Ivanhoe Mines Ltd

TSX:IVN

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ivanhoe Mines Earnings Call Q4 and Annual Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, February 20, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matthew Keevil, Director of Investor Relations with Ivanhoe. Please go ahead.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Ivanhoe Mines Fourth Quarter and Annual Financial Results Conference Call. As the operator mentioned, this is Matthew Keevil, and I'm the Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications with Ivanhoe Mines, here in not so sunny Vancouver.

On the call today from Ivanhoe Mines, we have Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Robert Friedland; President, Marna Cloete; Chief Financial Officer, David Van Heerden; Chief Operating Officer, Mark Farren; and Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alex Pickard. We will finish today's event with a question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions] Do please contact our Investor Relations team directly if your question is not addressed during the call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in our February 19 news release as well as on SEDAR+ and at www.ivanhoemines.com. It is now my pleasure to introduce Ivanhoe Mines' Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Robert Friedland, for opening remarks. Please go ahead, Robert.

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

Thank you, everyone, and greetings from California where we're on route to a major mining convocation in Miami, Florida. This is a great pleasure to present our annual results and all of the efforts, which are the result of the efforts of over 30,000 people working at Kamoa-Kakula and our other operations. And with that, in respect of this fantastic year, I'd like to turn this over to Martie, and he'll continue. Thank you.

[Martie Cloete, executive]

Thank you, Robert. That was brief and welcome, everyone. In the background is a photo of our newly constructed smelter, the largest in Africa and one of the largest of its kind in the world with a capacity of 500,000 tonnes of blister anode. It's currently being commissioned and with heat up -- we anticipate to heat it up within the next 2 months or so.

Next slide, please. We had a very busy year in 2024. We completed the Phase 3 project, which included an additional 5 million tonne per annum concentrator, and we are already putting plans in place to increase the design capacity and recoveries of that plant. We also opened up additional mining footprints at Kamoa 1 and Kamoa 2 together with Kansoko to feed this plant, and this enabled us to produce over 437,000 tonnes of copper for the year.

And we have set our guidance for 2025 between 520,000 and 580,000 tonnes of copper with the aim to achieve in excess of 600,000 tonnes of copper from 2026 onwards once our optimization and debottlenecking projects are complete. We also completed the construction of the smelter that I mentioned earlier. And as I mentioned, that commissioning is underway.

We expect the smelter to contribute to our margins towards the latter part of this year with a reduction in our transport costs, sulfuric acid byproduct sales as well as a reduction in our taxes. From a cash flow perspective, Kamoa Copper generated over $3 billion in revenue and over $1.8 billion in EBITDA at an average C1 cash cost of $1.65 per pound of copper produced.

We also started production at Kipushi in the middle of 2024, and we reached commercial production in the fourth quarter. Guidance for zinc production is set between 180,000 to 240,000 tonnes of zinc in concentrate for 2025, and we want to achieve in excess of 250,000 tonnes of zinc in concentrate from 2026 onwards. It's been a busy week for our team. So earlier this week, we also published an updated independent Phase 2 and Phase 3 study for our Platreef mine in South Africa, and that sets the path for Ivanplats to become a world-scale lower-cost platinum-group-metal producer together with nickel and copper byproduct.

And in the Western Forelands, we have drilled in excess of 80,000 meters in 2024, and we are busy analyzing what all of this means, but more on that later. But next slide, please. But the record we are probably the proudest of is the one that's contained on this slide. As you can see, we trend well below the industry average in terms of our total recordable injury frequency rate, and this is across the group. This is extremely remarkable if you take the growth of our company together with the amount of construction and expansion projects that our staff have worked on. And you can see some great statistics specifically around our project teams at the bottom of the slide.

On the next slide, we are beavering away at compiling our 2024 sustainability report. We plan to publish that probably in mid-April. And a few key highlights for the year is contained on this slide. Our local workforce is over 90%, of which 10% is female. And at Ivanplats, we have a 30% female ratio. That's quite significant in the African context. We've concluded a number of assessments, including a group-wide Scope 3 assessment, a human rights assessment at both Platreef and Kipushi, and we've updated our human rights assessment at Kamoa. And we're also busy with our Global Industry Standards on Tailings Management assessment at both Platreef and Kipushi.

We move on to the next slide. This is the first time I think we show our equity shareholders this slide, but this is a pie chart that shows the shared-value model in terms of what we share with the DRC in general over the life of mine of Kamoa-Kakula. And as you can see, as a result of the 20% shareholding in Kamoa-Kakula, of the benefits we will create over the life of this asset, 54% will flow through to the DRC. And we believe this is a very sustainable model of doing business in Africa.

It is true that conflict in the East is gaining momentum, and there is increasing pressure on the parties involved to engage in constructive dialogue to resolve this conflict. This conflict is still contained to the east of the country. It's in excess of 1,500 kilometers away from our operations outside of Kolwezi. We are, however, actively engaging with various stakeholders as this situation unfolds, and we have comprehensive contingency plans in place at both Kamoa and Kipushi. With that as an introduction, I will now hand over to David Van Heerden, our Chief Financial Officer, to take you through our financial results.

[David Van Heerden, executive]

Thank you, Marna, and good day to everybody joining the call today. If you can move over to the next slide. Kamoa-Kakula achieved its highest ever annual revenue of $3.1 billion in 2024, and that's at a realized copper price of $4.09 per pound. Revenue was up from $2.7 billion achieved in 2023. A record annual EBITDA of $1.8 billion was delivered at a very healthy margin of 58%. Kamoa-Kakula achieved record quarterly sales in Q4 2024 of $843 million at a realized price of $4.08 per pound with an EBITDA of $432 million for the quarter.

