Endeavour Mining Aktie

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Endeavour Mining's First Quarter 2026 Results Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference call is being recorded, and a transcript of the call will be available on Endeavour's website tomorrow. I'd now like to hand the call over to Endeavour's Vice President of Investor Relations, Jack Garman. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Endeavour's Q1 2026 Results Webcast. Before we start, please note our usual disclaimer. On the call today, I'm joined by Ian Cockerill, Chief Executive Officer; Guy Young, Chief Financial Officer; Djaria Traore, Executive Vice President of Operations and ESG; and Sonia Scarselli, Executive Vice President of Growth and Exploration.

Today's call will follow our usual format. Ian will first go through the highlights of the quarter. Guy will present the financials, and Djaria will walk you through our operating results by mine, before handing back to Ian for his closing remarks. We'll then open the line up for questions. I'll now hand over to Ian.

Thanks, Jack, and welcome to everyone joining us on the call today. Now Q1 2026 was a record quarter for Endeavour with a strong operational performance and elevated gold price, underpinning a very strong financial results. Production of 282,000 ounces was in line with our plan, and we expect to see progressive improvements as we move through the year as stripping activity opens up progressively higher grade ore through to Q4 later on this year, while all-in sustaining costs on a royalty adjusted basis also came in towards the lower end of our guidance in the quarter.

This performance translated into a record free cash flow of $613 million, and that's equivalent to $2,176 per ounce produced. That's a 29% increase over the prior quarter. Through the year, we'll continue to focus on our margins and maximizing free cash flow from every ounce that we produce. This free cash generation transformed our balance sheet. We moved from net debt of $158 million in the previous quarter to now a net cash position of $405 million at the end of this quarter, a $563 million swing in just 3-months. Given the strong balance sheet position and our outlook, we're going to look to increase our shareholder returns through supplemental dividends within our H1 2026 dividend announcement and through continued opportunistic share buybacks.

At prevailing gold prices, we expect supplemental returns to at least double -- to be at least double our $1 billion minimum commitment over the next 3-years. On organic growth, as we announced last week, the Assafou DFS confirms a high-quality, long-life asset that has very strong project economics. Early works are underway, and we're targeting a final investment decision before the end of this year. On the exploration front, we're accelerating resource definition of our Vindaloo Deep target, and we expect to deliver maiden resource in the first half of this year. Simultaneously, our new ventures exploration program continues to expand our exploration footprint into the most prospective Tier 1 gold provinces with the latest strategic investment into Guyana. I'll now take you through each of these areas in a bit more detail.

On Slide 7, you see production was 282,000 ounces, down from Q4 due to planned lower grades mined and processed, but in line with the mine sequence. All-in sustaining costs were higher in the quarter, largely due to higher gold price-driven royalty costs with some small impacts from the stripping activity and the higher power costs at Mana. But despite higher costs, our all-in sustaining margin of $2,976 an ounce was $751 per ounce higher than in Q4 as margins continue to consistently expand alongside the higher gold prices.

On Slide 8 and the full year guidance, you can see group production and all-in sustaining costs remain on track to achieve guidance. The Q1 production of 282,000 ounces represents approximately 26% of the low end of our guidance range, and we're expecting higher production in the second half of the year, peaking in Q4 as per our planned mining sequence.

On costs, while first quarter all-in sustaining costs of $1,834 an ounce sits slightly above the guidance range, this reflects higher royalty costs as a direct result of the rising gold price. On a gold price adjusted basis back to our budgeted level, underlying all-in sustaining costs of $642 an ounce were in the lower half of the guidance range. And let's say that's based on our $3,000 gold price.

On capital, we expect both sustaining and nonsustaining capital to be weighted towards the first 3-quarters of the year, aligned with our stripping program. While growth capital of $500 million to $100 million is now expected to support early works at Assafou, mostly in the second half of the year. So overall, we're confident in our full year outlook and expect to see improvements throughout the year.

Free cash flow reached a record $613 million in Q1, up 29% from Q4 and equivalent to $2,176 per ounce of gold produced. But we remain focused on maximizing free cash flow for every ounce that we produce, and as operational performance improves throughout the year, we expect to at least partially offset some of the impact of higher taxes in Q2 and Q3. The strong free cash flow has enabled us to rapidly de-leverage the balance sheet in Q1, reducing net debt by $563 million and moving to a net cash position of $405 million at quarter end. And this provides the financial flexibility to deliver our world-class organic growth project Assafou, whilst we pay out sector-leading returns to shareholders.

As you know, our leverage target through the cycle is less than 0.5x net debt to adjusted EBITDA. That remains the case, but we do not intend to maintain a very large net cash position either. So we'll stick to our capital allocation model and look to increase shareholder returns while prioritizing Assafou's development as well as our exploration program.

On Slide 11, our shareholder returns program is quite clear. Between '26 and '28, we're committed to return at least $1 billion to shareholders and we will maintain this commitment down to a gold price of $3,000 an ounce. And at prevailing gold prices, we could return more than double that minimum commitment to shareholders. Given the strong gold prices so far this year, we're on track to return a significant supplemental dividend when we announce our H1 '26 dividend in our Q2 results. So far this year, we've already completed $54 million of share buybacks, and we'll continue opportunistically and make up a significant component of our supplemental returns.

On to our sector-leading organic growth on Slide 12. Now last week, we published the results of our definitive feasibility study, strengthening our confidence in the Assafou project and its potential to transform our portfolio, driving production growth, lowering costs and delivering long-term value. We discovered Assafou for $13 million in 2022. And based on the DFS at a $4,000 per ounce gold price, the project now has an after-tax value of over $5 billion with an internal rate of return of 55%. Now that's value creation and reflects the highly prospective region and the ability to accelerate projects quickly from discovery to production. The Assafou project will be relatively similar to other mines that we've built, albeit bigger. The DFS outlines a 5 million tonne per annum gravity and CIL processing plant optimized to support a smoother production ramp-up and to add additional redundancy to give optionality to expand the plant in the future as we develop and further expand the resource, the exploration resource in the immediate vicinity of the mine.

Early works are already underway. Procurement of long lead items have started, detailed engineering and design is progressing and key tenders are already out. We have also launched land compensation negotiations as part of the resettlement action plan, which we need to finalize ahead of starting the resettlement, which is on the critical path. We're targeting a final investment decision before the end of this year and then a construction period of 24 to 30 months. Once construction starts, the resettlement, mining pre-stripping and ore commissioning are on the critical path to production. The resettlement is required for mining to start, so developing the resettlement action plan is a key part of our early works program.

Assafou has the potential to be one of our largest, lowest cost assets with the longest mine life, capable of producing 320,000 ounces of gold per year at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,000.26 per ounce over the first 8 years of its planned 16-year mine life. The DFS also reflects our increased confidence in the mine plan, underpinned by nearly 100,000 meters of additional close spaced drilling. This has increased reserves and resources and introduced maiden proven reserves and measured resources, providing a much higher level of certainty over what we will mine and when, de-risking the ramp-up and early production profile. And importantly, we see significant exploration upside in the immediate vicinity of the mine that will support continued growth in reserves and resources and further enhance the mine plan over time with the potential to sustain production higher levels over this period for much longer.

Looking at the exploration at Assafou on Slide 14. Most of our drilling has been focused on the Assafou deposit itself, and we've just started to step out beyond Assafou. We've already identified 20 highly prospective targets on this property that we are prioritizing with a guided $10 million spend for this year. We'll focus on advancing the Pala Trend 3 deposit following the 2025 maiden resource, defining Pala Trend 2 maiden resource and exploration drilling at the Pala Trend Southwest and Koumenagaré. At Assafou, we've discovered a new and highly fertile mineralized Greenstone belt and through our own land package and our strategic partnership with Kulu Gold, we expect to unlock significantly more value across this belt. Now Assafou is key to our organic growth outlook and along increased production at Sabodala-Massawa, we're targeting 27% growth in production to 1.5 million ounces by 2030 with a solid position in the first cost quartile.

On Slide 16, following the launch of our new exploration strategy late last year, we've increased our exploration guidance to $100 million for this year, and we will prioritize adding near-mine resources across the portfolio, expanding resources at the Assafou deposit and nearby targets, whilst advancing new ventures to replenish the longer-term organic project pipeline.

And as you can see on Slide 17, we are pleased that we signed a strategic investment of $20 million with Altair for a 9.9% stake. The Guyana Shield is one of the 4 Tier 1 gold provinces that we are targeting through our Greenfield and New Ventures program. And given the Guyana Shield is a continuity of the West African permian, we have a good understanding of the geology as well as the structural context. Now Altair has one of the largest consolidated land packages in Guyana, covering highly prospective ground to the south of recent significant discoveries at Oko West and Oko-Ghanie along the same shear zone. So we're excited about the prospectivity and the proceeds from our investment will be deployed to accelerate these exploration programs.

Before I hand over to Guy, I just wanted to touch shortly on ESG. As a long-term partner in West Africa, we will always strive to deliver sustainable value to all of our stakeholders. In 2025 alone, we contributed $2.8 billion to host economies. And over the last 6 years, we've contributed $12.9 billion. This consistent delivery of value alongside continued improvements in governance, stakeholder engagement and ESG management systems is increasingly being recognized. And as a member now of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, we met all transparency expectations in 2025, performing strongly relative to our peer group. In addition, our ISS rating has been upgraded, placing us in the top 10% of our sector, in line with the other strong ESG ratings we continue to maintain. And with that introduction, let me hand you over to Guy, who can take you through the Q1 financials. Guy, over to you.

Thanks, Ian, and hello to everyone. As Ian said, Q1 was a very strong quarter financially, driven by the higher gold price and consistency in our operational performance. The realized gold price increased by $937 an ounce to $4,810 an ounce, supporting our record financial performance. Whilst quarter-on-quarter production was down slightly and costs were up partially as a result, adjusted EBITDA increased by 29% and adjusted net earnings increased by 64%.

On the cash flow side, operating cash flows were up 21% and free cash flow was up 29%. On Slide 21, you can see that adjusted EBITDA reached a record $880 million, up 29% quarter-over-quarter, and our adjusted EBITDA margin also increased significantly by some 12% to 65%. The higher EBITDA reflects the combination of higher gold prices and lower operating expenses due to the lower production, while the improved margin demonstrates our ability to leverage the benefits of increased gold prices in our earnings.

Moving on to Slide 22. Operating cash flow was up 21% to $737 million compared to Q4 2025 due to higher gold prices and lower operating expenses despite increased cash taxes and an increased working capital outflow related to trade and payables, inventory and receivables. Looking now at the operating cash flow improvement in some more detail on Slide 23. The increase in the realized gold price added $169 million to operating cash flow. Gold sold decreased by 24,000 ounces to 278,000 ounces in Q1, which impacted operating cash flow by $99 million. Operating and other expenses were $156 million lower than Q4 due to a number of factors.

Firstly, lower nominal mining and processing costs on the back of the lower production, the completion of the hedging program last year, where we recorded a loss in Q4, and these were partially offset by higher royalties. Income taxes paid increased by $23 million to $46 million, reflecting the timing of corporate income tax payments as expected and provisional withholding tax payments at Sabodala-Massawa. On that point, please note for the full year, we've increased our cash tax guidance from $600 million to $700 million to the revised total of $660 million to $770 million, reflecting higher withholding tax payments related to an increase in cash repatriation on the back of higher gold prices. Cash income tax guidance is unchanged for the year.

Finally, working capital was a $91 million outflow, a $75 million increase on last quarter's. Key drivers of the increase were a reduction in payables, which we expect in Q1, along with increased VAT and stockpiles. Turning to VAT first. VAT balances increased in Q1 -- sorry, whilst VAT balances increased in Q1, we've seen some positive developments in April with a resumption in direct VAT reimbursements in Burkina Faso, a reduction in processing times in Senegal and higher levels of reimbursements in Cote d'Ivoire, which, if maintained, will positively impact our Q2 working capital. The stockpile increase is due to some deferral in stripping at Hounde and the concomitant stockpile drawdown along with higher mining volumes at Ity. Both these trends are expected to normalize through the rest of the year.

Although less material, we have built up supplies of some critical consumables like fuel and explosives to help mitigate any potential impacts from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Turning to Slide 24. Free cash flow reached a record $613 million in Q1, up 29% from Q4 despite the lower production and higher ASIC taxes and working capital outflow. Free cash flow has increased each quarter since Q2 2025 as we are benefiting from higher gold prices and successfully converting the majority of additional margin into free cash. The outlook remains very strong at current gold prices, particularly in H2 of this year. I would remind you, however, that for Q2, we expect free cash flow to be lower as a result of seasonal tax payments. This is normal regional tax seasonality with higher corporate income and withholding tax payments, representing approximately 65% of our full year payments to be paid in the quarter.

On Slide 25, our cash flow significantly improved our net debt position as shown here. We started the quarter with net debt of $158 million and ended with $405 million of net cash. As detailed on the previous 2 slides, operating activities generated $737 million of cash flow in the quarter. Investing outflows were $125 million, including $75 million of sustaining capital, $45 million of nonsustaining capital and $6 million of growth capital. Financing activities included a net $75 million drawdown on the revolving credit facility alongside $27 million of share buybacks, $8 million of lease payments and $4 million of financing fees, all of which leaves us in a net cash position of $405 million at the end of the quarter.

As Ian mentioned earlier, we do not intend to build a large net cash position, and we'll continue to follow our capital allocation model of increased shareholder returns after prioritizing assets for development and exploration requirements.

Finally, moving on to net earnings. Earnings from mining operations increased to $776 million, reflecting the higher gold price, partly offset by royalties and sustaining capital. Other expenses decreased with the higher Cote d'Ivoire royalties in the prior quarter now being reported as part of our cost of sales. Deferred tax was a $97 million expense compared to a $53 million recovery in the prior quarter. The change reflects the accrual of additional withholding taxes ahead of expected increased cash upstreaming as a result of the higher gold prices, as I referenced earlier. Adjusted net earnings were $442 million for the quarter or $1.53 per share, up 65% from Q4. Thank you, and I'll now hand over to Djaria to walk you through the operating performance.

Thank you, Guy, and hello, everyone. Before discussing our operating results, I want to talk about safety, which remains our top priority. We were deeply saddened that one of our contractor colleagues suffered a fatal injury at Mana on 6th of March, as we have previously reported.

Following the incident, we've launched a comprehensive investigation, and we've identified several areas of improvement, particularly around contractor on-boarding, supervision and ongoing training. These actions are now being implemented across all our operations. Despite this incident, our total recordable injury frequency rate of 0.72 on a trailing 12-month basis has improved during the quarter and remains one of the lowest in the sector, and we continue all our efforts to eliminate fatal risks.

Before turning to the mine-by-mine review, I wanted to touch on our first quarter performance compared to guidance on Slide 29. As Ian mentioned, we are on track to meet full year guidance with performance weighted towards H2 as production and costs are expected to improve at Hounde, Mana and Ity in the second half of the year, and this is in line with the mine plans. For quarter 1, group production was lower compared to last quarter of 2025 due to lower grades at Sabodala-Massawa, Mana and Ity, but again, in line with the mining sequence. The all-in sustaining costs were higher this quarter due to gold sales, higher royalty costs and increased stripping activity. Overall, we are pleased with our progress to date.

Starting with Hounde on Slide 10. Production increased as we mine and process higher grades from the Kari West and Vindaloo Deep pits. All-in sustaining costs have increased, but largely due to higher royalty costs at higher realized gold prices. and to higher sustaining capital from increased waste stripping at Kari West and heavy mining equipment improvement. We will continue stripping at the Vindaloo pit [indiscernible], which will support access to better grade to improve production for the year, with costs only expected to realize the benefit later in the year once the majority of the stripping has been completed.

On Slide 31, at Ity, production decreased as we mine lower grades from the Bakatouo and [ Walter ] pits, while we also processed lower tonnes due to scheduled mill maintenance in quarter 1. All-in sustaining costs at Ity has improved due to lower sustaining capital and the benefit of byproduct silver sales, despite the higher gold prices and lower gold sales. Similar to Hounde, Ity's performance is expected to be weighted towards H2 as blended grades are expected to increase through the year.

On Slide 32, you can see that production at Mana was lower quarter-over-quarter due to lower grades and the weighing down on mining activity in the Siou underground deposit, where the reserves are nearly depleted. Similarly, all-in sustaining costs were higher due to the lower levels of production and sales as well as higher royalty costs related to gold prices and the continued use of higher cost self-generated power. On costs, we expect that the grid power availability will improve during quarter 2 as the grid in Burkina Faso adds new capacity. We also continue to improve the resilience of our grid connection at Mana through the automation of the underground ventilation system and the installation of a new transformer and capacitor bank, which is expected to improve productivity and operating costs. In H2, the mining feed from the Wona underground deposit is expected to supplemented with ore from the open pit of Bana Camp, supporting slightly higher grade throughput and production.

Moving to Sabodala-Massawa on Slide 33. Production decreased due to lower grades mined and processed compared to the quarter 4 2025, but in line with the mine sequence. All-in sustaining costs increased due to lower gold sales, higher royalty costs related to the increased gold price and higher sustaining capital. As 2026 progresses, we expect to see steady performance from the CIL plant as improved grades are offset by slightly lower throughput. While on the BIOX side, we expect continuous improvement in throughput and recovery as the ongoing optimization work continues.

At the end of quarter 1, we published a technical report for Sabodala-Massawa. And it's also important to remember that this is a conservative reserve only outlook that we intend to optimize and smooth-out through additional explorations and sequencing. The study outlined significant production growth into the high 300,000 ounces by year 2029 with an average production over the next 5 years of 335,000 ounces per annum. The significant increase in production is expected to be driven by the ramp-up of underground mining at the Kerekounda and Golouma deposits. As the mining ramps up, it is projected to deliver higher grade to the CIL plant, coupled with high grades through the BIOX plant from the Massawa North Zone deposit. We will expect to small this production profile through sequencing of Massawa North Zone and conversion of additional reserves, which would allow us to achieve and maintain production in the mid-300,000 ounces range for longer.

Lastly, turning to Lafigue on Slide 35. Production increased as we mine higher grades from the main pit. We also benefited from improved recovery, which have increased following the completion of processing plant optimization project. All-in sustaining costs have also increased due to significant increase in sustaining capital related to the planned waste stripping this year and higher royalty costs due to the higher realized gold prices and the increased royalty rates. As stripping continues, we expect grades to decrease through the next quarter before again improving as we move into the next pushback in the second half of 2026. Overall, as you can see, the performance has been consistent and predictable during quarter 1. And as a result, we're well positioned for the rest of the year. Thank you for your time, and I will hand over to Ian.

Thank you, Djaria. As you've heard, we're off to a strong start operationally, and we've delivered another record quarter financially. But our key priorities from here are quite clear.

Firstly, deliver on production and cost guidance; secondly, maximize free cash flow for every ounce that we produce to ensure an optimized balance sheet so that we can deliver sector-leading organic growth and sector-leading shareholder returns whilst remaining a trusted partner to our host countries. We certainly look forward to updating you on our progress throughout the year. And with that, I'd say thank you, and now I'll hand back to the operator, who will be in a position to open up for Q&A. Thanks very much.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of Alain Gabriel of Morgan Stanley.

The first question is for you, Ian. The cash balance is building very rapidly on today's gold prices, and you can easily finance Assafou, meet all your capital returns commitments and still have significant cash pile that is left. Although that's a good problem to have, it also brings some scrutiny on capital allocation. So how are you thinking about M&A at this point in the cycle? And do you think you have the capacity to take on a sizable project like Assafou and pursue M&A at the same time? That's my first question.

Thanks, Alain. Yes, look, it's a bit of a Hollywood problem, having the cash and the already well-defined organic growth pipeline. Irrespective of how much cash we have on our balance sheet, we are -- as you know, we're really focused on growing this business in an organic fashion. We have lots of opportunities to do that. That's our principal focus. Our other focus is obviously on the exploration side. And I think the investment in Altair gives you another clear indication that's where we would -- we're happy to sort of put our money. We are patient capital investors. We seek the right opportunities to go in to create really outsized value returns to shareholders. It would be nice to do it every quarter, but we're taking a longer-term perspective on that.

With respect to M&A, we constantly look. And if the right opportunity came along, obviously, we would look at it. To date, we've looked at several opportunities, but there's nothing has eventually turned out to be positive. But we're not averse to M&A, but our principal focus obviously is on organic growth.

That's very clear. And the second question is probably for Guy on the costs of -- or the energy cost impact on the business. Maybe if you can talk to us a little bit more about the diesel exposure across the group. How do you see the conflict impacting your cost base? Are you seeing any supply stress emerge on the supply chain? Because you seem to have managed this very well in Q1. So how are you thinking going forward of these dynamics?

Alain, so let's just talk a little bit about the difference in our minds anyway between the security of supply and then the pricing risk. So to the first part, security of supply, as a general comment across all of our sites, we do not rely particularly heavily on fuel or any other related consumables that transit through the Strait of Hormuz. So we've got refineries that we rely on broadly regional, but in particular, in Cote d'Ivoire in Senegal. And the crude input into those refineries is predominantly coming from Nigeria. We do have some other refined products that are coming from Northern Western Europe.

