Cerrado Gold Inc. ($CERT)

Earnings Call Transcript · April 2, 2026

TSXV CA Materials Metals and Mining Earnings Calls 44 min

Highlights from the call

Cerrado Gold Inc. reported strong financial results for Q4 and the full year 2025, with an EBITDA of $46 million and a cash balance exceeding $22 million. The company is guiding for 2026 production of 50,000 to 60,000 gold equivalent ounces at an all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of $1,800 to $2,000 per ounce. Management highlighted a successful transition year, with production stability and significant investments in operations, setting a positive outlook for continued growth in 2026.

Main topics

  • Strong Financial Position: Cerrado ended 2025 with over $22 million in cash and generated $46 million in EBITDA, demonstrating a robust financial position. CEO Mark Brennan stated, "We've made a lot of money leaving our treasury and financial position very strong."
  • Production Guidance for 2026: The company expects to produce between 50,000 and 60,000 gold equivalent ounces in 2026, with production weighted towards the second half of the year. Management noted, "We expect the underground to reach stable production levels in the latter part of Q2 of 2026."
  • Operational Transition Success: Cerrado successfully transitioned from heap leach-driven production to underground mining, maintaining stable operating costs. The CEO remarked, "We are benefiting from continued strong gold prices providing strong margins."
  • Water Availability Improvement: Management reported a significant reduction in water costs from $850,000 to $250,000 per month due to improved water reservoir capacity. This improvement is expected to enhance production levels as the rainy season approaches.
  • Lagoa Salgada Project Challenges: The company faces regulatory challenges regarding the Lagoa Salgada project, with management expressing confidence in resolving the issues. Brennan stated, "We feel that there have been irregularities in process and timing... we're hopeful that we will have a resolution within the next 2-3 months."

Key metrics mentioned

  • Revenue: $46M (2025 EBITDA, strong cash generation)
  • Cash Balance: $22M (Strong financial position at year-end)
  • Production Guidance: 50,000 to 60,000 GEO ounces (Guidance for 2026 production)
  • AISC: $1,800 to $2,000 (Expected cost per ounce for 2026)
  • Q4 Production: 13,806 GEO ounces (Production in the fourth quarter)
  • 2025 Total Production: 50,238 GEO ounces (Stable production year-over-year)

Cerrado Gold Inc. is positioned for a strong 2026, driven by solid financials and operational improvements. However, regulatory challenges at Lagoa Salgada present risks that could impact future growth. Investors should monitor the resolution of these regulatory issues and the company's ability to meet production guidance.

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

Operator
#1

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Cerrado Gold Q4 and Year-End 2025 Financial and Production Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, Mike McAllister, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Michael McAllister

Executives
#2

Good morning, and thank you, operator. I'd like to note that today's call may contain forward-looking information that is based on the company's current expectations, estimates and beliefs. Please review this slide and the other forward-looking information contained on Page 2 of today's presentation as well as in the company's annual information form, which is publicly available on SEDAR+ and the company's website. The accompanying presentation for today's call is available for download from the company's website at www.cerradogold.com. The accompanying press release is also posted on the website and on SEDAR+. Please note that all dollar amounts mentioned on today's call are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Following management's presentation and remarks, a Q&A period will follow. Joining us on the call today are Mark Brennan, our CEO and Chairman; Jason Brooks, our CFO; Cliff Hale-Sanders, our President; Ed Guimarães, our Executive Vice President; Andrew Croal, our Chief Technical Officer; Carl Calandra, our Vice President and Legal Counsel; and David Ball, our Vice President, Corporate Development. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Brennan.

