Endeavour Mining Aktie

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Endeavour Mining's Second Quarter and Half Year 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 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 Q2 and H1 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 Exploration and Growth.

Today's call will follow our usual format. Ian will first go through the highlights of the first half of the year. Guy will present the financials. Djaria will walk you through our operating results by mine, and Sonia will provide an update on our exploration program 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.

Thank you, Jack, and hello to everyone joining us on the call today. Now H1 '26 was a record half year for Endeavour. Our strong operating performance has led to record free cash flow generation. And together with our healthy balance sheet, we're well positioned to meet our strategic objectives, which prioritize organic growth and shareholder returns.

Production of 564,000 ounces at an AISC of $1,871 per ounce for H1 certainly positions us firmly on track to meet our 2026 guidance with a stronger Q4. Our operational performance drove record free cash flow generation of $761 million. That's up 19% against H2 of last year despite the significant but expected seasonal tax payments. This cash flow generation supports our balance sheet, which sits in a healthy net cash position of $254 million and underpins our ability to grow the business organically and return capital to shareholders.

On shareholder returns, today, we've announced a record $301 million of returns for H1. That's made up of another record $230 million of dividends and an additional $71 million of buybacks. That's more than double our minimum commitment as we further strengthen our track record of paying significant supplemental returns.

On organic growth, we remain on track for FID before the end of the year at the Assafou project. At the same time, we're working towards our Sabodal-Massawa underground expansion with the first phase of development getting underway in H2 and targeting first ore by year-end. And on exploration, we're working towards significant resource updates at our Vindaloo Deeps and Kawsara discoveries that we expect to publish later this year.

In short, we have built a high-quality, resilient business through our disciplined approach to capital allocation that ensures we target only the highest return opportunities, preserving our high margins over the longer term. Now this approach also underpins our ability to reinvest in organic growth to sustain this portfolio quality while offering exposure to sector-leading shareholder returns.

I'll now walk you through each of those areas in a bit more detail. Starting on Slide 7. As I said, we produced 564,000 ounces in H1, which was stable when compared to the prior period, while our all-in sustaining margin increased by 37%, largely thanks to the increased gold prices half-on-half. Importantly, our margins have continued to increase with the gold price over the last 2 years.

On Slide 8, given this H1 performance, we remain on track to deliver both group production and all-in sustaining cost within the full year guidance. H1 production of 564,000 ounces represents approximately 52% of the low end of guidance, and we expect a stronger production profile later in the year as we move past the wet season and the elevated stripping activity in Q3 and then moving into Q4 when higher grades are expected at most of our mines.

On costs, our H1 all-in sustaining costs were $1,871 per ounce or $1,687 per ounce when adjusted for the impact of higher gold prices above the guidance price we use, principally due to the higher royalty rates at the higher price. And that positions us comfortably in the lower half of the guidance range for H1.

On capital, we've increased our sustaining CapEx guidance from $230 million to $280 million, driven largely by increased ore mining and capitalized waste stripping at Hounde and Lafigue. Non-sustaining and growth capital remain on track with increased stripping activity. The start of the Sabodala-Massawa underground expansion and the ramp-up of early works at Assafou expected in H2.

On Slide 9, you can see we've generated a record $1.6 billion of adjusted EBITDA in H1, up 41% from the prior period, a very healthy 63% EBITDA margin. That's been driven not only by a stronger gold price environment, but also a solid operational performance throughout the half.

Moving to free cash flow on Slide 10. We delivered another record $761 million in H1, up 19% from the prior period, and that's equivalent to $1,350 for every ounce per ounce of free cash flow generation. And this is despite the seasonal tax payments that Guy will walk you through later in this presentation. Since we completed our last growth phase in 2024, we have certainly grown free cash flow in each period, thanks to strong gold prices and our consistent operational performance.

On Slide 11, the strong cash flow profile has been mirrored in our balance sheet improvement, which now stands at a healthy $254 million of net cash. This gives us capital allocation flexibility to deliver sector-leading shareholder returns ahead of and throughout our next growth phase. And that's exactly what we've done for H1. We've returned a record $301 million to shareholders, consisting of a record $230 million of dividends and $71 million in buyback. And that's double our minimum commitment and nearly 40% higher than our H2 '25 returns and equivalent to 40% of our free cash flow generation.

With H1, we've extended our track record of delivering sector-leading shareholder returns. Since 2021, we've returned just under $2 billion, which is about 85% above our minimum commitment. And this reiterates our sustained commitment to sector-leading returns through both phases of growth as well as cash harvesting. Now we're on track to return at least $1.1 billion over the '26 to '28 period, and we expect to achieve this down to -- even down to a conservative gold price of $3,000 per ounce. At higher gold prices, obviously, we're well positioned to continue supplementing this return.

On Slide 14 and our other key strategic objective, and that is organic growth. At Assafou, since publishing the DFS in late April, we've launched early works and are advancing on a critical path to unlock FID by year-end. We've completed front-end engineering and design work and long lead time item procurement for the crushers, mills, HPGR and Apron feeders is now well advanced. Mining convention negotiations are on track for late Q3, and these negotiations are under the terms of the current 2014 mining code. The relocation action plan is progressing well following successful engagement with local community leaders with the assistance of government. Overall activities are ramping up in line with the plan, and we expect to declare FID and launch construction by the year-end.

On Slide 15, growth isn't just about greenfields. There's plenty to be done at our existing assets. The underground expansion at Sabodala-Massawa is targeting more than 0.5 million ounces of high-grade ore for the CIL processing plant, and that's to drive higher production over the coming years. The first phase is starting, and that's focused on development and construction of an exploration decline, giving us a platform for more detailed closer spaced underground drilling. Dewatering, earthworks and power establishment is underway with the initial fleet expected to arrive on site in Q3. We're targeting development to reach first oil by year-end with the second phase of the expansion expected to launch later this year, subject to approval.

On Slide 16, the combined Assafou and Sabodala support our growth ambitions to 1.5 million ounces by 2030. but we are not growing for the sake of growth, and we are focused on preserving and improving our margins through optimization at our existing mines. At Mana, for example, we're investing in the power network to ensure stability whilst also automating our underground operations in the power sense. At Lafigue, we recently completed crusher upgrades and feed optimizations, which are already improving throughput and reagent consumption rates. At Ity, we're optimizing our resigned circuit to improve our carbon and cyanide management to improve consumables, efficiency and costs. And these initiatives are focused on maximizing the value of every ounce that we produce as we grow the business.

