Earnings call transcript: Perseus Mining Q4 2025 gold production nears target

Perseus Mining Ltd (PRU.AX) reported its Q4 2025 earnings, showcasing strong operational performance with gold production nearing its target and notable financial achievements. The company produced 496,551 ounces of gold, close to its 500,000-ounce target, while maintaining a robust cash margin of $1,308 per ounce. According to InvestingPro data, the company holds more cash than debt on its balance sheet and has maintained strong financial health with a Financial Health Score of 2.08. Despite challenges, Perseus Mining continues to demonstrate resilience and strategic focus in the mining sector.

Key Takeaways

• Full-year gold production reached 496,551 ounces, close to the 500,000-ounce target.
• Average gold price increased to $2,205.43 per ounce, boosting cash margins.
• Cash and bullion holdings rose to $827 million, up by $26 million.
• Perseus Mining returned A$107 million to shareholders in FY25.
• Production guidance for FY26 is set at 400,000-440,000 ounces.

Company Performance

Perseus Mining’s performance in Q4 2025 was marked by its strong gold production and financial discipline. The company achieved a cash margin significantly above its target, driven by higher average gold prices. Perseus Mining’s strategic operations across multiple countries helped mitigate risks and maintain consistent production levels. The company’s focus on local procurement and employment contributed to its stable operational environment.

Financial Highlights

• Full-year gold production: 496,551 ounces (near 500,000 target)
• All-in Sustaining Costs (AISC): $1,235 per ounce
• Average gold price: $2,205.43 per ounce (up $529 from previous year)
• Cash margin: $1,308 per ounce
• Notional cash flow: $650 million
• Cash and bullion: $827 million (up $26 million)
• Total capital returned to shareholders since FY21: A$275 million

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Perseus Mining has set its production guidance for FY26 at 400,000-440,000 ounces, with All-in Sustaining Costs expected between $1,460 and $1,620 per ounce. The company is also focusing on the Nyanzaga Gold Project, with planned production starting as early as January 2026 and the first gold pour expected in Q1 2027. Perseus Mining’s five-year outlook indicates consistent production potential, supported by ongoing exploration opportunities.

Executive Commentary

CEO Jeff Quartermaine emphasized the company’s strategic resilience and operational diversity. "We believe that through engaging in multiple operations in multiple countries, we’re able to remove a lot of the volatility that comes with operating on the African continent and still deliver outstanding results," Quartermaine stated. He also highlighted the importance of human resources, saying, "You can have the best assets and the most amount of money in the world, but unless you have good people to execute your plans, you’ll not realize your potential."

Risks and Challenges

• Potential delays in the CMA Underground project due to pending presidential decree.
• Variations in quarterly production that require strategic adjustments.
• Challenges in transitioning operations at Edikan to the Ankasuo oxide pit.
• Maintaining safety standards and improving the Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFA).

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the potential delay in the CMA Underground project and the company’s strategies to address production variations. The management provided insights into the operational adjustments at Edikan and the challenges associated with oxide ore recoveries.

Overall, Perseus Mining’s Q4 2025 performance reflects its strategic focus on maintaining robust production levels and financial health, despite industry challenges. The company’s future guidance and ongoing projects indicate a commitment to sustaining its competitive position in the mining sector. For a complete understanding of Perseus Mining’s market position and future potential, access the detailed Pro Research Report available on InvestingPro, offering expert analysis and actionable insights among 1,400+ top stocks.

Full transcript - Perseus Mining Ltd (PRU) Q4 2025:

Nathan, Conference Moderator: Mining Investor Webinar and Conference Call. All attendees are in a listen only mode. If you would like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the raise hand function. I’ll now hand over to Perseus Mining Managing Director and CEO Jeff Quartermaine. Thank you Jeff.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Thanks Nathan, and welcome to Perseus Mining’s quarterly webinar to discuss our June Quarter report. I’m joined on the call today by one of my colleagues, Lee-Anne de Bruin, who as you know is our CFO. Lee-Anne doesn’t really need any introduction as she’s been an integral part of Perseus leadership team for some time now and of course has participated in many of these webinars and other most market facing events. Welcome Lee-Anne.

Lee-Anne de Bruin, CFO, Perseus Mining: Thanks Geoff.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: The agenda for today’s webinar is the same as usual. I’ll start by providing an overview of what Perseus achieved operationally during the quarter. Leanne and I then speak to aspects of the presentation, and then we’ll hold a Q and A session to dive into any specific matters that haven’t been addressed to your satisfaction during the presentation or indeed in the market release of the quarterly or the market release that we put out last week on the drilling results from Nyanzaga. For those of you who are participating in the webinar via your computer, you should be able to track the presentation visually on your screens. For others, we have released it to the market along with the quarterly, so you’ll be able to review it at your leisure.

