the support from the government in terms of, A, reestablishing site, but of course getting permits. On the back of permits, we all are confident that you’ll see us re-rate higher closer to this average developer multiple, a lot closer to 0.7 times. We’re trading at 0.4 times today. Of course, as you continue to develop, construct and then produce, I’ve been saying this is a show me story, particularly following that terrible tragedy. Two successive quarters of guidance met production, you should warrant that same average silver primary producer multiple closer to that 1.4, 1.5 times.
As a single asset company though, with a world-class project, you do potentially command that takeout multiple. Even though Vizsla has been very clear we are undervalued, we have no intents to sell this asset or the company, the investors will make that decision often on their own. And so we like to benchmark next to what we call the Three Amigos, Gatos, SilverCrest, and MAG. These are three silver primary projects that were based in Mexico, domiciled in Vancouver, just like Vizsla Silver, that traded hands at an average multiple of 1.8 times. Where we’re trading at 0.4, you can see the consensus NAV from a few of the analysts that are sitting here in the room today, just under $5 billion.
So quickly on the company snapshot, we sit here with roughly 354 million shares outstanding, excellent cash position as mentioned. The NYSE is our primary exchange. We have seen a bit of a turnover in our shareholder base as one would expect, but we’ve seen a real uptick in passive, so the ETFs. The ETFs hold right now over 22% of our issued and outstanding shares. The only other corporate close to that in our space would be Aya. The average would be around 10%. So you could see there on the right side, title being of course SILJ is the top, but we’re very well held by Sprott, Global X, Vanguard holds us in a few, and then of course Steve Land over at Franklin Templeton. We have seen an uptick in retail, opposite of what Don had mentioned. We are still very well held by institutional ownership, but with that passive and of course retail upticking, we’ve got a good mix of shareholders as we stand today. Obviously well covered by the analyst community, average consensus sitting there around $9.50 Canadian or roughly $6.80 US.
So the real catalyst for the group today as we stand here is of course permitting and the reestablishment of site. We’re guiding again by end of year to be back on site and then of course guiding permits towards Q4, Q1 of next year to actively start mining and stockpiling and constructing this next world-class project. With that, I’m happy to open it up for questions.
Thank you, Mike. Now open the questions. Anyone in the audience, please use the mic on the aisle. So you just mentioned we have the fully permitted tested mine goes down to 900 meters into the decline. So maybe walk us through what are we expecting and what’s the pathway before we go into the first silver in second half ’27.
Yeah. So in terms of the test mine, we’re permitted for 10,000 tons. So again, to my point, it was never about reconciliation. It was about doing some more bulk metallurgy, which we’ve already done five rounds of, so we’re quite confident in the technical aspects of this project. All of the critical path items that we have right now are to do with awarding key contracts. We’ve awarded our EPCM contract to M3. That’s $170 million contract. We’ve awarded our mine design to Mining Plus. They’ve already chewed through 55% of the detailed engineering for this build. We’ve awarded the equipment bundle to FLS. We’ve already ordered 85% of the fixed plant equipment. The last remaining contract is that main mine contractor award, which is very well advanced. I think the read-through there that’s incredibly important is the company and the board have already been spending dollars in anticipation of the permits and, of course, that reestablishment of site.
Okay. Thank you, Mike. And we have 30 seconds. So what do you think in the Vizsla story, what is the most underappreciated part of the story by the market right now?
Well, it’s been very difficult year for Vizsla Silver. And we haven’t been able to get out on the road and really tell everybody what we’ve been doing. So I think hearing the story now, knowing that we’ve got support of the government, support of the military, support of the community, we’re in a very good way to drive this project forward. It’s the exploration upside that everyone in this room is getting for free because that has been completely discounted by this incident.
Okay. Thank you, Mike. Thanks, everyone. [audience applauding]