Over and above this growth, our exploration program has this year already spent $44 million, advancing our recent discoveries, Vindaloo Deeps and Kawsara deposits. These deposits could support further growth beyond the 1.5 million ounces and help improve our asset quality certainly well into the next decade. We expect to announce exciting resource updates later this year, and Sonia is going to talk through this later on in the presentation today.

Before handing over to Guy, I'd just like to touch on ESG. When we launched the first phase of our ESG strategy 5 years ago, we were determined to deliver tangible impact, ensuring the value we create serves all of our stakeholders. That phase culminated last month with our inaugural 5-year impact report. Between 2021 and 2025, we generated over $11.5 billion in economic value for our host countries. That headline figure only tells part of the story. Beyond the numbers is where our true impact lies. Just to give you a few examples.

On health, our targeted programs have successfully driven a 77% reduction in malaria across our workforce since 2021 as well as the communities from which that workforce comes from. On education, we created more than 1,800 internships, helping young people develop skills to launch their careers. On economic empowerment, through more than 215 agricultural initiatives, we supported more than 5,000 direct beneficiaries and their families in building sustainable livelihoods.

And so as we look forward towards 2030, our conviction remains unchanged. Creating shared value that benefits all of our stakeholders is certainly key to sustaining our success.

And with that introduction, let me hand you over to Guy to take you through detailed financials. Guy, over to you.

Thanks, Ian, and hello, everyone. I'll now walk through our financial results for the second quarter. Production and unit costs were broadly stable quarter-on-quarter, but EBITDA and earnings were lower, primarily due to a 10% decline in realized gold prices. The seasonal impact of higher tax payments accounts for the lower cash flow as previously guided.

On Slide 21, in Q2, we produced 283,000 ounces, in line with Q1 levels as higher production at Ity and Hounde was offset by lower production at Mana, Lafigue and Sabodala-Massawa. All-in sustaining cost of $1,907 per ounce was a slight increase over Q1 due to lower gold production and sales at Sabodala-Massawa and Mana, increased sustaining capital at Hounde related to the ramp-up of stripping activity at the Vindaloo Main Phase 3 cutback and higher processing costs at Sabodala-Massawa, driven by scheduled maintenance.

Despite slightly lower gold prices quarter-on-quarter, we still generated a healthy all-in sustaining margin of 56% or $2,441 per ounce. We are firmly on track to achieve our full year guidance. In Q3, we will see some higher stripping and lower grade, coupled with the wet season impact that will translate to increased AISC, but we expect to see a material uplift in grades following the wet season and the completion of our stripping programs in Q4, which will strongly reverse this.

On to Slide 22. Despite the gold price-driven step down in EBITDA, our EBITDA margins remained resilient at 60%, reflecting the high quality of our operations. On Slide 23, our underlying operating cash flow remained robust during the quarter, absorbing our typical seasonal cash tax payments comprising provisional income tax payments for the prior year as well as withholding tax payments relating to the cash that we will upstream from our operating entities this year. This expected impact is compounded by the lower realized gold prices and the higher operating costs, as mentioned earlier. Given our expected H2 weighted operating performance with production expected to peak in Q4 and with the majority of the year's cash taxes behind us, we are well positioned to continue generating strong cash flow in H2.

Looking at the significant quarter-on-quarter operating cash flow movements in more detail on Slide 24. Firstly, the decline in realized gold prices reduced cash flows by $129 million, while stable quarterly operational performance translated into a marginal decrease of $17 million due to slightly higher operating expenses. Then as mentioned earlier, income taxes paid increased by $419 million, in line with the annual timing of our cash tax payments.

Finally, working capital was an inflow of $52 million this quarter and an increase of $144 million compared to last quarter's outflow. This was mainly driven by an increase in supply payables and timing of gold sales and VAT refunds in Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal. This inflow was partially offset by a buildup of consumables at Sabodala-Massawa and Hounde and a buildup of stockpiles at Hounde, Itimana and Sabodala-Massawa.

Moving on to Slide 25. Our free cash flow of $149 million was lower during Q2 as expected due to the higher seasonal taxes, lower realized gold prices, the ramp-up in stripping activities and the strategic investments in our new venture exploration partners, Altair Minerals and Koulou Gold. That said, for the first half of the year, we're pleased to have delivered another record free cash flow performance of $761 million. And looking forward, we remain focused on maximizing free cash flow by maintaining our capital allocation and cost discipline.

At the end of Q2, we remained in a strong net cash position of $254 million. During Q2, we generated $317 million from our operations. Investing activities of $169 million included sustaining capital of $75 million, $53 million of nonsustaining capital and $9 million of growth capital. In addition, we invested approximately $25 million through our new ventures program.

Financing activities included a net $315 million drawdown of the group's RCF, offsetting dividends paid to shareholders of $200 million, share buybacks of $44 million, payment of financing fees of $22 million and payments to minority shareholders of $14 million. This strong balance sheet position provides significant financial flexibility to continue to allocate capital towards both organic growth and our shareholder returns.

Finally, on Slide 27, I'll walk through some of the net earnings highlights focusing just on the key line items. In Q2, earnings from mining operations was $613 million. We recorded a loss on financial instruments of $28 million, comprised mainly of foreign exchange losses driven by the strengthening USD on our net asset balance sheet position, along with a fair value adjustment on marketable securities. Current income tax expenses increased as expected, driven by significantly higher recognized withholding tax expenses following local board approvals for our cash upstreaming.

Deferred tax recovery increased by $234 million compared to an expense in the prior year -- in the prior quarter, reflecting the reversal of deferred tax liabilities after local board approval and payment of withholding taxes associated with cash upstreaming in Q2. Lastly, add-back adjustments included the loss in financial instruments, other expenses of $21 million and a noncash tax adjustment of $10 million related to foreign exchange on deferred tax amounting to $57 million in Q2. As a result, our adjusted net earnings were $392 million for the quarter or $1.25 per share.

Thank you for your attention, and I'll now hand over to Djaria to walk you through our operating performance.

