Compañía de Minas Buenaventura S.A.A. (BVN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Buenaventura's Investor Day. Thank you for joining us today. At today's session, we will highlight our progress in implementing Buenaventura's strategy and the strong financial foundations that supports our long-term vision. We're excited to share how we are unlocking the full potential of our flagships and advancing on our exploration and project pipeline. Before we begin, I would like to cover a few important items. Please note that today's remarks include forward-looking statements based on management's current views and assumptions. While we believe these assumptions, expectations and projections are reasonable in view of the current available information, we are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. For those attending in person, the presentation QR code is printed on the back of the batch and attend cards at each table. For webcast participants, the presentation can be downloaded from the download tab on the webcast window. There will be a Q&A session after the presentation. We will first answer the in-person questions and then the questions from the webcast. Webcast participants may submit your questions online. Today's presentation will be led by Mr. Leandro Garcia, Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Daniel Dominguez, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Juan Carlos Ortiz, Vice President of Operations. Also joining us and available for your questions is Mr. Roque Benavides, our Chairman. Let me now turn the presentation over to Mr. Leandro Garcia.

Thank you, Sebastian. Good morning to all, and thank you for coming to be with us in this day that is very important for us to present our view of Buenaventura for the following 15 years. You have been witnessed of what has Buenaventura passed through the last 5 years. We have experienced difficult times. But however, with a lot of effort, teamwork, investment in our explorations, stability in our operations, we have been able to surpass difficult times. Today, we are a different company, and you have seen the turnaround that we have been able to make in the last 2 or 3 years. In this time, we have excited to put in production Yumpag, San Gabriel in the near December of this year. And we have reached stabilizing our four flagships. So we have a very good and excellent expectations for the following years. Today, we are in the position in the market capitalization around the 81st company. We expect to be in the following 15 years inside the top 50 companies in market capitalization. For this, in terms of gold production, we are in the level of 63, and we expect to be inside the 45 top 10 -- top 45 producers of gold. In terms of silver, we are in the 15th position, and we expect in the following years to be in the top 5. And in terms of copper, now we are in the 34th position, and we have the expectation to be inside the 25 top companies of producing copper. And during these year, we will try to get another time our investment grade to be in the Tier 1 of the new consolidated mining standard initiative that these organizations, the ICMM, the Copper Mark are trying to form, and we will be offshore part of this mining standard. As you know, we -- our revenues is a mix of 50% base metals and 50% precious metals. We feel very comfortable with that mix of production, and we will try to maintain that mix in the long run. Of course, our EBITDA will be at least 30% of our -- as a margin. Buenaventura has a strategy for sustainable value creation. And this value creation stands for mainly these four elements. We are -- our balanced metal mix position us to capture opportunities and mitigate risks in a rapidly changing world, changing world being the energy transition, the data centers, all the resources the data centers need, the artificial intelligence, the technology and the population growth. We are going to be focused on our four flagships, Cerro Verde, we are partnership -- we have a partnership with Freeport-McMoRan and is one of our main assets Uchucchacua and Yumpag, our silver complex, Brocal, our copper mine and San Gabriel that will be the center of the main producer of gold for the company that will be beginning production in the third week of this December. We will be focused also in operational excellence. We continue all our efforts to reduce our cost and to be able to reach the best practice and to be located in the second -- at most in the second quartile of the cost curve. And of course, our disciplined capital allocation that will maximize the returns for our shareholders. Well, this is today with a stable production and a predictability, we are able to present what we foresee for the following 15 years. In terms of production, we foresee in the long run, a production of gold between 200,000 ounces per year and -- from 200,000 to 220,000 ounces per year, coming from today around 120,000, 130,000. In silver, we expect to be producing in the long run, 5 years from now, around -- between 20 million and 22 million ounces per year. And in gold, including Trapiche, plus the production of Brocal, we are going to be producing between 120,000 and 130,000 tonnes of copper. One of our main value of our company, we have increased the life of mine on all our flagships -- on all our mines. And that has been the effort in the last 5 years. Today, we can say that we have surpassed the life of mine that we plan to have. Today, we used to plan 5 years for underground mines and 10 years from the open pit mine. Today, you will see during the presentation of Juan Carlos that we have reached and surpassed that objective, that goal. In cost optimization, we're still making all the efforts to be in the second quartile. And our promise is to generate mines and projects that at least obtain $100 million of EBITDA each year and with a 30% margin. And financial strength, we will be able and we will work to not go higher than 2x our leverage rate. You have to remember that 6 years ago in -- 5 years ago in 2021, in the worst moment for the company, our leverage ratio was 6x our EBITDA. Today, as of September 2025, we are in 0.45. So we have made a lot of efforts, and I think it's a good work that we have made since our -- all our mines. And the maturity -- sorry, we promised at least no less than 7 years of maturity to have a planning to foresee all our operations. We have shown this graph in the last presentations. Our pillars of growth will be our own mines, our organic growth, our projects and, of course, the possibility to inorganic growth. And this chart, I will be explaining the short term, midterm and long term. And this is what I mean. In the execution today, we have advanced, as you know, in Cerro Verde an operational excellence. We support the administration, the running of the company by Freeport, and we go with them on all the efforts they made to maintain the type of production, the type of results they get every year. In