But as a result of all of that and in discussion with our suppliers and the test of their business continuity planning, we don't perceive security of supply to be the key issue. It is what you've referred to more a question of pricing. When we look across the portfolio, and again, just bearing in mind that fuel is anywhere between 10% and 15% of operating costs, so it's significant, but not that material. When we run numbers bearing in mind local pricing, then we come up with a $10 per ounce AISC impact roughly for every $10 on the price of a barrel of oil. That is what we've seen so far.

And when we look forward into the remainder of the year, that's what we're anticipating. So if I look purely at price variance at the moment, we can expect to see roughly a $25 increase in our Q2 costs relating purely to the price of fuel. The one other thing I would just quickly touch on, and Djaria mentioned it in her presentation, but the volume of our consumption of fuel does depend to some extent on grid availability. So where we see declines in grid availability, we will see higher volumes for self-generated power, and that in and of itself will drive a cost increase. So subject to the grid availability, roughly $10 per ounce for every $10 per barrel.

We will now take our next question from the line of Ovais Habib of Scotiabank.

Cograts on Q1 beat and really a great start to the year. Ian, a couple of questions from me. The first one was answered in regards to the supplies as well as the cost impact on the Middle East side. So that was good. Just moving on to Assafou. Ian, you released a robust DFS on Assafou, permits have been received. What's keeping you back on pressing the green light to start construction on the project?

Yes. Thanks, Ovais. Look, as you know, as far as Assafou is concerned, we already have the environmental permit. We have the exploitation permit. We're currently in negotiation with government around the mining convention. Obviously, it's important that we get that done. Part of that process involves the creation of a local entity, and that's a normal administrative process. I have to say the government of Cote d'Ivoire have been incredibly supportive on this project. They recognize the importance to the country as well as to us.

And in fairness are really sort of trying their best to make sure that all necessary permits, approvals, whatever are sort of timely being expedited. In terms of what is it that is still outstanding, obviously, one of the key issues, as we mentioned in the presentation, was finalization on the resettlement. We have two villages that sit on top of the ore body. We're in negotiations with those communities and seeking their ascent and approval for to get moving. That is necessary before we can actually start mining activities because both those villages would potentially be within the normal sort of blast perimeter for the start of it.

The -- one of the other issues to be addressed is, there is a national road that runs through the footprint of the pit that needs to be diverted. We are very close to concluding the optimal diversion of that road. There's been some towing and throwing on that, but we're close to getting that concluded. Those, I think, are the two key outstanding issues. And obviously, I think it's always important as far as negotiations are concerned, the government knows that we're keen to progress. They're keen for this project to progress, but it's important that we keep our options open.

But to give you some idea of our confidence that the project is going, we've already committed up to -- it's about $80 million worth of pre-expenditure principally aimed at long lead items such that this is another way that we can help derisk the project by making sure that long lead items can be manufactured, transported and delivered well on time, and they don't delay any of the build program. So we're running several things in parallel. I'm still reasonably comfortable that by the end of this year, we will formally announce the project. But I think you can see just by what we're actually doing already, we do believe that this is -- it's not a question of if this project goes, it's merely a question of when. It's as simple as that.

Got it. And just maybe moving on to the exploration side, and maybe this is a question to Sonia, she's online. Obviously, you guys have a large exploration program for 2026. I just want to hear in terms of which target or area Sonia is most excited about? And when should we start receiving some exploration results?

Yes. Look, I'll pass on to -- Sona is with us. I'll pass on, but I can tell you she's excited about all the areas.

Thank you, for the question. It depends how much time you have for me talking about the exciting pipeline. Look, if I just start to talk about a couple of areas, definitely, we have a great results at Vindaloo Deep and Hounde, and we are planning to actually report the results of the mid and resource in the H1. So more to come on that with also a clear understanding of the upside potential. But then if we move into the other areas, we have exciting results in Sabodala-Massawa. We have completed a full portfolio review and identified over 20 new opportunities in the pipeline with the first one coming with a very clear resource -- major resource by the end of the year at [indiscernible]. So that's very exciting.

And in parallel, we also have identified more underground potential in the area, both in Sabodala and [indiscernible], more to come towards the end of the year with concrete results. Then if we switch to Cote d'Ivoire, there's plenty there to look at. It's more around which one we prioritize first, but Ity continues to surprise us in a positive way. We had a very great result at the back end of last year, both into the greenfield and brownfield opportunities, and we are now infill drilling on the brownfield close to the CIL plant. And then Assafou, a lot of the work that we did in Assafou in the past couple of years was really to get the confidence on the Assafou resource. We have that. It's moving on with the DFS. And there is now quite a large potential of under-explored brownfield opportunities that we are progressing in parallel to get a better feeling. Those are less mature in terms of exploration activities. We will be able to give a little bit more better understanding both towards the end of this year as well as next year. But overall, it's a very exciting pipeline within our existing areas...

[Operator Instructions] We have the speakers back. Please continue.

Sorry, could the last speaker, please reask the question. I think we just completed Ovais' question and we're moving on to the next.

You have any follow-up question, Ovais?

Apologies for cutting there, but we had an electronic glitch here.

We will now take our next question from the line of Richard Hatch of Berenberg.

SCongrats on a very good quarter. You're delivering as you promised you said you would, and you're generating that free cash flow, which is really good to see. Look, just two questions. Firstly, just given the volatility that we're seeing in Mali, can you just talk a little bit around if that's creating any kind of instability in the broader region, if you're seeing anything in that regard to your operations?

And then secondly, just on Vindaloo Deeps, you did sort of talk briefly about it there, but I just wonder if you might just be able to expand a bit more about what you're hoping to show the market on that when you update on the resource and how we should think about that into the short, medium and longer term?

Richard, thanks. Look, I think as everybody knows, Mali does not fall into any of our jurisdictions where we have operating assets. We have an old legacy asset, the [ Kalana ] mine that we're in the process of selling. That sale process continues. And certainly, our understanding is that the type of activity, that the civil unrest that's taking place does not appear to have migrated right down towards [ Kalana ]. It's a relatively, in Mali terms, much more benign region.

So we're not -- we have no immediate impact on our operations due to Mali. In terms of the potential for spread across from Mali to elsewhere, at the moment, no. I mean the obvious place where there might have been some spread was into Burkina Faso. The situation in Burkina appears relatively calm. We're not seeing any deterioration in the local situation. The security forces are sort of on top of things in that country. We're working hand in glove with them. And again, we're not experiencing any current issues, and we're not anticipating any issues into the immediate future.

As far as Vindaloo Deeps is concerned, as Sonia said, we will be -- in a short period of time, we'll be coming out with an update on the size of the resource and timing of when that would start coming into the plan. There's still one or two minor things to finalize. But as soon as that is ready for publication, we will come to the market. What I would say is I don't think the market is going to be disappointed. I think they're going to be very pleased with what's coming out of Vindaloo Deeps.

We will now take our next question from the line of Amos Fletcher of Barclays.

I had a couple of questions. First one was just on working capital. Obviously, there's quite a lot going on within the working capital line this quarter in particular. But it was, I guess, quite a surprise how big the build was. I was just wondering, Guy, whether you can give us a bit of a steer on how you expect it to play out over the next few quarters?

Sure, Amos. Thank you. Yes, working capital outflow was relatively significant. So I touched on it in the presentation, but maybe just walk through that again with a focus on stockpiles, which is the -- it's roughly 2/3 of that outflow. The stockpile increase is obviously in relation to mining tonnage. And the difference between our original expectation and our actual Q1 was an element of deferral of some of the waste stripping, particularly at Hounde, revolving around both production profile and fleet availability. So this is something that we expect to see pick up again in Q2 and marginally at the start of Q3.

As we pick up in stripping activities, we should be seeing naturally something of a drawdown on stockpiles. Further stockpile drawdown is anticipated at Sabodala-Massawa going into the second half. So with regards -- sorry, and Lafigue continued increase in stripping activity as well. So with the majority of our sites looking to do some stockpile drawdown, the types of build that you saw in the first quarter should not be repeating over the remainder of the year. And then without going into any detail as it wasn't part of the question, but I think there are positive trend indicators on both the VAT and the consumer build as well. So hopefully, the level of working capital build does not repeat through Q2, 3 and 4.

So potential for further build but smaller levels over the next couple of quarters, you'd say?

So we could see build depending on sites. So as an example, we'd love to see some more stock at Mana, making sure that we've got plant utilization. Lafigue, Houndé and Sabodala should see some stockpile drawdown.

And then the second question, I just wanted to ask for, I guess, a broader update on the Senegal mining code revision process. Has there been any developments to report over the last few months on that?

Yes. Amos, no new developments to report on that as yet.

We will now take our next question from the line of Carey MacRury of Canaccord Genuity.

Congrats on the great start. Maybe just another question for Guy. You've got over $1 billion in cash now, but still have some money drawn on the credit facility. Just wondering, I assume you're going to pay that down later this year. And is there any plan to pay down the Cote d'Ivoire debt early or just leave that as is for the schedule?

Okay. To the first question, the RCF drawdown, I think you know us pretty well. So you'll remember, we've got a cash cycle effectively that means predominant offshoring capacity comes via OpCo dividends. We will pay our withholding tax in Q2, effectively allowing us to commence with the repatriation in Q3. Speed of that repatriation dependent on mine site cash levels, that money comes offshore, utilize that to pay down the RCF. So current forecasts, we should have the RCF paid down in Q3 as soon as we get our OpCo dividends up.

And on the Cote d'Ivoire debt?

Thank you. I was really struggling to try and remember the second part of your question. I appreciate it. The Cote d'Ivoire debt, no, I think we'll keep that in place, Carey. So where we see -- as you can probably imagine, there is both cash and liquidity plus tax advantages for us to be holding local debt. So no, we wouldn't look to pay that off early. We would have alternative uses for that cash. So I expect the Cote d'Ivoire facility to remain in place and amortized as already disclosed.

We will now take our next question from the line of Anita Soni of CIBC.

Most of them have been asked and answered, but I just wanted to ask about -- have you had any recent conversations with the S&P/TSX about index inclusion? I understand from the tech process that the S&P has reached out to stakeholders to look at including companies that are not incorporated in Canada in the TSX. And I know you were removed a couple of years ago. So I'm just wondering if you had any recent discussions with them?

Anita, Jack has informed me that the -- there is obviously talk of inclusion in the index of companies on TSX that are not Canadian domiciled. So that would obviously be a tailwind for us. But we haven't had any detailed conversations. So our understanding is it's early doors, but nothing tangible from our perspective in terms of contact no.

We will now take our next question from the line of Mohamed Sidibe of NBC.

All of my questions have been answered. Just wanted to maybe ask a question on the timing of CapEx for Assafou as it relates to the free expenditures of $50 million to $100 million that you guided to for the year.

Mohamed, very simply, what we have done is we've identified the long lead items, basically buying in to the queue for mill shelves, big HPGR kit and what have you. So we flagged the level of expenditure around about plus/minus $80 million. I think you could say that, that expenditure would be spread over the year. It's not all going to come in one lump sum. We are in the process of discussing with various suppliers, getting the final quotes from them. And once that's done, obviously, there will be an element of timing of that spend. So you should assume it will be spread out over the balance of the year.

We will now take our next question from the line of Felicity Robson of Bank of America.

You've provided an update on Sabodala's production profile. Could you provide some color on where you see further scope to supplement this maybe with resource conversion or exploration in the near term?

Thank you, Felicity. I think we, as you mentioned, are very happy to have published NI3-101, whereby we are stipulating that there will be an increase in production Sabodala-Massawa is purely currently on the mineral reserves. We've seen already an increase when you look at the production profile 2026 versus 2025. What we're also seeing is that from 2029, we'll see a significant increase all the way to in the mid-360 at least for the next 5 years.

However, I think to answer your question, definitely, there's an additional upside at Sabodala-Massawa through resource conversion and additional exploration. For this year, we actually have a budget of almost $15 million to increase those resources at Sabodala-Massawa. Maybe Sonia will have additional information.

Yes. Just to add to what Jack was saying there. The increase of production in the late '20s driven mainly from the underground development and coming to the pipeline that bring in a very high-grade ore for Columbia and [indiscernible], which is very exciting. And then beyond what Djaria already talked about in terms of exploration upside, we have identified several opportunities, both in the exploitation permit and exploration permit that will start to add to the profile in the next couple of years starting with [ Macana ] is brownfield nearby the plant of non-refractory oxide and then moving into [indiscernible] as well as we are looking at some of the further underground potential. So we definitely have identified opportunities to maintain that pipeline and that profile beyond the end of the 2026.

We will now take our final question for today from the line of Frederic Bolton of BMO Capital Markets.

I just want to follow up on Ovais' and Mohammad's questions on Assafou. So there is a $396 million in nonsustaining capital, which I think is on top of the growth CapEx that you have in your financial model. Can you please give me some color on what's within the nonsustaining CapEx? And then within your growth CapEx allocated [indiscernible] costs. That seems to be quite high when I comp that against other projects of similar size. Can you sort of dive into what might be driving the $250 million?

Fred, it was breaking up a little, but I think I've got more or less what you were after. So the key element of the nonsustaining is effectively stripping. So I would just remind everyone, Assafou is relatively deep. So we have a very substantial pre-mining and stripping requirement at Assafou before we get into the ore body. So it is a fundamental driver of the nonsustaining CapEx.

At that point, [indiscernible] Frederic, on the owners -- so we do have some elements within the owners cost that when we compare it to our previous projects would be regarded as slightly higher. I think what we've attempted to do is ensure that we have incorporated encapsulated all specific costs associated with Assafou. So wherever we have people working on Assafou, bringing teams in, one of which, for example, we are going to be doing, which is a more fundamental cost management team that is being brought in as well as lessons learned from previous projects where we felt that we needed to be able to ramp up slightly earlier in terms of operational readiness. Those are the key factors driving the owner team costs.

Does that also include the management for the resettlement and the preparation for the highway diversion?

We have the costs associated with the road diversion and power diversion in the infrastructure line. But you're absolutely right, there is a fairly significant effort going into the resettlement that Ian touched on earlier, and that would be included in the earnings cost, yes.

And that's the end of the question-and-answer session.

And thank you, everybody...

Please continue, sir.

Okay. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for your time. I hope you've heard how pleased we are with the first quarter and how it's set up for continued success throughout the rest of the year. We look forward to meeting up with you again in the midyear when we give our Q2 and H1 results. Thank you all for listening today. Much appreciated. Thank you, and goodbye.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Endeavour Mining's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference call is being recorded, and a transcript of the call will be available on Endeavour's website tomorrow.

I would now like to hand the call over to Endeavour's Vice President of Investor Relations, Jack Garman. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Endeavour's Q4 and Full Year 2025 Results Webcast.

Before we start, please note our usual disclaimer. On the call today, I'm delighted to be joined by Ian Cockerill, Chief Executive Officer; Guy Young, Chief Financial Officer; and Djaria Traore, Executive Vice President of Operations and ESG.

Today's call will follow our usual format. Ian will first go through the highlights of the quarter and the year, Guy will present the financials, and Djaria will walk through our operating results by mine before handing back to Ian for his closing remarks. We'll then open the line up for questions.

With that, I'll now hand over to Ian.

Thank you, Jack, and hello to everyone who's joining us on the call today.

Now 2025 was an outstanding year for Endeavour, in which we delivered a strong operational performance and record financial results. Over the course of the year, we produced 1.2 million ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,433 per ounce. We achieved the top half of our production guidance with costs in line with the guided range on a royalty adjusted basis, and our safety record remained sector-leading.

Our strong operational performance, coupled with higher gold prices, translated directly into free cash flow. We generated a record $1.2 billion of free cash flow, and that's equivalent to over $955 for every ounce of gold that we produced. This cash generation enabled us to quickly deleverage our balance sheet to just 0.07x net debt to EBITDA by year-end, which is well below our through-the-cycle target of 0.5x, positioning us to significantly increase shareholder returns and invest in our exciting organic growth pipeline.

For 2025, we returned a record $435 million to shareholders, and that's equivalent to $360 for every ounce of gold that we produced and 93% above our minimum commitment for the year. That's truly a sector-leading return. And looking forward, we are already increasing returns with a commitment to over $1 billion minimum dividend over the next 3 years that we expect to supplement assuming current gold prices with at least another $1 billion of additional dividends and share buybacks.

Importantly, shareholders are not the only stakeholders benefiting from our strong performance. We also contributed $2.8 billion to our host countries, and that includes $919 million of direct contributions to our host governments, and we significantly increased our in-country procurement spend, reiterating our commitment to our in-country partners and strengthening the resilience of our business.

As we transition into a phase of increased focus on organic growth, we continue to advance the Assafou feasibility study towards completion, which is expected in a few weeks, and the key environmental and exploitation permits have already been approved, and that significantly derisks our time line to first gold, which is targeted to H2 2028.

Our exploration program discovered 1.5 million ounces this year at Assafou, Sabodala and Ity. And while we didn't fully replenish reserves, we are strengthening our exploration pipeline to ensure that we sustainably replace reserves, resources and production depletion as part of our 5-year exploration program as well as adding new high-return growth projects into our pipeline. We started 2026 with a strong operating momentum, and we will remain disciplined as we accelerate organic growth and shareholder returns, delivering on our strategic objectives.

On Slide 7, in 2025, we show how we increased production by 10% year-over-year, driven by the full year contribution from our Sabodala-Massawa BIOX plant and the Lafigué projects. More importantly, at a realized gold price of $3,244 an ounce, our all-in sustaining margin expanded dramatically to $1,811 per ounce. That's up 60%, 6-0 percent from 2024. Our track record of achieving guidance speaks for itself, and we were pleased to extend that track record in 2025. That means we've now achieved or beaten guidance 12x over the last 13 years. That demonstrates our operational excellence and the high quality of our diversified portfolio.

Looking at the year ahead on Slide 9. Group production is forecast to remain relatively stable as increased production at our Sabodala-Massawa mine will be partially offset by a planned lower production at our Houndé and Lafigué mines, which are entering a short phase of lower grades associated with higher stripping activity. All-in sustaining costs are expected to increase primarily due to the cost impact of this phase at Houndé and Lafigué.

We'll also see the impact of the increase in Côte d'Ivoire sliding scale royalty rates from 6% to 8% and a weaker dollar-euro ForEx assumption for the year. Nevertheless, we'll continue to generate exceptional margins, and we expect to see cost improvements from 2027 as Houndé and then Lafigué complete their current phases of stripping and transition back into higher-grade material.

As shown on Slide 10, we're firmly on track to achieve our 2030 production target of 1.5 million ounces, representing a 27% organic growth from this year. This growth will be driven by the targeted addition of production from Assafou [indiscernible] growth that will be coming from Sabodala-Massawa. At Sabodala-Massawa, we continue to drive improvements in BIOX's throughput and recovery rates. And in the second half of the year, we are starting some underground development to support high-grade underground ore through the CIL plant. Importantly, we expect to achieve this growth while improving all-in sustaining costs, positioning us again in the lower quartile by 2030.

Our production growth last year, combined with strong gold prices supported record operating cash flow and record free cash flow of $1.2 billion in 2025. So that's equivalent to $955 of free cash flow for every ounce of gold produced, and we'll continue to maximize cash flow for every ounce of gold we produce. We're chasing margins and not just chasing ounces. This strong cash flow helped rapidly deleverage our balance sheet that Guy will walk us through shortly. The free cash flow outlook for '26 is strong with us well positioned relative to our gold peers due to stable production and CapEx year-on-year. The completion of our hedging program and improved gold prices. Importantly, the gold mining sector is still good value for money relative to other sectors.

On Slide 13, for the year, we returned a record $435 million to shareholders, as I said, $360 for every ounce that we produced. Now since we started paying shareholder returns 5 years ago, we have returned $1.6 billion or 83% above our minimum commitment, and we have increased dividends per share and total returns per ounce produced every year, a trend we expect to continue in this higher gold price environment.

As shown on Slide 16, our '25 returns compared very favorably with our peers, both on a per ounce basis as well as in terms of yield. While the gold sector has not historically delivered an attractive yield compared to other sectors, we see that changing, and we want to maintain -- to remain a sector leader so that we're not just attractive for gold investors, but appeal to a wider investment base that seeks reliable yield in a macro landscape of rate declines.

In January, we announced our updated shareholder return program for '26 through '28. We will return a minimum of $1 billion dividend over '26-'28, and that's based on the assumption of a gold price of $3,000 per ounce and similar to our previous program, at higher gold prices, we'll supplement that minimum. As I mentioned, we've paid 83% above the minimum over the past 5 years, and we'll do that -- and with gold prices where they currently are, we expect total returns to more than double our minimum commitment over the next 3 years.

Moving on to growth and our flagship Assafou project on Slide 18. We're progressing very well, and the project remains on track with key environmental and exploration permits now approved, and that significantly derisks the project pipeline. The feasibility study mine plan is expected to be well aligned with the pre-feasibility study plan and the feasibility study will incorporate higher CapEx due to optimizations following additional grade control drilling results, a more scalable processing plant design that can be expanded in future and an extended road and power line diversion, which is aligned with both community and government requirements, which will bring slightly higher initial capital costs. More detail on the feasibility study will be released at the end of this quarter as we formally announce the results of our feasibility study in a separate stand-alone presentation.

