AngloGold Ashanti Limited Sponsored ADR Stock

Good afternoon. Welcome to the AngloGold Ashanti Q2 2026 Earnings Release. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded.

I will now hand you over to Mr. Stewart Bailey. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much, Judith. Good afternoon, good morning to everyone, depending on where you are, and welcome to our results for the second quarter and the first half of 2026. Alberto and Gillian will be presenting, but we have members of the executive team for any questions you might have.

As always, we have a safe harbor statement at the front of the presentation, which has important information regarding forward-looking statements, and we would encourage you to read that. I'll hand over to Alberto.

Thank you, Stewart. I will start with safety. You will remember from our Q1 presentation that we had a tragic fatality at Obuasi on April 24. We suspended operations for 2 weeks to undertake a thorough investigation into the incident, and we are taking the necessary and important steps to prevent a reoccurrence. This kind of event validates the effort and resources that we spend every day to improve our safety performance. We do remain proud of the enormous strides we have made over the past 5 years, as you can see.

Before we go into the quarter, let's take a step back and look at the first half, which -- really how are we doing after half a year. Production after stripping out the sale of Serra Grande was more or less stable year-on-year at around 1.5 million ounces. We had an exemplary cost performance again, managing controllable costs slightly lower in real terms. That is, if you strip away inflation, oil price, royalties, exchange rate, which is what we can control, we once more are below that level of controllables.

Once again, you see strong growth in EBITDA and earnings. Comparisons are not usually nice, but probably we had the best EBITDA growth year-on-year of all of the large gold companies, comfortably outstripping the rise in the gold price along with a more than doubling in cash flows. We made sure that shareholders both see the full benefit and see it right away with just under $1 billion in dividends declared over 6 months. It's been an extraordinary period by any measure.

As we look to Q2, there was a production impact from both Serra Grande sale and the temporary safety suspension at Obuasi. On the positive side of the ledger, we had standout performances at Tropicana and Cuiaba. Total cash cost to the group were $1,480 per ounce. Once again, as with the half year, the macro context is critical. As I mentioned before, royalties, fuel, broad inflation, FX basically accounted for all of the increase.

While this impact is driving cost inflation across the industry, our underlying operational discipline is firmly intact. And that discipline is why our financial metrics are so strong. We've ensured that earnings and cash flow grow well ahead of the gold price. EBITDA was up 46% to $2 billion. Headline earnings were 58% better at $1 billion.

You can see our cash flows remain robust. Cash generated from operations grew 49% to $1.8 billion. As we expected, cash taxes more than doubled year-over-year to $542 million. This reflects not only our improved profitability, but also the timing of payments across our operating jurisdictions. Importantly, it is a seasonal peak. As we start reading the analyst reports, I think that that's probably something that needs to be adjusted because, for example, we do expect cash taxes to fall to less than half of that $542 million to about $230 million to $250 million in each of Q3 and Q4. So that points to an even stronger cash conversion over the remainder of the year.

We continue to transform the balance sheet. Liquidity is ample at $4.2 billion, underpinned by a net cash position of nearly $1 billion. To put that in perspective, we had a net debt position of $311 million just 12 months ago. This allows us to comfortably invest in our growth pipeline while ensuring our shareholders benefit from strong cash returns.

This is an interesting graph, and we could make this one since 2021, but right now, you're seeing it since H1 of 2024. As we look at the broader industry landscape, it's clear that external market-driven factors have fundamentally reshaped cost profiles across the industry. Every operator is navigating the same intense macroeconomic pressures, persistent inflation, fuel spikes and the impact of higher gold price-linked royalties.

Our approach is not to passively accept them. We are relentlessly focused on executing what we can control. This chart provides important historical context of our cost performance. The gray bars represent our normalized cost. That is what our total cash cost would be if we simply accepted market inflation and royalty hikes and nothing else changed. However, through active mitigation strategies implemented across our portfolio, we have managed to partially offset these macro factors. This is reflected in the orange parts, which represents the total cash cost we actually reported, proving our ability to consistently outperform these macro-inflated baselines.

Through rigorous operational discipline and our Full Asset Potential program, we have successfully compensated not only for the increase due to these external factors, but also for normal changes in grade and mining further from infrastructure that is inevitable. Ultimately, by decoupling our controllable operating costs from these escalating market headwinds, we ensure that the full benefit of record gold prices flows directly to the bottom line, maximizing free cash flow and driving our sector-leading yields.

Our Tier 1 assets are the core growth and cash engine of the group, accounting for over 70% of total production at an exceptional 71% cash margin. These assets hold approximately 80% of our mineral reserves, underscoring the structural long-term quality of our global portfolio.

Our Tier 2 assets continue to serve as reliable cash generators, delivering a solid 58% margin with ongoing focus on operational discipline and cost competitiveness. This combined asset structure provides superior cash flow leverage to the higher gold price environment while maintaining the quality foundation needed to keep us firmly on track for full year guidance.

The high-quality portfolio we just walked through is not static. We are fortunate to have an emerging slate of low-risk, capital-efficient and potentially very high-return brownfield and greenfield opportunities. These projects underscore what I've said repeatedly, while we always scan the landscape for value-adding M&A, the best opportunities for us lie within our portfolio. Nevada is anticipated to become a significant production center for the company in the early 2030s. We're advancing to full feasibility study at Arthur. But even at our existing operation, we have options with the potential to add between [ 10% to 15% ] to our current production profile in the next 3 years, all from our existing operations.

There are various opportunities identified through leveraging our established strategic asset review and option analysis processes. Key operational focus areas include additional ore sources and processing plant expansions aimed at sustainably improvement on current production bottlenecks at Cuiaba, Geita, Siguiri, Obuasi and Sukari. We are currently advancing high-value exploration opportunities, priority studies and project implementations all along the pipeline with a new more agile fast-track project framework. I will give a detailed update of these growth projects in Q3.

This is what disciplined capital allocation looks like, taking part of our record free cash flow and reinvesting in its low-risk, high-return opportunities that will optimize the value we can deliver from our world-class ore bodies. We are prefunding the health and expansion of these assets today, ensuring they remain highly profitable cash generators well into the next decade.

On dividends, it is worth having a quick reminder of our dividend policy. It provides for a quarterly payout of $0.125 a share. It also provides for an annual true-up payment, bringing the payout to 50% of free cash flow. We again use discretion to make that true-up at the half year, underlining not only the extraordinary cash flow generation, but also our confidence in the outlook of the business. That takes our dividend declaration for the half year to $949 million with $364 million declared in Q2. This remains one of the most generous yields in the sector. And as normal, we expect a strong second half.

When you look at our overall capital allocation framework, you can see it working precisely as intended. Our portfolio is well capitalized and is performing consistently to plan. Our balance sheet is the strongest it's ever been. We're delivering sector-leading returns with one of the industry's most attractive yields.

We've shown an investor-forward approach with more frequent dividend payments. In April, we executed a buyback of our outstanding bonds, retiring $666 million of our '28 and '30 notes. That's another reduction in our longer-term financing risk and a clear improvement in our strategic flexibility. That positions us well to deploy excess liquidity into a $2 billion open market share buyback program. Shareholders approved the program last week, and we're now waiting approval from the South African Reserve Bank.

Again, if you step back, this is a business with a predictable operating base and unrivaled project pipeline and a balance sheet that will stand us in good stead in whatever market we encounter. With that, I hand over to Gillian.

Thank you, Alberto. We generated free cash flow of $727 million in Q2, a 36% increase over the $535 million reported in Q2 of last year. This was underpinned by a 41% year-on-year increase in net cash flow from operating activities to $1.4 billion, driven by disciplined cost execution and a 35% higher average gold price received.

The upward pressure on cost for our industry were particularly acute this quarter. U.S. CPI escalated to 3.5% in June of 2026 from 2.7% 12 months earlier. The primary driver was the 45% increase in Brent crude prices, which led to a spike in our energy inputs. Australia was the clearest example with inflation more than doubling to 4%, putting pressure on local labor and consumables.

U.S. dollar weakness was matched by appreciation of our local currencies, creating strong cost headwinds. This currency-driven inflation is receiving aggressive focus on internal cost containment measures. Our internal realized inflation rate, which represents CPI changes in the jurisdictions that we operate, is currently just under 6%. We're working to offset those cost pressures with our Full Asset Potential program and by adopting a total cost of ownership supply chain framework, ensuring disciplined capital allocation by optimizing long-term asset performance.

In our financials, the results show a significant rise in earnings and free cash flow. The increase in free cash flow was underpinned by higher realized price and improved cash receipts from Kibali. EBITDA rose 46% to $2 billion. Basic earnings per share rose 49% year-on-year to $1.97, up from $1.32 in Q2 of last year. As a result of the strong performance, we ended the quarter with net cash of $991 million, a $1.3 billion swing from June in the prior year.

Total cash costs increased by 21% year-on-year to $1,480 per ounce compared to $1,226 per ounce in Q2 of 2025. We've been very clear on those exogenous factors driving the increase. Inflation, higher gold price-linked royalties and exchange rates collectively added around $216 per ounce or 18% to the cost base. The higher gold price meant higher revenue-linked royalty costs, while the 45% increase in oil price drove up our fuel costs across the portfolio. The suspension at Obuasi accounted for another $38 an ounce.

In our managed operations, we saw the benefit of our Full Asset Potential programs, specifically our plant feed expansion program at Cuiaba. Total cash costs for our managed operations increased by 20% to $1,486 an ounce. Through Full Asset Potential and other operational improvement initiatives, we continue to look for opportunities to improve efficiencies and protect our margins.

On free cash flow, the higher price added $733 million, offset by lower sales volumes, which reduced it by $151 million. Increases in operating costs were largely driven by higher royalties, inflationary pressure and the weaker U.S. dollar, partly offset by higher byproduct revenues and lower costs related to legacy tailings facilities. It's important to note that earnings-related tax payments in Q2 2026 were the highest on record and are expected to be, by some way, the highest for this year. Capital spend stepped up as planned, while distributions to our noncontrolling interests were $85 million year-on-year.

We are pleased to again reaffirm annual guidance based on our stated assumptions, which underscores the robustness of our portfolio and the improving operational performance into the second half. We do expect a second-half weighted production profile, particularly in Q4. Production is expected to reduce slightly at Tropicana as open pit mining moves into the lower-grade Havana 6 pit and at Iduapriem due to difficulty accessing temporarily flooded higher-grade areas. Obuasi is running at a normalized run rate with half-2 production expected to be 150,000 ounces. We are keeping a close eye on developments in the Middle East to mitigate any impacts on our energy and global supply chains.

With that, I'll pass back to Alberto to outline our relative market performance.

Thank you, Gillian. We've not changed our focus. 2026 is about disciplined execution and controlling what we can control like we have done in the past 5 years. In a strong gold environment, discipline matters more, not less. Our aim is simple: protect margins, allocate capital rigorously, strengthen the portfolio. We remain laser-focused on cost discipline across the portfolio.

For Full Asset Potential, we are systematically looking for ways to offset external pressures across the board. We're increasing the production contribution from our Tier 1 assets, which structurally lowers our cost base and improves margin resilience. Active portfolio management remains core. We've been active in this area, and we'll continue to direct capital to assist -- to assets that generate superior risk-adjusted returns.

Sustaining capital is about protecting safety and reliability as well as asset longevity and growth. We are appropriately capitalizing our assets to ensure safe, stable and sustainable operations. We continue to invest in mineral reserve development to increase operational flexibility, particularly in complex ore bodies.

Reserve replacement remains fundamental. Sustained reserve growth underpins long-term value creation. Growth capital is focused on high-quality, long-life projects, particularly in Nevada. These projects enhance jurisdictional quality and portfolio resilience. We are creating flexibility for life extension and brownfield growth across the portfolio by building new tailings and opening land to extend our mining operations. We are prioritizing short-cycle, high-return organic projects that strengthen free cash flow generation.

Operational excellence alone is not enough. Social and regulatory stability are equally critical. We remain deeply committed to our host communities and governments where we're providing real-time benefit from the higher gold price through taxes, royalties, social investment and meaningful participation in our value chain.