Coimolache Oxides, we are working to extend the life of mine, re-leaching the current pads and looking opportunities to re-leach the waste dump -- sorry, to use the waste dump of the prior years as new mineral ore because remember, the cutoff in years 2011, 2012 was different than the cutoff we use today. Today, that waste is mineral. So we are going to work and trying to recover the mineral deposit in those waste dumps. In the case of La Zanja, also the same strategy. We are going to look for the waste dump we have made in -- during the past years. And there are opportunities to recover more gold from those operations. In the case of San Gabriel, as I told you before, we are working to get the first gold bar on December 20 of this year. Talking about our little mines, our legacy mines, we continue evaluating the next stage to have for those mines. We have to be responsible with these mines because as you remember, we have been there for many years, and we have a lot of responsibility of all the communities that we have in the surroundings, and we have to be cautious of what decision we make with these legacy mines. Of course, we understand that the size doesn't fit with the mines that we want to work our -- for example, our flagships. But we have to be very cautious on what are the second phase of these mines. In the midterm, from the next -- the following 5 years, you will see Brocal producing 70,000 tons of copper per year. That means our current production of 13,000 throughput -- 13,000 tonnes per day as our throughput will be changed to 17,000 tonnes per day. And in terms of Uchucchacua and Yumpag, our silver complex, the increased production will be from the -- today throughput of 3,500 tonnes per day to 6,000 tonnes per day. That will allow us to reach more than 20 million ounces per year in silver production. And M&A opportunity, we are -- we will be alert to any opportunity to balance our metal mix and diversify in top-tier jurisdictions. In terms of the long run, we will be witnessed of the Phase 2 of San Gabriel that we plan to treat 4,000 tonnes per day. We have our Coimolache Sulfides that is today is in the scoping stage study. Trapiche that is in the feasibility and permitting stage. La Zanja Sulfides that is an exploration project and Algarrobo in the north of Peru. Talking about our ESG practices. Now Buenaventura operates in 8 regions in Peru and have more than 15,000 colleagues that work with us. 64% of those colleagues are from -- of the total workers are from the local -- in the surroundings of the area, in the local communities. One of our greatest values in our culture is safety. And we make a lot of strategies to keep our -- all our workers safe and they can return safe and alive to their homes. We have a phrase in Buenaventura that says if it is not safe, don't do it. And we try to give the power of -- to empower our people to say no if they feel there is something with risk and can evolve in a fatal accident. This year, we have 0 fatal accidents. In terms of social and how we relate with our communities, we -- yearly, we buy in services and goods, $240 million of the surrounding communities. That gives the business in order to increase their economic possibilities to develop. One other strategy we have is to leverage government funds to our local areas. We help them to leverage -- this is accumulate -- this amount is accumulated during the -- since the beginning of this strategy to invest in the three main areas that we have identified that and we want to develop in our communities, infrastructure, education and health in order to close the gaps that we have found when we arrive to those areas. In terms of environmental, we are very glad to announce that 100% of our energy is renewable energy, mainly from our hydroelectrical plant once. And talking about the greenhouse gas emissions, our effort is to reduce year-by-year these emissions. And you will see in the next slide also. In terms of governance, we have updated our code of ethics and conduct this year. The last one was in 2017 and the first was in 2006 or '07. This is an update in order to reinforce our commitment to integrity. We are committed in compliance to have a strong regulatory compliance and effective risk management. The last 3 years have been -- we have been able to have a great performance in permitting. We have been granted of very important permitting that give us continuity of our operations. We -- in this -- in the more important permit that we are awaiting are, first, the San Gabriel operation permit that will be -- we expect to be granted in the following weeks. And El Brocal, we expected in the operational permit in the first quarter of 2026. This permit will allow us to increase the size of our tailing management -- tailing dump. So we have continued operation for the midterm. And Yumpag, the next permit will we are working on is to increase the production from 1,000 to 1,200 per day tonnes. And in the third quarter of 2027 to be granted of a permit to work -- to produce 3,000 tonnes per day. As I told you, our water resource management -- sorry, our renewable energy is 100% renewable source. We have made a lot of advance in the water management. We now recirculate in our underground mines, 88% of the water. And the greenhouse gas emissions, if you can see in this chart is reducing year-by-year. Now maybe it's time to talk about a little bit of what is the political situation coming next year. You know next year will be the elections in Peru in April in 2026. During the campaign, normally, there arise issues about nationalization, royalties, increased tax, but you know that any actual change really require approval and technical review and of course, political consensus. You will hear about these topics. But I think the context is completely different in today that we have in 2021. Recent polls have name Rafael Lopez Aliaga, former banker and the former mayor of Lima leading the race, following by always Keiko Fujimori and Mario Vizcarra that is the brother of Martin Vizcarra, our former President. But up today, it's very early to foresee which will be the winner, of course. The elections in Peru are defined in the last month, really. No dominant left wing contender has yet emerged. The context for the population is completely different, as I told you, as it was in 2021. Our macroeconomic fundamentals remain solid. We have a Central Bank very strong and the performance of the Sol Peruano have been very good with all the price -- the commodity prices, all the accounts, the national accounts looks very good. At the regional level, political sentiment is shifting from left to right. We see Ecuador, we see Argentina, the recent rotation in Chile. And so we expect new changes and good changes from Peru. We -- personally, I am very positive. Now I will present Juan Carlos Ortiz, who will give you the glance of what will be -- what should you expect for the production for the following years. Thank you.

