What’s Next For Markets? (Uncut) 03-16-2025

Gold Hits $3,000: ‘Things Are Breaking’, What’s Next For Markets? | Ryan King

Things are breaking. Things are at the breaking point. And I don’t know what’s going to happen, as he says.

It’s going to be in the next one to four years where there’s going to be a massive, significant change with regards to being able to service these debt bubbles. I think we’re just at the beginning of a major super cycle for gold. Recession fears are continuing to mount.

What does this mean for investors? How do we protect ourselves from this? And in terms of mining, we have big news coming out of Caliber Mining. Ryan Keane joins us to talk about this merger with Caliber and Equinox Gold. It’s all over the news.

It’s significant, not just for the company, but also for the sector overall. Ryan is the Senior VP of Corporate Development and IR at Caliber Mining. We’ve had him on the show last year.

Check out the interview with Ryan from last year, link down below. Ryan, good to see you again. Welcome back.

Well, thank you, David. It’s nice to see you and under different circumstances, but appreciate you taking the time. Well, gold’s a lot higher.

That’s different. Sentiment for the miners actually overall are a lot better than a couple months ago. Even last year when you and I spoke, remember the theme last year was when is gold mining companies going to pick up again? And now we’re starting to see the GDX outperform the bullion.

So that’s a change. And of course, your company is going through a merger. So more M&A action, perhaps.

That’s also a change. Let’s talk about a more recent change coming out of the U.S. this week, which is recession concerns. And like I pointed out to you offline, recession concerns are front and center in the news just today.

I’ll take a look at the CNBC article, for example. Just today, we have this article come out. We’re speaking on the 11th or 14th of March.

U.S. consumers are starting to crack as tariffs add to inflation. Recession concerns is the headline. Walmart’s down.

Leaders of companies that serve everyone from penny pinching grocery shoppers to first class travelers are seeing cracks in demand. A shift in resilience. Consumers propped up the U.S. economy for years despite prolonged inflation.

On top of high interest rates and persistent inflation, CEOs are now grappling with how to handle new hurdles like on again, off again tariffs, mass government layoffs, and worsening consumer sentiment. Just a string of really bad words, if you want to say, in the first paragraph. Markets have not responded.

This is the worst week for the S&P in two years. So a bit of a bounce today, but not much. Let’s talk about it.

What’s your reaction to what I just read? Does it reflect what you’ve been looking at in your personal life? Well, I mean, what you just read, I think, has been bubbling for quite some time. I think there’s been a lot of masking of what’s been happening in the macro landscape or even for the end buyers of products. We’ve all been facing consistent inflationary pressures, which inflationary pressure is really largely driven by depreciation of value of fiat currencies.

And a store of wealth like gold is really a defense mechanism against that deflationary situation, a depreciation of currency across the board. And we’re now seeing gold at all time highs versus almost every, I think every currency in the world, gold is hitting all time highs. And it’s now outpacing major indices.

You look at gold’s performance last year, we were up 27%. Physical gold prices were up 27% last year, really driven by central bank buying and significant central bank buying, not just one or two central banks buying, but you’re seeing it now across the board. Many different central banks are increasing exposure to the physical metal.

And why is that? Obviously, there’s inflationary pressures, geopolitical situations happening across the board, tariff uncertainty that’s happening. So I think it’s really coming home to people realizing, wow, that depreciation or that value loss, the purchasing power of their fiat currencies is hitting wallets, is hitting bank accounts, and it’s concerning people. And this is why we’ve seen over the last few years, all of a sudden, people looking at or definitely the increase in value of gold.

Personal anecdote, had a friend walk into a dealer, bullion dealer just the other day buying some silver coins. So this is somebody who has not been historically a gold and silver investor. In fact, he’s on the younger side, he’s my age.

Why are consumers flocking to metals right now? Well, I think it’s for all the reasons we were just talking about it. Really, to be honest with you, I think there’s fear. What is my currency worth? And why is it continuously going down in value? I think people are taking a much more pragmatic approach now and starting to do some investigation.

