Fiserv earnings missed by $0.61, revenue fell short of estimates
Resolute Mining Ltd (RSG), with a market capitalization of $69 billion, reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2025, highlighting robust cash flow and strategic progress on key projects. Despite a decline in stock price by 12.23%, the company demonstrated a solid operational performance with significant year-to-date EBITDA growth and a strong balance sheet. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock is currently trading above its Fair Value, with several key metrics suggesting strong momentum.
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Key Takeaways
- Year-to-date EBITDA increased to $293 million, up from $225 million last year.
- Gold production for Q3 was 59,857 ounces, with a year-to-date total of 211,000 ounces.
- The Siama Sulfide Expansion Project is nearing completion, expected to enhance production capacity in 2026.
- The company maintains a strong cash position with $137 million net cash and liquidity over $244 million.
Company Performance
Resolute Mining’s performance in Q3 2025 showcased its operational strength, driven by increased EBITDA and strategic project advancements. The company’s focus on expanding its gold production capacity through the Siama Sulfide Expansion Project and the Dropa Project underscores its commitment to long-term growth. Despite challenges such as explosive supply disruptions at the Siama site, the company remains on track to meet its production targets.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: $664 million for Q3 2025
- Year-to-date EBITDA: $293 million, up from $225 million last year
- Gold sold: 209,000 ounces at an average price of $3,175/oz
- Net cash position: $137 million
- Year-to-date operating cash flow: $68 million
Outlook & Guidance
Resolute Mining has set ambitious production targets, aiming for 275,000-285,000 ounces in 2025 and around 300,000 ounces in 2026. By 2028, the company plans to exceed 500,000 ounces annually, driven by the completion of the Siama Sulfide Expansion Project and the commencement of the Dropa Project.
Executive Commentary
CEO Chris Eger emphasized the company’s strategic vision, stating, "We are very much on a pathway to deliver targeted annual production of over 500,000 ounces from 2028." CFO Dave Jackson highlighted the company’s financial health, noting, "We generated a solid $68 million in operating cash flow during the quarter."
Risks and Challenges
- Supply chain issues, particularly explosive supply disruptions at the Siama site, could impact production timelines.
- VAT receivables issues in Mali may affect cash flow.
- Higher gold prices, while beneficial for revenue, also increase royalty expenses.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the ongoing explosive supply challenges in Mali and the company’s strategies to address these issues. Discussions also covered VAT receivables and planned plant modifications at the Mako operation to handle different ore types.
Full transcript - Resolute Mining Ltd (RSG) Q3 2025:
Chris Eger, CEO, Resolute Mining: Good morning and welcome to Resolute Mining Q3 Quarterly Highlights. My name is Chris Eger. I am the CEO of Resolute Mining, and I’m joined today by Dave Jackson, our CFO, and Gavin Harris, our Chief Operating Officer. Moving to page three, let’s start with some of the key highlights of the quarter. As you see on the page, we had gold poured of 59,857 ounces, just shy of 60,000, and for the year, that brings us at 211,000 ounces of gold poured. With regards to our group AISC, in Q3, we achieved a $2,205 per ounce cost. It’s worth noting, though, that in Q3, we are paying a much higher royalty expense across the business because of the higher gold price environment. We estimated that the AISC increased by about $125 in Q3 relative to previous quarters as a result of the higher gold price environment.
The business generated a healthy amount of cash in Q3, around $26 million. Therefore, we ended the quarter with a net cash position of $136 million. Overall, the gold price that we achieved in Q3 was $3,400, which also was an increase over Q2, as the Q2 gold price average was $3,261. Very pleased to say that our TRIFR reduced from the previous quarters, and we’re now sitting at 1.95 for Q3. One of the key developments that we had in the quarter was to increase our resource at the Dropa project in Côte d’Ivoire, and now we’re sitting at 4.4 million ounces. As you also see on the bottom right side of the page, we have now narrowed our guidance as we’re approaching the end of the year and have much better visibility of our activities in both our operating sites.