On Slide 19, I wanted to highlight some resource expansion and permit consolidation that we have been busy with at Assafou and across the wider belt. We increased measured and indicated resources by 13%, largely thanks to the maiden resource at Pala Trend 3, which is the first satellite target that we've defined at Endeavour.

Now while the resource is initially quite small, it is less than 2 kilometers away from Assafou. It's over 1.5 grams per tonne of oxide material that starts from surface. So it supports significantly increased operating flexibility at Assafou, and we expect it to be the first of many satellite resources that will ultimately support the upside at Assafou. Our strategic partner, Koulou Gold, has also successfully acquired the permit to the south of Assafou in addition to their permit to the East, helping to consolidate this highly prospective underexplored belt.

Exploration has been our most significant value creator over the last 10 years. We have now discovered more than 22 million ounces of measured and indicated resource for a discovery cost of less than $25 per ounce, including discoveries of the cornerstone Lafigué and Assafou deposits. This year, we discovered 1.5 million ounces at Assafou, Sabodala-Massawa and Ity, which only partially offset the production depletion and model optimizations that took place across the balance of our portfolio.

Over the next 5 years, we are targeting the discovery of between 12 million to 15 million ounces of measured, indicated and inferred resource. That target comprises 6 million to 9 million ounces at our existing operations to replace production depletion and up to 6 million ounces from greenfield resources, including the potential discovery of up to 2 or 3 new projects focused on strengthening and diversifying our long-term greenfield pipeline.

As outlined on Slide 22, despite Endeavour's strong performance and strong outlook that is underpinned by substantial organic growth, we still have a compelling value proposition, not only amongst gold peers, but across most other sectors as well. As we continue to deliver consistently, invest in sector-leading organic growth and deliver sector-leading returns while retaining our disciplined approach to capital allocation, we expect to unlock even more value.

As a long-term partner in West Africa, our resilience is underpinned by our ability to continue to deliver value to all our stakeholders. In 2025 alone, we contributed $2.8 billion to host economies, including $919 million in payments to host governments in the form of taxes, royalties and dividends and $270 million in wages and $1.6 billion on procurement at in-country. We also maintained our strong ESG track record, which is a reflection of our consistent commitment to excellence in ESG, and this is best shown in our impact over the last 5 years.

Since 2021, we've delivered more than $11 billion in total economic contribution, including $3.3 billion to host governments and $6.6 billion in local procurement. Beyond this economic contribution, we have made tangible impacts to local livelihoods through our social investments, including providing 55,000 people with access to quality health care, 38,000 children with educational support and nearly 10,000 people with economic development opportunities. Generating shared value that benefits all our stakeholders is key to sustaining our success, and I encourage you to view our sustainability report that we've published today.

And with that introduction, please let me hand you over to Guy, who will take you through the financials in more details. Over to you, Guy.

Thank you, Ian, and hello, everyone. As Ian mentioned, 2025 was an exceptional year financially for Endeavour with record results across all key metrics. We produced 1.2 million ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,433 per ounce, or $1,305 per ounce when adjusted for gold price-driven royalties. With a realized gold price of $3,244 per ounce, we generated record adjusted EBITDA of $2.3 billion, up 75% year-over-year and adjusted net earnings of $782 million, up 244% year-over-year. Free cash flow reached another record $1.2 billion, up 269% from 2024.

Turning to Slide 25. For the fourth quarter specifically, production increased by 34,000 ounces to 298,000 ounces due to higher grades across the portfolio, in line with the mine sequence. Our all-in sustaining margin also increased to $2,225 per ounce, a $547 increase compared to the prior quarter due to improved gold prices.

On Slide 26, we can see that the improved gold price translated into a 46% increase in adjusted EBITDA for Q4 as we generated $681 million with our adjusted EBITDA margin also increasing quarter-on-quarter. The higher EBITDA naturally drove an improvement in operating cash flow, as shown on Slide 27. Our operating cash flow in Q4 was up 97% from Q3 to $609 million, benefiting from the higher Q4 production, higher realized gold prices and seasonally lower tax -- sorry, cash taxes.

The operating cash flow bridge on Slide 28 shows the key drivers of the $300 million increase from Q3 to Q4. The realized gold price increased by $626 per ounce, which added $208 million of operating cash flow. Gold sales increased by 44,000 ounces, contributing a further $156 million. Cash operating expenses were up $177 million due to increased production, increased royalties due to gold prices and increased royalty rates in Côte d'Ivoire.

Income taxes paid decreased by $44 million due to the seasonality of cash tax payments and the typically lower payments in Q4. And working capital improved by $69 million as the buildup of inventories and VAT receivables slowed and was offset by a slight increase in payables at the end of the year. I highlighted that we were expecting to see improvements in our working capital last quarter. And pleasingly, Q4 was a significant improvement over Q3. This year, we're expecting this to improve further. We expect to further reduce inventory as we start drawing down on stockpiles at Lafigué and Houndé as we will be relying on stockpiles to support the mill feed during H1 as we concentrate on stripping at both sites, in line with mining sequence.

And we expect our VAT receivables to also improve as the timing of the VAT recovery cycle normalizes in Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal. And in Burkina Faso, we will continue to convert our VAT receivables into marketable debt instruments and sell them on the open market. Free cash flow in Q4 reached a record $476 million, up 187% from Q3, driven by the stronger production, higher gold prices and lower seasonal taxes.

For the full year, free cash flow was $1.156 billion, up 269% from 2024, marking a significant inflection in our cash generation capability following the completion of our last growth phase. It is pleasing to be converting strong operational performance into free cash flow, and we are effectively and efficiently upstreaming that cash to support our increasing shareholder returns.

Last year, with great support from our host nations within the West African Economic Union and the Central Bank of West African State, we successfully upstreamed $1.2 billion, leveraging our annual cash upstreaming model, which serves us and our in-country stakeholders very well as it provides early visibility on cash movements, foreign exchange requirements and minority interest dividend and withholding tax quantum.

Moving on to Slide 30. The change in net debt bridge on the slide shows how we are able to rapidly deleverage the balance sheet. We started Q3 with net debt of $453 million and generated operating cash flow of $609 million. After investing activities of $133 million and financing activities, including dividends and buybacks of $181 million, we ended the quarter with net debt of just $158 million. This represents a comfortable leverage level of only 0.07x, down from 0.21x at the end of Q3 and well below our through-the-cycle target of 0.5x. We reduced our net debt by $574 million and also reduced our gross debt by $511 million last year, leaving us with over $1.1 billion of liquidity available through our cash on hand and our undrawn RCF.

Finally, turning to earnings on Slide 31. I won't go through every line item, but just a few of the highlights. We generated $665 million of earnings from mine operations for Q4. We recorded $193 million of impairments, largely across exploration properties, including, in particular, Bantou, Nabanga and Kalana, as we don't expect to do any exploration work in the near term and don't see potential for Endeavour type assets at any of these properties.

Other expenses increased to $44 million. This does include $37 million of incremental royalties for 2025 at our Ity and Lafigué mines in Côte d'Ivoire, where the royalty rates for 2025 were retroactively increased from 6% to 8%. The net losses on financial instruments of $62 million were mainly due to realized losses on gold collars, partially offset by unrealized gains on marketable securities.

Last year, the tail end of our hedging program created a significant headwind to our earnings and our free cash flow. Given the strong gold price environment in particular, pleasingly, this year, we are fully unhedged and expect to realize the full benefits of this favorable gold price environment. During the quarter, we recognized a $52 million deferred tax recovery in the quarter as deferred tax liabilities decreased following the impairment of our exploration properties, which I referenced earlier. And adjusted net earnings reached $293 million or $0.93 per share for the quarter.

Thank you, and I'd like to hand you over to Djaria.

Thank you, Guy, and hello, everyone.

Before discussing our operating results, I want to start with safety, which remains our top priority. I'm pleased to report that we've maintained our industry-leading safety performance in 2025 with a long-term injury frequency rate of just 0.07, which position us as one of the safest operators in the gold mining sector. Before turning to the mine-by-mine review, I wanted to touch on our reserve and resource evolution.

During 2025, our P&P reserve decreased by 10% or 1.8 million ounces to 16.6 million ounces, driven by 1.4 million ounces of production depletion and the optimizations of several of our reserve models to incorporate updated cost assumptions. The decrease was partially offset by an increase in reserves gold price from $1,500 per ounce to $1,900 per ounce. However, we have not realized the full benefit of this increase as we have not yet updated the pit shells at Sabodala-Massawa and Ity mines. And the full benefit of the higher gold prices is expected to be realized next year when these pit shells are updated.

M&I resources also decreased slightly by 4% or 1.1 million ounces to 25 million ounces, which is due to 1.6 million ounces of depletion and resource model optimizations, which was partially offset by 1.5 million ounces of discoveries at Assafou, Sabodala-Massawa and Ity. As part of our new exploration strategy, we are focused on replacing production depletion at our existing assets, while adding up to 6 million ounces of resources at new greenfield projects to support our long-term growth -- organic growth.

On Slide 35, you can see an overview of our portfolio performance and the 2026 outlook. In 2025, we've achieved a production growth across Sabodala-Massawa, Mana and Lafigué, while production was lower at Houndé and Ity mines. Looking ahead to 2026, we expect further production growth at Sabodala-Massawa due to continued improvement through the BIOX plant. This increase will be offset by lower production at Houndé and Lafigué, where, as Ian mentioned earlier, we will be mining and processing lower grades and prioritizing waste stripping.

All-in sustaining costs are expected to increase this year, largely due to an increased focus on waste stripping at Houndé and Lafigué, which will lead to the processing of lower grade ore and a reliance on stockpiles to supplement the feed. In addition to that, the higher royalty rates in Côte d'Ivoire and the lower USD euro ForEx has driven our all-in sustaining cost guidance higher.

We expect costs to start to improve next year as this phase of stripping is completed at Houndé and Lafigué. On a longer term, we are tracking well towards our 1.5 million ounces target by 2030. And as we incorporate higher grade at Sabodala-Massawa, Houndé and Assafou in the coming years, we expect to be in the first cost quartile when we got to that 1.5 million ounces target.

On Slide 36, with Sabodala-Massawa, we've delivered a strong performance in 2025, achieving the top half of our production guidance range with costs within the guidance range on a royalty adjusted basis. Production increased 20% year-on-year as the BIOX plant had a full year of production. We expect to see further increases this year as the BIOX throughput continues to increase, targeting 15% above design nameplate, while recoveries continue to improve towards the 85% target. At the same time, we are starting to develop the Golouma underground deposit to incorporate the high-grade non-refractory underground ore into the mine plan from 2027, and that's supporting a continued production growth and cost improvement.

Moving to Houndé on Slide 37, where we've achieved near the top end of our production guidance range last year with cost beating guidance on a royalty adjusted basis. The strong performance was largely due to higher grade from the Kari Pump pit. As Ian mentioned earlier, Houndé will focus on waste stripping at the Vindaloo deposit this year. And as a result, we will be mining lower grade and drawing down on stockpile to supplement the mine ore feed, which result in a slightly lower production and higher costs.

As stripping advances, we expect to see grade and costs improve through the year and notably into next year 2027. Longer term, we are excited by the underground potential at Houndé, and we expect to declare a maiden resource for the large high-grade Vindaloo Deep deposit during H1 this year.

At Ity on Slide 38, we've achieved the top half of our production guidance with costs in line with the range, supported by strong mill throughput that has benefited from the use of supplemented mobile crushers. Production is expected to be stable year-on-year, while costs will be higher due to a slight increase in sustaining capital related to waste stripping at Ity, Zia and the Le Plaque pit. but as well as the increase in sliding scale royalty rates in Côte d'Ivoire from 6% to 8%.

At Mana on Slide 39, as expected at Mana, the accelerated development rates improved access to higher grade underground stopes, supporting a stronger production in the later part of last year. As a result, we've achieved the top half of our production guidance, while costs were above the top end of the range, reflecting an increased development and costs, which were associated with the contractor changeover.

This year, production at Mana is expected to be stable as underpinned by improved development rates from our consolidated single contractor underground mining model, coupled with a small volume of open pit feed in the mine plan. These 2 elements are expected to support an improved throughput year-on-year, which will largely offset the impact of slightly lower grade in the mine sequence. We are continuing to work on improving cost at Mana, prioritizing improvement in grid connection, power stability as well as underground mining productivity.

Finally, turning to Lafigué on Slide 40. We've achieved our production guidance with -- above the top end of the range due to higher mining volumes required to support the improved processing throughput rate as the plant continued to deliver well above design nameplate. For 2026, similar to Houndé, Lafigué will be prioritizing stripping activities to improve access to higher-grade ore. The mill feed will be supplemented with lower grade stockpile material, which combined with the increase in sliding scale rates of royalty in Côte d'Ivoire is expected to result in slightly production and higher costs year-on-year.

Thank you, everyone. I'm now handing back to Ian for the closing remarks.

Thank you, Djaria. Now as we look ahead, we're extremely well positioned to continue creating value for all of our stakeholders. Given our strong operational outlook and high gold prices, we expect to generate very strong free cash flow, which given our low leverage will be used to deliver sector-leading organic growth and sector-leading shareholder returns.

So thank you for listening. And now let me hand you back to the operator, and let's open up for Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And we take our first question, and it comes from the line of Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley.

Ian, I have a couple of questions. First, can you confirm on your capital allocation that you are thinking about $1 billion of supplemental buybacks and special dividends above and beyond the minimum $1 billion that you have set? And if so, what are the next milestones, time lines and signposts to unlocking these additional returns? Is it the AGM? Is it the Q1 results? How should we be thinking about it? That's my first question.

Okay. Thanks, Alain. Yes, look, just for clarity, we said that the $1 billion over 3 years is the minimum that we'll be sort of targeting to hand out to shareholders. That assumes the maintaining a minimum gold price of $3,000 an ounce.

What I was saying is that if you take current spot prices, the very real prospect of an additional $1 billion, and that will be made up of supplementary cash dividends as well as buybacks. And the buybacks will continue on an opportunistic basis, and they will form part of that additional $1 billion.

On that question, on the second part of your question -- of your answer, is it -- should we wait for the AGM for an authorization for the next leg of the buyback? Or what are the next milestones that we should be waiting for?

No, sorry. Yes, I should have been a little bit clearer there. No, look, I mean, we've already decided there's not a fixed number in terms of buybacks. It is going to be opportunistic. It will follow what we have done previously. Buybacks form part of the broader capital allocation framework, prioritizing where we get best return on our investment. And as and when we see the opportunity to affect a buyback and get the sort of returns that we're looking for, they will happen automatically. So there's no further sort of approvals needed because in principle, it's already been agreed that we should be doing it.

Sorry, Alain. I was just going to add, I don't think you should expect that at the AGM, we'll come out and revise the shareholder returns program per se. Your first clear indication is going to be probably at the time that we're declaring the next dividend.

So we're effectively saying we see our way clear at these gold prices. But what we will be waiting for is effectively a period in which, for example, the first half, we've earned that cash, and therefore, we will look to distribute to shareholders, and that would be the dividend declaration. But we're not looking to revise the shareholder returns program through the period.

Very clear. And my second question is on Assafou. I think, Ian, in your presentation as well, you touched on the cost being slightly higher than initially anticipated, but also the size of the project resources is also expanding, continues to expand.

Can you give us some preliminary hints or indications as to the scale of the increase in CapEx? And given what you've learned in the last few months on production and profile -- the production profile and the economics, anything that you can give us in advance of the full feasibility study that you expect to release before the end of the quarter?

Yes. No, look, I'm not going to be sort of specific. The increases are not out of the ordinary. They are linked as much to changes in scope for the project, some subtle design changes. We've picked up on, say, for instance, Lafigué because obviously, Assafou is very much the fundamental design is predicated on what we have at Lafigué.

But also on what we've learned at Lafigué, what went well, what didn't go so well and having looked globally at other projects using sort of HPGRs and making sure that for instance, our comminution circuits are fit for purpose, robust and are going to work well.

So there is modest increases. I mean, escalation is there. I think everyone is seeing cost creep on these things. So we will be in a position by the end of this month to have finalized the numbers, but it would be premature to give you the sort of even an indication at this stage. But the number will be going up, but not dramatically.

And the next question comes from the line of Ovais Habib from Scotiabank.

Congrats on a solid year. Just a couple of quick questions from me. You already answered the question on Assafou CapEx, so that's all good. But just moving on to -- and keeping on Assafou, maybe talking about Pala Trend 3. It looks like good oxide resource there, good grades there. Will this be included in the DFS? And if not, would it be safe to assume that these ounces will come into the mine plan in the front end of the mine life?

Yes, Ovais, look, again, just for clarity, no, they will -- Pala Trend 3 ounces are not included in the feasibility study. But because it's -- as we said, it's very, very close to the actual mine and to the plant, it's oxide material. It's there almost as should we call it, an emergency backup. So it just gives you greater sort of mining optionality and flexibility. But we're seeing even more sort of resource in and around and in close proximity to the plant.

So it's the upside over and above the basic mine plan, it's more than just Pala Trend 3. There are other satellite deposits in close proximity to the plant that will ultimately be included and will form part of the natural, should we call it, evolution and expansion of this plant as we get it up and running, as we debottleneck, as we start to probably operate beyond the 5 million tonnes, we don't need to include them in the feasibility study, but they will form, I think, a natural sort of upside to the project and probably will be in the early part of the project because it's so convenient to get it close by.

And just again, as you were talking about those other satellite targets that you guys are probably targeting, I mean, is this Sonia targeting those areas right now in the 2026 drilling program? Or is this more going to be more once production starts, then you'll continue doing more exploration around the area?

We haven't really stopped from the time that we started doing all the exploration drilling around there, Ovais.

So it's not as if we've got to start doing it. These are projects that have already been identified. Some of them we've done some initial scout drilling, some more advanced than others. I think what I'm really basically trying to say is that this is -- it's a permissive area. There's lots of opportunity, and it forms a natural sort of extension to the existing broader regional program in and around Assafou.

Perfect. And I don't know if Sonia is online, but just wanted to see if -- where she is most excited about this 2026 exploration program.

Look, she's not here at the moment. But what I can tell you is that we've been doing a lot of very interesting work at Sabodala. We've been applying a lot of -- doing some lot of AI work on that permit. We've identified a significant number of targets, applying this technique over our existing deposits. It identified 99% of the deposits that we already know about. So the fact that we've got a very interesting number of new projects gives me a lot of hope that we'll be finding some more stuff.

Effectively, what we've done, Ovais, is we started to join the dots because we -- as you know, we've got lots of deposits in and around. But our knowledge and understanding of how they all interconnect has been somewhat disjointed. We're starting to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. So we're very excited for '26 about what's there. And then we're going to take this technique and this technology. We're applying it to Ity South as well as Ity Maine. And we'll also apply it on our East Star joint venture in Kazakhstan, where we've got a massive area.

So using this technology to help us zero in on target areas as opposed to just trying to cover the whole area makes a huge amount of sense. So lots of prospect. The other area more immediately is Vindaloo Deeps at Houndé. Now we are very, very close to sort of publishing the results of that study. It wasn't quite ready in time for this year's declaration. But there's going to be not far short of 1 million ounces going into resource at Vindaloo Deeps, that's high grade, good quality. I know that, Djaria, I can't wait to get our hands on that.

Sounds good. And my last question, just moving on to Sabodala. Djaria mentioned that you're developing Golouma to come into production in 2027. Are there any other satellites that could come into production in the near term to improve the oxide production oxide production?

Thank you, Ovais. I think, yes, as you mentioned, we will be starting -- I think we're currently busy finalizing the commercial decisions, which contractors select for Sabodala. So that should be done sometime by the end of quarter 1, so that we can start mobilizing equipment into H2 of this year.

We expect that next year we'll be in and around development to start seeing the first ounces sometimes in 2028, really, which is really the high-grade ore that we needed for the CIL plant. We are working very closely with Sonia, obviously, to see, as Ian just mentioned, what are the other targets that we can see in and around Sabodala-Massawa. So I'm sure that the next call, we'll be able to start giving you some hints in that as well.

And now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Fahad Tariq from Jefferies.

Apologies if I missed this. Can you walk through the thought process of using $3,000 an ounce gold to set 2026 guidance?

It was simply a question of choose a number. The classical approach that we have taken historically is that we give forward guidance on our dividend program. We select a number and then based against our anticipated production and cost profile, we know what our cash generation should be.

We're comfortable in guaranteeing that sort of number. And then over and above that, that's when we say there will be supplemental returns as well. So 3,000 was just chosen as a number. We could have taken another number, but we felt comfortable with 3,000 over the next 3 years. And it's an indication to investors if you've got that sort of gold price environment, that's what you should anticipate should be coming your way in the form of dividends as a guaranteed.

