Taseko Mines achieves 50% revenue growth in Q3, bolstered by increased copper output and improved mill recoveries, while preparing for Florence ramp-up.

OPERATOR - (00:01:07)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Taseko Mines 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press STAR followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question again, press the star one. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Burgo. You may begin.

Brian Burgo - Moderator - (00:01:38)

Thank you, Jericho. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining Taseko's third quarter 2025 conference call. The news release and regulatory filing announcing our financial and operational results was issued yesterday after market close and is available on our website at tasekomines.com and on Sedar Plus. With me in Vancouver today is Taseko's President and CEO Stuart McDonald, Taseko's Chief Financial Officer Bryce Hammond and our COO Richard Tremblay. As usual, before we get into opening remarks by management, I would like to remind our listeners that our comments and answers to your questions will contain forward looking information and this information, by its nature is subject to risks and uncertainties. As such, actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, I encourage you to read the cautionary note that accompanies our third quarter MD and A and the related news release, as well as the risk factors particular to our company. These documents can be found on our website and also on SEDAR Plus. I would also like to point out. That we will use various non GAAP. Measures during the call. You can find explanations and reconciliations regarding these measures in the related news release. And finally, all dollar amounts we will discuss today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise specified. Following opening remarks, we will open the phone lines to analysts and investors for questions. I will now turn the call over to Stuart for his remarks.

Stuart McDonald - President and CEO - (00:03:04)

Great. Thanks Brian. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining our call today to discuss the third quarter financial and operating results. As usual, I'll provide some commentary focusing on the operational results and then Bryce will get into the financial performance for the quarter. As outlined in our release yesterday, third quarter results were definitely an improvement over the previous two quarters, both operationally and financially. Mining in the Connector Pit had presented more challenges in the early part of this year than we'd anticipated. But on the positive side, the higher mining rates in the last two quarters have opened up higher grade benches that we've been anticipating in the third quarter grades increased to 0.22%, which is up from 0.19 in the first quarter and 0.20 in the second quarter. This higher grade ore and less transitional oxide material both benefited mill recoveries, which increased to 77% in the third quarter. Mill throughput has been very steady this year, consistently operating at around design capacity. So overall copper production in the third quarter was just under 28 million pounds, and that includes 900,000 pounds of cathode production from Gibraltar's SXEW operation. Molybdenum production in the quarter was 560,000 pounds, which is also a big increase from prior quarters due to higher MOLY grades, which typically track copper grades. Costs in the quarter were $2.87 US per pound improvement over the prior quarter. Total site cost in the quarter was 7 million higher than the previous quarter, mainly due to SXEW costs now being expensed as well as increased maintenance costs. Maintenance costs, including parts and major components, is one area where we continue to see steady inflation. And all of that translated into 62 million of adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter. Looking ahead, we expect to finish the year with a strong fourth quarter. Gibraltar produced 11 million pounds of copper in October, which was the mine's highest production month in two years. So the quarter is off to a good start. We will provide formal guidance for 2026 in the new year, as we normally do, but generally we're looking for a more consistent year next year with less quarterly volatility. Now shifting over to Florence, where we have achieved a number of major milestones recently and the operation is now well on its way. Producing first copper In September, our general contractor achieved substantial completion of the SXEW plant and plant area. This is a huge accomplishment for the project team. In just 18 months since we broke ground to Florence, our team has been able to deliver this major capital project on time and in line with our previous cost estimates. So it's really a great achievement. And the project is now into the commissioning phase. In mid October, we received the final regulatory approvals we required to commence well field operations. We then initiated a short commissioning period which included pumping water from the aquifer to establish hydraulic control in the well field. A number of normal course commissioning issues were identified and resolved, and in early November, about a week ago, we began acidifying the commercial well field. Overall, we're a few weeks behind our original plan, but we're very happy with the wellfield performance so far, as initial flow rates in the wellfield are in line with and even exceeding our expectations. So it's early obviously, but the operation is off to a good start. About half of the well field is being acidified now and the second half will start up in the next week or so. And in the weeks ahead, we expect to see the grade of copper in solution or PLS grade from the well field start to increase to a point where we can turn on the SXEW plant and start plating copper. Cathode commissioning of the plant area is advancing in parallel with initial well field operations and we expect to be producing copper early in the new year. An important aspect of the production ramp up in 2026 will be our ability to develop and integrate additional wells into the operation. We're now preparing to restart drilling activity with two drills planned to start up here in November and an additional two drills will be added early next year. The operating team in Florence continues to grow, recruiting has gone very well and we're up to about 140 employees on site now. Needless to say, it's a very busy and exciting time for all of them. It's great timing to be starting up a major new supply of refined copper inside the U.S. obviously, copper markets and pricing remains very strong and there are some interesting dynamics in the US Cathode market. Although there are no US import tariffs on refined copper right now, the possibility of tariffs in the future has led to some speculative trading activity and growing cathode inventories inside the U.S. the COMEX price has continued to trade at a premium to the LME recently at about 4% premium or roughly 20 cents a pound. However, our understanding is that the quoted COMEX price may not reflect what can actually be realized in the physical market. And cathode sales in the US may be at a higher discount than normal higher than normal discounts that you might normally see to the COMEX price. Although we're still seeing a premium to LME pricing, this is a situation we're going to continue to monitor as we start cathode sales from Florence in the next few months. The US Government has stated that it plans to revisit tariffs middle of next year with the potential for a 15% tariff on cathode at the end of 2026, increasing to 30% potentially at the end of 2027. So in the longer term, this shows the strategic value of Florence, which will become one of the few US based suppliers of refined copper. Before I pass the call over to Bryce, I wanted to say a few words about our recent equity offering that was completed in Octo. The proceeds of that raise have significantly strengthened our balance sheet. We've now repaid the 75 million that was drawn on our revolving credit facility and the remaining funds provide additional working capital support ahead of the Florence ramp up next year. We're also planning additional spending at Yellowhead next year on environmental and engineering work to support the environmental assessment process. In the third quarter we held open houses in the local communities and initial feedback has been quite positive. So Yellowhead project permitting is off to a good start and we continue to view Yellowhead as an important longer term growth project for us. And with that I'll turn it over to Bryce. Thanks Stuart.