Our original production guidance of 275,000 ounces to 300,000 ounces has now been narrowed at the bottom end of the range to 275,000 ounces to 285,000 ounces, predominantly from a decrease at Siama, which again I’ll explain in the upcoming slides. Also, on the all-in sustaining cost, which was originally guided at $1,650 per ounce to $1,750 per ounce, we have now increased the AISC by $100, really to reflect the higher gold price environment, which is increasing royalty rates, royalty costs, as you say, across the business. This will become clearer as we talk about both Siama and the Mako operations. Moving to slide four, I wanted to recap what we believe is a very exciting and attractive organic profile that we’ve put in place at Resolute Mining. As you can see, in 2025, our updated guidance provides a production profile of 275,000 to 285,000 ounces.
In the next two years, we expect similar type production levels as we will be continuing to process stockpiles at Mako, but with the ramp-up in Siama as a result of the SSEP, we expect to start hitting numbers closer to 300,000 ounces, probably more in 2027 than 2026. Very excitingly, from 2028 and onwards, once we bring Dropa into production, we feel very confidently that the business will start to achieve production levels above 500,000 ounces. Moving beyond 2029, I’m very pleased with the amount of work that we’re doing in exploration, that the business has real potential to dramatically increase its production profile beyond 500,000 ounces. In summary, the business is very much on track for this growth profile, and I’m very pleased with the progress that we’ve made year to date with the substantial transformations that have happened in the business throughout 2025.
Now let’s move into each of our country activities to give a quarterly update on the key progress that’s been made across the group. Starting with Mali, let’s turn to page six. As previously highlighted, Siama unfortunately continued to have operational challenges in Q3, namely due to supply chain disruptions from explosives. Gold poured was just shy of 40,000 at 39,918 ounces, slightly down from Q2, which is around 41,000 ounces. We saw all-in sustaining costs increasing quite a bit to $2,358. One of the key contributing factors to the increase in AISC was that for the quarter, we saw an increase in royalty rates as a result of the high gold price, and that impact of higher royalty rates resulted in a higher AISC of about $160 relative to our original guidance at the beginning of the year. CapEx was as expected for $26 million for the quarter.
Talking about the site, we’ve made some good progress on supply chain disruptions whereby we have now increased suppliers with regards to explosives, but explosives continue to be the Achilles heel of the operation. Today, we’re sitting around 100 tons of explosives, which is only about one month’s worth of stock, not even to be honest. We have activities in place today to try and get an additional 400 tons, which will take us to the end of the year. Unfortunately, the explosives and supply chain situation continues to be very delicate, and we’re managing the best possible by trying to bring in as many new suppliers as possible, as well as to work with the government in the logistics of those explosives.
We’re making good progress on the underground, even with the explosives that we have today, we’re starting to mine continuously 8,000 tons per day relative to what was half of that at the beginning of the year. The activities on site are going well. We’re making some good inroads in reducing costs. We’re right now also in the budget season for 2026, and I’m pleased with how the team is coming together. Unfortunately, like I said before, the explosive situation is really a key contributing factor to the reduced production levels. In Q3, we also made quite a few management changes on site, and today, Gavin, who’s here with me, is effectively acting as a General Manager as we’re completely restructuring the management team at Siama in order to prepare for a much more profitable 2026 and beyond.
The oxide production is also reduced in Q3 because we’re very much at the end of the life of the oxide production, and we experienced expected lower grades as a result of diminishing oxides. Unfortunately, as a result of the challenging year that we’ve had at Siama, we have decided to reduce the full-year production guidance to 177,000 ounces to 183,000 ounces. I could say probably the mass majority of the reduction in ounces is a result of the lack of explosives, which, as I said before, has been a real frustration for us. Therefore, with the lower production and the higher gold price, we’ve needed to increase the all-in sustaining costs by roughly $200 to reflect the changes in the business environment.
What I wanted to highlight is of that $200 increase, probably two-thirds of it relates to the higher gold price environment that we sit in today relative to the beginning of the year. All in all, at Siama, it’s been a very challenging year, but I am quite confident that as we look to 2026 and beyond, we are putting in the right people and the right infrastructure in place to start to achieve our historical targets. On to page seven. One of the key projects that I believe may have been gotten lost in the investment thesis of Resolute Mining Limited has been the Siama Sulfide Conversion Project, or as we call it, the SSEP. To recap, this is a very exciting project that was commenced back in 2023, and what we’re doing here is converting our oxide line to process sulfides.