Okay. And then maybe just -- my question is more on just setting the cost guidance in particular. Maybe let me ask a different way. If I think about the year-over-year increase in the AISC guidance from 2025-2026, how much of that would be the higher royalty structure versus the increased waste stripping at Houndé and Lafigué? I'm just trying to get a sense of how AISC could potentially come down in 2027 once the stripping is complete?

Let me try and answer. The 3,000, is obviously relatively conservative in terms of current spot prices. But we do like to use fairly conservative gold pricing for budget purposes and cost control in the first instance. When it comes to, I think, the second part of your question, which was '25-'26, if you take a look at the overall cost per ounce increase, roughly 15% of that is made up of royalty rate increases and foreign exchange.

The remainder is effectively down to the mine sequencing, which includes a proportion of stripping activities at Houndé and Lafigué, which we mentioned, as well as the cost of stockpile drawdown. And those 2 factors combined constitute about 85% of that cost increase.

And the next question comes from the line of Marina Calero Ródenas from RBC Capital Markets.

I have a couple of questions. The first one is on your reserves. You mentioned that Ity and Sabodala are -- don't have the reserves calculated using the $1,900 per ounce price. I was wondering if you could give us a bit more details about that? And how will your group reserves look like if those prices were used across the entire portfolio?

Sorry, Marina, I didn't get -- it's a bit garbled. Could you repeat the question again, please?

Is now better? Can you hear me now?

Yes. Yes, that sounds much better.

Okay. Sorry about that. I was just asking you about your 2025 reserve statement. I noticed that you're not using the $1,900 price for Sabodala and Ity. So I was just wondering if you could give us a bit more color about that and how your group reserves will look like if the same prices were used across the entire portfolio.

Yes. Sorry. Now I understand the question. Look, I think what we have to recognize is that last year, there was a massive dislocation on gold prices. For us to get to produce truly accurate answers about reserves, you actually have to change pit shells, the pit shells also have to align. It's not just a question of changing the prices. And to be honest, we just -- for the 2 mines that you mentioned, at Sabodala and Ity, we just didn't have a chance to do the changes in the pit shells. They will take place later on this year.

What I -- and from that, we'll see what changes have taken place. What we are seeing, though, and this is a very sort of generic statement rather than anything specific about these 2 operations. is that the intrinsic quality of our reserve base and the relatively flat grade tonnage curves that we've got from our operations means that major changes in the gold price doesn't necessarily have a significant impact on our reserves either going up or going down.

But we still need to do the proper engineering with the correct price pit shells, and we simply just didn't get around -- didn't have the time to get around to doing it for those 2 specific mines, but it will be done later this year. And then as we update in the middle of the year, we'll see those changes coming through as we'll see also the updates coming through from Houndé, which we'll be able to produce fully [ queue feed ] resource and reserve statements there from Houndé as well.

Just another question on costs. Can you comment on the main inflationary pressures that you're seeing? And maybe as an extension of that, why is the sensitivity of your all-in sustaining cost, if any, to the oil price?

Sure. So on the first one, in terms of inflationary pressures, we've got somewhere in the region of 2/3 to 3/4 of our costs are effectively local denominated costs in [ CFA or XOF ]. That local currency is pegged to the euro. And as a result, we see relatively benign inflation for the vast majority of our cost base.

If you break down the cost base into its key elements, you'll have labor, which in West Africa, we are very lucky to have a great supply of people, well-experienced people. And as a result, we haven't seen the level of labor inflation that is necessarily being seen in other territories around the world.

Local inflation, I think, as a result of the pegging also means that the -- there isn't runaway local inflation that, again, you may see in other territories. So the fiscal discipline and policy of the Regional Central Bank fundamentally helps us from an inflationary perspective across the majority of our costs.

In addition to that, we've obviously got medium, long-term contracts that help us manage over time associated with agreed to contractual rise and fall. So there, again, that's on our side rather than helping it from an inflationary perspective. More importantly, to the second part of your question, oil or energy represents a fairly significant proportion of our cost base as well. But it's important to note that the 3 host nations in which we're operating all have relatively strict sets of pricing mechanisms, whereby the vast majority of host nations are maintaining a very low level of volatility of fuel prices on the ground to international oil prices.

So we have not seen either the highs or lows in terms of volatility that other countries have seen over the last number of years. On top of that, the vast majority of fuel that is supplied into West Africa is not coming from the Middle East. So our actual reliance in terms of security of supply is much more focused to Northwestern Europe and Africa itself.

And consequently, when we look at oil shocks, we tend to see it more as a question of pricing rather than security of supply. But even with that pricing, because of the government's pricing mechanisms, volatility is not significant for us from an all-in sustaining cost perspective.

Excuse me, Marina, any further questions?

Not that I have.

And the next question comes from the line of [ Alex Badawani ] from Stifel.

Just one simple question for me. So Guy, I want to pick up on something you alluded to earlier when you said Endeavour type assets when referring to the exploration impairments. At this point in time now, what constitutes an Endeavour type asset? And has that changed in the last couple of years?

Thanks very much. No, it hasn't changed. So you're right, it was shorthand, but what we're talking about is the same key elements that we would have always described as an Endeavour type asset. So it's life of mine cost profile and size, i.e., annual production. They're the same.

And what sort of thresholds are we looking at? Is it minimum 250,000 ounces...

Exactly. It's 250,000 ounces annual production. It's 10 years plus, and it's first quartile cost producer.

Now we are going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Frederic Bolton from BMO Capital Markets.

So just 2 questions from me as has already answered them for me. So first on Koulou, given your 19% position in the company, should we think of that as a stake -- think of that stake primarily as an investment today?

Or is that one that carries a longer-term strategic value in the portfolio? And then second question, given that there's been a bit of industry discussion around royalty rates in Côte d'Ivoire. When you think about the costs over the long term, what are the sort of key operational or financial levers you can mitigate or offset against the royalty pressures when you look at project economics?

Yes. Look, I mean, we've been involved in Koulou Gold for several years now. We think it's a very interesting project. I think everything that we saw right from the get-go, the more that the guys look, the more that we appreciate what's there.

That whole southeastern corner of Côte d'Ivoire is turning into a very interesting from a geological perspective because it's not Birimian, it's not Tarkwaian. It's really the transition between the 2. So what you have is you have Birimian type grades, but you have Tarkwaian type, call it, size and scale.

So it makes it a very, very interesting part of the world. At a 19% stake, we're comfortable with where we are. We have someone who sits on the Board, and we're watching very closely what is going on there. And we have good cooperation with Koulou.

On the royalty, I'm going to pass you over to Guy. Guy has been very much involved with the discussions with the government on royalty. Guy, over to you.

Thanks, Ian. I think your question around the royalties is more where are the opportunities to offset an increasing royalty environment. So is that the question?

Yes, that's the question. Yes.

So I'll start off, and I'm sure Djaria may want to add here as well. But if we look at fundamental offsets, I would suggest it's probably in a couple of areas. The first and most obvious one is just day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year productivity gains. So we do whatever we can to be mining and processing on a more efficient basis. And we have a productivity program in place across sites that is going to play a partial role of offsetting the royalty cost.

The other piece and the one that we're trying to talk about in today's slide deck is also just to maintain a perspective that we will continue to add higher grade options to our portfolio. And that's through obviously exploration in the first instance. But then through, as you mentioned earlier, investments in the likes of Koulou. The ability for us to do that from a diversification perspective and ensure that we are improving grade being fed into the mills is naturally going to be assisting us in terms of cost.

And then one thing which I think is longer term, which I don't want us to lose sight of is new growth based on that exploration in West Africa comes at a lower capital intensity. So those 3 elements for me would be key offsets in West Africa in total, but specifically to your question in Côte d'Ivoire as well.

If I can, just to add in there, just to reiterate what Guy had mentioned, is really for us in terms of operations to look at way of reducing mining costs. And that really goes through several opportunities initiatives that we're currently putting in place with the team on site.

Obviously, we do know about the Ity doughnut. We also know about the Ity grand pit. What it allows us to do is to be able to look at different type of equipment, either bring in bigger equipment or just some mix of equipment so that we ensure that we optimize those costs.

So that's one of the levers. The other ones in terms of our fixed plant is to ensure that we keep our throughput optimal, maximize it. And if we add capacity, just -- again, it's really to look at different initiatives to ensure that we are processing those ore high-grade ore that we have. And I think it's really, again, with the team to think outside of the box, what are different levers and different initiatives that we can put in place on a daily basis.

Now we take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Mohamed Sidibe from National Bank.

And maybe if I could just follow up on the royalty rates and not necessarily in Côte d'Ivoire, but just if you could comment on anything that you may be seeing either in Burkina or Ivory Coast or Senegal as it relate to that pressure for potential higher royalty rates. We know that Côte d'Ivoire just went through, but any comments would be appreciated on the remainder of your portfolio.

Look, I mean, as far as Burkina is concerned, I mean, the royalty rates in Burkina are well established. We know there's a sliding scale -- they're getting towards the top end, but they are well known. As far as Senegal is concerned, Senegal has not changed its mining code for quite some time. And there's been a sort of some indication that they want to sort of change the mining code.

We do, though, have a sort of a grandfathered project at Sabodala and that Sabodala-Massawa, that basically were grandfathered until 2040. So a mining convention. But if they want to change sort of royalty rates and what have you, that is usually outside of any sort of mining convention that we've got.

At the moment, Senegal is lower in terms of the overall rates, much more favorable sort of overall taxation and royalty schemes than the other countries. There's been some suggestion ventilated about them wanting to change that. I would argue that it's likely that the trajectory overall would likely increase because that seems to be the move everywhere. It's not just here in West Africa, but even in other places around the world. So whilst we're not seeing or hearing anything definitive as yet, if it happened, it probably would not be a huge surprise. But as to quantum size, change or when, at this stage, totally unknown.

And then just my final question on your target for 2030 for 1.5 million ounces of production. I know that Assafou will be a big contributor to that. But could you maybe help us reconcile the potential contribution from Sabodala and Lafigué? Any color on those 2 would be appreciated.

Yes. Look, I mean, if you take the existing sort of 5 assets, you could probably sort of look at a relatively steady performance coming from Mana. Houndé would be sort of the mid-200s, maybe slightly higher than the mid-200s. Ity would be its steady level, plus/minus 300.

We'll likely look at a higher output coming from Sabodala as part of the overall program, we were certainly targeting by sort of '28, '29 to be somewhere into the low to mid-300s. I think as an indicative number, that is the sort of target that we will be looking for.

Lafigué, anywhere sort of guiding between sort of 180 and 200. And then you're coming in with Assafou, which in '28 and then '29. '29 will be the first targeted first full year of production, but not at full rate, but it will be in 2030 that we'll be getting the full rate at Assafou, which will be sort of in the low 300.

We're going to take our last question for today, and it comes from the line of Daniel Major from UBS.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Yes. First question is a follow-up on the first question actually around capital returns. Yes, encouraging to see the commitment to lifting cash returns. But if we looked at free cash flow from the business anywhere near to spot prices, you would significantly exceed $2 billion of free cash over the next 3 years. I guess the question is, is there a net debt target or net debt level at which you would make a commitment to shareholders to return 100% of free cash to -- in the form of dividends and buybacks?

Yes. I think we've said all along that through the cycle, we wanted a net debt target of 0.5. Clearly, when we're not in a build program, that net debt would virtually go down to 0, maybe even occasionally just flick over a little bit. During the build program, we'll be bumping up against our upper limit closer to 1x debt to EBITDA.

When the time comes and assuming that we're in the fortunate position that we're generating huge amounts of cash, the way we structured our program gives us absolutely the flexibility to return as much as we can. If there is no other sensible use of our for our sort of free cash flow. And of course, it's going to go back to shareholders because it's shareholders' money after all. But what we've tried to do with our programs is give a base outline at the -- what we -- as Guy called them, sort of conservative yet rational levels.

And then beyond that, as and when we generate the money, it will get dished out to shareholders. So I don't think there's any need for us to say, well, it's going to be 100% or even less than that. As the time comes, we'll see what we need to do the business because one of the last things we want -- we don't want to do is we don't want to come through a period of really good gold prices, just handing back all the money to shareholders and then making sure that our -- the business is not robust and resilient.

As we come out the other side of this strong gold price, we want to make sure that we have a business, we have an asset base, which is in sound shape, and that may well require some additional capital injections in there. But again, everything will be done, assuming our normal sort of capital allocation program and making sure that we get the sort of returns that we're looking for as well.

Okay. And second one, just on the portfolio. Mana is the lowest quality of your assets. Would you consider disposing it if a good offer came in is the first question. And the second question, some assets in the region from one of the larger peers in Tanzania DRC may come to the market. Would you be interested in looking at any acquisitions in the region if they were to become available?

On Mana, first of all, we're always asked the question about it's our poorest asset. I would advise people just look at the cash generation of Mana. It's generating a lot of cash. It's more than adequately washing its space. If somebody wanted to come along and compensate us for that, yes, we are. As I said all along, all assets ultimately are up for sale. It is simply a question of is someone prepared to pay for it.

But bluntly, Daniel, we haven't had people banging the door down saying we'd like to make an offer for Mana offer any other asset. And that's fine. I'm very happy to continue running those assets as long as they are contributing to the bottom line. As far as -- and if I understand the thrust of your second question in terms of potential inorganic opportunities.

Over the last 2 to 3 years, we have looked at a variety of assets. all of which we have walked away from because they don't satisfy our return criteria. Does it mean that we are not going to do inorganic growth opportunities? Of course, not. We are in the fortunate position that we have got a very strong organic growth pipeline, and that is where our focus would be. But it is also appropriate for us to look outside of that. As and when opportunities arise, we can look at stuff. And if it makes sense, obviously, we would do it. But again, it has to be -- has to measure up and to be able to satisfy the sort of returns that we would be looking at as a group as a whole.

Daniel, any further questions?

No, that's it.

Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone, for listening, and we look forward to reporting back when we do our Q1 results for 2026. Look forward to it then. Thanks very much indeed. Cheery-up. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Endeavour Mining's Third Quarter 2025 Results Webcast. [Operator Instructions]. Today's conference call is being recorded, and a transcript of the call will be available on Endeavour's website tomorrow. I would now like to hand the call over to Endeavour's Vice President of Investor Relations, Jack Garman.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Endeavour's Third Quarter 2025 Results Webcast. Apologies for the slight delay getting started. Please note our usual disclaimer.

On the call today, I'm joined by Ian Cockerill, Chief Executive Officer; Guy Young, Chief Financial Officer; Djaria Traore, Executive Vice President of Operations and ESG; and Sonia Scarselli, EVP of Exploration.

Today's call will start with Ian presenting the highlights followed by Guy walking through the financials. Djaria will present our operating results by mine, and Sonia will provide an exploration update before handing back to Ian for his closing remarks. We'll then open the line up for questions. With that, I'll now hand over to Ian.

Thanks very much, Jack. Hello, everybody. And again, as Jack said, apologies. Unfortunately, me and the team were here in Dakar today, and unfortunately, Orange decided to do some unscheduled maintenance on the line, so hence the delay. But glad to say we're back up and running.

As I said, we're dialing in today from Dakar having just returned from our Sabodala-Massawa mine with the Board. We had a very productive trip and it was pleasing to see the strong and consistent performance specifically from the BIOX plant. Q3 2025 has marked another quarter of solid operating performance for Endeavour. As previously guided, production was a little lower with costs a little higher than the prior quarter with operational performance set to improve going into Q4.

Our strong year-to-date production leaves us well positioned to achieve the top half of our production guidance with 82% of the low end of the range already achieved. Meanwhile, our year-to-date all-in sustaining costs of $1,365 per ounce is on track to achieve our guidance, accounting for the impact of the higher gold prices on royalty costs. Looking ahead, we're focused on our organic growth pipeline.

On Slide 7, you can see our performance so far this year. We've maintained a low lost time injury frequency rate significantly below the industry average, and we had no loss time injuries during the quarter, and we continue to strive to zero harm. We've produced 911,000 ounces year-to-date, and with a strong Q4 outlook, we're well positioned to achieve the top half of our production guidance. Our year-to-date all-in sustaining cost of $1,362 per ounce is on track to achieve the full year guidance. We have seen approximately $103 per ounce impact on royalty costs from the higher realized gold prices compared to our guidance gold price of $2,000 per ounce. Accounting for this, our all-in sustaining cost is in the middle of the guidance range, with Q4 performance expected to be an improvement on Q3.

Turning to Slide 8. Our year-to-date performance has significantly improved this year compared to last year, following the startup of our 2 projects in Q3 2024. We've produced 170,000 ounces or 23% more so far this year, and our all-in sustaining margin is 90% higher than last year, aided, of course, by the strong gold price. While our margin has improved significantly, thanks largely to the gold price, it is important to highlight that our all-in sustaining costs remain firmly in the first cost quartile despite the gold price driven increases in our royalty costs and amongst the best of our peers year-to-date. While we expect to see all-in sustaining cost increases across the sector in the near term, we will continue to focus on controlling what we can control, delivering productivity initiatives and the development of our low-cost pipeline projects, which will more than offset any cost increases in the medium term.

Firstly, through our Tier 1 Assafou project, which continues to advance on track with the environmental permit now approved and the definitive feasibility study exceeded in early 2026. We're making good progress towards first gold in H2 2028. Secondly, we're accelerating our exploration program, primarily at our cornerstone mines, but also through our greenfield programs, we're expanding our pipeline to strengthen our long-term organic growth options, and we'll be announcing our new exploration strategy in the coming weeks.

On the financial side, our solid Q3 performance underpins significantly improved free cash flow, which is expected to increase materially in Q4 and into next year. Year-to-date, we generated a record $680 million. And over the past 12 months, we generated nearly $1 billion another record that's equivalent to a 19% free cash flow yield from the start of Q4 last year. This cash flow has supported our balance sheet strength, and we've seen improvements in our net debt and leverage which remains comfortably below our target. We also significantly reduced our gross debt, paying down the balance of our RCF during the quarter.

With solid operational performance and strong cash flow generation, we continue to increase shareholder returns, returning $233 million so far this year, already exceeding our minimum commitment. And with the announcement of our H2 dividend in January, we expect to return the minimum of $346 million to shareholders for the complete year. In January, we'll also announce our updated shareholder returns program. We expect to significantly increase returns and continue to be sector-leading throughout the upcoming Assafou build phase. With strong momentum built over the last 12 months and an even stronger outlook, we're well positioned to continue delivering sector-leading organic growth and sector-leading shareholder returns.

On Slide 10, our strong year-to-date operating performance, coupled with strong prices translated into a 110% increase in adjusted EBITDA compared to the same period last year, to more than $1.6 billion. Our adjusted EBITDA margin also increased by 10 percentage points to a very healthy 55%. We translated this performance into stronger free cash flow, as you can see on Slide 11. For the first 3 quarters of the year, we generated $680 million of free cash flow, and over the last 12 months, generated $948 million or the 19% free cash flow yield from the start of Q4 '24. As we look forward, we expect stronger operational performance in the coming quarter coupled with reduced seasonal taxes and higher gold prices. This will underpin even stronger free cash flow generation.

On Slide 12, you can see that given our strong operational and financial performance, we've continued to increase our shareholder returns. During the quarter, we paid our record H1 2025 dividend of $150 million, which we supplemented with $83 million of share buybacks so far this year. Total returns paid having come to $233 million, exceeding the $225 million minimum dividend. And with our H2 '25 dividend to be announced in January, which will be a minimum of $112.5 million we expect to return that minimum $346 million to shareholders this year, and that's before any supplemental dividend for H2 or any buybacks for Q4.

On Slide 13, we've returned over $1.4 billion to our shareholders over the last 4.5 years, 83% higher than our minimum commitment over the period. And that's equivalent to 72% of our free cash flow generation over that period, demonstrating our commitment to returning supplemental cash to our shareholders.

Looking ahead, we'll be unveiling our updated shareholder returns program early next year, covering the next growth phase, and we expect to outline significantly higher minimum commitments going forward and maintain the sector-leading returns that you all become used to, through our upcoming growth phase. On the growth side, our outlook compares very favorably against the consensus growth outlook for our peers, and that does not include some of the brownfield opportunities that we are advancing, which can supplement this outlook possibly even further.

A significant part of this growth is expected to come from our Tier 1 Assafou project in Côte d'Ivoire, which you can see on Slide 15. The Assafou project continues to advance with a definitive feasibility study tracking for completion in Q1 '26. We were very pleased to receive the environmental permit approval in September which we believe is a significant milestone towards full project approval with the last major approval being the exploitation permit, which we expect towards the end of Q1 next year.

On Slide 16, you can see we continued to accelerate exploration, and we've made good progress at Sabodala-Massawa, Houndé and Assafou. We're also looking at other Tier 1 gold provinces to strengthen and diversify our long-term organic growth outlook. Our aim is to have multiple potential development projects, each competing for internal capital that extend our pipeline even beyond Assafou. We completed the first transaction with Koulou Gold in Côte d'Ivoire last year, and just recently, we completed the second transaction with East Star Resources in Kazakhstan, a relatively modest $5 million investment over a 2-year period to identify potential Tier 1 targets in one of the world's most prolific and under-explored gold provinces. Sonia will take you through this in a little bit more detail later on.