Mark Brennan

Executives
#3

Thanks, Mike, and I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today. I'd also particularly like to thank the Cerrado financial team and our auditors at McGovern Hurley and Grant Thornton for the delivery of the year-end results a full month in advance of the statutory requirement. We've come a long way in the last 2 years on the financial reporting, and we're thrilled. 2025 has been a very successful transitional year for the company. Not only did we make a lot of money leaving our treasury and financial position very strong, but we've also made significant investments into each of our 3 projects, setting the stage for future success and growth for '26 and beyond. Our EBITDA for 2025 was $46 million with our closing balance of cash at over $22 million. This has grown materially in the first quarter, and our prospects for 2026 look significantly brighter with gold trading at the $4,600 level. The results achieved in the fourth quarter and for the full year demonstrate Cerrado's ability to maintain production at our MDN operation with stable operating costs as we transition from solely heap leach-driven production to production sourced from underground, the heap leach and existing low stockpiles. This process has continued throughout the first quarter of 2026, and we expect the underground to reach stable production levels in the latter part of Q2 of 2026. Not only was 2025 successful operationally, but organizationally, we have invested in people and systems to improve everything from cost control to reporting, which, as stated above, we are very proud to say, has enabled us to release our financial results one month ahead of schedule. With elevated gold prices, we continue to generate significant cash flows supporting our continued optimization and exploration efforts at MDN, which we expect will lead to an extension of the mine life and increased production. We expect to see robust economic potential with the completion of the bankable feasibility study at Mont Sorcier targeted for Q2 this year, and we continued the development process at the Lagoa Salgada project, while at the same time, reducing debt and building a strong cash position, improving Cerrado's overall financial strength. Following robust levels of adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2025, we continue to see strong cash generation into this quarter and throughout the year, especially now that the majority of our growth CapEx programs are nearing completion and the prior hedging program we had in place has been completed. Looking forward to 2026, operations at MDN are performing exceptionally well, and we are benefiting from continued strong gold prices providing strong margins, leading us to expect that the year will be another strong year for Cerrado. We are providing our 2026 production guidance of 50,000 to 60,000 ounces, GEO ounces with an AISC of $1,800 to $2,000 with production weighted towards the second half of the year when the underground is expected to reach expected capacity. Our focus for the coming year will continue to be on developing MDN, extending mine life, increasing production and continuing to develop future cash generation by completing the feasibility studies at both our development projects in Portugal and Quebec with limited dilution. I'd now like to turn the call over to Jason Brooks to take us through the financial highlights.

Jason Brooks

Executives
#4

Thanks, Mark. And turning to Slide 3. In 2025, the company produced 50,238 gold equivalent ounces with 13,806 gold equivalent ounces produced in the fourth quarter. Operational results for the full year 2025 showed stable production relative to the previous year. 2025 was a transitional year as the company shifted to rely on production from the heap leach operations at Calandrias, while the underground continued to ramp up towards the end of the year. Production rates would have been higher. However, the heap leach pad was irrigated less than usual due to water availability constraints caused by very dry summer conditions late in the year. The all-in sustaining costs for the full year came in at $1,746 per ounce, with Q4 all-in sustaining costs of $1,391 per ounce, which was a result of the higher production in the fourth quarter. The company continued to focus on operating costs -- sorry, excuse me, the company's continued focus on operating costs enabled all-in sustaining costs to remain at relatively low levels, despite inflationary pressures and higher water purchase costs in Q4. In 2026, the company is guiding gold equivalent ounce production between 50,000 and 60,000 ounces as the heap leach operation stabilizes at higher levels and more ounces come in from the underground this year. We expect that all-in sustaining costs will continue to moderate due to a reduction in water purchases and higher feed grades from the underground. Production rates are skewed higher in the second half of 2026 due to mine sequencing as more underground ore is expected to be available in the second half of the year. In 2025, driven by stable operating costs and much higher gold prices, the company generated adjusted EBITDA of $46 million for the full year and $22 million in the fourth quarter. Going into 2026, Cerrado's production will be unhedged, allowing MDN operations to reap the benefits of the completion of its recent expansionary capital expenditure program to grow production through its new heap leach operations as well as the availability of additional high-grade ore from underground operations. With the hedging program completed in 2025, Cerrado is now substantially exposed to record gold prices. Additional investment plan for 2026, including an expanded heap leach pad, a new tailings area, additional fleet enhancements and ongoing exploration activities is positioning MDN for long-term success. Finally, the company finished the year with over $22 million in cash. Moving into 2026, given the current gold price environment, the company expects to continue improving its cash position, above and beyond capital allocated to project growth plans. With that, I would now like to return the call back to Mark Brennan and take us through some production highlights and outlook for 2026.