We've made steady progress narrowing the rating gap relative to our North American peers through a comprehensive multiyear plan to strengthen the business. Today, our fundamentals are robust. Our portfolio is performing and the higher gold price is flowing directly to the bottom line. This slide clearly illustrates our relative outperformance. The transparent bubbles represent where we and our peers sat exactly 1 year ago, while the solid bubbles show our position today.

Over the last 12 months, you can see a sector-wide derating. For AngloGold over the past year, as you can see in the chart, we moved to higher dividend yield and a slightly higher EV-to-EBITDA multiple. All of our competitors saw the opposite. That is no accident for us. The market performance has followed our results. In fact, in Q2, we generated a sector-leading 36% year-over-year growth in free cash flow per share, outpacing the peer group. In the end, that is what matters, what flows to the bottom line to free cash flow.

While some peers have built significant net cash positions, our capital allocation ensures we pass this strong cash generation directly to shareholders. At these elevated gold prices -- as these elevated gold prices hold, we are focused on realizing our operational catalysts, managing costs aggressively and delivering on our buyback program. With that clear focus, we believe AngloGold represents the most compelling investment proposition in the sector today with significant embedded upside.

With that, I will hand over to the operator for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Josh Wolfson of RBC.

Alberto, we had a lot of questions on the last call on the buyback announcement. Many of the details couldn't be disclosed. With this now approved, can you provide me a bit more information on how the company is looking to leverage this? Is it going to be opportunistic purchases, more stable? And what are your thoughts on executing the full program, all things equal?

Thank you, Josh. We still, as I said -- mentioned, haven't had the authorization from the Reserve Bank of South Africa. And I can tell you at this stage, it's going to be more opportunistic. There's going to be probably at some point, a minimal buying, but it's going to be skewed more towards the downside and to [ liquidate ] more than anything else. But yes, we're still waiting for the reserve bank and then we see.

Got it. And then on our end, we're very excited about this upcoming organic growth update. The company has issued some details at least at Geita, and we kind of know the outlook for Obuasi. When we think about the other assets that were identified, Sukari, Cuiaba and Siguiri, is there any more information you can provide, maybe early expectations there? And also, what should we be thinking about the capital needs for some of these opportunities?

Thank you, Josh. Look, I'm sort of resistant because I want to give what I've said, sort of the next quarter is going to be, I would imagine, with -- I know a significant detail per asset of what we expect to see in 3 years and probably before that. But obviously, we've continued to work. There's a whole team, let's say, that has been assembled in the corporate with an SVP that's equivalent to the Head of Africa. So it's a pretty senior position. And in that group, you have planning people, you have supply people, you have finance, you have HR people, you have projects people. And so they're looking at each one of these.

The cost is not high. Probably it's where we have the processing plant in Geita, there's going to be a bit more cost. But in Sukari, it's basically equipment, trucks and shovels and things like that and exploration. In Cuiaba, it's going to be -- we will -- looking for bringing ore from other places, but it's pure mining. And Cuiaba, yes, we'll see if it's between -- it may be 75,000 or something in 3 years that we're looking for. And Siguiri, it's, again, pure mining. It is -- we've identified areas. We again need to do a bit more brownfield, but the initial estimates sort of solidify, strengthen our view that this is going to be just more of mining, open pit. There's not issues. We need to do some -- the issues of license to operate with resettlements, but nothing that we will see is going to be an issue within the next 3 years.

So look, what I can tell you right now, we've given a guidance between 2025 baseline, so above 3 million ounces and between 300,000 and 450,000 ounces. And the more we see, I think that we're going to be in that range and what we will be talking in Q3. So low CapEx.

Interestingly enough, and this is important, what you see in the growth CapEx and sustaining CapEx right now in this quarter is already contemplating the money to achieve that growth. For example, you will see in the growth capital, $120 million, from memory, for TSFs in Obuasi and TSFs in Siguiri from memory. So those two are needed as we grow the ounces. You are also seeing money on sustaining for stripping, money on sustaining for ORD, and that is all preparing the terrain.

So we've started to spend within apparently normal course of business, but it's within this laying the groundwork to have -- to materialize these growth projects. And again, it's not that we're going to only see the growth in 3 years. We should start seeing some of the growth. So we expect growth. If this is a transition year, if I look at 2026, we will be sort of flat for -- versus '25. We expect to see growth in '27, growth in '28 and then bigger growth in '29.

Okay. Very much looking forward to that. If I can sort of tuck in maybe one more question. There was a detailed exploration update also issued this morning, lots of sort of incremental pieces of insight, specifically for Arthur, where I guess we're focused on some of the upside there. Is there anything you can kind of point to? It looks like there's a lot of drilling that's been completed there. How should we be thinking about some of those opportunities and what that means for that project?

We are -- maybe I'll ask Marcelo Godoy just to help me out here or if he wants Nick, tell me, Marcelo. But look, we continue to advance. We had a Board meeting yesterday. We've given like significant more resources to finish this feasibility study. We are concentrated on that for -- to have it, I think, next year sometime. And everything we see is -- gives us more and more confidence that this is going to be the defining asset for AngloGold in the next decade. The progress in [indiscernible] but North Bullfrog, we expect record of decision by the end of this year. But Marcelo could -- you're somewhere else, but do you want to add something versus the question, please?

Sure, Alberto. We have been -- we have finished a major drilling campaign at Arthur, and we are aiming to increase the reserves by -- our target is 1 million-plus ounces for this year. And now with the approval of the feasibility -- the approval from the Board, we have the funds to start the feasibility study now in August. So that's where we've been focusing on. Everything else is working according to plan. Thank you.

The next question comes from Adrian Hammond of SBG.

Firstly, just talk about capital allocation, if you may. Your target for $1 billion cash buffer is largely achieved. So does this assume then you pay out all future free cash flows? Or are you going to build further cash buffers here in light of your growth aspirations?

Thanks, Adrian. No, the plan is to find a way to return that cash. At this stage, we don't -- our plan is to, yes, build that $1 billion. And so as I look at it, it all depends on the gold price. But if you believe that the gold prices staying where it is, we should double the free cash flows.

And then you can just remember, let's say, it's $3.8 billion, and we already -- so that's $1.9 billion we're returning on dividends. And then on the other $1.9 billion, we use $666 million, close to $700 million for the repurchase. So you can see that, that will -- there is -- if we keep $1 billion, there's going to be more upside that we'll return one way or another.

Okay. Great. And then if we can talk about Obuasi, you've mentioned 3 issues, including equipment breakdowns, availability, operational delays. Every 6 months, it seems to be something unfortunate there at Obuasi. Do these issues -- are they temporary? Or do you think these risk the ramp up there?

So let me -- I think the main, main issue was the fatality. I don't think that if there was any -- before the fatality, we were heading towards -- the first quarter was fine, and we were heading towards delivering on our target for the year, which was between 300,000 and 350,000, something like that. We would have done that.

And even -- but as you know, the fatality in an ore pass, the way it happened really obliged -- we had an obligation to deeply understand why it happened, how it happened and what we needed to do to avoid this. We also had a catastrophic failure in the system again. And so that impacted us not only in the weeks that we had operations closed. But for example, we're not using those ore passes right now. So basically, we're operating without the KMS shaft. And even without that, we expect to have an annualized 300,000 in the second half.

Now we do expect to bring everybody back to normality, including the ore passes. So we're building another ore pass because remember, all of the gate into -- how do you say? Yes, the gate that you used to control the flow of the ore pass was completely destroyed. So we are building another ore pass that should be ready by the fourth quarter, and that sets well the groundwork to deliver on the 2027, which was around 325,000, 350,000 or something like that. So that's where we are preparing ourselves to and we are thinking, again, that mostly without the KMS shaft, we will do around annualized 300,000 in the second half of the year.

That's clear. And then third question, perhaps for Gillian, on the realized gold price versus market averages. They seem to be quite apart. Is this just timing? Or should we think there is a reason for this such as the potential discounts that you're required to sell gold to Ghana and Tanzanian authorities?

Thanks, Adrian. It's exactly timing. You will know that there was quite a lot of volatility in gold price change in Q2. You saw the highest drop actually since 2013. And so it's effectively the timing of sales. So we had -- it was -- our realized price was $90 an ounce lower than the kind of the consensus or the spot price for the quarter. It is related to timing.

The other thing we've got very small amounts of concentrate sales still in Brazil, 36,000 ounces. So that's a small premium or discount on the gold price. But otherwise, nothing impacting us achieving market prices.

And while you're on the line, just I noticed your working capital outflows have improved quite considerably. Do you think that will reverse completely, at all at 2H? Or is this going to be something where we should expect a steady balance going forward?

No, I think -- thanks, and thank you for recognizing the achievement. The team is so focused on working capital. We're not anticipating any lumpiness in the second half. Of course, as your receivables are higher based on gold price, maybe there's some movement there, but we are laser-focused on working capital and don't anticipate any lumpiness in the second half.

Our next question comes from Raj Ray of BMO.

A couple of questions. First, a follow-up and more a clarification on Adrian's question on the buybacks. So am I correct in understanding that in periods where you pay 50% of your free cash flow as dividend, you're still willing to go above that for share repurchases. So your total capital returns could be higher than the 50% of free cash flow. Is that correct, Alberto?

That is absolutely correct. And if the gold price stays where it is today, it will be -- that will be the case.

Okay. And then a second question is the comment you made on the growth of -- coming in the portfolio over the next few years. Can you comment on what it does to your capital intensity? Are you happy with your sustaining and nonsustaining capital intensity at these levels as you deliver on those growth? Or is that expected to increase?

No. Look, it is -- I would say it's going to be stable for some years. So we are doing about $480, something like that, per ounce, which you look at other like Agnico, I think it's double, they're not investing anything. We have, yes, a very important growth pipeline within our own organic assets. And we -- yes, you need to invest in it. So we expect to stay where it is high for some years, but not go higher than that.

Our next question comes from Joseph Reagor of ROTH Capital Partners.

Two items I don't think have been touched on yet. So first, at Siguiri, there was this announcement that the government is going to force the flow of gold through their refinery. Has this occurred for you guys with Siguiri? And is there any impact from that going forward?

Thanks, Joseph. So yes, we are in conversations with the government. This is something that we have seen elsewhere, and we work with the governments like in Ghana. And yes, it's just about -- we have -- I think they gave 3 months. So we believe we will find a way of how to deal with it. But we understand the asks wanting to have more local adding value. And we will, again, talk to the government and the ways to deal with that.

So at this stage, I don't want to comment more except that we believe that it's something that you can address within almost business as usual. Business as usual means it's not any significant thing. We just need to reach to how do we do this with the government. But we have a lot of, I would say, confidence the Minister of Mines is -- probably is very knowledgeable of the industry, understands what we are, the needs of the industry. And yes, we expect to continue constructive conversations on this front.

Okay. Fair enough. And then at Iduapriem, cash costs rose pretty significantly quarter-over-quarter, looking at grades and throughput, et cetera. It doesn't seem like there's any meaningful justification for it. Is there some color you guys can give there on what caused that and if it's sticky?

I will tell you, and it is related, there is a particular significant hit on this quarter on the royalties increase. That's it. If you look at Iduapriem in terms of -- for the quarter in terms of what we call flex cost, which is including royalties and fuel price and everything, we sort of are flat. So that is important. And then the other interesting thing that I can note, if I look at the outlook for the year for Iduapriem, we're going to be again flat in terms of the flat cost. And then that royalty impact is reduced.

Let me just say one more thing, which is important, what the government did was increase the royalty. So right now, the increased impact is 5%, but they reduced the COVID levy by a net impact of about 2.6%. But that you see -- you don't see in cash flows. You see in taxes. And so there is a significant mitigation that you see below the line. So all in all, the sum is Iduapriem is doing well on cost. There was some increase in mining contractor, but the bulk of it for the quarter was the royalty impact.

Our next question comes from Tanya Jakusconek of Scotiabank.

The first one is just a clarification, if I can, Alberto. I understood from Josh and others that for that 300,000 to 450,000 ounce growth from your portfolio, that's going to come at less than $100 million of capital and really not any additional change to the $480 per ounce of sustaining capital. Is that a correct way for me to think about that?