But before I hand over to Guy to go through the financials, I just wanted to touch on our commitment to ESG and our social license to operate. Sustainalytics has improved our score and reiterated our low score rating, which again positions us as the best rated gold producer in the sector, recognizing our long-term work on ESG. We're also proud to see recognition for the work we're doing reflected in our host countries with national honors, including Best Mining Company in Senegal and Best Company Committed to Local Content in Burkina Faso and congratulations to Ity's General Manager, Drissa Soro, for winning the National Award of Manager of the Year in Côte d'Ivoire. These recognitions highlight our deep commitment to developing and promoting local talent, boosting local economies and empowering our host communities. And with that, let me pass you over to Guy to talk you through our financial results. Guy, over to you.

Thanks very much, Ian. Moving straight into our quarterly financial results. Without going through all of the details on Slide 19, I'll just pick out some of the key line items that I will come to later on in the slides. Our production in Q3 was slightly lower and our costs slightly higher than Q2, in line with our mine sequence and as noted in each of our quarterly presentations this year. This resulted in slightly lower earnings whilst operating cash flow before working capital improved by 33% and free cash flow improved by 59%, benefiting from seasonally low withholding and income taxes as well, of course, as higher gold prices.

Turning to Slide 20. Our operational performance remained solid during Q3, and we are on track to achieve the top half of our production guidance with costs adjusted for the impact of higher gold prices on royalties also within the guidance range. Production declined during the quarter due to lower grades processed across the portfolio, coupled with the impact of the wet season, which reduced throughput at Houndé and Lafigué specifically, and was exacerbated by the acceleration of production in H1 at Houndé to derisk our annual production targets. Our all-in sustaining margin decreased slightly, despite the higher gold prices, due to lower grades processed, lower mining and processing productivity as a result of the wet season and the impact of higher gold prices on royalties.

Moving to Slide 21. Our adjusted EBITDA decreased quarter-over-quarter due to the lower production at slightly higher costs, while the impact of the higher gold prices was lessened by the realized losses on financial instruments related to the settlement of the gold collar. Our operating cash flow increased by 22% quarter-over-quarter, shown on Slide 22, mainly due to the lower withholding and income tax payments as well as the higher gold prices. The majority of our income taxes and all of our withholding taxes have now been paid for the year with less than 15% of total taxes outstanding and to be paid in Q4. With improved production and costs expected, coupled with lower cash taxes and higher gold prices, we're extremely well positioned to deliver stronger operating cash flow in Q4.

If we turn to Slide 23 now, and compare Q3's operating cash flow with Q2, improvement was driven by, firstly, a $97 per ounce increase in the realized gold price to $3,247 per ounce, inclusive of the impact of the realized losses on gold collars, a decrease in cash operating expenses as a result of lower production and a stockpile build, lower income taxes paid due to the timing of payments in the region, generally being more weighted towards Q2 and the timing of withholding taxes, which are typically paid in Q2 and Q3, but were expedited this year, reflecting an improvement in the efficiency of the upstreaming process internally and with the West African Central Bank.

These increases were offset by lower gold sales related to lower production and a working capital outflow related to inventory and receivable buildup that I'd like to walk you through in more detail now. Slide 24 shows the two key drivers of the working capital increase of $85 million in the quarter, being inventory and receivables. The majority of the inventory increase, both in the quarter and year-to-date is due to stockpile increases at Sabodala-Massawa, Lafigué and Ity.

Stockpiles have increased at Sabodala-Massawa as we have mined and stockpiled the exceptionally high-grade Massawa North zone deposit, which we expect to start processing in the second half of next year. At Lafigué and Ity, we've also been accelerating mining activity to build stockpiles and are expecting to see continued improvement from the plants, which will draw down on these stockpiles starting in Q4 of this year. The increase in receivables is entirely due to higher VAT receivables and exacerbated by a foreign exchange revaluation of more than $20 million year-to-date. In Burkina Faso VAT refunds continued to be delayed this year, except for an offset arrangement of $23 million in Q3 that is reflected in financing activities in the cash flow. We are actively looking at opportunities to resolve this through various factoring solutions to help expedite the receipt of these refunds that should see a reduction from next year.

In Côte d'Ivoire, VAT refunds are processed quarterly. And at our new Lafigué mine, the setup of the administrative process to claim these VAT refunds has been slow. We've started to receive VAT reimbursement claims in Q3 and we expect this to now start accelerating into next year. In Senegal, where we have monthly VAT refunds, they continue as usual with a slight buildup related to the start-up of the BIOX plant and additional VAT being paid. We expect this to normalize from early next year. While we expect the full year working capital outflow, we should start seeing progressive improvements in both our inventory and receivables from Q4 and will further accelerate this improvement into 2026.

In terms of our free cash flow shown on Slide 25, we continue to generate strong free cash flow in Q3, delivering $166 million, $61 million higher than the prior quarter due to the lower cash taxes and higher realized gold prices I've already touched on. As mentioned, we expect free cash flow to grow in Q4 with the improved operational performance, lower taxes and higher gold prices.

Moving now to Slide 26. The strong free cash flow generation has allowed us to strengthen our balance sheet and reduce our leverage to 0.21x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, comfortably below our target of 0.5x. Given our strong cash flow outlook, our low leverage positions us well ahead of our upcoming growth phase to be able to deliver our organic growth projects and continue paying sector-leading shareholder returns. As I've mentioned in the past, we are not looking to build up a net cash position as we can comfortably meet our strategic objectives with leverage below 0.5x.

On Slide 27, we are pleased to have materially reduced our gross debt through the full repayment of our revolving credit facility during Q3. We paid down $472 million quarter-on-quarter and reduced gross debt by 38% to $678 million. We expect this to be reduced further over the coming years, as we progressively pay down our Lafigué term loan in line with the amortization schedule.

Finally, moving on to net earnings on Slide 28 and focusing on just the key items impacting the quarter. We incurred $49 million loss on financial instruments, which included $69 million realized loss on gold collars which was partially offset by an unrealized gain on the outstanding gold collars for Q4. The final delivery into our gold collar program will be 50,000 ounces at the end of this quarter, which based on prevailing gold prices should support improved cash flows in 2026. Our income tax expense was significantly lower during the quarter. This is due to lower taxable profits and lower withholding taxes recognized. Our deferred tax expense was also higher due to movements in foreign exchange on the opening deferred tax balances and the accrual of FY '25 withholding taxes.

Adjustments were limited during the quarter as the unrealized gain on gold collars was largely offset by other expenses and foreign exchange on our deferred tax balances. We reported another strong quarter of adjusted net earnings per share of $0.66, albeit slightly below the prior quarter, largely due to the lower earnings from operations and a higher realized loss on gold collars.

Thank you. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Djaria.

Thank you, Gary. During quarter 3, I'm pleased to report that we maintain our industry-leading safety record, with a loss time injury frequency rate of 0.05. Unchanged from quarter 2, 2025 or most importantly, we had no loss time injury. While our safety performance position us among the safest mining companies globally, we remain vigilant and we reject complacency. We continue to focus on training to foster the strong safety culture that we have across the business.

Moving on to Slide 31. Quarter 3 marked another solid quarter of operating performance, which contributed to a strong year-to-date production of 911,000 ounces and puts the company on track to achieve the top half of our production guidance range. On cost, we're pleased with the year-to-date performance with all-in sustaining cost of $1,362 per ounce, which has been impacted by $103 per ounce of higher royalty due to higher gold prices than our guidance set at $2,000 per ounce. Adjusting for these impacts, our all-in sustaining cost is firmly in the middle of the guidance range.

Across the portfolio, all the assets are on track to achieve the production guidance. With Houndé and Sabodala-Massawa, expected to achieve the top half of the range, while Lafigué is expected to achieve the lower half. On cost, it is Sabodala-Massawa, Houndé and Lafigué are on track, with Lafigué expected to land near the top end and Mana expected to be above the top end of the range. Despite this at the group level, we are well positioned to achieve our guidance range when accounting for the impact of royalties.

I will now run through the mine-by-mine details, starting with our mine of Ity on Slide 32. Production decreased quarter-on-quarter as expected. We processed a lower grade ore from the Le Plaque and Ity pit in line with the mine sequencing. All-in sustaining costs increased, driven primarily by lower gold sales volume, higher royalties due to increased gold price and higher sustaining capital. Ity is on track to achieve its 2025 production and cost guidance, and we are evaluating opportunities to reduce mining costs through development of the Ity Donut, which should provide us efficiencies by deploying a hybrid mining fleet within an expanded optimized pit over the coming years.

Let's now turn our mention to our Houndé mine on Slide 33. Houndé had a very strong start of the year as we have accelerated high grade into to H1, to derisk the impact of the wet season. And as expected, production decreased quarter-on-quarter. On cost in quarter 3, we saw an all-in sustaining cost decrease, driven primarily by lower sustaining capital as wet stripping requirement eased. Houndé is well positioned to deliver production in the top half of the guidance range with costs well in line. As we have highlighted previously, looking ahead to the next year, we expect we will continue stripping the Vindaloo main pit Phase III cut back and mining lower grade from Kari West and Vindaloo, which will result in high cost for the first half of the year. We should progressively improve as the stripping concludes, giving access to higher grade ore.

Moving now on to Mana on Slide 34. Production declined slightly in quarter 3 as we mined and processed lower grade from Wona underground deposit. While the cost increased slightly due to the lower grade, lower production and sales and higher gold price impact in royalty costs. At Mana, we are pleased with our production performance but there is still work to be done on cost. Importantly, we have now completed the changeover of our underground contractor, and we expect to start realizing some of the productivity benefits including a significant increase in development rate and total development meters next year, driven by expected improvement in equipment availability as well as the operating efficiencies by using a single underground contractor, which we expect will drive unit cost improvement into next year.

At the same time, we are improving the underground mine power stability, through the installation of a transformer and the automation of our on-site power plant to smooth switching between the grid and self-generated power. Combined, these initiatives will allow us to increase our reliance on the lower-cost grid power for the underground from early next year, which should also support cost improvement. For the year, Mana is well on track to achieve the production guidance, but costs are expected to be above the guided range due to the reliance of self-generated power for the underground and higher sustaining capital as we are accelerating development in the Wona deposit to gain access to higher grid more quickly.

At Sabodala-Massawa on Slide 35, production decreased only slightly in quarter 3 as lower grades were processed through the CIL plant, despite higher throughput recoveries for the CIL plant and higher grades as well as recovery through the BIOX plant. On all-in sustaining costs increased largely due to the impact that the unusually long and heavy rainfall had on mining and processing productivity, as well as higher royalty costs due to higher gold prices. It's pleasing to see the technical review at Sabodala-Massawa starting to positively impact performance. Following the acceleration of mining activity at Massawa central zone, we are now mining consistent higher grade, which came in at over 4 grams per ton for quarter 3. And on recovery in the BIOX plant, we were pleased as well to achieve an average of 82% for the quarter, which is a significant improvement from where we started last year, and well on track to achieving our life of mine target of 85%.

Recovery improvement has been driven partly by increased and better quality fresh ore from Massawa Central Zone, but also better feed consistency, which allow us to optimize flotation control and flotation tail leaching. We expect to drive more improvement as we optimize the gravity circuit later this year into next year. Looking ahead to quarter 4, we expect higher production from the CIL plant due to improved throughput and grades while our production from the BIOX plant is expected to remain consistent, position us to achieve the top half of the production guidance with costs in line with guidance. Looking ahead to next year, we will continue to drive the technical review forward to outline on incrementally improved production outlook as we accelerate underground development to drive further production improvement over the coming years.

Lastly, turning to Lafigué on Slide 36. Production declined during quarter 3 as we saw lower throughput, though a 35% higher year-on-year and reduced grade mine and process from the main pit, as mining activity shift towards stripping to accelerate access to more higher grade to support the processing plant, which is now consistently running above design nameplate. All-in sustaining cost increased but mainly due to lower gold sales and higher royalty costs due to gold prices. As we move into quarter 4, we are expecting grade and cost to improve, and Lafigué is tracking towards the lower half of its full year production guidance with the all-in sustaining cost near the top end of the range due to the lower level of production. I will now hand over to Sonia to walk you through our exploration highlights for the quarter. Sonia?

Thank you, Djaria. I'm pleased to be joining the quarterly webcast to provide you with an update of our exploration activities at some of key properties. This is also a timely update as we expect to announce our new exploration strategy for the next 5 years later this quarter. The new strategy will underpin our continued sector-leading organic growth Sabodala-Massawa on Slide 38, we are advancing the 2 high priority exploration targets called Makana and Kawsara. In Makana, we are accelerating the resource definition of the 2 high grade non-refractory mineralized deposits. This could potentially support the near-term mine plan in Sabodala-Massawa and affecting some lower grade feed and improving production. Kawsara is a potentially large non-restructuring resource located approximately 35 kilometers South of Sabodala-Massawa and can support a significant increase in the endowment and provide increased life of mine optionality, maiden resources reports are expected next year.

Moving to Houndé on Slide 39. We have increased our exploration budget as we continue to drill high grade intercept at Vindaloo deeps deposit. The target looks to be very large and very high grade and could support a material improvement in the mine plan. We expect to have a maiden resource for Vindaloo Deep in Q1 2026. Elsewhere in the operating portfolio, we have completed the drilling the holes in Mana to delineate the continuation of the Wona underground deposit. At Ity we are developing several early-stage opportunities along the Ity trend in Lafigué. We expect to start drilling on several near mine targets early next year.

Moving now to Slide 40 and our Tier 1 Assafou project. During Q3 2025, we completed a 23,000-meter drill program at the Pala Trend 2 and Pala Trend 3 targets located a few kilometers to the west of the main Assafou project. Drilling successfully expanded the mineralization over a 3-kilometer strike length along the similar Tarkwaian - Birimian contact to the one at the Assafou deposit, on the southwest side of the Assafou basin. We expect to complete the definition of maiden resources for the Pala Trend targets later in Q4.

And finally, on Slide 41, I want to give you a bit more color on our new joint venture with East Star resources that Ian mentioned earlier. While our new exploration strategy will prioritize existing operation, we will also be increasing our greenfield exploration spend, focused on strengthening and diversifying our exploration pipeline to support our longer-term organic growth. While we expect most of this growth to come from our existing West African portfolio, we are also entering into some highly prospective Tier 1 gold provinces with low exploration maturity and where we have an early mover advantage.

We are taking a low-risk and low-cost venture approach, giving us the ability to leverage our joint venture partners a technical expertise and their knowledge of the operating environment in this region. We signed a joint venture with East Star Resources, a Kazakhstan-based gold and base metal explorer targeting 2 highly prospective belts in Northern and Central Kazakhstan within the highly prospective Central Asian Orogenic Belt, the hosts multiple Tier 1 gold deposits.

We will invest $5 million over a 2-year period to earn 51% interest in the joint venture company that will be operated by East Star who are well integrated in the country, and have been operating there for over 5 years. From day 1, we will have control over the exploration program through our Board and technical committee seats. We expect to continue to leverage local exploration vehicles in a highly prospective Tier 1 gold provinces to expand that exploration pipeline and ensure that we have a multiple high-quality organic growth project that will compete for capital with each other and will underpin continued portfolio pipeline and production growth. With that, Ian, back to you.

Thank you, Sonia. With our strong operating momentum and the supportive gold price environment, we're well positioned to build on our year-to-date performance through the remainder of this year and into 2026. The high quality of our portfolio and the resilience of our business ensures that we are well positioned to sustainably deliver both sector-leading organic growth and sector-leading shareholder returns. We look forward to talking to you in January when we come back with the Q4 results, and we're very, very looking forward to seeing how they turn out. It's looking promising. And with that, let me hand you back to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And the questions come from the line of Wayne Lam from TD Securities.

Maybe at Sabodala, just wondering if you may be able to give us a bit of color on what you're seeing in terms of the stability of the government on the ground there? And are you in discussions on any potential renegotiation on the mining code in country?

Wayne, thanks. Look, in terms of stability of the government, having spent the last week in the country, you get a good sense just being in the streets, in the towns, talking to people, I'm not seeing anything abnormal here. There are some current discussions going on at government level around what they're doing. We are not in any negotiations with regard to change in mining codes in the country. Would I suspect that they will come? I think we've seen elsewhere in West Africa there is a tendency to want to modify. Bear in mind that the mining code in this country goes back to 2013.

So it probably -- it's fair to say it's likely to be due for renewal. So if it comes would I be surprise? No. But the dialogue between ourselves and government I think, is fairly good. And I think if there are going to be any changes, there's certainly going to be well telegraphed, and I would sincerely hope that we will have a high degree of input into what goes into them. But I don't see any immediate change in the immediate future.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just wondering on the recent JV signed with East Star. Can you just talk about the strategy going forward regionally for the company? Just given Endeavour's long-standing history, of operations in West Africa, are you still keen on expanding within the countries where you operate? Or are you now looking to diversify out into other developing regions globally?

I think the answer as I mentioned previously, Wayne, we still see good potential in West Africa. We're really sort of doubling down, particularly on our brownfield exploration, I think -- you can see what Sonia mentioned about specifically at places like Sabodala, highly, highly prospective piece of real estate. We just got to go and look for it. So we are certainly not walking away from West Africa far from it. But we do recognize that looking forward and bear in mind, exploration is a long-term game. This is not something that we're doing for the next quarter. The reason why we're expanding and taking sort of baby steps outside of West Africa is we're actually looking longer term.

We're looking for the mines we will develop in the 2030s that's sort of time horizon that we're looking at. And our focus is going to be on those areas that we think are highly prospective, relatively under-explored where we believe that our unique exploration expertise can be applied and we can be equally successful over the next decade as we've been, if you look back over the past decade in terms of cost-effective discovery of ounces of gold.

We are now going to take our next question and the questions come from the line of Richard Hatch from Berenberg.

Yes, two questions. Firstly, just following on from the previous question around tax and royalty regimes in West Africa. It has been a theme amongst some shareholders, just questions around that. And I guess you've got your stability agreement in Senegal and Burkina has already moved on that. But what about Côte d'Ivoire, what are you kind of hearing or you're seeing in Cote d'Ivoire? And how should we think about changes to royalty regimes in Côte d'Ivoire, tax and royalty regimes in Côte d'Ivoire. That's the first one.

Hey Richard, Guy. Richard in Cote d'Ivoire, I think a relatively well publicized discussion continues between the Chamber of Mines on which we're obviously represented and the state. The state's primary focus appears to be, amongst other things, on the royalty rates. It's important to us, obviously, predominantly with regards to Assafou because that's the sites which we'd like to start developing but for which we don't have any signed convention. So that's the key aspect for us. In terms of Ity, in particular, we do have, as you know, stabilization clause in which we would rely to avoid any near-term increase in royalties till such time as we're looking for permit renewal.

Lafigué, we would hope to be signing a convention relatively soon, at which point we'd be able to confirm. But there is no doubt there is ongoing and upward pressure from all of the states, including Cote d'Ivoire, particularly in terms of that royalty rate.

Understood. I'll ask my second one, but just to be clear, you can go forward with Assafou construction without having that convention signed? Or would you prefer to have it before you go forward? And then the follow-up, sorry, was how significant is a significant hike in the dividend. So if I look at $225 million, I mean, a significant hike could be 30%, but that takes it to $300 million. So it's $300 million like a fair number, a rule of thumb? Or could it be more? Or how do we think about the significance of significant?

Richard, in terms of the numbers that you've spoken of, you may say that we couldn't possibly comment at the stage.

Richard, we will, of course, be coming up with some more directional numbers very early next year. It's just a question, so significance is obviously a subjective term and the qualitative one of that open to interpretation. It's just that we do need to get to the end of our annual planning process. We need to take some views on gold pricing, reassessing cash flows, making sure we understand where we think the actual numbers are going to land. But in any of the scenarios, we see some significant -- apologies capacity for us to improve the current scenario, which we believe is relatively set for leading anyway and is only upside from here. But it won't be long, and we'll be able to provide you with a lot more quantitative directions.

We are now going to take our next question and the questions come from the line of Ovais Habib from Scotiabank.

Congrats on a good quarter and really glad to hear that production is tracking towards the top end of guidance. Ian, a couple of questions from me. I just wanted to start off with Assafou. Exploitation permit approval in DFS looks like they're on track to completion in Q1. Ian, there was a lot of drilling completed over the last couple of quarters, and Sonia did mention that mineralization extends over a 3-kilometer strike length and remains open. Obviously, that looks like there's a lot more further upside over here. Is this drilling going to be included in the PFS? And is there any change or a scope change in the PFS that we should expect?

A great question. Thank you. Look, I mean we've actually addressed this issue previously. At some point, you actually have to sort of close off the reserve because you've got to do it against your published reserve and resource statement. We've taken the view that the numbers that we used in the PFS, which was 4.1 million ounce reserve would be the number that we would use for the study. But we're cognizant of the fact that there is potential upside from there. Having said that, it's our belief that the 4.1 million ounces is more than enough against which we can do a realistic study, the final feasibility study. But we will make sure that whatever design we come up with and that we finally go with has in-built flexibility and that would be the assumption that over the life of this project, there will be scope to expand the throughput over and beyond the 5 million ton a year, which is the design profile that we're using for the initial study.

