McEwen Inc. ($MUX)

Meeting of McEwen Inc., and we're here today with a number of members of management and the Board of Directors. Could I ask them all to put up their hands. I think it's almost all the room. There you go. You can attack any one of them when you like or congratulate them. So we're going to hold this meeting and it's going to be much different than any annual meeting we've had before. We're taking an inspiration from Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. And so we have the pleasure today of Anthony Vaccaro, The Northern Miner Group, and he is going to be posing daunting questions, particularly to Mike about both our McEwen Copper, and Ian and I will be addressing McEwen Inc. And there'll be some overlap in between there. So with that, we'll get started, and I'm going to relinquish this podium and give it to Carmen, our General Counsel, who will take you through the formal part of the meeting, after which we'll get into this prize Q&A period. Thank you for coming.

Thank you very much, Rob. It's great to see so many familiar faces after many years of doing these virtually. So thank you to everyone who came out today. And my name is Carmen Diges. I'm the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of McEwen. And at Rob's request and in accordance with our bylaws, I'll be the chairman for the meeting. And Stefan Spears in the front row here, will act as Secretary. A representative from Computershare is acting as scrutineer for this meeting and is also in attendance. Today's meeting is conducted personally and also simultaneously broadcast via webcast. As we believe in engaging with our shareholders, we hope that the live broadcast will maximize participation of shareholders regardless of geographic location. This technology enables us to reach a larger audience and encourages your participation wherever you are. Today, we'll consider the election of directors for the ensuing year, the ratification of the appointment of our independent public accountants, and approval of the issuance of shares of common stock to Robert McEwen pursuant to an Arrangement Agreement with Canadian Gold Corp that's been previously announced and closed. For convenience, certain persons have been asked to propose and second resolutions. Those of you who are registered shareholders don't need to vote if you've already voted by proxy, unless, of course, you wish to change your vote in which case, please raise your hand as we go through the vote. All owners of record as of the close of business on April 20, 2026, are entitled to vote at this meeting. Those wishing to vote would have received a ballot when they registered with the scrutineers. If you'd like to vote but did not receive a form and you are a registered shareholder, please register with the scrutineers at the front table over there, and they will check your registration details. Should participants in the live broadcast wish to pose a question or comment, they will need to click on the Q&A icon on the webcast interface. Questions can also be sent by e-mailing [email protected], and we've received a number of those in advance. Our Vice President of Corporate Development, Stefan Spears, will also be managing questions for this meeting. A complete list of the owners of McEwen as of the record date for the meeting, which is April 20, 2026, as required by Colorado law has been on file at McEwen's office and was open for inspection by any shareholder up until this meeting and also by e-mail request since April 24. The list is also still available for anyone who wants to take a look at it. So just come up and chat with me if you'd like that. I have an affidavit from Computershare Trust Company, our stock transfer agent, attesting that the notice of the meeting, the proxy statement, annual report and proxy were made or made available to all shareholders of record as of April 2026 in the manner prescribed by law. Copies of these documents are available today as well for anyone who wants to see them. Copies are also available on our website and on SEDAR+ and EDGAR. There are a total of 59,452,799 shares outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting today. I've received the interim inspector's report on attendance, our articles require not less than 1/3 of the outstanding shares entitled to vote at this meeting for a quorum. And on that basis, I can declare that we have a quorum for this meeting. The first item of business is the appointment of the scrutineer and election judge. I have appointed Computershare Trust Company of Canada to act as scrutineer and election judge for the purpose of tabulating votes at our meeting today. The next item of business is the approval of the minutes of our last meeting held on June 19, 2025. Copies are also available for inspection by any shareholder tonight. With your consent, I propose that we dispense with the reading of the minutes unless there is any objection. Thank you. The polls have been open for voting since April 24 of this year, voting by Internet and telephone have been available until 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time today as declared in our proxy statement regarding this meeting. Voting at the meeting by ballot will be open immediately after the introduction of all of the proposals and will remain open until I declare them closed. Please note that voting is not available through the live webcast. We'll provide an interim result of voting on each item of business at the end of the meeting today. Management believes it has sufficient proxies to carry each of the proposals. And as such, the outcome is expected in favor of management's recommendations for each resolution. The first item of business is the election of directors to serve until the next annual meeting or until their successors are duly elected and qualified. Mr. McEwen, McEwen's Chairman and CEO will now recognize the 11 persons nominated for election to the Board of Directors. As Mr. McEwen calls out the names, I ask that each director who is present stand or indicate their presence when called.

The Board has nominated the following persons to serve as directors of the corporation to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of McEwen and until their successors are duly elected. Ian Ball, Dalia Asterbadi, Richard Brissenden, Alfred Colas, Nicolas Darveau-Garneau, he is not with us today. He is, today? Thank you. I didn't see that. John Florek, Steve Kaszas. Michelle Makori, I can say isn't here. She's here in spirit. Michael Melanson, William Shaver and myself already standing.

Thank you, Rob. Is there a second to the nominations?

I second the nominations.

Thank you, Mihaela. The corporation has received no other nominations for directors in the manner prescribed by the corporation's bylaws. I therefore declare that the nominations for directors are closed. Is there any discussion regarding this matter? Thank you. We'll now move on to the next item of business, which is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as auditors and independent registered public accountants of the corporation. This will be for the year ending December 31, 2026. And I can report that the Audit Committee of the Board has approved the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP and recommends ratification of their appointment. Robert McEwen will make the necessary motion to approve the auditors.

I move the following resolution be adopted, resolved that the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as the corporation's independent registered public accountants for the year ended December 31, 2026, be ratified and approved.

