Equinox Gold Corp. (EQX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Equinox Gold Corporate update. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the meeting over to Rhylin Bailie, Vice President, Investor Relations for Equinox Gold. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ariel, and thank you, everybody, for joining us this morning. We will, of course, be making a number of forward-looking statements today. So please do take the time to visit our website and our continuous disclosure documents on SEDAR and on EDGAR. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Ross Beaty, Chairman of Equinox Gold for opening remarks.

Thank you very much, Rhylin, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. This is our annual report card. This is our annual statement of what we did in 2021 and what our objectives and numbers are forecast to be for 2022. We're going to be very granular today. We have a lot of stuff to go over because we're a very big and busy company right now. We've -- this is the fourth year I've done this. We're 4 years old as of January. And we have come from basically nothing to establish it ourselves as a significant globally based gold company with a tremendous growth profile. Now none of this growth comes cheaply. It doesn't come easily. It doesn't come freely. And this is really a year coming up in 2022 that for me, it's all about growth built in our new mines, especially our big one in Ontario, Greenstone and also developing a long-term sustainable future for our other mines, particularly the ones in Brazil, but not to forget the 2 big ones we have in California and of course, our Los Filos Mine in Mexico. It's a year, a big investment and big investment means you're setting the stage for really the future of the company, the long-term future of this company as a very scaled gold producer, which will offer investors tremendous leverage to gold prices both on our production side and also on our large reserves and resources side. So with that introduction, I'm going to go through some early slides here, which are going to be sort of the broader base picture of what Equinox is like today, what we're going to be doing in this coming year. And then I'm going to turn it over to Christian Milau and his management team for a lot more granularity on details of each project and what's going on in 2022 vis-a-vis our guidance. So the first slide I want to talk to -- Rhylin, are you going to talk about cautionary notes?

We already did that. You can go ahead.