In summary, as I’ve said every quarter now for the last four or five years, our team at Perseus is consistently delivering on its promises, and during the 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month periods ending 30 June, we have once again delivered with strong group gold production, competitive all-in sustaining costs, and of course with the help of rising gold prices, we’ve expanded our cash margins and increased free cash flow and cash balances. Relative to many of our peers who have already reported this quarter, our operating performance and closing cash balances are demonstrably better than many in the gold sector. Now, notwithstanding our solid operating performance over a long period of time, we don’t seem to have received due recognition in terms of relative share price performance.

We were advised that one explanation for this anomaly was that doubts existed regarding the longevity and quality of Perseus’s asset portfolio relative to some. During the June quarter, we’ve sought to address this matter head on by publishing Perseus’s five year production and cost outlook. I’ll return to this subject in more detail later, but from what we published this quarter, I think it should be fairly clear even to the most cynical of observers that based on the platform that we’ve built, the future of Perseus looks strong. That is before we start to deploy our considerable financial capacity to expand the asset portfolio either through exploration or M and A initiatives. Speaking of exploration or organic growth, we’ve been active on this front during the quarter, and we returned some excellent drilling results from the Phase 2 confirmatory drilling at the Nyanzaga Gold Project in Tanzania.

As I said earlier, these were documented in a release that was made to the market last week. Now, speaking of the Nyanzaga, I should also mention very briefly because I will return to this, the very solid progress that’s been achieved on the development of the mine itself during the quarter. It is impressive, that’s for sure. Without further ado, let’s go to the presentation and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Looking at the operating results, 121,237 ounces for the quarter, which was pretty much in line with the last quarter. The all-in sustaining cost of $1,417 an ounce was up slightly on the previous quarter and there are reasons for that which we’ll discuss, not the least of which of course is the gold price, which was up $515 an ounce to $2,977 per ounce.

When I’m talking about the impact of the gold price, bear in mind that a significant portion of our cost base is gold price related charges. The cash margin that we generated was $1,560 per ounce. That’s up $307 an ounce. Notional cash flow was $189 million, leaving net cash and bullion of $827 million at the end of the quarter, which was up $26 million, notwithstanding some fairly significant expenditure during the period. Leanne will talk to that in a moment. What that has done is it’s translated into an excellent financial year for us. For the full financial year, production at 496,551, a touch under the 500,000, but certainly in line with what we had been anticipating. All-in sustaining costs for the year was $1,235 an ounce. The average gold price $2,205.43 per ounce, up $529 an ounce on the previous year.

Of course, that cash margin at $1,308 an ounce, it’s significantly above the target of $500 an ounce that we set ourselves some time ago. That’s all translated into notional cash flow from the operations of $650 million and, as I said, left us with a fairly healthy balance at the end of the year. What that means is that Perseus is firmly on track to continue funding growth and firmly on track to continue returning capital to our shareholders. If you look at how that result stacks up relative to guidance, in terms of the full year guidance, we have finished at about the 77% percentile of the guidance range at 496,000. On the cost, $1,235, we finished below the bottom end of the range. A similar result in terms of the half year as well.

At half year it was around the same sort of level, finishing below the bottom end of the cost range. The numbers on that slide tell a pretty interesting story and they do demonstrate the merit of having a diversified portfolio, having more than one operation at our disposal because the operations do have good times and bad times. If you look across the group, it’s pretty consistent performance where one will outperform to compensate for maybe some underperformance at another mine. Now looking at the three operations themselves, Yaouré was the biggest contributor of the three, as has been fairly normal over time. About 53% for the full year came from there, 58% for the quarter. That was done at a very attractive all-in sustaining costs of $1,180 per ounce or $1,100 for the full year. I mean it was a year of two halves in a sense.

We certainly struggled a little early in the piece, but picked up very strongly as the year wore on and turned into pretty solid performance. The notional cash margin of $1,824 U.S. certainly puts us into a fairly strong position in terms of cash flow generation. One of the areas that has challenged us, we’ve moved from mining in the CMA pit, we moved over to the Yaouré pit, which is geologically very complicated, much more complex than CMA. We’ve been working very solidly on trying to upgrade our grade control processes and the like to improve the reconciliation between block model and the mill. We’ve certainly seen an improvement on that over the last quarter but we still have some distance to go to get to where we would like to be.

At the moment we’re recording 25% for the last three months, 25% positive on tonnes, 15% negative on grade, 6% overall plus in terms of contained ounces. That is, you know, it’s better than it was but it’s not where we need to be. The other piece of course around the Yaouré is the underground and I’ll speak to that in just a moment. We’re waiting on a presidential decree to get going on the mining there now. Edikan’s had an interesting year. We’ve finished off mining in the AG pit and we’re just about to finish mining in the AG pit. There’s a bit of a change in the whole production profile. We have been moving into the Ankasuo pit which is largely an oxide pit. It’s a higher grade oxide pit that we will be mining from.

