Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria ($VISC)

Earnings Call Transcript · May 7, 2026

OM SE Materials Metals and Mining Earnings Calls 46 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#1

Warmly welcome, everybody, to the Q1 Report 2026 for Viscaria. We have another drilling quarter behind us with a huge amount of work, and I look forward to tell you about all the progress we have made during this quarter. We will show today another series of exceptional drill results for our continued exploration drilling, which then will confirm the extension of our life of mine. You can see also that the deposit remains open at depth at a long strike. Ross will show you some really thrilling pictures and presentations later on today. We are today also presenting a new business case with a copper price of SEK 11,700, and I will tell you more about the background of that and where we can show that the EBIT now stands at SEK 1.6 billion instead of the previously announced SEK 1.4 billion per year. We are continuing our process with the project financing bank, and the debt amount has increased from SEK 4 billion to SEK 4.8 billion, and I will also lay out the text about this and the rationale for that. There's a huge amount of infrastructure works that are conducted every day at site. Today, we are more than 200 people logging in, in the site, and we forecast this summer to be more than 400 people every day as we are building the huge processing plant and also the rail yard. We are pleased that we could announce on March 16, the recruitment of Charlotte Odenberger as our new Chief Operating Officer. Charlotte most recently comes from Lundin Mining, Zinkgruvan. Before that, Mandalay Resources [Jaskruvan]. A great complement to the team that we are really proud of having done. After the quarter yesterday, we also announced that we have appointed Staffan Sandstrom, the previous CEO of Zinkgruvan and before that, 30 years within Boliden as a senior adviser to us. Staffan has most probably one of the longest and largest merits in the mining industry in Sweden, not at least within the copper industry. It's a huge achievement for us to have Staffan with us in the team as well. We will also talk a bit about the cash cost, the increased cash cost for all the copper mines in the whole world, and that will support a higher copper price, and we will give you some data points behind that. You've seen this picture before. It is important to reiterate because this is one of the rationales why we are continuing to invest in the Viscaria copper project. Copper grades in the copper mines are going down. We are standing at 0.55% going towards 0.4%. The decreased copper grade means that you need to mine larger amounts at more tricky places to get the same volume out. This drives cash cost and the all-in sustaining cost. The average grade of new discoveries are going rapidly down as well. We are today standing at 0.35% on the average copper grade on new copper discoveries versus 1.35% in the 1950s. All easy copper is mined out. Cash cost is driven by this fact, and that will also support a higher copper price. Here, we can see even more granular data than you have seen before. On the lower bar chart, the green bar chart, you can see the amount all mine companies spend on copper exploration, and you can see the sharp increase in the amounts that are spent on copper exploration because you need to drill deeper, that costs more takes longer time. You need to drill at higher locations that cost more is more advanced drilling. The last 4-year period, exploration budget globally to find new copper discoveries stood at USD 13 billion between '20 and 2024. On the top hand on the brown bar chart, you can see the amount in million tons of new copper discoveries, you can see the sharp, sharp decline since 1990 to 2020, 2024. Another way to look at this, on the left-hand side, you can see the top 10 discoveries between 1990 and 1994. In total, there was found 48 new copper discoveries those 4 years. The average exploration budget combined with the tonnage that was explored amounted then to USD 10 per ton. To the right-hand side, you see the top 10 discoveries 2020, 2024. It's only that we did not have top 10. We only have top 6. The exploration budget to find those top 6 was stood at USD 1,500 per ton. All of these are supporting then that we will see a different copper price going forward. If we look then at even more granular data of the all-in sustaining cost, that means that you have the cash cost and then the all-in sustaining cost. Of all the 708 copper mines in the whole world, you can see on the left-hand side, the copper mines with a large amount of byproduct that, of course, drives down the cash cost and all-in sustaining cost. In the mid part, you see the copper mines with a mid