Atalaya Mining Copper SA

Atalaya Mining Copper SA

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Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptMarch 19, 2026

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Atalaya Mining 2025 Annual Results. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode.

Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session through the phone lines and instructions will follow at that time. I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded.

I will now hand over to the CEO of Atalaya Mining, Alberto Lavandeira, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.

Alberto Lavandeira

Hello, everybody. Hello, everyone.

Good morning. We are pleased to to re- to report our financial results for '25, which was a good year overall.

I have with me César Sánchez, CFO of the company, and I'm going to go directly to the presentation. In during the last year, we produced 51,000 tonnes of copper, which was just in the high range of our guidance, improved guidance.

That was produced at a cash cost of around $2.40 per pound, and with all-in sustaining cost of $2.90, which were both better than we ha- had guided. This resulted in a quite strong financial results, including EBITDA of €180 million and a free cash flow of over €100 million.

We ended up the year with €122 million in net cash on the balance sheet. As you remind or should note that this does not include the money that we raised in late January '26.

As a result of this good performance, our board has proposed a final dividend of 6.5 cents of euro per share, which I will discuss a little bit later in the presentation. At corporate level, we have some changes in the leadership at Rio Tinto, including a new general manager.

I should also remind everybody that we were added to the FTSE 250 Index following the the redomiciliation of of to Spain earlier this year. Since then, our liquidity has improved a lot, and and this is something that we have been promising and finally we delivered.

I will provide some updates of our projects later in the presentation, and and I will also provide a little bit of some some details of impairment that we recognized in our E-LIX project. I should also remind that we strengthened our board with addition of a new non-executive director with Mike Armitage, that followed the addition of Jane Sadowsky and Corina Faleafaga earlier in the year.

Looking at some sustainability highlights, I think we are showing here some key numbers. As we we take this quite seriously as part of our operating philosophy.

I think one of the key highlights that everybody sees when we arrive to our mine site at Rio Tinto is how good relations, very good relation that we have with our communities around Rio Tinto, with most of our workforce coming from the area, with 12 years with operation of with absolutely minimum incidents. I think it's something that we're really very proud of.

Some of the numbers shown there that show that our injury frequency rate in '25 have been slightly higher than previous year, something we are focusing, even if this means some of these incidents are very low let's say severity, of very low severity, but reality is that something that we take very seriously at the company, at the board level. Beyond that, we continue to work to be more efficient in the use of our water, something that normally is scarce in the south part of Spain, although this year we had a lot, and also the use of electricity and power, which has been consistently lowering through several initiatives in in the last year, besides the fact of of installing a a important solar plant that you can see in the background of this picture.

Going directly into the operational results of the the last quarter, we had announced these results in the previously in January. The mill performed very well.

Remember that this mill was designed for 15 million tonnes per year, has been running at over 16 million tonnes per year. The grades were lower than than the previous quarter, as expected, because we were pre-stripping in the higher-grade we were pre-stripping in the higher-grade of San Dionisio.

We were only mining the Cerro Colorado. Cerro Colorado has lower grades, but that's very clean ore, we we offset some of this lower grade with better recovery due to treating this this ore from from Cerro Colorado.

Even so, with this slightly lower predicted predicted recovery, due to the good copper prices and the good cost control, the results of the financial results of the fourth quarter were very solid. We had an EBITDA of €41 million, we have free cash flow of €47 million, and we also that that that includes also some changes in working capital.

Profits were also were similar to to the previous year, but it included an impairment of €24 million related to E-LIX. This impairment, I have to point out that's related to the loans that Atalaya has been given to Lain, which Lain continues to own and owns the intellectual property and operates the plant.

We The plant works well. The plant continues to work well, but the company had given loans in excess to €55 million to develop this in this last 10 years, and the board decided it would be prudent to to impair have a non-cash impairment of some of these loans until the plant was operating totally well due to the the potential limitations of scale.

As I said, we continue to believe that this is going to be something that's going to be have a positive impact in Atalaya and specifically and in the Pyrite Belt in in general. It's simply due to prudent reasons, accounting reasons, we prefer to to have this partially impairment of our loans to to Lain.