But both revenue and EBITDA would have been a fair bit higher in Q4 if Kamoa-Kakula had sold all the copper it produced and if we weren't impacted by the negative remeasurement of contract receivables, which was $52 million in Q4. Our quarter 4 revenue was artificially low due to the mark-to-market write-down of the 80,000 tonnes of provisionally priced copper tonnes sold at the end of December. This mark-to-market was at the quarterly bottom of $4.01, and that's really at the low point seen on the copper price graph on the right-hand side of your screen.

So we expect this to partially reverse in Q1 2025 and could easily be $20 million to $30 million or more given the current upward trajectory of the copper price. If all the copper on hand at the end of the quarter was sold in Q4, revenue for the quarter would have easily been more than $1 billion.

Next slide. On this slide, we focus on Kamoa-Kakula's unrivaled cash flow generation and the cash flow growth. 2024 concluded the fourth consecutive year of production, revenue and EBITDA growth at Kamoa-Kakula, and 2025 will again be a step-up. The 3 years EBITDA growth is shown on the left-hand side or 4 years EBITDA growth shown on the left-hand side with a graph showing the cash generated by operations on the right after excluding working capital movements, but net of tax and finance charges. This clearly illustrates that after significant investment in Phase 1, 2 and 3, Kamoa-Kakula has already returned $4.7 billion of cash in just 3.5 years.

We also show the income tax paid in sort of dashes to explain the relatively lower operating cash flow in 2024, but it's important to note that the $520 million income tax paid in 2024, more than half of that was provisional tax payments of this year's tax liability. So it's not really reflective of what the relative size will be in the future.

Moving to the next slide. Kamoa-Kakula's EBITDA waterfall illustrated on this slide just highlights that the 8% year-on-year EBITDA growth was driven principally by our increased production and the higher copper price throughout the year. Logistics charges was relatively lower year-on-year, while the remeasurement of provisioning price sales had a $59 million negative impact with most of that being in the fourth quarter of 2024, as I already noted.

Of the increase in costs in 2024, $71 million or 35% was driven by the power where generators were used in 2024 to protect production levels. Import power was also utilized in 2024, which is relatively more expensive than SNEL power in the DRC. Realization costs were 13% higher, driven by the higher year-on-year copper price, while the remaining relative increase related to mining with Phase 3 in ramp-up for part of the year and where we expect efficiencies to increase in the future.

Next slide, please. Yes. We've achieved our cash cost guidance for Kamoa-Kakula again with the 2024 cash cost ending at $1.65 per pound of payable copper produced. The fourth quarter cash cost was 4% higher than in Q3 2024 with more than half of that increase being attributable to the higher power costs as generator power was used to minimize the impact of the intermittent power on production. Of the $1.75 per pound cash cost in the fourth quarter, $0.22 related to power, and that's highlighted in the white -- shiny white boxes as part of our cash cost. That's $0.10 more than the $0.12 per pound in Q2 2024. But more importantly, production was maintained in the fourth quarter because of this additional spend.

As we look forward in the next slide, our cash cost guidance for 2025 is $1.65 to $1.85 per pound of payable copper, but we're at the peak. The smelter and the cheaper power from SNEL when Inga is complete will drive a decrease in our C1 cash cost, but the results of both those will only really have an impact from the second half of the year. The possible 3-month delay in starting the smelter was a consideration in setting the range, but Mark will discuss both the smelter and the progress on Inga later on in the presentation. Looking at the pie chart on the right, it's easy to say why the smelter will drive down our cash costs in the future as it will at minimum half our logistics charges, which equated to 27% of our C1 as we will only truck 50% of the current volumes. And then there's also, of course, the benefit of the sale of sulfuric acid, which the smelter will produce.

Looking at Kipushi for the first time, yes, Kipushi achieved commercial production in the fourth quarter of 2024, but was still in ramp-up. And yes, the quarter's results isn't really representative of what we expect from Kipushi in 2025. Kipushi sold 17,000 tonnes of zinc at a cash cost of $1.13 per pound of payable zinc. The Kipushi mine produced 32,000 tonnes of zinc in concentrate in the fourth quarter and 50,000 tonnes zinc for the year.

Cash costs during the quarter were higher than what is expected in 2025 due to it still being in ramp-up and the higher zinc production expected in 2025 as a result. So the 2025 cash cost guidance range is between $0.90 and $1 per pound of payable zinc.

If we move over to Ivanhoe's consolidated results on the next slide, Ivanhoe recognized normalized profit, which excludes the fair valuation of the convertible notes, which we redeemed mid-2024 of $386 million for 2024. This was at the same level as 2023 as we had higher share of profit from Kamoa-Kakula in 2024, but we increased exploration expenditure on the Western Forelands.

With the convertible notes redeemed in 2024, gone, thankfully, are the reason for us to differentiate between profit and normalized profit going forward. Our group level adjusted EBITDA was $624 million and an annual record for Ivanhoe. The principal driver of our adjusted EBITDA was again our share of EBITDA from Kamoa-Kakula, but Kipushi will start to contribute more meaningfully in 2025. With Kamoa-Kakula's Phase 3 now in full swing, the smelter expected to ramp up soon and even Platreef starting Phase 1 production in the fourth quarter of this year, the graphs will continue to grow.

Next slide. Our continued investment in growth was a key priority for 2024, and our expenditure at each of our projects was within our guidance. And we have reached the tail end of the Phase 3 and smelter spend at Kamoa-Kakula with the immediate focus turning to value-accretive projects like Project 95 and the throughput optimizations. At Platreef, we will continue to spend towards Phase 1 and the acceleration of Phase 2, while we are basically done spending on CapEx at Kipushi.

