Earnings call transcript: Wesdome Gold Mines posts Q2 2025 earnings beat

Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. (WDO) reported a robust performance in Q2 2025, surpassing earnings expectations with an EPS of $0.52 against a forecast of $0.4997, marking a 4.06% surprise. Despite these strong results, the stock experienced a 6.08% decline, closing at $17.94, as investors weighed operational challenges against financial successes. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company maintains an excellent financial health score of 3.88, supported by strong fundamentals and impressive growth metrics.

Key Takeaways

• Wesdome Gold Mines reported record financial performance in Q2 2025.
• EPS surpassed expectations, with a 4.06% positive surprise.
• Stock price fell 6.08% post-earnings, indicating mixed investor sentiment.
• The company revised production guidance for Eagle River and Kiena.
• Operational challenges, such as labor market issues, remain a concern.

Company Performance

Wesdome Gold Mines demonstrated strong financial health in Q2 2025, achieving several records. The company generated $53 million in free cash flow, surpassing the entire 2024 figure, and maintained a strong cash position of $188 million with zero debt. This performance underscores the company’s operational efficiency and strategic acquisitions, such as Angus Gold, which expanded its land holdings significantly. The company’s robust financial position is further evidenced by its exceptional current ratio of 3.8 and high Piotroski Score of 8, as reported by InvestingPro.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $208.55 million, exceeding forecasts by 10.23%.
• Earnings per share: $0.52, up from expectations.
• Gold production: 43,000 ounces, with a cash cost of $929 per ounce.

Earnings vs. Forecast

The company reported an EPS of $0.52, beating the forecast of $0.4997 by 4.06%. Revenue also exceeded expectations, coming in at $208.55 million compared to the forecasted $189.2 million, marking a 10.23% surprise.

Market Reaction

Despite the earnings beat, Wesdome Gold Mines’ stock declined by 6.08%, closing at $17.94. This movement suggests that investors are concerned about operational complexities and market conditions, despite the company’s strong financial performance.

Outlook & Guidance

Wesdome revised its 2025 production guidance, increasing expectations for Eagle River to 115,000 ounces while reducing Kiena’s forecast to 80,000-90,000 ounces. The company is targeting a mill throughput of 1,200 tonnes per day by year-end and plans to update technical reports in June 2026.

Executive Commentary

CEO Antti Bath stated, "We’ve delivered consistent sequential improvements in both operational and financial performance," highlighting the company’s strategic initiatives. COO Guy Baloo emphasized the advancements at Eagle River, noting, "The team at Eagle River has been advancing new mining fronts to strengthen flexibility and drive more predictable performance."

Risks and Challenges

• Labor market constraints continue to pose challenges.
• Operational complexity is increasing with expanded exploration activities.
• Market volatility could impact future gold prices and margins.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts raised concerns about equipment availability at Kiena and labor market constraints. The company addressed these by highlighting improvements in operational flexibility and development of multiple mining levels.

Overall, Wesdome Gold Mines’ Q2 2025 performance reflects strong financial results, tempered by operational challenges that have influenced investor sentiment.

Full transcript - Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. (WDO) Q2 2025:

Conference Operator: Good morning. Welcome to Wisdom Gold Mines conference call to discuss the company’s financial and operating results for the three and six months ended 06/30/2025. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Your host for today is Trish Moran, Wisdom’s Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms.

Moran, please go ahead.

Trish Moran, Vice President of Investor Relations, Wisdom Gold Mines: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, I’d like to point out that during today’s call, we may make forward looking statements as defined under Canadian securities law. I ask that you view our slide presentation for cautionary language regarding forward looking statements and the risk factors pertaining to these statements. Please note that all figures discussed on this call are in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted. Our press release, MD and A and financial statements are available both on SEDAR plus and on our website, westome.com.

With us on today’s call and webcast is Antti Bath, Westome’s President and CEO Guy Baloo, our Chief Operating Officer Jonah Lawrence, our Senior Vice President, Exploration and Raj Gill, our Interim Chief Financial Officer as well as Kevin Lonigan, SVP, Technical Services. Following management’s formal remarks, we will then open the call to questions.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: And now over to Anthea. Thank you, Trish. Good morning, everyone. As we move past the halfway point of 2025, one thing is clear. Westerm has made significant strides over the last two years.

We’ve delivered consistent sequential improvements in both operational and financial performance, culminating in record results across several key metrics for the quarter and the first half of the year. At the consolidated level, West Elm is effectively executing its strategy, shifting from a short term, just in time approach to one that is focused on building long term sustainable value. That said, while our financial performance year to date has been strong, we are updating our guidance to reflect Eagle River’s excellent performance and the challenges at Kiena. At Eagle River, the past twelve months have marked the start of a multiyear turnaround. While there’s still much to do, we’ve seen vast improvements in safety, increases in production and decreasing costs.

As demonstrated again this quarter, Eagle River continues to deliver strong results. This is due to good performance against our plans, compliance to our sequence and improved dilution. Given performance to date, we are raising production guidance, increasing the top end to 115,000 ounces and tightening the grade guidance to between 14 grams and 15 grams per tonne. All in sustaining costs per ounce are expected to improve, benefiting from ongoing cost optimization initiatives. Whilst Eagle River is trending upward, has fallen slightly behind.

Kiena’s challenges in the second quarter were largely a continuation of existing issues. Equipment availability challenges impacting our planned sequence accentuated by our reliance on a single mining horizon. This dependency limits operational flexibility and heightens our risk. When you are mining just three to five stopes per month, under or overperformance in just one stope can have a significant impact. We’ve consistently highlighted the importance of operation of of improving our operational flexibility, which is why since the mid twenty twenty three timeline, nearly every major initiative at Kiena has been aimed at unlocking operational agility.