Thank you, Guy, and hello, everyone. I will begin by discussing safety. Unfortunately, this quarter, we've reported a fatality when one of our colleagues, Sam Dauda, who was a team leader with one of our contractors, tragically lost its life during water drainage activities on the 29th May at our Lafigue mine. Any loss of life at our operations is unacceptable.

Following the incident, we've completed a comprehensive investigation, which identified several key recommendations. These are currently being implemented, particularly in relation to ways of working with and appropriately supervising contractors, reinforcing safety training, including immediate changes around contractors onboarding, but as well as mandatory refresher courses for all frontline supervisors and a supervisor capability program.

To reinforce the obligations to our contractors to be 100% aligned with Endeavor Health safety and environment standards, we will also be holding an annual CEO HSE workshop. This workshop will convene the CEOs of our key contractors in practical engagement focused on HSE performance, governance and culture across all our mining operations. Despite this tragic incidents, our trailing 12-month total recordable injury frequency rate of 0.72 remains low, but we will continuously work towards achieving a 0 incident work environment.

On Slide 13, our first half performance has positioned us firmly on track to achieve our full year guidance. H1 production was approximately 52% of the low end of the production guidance with a stronger second half expected, which is driven by a particularly strong quarter 4 from Hounde, Ity and Sabodala-Massawa due to higher grades in the mining sequence. While on all-in sustaining costs, our H1 performance position us in the lower half of the cost guidance range on a royalty adjusted basis with cost improvement expected in quarter 4, particularly due to the expected higher grade production and gold sales. It's important to highlight the productivity initiatives we are driving throughout the portfolio to reaffirm our operational excellence.

Our focus remains on controlling our costs with proactive business initiatives across the value chain from blast optimization to short distance haulage. On guidance, at Lafigue, the better-than-expected throughput in H1 has positioned the mine to achieve production in the top end of the guidance range with costs in the lower half. At Mana, lower grades following the completion of the [indiscernible] underground deposit, the deferral of the Bana Camp open pit and also the pause in mining at the Aviera Port of Wona underground mean we are expecting production below the low end of the range with costs above the top end. At the group level, we are firmly on track to deliver our full year guidance.

On Slide 31, I'll start with Hounde. We increased production during the quarter as we accelerated ore mining in the Kari West pit, which has provided good grade, soft oxide ore, which has supported a higher levels of throughput. Costs have increased slightly as stripping activity at Vindaloo Main 3 accelerated. Similar to all our assets, at Hounde, we have been looking at several optimization initiatives. We've been improving blast fragmentation and reducing truck cycle times and haulage distance through more efficient waste dumping to increase productivity and then offset external cost pressures.

Hounde is well on track for guidance with lower grade expected in quarter 3 and a significant improvement in grade in quarter 4, following the completion of waste stripping at the Vindaloo Main 3 pit. We've increased our sustaining capital guidance as we have accelerated waste stripping at Vindaloo Main and ore mining at Kari West, and we preorder some long lead mining equipment required for next year.

Turning now to Ity Mine on Slide 32. Production increased this quarter as we source higher grade from the Le Plaque and Bakatouo pits, coupled with lower planned maintenance compared to prior quarter, which results in overall good plant performance. The higher production and sales also supported a slight improvement in our all-in sustaining costs. It is on track to achieve its production and cost guidance. Higher grades are expected in quarter 4 at Le Plaque, while at Water, mining activity are advancing into higher grade area of the pit, which is anticipated to positively impact production.

Mana on Slide 33. At Mana, production decreased to 29,000 ounces due to lower grade as we finished mining the Siou deposits in quarter 1. The lower production resulted in higher all-in sustaining costs, which were compounded by an increase in sustaining capital development in the Wona deposit. During H1, Mana has produced less than expected due to the quicker-than-expected depletions of Siou, but also the deferral of the start-up of mining at the Bana Camp open pit to later in the year. As a result, Mana's production is expected to be below the end -- the low end of the guidance range with costs above the top end of the range.

During H2, mining will focus on the Wona deposit with lower tonnes in quarter 3, while higher tonnes and grade are expected in quarter 4. Unfortunately, during the month of July, as a precaution, we paused mining activities in the Aviera portion of the Wona underground mine as a fracture appeared on the surface in the depleted Wona open pit above the Aviera deposit. But we also expect to resume mining activities in the majority of the Aviera deposits in mid-quarter 3, subject, of course, to our ongoing monitoring.

We will be pushing production while we also explore opportunities to get as close as possible to the guided range. Given the strong performance from the rest of the portfolio, we do not see any impact on group level guidance with Lafigue expected to more than compensate any shortfall at Mana, one of the many benefits of operating such a high-quality portfolio.

Moving to Sabodala on Slide 34. The production at Sabodala-Massawa decreased due to lower throughput in the CIL, but also lower recovery rates at both plants. The throughput was lower due to maintenance in the plant. The recoveries through the CIL were impacted by semi-refractory ore from the [ Delia ] main pit, but also the Niakafir East pit, while the bias recoveries were lower due to maintenance activities planned. The all-in sustaining costs increased as we invested in additional mining fleet and increased our waste stripping at the Delia but also Massawa Central Zone pit.

Looking forward, we expect a stronger second half of the year, particularly in quarter 4 when higher grades from the Niakafir West but also Delia pit will increase production in the CIL plant, while the throughput is expected to continue improving through the BIOX plant. But as Ian mentioned earlier, we are also starting the first phase of the development of the high-grade Guloma underground deposit with a target to hit first ore towards the end of this year. This underground expansion is an important stepping stone towards higher levels of production at Sabodala-Massawa, bringing in significantly higher grades into the Searle processing plant.

At Lafigue on Slide 35, in quarter 2, quarter 2 production decreased slightly as we mine and process lower grades from the main pit. The all-in sustaining cost has improved as the sustaining waste stripping activity was largely completed during the quarter. We've had a very strong first half of the year at Lafigue, producing nearly 60% of the guidance midpoint already, thanks to the throughput in H1 outperforming design nameplate by nearly 10% consistently.

Lafigue is on track to achieve the top half of its production guidance with costs in the lower half of the range. Unlike the rest of the portfolio, the performance at Lafigue is expected to be weighted towards H1 with slightly lower grades and slightly lower throughput expected in H2 due to lower grade from the main pit and the wet season impact in quarter 3, respectively.