amount of byproduct. On the right-hand side, you see the ones that with no or very little byproduct. If we now take an average of all these production costs of all copper mines, 2025, so of the C90, that means that for the copper mines that produced -- that covered 90% of the demand in the whole world, they had an all-in sustaining cost of 7,500. Historical profit margin above the all-in sustaining cost has been 30%, so that would imply a copper price last year of 9,750. We ended 2025 with a slightly higher copper price on average, 9,900. Data from all these mines predicts then that the all-in sustaining cost will increase to USD 9,300 per ton by 2030. If we then are a bit more conservative and just apply a 20% profit margin, we will land at a predicted copper price at 11,600, 2030 -- 11,300, sorry. You can also see that we see a sharper increase of cash cost by 2035, all-in sustaining cost at USD 11,250 and then you add on a profit margin. Sorry, I go back to this slide. The only reason for believing in lower numbers here, that is we believe in lower demand. That is we believe in lower energy prices. That is if we believe in lower inflation. You see the demand, again, it comes from the increase of the middle class. Today, we are in the growth of the world. Today, we are 8 billion in the world. We will be 10 billion in 10 years. We cannot stop that development. For that growth, the will be an increased demand of copper. The demand is impossible to stop. Another fact is also when we look at the institutions and the copper price predictions, we can see during the last 10-year period that 9 out of 10 institutions constantly underestimate the forward-looking copper price by 8% on a 1-year forecast and by 15% on a 3-year forecast. If we take this into consideration, we can look at the consensus price for the institutions you see on the right-hand side of USD 12,500, 2030. That is actually not even correct. We don't even have a time to update our slides because just the last week and 2 weeks, Goldman, UBS, Deutsche and Morgan, they have revised their consensus forecast now for 2030 as the numbers you see within brackets. If we include them, then we stand at a consensus of 12,900, but let's stick to the conservative forecast of 12,500. On the left-hand chart here, you see then when we include the all-in sustaining cost by 2030, again, 9,300 with a 10% lower profit margin, that would imply then a copper price of 11,300, just driven by the supply conditions of the copper mines in the world. You remember that we saw the consensus forecast of 12,500, that is not really valid any longer. Remembering that they are constantly underestimating the forward-looking price with 15%, then we actually land at a copper price 2030 or revised forecast at 14,500. One should also remember that all these numbers are based on demand business as usual. That means that if we believe that electrification will increase cars, etc., going away from fossil energy, if we believe that rehabilitation in Gaza, Syria, Ukraine will increase, the demand will increase. If we believe that the growth of middle class, especially in India, will increase, the demand will increase. All of these are conservative forecasts. This of course, new business case is then based on USD 11,700 per ton, and that is, of course, not a number that we picked ourselves randomly. This is based on extensive market data reports and on the conservative side. Including the larger debt amount of SEK 4.8 billion, which we talked about and also an upcoming need to do a capital raise over a period of SEK 1.6 billion, we will anyhow have a larger EBIT number of SEK 1.6 billion per year compared to SEK 1.4 billion before. If we then look at the 12,500 consensus forecast 2030, we would land at SEK 1.7 billion in EBIT. And if we look at the revised forecast, 14,500, we will land at SEK 2.2 billion. Lastly, I will just update you a bit about the project financing with our mandated lead arrangers, ING and Soc Gen and also the credit agencies, Finnvera and Euler Hermes. Things are progressing very well, but it is cumbersome and time-consuming processes, not at least since both Finnvera and Hermes are governmental bodies, and they have a tendency to take longer time. We are just in the end of the due diligence processes, and we are passing that with Stars. We are also in the end of the term sheet negotiations. The financing documentation and the syndication discussions and also the credit decisions, again, not at least within the governmental bodies are foreseen to take slightly longer time than what we have predicted before. Instead of closing the debt financing end of June 2026, we are now forecasting to close that in August, September 2026. With that, I'm proud to hand over the scene to Charlotte Odenberger, our new Chief Operating Officer. Welcome.