We will give you more details. The $100 million, we've never talked about that. What I've said is, overall, we don't expect the sustaining CapEx numbers to increase. And the other thing that I've said is that all of the projects, I think most of them is going to be -- I don't have the numbers yet, but it's going to be nothing significant in the scheme of things.

They're very high IRR projects. But of course, if you need to buy more equipment in Siguiri and you need to buy more mining equipment in Sukari, that's just going to come at a cost. And I don't know how it's going to flow in -- exactly in the numbers. But it is nothing like you're going to have in billions of dollars that you have to do an expansion. So there will be no other projects that are as high IRRs as this one. That's the point I've tried to make. In the Q3, we will give probably some more detailed estimates of what we're assuming. But most of it is just more mining and the costs that are involved with that.

Okay. Sorry, I heard a $75 million number that was put out. I think you mentioned it. And so I thought that was for everything. Sorry, maybe it was my misunderstanding.

Okay. So that was my first clarification. The second I wanted to focus on was on your costs. And I appreciate that the higher gold price impacts the royalties, the higher fuel price impacts the cost as well. Can you maybe just talk about some of the other inputs that maybe you are feeling some inflationary pressure on, maybe it's labor, maybe it's consumables. Are you seeing anything in those areas that are also impacting your costs?

Thanks, Tanya. Let me probably -- the number I did mention was 75,000 ounces additional in Cuiaba. I don't know if that's what I didn't say. It wasn't millions, but ounces additional in Cuiaba.

Look, in terms of the costs, how do we -- the inflation impact in the half year is a bit larger than what we -- so it's -- usually, it's been 5%. It's about 5.8%. And this is excluding the fuel price. And so -- and the fuel price, it's about -- on the half-on-half, it's about $20 an ounce. So it's not significant, but everything adds up to it.

So when you look at the impacts -- and this -- I'm talking again half-on-half year, you're having about [ $60 ] on inflation, you're having about [ $23 ] in fuel price and exchange rate like [ $46 ] and then you have the impact of the royalty that is significant.

So that all adds up to a flex cost that is higher -- a bit higher than what you see in the numbers. If you go to our cost for the half year, cash cost is $1,436, the flex cost is a bit higher than that. So which means that we've been able to lower a bit versus the flex cost. I don't know if that's helpful.

I'm just wondering, as you -- is it labor -- is labor inflationary above the 3% to 5% in your portfolio? I'm just trying to understand, excluding that fuel and royalties, what else is just overall inflation? Just trying to understand that. And I know you've reduced on your productivity and optimization of assets separate from this about 2%. So you're gaining a little bit there. I'm just wondering where else am I seeing those pressures?

Maybe, Tanya, I can just say that we're not seeing anything out of the ordinary in terms of inflationary pressure within the jurisdictions that we operate, particularly around labor. What we would say is it's a relatively fixed cost business, especially in the short term. And so yes, we -- if you kind of look at the volumes and the cost base, you can see that it's those primary drivers for the costs are the macro factors that we are kind of trying to manage as best we can. But there's nothing outside of that, that we would highlight as an issue for us. And we are again expecting really quite strong cost performance in the second half, in line with the sort of volume profile that we are anticipating.

I'm not going to say whom, but we have heard others talking about like extraordinary costs and you see their impact. We haven't seen that. That's just...

Okay. Well, that's good. And then my final question, Alberto, to you. When you put up a slide and you showed your Tier 1 portfolio, which has a nice production of over 500,000 ounces, great costs and then you have your Tier 2 that obviously brings up the cost structure.

How do you think about that Tier 2 portfolio? Like if you -- it's always hindsight is 20/20, if you didn't have that portfolio, would you theoretically trade higher valuation with that cost base? So I just kind of think -- I wonder how you're thinking about those Tier 2 assets. What makes them important to stay within the portfolio? Maybe just review the -- maybe it's exploration upside, maybe it's increasing mine life. I'm just trying to understand why they're important.

Tanya, it's interesting. We were, at some point, trying to sell one of the assets that was Tier 2. And then at these gold prices, it's impossible to get the right value because it's sort of in nature that a lot of the offers come like at consensus pricing and with very conservative views of the gold price in 2 or 3 years, and we value them at futures, they're valued much, much more.

So it wasn't -- it was not a secret that we were trying to sell the CVSA that -- and we -- I can tell you, the cash flows for this year are like 60% of what we were going to receive by selling it. So if -- what we now have in our Tier 2 assets is -- and the only one that is not working that well and is improving is Sunrise and you see in the performance. But again, talk about CVSA. It's working like a little charm. It's been -- increased its life from 3 to 5 years. Silver, obviously, is now a byproduct and it's a blessing in CVSA, but the free cash flow it's generating is amazing. And so we have no rush to dispose in the current environment of Tier 2 assets.

Different was the case, for example, of Serra Grande that was just too small and it was just -- it drew on a lot of management time for the money that it produced. And so we're happy to have disposed of that one. But the rest, we're very happy to keep it.

And then you have assets that -- like Siguiri that are turning and will turn into Tier 1. So at this stage, we're quite happy with our 9 operating assets. It's a footprint that we can manage easily. We will see in the future what happens. But for now, we're not -- we're quite happy with that 9 operating assets.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this stage, I will hand over to Stewart Bailey for questions from the webcast.

Thanks, Judith. So the first question I'll ask is from Arnold Van Graan at Nedbank.

He says, solid results and proper long-term delivery. So my question is, where do you see the most compelling near-term growth optionality in the portfolio? Also, please talk us through your risk-adjusted return methodology. Are you seeing good projects in certain jurisdictions that fall short once you add the risk component to your assessments?

That's an interesting question. Look, the near-term optionality is in those 5 assets that are the core of the growth portfolio, Obuasi, Geita, Sukari, Siguiri and Cuiaba. And as I said, there is a lot of focused attention even with a centralized team, even though it will be delivered by each of the assets, we want to understand what are the bottlenecks, what do we need to do, what we need to do in brownfields, what we need to do in license to operate, what we need to do in TSF, what we need to do in communities and have a very clear centralized view of that. And that's what we're working on. So those are the best near-term optionality that we have, and those are the ones that we are working to present in Q3.

The risk-adjusted returns, we do have different discount rates, obviously, for each -- even though we have a company-weighted one, we have a different risk-adjusted return. So they all -- for example, these growth projects in different areas in Africa, they will all have to face the hurdles.

Now what I've said is they are so profitable that with all of that risk -- because it's little investment to a significant impact in the growth, take, whatever, in Siguiri, if we go from 300,000 to 350,000 or 375,000, that's 50% -- like that's -- I'm sorry, what would be 20% increase in the production and with very significantly little capital. So even though we do explicitly do risk-adjusted returns, they are way above any hurdle that we have for investment.

All right. Thanks for that, Arnold. The next question is from [ Robert Kellaway, ] who says, please update on the connection of Sukari to the Egyptian National Grid in light of the operation's heavy dependence on HFO fuel generation.

And Robert, just very quickly, the feasibility on that 80-megawatt grid connection is almost complete. We've got all the regulatory approvals we need and all going well. We're looking at commissioning early in 2028. The work to do between now and then is just to make sure that the -- there's certain upgrades to the grid just to ensure stability once that's connected. But just for the meantime, remember, we do have the 30-megawatt solar facility there that's working like a charm, so no problems there.

Alberto, one other from Martin Creamer, which is just your thoughts on AI. Are we using any in the business for exploration or for safety? And do you think it can improve efficiency?

I think we can ask Marcelo, who is the expert on that, but we are using AI, but give us some, Marcelo, of your wisdom on that front.

We have been implementing AI across the organization for quite a long time, especially machine learning, which we have been using for predictive maintenance, for process control and other activities around the mine. We also have a program to increase proficiency of AI across the group. So we have selected a single provider, blocked everything else and our technical teams and operating teams have access to generative AI for general tasks.

We are not in the era of agentic AI. We have some proof of concepts going on. But given the security issues that we have with that type of technology, we are taking a very cautionary approach to deploying that type of technology. But we are very advanced in our adoption across the group generally. Yes.

Great. Thanks, Marcelo. I think that's it from the webcast, and we don't have any other questions on the line. So Alberto, if you'd give us a closing remark before we wrap up.

Thank you. Okay. Yes. Look, mining, I always say, it's a normal curve without the right-hand side. So there's always issues. This one was particularly difficult. We -- the fatality in Obuasi impacted us in many, many ways. But apart from that, the -- which is very bad, but apart from that, that impacted Obuasi, we have some impact in Sunrise. But the portfolio effect, Tropicana doing much better and many others, leads us to relatively stable production in the first half.

We expect in the second half, if things go as expected, and that's always an if, if we don't have any additional surprises, to have an increase in the second half by about 6%. So that will also lead to -- we expect cash costs in the second half to actually go down versus the first half just because of higher production, obviously, higher denominator, and that will flow well.

The other thing that I'd like to highlight is the free cash flow because in the end, you can talk about cash cost and who's better, you can talk about all-in sustaining, you could talk about all-in costs. But in the end, what matters is what flows to the bottom line, and we do exceptionally well there. Our increase in the half of 36% higher than anybody else -- much higher than most of them is something that we are proud of.

And this is in spite -- and something that we had prepared for the questions but none came, which was the tax thing. We had an unusual lumpy tax in the second quarter of about $540 million. We expect half of that in Q3 and half of that in Q4, which by definition, if the gold price stays where it is today, should significantly improve the free cash flow in relative terms in Q3 and Q4.

So we are very comfortable where we are. We expect, as we said, to be comfortably within guidance, and we expect to keep making the most of this high gold price environment in terms of what we can deliver to our shareholders. We were clear that it's going to be, if the gold price stays where it is, above the 50%. We are already in the $1 billion of net cash. So we -- yes, we're looking very much forward to a strong second half in all fronts, obviously, with a little grace from God that you always need. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's event. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the AngloGold Ashanti Q4 2025 Earnings Release.

[Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded.

I will now hand you over to Mr. Stewart Bailey. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, is, and welcome, everybody, to our full year and Q4 results call. As always, Alberta and Jillian will walk through the presentation, but you do have other members of our senior leadership team that will be on hand for the Q&A afterwards as needed. I direct you all to the safe harbor statement at the beginning of the presentation, which has got important information regarding forward-looking statements.

Without any further ado, I'll hand over to Alberto.

Thank you, Stuart, and welcome, everyone. Let's talk, as always, with safety, we achieved our lowest ever lowest total recordable injury frequent rate at 0.97, 0.97 injuries per million hours worked. This was the first of a number of records set last year and by far the most important. This is another key milestone on our safety journey, again, outperforming by far the ACM member average.

Our main aim remains to ensure on places it doesn't creep in that we never stop learning from our mistakes and that we are diligent in applying these lessons. This morning, I heard a podcast on our results on a, they did a great job, but 1 thing that caught my attention, they talk about safety, but then they did tie it to the next part of the presentation. Such lower levels of safety lead to operational excellence. It means you have more plant maintenance. It means your processing plants are working like they should. You could never achieve the level of operating excellence without operation, the safety statistics that we have. So it is our highest priority, but it also leads the way to operational excellence.

I'm proud to report a strong set of numbers for Q4 and the full year. We set new records in cash flow, earnings and dividend deceleration. In the final quarter, we generated free cash flow of more than $1 billion. That's the most ever and more than 3x what we generated in the same quarter last year. As a result, we've declared $875 million to shareholders as a dividend in Q4 alone. When we can control, we continue to control very well. That's clear, especially when you look at our managed operations with higher contributions from Sukari, Obuasi, Siguiri, Garban Guardia. It's worth highlighting that we also produced 3.7 million of silver at CVSA in Argentina.

On the other side of the ledger, we saw lower production from IndoPrimand Southern wise Dan, as delivered a steady on-plan performance with improvements in recoveries and tonnes treated. Total cost for managed operations were only up 5% on year. This is the fourth year in a row where our cash costs are lower than inflation and royalties. So basically, we have had in real terms flat cash cost since 2021, the only company in the sector to have been able to achieve that.

Cash flow of almost $3 billion was up 204% year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA grew 129% and headline earnings were up 186%. The balance sheet is in excellent shape. Even after record dividend payments, we were able to turn $567 million of net debt at the end of 2024 to EUR 879 million of net cash at the end of 2025. We have ample liquidity and no material short-term maturities. We've been clear that shareholders who have patient -- who have been patient through the commodity cycle must see direct benefit from this improved performance. That requires the guardrails of a clear capital allocation framework and a competitive dividend policy.