As a result, Kiena has undertaken a number of significant and important projects, many of which will be completed by the end of this year. These include the tripling of a number of active mining zones, doubling of our development meters year on year, developing an exploration ramp, allows us a second material movement access as well, which completely unlocks our material movement in the mine, freeing up shaft capacity by 50%, rehabilitating our 33 level drift, allowing us access to the upper sections of the mine, adding 10 to 15 neutral platforms underground as well as increasing our ventilation by 100% at Kiena Deeps in 2026. There’s a lot going on at Kiena. The breadth and the pace of these initiatives represents a very deliberate and strategic investment in Kiena’s long term value creation. The team’s ability to simultaneously ramp up, derisk and expand operational flexibility while maintaining active mining and development is a notable achievement.

This mine at a fundamental level is is incredibly strong, and its future is taking shape. However, in hindsight, a higher risk tolerance may have been warranted given the scope and the complexity of the work underway. As we noted in our q ’2 production release in mid July, Kiena has been pacing at or just below the lower end of guidance. While we have our midyear forecast indicating that Kiena can still meet the lower end of its original production range, we believe it’d be prudent to revise guidance to reflect inherent risk in the plan. We’re now targeting 80,000 to 90,000 ounces in 2025 with a corresponding increase in costs.

We have indicated up to 10,000 ounces from per skill. If you take the average of the last five quarters, which is between twenty and twenty one thousand ounces, you can see we can get there. There’s also obviously additional grade and development coming from peanut deets, which adds to this and helps us get to the numbers, which makes it very sensible. Over the past eighteen months, the block model has reconsult extremely well. We remain confident in the Kiena ore body, and the team continues to prove that they can mine this extremely well, which is the most important thing personally for me.

We have we have a multifaceted program in place to deliver on this revised guidance, which includes an integrated action plan, short interval controls to track our performance and to quickly course correct, and we’ve added more resources, which helps us increase our redundancy. As well, the lower grade ore from Perscale is set to be processed in the second half this year. As mentioned, we expect this to produce up to 10,000 ounces from what is the first near surface zone accessed via this new exploration map. Each of these critical steps is aimed at securing the second half of the year and building for the future, enabling a more efficient, predictable execution and building a solid foundation for more consistent performance. On a consolidated basis, with the increase at Eagle River largely offsetting the short Boikina, we expect to remain around the midpoint of our original production guidance for the year, albeit at higher costs.

With respect to investment, the incremental $30,000,000 is mostly due to increasing growth capital at Kiena, which is well spent. The change reflects a redesign of the ventilation infrastructure because we have a larger ore body relative to the ritual design, as well as the capital to accelerate this this development and to extend the footprint of this larger Presquille zone to a deeper level. This will establish an additional mining front, giving us much more flexibility as Perskill gears up for future growth. No changes have been made to our 2026 guidance. The second quarter was a strategically important one for Westone, one that showcased our discipline, our focus and our ability to pursue the right opportunities for long term growth.

In June, we closed the acquisition of Angus Gold, a move that contributed our land position in Eagle River to 400 square kilometers. With the acquisition of Angus, we’ve inherited more than 40,000 meters of drilling, plus a rich data set of geological information. We’ve now consolidated a highly prospective land package around Eagle River, and we’ve added top tier exploration targets that directly support our fold them all strategy. During the quarter, we also amended and upsized our revolving credit facility. Financial housekeeping, as the previous one was maturing, we took advantage of this opportunity and increased the facility to $250,000,000 locked in more favorable terms.

With over $500,000,000 in total liquidity, we strengthened our financial position, giving us a runway to balance strategic growth with returning capital to our shareholders. Let’s look ahead at what’s coming down the pipe that could drive the next phase of value for Westone. Exploration is central to our future, and this year, we’re investing up to $50,000,000 to unlock that potential. We are on track to release an Eagle River update this month and follow-up with additional results from both sites later in the fall. At Eagle River, work on the updated global resource model is advancing well.

Our intensive drilling program is aimed at maximizing our resource QAQC with the goal of delivering a technical report that more accurately reflects the full potential and the intrinsic value of this asset. We’ve set a drilling cutoff date of December 31 this year. Therefore, we’ll update our mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates when we publish the results of our updated technical reports in June next year. At Kiena, the upfront technical report work is centered on cost optimization, near surface opportunities along 33 level and a full review of mine design and mining methods. Different approaches of each mine, but the goal is the same: to show the potential of each asset and to unlock this long term value.

There’s a lot of foundational work ahead of us as we move both technical reports forward. And as always, we’ll keep you informed every step of the way. Now over to Guy.

Guy Baloo, Chief Operating Officer, Wisdom Gold Mines: Thank you, Antia. Good morning, everyone. Let’s move to Slide nine and review operational performance. Eagle River had another strong quarter, producing approximately 26,000 ounces in Q2, a year over year increase of 33%. A grade of 16.9 gram per tonne in Q2 was above the high end of guidance.

This year’s strong grade profile reflects continued high grade contribution from the three hundred and seven twenty Falcon zones and improved grade reconciliation and dilution controls. Importantly, performance year to date reflects disciplined execution, not opportunistic grade chasing. Sequencing remains fully aligned with our 2025 plan, and the ore body is reconciling well. The team at Eagle River has been advancing new mining fronts to strengthen flexibility and drive more predictable performance. With the inclusion of the global model, we expect to increase from three to four zones to between five and seven zones in the next two years.