So we've decided to fix our view at that level, but the design will be flexible. We will not sort of bottle ourselves in. We'll leave lots of room and shape and capacity in the design. If we wish to increase capacity, we could do so and it's not going to make life difficult for ourselves. That's the approach that we've decided to take.

And then just moving on to exploration. The new 5-year exploration strategy is expected in Q4. Are we going to get a resource start rate like we did previously? And maybe a part-two to that is where is kind of the low-hanging fruit that you would be targeting in the near term?

Thanks a lot for the question. As I mentioned, the strategy will be presented on the fourth -- the next quarter. However, just looking at the next 5 years where we play. We will definitely double down in our existing operation. We have a pipeline of brownfield and greenfield that have been identified, that will move forward, especially the brownfield in the short term and greenfield will be progressed in the next 2, 3 years, to really keep building on that pipeline.

In parallel, we're really looking to expand the portfolio. That's why we are looking at this low-cost entry strategy of joint venture with partnership and juniors in different countries. But definitely, in the short term, we have identified a strong pipeline for a brownfield in our existing areas and hoping applying new technologies and new data sets to actually continue to expanding on that.

As we did previously Ovais, it would be the intention that we will be setting ourselves internal targets for achievement. So that we'll be doing as well.

And just in terms of brownfields that you talked about brownfield targets is the Ity Donut concept still in -- on the plate right now and that's going to be your focus going into 2026?

Look, it's a plan, absolutely. I mean, there's -- you've seen the plans. We're busy doing the engineering studies. We're looking at the implications, what is meant by this. I think as we said previously, one of the real issues that we have at Ity is a very, very tight site. The Ity Donut requires a fairly high degree of ground movement. And the question is, where best do we put all the -- particularly the waste material?

And that's what's requiring some very careful thought requiring us to do some fairly rapid condemnation drilling to make sure that in terms of waste par positioning, we're not putting on any future ore reserves and sterilizing stuff that we could go into in the future. But it's absolutely a very important part of organic growth opportunity potential within the group.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Fahad Tariq from Jefferies.

Ian, I just wanted to come back to your first answer on Senegal. There's a Bloomberg article just this morning talking about the government seeking to perhaps change its mining code by the end of the year given the debt crisis in the country. Your answer said you don't see an immediate change in the immediate future. Can you maybe just comment on that? Like is it based on discussions that you've had with the government or the team has had with the government?

Look, Fahad we've not had any discussions with government around the change. We also saw that comment. I think there's a huge difference between an aspiration and ability to deliver. And I think being realistic, there's no ways that the government may want to have a change in the mining code. But I do believe that it's not really going to happen. I mean, at Sabodala, our current mining code extends to 2040. So any changes to the existing 230 mining code are unlikely to affect us at Sabodala in the short term. So it's -- there's always lots of commentary.

In fairness, as I think Guy mentioned earlier, all jurisdictions are looking at ways of increasing their take with the higher gold price received. And let's be frank, that's not unique to countries where we're mining. Every country around the world is looking at ways of grabbing extra tax dollars. So if you're asking me, is there going to be a change by the end of the year, I would say that's not going to happen. If you were asking me what is the trajectory? I think it's fair to say that the trajectory, like in all countries is likely to be higher, but over the longer-term time line of which I'm afraid at this stage, I can't actually define.

That's helpful. And then just switching gears to exploration. Philosophically, is there a prioritization of mines that are, let's say, around the 10-year mine life and you want to maybe extend those mine lives, for example, Houndé and Ity? Or is it really just based on where you're seeing the most geologic potential, and that's where the exploration focus and the rigs will be?

I think it would always be great if you had a short mine life, and there was lots of potential and you could focus there, that would be the logical thing to do. But your exploration focus is absolutely going to be where you believe is the maximum potential. We're very fortunate that in our portfolio, we have some great potential. And historically, there's been perhaps insufficient emphasis on the underground potential.

And if you look at Sabodala, Ity, Houndé, all three of those mines have been fabulous mines within the portfolio that got really good underground potential. And we've recognized this that this is a great internal upside potential for the group. We are increasing our focus on underground exploration, but importantly, also bringing onboard people into the group who have got extensive underground mining, planning, execution capability. So we're preparing ourselves that a future within Endeavour is not just going to be open cut. It will be open cut as well as appropriate and commercially viable underground operations as well.

We are going to proceed with our next question and the question comes from the line of Marina Calero from RBC Capital Markets.

I have two questions on my side. The first one is a follow-up from previous questions on the JV agreement announced today. You're clearly looking to diversify into new regions. Can you comment where else you're seeing potential at the moment? And as an extension of that, how much capital are you looking to invest in these type of agreements going forward?

Yes. Marina, again, I think previously, we flagged that we certainly have an interest in the Tethyan belt. So clearly, that's why Kazakhstan has been flagged as being high potential. Let me reiterate what I said earlier, which is areas of high prospectivity, the potential for Tier 1 deposits as well as being relatively under-explored where we can apply our previously acquired expertise and knowledge. And also perhaps our familiarity with specific geology, which is why we've also said that parts of sort of Northern-South America are highly prospective. It's the same geology as we're exploiting in West Africa.

So those are the areas of focus. So it is -- it's not just a shotgun approach to expanding our exploration portfolio. It is a very deliberately focused program, where we believe our approach to exploration, our ability to have a higher probability of success we believe that we can actually repeat the success that we've had over the past decade. And going forward, do the same, generate more greenfield ounces and prepare ourselves for the next mines post-Assafou.

And I have one more question for Sonia. On the non-refractory targets that you're drilling at Sabodala-Massawa, can you give us a bit more color on that and when we could see those coming into the mine plan?

So for the Kawsara, we are still completing the drilling campaign that has two aspects, one on a very high grade part of the resources. It was infill drilling to really get to next year to an inferred resource. But in parallel, we are also doing the exploratory drilling to really understand the full expansion of the resource. So what we see today is an expansion of potential over 5 kilometers where the mineralization continues. That's why we are working with the team and fully understand the resource size will impact and where it will be scheduled on the mine plan.

On the other opportunity, Makana, this is brownfield opportunity nearby our CIL facility plant. So we will accelerate in 2026 the drilling campaign to get into indicated resource. So the goal is to actually accelerate to the mine plan as we get into 2027 and display the lower-grade resources.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the question comes from the line of Anita Soni from CIBC World Markets.

I just wanted to ask a couple of CapEx-related questions. On the fee gain, I think the CapEx has been shifting from sustaining to non-sustaining. And I think -- can you just give me some color on that? I thought you said was it related to just a focus on the different kinds of stripping that you're doing? And then should we then assume that, that sustaining capital will catch up next year? Is that a good assumption or not?

Anita, Guy. I'll try this, and if Djaria wants to add anything. Yes, you're absolutely right. There is a slight change in the Lafigué CapEx split. So there's another $10 million in our nonsustaining that is effectively associated with a revision to our stripping plant. So we're increasing some stripping at the main pit that's effectively allowing us better access in the short term to fresh ore and ounces. We will push stripping into nonsustaining from sustaining if the pushback or the strip itself is both ahead of life of mine strip ratio, as well as accessing ore that's going to be mined over multiple years. So in this particular case, those criteria being met, and consequently, is moved from sustaining to nonsustaining. I think over the longer term, we don't have any fundamental shifts in our expectation for total CapEx at the site, this is a question of short-term changes to mine plan.

Okay. So the strip ratio is higher than life of mine and so it moved from the sustaining to...

In this particular strip.

And then secondly, on Sabodala-Massawa, the processing costs dropped this quarter. And I'm just wondering, is that a function of something that's, I guess, more sustainable? Or is that really just a function of the higher contribution of the CIL or which I presume is slightly cheaper than the BIOX?

Anita maybe I can chat to you offline just to understand exactly the quantums you're looking at. It's fair to say, though, from a broader trend perspective, yes, our processing cost at Sabodala have benefited from some improvement in recoveries, which we touched on earlier in the call. The other impact that you're likely to see having started to come through in our '25 numbers and arguably going to be a bigger contributor into 2026 is the solar investment.

Our solar investments, which started coming online, this year is an investment to which we've been very proud of, not only for its ESG credentials, but the fact that it does have a fundamental improvement to our operating costs. So as the solar has ramped up, it's starting to contribute to a growing proportion of our overall power consumption. And that, I think, again, as a long-term trend, should be underpinning sort of the improvements you're seeing in processing costs at Sabodala.

[Operator Instructions] And the question comes from the line of Mohamed Sidibe from National Bank Capital Markets.

Guy, I think you mentioned that the goal is not to stockpile cash as you're advancing through the next year. Could you maybe help us understand what's the minimum amount of cash you would like to hold while advancing the build at Assafou in order to better understand maybe your capital return profile for your capital allocation priorities?

No problem. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to give you even through the backdoor sufficient quantification to kind of reverse engineer the shareholder returns. But what I can just point to, which I think we've discussed before is in terms of minimum cash requirements, we fundamentally look to hold sufficient liquidity at both mine sites as well as offshore. And when we look at those numbers, we tend to look at $150 million of liquidity offshore. And we also like to keep around $15 million, $20 million of liquidity at mine site.

I do keep trying to underline, the liquidity point here. So if we hold it in cash, that's fine, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in cash, it just needs to be liquidity availability. So I would reiterate the point made during the presentation itself. We have no stated short- or medium-term ambition to be holding cash piles. However, though cash piles as you would expect, form part of the capital allocation and ongoing capital allocation, and we will look to, of course, provide the right levels of liquidity and balance sheet strength. But equally, we will continue to focus on shareholder returns and CapEx, cash CapEx requirements of the business for organic growth. So there isn't a substantial amount of cash requirements or liquidity at either an offshore or a site level.

All right. Great. And then maybe if I could follow up on the working capital side of things, you noted that you expect a big part of that to be coming on and flowing out in 2026. Should we expect this to be mostly coming out in 2016? Or would some be seen in 2027 as well? Just wanted to think about the amount and levels into next year.

Sure. Just to make sure I understood. You're talking about the unwind profile?

Exactly the unwinding of the inventory and accounts receivable.

Okay. Perfect. So I think from a stockpile perspective, which is arguably the most material number. Yes, we see going particularly into 2026, partly as a result of the mine plans, the ability to start unwinding. And in particular, as I mentioned, it's likely to be happening at Lafigué as well as Sabodala. Sabodala, as we start blending slightly differently and looking to change our process plant feed, we should see North Zone materials starting to become consumed in H2 of '26. Lafigué, it's the same point. We've got a plant that is currently managing to produce well above nameplate capacity.

And as a result, we've stockpiled in order to be able to ensure that, that plant is filled through 2026. So whilst I think the trajectory is better for 2026, I think it would be presumptious to assume that we'd be able to consume all of our stockpiles. Clearly, there are going to be stockpiles consumed over life of mine. But there is an improving trend between '25 and '26 as I've described.

I think slightly more difficult to answer is on the VAT. Where we have higher degrees of confidence is in and around Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal. Cote d'Ivoire is associated with Lafigué. Lafigué having just come online and as it turns out simultaneously, the state of Cote d'Ivoire implemented a new administrative process and an online automated process in the same year. Those two things did end up slowing down our ability to submit and claim VAT reimbursements. The quarterly nature will not change.

So I expect us to be able to stabilize the level, which is slightly lower than where we are now. And then that should -- and that would be in 2026. And then that would flatten in terms of overall movements unless the nominal amount changes. In Senegal, we remain on track. It's a monthly process. So that's just a question of lead time and the nominal amount if it goes up, associated with costs, it might increase slightly, but that I expect to remain relatively flat.

The big unanswered one and very difficult to answer one is Burkina-Faso. We don't see Burkina-Faso as a counter-party risk, which is why we don't account for it as such. So our ECL associated with our VAT receivables is focused entirely on timing. The Burkina Faso state has always remained true to its word, and when it owes us money, it pays us. The question is around timing because they're under their own cash constraints. So we don't see the counter-party risk, but we remain cautious in terms of being able to commit two timing. And consequently, we're looking at alternatives where we might be able to look into some kind of factoring that allows us access to the cash.

Failing that, arguably, this is going to a slightly longer-term issue, but not which -- not one which we believe is insurmountable. We'll continue to work on it between '25 and '26, we should see some improvement. But thereafter, we'll have to wait and see whether the success of the factoring program can be repeated.

And the questions come from the line of Felicity Robson from Bank of America.

At Mana, you're expecting costs above the top end of the guide in part due to higher power costs and issues around grid stability. How can we think about the cost profile going forward there, please?

Thank you, Felicity. I think as we previously mentioned last quarter, we know that we do have issue around cost at Mana, and we do still have a lot of work to do. We've mentioned that there are two or three key elements here is the reliance still on the self-generated power. Hence, we are currently improving some of the initiatives, one of them being the transformer that we'll be setting up. So normally, by the beginning of next year, we should be seeing an improvement, at least on the power cost because what that will allow us to do with that transformer is to be able to then use the grid on the underground mining. So that's one thing.

I think on the quarter 3, what we've seen as well is that one-off cost due to the transition from two contractors to one contractor now, which we're very comfortable with. So with that, that means that there is a lot of productivity initiatives that we'll be putting in place. But one thing is for sure for Mana, I think what we've seen quarter-on-quarter is that in terms of production, which are stable. Mana is still contributing to the gold production as overall, is still generating cash. So I think for now, we just need to continue putting together some initiatives in order to reduce the costs at Mana.

Thank you. That will conclude today's Q&A session and today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Endeavour Mining's Second Quarter 2025 Results Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference call is being recorded, and a transcript of the call will be available on Endeavour's website tomorrow. I would now like to hand the call over to Endeavour's Vice President of Investor Relations, Jack Garman. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Endeavour's Second Quarter and Half Year 2025 Results Webcast. Before we start, please note our usual disclaimer. On the call today, I'm delighted to be joined by Ian Cockerill, Chief Executive Officer; Guy Young, Chief Financial Officer; and Djaria Traore, Executive Vice President of Operations and ESG.

Today's call will follow our usual format. Ian will first go through the highlights. Guy will present the financials, and Djaria will walk you through our operating results by mine before handing back to Ian for his closing remarks. We'll then open the line up for questions. With that, I will now hand over to Ian.

Thank you, Jack, and hello to everyone who's on the call today. I'm very proud to say that as previously guided, we've delivered another good quarter to cap of a strong first half, firmly underpinned by a sound safety performance. In H1 this year, we produced 647,000 ounces of gold at an average all-in sustaining cost of $1,281 per ounce, which firmly places us on track to achieve our full year guidance.

And I think to put that production in context on a like-for-like basis year-on-year, so in other words, excluding the influence of Lafigué's production, this year's H1 production is a 16% improvement in throughput year-on-year. Our organic growth pipeline continues to advance, and our Tier 1 Assafou Project's definitive feasibility study remains on track for completion by early '26. At the same time, we're making good progress with the environmental and exploitation permits as well.

Our exploration program is advancing several exciting greenfield and brownfield opportunities across the portfolio, including at Ity, where the Ity trend continues to deliver new greenfields discovery and pleasingly, at Sabodala-Massawa, where we are delineating a high-grade near-mine opportunity to support our mine plan.

On the financial side, we have continued to increase free cash flow generation, delivering $514 million of free cash flow in H1, and that's equivalent to $794 for every ounce that we've produced. This improved free cash flow generation has allowed us to maintain a healthy balance sheet and as previously guided, despite paying approximately 70% of our 2025 tax bill in the first half of this year. Our leverage is also well below our 0.5x target and positions us comfortably for future growth and enhanced shareholder returns. We've announced a record first half dividend of $150 million that we supplemented with $69 million of share buybacks. That's bringing total shareholder return for the first half of 2025 to $219 million. On an annualized basis, that's approximately 95% above our minimum commitment and is equivalent to a return of $338 per ounce of gold produced in H1. And I think this reiterates our commitment to delivering sector-leading returns to our shareholders.

So as you can see, we've carried the strong momentum that we've been building since the completion of our growth phase through the second quarter and rounding off a strong first half of the year. On the next slide, you can see our performance so far this year. We've maintained a low lost time injury frequency rate significantly below the industry average, and we continue to strive for zero harm. Operationally, we delivered 58% at the lower-end of our production guidance range during the first half. And that positions us well to achieve full year production guidance with slightly lower production expected in the second half due to rainy seasons in Q3 and planned mined lower grades at both Ity as well as at Houndé.

Importantly, in the first half of the year, we maintained a low all-in sustaining cost of $1,281 per ounce, close to the midpoint of our full year guidance range. And that's despite the impact of higher gold prices and their influence on royalty costs. In fact, the increased royalty cost was approximately $96 per ounce additional over our budgeted cost in the first half.

On Slide 8, our higher first half production was coupled with a significant 31% increase in our all-in sustaining margin, which reflects our cost discipline in this higher gold price environment. The improvement in both our production and margins is a result of the successful completion of our growth phase in early H2 2024. And with our larger higher-margin portfolio, we're well positioned to take advantage of the favorable gold price environment going forward.

On Slide 9, you can see our all-in sustaining costs compared to our sector peers, and we remain in the first cost quartile. Over the longer term, while we expect to see the industry all-in sustaining costs increase, we will continue to focus on productivity initiatives and the discovery and development of our low-cost pipeline projects to help offset any potential cost increases.

On Slide 10, our stronger first half production and our cost discipline, coupled with a strong gold price translated into a 35% increase in adjusted EBITDA to nearly $1.2 billion compared to the second half of 2024. Our adjusted EBITDA margin also increased by 5 percentage points to a very healthy 57%. Importantly, our improved production and earnings is also translating into stronger free cash flow, as you can see on Slide 11.

For the first half of the year, we generated over $0.5 billion of free cash flow, a 41% increase on H2 '24 and a significant improvement on H1 '24, when we were still in our construction phase and generating negative free cash flow. On a per ounce basis, our H1 '25 free cash flow is equivalent to $794 of free cash flow generated for every ounce of gold produced, highlighting the quality of the underlying portfolio and our ability to convert operational performance into free cash flow at a healthy margin.

And that's particularly impressive because during the first half of the year, as previously guided, we also paid approximately 70% of our expected 2025 cash taxes. With a robust second half operational performance, coupled with even higher gold prices at the start of the third quarter, we expect continued strong free cash flows going forward. This chart here really illustrates our transition from a growth phase in the third quarter of '24 to a period focused on cash flow harvesting. Over the last 12 months, since completing that growth phase, we've now generated $879 million in free cash flow, equivalent to $687 of free cash flow for every ounce of gold that we've produced. That's a very attractive free cash flow yield of 17% from the start of the period. And as we look forward, our robust operating outlook with cost discipline should underpin continued strong free cash flow generation.

On Slide 12, the strong free cash flow generation has allowed us to strengthen our balance sheet and reduce our leverage to 0.23x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, significantly below our target of 0.5x very quickly. Our net debt ended the period at $469 million, a significant improvement on our year-end debt of $732 million, and that's despite our big shareholder return payments, coupled with seasonally high taxes that have also been paid.

We were pleased to materially strengthen and extend the maturity profile of our capital structure during this period through the successful bond refinancing, which we completed in May and the subsequent repayment of the majority of our higher cost RCF, which Guy will speak to shortly.

On Slide 13, given our strong free cash flow, which has deleverage our financial position, we have continued to prioritize shareholder returns. I'm delighted to announce our record first half dividend of $150 million in cash, which we supplemented with a further $69 million of share buybacks, bringing total shareholder returns for the first half of the year to $219 million. And just putting that in context, that's approximately 11% of our revenue, 29% of our operating cash flow or 43% of our free cash flow. For the first half, we generated $794 per ounce of free cash flow and returned $338 per ounce to shareholders, reflecting our commitment again to delivering enhanced shareholder returns in these higher gold price environments.

Our first half shareholder returns brings total returns over the last 4.5 years to $1.4 billion, and that's 81% (sic) [ 80% ] above our minimum commitment for that period, and that reflects our commitment to supplemental returns through phase of growth and cash flow harvesting, reiterating the high quality of our business and highlighting our ability to continue delivering sector-leading returns to shareholders even through phases of growth.

And on an annualized basis, our first half returns of $219 million is approximately 95% higher than our minimum shareholder returns commitment for the year of $225 million, again, highlighting our commitment to supplemental returns that continues to increase given our strong operational performance.

Moving on to organic growth on Slide 15. I think nothing better exemplifies Endeavour's ability to create value through the drill bit than the Assafou Project in Côte d'Ivoire, which continues to advance on schedule towards its DFS completion by early 2026. In H1 '25, we continue to advance the project. We completed over 20,000 meters of drilling, largely focused on infill, confirming and increasing our confidence in the reserve model for the early part of the mine plan. Now that we completed this program, we can prioritize exploration principally at Assafou and Pala Trends 2 and 3 satellite targets within the kilometer of the Assafou main pit, where we expect to have a resource update later this year.