Bryce Hammond - Chief Financial Officer - (00:10:04)

Good morning everyone and thanks for joining us today. Total copper sales for the quarter were 26 million pounds, which includes 900,000 pounds of cathode. This was slightly below production due to shipment timing at the end of the quarter. We achieved a strong average realized copper price in the quarter just shy of $4.50 per pound US in line with the LME average and this has still continued to strengthen since the quarter end. This strong copper price translated into total revenue of 174 million, which includes 14 million from molybdenum sales. The combination of higher sales volume and strong pricing drove a 50% increase in revenue quarter over quarter. On an adjusted basis, we reported net income of 6 million or $0.02 per share for GAAP purposes. We reported a net loss of 28 million or $0.09 per share, and that was primarily due to unrealized foreign exchange losses on our US dollar denominated debt and an unrealized derivative loss related to our copper collars we have in place. Adjusted EBITDA came in at 62 million, a significant increase over prior quarters driven by the higher sales and stronger copper price. Capitalized stripping for the quarter was only 6 million and it was substantially lower than the previous two quarters. And that reflects our progress deeper into the connector pit where the strip ratio has declined in access to to ore has improved. Turning to Florence, we spent US dollars 27 million on the commercial facility this quarter and that brings our total capital spend since the start of construction to 267 million US. We achieved substantial completion with our contractor in Q3 and we only have a few million more on this capital project to finish the the year. This is within a few percentage points of our original construction budget since the start of 2024 and it's a testament to the execution of our capital projects team. Operating costs at Florence were 8 million in the quarter and these will increase as we continue hiring full time staff and ramp up our Wellfield operations. And that will include the procurement and consumption of acid going forward now that our operations are underway. We ended the quarter with 91 million of cash. In October we closed an equity financing for 173 million US and we used 75 of that to pay down our revolver. And with capital spending at Florence largely behind us now and improving production at Gibraltar and coupled with this cash injection from this financing our liquidity liquidity outlook is robust. We're well positioned to support the ramp up at Florence and advance our work at Yellowhead. That concludes my remarks and I'll now turn it back to the operator to begin the Q and A session.

OPERATOR - (00:13:06)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your headset to ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. We're going to pause for a moment to collate the Q and A cue. Our first question comes from Duncan Hay from Panmure Liberum. Please go ahead.

Duncan Hay - Equity Analyst - (00:13:59)

Yeah, hi. Hi Stuart. Just a quick one on the well field drilling. What's the, can you talk through the benefits of accelerating that and bringing that forward? I mean, presumably you're constrained by capacity in the plant, but. Yeah. What sort of flexibility or comfort does that give you?