It’s roughly a $100 million project that is now in the final stretches of completion. This project has run extremely smoothly. It’s been on budget, on track, and I’m very pleased to say that after close to 1 million man-hours spent, we’ve had no LTIs. As explained, the project is well on track. This year, we’ve spent just over $20 million of the planned guidance of $30 million. In Q3, we added two additional CCIL tanks that you can see in the top left part of the picture, as well as commissioned the pebble crusher. Both of those achievements will add a bit more flexibility to the business, with increasing a bit more recovery as we are starting to have increased residence times in the CCIL tanks.
However, the main benefit will come next year once the secondary crusher and the ball mills are commissioned, as well as the roaster upgrades. Moving into 2026, the site will be fully operational to process 100% sulfide ore, which will dramatically increase the flexibility of the operations and expect to increase the production back over 210,000 ounces for the foreseeable future. This has been a great project that we’ve completed or near completion, and it shows the capabilities of our business in building projects on time and on budget, which I think speaks to the team as we’re starting to enter operations and constructions at Dropa next year. On to the next slide, slide eight. I wanted to highlight a few other activities that have been important in Mali.
As some of you may know, back in October, early October, I visited Mali and had a chance to meet with senior government officials. Most namely, on October 10th, I was able to meet with both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Mines in Bamako. This was my first trip to Mali as CEO of Resolute Mining Limited, and I have to say it was a very productive trip. The discussions with both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Mines focused on historical challenges of the business, activities that we’re facing today, but most importantly, trying to create a platform for constructive growth. We had a very open discussion around what’s happened in the past, what are the challenges that face the industry today, and how to try and work together for the future.
It was an initial conversation that would lead to many more discussions, but I have to say, pleasingly, it was a step in the right direction. Other activities at Siama have been focused on exploration, although in 2025, exploration has been less of a priority at Siama relative to other areas in the business. We have targeted a few potential oxide ore bodies, but I have to say they have not come back with meaningful results. Moving into 2026, though, we will look to increase our exploration activities at Siama, but most likely with a focus of really developing additional sulfide ore in order to fill the plant, considering the flexibility that’s been implemented in 2025. In summary, before I move to talk about our operations and activities in Senegal, activities in Mali this year have been very complicated. We’ve had a lot of changes.
We’ve made a lot of significant management changes, but I’m confident that now we are putting in the right pieces, the right people, the right infrastructure in order to have a much more successful year in Mali in 2026 and beyond. What will be key to the success of Siama will not only be our people and our operations delivering their targets, but maintaining a constructive and productive dialogue with the government, which I’m confident will result in a win-win solution for Resolute Mining Limited, our employees, the community, as well as our stakeholders. Now let’s move to our activities in Senegal, starting first with our Mako operation on slide 10. I’m very pleased to say that in Q3, the site produced just shy of 20,000 ounces at 19,939 ounces, and year to date, we’ve achieved 82,000 ounces of gold poured.
As a result of the very strong first three quarters of the business and what we expect for the remaining quarter for 2025, we believe that full-year production will fall somewhere between 98,000 to 102,000 ounces at this stage. Therefore, we’ve increased guidance to these levels. As we look at AISC, with the higher production from the site, but a slightly higher AISC as regards to the higher royalty, we believe that AISC will remain unchanged from a guidance perspective between $1,300 and $1,400 per ounce. Although I will probably say that we’ll end up being at the lower end of that guidance. All in all, the activities at Mako have had a very robust year. The site’s been performing extremely well, and I’m very pleased with the activities at Mako.
However, there’s a lot of other activities in Senegal that are worth noting, specifically as it relates to our mine life extension projects. Looking on page 11, as you can see, we have two key projects that we are in the process of developing in order to add additional ore and mine life to the Mako operation. As discussed in the past, the two projects are Tambor & Croto and Bentako. Today, both deposits have over 600,000 ounces of known gold that we believe will add at least 5 to 10 years of additional mine life to the Mako operation. There is a lot of work that needs to happen in order to develop these two satellite deposits, which I’ll go through in detail in the next couple of slides.