The project is advancing to plan, and we have appointed the engineering contractor, the same team who we have successfully worked with on our last 5 construction projects who will be led by a best-in-class in-house construction supervisory team. The permitting process also continues to advance as anticipated with the environmental permit approval expected in the second half of this year and the exploitation permits expected early next year at the latest. All in all, Assafou remains on track to become a genuine Tier 1 asset in our portfolio and a key pillar of our next phase of growth, offering robust economics, strong exploration upside and a straightforward proven CIL flow sheet design, very similar to that, which we already have in place at Lafigué.

On Slide 16, we've continued to advance our long-term organic growth pipeline through exploration, increasing our full year guidance by $10 million to $85 million, driven by accelerated drilling programs at both Ity and Sabodala and significant progress at Assafou as well as Houndé. At Sabodala-Massawa, drilling is focused on high-grade near-mine non-refractory targets to support the ongoing technical review. Following the successes at Kiesta C and Soukhoto, which are now in this year's mine plan, we've had success at the Makana target, where results have outlined a potentially large-scale high-grade deposit located within 22 kilometers of the CIL processing plant.

Exploration at Ity is focused on the Ity trend, where drilling has identified several highly prospective high-grade greenfield targets and a follow-up program to test the scale of these targets is scheduled for later this year. Finally, at Houndé, the high-grade Vindaloo Deeps deposit is beginning to take shape. Drilling continues to highlight the potential for a large high-grade underground deposit. Drilling is going to continue in the second half of the year to further delineate mineralization and with an updated resource expected in early 2026.

Before I hand over to Guy, I'd just like to briefly touch on ESG following the recent publication of our annual tax and economic contribution report. As the largest gold producer and a major employer in the region, we're a key contributor to the economic prosperity of our host countries. Last year, this amounted to a total economic contribution of $2.2 billion to our host countries through the transparent payment of taxes, royalties, salaries and increasingly importantly, in-country procurement.

Our economic contribution, although critically important, is just one aspect of the meaningful value that we deliver from the gold that we produce. Transparency and traceability of responsibly sourced gold is equally important to ensure everyone benefits from the metal we mine from jewelers, downstream users and investors to ultimately our impacted communities. Single mine origin or more commonly known as SMO is just one such initiative, and they recently launched the SMO Foundation to fund a variety of projects in social equity, health care access and environmental conservation. We're proud to be partnering with them on improving health care at Sabodala-Massawa and supporting the protection of the Tai National Park, the Jewel of West Africa in Côte d'Ivoire.

We're also proud to partner with the World Gold Council on their Gold: The Journey Continues series. The latest episode, which was launched a few weeks ago, actually features our most recent mine, Lafigué. And this documentary series is storytelling at its best for the industry, authentic, honest accounts of how mining can positively impact the lives of host communities, opening up economic opportunities to transform lives for better. I believe a very, very necessary counterbalance to often the unduly negative press that we get in our industry. And with that, let me pass you over to Guy, who's going to take you through the financial results. Guy, over to you.

Thanks, Ian. I'll now walk through our financial results for the second quarter and first half of 2025.

On Slide 19, our operational profitability and cash flow highlights for the quarter. Following the very strong production in Q1 and in line with our intended H1 weighting to derisk production, our Q2 production was slightly lower due to lower grades being processed. Costs were slightly higher than Q1, mainly due to the lower volumes and grades mined and processed as well as higher royalty costs and higher power costs, partially offset by a higher realised gold price, which drove improved EBITDA and a net earnings increase of 57%. Cash flows were robust, but impacted by the expected seasonal peak in cash tax payments. As we originally guided, the majority of tax payments are now behind us for the year.

Turning to Slide 20. Our Q2 production declined by 35,000 ounces over Q1, in line with mine sequencing, driven by lower grades processed at Houndé, Sabodala-Massawa and Mana. Despite this, production was 55,000 ounces higher than Q2 last year as a result of the contributions from our new Sabodala-Massawa BIOX plant and Lafigué mine, which both achieved commercial production in Q3 of last year. Our all-in sustaining margin also continued to improve in Q2, thanks to the strong gold price during the quarter, but was partially offset by an increase in ASIC quarter-on-quarter due to the impact of higher royalty costs and higher power costs, the latter being driven by lower grid power availability as hydroelectric dam capacity in Cote d'Ivoire was at its lowest point for the year ahead of the annual wet season.

Moving on to Slide 21. Our EBITDA increased by 10% quarter-over-quarter, supported by our robust operational performance, higher gold prices as well as a swing in unrealized FX gains as the U.S. dollar depreciated against the euro. Importantly, our EBITDA margin also improved by some 700 basis points to 59% in the quarter, highlighting our strong cost position and leverage to the gold price.

Moving to Slide 22. Our operating cash flow for Q2 was $252 million and lower than Q1 due to the seasonal peak in cash tax payments across all 3 jurisdictions and slightly lower production in line with mine sequencing as previously discussed. As outlined in our tax guidance earlier in the year, we expected to incur around 55% of our full year cash taxes in Q2, and we paid $233 million in the quarter. By quarter end, we had already paid approximately 70% of our full year cash taxes, positioning us for a strong second half in terms of cash flow. We can see this in more detail on Slide 23 and the Q2 operating cash flow bridge, where, as mentioned earlier, the quarter-on-quarter decline in operating cash flow was primarily driven by 49,000 ounces lower gold sold as well as higher royalty costs and higher operating costs, both Houndé and Ity.

In addition, income taxes paid increased by $194 million, in line with the seasonality of our cash tax payments as previously spoken about. These impacts were partially offset by a $367 per ounce increase in the realised gold price and a $54 million reduction in working capital outflows. The lower working capital outflow was largely driven by the unwinding of golden circuit inventory built up during the prior quarter at both Houndé and Ity. This was partially offset by an $18 million buildup in VAT receivables, primarily at Houndé, Mana and Lafigué.

At Lafigué, the process is simply delayed following the mine start-up last year. While at Houndé and Mana, we continue to look at options to offset or factor some of our VAT receivables going forward. The net result of which was a very credible $233 million of operating cash flow in the quarter.

Moving now to Slide 24. Our operating cash flow of $252 million translated into a free cash flow generation in the quarter of $104 million after deducting $148 million of investing cash flow, which I will detail further in the next slide. In terms of cash flow seasonality, I reiterate that importantly, we've now paid approximately 70% of our full year cash taxes and as such, are in an excellent position to generate free cash flow in the second half of the year, supported by stronger gold prices.

Our leverage position, as outlined on Slide 25, remained stable throughout the quarter, while our net debt increased by $91 million due to the significant cash tax and shareholder returns payments during the quarter. Operating cash flow was $252 million, as previously mentioned. Investing activities was an outflow of $148 million, an increase over the first quarter as our capital expenditure ramped up. The total is comprised of $59 million of sustaining CapEx, $65 million of nonsustaining CapEx and $10 million of growth capital as we continue to advance the asset through definitive feasibility study.

Financing activities was an outflow of $256 million, primarily related to the $140 million H2 2024 shareholder dividend payment, which we paid in April as well as $39 million in financing costs related to the bond refinancing and interest on other debt instruments. $29 million was in share buybacks and $28 million in net repayments of debt and $7 million in lease repayments. We also recognized a $49 million gain from the foreign exchange remeasurement of cash balances through the quarter.

Our leverage remained stable despite the slight increase in net debt as our last 12-month adjusted EBITDA continued to improve, reflecting both higher realised gold prices and the positive impact of commercial production at our growth projects from Q3 of last year.

Turning to our capital structure on Slide 26. We successfully refinanced our $500 million senior notes in May of this year, replacing our existing 5% senior notes that were maturing in 2026, new 7% senior notes maturing in 2030. The transaction, which was significantly oversubscribed has extended our debt maturity profile and maintained our relatively low cost of capital. Importantly, the old notes that were issued at a spread to 5-year treasuries of approximately 395 basis points, while the new notes were issued at a reduced spread of only 300 basis points, reflecting the improved geographic diversification and quality in our portfolio.

I also thought it's worth highlighting that post the end of this quarter that we're reporting on now, we repaid approximately $426 million on our $700 million RCF, leaving a residual $46 million drawn, significantly reducing our gross debt from $1.1 billion to approximately $680 million as at the end of July. With our healthy leverage, our long-term and low-cost capital structure, coupled with our strong free cash flow outlook, we are well positioned to deliver on our strategy to organically grow while delivering attractive returns to our shareholders.

Moving lastly to Slide 27 and our net earnings. Our adjusted net earnings per share decreased by $0.17 due to lower earnings from operations as a result of slightly lower production at higher costs. Net earnings improved significantly as we recorded an $18 million gain on financial instruments as a result of unrealised FX gains on net assets and unrealised gains on gold collars as the outstanding collars continue to wind down, partially offset by a realised loss on gold collars for the quarter of $46 million, reflecting the 50,000 ounces that were settled.

While our 50,000 ounces of gold collars cost us $46 million this quarter, pleasingly, there is only another 250,000 ounce tranches to be settled in Q3 and Q4 before we are fully exposed to the gold price, giving us an immediate benefit from Q1 next year at current gold prices. Net tax expenses were also lower due to a significant deferred tax recovery, which was the result of an FX gain on deferred tax balances and payments of withholding taxes. As a result, total net earnings of $343 million were $121 million higher than the previous quarter. Finally, the adjustments, which include the unrealized gains on gold collars and FX on net assets, partially offset by other expenses, which resulted in a $100 million adjustment to adjusted earnings per share. I'll now hand it over to Djaria for the review of our operating performance.

Thank you, Guy. Our group lost time injury frequency rate remained low at 0.05 and our total recordable injury frequency rate remained stable at 1 for the quarter, similar to quarter 1. This reflects our strong safety culture and benchmarked against the recent ICMM safety performance report positions, Endeavour among the safest mining companies globally. However, complacency is the enemy of safety, and we are currently undertaking a group-wide safety leadership training program for all our frontline supervisors to reenergize reporting of leading indicators. This initiative aims to improve safety performance by encouraging proactive reporting of potential hazards and near misses rather than solely focusing on reactive measures after incident.

Moving to Slide 30. We had a strong first half of the year. Production totaled 647,000 ounces for H1, which is approximately 58% of the low end of our guidance range and 55% of guidance midpoint. Group production in quarter 2 was 360,000 ounces, slightly lower than quarter 1, but in line with mine plans as grade were lower at Houndé, Mana and Lafigué.

Looking to H2, we expect production to be slightly lower than H1 due to anticipated lower grades at Houndé and Ity. Our H1 in sustaining cost was $1,281 per ounce, well within our full year guidance range and only slightly above the midpoint due to the impact of higher gold price and royalty costs, which added approximately $96 per ounce during the period.

The quarter 2 all-in sustaining cost for the group was $1,458 per ounce, higher than quarter 1 all-in sustaining cost due to the higher gold price impacting royalty costs, lower gold sales, higher power costs due to the lower hydroelectric capacity towards the end of the dry season, but also increased sustaining capital costs at Houndé, Ity and Lafigué.

During H2, if the gold price is stable, we expect slightly higher all-in sustaining cost due to slightly lower production, due to the wet season and the impact of higher gold prices on royalties. Endeavour remains in the sector's lower cost quartile and is on track to meet full year guidance.

Now turning to mine-by-mine performance, starting with Sabodala-Massawa on Slide 31. Production declined slightly from quarter 1 due to lower tonnes and grade milled through the CIL plant as planned, while grade and recovery through the BIOX circuit improved as mining advanced through the Massawa Central Zone pit into higher grade and fresh ore. All-in sustaining costs increased due to slightly lower gold sales, higher processing costs due to maintenance and increased reagent consumption and the impact of higher gold prices on royalty costs.

In H2, we expect CIL production to be broadly consistent with H1 levels, while the BIOX input is set to increase as we begin processing more fresh ore from the Massawa Central Zone, supporting improved grade and recovery. Since we launched our technical review at Sabodala-Massawa in quarter 3 of last year, performance has continued to improve, which is driven largely by improvement in the BIOX circuit. As part of this review, we've been looking at ways to increase BIOX throughput and recoveries and opportunities as well to incorporate higher grade feed into the CIL plant with the aim of increasing production at Sabodala-Massawa complex towards a 350,000 ounces per annum run rate.

Turning to Slide 33. The first phase of the technical review was a comprehensive review of reserve and resources at Sabodala-Massawa. This included over 300,000 meters of additional grade control drilling, which was incorporated into existing models and reevaluated by both internal qualified persons and independent external consultants. We are pleased to confirm that our existing reserve and reserves assumptions with no major deviations to grade, tonnage or contained ounces compared to our year-end 2025 -- 2024 reserves and resource.

Moving to Slide 34. We've been progressively optimizing the buyout circuit. Initially through the use of a pebble crusher and optimization of the SAG mill discharge, which have improved the stability of the mill feed into the flotation circuits, resulting in improved flotation performance. We've already seen improved peak throughput, which we are working on sustaining. We expect to start 2026 at a higher throughput rate than design with an ultimate goal to sustain 10% to 15% throughput through above design.

BIOX recovery have also improved significantly since the first gold pour, and we are trending towards the mid-80% range, which is where we expect life of mine recoveries to stabilize. The improvement is a result of ore mining advancing deeper into the Massawa Central Zone pit through the transitional ore to now comprising about 80% fresh ore. We expect the fresh to transition ratio to continue increasing as mining advances.

Through the second half of the year, we will also be increasing the capacity of the gravity circuit, leveraging spare component from the existing CIL plant to help recover a higher proportion of post free gold in BIOX circuit.

Moving on to Slide 35 and the CIL plant where grade is our focus. Underground reserves at the Golouma and Kerekounda deposit are currently being explored to test potential extension to existing reserves. At the same time, we've launched a scoping study for the underground expansion, which will provide us with better clarity on the cost as well as time line required to accelerate this high-grade material into the mine plan. And we expect this to be completed in H1 next year.

The last component of the technical review on Slide 36 is focused on identifying and delineating high-grade non-refractory resources to help offset the expected grade decline at the CIL plant. The exploration program is building on recent successes at the Kiesta C and Soukhoto deposit, which are now in production and is targeting the Makana deposit located approximately 22 kilometers from the Sabodala process plant. Makana is shaping up to be a potentially feasible near-surface high-grade deposit that will provide a near-term multiyear sources of feed for the CIL plant once high potential resources are defined, which we expect by the end of the year.

Let's now turn our attention to our Houndé mine on Slide 37. Despite the very strong first half, we saw process grade decrease in quarter 2, as expected, following the acceleration of high-grade ore from the Kari Pump deposit into the mill in first quarter. As a result, production was lower quarter-on-quarter and all-in sustaining costs were higher due to the lower gold sales unwinding on inventory and higher gold prices impacting royalties. Due to a lower proportion of high-grade ore from Kari Pump in the plan for the second half of the year, we expect lower grades and lower production. Houndé remains on track to achieve its production guidance within our all-in sustaining cost guidance range.

Turning to Ity on Slide 38. Quarter 2 was another steady quarter operationally. The production was stable, while all-in sustaining costs were higher, which was driven by lower volumes of gold sold due to the timing of gold sales, but also increased haulage and drill and blast activity and higher power costs associated with seasonally lower grid availability. Royalty costs also increased due to the higher realized gold price.

Looking ahead to the second half of the year, the production is expected to decrease slightly due to a planned reduction in high-grade ore mined from the Ity and Le Plaque pits. Ity continued to be a standout contributor to the portfolio and remains on track to achieve production guidance with all-in sustaining costs within the range.

Moving to Mana. The production in quarter 2 declined due to lower average grades mined and processed from the Siou deposit, which was in line with the mine plan. All-in sustaining costs increased largely due to a lower grade availability, higher royalty costs, which related to the higher realized gold price and lower gold sales volume. But looking ahead at H2, production is expected to remain broadly in line with H1, while all-in sustaining costs are expected to improve, driven by the transition to a single underground mining contractor, which is expected to drive reliability and productivity improvement from the fourth quarter onwards. Overall, Mana is on track to meet its full year production guidance with all-in sustaining costs near the top end of the guidance range.

Lastly, turning to our U.S. operation, Lafigué on Slide 40. Production was relatively stable in quarter 2 despite lower grade processed due to continued improvement in throughput levels. Throughput for quarter 2 was 16% above design plate, reflecting ongoing operational improvement on site. Looking forward, we expect to continue driving higher throughput using mobile crushing of softer oxide ore and intense predictive maintenance to improve plant availability and utilization. We have also mobilized an additional mining contractor to support these higher levels of throughput. All-in sustaining costs rose during the quarter, primarily due to higher royalty payments related to higher realised gold price. For the second half of the year, process grades are expected to be lower than in H1. However, this is anticipated to be largely offset by the continued improvement in throughput. Overall, Lafigué remains on track to meet its full year guidance. I will now hand it back to Ian for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Djaria. I think with our strong operating momentum and the supportive gold price environment, we're certainly well positioned to build on an enviable first half performance through the remainder of this year and beyond. As we look ahead, our near-term strategic priorities are focused on maximizing free cash flow generation and delivering enhanced shareholder returns. And given our strong balance sheet position, we're certainly very well positioned to execute our organic growth strategy. And with that, I will hand over for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Alain Gabriel with Morgan Stanley.

I just have one question on Sabodala-Massawa. You clearly seem to have done a lot of work along the technical report or the technical review of the mine. Putting all the learnings you've had or you've made so far, how do you see the production profile evolving into '26 and '27? Has anything changed in the last 3 months? I'm conscious that you're still work in progress, but any color you can give us there would be much appreciated.

Thank you for the question. Obviously, if we compare where we were last year to this year, we've seen an improvement both in recovery, I talked about the significant improvement that we've seen because we've seen more fresh coming from the Massawa Central pit. We've also seen an improvement on the recovery. We're now near the 80%, and that's where we wanted to be going forward. So we are looking -- expecting that the production will improve compared to next year. 2026, we expect an improvement as well compared to 2025. So progressively, is to ensure that we are incrementally adding to it. As I mentioned earlier as well, we are looking at a run rate of $350 per annum, of course, depending on the underground that we expect to come to line around 2028.

Just to clarify, the $350 million that you expect is the average for '26 or is it more of an exit rate for '26?

No, no, it will not be the average for 2026. 2026 will definitely be improvement compared to 2025. The run rate of 350 is more the mid to long term.

And the next question comes from Ovais Habib with Scotiabank.

Congrats on a good quarter. Ian, a couple of questions for me, and maybe this is a continuation from the previous question regarding Sabodala-Massawa debt review. I mean, is this going to be a new tech report, new mine plan? Or is it just more of an internal review that you guys are doing? And how is this going to be kind of disseminated to the public?

No, it's not going to be a completely new report. It just basically is fine-tuning what we've already got recognizing where there are shortcomings, where there's scope for improvement, I think as you've seen in this year, exactly as Djaria said, we're seeing an appreciable improvement in performance this year, particularly coming out of the BIOX plant. The next area that we're looking at is trying to find more good quality, straightforward CIL plant feed. So we don't have to just put through lower-grade stockpile. We'll have higher grade current arisings.

And then the cherry on the cake on top of any enhanced throughput that we can see, particularly through the BIOX plant, the cherry on the cake will be how quickly we can bring in higher-grade underground material. And that's requiring a lot of careful engineering. I think the one thing that we've learned at Sabodala is the last thing that we want to do, having disappointed the market once, we don't want to do it again. We don't want to do it again.

This time, we want to make sure that we are perfectly on top of everything. And as soon as we've got something firmed up we will give out a complete sort of update as to where we are. What we're trying to do is on an as-you-go basis, give as much sort of update as to where we are in the technical review.

But we're making good progress. And I still fundamentally believe in this particular mine as a high potential source. It's just -- it is definitely underexplored. We just need to get it right. We need to understand the intricacies of both the fresh material and the complexities of the more refractory like material.

Perfect. And then just kind of moving on to exploration. Obviously, Assafou has been a huge success for Endeavour. I mean, is the exploration team kind of focused in 2025 on near-mine exploration, or has the team started to look for the next Assafou?

Look, we're going to give a strategic update in the second half, so we can give a little bit more color. But I think it is fair to say that in the short term, we are doing -- I think there's a better balance now between both the greenfields as well as the brownfields, a lot of effort going into resource to reserve conversion for obvious reasons. But we're extremely fortunate that wherever we are on all of our mining projects, we've got highly prospective ground, really increasing our efforts, increasing the amount of time and money that we put into exploration. We're seeing the more we drill, the more we discover. So the challenge for Sonia in her new role is just making sure that she gets that balance right between greenfields as well as brownfields. But we can give a little bit more sort of detail on that later on this year.

Got it. Looking forward to that. And then just a last question. I mean, in terms of capital allocation, you're looking to pay $150 million dividend in October. Just on the share buyback, how aggressive should we expect you to be going into share buybacks into the second half of the year? Are you going to kind of remain as aggressive have you been in the first half? Or how should we see the second half?

We'll retain our views upon buying at the times that we feel that the prices are advantageous in terms of us doing buybacks. Again, as you quite rightly point out, this is just one component of our capital allocation program. And if there are competing uses for that money, we'll look at those. But I think you should genuinely see that there will be continued buybacks, the tenor of which I don't really want to go into, but we will continue.

Congrats on a good quarter.

And the next question will come from Richard Hatch with Berenberg.