Mark Brennan

Executives
#5

Thanks, Jason. Turning to Slide 4. As we progress through 2026, we have a strong exploration program in place. We are targeting a surface exploration program of approximately 50,000 meters that does not include underground exploration. To accomplish this, we have acquired 3 owner-operated rigs. We now have 3 diamond rigs and 1 RC rig turning as we speak with initial results continuing to be encouraging. While drilling performance is now on target, we continue to see some delays with assay results. We are in the process of certifying our internal lab to shorten turnaround times and improve exploration performance and targeting. We will be releasing results to the market when we can demonstrate critical mass and new ore bodies. Cerrado's target is to expand the current mine life to at least 6-plus years and grow production. We also plan to have a fifth drill arriving in August that will focus on exploration at the Paloma Underground site, which is open at depth and along strike, where exploration success has the potential to increase grade to the mill and potentially materially boost production rates. As we progress into 2026, our focus remains on ramping up production, underground production during the second and third quarters. And as water availability returns as we enter the rainy season, heap leach production levels should recover to nameplate capacity and contribute to lower costs. We also have extensive operational optimization programs underway at MDN. As these programs are completed, we expect it will result in reduced unit costs and expanded production capabilities. As previously mentioned, 2025 was a very successful transition year for the company with significant investments made to advance our projects and set the company up for future mineral resource and production growth at MDN and advance our development projects with optimized feasibility studies and a production decision at Lagoa Salgada in Portugal expected in Q3. As previously announced in early '26, we are working with various government agencies in Portugal to resolve the current impasse with respect to the granting of the environmental impact approval given that Cerrado received a notice that the Portuguese Environmental Agency had purported to issue an unfavorable opinion for the Lagoa Salgada project contrary to -- what we believe is contrary to applicable laws and regulatory framework. We expect to be in a position to provide greater detail in the coming weeks as to the resolution of this matter. Also, at Mont Sorcier in Quebec, we are nearing completion of our feasibility study expected by the end of Q2 '26 and the submission of the environmental impact assessment by year-end. In 2026, we completed just under 18,000 meters of drilling to support upgrading the resources to reserves. As highlighted in Q4, the project is set to be developed into a phase 8 million tonne per annum project, producing over 67% high-grade, high-purity iron ore concentrates in 2 phases of 4 million tonnes per annum. This should also lead to a more optimal phasing of capital costs where we are seeing some upward pressure. The market for high-grade iron concentrates remains robust with a significant premium seen in the market for Mont Sorcier's high-grade, high-purity material, which we anticipate will translate into strong support for the project in the global iron ore market. We continue to see that a strong value proposition for Cerrado remains in place with significant cash flow growth and minimal shareholder dilution needed as we advance all 3 projects, targeting higher cash flow and production rates. We continue to believe our shares are trading at a material discount to our peers and anticipate we can close this gap as we continue to deliver on production, cash flows and project development. This concludes the portion of the call. I will now turn the call back to Lisa to open the call for the Q&A portion of the call.

Operator

Operator
#6

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will be coming from the line of Ron Stewart of Red Cloud Securities.

Ronald Stewart

Analysts
#7

Congrats on getting the news out. Mark, I might have missed it, but do you have guidance of sustaining capital, development capital and exploration spending for '26? I'm sorry, did you get my question?

Michael McAllister

Executives
#8

We just dropped. Could you please repeat that question one more time?

Ronald Stewart

Analysts
#9

Yes. No worries. Do you have guidance on sustaining capital, development capital and exploration spending for '26?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#10

We'll be using an all-in sustaining cost guidance of $1,800 to $2,000 per ounce. And basically, the -- we're targeting 50,000 meters of surface drilling with additional underground drilling. We have ordered an underground rig. That should be delivered July, August. It's a very difficult time to find rigs right now that are for underground exploration, but we'll have been in sight by July, August. And we expect that we could see an additional 10,000, 20,000 meters of drilling underground.

Ronald Stewart

Analysts
#11

No, I've got that. I was wondering whether or not you provided guidance as to the costing and whether or not the drilling is going to be capitalized or expensed.

Mark Brennan

Executives
#12

The drilling for underground will probably be capitalized. And in terms of guidance of cost, if you're looking for a guidance on we're probably looking at around -- because they're our own rigs, they'll probably be around $250 a ton -- a meter, excuse me. Does that answer your question?