Thank you, Leandro. Thank you for joining us today. We would like to start just showing you this picture of Yumpag. It's a very compact operation that was done by all the facilities that we have in surface, but that we will see in a minute is a very significant value generator for the company. First, I would like to start with this overview of our portfolio. These figures are the projection of reserve by the end of December this year, 2025, where we have about 15 years of gold reserve, 8 years of silver reserve and 16 years of copper reserve and production. So now we will develop that in detail, which assets are going to be part of this production and also give you some color about the geology that is the fundamental part of the growth and continued growth of this asset and not only the ongoing asset, but also the project that we are developing in our portfolio. Starting with the production profile. We have, in that part, the gold profile. As Leandro mentioned, we're going to be in the range between 160,000 to 180,000 ounces of gold per year, as you can see in this forecast production for the consolidated production of Buenaventura, is not including the production coming from Coimolache nor Cerro Verde, it's only from our consolidated operations. Further to the right, you see the copper production in the case of -- in this case, particularly for El Brocal production in that the number you see pretty much the guidance range for the coming years. And important to mention early on this presentation is that even if we do have a profile of 50,000 tonnes of copper per year in the coming 3 years, we're working to develop the next increase or expansion in El Brocal that will allow us to be on the range of 60,000 tonnes of copper per year. Something similar happened, you see further down to the left of the profile of silver production. We are ramping up production in Yumpag as well as in Uchucchacua, and we will be reaching about 20 million ounces by the year 2028. We are working right now with all the permit engineering, of course, developing the productions underground and continue with exploration to support this ongoing operation, not for 8 years, as I mentioned before, but way, way more than this range of time. And also in the case of Uchucchacua, we will have some production of zinc and copper, as you see in the lower corner of the presentation. Now I would like to start with the video about San Gabriel, how it's looking the project as of today. [Presentation]