Stuart McDonald - President and CEO - (00:14:21)

Well, I think initially in the ramp up period, the key for us is going to be opening up additional wells. The constraint is going to be not the plant, but the amount of solution flows that we can get off the well field. So it'll be key to the advancing that forward. So we've got two drills starting up here in November, an additional two early in the new year, and in Q2 and Q3 next year we'll see those additional wells start to come online and contribute to the ramp up. So no, it's a big part of the plan. I think it's always been part of the plan. But yeah, glad that we've got a solid balance sheet and we can move forward confidently with that work. Now.

Duncan Hay - Equity Analyst - (00:15:12)

You could see, I mean you're going to put guidance out in the new year, but if you look at what you were thinking, say six months ago you could have more production next year. Given the position you're in.

Stuart McDonald - President and CEO - (00:15:29)

Well, yeah, we'll see. I mean we're not giving, we're actually not going to give production guidance today. Obviously the technical report is out there and that had some assumptions about drilling as well, but we're optimistic. Certainly what we see today, the early results from the well field are positive, but it's early days and yeah, we keep pushing forward and obviously First Copper is going to be important, a big milestone for us early next year.

Duncan Hay - Equity Analyst - (00:15:59)

Yeah. Okay, thanks.

OPERATOR - (00:16:05)

Our next question comes from Craig Hutchinson from TV Cabin. Please go ahead.

Craig Hutchinson - Equity Analyst - (00:16:12)

Hi, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my question. I realize you guys aren't going to provide guidance for next year until I guess early next year, but just curious how you guys think about kind of the milestones for declaring commercial production. Obviously ISRs are relatively new for, for most people. Just how do you guys think about that in terms of production rate? You need to get to declare commercial production. Is it for 60% of design or is there some kind of metric that you guys look at to determine that?

Stuart McDonald - President and CEO - (00:16:47)

Yeah, Craig, we're not thinking about it in that way. I know that's a conventional way. It's been done in the past for concentrators. You know, it's going to be a steady ramp up of production through 2026. And yeah, as I said, the key is going to be bringing on new wells, but we should see sequential growth each quarter in the copper production. I don't know. Bryce, do you want to make a couple of comments about the accounting that we see? I guess the rules have changed in recent years.

Bryce Hammond - Chief Financial Officer - (00:17:24)

Yeah, I think the real focus will be on our obviously our C1 cost. We're going to be looking at what point that our production generates operating cash flow, operating profit. And with this project, given the nature of the operating cost, that happens relatively quick from what we're seeing. We could see that by mid year and then I think as we continue to ramp up, it's really about free cash flow and making enough money there to pay for the ongoing sustaining capital with the Wellfield development and that we see sort of later, by the end of next year and then onwards, of course. So those are kind of the two key milestones I think. First is operating profit, operating cash flow, and the second really being generating free cash flow. And so that's what we're really kind of targeting as we think about that ramp up into commercial operations.

Craig Hutchinson - Equity Analyst - (00:18:25)

Okay, so I guess until you reach or mid next year, do we assume some of the costs will be capitalized or you know, the moment you guys are producing sellable cathode, you'll start booking revenues right away in terms of kind of accounting do we think about revenues next year?

Bryce Hammond - Chief Financial Officer - (00:18:44)

Yeah, on the accounting side, these standards changed a few years ago. We now recognize revenue once it's sold. So even the first pounds of cathode will be recognized as revenue when sold. From a capital perspective, there'll probably be some of the. Until the plant's fully up and running, there'll be some of the plant costs, which get capitalized until it's sort of available for its full intended use. But the key, I think, with this operation, as we've looked at it, is the well field development cost. So that's the drilling and development of the wells. That is capitalized. So there will be significant, ongoing sustaining capital that's put to the balance sheet and then amortized over the life of the well.

Craig Hutchinson - Equity Analyst - (00:19:33)

Okay, great. And maybe just one last question for me. Just in terms of the overall capital, is it effectively now completely the initial capital spend at this point, or is there still some lingering costs into Q4?

Bryce Hammond - Chief Financial Officer - (00:19:45)

Effectively, the work is complete. There will be a few costs, commissioning costs, that kind of trickle in in Q4. I think we still probably have some of the cost in payables. right, That will come through the cash flow. But effectively the construction piece is complete.

Craig Hutchinson - Equity Analyst - (00:20:05)

Great. Thanks guys.

OPERATOR - (00:20:09)

Again. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one keypad. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to the TCU team for closing remarks.

Stuart McDonald - President and CEO - (00:20:29)

Okay, thanks everyone for joining. And yeah, if there are other questions, feel free to reach out to any of us. And otherwise. Otherwise, we will talk to you next quarter. Thanks again.