Starting with Tambor on page 12, in Q3, we had a very key milestone with regards to the fact that the ESIA for the Tambor development was lodged with the government, and we’re in active dialogue in discussing that ESIA with the government to get hopefully their approval by the end of this year or in Q1. Having the approval of the ESIA is a key milestone in order for Resolute to file for its mining exploitation permit planned for some time early next year. The other key activities at Tambor were ongoing community engagement to educate the folks that are involved around the benefits of developing Tambor. As people remember, we have to move a village. Finally, the other key activities at Tambor were in regards to completing the technical reports, namely the DFS required in order to file for that mining application in the beginning of next year.
In summary, I’m very pleased with the activities at Tambor in Q3. I congratulate the team in the filing of the ESIA and look forward to getting the government’s comments so that we can maintain our timeline, which you can see in the bottom left of the page. There is still quite a lot of work that needs to be done. The permitting and licensing will probably be the biggest risk to the overall timeline. Once we have the exploitation permits in hand, we can start to really develop the project by moving the village in order to get into mining the ore body sometime in 2028. Moving to slide 13, the other key activity in Senegal has been our progress on Bentako. If you remember back in July, during my Q2 announcement, we provided an initial MRE at Bentako.
In Q3 of this year, the key focus for us has been to continue to drill at Bentako with regards to doing infield drilling at Bentako South, also at Bentako West, as well as some additional drilling to expand the resource. Really, the focus has been infield drilling. As we look into Q4 and early next year, we’ll be looking to expand the Bentako resource. That infield drilling was needed so that we can complete the technical studies required, as well as the ESIA for Bentako, and get that lodged with the government so that we can be in a position to file for an exploitation permit in Q2 of 2026. There are two pictures on this slide. On the far right, the picture on the top is Bentako South, and you can see some of the promising drill results that we’ve had in Q3 as regards to infield.
We believe the deposit continues to extend at strike and also down dips, and we will continue to explore across this area, like I said, the latter part of this year and next year in order to make the deposit at Bentako South bigger. The other picture that you see on the bottom right of the page shows Bentako West. This is an interesting picture because you can see the Bentako West potential ore bodies, and you can also see the Tambor ore body in yellow. The magenta line to the left of the Bentako West ore bodies represents the planned road diversion that we’ll have to undertake in order to develop these satellite deposits.
Again, congratulations to the team for the significant amount of work that they’ve done in Q3 in order to progress both Bentako and Tambor, as these are key projects with regards to the extension of the mining activities at Mako. I’m very pleased to say that all the activities are on track, on budget, and the team is doing a fantastic job. Now moving to Côte d’Ivoire, I’m very pleased to say that the Dropa project remains very much on track and on budget at this stage. A key development in Q3 was the fact that we updated the mineral resource estimate to 4.4 million ounces based off of a more realistic gold price, and this was published in September.
The increase in gold price has created a lot more optionality and flexibility for the development of Dropa, and we’re in the process today of very much updating the definitive feasibility study with regards to creating this additional optionality and flexibility. Key activities in Q3 across Dropa were the increase in the mineral resource estimate, continued work on the updated definitive feasibility study, community activities, as well as permitting. Specifically, as regards to key activities in updating the definitive feasibility study, the main focus has been to think about increasing the capacity as regards to the fact that we know there’s going to be a lot more gold than was originally anticipated. We’re also evaluating different power options, and most importantly, we’re updating all the cost figures for more realistic assumptions based off today’s environment.
Today, we very much see that we are on track to provide an updated DFS at the end of November, early December, which will crystallize the value of the Dropa project. The other key activity in 2025 is around permitting. As flagged in the past, we are in the final stages of getting our exploitation permit granted. What we knew would be a bit of a complication around the permitting process was the fact that there were elections in Côte d’Ivoire on Saturday, which thankfully, from what we hear, have gone very peacefully. Unfortunately, because of the elections and the politicking that occurred before the elections, the Minister of Mines’ office has been preoccupied with the elections at this stage. However, we believe that discussions will resume, and we should be able to get our permits granted by the end of this year, worst case, very beginning of next year.
