Okay, we're gonna transition from silver to copper as I sit down with Brian Bergot, who heads investor relations at Taseko Mines. Again, just a quick reminder to everyone, all of our webcasts will be available on demand, so if you missed anything today, please visit the link after the event to access the recordings. All right. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Taseko Mines Fireside Chat. My name is Robert Blum, Managing Partner here at Lytham Partners. Today, I have the pleasure of moderating a Q&A discussion with Brian Bergot, who handles investor relations at Taseko. As a reminder, Taseko trades under the ticker symbol TGB on the New York Stock Exchange and TKO on the TSX. Brian, welcome. Thanks very much, Robert. Good to be here today. Fantastic. Again, for those not familiar with Taseko, can you give us an overview of the company today, your operating assets, the development pipeline and really the core strategy you're executing on? Sure, yeah. Yeah, great. Taseko, we are a growing North American-based copper miner. Today we've got two assets producing, one in Canada, one in the U.S., down in Arizona. It all started with Gibraltar, which we started operating 20 years ago. It's up here in B.C., where our head office is located. We're in Vancouver. It's a little bit north of here. We've now been operating Gibraltar for 20 years. It's the second largest open pit copper mine in Canada and top 4 in North America, so it's a very large-scale operation. In addition to that, we've got our Florence Copper project, and this is really the exciting part of the story today. We just started producing at Florence in the last month or so. Again, Florence is down in Arizona. It's a project we acquired quite a number of years ago. We took it right through permitting and then got through construction on time and on budget. Yeah, just fired it up literally a month ago, and we are now producing copper cathodes. Really those are the two key assets of Taseko. We also have a pipeline of projects, large scale open pit projects up here in B.C. We have our Yellowhead Copper project, which is up near Kamloops. We just started the environmental assessment process there last year. We also announced updated economics, so we have a great project there. Still a number of years of permitting ahead of us. Also, we have our New Prosperity project. New Prosperity was the original project at Taseko back in the 1990s. We announced a pretty important or we made a pretty important announcement last year there that could really see, you know, this project move through into, you know, ultimately, become a mine. There's still quite a bit of work there. We're working with the indigenous group there and we'll see how that plays out over the next year or two. We also have one other development asset, our Aley niobium project up in northern BC. That's a longer dated project as well. Really, you know, for Taseko, we're North American-based. That's by design. We like the North American jurisdiction. You know, we have rule of law up here. We don't have the geopolitical risk of many of our competitors. Today, our market caps. We're trading at about $5 or $6, and our market cap's about $2.2 billion. It's been a great last 12 months as we move towards production at Florence. We're, you know, reaping the benefits of a very good copper price environment today. Yeah. You've talked for a while about being the sort of leading low-cost North American copper producer. What are the sort of 2-3 structural advantages that you believe are most durable, really through a full cycle? Well, it's important because copper is a typical commodity, and it does cycle. You know, I think it comes down to your assets. All of our assets are long-term in nature. We all have long mine lives. Gibraltar, as I mentioned, we've got 19 years of mine life ahead there. Florence has a 22-year mine life. The other aspect obviously is costs. Gibraltar, while it's lower grade, it's one of the most efficient copper mines in the world really and on a cost per ton milled basis. Look, as I mentioned, we've been operating it for 20 years. We've been able to generate positive cash flow at all points in the copper price cycle. That's critical, to be able to generate cash at the bottom of the price cycle. Florence, once we get it ramped up, will be a very low cost producer. First quartile cost there, and that's because of the mining method we're using. You know, the other thing we pride ourselves in is our technical strength, both in our corporate office and our and at our sites. I guess the other thing is cost discipline. You know, Gibraltar, we've been very good at managing costs, and we're taking that discipline as we start to ramp up Florence and get it into commercial production. I guess the other aspect is jurisdiction. We keep going back to jurisdiction. You know, North America, we have access to good quality workforce, modern infrastructure, we, and we have the political stability. You know, copper obviously has been making headlines recently here. Obviously, pricing has moved up here. You know, what are sort of the indicators that you watch most closely to tell whether or not we're sort of in a temporary squeeze or sort of a very structural shortage? You know, help sort of the investor that doesn't follow the copper market closely understand, you know, how many mines are out there, inventory, demand, supply equations, where that demand is coming from, et cetera. Yeah, that's a real good point. I think the reality is nobody knows what the price is gonna do in the next month, 3 months, 6 months. There's so many factors that can affect it, whether it be global events like we're witnessing today in the Middle East, whether it be supply disruptions from major mines. We tend to focus on the medium and long term. What we see in the market today is, there's a lack of new major mines coming on the horizon. You know, for a number of years, the price of copper has been well below the incentive price to build new mines. We've seen projects deferred or even canceled. Obviously, copper is much higher today, so we're starting to see projects move forward. The timeline to bring new projects into production, you know, we're talking 18-20 years. You know, we, you know, Florence, for example, was discovered in the 1960s, drilled out in the 1980s and 1990s. We acquired it 