You see the processing plant already in the southern part of the country. This is the mine edit, the underground workings. They have an overview of the processing plant, 100% complete. Right now, we are starting with C3 commissioning process and C4 in December. So we expect to have the fair gold bar pool by the end of December, a few weeks down the road. And our integration with our surrounding communities is not only being part of the mining but also integrated as a good neighbor and integrate our key stakeholders into our profile of growth -- growing together. And something important here is that it's not only the launch of the C3 and C4 commissioning process for San Gabriel. It's something that we would like to share with you is how it's going to be the ramp-up of the production and why it's taking more months than a usual operation in the -- in this view, you can see the planned view of the operation. I will focus now on the way the tailing dam is going to operate. The central part where we have the filtration plant, 3,000 tonnes per day capacity. And to the left -- to the right, you can see the reservoir where we will stock all the wet tailings during the rainy season. After the rainy season, we will take all the tailings up to these drying platforms. We will bring all the material by truck. We dump the material in these platforms. And with dozers, we will start to spread that tailings in order to reduce the moisture content from 20% down to 10% moisture. Once the tailings are drying, we will bring them to the final position where you see that the tailings are being placed at the bottom of this V-shaped valley that we are using as a final reservoir. And you see that at the beginning, at the bottom is a small area that we have. But layer by layer, we are growing in elevation and gaining more area. And the more area means that we have more tonnage to be placed on a yearly basis. So that's how it's going to look like some years down the road once all the compaction is completed. So this means that in the initial year 2026, we will be in the order of 2,000 tonnes per day out of the full capacity of 3,000 tonnes per day. Why? Because we're going to be starting to place the tailings at the bottom part of the valley, where we have a little limited area. While we start putting more layer on top of each layer, we will increase the area, the compaction area, and we will be matching the production from the processing plant with the capacity to compaction of tailings in the final tailing reservoir. That's the reason we will have this production profile. Next year, it's going to be around 2,000 tonnes per day. In 2027, we will be around 2,800 tonnes per day. And in 2028, we will reach full capacity as a throughput, how much tonnes we will process in a year. They will be in that order of magnitude like Phase 1. And in Phase 2, we are planning to increase production, optimizing the processing plant in order to reach 3,500 tonnes per day. Translating that production throughput into gold production, down below in yellow, you see the production in gold terms. Next year, it's going to be in the range of 75,000 to 80,000 ounces of gold. Next year, 90,000 to 95,000 ounces and then in the order of 100,000 ounces of gold per year. That's for Phase 1. Phase 2 is going to be beyond that number when we de-bottleneck the plant, we get experience to know how to operate this processing plant, the ore that we have in there and to get the whole of the ore that we are putting through this processing facility. So we expect to be in Phase 2, reaching 3,500 tonnes per day and go over 100,000 ounces of gold per year. Important to mention also is that correlated with the increase in throughput is going to be a downward trend in the operating cost. If we put cost expressed on dollars per ounce of gold produced, cash cost, C1, we will be having this trend starting next year with $2,000 per ounce of gold and bringing it down to around $1,500 per ounce of gold. How it's going to be working like that? Of course, throughput is key. Increasing the throughput will allow to dilute all the fixed cost in the operation. But in addition to that, the mining method that we do have is something similar that some miners in Nevada do here like Barrick and Newmont, they do in the underground operation they have in Nevada. They have a main method called Under Drift and Fill in which you need to drive a tunnel then you backfill it with cemented backfill. And once it's completely hard, 21, 28 days later, you go one lift beneath that. So you're using the top lift as a roof for the next lift underneath. The most expensive part of the mining metals is driving the top cut. That's where you need to put heavy roof support. Once you are one layer beneath that, it's way cheaper. At the beginning, you're going to be 100% of the production coming from the top cuts. But gradually, this blend will equilibrate in 1/3 of the production of gold coming from the top cuts and 2/3 of the production coming from the under cuts. That's way, way cheaper. So that put that also that cost structure coming down. And number three is that we are continuing to develop the mine. We will keep doing the mine deepening for the next 3 years. So once we completed that in year 2028, '29, costs will be reduced again because developing will be done. We will continue to do exploration. Probably there is more to be going further in depth. But at this time, it's -- the completion of that task will allow also to reduce the operating cost for the remaining 17 years life of mine of San Gabriel. So that's for the gold production. If we move now to copper. Copper at this time in the next 5 years is going to be produced in El Brocal mine. Before getting into the production numbers, I would like to go a little bit deeper into the geology of El Brocal. At the left, we see a plan view of the deposit. This area with red, green and orange is the underground mine that have been mined for the last 25 years. The geology of the deposit is volcano at the center, and there is a mineralization all around the volcano, like a donut-shaped ore body. In the last 25 years, we only mined the northern part and a little bit of the western part. Now we are driving tunnels to develop the western phase and also the eastern phase around the volcano. There is about 5 kilometers more to continue and close the ring around the volcano. It will take at least 5 years full steam to develop all this area for exploration and for mine development. We do have geophysics and few drill holes that confirm mineralization all around. So now the task is to get access to that area. So 25 years of production here and a big future to continue. In that northern part, where we see all the red, orange and blue dots is where we do have the next 17 years of production of El Brocal. This is where we have our reserve. And the plan is to continue to ramp up production very slightly in the next 3 years, 2026, 2027 and 2028 because we do need to do some mine development, mine adding, ventilation, deepening the mine, prepare the mine for all the water that we are going to collect at the bottom of the mine and do some minor change in the processing plant. The ore is way harder than it was in the open pit. So we need to make some arrangement in the crushing and grinding circuit in order to allow to increase production with the existing footprint. So the investment that we are going to do in exploration, mine development and processing plant upgrading will lead us to jump into almost 70,000 tonnes per day in El Brocal. We do have the permit to 25,000 tonnes. So probably we need to do only minor change in our permit profile in order to accommodate additional set of equipment between or incorporated into the existing license that we do have. How that -- it looks like now in production terms, as I mentioned earlier, the production of copper will be around 50,000 tonnes of copper per year up to the year 2029, we do have the expansion happening, reaching 17,000 tonnes per day and reaching a 60,000 tonnes per day copper production. Along with the copper, we have silver and gold production, as you can see there, also working or keeping -- bringing us additional credits for the copper production. It will translate that into our cost structure in copper. We are bringing it down to $5,000 per tonne of copper. This is a combination of two factors. One, of course, is the credits coming from silver and gold. The increase in price is also helping us to reduce our overall copper cost. And number two, we do have a penalty for the arsenic content in our ore. And the market right now is changing a lot, and that penalty is coming down year-by-year. So the cost of producing copper, in particular in El Brocal is coming down from these two market conditions from the increasing value of the gold and silver credits and also by the reduction of the arsenic penalties. In addition to that, we are changing our business model in El Brocal. For the last 15 years, the mine was operated by a contractor. This year, 2026, we are buying $20 million of equipment. We're doing the mining and developing by ourselves. So we are reducing our cost by being more efficient, capturing that 30% general administrative and profit from the contractor and doing that work by ourselves, but not only doing that -- the same work because we're bringing larger equipment. Instead of having 10-tonne loaders, we're moving to 20-tonne loaders in the underground operation, so to make our cost structure more competitive as well. So the combination of all these factors will