None of that changes the overall timeline because it’s still envisioned that we will proceed with final investment decision post-updated DFS and permits either at the end of this year or early next year, and then start early works, complete financing, all with an anticipation of being in production in 2028. Overall, very pleased with how the project is developing. There’s been an awful lot of work. There continues to be an awful lot of work in getting all the steps completed, but at this stage, we’re very much on track. Moving to page 16, I wanted to talk to you about some of the other key exciting activities in Côte d’Ivoire, namely on exploration. First, let’s start with the ABC project. ABC today has over 2.2 million ounces at 0.9 grams per ton.
As you can see in the picture on the right, those ounces are dedicated to the Kona permit, which is in the middle of the three red boxes. In Q3, we did quite a bit of additional work on all the different permits in order to identify where we would like to drill next. Very pleasingly, we are going to start drilling in the permits in the north, the Ferreco and the Fauna permits, with a planned 10,000 meters of RC drilling to commence in November. That will continue into early next year. We’re very excited about that area because, as you can see, it’s just southeast of the Wally Newmont Joint Venture license, which has had some very high-grade intercepts in the past quarters. However, we’re not going to stop doing work at the Kona and Windu permits. We’ve done quite a bit of surface geochemistry and mapping.
As we’ve seen, we believe there’s additional resources in order to expand and grow that deposit. We are targeting at least 15,000 meters of RC drilling in order to develop that deposit. In combination between the three areas, we’re very excited about what we see at ABC and it has the potential to become the fourth mine for Resolute at some point in the future. Finally, before I turn the page, it’s worth noting that we’re still active in looking for new permits in Côte d’Ivoire as we find it to be a very interesting area for development. As you can see on the bottom right side of the page, we were granted a permit called Benzano, which was actually granted in June of this year, and we still have permit applications for two others that we expect to receive in 2026.
Moving to our final exploration projects in Côte d’Ivoire, on page 17, I want to give you an update of the Ledabo project. Today, Ledabo has over 400,000 ounces at 1.3 grams per ton, but that resource is dedicated to the northeast of the deposit, which you can see in the bottom left picture between the G3N and G3S areas. In Q3, we finished our exploration activities at Ledabo, and today we’re in the process of updating our mineral resource estimate, which we believe will be a substantial increase in what was previously published, and we’re on track to update that mineral resource estimate by the end of this year. Moving forward, we will look to expand our drilling activities, focusing on the middle to the southwest parts of the deposit. Again, very pleased with the progress at Ledabo.
We believe that this project also has very exciting potential, but at this stage, it’s a bit too small for us to say it will become a mine, but it has the potential to do so. With that, let me turn it over to Dave Jackson to discuss the financials of our Q3 results. Thanks, Chris. Today, we’ll walk you through this quarter’s headline financial results, highlighting the key performance metrics. Overall, our Q3 metrics were in line with our expectations as we continue to strengthen our balance sheet and build cash in the business. Looking at the financial highlights, our year-to-date EBITDA was an impressive $293 million versus $225 million in the same period last year. This performance was underpinned by a revenue of $664 million. This was generated from the sale of 209,000 ounces of gold at an average realized price of $3,175 per ounce.
As previously noted, Resolute remains fully unhedged and continues to sell all of its gold at spot prices. At quarter end, net cash stood at $137 million, marking more than a $20 million increase from Q2. Included in the net cash figure is $58 million of bullion, representing nearly 15,000 ounces of gold that we have sold after the quarter closed. We had $32 million drawn on overdraft facilities at quarter end. These continue to be used locally to optimize the working capital. The group has in-country overdraft facilities of approximately $100 million available as we continue to maintain financial flexibility for the group. The group all-in sustaining cost for Q3 was $2,205 per ounce sold, which represents a $500 per ounce increase from Q2.
This increase was primarily driven by the expected reduction in gold production at Mako, the impact of supply chain disruptions which impacted gold production at Siama, and the increased royalty expenses at both sites due to the rising gold prices. This has added approximately $125 per ounce in Q3 at the group level. At Siama, all-in sustaining cost was higher than Q2 due to lower production volumes as we continue to experience supply chain disruptions. As Chris already mentioned, while we are cautiously optimistic that we’re addressing these issues, the situation in Mali continues to be unpredictable. Despite these challenges, we are focused on maintaining strict cost control across the group. Let me now walk you through the key components of our financial results that led to the cash and bullion position of $168 million at the end of Q3.