We have had, obviously, the costs were impacted by lower production relative to previous periods, and also, of course, we got hit with royalties and various other charges and also some increase in sustaining capital where we were making compensation payments to landowners. That has been an issue for us. We are in the final stages of getting full access to the Ankasuo mining area. It has been a bit of a challenge along the way. There’s a few people who were struggling to come to terms with what we were doing, notwithstanding the law being on our side. Anyway, that is coming to an end, and we’ll have full access in the next quarter, which will improve grade, which will improve production from Edikan.

In terms of reconciliations at Edikan, we’re 10% positive on tonnes, 11% negative on grade, 2% negative overall on contained ounces, and that’s pretty much within acceptable limits. That’s fine. Looking into the future, we are working fairly solidly on various initiatives to extend the mine life at Edikan through to 2032 through a series of cutbacks of some of the previously mined pits. That is an important exercise, and we’re working closely with the local people and government to get that initiated. One of the things we did during the quarter was that we did cede a section of the mining lease back to the government, and that is to be allocated to local citizens for small scale mining. Hopefully, that will give them some confidence that continuing to work with Perseus Mining Limited going forward is in their interest.

Now, Sissingué’s had a fairly troubled quarter, I must admit. Production was slightly higher than the previous quarter, and costs were slightly better, but they’re still not where we really want them to be. We are at an interesting stage up there where we’re getting towards the end of one of the satellite pits, and we’ll be moving down to Bagway fairly shortly. In the intervening period, we’ve had to make do with what we’ve got and have had a few challenges with our contractor, etc. We do haul material up the road, and in wet weather, that also provides some challenges as well. Generally speaking, I think we’re in a position where the next 12 months are going to be quite different to the most recent 12 months as we get into material that is a better grade, etc.

The operation is cash flow positive and that’s obviously pleasing in terms of reconciliations. On a 12 month horizon, 18% positive on tonnes, 10% negative on grade, and 6% positive contained ounces. That’s a reasonable position. It has gone up and down a little bit over the last period of time, reflecting the particular ore bodies that we’ve been working in. It’s in a reasonable position. We’re also doing more work on that as we speak. As I said, we’re in the process of getting ready to move down to Bagway, so constructing facilities down there and we should be operating in that part of the world probably in about November this year, I would think. Now, if you look at the three mines put together, it has been a pretty solid performance from them.

Over the last four years we’ve averaged around 509,000 ounces of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,048 per ounce. Doing that in a period where we’ve also enjoyed fairly significant growth in gold prices, which has expanded margins and certainly generated a lot of cash. The thing that stands out from this chart here, of course, is the consistency of performance. This goes to the point I made earlier around the portfolio effect, where in any given period one or other of the mines may be struggling a little, as Sissingué has been doing for the last short period. At the same time, some of the others pick up and we managed to still maintain that consistent performance. Now, looking forward, as I said earlier in the piece, we felt it necessary to share with the market what the next five years of Perseus Mining Limited looks like.

We put out a release to this effect about a month or so ago. You can see that there is fairly solid performance coming through over the next five years at least. There is a short term dip coming through in fiscal 2026, which is really a scheduling function. We were anticipating producing from our Meyas Sand Gold Project in this period. As people are aware, that project was put on hold some time ago due to conflict in Sudan. Our production is down slightly this year. From here it picks up and it picks up quite materially as the Nyanzaga Gold Project comes on stream. As I said, it’s being developed in Tanzania and we’ll talk about that in a little more detail.

Certainly, the cost structure that we are expecting to see across the group is well within the marks of or in line with global cost structures at the current time, particularly with the gold price assumptions that we have used in this analysis. The point I’m making here is that looking forward, the next five years are very strong after a small setback. In terms of the guidance for next year, we are talking 400,000 to 440,000 ounces at all-in sustaining costs $1,460 to $1,620. It does reflect the fact that Yaouré will be reducing production from where it has been this year as we go into the underground. On the other side of the coin, it also reflects the fact that Sissingué will pick up in production as we go down to Bagway into the higher grade material there and Edikan keeps plugging along.

The higher costs at Edikan relate to some cutbacks that we’re planning on doing in the forthcoming period. At the elevated gold prices that we’re seeing, we’re still able to make significant headway in terms of cash margin. The other factor affecting Edikan Gold Mine next year, of course, is that our main source of ore will be from the Inkasua deposit, which is an oxide deposit. Recoveries of oxide material at Edikan are lower than fresh material. People who want to focus on the costs and be concerned about the costs, I would refer you to that chart on the right there which shows what Perseus has done relative to its cost guidance over the last five years or so. It’s fairly clear that, for one reason or another, we have outperformed our expectations on the cost front.