allow us to increase production and reduce the cost to a level of $5,000 per tonne of fine copper. In the case of Uchucchacua and Yumpag, this is our silver assets. They are pretty close to each other. You see further to the center of the slide in red, all Uchucchacua areas that we have been mining in the last 50 years and some 7 kilometers to the east, we have Yumpag. All along this fault, the Cachipampa fault. So there is some ground to explore in between. We are coming from Yumpag to the south and from Uchucchacua to the north to connect and fill the gap in between. We are getting good information. All the exploration, particularly in Yumpag is showing good evidence of mineralization of bonanza style mineralization. What we call bonanza is more than 20 ounces of silver per ton, is a ton of ore that is worth more than $1,000 per tonne. So high value with a cost of around $150 per tonne. So it's a big margin generator, a big volume generator. And we do have evidence that the mineralization continues to the north, continues to the west and continues further down below. But we are not also -- we're not only concentrated in the production in between these two assets, the Uchucchacua and Yumpag. We are opening the district for exploration as well. We do have Chonta to the north. It's about 4 kilometers to the north. We have evidence of copper mineralization in there, a standard type. We are starting -- right now, we have the permit to start doing the geophysics and probably next year, we will start with the infill drilling -- or start with drilling in the project. And also, we have an old mine Pozo Rico in this corner. And we have, in general, a district of 5 kilometer by 5 kilometers in we are going to concentrate our exploration. Our processing plant is close to Uchucchacua. So we can easily incorporate any additional discoveries into our existing footprint for the long term. We do have room for tailings. We have permits for increasing capacity to 6,000 tonnes. We will do some accommodation for a particular ore that we are going to incorporate to the production, but there was minor change probably won't need any heavy permitting in addition to what we already have. Based on the existing reserve in these 2 areas, Uchucchacua and Yumpag, we have this profile of production in the lower part of the slide. We do have a ramp-up production to 2,500 tonnes per day in Uchucchacua, more on the polymetallic type of ore. Whereas in Yumpag, we will be reaching 2,000 tonnes per day in the coming years. Basically, here, the -- the constraint that we have are permitting. We are expecting to have the first permit to 1,200 tonnes per day by June 2026 and to 2,000 tonnes per day in 2027. So continue increasing the production as a throughput. If we translate that production into silver ounces, we do have here the profile of production. In the case of Uchucchacua, only for silver, it's about 4 million ounces per year, we will be reaching that level of production. And in the case of Yumpag, we will be close to 20 million ounces of silver, just Yumpag itself. This is Yumpag at 2,000 tonnes per day. And we -- as Leandro mentioned, we are filing for a permit for 3,000 tonnes per day. So probably we can increase that. We will have the permit to do so, and we need to keep at the same pace of production, also doing the exploration in the mine. But it's a very important and very relevant asset for ourselves because you can make the math. You can have here the cost -- C1 cost for producing a silver ounce in the order of $9 per ounce, $10 per ounce with the current price, you can make easily the margin that we are making here in Uchucchacua and Yumpag. It's about almost $40 per ounce of silver. And if we have a combined production in the order of 20 million ounces, you can make -- that these assets could be in the potential range of $600 million to $700 million of EBITDA or margin per year, just Yumpag and Uchucchacua. So it's a very significant asset. The first picture that I show, small footprint, very compact operation, where we are planning to do our high performance teams is having a impact -- a significant impact in our portfolio production. Now I would like to talk about a little bit of Coimolache. We have been discussing previously that Coimolache was kind of at a limited speed because we do have to wait for the permit to put our process -- our pad, our leaching pad in full range. We get that permit back in August. We are now operating at full speed in the leaching pad, and that explains the increase in production that we have down below in yellow from 48 ounces -- 48,000 ounces of gold. We have a profile over 60,000 ounces of gold this year and going over 100,000 ounces of gold next year. As Leandro mentioned here, we are revisiting the whole district Coimolache for gold first. First, looking for the low-grade areas around the existing open pits. Number two, looking for revisiting the stockpile of the waste dump that we have generating for the last 15 years. In the first evidence that we do have, we have areas of that waste dump that was dumped 10, 12 years ago that now have a grade that is economic to be fitted into the process -- the leaching pad. So we are drilling that area. And probably by the second quarter, we have the results to know how much of that material could be incorporated in the production plan. The idea -- the internal idea is to keep driving or operating at around 100,000 ounces of gold for the coming 2, 3 years in the Coimolache, bringing that material that is already broken and available and putting in the leaching pad to add additional ounces of silver -- gold for our production. The other opportunity that we do have in here, we are learning how to re-leach our material, how to, again, remove the material in some places of the pad to another place and at the same time, mix it with oxygen and allowing the leaching reaction to happen again. So we do have also material in the pad -- in the lower layers of the pad, the original, the older ones that we can take from the bottom and bring it to the top in a sequence that allow us to recover the gold that was remaining in that stockpile or that value that were stock in that area. So we do have these actions altogether in our plans. And we have a small scale here, mining the mining oxides up to 2029, mining the low-grade pushbacks and laybacks on the open pits, 2028 and 2029. Also, that's important in a minute, mining the mixed ore, that's a combination or a transition between the oxides and the sulfides down below and processing also the low-grade material and re-leaching the pad. Coming back to the mining, the mixed ore or what we call the transitional ore. Transitional ore is what's in between the gold and the copper. The main area that holds this kind of reserve is the Tantahuatay open pit. So what we are doing right now is preparing the open pit for the transition to copper. So we are doing all the pushbacks, all the laybacks, all the ramp access. We do have all the land that we require. And we will have at the bottom of the pit, a big area where all the copper sulfides are established. So we will reach -- we will do the pre-stripping of the copper, we're recovering the gold contained in the upper layers. So we'll be -- by 2031, we will have the copper all open in our project. At the same time, most of the waste that we are generating will be backfilled in the old open pit, the gold open pit of Mirador and Tantahuatay West. These two will be the backfill. And part of the waste to do the pre-stripping of the copper will also be part of the dyes for the future tailing dam. So we are preparing the transition between gold and copper in the coming 5 years. Along with the drilling, along with the engineering, along with the permitting, we'll be doing all the transition in the existing footprint to be ready to make an easy transition to copper in 2021, 2022. So that's a key part of our strategy, not only generating value and cash with the mining of the gold, but also preparing the footprint for an easy transition, a lower CapEx, quick transition into flotation plant for copper. This is what I was mentioned also, the sulfide transition. The trade-off studies for the copper sulfide will be ending this year. We will start or continue with the conceptual study in 2026. We are going to be drilling, doing the infill drilling in 2026, 2027 and start working with the pre-feasibility study at the same time. So we expect to have the pre-feasibility study at 2028. Probably at that time, we can start filing the permits while at the same time, working for the pre-feasibility and detailed engineering on the project. So it's progressing in the same time, we are mining the gold. So mine gold will be financed, the stripping, the engineering and all the needed CapEx for transition into the copper. But this is not the only project copper that we do have. We do have Trapiche. Trapiche is also evolving in a good way. We expect to have the environmental permit granted early next year for the leaching operation. We expect to complete the power line right of path to buy all the land to bring the power line into the operation. We expect to complete all the negotiation for accessing the land in 2026 and complete also additional drilling, geotechnical, hydrogeological for the tail engineering. So the feasibility, detail engineering and probably the construction permit will be by the end of 2027, early 2028. So Trapiche is also on track to become the next project to be delivered for our own project portfolio. Alright, now I'll pass to Daniel/