Charlotte Odenberger

Executives
#2

Thank you so much, Jorgen. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here today and also to be part of this exciting project. I'm going to start off with some key project updates that has happened since December 2025. In December, we signed an MOU for an offtake agreement for approximately half of our copper concentrates with Aurubis, which marked an important milestone for us. In January, we signed our first long lead item with Metso, a SAG mill and a ball mill and there's more long lead items to come. In February, we also signed an agreement with Strawberry to construct and operate our temporary housing facilities for contractors that will come to site and construct, for example, our processing plant. We also signed an MOU for logistical solutions with the Narvik [Carbor], which is also important, we can ship our concentrate to our customers. We also appointed -- or Vattenfall appointed Omexom to build our power supplies for operations and also for construction. Looking into March, we passed an important milestone where we signed Nordic to build a processing plant, the foundation and weatherproof it, so to say. In touch to that, we signed Metso -- sorry, Sweco and AFRY to do detailed design of processing and construction and tie those time plans in together, which is derisking the building of the processing plant a lot. Looking at the updated project -- the project schedule. We have worked a lot during the quarter with the open pits. We have scrapped the ground. Last week, we did our first blast, which was an important milestone. We're not blasting ore at this stage. We're blasting construction material for our tailings facility, which is currently being built. We will leave the ore in the ground until the processing plant is built and ready to take in the ore. Looking at the water treatment, we're doing the final steps there with the sulfur treatment that is planned and is well on track to be ready for in June. That's also when we plan to start dewatering the mine. As we dewater the mine, we can start with the rehabilitation of the old mine infrastructure. We're actually starting that we have work already now to get experience and also to -- so we can do that more efficiently when as we dewater the mine. The mining operation itself will continue after the rehabilitation is done. Power installation ongoing as planned and will be fully completed by end of '27 and also for construction, that is in place. Railyard also going really well. We will connect to Malmbanan in mid-June, 16th of June. Tailings area, also well on track that will be completed by the end of this year. Processing plant, as mentioned, that will be weatherproof and the foundations will be completed by end of this year, early next year. Then we will go inside and install all process equipment. At the end of the installations, we go into commissioning phase and then do ramp up during '28. Now we're going to look at the industrial area, the mine area, how it will actually look like when it's fully completed. As you see, a great advantage for us is everything is located quite close together, which will give us a good efficient internal logistics and also facilitate collaborations between the mine and the mill. Now we're moving south of the mine site, and here is also where we have our underground mine. The yellow part that you can see first, that's the A zone, and that's where the historical mining operations were undertaken. Just close by to the A Zone, we have the B zone. Just close to the B zone a bit further out, we have the D zone. In the D zone, we have really high copper grades, the highest grades and also magnetite as of now. Looking just in front of the D zone, we have the tailings storage facility, which we are currently constructing, as mentioned. It's downstream dam, and we source the construction material from our open pit, which is located just close by. In front of the tailings storage facility, we have the ROM pad, and that's where we take all the ore, we crush it and then put it into different piles depending on where it's coming from. We have A zone, B zone and D zone as of now. When it's crushed, we put it into the processing plant in campaigns where we process it and thickening it, and then the thickener concentrate is pumped to the dewatering facility, as you can see in the picture. From there, the concentrate is going into the loading station as a storage facility where the train comes in, and we can load the concentrate and it's being shipped either north or south to Narvik. We also have the head offices where everyone that's working on site is sitting and the Viscaria village, where we will host our contractors. Of course, the water treatment plant, which is an important facility. On the topic, water treatment, the WTP1000, a short update there. The WTP1000 project is in commissioning phase and everything is going according to plan. We have commissioned in April the technical water and the drinking water very successfully. Sulfide treatment, as previously mentioned, will be completed in June. We have all permits in place to discharge water, and we're going to do that as soon as the sulfur treatment step is ready to go. Hence, dewatering will commence in June when analysts proves that the quality was expected. With that, I'm going to hand over to Ross for the latest update from exploration.