One might say, well, it’s a function simply that you are very conservative in your forecasts. That may be the case. What it also says is that at Perseus, we don’t generalize or just take things for granted. We work continuously to keep a lid on our costs and, where possible, to reduce them. We have a number of programs going continuously to try and find ways of improving our performance. While we’re forecasting $1,460 to $1,620 next year, we will be doing everything within our power to do better than that. When we look at that production, we are almost finished the first month of the 12-month period. Based on what’s happened in the first month of the period, we’ll be finishing in the upper part of that range, I would think, all things being equal, of course.

Now, having said that, I’m tempting fate for sure, but certainly we’ve started the new financial year quite strongly. I’ll pass over to Leanne to speak on some of the financial aspects, if I may.

Lee-Anne de Bruin, CFO, Perseus Mining: Thanks, Jeff, and morning to everybody. As you can see, we’ve had a very strong quarter generating $189 million notional cash flow, which was an increase of about $37 million or 20% on the last quarter. This is largely attributable to the $515 per ounce increase in our average gold price achieved in the quarter of $2,977. Our cash and bullion increased by $26 million, which I’ll speak to a little bit later, and our debt remains undrawn at US$300 million. The increase in cash and bullion to $827 million, I think it’s important to point out, was after a number of key expenditures during the quarter. As Jeff alluded to earlier on, the organic growth investment in the period was extensive, including exploration drilling at the Nyanzaga pits, and those results were released last week.

We’ve done some drilling at the Nkutumsu deposit in Ghana as we seek to continue looking for extension opportunities at Edikan. We also then spent about $80 million in sustaining and development capital in the quarter, which included $25 million on Nyanzaga, about $18 million on the CMA Underground project, and we spent $17 million purchasing increased land at Yaouré to ensure an extended capacity for our extension of the life of mine at that asset. We’ve continued to make contributions to our host countries, making $70 million of tax contributions, which included tax payments in Ghana for income tax and withholding tax payments on dividends we declared out of Côte d’Ivoire. In addition, we then also spent about $50 million returning funds to our shareholders and this included a $22 million interim dividend paid in April and we’ve in the quarter done $28 million on the share buyback.

That moves us to a key focus for us and particularly my role as CFO is being our hedge program and focusing on, as we always say, to continue focusing on maintaining our hedge program to ensure downside protection while retaining as much upside opportunity as possible. This is really done while we try and observe prudent cash management practices, knowing that gold price, as much as it can go up, it can go down. With that in mind, we’ve had a think about the selection of our hedging instruments during the period and during the quarter. In June we purchased 55,000 put options at a US$2,600 per ounce price for a cost of US$2.9 million and put those out over 2027 and 2028. Importantly, the committed hedge position of the group was reduced in the quarter from 24% to 16% of the forecast three-year production.

Moving on to our capital returns to shareholders in FY25, we have returned A$107 million to our shareholders by our interim dividend paid in April and our continued commitment to the share buyback. Since our maiden capital return in FY21, Perseus Mining Limited has returned a total of A$275 million to our shareholders and this will be a continued focus for us going into August. Lastly, just on our share buyback, importantly, as you all remember, we announced this A$100 million share buyback on 28-08-2024 and opportunities have presented itself where we’ve been able to purchase. We have, as at the 11th of July, progressed that to 73% and we will continue to focus on that now as we are able to go back into the market with the release of.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Thanks very much, Leanne. Yes, this issue of capital management is something that is exercising our mind at the moment. We’ve received a lot of feedback from our shareholder base as to their preferences between dividends and share buybacks, and we’ll be discussing this at some length, I expect, with our board in a month or so’s time. Certainly, the share buyback concept has worked extremely well for Perseus. We believe over the last, or since it was started in August last year, 12 months or so, we are somewhat constrained at times by blackout periods where we are about to make announcements, etc. We have to stay out of the market. Nevertheless, when we can buy back, we have done that and have done it reasonably consistently, and I think it’s been beneficial to the share price.

The dividend allocation has been steadily rising over a period of time, and you’ll see where the board sits on this in August, as I say. Certainly, this has been a good year, and I think that will be reflected not only in the financial results that are going to be delivered on the 28th of next month, but also in the returns to shareholders that are announced at the same time. Now, talking about capital management, basically with the excess cash that we’re generating, returns to shareholders is important and also managing our balance sheet is important. One of the other key focuses is on the organic growth of the business, and there are a couple of initiatives that are worth commenting on, I think, in that respect. We’ve mentioned the Nyanzaga Gold Project a couple of times throughout this call.