Thank you, Juan Carlos, and good afternoon to everybody. Thank you for joining our investor presentation. In this part of the presentation, we will talk about financial performance and our strategy in terms of capital allocation. As all we know, 2025 was a very solid year for Buenaventura, not only because of the higher metal prices because also due to the strong production in most of our operations. In terms of revenues, this year, '25, we will generate between $1.4 billion and $1.5 billion. And our revenues will be pretty stable during 2026 and 2028, with production coming from San Gabriel and offset by the depleted mines, Orcopampa and Tambomayo. In year 2029, we expect an important increase in production with additional silver coming from Yumpag, Uchucchacua and of course, El Brocal increasing its copper production. As you can see, the prices that we are assuming are for gold, $3,200 per ounce; for silver, $35; and for copper, $9,500 per tonne. This increase in revenues will have a consequence in the EBITDA. For this year, we expect an EBITDA of around $550 million to $600 million. And for the following years, using the conservative prices that I mentioned, for year 2026, we expect around $475 million of EBITDA and a slight increase in the EBITDA for the following years to peak in year 2029 in close to $750 million. This year, 2029, as I mentioned, will be boosted by increasing production from Yumpag and Uchucchacua and, of course, El Brocal. We will show later, and Juan Carlos has already shown our strategy to reduce costs and to increase the EBITDA margins. As you can see, we -- this year, we will report around 40% of EBITDA margins. And this will be maintained in the order of 40-plus percent for the following years. Regarding costs, we strongly believe that in an environment of high metal prices as we are right now, we need to strengthen our cost control and cost reduction strategy. For this, we have strategies in all of the mines that we operate, as Juan Carlos has mentioned. This year, we will start San Gabriel operation. We will start the ramp-up of San Gabriel next year and the cash cost that we estimate is around $2,000 per ounce. This is because we will be ramping up the operation during the year. When we get to the 3,000 tonnes per day production or 3,000 tonnes per day throughput and continue with some of the initiatives that we are going to start at San Gabriel, such as the transition from top cuts to undercuts and the increasing the recovery by implementing the flotation plant, then we will reduce the cost of San Gabriel down to $1,500 to $1,400 per ounce. At El Brocal, this year, we will report around $6,000 per tonne cash cost. And we will reduce this gradually to $5,000 per tonne. How are we going to do this? Basically, by increasing the throughput. We will increase the throughput to 15,000 tonnes per day in 2, 3 years. And in year 2029, we should be reaching the 17,000 tonnes per day throughput at El Brocal that will permit us to dilute the fixed costs and decrease the cash cost to and stabilize it in $5,000 per tonne. At Uchucchacua, this year, we will report a cash cost of around $12 per ounce, Uchucchacua and Yumpag and we -- as Juan Carlos mentioned, we will reduce this cost down to $9 to $10 per ounce, basically by increasing the throughput at the plant to 4,500 tonnes per day. Remember that currently, we are producing at a rate of 2,500 tonnes per day. And finally, at Coimolache, we will reduce the cost significantly for from $1,400 per ounce down to $1,100 per ounce by increasing the throughput and placing more ore in the leach pads. Get it into capital expenditures. This year was a strong and intensive year for capital expenditures in Buenaventura. We have disbursed or we estimate to disburse this year around $400 million in CapEx from which $300 million is devoted basically to San Gabriel construction. The remaining $100 million is basically for sustaining CapEx at El Brocal and Uchucchacua. For the following years, we will have a peak of sustaining CapEx in year 2026, $229 million, basically for San Gabriel tailing dam storage facility, the waste dam and the mine development. At El Brocal, we will build during '26 and '27, the paste backfill plant and of course, the tailing dam expansion. And finally, at Uchucchacua and Yumpag, we will complete or we will start the construction of the transmission line, continue with the mine development at both mines. And also, we will add some trackless equipment. For the following years, the sustaining CapEx between '27 and '29 will come back to the former levels of sustaining CapEx, which is in the order of $100 million to $120 million. And on top of this, we will have some growth CapEx devoted to Trapiche initial or early studies and land purchasing. As you all know, we have 20% -- almost 20% in Cerro Verde, which is a strategic asset for Buenaventura. We expect a streaming of $150 million to $170 million of dividends per year in a very stable long term. As you can see, Cerro Verde is generating more than $2 billion of EBITDA per year. They have very small CapEx, around $300 million, $320 million, and they have no debt. So we expect Cerro Verde to continue distributing to Buenaventura dividends in the order of $150 million to $170 million. Going to our cash flow generation. In the past, we have been -- we have had a negative cash flow generation due to the construction of San Gabriel. And before that, due to this SUNAT's issue and we had also to paralyze operations at Uchucchacua in year 2021. However, since next year -- starting next year 2026, we will have positive free cash flow. We expect $150 million of cash generation in year 2026, basically with the $450 million EBITDA that we will generate and the dividends that we received from Cerro Verde. The CapEx, as I mentioned, will be in the order of $340 million. In year 2027, we expect to finish the year -- or to start the year, sorry, with a capital -- or a cash position of $600 million. The $350 million, the EBITDA that we will generate in year '27, $600 million. Capital expenditures will be reduced to $170 million. We will continue receiving dividends from Cerro Verde. So we expect to generate $400 million of free cash flow in year '27. The same for year 2028, we expect a free cash flow worth $400 million. And in year 2029, when having El Brocal increasing the throughput, the final production and Yumpag contributing with almost 14 million, 15 million ounces of gold. We expect to generate $500 million and finish the year 2029 with a cash position of between $1.8 billion to $2 billion. It's very important to consider that in this cash flow generation -- in these estimates, we are not considering the dividend payment, which, of course, we will consider every year. And finally, our capital allocation strategy will be focused on operational stability, strategic expansion and dividend payout. We will finish the year with $660 million to $680 million of cash and a debt of $710 million. This will give us the lowest leverage ratio that we have had in the last 5 years. As Leandro mentioned at the beginning, 5 years ago, when we issued our first bond -- international bond, our leverage ratio was in excess of 5x net debt over EBITDA. The sustaining CapEx this year will be focused on improving, optimizing our current operations to increase the life of mine at El Brocal, San Gabriel and Uchucchacua and Yumpag. Growth CapEx, of course, our main projects, Trapiche, then Coimolache. We have also Algarrobo for the long term, dividends we need to resume our dividend policy with our shareholders, which is not less than 20% of the net income from the previous year. And now I give back to Leandro.