Really, it’s for the first time in a long time. Because look, over the last many years, people have done fairly well. The stock market has increased year over year over year since the great financial crisis 2008.

So there’s been this belief that it’s not going to end. But now all of a sudden, I think quantitative easing, consistent increased debt levels, all of a sudden is coming home and it’s all hitting at once. People are realizing, wait a second, what I used to be able to buy for $100 now takes me $200 to buy.

And that devaluation of that currency, what does this all mean? And there’s some real hard truths coming to roost here and there’s some real investigative work going underway. I mean, you’ve read some of the articles, but major well-known powerhouse financial companies like led by Ray Dalio is really calling out what’s happening globally with debt levels, the crisis that is happening across North America. So I think people are starting to really pay attention.

Yeah. You mentioned to me offline that Ray Dalio is seeing some sort of significant change going on in the world. Can you tell us about that? Well, I’m not a steward necessarily like he is of history, but Ray Dalio really focuses on history and the cycles that have happened over the years and the cycles that have happened for empires and superpowers like the United States, where they start from an industrial revolution and evolve and transform and want to keep the country growing at a certain GDP over and over and over to continue to fuel that superpower.

And over time, that’s going to require quantitative easing. That’s going to require taking on additional debt loads. That’s going to require more and more and more and more and pushing economy to the brink of having so much debt.

And that’s the situation we’re facing today, particularly in the US with debt levels close to the ceiling, with debt levels almost uncontrollable. I think one stat recently was actually just paying down, paying interest rates in the United States on the debt levels they have is equivalent or more than all of military spending and all of Medicare. So it’s becoming one of the highest expenses the country is facing.

So it becomes this very challenging problem and very difficult to solve. And at what point in time when the United States government goes out and starts looking to add to the debt levels, to look at different options, do the buyers not present themselves? At some point in time, you’re going to get this situation where there’s going to be no buyers for that long-term debt potential. What then? Yeah, what then? What happens to the markets then? We’ll talk about your company in just a minute, but gold and silver are huge run-ups, like you mentioned.

We’re close to $3,000. But by the way, why has gold not broken $3,000 yet? I mean, it might by the time we air this over the weekend, but right now it’s not. I don’t know.

It’s like $2 away. Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty close, isn’t it? What’s up? Okay. Let’s just keep an eye on the ticker over this course of the interview.

It’s just a stiff resistance, a lot of selling pressure at $3,000. That’s what it seems like to me. What’s going on? Well, I mean, I think it’s like almost any commodity or it’s like any equity or it’s like any ETF.

You look at it and I think year-to-date gold is up over 10%. Oh, sorry. Let me track what I said.

It did break $3,000 very briefly today. Yeah, it did. I was looking at it.

I was like, yeah, it did. Okay. So it broke $3,000, Ryan.

Congratulations to all. There you go. Yeah.

Well, maybe this is the starting point of $4,000. I mean, clearly it will be, right? I mean, and that’s the scary thing is that, you know, is it that gold is outperforming or is it that all of the fiat currencies are depreciating? I mean, realistically, all fiat currencies are depreciating against physical stores of asset like gold, like silver, like real estate, for example. You know, this is an important fact because, you know, there’s not an infinite amount of gold in the world.

Yes, there’s, you know, people have to invest money in exploring and discovering and developing and then producing the metal. But it’s not like you can continuously recreate it like a printing press for fiat currencies, right? So this is why it’s becoming that, okay, we need to start looking at a balanced portfolio. And I think I read a stat the other day that, you know, even very recently within the last 12 months, portfolio managers that manage a diversified portfolio, less than 1% was in gold or gold equities.

Whereas you look 10 years ago, 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, gold represented almost, you know, between 5% and 10%. So I think the average was about 7% of a portfolio. So it’s just people have come away from owning that store of value asset, because look at the Magnificent Seven have done so well over the last, you know, 5, 10 years, you know, the US stock markets have just done performed so well since the great financial crisis, you know, and as they continue to print money, and as they continue to throw money at it, maybe it will continue.