Thank you, everyone, and I will now hand to Sonia to walk you through the exploration highlights.

Thank you, Djaria, and hello, everyone. I wanted to briefly provide an update on exploration at 3 of our projects. At our Hounde mine, we have discovered an expansion to our Vindaloo main deposit called Vindaloo pits. Vindaloo pits is located immediately adjacent to the processing plant and can be accessed with limited development from the bottom of the Vindaloo Main pit. The resource is expected to be a large high-grade underground resource, and we have already completed the drilling program with a maiden resource expected later in H2.

Given the size, grade and proximity to the plant, it could offer significant production and life of mine upside in the near term at Hounde. And importantly, this is not included in our 1.5 million growth outlook. We have also stepped out from the Vindaloo Deep deposit towards the south and identified another deposit called Vindaloo Deep Southeast, which appears to be a fault offset continuation of Vindaloo Deep. We are currently drilling Bindaloo Deep Southeast and expect to define a maiden resource there next year. At Sabodala-Massawa, our exploration program is advancing the Kalzara discovery very quickly. We currently have 7 drill rigs working on defining updated M&I resources by year-end.

Kalzara is a target that is located approximately 35 kilometers south of the Sabodala-Massawa processing plant. It has a 10-kilometer long mineralized trend that we are drilling in phases, starting with the Kalzara in the north. We believe Kalzara is nonrefractory and should be amenable for processing through our Sabodala CIL plant, potentially supporting higher production for longer at Sabodala-Massawa.

On Slide 39, at Assafou, we already have 5 million ounces of high-grade resources defined, supporting a 16-year mine life. We have already defined 0.2 million ounces at the Pala Trend 3 deposit located 1 kilometer west of Assafou, and we have set out again to the Pala Trend 2 target located only 4 kilometers west of Assafou. Mineralization at Pala 2 is hosted in the Birimian rocks and the Tarkwaian sands. So we are targeting both type of mineralization and hope to add incremental resources into the overall endowment at Asaf next year.

Thank you, everyone. I will hand back to Ian for his closing remarks.

Thanks very much, Sonia. Before we open up for Q&A, I just wanted to briefly reiterate our approach to value creation. Here at Endeavour, we view exploration and project development as 2 of our most important value creation levers. We have consistently discovered more than we have produced, and we have done this at a sector-leading discovery cost, adding top-tier projects like Assafou into our pipeline.

We have a strong track record in building these projects efficiently and on budget, successfully expanding the portfolio organically. And we have built a high-quality cash-generative portfolio that has a lot of opportunity for further expansion and optimization within it. And it's this cash flow generation, coupled with our healthy balance sheet that puts us in a strong position to continue delivering not only sector-leading shareholder returns, but also sector-leading organic growth.

And with that, let me hand over to the operator, and we'll start taking Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question. This is from the line of Ovais Habib from Scotiabank.

Congrats on a good quarter and a good beat to our estimates, so looking good in Q2. A couple of questions from me. Number one, starting off at Sabodala. It looks like you're moving in the right direction with the new oxide discoveries at Kawsara. You're looking at going underground at Golouma and Kerekounda. Ian, internally, is there a target in mind as to what this operation can do once you bring all these targets in? Can we expect to get back to that 375,000 to 400,000 ounce level at this operation?

Look, I think the honest answer to that question, Ovais, is that is not impossible. But the question is what would be a higher yet sustainable level of production. And personally, I would feel much more comfortable that when all these things come to fruition, somewhere in the mid-300s as a more sustainable level of production. I think for modeling purposes and for aspiration purposes, I think that's more appropriate.

Clearly, if we can beat that, we will do. But let's build up from where we are now, but importantly, get ourselves into a steady-state condition and move away from this boom and bust, which is sadly characterized Sabodala and let's get into a more steady state, consistent, predictable level of performance. That would be my preference.

I think that would be the preference of the market as well. So I think that's the right way to think about it. So thanks for that. Next question, I may say, might be for Sonia. Looks like, Sonia, you're very excited on the potential of Vindaloo Deeps, Kawsara as well. I mean you've got 7 drill rigs at Kawsara and looks like that could kind of move towards coming into the production profile at Sabodala, and that's become a focus very quickly. Are there any other targets we should be keeping an eye on around Ity or Lafigue or any of those other assets that could kind of move the needle?

Thanks a lot, Ovais, for the question. Look, in Sabodala-Massawa, we are talking at length of Kalzara, but I assure you it's not the only target. We actually have identified through a complete new look at the entire area, multiple targets. We leveraged our understanding of the mineral system, applied AI tools, and we have identified over 23 targets. So there will be plenty more beyond Kalzara.

Now in the other region, we're really excited from the results that we have been having what we call the Ity Eastern port. This is located south east of our current operation if you think where La Plaque open pit is continuing to La Plaque from La Plaque to the south and 10-kilometer corridor where we have identified a continuous structural setting that is mineralized north, south and up and down. We have tested in the past, but now we are connecting all that portion together. This is definitely a big excitement for Ity, and we will be between this year and next year to upgrade the resources are more to come towards the end of the year.

In Lafigue, we are actually progressing further resources around the [ Lafigue pit ] that moved into indicated by the end of this year as well as 2 more target 1 and 11 where we initially drilled a couple of expansion at the beginning of the year, and we are now putting together the next drilling campaign that we will start in the next couple of months following the rain a more to come within a similar trend of the Lafigue ore body.

Then from that, Assafou, Assafou is proving to be a very exciting area. Of course, everybody knows about Assafou, but what we are starting to see is a set of other prospects both in the Tarkwaian [indiscernible] similar to Assafou system, but also in the Birimian, especially on what we call the Pala trend 2. Now we have just started with a couple of diamond drilling holes to prove the concept and existing of the mineralization, and we have very great results. And now we are planning for the next phase of drilling campaign that we started this year and in the next -- progress in the next year.

And then of course, we also start new jurisdiction in Kazakhstan where a little bit more down the line and long term, but we have positioned ourselves on over 720 square kilometer of permit. So our joint venture partner has just put in application for several permits. We completed our first reconnaissance field work during the summer, and we are continuing with sampling. So that's something, as I said, is long term, but it is moving in the right direction. And then in Guyana with the placement with Altair investment, we're starting now to put our booth on the ground and starting to see the potential in the area as well. So there is definitely different activities that are happening beyond Kawsara and Vindaloo Deeps south expansion.