As a reminder, we are 1 year into our new dividend policy. It provides for a set of quarterly payout of $0.125 per share or around $63 million. It also provides for an annual true-up payment, bringing the payout to 50% of free cash flow. In Q2, we took the decision to make an additional payment of $350 million. That takes our Q4 dividend to $875 million and our total payout for 2025 to almost $2 billion. That approach takes us to a net cash 0 at the end of 2025.

It speaks to the strength of the cash flows from our business and to our confidence in the outlook as we pay out substantially all of the cash we generate this year. I want to emphasize this point because that's always in the questions, why you're going to do? Are you going to be too net cash positive. And I think this is a statement of our confidence in the future but the fact that we bring net cash to 0 at the end of '25. We will see what happens this year. we will see what we do at the end of the next year. But I think that we have set significant precedents in terms of how we deal with quarterly dividends, and I think this is another milestone for us.

With Obuasi continued to ramp up our Tier 1 assets now account for more than 70% of production and 80% of reserves. The 2025 results reflect the first full year consolidation of Sukari operation with a significant impact on both our financial and operating performance. At the same time, our Tier 2 assets continue to deliver strong results with margins well ahead of where our Tier 1 mines were a year ago. A healthy margin and exceptional cash flow leverage are visible across the portfolio, reflecting an active management approach. Completion of the Sevagrande sale on December 1, 2025, we'll ensure we can further sharpen our focus on the core business.

At Obuasi, we delivered what we said we would. -- producing 266,000 ounces, up 20% year-on-year. The result was supported by our investment in ventilation, material handling and better equipment availability that we're working hard to sustain. It also showed meaningful progress on our technical proof of concept, under hand and feel it working in the high-grade zones and lateral development, which is key to underhand drift and fill is advancing -- we were up actually 34% between Q1 of 2025 and Q4 of 2025 in lateral development. And that sets us in a very good stage for our forecast guidance for 2026. We aim to grow production again in 2026 to over 300,000 ounces, alongside a commensurate increase in cash flow contribution just on the side, this Obuasi produced about $1,300 of free cash flow per ounce in 2025, which was double for example, what Kibali, our non-managed operation produced in 2025, it's quite a turn of events from what was happening 4 years ago.

So can is a Tier 1 operation by every measure record delivery, strong margins and exceptional operational stability. It also has a world-class operating team that has shown itself to be hungry to improve the asset and to benefit from being part of a larger business. They are thriving in a more competitive and supportive environment. 2025 was a record for Sukari, delivering its best-ever production and enormous cash flow. In fact, when you look at the net acquisition cost for sentiment after stripping out the sale proceeds for ABC and Doropo and the cash on the balance sheet, we generated almost 1/3 of the purchase in our first year as owners and the best is yet to come.

The integration is fully complete. The full asset potential team has completed its first pass. We have identified our rough of opportunities to increase value from almost every perspective. We see opportunities, the most significant expanding the underground from 1.2 million tonnes moved to 2.3 on higher grade ore. We just need to develop a new portal and expand the fleet, and we will talk about this in another asset, the impact of the most important idea that was uncovered in the full asset potential. But there were others, a small heap leach project improve feed efficiencies and better recoveries in the plan, just to name a few.

From a geological perspective, the ore body is still open with potential to add ounces and we will be increasing our budget for exploration, brownfield exploration during 2026. Essentially, there's opportunity wherever we look. While we generated record cash flow, we are aggressively drilling to secure tomorrow. It is worth remembering that we have the industry's top exploration team.

They continue to deliver exceptional exploration results across our portfolio replacing depletion and upgrading resource confidence. This slide breaks down our mineral reserve numbers. We had another very strong return from our brownfield exploration program across a range of asset. We added 10 million new ounces of reserves more than 3x our depletion. And yes, Nevada added $4.9 million with the first time we serve from Alter but it wasn't the only one. We also showed a good spread from our operating assets, about $2 million after depletion with net additions at Get Obuasi Edu, Cuiaba and Kibali.

At Geita, which has been a particular focus for us, most of the 1.3 million ounces are in the open pit. Mining is a long-term game, and it's important to zoom out to look at the returns over time. Over the past 3 years, we've added almost 23 million ounces at an average cost of about $47 per ounce. That value is hard 10 beat. The holy grail for any gold companies at Tier 1 discovery in a low-risk jurisdiction with long life and strong growth potential. Our Arthur gold project is just that. We started only a few goes a few years ago as an ambitious exploration thesis in the BT District has now evolved into 1 of the largest and most significant greenfield codiscoveries of this century in the U.S.

Today, it transitions from a discovery into a major high return project. The first time mineral reserve of 4.9 million ounces is just the top of the iceberg, given the much bigger resource in the project area. I'd probably remind everyone that we complemented our original land position with 3 acquisitions that were very timely from Corvus, Core and Augusta and that really allowed us to consolidate what is probably the most important discovery and land position in Nevada in decades.

Let's take a step back and look at the project. Arthur is a fully consolidated district scale opportunity comprising the Merlin and silicon deposits. So large-scale continuous gold system. It features broadly disseminated mineralization of oxide high-grade vein system with thickness reaching about 150 meters. The mineralized footprint is extensive, measuring approximately 2.7 kilometers by 1.3 kilometers. The deposit, which is largely oxide is highly amenable to bulk mining methods and conventional processing.

We see a clear geological connection between Merlin and silicon there is significant room for continued mineral resource expansion to the west of Merlin and down dip and to the north at silicon. In fact, Merlin remains completely open to the west and south, and we have a drilling program underway to support further resource exploration. The study envisages a conventional oxide gold mill with carbon and lease. It features a 3-stage crushing circuit with high-pressure grinding roll along with a heap leach served for lower-grade material. It is as it's simple as it gets no auto claims, no double refractory ore and so many of the others that is called in Nevada. So I'm sorry to say, it's just a very simple project. This will be a conventional open pit operation using large-scale equipment.

The fleet will include electric growth troubles with 60 cubic meter buckets and ultra-class old trucks. Our pit phasing facing a design to target higher value near service material early in the mine life to accelerate payback. The width of the ore zones and simple pikeometry will allow for wide mining benches and highly efficient, straightforward mining layouts.

Let's look at some of the main highlights of the study, noting that a lot more detail will be available on March 26 when we release our technical report summary. We start with the initial probable mineral reserve of 4.9 million ounces for Merlin calculated at $1,950 an ounce. That's 88 million tonnes at 1.75 grams per tonne. We expect to produce roughly 4.5 million ounces over an initial 9-year life of mine, average production is around 0.5 million ounces, low with this edging up towards 800,000 ounces in the early years. We estimate cash cost of around $780 an ounce all-in sustaining at $950 an ounce. Initial project capital is estimated to be around EUR 3.6 billion noting that normal margin of favor for a PFS stage study.

Even using only this initial reserves and long-term prices, which allows us to make an economic case and to move ahead with permitting, returns at this stage are well north of 20%. Obviously, as we will see in the next slides, that total returns of the project will be much, much higher. When in factory spot prices, okay, well, obviously, the returns are higher. When you consider the full resource potential, they're higher, again, this project has, by almost any measure, the potential to be a defining asset for us and for Southern Nevada because the Merlin reserve is mainly oxide. It avoids the technical complexity and the risk of refractory precessing Crucially, disability level environment, hydrological and community baseline studies are already underway.

This would be a highly competitive asset even with only the initial reserve and mine life. But while the 4.9% of reservicing principal its own, there's an additional $6.5 million of mineral reserves at Merlin, and we are actively exploring the potential conversion in additional reserves actually, we plan for this year to target an additional 1.4 million ounces, in line with the online drilling program. And that's significantly more in the years ahead, both from our defined resource base and from the ongoing exploration campaign in the area which remains incredibly prospective.

And by the way, all of these bubble charts that you see, we wouldn't initial at this stage, additional CapEx required. We are essentially drawing from our current record cash flows to invest in a marquee asset to anchor our portfolio well into the 2050.

With that, I will hand over to Gillian to work through our record financial results and how our robust balance sheet supports this growth.

Thank you, Alberto. Strong cash conversion was a feature in 2025 and ensuring the stronger gold price translated to record free cash flow of $2.9 billion, almost 3x the $956 million generated in 2024. This increase underscores both our improved quality of earnings and stronger operating leverage where the business is converting the better price and operating performance into cash at a significantly higher rate. It also reflects a sustained deliberate focus on cost discipline, working capital management, capital allocation, reinforcing our ability to generate cash through the cycle.

In 2025, our cost profile remained under pressure. The tailwind offered by lower energy prices with oil down around 14% year-on-year was offset by realized inflation across our operating footprint. The standout feature of the year, of course, was the step change in gold price, which averaged $3,468 an ounce, a 45% surge over the 2024 average. This change represents a fundamental upward shift from the 1,800 to 2,400 an ounce range we've seen over the last number of years. Production increased 16% year-on-year to 3.1 million ounces in 2025, reflecting solid execution across our core assets. Managed operations were up 19% to 2.8 million ounces, driven mainly by the addition of Sukari and a 20% increase from Obuasi. Gas, CBSA and secure also contributed, and this was partially offset by iduprimeSunrise dam and the removal of MSG from the portfolio.

Cash costs from our managed operations were 5% higher at $1,252 an ounce, mainly due to higher royalties and inflation, both market-driven factors outside environment control. Nonetheless, costs were well contained through disciplined cost management, the benefit from Sukari and the continued delivery of full asset potential initiatives. ASIC for managed operations rose 5% and to $1,751 an ounce, reflecting planned reinvestment in sustaining capital, partially offset by higher gold sales.

2025 was a record year, delivering a step change in performance and translating operational execution into record cash generation. Earnings and free cash flow more than doubled, reflecting the 16% increase in production and a 45% increase in gold price.

Adjusted EBITDA was up 129% to EUR 6.3 billion, and basic earnings of $2.6 billion were up from $1 billion in 2024. I -- we saw a 143% increase in net cash from operating activities, $4.8 billion, even after accounting for higher taxes flowing from increased profitability. And as previously mentioned, free cash flow was up almost 3x to $2.9 billion, even after funding all CapEx and distributions to our JV partners. Our balance sheet was has been well and truly transformed. We entered 2026 with almost $1 billion in net cash, a big turnaround from the $567 million of net debt a year earlier. Our focus is unchanged, maintain discipline, drive operational improvements, maximize cash conversion and ensure high-quality returns through the cycle.

Let's have a quick look at our guidance scorecard for 2025. This performance demonstrates the consistency and discipline of our operating model across our 10 assets. We again delivered within guidance on the 2 core benchmarks of reliability, gold production and sustaining capital. While ASIC and total cash costs were marginally above the guided range, the variance was driven by higher royalties linked to higher gold price. We successfully managed controllable inputs, maintaining operational delivery and protecting our competitive position despite industry-wide headwinds.

Message is straightforward. We delivered on our commitments stayed disciplined on capital and further strengthened the resilience of our business. We are clear about isolating the controllable elements of our cost base. This transparency allows us to drive better cost performance. In 2025, cash costs were 7% higher at $1,242 an ounce. That increase was driven mainly by market factors outside of our direct control. Inflation, higher gold price-linked royalties, fuel and exchange rates collectively added around $86 a an ounce or 7% to that cost base.

In addition, the $12 an ounce added by the plant stoppage during Q3 at Secure was partially offset by better productivity at Tropicana following the 2024 rainfall event. Our managed operations worked really hard to improve the controllable areas of their cost base, disciplined execution, operational excellence and the full asset potential program helped to deliver a roughly 1% productivity benefit. This was achieved through higher throughput, better utilization and stronger operating routines. Volumes from Sukari provided another positive tailwind.

We remained focused on converting a higher gold price into free cash flow. And in 2025, we did exactly that. We see in the green bars, the price uplift of $3 billion and the higher gold sales volumes of $1 billion. This was primarily from Sukari's inclusion and strong cash flows from Kibali and the ongoing focus on managing our working capital.