12 years ago, and it took us basically 12 years to permit it. Now here we are, how many years later, just bringing it into production. We view, you know, the long-term fundamentals are gonna be driven by a lack of supply. Demand is still growing. There's lots of new demand, whether it be from data centers or AI, but then all the traditional demand as well. You know, we're very bullish on the long term. And today we've got a copper price that's about $5.50, which is a very strong price. Really, if we grow from here, we're growing from a very strong base that we've never done before. Yeah, we're bullish on the long term and the medium term. Short term, yeah, obviously there's a number of things impacting the market today. Let's talk a little bit about some of the impact from trade policies and supply chain security efforts specifically surrounding copper here. What impact do you think, if any, that's had of late? Maybe talk a little bit about the pricing differential in different markets. Yeah. This was obviously very topical last year when there was a lot of talk of tariffs on copper imports. We saw the price differential between the COMEX, which is the U.S.-based pricing, and the LME pricing, the London pricing, which historically has been your main area, most prices are based on. Right now there is no tariff on copper imports, so there is no differential between the COMEX and LME prices. If the plan is for the U.S. to revisit that mid-year, and if there's talk of a tariff being imposed on copper cathodes, we'll see that price premium come back. Taseko stands to benefit from that. Our Florence Copper project in Arizona, it's going to produce pure copper cathodes, or it is producing pure copper cathodes. That cathode will stay within the North American market. We will capture most of that premium on the COMEX. Yeah, it's something we would benefit from. In terms of, you know, streamlining projects and moving projects faster, that's still to be determined. There's a lot of talk with politicians both in the U.S. and up here in Canada, but it's really the bureaucracy where things get slowed down. That's what needs. That's where the backlog is. It's, yeah, to be determined whether or not we can move these projects ahead quicker to reduce that reliance on foreign imports. Again, at Florence we'll be producing pure copper cathode within the U.S., so, you know, we're exactly Florence is exactly what that, what the U.S. administration's been talking about they need more of. Let's talk about that some more, 'cause Florence, as you mentioned, is now in production. You know, what are sort of the most important operational proof points in this ramp that will demonstrate the project is really on track to reach the goals and expectations that you've set forth here for it? Yeah. It's a real exciting time for us, as I mentioned, 12 years to get to here, and we're finally in production. Now, as I mentioned, Florence is not a typical open pit or underground mine. We're using a process here, in situ recovery. It's been commonly used for uranium, but not so much in copper. So we're just starting to ramp it up. As I mentioned, we produced first copper cathodes about a month ago, and you know, we're off to a really good start there. This will be our ramp-up year. We expect to produce 30-35 million lbs, and our goal is to be at capacity in 2027, which is 80-85 million lbs. Really the key to ramping, and I guess how I... I'll explain a little bit about what ISR is instead of mining the ore and bringing it to surface and processing it there. We're actually going to leach the copper in situ, so in place. That involves drilling a well field, and we inject a solution down into that well field or into the deposit. As that solution migrates its way through the deposit, it leaches or dissolves the copper, and then we recover that copper-bearing solution, and then that solution goes into a conventional SXEW plant where we produce the copper cathodes. As part of the construction, we drilled 100 injection and recovery wells, and that's what we're operating today. To get to capacity, we need to drill about another 100 wells this year, and that allows us to increase flow rates. Our target is to get up to about 13,000 gallons per minute of flow. We need those additional wells to get that flow rate. The other KPI that, you know, we're obviously watching and we'll be talking about is PLS grade or pregnant leach solution. That's the amount of copper that's coming out in the solution. We actually, as we started to leach the deposit, we probably, we were a little bit ahead on where we thought we'd be in terms of PLS grade. Right today, flow rates and PLS grade are basically exactly where we need them to be, and those are the key things to watch as we continue to ramp up. Talk about how sort of the strategic partnership and the offtake approach you have sort of shapes Florence's long-term positioning and, you know, do you sort of see this real market forming for this U.S.-produced or lower carbon, if you will, copper? And what sort of validates that? Yeah. You're talking about our partner at Florence, which is Mitsui. Right. Mitsui, how that deal is structured, they contributed $50 million to the construction of the commercial facility. In exchange for that, they got an effective 2% copper stream, and they get 81% of the offtake Florence Copper. That's what they have today. The second part of that deal is they have an option, they have 3 years where they can pay Taseko another $50 million, and at that time, the stream and the offtake would convert to a 10% equity ownership in Florence Copper. Like I say, they have 3 years to exercise that option, so they'll be watching the ramp-up and see how that goes. One of the reasons we moved forward with Mitsui is they have a very big copper cathode business in the U.S. today. They're very large copper cathode traders. They believe that there will be a premium that we'll be able to get for our copper as sort of the made in North America green copper. Now, the market we don't believe is there today, but we believe at some point in the future, we will be able to get that premium. Let's come back to Gibraltar now. Just operational for 20 years. I know it's just sort of a steady as it goes, but anything investors should be looking for in terms of the ramp here over the next number of years? I