Okay. So that's a lot in terms of exploration excitement there. So thank you. I think I've hit my 2 question limit, so I'll get back in the queue.

We will now take the next question. This is from Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley.

A couple of questions from my side. First is on the Kawsara. I would like to follow up. Is the prospect covered and governed by the same mining permit at Sabodala-Massawa? Or would you need to kick off a new permitting process should this prospect be pursued further? That's my first question. I'll take the second for later.

Thank you very much. So actually, the prospect fit into the exploration permit as we are progressing our drilling campaign to move it to indicated resources. We are also working in parallel to complete the environmental work that is required to move the portion into the exploitation permit and it will feed into the current mine permit for Kawsara for Sabodala-Massawa. So that is really the trend. Now the time line, we're looking at 2 to 3 years between completing the environmental work and all the necessary piece of work to move this into the mine permit.

That's very clear. And another question, I guess, this one is for Guy. Guy, a lot has happened to supply chain since you've guided for the Assafou CapEx, and you have probably done quite a bit of procurement during the first half of this year at the time of big supply chain dislocations. How confident are you in the initial budget that you have provided for Assafou?

Alain, thank you. So as Ian mentioned, we have started procuring some of the longer lead items. So far for the tenders that have come in and the orders being placed, they are completely in line with the costing that we have in the original budget. So that is not an area that we are seeing any potential inflationary or overrun potential at this stage.

We'll now move to our next question. This is from Amos Fletcher from Barclays.

A couple of questions. First one to Guy, just on working capital. Congrats on releasing a decent amount in Q2. I was just wondering if you can give us a steer on where you expect things to shake out during the second half in terms of -- whether we could see some more releases coming through.

Certainly. So apologies upfront for what might be a slightly detailed and protracted answer. But our Q2 inflow agreed, very welcome. The key driver of that, though, was an extension to our trade payables. And this is more a question of timing than anything fundamental or structural that we can necessarily expect to see in coming quarters. We did see some receivable inflows. Now that's partially down to some gold receipts and timing thereof. Again, nothing structural, but some good news as we've seen on the VAT. So in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, we've managed to tighten the turnaround time between submission and receipt of VAT reimbursements. We're certainly looking to hold that line and potentially improve it slightly into the second half.

The question really then becomes Burkina VAT. And whilst we have seen some very welcome reimbursements, cash -- direct cash reimbursements from the state, I don't think we should be counting on any further reimbursements to be able to completely offset the accruals we're making. So I think inevitably, we're going to see some extension or increase in Burkina Faso VAT overall balances into the second half.

A big swing factor is stockpiles. I think we've spoken already quite a bit about some of the stripping that we've got planned, particularly in Q3, but then also some residual in Q4. When we are doing our stripping, particularly at Lafigue, we tend to draw down on our stockpiles. There will be, therefore, some incremental drawdowns going into the second half of those stockpiles. But as we see the Q4 production ramp up, there probably will counteracting that be some increase in stockpiles, particularly at Hounde and Sabodala. So I think overall stockpile broadly slightly up in the second half.

Where I think we're unlikely to see that much material movement is in consumables. We built out consumables in H1, particularly at Sabodala and Hound but that was effectively for planning in and around our maintenance programs and catering for some logistics difficulties that we were facing in Burkina. I would expect the consumables, therefore, at a group level to be relatively flat. So the short summary of that protracted answer is I think the Q2 inflow whilst welcome, is not necessarily going to be repeated in Q3 and Q4, but I do think that our working capital outflows for H2 are going to be relatively well managed and should be a smaller swing than we've seen in historical quarters.

Okay. That's great. And then can I ask a follow-up question just on Assafou. Just wanted to ask how the negotiations on the mining extension are going? Has there been any material changes as a result of those negotiations since we last discussed this in Q2?

Yes. A, look, the negotiations on the mining convention are going extremely well. We've indicated to government that a mining convention that very closely mirrors that which we already have at Lafigue would work for us. There will be 1 or 2 minor things that we might want to discuss further, but we wouldn't want to delay the signing of that mining convention. What I can say is that the Minister of Mines has given us the undertaking that the convention will be signed under the 214 mining convention. So it will be a 10% free carry by the state.

So the concerns that maybe it will be a 15% free carry don't appear to be valid. And we are looking -- we said that we want to get this done within Q3. That is by mutual agreement. If we can do it a little bit quicker than that, clearly, we will. And it will obviously be a key factor in us moving rapidly to FID. But as things stand at the moment, I'm not seeing anything that we can't live with, minor tweaks here and there, but they will be subject to sort of ongoing negotiations.

And what would those be really more a question of making sure that allowances and sort of agreements are valid not only for external suppliers, but also for local suppliers. So there is a consistency in application of this mining convention to all people. But nothing at the moment that's stopping us from moving ahead. And we've seen sort of a final sort of draft, and we are relatively comfortable with it.

Next question today is from Richard Hatch from Berenberg.

Two questions. The first one is just on Mana. I mean, I appreciate your kind of discussions and color around like what's going on with the asset. But I mean, how should we think about this mine sort of into the medium to longer term? Because I guess we've been talking about it for a good sort of couple of years about how it's been operationally challenging and it doesn't seem to be improving. So how -- what is your kind of medium-term sketch for this thing in terms of volume and cost?

And then the second question is just around capital returns. So lovely additional dividend today. I guess as we move into Q3, Q4, you're going to throw off a bit more cash with less tax being paid. So how should we think about that dividend come the Q4? Should it be higher than this one on the assumption that the gold price remains flat in the second half?

Yes. Look, Richard, I'll talk to Mana, and Guy will talk to the capital returns. I think the most important thing to think of when it comes to Mana is it's really -- it's only been fairly recently that we've effectively completed the move to a complete underground operation and not a mixture of underground and some surface material. And we've also done a lot of work on optimizing those costs that we are capable of controlling, looking at productivity improvements and what have you. We've now moved from multiple underground contractors to one. And that has been very successful in helping us avoid sort of underground conflicts, logistical conflicts and what have you, and it certainly helped us improve.