The result is clear when you look at the improvements in free cash flows. This came despite higher operating costs driven by a combination of higher volumes, inflation, royalties, some higher contractor rates and also higher taxes from higher profits. In addition, capital spend stepped up as planned, driven by Sukari's inclusion in the portfolio. Dividends paid to noncontrolling interests were also $517 million higher year-on-year, again, a feature of Sukari's full year inclusion. The net of these factors was a record free cash flow of $2.9 billion in 2025.

In 2025, we generated cash flows from operating activities of $4.9 billion. This cash enabled us to reinvest in the business, strengthen the balance sheet, meet obligations to our JV partners and return value to our shareholders. We invested in sustaining capital, $1.1 billion and $459 million in future growth opportunities, $588 million was returned to our noncontrolling joint venture partners, and $953 million was used to strengthen the balance sheet as we moved into a net cash position. As Alberto mentioned, we declared an interim dividend of $875 million or USD 1.73 per share for the Q4 2025 period. This payout comprises 50% of free cash flow and an additional amount of $350 million, providing additional direct returns to shareholders and highlighting the continued confidence in the outlook for our operating performance and free cash flow generation in 2026.

This takes the total dividends for 2025 to a record $1.8 billion or USD 357 per share. At year-end, we had $4.4 billion in liquidity, comprising of $2.9 billion of cash and cash equivalents and the balance of undrawn facilities in our bank accounts. This balance sheet strength has been achieved while investing in safe stable production confidently driving projects through our growth pipeline and providing record returns to shareholders.

Let me now take you through our 2026 outlook, which is anchored in a portfolio that is performing, supported by a clear operating plan and disciplined value-led investment. For 2026, we are guiding group gold production of between 2.8 million ounces to 3.17 million ounces. Total cash costs for managed operations are estimated to be between $1,335 an ounce to $1,455 an ounce. This reflects a realistic view of the operating and macroeconomic environment, with the increase for next year comprising around half in royalties and half from expected inflation and foreign currency exchange movements.

The guidance comes in a year characterized by higher material movement across both underground and open pit operations. At the same time, we're investing to further strengthen the business and to unlock value. Sustaining capital for the group has guided at $1 billion to $1.14 billion. Our continued enhancements of our investments in the Sukari operations are anticipated to maintain the sustaining capital expenditure at our managed operations broadly in line with 2025 levels.

This is deliberate and value-accretive supporting reliability, improving operational flexibility and advancing for a potential program initiatives that are expected to drive productivity gains late -- from late $26 into '27. We are guiding group nonsustaining capital of $785 million to $835 million. In 2026, the key areas are Nevada, additional waste stripping at Sukari and tailings storage facilities at our Wasi and Sagari are focused on safeguarding the operating base creating the flexibility to unlock future production and manage our risks responsibly.

Looking into 2027, the continued ramp out of Obuasi underpins the uplift in production ounces while unit costs remained flat in real terms, reflecting the benefits of our cost leadership and productivity programs. We are not relying on the gold price to carry performance we are building structural competitiveness. Capital allocation remains disciplined. We expect sustaining capital to remain broadly consistent to 2025 and 2026 to support safe, stable operations while nonsustaining capital increases as we begin the construction of the North Ward project. This is exactly how we allocate capital, protect and sustain the base then invest selectively in the highest return growth opportunities, faced prudently executed rigorously and aligned to long-term value creation.

Overall, this guidance reflects a business with strong operational momentum, clear investment priority and continued commitment to cash generation, competitiveness and disciplined growth.

I will now pass back to Alberto to dive deeper on our 2026 focus.

Thank you, Julian. 2026 is about disciplined execution. In a strong gold price environment, discipline matters more, not less. Our focus is simple, protect margins, allocate capital rigorously and strengthen the portfolio. We remain focused on cost discipline and operational excellence across the portfolio. Through full asset potential, we are systematically looking for ways to offset inflationary pressures and royalty increases, particularly labor, energy and consumables. We are increasing the production contribution for our Tier 1 assets, which structurally lower our cost base and improves margin resilience. Active portfolio management remains core. We've been active in this area and we'll continue to optimize capital allocation towards assets that generate superior risk-adjusted returns. Sustaining capital is about conducting safety, reliability and asset longevity.

We are appropriately capitalizing our assets to ensure safe, stable and sustainable operations. We continue to invest in mineral reserve development to increase operational flexibility, particularly complex orebodies. Reserve replacement remains fundamental sustained reserve growth underpins long-term value creation. Growth capital is focused on high-quality, long-life projects, particularly in Nevada. These projects enhance jurisdictional quality and portfolio resilience. We are creating flexibility for life extension and brownfield growth across the portfolio by building new tailings and opening land to extend our mining operations.

We are prioritizing short-cycle, high-return organic projects at strengthening free cash flow generation. Operational excellence alone is not enough social and regulatory stability are equally critical. We remain deeply committed to our host communities and governments where we're providing real-time benefit from the higher gold price through taxes, royalties and meaningful participation in the value chain.

In this slide, we highlight an emerging picture of low-risk capital-efficient and very high return opportunities in our current operation footprint. It underscores what I've said repeatedly that the best opportunities for us like within the capital we're deploying today is funding low-risk, high-return projects at our current mines. These options have the potential to add between 10% and 15% of our current production profile during the next 3 years. We'll talk much more about this in detail in the second half of the year.

As previously mentioned, at Geita, we're advancing a project to live through put in the mill and increase production by around 20%. At Sukari, the capital we're spending on accelerated waste stripping and fleet upgrades will underpin a potentially significant mining expansion coupled with processing improvements like a new gramety circuit and absorption tank to boost recoveries. This will provide a healthy step-up in production. We are seeing similar organic growth across the rest of the portfolio.

At Seguiri, we're evaluating the potential to combine some of our existing dormant pits in Block 1 with the ramp-up of production from Block to bring this asset with its exceptional geology into the Tier 1 category. And Cuiaba, accessing the high-grade Viana ore body is a relatively straightforward opportunity to appreciably improve production. This is what disciplined capital allocation looks like, taking part of our record free cash flow and reinvest in low-risk, high-return opportunities that would optimize the value we can deliver from our world-class ore bodies. All of these growth projects will have a project management office and a BP growth dedicated to these organic projects for the next 3 years.

We are prefunding the health and expansion of these assets today, ensuring they remain highly profitable cash generators well into the 2030s. We made steady progress narrowing the rating gap relative to our North American peers. This hasn't been about addressing a single issue but rather a comprehensive plan over a number of years to strengthen every aspect of the business. Our fundamentals are robust. The portfolio is performing and the outlook is bright. We're delivering on our commitments, achieving consistent operational improvements, enhancing returns and positioning the company for sustainable growth.

And importantly, the higher gold price has flowed on to the bottom line. This has generated only the highest free cash flow yields in the industry or one of the highest. As you access our valuation metrics, we believe AngloGold Ashanti represents a compelling investment proposition, as you can see clearly in the graph, strong cash generation, disciplined shareholder-focused capital allocation, market-leading deal and a valuation that offers clear upside potential.

With that, I'll take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question from the line comes from Adrian Hammond of SBG Securities.

I've few questions. I'll list them in order. Firstly, the payout ratio is obviously welcome certainly exceeded your current base policy by margin. given where gold prices are, I get the sense that higher payouts are of the order of the day. But -- it's -- the question is where does this stop? Because at spot prices, you're going to generate significant amounts of money that you may not have a use for. So should gold prices stay where they are, what should we be modeling in terms of payouts as is 60% sort of the new benchmark for yourselves at spots? Or should we expect even higher payouts?

Secondly, on Slide 28, the organic growth options. I wonder if you can unpack that a bit more clearly. Just to confirm, you're seeing 10% growth on your base, so 300,000 ounces, and then correct me if I'm wrong, 100 from Gate. I assume that's from 2028, 100 from Security, when do you expect that? And then, I guess, the balance for Cuba and Sugar.

Thank you, Adrian. As always, very good questions and I probably can answer half of them. So Look, the payout ratio is 1 step at a time. We've done it. This is just an indication of how we think about things but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Again, we don't know the gold price where it's going to be. So this is just a commitment that if we have very gold prices, we will do something and we will explain what we're doing with it. So in the end, this is more symbolic. The $300 additional million was just, okay, we're going to get down to net 0 at the end of '25. And yes, we'll see what happens. As you know, in we have several options in how to deal with capital. So we'll be considering them and you will know of it.

What we won't do is tell you every quarter what we're doing with the money. But I don't want to anticipate if spot at this stage, I would just leave it there. On organic growth, we struggled a bit with saying because we were significantly increasing investment in growth capital. So we wanted to say that. But really, we will come with a very detailed of, as I said, asset by asset. And it's going to be those 4 plus Obuasi. The 10% to 15% would calculate it over the 3 million ounces. So yes, that's between 300,000 and 450,000 ounces by the third year. So we will give you lots of detail in this year. I think in the August, that's what we're planning. But we're very excited by this. And as I said, it's going to be Obuasi, it's going to be Sikuri, it's going to be Catacora it's going to be Cuiaba. Relatively low sort of investments.

You take Sukari, for example, which is a wonderful job that they did. We're increasing underground sort of movements from 1.2 million to 2.3 million higher grade ore -- and hence, we're just planning on this to build an additional platform and obviously, additional mining equipment, but we could do it through the same processing plant. And it has an impact of about 100,000 ounces. So I'll give you much more detail as we go through the year. But this is probably the most exciting project we have for 2026.

The next question comes from Josh Wolfson of RBC.

I noted this year, obviously, very positive initial reserve declaration, resources overall state stable with some of the disclosures earlier on the call about reserve conversion of an additional 1.4 ounces. How are you thinking about further expansion? How are you allocating exploration spending according to that?

Okay. Well, I'll answer something that there we have Marcelo Godoy on the call and Elasto help me. But Look, there's always a trade-off. You don't want to go too far advanced, again, on resource. We already have leases for the next 30 years or something like that. So there's always a Goldilocks point and the same with reserves, you needed to find a limb and say, okay, this is where we're going to start. But it's obvious when you see the chart that when we talk about 9 years, it's not going to happen like that. We're going to obviously go very quick. We're going to hike to about 800,000 ounces in the second or third year of production.

And by then, we will be bringing other ore bodies into reserves and all of that. We do see plan to add between 1 million and 1.4 million ounces in 2026.

But Marcelo? What else?

Yes. Thanks, Alberto. When you think about ARPU, you should be thinking about 12 million tonnes per year project. And that what came out of the prefeasibility study as an optimal size for the project. So any additional addition to the project, you should be using the additional life mine to in your models because that's what the the project is really about is continuing -- increasing the life of the project but continuing to produce 12 million tonnes per annum. And obviously, there are constraints that are made us arrive to that number. As you can see, we have lots of resources to produce that production rate for multiple decades, and exploration keeps just on giving. And every time we drill, we find more resources, which from our focus now is to get the project going and as soon as possible. And that's what the exploration team is focused on.

Got it. And then a question on, I guess, the 2027 guidance. I noticed the company included or disclosed the capital associated with North Bullfrog in 2026. I'm wondering for the 2027 numbers, what's the proportion of capital at North Bullfrog, and then what's the company assuming in terms of the Guinean royalty outlook? Is there a change incorporated? Or is it the existing rate?

So we're incorporating in North Bullfrog, I think about $4 million for 2026. I'll Gillian will happen with the rest we haven't incorporated anything on the gene and royalty. Again, we're having constructive conversations with the government. But at this stage, we will be premature. So Gillan?

Yes. So thanks, Josh. 27 North Bullfrog is $320 million. And then we've got about $90 million for other gold in the guidance as well.

Great. And if I can tuck in 1 more, just on the topic of M&A. On the disposition side of things, is CBSA still something that's under consideration. Maybe how are you thinking about that with significantly higher silver prices today. And then on the acquisition side, what's the current thinking

Thank you. Look, CBSA , it wasn't a secret that we were trying to have a a sale process. But with gold prices between we started the process and then 6 months later, like everything can change and silver, everything has changed. And so it just didn't make any sense for anybody nor for the buyer or for us in the value of the asset when it's going to produce the cash flow in the next 3 years is extraordinary. I have to say the guys over there, it's an extraordinary good team. There's a standard job that they're so far away on corporate that they produce, they're even better because nobody bothers them. So they are very, very quote and they have extended the mine life. We haven't declared it all. I know -- but they even managed to extend into the 2030. So we're happy owners with them. They do a very good job, and yes, the silver price and gold price for the next time has changed our vision. So we're happy to keep it at this stage.