Thank you. Quick to the draw there, Mihaela. Thank you. You've heard the motion. Is there any discussion? Thank you. We'll move on to the next item. The remaining item of business before this meeting requires a little explanation. It's the proposal to approve the issuance of shares of the corporation's common stock to Mr. Robert McEwen, pursuant to an arrangement agreement dated as of October 10, 2025, amended in December 23, '25, by and among McEwen Inc., Canadian Gold Corp. and in accordance with NYSE listing Rule 312.03 (B (i), which I'm sure you're all very familiar with. But basically, it's given the related nature of the transaction, this requires a vote of the disinterested shareholders of McEwen. And under the arrangement agreement, McEwen acquired all of the issued and outstanding shares of Canadian Gold Corp in exchange for shares of common stock of McEwen by way of a court-approved statutory plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act of British Columbia. And that was completed effective January 5, and all Canadian Gold shares other than the Canadian Gold shares held by Mr. McEwen were exchange for shares of McEwen. Mr. McEwen had subscription receipts instead. And that NYSE rule that I mentioned requires the corporation to obtain stockholder approval prior to the issuance of common stock, where there's a related party and where the securities exceed 1% of the number of shares outstanding before the issuance. We've determined that Mr. McEwen is an active related party under the NYSE rules, and we are soliciting stockholder approval for the issuance of the company shares to Mr. McEwen as set forth in the arrangement agreement and described in your proxy circular. So we need the affirmative vote of a majority of disinterested votes on the proposal of this meeting. And if shareholder approval is not obtained, the corporation will have to deliver cash to Mr. McEwen for the company shares he's entitled to receive upon conversion of the subscription receipts under this agreement. So I'll now call for a motion on the proposal with all that.

I move that the following resolution be adopted, resolved that the issuance of shares of the corporation's common stock to Mr. Robert McEwen pursuant to the arrangement agreement be approved.

You definitely had the easier side of that equation between the 2 of us. You've now heard the motion. Is there any discussion? Any questions on that one just because it's a little out of the ordinary? All right. Thank you. We'll proceed to take the vote and representatives from Computershare will collect any ballots that are out there. I didn't see any coming in, but if anyone's got a ballot, could you just raise it up. Okay. Polls are now closed. And the final tally of the vote will be published on the SEC website and on EDGAR -- sorry, on SEDAR within 4 business days of the meeting and minutes of the meeting will be prepared and available for any shareholder in the coming year. On the basis of the substantial advanced vote, however, that we've had today and the fact that I saw no ballots going in, we can take the motions as having passed. We'll safeguard any proxies that we received, any ballots, the affidavit of mailing the oath and certificate and report of inspector and keep them with the records of this meeting. And on the basis of all of that, I'm pleased to announce that Ian Ball, Dalia Asterbadi, Richard Brissenden, Alfred Colas, Nicolas Darveau-Garneau, John Florek, Steve Kaszas, Michelle Makori, Michael Melanson, William Shaver, and Robert McEwen have been elected as the corporation's directors. The proposal to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as the corporation's independent registered public accountants for the year ending December 31, 2026, is approved. And further, the issuance of shares of the corporation's common stock to Mr. Robert McEwen pursuant to an Arrangement Agreement is also approved. Thank you. Are there any other items of business to come before the meeting today? If not, I would entertain a motion to terminate the meeting for McEwen Inc. Could you move that for me?

Okay. I moved it.

And a seconder?

I second the motion.

Thank you. Unless anyone is opposed, the formal portion of this meeting is now terminated, and we can move on to the fun bullpen that has been planned for the rest of our afternoon. I declare the meeting terminated. And now I invite Mr. Anthony Vaccaro to moderate the rest of the meeting.

Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. I had fun. I was told it was a hard-hitting bullpen, I sharpened up my old journalism pen for this one. Thank you, Rob, for inviting me. And Ian and Michael, I'm really happy to be here, perhaps not as happy as Rob. I've been in the industry for about over 20 years. So I've had a front row seat for Rob's consistent, bullish gold forecast, and I think we're all happy to see last year that the market finally relented and decided to stop arguing with Rob, kind of what the way that he said it was going to go for all those years. There's a bit of a running joke in the industry that Rob's bullish forecast on gold lasts longer than most marriages, I would honestly say that Rob's relationship with Bullion has also aged considerably better than even those marriage that have perhaps lasted long, a long enough time. So but listen, we're going to start talking about copper because so much of what's going on in McEwen is around copper. And there's a lot of buzz. Rob, I hear it all the time when I'm out networking and hobnobbing with the industry, the IPO. When is McEwen Copper going to do its IPO? Can you give everyone here a little bit of a time line and more detail on what's happening on that front?

Sure. We've mentioned going public several times in the past. And each time before we sort of signed a piece of paper, there were private interest that came forward and said they'd put up the money. And the first 2 were Rio Tinto and Stellantis. So the second largest mining company in the world and the sixth largest car manufacturing company in the world. We said, well, taking money from them is easier than doing a prospectus and doing an IPO. And then as we moved along, we started saying, well, we have a preliminary economic assessment. We're probably creating more value for our shareholders if we go to a feasibility study. And then Argentina introduced a large investment incentive regime that's -- the acronym is RIGI, but it reduced the tax rate, it lifted exchange controls, it did a lot of things to make a project have significantly more value. So we said, all right, we're going to wait until we get that and then we're going to put it in the feasibility study. So we have the feasibility study done that was October of last year. We have an environmental permit in our hand. The project is shovel ready. And right now, we want to start production in next year in January.

Production in 2030, construction in 2027.

I want it next year. So it's -- we're in a position now where we're going to need to raise money for the CapEx. And the market is ready. There are not a lot of large projects such as Los Azules. It's a rarity in the market, and we think it's an opportune time to go public, and that will -- it was always trying to lift the value of that and make it visible for shareholders of McEwen Inc. And we've seen the effects over the last couple of years on that going forward. I think there'll be a good lift from where we are right now when we go public.

Right. And listen, we're fortunate to have Michael Meding, the Managing Director of McEwen Copper, so we can get into the weeds a little bit. It's a big build. It's an expensive build. Can you talk shareholders through a little bit about what the financing -- what the plan for is, how to finance it?