But these US stocks are incredibly overvalued versus global equities. But you know, it’s interesting is if you look back to 2000, and I think it’s 2001, maybe 2002, gold, physical gold, as being the best performing asset class against the S&P 500, and many, many other asset classes. So, you know, there’s something to this here.

And I think people are starting to investigate and learn a little bit more about what’s happening here. And I would imagine, yes, it’s hitting all time highs. So then, you know, you’ve got that fear, oh, did I miss out already? Did I miss the trade? Did I miss this long term investment? And I think realistically, the amount of money printing that has happened, the amount of debt that global economies are holding, I think we’re just at the beginning of a major super cycle for gold.

What does a super cycle look like? I know nobody has a crystal ball price projections are usually, you know, not always right anyway. So what looks reasonable to you right now as a trajectory? Well, let’s use history as an example, right? In 2000, 2001, gold was roughly 250 to $300 an ounce. Within the decade, right by 2010, 2011, gold was $1,900 an ounce, right? And largely due to, you know, major fiscal irresponsibilities, i.e., you know, take taking ourselves out of that rate financial crisis, you know, huge amount of quantitative easing flooding the market with cash.

And then obviously, that rebounded the economy, it was fantastic. But now it’s coming to that point in time of holy cow, there is so much devaluation of fiat currencies that have happened, there is so much debt on these balance sheets globally, and, you know, country by country, that I truly believe we’re kind of in that situation where we’re kind of early 2000s, with an opportunity to see a major run up on hard assets, you know, hard assets being all the metals, you know, gold, silver, copper, etc. I think there’s an incredible opportunity here.

Obviously, time will tell, and maybe things will shift. But it sure feels like that type of situation when I talk to people that have been through the early 2000s and seen that major run up in physical metal. And, you know, I think we’re not even there yet in terms of what the equities could look like, right? These are still trading, you know, like gold is almost, you know, 2500 or $2,000 an ounce realistically, because if you look at some of these gold ETFs today that are gold backed ETFs, or ETFs, or gold equities, versus 2011, they were higher in 2011.

And gold was $2,000 an ounce, right? So there’s a visit, there’s a pretty significant opportunity here when you put it all into perspective. What is $3,000 an ounce mean for your industry? High level and then we can get into the details. Well, honestly, if I’m honest with you here, there’s probably a lot of irresponsible decisions being made at $3,000 an ounce for gold companies.

What I mean by that is that, you know, gold is a cyclical commodities, I mean, all things, but let’s just take gold, it’s a very cyclical macroeconomic driven commodity asset class. And we know it’s cyclical, it’s up, it’s down. But, you know, you can’t make decisions on running a business at $3,000 an ounce.

Like, for example, the year ahead for 2025, Caliber used what we believe was a very pragmatic view, and used a $2,400 per ounce gold price to calculate our revenues to run our business. So, you know, I think there’s going to be a lot of irresponsible decisions being made at $3,000. And that will lead to opportunities for companies to look at, hey, you know, unfortunately, you know, somebody got too levered on debt, expecting a higher price, that higher price didn’t deliver or something along those lines.

But when we take a look at, maybe a responsible gold mining company, so you think about this over the last 10 years, gold producers that have been in that category, have really significantly reduced debt, cleaned up balance sheets, made their businesses very attractive, and fortunately, have been able to see incremental additional margin on every ounce of gold produced. You know, as it’s gone higher, yes, we’ve seen some inflationary pressures and some cost pressures across the board. But you’re seeing probably the most significant free cash flow from, you know, these strong, well-known mining companies.

And that presents a very compelling opportunity for investors, assuming, right, assuming that you believe that we’re into a, you know, not necessarily a super cycle, but let’s just assume a $25,000 to $3,000 per ounce gold environment. Well, okay, so last time we had a bull cycle, let’s just talk about the last two bull cycles, 2011 and 2020. So 2011 was the then all-time high of not quite $2,000, but around $2,000.