In the 300 zone, development is now almost a full year ahead of production, reducing risk and supporting stronger execution. We’ve spoken before about the continuous improvement program at Eagle River, and I’m pleased to report that it is starting to deliver measurable results. For both the second quarter and the 2025, cost of sales, cash costs, and all in sustaining cost per ounce of gold sold each declined year over year. We’re targeting up to $4,000,000 in annualized savings in 2025 from several areas, including improved maintenance enabled by our new surface workshop opening in September and more integrated planning across the mine and mill. We’re aligning the best practices and it’s paying off.

This is just the start. We expect to deliver meaningful long term cost reductions as we shift from contractor led to owner operated activities. A near term example is surface ore haulage. With new trucks arriving and our team ramping up this month, we’re transitioning away from contractors. On the ground, we’re doing the same.

Since late twenty twenty four, we’ve been steadily bringing development work in house. This year, over half of the development meters are being completed by Eagle River crews. We’re also making targeted infrastructure investment to boost surface efficiency and strengthen long term reliability, all aligned with the mine’s risk profile. During an eighteen day shutdown in May and June, we completed several major upgrades, including replacing the feed end trunnion gear on the primary ball mill, swapping out the gear set on the secondary ball mill and competing other plant maintenance. These enhancements were done to improve mill availability and throughput and to ensure long term reliability as we work to achieve our fill the mill strategy.

I am pleased to report that the mill was safely restarted on schedule and has been running steadily ever since. In July, we averaged nearly 900 ton per day, a 50% increase over the 2024 average. Mining did not stop while the mill was being upgraded. We focused our efforts on strategically building up the ore stockpile, which allows us to blend materials and maintain a more stable mill feed. Due to the length of the planned shutdown, quality mill throughput declined by 7% year over year, which is why the year to date numbers are directionally more accurate.

Mill performance in the 2025 was up 4%, thanks to the initiative to increase drill and develop inventory that are starting to deliver results. Since mid two thousand twenty four, Eagle River has been undergoing a disciplined transformation, and we’re now seeing those efforts deliver real results. There is so much more work to do. However, the changes to date are laying the groundwork for improved future performance. Building on a strong first half, Eagle River is well positioned to sustain its momentum and continue delivering value in the second half.

Our appreciation goes out to our Northern Ontario team. Their focus, execution and commitment are driving a successful turnaround and positioning Eagle River for continued success. Turning now to Slide 10. With delivery and execution falling below expectation at Kiena, our focus is on clear actionable priorities to drive performance. First, we’re taking definitive actions to secure strong second half production and meet revised guidance.

Second, we’re rapidly advancing several critical initiatives to enhance operational flexibility and unlock future value. I’ll come back to each of these important priorities shortly, but first, let’s take a quick look at q two performance. Kiena delivered approximately 7,200 ounces in the second quarter, bringing year to date production to nearly 34,000 ounces. Q2 was slightly ahead of Q1, but down 31% compared to Q2 last year. Grade averaged 10.7 gram per ton, in line with q one, but was lower than the 13.7 gram per ton we achieved in q two twenty twenty four.

Q2’s dip in production and grade came down to two key issues, ongoing equipment availability challenges that constraint access to several planned high grade stopes, which have been deferred and one high grade stope underperformed due to limited delineation. To compensate for the shortfall, the team mined some lower grade previously caped stopes that were stable to reenter and recover ore. We are pursuing several key initiatives that gives us confidence in our ability to deliver stronger production in the second half of the year. First, we must maintain the mining sequence, which is a function of planning and ensure people and machinery availability. Mining from a single single front has underscored just how crucial it is to maintain the mining sequence and success hinges on resources being reliable and available.

The maintenance challenge experienced this year is multilayered, so let me break down the steps we’ve taken. Since the end of q one, we’ve acted decisively to align our maintenance practices with Kiena’s deep current risk profile. This means bringing more people to critical areas and building redundancy. We’ve optimized shift schedule to ensure full round the clock maintenance coverage. We’re building staffing redundancy to support continuous operation.

We’ve reopened an additional maintenance workshop on the ground and increased bay availability. Several new machines were purchased, which will be redeployed to prescale and other zones once their support is no longer required in Kena B. Rental equipment has also been brought in to strengthen our fleet and reduce the downtime risk. And we’re increasing our spare parts inventory to properly reflect Kena’s risk profile and have secured supplier partnerships to ensure timely access to major long lead components. To top things off, we have implemented a strict set of critical controls to provide better assurance going forward.

Importantly, several of the high grade stocks deferred in Q2 are now scheduled for mining in the second half of the year. The balance will be accessed in 2026 once our initiatives to enhance operational flexibility are fully realized. Although our plan involves some risks, the steps we’ve taken are already showing positive results. Together with safety, strengthening production and meeting guidance is our top priority. Turning now to Slide 11.

As mentioned, one of Kiena’s key priority in the coming months is to enhance operational flexibility, which will lower our risk profile. The current reality at Kiena is that we operate in a single mining horizon, providing little to no flexibility. Operational flexibility is essential to unlocking the full value of Kiena, which is why we’re expanding from one to three active mining horizons. Progress at the second front with Presto Zone is well underway, with ore currently being stockpiled from for processing starting in q three. Presto would be a key contributor to our field and mill strategy, augmenting production from Kiena B.

At the same time, development of the third horizon is advancing steadily. The main ramp has reached level 136 and lateral development is in progress, opening up a new production front with the high grade Kiena Deep Zone. Both new horizons, Preskill and one thirty six, will be ready by year end. We’re also making strong progress on the exploration ramp, which will provide direct access to surface. This project is also on track for completion in 2025.