Okay. Very good. So I'm going to start with Slide #3. Equinox is the fastest-growing gold company because I think we are. We've come from really a standing start in the beginning of 2018, we had no production. We had a development asset in Brazil and another one in California, and we've grown into a diversified gold producer. We have 7 mines today, and we have a clear path to produce more than 1 million ounces of gold annually, which is a very, very ambitious and very -- for me will be a very satisfying result when we get there. Why 1 million ounces, it's just a number, but it represents scale. And these days, investors reward scale with better multiples, better liquidity, a lot more access to capital. It's just good business, and that's why we have that as our objective. 2018, of course, was the year that we acquired the Mesquite Mine as well. We spun out Solaris Resources, which has been very successful. In 2019, we acquired Leagold, the products that run our 3 mines in Brazil, apart from our Aurizona Mine and Los Filos Mine in Mexico. We also brought in a cornerstone investor, Mubadala from Abu Dhabi. And we're very proud of having Mubadala there as a cornerstone investor, which invested $260 million to convertible debentures and now holds a fully diluted position once they convert those, which will be close to 18% of the company. In 2020, we acquired Premier Gold. We did these acquisitions to get us quickly to a large production base with a very large reserve base. We wanted to go quickly to get to scale. That is our business plan, and we are very, very active on that today, of course. And we think we've got like another year or 2, and we will achieve the subject and once we can pay construction of the Greenstone Mine and develop our other assets as we'll go through today. So this past year, we had construction underway at 2 new mines as well as growing a tremendous amount of exploration success to grow our reserves and resources. And that's the last 4 years in a nutshell. Today, we have assets in 4 countries, Canada, where we're developing the very large Greenstone Gold deposit. It will produce about 400,000 ounces a year in the first few years, 60% of that will be ours. So that's a very -- that will be a very major gold deposit as we develop it -- gold mine as we develop it. Then in Brazil, we have today about 346,000 ounces of annual production, and this will grow to 400,000 ounces when our new Santa Luz mine reaches full production. In Mexico, this year, we have about 170,000 ounces of annual production from the Los Filos Mine. We also expect to expand that in due course and have some real good growth prospects at that world-class mine in Guerrero state in Mexico. And then in the U.S., we have about 155,000 ounces of annual production today. But as we expand the [ Castle Mountain ] mine particularly, that should climb to about 300,000 ounces per year. So between this -- all 4 of these countries, we have about the same amount of production potential. And that gives us a tremendous, I think, a great balance. They're all good countries, they're mining countries. It also gives us diversification against the normal risk that it is today, both in mining and in social and political spheres. So it's this diversified base to build strength and it's something we sought to achieve and we have, I think, got there today. We have a track record of value creation. We're not growing just to grow. There's no value in that. But if you can grow and create value for shareholders, it's a good business plan. In 2018, the Mesquite Mine that we bought for $158 million has already produced more than $160 million in free cash flow, 430,000 ounces of gold, and we discovered about 1 million ounces of new gold resources with, I think, a lot more to come. So the Mesquite Mine has been a real home run for us. We acquired it with a 2-year reserve. This is 3 years later, it's almost 4 years later, and we have more ounces there in reserves and resources than we started with. So it's been a great success, great value creator. In 2019, we completed construction of our Aurizona Mine, our first mine that we built ourselves. It costs $160 million. It had, had quite a troubled history, but we've already produced more than $230 million of free cash flow. We produced 335,000 ounces of gold from Aurizona. And more importantly, to me, we've discovered another 1.7 million ounces of gold resources. And this will give Aurizona a long-term future as another cornerstone asset of ours, tremendous growth potential here to build Equinox even bigger and better in the future. In 2020, we spun-out as our investors will know, we spun-out Solaris Resources. Solaris has been a tremendous success. And I give my hat to -- take my hat off to Richard Warke, Dan Earle and the management team at Solaris, for what they've been able to do to take a copper asset in Ecuador and create a really tremendous world-class copper exploration development company. Our stake in that, we retain 30% of the spin-out. We invested about $15 million in support in the early stages of the company. We sold $66 million last year, and we have about $300 million more as a portfolio asset, which at some point will be crystallized -- will be sold, and we will be able to use that money to develop our gold assets, which is exactly what we planned when we set up with Solaris Gold as a spin-out to our shareholders at the start. And then we did it again in 2021 when we acquired Premier Gold. We created i-80 Gold, along with Ewan Downie, the CEO, who had been the real driving force behind Premier Gold, and Ewan wanted to build a new company in Nevada. We created the i-80 with him. We kept the gains, 30% of the spin-out. We helped him along and we started investing about $14 million. He has a really exciting company there. It's got a market cap today of about $500 million. And our 30% is worth about $150 million. I think it's 25% today, it's worth about $150 million. And we expect more great things to come from that asset of ours and his company in the future. So we've created this value over the last few years, but the real value, I think, is going to come as we further develop our portfolio. We further explore it, we get more mine life extensions, more resource growth, build a bigger company. And what we've done so far is really to be just a model for what we're going to continue to do in the future. So just in terms of our gold production and reserve growth, this slide sort of tells it all over the years. 2018, we started with a small -- with our Mesquite Mine, a few months of Mesquite, and we produced way less than 100,000 ounces. 2019, 2020, 2021, you can see the growth. This year -- last year, we produced about 600,000 ounces. This year, our guidance is around 700,000 ounces. And then during the mid-2020s when we complete the expansion -- the expansion of some of our mines we complete out of the construction of Greenstone, we'll be producing it on a sustainable basis, well over 1 million ounces per year. And then the yellow line there is the way we've grown our reserves -- pardon me, our reserves, our gold reserves. This is exclusive of resources, resources are another, I think, well, you'll see resources in a minute. Moving to the next slide. This slide, I'm very proud of because it really shows the value add per share. That's the most important metric to me, how you can add value per share. And if you look at the left-hand slide there, reserve and resource growth per 1,000 shares, you can see how that's grown from both reserves and in resources. And I think in 2022, the big expenditure we're spending in 2022 is on making these assets long term, making our assets -- and doing a lot of the capital expenditures that we've just got to make to take these mines into a new generation, taking those resources and moving them into reserves, making these mines longer and longer lasting with more value creation for our shareholders. In terms of operating cash flow growth per share. That's self-evident, and that's a number we're very proud of. And again, production growth per 1,000 shares, you can see where we're going. We're not growing just for growth's sake, we're going to add value to all shareholders on a per share basis. We actually did very, very well in 2018, '19 and '20. But to be honest, last year wasn't a great year. Our market actually underperformed last year. Overall, since we started, these numbers are pretty impressive, I think. We've outperformed all the indices, gold and all of our peers since we began. But we had a down year last year, which I'm not too proud of. Again, I think it's because we had promised Los Filos, obviously, that was a significant road bump but also, we had, I think, some concern from investors about whether this acquisition of Premier was the right thing for us to do. It got us this big, big gold asset in Ontario, but it's going to cost a lot of money to develop. And Ontario has not exactly had a stellar record of developing new gold mines in recent years. And so it's going to be kind of a show-me story, and we're prepared for that. We've got our heads down. You're going to hear some numbers from Christian and Doug and the team here later on about what we're doing at Greenstone to make that a very successful mine. But I think with this behind us now, I'm looking forward to us getting back to outperforming our peers, outperforming gold and outperforming the indices as we've done really since we started trading in the first 3 years of our existence. What really -- this is all about is getting to kind of where our peers are. And right now, we're not there. We're trading at a much lower price to net asset value basis based on consensus estimates here. And what we think we are -- we should be doing is trading much higher up on that price to net asset value metric because we will have among the highest in -- by 2024, the most -- the highest gold production among all of those peers, we'll have the fastest production growth, and we'll have among the highest in total reserves. So we think that by moving -- by increasing our production base as we move forward in the next year or 2, we should climb up that left-hand side, which should increase our share price for all of our investors. We have a lot of inside ownership. I have a large stake personally. I've committed to this company a great deal, both in money and in time. I'm very pleased with what we're doing with the company, our strong, strong team, great Board of Directors, support of shareholders, fantastic assets. We have the seller growth profile. We've got our heads down this year. 2022 is going to be an investment year. We have the capital to make those investments. We have the team to make the investments and we have the assets. If you look at all of our assets, we are simply pregnant with opportunity. We have the expansion at Los Filos to come, and you're going to hear a lot more about where that stands. It is not happening this year. It's not going to happen until we have more clarity in Mexico on the community side, and we have much more advancement on our Greenstone asset. In Brazil, of course, we're having our Santa Luz Mine open up very shortly. Just in the next couple of months, we'll complete construction. That's going to be a great growth lever with a long life in -- for that asset. In -- at the Aurizona mine, we have an underground development there that's going to take that mine, I think, and allow it to run for many decades. It's a huge, huge slab of mineralization that goes laterally about 4 kilometers. Vertically, we haven't hit the bottom. We've tested over -- I think we've tested now almost 1,000 meters of low surface and it's wide and it's consistent. And I feel that -- I think Aurizona is really going to be a cornerstone asset for us. Then in California. We have the Castle Mountain Mine. Currently, it's just a small producer. It's simply almost like a pilot stage producer, but it's giving us the information we need to make that into a long-term, much larger producer. We're submitting permits this year to go into Phase 2, which is really the real story of Castle Mountain to allow that mine to produce about 200,000 ounces a year for a long time. And then, of course, in Greenstone, we have our big Greenstone development. So between Greenstone and Castle Mountain, steady-state production, for many more years at Mesquite, expansion at Los Filos eventually, development of the -- complete development of Santa Luz, going underground and expanding and developing a much longer life for Aurizona, and then potentially even the Fazenda Mine in Brazil has a long life potential. We're finding some tremendous exploration results nearby. We're making that into a district. So when you look at all these together, I think Equinox Gold is really positioning itself to be a major global gold producer, long life [Audio Gap] quality. Once we get this capital programs going that we're spending so much money on this year and next year, once we complete these capital programs, we are going to set ourselves up as a long-term dividend producer, great capital gains potential and most importantly to me, the scale to be of interest to large investors as well as the scale to offer investors tremendous leverage to higher gold prices. Needless to say, I am very optimistic about gold prices. I think we have a synchronicity of factors today that are bullish for gold as much as I've seen in my career. I mean most of them are well known to our investors. I'm absolutely profoundly bullish on gold price. I think it will go over $2,000 an ounce this year. Who knows how much higher, but I'm very optimistic we're going to see higher gold prices as we've seen in recent months? It's a volatile world. It's not going to go straight up. There's going to be lots of noise. But the overall, if you stand back away from the trees, if you look at the forest, you can see the macro factors in the world today are very favorable for gold. So I'm expecting to have higher gold prices within which environment Equinox will thrive. With those comments, I'm going to turn it over to the management team here, and I want to just remind everybody that none of this happens easily. We have a very committed Board of Directors. This slide shows all 9 of them. It's a wonderful Board. I'm very proud of the Board. They're diligent. Their hard working. Their support -- they support all of our growth efforts. And then the real guts of the company is the strong senior management team, some of whom you see here. I think we have about 7,000 people now in the company. And it's a strong team. We have a strong group of country managers. We have a strong group of mine managers. Our exploration team is fabulous. I mean we are doing a wonderful job. You're going to hear a lot about our ESG programs from [indiscernible]. We have a strong human resources team, a strong engineering team. We really are well founded right now to take our company into an entirely new orbit as we develop our existing assets in the future. So I'm very pleased at what happened in 2021 with the exception of the Los Filos situation. It was very disappointing. And I'm extremely excited about what's going to happen in 2022. These people make it possible. And now I'm going to turn the call over to Christian, who is going to go a lot more granular in individual assets and talk about our guidance and talk about what we're doing on the ground really to develop the company. And I look forward to speaking to all of you a year from now on how we've done in 2022. This set us up for a great future. Thank you very much, and over to you, Christian.