The industry at the time had made some mistakes with over-investing, buying companies with no significant real deposits. You know, I’ll let you comment on that. 2020 was another bull market, perhaps different, perhaps the same.

So if you were to evaluate all three cycles, 2011, 2020, and now, what differences, what similarities can you address in relation to what your industry is doing with acquisitions? Well, if we look at, you know, 2010, 2011, you know, you’re coming right out of the great financial crisis. The gold price ran up pretty quickly. I think it was, you know, seven, $800 an ounce in the back of the great financial crisis.

And within a couple of years, it was $1,900 an ounce. I’m not saying that can’t happen again. I’m just saying it had had a steady run up, you know, from that $250, $300 an ounce, steadily increasing year over year for a 10-year period.

So you’re almost at the end of a bigger cycle where I think there was a lot of executives feeling confident about the outlook, or they were feeling like, I need to do a deal to satisfy my shareholders. My shareholders want additional growth. They want additional profitability.

And obviously, we saw what happened after that, because it went from $1,900, you know, down to $1,100, and a lot of flow of money or investment into the sector evaporated very quickly. Because, again, you know, because of the cyclical nature of the business. I believe that there’s a lot of learnings that came out of that.

And we’ve seen that over the last few years, acquisitions or mergers have happened on merits of cash flow and deposits, rather than, you know, there’s something that has what looks like a very attractive exploration development stage opportunity. A, it’s not permitted. It hasn’t maybe had economic studies done on it.

But I still want to own it, because I think that based on some analysis, it’s going to be big, and it’s going to be very creative for our shareholders. Maybe it’s too early stage. So maybe there was some mistakes that happened along the way.

And there was a lot of write offs that happened along that thing. And what happened during that period of time, I think there was a lot of debt that was taken on by companies to leverage themselves to the exposure of gold, and ran into a situation where all of a sudden the price retreated, you know, 50%. Not quite 50%, but you know, a significant, a very significant retreat.

So now we’re into 2020, and obviously COVID happens. That is a very uncertain time. You know, a significantly uncertain time, where in those types of volatile times, you know, geopolitical tensions, lockdowns, and again, there was a significant amount of money printing that happened.

I think that was the largest amount of quantitative easing ever happened. Obviously, driving the gold price, driving this exuberance into the sector. And we all saw a significant run up.

But really, there was very minimal M&A activity that happened during that period of time. And again, I think that was because of the learnings that had happened over the course of the last decade. Here we are in a situation, you know, in 2025, where I think you’re starting to see things breaking a little bit more.

And it’s not an extraneous event, for example, i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s not an event that’s happening. But you’re seeing different countries having issues, you’re seeing recessionary pressures, you’re seeing inflationary pressures, you’re seeing tariff uncertainties, you know, geopolitical uncertainties across the board, debt levels to such levels that they’re not serviceable. So you’re getting to this point in time where all of a sudden, I think the, you know, and again, to use Ray Dalio as an example, things are breaking, things are at the breaking point.

And I don’t know what is going to happen, as he says, it’s going to be in the next one to four years, where there’s going to be a massive significant change with regards to being able to service these debt levels and people being able to, you know, I’m talking about very, very large countries like the United States and others that are going to have to find ways to fix these problems. And obviously, you’re seeing that now with the administration that’s in place, they’re trying to do different things with the Doge and others. But is it too late, too little too late? I don’t know.

Yeah. What do you think is going to happen to the Doge? One more question on this, we’ll move on to your company. What do you think is going to happen to Doge? We talked about the debt issue last time at length as well, right? Is Doge the solution to this debt problem? Well, I mean, it’s probably one of the last straws in the basket.