Where we stand at the moment, the schedule going forward is that we’ve started work on the foundations, etc., for the process plant. We’ve been working on the relocation action plan, which is housing of people impacted by the operation for some time, and that’ll be completed in around October. We’ve been working on upgrading the camp at Nyanzaga because we’re going to have a very significant influx of people very shortly, particularly when we start mining early next year. The current plan is to start in April 2026. However, we’re doing our best to bring that forward by three or four months to start in January 2026. We’ll have a mining group alongside a construction group on the site at the same time, which will make the site a very busy place to be.

That will culminate in first gold being poured, we believe in the first quarter of 2027, if not sooner. I know all of our team are highly motivated to do it a little bit earlier than that. This is where we’re predicting at the present time. Just looking at what is happening on the site, there has been a lot of building activity on the camp and on the wrap housing, etc., etc., and getting ready. You can see some photographs on the right-hand side of that work that’s going on there. We are using some pretty interesting construction techniques, using our local labor, et cetera, et cetera, and that’s going very well. You can see the foundations of the camp fairly clearly on this particular photograph.

We’ve also been working on putting in bypass roads to minimize the impact on our local community when we bring goods into the mine site. That work is ongoing and we’re doing that in a very professional manner to ensure that those roads are accessible under all weather conditions and will last the community long after we leave. On the resettlement program itself, we’ve been getting along pretty well there. We’ve completed 65 and handed over houses out of 262. There’s quite a lot more; another 40 or so will be handed over very shortly as soon as we get some more doors to put on. You can see some of the housing in the photographs here. It is interesting actually, the relocation housing. It’s quite different in every country we operate in. The people, we understand, are extremely happy with what is being received.

In certain instances, not only do they have water supply, but in certain cases they’ve also got electricity as well. It’s quite an important program. I did make mention earlier on the drilling that we’ve been doing, the stage two of the resource definition drilling. When we put out our final investment decision in April this year, it was based purely and simply on the first phase of drilling. At that time we announced the reserve of about, I think it was 2.3 million ounces. What we did say at the time was that we were undertaking a second phase of drilling and that we would upgrade the ore as a mineral resource by the time we started production in 2027. We put out a release the other day which, excuse me, reflected some of the results that we’ve achieved to date.

You can see from this slide here that there are some very, very good intercepts have been achieved. These intercepts give us enormous confidence in being able to make a fairly significant increase in the reserve for this project when we release that next year. That is material that will be mined from the open pit. One of the other things that also has come out from that drilling results is that there’s very clear evidence of mineralization extending at depth. We don’t want to offend the regulators here by saying too much other than to say that there is certainly very strong encouragement that if we continue drilling and continue to get the results that we’ve been seeing in recent times, then there’s every prospect that we may be able to continue mining well below the bottom of the currently envisaged pit and using underground mining techniques.

If we are able to do that, of course it will extend the life of the Nyanzaga Gold Project quite a substantial way. This has been a very important and exciting development at Nyanzaga that has come to light over the last six months or so. The other project that we’re busily working towards is the CMA Underground project. I mentioned that we have just about finished in the CMA pit, open pit itself, and we’ve moved over to the Yaouré pit. We took a final investment decision to go underground earlier this year and we’ve been working very strenuously ever since then to get ourselves into a position where we will start to mine underground very shortly. We appointed an excellent Australian underground mining contractor, Byrnecut, as our primary mining contractor and they are mobilized on the site and ready to go.

The only thing that’s really standing between us and cutting portals at the present time is that we are awaiting a presidential decree to give us the green light on this. This is something that only emerged very, very recently. The advice that we’d previously been given around how the government would approve this exercise seems to have changed and we now need to get the President to sign off, which we hope will occur in the next week or so. The operation itself is well and truly ready to go. We’re going to have four portals being built on the CMA pit, two intakes, two exhausts. The work on all that is well advanced and is pretty much ready to roll on all four of those. On those sites we’ve been working, getting our services up to scratch. Both power and water are more or less in place.

There’s a little bit more work to be done in some areas, but generally speaking, the power and water supplies to the mining are in very good shape. We’ve ordered the equipment and that should be arriving on the site fairly shortly. That will be installed as we go deeper underground. Of course, we’ve been working fairly strenuously on putting in place all of the facilities that are needed for the mining services contractor and our team to be able to work on the underground mine. All in all, at CMA Underground project, everything has moved along very nicely and we are ready to take the next step and to start cutting portals as soon as possible. One of the things that is pleasing about the way we’ve conducted our business is that we have been observing all of the areas to ensure that we have a sustainable operation.

We’re particularly happy with our safety record, running a TRIFA of 0.6 for fiscal 2025, which is the best result that we’ve turned in and one that’s actually very credible in global terms. The safety record is very, very good on the site. This is not a case, I can assure you, of poor reporting. This is a case that we have committed a good deal of money and effort to working on the safety front over the last few years and introduced a number of initiatives including the Failure Risk Management Control process and what we call SHED, which is Safely Home Every Day interactions. Between these two initiatives, I think our workforce has come on board and we’re delivering some very good outcomes. In terms of our host communities, government and communities are receiving very substantial benefits from what we do.