Ross Armstrong

Executives
#3

Thank you very much, Charlotte, and good morning to everyone watching. Yes, a warm welcome to the exploration update part of today's presentation, where we have a variety of really exciting news to share with you this morning. 2025 was really a milestone year for us where we had our newest resource update and as well the feasibility study to go along with the project. For us, that was really just the beginning. In 2026, we've started off with a really fast pace in our near-mine exploration program, where today, we have results to share from both the B zone and the D zone. Long story short, we're starting to see a completely different scale to the Viscaria mineral system now. With this near-mine exploration program, we have 3 rigs currently in operation, and that's the plan for the remainder of the year. The focus is to prioritize on high-value areas that can improve the project scale and enhance the overall project life as well. All the latest exploration results are pointing towards future resource growth. In that regard, we can now announce that our next resource update will be released in early 2027 as part of the Q4 year-end reporting for 2026. More on that later, but let's jump straight into the exploration results for now. Starting with the B zone. This is an image that many of you will start to recognize. What we have is a longitudinal section of the B Zone core. We're basically looking along the ore body for the B zone. This is color contered according to grade multiplied by thickness. Where we have the hot colors or pinks, reds, purples, this is where we have the thickest and the highest grade mineralization in situ. Towards the southwest portion of the deposit, you can see this gap in the mineral resource that previously had been untested, but during last quarter's presentation, we showed the results from the first hole in this gap, VDD25013B, where we encountered exceptionally thick and high-grade mineralization. You can see the numbers on the screen there, a whopping 76 meters at almost 1% copper. This is just one drill hole, of course. That brings us to our latest result, the follow-up drill hole 25013D, which you can see has been drilled around 100, 150 meters towards the Southwest. Here, we're seeing the same thing, pit mineralization with high grades. Good geological and grade continuity being observed between these nearby drill holes. For this latest result from 13D, this longitudinal section doesn't really tell the full story. For that, we need to rotate things by 90 degrees. Now what we're seeing is a cross-section through the deposit, which shows the trajectory of the drill hole 13D relative to the existing mineral resources. What we can see here is that 13D has intersected a very wide and broad mineralized package in its entirety, 317 meters with an average grade of around 0.6% copper. What's really outstanding here is that within this broad interval, there are several stacked high-grade lenses. We can look down the drill hole. We have 13.8 meters, 1.13% copper, 14 meters above 1%, 6.5 meters, 1.14%, 8.6 meters, 1.07%. You get the idea, 11.4 meters, 1.17% copper. This is really something special. I think from this perspective as well, you really get a sense of the average thickness of the existing mineral resources. In Viscaria in the shallow part of the deposit, the ore zones are around 10 to 15 meters thick on average. What we see in 13D is something on a completely other scale. Of course, naturally, this is something that we are already following up in the ongoing drill program. I think it's important also to link what we see in these numbers and in these graphic images to the geology. I have some photos from the drill co here on this current slide. On the left, we can see what I would call typical stratabound or concordant mineralization that's very characteristic of the Viscaria deposit. On top of that, in this particular area, we have an abundance of these cross-cutting feeder veins as well. It's the combination of the 2 that's really driving the increased thickness of the mineralization in this part of the deposit. The image on the right shows a little glimpse into the alteration phases that we often see in close proximity to the copper mineralization. As we've been drilling deeper in our exploration program, we've seen an increased amount of KFLs for alteration, for example, often overprinting an early [Alba] alteration phase. We don't need to spend too much time here, but I thought it's a nice little glimpse into the par genetic sequence for those that are interested. Now moving over to the D zone, where I think, in my opinion, we have one of the most exciting results to come from Viscaria in recent years. To cut straight to the point, our latest Scout drill hole 25013E has intersected the D Zone copper iron mineralization 800 meters along strike and beyond the current resource boundary. This is something really big. The image we see on the slide here, again, it's a longitudinal section of the D zone that many of you are starting to become familiar with, color contred according to grade time thickness. You can see from these black pierce points on the slide, these mark the step-out drill holes that we drilled so far. In the last year or so, it's been very much focused at depth very proximal to the existing resource and the planned mining infrastructure because we see really good potential here for immediate and near-term expansion of the plan. Just in the last quarter, we had our first kind of major step-out drill hole when we reported the result from 24036, which hit mineralization 400 meters from the existing resource boundary. Now we have the assay results to share from that drill hole as well. We know it returned now 14.3 meters at 1% copper and around 25% iron, and this was intercepted