By the way, the government has to shorten job, that was also the issue in the past that we couldn't get the cash flows now. It's like we're getting the cash flows out of the developed country, hopefully, Milan will stay there for a while. And then on M&A, you just heard us on our organic growth. It's -- we have such good opportunities. Obviously, the team always looks at things. But have said it in the past. It's a hard to pay a premium and still add value. Our criteria is always the same ad value -- net asset value to the company. And so yes, they still do the job. But I would say, 99.9% of the company is focused on that organic growth.

The next question comes from Patrick Jones of JPMorgan.

I ppreciate your comments earlier around the predictability of the dividend policy. But as I said, there's some buybacks this time it didn't make an appearance again the shareholder return slide. So I guess my question is, do you see a constitute the comment you gave was around you will consider buybacks from the supportive market conditions there on the slide. And what we're going to get the Board to shift is thinking from dividends to back.

This is something that we reassess. It's part of the book of buybacks, dividends, debt reduction. So this is part of the -- we always contemplate that at this stage, in this case, it was like we have a very good dividend. It's the most generous dividend policy. We're very flatter that several of our colleagues have -- competitors have copied it exactly. So that's a sign of flattery. But at this stage, we're happy where we are. So we'll just take it as I said, 1 step at a time, it didn't make any sense for $300 million to do a buyback. So it was clearly a supplementary dividend.

Now we will take it 1 step at a time, and we will be explaining what we do with the cash in every quarter.

And maybe just a follow-up question then on Arthur. Obviously, it's shaping up to be incredibly impressive product. Can you talk through what's kind of the eventual permitting and development time lines, the first output, particularly in light of the comments around North Bulfrog fraud CapEx coming up?

So the permitting for Arthur, it's always -- a lot of it is under control. What we can say is we will see this fast frac process, and there is incredible support both from the national government and from the state government. So we have made for the NPL with a lot of good progress. And -- but we don't want to give you time less because it's always so many things out of our control but we're quite encouraged, as I said, by the support.

Marcelo, anything you can add, please.

Yes. Look, we do -- I mean, we don't have exact times at the moment. But what we can tell you is that we want to have the road before the end of decade, and we will be producing in the beginning of the next decade. So that's the rough time lines we have at the moment, capitalizing on this fast track process for the Nipa process.

The next question comes from Tanu Akeso of Scotiabank.

Questions. Just wanted to start, Gillian, with you, if I could. Just to make sure I understand. So this dividend, still the base of $0.125 and the top up to 50% of cash flow. Is that now still going to be done quarterly? Or is that top-up still going to happen at the end of the year? Is just we had it quarterly before, and I'm just confused when this top-up happens.

So I'll start on that one. Just Look, the policy is that we pay at the end of the year because the spot price was so high last year, Well, those were the decisions to just say, okay, well, there's a lot of cash accumulated and let's do it by quarter. So I would assume in the spot price stays where it is, probably the Board will consider that again. But the policy is still that we only pay the 50% at the end. So we will take it quarter-by-quarter, Tanner.

Okay. Fair enough. And just coming back, if I could, to Gillian again on the capital, still on the guidance, you mentioned some big project capital Nevada, I think [indiscernible]can you just go through the growth capital, the big chunk for '26 and '27?

Yes, sure. I think -- so I think it's easier to maybe cover 271st given I've already talked about the Nevada element. So there's just over 400 between North or Fagan Arthur. We then always have the sort of need to continue to invest in tailings facilities. That takes up an amount across the portfolio. So we've got tailings management at Kibali Securities Obuasi, Idiremgata, so absolutely across the portfolio. And then there's some other capitalized it was at Sukari that you're aware of. We talked about it last year. There's a sort of a 3-year stripping campaign for Sukari.

I think then if you think about what does that look like for '26, we have lower than that spend for Navada. We've got the same stripping campaign in at Sukari and some investment in tailings and relocation as particularly in 2026, it really is required to unlock that reserve growth and the volumes that Alberto spoke about a little earlier on. So maintaining safe tailings facilities and making sure we are relocating communities, et cetera, to be able to unlock that value is a set of a focus for 2016 and beyond?

I'd just add quickly the there's $70 million on growth on Kibali, which I think is welcome. I think they're finally facing the pulp fact and it's good that they're investing in the growth of Kibali. So that is significant. And then yes, the rough numbers in going lebris, like 120 for all these tailings and different projects. It's about 45% on Kuba. That's for the growth project that we talked about before. Nevada is about $145 million. So you very you're up on close. That would explain a lot of the growth.

Okay. Great. And I'm going to have my next question come to Arthur, if I could. And I don't know who would want maybe Alberto you or Marcelo, maybe 1 of you can just walk us through what you can control, which is the next steps are drilling, then maybe when the feasibility study is coming out. And then obviously, when you do you expect to hand in your EIA so that we can understand what you can control. And over this period, Marcelo, do you think we can move the overall resource to 20 million ounces from close to 16 million?

Marcelo will help us with this, but just we can't pinpoint. We don't want to commit on timing because it's not in our control. But the rest, I think Mercelo can help you.

Yes. Look, we are going to start the feasibility study in Q2 of this year. So that's where we plan to do that and the federal permitting is something that we are going to be starting in Q1 2027. That's -- we have control over those days. Now the end of those processes is something that we don't necessarily have control that's why Alberto is not giving more information on that.

Yes. No, no, that's fair enough. I mean, you control your feasibility study, you control your drilling. I'm just trying to understand what you control, what the time line that you have in place and when you submit the...

Yes, this is -- the feasibility study starting in Q2 2026, we intend to be finalizing with that in Q4 2027. It's a normal timeline for a feasibility study of that size.

And then you would hand in your EIA at the end of 2027 as well?

Well, the EIA, you can start at the beginning of 2027 because it depends on the mine plan of operations, which is right now under development. So yes, we should be able to start that process in Q1 2021. .

Okay. And anything on the resource drilling over this period?

Look, I think at the end of the day, we want to convert as much as possible and 20 million would be great. But what we need to do now is just to get through the processing because we already have excellent grade and tonnage planning for the first 10 years of the mine. So everything that comes after that, we know it's there but it's not our highest priority right now.

I appreciate it much, Al. Just as a geologist, I look at the sections and the plan view and there's a lot more goals when are we going to get it I guess one has to dream. Second, my last question is actually for Alberto, if I could be in sort of your exploration and M&A outlook, we noticed that you or keep investing in junior as your latest 1 was in TSSGold here in Canada. Maybe talk a little bit about how you're viewing that sort of approach to part of your M&A focus

Well, we have -- fortunately, we have Terry here who leads all of that. So I'll let Terry help us.

And thank you for picking up the investment in thesis. We're really excited to work with you and the team there, let's say, advanced Lars Ranch project. But really, it's quite simple. We take a multipronged approach to growth. Alberto laid out. A lot of the organic opportunities within our brownfield sites. We also have greenfields exploration, which led to -- and we take strategic stakes as an interesting projects as well as, as Alberto said, we have the most optimal portfolio into the future.

Just a quick question. And is it likely to be a problem in the future?

[Technical Difficulties - Please refer to the preliminary transcript that will be posted shortly.]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the AngloGold Ashanti 2025 Q3 Results. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded.

I now hand you over to Mr. Stewart Bailey. Please go ahead.

Welcome to the Q3 results call. As normal, you have Alberto and Gillian doing the presentation. You have other members of the executive team available to answer questions after that presentation. Before we start, I would point you to the safe harbor statement at the front of the presentation, which contains important information regarding forward-looking statements, and we urge you to look at it.

I'll hand over to Alberto.

Thank you, Stewart. Safety remains our highest priority, and we're committed to eliminating severe injuries from all of our sites. Our TRIFR improved 17% year-on-year, and it's now at 0.96, well below the 2024 ICMM average. We're proud of this result and the strides we made in recent years, but we're always mindful that we're only ever as good as our last injury-free day. We will continue to work hard to mitigate risk and to learn from our mistakes and near misses.

I'm pleased to report another excellent quarter, showing clearly how momentum continues to build alongside the success of our business improvement interventions. This result, strong by any measure, is underpinned by the much improved resilience of our portfolio, steady delivery to plan and growth in free cash flow and earnings. We did set a number of new records. Free cash flow for the quarter was almost $1 billion and close to the free cash flow we generated for all of 2024, and we will pay half of that as a dividend.

Our adjusted net cash position of $450 million gives us our strongest balance sheet ever. Once again, we control costs very well despite persistent inflationary headwinds and higher royalties, the only cost that we reflect. Our performance marks the long-term industry trend of cost rising ahead of the gold price since 2021. Our cash cost and all-in sustaining costs have remained remarkably stable in real terms. This is the result of operational excellence driven by full asset potential, disciplined project execution and tight cost control.

What we can control, we continue to control very well. That's clear when you look at our managed operations. Production benefited from higher contributions from Obuasi, Kibali, Geita and Cuiaba. These strong performances were partially offset by lower tonnes and grades at Eagle, the temporary plant stoppage at Siguiri and lower underground tonnes and grade at Sunrise.

Obuasi delivered another steady on-plan performance in Q3. We're seeing the ongoing improvements in recoveries and treated. The result is supported by the investments we made in ventilation and also generally better equipment availability that we're working hard to sustain. Total cash cost for managed operations year-to-date was only up only 3%. We expect that number for the full year to be similar, only 3% up. And this is despite macro factors of 9% when you take into account the prevailing inflation rate of around 5% and the increase in royalties, which are linked to the gold price.

Let me clarify this. We expect to be within our guidance range, and that is before discounting the impact of royalties that we estimate for the year around $40 an ounce. Free cash flow at $1 billion was up 141%. Adjusted EBITDA grew 109%. Headline earnings were up 185%. The balance sheet is in excellent shape. We have ample liquidity, no material near-term maturities. At quarter end, even after record dividend payments in the first 9 months, we have moved to an adjusted net cash position of $450 million.

Let's have a quick refresher of our dividend policy. It provides for quarterly payout of $0.125 a share or around $63 million. We also provide for an annual true up payment, bringing the payout to 50% of free cash flow. We use this discretion to make that true-up at the half year, underlying it not only the extraordinary cash flow generation, but also our confidence in the outlook of the business. That took our dividend declaration for the half year to $469 million. We've done the same again for Q3 with a dividend declaration of $460 million, which matches in 3 months what we did in the first 6 months of the year. This provides one of the most generous and highest yields in the sector. And as normal, we expect a strong final quarter.

With Obuasi continued to ramp up, our Tier 1 assets now account for more than 70% of production and 80% of reserves. We expect to see the production share from our tier assets to rise still further. Our Tier 2 assets are also delivering a strong contribution. We are seeing healthy margins across the portfolio and exceptional cash flow leverage as we remain active managers of our portfolio. The sale of Serra Grande, which is expected to be finalized before the end of the year, will ensure that we can further sharpen our focus on the core business.

During this extraordinary turnaround journey we've been on since 2021, we continually assess where we can generate the most value. And the answer is clear, the best opportunities remain within. First, we are committed to lifting performance from our core assets, driving margin growth through cost discipline, which is continuing to do what we have done well in the past. Full asset potential has been invaluable in this regard, keeping cost flat in real terms -- cost per ounce in real terms. That's improved our position on the cost curve and helped us to reliably deliver on our guidance.

The insights from this program have also helped to a pipeline of organic growth options that are beginning to reveal themselves. This extends beyond Obuasi, which is starting to develop a consistent operating cadence as it ramps up. There are other projects under consideration to build scale and extend life at several other key assets. These are relatively low risk, low capital intensive opportunities that allow us to leverage our existing footprint, infrastructure and knowledge.

The returns, as you can imagine, are more than competitive. We'll flesh those out in the coming quarters, helping to daylight more value in this extraordinary portfolio of ours. And third, we're laying the foundation for the next stage of growth in Nevada, a world-class gold camp where we're building scale and optionality.