The short-term issues that we've got there at the moment are what they are. They're short term. I mean these things happen in mines. If one looks at the costs, clearly, costs are driven as much by your ability to produce the ounces divided by your costs. And one of the -- there are 2 key factors driving higher costs on the -- well, 3 factors, high cost. One, slightly lower production this quarter. Secondly, we've had to do a lot more self-generation of power because the state have been unable to supply us with what was previously guided by them that they could supply. That's had a fairly material impact on our costs.

So those, I think, are sort of key issues. And obviously, the other one -- the other key factor influencing the cost there is the big step-up in royalties that we've seen in Burkina Faso, not helping us. So when one looks at the controllable costs, those that we can control, actually, the guys are not doing too bad a job. It's the noncontrollable administered costs that are starting to weigh down on the operation.

On the sort of the longer term, Mana being an underground mine, it looks like it's got a short reserve life, but actually has got a fairly large resource. And it constantly rolls over and replenishes itself. We do need to drill that out. What we're seeing, we've done some deeper drilling. We do see at deeper levels. the extension of the existing ore bodies, similar grades. It is simply a question of us getting into it. There's no doubt that it's higher cost than we like. But I've said previously that there is a utility value to Mana in terms of how it helps us enhance our underground mining skills, and that's going to be helpful when it comes to places like Sabodala, Baruma and then ultimately, even a little bit further south of Mana at the Hounde mine.

But we're not asset huggers. We have built a high-quality portfolio through portfolio management. This is part of a broader portfolio. We do believe it has potential. And importantly, at these prices, it still makes money. It still throws off cash. So bluntly, unless we could realize more value through a divestment, we're going to continue to operate it mine it for cash and use that for reinvestment in growth and shareholder returns across the broader group.

Richard, if I can take shareholder returns, piece. So I think the short-ish answer is we don't envisage any change to our existing and well-publicized returns policy. So we maintain that at $3,000 gold and below 0.5x leverage, we've got our minimum commitment of $1 billion. The first half of this year, we had a realized gold price of above $4,500. And we had clearly stated at the time of the release of the policy at that kind of level, we would be doubling our shareholder returns, which we've importantly done.

So I think the kind of message is we do what we say. But what we've said isn't going to change. And therefore, at current gold prices of whatever, $4,100, then we would still look to supplement significantly in both dividends and share buyback, but probably not to the extent of doubling, which we would have at around 4,500. So whilst not necessarily a straight line, I think that indicatively is what one can expect in the second half.

And the next question today is from the line of Alex Bedwany, Stifel.

Just a simple question following on from the Mana discussion. Can you just elaborate a little bit about the fracture that was identified at surface? What caused it and what turned up through the monitoring? Should we be concerned at all through the rest of the year about disrupting any other areas that might be active?

Thank you, Alex, for the question. What we've noticed is indeed a small fracture at the surface, which obviously we've been monitoring. So definitely, the production is expected to be impacted by that event. And temporarily, what we've decided is really to post mining activities and purely as a precautionary measure. The affected area remains under close monitoring with a partial reentry expected shortly. We will not reenter that area until we have a full validation from our geotech.

So are we seeing an impact? Yes. But what we are currently doing as well is to really push on productivity initiatives. The expected impact that we're seeing will be completely offset by the other asset, mainly Lafigue. We are also, as I mentioned earlier in my section, we've delayed the Bana Camp, which is the open pit from quarter 1 to now quarter 4. So that definitely will bring in additional higher grade and additional ounces that we expected as well.

But on top of that, as I mentioned, we are doing some productivity initiatives. And the major one that we've been focusing on with the team is really how to reduce our reentry time. And where we are, we're seeing year-to-date, Mana has actually increased their mine tonnes productivity by almost 19%. So going into H2, I'm expecting the team to continue with the productivity initiatives and also try to accelerate the start-up of Manachem by the quarter 4.

Just a follow-up to that. So based on the commentary, it's not over active ore zones, right? So the zones that the fracture was identified, when were they planned to come into the mine plan?

So that area, we still currently maintain it closed. does not affect the entire Aviera. It's only the northern part. The Southern, the Central are still active. Danguna and Wona are still active. So we are really talking of very limited area of the Aviera underground.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Anita Soni from CIBC.

I think all the Mana questions have been asked, which was my concern as well. So thanks for that discussion. Secondly, I guess I wanted to ask on Sabodola-Massala. Just moving into the back half of the year, what kind of, I guess, rebound in grades and recovery rates are you expecting right now? It looks like it's lagging a little and needs a little bit of an uptick to achieve the guidance. So if you could provide some color on that? And apologies if you've already addressed it, but...

Thank you, Anita. So what we're expecting at Sabodala for quarter 3, the production will be fairly stable. We expect as well a small decline in grades, especially for the CIN plant, but it will be offset by the expected better grade from Massawa North zone stockpile that we plan to start feeding towards the end of this quarter. But when you look at the entire H2, we're expecting a much stronger H2 with much better grade, especially from Nakafiri West as well as the Delya South pit to feed into the CIL plant, which again will increase the production. We also expected a much better recovery in both the plants and definitely of throughput as well.

I think in previous discussions, you were -- you did ask about throughput. We are seeing a consistent minimum of 10% above the nameplate. We're also trying to reach that 15%, which we discussed. We're not there yet. I think what is important for me is that we completely reach that 10%, and that's where we currently have. When you look at the recovery, I think it's improving. We've reached about 84% in the month of June, and that is the type of level of recovery that I want to see consistently in the [indiscernible]. It's not yet there. We still range between 78%, 80%, 81%, but I know that at peak, we have been reaching 84% as well. to continue working with the team to ensure that, that 84% or so remains consistent.

Okay. And then in order to achieve those higher grades, I'm sorry, I did not hear which pits that you were talking about. But is there stripping involved? Or like I'm just trying to understand what you have to get through by the end of this quarter in order to be able to access those things? What are the key deliverables road blocks?

I think what I said is that for quarter 3, the production will remain stable. I'm expecting a small decline in grade, especially from [indiscernible] East, which is for the CIL plant. The grade at Massawa Central is more or less stable. We will start feeding the Massawa North zone stockpile, which is transition because we still need to feed it. So we expect from that stockpile a much higher grade than what we have at Massawa Central. But again, it's a stockpile. The remainder of the quarter 4, we will be feeding the CIL plant from [indiscernible] West as well as the Delya, which both of them bring in a much higher grade through the CIL plant that we're currently seeing.