Ronald Stewart

Analysts
#13

And the total development -- the total capital spending that you're anticipating for advancing the projects?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#14

Excuse me, we're spending approximately $30 million of CapEx at MDN this year.

Operator

Operator
#15

Our next question will be coming from the line of Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright.

Heiko Ihle

Analysts
#16

It's Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright. Two things. With the water availability at MDN, first of all, what have you seen recently? And second of all, how should we think of this going forward? Is there presumably more variability going forward? Or should we really just look at this as getting better with time?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#17

Are you speaking specifically on the second point, Heiko, to the water or in general?

Heiko Ihle

Analysts
#18

I thought just the water, but if you want to answer both, by all means, go ahead.

Mark Brennan

Executives
#19

Yes. I guess for the '25, '26 summer months in Argentina, we've had a particularly dry season. And combined with that, we also saw one of our water wells had depleted. So our usual capacity requirement is about 45 cubic meters. And basically, we're having to bring in with the dry weather that we experienced, we're having to bring in about 60 trucks a day to provide water in order to continue the operations. Now this had an impact, as highlighted on the heap leach irrigation and therefore, production. And what we're finding now is that we -- and that was costing, excuse me, about $850,000 a month for that water. I'm very pleased to say that on the water reservoir perspective, we've actually drilled a hole that has basically about 30 cubic meters, which fulfills 70% of our production requirement. And then on top of that, we're also moving into the rainy season starting in April, late April. And so we're expecting that we're not going to have the same issue. So our water costs have dropped down to about $250,000 a month from $850,000 a month. But again, this was a fairly unusual and unique dry, I guess, summer that we've had that we've experienced. And from that regard, we're obviously being very careful with what -- and looking forward to what's potentially in the fall of '26. But we're hopeful that we won't have a repeat of the dry season that we've experienced. So that kind of puts in place the water situation. And we are looking at other ways to -- we are looking for other water reservoirs that we can tap for all of our water needs. And then as it relates to the project in general, I think what you've seen at the site and when we mentioned that last year was a transitional year, it really took us away from being fighting our way through deposits, and we've now really come much more into a management of the asset perspective as opposed to continually driving projects that had to continue our sustainability. So I'm seeing much more efficiencies, much more attention to long-term value add like increasing our fleets -- one, increasing the fleet, two, increasing the loaders and then the trucks that are transporting from 30 tonnes to 45 tonnes. So we're seeing operational advantages that we're implementing now that will have long-term implications. So I fully expect that we'll continue to see as the second half rolls on, we'll continue to see lower costs. And again, our objective with our drill program, with our corporate development is that we will continue to see resource growth and potential for expansion of life of mine and production with levels.

Heiko Ihle

Analysts
#20

That was comprehensive. I have a feeling the next one is a little bit more touchy, feely. I'm trying to figure out how we should handicap Lagoa. I mean if you were in my shoes and you know what the analyst community goes through, Mark, how should we handicap this thing, model this thing? If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#21

I would say this. The -- I think that as mentioned in the core of the discussion and we're very confident in our case and that we feel that there's been irregularities in process and timing and in conclusions that were not regular. And so we're hopeful, Heiko, that within a period of 2 months, certainly by the end of the quarter, that we will have -- we're hopeful we'll have a resolution that's satisfactory to all parties. And that's been accommodated and being -- with the intervention of the Portuguese government who are dealing with Lagoa and Cerrado and dealing with APA, the regulatory agency on the other hand. So there's negotiations, discussions going on. Again, we're hopeful that there'll be a resolution within the next 2, 3 months. I guess in terms of how do you handicap this, that's a tough one. And the reality is that what I would perhaps -- to a certain extent, I would defer the decision, if you can, until the end of the second quarter. But in the absence that you can't, I mean, I think you determine what -- whether you handicap it to 20%, 80%, that really is going to be on your perspective of risk. But what I would say is that when I look at the valuation for Cerrado right now, forget about Portugal or even Quebec for that matter, we stand on our own in terms of our value proposition with MDN on its own. So I can't imagine or I don't believe that Lagoa has -- is having -- should have the impact with respect to the potential that we see for MDN in the coming few months. I wish I could give you something more definitive, but it really is going to depend on your -- with your risk tolerance and how you feel that people should -- how people pursue it. I mean our internal view is that we're still looking to enter into the construction phase in the first quarter of next year.