We have been able to arrange the project level facilities we required throughout the year. And as I will touch on later, had a very successful notes raise, enabling further growth funding. But we have reached the peak of our CapEx spending profile, which we can see on the next slide.

Yes. This illustrates quite nicely that it's the peak. The chart shows our pro rata attributable CapEx with 2025 and 2026 being the midpoint of our guidance ranges. And it's clear that while cash flow from operations will increase in the coming years, our need to reinvest that into CapEx is expected to reduce pretty quickly.

Next slide. Yes. We were very pleased with our inaugural senior unsecured notes offering that closed in January at 7.85%. As part of the process, we got credit ratings from Fitch and S&P, both notch better than the sovereign rating of the DRC, which would normally be the benchmark. We were able to achieve this improvement through highlighting the DRC's favorable repatriation regime that allows you to receive your revenue in an offshore account.

We also set ourselves a net leverage target of 1 through the cycle. And on the right-hand side of the screen is sort of how we guide of how our capital structure should be looked at. We include not only the debt at an Ivanhoe Mines level, but also our proportionate share of the Kamoa-Kakula joint venture debt. Looking at it this way, we had a low leverage ratio of 1.36 at the end of 2024, including -- and including the pro forma impact of the notes. But this will reduce below 1 pretty quickly with the EBITDA growth expected at Kamoa-Kakula and Kipushi imminently.

Yes, I'll now hand over to Alex Pickard, our Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, to commence the operations and project update presentation.

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Thank you very much, David. Yes, as David mentioned, I'll start with some of the production highlights at Kamoa-Kakula, and then I'll hand over to Mark Farren to tell you about some of the details in terms of the optimization projects we're working on. You can see another -- it's a really fantastic image here of the director with the smelter that was completed, at least the construction was completed in January.

I think we can go to the next slide. So we achieved another production record, a consecutive production record at Kamoa-Kakula of 437,000 tonnes of copper, which is an 11% year-on-year increase, and that's obviously in part due to the ramp-up of Phase 3 that happened in the second half of the year. I'd say as much as the team did fantastically well at Kamoa-Kakula to deliver this production, it does feel like the unfinished business to some extent, given that we were dealing with intermittent grid power through the year, we could have perhaps produced 40,000 tonnes additional copper or more had we had consistent grid power 100% of the time. So that really highlights why it's so important in terms of the power initiatives we're working on at the moment.

In terms of the recoveries, they were very close to 87% for the year, which is quite good considering that Phase 3 was in ramp-up. So you would have seen higher recoveries at Kakula, slightly lower recoveries at Phase 3. But actually, from this year onwards, we're basically hitting nameplate parameters at Phase 3 as well as Phase 1 and 2.

Marna mentioned the production guidance for the year, which is 550,000 tonnes of copper at the midpoint. And then from next year onwards, we are targeting 600,000 tonnes of copper or hopefully more as the power improvement projects and some of the low-hanging fruit growth initiatives such as Project 95 are completed.

Next slide, please. So we like this slide because it really gives a good impression of the Phase 3 ramp-up. So you can see that, that concentrator started in June, which again was ahead of schedule. So full credit to the project team for executing on that. And then it was also a very, very successful ramp-up in terms of reaching its nameplate and actually exceeding nameplate design parameters in terms of throughput in the third quarter. The month of December was a record at 47,000 tonnes. So you can see that we're already operating at about 550,000 tonnes annualized production, which is the midpoint of that guidance range.

I think on the next slide, I will hand over to Mark just to give a bit of an update on where we are with the smelter and the ramp-up there.

[Mark Farren, executive]

Thanks, Alex. If you look at the smelter in a picture, you don't really see the size of the complex. But I must tell you guys, it's the most complex project ever executed in the country in the DRC. It's a very modern complex. I think we've done very, very well to get it to where it is. And it's basically mechanically complete. We're busy with the C1, C2, C3 commissioning. We will probably move the heat up, which is actually basically your C4 feed or heat up in first feed into next quarter. And that's basically because we want to secure a stable -- a very stable source of power for that heat up.

And we did speak about power earlier. I will touch on power in a slide or 2, but it's important for the smelter itself to get stable power. So I think all in all, it's mechanically complete. We're ready to get going. It will start up this year. The ramp-up to 90% will take about 9 months generally. It's a bit complex with a lot of work that goes into getting it up to steady state. It's not like a concentrator or just a mine. To give you some idea, we've had to train more than 1,000 people to be ready to be able to run the smelter because there's nothing of its sort anywhere in the country. We've sent people overseas. We brought in people experts from all over the world. So it's a proper global team with a very strong owners team that we put in place to actually get this direct-to-blister smelter working.

So I think as a work in progress, something that we've done in the DRC, I'm very proud of this project. I think it's probably the crown on top of everything else that we've done. And as Marna and Alex say, it gives us an ability to not only drop costs enormously, but to add a lot of value by selling the asset and also contribute to the economy inside the country.

Thanks. If we can move to the next one. So power, we speak about power just about every time. And we spoke about losing 40,000 tonnes of copper last year. It's not the volume of power that we didn't have. It's more in stability. So in identifying the projects that we've been executing in the country, let me just talk a little bit about them. We did a big turbine basically replacement or complete rebuild of a power station, which was Mwadingusha. That was a few years ago, it executed, I think, from 2016 odd successfully and introduced that power into the grid.

And then we took on Inga, which is G25. Inga is about 1,500 kilometers away from the mine site. It generates power and then it gets transmitted through a direct current line and then it gets reconverted into alternating current at 220 megawatts. That project is not just as simple as putting in a new turbine. We've had to do a study across that grid, and we've identified a lot of other work, which needs to be executed to get the stability right.