I think I think you need to just give a bit more color on this. There's not anything sort of specifically there has to be a big stripping campaign. It is more -- this is the continuous process that we're working through. And as we naturally migrate into better quality material, that will give us the better grades that Djaria has been referring to. So there's not a major campaign that we have to prepare ourselves for like we're seeing perhaps, say, at Hounde, where big stripping at Hounde in Q3 that will definitely open up higher-grade material from mining in Q4. It's not as heavy as that.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Marina Calero from RBC Capital Markets.

Most of the key questions related to the quarter have been asked. So I just have a couple of high-level questions. The first one is on West Africa. We have seen the regional security picture deteriorated in recent months. Are you experiencing any disruptions or increased lead times on fuel or consumable deliveries to your sites, particularly in Burkina?

Marina, I would perhaps question, the -- your comment about the deterioration in the security situation in the areas that we operate in, I think it's fair to say we're not seeing a deterioration in the security situation. It's actually been specifically with respect to Burkina Faso because my sense is that's where your question is focused. Burkina Faso has been actually, I would say, quite stable over the past 6 to 9 months. Certainly, government seems to be much more in control of the area and the situation on the ground is actually quite stable.

With regards to supplies and what have you, at the beginning of this year, the government insisted on bringing in a national logistics company, which meant that our existing logistics teams or contractors that we use were sort of pushed on side in favor of this effectively state-owned enterprise. And that certainly did impact supplies of things like explosives and what have you, not so much fuel, funnily enough. But that was really a question of intergovernment departmental permitting that should have taken place between the new logistics provider and the providers of permits for that provider to actually bring our stuff to mines.

That initial sort of administrative, should we call it, confusion has died down, and we're now seeing better performance. It's still not, in my view, ideal. I would still prefer that we could run things with our own contractors. But that's the rules of the game. That's what we have to work with. But it has certainly improved from the very beginning of the year. January and February was really tough. but it seems to have settled down and we've got more into the rhythm. And we are -- in terms of material on site that we require consumables, we're in much better shape than we were at the beginning of H1.

That's great to hear. My second question is more on M&A. At your recent Exploration Day, you clearly defined the geological areas where you see the best opportunities. Some of your peers might be divesting assets in other African countries such as Tanzania, DRC, [ Zerbia ]. Do you see yourselves operating in these countries if the asset meets your quality standards?

Look, I mean, we've identified, as you quite rightly say, we've identified where we would prefer to operate. Obviously, as or when things come along, you always look at them. But whether you actually go ahead and do anything, honestly, I couldn't give you a general answer to such a broad question because every single opportunity you look at on a case-by-case basis.

But our main focus is continuing where we are as well as the other areas that we have identified. But if there's a compelling opportunity that we believe we have the ability to genuinely add value and it's cost effective and it meets our return criteria, obviously, we will look at it. But there's nothing in the pipeline that we're actively involved with at the moment.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Mohammed Sidibe from National Bank of Canada.

On a strong quarter. So I think most of my questions were answered and specifically around, I guess, your capital allocation priorities around the capital return and I guess, any sort of inorganic growth priorities. I think you have a growing cash balance there. But maybe on the good cost performance in the quarter, I think could you provide us maybe with a high-level commentary around inflationary pressures you're seeing at your operations?

Of course, your delivery on the operating front is definitely helping manage that. But what else have you been doing to kind of mitigate the cost and specifically at [indiscernible], pretty good unit cost performance on the process cost front. So yes, any color on inflation that you're seeing at the assets and how you've been able to offset it would be great.

Sure. Thanks, Mohamed. I think just briefly on the kind of quarter-on-quarter, we did see a slight uptick in our AISC in Q2, primarily driven by mining volumes. That was both at Mana and at Sabodala. The Mana increase in tonnage was, however, at a lower grade as we depleted seal, which Jorus touched on earlier as well as some development at Wona. Sabodala was an increase in tonnage again associated with waste for Delya and in Massawa Central Zone, again, which Jorres touched on, with some maintenance, both equipment and processing plant maintenance at Sabodala. Those items gave rise to that small increase in Q2.

When we look forward into the rest of H2, there are elements on cost. So we are going to see another increase, albeit relatively marginal in our mining costs. And that is fundamentally, again, driven by volume and our waste stripping, which I think we've spoken on quite a bit on the call already. When it comes to inflationary elements, and here, we're looking predominantly at fuel and explosives. We are not seeing anything at this stage that would make us change what we've already said in terms of broad guidelines, and that is that we've got around $1 increase in AISC for every dollar increase in oil. So the guidance itself remains, as previously mentioned.

But from our perspective, at this point, that's not going to be and shouldn't be regarded as a significant inflationary pressure into the second half. All of those are being offset by a variety of productivity measures, which Djaria did go through on a site-by-site basis. I think the key thing just to remind everyone on the cost subject is the likely impact that the production profile is going to have on our costs. So I don't think you should be looking into H2 with very significant inflationary measures on the cost line. It's more a question of understanding the production profile, which being lower in Q3 is inevitably going to see a spike in AISC in Q3. But then as I referenced in my section, we expect that to fully reverse with the higher production in Q4.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Daniel Major from UBS.

So the first one is maybe revisiting some of the commentary on the capital returns, et cetera. So if I look at you're exceeding your minimum commitment, but even at $4,000, the free cash flow would by far exceed your sort of capital return. So if we look at consensus, there's something like a $3 billion net cash position at the end of next year. What do we need to see to factor in that you don't need any more cash and you're going to pay 100% commitment to the market of all of that cash out? That's the first sort of part.

What is the level of cash on the balance sheet gives you all the optionality you need? And then the second point, just on the M&A front, any comment on the Barrick reports earlier in the quarter?

Dan, I'll probably take the first piece and then I imagine Ian will take the second. But -- so just in terms of the overall shareholder returns piece, I just -- it's difficult to say anything other than to reiterate. But if the concern is more in and around building cash balances on the balance sheet, no, that's not our intention. We've stated it before and I'll state it again. Your question on what is it going to take for us to fundamentally shift in terms of that supplemental.