Operator

Operator
#22

And our next question will be coming from the line of Colin McClelland of the Northern Miner.

Colin McClelland

Analysts
#23

Most of it has been answered. I was interested about Lagoa. It appears like you guys were blindsided on the water issue. I just wondered what happened there. You were surprised. How come you didn't know that there was an issue with it?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#24

Well, technically, there wasn't. What's very unique and when we speak of the regularities in May, we were informed by the APA that of their technical evaluation committee, we had the first project in the history of Portugal that had unanimity with its evaluation of 17 strong divisions that look after the technical evaluation for APA that we had -- again, that we had unanimity with all members of the 17 strong committee approving the project. Now at that time, we also were considering looking at leaching our precious metals. So we had a small component of cyanide usage, which the President of APA did not want us to proceed with, which we kind of understood. But even at that stage in May of last year, we had already moved to flotation of the precious metals, and we're not going to use cyanide anyway. In their second point that they made to us in May was that they wanted us to enhance the protection of the aquifer, but only the aquifer that was being utilized by the local community. In our instance, there's 3 aquifers. There's one aquifer at, say, 10 meters, which is used for the agricultural community. If there's rain, they use it. If there's no rain, they don't get it. At a depth of 35 meters is the main aquifer that's used by the local community. And that aquifer is what they asked us in May to continue to protect. In the third aquifer, which is actually where we're drawing our water from, is already contaminated by sulfides and acid drainage. And so that can't be used by the agricultural community. It cannot be used by the local community. And so we never had any problems or no issues commented to us in May about the deeper aquifer. When they came back with the decision in January, they did not refer to the 2 upper aquifers. They only referred to the deeper aquifer, which they had never suggested any issues with in the past. Now I'll mention that I believe that, Colin, that we have probably one of the most sophisticated hydrological studies conducted in Portuguese history. And the reason for that is that we have an expert in Spain who's renowned as one of the leading experts on water resource mining, water resource management. He actually runs the International Mining Resource Water Agency. And the fact is that we had very comprehensive layout and plans as it relates to all 3 aquifers. When they asked us for -- when they gave us the final decision, which related to only the deepest aquifer, first of all, that was a contravention of permissible questions allowed under the rule of law. And second of all, they didn't give us an opportunity to respond to their question with respect to the deeper aquifer. And basically, we had our fellow in Spain provided a 120-page response to their question, which, again, we feel is sufficiently answered any questions that they may have or any issues that they may have. And they did not even take the time to review that response before they gave us a negative opinion. So it's our strong belief that there have been irregularities, not only in the timing, but also in the process as well as the technical evaluation of the project. And we think that they're quite evident. And as a consequence, we're hopeful that we will have a positive forward dialogue with the Portuguese government and the development of Lagoa Salgada moving forward.

Colin McClelland

Analysts
#25

Okay. Just a quick follow-up then. One of the mayors over there seems to be -- he's jumping up and down a bit about it. You guys are reaching out trying to persuade him or talk to him about the issues.

Mark Brennan

Executives
#26

Well, what's very interesting is we had a very positive relationship with that mayor, up until the last election. And obviously, as you can imagine, a mining project in anybody's backyard is highly -- will arise with high controversy. The funny thing is that with this particular mayor, we had a tremendously strong relationship with him. And what was interesting is that up until the inauguration date, let's say, which I believe which was in September, and let's say, it was the September 15, which is a Saturday, there was an official and formal inauguration, which we were invited to, which we participated in, which we were kind of vetted, I guess, for lack of a better word. Then at that Saturday, there was a meeting set up for the following Friday. And at that point, the mayor went dark, and he went on a totally different course than he had with us. We had a phenomenal -- we've had a -- just so you know, we have had a phenomenal -- over the course of the past 8 years, we have had a phenomenal relationship with the local community, with the federal community. And we have never had any injunctions. We've never had any issues with any of the local community until this mayor frankly, had a totally 180-degree change in his perspective, which we don't understand. We're still trying to understand how that perspective came about and why that perspective came about. We know that there's a real estate community of -- called Comporta that they're developing 2 golf courses and very luxurious homes. And perhaps we're an inconvenience to that development. But again, we would say that there are high irregularities in the whole process here.