We We We finalized the year with fantastic cash position, with working capital surplus of over €94 million. That's, again, before the the before the placement that we made in late January.

If we look at the for '25 the whole year of '25, we can see that the our production was just over 51,000 tonnes, slightly better than the previous year. Our plant continued to perform very well, setting a new record of throughput, 16.6 million tonnes, which is basically a 10% improvement over nameplate capacity.

We had overall better grades than the previous year, even even if if the recovery was slightly lower when in the first part of the year we were processing some of the oxidized material that was at higher grade, but oxidized from the San Dionisio pit. Overall, a very good year, which translated in in the next slide in a and a very good results for the whole year, with EBITDA of €180 million, free cash flow of over €100 million, which was an excellent results, and the profit still €85 million after the €85 million after the impairment of 25 that I have just mentioned 24 that have been mentioned before.

It means that if it wasn't this, we would have tripled the profits of previous year, and also tripled the EBITDA of previous year. Looking at the cash costs breakdown, we normally give a quite detailed breakdown of mining, processing, G&A, and and offsite costs.

The performance was strong during '25. Actually, the the performance, both in cash costs, site cash costs and all-in sustaining costs, was better than the guidance.

For in the last quarter was $2.62 and $3.07, respectively, but at end the whole year were $2.40 and and $2.90 in all-in sustaining costs. The good performance was due to to several reasons.

The input costs in the mining, processing and in G&A were quite constant, the only variation was basically the better production. We have kept inflation, site inflation, quite under control.

We had some positive very positive by-product credits in the higher silver prices because we produced over 1 million ounces approximately of silver. That has been a very good contribution to our offsite costs.

We also benefited from the falling TCs, and also were able to sell some spot sales and spot lots even with negative, very negative treatment charges. Both the silver and the very low treatment charges resulted in basically negative offsite costs, which improved our all-in sustaining costs.

In the negative side, we had higher stripping, capitalized stripping at Cerro Colorado, which had an impact on all-in sustaining costs. Also we had a small improvement in the in the euro versus the US dollar, which has some unfavorable impacts in this US-denominated costs.

We normally provide a benchmark with of our all-in sustaining costs with with our other copper-producing peers. Our performance in '25 was in line.

We can see that we are comparing favorable. The only point I would like to to show here is that the industry is seeing more and more the $3.50 level around all-in sustaining costs as being quite common in the industry.

I know normally some companies provide only C1 costs, but at the end you have to provide all-in sustaining costs. As a result of this good financial performance and good balance sheet, and even knowing that there's going to be a significant amount of investments in this next few years, Atalaya's board has proposed a final dividend of another 6.5 cents per pound, sorry, per share as a final dividend.

This dividend is obviously going to need to be approved in the AGM of the company in June, and together with the intermediate interim dividend that we gave paid in October, the total dividend of of '25 is going to be 10.9 cents per per share. This compares with 6.5 6.4 that we had in '24, it's a significant significant increase.

It also shows that since we started the dividend payment 5 years ago, the company has paid over €94 million of dividends, which was more than that it had raised the money raised in the from the markets in all this operating history before January, January 20 26. Going forward to the guidance, how does '26 look?

We had already provided the guidance back in January. Since then, we have had a some things that had changed slightly our our perception is that we had huge rainfall events, including flooding, in the last weeks of January and the first part of February, where we the region received water more water from rains, heavy rains, than the whole previous year.

This had some some effect in accessing the Cerro Colorado pit that we could not access, and so we expect to have the the the first quarter production slightly lower than planned, but we expect also where we will be treating some of the marginal materials. We expect that these grades will be improving in the in the course of 20 26.

With all that said, '26 is still going to be expected to be between 50 and 54,000 tonnes of copper, and in addition to that, we expect to produce around 1 million ounces of silver, which is always quite interesting. The guidance we are keeping the guidance of $2.60 to $2.90 per pound in the site costs, and and $3.10 to $3.40 per pound in all-in sustaining costs.