We committed to bringing some of our most exciting internal opportunities to life, and we'll start today with Geita, our marquee asset. For years, Geita has been viewed as a world-class mine and relatively short reserve life. That is completely changing. This is a Tier 1 operation by every measure, consistent delivery, strong margins and exceptional operational stability. What's often overlooked is the geological quality. Geita sits in the Lake Victoria Greenstone Belt on the Tanzanian craton, part of the same gold province that holds Kibali and North Mara. After 2 decades of mining, large parts of the concession remain underexplored with compelling structural and geotechnical targets pointing to significant bump-up potential along strike and depth.

Today, Geita hosts an open pit and multiple underground operations producing around 500,000 ounces per year, underpinned by 3.5 million ounces in reserves and more than 7 million ounces in resources. We're now showcasing the next chapter to Geita, a mine position to remain a Tier 1 asset for at least the next 20 years, but in reality, it's going to be much longer than that. Here, you see the simple road map to unlock further value. We're allocating a total of $50 million, an additional $15 million a year to exploration. With that investment, we expect to grow reserves by about 60% to increase life to 10 years or more from around 7.5 today to about 10 years or more.

Our focus is on near mine drilling with a priority of adding ounces to the 4 mining fronts we have established. We're working through a conceptual option to increase mill capacity. this mill expansion, which we conservatively forecast to cost around $100 million, we expect to grow production by 20% to about 600,000 ounces. Importantly, we're focused on maintaining margin here and not simply creating an expansion to push through lower grade material. We will update you as we move through the study process. At a proposed capital intensity of only $1,000 per ounce of incremental annual production, this is an extraordinarily profitable project.

We are looking to put this additional investment to work in an area with proven geological quality and longevity. Since we started ding up our exploration investment in 2021, reserve life has more or less doubled to current levels around 7 years. zoom out a little further, we've added 2 million ounces of reserves between 2017 and 2024, over and above the 4.3 million ounces of depletion during that period. That comes at a cost of $39 an ounce, which is exceptional value by any measure and reinforcing the quality of the geology and our exploration team.

The pipeline of targets is exceptionally rich. We've identified around 40 prospects already and believe that we will easily improve reserve life with an initial target of 10 years or more. We aim to achieve the first milestone by 2028. The first route marker for us is to see this reserve at around 4 million ounces by next year and then 5 million ounces by the end of 2028. We have set clear initial priority areas for this drilling campaign.

Given that exploration, Geita has been somewhat undergone over the past decade or more, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit. This slide shows both Geita Hill and Nyankanga underground mines, where we have established a solid track record of predictable production and an excellent understanding of the geology. Importantly, these deposits remain open at depth and development and drilling over the next years will lead us to more clearly define the extent of the deposits.

At Star and Comet, it's very much the same approach: resource definition drilling is aimed at defining the extension of the resource. At Nyamulilima, drilling has confirmed the extension of the ore body at depth with good potential to transition to underground mining in time. We have additional high confidence exploration targets with striking distance of the pit where we've already intercepted mineralization, including some high-grade areas.

So where does it will take? We have a world-class ore body supporting a compelling investment case. With the incremental exploration spend, we expect to leverage the large resource base growing reserve life to 10 years or more and keeping it at that level for many, many years. The mine has maintained a resource to reserve conversion rate of more than 30%. This will underpin the baseline production of plus 500,000 ounces over a reserve life of 10 years. Over the medium term, we will continue to progress the mill expansion opportunity, which will step up production to 600,000 ounces. We'll update you at key points for the feasibility process. That leaves Geita well positioned to unlock significant value and to sustain its Tier 1 for decades to come.

Now we move to Nevada. While North Bullfrog is our first step in Nevada after the Tier 1 discovery at which the Nevada strategy turns. It is one of the most significant gold discoveries in the generation and is in one of the world's top mining jurisdictions. This is not a modest asset. It's large with significant mine grade. As of our latest update, Arthur holds a resource of around 16 million ounces. The deposits are predominantly oxide, which is key. Our focus is currently on the Merlin deposit, where we have some more exceptionally high-grade intercepts during resource definition drilling.

These results reinforce our confidence in the project Tier 1 quality. When fully developed, the Arthur complex is anticipated to be long-life, multimillion pound producer, which will become the center of gravity for the AngloGold Ashanti and will become the largest and probably most longevity asset that we will have in the portfolio, giving us low-cost, low-risk, high-margin ounces and plenty of them. We are currently at the back of our comprehensive prefeasibility study, which will run through the remainder of the year. We expect to talk about the results of that prefeasibility study in our results in February of next year.

However, just in a quick anticipation, if you see in the graph, the #1, that's small green, that's where we are concentrating our efforts right now, and we already are seeing how we can quickly go in that area to about 800,000-plus ounces per year. And then when you look at the whole area, you can understand why we say that it's a multi-decade, multimillion ounce deposit.

The drill bit is our best tool for value creation. Our strategy is deliberately structured in 2 phases, each with a distinct purpose but one shared goal to turn a world-class resource into a long-life, high-return complex. Our immediate focus is to convert resource to reserve. We expect again to bring those results in February. This infill drilling program across Merlin and Silicon. We're delivering the data to finalize pit designs, grade control models and strip ratios for the PFS and FS. Once we've established a reserve base, we will pivot to growth, expanding the footprint and extending mine life.

I'll hand over to Gillian now to run through the financials.

Thank you, Alberto. Q3 was marked by record gold prices driven by continued central bank buying, strong ETF inflows and still in demand amid geopolitical tensions and the weakening U.S. dollar. Oil prices were up around 13%, lower year-on-year based on both the WTI and Brent crude indices. Inflation moderated across most of our operating jurisdictions, most notably in Argentina, while Brazil saw a moderate increase to 5.2%, up from 4.4% last year.

Our unrealized inflation rate, which represents CPI changes in the jurisdictions that we operate was around 4.7%, keeping an upward pressure on our cost base. We continue to actively look for opportunities to mitigate cost impacts across the business, which we continue to demonstrate within our cash cost performance.

Production was 17% higher year-on-year in the quarter at 768,000 ounces. From our managed operations, production rose 16% to 682,000, up from 586,000 ounces in Q3 of last year. This stems from the addition of Sukari with 135,000 ounces and a 30% increase in ounces from Obuasi. The result was also supported by growth at our other key assets, including Kibali, Geita and Cuiaba. These production gains were offset somewhat by the plant stoppage at Siguiri. Total cash costs for our managed operations increased by 5% with pressure from inflation at just under 5% and royalties, which rose in line with the gold price.

Market-driven factors beyond our control would have increased cash costs from $1,172 an ounce in Q3 of 2024 to $1,272 per ounce in Q3 of 2025. We were, however, able to reduce this to $1,225 an ounce through disciplined cost management, the addition of Sukari to the portfolio and the impact of our full asset potential program. All-in sustaining costs for managed operations rose 6% year-on-year to $1,766 per ounce up from $1,665 an ounce in Q3 of '24. That increase reflecting our planned reinvestment in stay-in business capital, partially offset by our higher gold status.

Our financial results for the quarter reflect another strong performance from our managed operations with a number of new records set. Earnings and free cash flow more than doubled year-on-year, driven by continued cost discipline, the 17% increase in production and the 40% higher average gold price. EBITDA rose 109% year-on-year to $1.6 billion, driven by price and sales volumes. This was partly offset by higher costs, which, as I've said, were driven by inflation and the increase in royalties. Basic earnings climbed to $669 million from $223 million year-on-year, again, bolstered by the price and the increase in volumes.

Net cash from operating activities was up 134% to $1.4 billion, reflecting improved operating fundamentals and cash conversion. After taking into account CapEx and Kibali cash receipts, free cash flow more than doubled to $920 million, as Alberto mentioned, another record. We ended Q3 with an adjusted net cash position of $450 million, another first for our company, and it compares to $906 million in net debt just a year ago. Our focus is unchanged. We are working hard to realize more operational improvements to maximize cash conversion, extend mine life and ensure we are disciplined in allocating capital.

This slide highlights our progress in strengthening our competitive position on the cost curve. Total cash costs were $1,225 an ounce in Q3, up 5% year-on-year. Market-driven factors, including inflation, royalties, fuel price and exchange added around $100 an ounce or 9% to the cost base. The planned stoppage at Siguiri added around $58 to cash cost as a one-off. Our managed operations continue to deliver significant improvement in the things we can control, delivering an 8% improvement from productivity gains through full asset potential program, particularly plant throughput, strong operational excellence across the portfolio and of course, the addition of Sukari volumes.

AISC from our managed operations increased by just 6% to $1,766 an ounce, reflecting our ongoing capital reinvestment. We remain focused on converting higher gold prices to strong free cash flow. Gold price gains of $683 million, higher gold sales driven by strong performance at Obuasi and the contribution from Sukari as well as the focus on working capital improvement all flowed through to free cash flow, offset by higher operating costs linked to the higher gold sales volumes, higher cash taxes on higher revenues and the planned increase in capital spend with the integration of Sukari.

This all supported the widening free cash flow margin, which almost doubled to 45% in just 1 year, reflecting the strong focus on ensuring that higher gold prices and increased margins really do flow to our bottom line. The balance sheet has never been stronger. We ended Q3 in a net cash position of $450 million, underpinning total liquidity of $3.9 billion. We're in an excellent position not only to fund our capital pipeline, but to continue returning capital to shareholders. And finally, we remain on track to meet our 2025 guidance in all metrics.

I'll hand back to Alberto for a wrap-up.

Thank you, Gillian. Since 2021, our total cash costs in real terms has trended lower versus a 19% gain for our peers. We have stayed flat, as you can see, the average of the peers in real terms has come close up to 20%. That led to a margin growth that has outpaced the same peers as a result. This has been enabled by our full asset potential, which focuses on producing more ounces with fewer costs, which has made us more competitive. We're working hard to ensure that we maintain this advantage.

Some years ago, the analysts would say, well, we trade at a discount because we have a lower margin. As you can see, now we have the same margin, but we still have somewhat of a discount that you'll see on the next slide. We made steady progress in narrowing the rating gap relative to our North American peers. This hasn't been about fixing a single issue, but rather executing a comprehensive plan over the past years to strengthen every aspect of the business. Our fundamentals are robust, our portfolio is performing and our outlook has never been more promising. We continue to progress Nevada.

Let me probably add, we're proud to have received this year the 2026 Thayer Lindsley Exploration Award that just underpins that this has been one of the most significant discoveries in the U.S. in more than a decade. We're delivering on what we said we would, achieving consistent operational improvements, enhancing returns and positioning the company for sustainable growth. And importantly, we've ensured that 94% of the gold price increase has flowed on to the bottom line.

Let me just explain this. If you multiply the dollars increase in the gold price by our tonnes, you get the increase in the revenue, 94% of that increase has slowed on to the bottom line to net operational cash flows. This has generated one of the highest free cash flow yields in the industry. Actually, if you look at the third quarter, we would be the highest free cash flow per ounce in the industry of any of the large companies.

As we assess our valuation metrics, we believe AngloGold Ashanti represents a compelling investment proposition, combining strong cash generation, a disciplined and shareholder-focused capital allocation framework, market-leading yield, predictability and valuation that offers clear upside potential.

With that, I'll take your questions.

Our first question from the telephone lines comes from Adrian Hammond of SBG.

Alberto and Gillian, I have a question for each of you, if we just start with you, Alberto. Since we last spoke on your results, it was a gold price that was at $1,000 an ounce or so below where we are today. So this certainly must change the way you think about the business or at least in shareholder returns. So you have a dividend policy and your free cash flow is certainly well in excess of what your immediate needs and plans are. So what is your strategy with dividends? Specifically, you've certainly done a true-up this quarter, and we could expect that, I assume, going forward, it spot persists. But certainly, you'll start building a lot of cash. So buybacks or increased payouts and debt redemption, are you able to talk a bit more to that?

Thanks, Adrian. Yes. Look, every quarter, we sort of talk about how we can obviously have our shareholders share in this gold price. And as I mentioned in my presentation, the fact that we have been able to pass all of the gold price by 94% into the bottom line. And so this was where we again said, okay, let's make an exception to the policy and let's distribute 50%. I've also said, I probably said in the first half that we will reassess things in February, and we will determine if there's any need for additional further capital allocations.