The countries where we are received something like $231 million in total for the last quarter, taken in a range of ways. Of course, 83% of our procurement comes from local suppliers. We also make investments into various social aspects as well. Our employment of local people is around 94% or so, which is a fairly credible thing given that what is important in the countries where we work is that we try to maintain as much employment as possible to continue to support the economies. Environmentally, of course, that goes without saying. We observe all of the regulations that are in place and are determined to leave the mine sites in better shape than what we found them. From a governance point of view, once again, that goes without saying, those things are done to ensure that we are transparent and above board in everything that we do.

In conclusion, as I said at the start of the call, we have had another good performance on all fronts during the quarter, half and full financial year. We’ve delivered on group gold production, weighted average cost, cash generation, et cetera, et cetera. I think when we release our Fiscal 2025 financial report and our sustainability report, I should mention, as well as in about a month’s time, it’ll be just even more clear as to what a good year has passed. As I said earlier, the pleasing thing is that we’ve done this in a very, very safe manner so that our staff have been able to come to work every day, go home every day and not be incurring injuries or anything worse. Looking forward, as noted during the presentation, we will experience a slight reduction in our production next year relative to prior periods.

As I pointed out, in comparison to future periods, next year is also a dip. What we’re saying is that it’s a short-term dip resulting from scheduling of events rather than, and those events were beyond our control, rather than through poor performance. We have a clear strategy in place to recover from that, particularly with the commencing of production at Nyanzaga. Beyond that, we’ll also get further production from our existing operations. You know, what we do have, I think, is very clear evidence that our strategy of producing 500,000 to 600,000 ounces of gold a year at an average cash margin of no less than $500 an ounce, but usually a lot more, it will continue well into the future. That will occur even if we fail to grow our existing asset portfolio through exploration or M&A.

I think that it’s fair to say that from our perspective, the concept of us looking to grow our diversified portfolio is and will remain a very important feature of this business. We believe that through engaging in multiple operations in multiple countries, we’re able to remove a lot of the volatility that comes with operating on the African continent and still deliver outstanding results. We will continue to remain receptive to new ideas if a value creative opportunity comes along, and I stress the point, value creative. With the cash and debt financing capacity at our disposal, Perseus is in a great position to execute and to continue our growth journey.

As a company, our focus on generating material benefits for all stakeholders, including households, governments, communities, employees, providers of goods and services, and importantly our shareholders, our investors, remains as strong as ever, allowing us to consistently achieve our stated mission, the stated mission of our company. That’s something of which we are quite proud. Finally, in conclusion, I do once again want to acknowledge the wonderful contributions made by all of the men and women who make up the Perseus management and operating teams in all of the countries in which we operate, including here in Australia, where we’re headquartered. I’ve said many, many times that you can have the best assets and the most amount of money in the world, but unless you have good people to execute your plans, you’ll not realize your potential. Perseus has very good plans and currently has very good people.

More importantly, we’ve operated well as a team and long may that continue. To all those employees, I wish to acknowledge all of your contributions and sincerely thank you for all your efforts in helping us to continue to deliver on our promises. Thanks everyone for attending today’s webinar. This brings the presentation to a close and if you have any questions, we’re happy to try to answer. Thank you.

Nathan, Conference Moderator: Thanks, Geoff. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the raise hand function. Your first question comes from Kate McCutcheon at Citi.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Please.

Nathan, Conference Moderator: Go ahead, Kate. You’re just on mute there, Kate.

Morning. Sorry, Leanne and Jeff, thank you. Just on guidance for the year, your five-year outlook is pretty fresh at 420 to 440 and cost topping out at that $1,500 an ounce mark. Today’s guidance, I guess, is a bigger range on ounces and costs higher than what’s in that outlook. What has driven that tweak to the outlook for 2026 in the past month or so? I guess I’m looking for conviction in that five-year outlook because once you put these things out to the market, you tend to get held to it.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Okay, thanks very much for sharing that with us. That had never occurred to us that that might be the case. I think there’s a few factors in there. We’re wanting to just take into account where we sit at the present time. I also think that there is a difference in terms of the gold pricing that we’ve been using, which has had some impact on various things. Leanne, would you like to add to that?