Okay. So in our feasibility that we -- when we published the results on 7th of October last year, we published headline figures of approximately $3.2 billion, $3.17 billion for CapEx, which we think will result in an overall financing package of about $4 billion, including interest that we have to pay to construction plus working capital plus a little but over our facility so how do we get to $4 billion? The important thing is that each of the different buckets has already a home where we are trying to address those figures. And it's basically -- we think that for a project in Argentina that size 40% equity, 60% debt is something achievable. The 60% debt, what we have seen over the last 4 years and my colleague, Stefan and I, we have been traveling a lot talking to export credit agencies that are the -- export development banks, that the different countries have to support business opportunities have been very interested in getting back into mining and doing business in Argentina. Even before we had the feasibility out and even before we had the RIGI approval, we had several nonbinding offers for more than $1 billion on the table. And now that we have talked to about 20 different organizations in between DFIs. Those are the development finance organizations and the export credit agencies. We have engaged Societe Generale to lead this process going forward because that's not a job that we can do side of desk. We have a big team now working on that. Then since 25th of September last year, the World Bank through the IFC announced that we have a collaboration agreement in place in this collaboration agreement. We do 2 things. First of all, we work with the IFC to show that we are compliant with the IFC performance standards which are environment, social and governance standards that you want to be compliant with when you develop a big project. And obviously, Los Azules developed according to the equator principles. And they have agreed to work with us on that front. They have agreed to potentially become a leader arranger. So they have reserved the rights to do financing with us and those processes run alongside and SocGen, as we call them, are basically engaged also to make sure they are kept on the best terms in terms of interest rates and overall cost. And on the equity side, it's basically existing shareholders, potential industry conglomerate plus the IPO that Rob mentioned. That's how the finance package comes.

When you bring up equity, then I want to bring in Rob on that because shareholder dilution has to be something that's at least thought about by our audience when we're talking about a big spend on this. I do want to set this up a little bit, Rob, to take a second to remind everybody, almost USD 300 million of your own money invested in your businesses. And then -- but you do pull out quite a bit, right? You pull out $1 a year in salary. So I did a calculation in your tax bracket, it's going to take you about 1 billion years to recoup your investment in salary. Only 1 billion years, a dinosaur time, right? What's your philosophy around dilution when we are talking about a big build like this?

Avoid it as much as possible. If you look at Los Azules just for a moment, and let's convert it into an equivalent gold asset, and that will be achieved by taking the gold price, dividing it by the copper price, coming up with a ratio, it's about just over 700 pounds of copper equals the value of 1 ounce of gold. So we have 35.7 billion pounds of copper in resources, use that ratio, and that's equivalent to a 50 million-ounce gold deposit. If you use that same ratio and project it on our feasibility cost of $1.71 a pound, that is just under $1,300 cash and just under $1,600 all-in sustaining. It's 21 years plus another 33 years possible that is a giant gold deposit. And that is when I look at it, I said, we want to give away as little as possible of that as we go forward. So that the benefit accrues to the shareholders of McEwen Inc. and the shareholders of McEwen Copper.

Excellent. I mean you alluded to it, this is a world-class massive deposit. I have no doubt that this is going to be built, this is a mine, Los Azules is going to be going on long after all of us are dead. It's that kind of project. But when you get into projects of this scale, cost overruns are almost the norm. This is basically a mega project, and that has been a concern from the outside looking into our industry. I'm going to bring it back to you, Michael. You're the one on this front. What can you do to assure shareholders what steps you're going to take to mitigate that risk of cost overrun?

Okay. So for those of you who don't know my history, I mean, I'm now about 2 decades in the Americas. I spent more than 15 years in Argentina. And I worked for Barrick Gold Corporation in Argentina quite successfully as a CFO, for the Veladero gold mine, very big gold mine at my time, 1 million-ounce gold producer, 2 million ounce on silver. And I had also the chance to work on the Pascua-Lama Project, very big build that didn't see the light of day. And there are a lot of learnings from this time and learning such as having the right team, having the right in-country knowledge. I mean the Barrick people at the time, they put their star performers on the build, but we're not able to perform on the ground. They didn't have the traction on the ground. And every lack of decision-making, every delay, every scope creep is costing you significant money. So that caused a lot of headache. And so what we said is, okay, what can we do to reduce that risk. And best is, I mean, you cannot have cost overrun on stuff that you don't build. So what we went for is a much simplified flow sheet. So we chose to go via heap leach operation versus a conventional concentrator that is significantly lower in CapEx and levels of magnitude less complex. And this reduction of complexity helps us to be able to plan, I would say, better. There is experience in the same province where our project is located to build this kind of project. We want to do something that's very similar to Veladero. It's a different production process on the chemical side. But in terms of earth movement, in terms of crushing, in terms of heap leaching, it is very similar, and that has been done. And they've been able to secure a team that has on-the-ground experience, has done part of that build in Veladero before. On top of that, we have secured people that have built mega projects in the Andes, such as Florence, Morenci, QB1. So we have a mix of people that have lots of experience on the ground and lots of international experience, and we have formed a team that I think can work -- it has been able to work very effectively in Argentina over the last almost 4.5 years now. I think that is part of the game. And then obviously, top-notch project controls and a really detailed project plan. And then staggered CapEx. We don't build everything at once. We built the leach pad in stages. We built the crushing circuit in stages. We built the SX/EW in stages. We built the acid plant in stages. So everything goes in stages so that you don't have to eat the elephant at once, but plate by plate.

Okay. I want to pick up on one word that you said there. Rob told me I could be hard hitting in the question, so I'm going to take them up on his offer. Argentina. Yes, Argentina has been a volatile place. We all know that. Rob, you personally know Milei. Things are looking good there right now, but what confidence can you give shareholders that Argentina is the proper platform to be putting billions of dollars of investor money into?