We are approaching to the end of our presentation. And we want to highlight our commitment to these five concepts. First, operational excellence, essential to unlock the value of our current operations. Project development in order to have the best projects we can make and get the best value of them. Inorganic growth, to be alert of any opportunity that is presented to us in order to balance our mix production that we want to maintain. Commitment to our shareholders, delivering solid, sustainable results and rewarding their trust. And finally, vision for the future, building the foundation for long-term success. Before end, I want to -- I'm sure that some of our colleagues are watching this presentation in Lima in Peru and also I want to thank them, especially the guys, our colleagues in the mines. They work very hard with -- in an altitude of more than 3,800 meters above sea level. And their work is the responsible of what we have been presenting here today. Of course, all the support areas, permitting, human reserves, explorations, logistics, finance and everyone there. Thank you very much, and we really appreciate all the effort in the last 5 years. Thank you. Thank you very much, and thank you for coming today.

Now we may begin with the Q&A questions. Please, Carlos.

Carlos De Alba with Morgan Stanley. On San Gabriel and maybe a little bit more of where do we stand in terms of the testing, the trials -- the dry testing completely done, so you're ready to production? And if not, or even if they are done, what is still pending for you to really be able to produce that first bar in 4 weeks?

Well, we already got the connection to the National Grid. So we do have power now with the National Grid. We can start commissioning the whole circuit, no machine by machine, but the whole circuit altogether. We do start last week of that work. We are fully commissioning the crushing or passing through the crushing circuit, filling the ore wing. Next week, we will start with the wet commissioning of the two mills, the SAG mill and the Ball mill. We already have all the test dry, now we are starting with the slurries. And we have week by week scheduled for wet commissioning of the grinding, leaching and in December, the second week, we will start doing the filtration. At the same time, we were collecting all the carbon loaded with gold in order to start the recovery of the production of the gold precipitates. That's -- it is scheduled to have the first gold bar by December 20, in pretty much 1 month.

And then on the tailings management of San Gabriel, it's a very comprehensive operation. I wonder how much is the cost per ton or how does that compare to other operations that you have, just given how complicated the logistics seems to be?

We will have the experience of doing that in Tambomayo. In Tambomayo, we have been doing that for the last 8 years. The process of filtration, transportation to a reservoir where we store the tailings for -- during the rainy season, then taking out for drying and compaction is the whole process of dry stacking. So it's -- we're doing exactly what other companies do for dry stacking in their own businesses. The cost is a run rate of $9 to $10 per tonne from filtration up to the last step of compaction. The good thing about that is that you were doing your closure at the same time you were doing your compaction. So you are not leaving any cost to the end-of-the-life of the project. You are doing your closure at the very same time. And the other important thing is that it's a kind of a dry area in the country. So you recover more than 85% of the water and doing that, you recycle 85% of the water. The only water missing is the remaining moisture that is left on the tailings to keep it altogether. So it's very efficient metal. We have been doing that for the last 8 years in Tambomayo. We in Peru have experienced doing that in some other operation as well.

[indiscernible] put in order is gold miners to process all their heap where there's a lot of gold that would not be economic, let's say, 1,100 or 2,000 I think other people are going to do the same. Are you planning that?

Yes. In the case of Coimolache, in the open pit in 2010, 2011, we have a different cutoff, like 0.2, 0.25 grams of gold per tonne. Right now, our cutoff is below 0.1 grams...

0.1?

Yes, right now. In the past, it was 0.25 grams. So between 0.1 grams and 0.25 grams, there is some quantity of material in our waste dumps, all right, that need to be reprocessed. So we are redrilling the waste dump and the early result that we do have is that almost 50% of the material that is placed as waste can be reclaimed, put it in the pad for leaching and the low, low-grade material will go to a new waste dump.

Do you have a guess at how much it would cost per tonne to process?

Very little because there is no blasting, there is no transportation because it's very close to the pad, comparison to the pit, open pit the waste dump are in between the open pit and the leaching pad, so halfway in between. So we need to load it and place it whatever it is needed into the pad. The quantity of reagent needed, it's similar to the ongoing fresh ore that we have. So it's going to be in the range of $1,000, $1,200 per ounce of gold, in line with what we were doing right now, a little bit of...

$10 to $1,200 per ounce?

$1,000 to...

$1,000 to $1,200 per ounce?

Yes.

So at 3,200 or 4,200, you make $2,000 or $3,000 an ounce.

That's correct.

You're going to do that?

Yes.

Other people will do?

Yes. In La Zanja, in Coimolache, we are also revisiting the low-grade areas in Orcopampa mine, the underground operation, also waste dumps in the Orcopampa area. So everything is under review.

Do you currently have a hedging strategy? Or do you have hedges out there now? Or do you plan on incurring it? And that's for gold, you could have separate for gold, silver and copper.

In the past, we used to hedge. We hedged copper, we hedged gold. And in Peru, we have the IRS, the local tax authority that doesn't understand at this point in time what -- how to -- how the rules for hedging should be. So in this environment with the IRS not understanding this tool that is very common in the market, we will be very cautious. But it's always over the table. We understand that it's important to hedge especially for our bondholders. But first, we need to understand to let the IRS -- the local IRS to understand these tools.

Well, if we don't have any more questions. I'm turning to Carlos.

Maybe one on the SUNAT. Any update on the case that you're still fighting? That will be a very nice money back to their balance sheet.

The case is progressing slowly. We are having some wins and some losses that will continue in the court. So we have recovered slightly -- a small portion of the total amount of the case, which is $550 million. We have recovered $30 million, $35 million, but this will take a long time. It's not only one case. These are four separate cases that are running in separate courts with separate lawyers. So we think that we could win some cases and continue progressing in other ones.

Our expectation is to win as a total around -- between 50% and 60% of the amount.

And long term at the end -- and that ending is 5 years from now or...