Comparing to to to '25, the mining rates will be slightly higher than than than '26, sorry, than '25. The euro we also expect it to to strengthen a little bit against versus the US dollar, although all these things that happened in in the Middle East can change from what our expectations were in the beginning of the year.

Normally inflation is well under control in the past year, but this this war in the Middle East could drive up costs, something that we will be monitoring closely. Obviously, the effect of this war, one should look at the effect on energy.

In that sense, our energy costs electricity, which is an important part of our cost, is quite stable because we have first our solar plant, and and second, we have our a long-term PPA, which covers a good portion of our costs. We are not much We are not very exposed to the markets of gas, and also in Spain, there's a huge production of electricity from wind and and and solar, plus a lot of hydraulic production due to the heavy rains in the first part of the year.

We do have something that we will be watching carefully, which is the diesel price. Diesel price has an influence in the in the in the mining rates, and obviously this this will This can translate if the diesel price maintains high levels, can translate in the mining costs, as you can as you can expect.

Regarding capex, we expect similar levels to '25. Most of the capex is associated with San Dionisio stripping and the need to move a road to be able to access some of the better grades that are are in that area.

In addition to that, we will be preparing a ramp to Masa Valverde, a good deposit that's located south southwest of Rio Tinto, around 25 km away. Of course, this is still subject to board approval, but we expect that will be started later this year.

We also have some investment to continue with our tailings dam expansion, and of course, we will keep investing in exploration, which is quite important for our future, both in Spain, in the south, in Touro, and also abroad. I would like to mention a small in a second our equity offering in January '26, where we finalized an equity offering that raised £130 million £130 million.

This really strengthened our balance sheet and provide us a good confidence to advance all the projects. This is not only for for Touro, which we will still be finalizing the funding package once we get the the final approvals, and but it will also allow us to make some small acquisitions.

It will also allow us to go ahead with all this this these capital projects that we are going, in addition to Touro, which are basically driving our growth. Obviously, the main one is to to accelerate the pre-stripping at San Dionisio that you can see here.

In the second part of '25, you can see how we started moving the waste in the left part of the picture, and the idea is to access the better grades that are in the center of the picture. As we move to '26, we'll be increasing this high-grade ore, and that's why that's one of the reasons why the production guidance is weighted towards the second half of the year.

At at Masa Valverde, this underground polymetallic deposit, we now have all the land that we need to build a portal and to access, and we have had some discussions with the contractors to finalize the final the final award to try to control inflation, and basically we are we're in the final stages of that. Subject to board approval, once this is these discussions are finalized, we will be starting the construction.

The idea there is is to continue drilling this red zone, which is the high higher grade of copper that we that we where we will start mining initially with with grades over 2% copper. Another important point is to remind people is that we have a most of our resources and reserves are open-pittable at Cerro Colorado, around 160 million tonnes at a grade of slightly less than 0.4% copper.

It means that if we didn't do anything, we would be mining during 10 years at Cerro Colorado only. We do have a significant amount of polymetallic material that has copper, lead, zinc with better copper grades, basically triple what we have, more than triple than what we have at our existing Cerro Colorado, but they do contain also some zinc.

It means that we need to build a a polymetallic circuit. That's part of the use of proceeds that we're going to be using it for the the the raise of of of that we completed in January.

Building this circuit basically means installing some equipment in-line with our existing installations in such a way that provides flexibility to be able to treat both type of materials, and be able to treat this polymetallic ores with higher grade as we as we go through, without waiting until the until the very end of the mine life. We continue also to to drill San Antonio deposit, which is is located immediately to the east of Rio Tinto.

We continue to to drill at Masa Valverde focused in the high-grade copper zone. Also we are doing some early works, which requires some capex, in the at Touro, where we are very close to get the permits, we believe.

The engineering is basically completed, and we are ready to start buying some equipment with the last discussions being held with with suppliers. Actually Touro, as is is a value driver of this this company.

It's a very low capital intensity. It has it will have it will have all-in sustaining costs that will be around 50 cents lower than Rio Tinto.