within a broader interval of 38 meters. It was the result from this first major step-out the result that drove us and gave the encouragement to step even further beyond. That takes us to the result we have here in 25013E, which you can see in the bottom left-hand side of this image. I think what this section really starts to get across now is the sheer scale of the system that we're now beginning to unravel. I mean, this drill hole opens a substantial area for future resource growth. Of course, it is a priority now for us to do more work in here to prove that the geological continuity extends across this 800-meter wide corridor, but really exciting. Again, the scale here is really significant. What I should have mentioned is that this hole is actually ongoing. The drilling is still happening. The drill core you see here is fresh off the rig, literally delivered here this week. In that regard, we don't have the assay results yet, but in this case, I think the core box photos, they almost tell the story themselves. Through visual observations from the core, we can see that there's Chalcopyrite magnetite mineralization, very consistent with what we know from the D zone as well. If we take a closer look on these zoomed in photos, you can start to get a bit of an understanding why Jorgen Olsson has been dancing around the Kuna this week. No, but really, this is extremely promising results. We just can't wait to get the assay data. We plan to get this out to the market within 3 months during the next quarter update. Really nice stuff and something different that we're seeing in this whole 13E is an increased proportion of bornite as well. Bornite is another copper-bearing mineral. Unlike Chalcopyrite, has twice as much copper within the mineral structure. The images on the left-hand side of the slide show some examples of the bornite that was intersected. This is usually seen kind of replacing the Chalcopyrite on the grain margins, sometimes with this irdescent rainbow colors, but also with this fresh brownish red coloration as well. What this tells us the increased proportion of bornite is that in this particular part of the system, there is a lot of copper in play, possibly remobilized by late oxidizing fluids that are probably also associated to the hematite alteration that we're seeing in the core giving this deep red staining. This combination, an increased proportion of bornite and hematite alteration points itself towards our signals that we're approaching the high-grade core in this type of system. Again, a very interesting and exciting part of this latest result. Now I want to take a step back and try to frame these results within the broader context. It's not coincidence that we drilled 25013E exactly where we did. All of our drilling and all of these results are guided from our conceptual exploration model. This is a model that we're continuously refining. I think very importantly, we're also -- it's also being reinforced with a lot of these new results that we're seeing. The image I'm showing on the left-hand side of the slide here, this is now a planned view of the deposits. Now we're looking down on the mineralized zones. The backdrop to that is some geophysical data, specifically a depth site from our [Magneta Toluri] inversion. What the magnetic slurican version depicts in these hot red colors is the high conductivity signal associated with grphetic shales in the A Zone and the C zone. If we follow that high connectivity signal towards the southwest portion of the deposit, you can see that there's a sudden truncation, a sudden break in this conductivity. Along that same exact trend, that's where we've been making all of our recent discoveries. The ABBA Zone, B Zone deep, the first high grades in the C Zone and now this 800-meter long extension in the D zone as well. The geology we're seeing is backing this up as well. Stack high-grade Mantos all across the stratigraphy, an abundance of cross-cutting feeder veins and intense hydrothermal alteration and bleaching of carbonaceous units. Basically, we're on the right track and the geophysics and the geology are really starting to come together to drive the exploration. I think what this really points towards is that we have in the southwest portion of the deposit, a focused zone of hydrothermal fluid upflow, which seems to have really played an important controlling -- which appears to have played a really key role in controlling the formation of this deposit and as well the distribution of high-grade mineralization within it. Finally, to try and bring all of these results together from today. In the B Zone, we've seen exceptionally high-grade mineralization and in the D Zone, this outstanding 800-meter long strike extension. All of this points towards near-term resource growth. In the chart here, we can see the upward trajectory of Viscaria's mineral resources through time. Of course, this is a trend that we really see is going to continue within short. As mentioned earlier, we have a resource update now planned for release during February 2027. In the meantime, we will continue with 3 drill rigs in operation, focusing on high-value areas that we see can really develop the project scale and also offer flexibility in the operations down the line. In the meantime as well, we're also looking deeper. This summer, we have planned a reflection seismic survey in collaboration with Uppsala University and BitSim NOW. The purpose of that is, again, to really start to see how deep does the deposit go, what is the scale of this mineral system, and this will guide the targeting for years to come. To finish, I think every good mining project requires good geology at its foundation. From our perspective in this area, the future looks very bright indeed. On that note, I will hand the word to Frida.