Congrats on a nice quarter. Just a few questions from me. The first one is just on the second half dividend. I mean, you've been pretty good at setting the level, beating it, taking that to the next level, beating that. So should we expect that $150 million to be the base level going forward? That's the first one.

Richard, I think, no, what we're saying is we're sticking to what we've made a minimum commitment to do. However, we are also sticking to the supplemental returns policy. So assuming gold price remains strong, the balance sheet, which we believe to be extremely healthy, remains healthy, then we will look to supplement. But I think it's far more prudent just to go with the minimum commitment for now.

Okay. Second one is just on the hedge. You made the point that it's been quite financially painful to you, although I understand the reasons why you put it in. Fair to assume that as we go into '26, your comment that you'll be unhedged means that we won't be expecting to see any hedging go through the accounts into the next year?

Anybody who proposes a hedging program for 2026 will have to deliver the proposal along with their resignation slip.

I can clarify further if that isn't clear enough.

Third one is again for the CFO. Just on the CFA strength. Yes, it's been very strong, hasn't it, quarter-to-date, and that kind of gave you that $49 million tailwind on the cash flow statement, but it's come back a bit in July. Just wondering, are you seeing any pressure on your OpEx line just in terms of that strength and just the way that puts pressure on your mine operating cash costs?

Thanks, Richard. Yes, look, the short answer to the question is, yes, there is pressure. But I mean, FX perhaps it's worthwhile just unpacking it a little. So a weakening U.S. dollar versus euro or therefore, across to XOF or CFA is obviously the ratio that we're looking at and worried about. From an income statement perspective, a weaker dollar or a stronger euro or XOF fundamentally means that in U.S. dollars, which are translated in the average rate in the month, we will fundamentally see an increase in those dollar OpEx and CapEx numbers, absolutely right. You will have seen through the year, so you've made mention of the delta. So we saw 4% in the first quarter and a further 8% in the second quarter. And those numbers are creeping into our costs. given that we've got roughly 70% of our total OpEx base in local currency. The stuff that you see flowing through the income statement at the moment is predominantly in and around balance sheet translation.

So on the balance sheet, we're in a net asset position, obviously. So if you take our cash, our VAT receivables, et cetera, those in local currency when translated using a weaker dollar, fundamentally drive the gain. And then there is an offset but you can't see it because we're net asset on the liability side. So the Lafigué loan and our accounts payable, which, again, in dollars will go the other way.

So that net [ $40 ] million is coming through in the gain and loss line and it's effectively our balance sheet translation. And then the third and last element from an FX perspective is in and around deferred tax. So you would have seen some references to it, but essentially retranslation of the deferred tax balance is coming through as well, but that's going through the income tax line. All of those are unrealized FX gains, everything on the balance sheet. And as a result, we clearly removed those for adjusted earnings. Sorry, slightly longer answer to the question, yes, on the cost line and then on the balance sheet, unrealised reversed out, and we'll have to see where we go from here.

That's very helpful. And sorry, my last one is just on the Mana. It seems like your costs have been a little bit up quarter-on-quarter, but broadly flat. But I also know you've changed your contractor out. So you kind of alluded to it. But should we -- as we look into the second half with a fair stretch to hit your cost guidance and I guess, production as well, should we expect to see that mining cost dollar per tonne mined start to come down just as you switch out the contractor and then to your point, grades pick up and those 2 help you bring the all-in sustaining costs back down into range?

Richard, if I may, I'll give a slightly broader cost response and then maybe Djaria will want to add specifically on Mana. I think just from a cost perspective, clearly, Q2 is higher than Q1. But I think it's really important for us to stress that the Q2 ASIC cost is not the trend for the remainder of the year. We are in line with guidance. So $1,150 to $1,350 still remains our range. Mana, as Djaria said earlier, at the upper end thereof. But Q2, in particular, was impacted by a number of things, which I think are important to note. First of all, obviously, the slightly lower production because of the lower grades, as we've mentioned and as we've expected. We did see the inventory unwind, particularly at Houndé. And those ounces that were in GIC at the end of first quarter were less Kari Pump and therefore, slightly higher cost. All of that unwinds into second quarter, which Djaria mentioned earlier. There is the power.

And arguably, as the wet season kicks in, the hydropower availability improves, grid availability improves and therefore, requirement to self-generate at higher cost reduces. So arguably, that shouldn't be there on a look-forward basis.

And then the Q2 versus Q1 was also impacted by a catch-up in sustaining CapEx. And given that we're more than halfway through that CapEx program now, again, that shouldn't be something that is ballooning into the second half. So I just want to reiterate, yes, Q2 was up. But if you look at H1, which is arguably more representative and if you look at the underlying factors, I don't see that as a carryforward into the second half. Djaria, can I maybe hand to you if you want to chat for the moment.

Yes. Richard, just to pick up on what Guy said, obviously, quarter 2 is not what we should be expecting every quarter. And as we mentioned as well, if you look at the H1 and the first 6 months of the year, you'll see some of the underlying elements, which should not be going into H2. But I think on top of all of that, we are looking at some initiatives of productivity as well. If I just take one, which is the year-to-date, ore mine is about 13% ahead of compared to 2024.

We're also looking at the way to optimize especially our cost into power. As I mentioned earlier, currently at Mana, the entire mining sector is self-generated power. Towards the quarter 4, we are looking at changing, upgrading some of the infrastructure, adding a new transformer, which normally will put us fully on to the grade. So there are a few initiatives that we're looking at and definitely having now one single contractor helps in identifying some initiatives as well in order to optimize the mining cost. So we're confident that we will be able to get back into the guidance range.

And the next question comes from Anita Soni with CIBC.

So a few questions. Firstly, on the taxes. Can you just give us an understanding of these tax payments? I think it was the guidance of $350 million to $450 million, and I thought there was going to be a bigger tax payment in Q2 as per some of your indications in the call. But how does the rest of the year play out in terms of the tax payments? Is it a big number in Q3 as well and then not much in Q4?

Anita, sorry, your line isn't great. But I think if we're talking about tax payments, we had guided $350 million to $450 million with roughly 55% coming out in Q2, which rough numbers, I think, is about $220 million. And I think we disclosed the $233 million in the quarter. So we're broadly on track with regards to that. If you look at our original guidance, we said that there'd be roughly 25% of that total coming through in Q3, which, again, we see no reason to change. So that should be less than half of what you saw in Q2 in terms of cash tax payments in Q3.

Okay. And then the next question is with regards to the capital spend. So there was -- I noticed there's pretty big stripping numbers at most of the assets. Is that -- should we take that as a run rate in terms of how much stripping that you'll be doing for the rest of the year? I think it was almost -- obviously, Mana, but the rest of the assets had some big stripping numbers. Are those -- will it taper off in the back half of the year? Or is there -- is it front-end stripping?

Thank you, Anita. We're not expecting anything substantially different. We will be doing stripping if and when required. But at this stage in H2, we're not expecting any increase into the stripping that we've seen in H1.

Okay. So similar, I was actually asking if it would decline, not increase, but so you're saying pretty flat. Okay. And then last question with regards to the oxide ore -- sorry, at Sabodala-Massawa -- sorry, the CIL ore, the tonnage started to decline in Q2 in the CIL. Is it going to continue to decline? Or could you maintain levels would it bump up from there? Or how should we think about the CIL ore? We know that, obviously, you're looking for alternative ore sources, but I'm just trying to understand how the back half of the year looks at the CIL at Sabodala?

Again, so thank you, Anita. Obviously, as we mentioned earlier, we are looking at a way to increase that access to non-refractory ore for the CIL plant. But again, this is planned. If we go back to some of the DFS, you will see that this was planned. The decline, again, is scheduled. That's how we plan it for the year. We're not seeing that has been a big issue. I think what we need to really focus on is to accelerate those near mine access to new reserves as well as the underground Kerekounda and Golouma that we are planning to start development in 2027, 2028 to ensure that we stabilize and we increase the production going forward.

Okay. Let me ask the question again in a different way. Should we be forecasting the level of oxide CIL ore that you had in Q2 and Q3 and Q4? Or should we have that declining?

Anita, we are going into quarter 3, which is a raining season. So naturally, it will decrease. Again, that will not be anything different than what we see every year across our site in general. So to answer your question, quarter 3 [wetting] season, you should see a slight decrease in that oxide.

Okay. And then just one last question on the throughput levels. Can you talk about the things that you're doing at Sabodala-Massawa to get that 15% increase in throughput?

Thank you, Anita, again. Some of the initiatives that we're looking at to increase that throughput is, of course, the blended feed of the stockpile. We're also accelerating the mining at the high grade of North zone. What we already are, we're already more or less at 10%, but it's not consistent.

So the objective is to maintain that 10% increase above the design that we've already seen, maintain that throughput until the end of the year and then next year, 2026 at an incremental maybe 5%. So those are the different things that we're looking at in order to maintain that 10% that we're already more or less achieving.

Okay. My apologies if you've already asked and answered these things I've just been on dueling conference calls [indiscernible].

Not at all.

And the next question will come from Daniel Major with UBS.

The first one, just on the tax question again, and thank you very much for improving the clarity of the guides through the year in terms of the cash tax outflow. I guess this year, you've guided to a fixed tax rate within the range of $350 million to $400 million in terms of cash tax. You're clearly going to see a lift in profitability this year and accrue more tax. Is there some -- going to be some sort of catch-up payment? Can you just explain the mechanics of what we should be thinking about in terms of tax coming out into 2026?

Dan, yes, look, we'll do the same again next time around. So we'll give you full visibility and predictions in terms of cash flows as and when we get to the end of the year. But at the moment, the best way to indicatively see it is if you look at the income statement, what we're doing is a quarterly effective tax rate and accruing according to current profits.

So the income statement is indicatively what we're going to be looking to pay out next year. We are accruing CIT at the standard effective tax rate based on current year profits. And we are simultaneously putting into deferred tax a 60% charge of what we are anticipating in distributing next year for withholding tax purposes. So the income statement is the best one to follow, and we'll give full guidance similar to that, which we did this year when we're in a position to do so at the beginning of next.

Okay. That's helpful. And then the second one, just again on the cash flow dynamics. I think you've got the biggest quarter in terms of minority dividend payments. You've not paid much year-to-date, I think just $13.8 million in Q2. Can you just remind us on the guidance for the expectation around the full year and the distribution between Q3 and Q4?

Sure. So you're speaking specifically minority interest rather than any of the withholding tax piece. So I think the minority was between $100 million and $120 million for the year. And we would expect the vast majority of that to be paid in Q3.

Okay. That's useful. Just next one, you mentioned about some build in VAT receivables. Can you just remind us where you're at for the full year -- sorry, across the group in terms of VAT receivables and what the expectation is in the next 12 months, you mentioned some factoring and some other initiatives.

Sure. So as a group, we're sitting at around $176 million on VAT receivables as at June. The split is broadly $120 million in Burkina Faso and the remainder is sitting in Lafigué and Sabodala and a little bit of group. Now when we are talking about VAT receivables, the more problematic balances are the full Burkina Faso balance and then to a lesser degree, Lafigué.

Lafigué, as I said, in the slides, is more an issue of ramp-up. So having started out last year, we're having to put in place all of the processes to ensure that claims are going in, people understand our story and ensure that the documentation and the people we're dealing with, know us and what it is that we're going to be claiming on a monthly basis.

So I think that is more of a ramp-up issue than anything else, and that should be declining through the remainder of the year. Sabodala-Massawa is also one where we could see some incremental improvement because we've had some process improvements and the total outstanding may well rein in from the current average 4 months to about 3.5 or 3 months.

So the real issue for us remains Burkina Faso. And that $120 million balance, we're looking at a variety of different ways of trying to offset that, either with alternative amounts that we owe the state. And then we continue also to look at alternative factoring options. At the moment, local banks, which is where we used to do our factoring, are not interested in the paper anymore. But we're looking at potential alternative options to try and do something quite similar. So whether that comes off is difficult to say. I think it's a reasonably low probability, but we continue to look at whatever we can to reduce that $120 million other than simply waiting for the state.

Okay. And just one final question, if I may. You're rapidly bringing down net debt. If we look at your dividend sort of run rate and some of the buyback run rate, you should be moving somewhere towards 0 or net cash in the end of the year, even paying North of $400 million in cash returns. If we think about the quantum of cash return to 2026, do you -- can you give us a target of where you would kind of ideally get the balance sheet to in terms of net cash position or above what level would you just distribute 100% of free cash?

Okay. Here's another unhelpful rather broad answer. But what I think we've been very clear on and we'd like to reiterate, 0.5 is our maximum that we would like to see through a cycle. On the other end of that spectrum, we have said that we have no intention of building a large cash balance. In between there, we remain open to maximizing supplemental returns within the confines of what we have in front of us.

So you're absolutely right. In the short term, there are less calls on the cash. CapEx is reasonably well under control and forecastable. But we want to ensure that we've got a reasonable balance sheet and the buildup to the Assafou CapEx.

So I don't think you're ever going to see us move to a very formulaic position of paying out specific percentages of free cash. We would prefer to maintain flexibility in managing the balance sheet as best we can given whatever the emerging cash requirements are and subject to gold price. But we have no intention of building big cash balances. And therefore, I think it's fair to assume that ongoing strong supplemental returns are very much top of our capital allocation menu.

The next question will come from Jason Fairclough with Bank of America.

A couple of sort of, let's say, simple questions, I guess, for me. Thanks for the Slide 48, which lays out the tax payments by the different assets on a corporate level. I was just wondering, maybe it's for Guy, but can you just talk about the gold price that was the backdrop for generating those tax liabilities? Because I'm just trying to think about how those tax payments step up as we roll forward with these higher gold prices.

Sure, Jason. So the tax payments that you see going through, particularly at the site level, we should just bear in mind these are fundamentally payments for last year's tax.

So that's a 12-month lagged gold price that's driving the tax payments?

Exactly. Exactly.

I was going to say, so if I were to sort of -- if you like mark-to-market or think about a spot tax payment, are we doubling the tax payments versus what we're seeing on that Slide 48?

I'm happy to come back to you on exactly what that number would look like. But yes, if you're looking to try and get some sort of proxy, if you looked at our realised gold price per quarter through 2025 versus what we're running at now, it is a significant step-up in corporate income tax. That's absolutely correct.

Okay. So -- but I guess the point is as long as the gold price keeps going up, it's all fine. It's only -- the year that rolls over, it gets a bit ugly.

That's going to be [indiscernible].

You must be bugging our office.

Okay. Look, the other question I had, and in a way, it relates to some of the questions that have already been asked, which is, I guess, what stops you from being much more aggressive with the buybacks? Like -- and again, it depends what gold price you're using, but it's not hard to get you guys trading on a 15% free cash flow yield or something like that. I mean, to me, that's still screamingly cheap. So why wouldn't you still be much more aggressive with the share buyback from here?

So you're saying that we've not been aggressive enough so far despite the fact that the numbers that we've given.

That is correct, yes.

Yes. Clearly, some people are never happy. Look, I hear what you say. I guess what it is, we're trying to strike the balance between giving a total return to our shareholders. And bear in mind that our shareholders are a very broad church. There are those who absolutely only want cash. There are others who absolutely only want buybacks. Our challenge is to try and strike the balance between the 2 in terms of what percentage of each do we give in terms of shareholder returns.

And then in terms of the overall quantity, that takes into account, the demands on the business, where we are. And yes, we are inherently conservative in our approach. And yet, we still have -- with what we're doing, we still have sort of sector-leading returns. And I hear this story constantly, we want more buybacks. Some people say, well, I want more cash. I have to try and satisfy everyone. In the process, I'm satisfying nobody, I think that means we're getting the balance about right.

Fair point again. Congrats on the good results.

The next question comes from Amos Fletcher with Barclays.

A couple of questions. First one was on Lafigué. I just wanted to ask where do you see the throughput rates growing to over coming quarters given the investments that you're making?

Obviously, even at Lafigué today compared to a year ago when we started, we are already above the nameplate of about 10%. Going into next year, we will be increasing it more. And if you follow our other site, you'll see that we are pretty good usually increasing our throughput way above the design nameplate. So Lafigué will not be any different. So we expect the Lafigué throughput next year to be way above the 10% plus 15%.

Okay. And then a question on Assafou. I was just wondering whether it's realistic for you guys to -- so first question is how are you thinking about the CapEx and sort of scaling of the plant compared to what you put in the PFS? And then secondly, whether it's realistic to include any of the potential mineralization from Koulou, which is obviously incredibly early stage at this point, but it looks like it could be potentially quite exciting as well.

Let me answer the final question first. Koulou is an entirely separate business. We don't control it. So -- and it's 60 kilometers away from Assafou. So in all realistic senses, and that will be a stand-alone operation. As far as the plant is concerned, the PFS looked at 5 million tonne throughput. And despite the additional sort of ounces that we hope to include by the end of this year, particularly from Pala 2 and 3, we see no reason to increase the size of the plant above 5 million.

The danger you have as you -- if you keep on moving the goalposts, you make one change and there's 15 other consequential knock-on changes that you have to bring in. And that's when you start getting real problems with your capital projects and cost overruns and everything. We haven't thought about this. We haven't thought about that. We feel that it's much better to fix a certain size. The simulations that we did in the initial pre-feasibility where we looked at everything from 3 million to 8 million tonnes showed that the 5 million tonne production profile was likely to give us the most consistent production profile.

Importantly, gave us the opportunity to get up to full capacity much more quickly. So I don't see any change in that. What will happen, Assafou, as Djaria just alluded to earlier, is as soon as we get up and running, we'll start debottlenecking the plant. All our other plants have been anywhere between 40% to 60% higher than nameplate, which will be a combination of just mild tweaks, debottlenecking and in some instances, maybe putting on an extra line of tanks or something like that. And that's the way that we'll do it.

So it's, again, trying to make sure that we have the right size upfront, but making sure that we design our plant that there's sufficient flexibility and scope to increase it, we don't make too tight a footprint. So if you want to add anything extra, there's space to do it. So I don't think you're definitely not going to see any change from our current design, which is 5 million tonnes. That's what we'll stick to. But over the life of the mine, will it increase from 5 million tonnes? I would say almost with 95% certainty.

Okay. That's great. And then last question I just wanted to ask, has there been any update on Cote d'Ivoire royalty rates potentially being increased?

The state have come back and they've insisted on increasing royalties by 2%. We said, look, this is not part of our agreements. They said that we've put it in the budget. So that's why they want to do it. It is now basically, it's a bun fight between frankly with the chamber rather than individual mining houses and the state. I have to say the Minister of Mines is very supportive of our position. Obviously, there are budget squeezes and they want to extract every last dollar that they can. But rest assured that we're not taking it lying down.

And the next question will come from Marina Calero with RBC Capital.

Most of my questions have been answered, but perhaps a follow-up on the topic of distributions to shareholders. You mentioned you don't have -- you don't intend to build a very large cash balance. Can you maybe tell us what sort of cash levels would you like to build towards the end of this year, considering the upcoming construction of Assafou?

Sure. Again, I'll give you an indicative answer. We don't actually have a specific target of cash in mind. What we would like to do, though, is just continuously consider the calls on our cash. And as and when we've earned it, we obviously review what that future cash requirement is going to be, take an assessment on that and the potential returns associated with it and then effectively consider supplemental returns.

So without a specific target in mind, the only hard number we had was the leverage ratio, which, thankfully, current circumstances mean that that's not that relevant. The Assafou capital needs to be finalized. So we mentioned earlier on the call, the DFS will be completed by the beginning of 2026. When we have clarity on that capital and another quarter or 2 behind us in terms of cash flow generation, we'd be in a better position to talk about incremental supplemental returns.

And at a point later in the year, we would be coming up for a renewal of our overall shareholder returns policy, which we have only set out for a couple of years when we last did it. So clarity will come. But until then, I think, again, please do bank on the fact that we are looking at supplemental returns. And given cash flow generation and current gold prices, those will continue into the second half. But we aren't going to be more specific than that at this point.

And the next question will come from Mohamed Sidibe with National Bank.

I guess a lot of questions on the capital return. So I won't go there and understanding that you have a balanced approach to it. But just as it relates to your capital allocation, so you have a lot of free cash flow that is expected to come in the second half of the year and call it, into 2026 prior to Assafou going online. You've increased your exploration spend as you're seeing positive results. But how do you think about, I guess, organic growth versus inorganic growth within your capital allocation priorities?

Yes. Great question, Mohamed. Look, I've said before, and I'll repeat again, I mean, we are in a very fortunate position that we have an excellent organic growth pipeline. We have lots of opportunities. And it's not just Assafou. We're looking at, as you know, the -- for instance, the Ity doughnut, the ability to really sort of crank up the size of that operation and access more ore.

So we're not short of opportunities internally. But running in parallel to that and certainly in the 18 months that I've been in this role, we've never stopped looking at inorganic opportunities. But we've never seen anything that satisfies a very rigid return criteria.

So we haven't done anything because we haven't seen anything that we think materially would make a difference to the group. But we will continue to look. We are certainly not averse to inorganic opportunities. But priority one is certainly shareholder returns, looking at our own opportunities and then the inorganic opportunities comes along behind that as well.

Congrats on a good quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's presentation and conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.