guess, you know, 2025 was a challenging year at Gibraltar. We had to do a big pushback in the pit that we're in today, the connector pit. The first half of the year, you know, we got behind on mining rates just due to challenging ground conditions, so we didn't get the grade recoveries that were expected. In the back half of last year, we saw all that rebound as we got better situated into the pit. We saw the grades come up as well as the recoveries. Those improvements have continued into 2026. Our guidance for this year is 110-115 million lbs, which is about a 10%-15% increase over last year's production. We're now better set up in the pit, so we're expecting much more consistent quarterly production for the next few years. The connector pit will be our main source of ore for the next 3-4 years, and we expect more stable production over those years. The other thing that we did last year is we restarted our SXEW plant at Gibraltar. It's not a big SXEW plant. It produces 3-5 million lbs of copper cathode per year, so it's a little bit of incremental production. I guess the other important thing is we have no major capital spending at Gibraltar expected for the next few years. It's just standard sustaining capital. Talk about just briefly what sort of a hedging program do you have in place as it relates to sort of Gibraltar and then, you know, any sort of implementation as you begin to ramp up here at Florence? Yeah. We don't hedge per se, but what we do, and we've done this for 15 years, is protect a minimum price by buying out of the money put options, copper put options. Like, we've done this consistently, and we think it's the cost of doing business. It's buying insurance effectively. Today we actually have collars in place for the next 3 months that have a minimum price of $4 and a ceiling price of $5.40 for most of our production at Gibraltar. We typically don't put on collars. We know shareholders want the upside, so we always leave that open. Because we're in the capital spending program at Florence, we thought it was important to protect a higher floor price. I think we'll go back, starting in Q3, going back to what we've done traditionally, which is just buying out of the money puts. That's mainly for Gibraltar, 'cause Gibraltar does have a higher cost. Florence, with its very low cost of $1.20 per pound, not sure if we'll need to protect its cost structure because it's hard to foresee a price environment where it would not be cash flow positive. When you think about use of cash here over the next number of years with Florence beginning to ramp up now, obviously pricing, as we've talked about, has increased. We don't know where it's gonna be in the future, but when you sort of think about or how does the company think about long-term allocation of cash? Yeah. It's become more topical, which is kinda nice because usually we're talking about spending. Yeah, we're gonna generate a lot of cash with both assets, especially once Florence gets ramped up, you know, next year. You know, if we stay in a price environment anywhere near where we're at today, yeah, both those assets are gonna, you know, there'll be a lot of cash flow. Look, we took on some debt to build Florence, so our first priority is to de-lever the balance sheet. We think we could get to our target leverage goals probably by the end of 2028, if not earlier in this price environment. That is the first priority. Now, as I mentioned, Yellowhead is in the environmental phase, so we are spending some money there, but no significant spending. We've got, you know, 4, maybe 5 years before we'd be in a position to build that mine. That's really when the real spending would start. We have this window here of, you know, say 4 or 5 years, focus on de-levering the balance sheet initially. Then there could be an opportunity. We believe there'll be an opportunity for some shareholder distributions before the spending starts at Yellowhead. That's something we've started talking to the board about, and starting to, you know, talk to some shareholders, whether it be dividend or share buybacks. We believe there will be an opportunity. Maybe in the final couple minutes here, just kinda wrap up or summarize, you know, from a macro, you know, a program sort of specific or asset-specific. You know, what are the key events that you're thinking about and looking for over the next 12-24 months or so? Yeah. Obviously our focus and most people's focus is Florence and the ramp up. I think, you know, we need to show that we can take it from starting production a month ago, getting the 30-35 million lbs of production this year, and drilling, expanding the well field, and getting it up to capacity for 2027. That is the priority, and I think, you know, it's management's priority, it's our site's priority. That's, I think, the biggest thing. Gibraltar is very well-known. You know, we've been operating it 20 years. The market understands that asset. 2025 was a tough year, so I think people are looking for a rebound in production this year and then, you know, seeing that stable, consistent quarterly production. I think we're gonna have some positive news out of Yellowhead over the next 12-18 months as we make our way through the environmental assessment phase. I think one of the questions people will be looking about, because Yellowhead is a big open pit project, it comes with a bigger capital, CapEx. Today, it's estimated about CAD 2 billion. People will be looking for you know, how are we going to fund that? You know, we have 4-5 years to come up with that plan. We'll be generating a lot of cash from the two producing assets. But we do you know, we expect within the next couple of years we'll be able to you know, show the market how we can fund that CAD 2 billion to build Yellowhead. All right. Very good. Well, Brian, we will, we'll leave it there. I greatly appreciate your time here today, participation in the summit. I'll say to everyone watching here today, if there are any questions that you have for the company, or we can help coordinate a one-on-one meeting with Brian here, please shoot me an email. That's blum, B-L-U-M, @lythampartners.com. Again, we have additional presentations, fireside chats coming up today. Everyone please stick around for more. Again, Brian, thank you very much for the time today. I greatly appreciate it. Thanks, Robert.