Thanks, Ross. And yes, just to echo Ross' comments there. This is a big investment year. And as you noted there, we've been investing in the people as well as the assets. And we've built a great platform, but also the people to carry out that work. And we're very conscious of the heavy workload in front of us over the next 2 years. And as we dive into Page 13 and a little bit more granularity. As Ross said, it was a bit disappointing in 2021 with the share price. But in terms of when we set objectives and our report card, we're pretty transparent on that. Every year in our management circular, our AGM, we basically issue what we plan to do for the year-end kind of a report card on the prior year, and this is kind of our verbal reporting on it. And -- looking at 13. In terms of operations, I'm really pleased with how we ended up the year. It was tough during that disruption operations, obviously, at Filos, but we delivered 602,000 ounces of gold. Very strong finish to the year with 210,000 ounces in quarter #4. And that's despite the disruption, we were able to hit the lower end of our guidance for the original guidance at the beginning of the year prior to that disruption. So well done to the team on that front. We increased production by over 25%. And don't forget, we've also sold Pilar during the year, and we're in the process of selling Mercedes. So we're seeing a continuing increase in growth in our production despite also selling some noncore assets along the way. In terms of all-in sustaining costs, we are looking to achieve, we haven't issued the final numbers yet, but we will in February sort of the upper half of that guidance for the year. We've integrated Premier Gold assets. Obviously, the Greenstone Mine being the #1 asset there in that portfolio. Health and safety were strong again, and I'll comment on that a little bit further in the next couple of slides. In terms of development, Santa Luz is tracking on plan for gold towards the end of quarter 1. Greenstone construction started in October. We had a great initial groundbreaking ceremony there with all the First Nations, the mayor, the Minister of Mines and just a great kickoff for that mine and real groundswell of support in the local region. Los Filos expansion projects do continue on despite the disruptions. We're now mining Guadalupe. We continue to advance Bermejal. It's been slower than planned, and we'll talk about that a bit later. Castle Mountain, again, the expansion has been brought to light here. It will be a 200,000-ounce producer for almost 20 years. It's a 4 million-ounce reserve. So that's a big deposit. And Aurizona expansion, as Ross mentioned, that will be almost doubling the mine life with that extension underground that we've added into the pre-feasibility study, and we'll continue to drill this year in advance the permitting and the work on that. We've extended the mine life as we said there, through exploration in Aurizona. We're going to be looking at satellite deposits as well. Reserves and resources continue to grow. And as well, you'll be seeing some news, hopefully, in the next couple of months here on the Bahia district, which is obviously in between Santa Luz and Fazenda. Turning over on 14 to the corporate summary. We continue to focus on keeping a healthy treasury. We've got almost $500 million of liquidity, and we'll touch on that a bit further later on in the presentation. We continue to bolster the cash through noncore asset sales. We've also continued to focus and support our investment portfolio, and I'll touch on those a little bit further later on in the presentation, too. We've completed the accretive acquisition of Premier. We've also focused on responsible mining. And again, we'll talk about that in a little bit more depth here on the next slide. But for us, it's been a quick start, as Ross said, to growing this company. We've now adopted various standards. TSM towards sustainable mining, responsible gold mining principles from the World Gold Council. Our ESG reporting is -- we had our inaugural report out last year. We put out our first tailings management report. We submitted data on the carbon disclosure project. Our Scope 1 and 2 emissions are now available publicly. Also, we've also put a bit more focus on having ESG meetings with investors. Focus meetings, we'll start to have them a bit more widely as well this year. Displaying and talking about all the things we're doing well and also the areas that we need to improve on. And as a growing company, they're definitely in some of those areas. And looking a little more closely on the next slide. The way we think of ESG is it's actually an integrated part of our operations. It really isn't a separate part of our business. It's part of doing good business. And the areas that we want to look at and some good examples are things like energy sources. In the long term here, we have to set some long-term targets. This year is a year of planning. We're setting an objective of setting those targets by year-end. We know that our trucks, our plants, the energy sources for those are going to be key to reducing our emissions. We're looking at carbon credits. What do we do and what do we impact and where do we actually create some value in some of the regions we operate in, and we're doing an actual review of that at the moment as we speak? We've also, on the environmental side, certified 2 sites in compliance with the International Cyanide Code. Our safety stats for the year were excellent. We were able to bring those down despite increasing the number of work hours by almost 50%. We commenced reporting using the TCFD framework which is a lot of work. We've also been doing projects locally. And one I want to really highlight is we've just actually hooked up to the grid, the water treatment plant in the Aurizona village during the floods they had in the first part of last year. We made a big commitment to invest in the water system there. We rebuilt the system. It's a brand-new plant. Ross and I were down there actually in October to kind of get a good look at it, and we're able to actually get the community connected to the grid just recently. So right around year-end, we were able to get it up and running fully, and we're in the process of handing it over to the communities. But that's a really nice investment for an area where access to water is critical. We've had no production days lost due to COVID. It's been actually the most challenging period probably over the last 2, 2.5 years during COVID is most recently during this Omicron variant. A lot less people off sick and actually getting seriously ill, but we've seen a lot more absenteeism, obviously, because of the 5- to 10-day period where people are recovering. But we've been able to weather that and sort of manage shifts in that. In terms of transparency, as I mentioned, we now are providing a much more regular quarterly database reporting of information on our website. We're going to be reviewing integrated reporting. I mean that's something where I think the future is heading. We provide a quarterly management financial statement and MD&A, but also we'll be providing probably more data as we move forward and as the industry moves to provide that on an integrated basis. But that's in the early stages. We've created a couple of committees. We obviously have an ESG committee, but we actually integrate this whole thinking into our project planning and our operations and budgeting process. And we're conducting 2 human rights assessments at the moment at 2 sites that probably have the most risk to issues. So we just continue to move forward on all fronts and we'll keep disclosing and providing more and more information. Now diving into a little bit more detail on guidance on Slide #16. So as Ross said, this is an investment year. We have increased the overall production from just over 600,000 ounces now to almost 700,000 ounces. And really, the key changes there are increase in Los Filos production. We expect an uninterrupted year and full year from that. We're also adding 70,000 to 90,000 ounces from Santa Luz. If we pour gold in the sort of second half of March here, you've got almost 3 quarters of production. So that's a part year for Santa Luz. So it's not quite at full run rate production level for this year. In terms of costs, they are up slightly. And as we'll mention and go through a little bit further, there is some inflation that we're seeing, particularly in fuel and consumables, which we mentioned in the press release. Overall, our cash costs are up about 5.5% to 6% and on total basis. All-in sustaining costs up a little bit as well when you look at all the sustaining capital and the investment we're making into the mines. And we're very much bifurcated into half 1 for the year and half #2, and we've highlighted that. And normally, we don't provide that kind of granular detail. But we thought we'd provide the guidance for cash costs and all-in sustaining costs on a half basis because there is a big difference between half 1 and half 2. And you do see the costs come down in the second half of the year, with 60% of the production in that half and 85% of the cash flow in the second half. And you do see some of the investments starting to come off. Obviously, at Santa Luz's investment completes in the first half of the year. So CapEx on a nonsustaining basis will be lower in the second half of the year. And also don't forget, for those of you that had maybe expected closer to 800,000 ounces of production this year, we did sell almost 100,000 ounces of production with Pilar and Mercedes, which we're not including in this guidance. And a couple of assumptions worth just touching on at the very end as well as we've made assumptions on the foreign exchange rates. The Brazilian real at 5:1. Currently, it's weaker than that. Mexican peso at 19:1, and currently, it's a bit weaker than that and the Canadian dollar at 1.28, and those are baked into our assumptions. And when you dive into Page 17, I think it's worth a little bit closer look at the investments. I won't go through all the detail. We're spending about $36 million on exploration, and you can see the breakdown of that in the words in the detail. A lot of that is nonsustaining growth sort of capital. It will be spent on areas that are close to mines or greenfield areas that are within the regions that we operate. We're also looking to invest in our mines. Filos, we continue to strip and to develop and do the work that's been delayed over the last couple of years to open up these new ore sources. Mesquite, it's a big year. Again, we're investing in VE2. It's a big open-pit waste stripping of about $44 million. And that alone is $300 to $400 an ounce of addition to our all-in sustaining costs, but that will pay off in the coming year in 2023. Castle Mountain, we've decided to do the full leach pad expansion. So we've committed to $7 million of capital, which will be the rest of Phase 1. So that -- most of that will be done in the first half of this year. So you do see some benefits going from H2 onwards. Aurizona, we're stripping. We're putting in the pebble crusher as we move into a little bit harder rock and more fresh rock this year. We're also finishing off a tailings dam lift, and we're also going to be permitting and working on a second tailings down as we see the extension of that mine life to 11 years and a great future there. RDM, we continue on with tailings lifts. We're also putting a tailings thickener. So we're looking to reduce the water that we put back into the environment and actually recover more and more of that water. Santa Luz, as we get into full-scale mining here, we'll be stripping and lifting the tailings dam. And in terms of a nonsustaining basis, we continue on with some Los Filos expansionary capital as we've been doing in the past. Castle Mountain Phase 2, the permit should be submitted in the next few months here, and Doug will talk about that in a bit more detail. And really importantly here, Fazenda-Santa Luz District, we're going to put $9 million into the exploration there. So keep an eye for the news on that. And then the big capital items are obviously the $27 million on finishing off Santa Luz in the first quarter and leaking probably into the second quarter for capital spend. And then Greenstone is the big item, the big new addition here, $326 million. So a big chunk of that $750 million of our share of the capital spend is a big chunk for this year. And obviously, leading into summer, there will be a peak period where our camp should be full, and we'll be doing a lot of spend. And I'll turn it over to Doug to actually walk through the individual assets.