This is something that we are really very keen to develop. I had I was in Touro actually this week, and it looks like the the final reports that are ready that need to be ready before issuing the environmental impact statement are progressing very fast, and we continue to believe that we are going to get the environmental impact statement during the early part of the second quarter.

With this, it's clear that our growth targets are going to be very clear in order to get us to a production growth of around 100,000 tonnes of copper equivalent. Most of them are brownfield.

Most of them are in Spain, all of them are in Spain. Very important is that we have right now a balance sheet of around €300 million, which is basically of net cash, which should with together with the debt that we are going to be raising for Touro should allow us to to develop these projects and growth pipeline in a in a short timeframe.

There are more details in our presentation, whoever needs them, but I think I'm going to stop here and open it to Q&A. I will pass this to the operator.

Operator

Thank you so much. We will now begin the conference lines and set questions.

To ask a question on the phone line, please press *1 to raise your hand and join the queue. To withdraw your question, press the *1 again.

When called upon to ask your questions, please ensure you unmute your device and pick up the device handset to ensure optimum quality. Again, that is *1 to ask a question.

Your first question comes from the line of Laura Chan of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, Alberto.

Laura Chan

Hello,

Alberto Lavandeira

hello.

Laura Chan

[unclear] guidance, what kind of silver price are you using, electricity price, etc.?

Alberto Lavandeira

Could you please repeat because I only heard part of the question. Sorry about that.

Laura Chan

Sorry. Can you hear me better now?

Alberto Lavandeira

Much better, please. Thank you.

[laughs] Thanks. [laughs]

Laura Chan

Sorry about that.

Alberto Lavandeira

Would

Laura Chan

you mind walking me through the assumptions embedded in your 2026 cost guidance? What kind of silver prices are you using, electricity prices are you assuming, etc.?

Alberto Lavandeira

César, do you know exactly what is the silver price we use? In electricity, we are using the market price of around €80 for that part that's not hedged, €80 per kilowatt-hour, but remember that we have a solar plant that provides around 20% of our electricity, and we have around 40% of our electricity hedged at €52, €54 per kilowatt-hour.

I think the average could probably be 60, something like that, expected. Until now we have been okay.

We have covered most of the electrical costs already for the first and second quarter totally covered at low prices. The silver by-product credits, I don't know what price, I don't remember right now, I should, but I don't know.

César, do you know what's the silver price that we use in our projections for all-in sustaining costs?

César Sánchez

I'll check and I'll come back to you in [unclear].

Laura Chan

Okay. Don't worry.

It's just one more from me, just on Touro. Do you know what the exact—

Alberto Lavandeira

Normally I would say it's around $75, but...

Laura Chan

Okay.

Alberto Lavandeira

In Touro, again? Yeah.

[laughs]

Laura Chan

Sorry.

Alberto Lavandeira

[laughs]

Laura Chan

Yeah. Just one more from me, just on Touro.

What's the exact hold up in the permitting? Is there any kind of concern on the kind of water quality surrounding the project?

What's the best estimate of project kickoff at the moment?

Alberto Lavandeira

Look, we are pushing the local authorities saying that we need to start moving topsoil in the summer of this year. We don't want to be removing topsoil in the middle of the rainy season.

Looks like they are happy with that time frame. What's holding this right now is the water report, not a permit, it's a water report.

Normally before preparing the environmental impact statement, all the bodies of administration and all kinds of institutes that are participating provide a report. All these reports have been received and are positive, except one, which is the water report, that has not been received, is not positive.

We have had lots of meetings with them, and it's all quite positive, but almost when they were about to give the final report, somebody came asking us to make a small modelization of something with the rivers, which was not asked before in 2 years, which was kind of surprise to us. We have completed that, and I think they will be producing this report in the following weeks.

I have to say that when we had prepared the environmental impact statement 5 years ago, in a project where we failed, the water report was positive, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be positive right now. Actually, we don't expect that.

The question is more bureaucracy and the fact that the technicians have to complete the reports, and they have to be independent, and there is very difficult to push them. I don't expect nothing.