We generated a solid $68 million in operating cash flow during the quarter. CapEx totaled $89 million year to date. This includes $20 million allocated to exploration, $28 million in sustaining capital across Siama and Mako, and $41 million in non-sustaining capital at Siama, of which $20.7 million was spent on the SSEP. Overall, CapEx and exploration spend was in line with expectations, and we remain on track to deliver our 2025 guidance range of $109 to $126 million. As previously noted, we made the initial $25 million payment for the acquisition of the Dropa and ABC projects during Q2. These projects represent exciting growth opportunities for the company and are expected to deliver meaningful long-term value for our stakeholders. VAT outflows at the end of Q3 totaled $20 million across Mali and Senegal.
VAT remains a source of cash leakage for us, but we continue to engage actively with local governments to recover these amounts. Our recent discussions have been positive, and we remain encouraged by the progress being made. We recorded a $5 million working capital inflow for the year to date, primarily driven by a reduction in stockpile balances. Also, we have made solid progress in lowering consumable inventory levels as a part of our ongoing efforts to optimize working capital. Our ending cash and bullion of $168 million marks a $67 million increase from the beginning of the year. This leaves us with ample available liquidity of over $244 million at the end of September. As noted on the 15th of October, Longhorn Gold entered into a sale agreement whereby, subject to certain conditions, Changtong Mining will acquire all the outstanding common shares of Longhorn in an all-cash transaction.
Resolute holds just over 31 million common shares of Longhorn that are valued at around $31 million USD at the current exchange rate. The transaction is expected to close no later than Q1 2026, and Resolute expects no tax impact on its proceeds once received. In summary, we’re in a very solid financial position and are excited about the growth potential of the business. With that, I’ll hand it back to Chris. Thank you, Dave. In summary, I’m very pleased with how the business performed year to date, although we’ve had a very difficult time in Mali with the explosive situation. We’re still very much on track for full-year group production guidance, albeit at the lower end of the range of 275,000 to 285,000 ounces. The business is performing well.
We’re producing cash, as you can see through our net cash generation of $26 million in Q3, and therefore ending the quarter with a net cash position of $136 million. We continue to make good progress across the group, namely in Côte d’Ivoire with our development of the Dropa project. We’re very much advancing all our strategic initiatives across each of the countries that we operate, and we’re very much on a pathway to deliver targeted annual production of over 500,000 ounces from 2028. With that, I’ll hand it over for questions. Thank you very much.
Conference Operator: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We’ll take our first questions from Eric Spencer from Kennecott. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Chris. I believe it’s evening to me. Thanks for the presentation and congrats on a good quarter. My only question relates around what I’m sure is a frustrating issue on explosives in Mali. Can you tell me what you think the circuit breaker for this situation might be? Are we at a stage where we should be concerned about maintaining current levels of production, or is there any risk to near-term or medium-term production outlook due to the ongoing issues?
Dave Jackson, CFO, Resolute Mining: Evening, Rich. Thanks for joining the call. With regards to explosives, it hasn’t been easy because I think I’ve highlighted before, at the very beginning of the year, we lost our historical explosive supplier. We moved to a new supplier that has not been performing well throughout the year. Now we’ve added a second supplier into the mix, which will help. What complicates matters is the fact that there have also been fuel shortages in country, which you may have heard about from some of our other colleagues. That hasn’t impacted ourselves with regards to our fuel activities, but it has impacted the generation of explosives. That’s been a major concern as well because the supply of explosives is obviously low in Mali. The last component, which I’ve also highlighted in the past, has been the complicated government regulations required to import and move explosives around.
We are making no progress educating the government on this fact, and we’ve also highlighted to them that we’re down a meaningful amount of gold production this year because of their frustrations, and we’ve seen them react quicker to this. The way we think about it today is that with additional suppliers, with additional education from us to the government, we do think we’re in a better spot. We have more stock than we’ve had historically throughout the year. Like I said, we’re probably building enough stock to get us to the end of the year, but it is unfortunately going to be an ongoing bit of a struggle to have, you know, call it ample stock for 2026. It’s a risk, but I do think we’re heading in the right direction.