Thanks, Christian. So as Christian and Ross have said, it's really all about our -- the mines and projects. So we do have very experienced and professional operations and project teams. They're being managed by very reliable country managers, and we appreciate their work in 2021 and their enthusiasm going into 2022. So we'll look at USA first. Mesquite Mine produced 137,500 ounces in 2021 with half of the production coming in Q4, just under 67,000 ounces in Q4. It's a solid performer. It will be producing its 5th million ounce in 2022. And this mine has recently surpassed 5 years with no LTIs. That's 3.8 million ounce hours worked since the last LTI. So a very safe and reliable mine. This year, we'll be processing almost entirely Brownie open-pit ore and opening up the VE2 ore body. We're going to be permitting and constructing a new leach pad that will support mine life extension. And the 2022 guidance is 120,000 to 130,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,450 to $1,500 per ounce. At Castle Mountain, production in 2021 was just over 25,000 ounces, and this is run material -- run-of-mine material going to a heap leach. We will be introducing crushing and agglomeration. That will be to improve percolation rates, increased recoveries at the site. We do have the benefit of this period. As Ross mentioned, it's almost like a pilot mine. We have the benefit of being able to make some changes now to be able to learn and see what can improve overall. And we know history that coarse crush can improve the recovery and percolation at this mine. Permitting for Phase 2 will be happening this quarter. That will see -- Phase 2 is an expansion to 200,000 ounces a year. It has over 4 million ounces of reserves and brings the total project to a total of 21 years of mine life. And we continue with optimization studies, including metallurgical test work and the water well drilling that's been done on the back of the feasibility study that was done last year. We did a Gap analysis, and we continue to take the opportunity to be able to optimize the overall project. Guidance for 2022 is 25,000 to 35,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,475 to $1,525 per ounce. Moving on to Los Filos in Mexico. Los Filos produced 144,000 ounces in 2021. Yes, it was a truncated year due to some interruptions. But the continuous operations in Q4 yielded 38% of the ounces in that one quarter, just under 55,000 ounces. Mining has been happening in the Guadalupe open pit and Bermejal underground, but mostly it's development in Bermejal underground with small contributions coming from Bermejal underground as we gradually ramp up the core productions in Bermejal underground through this year. We're -- we have ongoing development in Los Filos open pit, Guadalupe open pit, Bermejal underground. And also, we continue to get the contributions from the Los Filos underground in 2022. So the -- I'll note that 90% of our ore tonnes are from the open pit with 23% of our ounces. So just 10% of our tonnes coming from the underground contribute 1/3 of the ounces that go to the leach pad and Los Filos. 2022 guidance is 160,000 to 180,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,625 to $1,700 per ounce. Moving on to Mercedes. We -- our portion, the attributable to Equinox in 2021 was just under 32,000 ounces. We reached an agreement late in the year to sell the mine to Bear Creek for $100 million and a 2% NSR and just under 25 million shares in Bear Creek. The transaction is expected to close in Q1. And I'll note that we did initiate a development program that's currently underway that will open up additional mining areas at Mercedes and enable that mine to be able to increase their annual throughput. Moving over to Brazil on the next slide. At Aurizona, we produced 135,000 ounces in 2021 with 30% of those ounces, which is 41,000 ounces were produced in the fourth quarter. That was a record quarter for plant throughput. We are in 2022 installing a pebble crusher, that's to help deal with increased proportion of fresh ore. And we always knew that we would gradually work our way through the saprolite and into a higher proportion of fresh ore. So that helps us to maintain our ability to process the higher ratio of fresh ore going through the plant. And we've been advancing the underground expansion study. So things that will happen in 2022 for the underground, we'll be permitting on portals. We will continue drilling on the underground portion of the Piaba Trend. As Ross mentioned, it's a very long trend. We developed the PFS with good first pass drilling and we're going back and being able to pick up on other areas where we can add to that overall resource and reserve utilizing essentially the same infrastructure that's already been designed for the PFS. But we will continue with ongoing mine planning. And so far, we've gone from an initial life at Aurizona of 6 years. Now we're at 11 years life of mine with a peak of 160,000 ounces a year seen in the PFS. So we'll be working on updating that as we move ahead. And exploration. It's a very large property. We have targets immediately beside our known deposits that we're mining, but also very nearby on other targets such as Tatajuba. And we have more regional targets on this property that will -- Scott Heffernan and his team will continue to explore in 2022. Guidance at Aurizona for the year is 120,000 to 130,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,175 to $1,225 an ounce. At Fazenda, we produced just over 60,000 ounces for the year. The emphasis in 2022 is going to be on underground mining. We have done a very good job of year-on-year reserve replacement. Technical report came out in 2021, which shows that each year, we -- our programs have been designed for reserve replacement and they've been bang on with replacing everything we mine. But the big change in 2021 was to step out and start exploring the belt between Fazenda and Santa Luz, as Ross mentioned, is a very prospective Greenstone belt. We have lots of targets, and the exploration team has been progressing really well on that. Guidance for 2022 is 60,000 to 65,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,200 to $1,250 per ounce. RDM produced just under 59,000 ounces in 2021. We continued with the large stripping program that's been happening at RDM. And during the year, we incorporated a new geotechnical model in the mine design, which enables a lower overall waste and some higher grades being mined in 2022. So 2022 guidance of 70,000 to 80,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,350 to $1,400 per ounce. So now we move on to one of our construction projects, Santa Luz, commissioning is underway. So this is a past-producing mine. It involved refurbishment of some of the existing infrastructure. It already had the power and water to site. But we've been retrofitting a lot of the facilities at site, including many changes in the processing plant. So the initial construction CapEx is $103 million. We're 90% complete. We're well advanced on the crushing area. We're commissioning in leach circuit and SAG, ball mill and secondary grinding areas. Mining commenced in June of 2021. And we're looking at the mine producing 110,000 ounces a year for the first 5 years, 95,000 ounces a year for life of mine. This project is on time and on budget. The first gold pour is planned for late in Q1. Our guidance for 2022 is 70,000 to 90,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $975 to $1,050 per ounce. And on the next slide, you can see some photos of the leach tank area, SAG and ball mill, crush area on the right-hand side. There's lots of photos and time lapse video on our website. I encourage you to have a look at that, and you can see the progress on the site. It's been going very well. And the team is very focused, and we're very proud of the progress that we've been making on this project. So moving on to Greenstone. Construction is underway at Greenstone. We are building one of the largest gold mines in Canada. I often think that it's not fully recognized for what it is. This is being developed by Equinox at 60%, Orion is 40%. 5.5 million ounces. It's a conventional open pit in a CIL plant, 5 million ounces of gold production over a 14-year life, and it will be producing 400,000 ounces a year for the first 5 years and more than 360,000 ounces for the life of mine -- 360,000 ounces per year life of mine and has lots of additional exploration potential within this belt. It has excellent infrastructure. It's adjacent to the town of Geraldton. It's on the Trans-Canada Hwy. We have very good community support. All of the indigenous agreements are in place, and we have very good support from our First Nations and Métis partners. We're 2 years looking at -- a 2-year construction period overall with 6 months of commissioning, and the first gold pour is targeted for the first half of 2024. So if you look at the next slide, and you can see a photo, obviously, on the left-hand side. That's the photo of the camp during -- before the snow flu. So that's in the fall. And there are several photos there of the water treatment plant that's in place. And also on the snowy photo on the right-hand side, that's the site prep for the plant area, the reagent area, offices, et cetera. So a lot of the earthworks have been undertaken in the fall. I'd say that's been progressing very well as well as work on the TSF area. And the bottom-right photo, a group of people who look at it [ Chile ] that were doing the groundbreaking ceremony. There are representatives from Equinox and Orion, our First Nations partners, the Métis Nation and our local community. And I'll say that this project is well set up and we're about over 85% complete on engineering at year-end. So going on to the next photo, looking principally at the capital costs -- On the left-hand side is the breakdown of our total initial capital cost to USD 1.2 billion. The CapEx was updated in Q4 of 2021. It's reflecting the firm supplier quotes following detailed engineering and also doing a review of the CapEx. We've increased the contingency with a provision for inflation and potential COVID impacts. We're at $1.23 billion initial capital. That's a 100% basis. $50 million spent to date. That includes the overall CapEx, estimate includes $170 million (sic) [ $177 million ] in contingency, it's about 14% of initial capital. It includes $125 million for the mining fleet, of which $100 million could actually be leased and reduce the upfront cash spend. It excludes any contribution from pre-production revenue and about 80% of the initial capital is Canadian dollar based. I think our estimate at the end of the year was about 25% in fixed price commitments on steel structures and equipment, and the total value of about 40% of the CapEx was already committed. So we've got a good handle on where we're going on the CapEx already. CapEx time line, this is a 100% basis. For 2021, there was $110 million focused on engineering, workforce, the camp, the water treatment plant, TSF and plant earthworks. So some of that was early works and some of that was part of the initial CapEx. And then 2022, $540 million being spent on process plant, water and tailings management, so a lot of earthworks involved in that; power and electrical, the new infrastructure, repositioning of existing infrastructure, including the highway that runs across the project and investment in the mobile equipment. As we move into 2023, it's about $450 million, that's focused on the power, tailings and process plant and then 2024 will be the remaining spend for construction and commissioning. I think with that, I hand it back to Christian.