The best estimate that I have is to have the environmental impact statement after Easter, and be able to break ground in June, July. Breaking ground meaning removing the topsoil, geotechnical work in the dam area, preparing offices, and of course, once we receive the environmental impact statement positive, we will order the equipment, specifically the mill and the gyro crusher.

The other flotation and filters and tanks are not that critical, but those we have already the informal approval from investment committee of the board that we will be able to commit to those knowing that once you get the environmental impact statement, the project is basically done, ready.

César Sánchez

Sorry, just to confirm, the silver price used for the guidance is around 50.

Alberto Lavandeira

Oh, quite conservative.

Laura Chan

Okay. Yeah.

Thanks so much, guys. I'll leave it to someone else.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Radclyffe of Global Mining Research. Please go ahead.

David Radclyffe

Hi, good morning, Alberto. It's David here.

Could you please maybe talk in broad terms to the mid-term capital outlook for Rio Tinto, as we still really don't have a plan here to go off of? Primarily in terms of what we should think about for stripping going into 2027, 2028, ongoing spending on tailings, is it kind of stay at the current rate, and then the ramp and associated development at Masa?

Thank you.

Alberto Lavandeira

The stripping, it would be similar to these years, depends on if we advance or not. As you see, either we put it in the operating costs or we put it in the all-in sustaining costs, it will not have any specific effect.

The strip ratio is around 2:1, and that will continue to be 2:1 at Cerro Colorado. Overall in San Dionisio, it's around 4.5:1.

I think the average, if I remember well, was like 2.5:1, and I think if you model that roughly in general, that would be okay. Ongoing spending in tailings, in the next 3 years, it will be similar to the levels of this year, because we are using downstream and centerline method, which means that we continuously have to be raising.

Having said that, I said 3 years because we are with the permitting of a new tailings pond, which will require much lower capital investment, and that will have enough capacity for the next 10 years. This work is ongoing with all the work being completed by Knight Piésold, and dialogue with the administration, and so on.

This is something that's ongoing. We don't mention that normally because it's something that needs some time, and we are always uncertain of how these things go.

Normally this thing would be, say, 2 years. It takes 2 years for permitting.

We are allowing for 3 years. Having said that, we have enough space in our current tailings ponds if we wanted to continue for another 10 years, but the other site, which is located west directly downstream of existing tailings pond is much better from the shape point of view, and with a very small barrier, very small embankment, we can hold off a lot of tailings.

Regarding investments in Masa Valverde, depending on the rate of development, but normally you will have around €30 to €50 million, depends on when you want to stop, which means the ramp itself, plus 3 raises, including one of them escape way, a pump station, which is not very big because there's no water, but you need it, some ventilation, and offices. Offices and change room and whatever, and surface, not much.

Equipment, everything is going to be subcontracted out to local contractors. That's the main thing.

If you wanted to get also a bit more about other capex initiatives, Touro, to put simple numbers, we have around $300 million, which would be weighted towards second half of this year and the whole next year. You could say 25% this year, 60% next year, and another 15% or whatever maybe in '27 the remnants.

Then the polymetallic circuit, the capex that we are seeing right now is around €88 million, or let's say $90 million or $100 million. We are optimizing that to reduce it a little bit, and it will be basically built during '27.

The late part of this year will already be some work, but most of it will be '27. Exploration, we normally keep our budget between 8 and 10 million, depends on obviously on results.

If we get some good results, we will increase that. Right now, normally that's what we have.

David Radclyffe

Thank you. If I could just have a follow-up.

Maybe just on your comments around E-LIX and the impairment there, it seems like you were saying that the impairment was more related to what you thought the scale of the operation could be, rather than you thought it would be still commercial. I'm just wondering if you could expand on that, and how the smaller scale actually works for you?

I guess why the decision wasn't just to write it all off, and then, when and if it obviously works, you could then write it back like you did with some other things?

Alberto Lavandeira

Exactly. This is exactly the approach that was taken by the board.