Really? I mean, when you think about it, and the levels they’re at, can they make a dent into the trillions of dollars of debt? And how quickly it is expanding? I would argue no, I think it’s going to be too problematic. But you’re seeing that administration try to cut, cut, cut. You know, what did they say? We want to cut income taxes.

Well, I don’t know if that’s going to help be able to service debt by cutting, you know, additional revenues that would come in. Now they’re trying to cut in different ways, but then they’re also trying to introduce tariffs. I don’t know how this is all going to play out.

I don’t think anyone does. But I do believe that it’s probably going to have impact, you know, negatively also in the US administration, I would believe that that or for the USGP, it’s going to apply pressures. And as you just read, recessionary fears, etc.

You know, that that isn’t just because of what we’re, what we’re, what we’re living out today, but I think it’s probably in part parcel, because of all the uncertainty the administration has been referring to on a weekly daily basis, and these new tariffs that could impact businesses, you know, not only in in different countries, but also in the United States. Okay, and this merger that you mentioned to me, Equinox and Caliber Mining, this was obviously, you know, concluded not too long ago, recent news. So did it have a lot to do with this run up in gold price or not? What was the strategic nature? Yeah, that’s a great question.

You know, we haven’t seen a lot of mergers or acquisitions over the last little while. I mean, actually, the market in the sector has been talking about how little they have been happening. And, but this, this, this type of a situation is, I think, very complimentary.

And, you know, Caliber will end up being a 35% stake in the pro forma company, Equinox Gold, led by Ross Beattie will be will be 65% of the pro forma company. And really, the principals got together and looked at the opportunity here. And it’s a in my view, it’s a very compelling opportunity.

Because you’re bringing complimentary assets together, and you’re bringing complimentary teams together, you unlock additional future value for all shareholders, there’s there’s no, it’s a non premium deal, this is an at market merger. And the interesting aspect here is that what’s coming together is, is Equinox has just recently birthed an asset called Greenstone. It’s a very large, multi million ounce, major mine in Ontario.

So it’s at the beginning of its life. It’s going to produce somewhere between this year 300 to 350. But at nameplate capacity, it’s a 350 to 400,000 ounce operation, and at a top quartile cost base.

So you’re talking somewhere in that, you know, 1000 to $1,200 an ounce to produce ounces of gold. And then you look at what Calibre brings Calibre bringing the and these are I’m just talking cornerstone assets, because that’s the that’s the focus right? In the, in the Calibre portfolio, we’re just about to have the Valentine gold mine, see first gold and Q2 and then have a ramp up to nameplate capacity by the end of the year. Those two assets combined, will at nameplate capacity will be producing approximately 600,000 ounces of gold a year.

That is the second largest gold production profile by any company in Canada. So, you know, by by combining the teams by combining the assets, you’re tearing up in quality, you’re tearing up in jurisdiction, and there’s many other assets in the portfolio. But these are the focus points right now is that cornerstone asset base in Canada.

And I’ll give you an example, you know, you look at some of the valuations. And and although new equinox will be a new entity with new people and integrating those teams, that doesn’t have as much of a track record as some of the others, but it presents a pretty compelling opportunity. And you look at a company like a Nico Eagle, that’s been or not a Nico Eagle, Alamos gold that’s been around for a number of years, and have been successful in in in gold production in Mexico and Canada.

And I think probably approximately 500,000 ounces of their production of their 600 to 650,000 ounces comes out of Canada. Well, their market valuation is sitting at about 10 billion US dollars. Right.

And so that is that is their production profile. It’s between six and 650,000 ounces a year, approximately 500,000 ounces coming out of Canada. Whereas you look at a new equinox, especially when you look at the Canadian assets, so the Canadian assets alone, will be producing approximately 600,000 ounces once getting main plate capacity.

And the valuation out of the gate is about 5.5 to 6 billion US US evaluation. And in order to I’m just talking about, right, we just talking about the cornerstone assets, the total company will have approximately this year about 950,000 ounces of production on a path to 1.2 million ounces a year production profile. Yeah, a very compelling opportunity when you look at some of the valuations in the marketplace versus what new equinox could present.