The ramp development is enabling a major ventilation upgrade at Kennedy, serving as a return airway and leading to a planned 100% increase in ventilation capacity in the 2026. Project scope has also been expanded at the Preskill ore body. We’re now allocating additional capital to position it for long term mining success by optimizing the ventilation system in this area to ensure long term capacity while lowering opening costs and accelerating development and extending the footprint to a deeper level, establishing an additional mining front. Supporting infrastructure for Prescale is now coming online. The surface crusher is now operational and similar works for the first surface ventilation fan are underway.

It goes without saying that the new mining horizon, surface ramp access, and upgraded ventilation system are crucial to Kina’s future success. Once complete, they will transform Kina into a more flexible and resilient operation. The importance of the new ramp was reinforced in July when the longer than planned oil shutdown highlighted the need for alternative access. Once complete, the ramp will provide a second option for transporting people and material, a key element of our broader strategy to strengthen operational redundancy and resilience. As mentioned at the outset, focus for the second half of the year is clear.

It is to strengthen production and meet revised guidance. It is also to complete the initiatives underway to improve operational flexibility. I’m confident that the exceptional team at Kienaq is well positioned to deliver. Leading the effort is Jean Bacie, who joined as general manager in June. Jean brings deep experience and a fresh perspective to the operation.

We welcome him to the new team. And now over to Jono to discuss exploration.

Jonah Lawrence, Senior Vice President, Exploration, Wisdom Gold Mines: Thank you, Keith, and good morning, everyone. Let’s start things off on slide 13, a snapshot of what’s happening at Eagle River, both underground and at surface. Underground at the 6 central zone, drilling is doing exactly what we had hoped, confirming the continuation of down plunge mineralization at consistent thickness and grade and highlighting potential new sub parallel structures. In the 300 fold zone, drilling supports the continuity of higher grades down plunge on a separate sub parallel structure from the 300 zone. Over at 311 Falcon and 720, it’s early days, just a few assays in, but the data so far is suggesting both ore bodies continue down plunge.

The seven twenty also has indication that the mineralization remains open to the west. On surface, q two drilling focused on the upper extension of the Falcon zone, testing the mineralization further up plunge. We intersected grade quartz staining with visible gold in multiple holes, a strong sign and more drilling is scheduled to evaluate continuity. We also tested a parallel trend to the sixth zone from surface, drilling seven holes across 300 meters of strike. We intersected quartz staining with sulfides and we’re now awaiting assays.

Since quarter end, we’ve kicked off new drill programs at Michi with MAGET concept to follow later this quarter. In total, we’ve got 10,000 meters of drilling planned, about 68 holes, focused on testing gaps west of the current drilling at Michi, assessing the down plunge continuity of the Michi deposit below the open pit, and twinning historic intercepts at both Michi and Magnacom. Now a quick update on the Angus property on Slide 14. Our top priority here is to complete the resource work at Dawson, which the Angus team commenced early this year. By mid July, we had drilled about 1,300 meters on the main a and b zones with another 2,000 meters to go, targeting both Dorset A, b, as well as Dorset West.

Our goal is to update the historic Dorset resource and define the continuity of the recent high grade hits at Dorset West. Once the resource drilling program at Dorset is wrapped up, we’ll shift focus to other high priority targets, including the Edin River Slay and the Cameron Lake iron formation. And just a quick note on the global model before we move to Kiena. Four underground rigs are currently tasked with infill drilling global model targets. Between now and November, approximately 40,000 meters will be completed.

Two other rigs are focused on delineation drilling for grade control and continued infill and exploration drilling on the Falcon 311 And 6 central parallel zones. The global model drill program will support category conversion of target material and feed into next year’s updated technical report. There’s a lot to be excited about at Eagle River, and we are targeting a release for the full exploration update in the coming weeks. Now let’s turn to Kiena on Slide 15. The completion of new underground drilling platforms is opening up some exciting opportunities.

In the deep part of the mine, two platforms on Level 134 are now complete, and drilling is underway from the first bay. Three more platforms are on track for completion by year end. These platforms are a game changer. They’re giving us much better angles to test Kiena Deep, the football zone, and the down plunge extension of the b zone. They also significantly reduce drill hole lengths, meaning faster, more cost effective exploration drilling.

As highlighted in our June news release, we remain encouraged by results of Kiena Deep, especially with compelling intercepts from both the football zone and the north lane of Kiena Deep Bay. In the b zone, historically a low grade area, recent drilling has led to a major reinterpretation. What was thought to be a single lens is now stood to be multiple stack lenses all open down plunge. This matters because B Zone sits right next to existing infrastructure. It is now being actively assessed as part of our broader field of mill strategy.

With Kiena mineralization highlighting a broad trend with grade increases at depth, the down plunge continuity of b zone presents an exciting exploration target, which we’ll evaluate in the near future. Moving up to level 33, our new platform is already producing results. As shown on Slide 16, drilling Southeast of the Wish Zone has intersected two high grade areas, one of which lies just Northwest of the historic Shawke Mine. This intercept is especially interesting. The mineralization style resembles and matches the original Shawke ore body, more than six grams per ton, suggesting a possible northwest continuation of the mineralization.

This area is strategically important due to its proximity to existing development at the old Shawke mine. We’re now drilling from further east along Level 33 with holes testing the northwest extension of the Shawky mineralization. Three holes have been completed so far. Early results are promising and further drilling is planned. Looking ahead, we’re excited to complete the extension of the Level 109 exploration drift, which will allow us to resume drilling the down plunge extension of the BC zone.