Frida Keskitalo

Executives
#4

Thank you for that, Ross. Then I will walk you through the financial performance in summary for quarter 1 2026. If we start with the P&L, you see the figures for the first quarter. We have a net profit of minus SEK 28 million. Of course, our primary focus is on the cash flow side, and we reported a cash flow for the period of minus SEK 405 million. If we then go down to the balance sheet, we see how we have investing during the period until the end of quarter 1, both in intangible assets like the exploration activities that Ross just talked about, but also and above all, ongoing development such as starting of the construction for the process plant, finalizing the water treatment facilities, but also the ongoing activities with the rail yard and tailings. We have a cash and cash equivalent of slightly above SEK 1 billion. In this SEK 1 billion, SEK 300 million of these are included as a deposit for closure cost, which means that we have SEK 700 million available liquidity, which means that we have a strong financial position. You also see the equity post almost SEK 3.1 billion. If we then leave the quarter 1 figures and go over to our business case. As you know, during quarter 1 2025, we reported our feasibility study. In parallel with that, we also presented our business case. The business case actually is based on the feasibility study with the reserves, but on top of that, we added in inferred tonnage as well. We have now done some updates in this business case, mainly driven by a weaker U.S. dollar, but also higher copper price. We also, of course, have made some updates within the OpEx and CapEx side and also the fact that we have advanced another year into the project. What you see in this slide is in the lower part, the old business case that was published in quarter 1 2025. That was based on a copper price of USD 9,500 per ton, and we had an FX rate of USD 10.30. What you see in the upper part is a new updated business case based on an average copper price of USD 11,700 and an FX rate of USD 9.40. As you can see here, all of our financial KPIs have improved during the last year. We have a slightly improvement within the cash cost. We have both some smaller cost increase within the OpEx and the realization cost, but we have also improvement on the revenue side for the byproduct as well. Looking at the net present value, we have a huge improve. We go from SEK 4.9 billion up to SEK 7.8 billion. That's mainly driven by a higher copper price, but also the fact that we adjusted the discount rate. If you then look at the profitability metrics, we have an increase in the EBITDA margin raises up to 68.2%. As you can see, the EBITDA and also the EBIT improves during these updates. We ended up in a net income going from SEK 1.1 billion up to SEK 1.3 billion on an annual basis during our whole steady-state period, which per today is 2029 until 2036. Worth to mention is also that even though we have a higher copper price in the new updated base case, we're still pretty well under the actual copper price at the market for today. This final slide shows a little bit higher granularity of our business case. We can show well competitive cash cost and improvement in all the financial metrics. We have an IRR of almost 22%, and we have a payback below 4 years. This business case is what we're really aiming for achieve. Doing this update and also the progressing one more year into the project makes us really confident that we will deliver copper to the European market. We will deliver copper in near term, and we will do it with a higher profitability. By that, I leave the word over to Jorgen, again.

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#5

Thank you, Frida. I think we constantly show the market that we are decreasing the risk in this project quarter-by-quarter by all the construction that we're doing at site, by all contracts that we're signing every month and that we now know much firmer what the outstanding -- remaining outstanding costs are. We are progressing well on our time line. Also attracting new talent to the company. We get a lot of more attraction, not at least because of the fantastic exceptional drill results that Ross talked about. I'm extremely proud and pleased of our continued development, and I very much look forward to see you again within short. We have a thrilling Capital Markets Day up here in Kiruna today. I hope that we will get a couple of hundred in the audience here according to people that have signed up. I really look forward to that. With that, I invite [indiscernible] to come to the stage and lead our -- moderate our Q&A session.

Operator

Operator
#6

Jorgen, thank you. A lot has happened, but the news from today is, of course, the business case. EBIT now stands at SEK 1.6 billion. You're saying that the copper price you're using is conservative. Why don't you dare go further?

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#7

I think that during these 6 years, we have proven to the market a consistent credible messages. We don't want to overestimate. We want the market to trust in us and trust in our predictions. Thereby, we'd rather be on the conservative side. Of course, you saw in some of my slides that we dare to show a revised forecast of up to 14,500, and we dare to show a potential result increase of that as well. For the business case as such, we continue to keep on the conservative side.