Okay, but but this is it obviously is going to be a creative for both sides. I’m presuming what is the value added to shareholders? That’s probably what people are wondering, first and foremost. Yeah, I mean, so for example, caliber shareholders, right? What what is this? What is this benefit caliber shareholders? And in my view, the benefit to caliber shareholders here is you’re getting exposure to a that greenstone asset that isn’t quite at nameplate capacity yet, and is continuing to ramp up.

So there’ll be some unlocking of value from that new Canadian asset. Additionally, you know, there’s other growth assets in that portfolio that I think are going to significantly unlock value and it’s not going to happen overnight, or even in the next six months, but in the next, you know, 1218 months, that’s where the unlocking of value I think is really going to start to come from, from these other growth opportunities. And again, when you scale up in size, you start to attract a whole different capital markets profile, and a different investor base and a different valuation, assuming that you execute and deliver on your promises.

And that’s one of the things that I think is really critical in a transaction like this is that you can put all these assets together. But what’s highly critical is the operating team, you know, setting the stage and then delivering on those expectations to build the trust and the confidence in the marketplace. What is next strategically speaking for for caliber? Is it? Is it more acquisitions? Is it expansion? Is it? Do you have to sort of that with Equinox management? Like what’s what’s what’s next? Well, absolutely.

So what we’ve done so far is February 23. The deal was announced to the marketplace of the combination of the two companies will now go through, you know, getting an information circular out to sort of to provide all the information so shareholders can vote a vote would happen. I believe it’s April 24, the end of April to vote on this transaction.

So it’s hands of the shareholders now. And then post that you go through regulatory and court approval close. So, you know, really now it’s it’s it’s working through that process.

But then upon close, it’s really about integrating the teams, setting the vision going forward with the plan. And in our calibers, Chief Executive Officer Darren Hall, he’ll be coming into the business as President and Chief Operating Officer. So and it’s then that’s why I say the skill set in the teams, the combination of the teams is so is so beneficial, because the Equinox team brings a great financial strength, corporate development, capital market strength, and in the caliber team brings a significant amount of expertise and experience and operations and big, large open pit mines all around the world.

And Darren had spent 30 years at Newmont, optimizing and operating assets all around the planet. So there’s a tremendous amount of skill set that I think collectively combined will add a lot of value to the new Equinox gold and then it will be looking at the whole portfolio, you know, staging things out looking at the opportunities, focusing on the cornerstone assets and then unlocking value from the growth opportunities in the future. Can you comment on the deal itself? I understand it’s all stock, right? Let’s talk about the financing here.

Yeah, no, that’s right. I mean, this is an all equity transaction. So again, Equinox shareholders will end up owning 65% of pro forma company.

Caliber shareholders will end up owning 35%. This is in the money securities of the pro forma company. Ross Beattie is set to be the chairman and one of the largest shareholders of the company.

Blaine Johnson, who’s the chairman of Caliber Mining, will become a director of New Equinox Gold. Doug Forrester, again, Doug and Blaine were founders of Caliber Mining. Doug Forrester will become a board member.

And then as mentioned, Darren will become the president COO. So for every share you own of Caliber, you will get 0.31 of the share of Newco, of New Equinox Gold. And the company net will have approximately 450 million US in cash.

I believe about $1.4 billion of debt. But the attractive piece here is how quickly that debt could get repaid with the immediate increase in production and cash flow. EBITDA is very significant over this year and next year.

So there’s a real significant opportunity to quickly de-lever the company. I think for example, 2025, based on analyst consensus numbers, I think it’s at a $2,600 Gold price. It’ll be a roughly $1.5, $1.6 billion in EBITDA.

And if we were to use a $2,900 Gold, which is obviously even a little bit more conservative to today’s price, as you pointed out, we’re talking about about $1.9 billion of EBITDA. So a very attractive, compelling cash flow profile to quickly de-lever the company and look to potentially return capital to shareholders. Okay.