Let's be prudent. In a year that we have good operating results, I think it's better to be prudent.

The main reason is that the system works, and we're happy how it works. When we started this, the idea was to treat copper concentrates, and obviously copper concentrates are not economic due to the very low treatment charges that are in the market, and is likely to be there for a while.

The plant itself, basically changing the operating conditions, can switch to removing zinc from copper-zinc concentrates or other type of concentrates, but specifically those. Obviously, the margin of removing zinc from copper is much lower, and although the technology works, we have some doubts because the payback of our loans will be as part of the margin, and we believe it's going to be taking a long time, we decided to just impair it.

This is the main reason. The plant itself works and works continuously, and works successfully with quite complex materials.

For example, it's able to treat materials with very high antimony, very high arsenic. It can also extract some of the silver and gold containing very complex concentrates, and this is something that we are evaluating.

We will continue to be using that plant. Initially this year, the plan is to treat it removing some zinc from an area where we can produce copper concentrates of around 12% copper and 10% zinc, which are not very commercial, but if you remove the zinc, then you can sell the copper.

Also by the way, it also removes quite a lot of the silver, getting good payment terms. While we are interested in this, we decide to impair, and if later we need to do additional financing with Lain, we will probably have to evaluate how we do it, not really all with loans, because it's basically too much for a size of our company.

Remember, we have invested over €55 million. It's along 10 years, but we are not a huge company.

It's a lot of merit,

David Radclyffe

but

Alberto Lavandeira

we're not a huge company. It has a lot of potential.

David Radclyffe

Brilliant. Thank you very much.

I'll pass it on.

Operator

Before we move on to the next question, a reminder, if you would like to join the queue, to press *1 now. Your next question comes from the line of Alexander Pearce of BMO.

Please go ahead.

Alexander Pearce

Great, thanks Alberto. You touched on some of the cost impacts already, but I was just wondering if you could give us a bit of an overview of what you're seeing in diesel prices, and how sensitive your costs are to diesel going forward?

Alberto Lavandeira

It's a very good question, Alex. We consume, just to give you very rough numbers and easy to calculate for you, we consume roughly 30 million liters, the contractor consumes 30 million liters per year last year.

If you divide that by, just easy numbers, 50 million tonnes, 50 million tonnes roughly, it means that you consume 30 / 50, 0.6 liters per per per tonne of material. It doesn't matter if it's waste or ore.

At at a price of Normally the price was around €0.80 per liter, €0.70, €0.90. The increase is passed to us, we have a formula, basically it's neutral for us neutral for the contractor, obviously, with a benchmark.

If there was an increase of a 30% of the cost of diesel during the whole year, yeah, it could be Imagine it was 30, just to make easy numbers, if it was $30 million in in diesel, a a 30% increase would mean $9 million. It's a it's an important number if it was to continue the whole year.

The explosives is also something that has some influence, but explosives, we consume around 0.7 kg per cubic meter, and the price is roughly also about €1 per kilo, it has an influence, but much much much lower. The price can go up a little bit more or less.

In theory, the fertilizer ammonia that's used for explosives is not coming from that area, but as the suppliers is coming from Norway and Spain, but as the suppliers will always take the advantage and the excuse of higher TTF prices and gas prices to lift the benchmark and sell you at higher prices. For example, Spain does not import almost any gas from Qatar or Middle East or whatever, zero, but the prices immediately went up, [laughs] like you can expect.

[laughs] Those are the Those are the two points. Diesel is the one that has more influence.

Brilliant,

Alexander Pearce

thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Hatch at Berenberg. Your line is open.

Richard Hatch

Thanks. Morning, a few questions.

Firstly, just on the issues in Q1 that you're seeing, can you give us a kind of steer as to what kind of volumes you're thinking about for the first quarter, should that be more like a 10,000-tonne production quarter, or is that too pessimistic? First one.

Alberto Lavandeira

There's only left 15 days to go, I have to check how much we are going to be producing. I know we are behind around 2,000 tonnes of copper.

That's what I know. I think we can recover it, but that's more or less what we know.