We’re targeting a restart before the end of the year. Beyond underground, surface exploration at Kiena is also progressing well. We currently have three barge drills active, targeting extensions of the Presque Hill Zone and exploring at Northwest, West Dome, Dubuisson, and the 134 Zone. And finally, we’ve launched our planned high resolution drone magnetic survey across the entire Kena property. This will give us a valuable new layer of geophysical data to help guide future exploration and uncover new targets across the land package.

To wrap up, it’s been a strong and productive first half with momentum continuing to build across the portfolio. We’re also pleased to welcome the Angus exploration team, bringing valuable expertise to the Angus program while contributing to our broader exploration efforts. Company wide, our drilling programs remain tightly focused and efficient, aimed at driving resource growth, enhancing operational flexibility, and delivering long term value. Our exploration teams have worked hard at building a pipeline of drill targets, surface and underground, brownfields, and greenfields. We have fertile real estate with exciting upside potential.

We look forward to sharing continued progress as we advance this work through the second half of the year. Now over to Raj, who’ll take you through this quarter’s financial results.

Raj Gill, Interim Chief Financial Officer, Wisdom Gold Mines: Thanks, Jono, and good morning, everyone. Turning to Slide 18. The second quarter set several new records across revenue, EBITDA, cash margin, net income and free cash flow. Notably, Westum generated $53,000,000 in free cash flow this quarter more than the entire 2024. Per share metrics like adjusted net income of $0.52 and cash flow of $0.67 showed strong sequential improvement over the first quarter as well as Q2 twenty twenty four.

I would note that headline earnings was adjusted to reflect executive departure costs as well as a consideration receivable accrued for royalty buyback. Turning to Slide 19, gold production in the second quarter was approximately 43,000 ounces at cash cost of $929 per ounce and all in sustaining cost of $15.28 dollars per ounce. As an unhedged producer with most of our costs in Canadian dollars, we captured over $17.50 dollars per ounce or 53% basic margin per ounce compared to a realized gold price of $3,279 per ounce. We’re seeing the benefits of having multiple producing assets in the portfolio with Eagle River’s strong performance on grade partially offsetting lower production in Kena due to equipment availability challenges. Looking at the AISC profile for the second half, we’re forecasting Q3 to be similar to Q2, while Q4 is expected to be materially lower.

Even with record margins this quarter, there’s clearly room for improvement. By tightening cost controls, enhancing our planning and tracking processes and upgrading our internal reporting, we can unlock more value in powering real time tactical and strategic decision making. Turning to Slide 20. Our balance sheet continues to strengthen with about $188,000,000 in cash and zero debt. With a stronger second half and fourth quarter plan, we expect our financial position to continue improving at an accelerated clip as we work hard to deliver more consistently reduced costs and capture the operating leverage inherent in the business.

As a reminder, we closed the Angus Gold transaction on June 27, which required a cash outlay of about $30,000,000 As Anthea mentioned, during the quarter, we also amended our revolving credit facility to extend its maturity to 2028, increased capacity of $250,000,000 from Canadian $150,000,000 previously. The debt facility also includes an accordion feature, which now stands at US $50,000,000 With liquidity of more than $05,000,000,000 Westo enters the 2025 in its strongest financial position to date. We’re now at the point where we’re building a disciplined capital allocation framework anchored on maintaining financial flexibility while balancing the execution of our strategic objectives and delivering long term returns for shareholders. Our first priority always remains fully funding high potential exploration and advancing the fill the mill strategies of both Eagle River and Kiena. Organic growth has historically yielded the highest returns for our shareholders.

In parallel, we’ll maintain a rigorous approach to evaluating strategic opportunities that complement our operating strengths and support our vision of building a resilient, growing, value driven gold producer. With that, operator, you can open the line for questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We’ll pause for just a moment as callers join the queue. The first question comes from the line of Andrew Smitichtroop with BMO Capital Markets.

Your line is open.

Andrew Smitichtroop, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Well, thanks for taking my question. There’s quite a bit of detail on the work that you’re doing at Kiena, but maybe I could just ask someone to contrast what we see at Eagle in terms of fairly well impressive preparation and reliability and a year of forward development and all kinds of metrics like that. How long or is it possible to get to that kind of a situation at Quiena? Is that the goal, or am I misunderstanding the vision?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: No. Andrew, that’s a great question, and and and thank you for asking the question. So, yeah, I mean, I think Eagle’s side has been a program that’s been going for the last eighteen to twenty four months to to move towards being much more flexible, and there’s a wonderful strategy to keep growing Eagle and to build it out. And, hopefully, next year, we can show you then the technical reports as well. For Kiena, the first thing was to make sure we build out our operational flexibility in the mine, which will then allow us to unlock it further.

Kiena is a little bit different from Eagle in that you you have a different ground situation where you can’t just open up stopes across this entire operation. You have to build very carefully. So the more mining fronts we open up, the more flexibility we create. The big thing was moving from level one twenty nine down to level one thirty six and then continuing that ramp down to level one forty two, which is what we continue to do, then unlocking opportunities near surface as well. All of these programs are currently currently taking effect.

You see, in terms of not having that flexibility, you see the impact of issues going wrong in the mine. So in this case, we had a situation where our material sorry, our material, our equipment didn’t perform to the utilization that was we wanted it to be. And with that, you then affect your sequence, which means you rely on the single phase, and then you can it just slows things down. However, the one thing I wanna assure you is that we have a very systematic and step by step process to get this to get that unlocked through the flexibility discussion we just mentioned. But, similarly, that when we do things at Kiena right now, we’re doing them really right.

