Taseko Mines, Ltd.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Teseco Mines 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines has 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 Burgow. You may begin.

Thank you, Jericho. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining TSECO'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 tsecomines.com and on CDAR+. With me in Vancouver today is TSECO's President and CEO, Stuart MacDonald, TSECO's Chief Financial Officer, Bryce Hamming, 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&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 CDAR+. I would also like to point out that we will use various time gap 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.

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'd 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 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 287 US per pound, an 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've achieved a number of major milestones recently and the operation is now well on its way to 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 that we required to commence wellfield operations. We then initiated a short commissioning period, which included pumping water from the aquifer to establish hydraulic control in the wellfield. A number of normal course commissioning issues were identified and resolved, and in early November, about a week ago, we began acidifying the commercial wellfield. 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 wellfield 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 wellfield 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 wellfield 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 US. Obviously, copper markets and pricing remains very strong. And there's some interesting dynamics in the US capital 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 capital inventories inside the US. The COMEX price has continued to trade at a premium to the LME, recently at about 4% premium or roughly $0.20 a pound. However, our understanding is that the quoted COMEX price may not reflect what can actually be realized in the physical market, and capital sales in the U.S. may be at a higher than normal discount 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 cap-out sales from Florence in the next few months. The U.S. government has stated that it plans to revisit tariffs in the middle of next year with the potential for a 15% tariff on cap-out 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 U.S.-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 October. 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 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 stewart 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 450 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 MOLLE 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 U.S. dollar-denominated debt and an unrealized derivative loss related to our copper callers 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 and access 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 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 at 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 outlook is robust. We're well positioned to support the wrap-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&A session.

You will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 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 correlate the

Q&A queue.

Our first question comes from Duncan Hay from Panmure Liberum. Please go ahead.

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

Well, I think initially in the ramp-up period, you know, 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 wellfield. So it'll be key to be 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, you know, we've got, you know, a solid balance sheet and we can move forward confidently with that work now.

So 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.

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. You know, but no, we're optimistic. Certainly, what we see today, you know, the early results from the well field are positive, but it's early days. And yeah, we're keep pushing forward. And obviously, first copper is going to be important, you know, a big milestone for us early next year. Yeah, okay, thanks.

Our next question comes from Craig Hutchinson from TD Calvin.

Please go ahead. 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 the kind of milestones for declaring commercial production. Obviously, ISRs are relatively new for most people. Just how do you guys think about that in terms of production rate you need to get to 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?

Yeah, Craig, we're not thinking about about it in that way. I know that's a conventional way it's been done in the past for concentrators. It's going to be a steady ramp-up of production through 2026. 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? So we see, I guess, the rules have changed in recent years.

Yeah, I think the real focus will be on our, you know, obviously our C1 costs. We're going to be looking at, you know, at what point that our production, you know, generates operating cash flow, operating profits. And with this project, given the nature of the operating costs, 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 well field development. And that we see sort of later by the end of next year and then onwards, of course. 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.

Okay, so I guess until you reach your mid-next year, do we assume some of the costs will be capitalized or 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?

Yeah, on the accounting side, you know, these standards changed a few years ago. We now recognize revenue once it's sold. So even the first pounds of cathode will be 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 costs, so that's the drilling 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.

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

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

Okay, great. Thanks, guys.

Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your keypad. There are no further questions at this time.

I would now like to turn the call back over to the TSECO team for closing remarks.

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