All right. Thanks, Doug. And I just have a couple of slides just to wrap it up for Q&A. Looking at Slide #26. Obviously, we got a solid balance sheet, which you continue to emphasize. We ended the year with just over $300 million of cash and a couple of hundred million dollars still available on our revolving credit facility. So almost $0.5 billion in liquidity. We're also sitting on almost $0.5 billion in investments being Solaris, i-80, Bear Creek and Pilar. And we continue to advance our cash flow metrics as we increase production. Gold price has been holding steady at $1,800. So our all-in sustaining margin is over $300 million or at current spot price, almost $500 an ounce. So a really nice solid balance sheet to deliver on our funded growth. And when you look at the final slide, really, the 2022 objectives. Again, it's a year of growing the business, investing in the assets, focusing on the operations. So continuing with health and safety and ESG metrics and disclosure, hitting our 600,000 to 700,000 ounces of gold production at the cost we set. Really continue to execute on the ramp-up at Santa Luz, bringing it in on time, on budget, advancing Greenstone on plan. It's a key summer this year to get lots of work done. Expansion at Castle Mountain, really, its early days, but submitting that permit application in the next couple of months here. Completing the CIL study on Los Filos. So a little less urgency to that, as Ross mentioned, in terms of time line, and also continuing the Aurizona underground development. Exploration will continue to get a lot of attention in the region and around the mine sites to extend mine life. Corporately, we want to complete the Mercedes sale, support our investee companies. And we'll continue to be opportunistic on the M&A front, but really, we're focused on internal execution and developing our assets. So just as a summary on the very last slide, 28, to highlight things. We're executing on our growth plans. We've got massive leverage to the gold price with the 16 million-ounce reserve and 30 million-ounce resource space. There's an excellent opportunity really here to buy funded growth in a really supportive well setup gold environment, and we think it's an attractive price and a good multiple in terms of an entry point. So this is a company on the way towards 1 million ounces of annual production per year. We set that ambition, early days when we started building this company, and we're well on our way to executing on that. And really right now the next 18 months to 2 years is about putting our heads down and delivering on the things that we're setting in terms of targets and getting Greenstone up and running, particularly by early 2024. And I think I'll end it there and open it up to Q&A.

Perfect. Thank you, operator. Can you please remind people how to ask the questions?

[Operator Instructions]

Thank you. While we wait for people on the call to join us, I'll ask a question from one of our online listeners. Can you please give us an update on the all-in sustaining costs? We hope they would come down this year, but they seem to be around the same range or higher?