So what we had seen when Argentina was opening up and mining had its first boom in '90s through the implementation of the mining investment law. There was the idea of giving guarantees. But unfortunately, the mining investment law from the '90s wasn't as clearly written. So over the years, unfortunately, was eroded and didn't have automatic international arbitration built in. And what I can say, though, is that, for example, during my time, when I was the CFO for Barrick in Argentina, I bought $2 billion out of the country and have been able to sell 50% of the asset for $960 million, and that worked out also. So a top player went into the country. And then afterwards, when we were -- through the job changes, I ended up as Managing Director for McEwen Copper. Now we were working towards development. We were trying to reduce the risk on an operational side, what we now saw is the movement towards a much improved investment protection agreement, which is the large infrastructure investment incentive regime that Rob mentioned, the RIGI, which gives you a 30-year tax stability, it gives you a reduction on tax rate from 35% to 25%, gives you a reduction of tax on dividend from 7% to 3.5%. And it gives you legally baked in the right for international arbitration, a big item that was missing in the money investment law from the '90s. So what I estimate is -- and not only for mining, there's lots of money flowing into Argentina in the moment, more than $40 billion of projects have been approved. And significant investment is flowing already in projects such as Vaca Muerta and some energy projects. There are a lot of other mining projects that have applied, copper projects as well that haven't been approved yet. But well, I think that this is something that will help to stabilize those projects and to ensure that they have defendable rights going forward.

Right. And I think we are seeing from where I sit on the media side, we are seeing a discernible trend in South America with the recent elections in Colombia. It looks like better results for a more business-friendly leader there. There is a tide going on there right now of realizing that we need -- they need more economic business-friendly policies. So thank you for that, Michael. Rob, coming to you, listen, entrepreneurs of your ilk don't go into anything without a bit of an end game, right? You're thinking about what's the long-term strategy here? What is it with Los Azules? Do you want to build this? Or do you -- is this something that you're trying to get into the best shape that you can for someone else to build?

We have a team that has experience building aspects in the Andes, in Argentina, so conceivably, we could build it. We could also -- but right now, what we have is a very scarce asset. The major mining companies around the world are looking for large copper projects. They're looking to build their pipeline. So it's conceivable you'll see a price that might look attractive. But if that doesn't appear we want to take it forward. I mean, this is an asset that -- I mean, at current prices, it's got a better than 72% gross margin. First, it's got a payback of under 3 years on an almost $3.2 billion CapEx. You're looking at the first 5 years, 450 million pounds of copper cathode a year. And I also -- I mean that would be $2.8 billion, and you'll be looking at $2.1 billion gross profit. I mean it's a huge enterprise. And you look -- it's on a large property package where we found other porphyry targets that we want to explore. So we're looking 55 years, it could be, maybe 70, could be 100. They're deep rooted, but it's -- I'm particularly drawn to it because 4 or 5 years ago, brought in an architect who's considered the Steve Jobs of the green living building space. and saying, how do we change the public's negative impression of mining? What do we have to do? It has to be more than words. It has to be action. And so it was designing a mine that if you were to compare it to a conventional copper mine that produces a concentrate of a comparable size, this -- the design for this mine, it would use less than 1/4 of the water, it would emit 1/10 the carbon. It would have no tailings that would threaten downstream communities. It would be powered 100% by renewable energy. This is a model for mining going in the future, and we have to get the world to take out those pictures they have in their minds of what mining was 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago and understand that the industry is much more responsible and a much better steward of the environment today than it was back then. And the other thing people have to understand is that everything around us, modern civilization is dependent on what comes out of the ground. And if you can't get the social license to build a mine, this is going to disappear. That's why we want to move that forward.

Well said. Unless anyone thinks, including you Ian, that Ian is getting off easy so far. Don't worry, I'm coming for him. I'm coming for him. We'll loop back around. But I didn't -- that's going to temporarily move on from Los Azules. I mentioned off the top, obviously, we're sitting here with Rob McEwen, he's still the gold guy, even though now he is becoming the copper guy. I want to get your take, Rob. All those years saying where gold was going to go, then it happened. What made it? What were some of those fundamental drivers that are at play in the gold market right now. And then we'll start talking a little bit about the McEwen Gold operations.

If you're a student of history, economic history, you can see that when governments are printing large amounts of money, and they're taking on lots of debt, they're debating the currency. What we have in our wallets, the fiat currency. And that is -- you can go through a millennium and find all sorts of examples of that happening. And what we're seeing is governments around the world accumulating a lot of debt. They're very lax in their monetary controls and then you get a war someplace that gets even heated further. People are going to go to hard money. You're looking at central banks buying at a rate we haven't seen in several decades. You have major central banks picking up gold at a very quick rate. In fact, gold is now a larger asset in many of the central banks than their U.S. treasuries. They don't trust the dollar. They shouldn't trust the Canadian dollar, but we're a commodity country. So maybe it'll buoy up. And if our government ever gets their act together, maybe we'll have more mines. Our exports will get higher. And our inflation will drop as a result of a stronger currency, but I see gold going higher, right now it's just floating around. I can see the next stop, but could drop a bit more, but up to 7,500. And then beyond that, I'll go to Peter Schiff and Pierre Lassonde and they're in their $10,000 and $20,000 numbers.

Okay. And I think we have a few slides a little bit later on that we'll give some data around the thesis.

I mean I look at Gold. I have a large holding of gold bullion and I view that as liquidity. You can borrow against it if you want. If you need liquidity, you can sell it in 2 days. It's not like a house where you're waiting for something to sell. And you don't have to give an insider report when you sell it. Not that I have 10% of the gold hoard in the world, but...

Not yet anyway. All right. Let's bring in Ian, Executive Vice Chairman of McEwen. McEwen has stated that a lot of the growth should be -- being funded from gold operations. What can you tell investors here today about how that's going to work? And what kind of confidence can you give them in the strategy?