My answer to that is just to have the cash on the balance sheet. So the things that we're obviously looking forward and trying to predict and just make sure that we have in hand is our organic growth pipeline. So we've got $50 million to $100 million coming through this year on growth CapEx. We want to make sure that we are going to be able to fully fund ASPU off our balance sheet. In order to do that and look forward a couple of years, we are having to take a decision today based on today's spot and today's cash balance as to what we feel comfortable in being able to distribute.

So within our overall framework of capital allocation and the $1 billion to potential doubling that depending on gold price, we stand by that. If there is excess cash at any point that doesn't require spending in our organic growth pipeline, then we will look to supplemental shareholder returns. So the policy remains we are doing what we said we'd do thus far, and there is no stated ambition to grow excess cash balances in the near or medium term.

Sorry, just before you answer the M&A question, just to follow up on that, Guy. So -- and I guess you've got to factor in your gold price and we're trying to factor in your CapEx assumptions. But if you were on our side, would you be putting in 100% free cash flow distributions in 2027, 2028 to prevent Endeavour building a growing cash position?

Okay. Nice pointed question. Thanks, Dan. So Guy Young personally speaking here, if I were in your shoes, no, I would have thought that, that's would be excessive to look at 100% free cash flow distribution. So if you look at our H1, I think we're at about 41% free cash flow distribution, somewhere in that kind of region until such time as we've got a cash balance that then cannot be used by an organic growth pipeline.

So the closer we get to Assafou completion, and we're still building cash, then I would expect us to move up in terms of percentage free cash flow. But until that started and we're through some of that project, I think it will be rash for us to be distributing 100%.

Okay. So you continue to build cash on the balance sheet until you finish the [indiscernible]. That's the right message?

I think at least until we've got a high degree of certainty with regards to the total build, yes.

Sorry, yes, maybe the [indiscernible] question.

Yes. Look, Daniel, I have to say when I saw that comment, bluntly, I was quite surprised. I'm not sure where it came from. And as you know, I mean, we really don't sort of comment on market speculation. And that's why we were silent. What I would say is if you're looking at M&A from a growth and a value creation perspective, our approach to that is absolutely unchanged. We have said all along that our growth is going to be more biased towards organic opportunities. That's why we've focused on these exploration programs that we've got in Kazakhstan as well as in Guyana.

You've heard today from Sonia, there's some very significant opportunities in terms of our brownfield opportunities that can feed into the pipeline. I mean we've consistently produced more ounces than we've depleted. And that's where -- that really will be where our focus is. We're comfortable with where we are at the moment. We can operate in these areas.

And going forward, certainly, it would make a lot of sense for us to go and look at perhaps what will be a perception of lower risk areas if we were to do any M&A. So we're selling. We're moving out of assets in Mali. So it hardly makes sense for us to think about going back into a place like Mali. So let me leave it at that.

And we'll now take the next question. This is from Felicity Robson, Bank of America.

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Just one on Lafigue, which is performing well and exceeding nameplate design. Is there any further operational upside we can expect from the asset in the short term?

Thank you, Felicity. I'll take that one. Yes, I think we've been very pleased about the performance of Lafigue. And really thanks to the team on the ground. I think there's a few initiatives were in place, especially in and around the plant, and that's really what led to now this really good results. I think going forward, we have also pushing through some of the other productivity initiatives. One of them is really around reagent usage as well as how can we -- what can we do to really reduce our operating costs.

One of the initiatives that we have is really how can we increase the recycled water and also the reagent plus dosage. And we're testing some alternative floculant. And what we've seen as a result so far is that we've seen a reduction in our consumption by about 30%. So those are the sorts and the type of initiatives that we want to really bring around while we're continuously, again, upgrading in and around the plant. That 10% above the nameplate that I mentioned to you earlier is really a result, again, of upgrades that have been done initiatives on the ground, and that's really where we want to continue pushing.

Lafigue is not different from many of our sites. We push our plant. We make sure that each one of them sweat. We look at opportunities. We want to be able to mine best margin ounces and make sure that when we fit them and we process them, we get the best recovery. Every ounce counts, every percentage point on recovery count. So with the team, that's what we're focusing on really make sure that we stabilize. We've seen that 10% and how far can we take it.

And there are no further questions. I'd like to thank you for joining the Endeavour Mining Q2 and Half Year Webcast.

Hello, everyone. Today, we announced our first half results, and I'm pleased to report another half of solid operational performance, which is translating into record financial performance and record shareholder returns.

In H1, we produced 564,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,871 per ounce. That keeps us firmly on track to meet our full-year guidance with a stronger production profile later in the year as planned. This solid operational performance has helped us deliver record financial results with free cash flow of $761 million, and that's up 48% year-on-year, nearly $1,350 of free cash flow for every single ounce of gold that we have produced.

Our ability to generate strong cash flow means that we can continue delivering exceptional returns to shareholders. In H1, we returned a record $301 million, which is more than double our minimum commitment for the half and nearly 40% higher than we returned in H2 of last year.

Since 2021, we've actually returned nearly $2 billion to shareholders, 85% above our minimum commitment, and we expect to continue delivering significant supplemental returns at these elevated gold prices. At the same time, we're investing in organic growth and building towards our target of 1.5 million ounces by 2030.

At the top-tier Assafou project, we're progressing early works and detailed engineering, and we're on track to reach a final investment decision before year-end. While at Sabodala-Massawa, we're launching the underground expansion to drive production growth at that site.

Exploration is critical to our longer-term growth and has consistently been our biggest value creation lever. This year, we expect to finalize significant resource increases at our Vindaloo Deeps and Kawsara discoveries, both of which offer multimillion-ounce resource upside.

We're also continuing to progress our new ventures exploration programs, expanding and diversifying into new Tier 1 gold provinces, creating a much more resilient project pipeline.

Our strategy is simple. We discover high-value ounces, we develop high-return projects and we generate significant free cash flow from our operations. And with that cash, we reinvest with discipline into our highest-return growth opportunities and we return it to shareholders.

Supported by our high-quality portfolio, strong cash flow generation and a healthy balance sheet, we remain well positioned to deliver sector-leading growth to 2030 and sector-leading shareholder returns, creating long-term value for all of our stakeholders. Thank you.

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.