So when we do mine, we’re mining really, really well, which is what I love. The next thing to do now is to make sure we get these levels open, we unlock it, and then the flexibility naturally happens. In the meantime, what we’ve done at Kiena is we’ve opened up redundancy to allow us to actually manage those those little errors a little bit differently. So if they do happen or we have an issue where people aren’t available for a machine at the right time, we’ve got redundancy now built in that we can assure the utilization rates we need to keep our sequence strong. So I I don’t know if that helps at all, Andrew.

Andrew Smitichtroop, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: No. It kinda makes sense. And staying with Kiana Kino, this ten, eleven, twelve days of shaft maintenance unplanned issues, how should that impact Q3 versus, say, Q2? Should like we’re looking for a similar outcome that hopefully some improvements in the balance of the quarter offset those issues? Or is there a risk that Q3 is weaker than q two?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: No. No. No. I think, okay, definitely, we what we had here was a planned maintenance shut that extended, right, by four or five days. I’ve got four days there.

But it does your quarter three your quarter three does see an improvement, definitely. So may Adi, do you wanna comment further?

Guy Baloo, Chief Operating Officer, Wisdom Gold Mines: Yeah. So it was a it was a four days planned shutdown, and the the shutdown has been has been has been extended to to fix to fix some some key components around around the hoist. Now it’s all it’s all it’s all behind us, and we’re moving ahead into the quarter. We’ve seen some some pretty impressive results recently. The team has been working very hard in fixing issues.

And we’ve seen recently 20 grams per ton in the mill. So overexpectation team is doing a very good job over there.

Andrew Smitichtroop, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Last question. And I think you alluded to this earlier in the call, but just to be clear, if you’re going to deliver 40% of your gold in q four Yeah. That would require both tonnes and grades to come up in q four, or is it really mostly tonnes? Or any guidance on the split so that people can have an idea of what to expect?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Okay. So to I’ll just try and say it again. So definitely has a bit of a great impact from Kiena Deep. But if you think about it, it really is for skill coming in in q four as well as Kiena Deep’s almost executing at a similar run rate than it would have done over a period. So it’s it’s very achievable.

We just need to make sure we keep delivering as we are at the moment.

Andrew Smitichtroop, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Last question because I don’t monopolizing the time here. Further explanation of what you’re considering when you say return of capital to shareholders?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Yeah. I mean, we’re busy working with our board on capital allocation framework at the moment, Andrew, and we’ll be sharing in the second half of the year, as we said before. So at this stage, you know, yep, that’s the the key focus within the team. And, obviously, you know, we keep focusing strongly on our organic initiatives and then remain very prudent.

Andrew Smitichtroop, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Well, thank you very much for humoring my many questions, and I’ll pass the microphone to somebody else.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Thanks, Andrew.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from the line of Wayne Long with TD Securities. Maybe

Wayne Long, Analyst, TD Securities: a follow-up question on Kiena. Have you seen any difficulties in terms of the minability of the Kiena Deep? And is that also driving like is that driving some of the changes to the mine design? And then just wondering going forward, what would be the targeted run rate expected from Kena Deep on a tonne per day basis? Would that still be something in the range of six fifty tonnes per day and then maybe adding in three fifty tonnes per per scale to get to a 1,000 tonne per day run rate?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: So minability, and I’ll make a key comment afterwards, the minability is going really well. We can definitely mine, and we mine it really, really well. So that’s really good relative to the parameters. We’d like it to be mined. We’re doing a great job.

It’s something we’re really focused on. Run rate wise, we’re currently targeting, what, 750 tonnes per day from Kiena Deeps at the moment. Roughly. Seven fifty. And then if you add Brescille on top of that, you get another three fifty or so.

You it’s getting a little bit higher than that way. Three fifty, 400 will go up too.

Wayne Long, Analyst, TD Securities: Okay, great. Thanks. And then maybe within the additional growth CapEx budget at Kiena, how much of that is related to accelerated development in the 136 level? And has completion of access to the 136 been slightly delayed?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Sorry, Wayne, you said sorry, if you may repeat your question?

Wayne Long, Analyst, TD Securities: Yes. Just within the additional growth capital now budgeted at Kiena, I was just wondering how much of that is related to accelerated development of Kiena Deep in the 136 level and whether the completion of access to 136 had been slightly delayed?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: No. I mean, the the completion, we weren’t planning on man of mining one thirty six this year at all. So it’s that’s pretty much on track, and it’s per plan. The additional capital there is really actually more in Briskill, on the development side of Briskill, and also unlocking the ventilation circuit even more so. So we’ve done some work on optimizing the ventilation circuit, which requires a bit more development too.

So this is largely around flexibility both at skill level and creating another horizon day as well as enhancing our future flexibility in the mine going forward. So it’s not to do with January. January is going really well. It was never planned to be mined in 2025 at all, and it will be ready to be mined in 2026.

Wayne Long, Analyst, TD Securities: Okay, great. Thanks. And then maybe just last one at Eagle River, obviously, some significant improvements being made operationally. Just wondering if you might be able to provide a bit more detail on some of the improvements being made on the dilution front and then whether that whether you see that as sustainable. And just wondering how much of that improvement is also being driven by the new global model?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Okay. I’m going to let Guy comment on that.

Guy Baloo, Chief Operating Officer, Wisdom Gold Mines: No, thank you. Very good question. The team has worked very hard on improving drilling and blasting techniques. And since the end of the year, we have seen continuous improvement in the dilution, doing an exceptional job controlling better the drilling accuracy and vibrations during blasting, translating into very, very good results, and we see it in the grade as well.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: I think just to add to that, Wayne, we expect that to continue. I mean, I think if you when Keith’s head now, he’s not saying it well enough. He’s got a plan to go beyond that. So that’s been a substantial difference in how they are improving on those parameters there. The global model is is not the reason for that.