Right. Well, first off, I'm a big believer, almost a religion, you do not issue shares. The last company that I was running. We had the smallest share count of any gold mining company in the world, and that accelerated the share price. And I think -- what you see in the mining industry is a lot of vanity projects where shares issue it without a lot of regard for the shareholders that own the company. When we look at McEwen and you look at the gold price today, obviously, it's the gold price that's driving the cash flow right now. And we've had some recent examples of our San Jose mine issuing $58 million to us so far in 2026. Silver has actually been the largest change in that operation. For our 100% owned mines, we're looking at about $80 million of free cash flow this year. And we have between cash and securities, about $100 million on the balance sheet. You have to kind of build in a buffer, right? Like how are you going to build out about $0.5 billion in CapEx over the next 5 years. And so one of the things we have been looking at is in our Mexico operation, it's a $30 million CapEx to build that starting in the second half. We're comfortable bringing on a little bit of debt and mostly because it's a quick payback period. You're looking at about a 9-, 10-month payback period, so we can bring on the debt without having to use our existing balance sheet. But we've also been discussing we have some, what I would call, noncore assets within the company that we would consider selling. So none of them that would affect our production profile. And I should say that we have a royalty on Los Azules that we consider quite core, so we would not sell that as well. But we want to have those in place as a buffer because there's no point growing the market cap of the company if the share price doesn't follow, right? There's no use having 300,000 ounces of production if your share price went nowhere.

Yes. And I think. To wrap our minds around it because there is a lot going on with the gold operations, right? You have Black Fox in Timmins, Tartan in Manitoba. You mentioned Mexico, Phoenix and El Gallo, Gold Bar in Nevada. 50% in Argentina. What is operationally looking at that portfolio, what's the biggest lever you could pull operationally to really kind of get this -- the market impact that you're talking about.

Well, I think if you look at McEwen mining from an outsider, we've always been viewed as having these mines that are small, they're high cost, they're very short live. And I think that was actually a very accurate perception. And I think we've suffered because of an valuation standpoint. If you look at us versus our peers, we trade at a discount relative to the peer group. What we've been trying to do through exploration is transform the assets, exploration as well as bolt-on acquisitions around the existing mines. And if you look at Timmins, we're going to be putting out a new technical study, feasibility study looking at our Grey Fox operation. So we're going from a very short life of 4 to 5 years to what we think is going to be a decade, into possibly 2 decades of production. If you look at Mexico, that was an asset that nobody was giving value for. We purchased a mill there. We're going to be beginning construction and we're going to be putting out a new resource base, and we see a situation there where that could run for 20 years when you look at Phase I and Phase II. And if you look at what we're doing in Gold Bar, we have a very short life right now 4 years. We've come out with new resource estimates for the windfall lookout deposit and then we're coming in with a third. So we're trying to move these 4, we're trying to not only increase production but expand the mine life and hopefully have our costs come down to closer to the industry average. And I think if we're able to execute on all that plan without the share issuances I think that's what you're going to see as the biggest lever is our ability to execute on the plan, and these are not new builds. Like these are either reactivation of existing mines or their extensions of our current operations. So I think inherently, there's a lot of advantages and your ability to execute when you're not doing something from scratch.

And we should say, I mean, you're sitting already globally, I think, almost 6 million -- close to 6 million ounces, right, including inferred measured indicators. So it's not -- it's a pretty good base to be building up on. Can we call up some slides. I think we have -- we're going to get into the gold price. And I want to bring it over to Rob. Yes, but I got a question for you before I -- do you want to set it up?

You can ask questions.

Thank you. I wanted to be a little bit tough on you now. I've been tougher on Ian and Mike. But for you, you have this big run-up in the gold price. MUX has done well, but do you think it's done as well as it should? Do you think that the gold in the portfolio is being reflected in the share price? And if not, what's going on?

It isn't. It isn't. It's been our Achilles heel. It needs consistency. It fluctuates too much and we have to make guidance. And over the past several years, we've had difficulty achieving guidance. Once we achieve that, and we seem to be on that course now, then I think it picks up. This is just looking from last year, our annual meeting how we performed since last year relative to gold, copper silver, the GDX, GDXJ. And we've outperformed all of them. So that was -- yes, we're up 120% in that period. If you look longer term, back to when we closed the first financing not to fund Los Azules, we're up 600% and again, outperformed all of that. I mean you can look at the Dow, we're 10x what the Dow has done in that period. But that was helped by getting the global players I mentioned earlier on coming into the copper project and suddenly saying, hey, you've got a big copper project there. And the inconsistency of our gold operations in my mind, obscured the value of the copper. So now the copper is being recognized as we get the gold assets running the way, then we'll go back to outperforming our peers in the gold space, which we -- was our history, coming out of Gold Corp and early on in the life of US Gold. And what could it be worth? There are 3 parts. There's McEwen Copper. There's a royalty portfolio. There's a big royalty sitting in -- on our copper projects. It's 1.25%, it would be a big cash flow generator -- will be, when Mike gets his mine up and running. But this is just looking at -- we were $9.46 last year at the annual meeting. And this year, we're -- last night, we closed at $20. Those are U.S. dollars, real dollars. And you can see where we see some estimates. And this is just a copper price. And when copper can buy an ounce of gold for 200 pounds, buys an ounce gold, copper is expensive. Right now, it takes 700 pounds. And the average is 400. So we get down there. I think there's a lot of room on the upside both for copper and gold.

Ian, let's bring it to you. Any other factors that -- when you think about hitting, I mean, everyone that runs a company I think there's some hidden value there that the market is totally missing. What's the hidden value in the market?