And as you mentioned, between debt reduction or dividends additional or buybacks. But we will talk about that in February of next year. I don't notice that there's many gold companies again are sort of comfortable with a positive net cash. Again, I think that there's limits to that, but I think we're far away from that. But in February, we will definitely deal with additional sort of ideas for capital distribution or allocation, let's say.

That's clear. And perhaps for Gillian. On costs, you're trending at the upper end of your guidance and certainly, royalties is putting pressure there that I'm assuming wasn't part of your assumption at the start of the year when you put these forecasts out or guidance out. So could you just reconcile what those assumptions were? And are you confident that given you're probably going to pay a bit more on royalties this quarter, why you think at least you should meet that guidance?

And then secondly, some of your peers have really started ramping up the reserve gold price assumption. I assume that's going to be a trend for the sector, but probably some more than others, which is telling in respect of what sort of capital you plan on investing in the business because those reserves will need infrastructure. So are you able to give us some sort of insight into your reserve gold price plans in respect of capital discipline?

Let me start with that, and Gillian will help me with the latter. But we did say, Adrian, very, very clearly that we were assuming that $2,350 gold price then. And that obviously, we love, as I said, the only cost we love is royalties because it's tied to the price, but that our guidance was excluding that. So if you look at where we'll end up in the year roughly, the impact of that, it will be about $40 an ounce on the cash cost. Having said that, we expect -- even without that, we expect to be right on the top end. And then with the royalties, excluding the royalty, we will be way within the cash cost.

As I mentioned, our managed operations, the non-managed has gone up more than we would have wanted Kibali, but our managed operations are only up 3% in nominal terms. So I think this will be one of our best years in terms of managing costs. And so we're quite happy about that. And then we will reconsider the gold price. But we said it before that we distinguish very clearly between if we're plan constrained or mine constrained. If you're constrained, there's just no point in changing the reserve or reserve gold price. If you're not, then we'll look at it.

But I would say that in general, our default is we're really not being changing anything because of the higher gold price. But we'll look at it and probably we will adjust it on a cost base, not so the cost of the industry have gone up, and then that's probably how we will look at it. But we will be probably along the most conservative in the industry in that regard because we just don't see a pointed. But Gillian?

Yes. So thanks, Alberto. As Alberto said, the focus is on maintaining grade in our operations and not changing that focus on rate because of gold price changes. You will know that our reserve price is $1,600 an ounce currently and resource price is $1,900. We do obviously do an annual assessment of that and would anticipate sort of marginal increases in '25, maybe $100 an ounce. But it's really looking at the change in the cost curve and its impact on us maintaining those grades rather than focusing on price, as Alberto said. I think the other thing we always do on major capital projects is look at price sensitivity regardless of that price that you set for reserve and resource. And that's just a standard thing that we would do anyway.

That's clear. Well done on a good quarter and look forward to some more insights into reserve extensions and life extensions, if you have.

Our next question comes from Joseph Reagor of ROTH Capital Partners.

Just a quick thing. Do you guys have any planned shutdowns like to the magnitude that was Siguiri in the quarter for Q4 that we should be aware of?

No. The quick answer, no. There's everything -- we expect a very strong fourth quarter right now. What we know and we will say what we don't know, we don't know, well, that's different. But what we hope we don't know and what we know we know, we're fine.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Tanya Jakusconek of Scotiabank.

Adrian asked a few of them. So I too look forward to hearing about the reserves and what's happening on that front. But I'm going to come back and I'm going to focus on Geita, if I could. I'm just looking at some of the slides you presented and thinking about the processing facility. So you said it's about $100 million to get that processing facility up. Just can you go through what exactly would be needed at the processing facility?

And then on the mining side, I see that you're going to be looking at 4 sources of production, 1 open pit and 3 underground. So I'm just trying to wonder how much money would be required to put in the underground? And on the open pit side, is there anything that I should be thinking about like a pit layback that would involve a lot of waste. So I'm trying to understand what's required on the mining side from the capital standpoint as well? That's my first question.

Tanya, look, on the second question, we already have 4 sources of ore. I don't see -- there's nothing that -- there's not a big chunk of, let's say, unusual capital that we would need on that. I think that's what makes it so strong and so predictable in those 4 sources of ore. So there's nothing about it. We are -- I'll ask Marcelo Pereira to give any details on the plant expansion. But it's still probably not even in pre-feasibility, but it is a project that is one of those when it comes, that will be a no-brainer, extremely profitable and relatively minor cost.

So it's a pure -- this all comes from full asset potential. Full asset potential is it addresses the 5 or 6 things that we're going to debottleneck and have the greatest rate of return. So this comes from that type of thinking. But Marcelo, is there any more details on that processing plant?

Absolutely, Alberto. And thanks for the question. Our plan is focused on optimizing as best as possible the capacity that we have in the plant without major investments. As Alberto has pointed out, we are planning to do investments in around $100 million as we are foreseeing now according to our level of the engineering for this plan. And our expectation is that we are going to add one additional milling capacity, but it's going to be confirmed by the engineering studies that we are confirming now. At this moment, we see very good capacity in the mill sir, which will not require additional investments. But all of these are going to be confirmed by the engineering study that we are performing at this moment.

Okay. So it looks like just upgrading of these components then at this plant. There's nothing really major to do beyond that. And it appears then on the mining front, continued open pit mining and underground would be development work. Would that be fair?

Yes.

Okay. That's great. Hopefully, one day, you get to see this asset as well. My second question, if I could. Alberto, it's to you. You started your presentation by talking about your best opportunities are within the company, so organic growth. So you've got Geita that's ramping up. You've got obvious -- sorry, Geita, Obuasi is ramping up, Geita opportunity now. You've got the Arthur Gold that's coming in towards the end of the -- well, after the end of the decade for Merlin. What about -- how do you balance that with M&A opportunities? We talked about safe jurisdiction, just selling some assets. How do you look about -- how do you think about that in terms of replacing those ounces and looking at your overall geopolitical risk profile?

Thanks, Tanya. Look, probably I'll start with your -- what you implied when you start the question. When we look at this opportunity like Geita, but also Cuiaba and its potential, the potential of Siguiri in the long term, it's just very, very impactful and very low cost. So it's actually very difficult to compete because the rate of returns of all of those 3 and others of Obuasi, as we expect from others is just extremely high. And so that's -- if you look at our brownfield exploration budget, it's increasing by about 40% or something like that. And that's what we're doing, exploring more in Geita, exploring more in Cuiaba, exploring more in Sukari. So just to delineating what we have multi-decade deposits.

And so that's -- as I said, that's where I would say the focus the bulk of the management team and 99.9% of the people is Yes, there is a group in BD that looks at opportunities I said before, it's difficult to do M&A because it needs to add value. I also haven't been shy in saying that we will focus probably in developed countries more than anything, like if we could have the next equivalent to or a bit smaller Tier 1 cost, it will be something that will -- and we can add value to the company, we will look at that. We will assess our opportunities. And if they're, for example, competitive I said before, probably we will lose, and that's fine.

We will only do something if it adds value. And that's about it. So yes, in summary, main focus is wonderful opportunities we have. We have a big team that is very good. and that its track record to date in terms of Corvus, Augusta and obviously, Centamin. And then it's very disciplined in selling things in selling what we sold in Africa and Serra Grande is very good. So then continue to try to do that. And yes, that's how we look at those things, Tanya.

Okay. And so should I be thinking that maybe the completion of the Cerro Vanguardia mine asset would be sold in 2025 as well? Or is that a '26 story for an asset sale?

I think it will be close. So either fourth quarter or first quarter of next year. Either this year first quarter of next.

And is that pretty much in your portfolio, you're done with the asset sales? I think you still have a royalty portfolio. Is that correct?

Sorry. What was the question?

I think I was just commenting that after we've done Cerro Vanguardia, that asset sale, are you done with asset sales? I think you still have a royalty portfolio that could be sold. But besides that, is that it on the asset sales?

I think it's small, but we can look at it. And then CBSA, again, let me probably reassess. We're in the process we have with offers, but as always, we never know if it's going to be concluded or not, but we know that will be concluded as soon as LSG. But the portfolio, the loyalty portfolio I don't think it's very significant for us right now. But I think Terry mentioned something. I don't know, Terry, I think you're on the call.

Yes. This is something we'll probably look at in 2026 because there's still the 2 ongoing sales process, as Alberto mentioned, which might come with contingent payments that will add to the existing royalty portfolio, but it's relatively modest, but something we'll probably look at next year.

At this stage, I will hand over for questions from the webcast.

All right. Alberto, Gillian, I'll go in no particular order here. But [ Shashi Shekhar ]from Citibank says, what is the total expenditure, capital expenditure you're planning to increase the reserve by 60%. So that's obviously a Geita question. And then to increase production to 600,000 ounces. On Siguiri, just is the processing plant operating at 100% currently? And when do you expect the mined but not processed ore that we produced in Q3 to be fully processed?

Okay. So the gate that we're increasing the budget from $35 million to $50 million, and that's going to be for some years, and that should take us to the 10-year to 4 million in 2026 and to 5 million ounces of reserve in 2027, '28. And then the 600,000 ounces, that's the plant and the plant is $100 million today, again, we'll see what it is. But we know that it will be a project that we will do because it's such a high rate of return.

Look, in Siguiri, the mine is operating normally. The plant is operating, but it will go at full speed again, probably the third quarter of next year. But because we're processing such high grade because the mine has not shut, we expect, for example, that for the year, Siguiri will still be up 8% versus 2024. So it will still be a very good year for Siguiri.

Right. The next question from [ Yamin Gosain ] at Laurium Capital. He says, team, well done on a wonderful set of results. The current CapEx run rate is around $368 million a quarter, implying $590 million in Q4 to reach the midpoint of guidance. Can we expect to see a big CapEx number in Q4? Or will some of this be rolled over into '26?

Thank you for the question. I think we would anticipate relatively stable capital spend in stripping ore development, et cetera. We do in Q4 some orders for fleet management strategy. And so you'll definitely see an increase, but we're well within our guidance range for the full year.

Good. There is another question here from Herbert Kharivhe at Absa. He says, what is the outstanding dividend payment from CVSA? And is it likely that you received an amount this quarter?

So we -- just to get clear, we have finalized our 2024 financial statements for CVSA, which allows us to pay up dividends through to our parent company. We have done that quite significantly actually in 2025. And so there's no restrictions on how much we can flow back through to the parent company. We, of course, will want to maintain working capital levels in Argentina, but we've made really good progress on cash lockups in that region, yes.

The cash lockups, I think if you look at it, we've gone from $176 million to $100 million roughly. So dramatically reduce the cash lockup is probably where we make the most gains. So obviously, that's not surprising given sort of that there's a panel in charge first time in a long time in Argentina. So things are better.

Thanks, Alberto. We have one from [ Larry Clarkson ] at Redington Intelligence, and he just wanted to understand if we've paid back any of our bonds over the quarter?

No.

The answer for that is no, Larry. And then just to sort of close up, there are a couple of questions, [ Martin at Mining Weekly ]. Martin, you've asked some questions on clean energy use installed and whatnot. If you would just allow me to come back to you after the call on those questions. And [ Jack Forbes ], Jack, you can get hold of me just to follow up on your question on [email protected], and we can have a discussion just around the difficulty you're having on that.

But other than that, we have no other questions. So Alberto, just maybe a closing remark from you before we wrap.

I haven't thought about that. But anyway, look, it's all about disciplined execution. It's really -- and when we talk about disciplined execution, it's 40,000 people who really do the work and deliver every day, and it's just pretty amazing to see. And it's been a journey the last 4 years, but seeing how everybody is seeing to that same tune and just being able to reliably and predictably deliver what we say we're going to do.

That's your ambition in mining, the highest ambition to do that, and we are, we have been able to do it. And just again, it's just that 40,000 people who understand and are really getting up every day and delivering that. So it's just for me, it's just a thanks to all of them, and thanks to our shareholders and investors, and we will keep trying to be predictable, reliable and at the top in other mining -- gold mining industry. Thanks.

Perfect. Thanks, Alberto. Thank you.

Thank you all. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's event. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.