So within this year, there will be a lot more work done and executed to make sure that not only do we execute G25, but we also stabilize the grid. So for those that are technical on the call, it's filter banks, it's synchronous compensators that are being upgraded at the moment and then a static compensator that's going in at Kolwezi, which is on its own a $40 million investment. So we're investing quite heavily in not only generation, but also getting the transmission and the stability in the grid sorted out at Inga.

We believe in addition to these measures in the country, we're pursuing other projects. So megawatts of solar we've already identified and shortlisted 2 30-megawatt projects, which will start execution. In other words, physical RPT order placement at the end of this month, and we're looking at the next 2. So as a minimum, we will have 60 megawatts of solar with backup batteries on site with a 95% availability. We'll have that in 18 months, between 12 and 18 months, basically, that generation will be available to us. We're investing, I think it will be in excess of $500 million when we finished with now to improve their base load and the stability of the network and also the generating capacity that I spoke about earlier.

And then in the short term, we're importing power from that southern grid. So from Zambia, from Mozambique and in the longer term, we'll be looking at Angola. And maybe if I can just talk a little bit about that. So there's steps in this too. At the moment, we have an allocation of 50 megawatts, mainly from Mozambique, while there's a drought in Zambia, and I think you people are aware that there's a drought and a shortage of water and the battling with the turbines.

But in that Southern grid, there is enough capacity to be able to import generation and reticulation has been the short-term bottleneck at the moment. So in that short-term bottleneck, we also have identified a project ourselves to be able to create a transmission network from Zambia all the way through to our own, what we call NRO, which is our power station, our network right within the footprint of the mine. So that would sort of get us off the dependency of the SNEL network or if there is another network, let's call it, where we can have our own power reticulated from wherever, generated from wherever, but through that line from Zambia into the DRC and on to our footprint.

And then longer term, Angola is worth mentioning. They have a generating capacity in excess of 303 gigawatts more than what they require. So it's really a matter of taking excess generation capacity and then moving that into the Southern grid. And the Southern grid, I mean Zambia down to -- all the way down to Mozambique through South Africa and then north to us in the DRC.

So those projects are all underway. And I think if you look at the big picture, we do unlock power in this year and in the longer term. And if you look at the graph on the right-hand side, you'll see that little star thing, which is basically your diesel generators peaking at about 200 megawatts and then staying flat. That capacity should become completely redundant with the planning that we've put in place to get imported power right, to get solar power working and then obviously, the work inside the country and then the longer-term network stability and the imports that we're creating for ourselves as well with dedicated lines.

We have a full project team behind power, my best people in our project team, our owners team working on power and all these different initiatives are being managed every single day to derisk power for us and enable us to grow. The green line says that we're going to about 400 megawatts as a requirement for the mine. That's basically Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3 and some of Phase 4. We want to be able to execute more projects over time and other projects will include, for example, the Western Forelands. So we're looking at all of that. We take it into consideration as we develop the mine. And everything we've done, if you look at our past and you look at us going forward, we've always had to do these things. We've always had to take on challenges and resolve them. And this is exactly the same. It's nothing different from anything else that we do. Thank you.

Next slide. And then just talking about the future a little bit. Project 95, which is basically taking our current recovery of Phase 1 and 2 from 87%, 88% to 95%. That project is well in execution. It will be complete at the end of this year, quarter 1 next year at the very latest, and that will give us an extra 7% copper without any additional cost or very little additional cost because remember, you're mining it, you're treating it and it's going to go straight to your top line, going straight to your revenue line. So I think that was a very good decision to do.

And then just below that, we're talking about Phase 3. I think Alex mentioned it or Marna mentioned it that we've just commissioned Phase 3 as a 5 million tonne operation. We believe with a little bit of tinkering, a little bit of upgrading it will be stable at 6.5 million tonnes, taking the complex currently -- the current complex, Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3 to about 17 million tonnes per annum. We want to do that quickly. It's not going to be expensive. And then we're also going to target some optimization on that plant to get the recoveries from the 88%, 89% to 92%. We believe that's very, very possible.

And then there is -- for everybody on the call, there is a Phase 4. There's definitely a Phase 4, and that will be over 20 million tonnes. When you look at it, if you add it, it's probably also a module of 6.5 million tonnes, which would take us to about 23 million tonnes. The timing of that and the cost of that, we're still working on. That will be out in quarter 2, but it is exciting. The results look excellent. And just maybe just out of interest, to get another phase in would be really capitalizing a concentrator and some development underground from the current infrastructure that's already been created.

So I don't believe we need to establish new mines to get up to the 20 million, 23 million tonnes per annum. And there's potentially an upside here where we can do something a bit early and early works that gets some tonnes for us, some copper tonnes for us early and then obviously, the fresh ore coming in when the ore reserves are in place. But we'll discuss that in detail in quarter 2. Thank you.

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Thanks, Mark. It's Alex Pickard again. So this is quite hot off the press. Yesterday, we announced landmark updated study results for Platreef's Phase 2 and Phase 3 expansions. And really, these studies show the pathway for Platreef to become not only the lowest cost precious metals and nickel and copper producer in the world, but also among the largest primary PGM producers in the world.

The studies -- so there's 2 studies. One is a feasibility study for our Phase 2 expansion. So that's up to a throughput rate of 4.1 million tonnes per annum. It includes the Phase 1, which is substantially built already, and Phase 1 will be starting up in Q4 of this year. Phase 2 will be coming a year earlier in 2027. And then the second study is building from that footprint to Phase 1 and 2, a scoping study for a third expansion, which can take place from 2030. And really at that sort of level, that's when you're making the most of the scale of the Platreef ore body underground and you get up to 1 million ounces and above of production.