I'm a little biased because I was previously running a royalty company. So when I look at McEwen Mining, I always thought that the royalty on Los Azules was not being recognized within the portfolio. And one way of looking at it is it's almost like bringing on a new mine based on today's copper price, that royalty should generate about USD 30 million per year. And initially, there's a 22-year life. Rob has spoken about with the Nuton technology or if we decide to build a mill, you're looking at a 55-year life. There's additional resources that could see it go much longer. Is it 70 years? Is it 100 years. If you look at the first 22 years of reserves, it's $0.5 billion of free cash flow that would accrue to McEwen Inc. If you look at the 55-year plan for the mine that's close to $1 billion of cash flow. And I bring this up because the most famous royalty in the world was Franco-Nevada's on Goldstrike. And when they sold to Newmont in the late '90s that had generated approximately $1 billion of cash flow to Franco and that created a $3 billion company. And I don't think anybody is looking at this asset and if you look at Franco and Wheaton right now and the cost that they have to pay to create these large new royalties because everything that's out there that was already created has been purchased. So they have to recreate new royalties and I look at Los Azules and there's very few royalties that you could buy that could run for almost a century. And I think those are very rare in the market space, and I think it will ultimately be worth -- if I had to have one asset personally, I would take the royalty from the company.

It's a strong point. And I like that it's a nice, simple answer. One could argue that the structure of McEwen isn't always simple. We just got into it. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of smaller gold mines, you have one of the biggest copper developments. Is it too -- is the structure too complicated, Rob? Is that also a factor maybe that's complicating the market valuation?

It might be a factor. I don't see it as that. I feel I'm using a similar playbook to what I use to develop Gold Corp. And that was by underappreciated assets and work on getting them operating better, then consolidate them and create a larger organization. I mean we went from $50 million to $8 billion. And I think we have assets that can drive a lot of value. I don't know if it's in there. There's a graph I missed. But I just wanted to show one -- there, this is a sensitivity of Los Azules to the price of copper. A 10% move in the price of copper generates $1 billion change in the net present value. So we did the feasibility study at $4.35 a pound, and the NPV was $2.94 billion. Today, the copper price was -- I think it was $6.30 or something. So if you go down here and look at $6.09, you've got a 72% gross margin. Our 46% ownership is $3.3 billion based on that net present value. And it's got huge leverage. If the copper price ever doubled from when we did the feasibility, you're looking at $13 billion. This has got incredible leverage. So you look at it and say, I was blessed having a world-class asset we discovered in Red Lake when we were building Gold Corp. And here, we have another world-class asset. And so you have to look through some of that to see it. But I think it will become much clearer as we do the IPO, and that gets reflected as the gold assets move along and have become more consistent and we have our growth plans, we're realizing that, then the value will grow. And in this industry, you have to be patient. There are setbacks. There's -- it's cyclical. And I found it's time.

The IPO does a lot to simplify the structure, of course. For sure. Okay. We've covered hitting guidance, the execution, all that. I love the highlight on the big royalty. And for Rob and Ian, anything else that you think can really drive the stock price, close this valuation gap in the next -- in the near term for the rest of 2026.

Gold price.

Sensitivity to gold and copper prices, clearly. Anything else?

Yes, I think you're looking at the McEwen Copper IPO should highlight that it's worth a lot more than what we're carrying it on our balance sheet for us. I would say that's one. And I think you're seeing on the gold side, we should have the stock mine producing in the second half of this year. The construction of El Gallo should be happening. And I think that's going to -- you're going to start to see the precious metal operations starting to make its turn. This should be the low.

Okay. Well, that's exciting stuff, then. Michael, let's get you back in the conversation. So let these gold guys talk their gold, let's bring it back to copper and like move into a bit of forecasting. Everything that I see and that we all see is forecasting, when you look at the supply and demand fundamentals going out to 2035, it's pretty bullish case for copper, most now predicting a 30% deficit in copper production by 2035. How are you reading it? What's your forecast look like? What's going on in the copper?

Yes. So I mean, it depends a little bit what we believe. But I mean, generally speaking, all the forecasting houses are foreseeing significant copper shortages to 2035 to 2050. So if you just look at 2035, as if the 5 biggest copper mines in the world would be switched off, yes. And that obviously creates a very interesting price scenario for copper. There is -- I would say there's certain sensitivity in terms of -- on the demand side to price, but they're certainly on the supply side because bringing on a new mine takes 15, 20, in some cases, I mean, El Pachon, another very big mine in the same province -- a project in the same province as us was discovered 60 years ago. It's sitting there for 60 years. So we have a project that can be developed very, very quickly. It can be brought online very, very quickly. In a time frame where we think there will be significant copper demand. Copper demand driven by urbanization. I mean, yes, there is some, I would say, slowing down in China, but then India is picking up significantly. And on the other hand, what we see is the electrification of vehicles has developed maybe less strong than the automotive industry thought, but it's still the way to go. And all of a sudden, you have this huge AI boom. And it's not only the AI data centers. If you look into the forecast, people start thinking about, okay, how much cable is in a data center, but it's not about that. A data center in today's world is not calculated in TeraFLOPS in floating operations per second, it's calculated in gigawatts in electricity use. And somebody has to bring the cable with all that electricity and that electricity needs to be generated, whether it's nuclear, whether it's hydro, whether it's wind, whether it's solar, everything needs copper and need significant amount of copper. So I think that over the next decade, we continue to see a shortage of copper. There are always people that say, well, we have lots of projects, but it's very difficult to permit a project. In some jurisdictions, you think you should be moving fast, but you're not and as Rob said. I mean, our project is permitted, so we can move and we can move in a time when we think there is a significant copper shortage existing in the market.

Excellent. I mean, AI data centers, it's 10x the uses of copper from what I've seeing. And I always think the other demand driver, I'm a Stanley Kubrick fan, the movie Full Metal Jacket, right? Full Metal Jacket refers to the copper that goes around, I need to get more of it, but the copper that goes around the large bullets that are used in military. So the military applications for copper as well is huge. So we are seeing massive drivers here just as like Grasberg and the big mines in Chile have come down, yes. Yes, very strong stuff. Okay. Let's move on to -- from the far-flung places of the world that produce the copper that we need to Canada. Rob, you're wearing your order of Canada pin, you are someone that people listen to when it comes to talking about Canada. So what are your feelings about how the Canadian government is certainly starting to say the right things about mine development and the importance of critical minerals, are you a happy camper as a Canadian that is one of our great mine builders in this country? What's your read, Canadian government, Canadian policy for the industry?