Lee-Anne de Bruin, CFO, Perseus Mining: Yeah. Kate, when we did the five-year forecast, we were using a $2,004, $400 gold price for the long term, five years. With this guidance now, we brought in the gold price of between $2,007 and $2,800, which will definitely impact the royalties. Importantly, remembering that, you know, Edikan and Côte d’Ivoire have quite extensive linkages to gold price, including the community benefits, the global sustainability levy, and then the royalties. I think just in terms of the actual guidance for the ounces, we just decided for this financial year, given with the underground, just to increase the range effectively from what we put out in the five-year forecast. Effectively, we just put down the downside. Went from 420 to 400.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Yeah, I mean, there’s nothing too sinister in that, I have to say. I mean, we are being a little conservative perhaps, but I guess we feel that that’s appropriate given that we are a little late starting with the CMA Underground relative to the recent change with the government. I think that as I said where we sit at the present time, I mean if the first month is any guide, I don’t think people need to be too concerned about where we’re going to end up for the year.

Lee-Anne de Bruin, CFO, Perseus Mining: Yeah, it’s just to accommodate for the underground answers that are included in the FY26. If there is a delay in that, we wanted to have, we did want to sort of put some downside advice on that, guidance on that.

Okay, cool. That is crystal clear.

Thank you.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: All right.

Nathan, Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Al Harvey at JP Morgan. Please go ahead, Al.

Yeah, morning team. I just want to get a bit more of an explanation of that change in the CMA Underground process going forward. Did you mention that you’re expecting the presidential decree in a week or so? Would you guys expect to announce this to market, and I suppose what are the options the team has up their sleeve to mitigate potential delays here?

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Look, the situation is just that we were told about two or three years ago of a process that needed to be followed. We followed that process and done everything that was asked of us. Only last week we received some advice that in fact, on reflection, the government had changed its perspective. Now there is a meeting of cabinet next week, I think it is, and we have been assured that everything will be done appropriately. If it isn’t done appropriately, we’ll just have to regroup at that particular point and see what we do. There are some options available to us that I don’t really want to be going into at this particular juncture. Yes, we will keep the market fully informed as we always do.

At this stage of the game, we’re fairly optimistic that the government will do what they have said they were going to do and get this signed off and we’ll be moving forward fairly quickly. We have lost a month or so on it, I must admit, because we were looking at cutting portals on the 1st of this month. However, we have a very committed mining contractor and team of people there. If history is any guide, Perseus Mining Limited will find a way to recover ground. We seem to have a knack of being able to do that and we will do it again, I’m sure. In terms of the guidance and everything, we thought that rather than be sitting on a knife edge, we would give ourselves a little bit more protection just to see how things go.

I have every faith in what’s going to occur and that I believe that we will be delivering, if anything, towards the—certainly into the upper half of that range. When the next year comes around, I mean there’s just.

Lee-Anne de Bruin, CFO, Perseus Mining: To add to that, there’s about 20,000 ounces of underground that was, you know, in that region, in the underground coming into FY2026. We’re not talking about huge amounts, and there is opportunity there to look at the remaining CMA under the CMA pit from an open pit perspective.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Yeah, just to clarify, what Leanne has said is that the contribution from the underground this year is not enormous, but there is some contribution. You know, we’ll be doing our best to bring that in through various means.

Yeah, thanks, Jeff. Maybe just to follow up, I guess, just with the presidential elections coming up in Côte d’Ivoire, do you feel like there’s any impact there or as to why this decision’s been taken?

No, I don’t think, I think it’s completely unrelated to that. I just think that, look, there are various processes that they follow and some things can be approved at a ministerial level, some things can be approved at a presidential level. I think that this is the first underground mine in Côte d’Ivoire. This is the first time they’ve had to deal with this situation. They started off considering that this decree could be issued by the minister, but what they’re saying is that this is actually a change to your original mining lease. Given that the original mining lease was signed off by the President, this needs to be signed off now. It would have been helpful if this was discovered two years ago or three years ago, but the fact that it’s only occurred last week, you know, we just need to work around it.

I don’t think there’s anything to get too excited about. Plenty of people have made observations about the ups and downs of operating in Africa, and this is just simply one of those. We’ve been dealing with these sorts of things for 15 odd years and we do find a way to get our way around them. I wouldn’t make too much of it, to be frank. If there is something to be made of it, we’ll certainly keep the market informed.

Sure. Thanks, Jeff.

Nathan, Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Wood at UBS. Please go ahead, Ben.

Thanks. Just wanting to hopefully get a little bit more color on FY26 and just drill into the detail a little bit more. How should we think about the profile across the year itself? You know, June quarterly run rates at Yaouré sort of suggest a stronger start and potentially a weaker finish, but hopefully just wanting a little bit more color on that if possible.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: You know, I’m tempted to. What will happen is that, for instance, Yaouré’s first half will be stronger than its second half. I’ll give you that much. Edikan’s second half is going to be substantially stronger than the first half because in the second half of the year we do get full access to the Kasua deposit and the much higher grade material there. Similarly, Sissingué, the second half is going to be stronger than the first half because we will have a full six months of Bagoe, which once again is higher grade than what we’re seeing in the first six months. The thing is that each of the operations have their ups and downs. We have in the past provided the market with 6 monthly guidance, but we were told repeatedly by analysts that you didn’t want 6 monthly guidance, you wanted 12 monthly guidance.