The global model has got other benefits, and I think it’s quite exciting to see what’s happening there. So that’s gonna add more to my life and more to filling up our mill. So another good thing that Guy and his team have been working on is in making sure we ramp up and get the mill ready, you know, and the whole operation ready for a ramp up phase. So lots and lots of good work going on at at at Eagle in terms of opening operational flexibility, but also preparing Eagle River for its next phase.

Wayne Long, Analyst, TD Securities: Okay. Perfect. Thanks for taking my questions, and look forward to the improvements in the month ahead.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Thank you. The

Conference Operator: next question comes from the line of Ralph Profiti Your line is open.

Ralph Profiti, Analyst: Thanks operator. Good morning. Antti, I appreciate the added color on Kiena Deep’s, the goal being to double ventilation infrastructure in 2026. Just wondering if you can give us a sort of a CapEx on that work order, understanding that’s part of a broader scope and maybe included as part of the comprehensive technical review.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Okay. So from a CapEx perspective on the ventilation side, if you just maybe just make it clear, we we are you we’re building ventilation. We don’t need ventilation for where we’re mining right now in 01/29. We need ventilation. We wanna grow the mine and create more flexibility.

Right? So if and you wanna create more redundancy, ventilation helps because we are limited in ventilation in terms of what we can what we can add on. So we can’t just easily add more machines into the mine right now if we needed them at this point in time. So so there this was always part of the plan to do this, Ralph. So it’s this is nothing new.

What we’re doing now is we’re just enhancing that because we’re realizing that this mind, you know, isn’t has got more. Right? So we’re seeing more in level 33. We’re seeing more in preskill. We’re seeing more things.

You just heard Jonas speak about the scale of what’s in what’s in what’s in Kiena. So a lot of what Westerm’s team is doing is preparing Kiena for the long term as well. So when we stand back from the operation, we wanna make sure that any decision we make allows us to have success not just for the next three years, but for beyond three years. So some of this investment that you might have seen, which was an increase, I think it was about $44,000,000 or so. I’m not mistaken, Kevin.

I’m just looking at you in terms it’s about 4,000,000 or so. I could have the number not exactly right, but I can get Kevin to get that number to us exactly. But it was a bit more to help enhance that that program. It’s it’s it’s it’s it’s not something that we’ve learned today. It’s something that we build to create more growth and more flexibility in Kiena.

Ralph Profiti, Analyst: Yes. That’s helpful. Thank you. And and just as a second question, I wanna delve a little bit more into the equipment availability constraints. It wasn’t clear whether or not this is related to fixed infrastructure or mobile equipment.

And either or, is this is this more related to design issues, maintenance issues, or operator issues?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Sorry. Just one moment. Sorry. Ralph, I didn’t hear you probably. Can you just say that again?

Ralph Profiti, Analyst: My apologies. Yes. I I wanted to get and expand a little bit more on the equipment availability constraints and whether or not this was mobile equipment or fixed infrastructure and whether or not these are more related to design, maintenance, or operator?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Okay. Great question. The the the mobile, it’s mostly related to fleet at this stage. And the reason why is because our fleet availability needs to be an extremely high level from a utilize well, it needs to be at a level on a utilization level, which is well planned. The problem is it’s a people issue as well as a as a equipment issue.

Right? So it’s it’s it’s both sides. The risk profile of our equipment needs to be fully aligned with the risk profile in the mind. So if you look at things like our spare parts strategy, we probably needed to be a bit stronger on that, Hagie, to make sure we had you know, you can’t wait. Like, you don’t have time to wait when you require a very tight execution program.

So it’s it’s this is not an equipment, you know, specific issue. This is a matter of a planning issue more than anything else. The equipment’s there. We’ve got great equipment. It’s about making sure that the planning procedures and how we assure that our redundancy and our risk profile aligns better to the requirements of the mine.

It’s this is there’s nothing inherent about this, Ralph. This is this is a fantastic mining operation. This is just about getting these things to fit the risk profile appropriately. And that’s why I say we probably should have applied a bit more risk, you know, at the beginning of the plan. What we’ve what we’ve really focused on at Bikina is to make sure we do things systematically extremely well.

So if we do extract, we extract well. We need to make sure that our people strategy fits it really, really well. If you don’t have a person to run a machine, you don’t have a machine that can work. If you’ve a sequence that requires you to have a machine ready and the person isn’t there, you can’t run the machine when you need it. If you’ve got no flexibility, well, then guess what?

You can’t sleep with your sequence. So what I tell the team is, I don’t care. You mine well. You keep mining this mine well because that’s what we care about because you’ll see those stoats will come in. They are beautiful.

This is a beautiful mine. The mine reconciles really well. The things this mine has done, and I really wanna say this to the Keene team, they’ve done a phenomenal job of developing infrastructure to grow this operation with the future. They’re drilling all over the place. They’ve built exploration ramps.

They’ve built I mean, they keep working so well to create a future that you that I’m telling you we’ll be so proud of because you’ll see it come through. There’s such great geological potential in this mine. It’s scary. What we now need to do is just systematically keep delivering, get the risk profile down, which is which is coming down, which is really coming down. You have a second ramp coming in.

It’s unlocking the mine. You got the people strategy well supporting the execution strategy. You got more controls in. I mean, our short term internal controls are now so tight that we’re watching them, I think, shift by shift in in Guy’s desk. So we it’s it it we made yeah.