I'm not a happy camper. If you look at our country, we have so much potential. And yet our biggest exports right now, our talented youth and successful individuals. And you have to ask the question, why? Why are we criticizing pension funds for investing outside the country? Shouldn't we be asking why is it more attractive to invest outside the country than our own country when we have all this potential. What do we have to change? And I listened to our Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, and I thought he was going to talk about all the good things that were going to happen. In the first 10 minutes, he had his elbows out like this. so we're just going to go into the boards with the Americans. And I said, come on, you got to reconcile with this. And I look at it and go, in 1975, on a very appropriate day, April Fool's Day, our government moved from metric, from Imperial measure to metric, with the express purpose of expanding our export markets because more people on metric than Imperial measure. So here we are, 56 years later and the same government party is saying, we've got to go around and get away from our dependence on the U.S. It only takes 75% of our exports, and I'm going, come on, the first rule in Investor Relations, customer is always right. You don't run down to Washington and punch that customer in the nose and expect them to do nothing. What you go down there and say, what could we improve? How do we reconcile the relationship that's so important to this country rather than fighting and saying -- you just don't do that. The words are there. We're a superpower. We're an energy superpower, we're a natural resource superpower. Where are the pipelines? Where are they going east? Where are they going West? Where are they going north? Where are the permits being given? Have we got rid of the regulations to the degree that speeds up investment in this country? Because that's what we need. We need more exports. We need more exports to get the Canadian dollar stronger so that everything we're bringing in keeps our cost of living lower, but they're not addressing that, and they need to in my mind.

And we were talking earlier, you mentioned gold is now Canada's second biggest export. It should deserve a little more credit from the government, you would think, is it?

Absolutely. I mean it's right behind oil. And those are the 2 things. They didn't like mining, the last government, and they didn't like oil and gas. And the fact is the world doesn't work without oil and gas. And mining is a big -- there's a big economic multiplier in society. There is secondary and tertiary industries. It's high-paying jobs. It's not a factory that can be closed, the deposit might run out, but you can't take that deposit and take it to a different country.

Wonderful. Okay. I do want to get to investor questions, we have a lot here. But before I do, while I still have Rob on a hot seat, it's rare that you get this opportunity. One more for you, Rob. What is your most expensive lesson that you've learned in your career? And if you could bring it into applications to the current situation, that would be, I think, useful to the audience.

It's going to take a while. When I was 10 and 11, my father who was in the investment industry had me charting stocks. So when I was 12, I made my first investment and it was a glorious investment in the space of a couple of years, the stock -- I invested $200. I'd done a job and my dad said, what are you going to do with that? Sir, I'm going to put it in the bank. No, you should put it in the market. Okay. So in the course of 2 years, the stock I bought split 2 for 1 and then split 3 for 1, and that $200 became $1,800. And I thought, wow, this is how the stock market works. Well, I just put some more money in there and hey, it's not supposed to become 1/10 of what I put in. So it's the cyclical nature of the market. And mining is a very cyclical part of the market, and you want to watch when you come in and go out. So one was a cautionary tale about the market. The other would be, have you hired the right people because you can get way off track if the wrong people are sitting in a job that you can't move ahead. And I think the industry is very resistant to technology, and we have to embrace it. I don't know if anyone saw the cover of The Economists that just came out this week and had a picture of a solitary soldier standing and above whom was a swarm of drones. And I looked at that and said, this is what AI is going to do to business if we don't get on top of it, it's just going to come in so fast and overpowering businesses that do not embrace it and understand its power, are going to be decimated. It's just -- it's a very powerful tool. And I mean it's addictive. It keeps asking you what you want. And it keeps -- it's going into the world and all the knowledge in the world with all its biases. But you can pull information out that you can plan. And as you hear stories and say there's going to be a single person that creates a $1 trillion company using AI. Maybe that's fantasy, maybe that's like the $5,000 goal I called in 2010. But it's going to happen.

If you stick to it long enough, it will happen. But the challenge being for business leaders, how do we get our employees to embrace something that they feel threatens their position sometimes. I think that's a challenge we're all trying to grapple with. But if they don't, we're going to get left behind. Great stuff. Really thankful for that. Rob, Ian and Michael. Now I'm going to come into the shareholders' questions and see, maybe they're even tougher. I don't know. Let's see what we got. Tara, thank you for providing these. I think these were submitted in the -- today and yesterday, I think over the course of the last few days. First one here comes, we're going to bring this one to Ian, I think, from the looks of this. Production has repeatedly missed -- guys, it's a tough one, sorry, Ian. Production has repeatedly missed guidance in recent years, what specific operational management changes have been implemented to ensure the 2026 guidance is going to be met rather than adjusted downward again? We have covered this, but let's hammer it home.

I will go through it fairly quickly then. One of the things, if we look at it from our guidance perspective, we did have to downgrade guidance last year in terms of production and increase the cost. And no investor wants to see you do that twice. So one of the things is when we're forecasting, I think you've seen like the teams at site have been more conservative in terms of the numbers that they're projecting. So that's one. Two, we've added a fair bit of training to both of our sites in Timmins and Nevada trying to say how can we be more efficient to ensure that we can execute on the numbers that we're actually delivering. And then third is trying to figure out what has gone wrong. Is there a specific reason? Can we get on top of it? Is it a fatal flaw? Is it something that we've just misjudged. And so we're trying to tackle it on a few fronts to ensure that we don't disappoint the shareholders because if we can't execute on a daily basis, which confidence are you going to have -- you can build these gold mines and then build a copper mine. So you have to instill that confidence from the day-to-day operations to the large build.