Yes. I'll give an overall summary to that. What we've seen, particularly in certain regions is things like fuel prices and consumables have come up quite a bit. And I think we've used an estimate an average of about 15% in a couple of places. I'm going to use California as example, free floating fuel price. We've seen it basically double over the last 18 months. So we're battling those increases in consumables and some of the input costs. One of the things we are doing also to try and combat that is putting in place a global purchasing initiative, and we're actually looking to fill a role here in Vancouver, which we'll be looking to bring together all of our purchasing. We're buying cyanide at 7 mines around the world, but at the moment, they're all buying on separate contracts effectively. And if we can start to bring together some of that purchasing power, I hope that we can sort of call back some of these costs. But right now, we factor that into our increases. A couple of other sorts of items as well. I'd say labor is sort of lagging behind that. It's probably not increasing at the same level as consumables. We're investing in, particularly at Mesquite, there's a $44 million sustaining capital program to open up VE2, which we'll see the payoff in 2023. So that has a contributor to Mesquite cost being a little elevated. And to be honest, at Los Filos, as we've unfortunately not been able to put in place the CIL plant yet, and we're still opening up the Bermejal underground has higher grade source of ore. That is a little bit of a higher cost producer right now. So one of the goals there is ultimately advancing it to putting in place a more efficient operating plant that will allow us to process the higher grade at ultimately a lower cost. So it's a combination of inflation, a couple of investments and then ultimately, longer term, getting Los Filos down and bring in to line Santa Luz and Greenstone, which are going to be lower-cost producers and bring down our average cost over time. So it's an investment phase right now in the portfolio.

Thank you. We can go ahead and take some calls from the conference line, please.

Certainly. Our first question comes from Anita Soni of CIBC World Markets.

I just wanted to go over 2023 and sort of what's built into your growth slide where you show mid-20s, I guess, and where you get to over 1 million ounces. So I guess if we go back to Slide 6 and showing that last bar on the right showing mid-20s. Can you tell us what's embedded in that? And when you plan to start spending on Castle Mountain and on Los Filos underground? I know you -- or sorry, Los Filos CIL. I know you've said that you won't be spending until you get some stability and certainly after the Hardrock -- major Hardrock CapEx is behind you. But if we could get an idea of the time line, that would be appreciated.

Yes. I think the way to think of the portfolio is we've got our sort of baseline production of the sort of 7 producing mines at the moment, give or take, 700,000 ounces of production. That will be the core part of the portfolio. Then obviously, Greenstone will come into production the first part of 2024. That will add, give or take, 240,000, 250,000 ounces to our attributable portfolio. We've also got the Los Filos expansion. And right now, it's producing 160,000 to 180,000. I have the chance to do 300,000 to 350,000 ounces. But as we've said, we probably won't invest in that while we're building Greenstone, maybe we do towards the end, depending on the stability and the timing of that. So you could be starting to invest in that as you're finishing off Greenstone. And then with Castle Mountain, the expansion from roughly 30,000 ounces to 200,000, that will be permit dependent. We'll submit that permit application around the end of quarter 1 this year, and that will take, I'm going to say 2 to 3 years, but let's use 3 years as the outset. And so that permit would come in kind of -- a bit after you're finishing off Greenstone, so you wouldn't start investing in that until probably a year after Greenstone's done. So that production will come in on a lag basis a couple of years after Greenstone's up and running. So really, it's that additional production basis from the expanding Los Filos, adding Greenstone and adding Castle Mountain expansion.

Okay. And when you look at these 2 projects that you have beyond Hardrock, how would you prioritize them? Like, say, the Castle Mountain permit comes in at 2 years, would you accelerate that one over Los Filos CIL?

I mean, at the moment, in the current situation, that's a possibility. I mean the challenge is there, the CIL needs to be built to make that the more efficient mine that we kind of envisage. There's a little bit more uncertainty with the timing. So I agree if it came in sooner, likely that we'd look at Castle as a potential earlier project if it came in sooner.

Okay. And then the last question, and I'll pass it to others to take some questions. In terms of your sustaining and nonsustaining capital? Are there -- and outside of the spend that you've outlined at Greenstone, can you give us any major drivers of what the sustaining and nonsustaining capital will look like in 2023? I know Ross mentioned in his opening comments that there was a lot of investments in the next 2 years. So to get an idea of is this the level of investment we'll see given the Greenstone investment to be similar? Is this the level of investment we'll see in the mine next year as well?

I don't have -- obviously, we don't have exact figures at this stage. I think you're going to see a fairly steady state from the sort of longer operating mines. Mesquite will be a little lumpier. We haven't set up that capital yet for 2023, but it may come down a bit if that waste stripping tails off a bit because we're putting almost $45 million into this year, and you'll see the benefits of that in 2023. But it also depends on how we convert any of that resource to reserve and whether there's any stripping related to that, which I don't have visibility on today. So there's a potential for that to come down. And I think with Filos, you're going to see certainly, obviously, Guadalupe, we're now into the guts, I'd say, of the ore body, you're going to see less stripping there, but you're also going to see Bermejal up and operating in a better more run rate state in 2023 as well. So some of that sustaining capital and nonsustaining will probably tail off a little bit into 2023. Aurizona, we're making a fairly big investment into stripping and into the new tailings dams. We're overlapping almost 2 tailings dams in 2022. So there's a potential for that to tail off a little bit as well, but probably mildly less than we're currently operating at.

Our next question comes from Kerry Smith of Haywood Securities.

Christian, I just had a couple of questions. One, just on the -- notionally on the funding -- the timing of the funding for 2022. I guess you've got notionally $700 million of growth in sustaining CapEx. And you've got $100 million coming from Mercedes. You've got $200 million on the revolver that's undrawn. And then I guess you've got $300 million of cash. So I was just wondering about the timing of the outflows versus the inflows of the cash from the operations and the cash from the sale of Mercedes. And just how -- what would be the minimum cash balance that you would want to maintain on the balance sheet? I'm assuming it's probably going to be $200 million anyhow. So I'm just kind of thinking about the timing of inflows and outflows this year to fund the heavy CapEx spend.

Kerry, it's Peter Hardie here. With respect to your latter question on minimum cash balance. We maintain -- we seek to maintain a minimum cash balance of $100 million. And then with respect to the timing of the capital flows, it is a front half of the year weighted year. Part of that is due to Santa Luz. We're completing construction there. And then, of course, it comes online after Q1 and then has a full year -- a full half year of production in the second half of the year. So that contributes to operating cash flow and why cash -- operating cash flow is weighted in the second half of the year. And then with respect to Greenstone, that's fairly steady state throughout the year if you're trying to model that out. And then on the other operations, there's a -- at Aurizona, there's seasonality. So it winds up -- it's always weighted in the latter part of the year, generally speaking, when it's dry, and you can get -- and ground conditions are good to do some of the sustaining work that is typically done there every year. And then for the remaining mines, the CapEx is weighted really into the first 6 to 8 months of the year.

Okay. Okay. So probably, we would maybe expect to see you draw on the revolver, the rest of the revolver sometime in the first half, I guess, would that be fair again?

Yes, maybe middle of the year depending on timing. But yes, it's pretty typical. We budget for when activities will happen. They always happen with -- generally speaking, as you know, in operations, they tend to happen a little bit slower than you otherwise expect with respect to the actual expenditure. But yes, I think saying that we'll be drawing in the revolver in the middle or later in the year is fair.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then just on the comment that you made in the press release on the crushing and agglomeration circuit that you're putting in at Castle Mountain for Phase 1. Does that have any implications for the CapEx for the Phase 2 project? Or is this really something you're doing just for Phase 1 and not likely to be utilized in Phase 2?