3 years.

3 years. Okay. And then on Coimolache, what is the expectation as you transition into copper sulfides? Would you continue to operate the asset? Or what is the idea there?

No, that is a discussion that we have to make with our partners. We are working today on the project to develop a profitable project. Let's see, if we can continue working as business as usual.

And last one for me, sorry, for monopolizing the mic. The cash cost trends that you showed today, if we looked at the cash that you report for your operations, can we assume the same decline on a percentage basis, both...

Yes.

Well, now turning to the Q&A questions from the webcast. Our first question comes from Juraj Domic at LarrainVial. You mentioned M&A opportunities in the Strategy 2024 slide. Are you considering seeing the precious metals plus copper? Or are you considering new metals or markets?

No. We are considering to stay in the metals we feel comfortable. Gold primarily, we think that we should look for additional production of -- production in the following 6 years. So will be mainly our -- we are looking for gold mines.

And the second question is, given the current prices, should we expect a reserve increase in Tambomayo and Orcopampa and thus further production down in 2026?

No. We will continue to -- with exploration in these two properties. Of course, now with the increasing price, we are more comfortable looking for mid-grade or low-grade materials in the district. But with the current structures and veins and ore bodies, we have limited room for increase in -- with the current price. It's more on the potential nearby the operation than in the ongoing structure that we are mining as of today.

Our next questions come from [indiscernible] Securities. Could you provide some CapEx figures from the planned expansion at the El Brocal and Uchucchacua and Yumpag area? Also, could you share expected CapEx for the Coimolache oxide project?

In the case of El Brocal, for -- more of an expansion is modification. We have been running for 17,000 tonnes per day in the past, but it was with very soft ore. Now we need to accommodate the hard rock copper coming from the underground mine. So we need to put an extra set of crushers and probably additional flotation cells. So it's not that big, probably in the area of $100 million -- less than $100 million CapEx to make all the transition from soft rock into hard rock at 17,000 tonnes per day. In the case of Uchucchacua, probably it's going to be -- we don't have a definite budget so far, between $50 million to $60 million to increase to 6,000 tonnes per day. We do have the power, the water, the tailing dam, it's going to be more to accommodate an additional crushing and grinding circuit for processing the ore. And in Coimolache, we start very early on the engineering. So we don't have a definitive figures so far.

Our next question comes from Cesar Perez at BTG. Regarding the reduction on arsenic-related penalties applied to El Brocal copper concentrate, to what extent can this be attributed to shifting market tolerance parameters, advancing chemical assay precision or the influence of an expected concentrate volume resulting from the marketing integration of Cerro Verde copper ores?

Well, we actually don't have any problem to sell all our concentrate of El Brocal. Actually, we think that we have the capacity to sell twice the total concentrate we produce today. We have -- as Juan Carlos told us, we have seen a decrease in the penalties. So there is room for more concentrate -- in this concentrate -- this composition for the market.

But also in addition to that, market condition, also we are kind of fine-tuning the quality of our concentrates. Instead of going to high copper, high arsenic, we are going to a middle point where the market prefer to have the quality of the concentrate. So we are kind of switching the quality of the concentrate, reducing a little bit of the copper, but at the same time, reducing the amount of arsenic that goes linked to the copper and the market prefer that particular quality rather than the previous one, high copper and high arsenic at the same time. So it's a market, but at the same time, we are doing our task in the operation.

The next question comes from Omar [indiscernible] Compass. Why does the sustaining CapEx increase so much in 2026? Also, in Cerro Verde, we do expect the unit to increase processing capacity.

Cerro Verde, we think that the production will be stable -- stabilized at [indiscernible] tonnes per day. The production will be similar from this year. In terms of CapEx for the following year, well, there are -- as Juan Carlos mentioned, there are some additional investment that we have to make in the tailing dams, you would have seen the videos is a stage by stage -- state-by-state complement. So we -- and announced in Uchucchacua, we -- and El Brocal, we have to make all the waste management investment in order to warranty the long-term production.

Maybe to add and put some figures to what Leandro said, at San Gabriel, next year, we will have a CapEx of around $60 million devoted to what Leandro said and Juan Carlos, basically to complete some of the tailing dams and waste dumps that we have are already building. And at El Brocal, there will be around $80 million to $90 million CapEx for the purchase of equipment and also the management of the tailings.

The next question comes from Alexander [indiscernible] at S&P Global. Trapiche looks to turn Buenaventura into an increasingly copper-focused producer. Given that project CapEx will be considerable for both, will Buenaventura seek for joint venture partners?

Well, maybe 4 years ago, 5 years ago, I will respond that we may look for a partner for Trapiche. Today, our answer is may not. Maybe we can do it by ourselves. As you have seen the figures shown by Daniel, we have a very high cash expected during the years. Our focus today has to be -- to prepare an excellent project, quality project. So we are going to invest the best in all the studies we have to develop in order to have profitable project. And in El Algarrobo, also, we are very positive in all the things we are going on with the community and our neighbors, but it's kind of in a longer stage. We expect a -- we expect to generate that project after we construct Trapiche.

Correct. And finally, [ Gabriela Bend at Lucro ] Analytics. Please, can you give us more information on your expected dividend payments?

Well, yes, our policy is at least 20% of the profit. So we will be -- we are going to resume that policy. This year already, we are paying dividends 20%. And we will, of course, evaluate to pay in excess of that 20%.

With that, we have concluded the Q&A questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for being with us today and spending a couple of hours. And next year, we will have the 30th anniversary of being in the New York Stock Exchange. So since now we invite you to come with us to celebrate the 30 years of being a listed company in New York Stock Exchange. We will send you the invitations properly.