I'll show you that on the next slide, where we have a schematic -- so you can see Phase 1 and Phase 2, which are covered by the feasibility study. The key milestones are the commissioning of the concentrator, which was completed in the middle of last year. So that will take place in Q4 of this year. And then the major milestone, and Mark will give you some of the project updates on these shafts, but the major milestone is coming in Q1 of next year, which is when we have Shaft #3 hoisting.

So that will basically increase our hoisting capacity by 4x. We'll have 5 million tonnes of total hoisting capacity. And what the chart shows is the buildup of the mining rate over time, which allows you to build a stockpile and basically bring on a Phase 2 concentrator, which is 3.3 million tonnes per annum in late 2027. So that's Phase 2. At that point in time, Platreef is producing around 450,000 ounces of the 4 precious metals, so platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold and then 16,000 tonnes of nickel and copper, quite a significant byproduct.

Then the next phase is really driven and dictated by the completion of shaft #2, which is also in progress. This is a 10-meter giant of the shaft. It will be one of the biggest shafts in Africa, if not the world. So that shaft will be ready for hoisting men and materials from the end of 2028 and then ready for hoisting ore and waste from 2029, which will really be the facilitator for the Phase 3 expansion, which is building 2 identical modules to Phase 2, so 3.3 million tonnes per annum each, which takes your total milling capacity up to the 10.7 million tonnes per annum. And at that level, you are producing over 1 million ounces of the 4 precious metals plus over 40,000 tonnes of nickel and copper. So you're one of the largest sulfide nickel producers in the world at that point in time.

And then also, this is basically a fraction of the overall resource footprint at Platreef. There is a huge amount of exploration potential. We haven't actually done any exploration drilling at Platreef in over 10 years, and we only really stopped because we had enough to build a multigenerational mine already.

The next slide shows some of the key financial highlights. I think what this really confirms is what we already knew about Platreef and it's why we are 100% committed to building Platreef and bringing it online. Number one, it's a very long-life asset. So on the basis of the reserves only, there's a 35-year mine life. On the basis of the PEA, there's still a 30-year mine life despite the fact that you are producing at a huge scale. It's also a very, very low-cost asset. And the reason for that is because you have bulk underground mining methods, it's a 30-meter thick ore body, and you also have the advantage of very large nickel and copper byproducts. So even though we've updated all of these numbers quite comprehensively, we still have an all-in sustaining cost of $700 per ounce for the feasibility study. And I would note that, that also includes the impact of the streaming transaction, which was not presented in our previous study.

And then in terms of CapEx remaining for Phase 1 and 2, it's $1.2 billion. There's a small sliver of CapEx to finish Phase 1 this year. And what we are planning to do over the course of the next year is arrange a financing facility for at least 50% of that CapEx, which we should hopefully have in place in 2026.

So in terms of the economic results, what you can see is that Platreef generates very strong margins through the cycle. We've used consensus prices here, but I think it's not too long ago in recent memory that palladium prices, for example, were more than double where they -- well, maybe triple where they are today. And that's the reason why we built this asset because it will make money at any price, but there will be years where Platreef will be maybe making even more than Kamoa-Kakula.

And then in terms of NPV and IRR, I think those numbers speak for themselves to build a very long life and very low-cost asset. I would just highlight for the PEA, one of the nice things about the PEA is that we've substantially overbuilt the infrastructure during Phase 1 and Phase 2. So the shaft # 2 is included in that $1.2 billion, which is why you only have about $800 million in expansion capital, which is basically building those 2 additional 3.3 million tonne concentrators on surface and building up your mining fleet. And you also have the opportunity to bring down your overall cash costs further, the larger that Platreef becomes. So I think those numbers for the larger PEA are quite outstanding.

This is putting the production levels into a benchmarking form. So you can see that the 4 million tonne feasibility study places Platreef as one of the largest PGM mines or primary PGM mines in the world. And then at the PEA scale, we will be, if not the biggest, certainly one of the top few PGM producers. And what you can also see here just in terms of the shaded area is the contribution that the nickel and copper make to the Platreef basket. So it's roughly 30% of the overall basket, which gives Platreef a nice diversification that the other mines don't have.

And then finally, just looking at the cost curve to give an impression of those margins. So you can see that even with all of the updated numbers and even with the inclusion of the stream, we are still projected to be the lowest cost primary PGM producer in the world. You can see the basket price overlying there. So clearly, there is still -- a lot of the industry is struggling to make money and certainly struggling to continue investing in sustaining CapEx at current spot prices, which is also one of the reasons why we are comfortable investing in this asset on a slightly countercyclical basis. I'll pass over to Mark just to give an update on the construction progress.

[Mark Farren, executive]

Thanks, Alex. Okay. So if you think about it, we had a ventilation shaft, which is shaft 1 that went through. We called it, I think, a bulk sample shaft that went down. And then we equipped it to get underground access to shaft #2, shaft #3 and shaft #4 may need to get to raise balls through. So that was actually very good. But if you also think about it, that one single shaft has been doing everything every single thing on the mine. It handles all the underground development, handles all the men and material and putting down LHDs and equipment every single day and the raisebore chips with the meters. So we really needed to get shaft #3 in place to be able to get something meaningful out of this footprint. And all of this stuff happens at about 1,000 meters below surface or 950 in terms of shaft #3.

So the Shaft 3 ventilation shaft we decided to remit, finish it and then equip it to hoist. And that's what Alex was talking about to be able to hoist 5 million-odd tonnes out of this footprint that we have created, while we're still waiting for Shaft #2.