As I said, we're doing this because we have the opportunity to be able to improve percolation and recovery. We've done some additional met test work, some Gap analysis work, post-feasibility study. We see opportunity and optimization. So that is why we want to do this on a larger scale. And see if it can improve Phase 1 -- if it works out for Phase I. And of course, we have -- the prior operation was doing a crush and agglomeration. So if we can do a coarse crush and it improves things, then we would look at that for Phase 2 as well. So it is a natural thing given that we have the opportunity to be able to do this on the scale that we'll need for our real-world test rather than just large [ diameter ] columns to be able to see how it works out. And we believe this will make a difference for this coming year.

Okay. And the intention, Doug, is to use it in Phase 1 for not just historic stockpiled but also for fresh ore, Is that correct?

We intend -- principally, Phase 1 is done material, but we do intend to do some tests on some [indiscernible] as well. That would be really good.

Okay. Okay. Got you. And then at RDM, this new geotechnical model, I guess you're just steepening the walls up. Is that likely to carry over for the remaining years of mine life, so we will see a lower life of mine strip ratio with that project? Is that the expectation then?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. Great. And then...

This year, it's less so in future years, but it's a change rate in this year. So it gives us a little bump in 2022, but it does alleviate some of the strip in future years -- some of the stripping ratio in the future years.

Right. And can you give any guidance as to what the new life of mine strip ratio might be for that project then?

Not off the top of my head. So I'd have to go and look that up.

Okay. No problem. And then last question, just on Aurizona when you installed the pebble crusher. Will that have any impact on production? Or can it be tied in without really disrupting the current operation?

So we've actually had talked about installing the pebble crusher last year and looked at the feed that was coming in the blending that was coming in. And as I noted, we had a record throughput in Q4 of 2021. So knowing that we are gradually increasing our ratio of fresh to saprolite, we felt that now is the time to put it in. And obviously, in the future, as we move towards a contribution eventually from underground ore, which is all going to be fresh, it will be very important to be able to have that already in place. So now it's the time to do it. So it's not going to increase. It's to maintain, and it's all about being able to have the blend. If you went to 100% fresh ore, you probably reduce your throughput rate a bit. But also keep in mind, if you're doing underground ore, you're also getting higher-grade material. So -- it's always going to be about achieving the right blend for throughput and also feed from the different sources.

Our next question comes from Wayne Lam of RBC.

I guess -- just a question at Mesquite. You guys just finished up a big strip program to open up the Brownie pit last year. And then this year, you guys are investing in the stripping at VE2. Just looking out to 2023, do you expect that to be a year of significantly lower waste stripping? And just trying to understand what the resource conversion you're kind of seeing here, there's additional deposits that need to be opened up to kind of sustain the mine life and what a run rate level of cost might be once all these programs are completed?

I would say that, yes, next year would be a lower strip compared to what we're dealing with this year and last year. Obviously, the strip in 2021 for Brownie in the first part of the year led to having that large contribution of the ore at the very end of the year. So we knew it was going to happen that way. VE2, we're taking advantage of being able to mine Brownie ore in this year, at the same time, stripping VE2. So we benefit from VE2 going into next year, so less of a strip next year. We have added to the resources at Mesquite. We're doing a fulsome review of the future mining at that site. It's a quite constrained mine site. So you're always looking at what areas you can be mining without compromising other areas of the site. So the guys at site have been doing an excellent job of trying to manage the competing areas of waste dumps versus open pits with a lot of constraints on that site. So I'd say, beyond next year, it's still being revised and worked on and what we're going to do to try to maintain a lower strip going into 2023 and beyond.

Okay. Great. And then maybe at Los Filos, looking at the costs, even before accounting for the waste stripping that was deferred into this year, the cash costs look to be about 25% higher versus the initial guidance last year. What's driving that cost increase? Obviously, there's some inflation pressures being seen. But how much of that is kind of being attributed to grade? And how should we think about the overall grades or proportion of ore from the Bermejal underground this year?

Well, Bermejal underground is principally development. There is a small contribution from Bermejal underground as mining continues, but really the main zone for Bermejal underground is Zone 5. So -- and in regard to inflation, in Mexico, the inflation was about 7.5%. So while -- it's a combination of the factors. And also the fact that we're running a very large heap leach, which is a lot of consumables, cyanide in mine, whereas if we had a CIL, it actually is more efficient to run the CIL than to run a very large heap leach. So we would benefit from that, but that's going be pushed off for a bit.

And some of the fixed costs there, I think, unfortunately, as it is still a smaller operation, don't get spread across as many ounces. And the community payments for one, for example, are based on gold ounces. And so as the gold prices sustained at a higher level, there's a higher fixed cost for land access agreement payments in that and those don't get spread over as many ounces. And that's why ideally going to 300,000 ounces plus, we'll make this a much more efficient operation.

Okay. Perfect. And then maybe last question. You guys have kind of outlined the growth projects ahead. I was just wondering for the Aurizona underground, how you guys are thinking about that in terms of sequencing? And would that be brought into construction during the construction period of Greenstone?

So on Aurizona, we're -- we completed the PFS already. We're going to be entering into a period of permitting. We have actually several portal areas that we're going to put forward for permitting. We did the same thing when we approach the portal for Bermejal underground in Mexico. While the permitting process happens, I think our estimate is 3 months to outside of 6 months, but the pit won't necessarily be in the correct position to be able to start the portal in all 3 of those areas. So we'll see how the pit advances. And by the time we've completed that, we will have incorporated additional drilling and see if our overall mine plan has changed in regard to our portal location, the tie-in to the mine plan that has been in the process of being developed. Theoretically, you could say that you could start the portal development in 2022. Will that happen? I don't know until we get further on with the results of the drilling, where the center of the higher-grade material is because that will determine how we develop. So we can obviously access higher grade sooner rather than mining the lower grade and leaving the higher grade to later.

So probably minimal, call it, development spend capital in 2022. You probably have a smaller amount as we advance in '23 and then '24, as Greenstone is finishing, you start hitting the higher capital spend that's a pretty small project overall.

I'll take a question from one of our online listeners. So we saw some insider selling in late 2021. Can you give some color on that? And do you -- Christian and Greg still hold significant positions in Equinox Gold?

Yes, sure. I'll comment on that. We're coming to, I guess, it's been 4 years in since we created Equinox. I guess I've been with the company as CEO for over 5 years, and there's an expiry of a number of my -- I'm going to say my personal options and my instruments that obviously don't extend longer. And so I did sell a few of those if you're looking at any insider selling in that sense. I still have a very material stake in this. I actually bought more shares last year as well in the summer. And my personal position is in the multi millions of dollars. And this is by far the biggest investment in my portfolio. So no, there's not a material change in my position, actually. If anything, it's gone up a bit.

I believe some of the insider you're selling with for people who are renovating and things like that, too.

Yes.

Thank you. Operator, we'll take a question from the phone, please?

Our next question comes from John Sclodnick of Desjardins.

Just wanted to dig into Castle Mountain and just curious on how long Phase 1 can last before going into Phase 2? And yes, just how much reserves you've got left there?

I think we're good for 5-plus years. We've already been operating for, I guess, we're in our second year. So we have additional material that was not fully put into reserves that's available to us. So we've got quite a run rate. So well beyond, I believe I would be the outside guests for permitting.

And I guess, theoretically, we can continue at that rate beyond that period, but clearly, in that period, we expect to have a bigger mine.

Okay. Okay. Good to know, yes. Just curious on how that would dovetail with Phase 2. Rest of my questions have been asked already. So I appreciate it.