Okay. Yeah, thanks, Chris. I appreciate you trying to really give much more color around the situation. I know some of the other operations in Mali may not be actually operating, but this sounds like a countrywide thing and certainly not specific to you guys, right?
From what we see, yes. I mean, look, we are trying to buy explosives from the other operators in country, and we’re having a bit of progress. In some cases, we’re not having any progress, which just demonstrates that there’s not a whole lot of ample supply of explosives in Mali these days.
Right. Thanks very much. Appreciate it again. Congrats on the quarter. I’ll pass it on.
Thanks, Rich.
Conference Operator: Thank you. We are now taking our next questions from Will Dahlby from Berenberg. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, Chris. Morning, Dave. Thanks a lot for the call. Just a couple for me. I think, you know, in light of this explosive situation and obviously the higher royalty expenses, I’m just wondering if you feel there’s much scope to improve your group AISC next year versus this year. That’s the first one.
Dave Jackson, CFO, Resolute Mining: Morning, Will. In short, yes, because we think next year the production volumes at Siama will go up as we have effectively commissioned and will be commissioning the SSEP. We’re obviously in the budget process now, but we expect to be back up to about 200,000 ounces. That’ll help on one aspect. The gold price is the other key component. Today we’re sitting at $4,000, just shy of $4,100, and obviously that has a meaningful impact in royalty expenses, which will impact the site. On an apples-to-apples basis, we do expect AISC to decrease next year because of the higher production. I just don’t have an exact figure in my head because of the high royalty expenses today.
Okay. Got it. No, that is helpful. The second, sort of just around the VAT receivables piece in both Mali and Senegal, that’s sort of been an ongoing challenge there. I wonder if you can flesh out and give a bit more color on that situation. Are you seeing any kind of progress there, and how is that kind of unfolding?
Yeah, thanks, Will. It’s Dave here. The situations are very different in both countries. As we mentioned in the quarterly release, we are getting VAT back in Senegal, which we use to offset various government payments. The situation is quite positive in Senegal, but in Mali, it still remains to be a point of cash leakage for us. We’re engaging with the government, discussing a potential path forward, but as we stand right now, we continue to be not getting any of the VAT back. There is quite a bit of cash leakage, as I said, in Mali. Until that’s resolved, it’ll be a bit of an issue for us.
Will, it’s worth noting that when I met with the government officials, namely the Prime Minister and the Minister of Mines, we obviously put this as one of the key topics and said, "Look, not getting our VAT refunds is impacting the future growth of the business," and they understood it. I think they’re hearing the message from quite a few folks, but unfortunately, because of their economic situation, it continues to be very difficult to get them. I’m not optimistic that we’ll get any more the rest of this year.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Maybe just a quick last one. I just sort of note in the preso on these very helpful development timelines you have, you have plant modifications at Mako for Tambor & Croto. I just wondered if you could give a bit more detail around what’s required there. I see it’s in the timeline for Tambor, but not Bentako. Is that sort of specific modifications for that deposit? I guess just how’s that working?
Yeah. Look, the ore at Mako, the original ore, was quite hard rock. As we look to mine ore from both Bentako and Tambor, it’s a lot softer, and it’s going to require additional capacity. The other key area of improvement in the plant is to increase overall throughput. Today, Mako has a throughput capacity of about 2.3 million tons per annum, and we’re looking to increase it to 2.9 million tons per annum because we’ve been historically processing ore at, call it, 2.2 grams per ton, and both Tambor and Mako, sorry, Bentako and Mako are going to be closer to 1.1, 1.2. In order to try and maintain appropriate production levels, we want to increase the capacity. That’s the main reason for the plant modifications.
Okay, helpful. Thanks a lot, Chris. Cheers, Dave. Thanks.
Thanks, Will.
Conference Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one now. It appears we have no further questions. I’d now like to turn the conference back to Chris Eger for any additional or closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.
Dave Jackson, CFO, Resolute Mining: Thank you very much for joining the call. Like I said, it’s been a challenging quarter, but in summary, we believe we’re on track to deliver a very robust set of performance for 2025 and the platform for a very robust 2026. Thanks again. Have a good day. Cheers. Bye.
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