Okay. Well handled. So let's stay with you because you did handle that one well because there's another one for you. I'll try and read it in the tone that I think that it was written in. If the gold price was to fall back to $3,000 per ounce. What's the plan?

Close up shop. No, just kidding. No, I think, first of all, stock is halfway built. So that's going to be completed with the existing treasury. El Gallo is a very small CapEx project. If gold was to fall back then you have to start looking at where are the highest return projects in the company, where are the CapEx where it's manageable. We're not looking to build every mine at the same time. So we're doing this in a phased approach where if the gold price was to pull back, we're not going to just go ahead, issue the shares and there's an old Warren Buffett quote, right? You don't ask a barber if you need a haircut. You don't ask an engineer if you need to build a mine because usually the answer is yes. And I apologize to our engineering team that is here. But it's one of the things where you have to take a bit of a pragmatic approach and say, okay, well, is something better to be deferred rather than just being pushed ahead. But we are moving in phases. I think that if that was to fall back, we wouldn't just issue a bunch of shares to see the growth.

Right. Because their follow-up was, would you go ahead and dilute the shares. So there you go, very proactive answer to that. Next one. S&P 500 Gold years ago -- now this one's for Rob, I think he's speaking to Rob on this. Years ago, Rob, you spoke about building McEwen into a company that could one day qualify for inclusion in the S&P 500. Is that still part of your long-term vision? And what would need to happen between now and then to make that a realistic outcome?

It's still a goal. And just recently, we were -- I guess, last week, we saw that we were put on the preliminary list to be included in the Russell 2000 Index. So that's preliminary. And on the 26th of this month, we'll know if we're on it. So that's marching.

That's a step in that direction now.

A step in that direction. With the IPO, with the growth in our gold development projects, we're moving much closer to that.

Okay.

So the goal remains there.

Okay. There you go. And marching right along. If McEwen Copper ultimately proceeds with an IPO, how are you thinking about participation by existing shareholders? That's a good one.

We welcome them. They're very welcome. If they want. They can be on the President's list to be insured they're in there.

Okay. Okay. Now next one, would accredited investors have an opportunity to participate directly in the offering?

Same question.

Same thing. Yes, same answer.

Same answer.

Slightly different question, same answer. Which milestones should investors watch over the next 12 months to gauge whether the strategy is on track? For Ian or for Rob.

IPO, the construction, there's a pre-feasibility study coming out later this week for Grey Fox. We're building -- there's a ramp going down up at stock. We're looking -- we've -- as Ian said earlier on, we bought a couple of companies, exploration companies that are adjacent to our existing operations where we feel as we develop those, it will extend the life of our operations. There are a couple of wildcat areas where we're exploring. We have a property sitting in Nevada that's just below Cortez Hills, which is Nevada Gold's large property. It's never really been tested to depth. It's got the same structure and rock. So we're putting some holes down there. I mean if there's 50 million ounces sitting right next door to us, if you clip a corner of that, that would be exciting. So there's some speculative aspects of which could accelerate it.

That's some fun stuff. So agreed to lead, those will make some great stories for the Northern Miner. So let's hope you hit something there. How much ownership does McEwen Inc. ultimately expect to retain in Los Azules?

Unchanged if we get $100 a share.

Right. We should say so, McEwen owns 46% of McEwen Copper, so that's the current.

Yes. It's going to depend on the price of the IPO.

Yes. Okay. So that is to be determined in some ways. What are the biggest execution risks to achieving 2030 production targets? So that comes back to you, Ian.

First of all, the gold price. If the gold price falls below $4,000, the execution becomes less and less likely. I should say you pull back on some of that growth. And I think the second thing is you're going to be putting out CapEx numbers. And can you meet that? The industry rarely comes at CapEx below what they have stated. So if you're going to see a lot of inflation, if we're wrong in our estimates, I think that's a significant risk. The operations can deliver the cash flow, but if you missed on your spending, and you're probably in jeopardy as well.

Right. Right. You got to watch both sides of it. If we took the initial reported all-in sustaining costs of the different mines and compare the percentage change in ensuing years, wrap your heads around this, how would it compare to the change in price of underlying metals? Wow, I don't know, Ian, you want to take a stab?

Yes, I would. So obviously, cost and industry are going up for every company. Where we're seeing some relief is at our San Jose mine. They've changed the mining method. They've increased the mill so they're able to gain economies of scale that we've actually seen the cost at San Jose year-over-year decline. And we have seen the cost of our other operations go up. When you blend them together, our costs have actually been flat year-over-year for the first quarter. We've seen gold prices have gone up by 70%, we've produced a little bit more gold this year than what we did last year. So you see margins expand by 70% because of the factor of the gold price. Overall, the costs have stayed the same. But that will be an ongoing challenge going forward is keeping on those costs because it's something that people always assume that if the costs are going up, everyone who's running a mine must be incompetent, right, how do costs go up, people don't realize a lot of it is currency. You report in U.S. dollars, but if you're operating in Canadian dollars or in Mexican pesos, if those currencies are strengthening in value relative to the U.S. dollar, even if nothing has changed your cost structure will go up when you report back in U.S. dollars. And just like on the reverse side, when the gold price was going down in 2016, everybody who's running a major mining company said, well, we're getting our cost down because the Canadian dollar was weakening relative to the U.S. dollar but everyone makes it sound like they're the superstar and there's something that they're doing operationally when a lot of it is currency driven.

Yes, it cuts both ways. That's a great point to make. And then we do have the little issue of a certain war in Iran and an oil prices and input costs there. So imagine that factors in. Do we -- I believe there was still the opportunity for other questions to come in. Tara or Casper, do we have -- we're okay because that would be the last one that was submitted. Okay. So we're good. Please join me in thanking our esteemed panel here for your forthright straightforward answer. Much appreciate it, gentlemen.

Thank you, Anthony.

Thank you so much.