And that -- the end of that work is within sight thank goodness. So by the end of this year, quarter 1 next year, we should be hoisting out of shaft #3, which I'm going to use the word unlocks. It unlocks the potential of this mine. And the differentiating factor between this mine and anything else is the ore body. The ore body is running at about 20 to 30 meters thick. The equivalent grades of other mines, they're running at about 1 meter mineralized, meter, maybe 1.5 meters. So it's going to be a mechanized, automated operation. And it will be the lowest cost producer. And unfortunately, it's going to displace some of the other mines in the longer term.

So where we are is finally some flipping lights at the end of the tunnel, which is not a train to get shaft #3 hoisting, which I'm aiming at the end of this year, quarter 1 next year at the latest, and then we can grow the production. So what it actually means is your Phase 1 is then completely derisked because there's no pressure on hoisting tonnes. And your shaft #2 and your Phase 2 can also go as fast as you like because you can handle the chips from Phase 2, which would then be the slip and line actually and the final sinking. And then you can ramp up seamlessly from, let's call it, Phase 1 and Phase 2, sort of in chunks that are chewable like we did at Kamoa, except to understand that the is down about 950 meters with 3 levels that you're operating. So it's slightly different. But once you're into the ore body, you can ramp up very quickly. Yes. Okay. Next slide.

[Martie Cloete, executive]

Yes, I'll take over here. So I think sometimes in order for us to look forward, we need to look back a bit. And this picture that you see in front of you is the way Kipushi looked back in 2023 after we cleared all the surface dilapidated infrastructure. Kipushi has been in the group since 2011, and it took a massive amount of effort to deepwater this mine and to upgrade the underground infrastructure. And then if we flip to the next slide, we can see what Kipushi looks like today. This is the plant at Kipushi. And Kipushi is really a world-class mine that can hold its own anywhere else in the world. So really a significant achievement.

We can flip to the next slide. Last year, we brought Kipushi into production. We inaugurated the mine. It was basically under care and maintenance for a period of 30 years. It took us a bit of time to ramp up, and we achieved commercial production in the fourth quarter. And our quarterly zinc production was in excess of 32,000 tonnes of zinc in concentrate at a grade of 29%. And we're working on increasing recovery and our grade achieved at Kipushi. And I'm hopeful that all of that will sort of unfold in this first quarter of the year as we continue with our growth projects. If I can maybe just ask you, Mark, to speak the audience through what we anticipate in terms of our growth projects at Kipushi over the next couple of months. And you can flip to the next slide.

[Mark Farren, executive]

Okay. So the guidance for this year is the 180,000 to 240,000 tonnes. There's a little bit of work. It's not big work, which is basically committed. It's really upgrading of pumps. It's a couple of clarifiers. There's some work on DMS, but there's nothing massive to be done. And there's still lots of, let's call it, kilowatts or megawatts, a small amount of megawatts left on the mill to be able to take the production up. And the number for me is to get it stable between like 250,000 and 300,000 tonnes of capacity of production per year of zinc.

That work is happening. The big steps are -- the milestones is really the first milestone is in May and then the second one is October. We also, for example, on this mine, of creating enough generating capacity for the rolling blackout issues if there are rolling blackout issues in parallel to us doing the stability work on the grid.

So by the end of this year, we'll have full redundancy with generators, although it's expensive. We will have full redundancy on the mine if we need it. I doubt very much that we're going to do it, that we're going to need it. But the debottlenecking stuff is going to give us, like I said, a nice increase without much work. Underground, the mine is excellent. The conditions are lovely. The ore body is very predictable. It's very easy to mine. We've got our aggregate, our cement aggregate backfill plant working. Everything is working.

So I don't see major issues here to get it stable, to get it operating beautifully. It's a very high-grade mine. I think we've disclosed many times that it's like a 31%, 33%, 35% zinc. Some of the months, we're going to mine 40% zinc as feed grades, where the next in the world, I think the next big mine is running at 7%. So we're absolutely in a very solid position at Kipushi to tweak the concentrator and keep the mine going really nicely.

We've looked at pyrite as a circuit, a new circuit. And the reason for that is because we need pyrite in our smelter at Kamoa. So the new smelter requires about 700 tonnes per month of pyrite, and we can get it from Kipushi at the right quality. So that circuit, I think we will commit to within this year and execute that project.

It adds some money, not that much, but in the context of Kipushi, it's meaningful money. So we're excited about, number one, ramping it up above nameplate, which we're doing. And the second thing is bringing in that pyrite circuit probably this year, beginning of next year, it will be in.

So I think all in all, Kipushi is managing C1 cash costs. We've got the right feed grades. We'll have the right volume levers to pull. It's a great mine. And if you guys want to come and visit it, come and have a look, it's modern, it's beautiful. It's a lovely mine, as Marna says. Thank you.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

And I think now moving over to exploration, Robert, I think you'll step in here for us.

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

Developing these giant ore bodies is very similar to the way you mean an elephant, one slice at a time. Kamoa-Kakula is a super giant elephant that has been correctly developed in a series of stages. And Mark mentioned the fourth stage, and in the distant future, there's a fifth stage and then there's the Western Forelands. But I don't know it has always grown through our exploration, our visionary exploration and looking for Tier 1 targets.