Operator

Operator
#8

Can you elaborate a bit on how you got to the SEK 4.8 billion and the SEK 1.6 billion? You said 60-40 in the mix? How do you land at 4.8?

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#9

It is the case that we are not unaffected of recent events in the world. We have diesel prices that has gone up dramatically. We have seen increased inflation, not just here in Sweden, but in our supplier countries that has affected prices. Energy prices has increased as well. It's just a face fact. We are just as any other party affected by these increased global cost scenarios. The 4.8% is also, of course, a result of the extremely granular due diligence processes with the lending banks, Soc and ING, but also with the credit guarantee institutes. They have taken help of technical consultants, geological consultants, processing consultants to verify and certify everything. In order to have a trustworthy amount with a cushion, so you really know that you can support your debt, then yes, in a joint discussion that we have landed this SEK 4.8 billion. One should continue to remember, there's a large amount of contingencies, i.e., reserves within this amount and the forecasted project cost, we have 15% contingency in the continued initial CapEx, 10% in the sustaining CapEx. Then we have a cost overrun facility that now are around SEK 800 million that we're not allowed to touch until the day when the debt is started to be drawn.

Operator

Operator
#10

Exactly. The debt is starting to be drawn when you have secured that. Ahead of that, will we see an equity raise, the SEK 1.6 billion that you're talking about, when will you raise that?

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#11

Most probably, we will raise a portion of that before summer within a couple of months. That's what we know today.

Operator

Operator
#12

What structure do you foresee?

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#13

We are, of course, in constant dialogue with all our major shareholders that are continued very supportive to us, which is a fantastic strength of the Viscaria project to have such a cap table. One should remember then again, that of the SEK 3.7 billion, 90% is Swedish money from a very tight circuit of prominent Swedish financial institutions and prominent Swedish individuals and family offices. We dialogue with them. We're also talking to our banks that are supporting us in the equity raising case, and we are discussing different alternatives. We have to come back to the market at the time when we see the optimal conditions.

Operator

Operator
#14

Now in total, this project is not SEK 9 billion anymore. It's around SEK 10 billion. Can we be certain you want to increase this again?

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#15

I mean nothing is guaranteed in this world. We all know that. I mean, not at least the recent global events shows that clearly. We are, of course, very much closer today than we were 1 year ago about the knowledge since we signed huge contracts with the Narvik, huge contract with Metso. Charlotte also showed that we signed a huge detailed engineering contract with Sweco and AFR, etc. Much of the contracts are now signed and the construction work has started also with the rail yard has been signed with the BDX rail that you're doing that with [TRAFIK], with Vattenfall. There's less and less uncertainties going forward now due to the fact that we are signing this contract and are into construction.

Operator

Operator
#16

A lot more certainty. Ross says you've been dancing around this week. What does these results mean for?

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#17

There are nothing else than outstanding. There are nothing else than exceptional. When you hear Ross, it's an advanced geology vocabulary, and it's a bit tricky to follow along. Ross also pointed out that we don't have the assets back yet from this step-out 800 meters. Of course, we need to verify the area between the step-out hold and where we have drilled out the resources before. It's not a black space. We know from geophysics, and we can see the geophysics in between. All indications is that we will have a multi-decade mine operation here, and we see increase in copper grades. Increase in copper grades means a larger output. 3 million tons at 0.9 gives 26,000 tons of copper every year, 3 million tons of 1% gives 30,000, etc. Also Ross told you about that we were doing this seismic investigation this summer that shows a -- you can see very much longer than if you just do your physics down in the ground. We have an extremely thrilling continued drilling period ahead of us in front of that. It's, of course, fantastic to get support by actual results from the drill rigs.

Operator

Operator
#18

It's going to be very interesting to follow. Thank you again. I look forward to you.

Jorgen Olsson

Executives
#19

Thank you. No questions today from the web. Thank you for listening to us today. I very much look forward to see you again when we are presenting our Q2. I hope that our Capital Markets Day today will be another great event for us. Thank you very much.

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