Let’s talk about Caliber’s evaluations itself. How does it sit relative to its peers? Yeah. I mean, and this is the unique thing with this situation is that when we look at a basket of Gold equities, you know, mixed jurisdictions, you know, kind of in that 200 to 300,000 ounce a year production profile, Caliber had a price to NAV based on analyst consensus numbers.

And Caliber has 11 analysts covering the company. We had about a 0.68, 0.7 times price to NAV. When we look at Equinox, they’re roughly the same.

So in our view, that re-rate potential and valuation opportunity is very significant. I talked a little bit about it with Alamos, but you can look at it on a PNAV basis, price to NAV basis with a combined pro forma company. We’re at the bottom of the quartile.

So you look at various companies, let’s take New Gold, for example, based on the analyst consensus numbers, it’s one times. You look at Alamos, they’re trading at 1.3 times. You look at Lundin Gold trading at 1.4 times.

Now we have to factor in there’s many different items that will go into the metrics of the calculation. You know, so that’s going to be cost profile, that’s going to be balance sheet, that’s going to be other things. But this presents a very attractive opportunity for an entry point and an opportunity for a re-rate as these major Canadian assets come together, as the combined teams come together to unlock a lot of value for shareholders moving forward, especially, you know, in this environment of $3,000 per ounce gold.

You know, this will be that one plus million ounce a year gold producer creating a significant amount of cashflow at these prices. Well, now that this company is significantly larger, presumably with this merger, is the future expansion of the company dependent on acquisitions of smaller juniors and posits? That’s actually a really great question because, you know, we’ve got these cornerstone assets that I’ve talked about. You’ve also got assets that are producing in Brazil, you’ve got assets that are producing in California, you’ve got assets that are producing in Nicaragua to culminate into that 1.2 plus million ounce a year production profile.

However, also within that, there’s opportunity for organic growth. You know, we’ve talked about this a little bit, but in Central America, Nicaragua where Calibre has been since 2019, growing that asset base. And again, it’s very compelling because we’ve grown that from what was 50,000 ounces a year to now is 200,000 to 250,000 ounces a year.

But importantly, that asset base still has a million tons of surplus capacity at one of its facilities for organic growth. So that’s going to be, you know, any sort of exploration success that could lead to opportunities. And we’ve seen the exploration success year over year.

We’ve grown reserves 300 plus percent. And then you layer on something like in the Equinox portfolio, they have an asset called Castle Mountain that’s going through a phase two permit. So it has been an operating heap leach bond.

It’s now transitioning to meet a CIL plant and tailings facility and going through a permitting process there, which is expected to be based on what I understand by the end of 26, early 27 to potentially have a permit in hand. We know the US administration is very favorable to moving ahead with projects. This could be one of those opportunities.

And that could be another 200 to 250,000 ounce a year production profile, because I believe it’s got over 4 million ounces in reserves. So within the portfolio, there’s a lot of great opportunities to see upside potential. It’s not just about acquiring to get bigger.

This is about looking at the portfolio and unlocking value of that total portfolio. Possibly maybe it means rationalizing some pieces of the business, possibly. But what we’re really looking at here is this is a million ounce, a significant major Gold producer with a lot of levers within the company to unlock additional value for shareholders.

Okay, perfect. Let’s keep tabs on the news and we’ll keep updated as more information comes out. Where can we follow you and your company? Well, yeah.

So Caliber, assuming all goes well, will then fold into Equinox Gold. And so Equinox Gold, I think, but I believe equinoxgold.com would be the way to continue to follow the progress. But for now, until everything progresses, calibermining.com. And you can reach me, Ryan King, directly from the website.

And if there’s any questions, we’re always happy to have further conversations and discuss the transaction. Thank you. We’ll put the links down below.

So make sure to follow Caliber Mining’s journey there. And take care for now. Ryan, we’ll see you soon.

Bye. Sounds good, David. Bye.

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