Colin McClelland

Analysts
#27

How far is that luxury development away from you guys?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#28

Well, in terms of distance, it's about 35 kilometers. So really, we don't feel it should have any impact, although it is still within the Grândola jurisdiction. And then second of all, most -- probably more importantly is that the project is -- it's almost completed the selling process. And so once that sales process is completed, my guess is that people are going to change their tune on Lagoa fairly considerably.

Operator

Operator
#29

And at this time, there are no more questions in the queue. And I'd like to turn the call back over to Mike. Please go ahead, Mike.

Michael McAllister

Executives
#30

Thank you, operator. We're just going to check the webcast just to see if there's any questions that have come in through that. And we do have a few here. The first one is from Matt Crabbe. He's asking when if we anticipate any release of the drilling results at MDN?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#31

We're proceeding with the drilling, and we've had some very interesting progress there. We have 2 areas that looked highly prospective. And we have -- we're drilling with the area called Sulfuro S, which is just East and South of the the underground, the Paloma Underground pit. And then on top of that, we're also looking at an area in the southern zone called Baritina and Chulengo, which looks very interesting as well. Now the issue that we have in terms of producing and publishing results is that what we need to do there is to really end up with -- have a density of drilling that we can actually come out with what we would consider to be resourceworthy kind of size. And that's really what we're looking to put out. So I would say that by midyear, we'll be able to come out with hopefully some greater progress and discussion on that, certainly before midyear. But also, we are looking and we are looking to be able to -- within that time frame to also provide evidence to the market that we can expand our life of mine and look to potentially double that life of mine. And that's something we're still focusing on in the midterm, short term as well.

Michael McAllister

Executives
#32

And then we also have one other follow-up question for Matt regarding the company's buyback. He's asking if the company bought back? And if so, how many shares during the quarter?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#33

Yes. We bought a total in our buyback of about 380,000 shares or just under 400,000 shares of a total buyback of $6.4 million. Our treasury is building up very nicely. And we're buying shares on a daily basis. However, what we're kind of contemplating, we're waiting for is to see if the markets have any significant sell-off and looking at that as potentially an opportunity to come in and buy a larger bulk of shares. I mean we tend to think that the hostilities in the Middle East are probably going to continue a little more than people were looking for as of yesterday. Today, it's a different day. But we think that there's still probably some capitulation in the markets and potential for capitulation in the market, and we think we can use that as an opportunity to buy our shares at that time.

Michael McAllister

Executives
#34

And then just one follow-up question. He's asking in terms of -- Tim Tremblay is asking, will you receive any funding or grants from the Canadian government for the development of the Mont Sorcier project?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#35

I think it's an avenue we could pursue. But as we've really tried to highlight to people, we don't need the money from the Canadian government. And one of our strongest positions here is that we have the support of UKEF, which is the U.K. Export Credit Agency. And we believe in conjunction with another development agency that we'll be able to fund this project to the tune of about 70%. And then on top of that, we believe that the other 2 remaining sources of funding, which would make up the 30%, we believe offtake and a potential stream could help us a long way towards completing that. And then by '28, when we anticipate being in construction, we believe we'll have a cash position that can furnish the balance. So in terms of our mantra, as you guys are well aware, as per the same response for Portugal, we really believe that there's a strong possibility that we can develop these 3 projects from our own cash flows as well as through means which are nondilutive and predominantly through offtake agreements or potential sale streams, although we know that the long-term cost of streams. So -- but again, we're building a very strong cash position. We're seeing that expand with Lagoa potentially coming on stream in 2028. That would put us in a position where if I'm looking at today's market, we're probably generating a couple of hundred million dollars of cash flow. So we're really building up some momentum here that I think we'll be able to sustain and grow these projects without requirement for dilution.