We shouldn’t have had this issue. We did have it. We we apologize to all of our our market for that, but we’ll we’ll we’ll fix it.

Ralph Profiti, Analyst: Thank you, Anthea. Those are very helpful answers.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from the line of Don DeMarco with National Bank. Your line is open.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: Thank you, operator, and good morning, Kiena and team sorry, Dia and team. My first question is on Kiena. So you’ll be getting into level 136 by the end of the year. Can you give us a sense of the grades and the tonnage that you might expect to mine from this zone and how long you’ll be mining it?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: K. So I can just I’ll just revert to my to Kevin that you have the the actual long section for Keene at the for one thirty six level, what is the grade profile?

Trish Moran, Vice President of Investor Relations, Wisdom Gold Mines0: Yeah. The grade the grade is very much similar to what we’re used in Keene Deep in the

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: One twenty nine.

Trish Moran, Vice President of Investor Relations, Wisdom Gold Mines0: To 14 grams a ton. I mean, in January. Yeah.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: If I’m mistaken, it’s about, again, I’m probably lying to two years of mining.

Trish Moran, Vice President of Investor Relations, Wisdom Gold Mines0: Yeah. So we we we develop one three six horizon, as we say, which is four levels. It’s in the, you know, the 12 to 14 grams a ton. Once that’s developed, it sustains production from those levels up to 2020, I think, 2028. So once we develop these horizons, we have, you know, we’ve got two, two and a half years of mining in those horizons, which is you know, that’s sort of coincides with what Anthony has said about the flexibility.

Once they’re developed, we we tend to have consistent, sustainable mining for a long term in them.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Two years of mining they’ve done.

Trish Moran, Vice President of Investor Relations, Wisdom Gold Mines0: Yeah. Two years.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: Great. And so how many levels will you be mining in Kiena Deep after level after you’re into one thirty six?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Then we keep going to one forty two, and then after one forty two, we get to one forty is it one forty six? I can’t remember the exact

Trish Moran, Vice President of Investor Relations, Wisdom Gold Mines0: Yeah. Currently in the current reserves, you’re talking about five more mining.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: But in terms of current currently mine, we will be mining from multiple levels concurrently?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Over the year, we can get three that we’re gonna mine from.

Wayne Long, Analyst, TD Securities: Three.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: So right now, we

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: have one. Okay.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: End of the year, we have three.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: So I guess this leads into my next question. You know, looking at the the throughput in q two, and it’s 500 something tons per day, and you certainly got a lot of spare capacity at the mill. By way of getting into level 136 plus per scale, where do you think that mill throughput might move up to over the coming quarters or after you get into these zones?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: As I just I mean, if you look at to this year, we should be getting for for the end of this year, second half, you’ll see the increased line purely in in in the one twenty nine level plus per skill heading to the thousand plus level. It’s it goes up to 1,200 tons per day plus more or less to that mill at the moment. When you get to one thirty six, it allows you the next horizon as well. And I think I mentioned earlier that even the hoist capacity has been unblocked with the work that he and his team have done. So we even got more capability to we can hoist right upwards, I think, of 1,800 seventeen, eighteen hundred tons a day.

So we really can we’re unlocking material movement. It’s then gonna come down to how many levels we can get into to create the flexibility correctly. Because you can’t and also the design. So Kevin’s team’s busy working on the design to make sure we create multiple fronts kinda into a level, which the change in design to allows even more flexibility per level. So there’s a lot of work going on to unlock and to, you know, reduce risk in this mine.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: Okay. Great. So and I I think earlier, at some point, you talked about coming out with updated technical reports for both Kiena and Eagle. Is that still on track for some time maybe early next year? Is that so is that the schedule that you had expected?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: We’ll be planning on putting out the press release in June next year, Tom. So we we we Okay. As I mentioned in the last call was we needed to understand the amount of conversion or confirmation training that Jonas team needed to do to get the QAQC correct. And that was we got those plans back, and we need to do about 40,000 meters, I think, of drilling to do that just to confirm. And then, obviously, that gets us to the end of the year, and then we’ll have it ready by June in our in our release.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: Okay. And so and that will include a mine plan then that will give us an idea of the trajectory of these throughputs increasing as you get into the different zones and and optimize things. Is that right?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: That’s correct, Don. And then you can add your own logic into how, you know, as we also do conversion or a depletion side as well. This is what’s in the current available in the current available model. So you can imagine what’s we’ll we’ll talk a bit more about that later, but it’s gonna have a marked impact.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: Okay. And then just finally, just to wrap it all up, just so so we will be expecting kind of a material increase in throughput some at some point into 2026 or or thereafter versus what we saw in q two?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, q two is affected by challenges, not affected by if you know? So your your tonnage was lower because of these challenges we spoke about.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: Okay. Okay. Great. Well, we look forward to that. And well, maybe just one final question.

I see that you’re you’re actively sourcing different open positions and so on. How would you characterize the labor market right now? And is that a potential any potential bottleneck on the horizon?

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Labor is a major challenge, and I think every mining companies probably has the same, but it is a major challenge. It’s something that we we probably spend, Hagie, how much of our time on this every day? It’s a significant amount of our time to make sure we keep assuring that our the people strategy is strong. And yeah. So it’s a it’s a single biggest challenge, I think, today for all of us.

Don DeMarco, Analyst, National Bank: Okay. Okay. Thanks for that, and good luck with the rest of the quarter.

Antti Bath, President and CEO, Wisdom Gold Mines: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. This concludes this morning’s call. If you have any further questions, please contact Trish Moran at trish. Moranwisdom dot com.

Thank you for participating today.

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