Right now, we have the first drill hole going into the Mokopane feeder. You can see this target area from our Platreef shaft is very close by. This is targeting what is one of the world's largest gravity anomalies. It's an enormous gravity anomaly, about 4 miles by 3 miles, roughly all void in shape. And nobody knows what it is. It's been known for years. Some of the best geologists in the world have called it the Mokopane feeder and the word feeder refers to as a potential source for the Bushveld complex. So after many years of work, we have acquired all of the farms that host the Mokopane feeder. We've run 2 generations of detailed gravity surveys. And last month, we started drilling. So that's exploration with large for an extremely large and enigmatic target. And I'm very happy to report for the first time that the drill is turning to the right, and we've begun drilling the Mokopane feeder.

In addition, we've looked at all of the African continent for more Western Foreland style sedimentary copper. And we are very enamored with the situation in Angola. As Mark mentioned, Angola is in a position to export up to 3,000 megawatts or 3 gigawatts of hydroelectric power. There's excess electricity in Angola. And given the visionary support of the G7 nations for the Lobito corridor, Angola has superb railroad infrastructure to the Port of Lobito. So there, you have power and rail and you have hidden under the Kalahari sands that blew in from the Kalahari Desert, the potential for Western Foreland style copper mineralization.

We have an enormous 100% owned landholding in Angola. And we will begin drilling that massive landholding in the April, May season as the seasonal rainfalls come to the end. We've seen some big rains now in Zambia and the southern part of the African grid really needs that rain. But as you can imagine, the rain that's good for filling those hydroelectric dams is not great for getting into a new exploration area. So when it dries out in April or May, this massive Angolan project can begin. And it's 100% owned by Ivanhoe Mines.

And then we've announced our old stomping grounds Kazakhstan, a country that we're very fond of. The largest sedimentary copper basin in the world is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That's why we went there in the first place in 1995 early and we were first. The second largest has been in Poland, but the Polish asset is getting deeper and older and is not as attractive to us as the massive unexplored sedimentary copper basin that exists in Central Kazakhstan, which hosts 3 of some of the largest copper mines in the world with other byproducts, including silver.

So these tend to be giant silver-bearing copper systems with other metals. And we've teamed up with a local partner. They're based in England, a private company that has top flight geologists. And we've acquired a very large land package of up to 16,000 square kilometers. I did have the privilege of meeting with the foreign minister of Kazakhstan at the invitation of the United States government a few years ago in New York. He encouraged us to come into the country and the previous iteration of Ivanhoe Mines developed gold assets that have been very successful in country and opening up a footprint in Kazakhstan with knowledgeable local partners who worked there for many years, shows that we can expand internationally, take our expertise in exploration and in mine development globally and continue with our ambition to build Ivanhoe Mines into a Tier 1 major global integrated major mining company.

Can we see the next slide, please? And opening soon at a theater near you, we're going to talk more about the Western Forelands. When you look at our earnings last year, a lot of people get cranky because we expensed about $100 million of exploration. We drilled themes, and we're going to continue drilling this year in the Western Forelands. We haven't said much about it publicly. But in the near future, we will be telling you more about what's been going on in the Western Forelands. We'll be explaining how much we spent, but we'll also be explaining what we're finding and what its impact could be on Ivanhoe Mines.

And as we prefer to talk about these things, not on conference calls, but in front of live audiences. So please get a ticket to these upcoming events, and we'll be seeing you soon to talk about the Western Forelands. Next slide, please.

So that really summarizes how we've been eating these elephants, one slice at a time. I want to thank all of the Congolese people who have been so dedicated to our efforts and the supportive governments in our local province in the Congo and [indiscernible] government, the people in the central government, the people of SNEL.

I want to thank Marna and her team of remarkable women that have done so much to establish a corporate culture that has a software component that is the best in the industry. We'd urge all of you to read all of our reports that are independently audited on the social work we do there, the fish farming, the agricultural development, education right through the university level in our schooling and the support of our major institutional shareholders that realize a super giant major mining company is not built overnight.

I want to thank everybody for their continuous support. They're going to be serving me for lunch as the keynote speaker on Monday at the Bank of Montreal Annual Mining Conference. We are also going to be going to the Bank of America in May in Barcelona, Spain. That's in a beautiful venue as well. And so we look forward to seeing the world's largest institutional investors who are so interested in the myriad of uses for the metals we produce. And we're going to explain what metals actually go into these data centers, what metals are actually required for artificial intelligence in these data centers, and you'll be surprised what metals go into these data centers besides copper, and all of them are produced by Ivanhoe Mines. So with that, I will turn this over to Matt Keevil. Matt will start fielding questions to anybody in the management team. Thank you so much.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

Thanks, Robert.

Yes, we'll now begin the question-and-answer session. I'll just, first and foremost, hand it back to the operator to proceed with any questions we have waiting on the phone line. And then pending time remaining, we'll look at the web for any questions on the web-based application. So operator, could you please proceed with fielding the questions we have waiting on the phone?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] First question on the line comes from Daniel Major at UBS.

[Daniel Major, analyst]

So first question, just wondering if you make any comment around your interaction with the government. Any commentary on the M23 Rebels sort of insurgency in the northeast of the country, whether that's having any impact on regional politics.

[Martie Cloete, executive]

I think our comments remain the same, as I said earlier during the presentation. It's definitely a situation that has escalated in terms of tension around the East. It is very far removed from our operations, but we do have on-site intelligence. We engage with local authorities. We engage with national authorities. We're tracking the situation. We're monitoring it. And obviously, we are hoping that it stays contained to the east and do not spill further into the country.

We do have full contingency plans in place. Should we need to put those into force, we have backup plans in place at both Kipushi and Kamoa. But obviously, it's not something that one wants for a country. One wants to have these sort of conflicts to be resolved through dialogue. And I think there's mounting pressure on the parties involved to engage in dialogue to try and settle this matter peacefully. And we hope that sanity will prevail and that we will get to a negotiated solution soon.