This is what you’ve been given. We’re responding to requests from the market in giving 12 monthly guidance.

Appreciate that. Thank you for the color.

Nathan, Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from David Radcliffe at Global Mining Research. Please go ahead, David.

Good morning, Jeff and Leanne. My first question’s on Edikan recoveries for the year. Just short of 90%. You’ve stated that there’s probably an impact in 2026, given the higher rate of oxide material. Could you maybe give a bit of quantum on that? Within that, you’ve obviously been waiting for access to the new pit for a while. You’ve mentioned the government’s intervened, but every quarter it seems to be just getting pushed out.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Just to clarify, we have been mining out of Kasuo now for six months. What we’re looking for is full access to ground for waste dumps and things of that nature, more so than the actual pit as well. There is some access in the pit, but it’s really about getting into full-scale mining conditions. That is fine. As far as the government is concerned, the government is fully on board with this project and is fully supportive of it. There’s no issue on that particular front. Where we have had some discussions is with the local community, and we want to make sure that everybody is happy about what we’re doing. We don’t want to go ahead with full resumption of land if there’s anybody who’s not happy about it. We’re just being a little bit cautious on that front.

As to the recovery, the oxide ore does have a lower recovery. What we tend to do is blend that oxide material with lower grade fresh stockpiles that have been accumulated over many years. We will probably see a drop down in the recovery, not too dramatically, but it will be below where it’s been in the last 12 months or so. If you actually look at the plant at Edikan, it really is quite remarkable. Here we are now, 2025. This thing started in 2011. The runtime and recoveries that we’ve achieved at Edikan over the last 10 years have been spectacularly good. It really is a very good plant, and I wish that we had enough ore to go for another 10 or 15 years, but it doesn’t look like that will be the case.

Okay, thanks Jeff.

So.

Maybe on the exploration spend for next year, obviously big step up this year and you had a lot of drilling to do, especially at Nyanzaga and such like. Do we expect the level to be maintained through this year?

It’ll certainly be maintained. I mean, look, with our approach to exploration, it’s a fully gated exercise. It really depends on the level of success people are having. If we’re being successful, then we will find money to fund it. One thing that we’re going to be doing this year that we haven’t done a lot in the past is to really embrace greenfields exploration. Most of our exploration to date has been relatively close to existing infrastructure and the like for the obvious reason that they’re the cheapest answers that we can get. We also think, looking forward and particularly taking into account the fact that there’s not that many opportunities around for acquisition, we do think that with large amounts of capital available, we really should start a greenfields program and see if we can’t generate some deposits that way.

The fact is that it’s not going to happen in the short term. We need to make a long-term commitment, and that means making a commitment of money and people. That’s something that we as a company are about to do.

Okay, thanks. The last one, Yaouré and Edikan all-in sustaining costs up a couple of hundred bucks per ounce. Was that all just related to compensation payments? Were there other things in there?

Lee-Anne de Bruin, CFO, Perseus Mining: A couple of things in there. Just talking specifically about the assets, I mean, Edikan had about an $80 per ounce increase due to royalties. There is quite a lot of expenditure on tailings expansion in this quarter for Edikan. There was actually a big payment in the quarter for land compensation as well, related to the extension of the mining lease. Yaouré similarly has got, and when I say royalties, I’m talking about everything, so that’s also the community spend. There’s also links to the gold price, was about $70 per ounce at Yaouré. Additionally, there was the big finish up of the TSF expansion for Yaouré in this period. It was those two contributors, really.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Yeah. Three things essentially: royalties and, in the broadest possible sense, price-related costs, if we will, community compensation, and sustaining capital. Yaouré is one of these ones that actually is worth commenting on. I guess when we developed Yaouré originally, if we made a mistake, we probably didn’t plan for the success that we’ve actually had. We have, you know, with the underground coming on and other, you know, shallower deposits, it’s pretty clear that we need more space. We do need more space for tailings and also for waste dumps. We have had to actually go out to the community to pick up some more land. We’ve also needed to.

Lee-Anne de Bruin, CFO, Perseus Mining: You.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: To actually build the structures, et cetera, et cetera, it’s a price that we’re paying for the successful expansion of that operation.

Brilliant. Thank you. I’ll pass it on.

Nathan, Conference Moderator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I’ll hand back to Jeff for closing remarks.

Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO, Perseus Mining: Okay, thank you very much, Nathan. Yes, we’re pretty comfortable with where we’re positioned at the present time and we’re looking forward to the future. I think that investors can have a similar level of optimism, particularly when you look at the quality of the team and the efforts that are being put into delivering outcomes on a consistent basis. Anyway, we’ll look forward to bringing you more news as and when it’s relevant. Thank you very much.

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