Richard Hatch

Okay. Thanks.

The second one, sorry to make you just go over this again, but just on the permits for Touro, this is a key catalyst for the stock and perhaps one of the reasons why the shares are softer this morning. Once you finally get that water report and the EIS is complete, can you just talk us through what are the next key permits or any other paperwork which needs to get approved before you can start moving the topsoil in the summer?

Can you just be 100% clear on that?

Alberto Lavandeira

Perfect. Not much permits.

If you remember this project has a strategic status. With the strategic status, once you get the approval of the Mines Department or Industry Department, you get all the approvals.

It means you don't have a specific approval later to connect to the water, discharge water, access to land, urbanistic permits and all this, which you normally have in other projects. What goes from getting this environmental permit to the approval of the project by the Mines Department is basically first they need the positive environmental impact declaration, which is published in the official gazette.

After that, what they do is say, "Having received this thing and having checked that this company is financially capable," which is very clear, "and technically sound," or whatever, which is some of the other conditions, "I approve the project," or "we approve the project with the following conditions." They set the conditions.

These conditions include the main thing that they have to add is, because they also approve the restoration plan, the amount of bond or insurance policy that you have to put as a partial reclamation bond. Normally this procedure takes a little bit less than 2 months or 2 months, and actually it could be done, if they have it, it could be done in matter of weeks, but we always assume 2 months.

After that moment, you are free to access the land, you have automatic expropriation, you can access roads, you get access to the water, discharge, you don't need to go ask for the urbanistic license or anything like that. That's the period.

In some cases, you can even start before that, and you can start doing some things that do not even need the approval from the Mines Department, like for example, setting offices, getting some geotechnical work done, things that are really like independent of the project itself, and that only require the approval from the local council of the village. That local council, which is normally done in matter of days, needs the positive environmental impact assessment.

If the council did not move, in any case you have to wait until the Mines Department, which takes 2 months. That's what we are pushing.

It's essential that we get this thing of the EIS positive environmental impact declaration in let's say April in order to be able to move ground late May late June, early July, which is still good enough to be able to clear all the topsoil and all these things for the plant site and get ready. It's not that cannot be done in autumn, but it's better to do it in summer.

Richard Hatch

That's fair. Thank you.

Then the last one is just can I just ask on the actual cash capex, it's a bit confusing with the numbers then being moved around non-sustaining capex, then there's numbers waste stripping in the AISC. Can you just give us a absolute steer on absolute cash capex for 2026, like the number that we're going to see that comes up in the financial statements?

Thanks.

Alberto Lavandeira

I think, César, it's best thing you take the budget and show it, because

César Sánchez

Sorry, do you mean for 2025 or the guidance? '26, '26.

Alberto Lavandeira

'26,

Richard Hatch

no, yeah, no, for '26, yeah.

César Sánchez

'26, the stripping capex that we're expecting for

Alberto Lavandeira

The whole global capex that we have for '26, excluding Touro.

César Sánchez

It will be in the range of €80 million, a bit over A bit over that way, but yeah.

Richard Hatch

Thanks.

Alberto Lavandeira

Without considering this thing of the polymetallic circuit and depends on when we start, and Touro. The total of polymetallic is €88 million.

First pass, we are optimizing that. Touro is, as I said, it's around 300.

I would guess we will not spend more than 50 to 70 this year, because normally the first part Well, maybe a little bit more because we have to order equipment. We have a breakdown month-by-month, but I don't remember it right now.

Richard Hatch

Thanks. It's just more to get an understanding of the absolute cash going out the door in 2026 on the cash flow statement.

If you can come back to us, that'd be helpful.

César Sánchez

It's around €120 million, excluding Touro. That's all the cash outflow that we're expecting.

Richard Hatch

Okay. Thanks, helpful.

Operator

There are no further questions on the conference line. I will now hand over to Alberto Lavandeira, CEO, for closing remarks.

Alberto Lavandeira

Thank you very much to everybody for attending this call. It's always a pleasure to speak with you, and we will see you soon.

Thanks a lot. Thanks for your support.