[Daniel Major, analyst]

Okay. Second question on Kamoa. I think when you provided the guidance for 2025, you mentioned the change in the mining method to more bulk mining. Can you give us a sense of how that's impacted the grade profile, not just this year, but over the next 2, 3 years? You mentioned peak production north of 600,000. How should we be thinking about how much north of 600,000 with the new grade profile? And a similar question on cash costs. I mean, I think you previously targeted somewhere around $1.20 or so once power is restored and you hit full production using the rail corridor. Is that still where the mine should be landing in terms of cash costs medium term?

[Mark Farren, executive]

I can take the mining method and then just comment and somebody can just add. So on the mining method itself, it's actually a breakthrough -- if you want to look at it anyway, it's actually a breakthrough. The previous method was drift and fill, basically taking one cut and then ramping up after fill onto another cut. And so it wasn't exactly the most efficient way of getting the ore body out. In this new method, we basically -- I need to actually show it to you in sequence, but you sort of develop to the end of the area and then you use what you call long-haul stoping, and that doesn't have to be that long. You still use whatever cutoff grade you've designed.

And because the ore body is bottom loaded, you use your cutoff grade to dictate how long your top holes are and your side holes are. And you basically then blast that and you do automated mining backwards. So it's remote control loading, it's modern, it's mechanized. It's typical long-haul methodology. And it allows you to do -- to get a lot more efficiencies out of your fleet. And it also happens to be a hell of a lot safer than what we had ramping up on top of fill into a hanging wall.

So all in all, let's put the mining method to be it. It's a fantastic ore body. That mining method works. It's more than tested. We're actually using it nicely. And we will apply that to everything else that we do, whether it be Kamoa, Kansoko, that whole area will be mined in exactly the same fashion and probably the Western Forelands.

What's quite interesting about this mining method is, let's say, for example, you want to choose a very low cut because you've seen thickness is either steep or it's thin. Then you can do your development and then do like a thin long-haul cut if you want to. So technically, it works well. It's slightly different to long haul -- typical long-haul stoping that you'll see elsewhere in the world, but it really works. It's efficient. And in terms of getting C1 cash cost down, this mining method is cheaper, much cheaper than, let's call it, the drift and fill development mining method.

The other work that's got to take place is really -- it's getting the smelter running, it's getting the logistics cost down. The mining cost will come down with the new method. And then obviously, the power, the power source, the power to get back to like clean power, hydropower, getting off the use of diesel generators. David pointed out that I think it's a $20 per pound impact on power if you're using the diesel mix that we use with the hydro. So longer term, we will bring the power cost down. And then the big picture stays intact. Very efficient mining, low-cost mining, bulk mining and efficiencies will be driven. I don't know, Marna, if you want to add?

[Martie Cloete, executive]

No, I think that covers it, Mark.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

The next question comes from Andrew Mikitchook at BMO Capital Markets.

[Andrew Mikitchook, analyst]

Thank you for a very comprehensive review here on the year-end. Can we just come back quickly to the power? And Mark, I think -- is it fair to say that the existing backup generation plus supplies from grid and imports, it sufficiently covers Phase 1, 2 and 3 or at least has minimal impact on Phase 1, 2 and 3 mining and processing itself and that the constraints currently or recently is more as to going forward on the next step with the smelter?

[Mark Farren, executive]

That's exactly right, Andrew. So Phase 1, 2 and 3, even with that, we had a fire on one of the generator areas. Even with that, we can run all 3 phases. We do run all 3 phases. Even if there's a blackout, we can run everything. We can run the mines, all the mines and we can run the 3 concentrators under any conditions. And that's why we made that decision. The big next step is obviously the smelter, getting a stable power source into that smelter area, so we can ramp up nicely because a smelter needs stable power. It's not really about the megawatts, it's about stability. And that work is ongoing. That will be in the next quarter, I guess.

[Andrew Mikitchook, analyst]

And the repair of the majority of the generators that were involved in the fire that's progressing as well?

[Mark Farren, executive]

Yes, it's going well. Between 6 -- you can work on 6 and 9 months, 6 months by the end of this year, quarter 1 at the very latest, everything will be restored. So I think we start handing over generators in September, October. Yes, September at the latest. October. But by October, the bulk of them will be restored and then there's a few other pieces of work that will carry on. But yes, within a year, everything -- 6 to 9 months, we should have everything running.

[Andrew Mikitchook, analyst]

And if I could indulge in one more question on exploration. It's good to see a ramp-up on various portions of the portfolio. I was wondering if there are any thoughts for Kipushi chasing some of the high-grade copper or defining some of the byproduct metals.

[Martie Cloete, executive]

Maybe I can just step in here. We have certain rights that we are entitled to under our revised joint venture agreement. And that basically is contained to what was included in our feasibility study that was published on Kipushi. So exploration outside of that area falls under the revised joint venture agreement and would be for the economic benefit of mainly Gécamines. But we are studying introducing a copper circuit, which we will negotiate with Gécamines and that would be copper that's contained within the current footprint area, but it's something that's still under review. So we are actively looking at additional income streams for Kipushi, but it would not include a bigger exploration program outside of the current footprint area at this point in time.

[Operator]

We have no further questions on the line. I'll turn the call back over to Matthew Keevil.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

Thanks very much, operator, and thank you, everyone, for attending today. We've already run a little bit over time. So we'll just wrap up the call here. I'd again like to thank you for joining us today and look forward to all the exciting things we'll be speaking about in 2025. And as Robert mentioned, we look forward to seeing everyone next week at the BMO Conference. So have a great day. And operator, you can wrap it up.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.