So to bring Ross back into the loop, I have the mandatory question that we get on every single call. Is there any plan for dividends or share buybacks? Would you consider maybe selling i-80 Gold and Solaris in order to buy back EQX shares?

That's a good question actually. We haven't been really looked at things quite like that. Certainly, the answer to the first part of the question is black and white. We can't wait to take out a dividend. It's going to be significant. It's going to be long lasting. And I could hardly to wait to get there, but we're not there yet. We're putting our money into growth. We really won't be looking at -- I don't think we'll be looking at declaring a dividend probably until we finish Greenstone. Unless we see a [ savant ] spike in the gold price, we have better cash flow from operations or we have a much stronger financial position that gives us a lot of free cash flow beyond what we need for our expansion CapEx and our development projects. So right now, there's nothing in the immediate horizon, but I certainly will look forward to the day we can declare a dividend, and it will come. And it will come, and it will last a long time once we complete this current growth. On the second question, that's a very interesting one. The essence of the question, I think, was that why don't sell these portfolio assets that are traded at a higher price to net asset value multiples than we are and put the money into buying our own shares. And I think that there's good merit to that notion if we have spare cash beyond what we see as our immediate needs for growth to complete our expansion and development projects. So for example, if we had a higher gold price, so we had more free cash flow or sales from our operations, if we had an outcome from the standpoint of, for example, Solaris, if it was sold this year, say, or next year, which I think it very likely could be because it's such an attractive development asset to large companies, and that is, I think, the business plan of the company to divest eventually. We would potentially have more receipts from that kind of sales than we had currently planned. And there's more cash available for things like dividends and share buybacks. So it's an interesting idea, and I can imagine there are circumstances that we would actually do that. But for the time being, I think the plan is pretty simple and straightforward. We're going use that. We're going to use those assets as needed to fund our growth and look at the opportunity for them to rise in value. If there's a point in time that we think the price is higher than fits us with other strategic objectives, then we'll do that kind of thing. And it would be an interstate exercise if and as it when it happens. But more than that, I really expect that the multiple on Equinox shares will rise so that we won't have this discount that we see today. I think -- I hope our investors realize that we are a very, very well-valued company today, a very good investment opportunity today and that will ultimately, during the course of 2022, result in a rising share price and elimination of that discount.

Thank you, Ross. Operator, you can take another question from Anita on the line, please?

Our next question is a follow-up from Anita Soni of CIBC World Markets. .

Yes. I just wanted to ask in terms of your policy on -- sorry, I lost my train of thought there. So I was just going to ask in terms of the inflationary pressures that you're seeing at Hardrock. When do we expect to do an updated study on the Hardrock deposit? I mean you bought it from a junior -- and I think you probably given the amount of CapEx that's going to be invested into it, wanted to reevaluate from a ground-up perspective what the assumptions were? I know you did an update on sustaining -- or on the overall CapEx number, but I'm just wondering if you are going to redo that study at any point.

So the study was delivered at the very start of 2020. When we took over, we did a thorough overview on the study, and I'll applaud the team that's been on the project for over 10 years. Some of them have been with the project have done a really good job of bringing it up to a high standard. We've really dug deep into it, and we've had lots of discussion about the contingencies and escalation. As I noted in the presentation, we've been through a Q4 review of the CapEx. So there's no intent to go and update the study. It's essentially, we have updated the CapEx overall.

And as we get closer to production, obviously, we'll put out some estimates on operating expenditures and the plan for ramping that up.

Okay. So we've got Mike Parkin, one of our analysts online asking about our plans for annual reserve updates going forward?

I'm sorry. Just double checking a number on one of the prior questions.

Mike Parkin, one of our analysts is asking about our plans to do annual reserve updates going forward.

Yes. We'll be doing the update; it will come out. We target the middle of the year for -- so it will come out in Q3 updating for midyear.

Okay. At the moment, we have no more questions online, but I did promise to ask a question on behalf of a couple of our investors that have been asking about this, and this is another one for you, Ross. What can Equinox Gold or the gold industry do to sort of remind the millennials and the younger investors that gold is a great investment. We're losing out to Bitcoin and TAC, and what can we do to better position the industry?

Good question. Another good question from online listeners. This is something that's been vexing me as well. I've been watching the macro environment in the last few years that I have thought should result in higher gold prices than we've seen. Gold, of course, has gone up. It's been pretty good, but it should have done better. I expect it to go into sales through $2,000 [indiscernible] a couple of years ago. It bounced -- it [indiscernible] and then it went back and then it's been sort of bouncing around, slopping around the $1,800 level since then. And it's a disappointment to me. I really thought that the inflation that was fairly self-evident that it was going to be coming into the world would be -- and it has now -- now everybody has admitted. Everybody is admitting it's there would have resulted in higher gold prices. I would have thought that the geopolitical switching that's going on in the world would have resulted in their gold prices than we see right now. And I would have expected this based on the things that I've seen that have happened in my career in the mining industry and in the investing world in the last 30 or 40 years. So while gold has done okay, it should have done better. And -- so I'm constantly challenging myself on why this is. And I think, clearly, the move into cryptos has affected it, for sure. I think cryptos have certainly had some bites take under their aurora in the last -- or in -- There certainly have been some -- the price of Bitcoin hasn't done very well and the cryptos haven't done very well recently, whereas gold has kind of held its own in the last few months. So maybe that has -- that is going to affect some of the millennials who were investing in cryptos. Maybe it's not the great investment that's been mooted to be. But I take the questions point about, is there anything else we can do to bring more investors into the gold space? So the World Gold Council will be looking at new things that should be done to remind millennials of the historic store of value that gold has always had, the use of gold, the beauty of gold and the part in everyone's investment portfolio that gold should play, both the metal and also gold equities. So it's definitely something that we have to think about. And I would say it's going to give us food for thought-- in this coming year. If gold continues to outperform against cryptos, that's going to be one data point that I think will be able to be said quite resonantly that it is an abiding store of value and an abiding investment product. If we see gold outperform major markets, particularly the TAC stocks that have done so well in recent years and have now started to crack. If we see gold outperform against the S&P 500, the [ Dell ], the U.S. dollar, all of these things, which we should see if gold behaves like it has behaved in the last 20 or 30 years. Then I think we're going to convince millennials that gold does have a place in everyone's investment portfolio as it has for many, many decades. And I think that's what I look forward to. So watch this space. We'll try to, I think, in the World Gold Council and gold groups like that, and we'll try to figure out ways to remind millennials the importance of gold, the role it has as an investment product and as a store of value. And I think we could see more inflows into gold if we are successful on that. It's not just millennials, it's generalist investors of all kinds and many institutional investors as well. We just simply have to see some, I think, some changes in the overall major markets to get people to be thinking about gold again. I think that's happening today. I just see that, that -- I expect that trend will continue, and I look forward to it. That's the short answer.

Thank you, Ross. Okay. We're coming up on the 9:00 mark, so I will hand it over to Ross and Christian for closing remarks.

Nothing more for me. I thank everyone for their time and patience today and hope you understand a lot more about our company than you did before and look forward to watching us as we continue with 2022 development.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Operator, you can now disconnect the call.

This concludes today's presentation. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.