Michael McAllister

Executives
#36

Great. Then one other one. The company has stated that the production is back-end loaded in the year. How many ounces do you expect will come from the underground in the latter half of the year and estimate on that grade of those ounces?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#37

My guesstimate would be that we're looking at something in the region of about about 1,000 ounces a month or so. Now remember, we're not going -- the purpose of the underground development was not to go and -- we have a plan where we see about -- we published a PEA that basically that had a 30,000 ounce resource underground. I believe that the objective that we have is not to really go underground to produce the existing resources that we have. Really it is to go underground and start drilling aggressively to grow the resources. And that's what we've seen at our neighbors at Cerro Negro, Cerro Moro, at Cerro Vanguardia, at Cerro Negro. Really underground is where you start to see the rubber hit the road. For the most part, on the Massif, you tend to see fairly vein structures that are dispersed, that they're small, but multiple, but they are very -- a large number of them. The fact is that as you move underground, you tend to find vein structures that are more complete and larger. And that's what we're anticipating that we'll see, but we really need to go down there and drill aggressively, which we'll do as soon as we receive the rig, which will be in July or August. So it leads to the question that with a little bit of success and our average grade that we're contemplating is about 5 grams in our budget per 5 grams per tonne. When we were mining the Paloma pit above the underground, we were averaging around 7 to 8 grams. So I think that the potential here is that we can see with any success with the drilling, with the open pit with the open -- with the surface drilling, the underground, we can really see our production expand fairly dramatically, and we have all the infrastructure in place to develop. It really is just resource management that we need to develop and expansion of the resources, which we're obviously focusing on now for the first time in our history of being at the mine. So we're very optimistic that at some point, the shoe will drop. We're just not sure when that will be.

Michael McAllister

Executives
#38

Follow-up question from Stigen Smith. He's mentioning that we have mentioned limited dilution multiple times. What dilution do we foresee? Or could we do these -- advance these projects with no dilution?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#39

My preference would be for no dilution, obviously, but one has to consider the variabilities of market conditions and we -- the mining sector, as we all know, is a very volatile space. And what we're seeing now, for example, in Portugal, just to give you a little bit of color on our position with funding of Lagoa Salgada is basically we have, again, the support of the U.K. Export Credit Agency for 70% project funding. The -- let's call it, for example, a $200 million CapEx. So if we're looking at $140 million coming from the -- from UCEF and Santander Bank, who are working with UCEF, basically, the $60 million that we require due to the fact that Boliden has acquired Neves-Corvo and a large number of the trading groups and even Boliden for that matter, are looking for more ore to go into their smelters. We believe that the dynamic -- current dynamic is that we can use traders to actually help us fund the development of the balance of the capital required. And so therefore, I think there's a strong belief that we have that we could fund that project with third-party money. If we need to put in a little bit of capital, we'll be more than strong enough in our own cash position to actually supply that capital ourselves. So that means we're not contemplating substantial dilution. And if we look at a much bigger capital program in Quebec, we believe the same is true. We may have to rely a little bit on the stream, if necessary, but we believe through project funding, offtake and our own cash position, we should be able to cover the majority of the funding required. So I can't make the promise we won't dilute, and that's why we don't say we will never dilute, but our hope is that, that will be the ultimate endpoint.

Michael McAllister

Executives
#40

Great. And then just one last question regarding recoveries for the heap leaching. They noticed 32% for the year. Is that what we expect going forward? Or could we expect increased recoveries from the heap leach?

Mark Brennan

Executives
#41

I mean it really depends whether you're producing the sulfides or the sulfides or the oxides. You correctly highlight that we've been producing from the sulfides. And so recoveries have been a little bit lower than normal than what we anticipate. I would expect that those recoveries will improve as we move through the -- into other areas. But I would expect for the sulfides, we're probably running 35%, 40% recoveries. And then for the oxides, we're probably closer to 60%. But obviously, the oxides are probably running lower grade than what we see in the sulfides.

Michael McAllister

Executives
#42

Great. There's no more questions in the -- from the webcast portion of the call. So I'll now turn the call back over to Mark Brennan, just for any closing comments.

Mark Brennan

Executives
#43

Well, thank you, everyone, who joined us today. As a reminder, the recording of this call, along with the presentation, will be available on the company's website at cerradogold.com. For any follow-up questions or concerns, you can find our contact details on our website. And thank you very much for your support, interest and following the Cerrado story. With that, operator, thank you very much. I think that concludes our call.

Operator

Operator
#44

Thank you. This does conclude today's program. You may all disconnect.

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